On July 6 Jabhat al-Nusra captured Al-Safa Hill in the Rankous Barrens . The rebel group launched an attack on Hezbollah, at the Al-Safa barrier, seizing two tanks and ‘57mm cannon. ’ Later in the day, pro-Government sources announced that all lost territory had been regained in Al-Safa.

On the Midaa front, Jaish al-Islam claimed to have destroyed ‘several’ SAA armored vehicles in Eastern Ghouta . Dozens of fighters on both sides were reported dead . By the afternoon, pro-Government sources officially denied the statements made by Islamist groups.

Footage was released showing government tanks storming suspected rebel-held positions in Daraya, Damascus.

The SAA began July 6 with two kilometers separting their position in al-Mallah, from the Castello Road . After securing the farms and blocking the road around midday, the SAA engaged rebel forces in the afternoon. Now, the road is under the SAA fire control and the joint force of Al Nusra, Nour al Dein al Zenki, Levant Front, Jaysh al-Fateh and the Free Syrian Army are attempting to re-open it. Militants are deploying massive reinforcements from the Idlib area. Pro-rebel sources say that up to 40 000 militants will be engaged in the battle for Aleppo.

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July 7, 2005, eleven years ago, the London 7/7 bombings. 

Was there advanced knowledge of the attacks? Was it a conspiracy?

The following text was first published by Global Research on August 8, 2005

*      *      *

A fictional “scenario” of multiple bomb attacks on London’s underground took place at exactly the same time as the bomb attack on July 7, 2005.

Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, a private firm on contract to the London Metropolitan Police, described in a BBC interview how he had organized and conducted the anti-terror drill, on behalf of an unnamed business client.

The fictional scenario was based on simultaneous bombs going off at exactly the same time at the underground stations where the real attacks were occurring:

POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.

HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?

POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don’t want to reveal their name but they’re listening and they’ll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they’d met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.

(BBC Radio Interview, 7 July 2005)

In response to the flood of incoming email messages, Peter Power –who is a former senior Scotland Yard official specializing in counterterrorism– responded in the form of the following “automatic reply”:

“Thank you for your message. Given the volume of emails about events on 7 July and a commonly expressed misguided belief that our exercise revealed prescient behaviour, or was somehow a conspiracy (noting that several websites interpreted our work that day in an inaccurate / naive / ignorant / hostile manner) it has been decided to issue a single email response as follows:

It is confirmed that a short number of ‘walk through’ scenarios planed [sic] well in advance had commenced that morning for a private company in London (as part of a wider project that remains confidential) and that two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs at the same time as the ones that actually detonated with such tragic results. One scenario in particular, was very similar to real time events.

However, anyone with knowledge about such ongoing threats to our capital city will be aware that (a) the emergency services have already practiced several of their own exercises based on bombs in the underground system (also reported by the main news channels) and (b) a few months ago the BBC broadcast a similar documentary on the same theme, although with much worse consequences [??]. It is hardly surprising therefore, that we chose a feasible scenario – but the timing and script was nonetheless, a little disconcerting.

In short, our exercise (which involved just a few people as crisis managers actually responding to a simulated series of activities involving, on paper, 1000 staff) quickly became the real thing and the players that morning responded very well indeed to the sudden reality of events.

Beyond this no further comment will be made and based on the extraordinary number of messages from ill informed people, no replies will henceforth be given to anyone unable to demonstrate a bona fide reason for asking (e.g. accredited journalist / academic).

[ signed ] Peter Power”

(quoted in London Underground Exercises: Peter Power Responds, Jon Rappoport, July 13 2005
http://www.infowars.com/articles/London_attack/power_responds_terror_drills.htm)

Mock Terror Drills

There was nothing “routine” in the so-called “walk through” scenarios. Visor’s mock terror drills (held on the very same day as the real attack) was by no means an isolated “coincidence”. Power’s email response suggests that mock drills are undertaken very frequently, as a matter of routine, and that there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the exercise conducted on July 7th, which just so happened to coincide with the real terror attacks.

There have indeed been several documented high profile cases of mock terror drills in the US and the UK, held prior or on exactly the same day and at the same time as the actual terror event. In the three previous cases reviewed below, the mock drills bear a canny resemblance to the real time terror attacks.

 1. CIA Sponsored Exercise on the Morning of 9/11

On the morning of September 11 2001, within minutes of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the CIA had been running “a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building”. The simulation was held at the CIA Chantilly Virginia Reconnaissance Office.

The Bush administration described the event as “a bizarre coincidence”. The matter was not mentioned by the media.(AP, 22 August 2002)

The CIA sponsored simulation consisted in a “scheduled exercise” held on the morning of September 11, 2001, where “a small corporate jet crashed into one of the four towers at the agency’s headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.” (Quoted in Associated Press, 22 August 2002.)

The news concerning the 9/11 Chantilly aircraft crashing simulation was hushed up. It was not made public at the time. It was revealed almost a year later, in the form of an innocuous announcement of a Homeland Security Conference. The latter entitled “Homeland Security: America’s Leadership Challenge” was held in Chicago on September 6, 2002, barely a few days before the commemoration of the tragic events of 9/11.

The promotional literature for the conference under the auspices of the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute (NLESI) stated what nobody in America knew about. On the morning of 9/11, the CIA was conducting a pre-planned simulation of a plane striking a building. One of the key speakers at the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute conference was CIA’s John Fulton, Chief of the Strategic War Gaming Division of the National Reconnaissance Office a specialist in risk and threat response analysis, scenario gaming, and strategic planning.

(See . The National Law Enforcement and Security Institute website is: http://www.nlsi.net/ See also The Memory Hole at http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm):

On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day. Information is the most powerful tool available in the homeland security effort. At the core of every initiative currently underway to protect our country and its citizens is the challenge of getting the right information to the right people at the right time. How can so much information from around the world be captured and processed in meaningful and timely ways? Mr. Fulton shares his insights into the intelligence community, and shares a vision of how today’s information systems will be developed into even better counter-terrorism tools of tomorrow. (Ibid)

 2. October 2000 Mock Terror Attack on the Pentagon

In late October 2000 (more than ten months prior to 9/11), a military exercise was conducted which consisted in establishing the scenario of a simulated passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon. The Defense Protective Services Police and the Pentagon’s Command Emergency Response Team coordinated the exercise. According to a detailed report by Dennis Ryan of Fort Myer Military Community’s Pentagram, “the Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to on Oct. 24-26 [2000]”:

The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. (…) Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the “plane crash” was a simulated one.

On Oct. 24, there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents.

(Dennis Ryan, “Contingency planning, Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies”, MDW NEWS 3 Nov 2000. http://www.mdw.army.mil/ )

3. Britain’s Atlantic Blue, April 2005

In Britain, there were several documented exercises of terror attacks on London’s underground system.

In addition to the 7/7 exercise conducted by Visor Consultants, a similar mock terror drill on London’s transportation system entitled “Atlantic Blue” was held in April 2005, barely three months prior to the real attacks. In 2003, a mock terror drill labelled OSIRIS 2 was conducted. It consisted, according to Peter Power in testing the “equipment and people deep in the Underground of London”. It involved the participation of several hundred people. (Interview with Peter Power, CTV, 11 July 2005).

“Atlantic Blue” was part of a much larger US sponsored emergency preparedness exercise labelled TOPOFF 3, which included the participation of Britain and Canada. It had been ordered by the UK Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr. Charles Clarke, in close coordination with his US counterpart Michael Chertoff.

The assumptions of the Visor Consultants mock drill conducted on the morning of July 7th were similar to those conducted under “Atlantic Blue”. This should come as no surprise since Visor Consultants was involved, on contract to the British government, in the organisation and conduct of Atlantic Blue and in coordination with the US Department of Homeland Security.

As in the case of the 9/11 simulation organized by the CIA, the July 7, 2005 Visor mock terror drill, was casually dismissed by the media, without further investigation, as a mere “coincidence”, with no relationship to the real event.

Foreknowledge of the 7/7 Attack?

According to a report of the Associated Press correspondent in Jerusalem, the Israeli embassy in London had been advised in advance by Scotland Yard of an impending bomb attack:

Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.(AP, 7 July 2005)

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned by his embassy not to attend an attend an economic conference organized by the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) in collaboration with the Israeli embassy and Deutsche Bank.

Netanyahu was staying at the Aldridge Hotel in Mayfair. The conference venue was a few miles away at the Great Eastern Hotel close to the Liverpool subway station, where one of the bomb blasts occurred.

Rudolph Giuliani’s London Visit

Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City at the time of the 9/11 attacks, was staying at the Great Eastern hotel on the 7th of July, where TASE was hosting its economic conference, with Israel’s Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as keynote speaker.

Giuliani was having a business breakfast meeting in his room at the Great Eastern Hotel, close to Liverpool Street station when the bombs went off:

“I didn’t hear the Liverpool Street bomb go off,” he explains. “One of my security people came into the room and informed me that there had been an explosion. We went outside and they pointed in the direction of where they thought the incident had happened. There was no panic. I went back in to my breakfast. At that stage, the information coming in to us was very ambiguous.” (quoted in the Evening Standard, 11 July 2005.)

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rudolph Giuliani knew each other. Giuliani had officially welcomed Netanyahu when he visited New York City as Prime Minister of Israel in 1996. There was no indication, however, from news reports that the two men met in London at the Great Eastern. On the day prior to the London attacks, July 6th, Giuliani was in North Yorkshire at a meeting.

After completing his term as mayor of New York City, Rudi Giuliani established a security outfit: Giuliani Security and Safety. The latter is a subsidary of Giuliani Partners LLC. headed by former New York head of the FBI, Pasquale D’Amuro.

After 9/11, D’Amuro was appointed Inspector in Charge of the FBI’s investigation of 9/11. He later served as Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division at FBI Headquarters and, Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence. D’Amuro had close links to the Neocons in the Bush adminstration.

It is worth noting that Visor Consultants and Giuliani Security and Safety LLC specialize in similar “mock terror drills” and “emergency preparedness” procedures. Both Giuliani and Power were in London at the same time within a short distance of one of the bombing sites. While there is no evidence that Giuliani and Power met in London, the two companies have had prior business contacts in the area of emergency preparedness. Peter Power served on the Advisory Board to the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness (CCEP), together with Richard Sheirer, Senior Vice President of Giuliani and Partners. who was previously Commissioner at the NYC Office of Emergency Management, and Director of New York City Homeland Security.

(See CCEP at http://www.ccep.ca/ccep_shei.html)

Concluding Remarks

One should not at this stage of the investigation draw hasty conclusions regarding the mock terror drill of a terror attack on the London underground, held on the same day and at the same time as the real time attacks.

The issue cannot, however, be dismissed. One would expect that it be addressed in a serious and professional fashion by the police investigation and that the matter be the object of a formal clarification by the British authorities.

The issue of foreknowledge raised in the Associated Press report also requires investigation.

More generally, an independent public inquiry into the London bomb attacks is required.


 by Michel Chossudovsky

Special Price: $17.00

Israel Remains Faithful to the Fundamental Ideology of Zionism

July 10th, 2016 by Prof. Yakov M. Rabkin

The recent appointment of the Soviet-born Avigdor Lieberman has aggrieved many liberal supporters of Israel. The man is on record as a proponent of ethnic cleansing, bombing the Aswan Dam in Egypt and stripping Arabs of Israeli citizenship.

These critics bemoan an alleged betrayal of the ideas of the founders’ generation, such as Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, by the current Israeli leaders. I strongly disagree with these critics. Rather, today’s government of Israel, both its executive and legislative branches, reflect remarkable continuity and unswerving loyalty to the fundamental ideology of Zionism. Massive ethnic cleansing took place in 1947-8 under the command of Ben Gurion.

All Israeli governments have ordered bombings raids on the neighbouring countries. Government threats of bombing Iran have been routine for a good decade.  Arabs were placed under military rule from 1948 to 1966, a period of continuous rule of “the left”. Lieberman is no different from the founding fathers.

 

The Zionist project in Palestine developed under the motto of hafrada, separate development. Zionist settlers did not mean to join and develop the existing economic and social systems in Palestine but, rather, pursued policies typical of settler colonialism. The goal of occupying a maximum of land with a minimum of Arabs has been the policy of all Israeli administrations. So has the fundamental idea that Israel is “the state of the Jewish people” rather than a state of its citizens. This naturally reduces Arab citizens of Israel to a second-class status.

Israeli society and its elites adopted, from the very inception of the Zionist enterprise, a reductionist view of the “Arab” akin to racial anti-Semitism. On the ground, it made possible discrimination against Palestinian Arabs, Jews from Muslim countries as well as immigrant workers from Asia and refugees from Africa. Massive demonstrations have taken place in Israel against intimate relations between Jews and Arabs, and there is no civil marriage in Israel, which could have made mixed marriages possible.

The right and the extreme right around the world have long admired the unfettered nationalism that underlies the State of Israel. For example, the White nationalists of South Africa identified with the State of Israel and lent it their support since 1948, while at the same time their National Party would not admit Jews. The close collaboration established between the Zionist State in Asia and the Apartheid State in Africa reflected not only a confluence of interests but, equally, ideological affinities.[2]

This shows that anti-Semitism can co-exist with admiration for the valiant and intrepid New Hebrew Man, for the Zionist ideology that has shaped him. It sought to regenerate “the Jewish race” deemed degenerate by prominent Zionist ideologues and practitioners. Social Darwinism, an important aspect of many right-wing ideologies, was part of the Zionist project from its inception.

Prior to unleashing a world war Nazi leadership treated Zionists as “favoured children,” helped them train settlers for Palestine and allowed them to emigrate with their assets. SS officials were guests of the Zionist leadership in Palestine and returned to Germany with admiration, which they expressed in German press. A commemorative medal was even minted in honour of one such visit. (A recent Israeli documentary, The Flat, recounted this story in some detail; it also shows a medal coined on that occasion: with the star of David on one side, and the swastika on the other.) Several right wing groups known for their anti-Semitic past—the Dutch Freedom Party, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the English Defence League in Great Britain, and the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich in Austria—have all rallied enthusiastically to the cause of Israel in recent years.[3] Herzl’s belief that anti-Semites will be “our best friends and allies” continues to ring true.

European and American Islamophobes admire Israel. In an admittedly extreme case, the perpetrator of the massacre of dozens of people in Norway in the summer of 2011, Anders Breivik, cited 359 times in his manifesto the Zionist State as a rampart against Islam and an example of armed resolve.[4]

The right likewise appreciates the dominant role played by former military officers in Israeli economic and political life, which legitimizes the conflation—usually more discrete in other countries—of politics and the military-industrial complex. Socialist Zionist movements withered within Israel, while the poverty rate there became the highest among the OECD nations, and Israel came to share with the United States the record of socio-economic inequality. This pauperization of masses of citizens has provoked relatively little social protest, and the little that did not take place was defused by the usual means of invoking “existential threats”, be it Hamas, Iran or the BDS. This has turned Israel into a poster boy for neo-liberal economic policies, an attractive country for direct foreign investment, firmly integrated into the globalized economy.

When they overlap with systemic ethnic discrimination, socio-economic disparities, tend to provoke violent reaction, usually termed as terrorism and insurgency. Israel’s extensive military experience enabled it to become a major exporter of security equipment and anti-terrorism knowhow. Thus Israel not only shows how the ruling elites can defuse social unrest with references to internal and external enemies, but also provides material means to deal with violence if such distraction is not effective. The many decades of occupation have made Israel a world leader in counter-insurgency expertise. The State of Israel remains vital to understanding not only today’s world but also the way its history can be manipulated to justify the rule of the right.

Wedded to unbridled nationalism, Israel, which Sami Michael, one of its distinguished authors, characterizes as “the most racist state in the industrialized world,”[5] preserves the European tradition of the use of force to ensure colonial settlement. This tradition is certainly not of Jewish origin. But it reflects the historical role of which the State of Israel is proud: the affirmation of European values such as assertive military behaviour. Following the Nazi period and during the decolonization undertaken in the context of the Cold War, the principles of racial equality and aversion for war temporarily prevailed in European societies. While the ideology of racial and ethnic superiority went into eclipse in Europe between 1960 and 1980, it is gaining ground once more, particularly since the end of the Cold War.[6]  Eastern Europe is awash in it.

While the use of force as a matter of course against “people of colour” in far-off countries had fallen into temporary discredit, throughout all its existence Israel has regularly attacked neighbouring countries and the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has become a major source of specialists and equipment in the “war on terror.” Western countries and their allies draw upon Israeli expertise when they prepare their armed and police forces not only for operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and other Muslim-majority countries, but also for social control and repression of their own societies.[7]

The right wing nature of political Zionism had long been clear to those who cared to pay attention. In 1935 Albert Einstein, along with other Jewish humanists, denounced the Betar youth movement founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the spiritual father of the current Israel government, calling it “as much of a danger to our youth as Hitlerism is to German youth.”[8] Einstein, who espused cultural and humanist Zionism, was openly opposed to the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine and repeatedly criticized the rightward drift of the Zionist movement in the 1940s.[9] Irving Reichert (1895-1968), a Reform rabbi, pointed to a dangerous “parallel between the insistence of some Zionist spokesmen upon nationality and race and blood and similar pronouncements by fascist leaders in certain European dictatorships.”[10] A graphic illustration can be found in a memoir of life in a Lithuanian town between the two world wars: “In Biliunas Street, a member of the Young Lithuania movement [which carry out massacres of Jews during the war] wearing a green uniform met a member of Betar, in gray-brown [a Zionist militarized youth movement]; they greeted each other raising their arms in the fascist salute.”[11]

The very nature of settler colonialism invariably exacerbates ethnic nationalism. The Israeli historian Benny Morris explains this logic:

Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist. Realizing Zionism meant organizing and dispatching settlement groups to Palestine. As each settlement took root, it became acutely aware of its isolation and vulnerability, and quite naturally sought the establishment of new Jewish settlements around it. This would make the original settlement more “secure” — but the new settlements now became the “front line” and themselves needed “new” settlements to safeguard them.[12]

Hannah Arendt, an erstwhile Zionist and political philosopher had well understood this tendency and wrote in 1948, when Palestine was aflame:

And even if the Jews were to win the war… [t]he “victorious” Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded inside ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defence…. And all this would be the fate of a nation that—no matter how many immigrants it could still absorb and how far it extended its boundaries (the whole of Palestine and Transjordan is the insane Revisionist demand)—would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbours.[13]

Hers was as much a prophesy as a warning.

The world continues to pay a high price for ignoring such warnings.[14] Those who warned against the creation of a Zionist state saw their words treated with disdain, or at best with condescension. However, these same Jewish authors have proven to be prophetic in identifying early on the trends that have now become dominant in Israeli society. They had, in particular, foreseen the upsurge of chauvinism and xenophobia, the militarization of society and the popularity of fascist ideas. While only few Israeli politicians, such as Miri Regev, are “happy to be fascists”, most frequently fascism is treated as a threatening spectre invoked by former prime ministers, journalists and even military brass.

These warnings deserve more than the “condescension of history.” The State of Israel has been a vanguard and a barometer of right-wing trends that have taken place in economic and social developments, in international relations and warfare since the turn of the century. The inclusion of Lieberman and his extreme-right party in the government coalition is part of the country’s genetic code. Israel remains faithful to its principles. This is important to realize if one is to understand what is modern Israel and what roles it plays in the world at large.

Notes

[1] The author is Professor of History at the University of Montreal ; his recent book is What is Modern Israel (Pluto Press), also available in French, Japanese and Russian. His previous book A Threat from Within : A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism is available in fourteen languages, including Arabic and Hebrew.

[2] Sasha Polakow-Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, New York: Pantheon Books, 2010.

[3] Adar Primor, “The unholy alliance between Israel’s Right and Europe’s anti-Semites,” Haaretz, December 12 2010.

[4] Ben Hartman, “Norway attack suspect had anti-Muslim, pro-Israel views.” Jerusalem Post, July 24 2011.

[5] This characterization belongs to Sami Michael, an acclaimed Israeli novelist and Nobel nominee: Lisa Goldman, “Sami Michael: ‘Israel – Most racist state in the industrialized world’”, +972, August 2, 2009; http://972mag.com/author-sami-michael-israel-is-the-most-racist-state-in-the-industrialized-world/52602/

[6] Paul Hockenos, Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post-Communist Eastern Europe, New York: Routledge, 1993; John Palmer, “The rise of far right parties across Europe is a chilling echo of the 1930s”, Guardian November 15, 2013; http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/15/far-right-threat-europe-integration; M. Golder, “Extreme Right Parties in Europe”, Annual Review of Political Science, 19(1), 2015.

[7] Edmund Sanders and Batsheva Sobelman, “Israeli firms see a global market for their anti-terrorism know-how”, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2010; http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/27/world/la-fg-israel-homeland-security-20101128

[8]  Peter A. Bucky, The Private Albert Einstein, Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel, 1992, p. 64

[9] Fred Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2009

[10] Quoted in Ross,, Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism, Washington, DC: Potomac, 2011, p. 37

[11] Rimantas Vanagas, Nenusigręžk nuo savęs: gyvieji tilta. Vinius, Vyturys, 1995, pp. 69-70

[12] Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, New York, Vintage Books, 2001, p. 676.

[13] Hannah Arendt, “To Save the Jewish Homeland,” (published in May 1948), in Jew as Pariah, New York, Grove Press, 1978, p. 187

[14] Adam Schatz, Prophets Outcast, New York: Nation, 2004, p. xii.

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As the war on weed winds down, hemp and cannabis users are celebrating.

But as Ellen Brown warns , the same corporate interests that benefited from its criminalisation are seeking to reap the profits from its carefully controlled “legalisation.”

This is the GRTV interview with your host James Corbett and our special guest, Ellen Brown.

.

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US-Sponsored Genocide in Syria

July 10th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

From the republic’s inception, America waged genocidal wars without mercy, rule of law principles discarded, conquest and dominance sought at any price.

At home, America’s native people were virtually exterminated, survivors consigned to concentration camp-like reservations, treated more like animals than people, impoverished, abused and denied their fundamental rights.

Abroad, one country after another was raped and destroyed, endless horrors continuing. Tens of millions of death attest to a ruthless state masquerading as democratic and peace-loving – an Orwellian world in fact, not fiction.

Cold hard reality exposes horrifying truths – a nation bent on world conquest and colonization, its resources looted, its people exploited, nonbelievers slaughtered, imprisoned, disappeared or otherwise eliminated.

Where does it end? Will neocon lunatics in Washington use nuclear and other super-weapons?

Syria is one of many US war theaters, using ISIS and other terrorist groups as imperial foot soldiers, backed by American air power, pretending to combat the scourge it supports.

Endless war continues, peace talks and cessation of hostilities farcical. Clinton, if elected president, and her likely secretary of WAR Michele Flournoy favor escalated conflict, including no-fly or no-bombing zones, along with greater numbers of US combat troops involved.

Both are warriors, favoring war over diplomatic solutions, wanting Assad forcibly toppled, risking direct confrontation with Russia – Putin wanting Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity protected, its people alone deciding who’ll lead them.

Days earlier, Syria declared a three-day truce, then extended it another 72 hours – a futile gesture. Foreign-backed terrorists don’t take holidays.

John Kerry lied, saying “(w)e very much welcome the Syrian army declaring of 72 hours of quiet. We are trying very hard to grow these current discussions into a longer lasting…enforceable, accountable cessation of hostilities that could change the dynamics on the ground.”

At the same time, Washington continues supporting terrorists mischaracterized as moderates, wanting endless war, Assad toppled, US-controlled puppet leadership replacing him, another nation destroyed by imperial madness.

In letters to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and current Security Council president (Japan’s) Koro Bessho, Syria’s Foreign Ministry blasted the hypocrisy of America, NATO and regional countries, pretending to want terrorism eliminated while actively supporting it, saying:

In continuation of the policies of destruction and hatred which are sponsored by specific countries and regimes including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, the armed terrorist groups which are supported and funded by external sides continued targeting the residential neighborhoods in Aleppo city with various explosive and rocket shells and ‘hellfire cannon’ shells which consist of weaponized gas cylinders in an arbitrary manner without any consideration for the sanctity of Eid al-Fitr holiday in blatant violations of the truce agreements and the cessation of hostilities.

Since the ceasefire was declared, effective midnight last February 26, 762 known terrorist violations occurred, more daily, notably targeting residential and other civilian areas – advanced weapons, cluster munitions, and chemical agents used, supplied by Western and regional states.

According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA),

“the persistence of these terrorists attacks which are carried out by what some like to call ‘moderate opposition groups’ such as the terrorist organizations Jabhar al-Nusra, Jaish al-Fateh, and Jaish al-Islam among other groups affiliated or linked to ISIS and Al Qaeda, shows the depth of the hypocrisy of the states that claim to be fighting terrorism, as well as being evidence of the lack of seriousness of countries such as France, Britain, and the United States – the three of them permanent Security Council members – in combating terrorism, in addition to showing the double standards employed by these states when it comes to the war on terrorism.”

(T)hese cowardly terrorist act…are…protected by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, France, Britain, and the United States…

(T)hese states and regimes provid(e) terrorist groups with funds, weapons, munitions, equipment, and recruits…some providing…safe havens, particularly Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel…

The Ministry blasted key Security Council members for failing to fulfill their duties to combat the scourge of terrorism they actively support.

They’re responsible for half a million or more Syrian deaths, half the population internally or externally displaced, survivors facing largely unaddressed crisis conditions, Russia alone among major powers committed to helping them.

The fate of a nation and its people hang in the balance.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

 

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The Warsaw Summit and NATO’s Reckless Bluff

July 10th, 2016 by Alexander Mercouris

NATO troop deployments to Poland and the Baltic States are a dangerous public relations move which is already backfiring.

NATO’s decision to deploy four battalions of troops on a supposedly rotating basis to Poland and the Baltic States is the worst sort of decision.  However we need to stay calm. It does not mean war is coming.

The four battalions NATO is deploying to Poland and the Baltic States cannot threaten Russia.  There’s been some wild talk of how German tanks have for the first time since the end of the Second World War moved closer to St. Petersburg.  I recently visited St. Petersburg.  Any idea that NATO could capture or even seriously threaten St. Petersburg with just four battalions – around 3,000 men – when Hitler’s Army Group North with 23 divisions backed by a Finnish army consisting of a further 7 divisions couldn’t capture it, is simply silly.

Not only is the force NATO is deploying to Poland and the Baltic States incapable of seriously threatening Russia but in the event of a Russian attack it wouldn’t even be able to defend itself.  Media commentary in the West admits as much.  It says the NATO troops are simply intended to be a “trip-wire” to deter a Russian attack on Poland and the Baltic States.

No Russian attack is planned or threatened against either Poland or the Baltic States.  No one is seriously claiming there is the slightest possibility of such an attack.  If NATO leaders genuinely feared such an attack they would not deploy troops to the Baltic States on what would in effect be a suicide mission, where they would be immediately overrun by the overwhelmingly stronger armies the Russians could immediately deploy to the area.  Even NATO generals are not that stupid.

As for saying that the deployments are intended to reinforce the message that NATO will stand by its Article 5 commitment to defend the Baltic States in the event of a Russian attack, what that does  is the exact opposite: show that the Article 5 commitment is not really cast iron and that neither NATO nor the Russians really believe it is.  If it was why would there be any need to reinforce it?

So why is NATO deploying such a force to Poland and the Baltic States?  Is it perhaps part of a larger plan to build up over time more forces in the area to threaten Russia eventually?

Hardly!  The reality – as every serious military analyst knows – is that the US military, which is the core of NATO, is seriously overextended and has no reserves to carry out further deployments in this region, whilst the capabilities and commitment of the US’s NATO allies are now so poor it is doubtful they could seriously threaten anybody.  If the British and French militaries working together could not defeat Gaddafi’s military without calling on US support during their 2011 Libyan adventure then they are in no position to take on Russia, and nor is the German army which today bares no resemblance to the force it was in the Second World War.

The true reason why NATO is deploying troops to Poland and the Baltic States has nothing to do with any of the reasons that are being said.  It is because NATO is looking for some way to demonstrate publicly that it once more considers Russia an enemy and these highly provocative and illegal deployments are the way to do it.  That way it hopes to mobilise European opinion behind its latest anti-Russian campaign.

This is both reckless and stupid.  It effectively scraps yet another agreement and promise NATO made to Russia at the end of the Cold War, which was not to deploy Western militaries in the territories of the former Warsaw Pact.  It tells the people and government of Russia – by far the most powerful country in Europe – that NATO considers them an enemy.  And it does so with an outrageous bluff that any serious military analyst – of which Russia has any number – will immediately see through.

As for mobilising European opinion behind NATO’s anti Russian campaign, the effect is the diametric opposite. All that the talk of war and of military deployments is doing is alarming the Western public leading to more and more questions about where NATO is going.  The leaders of Italy and France in order to reassure their publics have had to state publicly that they do not consider Russia an enemy, which is simply opening them up to more questions of why in that case they are agreeing to the deployments at all.  In Germany there is now an open split between Merkel – who supports the policy as she made clear in a hardline speech to the Bundestag – and her SPD and CSU coalition partners, who have made it clear they don’t.

A policy that manages to alarm, provoke and bluff all at the same time has clearly not been thought through. The Chilcot Inquiry Report into the handling of the Iraq war lambasted the lack of basic honesty, hard thinking and serious planning behind that war.  In relation to Russia – a nuclear superpower – NATO is behaving in exactly the same way.

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Libya: The Return of Saif Gaddafi

July 10th, 2016 by Richard Galustian

In an article in early May, I wrote “Keep in the back off your mind the potential future importance of Saif Gaddafi.”

The news of the release from a Libyan prison in Zintan of Saif Al Islam Gaddafi, heir apparent to his late father, is surprising to many outsiders but it nothing to what may come next – a return in some form to power.

In Libya’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising, Saif joined his father and sons on the barricades, castigating NATO-backed rebels in a bitter revolutionary war. While those rebels later cornered and killed his father Muammar and brother Moatasim in Sirte, Saif was captured alive trying to flee through the Sahara desert to Niger.

It may be his good fortune that the units capturing him were from Zintan, a mountain town south of Tripoli, who later went to war with Islamist led Libya Dawn which captured the capital in 2014. When a mass trial was held of former regime figures there, Zintan refused to hand Saif over, sparing him the brutalities inflicted on other prisoners including former intelligence chief Abdullah al Senussi and his younger brother Saadi, who was filmed being beaten in a Tripoli prison cell.

Zintanis were no friends of the former regime, fighting against Gaddafi’s forces as one of the most effective rebel outfits during the uprising that was won by NATO bombing.

But from the few accounts of those allowed to visit him in a closely guarded compound somewhere in the town, he has been treated well, living under what amounts to house arrest, until now.

A year ago a Tripoli court operating under Libya Dawn auspices sentenced him, and either others including Al Senussi, to death. Up in Zintan, not much changed for Saif, with Zintan still digging in its heels and refusing to hand him over to Tripoli’s grim Al Hadba prison.

The shambolic UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) under a puppet PM who operates out of Tripoli naval base, the only part of the city they control, however appears to be responsible for the amnesty order given in April to Saif and other prisoners removing their death sentences and ordering them to be freed.

Since then, Saif’s location is a mystery, but Zintan’s attitude to him is tempered by their alliance with former Gaddafi-supporting tribes, including those from Beni Walid and Warshefani, in their brutal battle with Libya Dawn’s Islamists. The Gaddafi tribe itself has a base south of Zintan around Sebha, making common cause with the Zintanis against Libya Dawn militias who control the capital and lord it over the GNA.

Before the Libya uprising, Saif criss-crossed the globe pushing an agenda for democratization he hoped would reform the country. Whether the drive was not serious, or whether it was frustrated by his hardline siblings Moatsem and Khamis, is impossible to know, but he emerges from captivity to find Libya a changed place something he predicted.

Saif al-Islam in February 2011 gave a speech foretelling of what was to come. And he was right “There will be civil war in Libya … we will kill one another in the streets and all of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country, because today, everyone will want to be president, or emir, and everybody will want to run the country.”

Saif knew his country would be torn apart if his father regime was forced out by the West.

The brutalities of his father’s regime have since been matched by those of some of the militias that overthrew him, most visibly the grim beating of his brother Saadi in a Tripoli jail which his captors filmed in gruesome detail.

Many of the tribes that once supported Gaddafi are now battling Islamists and their opportunistic Misratan allies of Libya Dawn, and will see in Saif a figure who can unify their demands not to be squeezed out of Libyan political life.

Opposition to him taking a political role it can be argued is softening because he was never part of the “muscle” of the Gaddafi regime, spending much of his time in London moving around the gilded circle of rich tycoons, academics and Tony Blair’s political elite.

There is, in other words, an opening for a man who was castigated by rebels for dismissing their rebellion on Gaddafi’s green TV during the uprising, but who never fired a shot in anger. With his release, he might get a shot at the plan he always said he wanted; to reform his country and unite key tribes who feel marginalized by Libya’s power brokers.

Pieces are falling into place for him to possibly take part in some kind of grand council. With the GNA unable to persuade either of Libya’s other two governments to join it, there are calls for a wider mediation effort, with Saudi Arabia and importantly Oman, offering mediation, to be discussed in Brussels on 18th July with US Secretary of State John Kerry.

In this battered, chaotic country, with governments fighting each other and IS, Saif Gadaffi may find a new role as part of the solution rather than the problem.

In the past 24 hours since the news broke he had been freed, Libyans across the country from different towns and cities have held pictures of Saif shouting his name. To my knowledge it’s the first time any pro-Gaddafi demonstrations have been evident in so many parts of the country since 2011.

It’s time Saif played a role with other libertarians in and outside Libya promoting the old constitution and particularly banishing members of the former AQ affiliate, LIFG.

Rumors are abound that Saif will give a press conference very soon. That’s going to be very interesting indeed if it happens.

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The Rim of the Pacific biennial naval exercises taking place near Hawaii under the auspices of the US Navy have caused some comment due to the inclusion of China. However joint military exercises between the USA and China are part of a co-operation of long duration.

The U.S. Navy states of the exercises: “Twenty-six nations, 45 ships, five submarines, more than 200 aircraft, and 25,000 personnel will participate in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise scheduled June 30 to Aug. 4, in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California.” The theme is “Capable, Adaptive, Partners.” “This year’s exercise includes forces from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, People’s Republic of China, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom, and the United States,” with Brazil unable to attend.”[1]

Notable is the exclusion of Russia, while Russia’s BRIC partners were invited: Brazil, India, China. China has attended RIMPAC since 2014. Russia had participated in 2012 and 2013, but has not been re-invited. However, the USA had been urging China to participate since 2010. Indian analyst Vijay Sakhuja, although maintaining that the relationship between the USA and China is one of mutual suspicion, stated of 2014 RIMPAC and China’s participation that the USA wanted to “enhance engagements with the People’s Liberation Army Navy,” dispel suspicions that there was a containment policy towards China, and to “enmesh the Chinese into multilateral naval engagements.”[2]

So far from being seen as an enduring antagonist, the USA continues to regard China as a potential ally in the containment of Russia and a pivotal factor in a global economy, and beyond that a world order. The USA’s outlook towards China is different from its outlook towards Russia. The present Chinese regime is one that can be worked with, and even partnered.

“Regime change” in Russia is the contrasting aim of the USA. We have seen shadow boxing between the USA and China before, while pursuing a containment policy against Russia, or the USSR as it was then called. The efforts to woo China vis-a-via the USA and Russia will not be forsaken over other geopolitical issues that are trivial by comparison. Despite BRICS and the Shanghai Co-operation organization, China will remain open as to its course in regard to the USA and Russia. The relationship between Russia and China is as pragmatic as that between Hitler and Stalin. In the post-Soviet Russo-China accord China has had her own way continually, pushing Russia out of former spheres of influence. Despite the smiles and handshakes between the leaders, the Russian leadership is cognizant of China’s designs on the Russian Far East and recently offered free land to Russians. A perceptive summary of Russo-Chinese relations, and the deeply embedded distrust, states:

  In the long-term, however, the China-Russia relationship encounters almost insurmountable odds. History is one of the main culprits here, with Beijing-Moscow ties strained by a series of unequal treaties, like the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and the 1860 Convention of Peking, both with major territorial consequences on China that reverberate until this day. Then there was Mao’s rejection of Soviet reforms after Stalin’s death and the subsequent antagonism within the Soviet bloc, along with numerous Cold War-era border skirmishes, both in the Western part of the border near Xinjiang and in the Eastern part of the border, near Manchuria. Another important culprit is geography. The border in the East, approximately 3,645 kilometers long, is porous by nature and has few natural barriers to restrict traffic. Yet another important factor geography brings to the equation is demography, which is at the core of the Siberian question in the Far East.[3]

Thriving China Good for America

What is of more significance than media focused cat and mice games of surveillance between Chinese and American ships and planes, is the strategic aims of the USA towards China expressed at high policy levels. In 2011 Hilary Clinton wrote a significant article for Foreign Policy, entitled “America’s Pacific Century,” highlighting the focus of the USA on the region.[4] While the assumption might be made that U.S. interests will result in rivalry between China and the USA, Clinton unequivocally reiterated the long-held view among the policy-making establishment that regards China not as a rival but as a partner. She stated this in a speech with the same title at the East-West Center the following month:

 Our most complex and consequential relationships with an emerging power is, of course, with China. Some in our country see China’s progress as a threat to the United States, while some in China worry that America seeks to constrain China. In fact, we believe a thriving China is good for China, and a thriving China is good for America. President Obama and I have made very clear that the United States is fundamentally committed to developing a positive and cooperative relationship with China.[5]

Clinton referred to high level dialogue that had been taking place between the USA and China militarily, diplomatically and economically, referring to the Strategic and Economic Dialogue started in 2009 and the Strategic Security Dialogue. U.S. corporate interests have seen China as having the greatest potential as a market, and this outlook is not new. The ground was laid when Mao was alive, with Henry Kissinger’s dialogue that had been long urged by globalist interests in such bodies as the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. The pro-China outlook among the globalist establishment has not dissipated. The economies have become symbiotic, and Clinton alluded to the desirability of this symbiosis in her speech:

On the economic front, the United States and China have to work together – there is no choice – to ensure strong, sustained, balanced future global growth. U.S. firms want fair opportunities to export to China’s markets and a level playing field for competition. Chinese firms want to buy more high-tech products from us, make more investments in our country, and be accorded the same terms of access that market economies enjoy. We can work together on these objectives, but China needs to take steps to reform. In particular, we are working with China to end unfair discrimination against U.S. and other foreign companies, and we are working to protect innovative technologies, remove competition-distorting preferences. China must allow its currency to appreciate more rapidly and end the measures that disadvantage or pirate foreign intellectual property.[6]

What is required of China is reform, and indeed that is what China has been pursuing for decades, but not to the point of allowing the undermining of State authority. Such State stability is also in the interests of the USA to maintain, to avoid ensuing chaos and economic dislocation. That is why there is the aim of “reform” for China, as distinct from “regime change” demanded for Russia.

Clinton addressed the USA’s attitude towards Chinese economic incursions into the small Pacific nations, which are often followed by a Chinese military presence. Such Chinese expansion is generally assumed as being seen by the USA as resulting in economic, diplomatic and military rivalry. This is not so. The question was asked by Derek Mane from the Solomon Islands, referring to “the economic leverage China is getting in the region,” and alluding to Papua New Guinea and Fiji. Clinton replied:

“With respect to Chinese investment, the United States does not object to investment from anywhere, particularly in our Pacific Island friends, because we want to see sustainable growth. We want to see opportunities for Pacific Islanders. But as I said in my speech, we want also to see investment carried out by the United States, by China, by anyone, according to certain rules that will truly benefit the countries in which the investment occurs.”[7]

Other than the USA and China there is no “anyone.” Clinton was stating that there is no rivalry between the USA and China in the region. Her allusions to the “rights” of anyone else are the necessary platitudes that have justified U.S. interference across the world since Woodrow Wilson. They have become nothing more than clichés.

A delegate from China, Mien Cui, asked Clinton about the role of foreign students, as the future policy makers, given that many of these future Chinese foreign policy makers are getting educated at American universities. Clinton replied, “We have a program to try to get 100,000 more students – more American students studying in China, more Chinese students coming to the United States,” along with other Asian states. Again we see a symbiosis between China and the USA, where the future elites of both nations are being culturally, politically and intellectually cross-pollinated.

“Enhancing the global good”

Clinton, although no longer Secretary of State, but making a bid for the Presidency, was expressing what goes beyond the thinking of the Obama Administration or any other temporary Democratic or Republican presidency. It is the long held view of globalists towards China (and not solely those based in the USA), which coalesces in bodies such as the Trilateral Commission. Richard C Bush in a paper for the Brookings Institute, referred to the Clinton Foreign Policy article, a speech by Obama to the Australian Parliament and a talk by National Security Adviser Tom Donilon to the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the USA’s attention towards the RIMPAC region. Bush stated that    “On the implication of rebalancing priorities for China, all three reiterated the U.S. desire to expand the areas on which Washington and Beijing could cooperate to enhance the global good.”[8] “Donilon stressed that re-balancing ‘does not mean containing China or seeking to dictate terms to Asia.”[9]

Bush remarks that a “rising power” pursuing “revisionist” goals often leads to war with an “established power” (in this instance the USA). However he draws a distinction between popular perceptions and those of policy makers, stating that “To date, the Chinese leadership appears to believe that American intentions are benign, while the nationalistic and vocal public believes they are malign.” Bush is here drawing a distinction between popular perceptions and assumptions among the Chinese (and American) people, and attitudes at higher levels of policy making. It might be added that when U.S. Congress calls for weapons sanctions on China in relation to “human rights” for example, this does not necessarily reflect the outlook and aims of the globalist executives and policy analysts, such as Trilateralists, but politicos such as Clinton are obliged to give a certain amount of public lip service to such sentiments, before the real business of governing the world is conducted. Over the long term, Richard Bush writes on the possibility of friction over the “transition of power”:

The rebalancing policy of the United States is a measured response to East Asia’s new realities. It is not designed to contain China but it is the premise and basis for addressing China’s revival in ways that China will choose to play a constructive rather than disruptive role in regional and global affairs.[10]

Contrasting attitudes towards Russia and China

In comparison, a Brooking Institute article by Michael E O’Hanlon, senior Fellow at Brookings, specialising in military and security issues, and co-director of its Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, castigates Obama for what he considers the president’s soft attitude towards Putin. Obama’s “restraint” “does not hold water.” The Cold War rhetoric towards Russia is revived:

More than an intellectual mistake, it is entirely unsustainable in American politics; there is no way the next president will maintain such a view. Even Trump would almost surely see his bromance with Putin fall apart … since the Ukraine problem and other matters are unlikely to solve themselves and Putin is unlikely to take the initiative to solve them in good faith.[11]

O’Hanlon proceeds to call Putin a “thug” and refers to Russian “provocations” against NATO, neutral countries and the USA. It takes a wilful blindness to ignore the U.S./NATO provocations on Russia’s border, and ground-floor interference in such issues as the Ukraine. O’Hanlan hopes that restraint will be sufficient, but sees the need for a military response as likely.

Fiona Hill, Director of the Center on the United States and Europe, and a senior Fellow at Brookings, testified to the House Armed Services Committee, February 10, 2016, that “Russia today poses a greater foreign policy and security challenge to the United States and its Western allies than at any time since the height of the Cold War.”[12]

The differences in outlook towards China and Russia are reflected by veteran foreign policy analysts such as Kissinger and Brzezinski, and by plutocrats such as George Soros, David Rockefeller, and Goldman Sachs executives, the latter in recent years becoming a notable presence in such globalist think tanks as the Bilderbergers. Again the hope is of “reform” that will see China become an integral part of a world order, as distinct from the “regime change” demanded of Russia. Russia in contrast to China has proved a disappointing investment to the international banks, indicated by the recent drawback there by Goldman Sachs.[13] While Goldman Sachs is heavily involved in China, for his part Putin sees the bankers as part of the anti-Russian offensive. Putin regarded the recent leaking of the “Panama Papers” as part of an effort by the USA and Goldman Sachs to influence the Duma elections in September this year.[14] While Goldman Sachs had signed up to be the Kremlin’s global PR firm in 2013 this seems to have come quickly unstuck. Putin’s attack perhaps reflects Goldman Sachs having withdrawn the previous month from a deal to underwrite $3 billion of Russia’s debt.[15]

Continuation of CFR/Trilateral policy

The machinations of globalist think tanks and investors are of more consequence than public shadow boxing and rhetoric from politicians. While the public sees and hears jibes between China and the USA and exaggerated reports of innocuous so-called confrontations at sea or over air space, all the while the economies of both continue in symbiosis, high level dialogue and even joint military manoeuvres continue, and Chinese analysts sit in conference with their counterparts at meetings of globalist think tanks. Of the latter, the Trilateral Commission (TC) was established by David Rockefeller whose family dynasty have been long-time friends of China. TC and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) personnel were prominent in establishing official dialogue with China during the Nixon-Mao years, fronted by the omnipresent Henry Kissinger. Indeed, the CFR, a long running globalist think tank, touts its role in the development of Sino-US relations.[16]

In 2006 the TC issued its second post-Soviet report on Russia. As one would expect they had seen hope in the first Yeltsin years, which soon turned chaotic. From late 2003 Putin started reversing policies. The Trilateral position is to maintain dialogue rather than push Russia towards isolation, with the aim of subverting Russia. Business is seen as the force for “dynamic change.” “It attracts the young elite and interacts with the outside world; in a growing number of companies, it requires conformity with international standards of law, accountancy and governance.”[17] That is to say, economics is the most effective manner of subverting a state’s traditional values. It is the revolutionary character of capitalism, exemplified by George Soros. “The young elite” is an emerging class of trans-national, trans-cultural nomads; it is a global elite (what might be called “rootless cosmopolitans” in Stalinist parlance) or what G Pascal Zachary approvingly called the “Global Me” in a book of that name. Tourism, travel and scholarships are seen as means by which Russians can be influenced by foreign methods and thinking; or what critics might more cynically call “infection.” NGOs are also listed as an important factor. Since then Putin has also recognised this and the Duma took steps to eradicate the influence of the type of NGOs that have been funded by OSI, National Endowment for Democracy, et al, instrumental in creating “color revolutions” first of all in the ex-Soviet bloc states.

It is of interest that China is represented on the Executive of the Trilateral Commission by Chen Naiqing, Vice President of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, Beijing. In addition there are Chinese members of the TC’s “Asia Pacific Group”: Li Zhaoxing, Former Foreign Minister of RPC, Beijing; Lu Shumin, Executive President of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, Beijing; Ruan Zongze, Executive Vice President of China Institute of International Studies, Beijing; Sio Chi Wai, Member of the Legislative Assembly of the Macau Special Administrative Region; Wu Jianmin, Member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Group of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Senior Research Fellow of Counsellors’ office of the State Council, Member and Vice President of the Wuropean Academy of Sciences, Beijing; Wu Xinbo, Director of the Center for American Studies and Executive Dean of the Institute of International Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai; and Yang Wenchang, President of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, Beijing.[18]

That proportion of Chinese members of the TC is more than a token representation. They could not be members without approval from the State.

Co-operation or confrontation?

High level co-operation is not new. Dr David Finkelstein, in a paper for the Center for Naval Analyses stated that co-operation on security and international issues was taking place before the normalization of relations in 1979:

We recall that during the height of the Cold War the two nations demonstrated that when a pressing and shared security concern (in that case, the former Soviet Union) presented itself, Washington and Beijing were capable of working together, extant differences notwithstanding. Security consultations and sometime security cooperation between the two countries continue today. But as the record of security cooperation is reviewed, one comes to the conclusion that, for the most part, U.S.-China security cooperation has been mainly of a political nature and operationalized at a high level of strategic policy coordination.[19]

Dr Finkelstein, vice president for the Center for Naval Analyses and director of CNA China Studies, explains of the last point that “Security cooperation between the two nations has been largely the purview of U.S. and Chinese civilian officials and diplomats, not generals and admirals.” That is surely where it matters. Generals and admirals do not run most states. One might also add that also where it matters perhaps even more so than the words and actions of official and diplomats, is among the corporate executives, NGO directors, and think tank analysts than meet together at the Bilderberg and Trilateral gatherings. He states that “sound military-to-military” cooperation between China and the USA is lacking. Finkelstein refers to the previous extensive military co-operation with China enabled by that great crusader against the USSR, Ronald Reagan.

Over the next half-decade, China acquired a series of American weapons systems. It paid $22 million for American help in modernizing its factories to produce artillery ammunition and projectiles. China spent an additional $8 million for American torpedoes, $62 million for artillery-locating radar and more than $500 million for American help in modernizing its jet fighters…China also entered into several commercial transactions, in which it bought American hardware directly from U.S. defense firms. The most notable of these was the purchase of 24 Sikorsky S-70C helicopters from United Technologies Corp.[20]

While USA’s high tech military transfer with China halted due to the “Tiananmen Sanctions” enacted by Congress in 1989, a few years later President Bill Clinton had succeeded in somewhat rectifying this with “a U.S.-China ‘constructive strategic partnership’ for the 21st century,” resulting in the Defense Consultative Talks (DCT) and the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA).[21]

Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, the overall trend in U.S.-China relations was quite positive. … During this period, the United States supported China’s entry into the WTO (2001) and high-level consultative dialogues, such as the ‘Senior Dialogue’ (2005) and the ‘Strategic Economic Dialogue’ (2006), were established, and there was co-ordination between the two regarding North Korea.[22] During the George W Bush administration policy papers suggested that China was a global competitor, and Chinese analysts saw this as a US mentality that required an enemy.[23]

Finkelstein considers that a lack of high level security co-operation will continue due to the lack of a common military threat such as that posed by the USSR. However, the USA remains eager to secure China as an ally. Both states must appease contrary factions, and sabre-rattling serves this purpose. Finkelstein, as with many others, sees Taiwan as the continuing point of major contention. It is questionable whether the USA would remain loyal to Taiwan if push came literal shove. The USA pursued a “two China” policy which allowed China entry into the UNO and the removal of ROC, and “one China” remains the policy of the USA. As with other scenarios for conflict between the USA and China, one might ask how realistic is a conflict between the People’s Republic of China and ROC? Again, does sabre rattling and shadow boxing indicate substance? Taiwan under Chiang had a command economy and Chiang’s nationalist ideology was based on resisting the incursions of international finance. Despite the image of Taiwan as an outpost of U.S. imperialism, Chiang pursued independent economic policies, and not until recently did Taiwan become a market economy. Taiwan pursued economic nationalism.[24] More latterly Taiwan has pursued globalization, and this includes Taiwanese investment in Mainland China and Taiwan acting as a bridgehead for other investors into China.

U.S. companies can draw on Taiwan’s relationships and expertise in expanding their business arrangements in all of Asia, especially China. The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which entered into force in September 2010, further enhances Taiwan’s competitiveness in the Chinese market and establishes Taiwan as a strategic springboard for its trading partners. As of the end of 2014, nearly 50,000 Taiwanese companies had invested directly in Mainland China and ASEAN, forming a complete supply chain system for U.S. companies to develop their Asian markets and the rest of the world.[25]

China and Taiwan cannot afford conflict any more than China and the USA. There will be no confrontation between China and the USA over Taiwan.

Finkelstien presents alternative scenarios to rivalry:

While none of the persistent and gnawing inhibitors listed above are about to vanish, there are new forces at work in international security, and especially within China, that argue for the possibility of security cooperation between the two defense-military establishments as the current decade unfolds. The most significant development behind this line of thought is the combination of the increasing globalization of China’s national security interests with the diversification of non-traditional security threats which China also faces as a result of its emergence as a global political and economic actor.[26]

Finkelstein cites several Chinese positions that are, it might be noted, in accord with globalist attitudes on the role of China in a world order:

Beijing is beginning to acknowledge a new reality: a China with global economic interests is a China with global political interests and, increasingly, a China with global security interests. The 2006 version of the PRC defense white paper proclaimed (almost nervously), ‘Never before has China been so closely bound up with the rest of the world as it is today,’ and a causal connection was made between economic globalization and national security interests. Chinese leaders also acknowledge that securing China’s globalized security interests will require cooperation between the PRC and other 29 nations. This concept was hinted at in the work report of the 17th Party Congress (2007), which declared, ‘China cannot develop in isolation from the rest of the world, nor can the world enjoy prosperity or stability without China.'[27]

This seems the same position as that of Kissinger, Rockefeller, Soros, Trilateralism, et al. It might be contended that these issues are more significant than the issue of America’s backing of Taiwan, and routine clichés about “human rights.” We are dealing with high policy in the interests of global economics, besides which the puppet show for public consumption among both Chinese and Americans is trivial. Of other areas where there is a common security focus, such as in dealing with piracy, Finkelstein writes:

… the United States and China have already recognized the need to cooperate, and in fact do cooperate, extensively in civil maritime security affairs. One of the little-known successes in U.S.-China security cooperation is the relationship between the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and its multiple counterparts in China. Technically, this is non-military security cooperation, but in many cases it has a very paramilitary flavor.[28]

A ground force equivalent to RIMPAC sponsored by the USA and conducted in Mongolia, took place in 2015, with participation by the Chinese army.

Around 300 U.S. personnel, from the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, will participate in the exercise, along with 600 Mongolian Armed Forces troops. U.S. and Mongolian troops will comprise the majority of the roughly 1,200 military personnel from 25 countries scheduled to participate or observe this year’s exercise. The complete list of participants, per U.S. PACOM, includes “Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, China, Czech, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, ROK, Singapore, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, and Vietnam.” … U.S. Marine Brigadier General Christopher J. Mahoney noted that Khaan Quest 2015 will help participating militaries “create professional military-to-military relationships” and “build personal and lasting connections.” No statements from either the Mongolian or the U.S. side emphasized the significance of China’s first-time participation.[29]

It is notable that Exercise Khaan Quest was only sparsely mentioned by the Chinese media, and China’s involvement has not received commentary from the USA. Such co-operation does not accord with the popular view of rivalry. Again, Russia is missing, despite the “peacekeeping” character of the operations, and Russia’s immediate interest in the area, as distinct from Canada, Italy, et al. Mongolia is one of the states that was once part of the Russian sphere of influence, but has been drawn to China; an example of the manner by which China has profited most from the post-Soviet decline of its Russian “ally.”

There is an inherent, one might say spiritual, basis to an enduring conflict between Russia and the USA. Americans have been poisoned against Russia since journalist George F Kennan, later funded for his revolutionary fervor by Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, started writing and lecturing across America against Russia in 1886, as among the first to start calling for “regime change.”[30] The conflict between Russia and the USA is one of difference in world-views; one mercantile, the other spiritual and both universal (Russia as the “Katehon” holding back the forces of the Antichrist, remains a deep-set mystique). The USA and China think in terms of trade and economics. [31] The differences between them are not of the same magnitude and quality as those vis-a-vis Russia. [32]

Notes

[1] “26 Nations to Participate in World’s Largest Naval Exercise,” US Navy, http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/Pages/26-Nations-to-Participate-in-World%27s-Largest-Maritime-Exercise.aspx#.V22-Orh96M8

[2] Vijay Sakhuja, “Rim of the Pacific Exercises (RIMPAC): Thaw in China-US Tensions?,” Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, June 28 2014, http://www.ipcs.org/article/us-south-asia/rim-of-the-pacific-exercises-rimpac-thaw-in-china-us-4529.html

[3] Dragoș Tîrnoveanu, “Russia, China and the Far East Question”, The Diplomat, January 20, 2016; http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/russia-china-and-the-far-east-question/

[4] Hilary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” FP, October 11, 2011, http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/11/americas-pacific-century/

[5] Hilary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” November 10, 2011, U.S. State Department, http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/11/176999.htm

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Richard C Bush, “United States policy towards Northeast Asia,” SERI Quarterly, Brookings Institute, April 2013, 38.

[9] Ibid., citing Donilon, “Remarks By Tom Donilon, National Security Advisory to the President: ‘The United States and the Asia-Pacific in 2013,’ March 11, 2013.”

[10] Ibid., 43.

[11] Michael e O’Hanlon, :US-Russian Relations Beyond Obama,” April 20, 2016, Brookings Institute, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2016/04/20-putin-obama-next-administration-ohanlon

[12] Fiona Hill, “Russian Adventurism and the US Long Game,” Brookings, Inst., March 3, 2016, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2016/03/03-russian-adventurism-us-policy-hill

[13] “Goldman Sachs lays off Russia staff: more expected, Reuters, June 8 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-russia-idUSKCN0YU23I

[14] “Putin sees US, Goldman Sachs behind leak of Panama Papers,” Blomberg, April 15 2016, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-14/putin-sees-u-s-goldman-sachs-behind-leak-of-panama-papers

[15] “Goldman Sachs says Niet to Russian bond deal,” Fortune, March 3 2016, http://fortune.com/2016/03/03/goldman-sachs-russian-bond-deal/

[16] Peter Grose, Continuing The Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996 (New York: CFR, 2006), 42-43.

[17] Roderic Lyne et al, Engaging Russia: The Next Phase (Trilateral Commission, 2006), 179-181.

[18] Trilateral Commission 2016 membership roster.

[19] David Finkelstein, The military dimensions of US-China security co-operation, CNA, 2010, 1.

[20] Finkelstein, 7, citing James Mann, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 141–142.

[21] Finkelstein, 14.

[22] Ibid, 14.

[23] Ibid., 15.

[24] Chiang Kai-shek, China’s Destiny & Chinese Economic Theory (New York, 1947).

[25] U.S. TaiwanConnect, http://www.ustaiwanconnect.org/

[26] Ibid, 28.

[27] Ibid., 28-29.

[28] Ibid., 33.

[29] Ankit Panda, “A First: China Sends Troops to US-Mongolia-Led Khaan Quest Exercise,” The Diplomat, June 23 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/a-first-china-sends-troops-to-us-mongolia-led-khaan-quest-exercise/

[30] George F Kennan, Siberia and The Exile System (New York: The Century Co., 1891).

[31] For a particularly insightful study of Chinese civilization see: Amaury De Riencourt, The Soul of China (Avon: Honeyglen Publishing, 1989 [1958]).

[32] For a consideration of the Russian messianic imperative see for example: Ellis Sandoz, Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2000).

 

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Hillary Emails, Gold Dinars and Arab Springs

July 10th, 2016 by F. William Engdahl

Buried amid tens of thousands of pages of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s secret emails, now being made public by the US Government, is a devastating email exchange between Clinton and her confidential adviser, Sid Blumenthal. It’s about Qaddafi and the US-coordinated intervention in 2011 to topple the Libyan ruler. It’s about gold and a potentially existential threat to the future of the US dollar as world reserve currency. It’s about Qaddafi’s plans then for the gold-based Dinar for Africa and the Arab oil world.

Two paragraphs in a recently declassified email from the illegal private server used by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the US-orchestrated war to destroy Libya’s Qaddafi in 2011 reveal a tightly-held secret agenda behind the Obama Administration’s war against Qaddafi, cynically named “Responsibility to Protect.”

Barack Obama, an indecisive and weak President, delegated all presidential responsibility for the Libya war to his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Clinton, who was an early backer of an Arab “regime change,” using the secret Muslim Brotherhood, invoked the new, bizarre principle of “responsibility to protect” (R2P) to justify the Libyan war, which she quickly turned into a NATO-led war. Under R2P, a silly notion promoted by the networks of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Clinton claimed, with no verifiable proof, that Qaddafi was bombing innocent Libyan civilians in the Benghazi region.

According to a New York Times report at the time, citing Obama Administration senior sources, it was Hillary Clinton, backed by Samantha Power, then a senior aide at the National Security Council and today Obama’s UN Ambassador; and Susan Rice, then Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, and now National Security Adviser. That triad pushed Obama into military action against Libya’s Qaddafi. Clinton, flanked by Powers and Rice, was so powerful that Clinton managed to overrule Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Tom Donilon, Obama’s national security adviser, and John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism chief, today CIA head.

Secretary of State Clinton was also knee-deep in the conspiracy to unleash what came to be dubbed the “Arab Spring,” the wave of US-financed regime changes across the Arab Middle East, part of the Greater Middle East project unveiled in 2003 by the Bush Administration after occupation of Iraq. The first three target countries of that 2011 US “Arab Spring”–an action in which Washington used its “human rights” NGOs such as Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy, in cahoots as usual, with the Open Society Foundations of billionaire speculator, George Soros, along with US State Department and CIA operatives–were Ben Ali’s Tunisia, Mubarak’s Egypt and Qaddafi’s Libya.

Now the timing and targeting of Washington’s 2011 “Arab Spring” destabilizations of select Middle East states assume a new light in relation to just-released declassified Clinton emails to her private Libya “adviser” and friend, Sid Blumenthal. Blumenthal is the slick lawyer who defended then-President Bill Clinton in the Monika Lewinsky and other sex scandal affairs when Bill was President and facing impeachment.

Qaddafi’s gold dinar

For many it remains a mystery just why Washington decided that Qaddafi personally must be destroyed, murdered, not just sent into exile like Mubarak. Clinton, when informed of Qaddafi’s brutal murder by US-financed Al Qaeda “democratic opposition” terrorists, told CBS news, in a sick, joking paraphrase of Julius Caesar, “We came, we saw, he died,” words spoken by her with a hearty, macabre laugh.

Little is known in the West about what Muammar Qaddafi did in Libya or, for that matter, in Africa and in the Arab world. Now, release of a new portion of Hillary Clinton’s emails as Secretary of State, at the time she was running Obama Administration war on Qaddafi, sheds dramatic new light on the background.

It was not a personal decision of Hillary Clinton to eliminate Qaddafi and destroy his entire state infrastructure. The decision, it’s now clear, came from circles very high in the US money oligarchy. She was merely another Washington political tool implementing the mandate of those oligarchs. The intervention was about killing Qaddafi’s well-laid plans to create a gold-based African and Arabic currency to replace the dollar in oil trades. Since the US dollar abandoned gold exchange for dollars in 1971 the dollar in terms of gold has dramatically lost value. Arab and African OPEC oil states have long objected to the vanishing purchasing power of their oil sales, mandated since the 1970’s by Washington to be solely in US dollars, as dollar inflation soared more than 2000% to 2001.

In a newly declassified Clinton email from Sid Blumenthal to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dated April 2, 2011, Blumenthal reveals the reason that Qaddafi must be eliminated. Using the pretext of citing an unidentified “high source” Blumenthal writes to Clinton, “According to sensitive information available to this source, Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver… This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).” That French aspect was only the tip of the Qaddafi gold dinar iceberg.

Golden Dinar and more

During the first decade of this century, Gulf Arab OPEC countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others, began seriously diverting a significant portion of the revenues from their vast oil and gas sales into state sovereign wealth funds, many based on the success of Norway’s Oil Fund.

Growing discontent with the US War on Terror, with the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and with overall US Middle East policies after September 2001, led most OPEC Arab states to divert a growing share of oil revenues into state-controlled funds rather than trusting it to the sticky fingers of New York and London bankers as had been the custom since the 1970’s when oil prices went through the roof, creating what Henry Kissinger fondly called the “petro-dollar” to replace the gold-backed dollar Washington walked away from on August 15, 1971. The present Sunni-Shi’ite war or clash of civilizations is in fact a result of the US manipulations after 2003 in the region— “divide and rule.”

By 2008 the prospect of sovereign control by a growing number of African and Arab oil states of their state oil and gas revenues was causing serious concern in Wall Street as well as the City of London. It was huge liquidity, in the trillions, they potentially no longer controlled.

The timing of the Arab Spring, in retrospect, increasingly looks tied to Washington and Wall Street efforts to control not only the huge Arab Middle East oil flows. It is now clear it was equally aimed at controlling their money, their trillions of dollars accumulating in their new sovereign wealth funds.

However, as is now confirmed in the latest Clinton-Blumenthal April 2, 2011 email exchange, there was a qualitatively new threat emerging for Wall Street and the City of London “gods of money,” from the African and Arab oil world. Libya’s Qaddafi, Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Mubarak’s Egypt were about to launch a gold-backed Islamic currency independent of the US dollar. I was first told of this plan in early 2012, at a Swiss financial and geopolitical conference, by an Algerian with extensive knowledge of the project. Documentation was scarce at the time and the story remained in my mental back-burner. Now a far more interesting picture emerges that puts the ferocity of Washington’s Arab Spring and its urgency in the case of Libya into perspective.

‘United States of Africa’

In 2009, Qaddafi, who was at the time the President of the African Union, had proposed that the economically depressed continent adopt the “Gold Dinar.”

In the months prior to the US decision, with British and French backing, to get a UN Security Council resolution that would give them the legal fig-leaf for a NATO destruction of the Qaddafi regime, Muammar Qaddafi had been organizing the creation of a gold-backed dinar that would be used by African oil states as well as Arab OPEC countries in their sales of oil on the world market.

Had that happened at the time Wall Street and the City of London were deep into the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the challenge to the reserve currency role of the dollar would have been more than serious. It would be a death knell to American financial hegemony, and to the Dollar System. Africa is one of the world’s richest continents, with vast unexplored gold and mineral wealth, had been intentionally kept for centuries underdeveloped or in wars to prevent their development. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank for the recent decades have been the Washington instruments to suppress African real development.

Gaddafi had called upon African oil producers in the African Union and in Muslim nations to join an alliance that would make the gold dinar their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil and other resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars. As President of the African Union in 2009, Qaddafi introduced for discussion to African Union member states Qaddafi’s proposal to use the Libyan dinar and the silver dirham as the only possible money for the rest of the world to buy African oil.

Along with the Arab OPEC sovereign wealth funds for their oil, other African oil nations, specifically Angola and Nigeria, were moving to create their own national oil wealth funds at the time of the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya. Those sovereign national wealth funds, tied to Qaddafi’s concept of the gold dinar, would make Africa’s long-held dream of independence from colonial monetary control, whether of the British Pound, the French Franc, the euro or the US dollar, a reality.

Qaddafi was moving forward, as head of the African Union, at the time of his assassination, with a plan to unify the sovereign States of Africa with one gold currency, a United States of Africa. In 2004, a Pan-African Parliament of 53 nations had laid plans for an African Economic Community – with a single gold currency by 2023.

African oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment for their oil and gas. The list included Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tunisia, Gabon, South Africa, Uganda, Chad, Suriname, Cameroon, Mauritania, Morocco, Zambia, Somalia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire, plus Yemen which had just made significant new oil discoveries. The four African member-states of OPEC–Algeria, Angola, Nigeria, a giant oil producer and the largest natural gas producer in Africa with huge natural gas reserves, and Libya with the largest reserves–would be in the new gold dinar system.

Little wonder that French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was given the up-front role in the war on Qaddafi by Washington, went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world.

Hillary’s ‘rebels’ create a central bank

One of the most bizarre features of Hillary Clinton’s war to destroy Qaddafi was the fact that the US-backed “rebels” in Benghazi, in the oil-rich eastern part of Libya, in the midst of battle, well before it was at all clear if they would topple the Qaddafi regime, declared they had created a Western-style central bank, “in exile.”

In the very first weeks of the rebellion, the rebel leaders declared that they had created a central bank to replace Gadhafi’s state-owned monetary authority. The rebel council, in addition to creating their own oil company to sell the oil they captured announced: “Designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”

Commenting on the odd decision, before the outcome of battle was even decided, to create a western-style central bank to replace Qaddafi’s sovereign national bank that was issuing gold-backed dinars, Robert Wenzel in the Economic Policy Journal, remarked, “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticatedinfluences.”

It becomes clear now in light of the Clinton-Blumenthal emails that those “pretty sophisticated influences” were tied to Wall Street and the City of London. The person brought in by Washington to lead the rebels in March 2011, Khalifa Hifter, had spent the previous twenty years of his life in suburban Virginia, not far from CIA headquarters, after a break with Libya as a leading military commander of Qaddafi.

The risk to the future of the US dollar as world reserve currency, if Qaddafi had been allowed to proceed–together with Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab OPEC and African Union members– to introduce oil sales for gold not dollars, would clearly have been the financial equivalent of a Tsunami.

New Gold Silk Road

The Qaddafi dream of an Arabic and African gold system independent of the dollar, unfortunately, died with him. Libya, after Hillary Clinton’s cynical “responsibility to protect” destruction of the country, today is a shambles, torn by tribal warfare, economic chaos, al-Qaeda and DAESH or ISIS terrorists. The monetary sovereignty held by Qaddafi’s 100% state-owned national monetary agency and its issuance of gold dinars is gone, replaced by an “independent” central bank tied to the dollar.

Despite that setback, it’s more than notable that now an entirely new grouping of nations is coming together to build a similar gold-backed monetary system. This is the group led by Russia and China, the world’s number three and number one gold producing countries, respectively.

This group is tied to the construction of China’s One Belt, One Road New Silk Road Eurasian infrastructure great project. It involves China’s $16 billion Gold Development Fund, and very firm steps by China to replace the City of London and New York as the center of world gold trade. The Eurasian gold system emerging now poses an entirely new quality of challenge to American financial hegemony. This Eurasian challenge, its success or failure, could well determine whether we allow our civilization to survive and prosper under entirely different conditions, or whether we decide to sink along with the bankrupt dollar system.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

http://journal-neo.org/2016/03/17/hillary-emails-gold-dinars-and-arab-springs/

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The decision of Seoul and Washington to place on the territory of South Korea American missile defense systems THAAD violates the provisions of the UN security Council resolution No. 2270 on North Korea. That’s the words of an influential legal expert on international sanctions issued to the Rossiyskaya Gazeta on condition of anonymity.

Other experts noted that the United States and the Republic of Korea constantly allow themselves actions that are destabilizing the situation, which  is also contrary to the provisions of the resolution, although Seoul and Washington are in the forefront of those calling to comply with this resolution as closely as possible.

We can remind you that the UN security Council resolution No. 2270 was adopted on March 2, 2016 in response to the nuclear and missile tests by Pyongyang in January and February of this year. The main content of the document were the new sanctions against the DPRK, but there are also a number of General provisions. Yesterday, the United States and the Republic of Korea stated that they intend to place on the Korean peninsula American anti-missile complexes THAAD before the end of 2017, which caused a sharp condemnation from Russia and China, as well as a mixed reaction in South Korea.

Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) produced by Lockheed Martin

“Seoul and Washington are usually very keen on keeping an eye on othes, so that they would very strictly adhere to UN security Council resolution No. 2270, but they forget about their behavior. They should have to read the whole text if that resolution. Their decision on THAAD is totally contrary to the provisions of this resolution,” – said to Rossiyskaya Gazeta a competent source in the field of application of sanctions who asked not to be named.

The expert explained that it concerns in particular the paragraph 49 of the resolution No. 2270, where it is stressed that the UN security Council

“reaffirms the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and throughout northeast Asia, reiterates its commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation and welcomes efforts by Council members as well as other States to facilitate a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue and to avoid any action which might increase tensions”.

“Placing missile defense systems THAAD just increases the tension on the Korean Peninsula, in northeast Asia and does not contribute to the maintenance of peace and stability,” he said, pointing out that after the statement of Seoul and Washington about THAAD instability and tension in the region are increasing rapidly

He added that this view is supported by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and of the People’s Republic of China who yesterday issued their statements about plans to place of antimissile systems. In particular, the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry says that “such actions, no matter how they were substantiated, have the most negative impact on global strategic stability, the commitment about which they love to talk so much in Washington. They also increase regional tensions, creating new challenges to solve complex problems of the Korean Peninsula including its denuclearization”.

Another expert on regional issues said that the US and South Korea consistently make actions which are a violation of the resolution and do not contribute to stability.

“They like to say about THAAD in Seoul  that this is a purely defensive weapons. OK, then let’s talk about the following. Right now, artillery, aviation, and marine corps of South Korea and the United States are involved  in yet another exercises on the Korean Peninsula, which work out how to attack the DPRK, practicing the seizure of footholds and the development of further advance. The exercises started on June 27 and will last until July 14. Earlier, the US Army Command in the Asia Pacific region informed that they have conducted exercises the aim of which was also how to invade the DPRK, a practice on bombing of North Korea with the participation of the strategic B-52 bombers and attacking aircraft.

The military of both the United States and South Korea not only did not conceal the offensive nature of the exercises, but even emphasized it. So, they want to present such actions, too,  as “contributing to peace and stability”? And can after that anybody be surprised that Pyongyang is starting to get agitate?!”- he asked rhetorically, stressing that these exercises  also undoubtedly violate the UN security Council resolution No. 2270.

“… Please, let’s remember that this document has provisions mandatory for all, including the US and South Korea. Today they shout in unison that the launch of ballistic missile from a North Korean submarine violates the UN resolution. But they constantly allow themselves actions that are inconsistent with the document on the thorough implementation of which they themselves insist,” said the expert.

Abridged translation from Russian.

Original article in Russian:

https://rg.ru/2016/07/09/reshenie-seula-po-kompleksam-pro-thaad-narushilo-rezoliuciiu-sb-oon.html

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The ‘Ugly Canadian’ strikes again.

Toronto-based Kinross Gold recently suspended work at its Tasiast mine to protest an order from Mauritania’s government that unpermitted ‘expatriates’ stop working on the massive project.

The lead foreign firm in the sparsely populated West African nation has been embroiled in a series of power struggles with its Mauritanian workforce. During a strike last month union officials complained about the gap in pay between locals and foreigners. “There are 2,600 Mauritanian workers employed by the firm of whom 1,041 are permanent, costing the company $36 million, while there are 130 expatriate employees who cost $43 million,” workers’ spokesperson Bounenna Ould Sidi told AFP. Further irritating its Mauritanian staff, Kinross mostlyhouses ‘expatriate’ managers outside the country, in the Canary Islands.

mauritania_political_map

On three occasions over the past five years the mineworkers have withdrawn their labour in a bid to force the world’s fifth biggest gold mining company to respect previous commitments to improve their pay and conditions. In 2011 the local workforce was angered by the company’s refusal to transfer seriously ill employees to the capital Nouakchott. When Kinross laid off 300 workers at the end of 2013 the union claimed it was done in violation of the country’s labour law and that one of those dismissed was still receiving medical treatment for a workplace injury. Demanding government action, the laid-off workers protested outside the presidential palace in Nouakchott 300 km away. After a multi-day sit-in the police raided their makeshift camp, arresting a dozen and injuring a similar number.

In 2010 two Tasiast employees were arrested after dumping toxic waste in an inhabited area near the mine. There was no independent environmental assessment of the multibillion-dollar mine and the Toronto-based companyfailed to certify Tasiast under the International Cyanide Management Code, a voluntary agreement that allows companies to demonstrate their commitment to properly manage the poisonous substance.

As with many other Canadian mining companies in Africa, Kinross has paid the country little and was accused of corruption. Last fall the US Department of Justice (Kinross is listed on both the New York and Toronto stock exchanges) launched an investigation into “improper payments made to government officials” at Kinross’ operations in Mauritania and Ghana. MiningWatch Canada and French anti-corruption association Sherpa submitted a long report detailing allegations of bribery and corruption to the RCMP and called for the police force to investigate Kinross’ apparent breaches of Canadian anti-corruption laws at its Mauritanian and Ghanian mines. Adding to the Mining Watch/Sherpa report, France’s Le Monde quoted a former member of the company’s African legal department saying, “the levelof corruption was becoming grotesque.”

In March the Globe and Mail revealed that Kinross gave a US $50 million contract to a French/Mauritanian partnership even though their bid wasn’t the lowest. The Mauritanian company was owned by a former top government official and an internal Kinross document noted the company “took into consideration the stated preference of officials of the Government of Mauritania that the logistics contract be awarded to” the French/Mauritanian consortium.

Kinross' Tasiast gold mine

Kinross’ Tasiast gold mine

Allegations of bribery have been swirling around Kinross’ Mauritania operations for years. When President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz criticized the company’s meagre payments to the treasury in 2013, Kinross reportedly hireda couple of his cousins to important positions. A 2013 Africa Mining Intelligence article detailed the close familial and political ties between Kinross and Aziz, who came to power by overthrowing the country’s first elected president in 2008. (The brigadier general won an election the next year that most political parties boycotted.)

How does the federal government react to such behavior by a Canadian company? With praise. In a webpage titled CSR [corporate social responsibility] ABROAD – Anti-Corruption and Bribery Global Affairs Canada describes how “Kinross’ commitment to human rights is implemented” through its adherence to the UN Global Compact, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the company’s code of conduct.

As a result, in many parts of the world, the face of Canada has become the ruthless multinational that bullies workers, ignores environmental standards and ‘buys’ politicians. The Ugly Canadian.

Yves Engler is the author of Canada in Africa: 300 years of aid and exploitationRead other articles by Yves.

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Brexit Revolution and Counter-Revolution

July 10th, 2016 by Takis Fotopoulos

Why a Brexit revolution?

June 23rd 2016 is the day that may change history. Not only in Britain itself but also in Europe as a whole––which is now controlled by the European branch of the Transnational Elite (TE), that is the network of transnational political, economic, media and cultural elites, mainly based in the G7 countries which run the world. The British referendum was a terrific slap in the faces, not only of the Euro-elites, but also the whole Transnational Elite and the neoliberal globalization run by it. That is, a globalization that has already pushed billions of people around the world (including the British) to economic and social degradation, or, alternatively, to physical extermination and dislocation through the wars unleashed during its rule (from Yugoslavia to Iraq and Afghanistan, and from Libya and Syria to Ukraine).[1]

It was a terrific slap because the British people did not buckle, despite the brutal campaign by the Transnational Elite to force them, using all means at its disposal, including the mass media controlled by them.[2] The `Project Fear dismally failed because, as the flagship of the globalist “Left” pointed out, its “fundamental mistake was that it did not understand that far too many Britons, already living insecure and uncertain lives, felt they had little to lose… the typical pay packet is the same now as at the time of the 2008 crash.”[3] Even the war criminal, Nobel Peace laureate Obama, was mobilized to go to London to declare that Britain will suffer disaster if it leaves the EU (clearly worried by the possible serious ramifications of Brexit with respect to the forthcoming US elections), while the equally criminal Tusk (who, after having organized the murderous coup in Ukraine as prime minister of Poland, was rewarded with the Presidency of the European Council!) spoke about a possible destruction of Western civilization following a Brexit,[4] unashamedly identifying the latter with he criminal NWO of which he is a minor apparatchik.

Perhaps one of the best descriptions of the revolutionary nature of Brexit was given by the Observer, which together with its sister paper the Guardian play a leading role in the globalist “Left”, i.e. the kind of Left which is fully integrated into the NWO not questioning its main institutions, such as the EU, the WTO, TTIP and TPP and NATO:

Anyone who has witnessed the aftermath of a super typhoon in countries such as the Philippines or seen the devastation caused by the hurricanes that occasionally ravage the Caribbean and southern US would readily recognize the dramatically altered political, economic and social landscape of the United Kingdom following last week’s thunderous vote to leave the European Union. The damage caused by this constitutional mega-storm is ubiquitous, unquantifiable and, in some key instances, irreparable. The political establishment, including the leaders of the two main parties, David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn, and the Brussels hierarchy, was squashed flat. The hitherto dominant influence of the City, big business, financial institutions, the US government, international watchdogs such as the IMF and myriad economic experts was contemptuously blown aside.[5]

Even more significant is the direct connection the paper makes with neoliberal globalization, although the conclusion it draws is the usual one expected from this kind of ”Left”, i.e.––to exonerate the NWO and the EU itself, as “possibly the greatest democratic achievement of the postwar era” and to directly blame the ‘bad’ Tory governments (but not necessarily also the equal “bad” Blairite governments!):

So what about globalization? How have free markets benefited the steel worker put out of work by the EU-sanctioned dumping of cheap Chinese products? Seen from Wearside or the Welsh valleys, booming London and the southeast, with its Monopoly money property prices and £70 a head restaurants, resembles Gold rush City, a foreign and hostile land. Does anybody in Westminster understand or even care? No, not really, so these alienated voters seemed to believe…For 30 years, the “leftbehind” (the working poor, the “strivers”, the zero-hours workers) have waited for a new economic reality based on fairness and equality to rebalance the effects of late capitalism as it advantaged a smaller and smaller number of people with grotesque income inequalities”. [6]

Then it was the turn of Guardian, the flagship of the globalist “Left”, to expand on the significance of globalization and put the blame directly on it (in order to draw, of course, the wrong conclusions!) Thus, beginning with a brief history of globalization, which started in the late 1970s and accelerated throughout 1980s and reached a climax with the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism in Eastern Europe at the end of the decade and the beginning of the 1990s, it described the essence of globalization as “the free movement of capital, people and goods; trickle-down economics; a much diminished role for nation states; and a belief that market forces, now unleashed, were inexorable”.[7] However, the obvious aim of the paper was simply to exonerate the EU itself (as a NWO institution) and simply put the blame on its bad practices and policies:

In the age of globalization, the idea was that a more integrated Europe would collectively serve as the bulwark that nation states could no longer provide. Britain, France, Germany or Italy could not individually resist the power of transnational capital, but the EU potentially could. The way forward was clear. Move on from a single market to a single currency, a single banking system, a single budget and eventually a single political entity. That dream is now over. As Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, put it: “Brexit is a momentous event in the history of Europe and from now on the narrative will be one of disintegration not integration…The reason is obvious. Europe has failed to fulfill the historic role allocated to it.”[8]

So, although Guardian admits that Britain’s rejection of the EU was, in fact, a protest against the economic model that has been in place for the past three decades, it is clear that its real aim was simply to criticize the EU as not being “progressive enough”, following the well trodden path of Varoufakis,[9] the well known adviser of Jeremy Corbyn, the Labor Party leader! All that the globalist “Left” had to do, according to this completely disorienting view, was to introduce some reforms to cover its democratic “deficit”, without of course touching the cherished by the EU “4 freedoms” in the movement of capital, labor, goods and services. In other words, without making the life of multinational corporations, which control the world economy, more difficult in any sense of the word. In fact, the entire globalist “Left” has engaged in a huge attempt of gross deception of the victims of globalization when it argued that globalization is not by necessity neoliberal but that it is instead the ‘bad’ policy of some ‘bad’ political parties and economists! Yet, it can be shown that no other ‘good’ globalization is possible within a system of open and liberalized markets for capital, commodities and labor. Therefore, this is in fact a resurgence of the old deceptive Port Allegre slogan of the World Social Forum that “another world is possible’ even within the present globalization, as long as the good Left politicians replace the present bad ones.

Needless to add that the growing anger at the EU is not simply a British phenomenon. The victims of globalization all over Europe have begun rising as early as 2011 in Greece and then Spain but, unfortunately, due to the recent past of these countries with a military junta in the former case and fascism in the latter, the globalist “Left” (Syriza and Podemos) managed to control the rising popular indignation, deceiving the peoples that it was just the austerity policies that the “bad” Germans imposed which was the cause of their misery. All that was needed therefore was to elect con artists of Tsipras kind (who at present is busy imposing arguably the worst kind of neoliberal policies ever applied in any country of the world––all for the sake of the people of course!) so that good days come back again. Fortunately, in the rest of Europe this kind of “Left” is politically bankrupt and people in France have been on the roads for several months now against the measures to “liberalize” the labor market which another con artist, the “socialist” Hollande, has been trying to impose.  Even in the USA, Donald Trump successfully appealed to the victims of globalization there with slogans against it. Therefore, the British Brexit revolution, far from being an isolated phenomenon, reflects a world phenomenon. This is because Brexit is indeed a class issue––although we have to re-define ‘class’ to give it a broader sense than the traditional Marxist sense, more appropriate to the globalization era, as I tried to do elsewhere. [10]

The fact that Brexit is in fact a class issue, reflecting the popular reaction to the class nature of globalization, has even prompted some of the world’s most powerful investment houses to turn their focus to inequality, with both Bank of America and the international investment firm Pimco warning their clients about the growing risks resulting from the fact that the gulf between rich and poor has been continually rising in the globalization era. Thus, Joachim Fels, global economic adviser at Pimco, wrote in a research note: “The vote in the UK is part of a wider, more global, backlash against the establishment, rising inequality and globalization.[11] Similarly, in a research note entitled “Brexit and the war on inequality”, Bank of America strategists stress, “Brexit is thus far the biggest electoral riposte to our age of inequality.[12]

All this points once more to the bankruptcy of the “Left”, which still talks about imperialism, ignoring globalization, as if we are still at the beginning of the 20th century when nation-states were still dominant. A typical example of this is an archaic  ‘Marxist’ Left supporter who, completely ignorant of my analysis on imperialism, has discovered that ’what’s missing from Fotopoulos’s argument is any reference to Imperialism’![13]

Clearly, Brexit was very much a popular “revolution” as the entire movement was a movement “from below”, from the victims of globalization themselves. This was inevitable once their “natural” leaders, i.e. the Left parties (Labor party, Green party etc.) and even their own Trade Union leaders, apart from very few honorable exceptions, declared themselves against Brexit on the basis of a variety of excuses, as we shall see next, usually centered around the issue of immigration. Not surprisingly, even when the parties of the supposedly antisystemic Left, reluctantly and usually for tactical reasons supported Brexit (e.g. the Trotskyite SWP) they never uttered a single word against globalization, the Transnational Elite and its institutions! Yet, the Transnational Elite has a much better picture than the “Left” of the real significance of Brexit, as George Soros, a significant member of the Transnational Elite, made clear in his first article after Brexit, adding a menacing threat:

Now the catastrophic scenario that many feared has materialized, making the disintegration of the EU practically irreversible…I am convinced that as the consequences of Brexit unfold in the weeks and months ahead, more and more people will join us.[14]

In fact, it was a referendum in which an unprecedented number of voters took part, and in which well over a million more people voted for change than for the status quo on UK’s membership of the EU. Two important characteristics of the referendum were usually minimized by the Transnational Elite’s media: first, the geographical pattern of vote and its high significance with respect to the class nature of the Brexit vote and, second, the age pattern of the vote and its significance with respect to ideological and cultural globalization.

As regards, first, the geographical pattern of the vote, the way in which people voted is a clear indication of the fact that this was a ‘revolution from below’ of the victims of globalization. Thus, in England, London was the only region to vote for Remain, by 60 to 40 percent. Every other region went to Leave, by 58 percent in Yorkshire and Humberside, 54 percent in the North West, 59 percent in the West Midlands, and more than 50 percent in both the South East and South West. Yet, it is well known that the areas in England and Wales where Brexit was victorious are exactly the areas populated by the victims of globalization, i.e. the victims of the criminal de-industrialization imposed by the multinational corporations when they moved en masse to the ‘exotic’ Chinese and Indian paradises. That is, the places offering multinationals a very disciplined work force paid survival wages, as well as all possible tax concessions etc. possible, in order to induce them to invest and create a pseudo kind of development. This was the kind of development that led to the emergence of a few hundred billionaires in those countries while the mass of the population has suffered the effects of economic as well environmental strangulation. In view of the above it is not therefore surprising that even Gordon Brown, i.e. Tony Blair’s heir in the throne of the Labor Party, who continued his criminal policies, felt the need to make the following statement in the aftermath of the referendum:

The elephant in the room is globalization. And the most obvious manifestation of the world we have lost is the hollowing out of our industrial towns as a result of the collapse of manufacturing in the face of Asian competition. These towns are home to a disproportionate share of the semi-skilled workers who have, not surprisingly, become recruits to an anti-globalization movement whose lightning rod is migration.[15]

Naturally, the “solution” proposed by Gordon Brown was another Commission of Inquiry, this time on migration, not omitting to express the Transnational Elite’s line that “we have to decide that we cannot simply be an antiglobalization party that exploits grievances but offers no answers (!)[16]

As regards London, where a second generation Pakistani yuppie and fanatic supporter of Bremain was elected Mayor a few months ago, (now campaigning for an ‘independent” London within the EU!) it is of course populated by the economic elites and the upper part of the middle class, while the victims of globalization living there are usually young immigrants who have adopted a British version of the “American dream”. In other words, the Bremain victory in London is due to the fact that the majority of the population there consists of either those benefiting from globalization who are concentrated in the capital that attracts the relevant lines of activity (finance, management and services in general), or of those immigrants or descendants of them, who may or may not belong to the beneficiaries of globalization but have been persuaded by the EU propaganda that a Brexit could somehow lead to their expulsion from UK.

As regards, second, the age distribution of the vote, the most significant exception to the voting pattern described above was among those under the age of 24, where the Remain vote was 75 percent in favor.[17] In fact, Bremain was supported by an a-political youth—the perfect subject for manipulation by the elites and its media (including social media) — who are brainwashed by ideological and cultural globalization. Thus, it has been estimated that while there was a turnout of 82% among those aged 55 and over, barely a third of the 18-24 age group bothered to cast their vote. But those youngsters who bothered to vote were fanatical opponents of Brexit (and today are demonstrating against it with the direct or indirect support of the local elites, as well as of the Transnational Elite), though when asked to explain their fanatical support for the EU they were usually at a loss to explain their stand. The following description in Dominic Lawson’s Sunday Times column is characteristic:

The journalist Melissa Kite described in the Catholic Herald being accosted by neighbors who, when they discovered she was voting “leave”, began to rant at her that she was on the side of the killer of the Labor MP Jo Cox. And one of them told Kite: “I don’t understand any of the detail of the EU, but I know whose side I’m on…. A similar sort of rage has been directed at “the old”, for voting in such vast numbers to leave. Speaking of voters dragging themselves to the ballot box, a friend of mine saw an elderly woman moving inch by agonizing inch to the voting booth. If she had voted for “remain”, it might easily have been described as “heroic” in a BBC report, but if the old lady voted for “leave”, it is categorized as “selfish”.[18]

No wonder therefore that the EU elites fully support further lowering the age of qualifying for voting (Tsipras has already pioneered a new electoral law to this effect). This is hardly surprising given that SYRIZA—as well as Podemos in Spain—owe much of their electoral appeal to an a-political (or pseudo-political) youth essentially supporting the status quo (including even the EU!) and demanding its reform. This, in contrast, to the really radicalized and mostly antisystemic youth in May 68, as well as the anti-globalization youth in Seattle and Genova, before it was suppressed by the pseudo ’Left’ of the World Social Forum[19]

The smearing of the Brexit revolution as a prelude to a counter-revolution

In the aftermath of the Brexit revolution a new smear campaign began by all those at the service of the NWO of neoliberal globalization aiming, directly or indirectly, to justify the parallel counter-revolution going on we shall see next, through which the Transnational Elite attempts to reverse the results of the referendum.

Some talked about the return of nationalism and therefore of nationalist wars, which plagued Europe, particularly in the 20th century. Others talked about the victory of German “imperialism” which attempts to reverse the results of its defeats in the last two world wars, while still others talked about the nostalgia for British imperialism among many of the voters for Brexit. Most however of the “serious” commentators stressed either the supposed re-emergence of nationalism, or, alternatively, the assumed rise of anti-immigration feelings and the related rise of Islamophobia and xenophobia in general. In fact, as I will try to show briefly, these are all parts of a huge propaganda campaign orchestrated by the Transnational Elite and its media, NGOs etc. to divert attention from the real nature of Brexit that I described above. That is, the fact that Brexit is a victory of the victims of globalization against the NWO and as such it is a class victory, although ‘class’ has to be redefined to include not just the old working class which has diminished in Europe in general and Britain in particular as a result of de-industrialization––which is of course, also, a by-product of globalization.

1. Brexit and nationalism

As regards, first, the supposed re-emergence of nationalism, those who talk about the revival of nationalism and possible national conflicts have no clue (or pretend they don’t) that nationalism ended with the phasing out of economic and national sovereignty of all those states that were integrated into the NWO, i.e. most of the world. Furthermore, as I showed elsewhere,[20] the nationalist movements of the 19th and 20th century have very little, if anything, to do with the neo-nationalist movements rising today, such as UKIP in Britain and FN (Le Pen’s movement) in France. The former movements aimed to create nation-states, usually following a national liberation struggle, whereas the latter aim to restore the economic and national sovereignty lost in the globalization process. Therefore, by their nature, neo-nationalist movements are not aggressive movements against other peoples living beyond their borders but essentially defensive moments fighting for the fundamental right of any nation for self-determination, which is under severe attack by the nations controlling political-economic unions like the EU, which is ‘justified’ under the pretext of creating a supranational super-state that will protect the peoples’ rights better against globalization than any single nation-state could do acting alone.

However, this has already been proven a pure fantasy to deceive European peoples given that the EU is, in fact, the main organ of the NWO in the European area, as its “constitution” since the Maastricht Treaty, and the subsequent Treaties that established the basic globalization principle of the ‘4 freedoms, clearly showed. In other words, it is through the EU that all legislation to impose the opening and ‘liberalization’ of all markets (labor, capital and commodities) has gone through. Also, as I showed in the past, it was through the integration into the EU that the productive structure of countries like Greece had been destroyed and, as a result, the Greek people has been transformed––thanks to the criminal policies presently employed by the pseudo-“Left” of Syriza––into a beggar of financial capital in order to secure its very survival.[21] A similar story could be told about countries such as Portugal and Spain, which have also lost their economic sovereignty, following their entry into the EU.

Last, but not least, neo-nationalist movements are not purely ‘nationalist’ movements, which ignore class issues and fight only for the “nation”, as used to be the case wit the old nationalist movements. Thus, unlike old nationalism, neo-nationalism raises also demands that in the past were an essential part of the Left agenda, such as the demand for greater equality (within the nation-state and between nation-states), the demand to minimize the power of the elites, even anti-war demands, taking sides usually in favor of informal patriotic movements such as the Russian one (which also fights against its own globalist “Left” that its supported by Russian oligarchs, the media and so on).[22] In other words, neo-nationalist movements become themselves, even by default, class movements when they fight, directly or indirectly, against globalization, which as we saw above is a class issue.

So, on the one hand, are the pro-globalization movements and parties appealing to all those benefiting from globalization (the elites, the upper middle class and part of the petty bourgeoisie which aspires to join them) and, on the other, are the anti-globalization movements and parties appealing to the victims of globalization. No wonder therefore that the old working class (or the remnants of it, following globalization) move en masse towards these movements in countries such as Britain,[23] France and Austria, abandoning the old Left parties, which now survive mainly through the support they receive from that part of the middle class which benefits from globalization. In a nutshell, the “Left” today mostly expresses those benefiting from globalization (or those believing the “Left” mythology about the benefits of globalization in general and the EU in particular). Those pro-globalization Left parties (which I called the globalist “Left”) do not have any qualms about characterizing the popular strata which have moved to the neo-nationalist parties as racist, anti-immigrant and so on. The present therefore political bankruptcy of the Left everywhere (following its theoretical bankruptcy, as apart from a few honorable exceptions, the Marxist Left never grasped the significance of globalization as a structural change in the capitalist system) is simply the inevitable consequence of its abandonment of its traditional role in supporting the victims of the social system rather than the elites, as it does at present. Even worse, those “Left” parties such as SYRIZA, which still pretend that they fight for the victims of globalization while in effect they implement without any objection the most criminal policies imposed by the Transnational Elite, are in fact con artists and as such are already seen by the majority of the Greek people. Needless to add that the international “Left” which supported and still supports SYRIZA (such as Chomsky, Zizek and the likes) are also seen in the same light.

Naturally, given the origin of many neo-nationalist parties and their supporters, supporters of the old nationalist ideology have penetrated them, such as the Islamophobic and anti-immigration trends within them, which provide the excuse for the elites to dismiss all these movements as ‘far right’. However, such trends, which have always existed, are by no means the main reasons why such movements have expanded rapidly in the last few years. On the other hand, today’s autonomist movements, like those in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Catalonia, are purely nationalist movements of the old type, and as they are controlled by the middle class nationalists who mostly benefit from globalization, they ignore class issues or pretend that the social problems affecting their regions are caused by the reactionary policies of British (or Spanish) governing conservative parties. Thus such parties have played a purely reactionary role with respect to the Brexit revolution, and instead of joining the struggle of the British working class for self-determination, they raised the flag of “Independence” from Britain in order to remain in the EU, fully siding with the Transnational Elite and the EU elites! At the same time in Wales, where the class issue has always been dominant, as Welsh people had known at first hand the consequences of globalization (following the massive de-industrialization of their region within the globalization process) they fully supported Brexit, showing a level of maturity completely lacking by the other autonomist movements today.

2. Brexit and racism: the immigration issue

Finally, as regards the smearing of the Brexit revolution, as a prelude to the counter-revolution against Brexit, the flagship of the globalist “Left” and its principal “radical” columnists set the line of attack based firmly on the ideology of globalization in general and the supposedly anti-immigration nature of Brexit in particular. Thus, a Guardian editorial following the Brexit victory, declared:

The country has embarked on a perilous journey… The immediate outlook for progressive and even humanitarian values in the UK is not encouraging. There is no denying that, even if only on the Faragiste fringes, xenophobia had its part to play in the leave campaign… Most, but not all, of the Conservatives’ Brexit wing opposed, for example, gay marriage, the one solid progressive achievement on the home front. [24]

Then, never stepping out of line, Owen Jones and George Monbiot, its two main ‘radical’ columnists, predicted a doomsday scenario as a result of Brexit. Thus, Owen Jones first, saw in Brexit a disaster:

The referendum fallout looks terrifying: economic chaos, a resurgence in racism, the break-up of the UK. We need to fight these multiple threats… Just thinking about the coming years is as exhausting as it is terrifying. From economic chaos to the legitimization of xenophobia and racism; from the coming dismantling of the UK to the stress placed on the Northern Ireland peace process; from the ascent of the Tory hard right to the coming attacks on everything from workers’ rights to the NHS; from the inevitable anger that will follow the leave campaign’s abandonment of their unachievable premises to the inevitable retribution from a European Union that fears for its existence and that suffers from the Brexit aftershocks. Any one of these in isolation would be difficult to deal with. They are all coming together, and they are coming fast.[25]

Next, it was the turn of its second ‘radical’ columnist, George Monbiot to describe the doomsday that will follow Brexit:

Yes, the Brexit vote has empowered the most gruesome collection of schemers, misfits, liars, extremists and puppets that British politics has produced in the modern era. It threatens to invoke a new age of demagoguery, a threat sharpened by the thought that if this can happen, so can Donald Trump. It has provoked a resurgence of racism and an economic crisis whose dimensions remain unknown. It jeopardizes the living world, the NHS, peace in Ireland and the rest of the European Union. [26]

Leaving aside the doomsday scenarios presented by these two “radical Left” thinkers of the globalist “Left”, one has to remember that they are supposed to support the victims of the elites (in this case of neoliberal globalization) but it seems in this case they “forgot” this mission and instead they supported the elites themselves, i.e. those running the NWO in general and the EU in particular in their struggle against the victims of globalization! Yet, the working class have voted overwhelmingly for Brexit and this was not a big surprise given that other Guardian columnists just a week before the referendum predicted the same result. Nonetheless, the flagship of the globalist “Left” published their conclusions, for the sake of an “objectivity”, which, however, only as a rare exception allows such heretic views to be published, with the obvious aim to deceive its readers that all views are given a fair hearing in this paper. Thus, John Harris, a honest liberal left columnist, stressed the following conclusion following a local research in England and Wales––he correctly excluded Scotland from his research, rightly perhaps perceiving that most of the Scottish people are a ‘lost cause’ to the anti-globalization struggle, due to their narrow minded old type of nationalism, which makes them allies of the Transnational Elite and the Euro-elites:

To quote the opinion pollsters Populus: “Both socioeconomic groups C2 and DE disproportionately back the UK leaving the EU.” To be a little more dramatic about it, now that Scotland has been through its political reformation, England and Wales are in the midst of a working-class revolt… make no mistake: in an almost comical reflection of the sacred lefty belief that any worthwhile political movement will necessarily be built around the workers, the foundation of the Brexit coalition is what used to be called the proletariat, large swaths of which are as united as in any lefty fantasy, even if some of their loudest complaints are triggering no end of anxiety among bien-pensant types, and causing Labor a great deal of apprehension.[27]

Then, referring directly to the supposed racist nature of Brexit he implicitly assumed (rightly) that, as I had tried to show in the past, the “refugee problem” is in fact part and parcel of globalization and the ‘4 freedoms’ that its ideology preaches:

Yes, some people – from bigots in the stockbroker belt to raging gobshites in south Wales shopping precincts – are simply racist. But in a society and economy as precarious as ours, the arrival of large numbers of people prepared to do jobs with increasingly awful t*erms and conditions was always going to trigger loud resentment. For many places, the pace of change and the pressures on public services have arguably proved to be too much to cope with. Before anyone with a more right on view of all this explodes with ire, they might also consider the numbers. Between 1991 and 2003, on average about 60,000 migrants from the EU came to the UK each year. Between 2004 and 2012, that figure rose to 170,000. The 2011 census put the number of UK residents from Poland alone at 654,000.[28]

In fact, figures released in May by the Office for National Statistics showed 2.15 million EU migrants working in the UK – up 224,000 on a year earlier. A further 1.19 million people from non-EU countries are also working in UK, which means foreign nationals account for 10.6% of the British workforce. As a result, many industries say they depend on migrant labor and that restricting freedom of movement will cause big problems.[29] But, even Gideon Rachman, who may be considered as the ideological father of Global Governance, had stressed that the benefits of globalization inevitably are unevenly distributed:

Those at the top of the British social scale have generally done pretty well out of the globalization they occasionally decry: their salaries are higher, their houses are worth more, their horizons and those of their children are broadened by living in one of the most internationally connected countries in the world. The impact of globalization on the poorer parts of the country is much more ambiguous. It is the working-class whose wages are most likely to be held down by competition with immigrants, and whose areas are most likely to be transformed by mass migration.

This development, far from unexpected, represents in effect the essence of globalization. It is well known that because of demographic trends, several countries in Europe, particularly in the North, such as Germany, which has faced a rising demand for labor during the globalization era––especially since the emergence of the Eurozone, (effectively controlled by this country)–came out in favor of facilitating the influx of cheap labor from the European South to the North, as well as from Asia and Africa. The criminal wars of the Transnational Elite in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, as well as the equally criminal economic violence against the Greek people have also created a massive exodus from the corresponding countries in the South to the North and particularly Germany. It was particularly in the last few years that the ideology of open borders was massively promoted by the Transnational Elite media, together with a mass (supposedly humanist) campaign to save the refugees––who were of course created by the Transnational Elite through its wars in the Middle East!

Needless to add that ‘open borders’––the policy promoted by Soros, the Transnational Elite, Varoufakis and the likes––in fact exploits an old libertarian ideal, completely distorting its essence in the process. Open borders is meaningful only in a new democratic world order where the peoples of the world are really self-determined, controlling themselves the productive resources at their disposal including human resources, a world with no exploitation and no inequality, where peoples determine by themselves how best to meet the needs they decide to meet, through social control, rather than through the anarchy of the markets. Clearly, the world we live in today is exactly the opposite of this kind of ideal world and those fighting for open borders are in fact the elites and their associates aiming to maximize their profits through the free movement between countries not only of capital and commodities but of cheap labor as well, equalizing ‘to the bottom’ the real value of wages and salaries (their “cost of production”) all over the world.

This is the essence of the economic side of immigration and not the pseudo-humanist black propaganda about helping the masses of refugees and the victims of globalization. Particularly so, when both the former and the latter are the byproducts of political and economic globalization respectively. It was the criminal wars of the Transnational Elite that created millions of refugees in the globalization era and it was the economic violence of the same elite through the opening and liberalization of markets, which has led to billions of victims of neoliberal globalization all over the world.

However, there is an equally important other side of globalization: the cultural globalization, i.e. the present homogenization of culture, as expressed for instance by the fact that almost everybody in today’s’ ‘global village’ watches more or less the same TV serials and videos, consumes –or aspires to consume– the same products and so on. The national culture is of course in clear contradiction with a globalist culture like the one imposed now ‘from above’ by the Transnational and national elites.

Thus, the national culture includes all major aspects of culture created by a nation during its history (language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies and so on). A nation in this sense can be defined as “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture”.[30]

On the other hand, the globalist culture is effectively the negation of national culture as it is based on the globalization ideology of multiculturalism, protection of human rights etc., which in fact is an extension of the classical liberal ideology to the NWO. In fact, the criminal wars launched by the Transnational Elite during the globalization era aimed mainly to “protect” human rights (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and indirectly Syria). It is not therefore accidental that globalist ideologists characterize the present flourishing of what I called neo-nationalism (UKIP in UK, FN in France and so on) as the rise of ‘illiberalism’.

In fact, however, cultural globalization is not only some sort of ‘automatic’ effect of globalization. It can be shown that it is also a deliberate policy of the Transnational Elite particularly in the last few years, with the aim of creating the mass immigrant flow to the EU, which euphemistically is called the ‘refugee problem’. For instance, Peter Sutherland, the UN migration chief (in his capacity as the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration and as chairman of the Global Forum on Migration and Development which brings together representatives of 160 nations to share policy ideas) has played a leading role in expressing the Transnational Elite line on immigration and cultural homogeneity. In fact, Sutherland is a prominent member of the Transnational Elite himself as he was the first director-general of the World Trade Organization –one of the main institutions of neoliberal globalization. He has also served for twenty years as Chairman of Goldman Sachs International and is a former chairman of oil giant BP. Given his high ‘qualifications’ he naturally played a leading role in the campaign against Brexit. However, what is even more important is to examine his views with respect to the migration crisis” and the “refugee problem”, as revealed by the BBC itself, a leading organ of the Transnational Elite propaganda.

Thus, Sutherland, quizzed by the UK House of Lords committee four years ago on migration, inadvertently revealed who and why created the mass exodus of migrants into Europe in the last few years and the motives behind the so-called “refugee problem”. That is, he inadvertently revealed that, in fact, it was the Transnational Elite which, in order to meet the needs of neoliberal globalization in terms of cheap labor requirements, it had used the ideology of globalization in terms of multiculturalism and open borders, effectively, in order to achieve its aims of both economic and cultural globalization, through the undermining of cultural homogeneity of the European Nations.

This is how the BBC reported the crucial House of Lords committee meeting with Sutherland:

An ageing or declining native population in countries like Germany or southern EU states was the “key argument and, I hesitate to the use word because people have attacked it, for the development of multicultural states”, he added. “It’s impossible to consider that the degree of homogeneity which is implied by the other argument can survive because states have to become more open states, in terms of the people who inhabit them. Just as the United Kingdom has demonstrated.” At the most basic level, individuals should have a freedom of choice. The UN special representative on migration was also quizzed about what the EU should do about evidence from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that employment rates among migrants were higher in the US and Australia than EU countries. He told the committee: “The United States, or Australia and New Zealand, are migrant societies and therefore they accommodate more readily those from other backgrounds than we do ourselves, who still nurse a sense of our homogeneity and difference from others. “And that’s precisely what the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine. (My emphasis).[31]

So, for this frequent attendant of the meetings of The Bilderberg Group (another informal institution of the Transnational Elite that is a top level international networking organization often criticized for its alleged secrecy), the EU should be doing its best to undermine cultural homogeneity at the national level, through its migration and refugee policies, on the pretext of supporting the ‘sacred’ right of freedom of choice and the humanist “European values” on refugees respectively. It is on the basis of this disorienting argument, expressing the liberal values of individual autonomy, in contrast to the libertarian and socialist values of collective or social autonomy, that the huge Transnational Elite propaganda to ‘save the refugees’ was built, which had multiple aims:

a)     To assist economic globalization, by providing plenty of cheap labor to cover the growth needs of the European North and, at the same time, by equalizing to the bottom wages and salaries;

b)      To promote effectively cultural globalization by undermining cultural homogeneity within each nation, as the precondition for creating an integrated political and economic EU, which will also be the first step in the process of global governance (the next step will be the effective merging of EU and NAFTA through TTIP);

c)     To destroy any remnants of economic and national sovereignty within a borderless EU. It was in reaction to this trend and the consequent rise of neo-nationalist movements all over Europe that several European countries were forced in the last few months to close their borders, apart from those which have already lost any trace of sovereignty, such as Greece, governed, as I mentioned above, by a criminal “Left” government of con artists.

It was therefore in this sense that the decision of the British people for Brexit was a revolutionary one, as it was torpedoing this carefully planned long-term process for global governance. This was also the reason for the huge counter-revolution that was set in motion by the Transnational Elite immediately after the referendum result was announced. The aim was to ‘punish’ in any way possible those of the British people who had the courage to resist neoliberal globalization, so that nobody else would even think of trying to imitate them.

However, the NWO of neoliberal globalization has brought about not just a huge economic divide among the British population with the rich becoming 64% richer than before the recession, while the poor becoming 57% poorer, as revealed by a recent Social Market Foundation (SMF) study,[32] but also an equally huge cultural divide, as described above. Paul Mason, a well-known ex-Trotskyite and presently EU acolyte broadcaster and globalist “Left” admirer of Varoufakis and the likes, gave a good description of the a-political youth which voted overwhelmingly against Brexit: the other half (who voted for Remain) is “symbolized by the bearded hipster — his trips to Berlin for art, Ibiza for dancing, now in question, and the assumed cultural dominance of his social liberalism and anti-racism under threat”.[33]

The raging counter-revolution against Brexit

Immediately after the Brexit result, Craig Roberts rightly described what was to follow, following the dismal failure of the elites to terrorize the victims of globalization:

The propagandists who comprise the Western political and media establishments succeeded in keeping the real issues out of public discussion and presenting the leave vote as racism. However, enough of the British people resisted the brainwashing and controlled debate to grasp the real issues: sovereignty, accountable government, financial independence, freedom from involvement in Washington’s wars and conflict with Russia. The British people should not be so naive as to think that their vote settles the matter. The fight has only begun. [34]

He then went on to describe how the Fed, ECB, BOJ, and NY hedge funds would pound the pound and short British stocks in order to convince the British voters that their vote is sinking the economy (as it has already happened) and, also,  how they would try to ‘soften’ the leaders of the Brexit campaign (in fact, it seems they already succeeded, through various ways, in getting rid of both of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage!) and so on.

In effect, the counter-revolution, despite the obvious shock of the elites for a result they did not expect, began immediately after the announcement of the referendum result and it took a political, an economic and a media form.

1. The political dimension of counter-revolution

At the political level, PM Cameron, instead of announcing his immediate resignation from both the leadership of his clearly divided party and the government––as any defeated leader of a similar campaign would have done setting in motion a process whereby the new popular mandate for Brexit will be implemented–– he set in motion, instead, a delaying tactics, with the obvious aim to create the conditions for the effective reversal of the popular will.

Thus, he announced first that his resignation would take effect in September, following a new party leadership election. He then proceeded to arrange a very time-consuming procedure for the exit itself. Thus, he did not pursue the road of a unilateral withdrawal of UK from the EU, through a Parliament Act that would reverse the country’s entry into it, as the British Parliament had the power to do. Of course, given that the majority in Parliament consists of ardent supporters of the EU, such an Act would have easily been blocked by them. But then, the contempt of the political elites for the popular will would have been made all too clear for everybody to see and draw the necessary conclusions about the sort of “democracy” prevailing in Britain and the EU in general.  This is also the reason why the alternative road suggested by many in the elites, i.e. to annul the result of the referendum, was not pursued. Cameron announced, Instead, that Britain will follow the Byzantine exit process envisaged by article 50 of the EU Treaty, which has been designed with the clear aim to make the exit of any member state almost impossible, as this process could take up to two years of negotiations, unless the two parties (EU and UK) took a joint decision to prolong them further.

Clearly, given the crucial nature of the decision, not only strong political forces could be set in motion within such a long period to effectively reverse the popular will but even more so, world economic forces with an obvious interest to do so would also do the same. Particularly so as the entire Transnational Elite, i.e. the transnational political, economic, media and cultural elites, had already taken a strong line to avert the British exit at all cost.[35] In fact, this is exactly what is going on at the moment with political forces having already been mobilized to elect as a new Tory leader (and prime minister) to implement the Brexit decision, somebody not from the Brexit side of the Tory Party but, instead, from the Remain side of it! This is what will happen, for instance, if Theresa May (the most likely winner) becomes the new leader, while Boris Johnson, the natural candidate from the Tory party to lead the Brexit negotiations, has already been ‘sent to Coventry’, i.e. he has been ostracized!

The outcome therefore of the negotiations with the EU is predetermined: a new Treaty with the EU which for all intents and purposes will be like the present Treaty, the difference being that UK will, formally, not be an EU member anymore. Yet, it will still have to implement fully the “4 freedoms” of the Maastricht Treaty (open and liberalized markets for capital, labor, goods and services) –which it will have to implement anyway as a member of the World Trade Organization––perhaps with some minor modifications concerning the number of refugees allowed into Britain, as a ‘concession’ to the popular will. All this in exchange for the multinationals based in Britain to have full access to the lucrative EU market and vice versa as regards the equally important British market.

In other words, the almost indefinite postponement of Brexit works obviously in favor of the forces working for the effective annulment of the referendum result, given that a formal annulment of it is politically prohibitive. Obviously, the longer the process takes the longer the Transnational Elite can inflict punishment on the victims of globalization in Britain, who not only dared to express their discontent with their lot in life but also to question the very fabric of British society: neoliberal globalization itself! This way, by the end of negotiations in 2-3 years time, the people will be so beat down by punishment and propaganda that it will be easy to force them to accept essentially the same social fabric as before but under a different name. This could perhaps better be achieved through a new general election at the end of the long negotiating process. This is also what a well-informed Financial Times columnist hinted:

The referendum result cannot be undone, but the strategic goal should be an association agreement that keeps Britain within the single market and recognizes that it is still a European state by preserving vital co-operation on security, defense and crime. Norway-plus, you could call it. The choice, though, must be put to the electorate in a general election. A fresh mandate is the minimum requirement for a new prime minister. [36]

But as the same columnist admitted, this may not still sort out the political crisis that he mentioned (and certainly not the social crisis, which he did not mention). However, the elites have a solution even for this eventuality: simply to copy the “Greek model”, which it seems played the role of a pilot project by the elites in their systematic effort to subordinate the victims of globalization (or crush them in the Greek case) not only by depriving them of any effective economic sovereignty but also of any meaningful political sovereignty, so that their total loss of national sovereignty could be completed and the people become subjects of the future global governance.

However, for this aim to be achieved the necessary requirement is the existence of strong parties, such as those introduced all over the West in the post-war period, in full conformity to the highly successful bipartisan US system of deceiving the masses that they enjoy full democracy. Yet, the rise of neo-nationalist parties all over Europe has effectively broken this system and the only way to restore the authority of the economic elites and their associates in the political elites is by facilitating the creation of a multi-party governing system (i.e. coalition governments) like the one in Israel. Proportional representation is the way to facilitate this radical political change and the Syriza government, which has converted Greece into a full protectorate of the Transnational Elite (as well as the Zionist Israeli elite) is already taking constitutional steps in this direction. Here is how the same FT columnist describes how Britain could imitate Greece:

Of course, it is possible that an election would not solve anything. The fragmentation of politics leaves the two big parties struggling to win a majority in the best of times. These are the worst. Pre-election paralysis might be followed by post-election, well, paralysis. This would be the moment for otherwise cautious politicians to think radically. The referendum disenfranchised the centrist, internationalist majority in parliament. To borrow a phrase from the leavers, these moderates should be planning to take back control. Many centrist Tories have more in common with their counterparts on the Labor side than with English nationalist Brexiters; and, likewise, middle-of-the-road Labourites are closer to pro-European Tories than to Mr. Corbyn’s brand of 1970s state socialism. Political realignments do not happen often in British politics, mostly because the first-past-the-post electoral system has been merciless towards third parties. But the space may be opening up for a new, pro-European, economically liberal and socially compassionate alternative to pinched nationalism and hard-left socialism. The wait, of course, would be infuriating for Britain’s erstwhile partners. But at least they have had the experience of dealing with Greece. [37]

2. The economic dimension of the counter-revolution

As far as the economic dimension of the counter-revolution is concerned, George Soros, the well known cadre of the Transnational Elite, immediately after the result was known declared in his Project Syndicate website: “Britain eventually may or may not be relatively better off than other countries by leaving the EU, but its economy and people stand to suffer significantly in the short- to medium term.”[38]

Then, it was the turn of multinationals themselves warning of risks to jobs and profitability as a result of Brexit. Major US banks said they might move staff abroad while some of the world’s largest companies warned they could relocate their British-based operations following the referendum result. Thus, Investment bank JP Morgan, plane maker Airbus and car manufacturers Toyota and Ford all said they will review their investments in the UK after the country voted to leave the European Union.[39] As Graham VanBergen put it, “what you are witnessing is anarchy by the rich and powerful and now the gloves are off. Get ready to be bludgeoned like never before until you are on your knees begging for their neoliberal mercy”. This was particularly so if one takes into account what he stressed that “Britain’s rich are 64% richer than before the recession, while the poor are 57% poorer – all that in just 8 years. Overall, about 20 per cent of the population is doing much better and 80 per cent are doing much worse. This was the real reason for ‘Brexit’.”[40]

Then, it was the turn of the “big guns”, the “socialist” French President Hollande, who distinguished himself in braking old-established working rights in France in order to make labor more ‘flexible’ (i.e. more competitive and profitable for multinationals), leading to a long struggle with street fighting this Spring and early summer. Speaking at the end of a Brussels summit, Hollande warned that it would be unacceptable for clearing — a crucial stage in trading of derivatives and equities — to take place in the UK:

The City, which thanks to the EU was able to handle clearing operations for the Eurozone, will not be able to do them,” he said. “It can serve as an example for those who seek the end of Europe … it can serve as a lesson. [41]

Yet, this was an old point of dispute between EU’s main financial centers. The City’s right to clear in euros is a long cherished goal of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, which was previously thwarted by the UK in the EU courts. The ECB had argued that it was unfair for it to be expected to provide emergency support to clearing houses that operated outside its jurisdiction, while the UK had argued that a “location policy” would discriminate against Britain and challenge its role in the single market. George Osborne, UK chancellor, described the UK’s court victory in 2015 as a “major win for Britain.”

As regards the real effect of the counter-revolution on the British economy, even a survey by the BBC (which excelled in its bias against Brexit!), completed almost a week after Brexit, concluded that the actual effect so far was far from the catastrophe predicted by various “experts”––mainly economists and institutions supported by the elites and particularly the EU elites. Although the picture may change later on, particularly at the time of the election of the new Tory leader and PM, the situation last week was as follows. Contrary to the claim of Bremainers that the damage done to the economy has already been many times the value of the UK’s contribution to the EU Budget, “there may already have been an impact on the economy or the public finances but we do not yet have data showing that”[42] ––and we are not going to have any significant relevant data before the end of July.

What is certainly known so far is the highly expected downgrading of the UK’s credit rating by such ‘objective’ institutions as the rating agencies Fitch and S&P, which of course express the Transnational Elite’s assessment about the safety of lending the UK government, implying that lending money to the British government is less safe now and therefore less attractive. In fact however exactly the opposite has happened so far, as the yield, or return, on government bonds (which is a good indicator of the interest rate the government would have to pay to borrow money) has fallen, indicating that UK government bonds are more attractive now than before!

As regards stock markets, although there were big falls in stock markets immediately after the referendum, the stock index hovers now near a one-year high.[43] Perhaps therefore the biggest negative impact so far is the fall in the value of the pound which has dropped considerably both against the US dollar and the Euro. This was of course to be expected as currency speculation is the specialty of such world benefactors as George Soros, who will do everything in his power to make Brexit fail and particularly to frighten the middle class to press even more against Brexit, after seeing that their highly valued holidays in the Mediterranean and the US have suddenly become much more expensive this year. Naturally, the victims of globalization will also pay a high price later on, when the price of imported commodities will rise significantly. Yet, this is also another reason for them to press for a real Brexit, involving a self-reliant economy, which is a precondition for economic and national sovereignty, as I tried to show elsewhere.[44] As I concluded there, “a Front for National and Social Liberation, which would function as a catalyst for fundamental political and economic change, is the only kind of change that could get us out of the current mire, while creating also the basis of a new true internationalism based on the self-determination of each nation.”

Takis Fotopoulos
VISIT THE INT.JOURNAL OF INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY WEBSITE AT :

http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal

The above text is an extract from Takis Fotopoulos’ new  book Globalization, the Brexit Revolution and the “Left” to be published shortly by Progressive Press. 

http://www.progressivepress.com/book-listing/new-world-order-action

The  book is volume 1 of the 3-volume work by the same author The New World Order in Action (Progressive Press, 2016).

Notes

[1] See the 3-volume work The New World Order in Action (Progressive Press, 2016).,http://www.progressivepress.com/book-listing/new-world-order-action

[2] See Takis Fotopoulos, “Brexit, Globalization and the Bankruptcy of the Globalist “Left”’, Global Research, 10/4/2016 and reposted on 25/6/2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/brexit-globalization-and-the-bankruptcy-of-the-globalist-left/5519403

[3] Editorial, “Britain after Brexit: our economy, our union and our place in the world are all at stake”, The Guardian, 25/6/2016

[5] Editorial, “We ignored the ‘left-behind’”, The Observer, 26/6/2016

[6] ibid.

[7] Editorial, “The age of globalisation showed how weak the EU is. Now for the age of disintegration”, The Guardian, 27/6/2016

[8] ibid.

[9] Takis Fotopoulos, “The DIEM25 Manifesto: ‘Democratizing Europe’ or Perpetuating the Domination of the EU Elites? Global Research, 19/2/2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-diem25-manifesto-democratizing-europe-or-perpetuating-the-domination-of-the-eu-elites/5508950

[10] Takis Fotopoulos, Class Divisions Today ― The Inclusive Democracy approach, DEMOCRACY & NATURE, vol.6, no.2, (July 2000) http://www.democracynature.org/vol6/takis_class.htm

[11] Katie Allen, “UK vote is part of global backlash, investors told”, The Guardian, 28/6/2016

[12] ibid.

[13] William Bowles, ‘The Tory Chickens Come Home to Roost. Brexit, What Next?’, Global Research, 24/6/2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-tory-chickens-come-home-to-roost-brexit-what-next/5532608?print=1

[14] Soros warns of EU disintegration, BBC News, 25/6/2016 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36630468]]=

[15] Gordon Brown, “It’s now clear, globalisation must work for all of Britain”, The Guardian, 29/6/2016

[16] ibid.

[17] Chris Marsden & Julie Hyland,  ““Seismic Shock”: UK Vote to Leave the EU Triggers Economic and Political Crisis, Global Research, 24/6/2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/seismic-shock-uk-vote-to-leave-the-eu-triggers-economic-and-political-crisis/5532656?print=1

[18] Dominic Lawson, “OK, you’re angry. But ignore the vote and tanks could be on the streets”, Sunday Times, 3/7/2016

[19] See “Globalization, the reformist Left and the Anti-Globalization ‘Movement’”, Democracy & Nature, vol.7, no.2 (July 2001)

http://www.democracynature.org/vol7/takis_globalisation.htm

[20] Takis Fotopoulos, “Globalization, Rise of Neo-Nationalism and the Bankruptcy of the Left”, Global Research, 26/5/2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/globalization-the-massive-rise-of-neo-nationalism-and-the-bankruptcy-of-the-left/5527157

[21] See “The Real Causes of the Catastrophic Crisis in Greece and the “Left”’, Global Research, 17/10/2015 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-causes-of-the-catastrophic-crisis-in-greece-and-the-left/5365013

[22] See e.g. Anne-Sylvaine Chassany and Roula Khalaf, “Marine Le Pen lays out radical vision to govern France”, Financial Times (5/3/2015).

[23] Francis Elliott et al. ‘Working class prefers Ukip to Labor”, The Times (25/11/2014).

[24] Editorial, ”Britain after Brexit: our economy, our union and our place in the world are all at stake”, The Guardian, 25/6/2016

[25] Owen Jones, We cannot succumb to inevitable disaster. It’s time to campaign to save our future, The Guardian, 28/6/2016

[26] George Monbiot, Brexit is a disaster, but we can build on the ruins, The Guardian, 29/6/2016

[27] John Harris. “We are in the midst of a working-class revolt, The Guardian, 17/6/2016

[28] ibid.

[29] Sarah Butler, “Employers dependent on foreign workers seek reassurances from Whitehall”, The Observer, 3/7/2016

[30] J. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question (Vienna, 1913) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm

[31] Brian Wheeler, “EU should ‘undermine national homogeneity’ says UN migration chief”, BBC News, 21/6/2012 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-1851

[32] Nigel Morris, “Britain’s divided decade: the rich are 64% richer than before the recession, while the poor are 57% poorer”, The Independent, 10/3/2015

[33] Paul Mason, “UK: lost, divided and alone”, Le Monde Diplomatique, July, 2016

[34] Dr. Paul Graig-Roberts, “Despite the Brexit Vote, the Odds Are Against Britain Leaving the EU, Global Research, 25/6/2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/despite-the-vote-the-odds-are-against-britain-leaving-the-eu/5532728

[35] See Takis Fotopoulos, “Brexit, Globalization and the Bankruptcy of the Globalist “Left

[36] Phillip Stevens, “Britain is starting to imitate Greece”, Financial Times, 30/6/2016

[37] ibid.

[38] “Soros warns of EU disintegration”, BBC News, 25/6/2016 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36630468

[39] Graham Ruddick, “Multinationals warn of risk to jobs and falling profits”, The Guardian, 25/6/2016

[40] Graham VanBergen, “Brexit – Why Things will get Worse and What’s coming Next”, Global Research, 26/6/2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/brexit-why-things-will-get-worse-and-whats-coming-next/5532899

[41] Jim Brunsden and Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, “Hollande heightens City Brexit fallout fears”, Financial Times, 29/6/2016

[42] BBC News, “What has Brexit done to the economy?” 29/6/2016 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36661918

[43] Sudip Kar-Gupta, “FTSE 100 rises, hovers near one-year high”, Reuters, 8/7/2016 http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks-idUKKCN0ZO0M3

[44] See“Brexit, Globalization and the Bankruptcy of the Globalist “Left”’, Global Research, 10/4/2016 and reposted on 25/6/2016

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In a lengthy article in the Washington Post lamenting the Brexit vote and calling it a “victory for Putin”, former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul slips out a fascinating comment that is very revealing of the looking glass world of neocon thinking:

“He (Putin) stopped NATO’s expansion by invading Georgia in 2008 and slowed E.U. expansion by invading Ukraine in 2014. He has increased Russia’s economic hegemony in large parts of the former Soviet Union by building the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). As a result of his military intervention in Syria, Putin is expanding Russia’s presence in the Middle East, as Europe and the United States pull back.”

In McFaul’s world all this is taken as axiomatically bad.  But what actually makes it bad?  Let us take each of these propositions one by one:

Stopping NATO expansion and slowing EU expansion

Putin or rather Russia did not invade Georgia in 2008.  As was conclusively established by an EU report what happened in 2008 was that Georgia attacked South Ossetia and Russia repulsed the Georgian attack.

Nor did Russia invade Ukraine in 2014.  What happened in 2014 was that following a violent and unconstitutional coup in Kiev, which overthrew the country’s democratically elected President, Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia whilst Ukraine’s eastern regions – which had overwhelmingly voted for the overthrown President – protested following his overthrow and demanded more autonomy.  The new coup-installed Ukrainian government in Kiev in turn responded by launching a military attack on the protesters in the eastern regions causing the war there.  The fact that the conflict in Ukraine is a civil war is explicitly recognised in the Minsk II agreement – which was brokered by the Germans and the French and which sets out a road-map for a political settlement – and which is itself an international legal document approved and supported as such by the US and by a vote of the UN Security Council.

Putting aside these factual points, why is it wrong for Russia to oppose the expansion of NATO and the EU to its borders and why is it right to seek to expand them in that way?  Why is it a bad thing if the expansion of the one is halted and the expansion of the other is slowed down?

McFaul does not answer or even pose these questions.  For him the mere fact the US wants these organisations expanded right up to Russia’s border suffices in itself to make their expansion good and Russian opposition bad.  As his comment all too obviously shows, in McFaul’s world Russia is not entitled to have opinions on such questions, much less to act on them, even though they concern questions which are vital to Russia’s security and national interests.

The Eurasian Economic Union

Unlike the EU, which has expanded following wars in Yugoslavia and which McFaul wants to expand into Ukraine following a violent coup there, the Eurasian Economic Union has been established entirely peacefully.

Why is wrong and bad for Russia to promote peacefully the EEU and good and right for the US to promote – sometimes violently – the EU?

In his article McFaul essentially accuses Russia of working to subvert and disintegrate the EU for example by wanting Brexit.  Yet isn’t that precisely what he wants the US and EU to do to the EEU?   Why is Russia doing the one to the EU wrong and bad and the US and the EU doing the same to the EEU good and right?

As it happens McFaul is wrong.  The Russians are not trying to subvert or disintegrate the EU.  The “evidence” they are amounts to nothing more than the fact that Marine Le Pen’s party in France once borrowed some money from a Russian commercial bank.  The Russians did not try to achieve a Leave vote in the British Brexit Referendum and Putin did not welcome the result when it came out.  As Putin made perfectly clear at his speech in SPIEF 2016, far from wanting to destroy the EU the Russians want it to become a partner in their Greater Eurasia project.

By contrast the US has openly committed itself to doing all it can to stop or delay the EEU.  The coup in Kiev and the war in Ukraine are at least in part a result of that.

Expanding Russia’s presence in the Middle East and the war in Syria

The US has been trying to expand its presence in the Middle East for decades.  It has bases in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Bahrain and Turkey.  It is allied to Israel and Saudi Arabia.  It has waged aggressive wars which have overthrown the governments of Iraq and Libya.  It has for some years supported the insurgency which is seeking to overthrow the government of Syria; and it has placed Iran under virtual siege.

Why is it good and right for the US to expand its presence in the Middle East in this way through war and violence and wrong and bad for Russia to do the same?

As it happens McFaul is again misrepresenting Russian policy.  Firstly it is debatable whether Russian influence in the Middle East is really expanding.  Russia already had a presence in Syria before the war there started and though Russia’s ties with Iran are growing stronger Iran is in no sense a Russian vassal state or satellite and will not become one.  As for the Russian intervention in Syria, as the Russians have been at pains to point out unlike the various US interventions it is not merely legal but supports an existing government – and thus order and stability in the region – rather than seeking to overthrow or disrupt it.  Moreover unlike the US, which never talks to Russia about anything unless forced to do so, the Russians have gone to great lengths to talk to the US about Syria and to try to work with the US to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Syria.

McFaul’s piece encapsulates everything which is wrong and dangerous about US policy.  As is only too obvious, in his world view and in that of the neocons Russia – and all other countries – are not entitled to their own opinions and are certainly not entitled to an independent foreign policy.  The only proper and “good” course for them is to agree to whatever the US demands of them.  When they behave differently by acting in their own interests they are doing something wrong and bad, become “evil” and are vilified and attacked.

This is an impossible, overweening demand the like of which has never been made by any Great Power since the Fall of the Roman Empire.  There is no possibility of strong independent countries like Russia ever agreeing to it.  Demanding it of them is what is driving the world towards war.

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While this weapon system is still currently “under the radar” (no pun intended…) of the Western media, one can rest assured that once it starts flight tests in earnest, it will be paraded as Exhibit A in the propaganda indictment of “Russian aggression.” Therefore it might be worthwhile to pre-empt the usual media barrage by placing a spotlight on what promises to be a revolutionary weapon system capable of changing the global balance of power.

The Sarmat missile is classified as a so-called “heavy” ICBM. In accordance with START treaties, that designation is applied to weapons with intercontinental range and launch weight in excess of 100 metric tons. It is not the first such weapon to earn this designation–the earlier R-36-series Voyevoda ICBM, dubbed by NATO as the SS-18 Satan (!), also belonged to that category and likewise was the target of a focused propaganda campaign–why else would it be assigned a code name like that? USSR was not the only country to deploy such weapons. US strategic forces used Titan ICBMs for several decades.

The controversy associated with heavy ICBMs naturally begs the question: why bother with such weapons? What missions are they intended to accomplish? In the Russian case, at any rate, heavy ICBMs play a specific role. They are the spear-tip of strategic nuclear deterrence. Their ability to destroy heavily defended or protected targets, including by anti-ballistic missile systems, guarantees the rest of the deterrent force remains viable. Although the R-36 spent most of its service life under the ABM Treaty regime, one has to keep in mind that it was designed with the assumption the US would have widely deployed ABM systems, and moreover Soviet heavy ICBMs were part of the reason the US realized, in the early 1970s, that the Soviet missile capabilities were sufficient to render any US defensive system irrelevant. A single R-36 represented, after all, a 10-warhead rapid-fire volley that no ABM system at the time could hope to counter. It’s the realization that ABM systems would be costly, destabilizing, and, in the end, useless, that gave us the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” in its mature form.

The Sarmat is the child of the post-ABM Treaty era, from which the US withdrew during the first term of the George W. Bush administration whose main priority, before it was sidelined by the 9/11 terror attacks, was a military build-up in space, to the point of making “the final frontier” a US military preserve. Sarmat’s function is as much political as it is military, as it is intended to send the message that, in the final account, the US is better off sitting down behind negotiating table in order to create a new multilateral framework of collective security than pursuing impossible dreams of unilateral “full spectrum dominance.”

Since the US missile defense technologies have evolved over the last several decades, the Sarmat will likewise represent a major advancement over the Voyevoda. Instead of simply presenting the ABM system with a rapid succession of targets with the goal of saturating the defenses, the Sarmat is more subtle. Its approach to the task of invalidating opposing missile defenses consists of a combination of factors. They include the ability employ multiple trajectories, not only the standard route over the North Pole, to the North American continent, thanks to the missile’s powerful engines and ample fuel load which account for the bulk of the missile’s estimated 170 tons. It can also employ suborbital trajectories which greatly reduce flight, and therefore also reaction, time. Its 10-ton payload will include hypersonic aerodynamic vehicles which are considerably harder to intercept, in addition to standard warheads and, naturally, decoys. Last but not least, in order to ensure its survivability, its launch preparation time will be only 1 minute, greatly reducing the likelihood of it being caught on the ground by an enemy first strike.

The Sarmat is a high-priority weapons system whose timetable has not suffered significant delays. Its initial testing is scheduled to begin later in 2016, with service entry scheduled by not later than the end of 2018, and with all the R-36M missiles still in service being replaced by 2020. The initial “free world” reaction will likely be the usual barrage of propaganda which inevitably follows every Russian international initiative, though, as in the 1970s, it will be followed by a more constructive Western response that will help restore a sense of global security and stability.

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A multinational military operation involving British, French and US forces is coordinating air strikes in support of a renegade general battling Islamist militia groups from a base near Benghazi in eastern Libya, air traffic recordings obtained by Middle East Eye reveal.

The leaked tapes appear to confirm earlier reports suggesting the existence of an international operations centre that is helping General Khalifa Haftar in his campaign to gain control of eastern Libya from groups he has declared to be “extremists”.

At least one air strike was heard being coordinated in the tapes, which total just under an hour in length, suggesting the operations room is being used not only for reconnaissance.

A Libyan boy holds a portrait of General Khalifa Haftar amid celebrations in Benghazi last October (AFP)

A Libyan boy holds a portrait of General Khalifa Haftar amid celebrations in Benghazi last October (AFP)

The recordings were passed to MEE from the Benina air base, which is considered to be Haftar’s most important military facility.

The leaks could prove damaging for the international parties involved because Haftar has refused to support the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli and has been fighting some groups that have taken part in the Western-backed campaign against the Islamic State (IS) group.

Last month, the UN Security Council authorised an EU naval force to enforce the arms embargo on Libya by intercepting ships suspected of carrying weapons. The arms embargo was imposed on Libya in 2011, but UN sanctions monitors have reported shipments from Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan to various factions.

One of those factions is led by Haftar, against whom the EU has previously threatened to extend sanctions for undermining the UN-backed Libyan government.

“The sanctions are meaningless,” Haftar’s spokesman said at the time of the threat. “At the moment we have only heard reports in the media and have had no formal message.”

Middle East Eye also revealed in March that British SAS soldiers, supported by Jordanian forces, were already operating in Libya against IS militants.

The leaked tapes feature pilots and air traffic controllers speaking in Arabic and English. British, American, French and Italian accents can be heard.

“Benghazi, good morning, Ascot 9908,” a man with a British accent is heard saying. “Ascot 9908, just letting you know we are in contact with Benghazi airfield.”

The call sign Ascot 9908 came up repeatedly in the recordings. Later on, the man was heard saying: “Ascot 9908 with you again from Benina, we’re looking to pick up a flight plan route from Lima Golf Sierra Alpha.”

“That’s Ascot 9908, we are complete at Benina and next destination is Lima Golf Sierra Alpha,” the same man said, before ending the conversation and continuing with his mission.

Those speaking with French and Italian accents seemed to spend most of the recordings directing air traffic from the control room.

Pilots with American accents also featured prominently. Their two key call signs were Bronco 71 and Mustang 99 – the names of classic American cars.

Many of the files sound like routine air traffic control room communications – numbers, call signs, complaints about malfunctioning radios and back-and-forth confirmations.

“Sorry about the trouble, sir, our radios are not working well,” a voice, presumed to be an American pilot, said. “Control, Mustang 99 is departing your airspace to the northeast, apologies once again for our radios and good evening.”

The Fish Market

A number of voices were also heard on the leaked files speaking in Arabic.

“The first target has been interacted with,” an Arabic-speaking pilot is heard saying. The target was in Souq al-Hout, or the Fish Market.

“It’s a famous neighbourhood in Benghazi,” said Libya specialist Mattia Toaldo, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s one of the neighbourhoods close to the sea. It was crucial during the 2011 fighting (against former leader Muammar Gaddafi) and then it’s been one of the main areas of fighting between Haftar and the Islamist forces since 2014.”

The group Haftar is fighting in Souq al-Hout is called the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries (SCBR), an amalgamation of several Islamist and militant groups.

The group’s make-up is complicated and contradictory but crucially the SCBR does not include or align itself with IS.

The coalition includes Ansar al-Sharia, which is labeled a terrorist organisation by the UN, the US, the UK and Turkey. But it also includes the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, which is not considered a terrorist organisation and is reportedly funded by the Libyan defence ministry in Tripoli.

“We have interacted with the second target, and we’re going on to the third target, God willing,” the Arabic speaking pilot is heard saying as he flew over Souq al-Hout.

Air traffic control then responds and urges him to “go ahead”.

“We have interacted with the third target,” the pilot says.

At another point in the leaked tapes, an air-traffic controller admonishes an Arabic-speaking pilot for unloading one of his two bombs early. Later, a pilot asks the operations room to check if one of his bombs had exploded.

‘He doesn’t want to have any rivals’

That the groups Haftar is targeting are not IS, nor even IS-aligned, is noteworthy but not new considering his actions in Derna, a town east of Benghazi.

Haftar was a key military figure in Gaddafi’s army, but was exiled to the US and returned during the 2011 revolution to try to oust the long-time leader. He has been accused of having links to the CIA, of having presidential ambitions and, according to the Economist, is “often considered a spoiler of efforts to unify the country”.

His role in any national military force, as minister of defence or an army commander, has been one of the most contentious issues in attempts to achieve unity.

Western support has only emboldened the renegade general to the detriment of attempts to unify the chaotic North African country, Toaldo told MEE.

“Support by Western special forces, particularly French, to General Haftar has made it more difficult to reach a compromise with him because he thinks he has important external backing and therefore does not need to compromise with the unity government,” he said.

Two years ago, Haftar launched Operation Dignity, centred primarily around Benghazi. He subsequently allied with the eastern Tobruk-based government, but despite his claims to have “liberated” Benghazi earlier in 2016, violence has continued to rage. On Thursday, a car bomb killed 12 of Haftar’s fighters.

Just as IS has exploited the chaotic situation to bolster its presence inside Libya – turning Gaddafi’s home city Sirte into a training camp for its militants – Haftar appears to have exploited IS to secure foreign backing.

Foreign backing for Haftar

Since Operation Dignity was launched, there have been numerous reports that he receives support from foreign powers, notably Egypt and the UAE, which are thought to be responsible for night-time air strikes on sites controlled by Islamist-aligned forces.

In a 20-minute interview with the BBC, Haftar acknowledged that his forces had received support from foreign powers.

“IS in Benghazi had a hard time in the past few months, but we should not take the lesson that we should support Haftar,” Toaldo said. “It’s mostly because of the external support that Haftar forces got that IS in Benghazi have had a hard time, but on the other hand it’s because of the split between IS and the Benghazi revolutionary council.”

This time last year, IS was decimated in the eastern coastal city of Derna by the Shura Council of Mujahideen in Derna, another Islamist group.

While the UN-backed government has been busy trying to clear IS out of their Libyan stronghold of Sirte in recent months, Haftar has been fighting his own war – against the same group that pushed IS out of Derna.

The UN Support Mission in Libya condemned Haftar’s airstrikes on Derna and warned that the resulting civilian casualties may constitute a war crime.

“It’s not new in its strategy because basically he doesn’t want to have any rivals in the east and he considers everyone, even loosely associated with political Islam, as terrorists,” Toaldo said. “Much like his Egyptian patrons.”

Speaking about the long-term consequences of the leak, Toaldo said: “I think that it changes things more in Europe than in Libya because it’s more difficult for the French government to deny any involvement in Benghazi.

It will have to explain why it’s supporting the unity government with a lot of diplomatic effort, while its military forces are supporting the rival of that government.

A British Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “As we have said before, the RAF regularly facilitates visits by diplomatic and military advisers to Libya.”

The MoD also said that it does not comment on leaked documents or offer running commentary on flights for security reasons and has not conducted air strikes over Libya.

The French Ministry of Defence declined to comment.

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Terror Information and State Secrecy

July 10th, 2016 by Michael Welch

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“What we are pressing for is not the power to be Big Brother, watching everyone from above, but rather a flock of Little Sisters, watching government from below.” – Micah L. Sifry[1] (cited by Binoy Kampmark in his talk.)

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, teaching within the Bachelor of Social Science (Legal and Dispute Studies) program. In his presentation, Dr. Kampmark explores how internet platforms such as wikileaks and other forms of “hacktivism” has started to force radical transparency on government institutions and are therefore playing a role in fostering democracy on a State apparatus increasing capitulating to the undemocratic will and demands of major corporate centres of power. Dr. Kampmark invokes the secretive trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a Case Study of this phenomenon.

“My sense of justice requires that if you’re going to convict people and you’re going to start a whole perspective of how the whole world should change, the result of what happened on September 11… you ought to have a fully convincing case about who the perpetrators were, and the 9/11 Commission Report didn’t even mention it.” – Paul Zarembka

Paul Zarembka is Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has been the general editor for Research in Political Economy since 1977, and was also the editor of the 2008 volume, The Hidden History of 9/11. In his presentation, Dr. Zarembka argues that the term ‘conspiracy theory’ is an anti-intellectual concept and makes his point by addressing demonstrable flaws in the narrative around the September 11 attacks, and invoking historical examples from before the term became a pejorative.

 These talks were part of a panel discussion presented at the Geopolitical Economy Research Group Conference held at the University of Manitoba in late September of 2015.

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1)  Micah L. Sifry (February, 2011)Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency (p. 164)

US-dominated NATO threatens world peace. It’s for offense, not defense. No threats exist except invented ones, lamely justifying the unjustifiable. Washington uses the alliance to advance its imperium, hanging a sword of Damocles over humanity.

Claiming NATO’s resolve is to confront a “resurgent Russia” masks its aim to be a world policeman, a global alliance operating on every continent, an enforcer of US foreign policy – an agenda of endless wars, elimination of all independent governments, puppet regimes replacing them, planet earth colonized.

Obama’s Financial Times op-ed on the summit’s eve combined anti-Russia saber-rattling with willful deception.

“This may be the most important moment for our transatlantic alliance since the end of the cold war,” he said.

Claiming terrorist threats ignored US responsibility for creating ISIS and likeminded groups, using them as imperial foot soldiers in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

Citing the refugee crisis failed to explain America’s responsibility for the gravest one since WW II. Accusing Russia of “aggression against Ukraine threat(ing) our vision of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace” turned truth on its head.

Saying “(w)e need to bolster the defense of our allies in central and eastern Europe, strengthen deterrence and boost our resilience against new threats” begs the question.

Why when invented threats alone exist, America and its rogue allies the only real ones, NATO belligerently serving their interests, its agenda humanity’s greatest scourge.

Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is a US-appointed front man representing its imperial interests.

At Warsaw’s summit saying “NATO…send(s) a very clear message that we are here” is code language reflecting aggressive US foreign policy – Russia and China its prime targets, creating the illusion of both countries posing a threat to alliance members when none exists.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged “common sense” over “anti-Russia hysteria,” explaining it’s “absurd to speak of a (nonexistent) threat coming from Russia when people are being killed in the heart of Europe, while hundreds die in the Middle East every day.”

Days earlier, Putin said “(w)e are always accused of some kind of military activity. Where? On our (own) territory. But (deploying NATO combat troops and heavy weapons) on our border – that’s OK.”

According to Russian upper house Federation Council Foreign pPolicy Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachov, “(t)he Warsaw summit is a summit of deception…cement(ing) a second wall in Europe after the Berlin one…proceed(ing) from the logic of confrontation…”

Russian Federation Council first deputy Defense and Security committee head Frants Klintsevich called deploying battalions of combat troops near Russia’s border an “act of aggression…hav(ing) an extremely negative impact on the global situation on the whole.”

Russia will respond appropriately, he added, responsibly protecting its national security interests. Belligerent US-led actions belie Stoltenberg saying NATO doesn’t want a new Cold War, arms race, confrontation or Russia isolated.

Its agenda risks global war for the first time since WW II ended – today’s super-weapons able to end life on earth.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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Impeach and Prosecute Tony Blair

July 10th, 2016 by David Swanson

The Chilcot report’s “findings” have virtually all been part of the public record for a decade, and it avoids key pieces of evidence. Its recommendations are essentially to continue using war as a threat and a tool of foreign policy, but to please try not to lie so much, make sure to win over a bit more of the public, and don’t promise any positive outcomes given the likelihood of catastrophe.

The report is a confused jumble, given that it records evidence of the supreme crime but tries to excuse it. The closer you get to the beginning of the executive summary, the more the report reads as if written by the very criminals it’s reporting on. Yet the report makes clear, as we always knew, that even in 2001-2003 there were honest people working in the British, as also in the U.S., government — some of whom became whistleblowers, others of whom accurately identified the planned war as a crime that would endanger rather than protect, but stayed in their jobs when the war was launched.

Chilcot makes clear that the attack on Iraq was illegal, against the British public, against the international community and the UN Charter, expected to increase terrorism, based on lies about terrorism and weapons, and — like every other war ever launched — not a last resort. Chilcot records, as reality-based reporting always has, that Iraq claimed honestly to have no nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. Chilcot fails to explain with any clarity that one cannot legally or morally attack another nation even when it does have such things.

Chilcot does make clear the extent to which France was pushing back against war, along with Russia and Germany and Chile and China. The key supporter of U.S. war plans was the UK, and there is some possibility that a UK refusal to join in this crime might really have done some good.

But Chilcot steers away from criminal responsibility, and from the damage done by the crime. It avoids the Downing Street Memo, the White House MemoHussein Kamel, the spying and threatening and bribing involved in the failed effort to win UN authorization, Aznar’s account of Bush’s admission that Saddam Hussein was willing to leave, etc. This is a report that aims for politeness and tranquility.

Not to worry, Chilcot tells us, as nothing like this will happen again even if we just let the criminals walk. Chilcot claims bizarrely that every other war before and since has been defensive and in response to some attack, rather than an act of aggression like this one. Of course, no list of those other wars is provided.

Even more bizarrely, Chilcot claims that Blair and gang literally never considered the possibility that Iraq had no “weapons of mass destruction.” How you make all kinds of assertions, contrary to your evidence, that Iraq has weapons without considering the question is beyond me. But Chilcot credits with great significance the supposedly excusing grace of groupthink and the passion with which people like Blair supposedly believed their own lies. Chilcot even feeds into the disgusting lie that Blair pushes to this daythat Iraqis chose to destroy their own country while their occupiers nobly attempted “reconstruction.”

Despite itself, however, Chilcot may do some good. In the United States, when James Comey describes crimes by Hillary Clinton and assures us they should not be prosecuted, most people can be counted on to lie back and accept that blindly or even fervently. Yet our friends in Britain appear less than eager to accept the attitude with which Chilcot has reported on the supreme international crime.

Tony Blair may now be impeached as he needs to be. Yes — sigh — one can and should impeach people no longer in office, as has been usefully done in both British and U.S. history. Removal from office is one penalty that sometimes follows a conviction at a trial following an impeachment; it is not itself the definition of impeachment. Blair should be tried and convicted by Parliament. He should also be put on trial by the International Criminal Court or, better, by a special tribunal established for Iraq as for World War II or Yugoslavia.

The victors in World War II used the Kellogg-Briand Pact to prosecute the losers for the new crime of launching a war. Blair violated both the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the newer, yet never used, United Nations Charter, which also bans war. While Kellogg-Briand allows no exceptions, the exceptions in the UN Charter were famously not met in the case of the war on Iraq or, for that matter, any other recent western wars.

You can sign a petition urging Blair’s impeachment and prosecution here. Of course the goal must be to build momentum for holding the chief (U.S.) war criminals accountable, pursuing truth and reconciliation, and making massive reparations to the people of Iraq and their region. What the U.S. needs is action, not a 7-year “investigation.” Our own Chilcot report, better in fact, was written long ago.

The Chilcot report could, against its own wishes, move us in that direction.

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Schroeder had left Merkel an impressive legacy: a stable country, a growing economy, good relationships with the leading countries of the world. How has “die Eiserne Kanzlerin” made use of them? Down which path have 11 years of Merkel’s brand of democracy led Germany and Europe?

Despite the fact that Germany is Europe’s economic leader and retains the final word in EU policies, Merkel’s failures in internal and foreign policy are becoming more obvious. Of course, at first glance, the Chancellor succeeded in reducing the level of unemployment in Germany and brought the economy to a path of growth after the recession of the post-crisis period, but the situation in the country continues to deteriorate each day.

Confused foreign policy and the lack of political will have led to a massive influx of migrants from the crisis regions of the Middle East and North Africa. The migrants, in addition to causing a financial burden on the budget, are destabilizing the traditional German society by creating a demographic imbalance.

It is well-known that the German population is steadily declining by nearly 100,000 people per year. The influx of migrants has arrested this process, but it is unable to eliminate the tendency altogether. Germany’s mortality rate continues to exceed the birth rate. According to the Federal Statistical Agency, the average woman in Germany in recent years has borne 1.4 children. A higher birth rate – 1.6 children per woman – would have slowed this trend down, but it would not be able to halt it entirely. The number of deaths is projected to rise. It is accordingly evident that Merkel’s demographic policy has failed.

The crime situation is worsening with the influx of migrants. Although migrants make up just over 10% of the population, they account for just over 25% of crimes that are committed, though some sources place this number as high a 30%. In addition, foreigners commit more than 80% of all violent crimes. However, the authorities prefer to keep silent about this data, in order not to provoke further anti-migrant backlash. Dozens of Middle East- and Africa-based organized crime clans have taken thieves, robbers and drug dealers all over Germany under their wing. To make matters worse, German cities are overflowing with drugs and the mortality rate from drug use is increasing rapidly. In 2015, this figure had risen to 20%.

The worsening crime situation has increased the demoralization among the police. For example, there are some policemen who are afraid to act in the so-called ‘zones of lawlessness’ in Duisburg, as they know that any attacks on them by the people from the Middle East will remain unpunished. Germany has gone from being the centerpiece of the European welfare state to the epicenter of the continent’s organized crime. However, German intelligence services deserve credit for preventing major terrorist attacks in the country. It is possible, however, that there exists a tacit understanding that obligates criminal organizations to suppress terrorist activities in exchange for certain freedom of action.

The environmental situation is another area which is deteriorating due to the influx of migrants. Many of the migrants are simply not accustomed to using trash bins, let alone a sophisticated recycling system. Piles of garbage and sewage are now visible along the highways throughout the country.

Despite Germany’s image as of one of the pillars of democracy in the world, the freedom of speech in the country continues to suffer from major restrictions. It is practically impossible to publish an article in the local media which is contrary to government policy. Article submissions are blocked at the editorial level.

There are also numerous gaps in the country’s foreign policy. During Merkel’s reign, Germany was unable to appropriately respond to crises that occurred at the EU borders. Merkel’s slow and hesitant foreign policy has led to hundreds of thousands of victims in the once-stable states. Military intervention in Libya, and the subsequent strengthening of the terrorists in this country and in the region, are the result of Germany’s inactivity. Despite criticism of Russia concerning Syria, Merkel herself was not able to put forward constructive initiatives to resolve the crisis. Inconsistent German policy towards Ukraine has led this country to civil war. It would be pertinent to recall that Mr Steinmeier, the German Foreign Minister, was one of the guarantors of the agreement signed between the former President of the Ukraine Yanukovych and the Maidan opposition, although the German side was evidently not going to insist on its implementation. The subsequent civil war has led to thousands of casualties among the civilian population of Ukraine, and the sanctions significantly damaged the relationship with one of Germany’s main foreign trade partners – Russia. In general, the entire system of European security has been undermined.

Undoubtedly, there are reasons why Germany pursues this type of foreign policy: Merkel is under tremendous pressure from the United States. She has to seek balance between the interests of her people and Washington’s demands. The fact that most of Germany’s gold reserves are situated in the US should not be underestimated. In addition, several hundred US military bases (287) are deployed in Germany, although the line of confrontation with its main geo-political rival of the West – Russia – had shifted far to the East a long time ago. At the same time, the Bundeswehr’s personnel strength, after the latest reduction in numbers, has reached the lowest figure in its history with 177,000 men, while in the country, there are over 40,000 US troops. Obviously, in such circumstances, Germany cannot pursue an independent foreign policy and resist the will of the United States. The rapprochement between Russia and Germany is a direct threat to US dominance in the Euro-Atlantic area.

What kind legacy will Merkel leave? An undermined economy, refugee camps, the highest crime rate ever, a castrated EU, growing international instability. Frau Kanzlerin! It is high time to finally change course!

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In October 2015 the US administration abandoned its efforts to build up a new rebel force inside Syria to combat the Islamic State, acknowledging the failure of its $500 million campaign to train thousands of fighters and announcing that it will instead use the money to provide ammunition and some weapons for groups already engaged in the battle. The decision to change the policy was made after mounting evidence that the training mission had resulted in no more than a handful of American-trained fighters.

The Pentagon spent 384 million dollars out of initially planned $500 million program on the preparation of 150 fighters, instead of almost 3,000 militants it originally planned to train. At that point, US officials declared this program a bitter failure and shut it down, without ever mentioning that the Pentagon spent 2 million dollars per fighter trained.

Since then it has changed its tact and started backing alternative groups. In southern Syria the US launched a new project – the New Syrian Army (NSA), a Sunni rebel group aligned with the Free Syria Army (FSA), and mainly made up of locals from Syria’s Deir ez-Zor Governorate. With its strength of a few hundred fighters, it has received training in Jordan, as well as arms from the US and UK. Furthermore, the US-led coalition provided air and artillery support.

On July 4, the US-backed New Syrian Army suffered another crippling defeat as a result of Islamic State (IS) massive attack at Bir Mahrutha near the Syria-Jordan border.

This is the second setback in a row right after the US-trained force was defeated at Al-Bukamal on the Iraqi border.

On June 28, the NSA launched the al-Bukamal offensive, also known as Operation Day of Wrath. Al-Bukamal, just a few miles from the Iraqi frontier, is a key gateway city on the border between Syria and Iraq where the Euphrates River crosses the frontier. In 2014 it was captured by IS to effectively erase the border between Syria and Iraq. Losing it would be a huge symbolic and strategic blow to the Islamic State group.

The Pentagon-trained counterterrorism force dispatched 200 of its 300 fighters to the area. The advance was aided by anti-IS elements inside the city. Islamic State fighters encircled the rebels in a surprise ambush. They reportedly inflicted heavy casualties on the NSA forces seizing satellite communications equipment and weapons. It’s hard to say if the group will exist as a coherent force after such a rout.

It was logical to assume that such a large operation conducted by trained troops with cutting-edge equipment and surprise on their side was well prepared. Thorough planning was expected to be based on reliable intelligence and extensive logistic support. Evidently, it was not the case.

It’s impossible to understand how could such an attack, with all advantages on the side of the NSA, end in disaster. It will go down as one of the most striking defeats ever suffered by an American-backed Syrian force. In a broader sense, it shows that one more time the US military has failed in one of the training programs it runs in support of fighting the Islamic State. The crushing defeat represents yet another failure by the US to create an effective anti-IS Arab force in Syria. Earlier training missions had also gone awry.

It’s not Syria only. After disbanding the Iraqi military in the wake of the 2003 invasion, the US spent more than $25 billion through fiscal year 2012 to build a new force. Yet several Iraqi divisions collapsed under Islamic State attacks in 2014 and 2015, with soldiers shedding their weapons and uniforms and fleeing the battlefield. In the battle of Mosul (June 2014) around 1500 IS fighters defeated 30,000 Iraqi troops.

In Yemen, American-trained troops and counterterrorism forces crumbled against attacks by Houthi rebels who wound up overrunning the capital in 2014 forcing the government into exile. The battle is now being fought mostly via a Saudi-led air campaign, which is hardly a success story.

In Afghanistan, the United States has spent about $65 billion to build the army and police. In October 2015 US-backed Afghan security forces suffered a setback in Kunduz.

Today thousands of Afghan Army, police and militia defenders display poor performance against the Taliban force, which is much smaller in numbers.

In northwest Africa, the United States has spent more than $600 million to combat Islamist militancy, with training programs stretching from Morocco to Chad. American officials once heralded Mali’s military as an exemplary partner. But in 2012, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya to rout the military, including units trained by United States Special Forces. That defeat, followed by a coup led by an American-trained officer, Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo, astounded US commanders.

French, United Nations and European Union forces now carry out training and security missions in Mali.

The American government has invested nearly $1 billion in the overall strategy in Somalia. But even with the gains, the Shabab militants have been able to carry out bombings in Mogadishu, the capital, and in neighboring countries.

Tens of billions of dollars spent by the US in recent years to train security forces across the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere have not succeeded in transforming local fighters into effective, long-term militaries. It calls into question the effectiveness of the American conflict management policy. «Our track record at building security forces over the past 15 years is miserable», said Karl W. Eikenberry, a former military commander and United States ambassador in Afghanistan.

The US cooperation with Kurds in the northern part of Syria has its limits, while all the attempts to form a capable Sunni Arab fighting force have failed. It means, the policy aimed at bringing to power a pro-American puppet regime with its military trained by US instructors and armed with US-made weapons is questionable at best. It just does not work, neither in Syria, nor in Iraq, nor in any other country. US officials should acknowledge these realities.

At the same time, a broader regional coalition could be a powerful tool against the Islamic State. True, the United States still has a strong military presence in the area, as well as strong ties to the Kurds. But it also has weak points, such as poor intelligence in Syria and a failed military training program for the Syrian opposition, a troubled relationship with the ineffective Iraqi government and few links with Iran. Russia has the leverage in Syria that the US lacks: military partnership with the Syrian government and its forces operating on the ground, working ties with other actors like the Iranian government, and an intelligence-sharing agreement with Iraq, Syria, and Iran, that could well include Iranian allies like Hezbollah.

Working together, the US and Russia could take advantage of their respective ties with the regional actors. It is worth mentioning Henry A. Kissinger’s Primakov Lecture at the Gorchakov Fund in Moscow in February 2016, where he emphasized that «Today threats more frequently arise from the disintegration of state power and the growing number of ungoverned territories. This spreading power vacuum cannot be dealt with by any state, no matter how powerful, on an exclusively national basis. It requires sustained cooperation between the United States and Russia, and other major powers».

Perhaps, Syria will never be the same country we knew for the past seventy years. It will have to be put together again in a totally new way. This can only result from negotiations among the various Syrian players (minus IS, Jabhat al-Nusra and some other extremist groups), with the assistance of the international community, including the US and Russia.

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The Egyptian parliament said Friday that Britain’s new report on the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq provides good reason to put George W.Bush and Tony Blair on trial as war criminals. 

The Egyptian parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs called on Friday for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to be tried as war criminals, saying the resounding report of a British committee investigating Britain’s participation in the war against Iraq clearly shows that there were no convincing reasons for the conflict.

“This British committee’s report – the Chilcot report – has exposed the false reasons which former US president George W. Bush and former UK prime minister Tony Blair had exploited to wage their illegitimate war against Iraq,” said the strongly-worded statement.

Egyptian parliament

A general view shows members of the Egyptian parliament attending a session at the main headquarters of Parliament in Cairo, Egypt, January 10, 2016 (Reuters)

The parliament said that the American-led war in Iraq left more than one million Iraqis killed and millions more wounded, internally displaced or sent from their homes as refugees.

“There’s no question that George W. Bush and Tony Blair should be put on trial as war criminals not only because they are the ones who trumpeted the reasons for this war, but also because they should be held responsible for the deaths of millions of Iraqis since 2003,” the statement read.

It singled out former US president Bush as the Iraqi conflict’s foremost war criminal.

“Bush committed his crimes in Iraq amid silence in America which claims itself as the land of democracy and human rights,” the statement noted.

According to the statement, the British report on the war also exposed the ceaseless Western conspiracies against the Arab World, the Middle East and the Arab Gulf.

“These conspiracies aim at plundering the riches of this region, enslaving its peoples and plunging them into constant troubles,” said the statement.

The committee recommended that the Arab League and the next Arab Summit in Mauritania this month issue strong statements against Western military intervention in the Arab World and to use its influence in the United Nations to espouse this principle.

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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair needs to face the consequences of his actions after “opening the gates of hell” in Iraq, says Catholic priest Father Newell in an interview with Vice.

Tony Blair has caused evil, suffering and mass murder that still goes on to this day after taking the UK to war in Iraq in 2003 based on deception.

For his soul not to be eternally damned to the fires of hell, the former PM must truly repent and come clean before the masses and tell us what really went on between himself and George W. Bush that unleashed the demons of hell on earth.

Tony Blair Vice reports:

Despite the scathing assessment of the Chilcot Report – an investigation into the Iraq War which was published this week – former Prime Minister Tony Blair is unlikely to face human justice for leading Britain into a conflict that left as many as one million Iraqis dead . The International Criminal Court has admitted it has no power to prosecute him. Even so, for Blair, a devout Catholic, could it be a case of “out of the frying pan and into the unquenchable lake of burning sulphur”?

I called up Father Martin Newell, a Catholic priest and peace activist, to find out.

VICE: Hello Father Newell. What do you have to do to get sent to hell these days? 

Father Newell: It’s not as simple as that. Catholic teaching says that hell exists but we’re not sure that there’s anybody in it. People can repent of anything and hopefully they do. God’s mercy is infinite. We all depend on God’s mercy. We’re all sinners. We all do things wrong. There are very serious sins – mortal sins – certainly: murder, for example. We can talk about the invasion of Iraq being mass murder. A sin like that, unrepented, would mean that you are effectively in hell. Obviously lying about something as important as the reasons to go to war, for example, would be a massive offence against truth.

How stained is Tony Blair’s soul?
It’s not possible to speak about the state of another man’s soul, but it would appear that he has lied to and deceived the public. He seems to be deceiving himself now. He led the country into a war which was completely unjust. In a sense we are all complicit but in this country he has the highest share of that complicity in mass murder that’s still going on. He opened the gates of hell, metaphorically speaking, with the chaos that’s come out of the invasion of Iraq. What he’s done has caused massive evil and suffering. Morally he’s in very serious trouble.

Tony Blair

What happens in Hell?
Catholic teaching about Hell says that it’s more about the absence of God than something happening. It’s a turning away from God, love, truth, and hope. The three greatest things are faith, hope, and love. The opposite of those is pride, despair, and hatred. That is hell.

Wouldn’t Hell be quite fun for Blair? His friends will be there. It’ll be like a retirement home for unspeakable bastards.
I don’t think it’s like that… There are a couple of good light-hearted stories about the difference between Heaven and Hell. One is that in both places people are at a banquet, but there are only really long spoons to eat with – too long to feed yourself with. In Heaven people are feeding each other. In Hell people only try to feed themselves but they can’t because the spoons are too long to go from their hands to their mouth. There wouldn’t be any pleasure in being around other people like that at all.

Do you think God might be punishing Tony Blair right now?
When I look at him I think he looks quite wild-eyed. There was a point a few years ago where he seemed to be coming close to thinking that perhaps he’d made a terrible mistake. And then he went back into this utter certainty that he was right. There’s some kind of madness. It’s possible he couldn’t cope with the realisation that he was coming to and went into total denial about it. He’s dislocated from reality somehow. But when he dies he will have to face that reality.

Blair converted to Catholicism. He’s even met the Pope. He is now, it seems, a good Christian. How many Hail Marys do you think he’s had to do to make up for the one million Iraqi people that died as a result of the war?
That just doesn’t work, I’m afraid.

If you were his Father Confessor, what penance would you suggest?
I’ve got a feeling that something like that would have to go to a higher level. As an ordinary priest I wouldn’t be able to absolve something like that. I think it would take a lot of thinking about, a lot of talking. I think he’d have to come out publicly and admit that he was guilty: that he took a country into an unjust war. He’d have to admit everything that it would be necessary for him to admit to be taken to the International Criminal Court or to be prosecuted. It would be about admitting what he’s done wrong and taking the consequences of that. Somebody who is really repentant for a criminal act they’ve done has to go and face the consequences.

Tony Blair

Really? I always thought confession was a sort of Get Out of Jail Free card for your soul.
If it’s something as serious as this, to be really sorry, you can’t just say you’re sorry and then hide it. That’s not genuine repentance, or sorrow, or remorse.

As a priest your job is to harvest souls for God. But does part of you secretly you want Blair to go to Hell?
No. Not at all. I want him to repent and admit what he’s done: the terrible, horrific consequences of his part in that war. I want him to campaign for peace in the future, to campaign for other governments not to make the same mistakes as him, and tell us what really happened between him and George Bush and all the rest of them, to help the rest of us build a peaceful world. I really want him to change because he could have a massive impact for peace in the world.

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“It turns out … that I’m really good at killing people.” President Barack Obama (1961- ), (as reported in Reed Peeples, ‘A President and his Drones’, June 29, 2016, —a review of the book ‘Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone’, S. Shane, 2015)

We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do.

—Governments are only machines, created by the individuals of a nation for their own convenience; they are only delegated bodies, delegated by the individuals, and therefore they cannot possibly have larger moral rights of using force, or, indeed, larger moral rights of any kind, than the individuals who delegated them.

—We may reasonably believe that an individual, as a self-owner, is morally justified in defending the rights he possesses in himself and in his own property—by force, if necessary, against force (and fraud), but he cannot be justified in using force for any other purpose whatsoever. Auberon Herbert (1838-1906), British writer

“Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.” Hannah More (1745-1833) English writer and philanthropist

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian psychiatrist and philosopher

Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

We not only live in the computer and digital age, we also live in a profoundly immoral age, in which the use of violence against people has become easily justifiable, nearly routinely, either for religious, military or security reasons.

Let us recall that the Twentieth Century was the most politically murderous period ever in history. It is estimated that political decisions, mostly made by psychopaths in various governments, resulted in the death of some 262 million people—a democide or political mass murder, according to scholarly works by political scientist Rudolph J. Rummel. It remains to be seen if the Twenty-first Century will regress from this barbarism or exceed it. So far, things do not look too good. Human morality and empathy is not increasing; it is declining fast. And with nuclear weapons in the hands of potential psychopaths, the next big step toward oblivion will not be a cakewalk.

Indeed, a new brand of immorality has permeated into some political minds, according to which what one individual cannot morally do on his own, i.e. cold-blooded murder of another human being, a head of state, a government or a group of public officials can do, in his place. Under what moral code can individuals delegate to governments or public officials authority to do crimes that they themselves cannot do without being immoral? Wouldn’t that be extremely hypocritical and a parody of morality?

According to basic humanitarian or humanist morality, as the Auberon Herbert’s quote above illustrates, what is immoral for one individual does not become moral because one million individuals do it, under the cloak of a government or any other umbrella organization. In other words, a head of state or a government cannot enjoy a wider choice of moral rules than the ones that apply to every individual. The agent (the public person) cannot have looser moral rules than the principal (the people). There cannot be one morality for an individual in private life, and another one for an individual acting within a government.

For example, it is widely accepted under basic moral rules that an individual may only use deadly force in self-defense, when his own life or the lives of his family are threatened. Therefore, the delegated morality to a state by its citizens to use deadly force cannot extend beyond the requirements of self-defense against actual or imminent attack, of the maintenance of order, and of the implementation of justice. Any unprovoked act of deadly aggression, resulting in the untimely and extrajudicial death of people, by a head of state, a government or its officials against other people becomes automatically immoral, if not illegal, notwithstanding in what legal mumbo jumbo such an aggression is couched.

It is true that the current chasm between individual and official morality has been long in developing. When the Roman Emperor Theodosius (347-395), in 380, adopted Christianity as its official state religion, it was difficult to apply Jesus Christ’s pacifist and non-violence admonition that “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword”. Christian theologians such as Augustine of Hippo (354-430) were thus obliged to develop the argument that moral rules designed for individuals did not necessarily apply to an individual becoming an emperor, a king or a head of state who must administer justice or wage wars. In particular, the Commandment “Thou shall not kill” was redefined to exclude heads of state involved in so-called “just wars”, waged by a ‘legitimate authority’. It was spelled out, however, that such wars could not be pre-emptive, but strictly defensive to restore peace. Otherwise, such a war would become immoral.

Nowadays, there is a basic public morality inscribed in the United Nations Charter and in the Nuremberg Charter. The latter clearly prohibits crimes against peace, defined as referring to the “planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression”… A war of aggression is defined as is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The U.N. General Assembly adopted these definitions, on December 11, 1946, as part of customary international law. Such was the core of public morality after World War II.

However, over the years, public morality has steadily declined, most recently illustrated in 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush launched a U.S.-led war of unprovoked aggression against the country of Iraq, assisted by British Prime minister Tony Blair. The latter unnecessary and disastrous war, launched on a mountain of lies, has been thoroughly investigated in the United Kingdom, but hardly at all in the United States, the center of it all.

Therefore, notwithstanding that no serious post-administration inquiry has been carried out in the United States regarding the mischief caused by the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney tandem, at the very least, future historians will have the 12-volume Chilcot Report to assess how some British and American politicians fooled the people, in 2002-2003, and launched a war of aggression against an independent country, with no direct consequences for themselves.

More generally indeed, in the Twenty-first Century, it can be said that killing technology has advanced at the same time as public morality and personal accountability have declined.

Truman globalresearch.caIn the U.S., for instance, it has long been suspected that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), (a sort of secret government within the government created by President Harry Truman in 1946), was involved in covert illegal activities, especially when it came to sponsoring terrorist death squads in various countries. In 1975, for example, the U.S. Senate established a Select Committee to study governmental operations with respect to illegal intelligence activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID). That important committee investigated illegalities by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Among the matters investigated were the covert activities of the CIA involving attempts to assassinate foreign leaders and attempts to subvert foreign national governments. Following the reports and under the recommendations and pressure by the Church committee, President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905 (ultimately replaced in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order 12333) with the express intent to ban U.S. sanctioned assassinations of foreign leaders.

Now, let us move fast forward. The most recent instance of a public official known to have assigned to himself the task of targeting some people, even American citizens, to be assassinated with unmanned drones or other means, without charge and outside of judicial procedures, and without geographic limits, is under President Barack Obama. Indeed, Mr. Obama seems to be the first American president to have institutionalized what is called the “Terror Tuesday” meetings, during which the American president, with the help of the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), decides about the assassination or the capture of individuals deemed to be enemies of the United States around the world.

Last July 1st, the Obama administration released its own assessment of the number of civilians assassinated by drone strikes in nations where the U.S. is not officially at war. It claimed it has killed between 64 and 116 “non-combatant” individuals in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, between January 2009 and the end of 2015. However, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has estimated that as many as 380 to 801 unarmed civilians have been recorded to have been killed with the new technology of unmanned drones.

Remote Killing, Drone Screens

Drone killing may be the most controversial legacy that President Barack Obama is leaving behind. To my knowledge, this is without precedent in U.S. history, at least at the presidential level, that assassinations of people, including some Americans, are carried outside of the legal framework, under direct supervision of a U.S. lethal president. In a democracy based on checks and balances, this would seem to be an example of executive overreach.

With such an example originating in the White House, it may not be a surprise that an American military officer has recently requested the “authority” to assassinate people without presidential approval, in his geographical area of responsibility, in Africa.

It is very disturbing to empower a government, any government, with the power to execute people without trial or due process. This may be a sign of our times, but this is not what we could call a progress of civilization or of human morality. It seems rather that as killing technology has advanced, and as power has become less constrained, humanitarian morality has badly declined.

It is a sad truth that advances in military technology over time have always been used to kill people. Even the dreadful atom bomb has been used to kill hundreds of thousands people. It is only a matter of time before it could be used again. It would only take one psychopathic madman in power to destroy humanity.

Addendum:

All this immorality permeates into the management of the economy, under the motto “greed is good”. As I assessed at the beginning of this year, the world economy is ripe for a huge awakening. A mixture of wars of aggression and of financial market crashes could shake the world in the coming months.

That is because the people who fan the flames of war are the same ones who are pushing financial markets to their limits and created a huge asset bubble.

Barak Obama’s little known neocon-inspired goal has been to expand NATO to Russia’s borders and to isolate Russia. This mischievous brinkmanship policy is being played out to the fullest. Indeed, there is presently a suspicious and dangerous buildup of NATO troops at the Russian border, with the obvious intent of provoking Russia into some sort of conflict. These professional warmongers may get their wish and they may soon plunge the world into chaos.

Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles, and oThe New American Empire.

Please visit the book site at:

http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/

and his blog at:

http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.htm

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The conceptual toolbox of mainstream economics is no longer sufficient. In a 21st century global economy—in which financial variables and cycles have increasing effect on the non-financial economy and its stability—that toolbox lacks a number of necessary instruments. The missing instruments, or tools of analysis, are those that would explain how financial variables and financial cycles interact with real variables and cycles, both mutually determining the other.

In earlier decades, before the 1980s, financial variables were simply not that important in determining the trajectory of the real side of the economy. From the 1980s on, however, they have become increasingly central to that unstable trajectory. Today, well into the second decade of the 21st century, financial variables are more important and determinative of real growth and business cycles than ever before.

A problem with mainstream economics is that it is superficial. By that is meant it doesn’t go deep enough in analyzing financial determinants underlying economic instability. Instability in this case, in the 21st century, should not be understood as just severe swings in economic conditions. Instability today is not limited to a ‘Lehman-like’ credit crisis, as in the US banking system in 2008, or a stock market crash, as in China 2015; nor is it limited to a deep or protracted real contraction, which followed the global subprime mortgage and credit crash of 2008-2009, or Europe’s subsequent double dip in 2011-2013, or Japan’s five short and shallow recessions since 2008.

Forms of chronic stagnation are as much an indicator of instability as a banking crisis or stock market crash. Today’s global productivity collapse, the acute slowdown of global trade in recent years, and the disinflation and steady drift toward deflation in prices of real goods and services now spreading globally are also indications of growing economic instability. Mainstream economic analysis is superficial because it insists on understanding these instability trends employing a conceptual toolbox composed almost exclusively of real variables, while ignoring the influence of financial variables and conditions that ultimately underlie the instability.

The Interest Rate Fetish

Since 2008 mainstreamers’ theoretical—and central bankers’ policy—focus on interest rates as a solution to growing instability has become almost a fetish. Interest rate manipulation is viewed increasingly as the end-all solution to all the global economy’s woes. Forget fiscal stimulus. Forget income inequality. Forget unsustainable and increasingly unserviceable levels of debt. Ignore the major changes in labor markets that are crushing wage earners, or the structural changes in financial markets that are rewarding investors in financial securities with unprecedented gains in income and wealth. Just lower interest rates to zero and, if necessary, push them into negative territory. And if seven years of the same is not enough, then another seven is necessary.

Mainstream economics erroneously believes that focusing on interest rates and their money determinants represents analysis of financial variables. But interest rates are not financial variables. Moreover, interest rates are not fundamental, but intermediate variables. They are proxies for changes in more fundamental forces. These forces may reflect real variables like money, technological change, cost of physical capital, expected rates of return on investment. But interest rates may reflect financial variables as well. Nevertheless, while mainstream economists may sometimes consider various real causes determining interest rates, they continue to ignore financial determinants of those rates.

Mainstreamers’ preoccupation with real determinants of interest rates goes back at least to the early 20th century, when economists like Wicksell, Fisher and others debated what drove changes in interest rates—beyond just the previous simplistic 19th century economic notion of money supply and demand. Was it money that determined interest rates? Money demand? Money supply? Money velocity? Or did rates instead follow changes in real investment. Was it interest rates that determined real investment or real investment that determined interest rates? Whichever side of the debate taken, interest rates were viewed associated primarily with real variables—whether money, real asset investment, waves of new technologies, cost of replacement of physical capital, and so on. The same preoccupation with interest rates determined by real variables applies to mainstream economics today.

But focusing on real variables has failed to explain why interest rates have had little effect on restoring economic stability and, in fact, are contributing now to instability. As interest rates approached the zero bound after 2008, and descended into negative territory in recent years, real economic growth has continued to slow and stagnate nonetheless. No less than $10 trillion in bonds and other securities are now in negative rate territory, with more being considered or on the way. And not only has real economic growth been slowing, but global trade is stalling, productivity has nearly collapsed, real asset investment growth rates are declining, and the drift toward deflation in real goods and services long term continues. Something is wrong with the mainstream theory interpretation of interest rates—as well as the central bankers’ policies built upon the theory.

At the same time as instability in the real economy is rising, so too is instability on the financial side. Highly correlated with the collapse of interest rates, financial asset prices have escalated and repeatedly created asset bubbles globally—which suggests strongly that low rates have been servicing financial markets more and real investment less. But that evidence has been largely disregarded by mainstream economics.

To explain why the linkage between low rates, on the one hand, and real investment and economic growth has broken down, mainstreamers would have to focus their analysis at a more fundamental level and consider financial forces as well real at that level. They would have to explain how the effect of low interest rates has been distorted by financial forces that have become increasingly influential in the 21st century.

But mainstreamers have no financial tools in their box to do that kind of analysis. They pay little attention to the linkages between financial forces and interest rates because their toolbox is composed of pliers, hammer, wrenches and such, when perhaps what is missing is a software machine-learning algorithm tool that might show how financial forces today are eclipsing real forces in determining the impact of interest rates on economic stability.

Those mainstream economists who have been growing uncomfortable with the historical record contradicting the theory have attempted to explain the failure by what they call ‘secular stagnation’. But secular stagnation theory is itself an analysis based primarily on real variables as well. Like contemporary interest rate theory, it also disregards the role of financial forces and variables. Once again we get refusal to consider the financial side.

What then are possible financial forces and variables behind the failure of zero bound, and even negative, interest rates to generate real investment and restore normal economic growth rates, real investment, productivity, global trade, halt the slide of commodity prices, and reverse the drift toward deflation of real goods and services? These were addressed at length in several key chapters in this writer’s recent book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’.

A short explanation would be as follows: during the past decade central banks in the advanced economies have pumped tens of trillions of dollars and other forms of central bank money liquidity into the global economy. Rates plummeted to near zero and below. But instead of the liquidity being directed by low interest rates into real investment, it was redirected instead into financial asset markets. Or it was hoarded on balance sheets in expectation of future opportunities in financial assets. Or redistributed to shareholders in trillions of dollars of stock buybacks and dividend payouts. A new global financial structure was created the last quarter century to accommodate the central-bank driven liquidity explosion—itself set in motion and enabled by the collapse of the Bretton Woods international monetary system in the 1970s, the subsequent removal of controls on cross-country money capital flows in the 1980s, the advent of new digital technologies and the internet in the 1990s, and the general rise of political influence by financial investors since the 1990s.

The result was a proliferation of new financial securities and global expansion of liquid markets in which they are traded. New forms of financial institutions concurrently emerged, sometimes called shadow banks, which also penetrated and merged with commercial banks and even non-bank corporations, to provide the institutional framework for the global trading of the new securities in the new markets. Behind the institutions and markets was the rise of a new agency—i.e. a new finance capital elite that has expanded in number and even more so in available investible wealth.

It is this new financial structure—with its proliferating highly liquid markets, countless new financial securities, new financial institutions, and new agency of professional investors—that has diverted the massive, post-Bretton Woods liquidity injections by central banks into financial asset markets and investment.

The new financial structure and the diversion has rendered interest rates and their real determinates increasingly ineffective in generating real investment and growth. Given the new evolved global financial structure of institutions, markets, securities and agents, financial asset investment has proven to be simply more profitable in the short run than real investment. Both risk and uncertainty is less in financial asset investing than in real asset investing. Interest rates may lower to zero, and even negative, but the liquidity that is borrowed at those rates will still flow primarily into financial investments.

Financialization as thus defined has severely damaged the traditional interest rate to real investment relationship. But nowhere in mainstream economic analysis is the impact of these financial forces—this financialization—on the function of interest rates in determining real investment considered. Neither in academic theory nor in central banker practice. Mainstream economists and central bankers remain myopically fixated on interest rates, even as financial forces continue to negate the effect of interest rates on real investment and drive the global economy—both real and financial—steadily toward more instability.

The Productivity Conundrum

Another area where mainstream economics that has failed to account for the influence of financial forces is productivity analysis. Productivity has long remained a favorite instrument in the mainstream toolbox. But mainstreamers have little or no explanation why today productivity is stagnating globally.

A recent global business page headline read: ‘The Puzzle That Baffles the World’s Economies’. The article remarked that slowing output per hour is little understood by mainstream economists today. “There is little agreement on the cause and still less on the right response”, the article concludes. It has become a major conundrum of sorts for mainstream economic analysis.

A well-known American economist of the ‘hybrid’ wing, Robert J. Gordon, addressed the problem of stagnating productivity in great detail in his recent tour de force book on the contribution of technology evolution to US economic growth since 1860. Gordon identifies the slowdown of productivity having two causes reflecting the two primary elements of macroeconomic level productivity—hours of work per person and output per person, the latter of which he calls simply labor productivity but apparently means output change per person holding hours worked constant. Labor productivity in the US began to slow during the decade of the 1970s, per Gordon’s analysis. It was offset and obscured, however, by rising hours of work per person as women entered the labor force in the US in great numbers that decade and after. However, by 2000 this second element of hours of work began slowing as well. The fundamental trend of slowing productivity, as both its determinants weakened, has thus become increasingly evident since 2000 in the US.

As Gordon concluded, “The most recent decade, 2004-14, has been characterized by the slowest growth in productivity of any decade in American history”. The rate of productivity growth during 2004-2014 measured barely one third of the rate during 1948-1970, according to Gordon. And during the five year period, 2010-2015, productivity grew annually by a mere 0.5%. This year, 2016, it will likely turned negative for the first time in a century.

And it is a global trend as well. Supporting Gordon’s data, recent reports by the US Conference Board also shows US productivity growth barely at a few tenths of a percent annually. Europe’s OECD recently confirms the same for the Euro and G7 economies.

For Gordon, productivity is primarily driven by technological revolutions. The slowing of productivity in recent decades is due in part to the digital revolution having had less of a significant impact on productivity growth than did previous tech revolutions before 1970. The contribution of the internet was largely played out by 2005 and the wireless tech revolution that followed has had an even lesser impact on productivity than did the internet. After the 1970s, an ‘educational headwind’ to productivity emerged and reduced the historic contribution of education to productivity growth, which intensified after 2000. Hours of work per person shifted after 2000 as well, as various ‘demographic headwinds’ to productivity also began to develop. Finally, there is what Gordon refers to as ‘fiscal headwinds’ of entitlement (social security, etc.) and tax policies which add to productivity slowing as resources for real investment are redirected and reduced.

What’s notable about all this analysis is that, in classic mainstream economics fashion, the most important determinants of productivity growth are ‘real’ forces, especially technological waves; so too, the most important determinants of the slowing of productivity are also real—the soft technologies of internet and digital communications, education system failures, demographic trends, and fiscal policies. Financial restructuring of the US and global economy—which perhaps not coincidentally also began in earnest circa Gordon’s key datapoints of the1970s decade and after 2000—is nowhere part of the analysis why productivity has been slowing. But it should be.

Consider an alternative explanation, factoring in financial forces as contributing to the collapse of productivity.

Global financialization has been key to enabling real investment to move offshore from the US and advanced economies to emerging market economies, most notably China, since 2000 and even more rapidly from 2010-2013. Without financialization the shift of real investment offshore would not have been possible. As a consequence of that shift, the relative size of the manufacturing and construction sectors have shrunk, in particular in the US, Euro and Japan economies, leaving service industries constituting typically 80% or more of the economy in the US. Service sector productivity growth is typically far less than manufacturing-construction and very difficult to accurately estimate. As the service sector has grown as a percent of the total economy, productivity growth rates have slowed.

There’s also the matter of the composition of the service economy. It is developed in some sectors into a virtually all-contingent labor economy. Part time, temporary, independent contract, and ‘gig’ or sharing economy employment has exploded. That too lowers productivity growth potential and makes the estimation of productivity even more problematic. In Europe in recent years, contingent labor growth constitutes 70% or more of job creation in various countries. In the US today, perhaps as much as a third, or more than 50 million, are now contingent in some way. Many of the new, contingent-based service companies being created are also being financed by the new financial structure—hedge funds, peer to peer lending groups, online funding, angel investors, venture capital, and so on. The emerging ‘gig’ or sharing economy—the latest phase of service economy evolution—is almost a total product of the new financial structure.

Financial structure and institutions are changing rapidly, driving corresponding changes in labor markets in turn, that are resulting in the relative decline of traditional high (and easier to measure) productivity sectors like manufacturing and construction and the relative rise of low productivity (and difficult to measure) service industries. Changing labor markets and forms of employment slow productivity growth rates even further.

But because mainstream economics cannot see the connections between today’s revolution in financial structures and its direct or indirect impact on productivity, the collapse of productivity appears a conundrum. A ‘puzzle that baffles’, according to the global business press. Non-transformative technologies compared to those of the past (Gordon), or the technology ‘diffusion machine’ is just somehow broken, as other mainstreamers have concluded.

Looking deeper into the potential causes of the productivity malaise, however, focusing not just on real factors but on the contribution of financial forces’ to the collapse of productivity, may yield another conclusions other than conundrum. But mainstreamers’ refusal to look that deep, or in that direction, produces a myopia that ends in ‘bafflement’.

Money vs. Credit

Mainstreamers of the ‘Retro-classicalist’ wing fare no better with regard to financial variables and financial instability. If mainstreamers of the ‘hybrid’ wing make a fetish out of interest rates, the ‘retros’ do the same in the case of aggregate money supply. Hybrids argue interest rates are the proper focus of analysis; retros say it is the money supply, regardless of the effect money may have on the level of interest rates.

The problem with the money supply ‘retro’ view is that it fails to distinguish between money as credit, on the one hand, and the rapid growth of non-money forms of credit on the other. For Retros, the distinction between money and credit does not exist. Without money there is no credit and therefore no possibility of investment. But this is not so in today’s era of radical global financial restructuring.

Traditional banking theory describes how the central bank can provide liquidity to commercial banks and thereby incentives for the latter to make loans and increase the money supply in the greater economy. Innovations in central bank policies in recent years allow central banks to function as private banks, in the sense of directly injecting money into the economy by printing (electronically) and purchasing assets directly from non-commercial bank investors. But financial security products in particular may be purchased without access to money in the traditional sense. Credit is loaned to investors based on the collateralized value of the financial assets previously purchased. Asset price escalation may lead to more debt availability that is simply credited electronically to the borrower. This is the essence of ‘inside credit’ creation. Other forms of non-money credit creation are emerging as well. Bitcoins and forms of digital money are rapidly growing. Shadow banks are taking over the functions of commercial banks, from financial repo markets to peer to peer online lending. Technology is enabling the acceleration of money velocity and credit velocity in general—accelerating the turnover and de facto raising the supply of money and credit as a flow and not just a stock.

To continue to try to explain the role of money defined in a traditional sense has been seriously challenged by the rapid restructuring of financial institutions, markets, and products that characterizes the recent present period. Nevertheless, the retro wing of mainstream economics insists on theorizing and trying to explain today’s global economic instability by reference to traditional forms of money. But money is no longer just money. And forms of credit are separating from traditional forms of money.

Why Mainstream Economists Ignore Finance

The question then becomes why do mainstream economists mostly ignore financial variables? Why does their analysis remain fixated on real variables and at a level of analysis that is often superficial?

Part of the explanation is traceable to their basic training in the discipline. Mainstream macroeconomists—which is the primary subject here—are trained in constructing hypotheses and models based on real variables almost exclusively. Modern macroeconomics begins in the 1920s and 1930s and is concurrent with the development of National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), sometimes referred to loosely as GDP analysis. GDP by definition excludes financial variables. It was a product of the need to determine the effects of government policy on stimulating real economy growth, in particular during the great depression and subsequent war years. Attempts to understand the financial underpinnings in the 1920s of the origins of the great depression of the 1930s were mostly abandoned thereafter in favor of understanding real economic growth.

From the mid-1930s on, financial instability and financial forces were no longer a major focus of macro analysis. Nor did it subsequently become so once again during the several decades following the war, during which real growth was substantial and banking and financial instability not yet a factor of instability. Even at the policy level, central banks played a secondary policy role in relation to Treasury departments until the 1960s, at least in the US. Evidence of the return of financial instability only again began to emerge in the late 1960s, and then only marginally and located in single markets or single financial institutions.

As financial forces and instability began to re-emerge in the late 1960s and gather momentum in the 1970s and 1980s, conditions in the economy changed and it became increasingly susceptible to financial forces and instability events. But mainstream economics was slow to change with the conditions. Ideas upon which careers are established are not readily jettisoned. Anomalies that challenge the old ideas, theories, and models built upon them, are more often ignored than not.

Thus, Hybrid Keynesians who dominated until the 1970s continued to focus on interest rates and money determinants of rates in subsequent decades as financial instability grew; Retro classicalists continued to insist that money supply, and not the rates, were the key determinant and continued to argue money supply was the only significant determinant of instability. With the end of Bretton Woods, stagnating real investment, localized financial instabilities, and slow economic growth throughout the 1970s, the Retros’ continued focus on money supply dethroned the Hybrids as the dominant wing within mainstream economics. With a few exceptions, neither wing paid much attention to financial variables. The de-emphasis continued to widen throughout the 1980s and after, and remains a factor to this day.

There is also the conservative inertia that in general afflicts most academic thought and idea development. Peer pressures are great to avoid fundamentally challenging basic paradigms of analysis. If a young challenger cannot show how her ideas are essentially an extension of previously accepted thinking, the work will not get pass the peer reviewers and committees. Promotions will not follow. Job security becomes problematic. Pressures are significant to engage in what the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, once called ‘mopping up operations’ or ‘normal science’, instead of potentially breakthrough thinking that may challenge, especially fundamentally, prevailing paradigms and acceptable modes of thought. This too contributes to why mainstreamers are still reluctant to explore more deeply the connections and relationships between financial instability and the real economy. Some may attempt so, but are encouraged to gather together and separate themselves voluntarily from the rest of the discipline in special institutes dedicated to such analyses, safely isolated from the mainstream communication channels. A form of institutional containment results, relieving the dominant paradigm’s advocates from having to directly confront and contend with the new ideas.

Thus both the initial training of mainstreamers, the type data they employ, the models they have developed that largely exclude financial variables, conservative career pressures, and the acceptable intellectual preoccupations of the economics discipline itself keeps the consideration of financial variables and financial instability on the fringe. The end result is a continuation of a widespread disregard of financial forces and instability among mainstream macroeconomists to this day. When they do engage the subject, moreover, it is almost always from the perspective of their own non-financial analyses and accepted theory.

Professor Fields’ Mainstream Review

Representative of a number of the above limits of mainstream economics is the recent review of this writer’s book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, by Alex Fields, which appeared in an earlier edition of European Financial Review.

While Professor Fields acknowledges various positive contributions of the book at the close of his review—and notes that the first third of ‘Systemic Fragility’, which focuses on a description of fragility conditions today in Europe, Japan, China, US, and Emerging Markets, is “the most interesting section of the book” providing “a readable and informed overview”—he nonetheless concludes the third section of the book, which critiques mainstream economic thought and theory, “is the least satisfying”. Nothing “new or original in summarising or critiquing mainstream macroeconomics” was apparently said in the chapter directly critiquing mainstream economic analyses.

We would of course beg to differ. It would have been useful for Fields not to have just brushed off the critique of his theoretical perspective with a single phrase of ‘nothing new or original’. But his reply is not untypical of mainstreamers who don’t like to confront direct challenges to the fundamental propositions of their analytical framework—especially when they involve debate over the need to give more consideration to financial forces and variables.

In the book, fourteen specific points were made in the summarily dismissed chapter critiquing mainstream economics that Fields chose not to consider—including how the hybrid wing (of which Fields is clearly a member) fails to distinguish between real and financial assets in its theory of investment; how it regards debt levels and rates of change as benign so long as the economy is at less than full employment; how it does not distinguish between money and non-money forms of credit; lacks a convincing theory of financial asset price inflation; how mainstream’s Savings = Investment basic assumption makes no sense if financial asset investment is excluded from the Investment variable; and how mainstreamers provide no explanation why multiplier effects have been declining in recent years perhaps due to the excessive accumulation of private sector debt—to name but a few of the fourteen. Nothing new or original? Really?

Even more indicative of mainstreamers’ refusal to confront theoretical challenges to their basic assumptions from the financial side is Prof. Fields’ failure to even mention the book’s concluding chapter, ‘ A Theory of Systemic Fragility’, in which an alternative, financial approach to explaining instability today is offered. However, not a word in the review about the chapter. Nor its specific consideration of the negative relationships between debt, income, and conditions of debt repayment that are at work today at levels of government, households, and business. Nor was anything said about the preliminary equations that summarize the theory in an appendix at the end of the concluding chapter.

Professor Fields elsewhere in his review criticizes the proposition that liquidity has been flowing in ever greater magnitude into financial asset investing—with negative consequences for sustaining real investment. He queries, “what is the purported mechanism”? If he had read the concluding chapter he might have noticed the three specific transmission mechanisms that were proposed in support of the assertion that financial asset investing is crowding out real investment: price systems, investors’ expectations, and public policy.

The middle, second part of the book fares little better. Nine chapters that lay the groundwork for the theoretical critique and restatement that follows. Except for a brief reference as to whether global shadow banking can be effectively regulated—which I concluded cannot and in his view, one must try nonetheless—Fields focuses most of his review on chapters 14 and 15. Here monetary policy and fiscal policy are discussed. Seven of the nine chapters in part two of the book are bypassed, which makes eleven of the nineteen chapters virtually ignored. Given that the first six chapters are descriptive narratives and overview of the global economy, Fields’ review consequently boils down to two chapters—monetary and fiscal policy—and a few passing references elsewhere to regulating shadow banks and other matters. In other words, the review is conducted from a safe ‘high ground’ comfortable to mainstream economic analysis.

Fields dedicates much of his review to refuting the book’s contention that massive liquidity injections by central banks has led to excessive debt-driven financial asset investing at the expense of real asset investment. He acknowledges quantitative easing and near zero interest rate central bank policies have occurred but he is not convinced they “have been harmful”. What about the tens of millions of households in the US alone on fixed income investments? Have eight years of no interest income not ‘harmed’ them? Or what about pension funds and insurance annuity funds that tens of million retirees are dependent upon? Or the union pension plans now going bust? Or the trillions of dollars in high yield corporate bonds—made possible by the super-low rates—that are now in trouble? Of course, investors in equities and bonds were not ‘harmed’, quite the contrary. In the US alone, in just the past five years no less than $5 trillion in share buybacks and dividend payouts were distributed.

Where Fields seriously misses one of the book’s main themes is his refutation that financial bubbles need not require excessively low interest rates in the short term to occur. He notes how the bubbles in the 1990s and early 2000s in tech and global currencies were accompanied by relatively high US central bank interest rates. The same occurred during the 1920s, he adds, when asset bubbles occurred and rates were high. What Fields misses, however, is that years and decades of central bank liquidity injection is what fuels bubbles. Since the end of Bretton Woods in 1973, central banks like the US have been injecting volumes of liquidity with every recession, credit crunch, financial crisis, etc. The money is not recalled, but remains circulating in the global economy, accessible by borrowers from various global markets. The global economy is full of dollars after decades of such injection. It is not a matter of short term central bank interest rates, as Fields maintains (thus revealing mainstreamers’ excessive reliance on the role off interest rates). Speculative investing need not ‘borrow’ from central banks short term. The credit is available in countless global dollar money markets. Indeed, investors need not borrow dollars at all. They can access non-money forms of credit, based on collateralized value of prior financial assets’ price appreciation. No ‘money’ is required. Central bank ‘high powered money’ is not essential in the short term to produce financial asset bubbles. On that Fields and I agree. But we disagree as to where the liquidity has been coming from. Once again, mainstream analysis does not understand the difference between money credit and non-money, or ‘inside’, credit—the latter of which Fields confuses with central bank ‘inside money’.

In typical Hybrid Keynesian analysis, Fields maintains that real asset investment may be declining not due to financial asset crowding it out (or ‘diverting’ and redirecting liquidity as I express it), but due to lack of money demand for bank lending. But if that were so, then US banks after 2009 would not have imposed highly restrictive terms and conditions for borrowing funds by small and medium companies—which they did. Banks were eager and loaned to large multinational corporations, speculated themselves in financial markets, and otherwise hoarded the trillions in cheap dollars provided by the Federal Reserve. The rates of return on these options were far higher than traditional lending to small-medium businesses. The money demand was there; the banks preferred safer and greater returns elsewhere—i.e. in financial asset markets and/or abroad in emerging markets.

With regard to fiscal policy, Fields takes issue with my view that multiplier effects have diminished. A number of studies recently show this is so. But the book does not maintain that multipliers are low because of zero interest rates. They are likely declining because of chronic debt overhang, especially for businesses having loaded up on high yield and other bond debt and median to low income households. And as for the book’s claim that the US 2009 Obama Recovery Act did not aid homeowners, for which he asks for evidence, the US budget is clear that no more than $50 billion was spent on homeowner foreclosure assistance, half of which went to banks holding mortgages, while trillions of dollars were spent by the Federal Reserve bailing out the US banks. And in so far as the book’s assertion that the bank stress test in 2009 was phony, one can only conclude so since the banks at the time were exempted from ‘mark to market’ accounting at the time of the tests, which allowed them to value their assets well above then prevailing market rates.

But critiques and tit-for-tat replies aside, what is evident in Professor Fields’ review is that it is conducted from a typical mainstream economic perspective—a perspective that clearly feels challenged by propositions that increase the weight of financial forces and financial instability in general economic instability.

The slowing global economy, world trade, productivity collapse, disinflation-deflation in real goods and services, rising currency exchange rate volatility, trillions of dollars in global non-performing bank loans, fifty trillions in additional debt since 2009, desperate new forms of central bank liquidity injections, tens of trillions of dollars in negative interest rates, global equity and bond markets teetering on the edge—all represent growing global economic instability, both financial and real. Mainstream economics to date has little to offer in the way of explaining the causes and future trajectory of these trends. Its focus on real variables, and at a superficial level of analysis, continues to result in little understanding of what is behind it all. Mainstream analysis would do well to be more open to approaches that bring a more financial variables focus to the analysis of what is clearly a growing instability in the global economy.

This article appeared in the June-July 2016 Issue of the London-based, European Financial Review.

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The issues that were discussed at this year’s NATO Summit were mainly preparations for a possible war against Russia.

The two-day Summit in Warsaw Poland ended on Saturday July 9th, with a 139-part “Warsaw Summit Communiqué” which used the word “terrorism” 17 times, “jihad” and “jihadist” and “jihadism” 0 (zero) times, and “Russia” 58 times — never favorably, and often with overt hostility.

It also referred to “Ukraine” 34 times, and “Syria” 10 times. Ukraine, during a February 2014 coup (it has been referred to as having been a “coup” both by the leader of the private CIA firm Stratfor, and by the Establishment writer on international relations John Mearsheimer, among others) switched, immediately after the coup, from having been neutral between NATO and Russia, to being suddenly and consistently intensely hostile to Russia, and immediately applied to join NATO; Syria still remains strongly allied with Russia.

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The Ukrainian government was referred to 100% favorably, and the Syrian government was referred to 100% unfavorably.

In other words: the Communiqué is 100% hostile toward Russia and its ally Syria, and is far more concerned about Russia than it is about terrorism — and not at all concerned about jihadism and jihadists.

The Communiqué is clear about “the crisis in and around Ukraine being, in current circumstances, the first topic on our agenda.” All of its references to that matter are based upon the assumption that this problem is due entirely to Russian “aggression” and that all violations of the Minsk agreements on the Ukrainian conflict are by the pro-Russian separatists, none of the violations are on the Ukrainian government side.

The presumption is that the Ukrainian government side never commits aggression, and that the separatist side is never defending itself against Ukrainian aggression. The Communiqué says, regarding the Special Monitoring Mission that is overseeing implementation of the Minsk agreements:

Impediments to the SMM’s work, which continue to occur overwhelmingly in areas under the control of the Russian-backed militants, represent a violation of the Minsk Agreements and seriously hamper the monitoring function of the SMM.”

The SMM operates in, and issues daily reports from, the separatist region (Donbass, consisting of two parts: Luhansk and Donetsk), and therefore it’s natural that almost all of those reports concern that region, not Ukraine. However, for example, the report dated 7 July 2016 does note that,

“Civilians expressed their anger at continued shelling while other civilians expressed their frustration over water cuts. The SMM facilitated and monitored adherence to the ceasefire to enable repairs to essential infrastructure.”

Though this report was, indeed, as NATO phrases the matter, “in areas under the control of the Russian-backed militants” (i.e., of people who live in the region that rejects the coup-imposed Ukrainian government), the “violation of the Minsk agreements” there consisted actually of shelling that was fired from the Ukrainian government forces, into “areas under the control of the Russian-backed militants.”

Similarly, the Communiqué blames the war in Syria upon the Russian-allied side, which in that case happens to be the Syrian government. For example, it says:

“We call on the Syrian regime to fully comply with the provisions of all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs), and to immediately take steps for a genuine political transition in accordance with UNSCR 2254  and the 30 June 2012 Geneva Communiqué.”

That conflict is between jihadists who are trying to overthrow the Syrian government, and the Syrian government. NATO blames the conflict entirely upon the Syrian government.

The Communiqué describes at some length the sharp increase in soldiers and weapons that NATO is pouring onto and near Russia’s borders, especially in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania. The reason that’s given for this surrounding Russia with hostile forces is:

…the ongoing illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, which we do not and will not recognise and which we call on Russia to reverse; the violation of sovereign borders by force; the deliberate destabilisation of eastern Ukraine;

large-scale snap exercises contrary to the spirit of the Vienna Document, and provocative military activities near NATO borders, including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean; its irresponsible and aggressive nuclear rhetoric, military concept and underlying posture;

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

No mention is made in the Communiqué of the event that sparked all of this, which was Washington’s Ukrainian coup, which Washington had been preparing starting no later than 1 March 2013 in its Ukrainian Embassy to overthrow the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.

When NATO demands, regarding Crimea’s return to Russia shortly after the coup, “we do not and will not recognise and … we call on Russia to reverse”; when NATO demands Russia to abandon the 90+% of Crimeans who wanted to rejoin as being part of Russia — when NATO demands Russia to consign these people to the now failed state of Ukraine (which hates them and wants them dead) — NATO is placing itself in the position of a continuing escalation toward nuclear war against Russia, unless NATO itself disbands or else cancels its demand. NATO is now in a position where they will either cancel their demand, or else continue their escalation and surrounding-of-Russia to the point where Russia will have no alternative but to unleash (without warning) all-out nuclear war against NATO countries, and against all nations, such as Ukraine, that hate Russians so much that they are trying to join NATO — the anti-Russia club of nations.

Russia is not going to do what NATO demands. The question now is: which side will start the nuclear war — attack first. In any case, the war (assuming that NATO neither retracts its demand nor disbands, and so war results) will probably be over within less than an hour. There won’t be any winners, but the side that strikes first will be destroyed less than will the side that merely retaliates. And, in that sense, there will be a ‘winner’, even to an all-out nuclear war. Regardless, though, Vladimir Putin’s responsibility is only to the Russian people, no matter how unacceptable the two choices are that NATO has offered him. He has tried many times to discuss the matter with Barack Obama, who always refuses to discuss it with him. Obama’s refusal speaks clearer than any mere words, either from him or from (his agent) NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, possibly could.

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.

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Who has Sovereignty in the South China Sea?

July 9th, 2016 by Kim Petersen

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The prospect for a negotiated settlement between China and the Philippines over some Nansha islands and islets appears possible with the change of government in Manila. The term of president Benigno Aquino III who rejected bilateral talks with Beijing ended on June 30. He has been replaced by Rodrigo Duterte in the Malacañan Palace. The new government has made overtures about holding bilateral talks with Beijing.

Relations became strained under the Aquino III administration. It restarted the territorial dispute and welcomed the revitalization of the US military presence in Southeast Asia.

In 2011, Aquino decided to start referring to the South China Sea as the West Philippine Sea to emphasize the country’s claims, and later wrote this change into law. Straining ties further, his administration initiated legal action against China through the Permanent Court of Arbitration on October 29, 2015.

On July 5, 2016, just one week before the ruling, Duterte offered to hold talks with China. While he will surely use the Permanent Court of Arbitration award as leverage in bilateral talks, Duterte appears to be keen on a settlement.

While campaigning for the presidency, Duterte’s discourse on China sent mixed signals. It shifted between antagonistic and conciliatory. This was a tactic to gain the support of Filipinos with nationalist attitudes and those that want peace and trade with China.

At the international level, Duterte may have sent mixed signals to satisfy both the US and China. His antagonistic remarks pleased Washington while his conciliatory remarks signaled that he was willing to hold talks with Beijing. Interestingly, Duterte was the only key politician in the 2016 Philippine general elections who publicly admitted that he went to talk about the Spratly Islands with the US Embassy in Manila.

After Duterte won the election, his tone altered. He became much more cordial to China. Beijing wants cooperation and trade, not war or conflict with the Philippines and other member states of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Its aim is to expand the Silk Road, both on land and sea, and to buttress regional integration and prosperity.

Like Duterte, the Chinese government has signaled that it is ready to hold direct negotiations with Manila.

Meanwhile, China has been insisting on the principle that disputes could be shelved as both sides could engage in joint projects to develop resources in the region.

What is at stake in the disputed zone are not only large amounts of hydrocarbon energy, fishing, and one of the most important maritime corridors and trade routes in the world. Chinese trade and energy supplies would be disrupted if maritime movement is halted in the South China Sea, which is why the US military is heavily focused on having a presence in the area.

Washington sees Beijing as a strategic rival. It is intentionally ratcheting tensions up in the South China Sea to justify its military presence there. Using coercive diplomacy, economic warfare and a strategy of tension, the US is trying to consign China to the position of a junior partner.

Ironically, while it is demonizing China as a regional threat, Washington is sending contradictory messages to its regional allies. The US has been vilifying Beijing while it simultaneously orders the military to hold military exercises with the Chinese.

Regional leaders should take notice of the US modus operandi.

US leaders are not willing to directly confront China. Instead they are using countries like the Philippines as pawns, leverage, and negotiating chips to either bargain with or obstruct an increasingly assertive and economically prosperous China.

The author is a visiting professor teaching political science and international relations at the University of the Philippines Cebu.

With the apparent stall in negotiations between the Thai Government and Barisan Revolusi Patani (BRN [the Patani independence movement in Patani, southern Thailand]) over the violence of the Deep South, one must start considering how long before a solution to this lingering insurgency problem can be found.

With roughly 5,300 people being killed since 2004, with 45 killed and 75 injured since the negotiations between the Thai Government and BRN began negotiations with Malaysia mediating, there have been calls by opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva to suspend negotiations with the BRN until the level of violence is lowered. The recent BRN commitment to decrease violence during Ramadan included a mention of the Sadao region within Songkhla Province, leading to further confusion by Thai authorities.

There are also risks that the military may go on the offensive again and conduct pre-emptive raids on suspected ‘terrorist’ hideouts, where roads into and out of Yala town are virtually on lockdown and house to house searches are being carried out. Entry and exit into the circular roads where the court houses in Yala are housed, resemble the ‘green zone’ in Bagdad, Iraq.

The apparently stalled negotiations could be interpreted to mean that the BRN are not the sole voice for the various insurgent groups in the Deep South, and some of these groups feel angry that the BRN is grandstanding in public claiming to represent southern grievances. In fact, if one drives from Hat Yai in Songkhla Province through Petani, Yala, and Narathiwat, what is most striking is the diversity and fragmentation of ‘Malay’ Muslims within the Deep South. There are those who live by the coast, those that live in the mountains around Yala, those who live in rubber estates within Narathiwat, and the urban Malay Muslims. All have different interests, livelihoods, and leaders, where by far, the majority are peace-loving people.

However, what one will also see when making this trip around the south is the stark difference in the culture of the region with the rest of Thailand. And if one has some knowledge of Malay culture, the difference between the Muslims of the Deep South and the people in the rest of Thailand can be seen. The Petani Malays appear to live their lives the way they have for generations, and resist the imposition of both Thai culture and globalization upon their communities.

This is an extremely important perspective that must be understood. Different ‘Malay’ groups within the Deep South react differently to the perceived threat upon their culture. Urban Malays have become vibrant micro-entrepreneurs, while rural ‘Malays’ still prefer to undertake their traditional livelihoods, which are being threatened by development in some cases.

Thai Army Chief Prayuth Chan-ocha’s call to build a Border fence between Malaysia and Thailand to prevent insurgents freely moving across the border indicates that those carrying out the violence are actually not from the Deep South itself. There are many rumors that most bombings and other acts of terrorism are actually undertaken by those who don’t live in the Deep South and that’s why intelligence on the ground most often has difficulty in predicting attacks. They occur anonymously and without anybody claiming responsibility, where, in fact, some are actually acts of gangsters and retribution by other parties.

The recent film clips posted on Youtube on April 26 by Ustaz Hassan Taib and a second video on May 28 by Abdulkarim Khalib of the BRN, making demands, highlights that this is a “Malay” issue and not a “Muslim” issue. Their statements highlighted the Malay history of Petani and their need to fight for the rights of Bangsa Melayu Petani or the Malay race of Petani. This is only the second time any demands have ever been made publicly, the first by the Petani United Liberation Organization (PULO) from Europe back in 1968. However these announcements might be more about the BRN trying to assert their authority in discussions with the government over the vast number of groups.

This shows the complexity of the problem. Violence originating from outside of the Deep South Region by unknown people, and a plea for the restoration of Petani Malay Nationalism within the Thai State are paradoxes that must be reconciled and acted upon by the authorities. Clamping down on the citizens of the Deep South by Thai security forces risks creating more resentment by locals and being ineffective anyway, as these people are not the perpetrators of the violence.

In addition, there appears to be little coordination between the Military and Interior Ministry on their programs within the communities of the Deep South.

Not understanding the unique ‘Malay’ identities of the Deep South is missing the whole reason why there are feelings of insecurity by Malay-Muslims of the Deep South.

The problem of the South must be seen as an ethnic identity problem and not a religious problem. This point has fundamentally been lost. To the Muslim-Malays it’s about protecting traditions, language, culture, and religion.

So what is the solution to the violence of the Deep South?

Unfortunately, external engagement will only raise suspicions in the South as to the motives of the outsiders. The solution to the problems will only come from within the south itself. It won’t come from dialogues, negotiations, forums, and lectures about how Muslims in the South must be responsible, etc. It will come from a changing consciousness at the community level.

The problem is most Malay-Muslims in the Deep South wish to live their lives where they are, and not engage the development that the rest of the country is going through. They see their traditional life as their aspirations. Most university graduates return to their villages rather than seek work in Bangkok or one of the other provinces. So this indicates that Malay-Muslims could be assisted in developing economic activities within the region of where they live to assist in raising standards of living.

The Thai authorities have been very successful in assisting rural communities through community vocational programs like the One Tambon One Product (OTOP) program, and this needs to be extended in the south with much more vigor than what it is now. The Malay-Muslims of the mountain regions around Yala and Narathiwat must be assisted in developing their own concepts of self-sustainability. Poverty is still much a major issue here. Community building projects run by the Malay-Muslims, for the Malay-Muslims, may be very important here.

But the real change as mentioned will only come from within. There is also a generational context to this situation where the older generation feel resentment and alienation, while the younger generation have a wide diversity of feelings that may not have hardened into the anger of their elders. This brings hopes that a change of consciousness on the part of the younger generation within the Deep South may occur over time. This change may be promoted as more of the younger generation become engaged in social media where they may find new visions for their lives and region. There are plenty of precedents for this in other parts of ASEAN and within the MENA. However this is going to take some time, but this will enable a generational change if the Malay-Muslims of the Deep South are going to integrate with the rest of Thai society, as other Muslims in Thailand have.

It looks like negotiations will lead nowhere. Regional autonomy may not be the solution as many academics are suggesting and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said she would consider during her 2011 election campaign. Autonomy may not satisfy all of the fragmented groups in the South, and fighting may just continue.

The Thai strategy towards the Deep South must change. Reports indicate that more than USD 7 Billion has been spent on trying to quell this insurgency since its reemergence in 2004. Attacks made by insurgents must be separated from those made by criminals and particularly by those from outside the region. Insurgents have changed their tactics using new equipment that they have been able to acquire and carrying out targeted assassinations on government officials. The numerous police and army checkpoints and roadblocks do very little to put any check on the violence and in some cases make it easier for the insurgents to assassinate any official in a motor vehicle slowing down for the checkpoint. Most of the time the victims of random urban attacks are the Malay-Muslims themselves.

The struggle is about living a traditional lifestyle as a ‘Malay-Muslim’ in Petani, Yala, and Narathiwat. This should not be forgotten. There are many illusions here in the Deep South which require re-evaluation to understand what’s is really going on. This may require a major realignment of strategy, focusing on intelligence by the military, rather than any show of force, which may pay off very well. One can never defeat the spirit of the Petani-Malay. This will never happen. It’s about enabling integration without the loss of cultural identity, something which Thailand should be able to entertain.

Prof. Murray Hunter an associate professor at the University Malaysia Perlis.

 

 

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Dhammananda, a 72-year-old Thai woman, is forbidden from hugging her sons. She’s never been able to chase her giggling grandchildren around the room. Both acts are forbidden by the strict Buddhist precepts that monks must follow.

Dhammananda is a self-described “rare species.” She’s a monk. She’s also a mom. And in the eyes of her homeland’s Buddhist establishment, she’s a feminist insurgent.

Each day, she and her female disciples wear the same clothing: flowing robes the color of ripe mangoes. Their heads are shorn down to stubble. Their possessions are limited to flip flops and little else.

In other words, their day-to-day lives are largely indistinguishable from that of any upstanding Buddhist monk in their native Thailand.

But because they are women, Dhammananda and her flock of 15 female monks are shunned by the state-backed Buddhist hierarchy. This powerful all-male order, known as the “sangha,” regards them as imposters.

“That’s their problem,” Dhammananda says. She’s the abbess (yes, that’s female for “abbott”) of a temple 60 kilometers west of Bangkok.

“That’s their own ignorance, which they’ll have to overcome.”

There are roughly 300,000 monks in Thailand, home to one of the highest concentrations of Buddhists on the planet. Yet only 100 are women. They’re scattered among small temples that the traditional order views as insolent.

Before Dhammananda, there were none at all. Prohibited from ordination in Thailand, she hacked the system in 2001 by flying to Sri Lanka, which started ordaining women in the mid-1990s.

She then returned home as Thailand’s first female monk in modern times — at least in the old-school Theravada strain of Buddhism that dominates Southeast Asia.

The three main confessions or sects of Buddhism.

 

In Dhammananda’s view, the near absence of women in the monkhood has left Buddhism as wobbly as a three-legged chair. The faith is lopsided, she says, because it lacks feminine insight.

Past experience as a mother, she says, is particularly valuable to Buddhist spiritual life. “That experience makes you whole,” she says. “You tend to understand people’s problems on a different level than men do.”

The argument against allowing women into the monkhood is shaky, she says. Roughly 2,600 years ago, Buddha explicitly stated that women can achieve enlightenment. He even ordained his own foster mom.

“Enlightenment is the quality of mind that goes beyond. There is no gender there,” Dhammananda says. “When you talk about the supreme spiritual goal in Buddhism, it’s genderless.”

Thailand’s monastic order, however, rests its case against female monks on a technicality. The sangha insists that female monks can only be brought into the fold by other women.

But because the sangha in Thailand has never sanctioned a female monk, there are no women available to open the door to newcomers. The original lineage of female monks dating back to Buddha’s time faded out centuries ago.

Thailand’s official Buddhist order “feels women are a big threat. Especially women in robes,” says Sulak Sivaraksa, one of Thailand’s best-known Buddhist scholars.

“But since [the female monks] are wonderful people, more and more people recognize them,” Sulak says. “I told the Thai [female monks] … to keep clear of scandal. Do good work. And soon the male monks will not only recognize you. They will come and worship you. They will be led by you.”

Like any Buddhist monk, female monks such as Dhammananda are sworn to a dry life that forsakes romance, luxury and excess of any kind.

Holding hands? Devouring an entire carton of Häagen-Dazs in one sitting? Pop music or even gossiping? All are forbidden. More than 300 rules (called precepts) dictate their behavior to ensure they do not grow attached to sensual pleasures.

Nor can they work. They acquire nourishment by walking the streets and collecting free food — often soy milk, rice or curry — from everyday Buddhists.

Here are Dhammananda’s thoughts on rebellion, moms in the monkhood, and the decadent treats she misses from her life before the temple. Her comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Question: Do you think of yourself as a rebel?

I never thought of myself as a rebel. Even though I might be one.

My intention is not to provoke. My intention is to insist that we return to the right path.

Question: Would you call yourself a feminist?

Yes. Not that I ever studied feminism. But my understanding of feminism is you should bring out your potentiality to the fullest. Anything obstructing your path, you should work against it. That’s my feminist attitude.

Question: When your sons come to visit, are you allowed to hug them?

No. That is a very hard part. Particularly for my oldest son. He really misses that. He once said to the [other female monks], “You don’t know how much I miss my mother.”

He’s kind of making an offering to the Buddha by giving up his own mother to do this job. But he still misses the hugs.

Question: Are there special rules for men speaking to female monks?

As long as there is a third person around, and as long as we are not sharing the same seat, [men and female monks] can be close. But I must have a sister [fellow female monk] here as a witness.

Question: You have very young grandkids. What are the rules regarding grandchildren? Can you pick them up and play with them?

The youngest is a boy and, yes, I have held him. I don’t think of him as a man so I’m not touching a man. He’s a two-year-old boy. A child! But I don’t go around hugging him.

Question: As I understand it, monks aren’t even allowed to tickle?

Oh yes! You aren’t supposed to tickle a monk. Because people will roll into a great laughter. That’s part of the rules.

Question: So no tickling your grandchildren?

No, that rule is about tickling monks. Not about tickling laypeople. But, no, I don’t tickle them.

Question: How do regular people treat female monks out in public?

There are two groups. Some couldn’t care less. Others are more suspicious. But for those who are interested, we educate them. It’s much easier now compared to 16 years ago when I was the only female monk walking in this land.

Question: Tell me about your first day collecting alms.

I was invited to Rayong (a Thai coastal province) for a seminar. And I went out with the male monks. People in the marketplace, when they realized the last one walking in the back was actually female, they were so interested!

One household ran inside and grabbed a big box of drinks and offered it to my [alms] bowl. I was happy.

To go back to Buddha’s time, it’s said that if you make an offering to monks, that’s well and good. But if you make offerings to both monks and female monks? It’s even better. This is in the text.

Question: The ordination process for female monks involves embarassing questions, even sexual questions. Does that create more resistance to ordaining women.

For men, they ask, “Are you a man? Do you have such and such illness?” For women, they will ask about our private parts. “Do you menstruate all the time?” Or whether you have all of your sex organs.

But if I am willing to answer this, they should give us ordination. I think Thai women, young and old, are willing to go through this interrogation.

Question: What do you miss about regular life?

I miss high tea. This here [gestures toward an 11 a.m. lunch spread donated by the local village] is our last meal of the day. So no high tea. I actually used to enjoy it more than dinner. Especially if it came with blueberry cheesecake.

Question: Can’t you just eat cheesecake in the morning?

It doesn’t feel the same way in the morning! You just have to give it up.

Question: Some people who’ve been through challenges in life end up being pretty funny. Do you have a sense of humor?

I have a great sense of humor! The monastic life is quite dry. You need to laugh once in awhile.

You shouldn’t be making jokes all the time like a joker. But if you can show people another way to look at things, even by making them laugh, that’s OK.

Question: People see monks and wonder: Does it really make you happy to give up everything like that?

Yes. Because we give up the bad things, not everything. It is letting go of that which is unwholesome.

Question: But you have to let go of pizza. And high tea, as you mentioned. Or your boyfriend or girlfriend. It seems hard.

At certain points, it may be so. But then you look ahead in time, outside this context, and realize the goal is much greater than your boyfriend or your girlfriend. And much greater than pizza.

Question: What sorts of backgrounds do the female monks here have?

All different backgrounds. This one studied journalism. The next one over was a seamstress. Some were just ordinary factory workers. Two of them have master’s degrees.

Question: If there was a vote, do you think Thai society would allow women to be ordained?

Ordination is our heritage given by the Buddha. So we should not be ordained expecting people to accept me. You should ordain because you want to do it and to keep our heritage alive.

Question: As a monk you have to subdue your anger. But doesn’t it make you irritated that people think you shouldn’t be a monk?

I cannot put the ignorance of all the people in the whole world on my shoulders.

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Who has Sovereignty in the South China Sea?

July 9th, 2016 by Kim Petersen

In 1949, Communist troops led by Mao Zedong defeated the Nationalist forces led by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). The Guomindang (KMT) escaped across the Taiwan Strait to the island of Taiwan. The United States continued to recognize the KMT as the government of all China and pledged the US 7th fleet to the so-called defense of Taiwan. With that policy, the United States effectively intervened in the Chinese civil war with the declared aim to to prevent the reintegration of all China under a Communist government.

In 1979, US president Jimmy Carter transferred recognition from Taipei to Beijing as being the government of China. Economic opportunities and seeking to drive a wedge between China and the USSR were behind “US interests.”

To this day, Taiwan stands as a poignant reminder that military weakness has rendered China unwhole.

In the intervening decades, China has made enormous developmental strides. China is the world’s largest economy in terms of PPP. It holds $1.3 trillion in US treasury bills, helping to prop up the US economy. China has launched humans into space. At home, the Communist Party has pulled over 600 million Chinese people out of poverty and seeks to eradicate all poverty by the year 2020.

“Pivoting” to the South China Sea

Recently news regarding sovereignty over the South China Sea has become more and more prominent. The US has dispatched warships to the area.

Anyone who eyeballs a map of the South China Sea and reaches a conclusion solely on proximity to the nearest major landmass, can’t help but find that many of the reefs, cays, islets, and tiny islands belong to a number of countries in the region. Unsurprisingly, a number of countries have made claims to the tiny islands and reefs in the South China Sea.

China, however, claims sovereignty for the entirety of the South China Sea, a sovereignty that preceded UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). China argues that history has conferred it sovereignty and maritime rights. Chinaclaims its activities in the South China Sea date back to over 2,000 years ago.

China has been the first to discover, name and develop the group of islands in the South China Sea, which have been known as the Nanhai Islands in China. For centuries, the Chinese government had been the administrator of the islands by putting them under the administration of local governments, conducting military patrols and providing rescue services.The Nansha [Spratly] and Xisha [Paracel] Islands, occupied by Japan during World War II, were returned to China as part of the territories stolen from China. This has been clearly set out in international documents such as the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation. China sent government and military officials to recover the islands and deployed troops there.

The BBC produced a documentary, “Our World Flashpoint: South China Sea,” concerning China’s sovereignty claims and its island building in the South China Sea. The documentary stated, “the US will not sit back and watch Beijing turn the western Pacific into a Chinese lake.”

The BBC documentary interviewed US Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery who asseverated of the US military presence in the South China Sea, “… we [the US] have to develop the tactics, weapons, and procedures to continue to operate in an unfettered manner.” He asserted, “The US navy is one of the single greatest contributors for the security and stability of the Asia-Pacific region; we have been for nearly 70 years.”

The South China Sea dispute is centered on territorial sovereignty. Yang Yanyi, Head of the Chinese Mission to the EU states that potential for hydrocarbons has motivated interest in nearby nations:

It has been widely recognised by the international community that the Nansha Islands and the adjacent waters belong to China, and no country ever challenged this during a long course of history.

It was only since the 1960s and 1970s, especially after the discovery of abundant oil reserves in the Nansha waters and the coming into being of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), that some countries in the region illegally occupied 42 of China’s islands and reefs as part of the Nansha Islands in violation of the charter and fundamental principles of governing international relations.

Threat to US Interests?

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a US organization that describesitself as “an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher.” It is described otherwise as an “influential ruling class organization” whose members come predominantly from the corporate business community which finances the CFR. According to the CFR:

Of the many conceivable contingencies involving an armed clash in the South China Sea, three especially threaten U.S. interests and could potentially prompt the United States to use force.

The most likely and dangerous contingency is a clash stemming from U.S. military operations within China’s EEZ that provokes an armed Chinese response. The United States holds that nothing in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) or state practice negates the right of military forces of all nations to conduct military activities in EEZs without coastal state notice or consent. China insists that reconnaissance activities undertaken without prior notification and without permission of the coastal state violate Chinese domestic law and international law. China routinely intercepts U.S. reconnaissance flights conducted in its EEZ …

If nations in the South China Sea lose confidence in the United States to serve as the principal regional security guarantor, they could embark on costly and potentially destabilizing arms buildups to compensate or, alternatively, become more accommodating to the demands of a powerful China. Neither would be in the U.S. interest.

A comparison

China also prioritizes freedom and safety of navigation, peace, and prosperity in the South China Sea. It does not, however, accept the right of foreign warships to operate without its approval in what it considers are its territorial waters or EEZ.

If China engaged in military surveillance and maneuvers in the Florida Strait between Florida and Cuba, how would the US respond? Surely many Americans and politicians in the Beltway would be upset at a Chinese military presence nearby.

If one dismisses historical evidence of cartography and usage and only employs the eyeball test to judge the issue, then it seems only fair to use such a technique to judge other territorial and sovereignty disputes.

As a starting point, China is a country inhabited by Chinese people for millennia (setting aside the complexities of Tibet).

The United States, on the contrary, is a country formed by Europeans (mainly Brits) wreaking genocide on the Original Peoples and dispossessing them of the land; warring against Mexico to grab most of California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico; purchasing Alaska from Russia (without questioning Russia’s sovereign claim to Alaska). Then, in 1893, the US overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and annexed the islands, 3500 km (2200 miles) from the continental US.

The US Senate apologized, but the US maintains sovereignty over Hawai’i. By way of simplistic analogy: if someone steals your wallet, spends the cash inside it and later returns the empty wallet with an apology, is that any kind of meaningful apology or justice?1

And what about the far-flung US-administered territories of Guam, other Micronesian islands, Puerto Rico, and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba? How is it that the US and its G7 allies – all of who are former/current colonizers – can intervene with an iota of integrity on the dispute in the South China Sea?

The US has a sordid history of aggression with South China Sea countries, but sometimes the enemy of an enemy becomes a friend. Hence the Philippines and Viet Nam consort with the US regarding the South China Sea.

The US Role and Respect for Law

The Philippines has sought arbitration under UNCLOS. China opposes international arbitration and seeks bilateral settlements. The US (which has not ratified UNCLOS) insists on China respecting international law and has backed the Philippines seeking international arbitration. One wonders what the world would be like if the US insisted on Israel adhering to international law or, for that matter, that itself, the US, respect international law. The US rejected the 1986 World Court judgment against the US of unlawful use of force in Nicaragua.

As Muhammad Mahmood writes in Bangladesh’s Financial Express:

… definitely China was not the first country to deploy weapons or conduct military manoeuvres in the region, rather China just responded to when the USA sent armed naval vessels to the sea. For China it was just a case of self-preservation.

Facts

Critics counter that China through its island building is creating facts on the ground to strengthen its territorial claim. How does that compare to basing a territorial claim on bird droppings as the US has done in the mid-Pacific Ocean? And what is the entirety of the US but a fact established on Indigenous people’s ground?

That the US, Canadian, Australian, and G7 criticism of Chinese actions in the South China Sea are mired in hypocrisy does not mitigate or support China’s claims in the South China Sea. Tu quoque arguments while undermining the integrity of China’s detractors, do not, however, buttress China’s claims to the territory. China’s territorial claims which needs to be judged on their merits. It would be advisable though that China take into consideration the aspirations of its neighbors and act accordingly. To this end, China does seek bilateral discussions with all nations.

What does justify Chinese actions is the US militarization of waters that are unconnected to the US mainland or offshore territories. China has been ringed by US military bases. China is aware that the US cut off oil to Japan during WWII stirring up tensions leading to war, and that the US has used embargoes often since then to try and strangle those nations it labels foes. The South China Sea is a vital transportation and trade route for China.

Furthermore, China is keenly aware of the foreign humiliation of a weak China in the 19th century and later the role played by the US in the mainland’s political separation from Taiwan.

Chinese Intentions

Current Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping wrote of Chinese intentions in his bookThe Governance of China:

Facts speak louder than words. China has consistently followed an independent foreign policy of peace and made it crystal clear that China’s foreign policy is aimed at maintaining world peace and promoting common development. China has stated on numerous occasions that it opposes hegemonism and power politics in all forms, does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, and will never seek hegemony or expansion.” (location 3958)

However, Xi emphasized,

No country should expect China to swallow any bitter fruit that undermines its sovereignty, security or development interests. (loc 3962)

Where China really sets itself apart from the US and the US interest is that for China, it is not solely about the China interest. It is about the interest of humanity.

We stand for the sharing of the fruits of development by all countries and peoples. Every country while pursuing its own development, should actively seek the common development of all countries. There cannot be sustainable development in the world when some countries are getting richer and richer while others languish in prolonged poverty and backwardness. (loc 4010)

If Chinese sovereignty in the South China Sea is devoted to peace and common prosperity, it seems China should be given a chance to prove itself. It seems a hell of a lot better than the destruction that the US has brought to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Honduras, Haiti, Syria, etc.

Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of Dissident Voice.

The new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has blamed the U.S. for the bloody conflicts in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.

“It is not that the Middle East is exporting terrorism (to) America. America imported terrorism,” Duterte said as he spoke before hundreds of Muslims during the Mindanao Hariraya Eid’l Fit’r celebration on Friday.

He said that the US introduced war to Iraq by toppling the government of former President Saddam Hussein in 2003, and that the terrorism is a result of Iraqi people being “pushed to the wall.”

“They forced their way to Iraq … look at Iraq now, look what happened to Libya, look what happened to Syria,” he told the Muslim community in southern Davao city, “people are being annihilated there including children,” he added.

The president, who is known for courting controversy, made the remarks in the wake of a series of deadly terrorist attacks around the globe.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as the use of violence to endanger human life in a bid to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion through acts such as mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.

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China will hold military exercises this week in the South China Sea ahead of a UN arbitration ruling, with analysts saying the drills are meant for peacekeeping while showing that China is capable of defending its territorial sovereignty.

The Maritime Safety Administration of China on Sunday posted a notice on its official website, saying that military exercises in certain waters of the South China Sea will be held from Tuesday to July 11, and all civilian vessels will be prohibited from those areas.

The exercises will finish one day before the UN arbitration court announces its decision on the South China Sea case initiated by the Philippines against China.

“China gave coordinates for the drills that cover an area from the east of China’s Hainan Island down to and including the Xisha Islands,” Reuters reported Sunday.

The Hong Kong Economic Times reported Wednesday that warships from the three fleets of the Chinese navy were spotted at the Sanya military port, Hainan. The warships allegedly included the guided missile destroyer Shenyang under the North China Sea Fleet, the guided missile destroyer Ningbo and the missile frigate Chaozhou under the East China Sea Fleet.

An official from the defense ministry told the Global Times on Thursday that this is a routine exercise according to an annual plan.

“The timing of the exercises in the South China Sea is subtle, but it’s not necessary to link it with the arbitration, because the exercise is a routine activity that was planned a long time ago,” Liu Feng, an expert on Chinese maritime issues, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Wang Xiaopeng, a maritime border expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times the drill is a normal naval activity to methodically maintain regional stability, which is not connected with specific events or targeted at certain countries.

The situation in the South China Sea is sensitive. However, given the sluggish global economy, it is more essential to improve regional cooperation, instead of making trouble like the US and Japan, Liu said.

Currently, there are some unstable elements in the area, mainly because of persistent intervention from the US and the arbitration case initiated by the Philippines, which have overshadowed the security of the area, Wang said.

China will continue constructing on reefs in the area and improve naval power in order to maintain regional peace and show the outsiders that China has the capability to maintain its own sovereign security, Liu noted.

Sino-Russian cooperation

China’s defense ministry spokesperson Wu Qian confirmed to the Global Times at a press briefing on Thursday that China and Russia were negotiating on the “Joint Sea-2016” drills.

China and Russia have held six joint naval exercises since 2005.

In August 2015, 23 vessels and two submarines participated in the Joint Sea-2015 (II) exercise, which took place in the Peter the Great Gulf, the waters off Clerk Cape, and the Sea of Japan, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

In previous exercises when China served as the host, the directing fleets were the North China Sea Fleet and the East China Sea Fleet respectively. Therefore, this time it is very likely that the South China Sea Fleet will take its turn as the main power, and the location might be near the South China Sea as well, media reported.

“The time and location of the joint drills will only be decided by technical concerns, instead of political issues,” Wang noted, adding that it shows the maritime interactions on sea between the two countries is strengthening.

“Since the US has been trying to gang up in the South China Sea, the joint drills show that China also needs support and understanding from the international society in order to defend its just title and maintain regional stability,” Liu said.

China and Russia vowed to strengthen global strategic stability in a joint statement signed by Chinese President Xi Jinpingand his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on June 25 during Putin’s visit to Beijing, Xinhua reported.

A Chinese fleet with about 1,200 sailors and officers arrived at Pearl Harbor Wednesday to take part in the Rim of the Pacific 2016 (RIMPAC 2016) multinational naval exercise. It is the second time the Chinese Navy has taken part in RIMPAC, Xinhua reported.

“Even though China and the US have some misunderstandings and conflicts over sea issues, cooperation is larger and more important,” Liu noted, adding that China’s participation in RIMPAC is beneficial to maintain regional safety.

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The FBI report regarding Hillary Clinton’s Emails is but the tip of the iceberg. The Attorney General is a crony of the Clinton family and will not press charges against Hillary. 

The corporate media (with some exceptions) as well as sections of the alternative media are involved in a cover up with a view to supporting Hillary’s candidacy. Meanwhile, a process of smearing the FBI is already ongoing. 

Despite the FBI decision not to recommend an indictment on criminal charges,  FBI Director James Comey nonetheless confirmed that there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information”. Moreover, the FBI statement described Hillary Clinton as “extremely careless in … the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”.  

Hillary’s reputation has been tainted. What kind of decision-making can we expect if  Hillary Clinton were to be elected president of the United States? Do the American people want an “extremely careless” president who has been under prior investigation by the the FBI.

Meanwhile, the Donald Trump campaign has gone into high gear to discredit Hillary Clinton.  

What is unfolding is a mudslinging campaign between Hillary and Donald.

While the mainstream media continues to endorse Hillary, dismissing her alleged criminal record, Fox News (which constitutes America’s Right Mouthpiece) has gone into overdrive revealing the “secret” crony undertakings of the Clinton family as well as the scams of the Clinton foundation.

It would appear that Fox News is now on the Trump side. Its reports reveal Hillary’s conflicts of interest as well as the criminal nature of the Clinton family. 

Judge Napolitano commenting on Fox News has provided an incisive review of some of Hillary’s crony undertakings. 

To View the Fox News program with Judge Napolitano click the image below or the hyperlink.

Excerpts of the July 3 Fox news article are provided below.

The interview with Judge Napolitano was in December 2015.

The more fundamental question. What will be the outcome of the mudslinging campaign?

Who will win the mudslinging campaign? 

Will the legitimacy of Hillary’s candidacy prevail from now until November. I have my doubts.

And it is too late for the Democratic Party to envisage a Plan B. 

Dirty politics. So much for Democracy and “We the People”.

The Criminalization of Politics in America: The leading presidential candidates, Hillary and Donald, have shaky records, with alleged links to criminal wrongdoings.

What choice is left? Revolution. Regime Change in the US…

Michel Chossudovsky,  July 9, 2016

*      *      *

To View the Fox News program with Judge Napolitano click the image below or the hyperlink.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4660725450001

Below are selected excerpts of the Fox New report by Peter Byrne, to access the full report click here 

Clinton sought secret info on EU bailout plans as son-in-law’s doomed hedge fund gambled on Greece

by Peter Byrne

July 3, 2016

Hedge fund manager Marc Mezvinsky had friends in high places when he bet big on a Greek economic recovery, but even the keen interest of his mother-in-law, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wasn’t enough to spare him and his investors from financial tragedy.

In 2012, Mezvinsky, the husband of Chelsea Clinton, created a $325 million basket of offshore funds under the Eaglevale Partners banner through a special arrangement with investment bank Goldman Sachs. The funds have lost tens of millions of dollars predicting that bailouts of the Greek banking system would pump up the value of the country’s distressed bonds. One fund, exclusively dedicated to Greek debt, suffered near-total losses.

Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in 2013 to run for president. But newly released emails from 2012 show that she and Clinton Foundation consultant, Sidney Blumenthal, shared classified information about how German leadership viewed the prospects for a Greek bailout. Clinton also shared “protected” State Department information about Greek bonds with her husband at the same time that her son-in-law aimed his hedge fund at Greece.

….

A former Goldman Sachs broker himself, Mezvinsky formed Eaglevale Management with two ex-Goldman Sachs partners in October 2011. As a “global macro” firm, Eaglevale’s strategy is to seek profit opportunities in politically volatile situations. Mezvinsky set up several funds in the Cayman Islands, a secretive tax haven, with Goldman Sachs serving as Eaglevale’s prime broker and banker. The giant brokerage firm has a checkered history of manipulating the value of Greek debt to the detriment of Greece.

Read full Fox News report

Copyright Fox News, 2016

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Little is known in the outside world about the conflict in Western New Guinea or West Papua, which became a part of  Indonesia in 1962. There are nuances and complexities to what took place when Indonesia fought the Dutch for West Papua and  about the vision that Indonesian independence leader President Sukarno wanted for West Papua and its people.

Some may describe it as a fight against Dutch imperialism and colonialism by Indonesia gone wrong, even blaming the US for helping insulate corrupt regimes in Jakarta, whereas others would describe it as the outright occupation of West Papua by Indonesia. Whatever the case, like many of the other people in Indonesia, the West Papuan people are being discriminated against and are marginalized with the acquiescence of the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and other actors.

The Indonesian military has targeted political dissidents, murdering them in different operations. There has been no justice for the victims of these domestic military operations in West Papua.

The case of Arline Tabuni is one of these stories. Over three years ago Arline, who was a girl of the age of twelve at the time, was shot by the Indonesian military on July 1, 2013. Her story is just one of many tragedies in West Papua and in Indonesia.

In the interest of introducing readers to the conflict in West Papua, so that they can make their own assessments,  this article about the murder of Arline Tabuni that was written on 1 July 2013 is being republished by Asia-Pacific Research.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Asia-Pacific Research Editor, 9 July 2016.


Tabuni in the arms of a family member after being fatally shot by the Indonesian military through her neck and in her chest.

 It’s the 1st of July, 2013

Arlince Tabuni, a 12 year old Melanesian West Papuan girl, daughter of a pastor is enjoying life in her village highlands village of Popume.

Suddenly, at 17:30, four fully armed Indonesian soldiers drive into the village with loaded guns. They briefly interrogate a member of her family and then demand he leaves the scene. They then proceed towards Arlince’s house.

Seeing the soldiers, Arlince tries to run away.

The military fire 3 shots, she is hit in the neck and chest and dies.

In response to protests by the local community and outrage by Papuans across West Papua, the military at first denies the shooting and then claims they opened fire due to a sense of “excess frustration, and panic”.

This sufficiently  satisfies the Indonesian government who give full impunity to the soldiers who fired the shots. They hold no investigation and say nothing of the matter.

The questions of the case

But why were Indonesian soldiers in Melanesian West Papua in the first place?

Why did they come armed into a peaceful highlands village?

Why did they shoot a 12 year old girl?

Why did the soldiers who fired the shots not receive any justice for their murder?

And why did the international media not report about any of this?

The answer: Money

Background to West Papua

West Papua is the western half of the Melanesian island of New Guinea, in the Pacific Ocean, bordering the independent nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG). It lies just 200km north of Australia and the indigenous Melanesian people have lived there for over 40,000 years.

West Papua was colonised by the Dutch in 1898 and always administered as “Dutch New Guinea” separate from their “Dutch East Indies” which is now Indonesia.

With the promise of independence on 1st December 1970 and on 1st December 1961, the West Papuan national flag was raised with the beginnings of a democratically elected government formed, announcing a 9 year period of peaceful transition towards independence.

Politics before Papuans

But within months the dream was dead. The newly independent state of Indonesia wanted access to West Papua vast wealth and the military promptly invaded West Papua. Conflict broke out between the Netherlands, Indonesia and the indigenous population regarding control of the territory.

Due to US fear that failing to appease Indonesia could result in the spread of South East Asian communism, the US government intervened and engineered an agreement between Indonesia and the Netherlands, which in 1962 gave control of West Papua to the United Nations and one year later transferred control to Indonesia.

The Papuans were never consulted and after a sham referendum in 1969 with 1026 people handpicked Papuans being forced to vote for Indonesian sovereignty, West Papua officially became part of Indonesia.

The military occupation and secret genocide

The West Papuan people never accepted Indonesia in their country and ever since 1963, have resisted Indonesian rule, first with bows and arrows and what little guns they could and then with peaceful civil resistance.

The people of West Papua have regularly organise mass protests for self determination and independence and continue to appeal to the international community from speaking out through media to diplomatic pleas by exiled Papuans.

Through a vast wealth of natural resources, like the largest goldmine on Earth (Grasberg), West Papua has become Indonesia’s largest GDP contributor, and with the prospect of an independent West Papua looking with international support, Indonesia does not want Papuans telling the outside world the truth.

Not only has the Indonesian government banned all foreign journalists and human rights groups from West Papua but the Indonesian military and police also systematically target any West Papuans campaigning for independence and brands them as “separatists” and “terrorists”.

Even the raising of the West Papuan national flag was made illegal by Indonesia and anyone raising it in West Papua can, if they are lucky expect 15 years in an Indonesian jail cell. Any unlucky West Papuans found supporting independence are simply killed. Indonesia sees Papuans as nothing more than inconvenient resistance in a land bursting with money to be made.

The result of this brutal repression of any resistance is nothing short of genocide and it is estimated that over 500,000 innocent West Papuan men, women and children have already been killed by the Indonesian military since 1963.

Indonesian soldiers pose for a “trophy kill” in 2013 to show off the corpse of Papuan farmer Wendiman Wonda whom they murdered.

 

Arlince’s Case

The Indonesian soldiers in Arlince’s village were conducting of of the military’s routine “sweeping operations” by which they section off whole districts away from the towns to sweep the area completely from any Papuans daring to speak out for self determination and independence.

It is reported that some of her killers might have been from Indonesia’s “anti terror special forces” also known as Kopassus or “Detachment 88”. These troops are funded and supplied by the Australian government despite international calls to cease their support as they are responsible for some of the worst crimes against humanity in West Papua.

According to reports the Indonesian military in Arlince’s village were looking for members of the outlawed Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM), a resistance movement founded in the 1970s which previously organised attacks on Indonesian military patrols.
The Indonesian government is well aware that the OPM is nowadays a much more symbolic movement and that no villages such as Arlince’s are actually home to armed guerrillas.

However, ever since the formation of the OPM, it has always been the Indonesian government’s excuse that any pro-independence Papuan that they kill or jail is a violent member of the “separatist” OPM.
They use this excuse to bar all foreign journalists from entering West Papua.
(Almost all Papuans now align themselves with peaceful pro-independence movements such as the West Papua National Comittee/KNPB).

When the soldiers came to interrogate Arlince’s relative, they asked him “where are the hordes of OPM?”

Arlince’s relative told them that there are none and that there is an Indonesian flag in the village (which is effectively mandatory in West Papua).

The soldiers paid no attention to the man and marched directly towards Arlince’s house.
They stood at the bottom of the garden and saw the 12 year old girl who ran.

The Indonesian military saw Arlince.
They saw her run away.

They shot at her.
Once
Twice
Three times.

They killed her.

This was no accident. There is no way the Indonesian military mistook a 12 year old girl in point blank range and directly in front of them for an armed and violent adult guerrilla fighter.

It was yet another example of the extreme violence the Indonesian military uses to suppress and terrorise the indigenous people of West Papua.
In rural areas such as Popume village in the Lanny Jaya Regency, the military is totally able to do as it pleases, using the highlands like a playground.

However, it is the culture of impunity that is almost just as shocking as the murder.

No justice

Imagine if the British military had shot a 12 year old Scottish girl because they were looking for potential family members supporting the Scottish independence movement?

Even if the Indonesian military had shot dead a 12 year old girl in Java or Bali, this might make headline news around the world.

As it is, this terrible incident happened in West Papua where no foreign media is allowed and even Indonesian journalists face the most widespread violence and suppression.

A day after the shooting, at around 11:00, a joint police and military investigation team arrived and later so did Human Rights advocates.

There was no agreement whatsoever between the girl’s family and the military. Though it would be no help for the loss of their daughter, the family at least demanded an immediate compensation of 1 billion Rupiah (about 86,000 dollars).

There was mass outrage among the community and Malky Jigibalom, directress Tiom Hospital (Lanny Jaya), was furious.

She said:  “I strongly condemn the shooting of women. How can TNI / Kopassus as outsiders come and kill Papuan women? Stop the killing of women.”

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) also urged investigation into the murder Arlince Tabuni.

“We deplore the violence still continues in Papua. Among them, we have the shooting information of a child, aged 12 years on behalf Arlince Tabuni.” said Yati Andriani, one of the staff KontraS, in a press release.

“The actions above shows the lack of professionalism and brutality of the security forces in conducting security operations,” Yati said.

A demonstration was also held in Lanny Jaya on 9th July, calling for all Indonesian soldiers to be pulled of of the Regency, the UN to immediately mediate in West Papua and for a full investigation into the brutal murder of Arlince Tabuni.

The military response?
To claim that the shooting was due to a sense of “excess frustration, and panic”.

And that was that.

Indonesia ensures that the international community stays blind, deaf and dumb about the situation in West Papua.

The family of Arlince Tabuni and the Papuan people are still deeply outraged almost a year on, not only from her murder but from the murder of every single of the 500,000 innocent West Papuan civilians who have been brutally murdered by Indonesia ever since 1963.

The same soldiers who kill innocent people like Arlince are given medals by the government and praised.

In 2001, West Papua’s greatest leader, Chief Theys Eluay who successfully led the Papuan people from strength to strength in gaining international recognition towards independence, was murdered by the Indonesian special forces.

fter initially claiming that he died of a stroke, the Indonesian government finally was forced to bow down to outside pressure and four Kopassus soldiers were convicted and sentenced to a few years in jail

General Ryamizard Ryacudu from the Indonesian military, who was recently appointed Defence Minister is quoted as saying, “I don’t know, people say they did wrong, they broke the law. What law? Okay, we are a state based on the rule of law, so they have been punished. But for me, they are heroes because the person they killed was a rebel leader.”

Friends of Theys pull his strangled body outside of the car where he was murdered.

Jeny Badi, an 18 year old Papuan student who was gang raped by the Indonesian military and then shot dead in 2012.

 

Free West Papua Campaign takes action

Immediately following her murder, the Free West Papua Campaign took action, writing to all media contacts and publishing this article, encouraging everyone to spread the word and take action to stop such incidents such as this happening again.

This action has helped people all around the world learn about not just Arlince’s case but also that about the whole situation in West Papua and now finally, even international media such as the Telegraph has published the story.

We would like to encourage everyone to also take action for the family and people of Arlince Tabuni.

Please help to share this article and images throughout the internet and the world to let the world know what is really happening to the people of West Papua.

Atrocities such as this will only stop happening when the outside world begins to see the horror and oppression that all West Papuans, including children have to face on a daily basis under Indonesian military rule.

Please support the work of the Free West Papua Campaign.

We are a voluntary organisation and every donation we receive is used to help free the people of West Papua.

Visit the take action part of the website to find out how you can help more.

Please keep the West Papuan people in your hearts, especially at this time of tragedy.

Help to stop this 21st century genocide

Thank you very much

Rest in Peace, sister Arlince Tabuni

If You Like Obama, You’ll Love Trump

July 9th, 2016 by William Blum

Oh what fun we have with the nonsense that flows out of the mouth of Donald J. Trump. The man is suffocatingly banal, racist, dishonest, inarticulate, uninformed, uneducated, narcissistic, a bully, just plain stupid… or in the immortal words of my people — a schmuck!

I would guess that as the boss of his own enterprises for many years, with the power and the habit of firing people, he eventually became deeply accustomed to not having his thoughts seriously questioned or challenged, to the extent that he really believes the crap that comes out of his mouth and doesn’t really understand what others actually think of him.

But if we look at what comes out of the mouth of The Barack is there any reason to castigate The Donald for his supposedly outrageous or weird way of expressing himself? Here’s a sample:

— On numerous occasions, in reply to a question about why his administration has not prosecuted the Bush-Cheney gang for mass murder, torture and other war crimes, former law professor Obama has stated: “I prefer to look forward rather than backwards.” Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found innocent of any crime on such grounds. On other occasions, Obama, without apparent embarrassment, has stated that “nobody is above the law”. (A public figure can be labeled stupid not just for saying or doing stupid things, but for not even realizing that the public will SEE his words or actions as stupid.)

— Asked whether he would apologize for Washington’s role in Chile’s 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced it with a dictatorship, Obama replied: “I’m interested in going forward, not looking backward. I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world.” (June 23, 2009)

— Question from CNN, 2008: “Do you think the US should apologize for any mistakes that it has made in the past?” Obama’s reply: “I don’t think the US should ever apologize for anything.”

— Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2014 where he classified Russia to be one of the three great threats to the world along with the Islamic State and the ebola virus.

— Obama’s declaration that ISIS “has nothing to do with Islam”. This is standard political correctness which ignores the indisputable role played by Islam in inspiring Orlando and Long Beach and Paris and Ankara and many other massacres; it is the religion that teaches the beauty and godliness of jihad and the heavenly rewards of suicide bombings.

— After Turkey’ intentional shoot-down of a Russian warplane along the Turkish-Syrian border, instead of rebuking Turkey, a NATO member, for its absolutely reckless behavior –- or expressing sympathy to the Russians -– Obama asserted that “Turkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and its airspace.”(November 24, 2015) Turkey later apologized to Russia, but Obama didn’t.

— In September 2013 Obama stood before the United Nations and declared: “I believe America is exceptional.”

— On March 9, 2015 Obama declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.

— Obama spoke of “the principle that no country has the right to send in troops to another country unprovoked” (March 3, 2014) (Do our leaders have no memory or do they think we’ve all lost ours?)

— “I’m good at killing.” (Just imagine Trump saying this.) Obama has claimed the power to murder anyone anywhere by drone. Nixon had an enemies list, but this drone king has a personal kill list. Obama’s use of drones against jihadist leaders, and anyone else who happens to be too close, has essentially rescinded the leading principle that was established in the Magna Carta 800 years ago — the presumption of innocence.

— Imagine also The Donald joking — as Obama did — about using a drone on his daughters’ boyfriends: “They’ll never know what hit them.”

— Obama, State of the Union speech, 2012: “This generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world.”

— On May 28, 2012 the president declared that Vietnam was “one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of [US] military history”.

— After taking over the White House in 2009, Obama called Afghanistan the “good war”

— Obama, explaining the US/NATO devastation of Libya in 2011, turning it from Africa’s highest standard of living into a desperate failed state, based on made-up reports about Ghaddafi carrying out atrocities: “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.” (March 28, 2011)

— Said Obama: A US refusal to intervene in Libya would be “a betrayal of who we are.” (How true.)

— In March 2011, as the US/NATO bombardment of the people of Libya continued, day after day, the White House insisted that it was “a limited humanitarian intervention, not war.”

— “All the forces that we’re seeing at work in Egypt are forces that naturally should be aligned with us, should be aligned with Israel — if we make good decisions now and we understand sort of the sweep of history.”(March 4, 2011) Egypt quickly became a brutal dictatorship.

— State of the Union address, 2011: “And we’ve sent a message … to all parts of the globe: we will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you.”

— Obama: “I’m not somebody who discounts the sincerity and worthiness of President Bush’s concerns about democracy and human rights.” (Washington Post, January 19, 2009)

— Obama: “President Bush was right that Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat [to Europe and the US].” (September 30, 2009)

“I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis.” (Obama, Washington Post, August 17, 2008)

— June 22, 2009: Obama says America is “fully prepared” for any action by North Korea. (Thank god; after the nuclear attacks by China and Russia it was great to not have to worry about North Korea. But there was still Iran.)

— Obama, speaking about Russia, July 7: “In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over.”

— During a visit to Baghdad April 7, 2009, Obama praised the US military for their “extraordinary achievement” in Iraq.

— Obama: “To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet.” (December 1, 2008)

— Speaking to a joint session of Congress: “I can stand here and say without exception or equivocation that the United States does not torture.” (Washington Post, February 24, 2009)

— “There is no spying on Americans. We don’t have a domestic spying program.” (Obama on The Tonight Show, August 7, 2013)

— Just 18 days before the disastrous Gulf oil spill in 2010 Obama said: “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.” (Washington Post, May 27, 2010)

— Obama’s pep talk December 2010 to US troops in Afghanistan in which he lauded them as “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known”. (George W. Bush: the US military is “the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world” and “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.”) Try and top those lines, Donald.

— As a presidential candidate in 2008 Obama lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [who] must be protected from reprisal.” In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other US presidents combined.

— Obama’s claim that the U.S. has been “For nearly seven decades the anchor of global security”. (September 10, 2013)

— “Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it’s an act of terror.” (April 16, 2013); “I was elected to end wars, not start them. I’ve spent the last 4 1/2 years doing everything I can to reduce our reliance on military power as a means of meeting our international obligations and protecting the American people.” (September 6, 2013); “The bottom line is, nothing of significance, nothing of benefit results from destructive acts.” (November 25, 2014)

Thus spoke the man who carried out military attacks against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, and Syria.

— Obama (CBS News, February 13, 2013): “I urge this Congress to come up with a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change.”

Sam Smith asked: “Does he also want, for example, a bipartisan market-based solution to cancer?

— In his book The Audacity of Hope Obama wrote: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

And if you like Barack Obama you’ll love Hillary Clinton.

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire. He can be reached at:[email protected]Read other articles by William, or visit William’s website.

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Hybrid Wars: Trick To Containing China

July 9th, 2016 by Andrew Korybko

(Please read Part IPart IIPart III,  Part IV  , and Part V before this article)

The first part of this transitionary chapter explains how the strategic friction between China and the CCC in the Greater Mekong Subregion sets the foundation for American-directed Hybrid Wars against Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand. After that, the second part explores some of the strategic reasons why the US could potentially apply this weapon towards its own nominal ‘allies’ in order to pressure or punish them for their respective stances towards the CCC.

Explaining The Impetus

The multiple geopolitical convergences in Thailand between China, India, and Japan have the constructive potential to have all parties multilaterally cooperate in ensuring their shared ASEAN partner’s stability, but this is the last scenario would be absolutely contrary to the US’ grand strategic designs. Washington believes that the passive cooperation between China and the CCC over their intersecting interests in Thailand would basically result in ‘ceding’ Southeast Asia to Beijing by allowing it to successful build its non-South China Sea ‘escape route’ to the Indian Ocean. This would in effect nullify everything that the US is trying to accomplish in ASEAN’s maritime front and would represent a major victory for multipolarity.

The US’ dilemma then becomes one of figuring out how to disrupt China’s plans without endangering India and Japan’s, and in finding ways to do so unilaterally since it’s unlikely that neither New Delhi nor Tokyo is willing to take any geostrategic risks that could possibly backfire against their projects. Given these situational constraints, US strategists likely see Hybrid War as their best (and perhaps only) option. The trick in this specific regional application would be in limiting the destabilization to northeastern Myanmar, north-central Laos, and the northern regions of Thailand just shy of the East-West Corridor, but the nature of chaos is that it’s inherently uncontrollable and unpredictable, and it’s very likely that the debilitating chain reactions that it could unleash would spread well past the US’ ‘chaotic containment zone’.

Scorched Earth

In any case, that wouldn’t be absolutely anathema to the US’ grand strategy because its primary concern is to prevent China’s ‘containment breakout’ by one way or another. Geopolitical ‘scorched earth’ tactics are not beyond its operational capability and it would certainly apply them if it saw the need to do so, regardless of the collateral damage this could have on its Indian and Japanese allies’ infrastructure projects. Unipolarity’s tightening grasp over Southeast Asia would be irreparably weakened if China were successful in circumventing the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca through the construction of its two mainland ‘detour routes’ through Myanmar and Laos-Thailand, thus explaining the urgency with which the US aspires to destabilize all three countries (or at least portions thereof) if it can’t ‘convince’ their governments to halt the Chinese projects. US strategy dictates that the Greater Mekong Subregion must be thrown into total chaos as a last resort to stopping China’s geostrategic-infrastructural ambitions if all else fails because the resultant combination of an impassable war-zone mainland and American-controlled waterways is the only possibility the US would have left for containing China in its ‘backyard’.

The Only Unipolar Back-Up Plan

It doesn’t matter that much to the US if the destabilization extends beyond the ‘chaotic containment zone’ in northeast Myanmar, north-central Laos, and the northern reaches of Thailand and begins to interfere with and possibly disrupt the Western Corridor”(India’s ASEAN highway), the East-West Corridor, and even the Southern Corridor” because it knows that India and Japan are not as dependent on this region for their strategic growth and geopolitical security as China is. As the only back-up plan in cushioning some of the geopolitical blowback that could result from Hybrid War breaching the  ‘containment zone’ and disrupting the East-West Corridor, the US could simply suggest that India redirect its ASEAN highway to Dawei and then connect it with the Southern Corridor. This would result in sacrificing one of the region’s landmark unipolar trade routes, but the strategic recompense would be that the Southern Corridor could still fulfill this function while China has no such alternatives available. However, there’s also the possibility that the chaos would extend well past the ‘front lines’ that the US is anticipating and could come to envelop the entirety of Myanmar and Thailand, thereby preventing this back-up plan from being actualized and leading to the full cancellation of all of the Greater Mekong Subregion’s connective infrastructure projects.

A Zero-Sum Game

Both Lead From Behind partners could still sustain their trade and operate freely despite the absence of the convenient connective infrastructure that they’re planning in the Greater Mekong Subregion due to their American ally’s naval power in the South China Sea, but conversely, this scenario would leave China wholly vulnerable to the Pentagon’s blackmail in this area and the Strait of Malacca and thereby threaten the viability of its economically necessary Africa policy. For American planners, this course of events would be more than ideal for the indefinite retention of unipolarity and it would represent a back-breaking defeat for China’s global strategy and that of the multipolar world in general. Therefore, from the perspective of the US, it doesn’t matter that much if the planned Hybrid Wars remain in their ‘containment zones’ or not, since ultimately, ‘the ends justify the means’ for them so long as the final result is China’s full geostrategic containment.

Hybrid War ‘Friendly Fire’

As history plainly shows, it’s impossible for the US to fully control the chaotic processes that it unleashes, and more often than not, they seem to always have a way of boomeranging back and ultimately dealing some form of unintended collateral damage. This is most popularly recognized in the cases of Al Qaeda and ISIL, and interestingly enough, as most of the Hybrid War destabilizations in maritime ASEAN (the part of the organization most closely aligned with the US) deal with Islamic terrorism, the US would ironically be repeating the same pattern that it’s already gone through twice before, even using the same organizational actors in the most probable cases. The only thing that can explain this seemingly illogical fallacy, especially in the sense that it could be targeting the US’ own allies with Hybrid War ‘friendly fire’, is that it’s actually precisely what Washington wants. The reader should hopefully have acquired a sense of cynicism and a deep understanding of the unprincipled nature of American foreign policy after having arrived at this point of the book, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that ‘controlled chaos’ is used by the US in order to advance its divide-and-rule policies all across Eurasia, even in regards to official partners.

Backstabbing Motivations

When low-intensity Hybrid War threats are purposefully manufactured against its supposed ‘allies’, the geopolitical arsonist-firefighter is intending to put pressure on their leadership and create the conditions where they’re prompted to request American military assistance in order to quell the upstart destabilization. The formalization of the target/’host’ nation’s relationship with the American military (even if done behind closed doors) is expected to tighten the patron-proxy relationship between them and craft the conditions for a prolonged Pentagon presence inside the country. Understandably, it wouldn’t just be military servicemen that are deployed, but also their associated support and intelligence staffs (whether or not the target/’host’ nation is even aware of this), the latter of which could then be operationally reoriented towards embedding their network even deeper into the country and engaging in anti-government organizational and informational activities.

The sum effect of all of this stage-managed subterfuge is to cripple the targeted/’host’ government’s sovereignty and transform it into a full-fledged American vassal. The strategically manufactured Hybrid War crisis or reasonably imminent fear thereof (purposefully kept at low-intensity at the beginning but which could predictably get out of control) is nothing more than a calculated ruse by the US to strengthen its hold over its so-called allies and/or punish some of them for their perceived strategic intransigence (i.e. not cooperating as closely as the US would like in the CCC or outright refusing to take part in the destabilizing venture). It will soon be seen in the next chapter just how susceptible the maritime members of ASEAN are to these scenarios, but Vietnam and Cambodia are also somewhat vulnerable too, albeit more in the sense of NGO- and intelligence-organized labor disturbances than to Wahhabist terrorism.

Indonesia

The most likely case of the US using Hybrid War against one of its allies is undoubtedly Indonesia, as this state has yet to fully commit to the China Containment Coalition (CCC) despite the US’ implied urging to do so. Like was earlier discussed in the previous chapters, it did state that it wants to join the TPP in the near future, but this may not be the desired level of CCC coordination that some influential hawk-like decision-makers in the US are anticipating, especially if Indonesia’s accession talks stall for whatever reason (note: they have yet to even formally begin). In that case, it’s very likely that some of the Hybrid War scenarios that will later be discussed could be facilitated or outright engineered in order to put Indonesia’s ‘feet to the fire’ and compel it to request the type of insidious American assistance described above. Washington’s end goal is to turn the geostrategic island chain into its largest-ever proxy state, thus cementing the CCC with a coerced and totally manipulated Lead From Behind actor that can provide the regional economic and political finesse that’s required to majorly disrupt China’s soft presence in the maritime reaches of ASEAN.

Blowback

The strategic flaw in this approach is that the target/’host’ state is not voluntarily joining the CCC, but is being forced and manipulated into it, whether it’s cognizant of this process occurring or not. Should the leadership or influential elite (likely concentrated in the military and/or political spheres, with their economic counterparts expected to be pro-US) become aware of the scheme that’s being played, they may instigate an internal revolt or outright coup against the US-manipulated authorities, which would then have the consequence of reversing the US’ ‘successes’ and possibly provoking it to unleash an all-out Hybrid War if the new administration drifts too close to Beijing.

None of this would be unprecedented either, since investigative journalist Tony Cartalucci convincingly argued that Thailand’s 2014 military coup was a patriotic move against the pro-US proxy leadership that was earlier installed in the country. Similar blowback could occur in Indonesia, the Philippines, or any of the active or probable CCC-member states in the future, and the reader must always keep this in mind. Accordingly, because of the instrumentality of Hybrid War in pressuring and punishing nominally allied states vis-à-vis their position to the CCC as well as disrupting China’s regional infrastructure projects, it’s worthy to explore all of the ASEAN-member states’ socio-political vulnerabilities to this post-modern weapon, which is exactly what the proceeding chapter will do.

xvrtuc01

To be continued…

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

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Hybrid Wars 5. Breaking the Balkans

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Part 1 of this series focused on the technical difficulties involved in assessing the potential harm from exposure to a substance being tested. This part (2) concerns a different kind of contamination: endemic conflicts of interest in which money and political power  undermine scientific risk assessments, placing in jeopardy the public’s health and well-being.

Scientists often have financial and other conflicts of interest which, in turn, lead to biases that impact on conclusions. A fascinating recent example of apparent unconscious bias comes from a survey of scientific publications commissioned by the Dutch government on the effects of pesticidal GMO (Bt) crops on non-target organisms in outdoor experiments. The survey revealed that researchers who found negative consequences of GMO (Bt) crops were disregarding their own findings, even when these were statistically significant.

Even more interesting to the Dutch authors was that the rationales offered for doing so were oftentimes illogical. Typically, researchers used experimental methods designed to detect ecotoxicological effects that were “transient or local”, but when such effects were found, the researchers dismissed the significance of their own results — as being either “transient or local”.

This Dutch report represented prima facie evidence that researchers across a whole academic discipline were avoiding conclusions that would throw doubt on the wisdom of using GMO Bt crops. Apparently, the researchers had a prior commitment to finding no harm — the kind of commitment that scientists are not supposed to have.

Institutional Dysfunctionality

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a variety of institutional and procedural defects that prevent it from being an effective regulator.

One of the better known ones is to allow self-interested corporations to conduct their own experiments, and to provide the data for risk assessment. This lets them summarize — or even lie about — the results.

It is extraordinarily easy for an “independent” commercial testing operation to bias or fix the result of a typical toxicology study for the benefit of a client, as pointed out by Melvin Reuber, former EPA consultant.

How the EPA first allowed corporations to generate and submit their own regulatory data is a story well worth knowing.

In the 1980s Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) was the largest independent commercial testing laboratory in the United States. Food and Drug Administration scientist Adrian Gross discovered that IBT (and other testing companies) weredeliberately, consistently, and illegally misleading both the EPA and the FDA about their results. Aided by practices — such as the hiring of a chemist from Monsanto, a company that manufactured PCBs, to test PCBs —  IBT created an illusion of chemical safety for numerous pesticides and other chemicals. Many are still in use. They include Roundup, atrazine and 2,4-D, all commonly used in US agriculture.

Senior IBT managers were eventually jailed, but what the scandal revealed was that whenever results showed evidence of harm — which was often — a concerted effort to mislead regulators was standard practice.

Even more remarkable than the scandal was EPA’s response to it. Instead of bringing testing in-house, which would seem the logical response to a system-wide failure of independent commercial testing, EPA created a Byzantine system of external reporting and corporate summarizing.

The resulting bureaucratic maze ensures that no EPA employee ever sets eyes on the original experiments or the primary data — and only a handful can access even the summarized results.

This system has a further consequence: excluding any possibility that whistleblowing on the part of Federal employees or even FOIA requests (from outsiders) might reveal fraudulent or otherwise problematic tests.

Thus the EPA has calculatedly turned a blind eye to any future wrongdoing in the full knowledge that the chemical regulatory system it oversees was systemically corrupt.

Probably more familiar to readers is what is called “regulatory capture.” This takes many forms, from the offering to public servants of immediate favors and future jobs, to the impact of top-down political interference on regulatory agencies.

The culminating effect is to ensure that political will within agencies to protect the public is diluted or lost.

Regulatory capture can become a permanent feature of an institution. For example, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries have an agreement called the Mutual Acceptance of Data (MAD).

MAD is appropriately named. It has the effect of explicitly excluding from regulatory consideration most of the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

The purported goal of MAD was to elevate experimental practices by requiring certification via Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), a procedure introduced, ironically, after the IBT scandal (Wagner and Michaels, 2004).

GLP is a mix of management and reliability protocols that are standard in industrial laboratories but rare in universities and elsewhere. Therefore, the consequence of adopting MAD has been to specifically exclude from regulatory consideration evidence and data not produced by industry.

The MAD agreement explains much of the regulatory inaction over the plastic bisphenol A (BPA), for example. Because of MAD, FDA and also its European equivalent, the European Food Safety Authority, have ignored the hundreds of peer-reviewed BPA studies—since they are not GLP— in favor of just two by industry. These two industry studies, whose credibility and conclusions have been publicly disputed by independent scientists, showed no ill effects of BPA.

Whistleblowing on the EPA

Various EPA whistleblowers have described in detail the lamentable specifics of their former organization’s capture by branches of the chemical industry.

Whistleblower William Sanjour has described how regulatory failure was ensured by the basic organizational structure imposed on the EPA at its Nixon-era inception. The structure of EPA is inherently conflicted since it has the dual functions of both writingand enforcing regulations. The Agency’s unwillingness to enforce high standards led his superiors to order Sanjour to write deliberate loopholes into those regulations.

More recently, the EU’s EFSA was similarly caught proposing loopholes for new regulations on endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Inserting loopholes seems standard practice in the writing of chemical safety regulations.

In the same article, Sanjour proposed that since the overwhelming influence of companies on public institutions renders them useless, the public would be better off with no regulatory agencies. In a similar vein, former EPA pesticide scientist Evaggelos Vallianatos called his former employer, at book length, the “polluter’s protection agency.”

Fudging Reports on Toxic Sewage Sludge

Another EPA whistleblower, David Lewis, this time at EPA’s Office of Water, has shown in court-obtained documents that, in the 1980s and early 1990s, EPA scientists buried evidence and even covered up deaths so as to formulate new regulations (which came to be called the 503 sludge rule) that would permit land application of sewage sludge.

As EPA knew, this sludge was routinely contaminated with pathogens, heavy metals, industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, flame retardants, and other known hazardous substances.

David Lewis eventually obtained a legal judgement that the City of Augusta, Ga, had“fudged” the toxicity testing of its own sewage sludge in order to meet EPA guidelines. The city had done so at the request of the EPA which wished to facilitate final adoption of the 503 sludge rule in 1993.

The corruption necessary to enact these sewage sludge regulations extended well beyond the EPA. Other federal agencies, several universities, the National Academy of Science, and municipalities, were also party to fraud, data manipulation and coverups.

Coverups on Fracking

In another recent case, again at EPA, DeSmogBlog obtained, through a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA), internal documents showing how EPA offered access to its fracking study plans:

“[Y]ou guys are part of the team here,” one EPA representative wrote to Chesapeake Energy as they together edited study planning documents in October 2013, “please write things in as you see fit.”

Toxic Effects on 9/11 First Responders

Even more recently, EPA whistleblower and chemist Dr. Cate Jenkins and the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) successfully sued EPAfor suppressing information about toxic effects on 9/11 first responders.

The case ended with a judgment showing that EPA had, among numerous egregious acts, created fake email accounts (including for EPA head Lisa Jackson) to evade accountability. According to Judge Chambers, EPA:

Failed, and failed miserably, over an extended course of time in complying with its discovery obligations and…Court discovery orders

Judge Chambers also found that EPA worked a “fraud on the Court” through numerous “false claims” and inaccurate claims of privilege, which upon examination applied to “none of the documents provided.”The judge also found that EPA deliberately and illegally destroyed an unknown number of documents which should have been under a litigation hold.

Risk Assessment Dominated by Commerce

The ultimate effect of these institutional defects is that chemical risk assessments in the US and the EU have a safety bar for approval that is so low that regulators virtuallynever decline to approve a chemical.

In contrast, the same institutions use standards for taking any chemical off the market that are so high that such an event nearly never happens.

Of course, if both standards were based purely on science, as they always claim to be, both bars would be the same height.

This double standard represents an accurate measure of the overwhelming bias in the chemical regulatory system. At every stage — from the funding of research to the ultimate decision to approve a chemical — the process is dominated by commercial concerns and not by science (as was recently shown yet again).

Chemical regulatory systems are not just broken, they are unfixable.

To come: Unsafe at Any Level, Part 3: What To Do?

Jonathan R. Latham, PhD is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project; Editor of the Independent Science News website. He holds a Masters degree in Crop Genetics and a PhD in Virology, and was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published papers in disciplines as diverse as plant ecology, plant virology and genetics. “The Twin Research Debate in American Criminology” (2015); “Transcomplementation and Synergism in Plants: Implications for Viral Transgenes?” (2008); “Transformation-induced Mutations in Transgenic Plants: Analysis and Biosafety Implications” (2006).


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In a powerful short novel by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, “No One Writes to the Colonel” (El coronel no tiene quien le escriba) set during the period of “La Violencia”, an old retired colonel struggles to survive, forgotten by the government which promised him a substantial pension some fifteen years earlier. The state is corrupt and brutal, and it had abandoned almost all of those who had fought for the country during the fierce “Thousand Days’ War”.

And so, no one writes to the colonel. No letters, no envelopes with his pension are arriving. The old man and his wife are living alone. Their son had died a few years earlier. Their savings are gone. There seems to be no hope.

The colonel has a rooster. It is a mighty fighting cock. He trains it; the bird is his only chance of survival, it is all that he has left, as well as his pride. At the end of the story, he is approached and offered money for the rooster. He turns the offer down. He would rather go hungry, but he will not be humiliated!

His wife approaches him, asking whether he sold the rooster. He tells her that he did not.

Horrified, she asks: “But what are we going to eat?”

He replies to her, slowly and honestly: “We will eat shit!”

***

The Western mass media is now overflowing with stories about the people of Venezuela, collecting rotten fruit, even garbage, in order to fill their stomachs.

Many of these stories are grossly exaggerated, but it is true that millions in Venezuela are suffering.

Once again, the country has been betrayed by its elites. As Chile was before the 1973 coup, as Brazil was just a short while ago. The elites in Latin America are only loyal to their Western handlers, never to their own people.

There is capital flight, and there is an artificially created deficit of many basic commodities; medicines and food products. The goal of the ‘opposition’ backed by the United States and Europe is simple, and clear: to choke the revolutionary process, to discredit the legacy of Hugo Chavez, and to grab power again, while re-introducing neo-liberal dogma.

But the majority of Venezuelan people do not support the ‘opposition’. Of course, not everyone is in agreement with the policies of President Maduro, but a return to the capitalist past is not what the nation desires.

And that is why Venezuelans are forced to eat shit!

***

I am not sure what the maternal side of my family ate during WWII, during the 900 days of the Siege of Leningrad.

My grandmother and my mom survived, while almost all of our other relatives vanished.

The city was surrounded by German troops. It was bombed day and night, savagely. And the only food supply route was open during the winters, over the thin ice covering the Ladoga Lake.

There was mass starvation in the city. But against all the odds, Leningrad stubbornly refused to surrender.

Everyday, my grandmother went to the frontline, to fight the Germans, and to dig trenches. The Nazis dropped millions of leaflets spiced with disgusting humor: “Dear damsels, stop digging your little holes. Over your holes, our tanks will soon be passing.”

They did not pass! The ‘damsels’, including my grandma, were gentle-looking, opera and ballet going, poetry reading romantics, but in their core, actually, extremely tough and determined Russian women. And they were not going to surrender, until the final victory – after all, they were defending their beloved city, their motherland and humanity.

Almost half of the population of the city was killed, or starved to death. People were collapsing in the middle of the streets. But Leningrad stood tall, defiant and proud. A city of countless theaters and museums, one of the most beautiful cities on Earth, a refined metropolis, suddenly hardened itself and prevented the Nazi hordes from entering its streets and embankments.

“People were forced to eat corpses, grandma?” I asked once, when she was still alive.

“Yes,” she replied. “Your mother and I never did, but some people… yes; they had no choice. We ate plywood and glue, if we were lucky to find some. Or we ate nothing…”

My grandmother was decorated twice, for her extraordinary courage at the front. She was decorated as a soldier, as a Soviet soldier (although she had absolutely no military training), not as a ‘damsel’.

Finally, the blockade, the siege was broken. A few weeks before, my grandmother and my tiny mom were evacuated over the Ladoga Lake. My mother looked like a skeleton, with an enormous belly of a child suffering from malnutrition sticking out. I was told that when she was brought to a first aid center that was full of medicine and food, she began moving, as if possessed, trying to grab and stuff into her mouth all she could put her hands on. Three adults had to hold her and drag her away. Her food intake had to be increased gradually, or otherwise she would have died.

Once, my grandmother told me: “It is no shame to eat shit! It is much better than to betray… But it is a terrible crime to force people to eat it!”

During that same war, in approximately the same period of time, my paternal, the Czech side of the family had full access to sausages, tenderloins and other foodstuffs. The Czechs had been collaborating with the Nazis, and they were generously rewarded for their efforts.

From my early age I was absolutely clear where my allegiances lied!

Leningrad and Russia have always been my love, my identity, and my motherland. Often remote, often hidden far away, over the horizon, but Motherland nevertheless! Just as my Russian, maternal grandmother was perhaps the most important woman in my life.

And whatever I later became, whatever I am now, was formed during those days of determined fight against the evil, during the Siege of Leningrad, which took place decades before I was even born.

***

Last week I was working in the Russian Far East, in Kamchatka, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. I flew there from Tokyo, and stayed longer than I originally planned. I was trying to document the tremendous progress that this part of the country has registered during the last decade.

Just as during my lengthy visit to Brazil in 2015, I refused to meet intellectuals and ‘elites’. I spent time discussing Russia and the world with sailors, fishermen, and truck drivers – the most common folks.

Venezuela was bleeding. Every day, I read the news, and searched for the latest developments in Latin America.

I kept stumbling over the most cynical reports coming from the Western mass media outlets.

They were celebrating! They were openly calling for an invasion to depose the government. They were getting hyperbolic about ‘absolute chaos’ in Caracas.

It was extremely sad reading. It was actually disgusting. These scribes had no higher principles, no understanding of duty or of sacrifice. They were getting paid well and, intuitively, they simply knew what they were expected to write. Their ‘culture’ was extremely low.

They had absolutely no clue that it is much more glorious to eat shit than caviar, if you are doing it in order to defend your ideals and your beloved country.

Because these men and women from the Western mainstream have no ideals left, as they hardly understand the meaning of “love” or pride, anymore.

But those Russian workers I spoke to, they understood perfectly well what was going on more than 10,000 kilometers away, in Venezuela, as the colonel from the novel of Garcia Marquez would understand, and as my grandmother most definitely would.

It is actually all very simple: you stick to your principles, no matter how tough such decisions might be. Or if you don’t, your life is finished, thoroughly meaningless: your life as a person, or the life of the entire society.

In the West, in the epicenter of imperialism, a colonialist mentality and savage consumerism has made all basic ideals of humanism thoroughly irrelevant. Ethical principles have become the laughing stock of the official propagandists who are busy spreading nihilism all over the planet. That is why people are so confused and that is why life is so empty. It is empty in the Empire itself, and in its ‘client’ states that are shamelessly whoring, betraying and selling their own people and all that is above and under the surface of the Earth.

That is why re-visiting the great books written by people like Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Maxim Gorki, is so essential, in this dark time and age.

No one wants to eat shit. Nobody wants the people of Venezuela to eat shit!

But if the choice is between tenderloin as a reward for betrayal, and rotten vegetables to sustain you while fighting your treasonous elites and an indirect foreign invasion, in a ‘normal’ society the choice is obvious!

And then, after victory is finally achieved, for those who are forcing their own proud patriots to eat shit, there should be no clemency, and no forgiveness.

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The Big Oil cartels have, for decades, been poisoning the Gulf of Mexico, the Persian Gulf and many other oceans and ocean floors with uncounted millions of gallons of toxic crude oil via their risky, and very leaky deep water oil wells. It wasn’t just the crime against the planet that British Petroleum and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton perpetrated in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. There are many other entities that have contributed to the mortal wounding of the Gulf, including the US military.

A prime example of the damage done to the Gulf by corporate entities includes the Mississippi River delta’s massive dead zone that has been enlarging rapidly for decades, thanks to the many shoreline polluters that have been allowing industrial waste, herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers and other toxins to flow downstream from such so-called “environmentally friendly” states like Minnesota and its Big Chemical and Big Agribusiness-mesmerized farmers.

There are hundreds of dead zones at the mouths of many of the world’s major rivers, but much of the pollution that caused the huge dead zone at the Mississippi’s mouth started in Upper Midwest farmlands, especially the corporate mega-farms. (See www.geoengineeringwatch.com for more details.)

Carcinogenic corporate waste products that are dumped directly into the river or otherwise seep into the ground water are known to sicken and then kill living creatures downstream. As I was growing up, I fished in the Minnesota River and I witnessed the beginnings of the mortal wounding of that river because of massive corporate farm chemical runoff.  The Minnesota went from swimmable and fishable to muddy, smelly, toxic and relatively fishless during the years in which I was coming of age.

So far the corporate criminals in the Big Oil, Big Chemical and Big Agribusiness cartels have been making “good for us” but “bad for your planet” economic decisions, but they keep getting off with barely a rap on the knuckles for contributing to the slow death of our increasingly poisoned planet, especially the water. And, just like the Big Bank’s predatory lenders on Wall Street who have had controlling power in all recent administrations, the corporate elites are still awarding themselves lavish bonuses and getting everything they want from our bribed legislators and co-opted Supreme Court justices.

These elite sociopaths who have both political and economic power could just as well be saying to us: “to hell with the long-term sustainability of Mother Earth. And to hell with you peasants in the lower 99% who depend on the health and sustainability of Mother Earth’s air, water and soil. We in the upper 1% got ours by hook or by crook, thanks to our owned media, our owned politicians, our owned lawyers, our owned judges, our owned police, our owned lobbyists, our gated communities and our body guards, and we dare you to try to take any of it back.”

Whatever the highly paid lobbyists from Big Business tell us in their ever-present, staged Big Media interviews, the only things that really matter to them and their paymasters is shareholder value, the next quarter’s profit report and today’s share price (that they know will not be adversely affected by the ever-present criminal or unethical activities – Big Media will not be reporting on them!).

Big Oil and Big Agribusiness Aren’t the Only Industries that Have Been Polluting the Air and the Water

Of course, the history of petroleum pollution of the once pristine, fertile and life-giving waters of the Gulf of Mexico didn’t just start with Big Oil’s inadvisable – and very risky – deep water drilling.

In 1946, flush with pride at winning WWII, the US Department of the Navy established a base of naval air operations on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. For the purpose of recruiting pilots to the Navy and raising unit morale it started performing airshows for the public, and the Blue Angels flying team was born. The Gulf has been its base of operations ever since, first at Jacksonville, Florida (until 1950), then at Corpus Christi, Texas (from 1950 to 1954), and finally at its permanent home at Pensacola.

The Angels began petro-poisoning the Gulf when the Navy found it advisable to have its fighter jets dump excess fuel over the Gulf just prior to landing, thus decreasing the remote possibility of a lethal fireball engulfing the plane and pilot in case of a crash landing. No records seem to have been kept to quantify the volume or frequency of such fuel dumps, and, simply out of ignorance or arrogance, no environmental impact study was ever considered. I have heard that the Blue Angels have discontinued fuel dumping a number of years ago when the price of fuel rose dramatically; so now they only dump fuel before landing in certain emergencies.

JP-5 Jet Propellant is Highly Toxic Whether Burned or Dumped

The current Blue Angels F-18s use a highly toxic propellant fuel, a recent permutation of which is called JP-5. And the many additives do not burn clean, no matter what the US Navy or Air Force says.

JP-5 is actually a highly refined kerosene that also contains a complex mixture of volatile chemicals that can be toxic to liver, brain, kidney and immune systems.

The post-combustion exhaust from jet engines is an equally carcinogenic polluter of air, water and soil that can then be poisonous to human, non-humans and plant and aquatic life.

The military personnel who handle the JP-5 fuel are at high risk of being poisoned by inhaling either the raw fumes or the engine exhaust. Those exposed can easily develop, in a delayed fashion, chronic illnesses because of the toxicity of the VOCs.

The Sobering Economics of Military Air Shows

The fuel consumption data for the US Navy’s Blue Angel and US Air Force’s Thunderbird air shows are generally kept secret – and for good reasons. The alarmingly high fuel consumption would tend to dampen the enthusiasm of all but the most patriotic and thrill-seeking ticket-buyers.

The aviation industry says that JP-5 jet fuel costs 2-3 times more than automotive fuel. A few years back JP-5 cost the Pentagon between $8 and $12/gallon!

The Duluth airshow is Coming

In 2014, the Blue Angels were in my hometown of Duluth, MN, headlining the biannual stunt-flying air show, which many of those critical of US militarism, US imperialism and US exceptionalism derogatorily call the Dulut Hairshow. During the pre-show promotional build-up, a local journalist for the Duluth News-Tribune was given a publicity ride and wrote in his column that the jet he rode in burned 1,200 gallons (8,000 pounds) of fuel per hour. That number should sober us all, for 1,200 gallons of fuel for a fuel-efficient car that gets 40 mpg would cover 48,000 miles. If you were driving 10,000 miles per year, the amount of fuel that that jet burns up in one hour would fuel your car for nearly 5 years.

Back then 1,200 gallons of JP-5 cost the military upwards of $12,000 (at $10/gallon). If one multiplied that consumption by 6 (the number of jets in each Blue Angels performing team) the fuel costs for 60 minutes would be $72,000 just for the fuel costs (not counting the daily practice sessions that also last an hour). And those costs didn’t factor in the fuel consumption for the round trip to Florida and back for each of the 70 air shows that the Blue Angels do in a typical year. Do the math and you will start to rethink the wisdom of supporting such environmentally-insensitive and unsustainable entertainment events.

On Bastille Day of 2014 (July 14) eight USAF Thunderbird F-16 jets arrived in Duluth along with the obligatory C-17 cargo plane carrying 30 support staff and spare parts for the jets (for air shows the support contingent usually numbers 50-55 members).

The next day, 6 Thunderbirds left Duluth for their only reason to be in Minnesota: to do a 10 second flyover for the start of the Major League Baseball All-Star game at Target Field in Minneapolis. The flyover was to coincide with the last strains of the Star Spangled Banner. Two spare jets, who made the trip for nothing, were left sitting on the tarmac in Duluth. The News Tribune reporter covering that story wrote that “each of the multi-million dollar fighter jets will consume about 3,000 pounds – or 500 gallons – of fuel to make the (30 minute) round trip to and from Minneapolis.

We’re talking big bucks every time either the Blue Angels of Thunderbirds perform or practice, even if one acknowledges that a portion of the costs are covered by civilian event sponsors. But there is more to understand about US military air shows that should raise additional questions.

A Duluth News-Tribune reporter covering one of Duluth’s air shows wrote that the commanding officer of one of the flight teams was required to fly a minimum of 3,000 training hours (paid for by the US taxpayer) in order to qualify for the role of commander. The other team members had to fly 1,350 training hours. The journalist noted in that article that there were a total of 15 pilots in the team, although only 6 perform at a time. The team members (the subs as well as prime time flyers) practice their highly technical and dangerous stunts virtually every day of the year in order to keep their skills honed and the air shows safe.

The History of US Military Air Shows

As of 2006, there had reportedly been 230 fighter pilots since the Blue Angels started their stunt-flying for audiences. Since the Angels began flying in 1946, about 25 of their pilots have died in crashes, which means that as many as 25 multimillion-dollar planes probably went down in the  crashes (this figure does not factor in the number of planes that were demolished while the pilot survived by ejecting safely). In 2011, 70 Blue Angel air shows (two shows per weekend) were presented at 35 different sites, with rehearsal flights the day before each performance. When they are not touring, the Angels practice their routines year-round, usually over the Gulf of Mexico at their Pensacola base of operations.

Now for more really sobering math.

Using the figures that the journalist obtained from the Blue Angels, the 3,000 hours of training for the single Commanding Officer used up as many as 2,400,000 gallons of jet fuel just to qualify (3,000 hours X 800 gallons/hour)! Of course, this training number does not include the equally enormous amounts of fuel consumed during the air show performances, the rehearsals or the flights to and from Pensacola.

The 1,350 training hours for the other pilots on the team (at one time there were as many as 15 pilots on the Blue Angels teams) consumed as much as 1,080,000 gallons for each pilot’s training (1,350 hours X 800 gallons/hour). Multiply that by 14 non-CO pilots and you get 15,120,000 gallons of fuel just for the hours spent training those pilots.

Considering the fact that in 2012, a gallon of JP-5 jet fuel cost around $8 to $12/gallon (average $10/gallon), every new Navy pilot who succeeds at becoming a Blue Angel pilot cost the US taxpayer approximately $10,080,000 per pilot (1,080,000 gallons X $10/gallon) – just for the fuel used to become a member of the team! And the 10 million dollars is not factoring in the airmen’s salaries, the retirement pensions or the tens of millions of dollars that each jet costs.

I challenge readers to try to estimate in  dollar figures the enormous fuel costs for all of the Blue Angel shows/year, and then try to calculate the fuel used up in the flights to and from Pensacola (or Las Vegas in the case of the Thunderbirds). And then add in the costs of the huge transport planes that carry all the repair parts and the 50 – 55 support crew members in supply and maintenance.

Of course, the costs to the American taxpayer are impossible to calculate precisely, but surely it must be billions of dollars per year, admittedly partly offset by ticket sales. Nevertheless, the burning of precious fuel must be taken into account if and when the future of fuel-wasting military air shows is to be re-considered.

Squandering Increasingly Scarce Fossil Fuel for our Amusement

This weekend (July 9 – 10, 2016), the USAF Thunderbirds will be headlining the Duluth Air Show. There will be a number of other participants, all using up increasingly scarce petroleum products for purposes of entertainment and the recruitment of starry-eyed, vulnerable young children who have been primed for wanting to join the military professions because of their extensive experience with first person shooter videogames that make homicidal violence normal and attractive.

America is headed for an over-population, Peak Oil, economic and climate change cliff, so isn’t it about time for people to get serious about the worrisome realities above? We live in a world of rapidly dwindling fossil fuel resources that are cavalierly being squandered by thousands of sociopathic corporate misleaders on Wall Street and War Street, including Big Oil, Big Agribusiness, Big Chemical, Big Food, Big Media and Big Armaments. Each of these industries – in one way or the other – profits from wars and rumors of war, and so the mesmerizing beat goes on.

And then of course we have our equally pro-war political (in both major parties) and military misleaders at both state and federal levels that have been mis-leading America into our current quagmire of military misadventures everywhere in the world And none of them has a clue as to how to honorably (or even dishonorably) extract our nation out of any of those messes.

Too many military veterans are now physically, neurologically and/or spiritually dead or dying (way too often at their own hands), and they sacrificed the best years of their lives not for American “democracy”, but for money-hungry corporations and CEOs that cunningly waved the flag and wore the patriotic lapel pins. Now we know that they never really cared about the well-being of their “cannon fodder” warriors who did the dirty work for them. The flag that multinational corporations and their CEOs pledge allegiance to IS NOT the Stars and Stripes, but it is a flag that has their corporate logo on it.

Millions of dead and dying American veterans from every war over the last century enlisted out of a sense of patriotic duty; but most of them soon found themselves 1) disillusioned by the atrocities they had been ordered to commit; 2) sickened from the exposures to military toxins (including the over-vaccination program for every enlistee); 3) malnourished from the highly processed pseudo-food; 4) neurologically and psychiatrically sickened from the ubiquitous cocktails of psych drugs given to them by military psychiatrists, medics and the VA; and 5)  tormented by the post-combat demons, the nightmares and the suicidality – all the while earning less than minimum wage. And part of the propaganda that led to think that killing and dying for their nation was glorious may have begun with the supposed glory of military air shows.

America’s soldiers, airmen, seamen and Marines have been, in reality, working not for the US Constitution to which they pledged allegiance, but rather for a whole host of nefarious special interest groups that quickly stopped supporting them when the body bags and broken brains came home.

Hopefully, acknowledging these unwelcome realities will someday set us free from the war-mongering schemers on Wall Street and War Street.

One of the purposes of this column is to point out some of the serious downsides of military air shows in order warn others about the connection between America’s unaffordable imperialistic, endless war agenda and the on-rushing energy and environmental crises that have been censored out of our consciousness by a feel-good media that chooses vagueness or silence when courageous clarity is what is needed.

So, this next weekend, many patriotic Duluthians will be watching in wide-eyed wonder the highly skilled jet pilots as they do their breath-taking stunts.

But there are many Duluthians who will refuse to spend their time and money attending and supporting these shows. They are capable of understanding the many negatives of America’s energy-wasting air shows that are being sponsored by corporate entities that have closed their eyes to the above realities.

Sadly, the Thunderbirds and their sponsors and fans are unconsciously hastening – if nothing is done to change things – America’s inevitable moral and financial bankruptcy by ignoring the wastefulness of burning up precious non-renewable fossil fuel resources and at the same time permanently poisoning the planet and risking the health of everybody and their progeny.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. In the decade prior to his retirement from family practice, he practiced what could best be described as “holistic (non-drug) and preventive mental health care”. He frequently dealt with combat-induced PTSD, a totally preventable disorder. Dr Kohls has been actively involved in peace, justice and nonviolence issues for much of his adult life and, since he retired, he has written a weekly column for the Duluth Reader dealing with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, psychiatric drugs, vaccines, and movements that threaten American health, democracy, civility and longevity. Many of his columns are archived online at

http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn and at http://www.globalresearch.ca/search?q=gary+kohls&x=0&y=0

 

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This is a call for demonstrations in Washington to stop the drive to World War III.

In its pursuit of planet-wide dominance, the U.S. government has over the past 15 years waged wars which have moved our planet step-by-step to the precipice of a nuclear war which can destroy our planet.  It has initiated illegal wars of aggression which continue in various forms to this day in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, while covertly financing and arming Jihadists in Syria and other countries.

Meanwhile, U.S. government-led Nato forces have for some time sought  military encirclement of Russia, with U.S. and Nato forces now moving up to its very borders on the false pretext of imaginary ‘Russian aggression, while new military bases and movement of high tech military equipment, new military bases, and engagements in the South China sea threaten to trigger war with China.

It should be emphasized that – unlike the other victims of U.S. military aggression  – Russia and China are powerful nuclear armed states, with the current aggressive moves against them bringing a real danger of nuclear war.  The danger of a planet-destroying nuclear war is now at a higher pitch than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.

The first anti-war demonstration in Washington in the 1960’s opposing the U.S. Vietnam war attracted only about 26,000 people However, it was the start of the massive anti-war movement which ultimately brought more than a million anti-Vietnam war demonstrators to Washington/

It’s now time for the first demonstration in Washington calling for a new kind of workers government to stop the drive to world war.  The current government in Washington represents not the interest of the U.S. people, but that of the financial elite which benefits from one trillion dollars per year transfered essentially free from the government to its banks and finance companies; that of the leaders of the military and NSA/security system which systematically captures the online activity of American people; and that of the interests of the owners and upper managers of large corporations which benefit from war and exploitation..

It’s true that approximately 10% of the U.S. population comprises an upper middle class whose economic interests align to varying degrees with the .1 and .01 per cent of the super-rich portion of the population. Nevertheless, an organizing slogan incorporating the widely accepted notion of the 99% might be used, such as: “Stop the War Drive with a workers socialist government. Government of, by, and for the 99%, not the 1% that benefits from the wars.”

Demands of these demonstrations should include:

  • Immediate ending of all U.S. military aggression in other peoples countries which have never attacked the U.S.
  • Immediate closure of the 650 U.S. military bases in other peoples countries.
  • Immediate start of a massive employment program in the U.S. to repair its crumbling infrastructure by utilizing the resources freed up by ending foreign militarism.
  • Immediate expropriation of the banks, finance companies, and large corporations whose interests currently underpin the drive to war   These organizations henceforth to be operated as public utilities, democratically controlled by American workers, who are the vast majority of the American people.
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As is known, the conclusion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement being lobbied for by Washington would create the world’s largest free trade zone and the free movement of capital. Today, the US and EU together (including the UK) are estimated to account for half of global GDP and a third of world trade.

Brexit, however, may introduce new elements into the Transatlantic Partnership equation.

On 26 June, the Independent, a British online newspaper, published an article titled “We thought the best thing about Brexit would be avoiding TTIP – but the fight isn’t over yet” by well-known anti-globalist and Eurosceptic John Hilary, executive director of the NGO War on Want. The author believes it is too early to celebrate a victory over supporters of the Transatlantic Partnership. “The Leave vote“, writes Hilary,

“means that the British people have escaped being party to any future TTIP agreement as an EU member state… At the same time… leaving the EU would bring us face-to-face with a UK political elite that has consistently championed the most extreme neoliberal positions… A new UK government could still attempt to sign us up to the principles of TTIP at a future date”.

Nick Dearden, director of NGO Global Justice Now, expresses a similar point of view:

Alongside US lobbyists, the British government has done everything possible to push the most extreme and toxic version of TTIP. So there’s every reason to suspect that the UK will look to develop a bilateral deal with the USA that could end up being even more disastrous for labour protections, consumer standards and public services than TTIP was going to be… Brexit means that we need to redouble our efforts to stop the UK’s free market fundamentalists from enabling massive corporate power grabs through bilateral trade deals.

Benjamin Oreskes and Victoria Guida, authors of the article “The bright side of Brexit? A US-UK trade deal” published in the online journal Politico, note that the prospects of a TTIP agreement between the US and the EU are becoming increasingly elusive. According to the authors, the agreement is facing particularly strong opposition in Germany and Austria. Last year, meanwhile, the Democrats promised American voters that if Barack Obama’s administration ran out of time to conclude the TTIP agreement with Europe, then it would be done by the new Democrat president (Hillary Clinton).

A number of other US experts, whose opinions are quoted by Politico, are more or less confident that the break-up between London and Brussels will not stop Washington and London entering into an agreement similar to the one prepared during negotiations between Washington and Brussels.

Arguably the most reserved on the issue and the one who has expressed himself most cautiously is Tennessee Republican senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Corker. He stated that he was all for expanding trade links with the UK, but would still prefer a wide-ranging trade pact between the US and the EU.

Hillary Clinton also gave her view on the subject, although her opinion was extremely affected. She reiterated Obama’s statement that the referendum will not influence relations between the US and the UK.

According to a number of experts, interest in entering into a bilateral agreement is now coming not just from Washington, but from London as well. To compensate for any possible trade losses as a result of leaving the EU, London is bolstering trade links with countries outside of the European Union. The US is the UK’s main trading partner. In 2015, the total value of UK goods exports was $460.1 billion and just over half of UK exports went to Europe. The US nevertheless holds first place among the UK’s trading partners. Last year, UK goods export volumes totalled (billions of dollars, share of total UK exports in brackets): US – 66.5 (14.5%); Germany – 46.4 (10.1%); Switzerland – 32.2 (7.0%); and China – 27.4 (5.9%). America is also the UK’s main partner in terms of international investment. Thus in 2014, US investment accounted for 41.5 percent of the total amount of FDI inflow into the UK economy ($72 billion) and by the end of 2014, the total amount of US foreign direct investment in the UK had reached $588 billion.

Obviously the UK is not such an important economic partner for the US as the US is for the UK, however. In 2014, for example, the UK was only America’s seventh biggest trading partner in terms of foreign trade turnover (after Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, Germany and South Korea).

Primarily, London is important to Washington not as a trade and economic partner, but as a political and military one. It is through London that the US is hoping to continue exerting its influence on Continental Europe and in this regard, Brexit will change nothing.

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The long-awaited Chilcot Report was finally released today, examining the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War and occupation. Unfortunately, on the most important question, the report’s conclusions are all but silent: why did the UK go to war?

Chilcot takes at face value the Blair government’s claim that the motive was to address Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and limits its criticism to mistakes in the intelligence on WMD, and on insufficient administrative and military planning. He shows a remarkable lack of curiosity about the political factors behind the move to war, especially given the weakness (even at the time) of the WMD case.

Most important of these is oil. Buried in deep in volume 9 of the 2.6 million-word report, Chilcot refers to government documents that explicitly state the oil objective, and outlining how Britain pursued that objective throughout the occupation. But he does not consider this evidence in his analysis or conclusions. Oil considerations do not even appear in the report’s 150-page summary.

To many people around the world, it was obvious that oil was a central issue, as Iraq itself had nearly a tenth of the world’s oil reserves, and together with its neighbouring countries nearly two thirds. There was a clear public interest in understanding how that affected UK decisions. Chilcot failed to explore it.

Section 10.3 of the report, in volume 9, records that senior government officials met secretly with BP and Shell on at several occasions (denied at the time) to discuss their commercial interests in obtaining contracts. Chilcot did not release the minutes, but we had obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act: they are posted here. In unusually expressive terms for a civil service write-up, one of the meeting’s minutes began, “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there” (emphasis in original). 

Also in that section, Chilcot includes references to several pre-war documents identifying a British objective of using Iraqi oil to boost Britain’s own energy supplies. For example, a February 2002 Cabinet Office paper stated that the UK’s Iraq policy falls “within our objectives of preserving peace and stability in the Gulf and ensuring energy security”. A Foreign Office strategy paper in May 2003, which Chilcot didn’t include, was even more explicit: “The future shape of the Iraqi oil industry will affect oil markets, and the functioning of OPEC, in both of which we have a vital interest“.

So there was the motive; but how did the UK act on it? That same section 10.3 refers to numerous documents revealing the UK’s evolving actions to shape the structure of the Iraqi oil industry, throughout the occupation until 2009. The government did so in close coordination with BP and Shell. This full story – with its crucial context ­– was told in Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq

As the UK’s strategy evolved with changing circumstances, two priority objectives remain consistently emphasised in the documents: to transfer Iraq’s oil industry from public ownership to the hands of multinational companies, and to make sure BP and Shell get a large piece of that. 

During the direct occupation of 2003-4, the UK consistently pushed oil policy towards the longer-term issue of privatisation, rather than the immediate rebuilding of the war-damaged infrastructure. The government installed Terry Adams, a former senior manager of BP, in Baghdad to begin that work.

British officials knew their plans were not what Iraqis wanted. One document in 2004, seen but not released by Chilcot, noted that the oil issue was “politically sensitive, touching on issues of sovereignty”. Without recognising any conflict, it recommended that Britain “push the message on [foreign direct investment] to the Iraqis in private, but it will require careful handling to avoid the impression that we are trying to push the Iraqis down one particular path”.

British officials actively pressed the oil issue on the interim government in 2004-5, the provisional government in 2005-6, and the permanent government of from 2006. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote to Tony Blair in July 2005 setting out the progress on those activities. He wrote that Iraqi oil “remains important for the UK commercially and in terms of energy security. Foreign investment is badly needed and we need to continue to support Iraq to create the right framework for investment, while also supporting UK companies to engage”.

During the December 2005 election, British Ambassador William Patey sought to pressure candidates to accept passage of an oil privatization law as a top priority for the new government. During 2006 and 2007 this law became the key focus of British and US political efforts in Iraq. Forcing passage of this law became a major focus of UK and US political efforts over the subsequent two years, and was closely tied to the “surge” in troops that President Bush announced in January 2007.

Deep in volume 9, when Chilcot refers to these British efforts, he presents them under the veneer of normal diplomatic activity, neglecting the reality that the UK and USA still had 150,000 troops the country, and had directly appointed the interim government. The permanent government in 2006 was established through elections the UK and USA had designed, and contested by the politicians they had promoted. Terry Adams was even commissioned to draft the contracts that would be signed with the likes of his former company.

In the end, attempts by Britain and the US to force a law through that legalised oil privatisation failed. The law was not passed, largely because of a popular Iraqi campaign against it. It was then decided to sign long-term contracts even without any legal basis for doing so.  Iraq´s oil industry is largely now run – illegally – by companies like BP, Shell and ExxonMobil.

Chilcot has said he was not asked to judge whether the war was legal.  Yet in his failure to examine the real motive for war, he has side-lined crucial evidence that might tell us about the legality of the war and occupation, and the culpability of senior UK officials, including Tony Blair.

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The command of the Syrian government troops announced a 72-hour truce across entire Syria. The report by the Syrian state-run news agency SANA says that “the truce will last from 1:00 am, July 6th until midnight, July 8th.” The ceasefire coincides with the start of the Eid al-Fitr festival, marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) said it agreed to the ceasefire while while Jaysh al Islam spokesman Islam Alloush said that “anything has changed” on the ground. Clashes continued across the country with all sides blaming each other for violations of the truce.

The Syrian army repelled a major attack of the joint force of Al-Nusra, the Free Syrian Army and Turkoman units. The militants attacked from their positions near Tal Baydha region, but were not able to breach the Syrian army’s defense lines. Some 20 militants were killed in the clashes. There are reports that the Chief of General Staff for the Syrian Arab Army, Lt. General ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Ayyoub visited northern Latakia on July 5 in order to observe preparations for the expected advance of pro-government forces in the area. The strategic town of Kinsibba, controlled by jihadists, will likely become the main target of the pro-government forces’ operations.

The government forces launched fresh military operations near the ancient city of Palmyra, engaging ISIS militants near the Talilah Crossroad. All attempts of ISIS to advance on Palmyra have been repelled.

Pro-Kurdish sources report that the ISIS terrorist group has lost up to 100 fighters in a failed counter-attack in the area of Ar Rus, south of Manbij, the strategic city in Syria’s Aleppo province. Now, ISIS militants are reportedly withdrawing in the direction of Jubb al Katashil.

Now, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces – Kurdish YPG units and some Arab militias – are redeploying forces for a fresh advance on the strategic city of Manbij. According to reports, it will be a major operation with a full-scale air support from the US-led coalition. Some sources say that the Kurds will advance on the city from four directions.

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Sir John Chilcot, a member of the British establishment and also a member of the Butler Inquiry, the responsibility of which was to determine if the so-called “intelligence” used as the excuse for the US/UK invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was “fixed” to justify the invasion, has, after seven years of delay, finally issued the Chilcot commission report.

Remember, there was a leaked memo from the head of British intelligence that the intelligence justifying the Iraqi Invasion was “fixed” or orchestrated to produce the justification for the invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the United States. Chilcot’s job was to make this fact go away or assume less importance and to protect the Butler Inquiry’s orchestrated verdict that, despite the word of the head of British intelligence, the intelligence was not fixed.

In other words, Sir John’s assigned task under the guise of an “impartial inquiry” was to absolve former UK PM and war criminal Tony Blair not of all responsibility but of all responsibility deserving of prosecution.

Sir John’s report is akin to FBI director Comey’s report on Hillary: They did it but they didn’t do it enough to be prosecuted.

In the context of democratic politics, if such existed in England, Tony Blair would be in the crosshairs of the ruling UK party, the Tories or Conservatives. Yet, as both parties represent the same private interest groups, the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, who has announced his resignation effective next October, rushed to the opposition party’s defense and gave in Parliament what former British Ambassador Craig Murray calls a “dishonest, apologia for the invasion that bore no relationship to the Chilcot report.”

The UK media, for the most part, also came out in defense of Tony Blair, the war criminal and liar, providing, according to Amb. Murray, “unlimited airtime to Blair and his defender Alastair Campbell” and “almost no airtime to those who campaigned against the war.”

Here is the judgement of a British Ambassador, Craig Murray: “Blair is still a creature of absolute self-serving slime.”

You could make the same judgment on almost every member of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes. And Hillary’s regime would be even worse. My prediction is that life on earth would not survive Hillary’s first term.

Elect Hillary and die.

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 WestHow America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

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Is the Dallas police shooting a false flag affair in behalf of gun control? Is it the result of a war veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? Is the shooting the beginning of retribution for thousands of wanton police murders of US citizens in the 21st century? Or is there some other explanation?

We will never know. The perpetrator is dead. The authorities will tell us whatever suits the purposes of authority.

We could say that the police have brought this on themselves by their undisciplined and violent behavior toward the public. On the other hand, we can hold the police chiefs, the police unions, the mayors and city councils, the governors, prosecutors, and the Justice (sic) Department responsible for failure to hold accountable those cops who murder and commit gratuitous violence against the public.

When police execute someone, the excuse is always something like this: “He reached under his shirt to his waistband. I thought he had a gun. I didn’t want to leave my children fatherless and my wife a widow.” The murdered victim’s wife and children, if any, are of no consequence.

Conservatives, especially those taught to be fearful of crime, have scant objection to police murders. Their view is always: “The police wouldn’t have shot him without cause.” The same bias in favor of the police is why conservative jurors always convict.

The liberals tend to interpret the shootings as racism, so they want to combat racism.

The real problem is that public authorities do not protect the public from gratuitous violence. Therefore, hatred and disrespect for the police are growing. Routine murders by police–several each day, almost all of which go unpunished–are generating the kind of anger that causes people to snap and to reply to violence with violence.

If the criminal justice system applied also to the police, the police would think twice before they wantonly murder.

Being a police officer is not supposed to be risk free. A police officer should be concerned about the public, not merely his own family. We cannot accept gratuitous police violence on the grounds that the officer’s behavior is dictated by his concerns for his own family. If an officer cannot accept the risks of being a police officer, he should find a different occupation.

Police violence is out of control because mayors, prosecutors, and governors are failing the public by refusing to put a halt to it. According to conservatives, punishment deters crime, but they do not apply this to the police.

Police violence is also out of control because of the revolution in police training which teaches police to protect themselves and to subdue the suspect regardless of cost. A number of former police officers have written to me that the reason they gave up the occupation is that today police are being trained to be killers like soldiers.

If a former police officer or someone knowledgeable about this training would describe it and its history, where it originated and why, I will post it on the website.

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 WestHow America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

 

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The banners and placards outside London’s Queen Elizabeth 11 Conference Centre – where the findings of the seven year awaited Chilcot Inquiry in to the Blair government’s illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq were to be revealed – reflected an anger undiminished since maybe two million people marched against the war in the city on 15th February 2003. Thirty six million are estimated to have demonstrated across the world.

On “Chilcot Wednesday”, 6th July, as Sir John Chilcot’s findings were awaited the fury still directed towards Tony Blair for the commitments he had made, unknown to Parliament, to George W. Bush and for the lies in documents giving the excuse for war under his watch, were palpable.

Two figures with Blair masks and bloody hands walked through the crowd, followed by two “Judges” in full formal regalia and wigs, past signs held high: “Blair, now is the time to pay for your crimes”, “Justice for Iraq, The Hague for Blair”, “Tony Blair ‘Peace Envoy’ – What an oxy-Moron” and referring to Blair’s fantasy that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could hit the West in “forty five minutes” there was: “Forty five minutes from Truth and Justice?”

Nicholas Wood, author of the meticulous book: “War Crime or Just War? The Case Against Blair”, had designed a thirty foot long banner with “Blair Must Face War Crimes Trial”, which was unveiled to the media outside Blair’s house at London’s 29 Connaught Square at 7 a.m., to greet Blair as he left for the Inquiry. (1)

He was also faced by relentless Iraq war protester and renowned actor Michael Culver, wearing a T-shirt reading: “2,000,000 Dead, 4,000,000 Fled, Genocide, Theft, Torture, Starvation.”

For a man holding integral responsibility for the ongoing deaths of probably now well over two million souls, so terrified that he has round the clock protection of 20 police officers – paid for by the taxpayer – it must have been a very bad start to his day of judgement.

Having ambushed Tony Blair, the banner was then then carried the mile-plus walk to the Conference Centre to further wide press exposure.

It was Green MP Caroline Lucas who gave the crowd the first hint of what might be to come. She had read an advance copy of the Summary of the Report since early morning. It was, she said: “Worse than your worst fears … diplomatic routes had not been exhausted, intelligence was flawed” and those responsible “must be held to account”, she demanded.

For a 2.6 million word document, ITV probably had the most succinct summary (2) of a tome which will be poured over for months and years:

*Tony Blair’s reputation lies in tatters in the wake of the report into the Iraq War

*Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry said the six-year conflict was unnecessary and disastrous

*The ex-prime minister was accused of exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein

*A memo also revealed that Blair promised George W Bush: ‘I will be with you, whatever’

*An emotional Blair defended the war, saying he would make same decision again

*Families of some of the 179 military personnel killed in described Blair as a “terrorist”

The memo referred to, above, of July 2002 (3) is extraordinary. The first sentence: “I will be with you whatever”, reads as if the beginning of a love letter. But then some will remember: “We pray together … we use the same toothpaste.”

He then advises the US President on the importance of planning, pointing out that the planned carnage: “ … is not Kosovo. It is not Afghanistan. It is not even the Gulf War.” How casually massacres in three countries are simply dismissed – including the US’1991 butchery and carnage on the Basra Road, the burying alive of Iraqi conscripts under US bulldozers, erased by Blair.

“Getting rid of Saddam is the right thing to do”, Blair assured Bush. The towering illegality of such an action not even a consideration. Astonishingly Blair admits that Saddam Hussein: “ … is a potential threat” – not an actual one and: “He could be contained.” However: “His departure would free up the region.”

“Free up” for what exactly? Ram raids for oil, further expansion and theft of Palestinian lands by an occupying force now Saddam Hussein would no longer be remitting compensation to Palestinian families? Further expansions as in Syria to impose a client government and move in to the oil and gas fields – with an eye also on Iran, geographically next door?

Cynical? Ponder that Blair became Middle East “Peace Envoy” shortly after slinking out of Downing Street in 2007, spent most of his time when in the region in Israel, did not offer even a bleat of criticism of Israel’s bombardments of Gaza – a besieged enclave with no army, navy, air force – in 2008-9, or the Commando attack on the peace and aid ship Mavi Marmara, in international waters, murdering ten in 2010 and further onslaughts on Gaza in 2012 and 2014.

However in 2009, Blair was awarded Israel’s Dan David Prize, with a million $ cash bung, as: “one of the most outstanding statesmen of our era”.

That now anyway seems a world away. After Chilcot, the families of soldiers killed in Iraq have vowed to sue Tony Blair for “every penny” (Independent, 8th July 2016.)

As Simon Jenkins has written (Guardian, 8th July 2016) “Blair emerges as other Iraq historians have already portrayed him, as a pathetic and self-regarding figure in awe of the transatlantic power. The most culpable participants in the story were his Cabinet colleagues (who) failed to do what they knew to be right and stop him.”

Blair renders his account for Iraq every day. He cuts a lonely and wretched figure. Seemingly scared of the outside world, he is imprisoned by armed guards day and night. He travels the world, living out of suitcases and hotel rooms, attended by a dwindling band of courtiers, sustained by shady friends and ‘consultancies.’

Jenkins might have eloquently written Blair’s political epitaph. There will be many more to follow.

Notes

1. http://metro.co.uk/2016/07/06/this-is-what-greeted-tony-blair-as-he-set-off-for-chilcot-inquiry-5988506/

2. http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-07-07/hammond-removing-members-of-iraqi-government-was-mistake/

3. https://mobile.twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/750649203324489728/photo/1

 

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It has long been known that currency markets are massively rigged. And see this, this, and this.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, U.K. Financial Services Authority and Singapore’s central bank and financial regulator found “smoking gun” evidence of a massive conspiracy by the big banks to rig the prices of financial derivatives based on the  Singapore  Interbank Offered Rate and Singapore Swap Offer Rate … which in turn warped international currency markets.

In a separate incident, a number of giant banks pleaded guilty to manipulating currency markets, and agreed to pay a $7.5 billion dollar fine. New York’s state financial regulator called it “a brazen ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ scheme to rip off their clients.”

The formal admissions by the banks include a trader saying, “We trying to manipulate it a bit more in ny now . . . a coupld buddies of mine and I.” And a vice president of a big bank said:

  • “If you aint cheating, you aint trying.”

Indeed, not only do the banks share confidential information with each other … they also shared it with a giant oil company.

Banks Rig Treasury Market

Bloomberg reported last September:

The same analytical technique that uncovered cheating in currency markets and the Libor rates benchmark [details below] — resulting in about $20 billion of fines — suggests the dealers who control the U.S. Treasury market rigged bond auctions for years, according to a lawsuit.

***

The plaintiffs built their case against the 22 primary dealers who serve as the backbone of Treasury trading — including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley — using data from Rosa Abrantes-Metz, an adjunct associate professor at New York University who has provided expert testimony in rigging cases.

Her conclusion: More than two-thirds of a certain type of Treasury auction appear to have been rigged. She found issues with other auctions, too.

***

Treasury traders at some banks learn of customer demand hours before auctions, and were communicating with their counterparts at other firms via chat rooms as recently as last year, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year.

***

Among the lawyers representing the investors is Daniel Brockett, a Quinn Emmanuel attorney who recently won a $1.87 billion settlement against Wall Street’s largest banks in a case alleging they conspired to limit competition in the market for credit-default swaps.

***

Another group of investors, including Boston’s public employee retirement system, has filed a similar suit against Wall Street primary dealers. Experts interviewed by Labaton Sucharow LLP, the law firm that filed that suit, analyzed auctions and the market for when-issued securities, which are essentially agreements to buy or sell Treasury bonds, notes or bills once they’re issued.

They claim that banks colluded to push prices artificially low at auctions, and to drive prices for when-issued securities to artificially high levels, until December 2012, when news broke of investigations into how Libor was set.

These scenarios all turn on a very simple conflict of interest,” attorney Michael Stocker said in a telephone interview. “You had banks who were auction participants who also had the power to move the prices that those markets depended on.

High-frequency trading has also long been used to manipulate the treasury market.

Derivatives Are Manipulated

Runaway derivatives – especially credit default swaps (CDS) – were one of the main causes of the 2008 financial crisis. Congress never fixed the problem, and actually made it worse.

The big banks have long manipulated derivatives … a $1,200 Trillion Dollar market.

Indeed, many trillions of dollars of derivatives are being manipulated in the exact same same way that interest rates are fixed (see below) … through gamed self-reporting.

Reuters noted in 2014:

A Manhattan federal judge said on Thursday that investors may pursue a lawsuit accusing 12 major banks of violating antitrust law by fixing prices and restraining competition in the roughly $21 trillion market for credit default swaps.

***

“The complaint provides a chronology of behavior that would probably not result from chance, coincidence, independent responses to common stimuli, or mere interdependence,” [Judge] Cote said.

The defendants include Bank of America Corp, Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc , Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG , Goldman Sachs Group Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc , JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and UBS AG.

Other defendants are the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and Markit Ltd, which provides credit derivative pricing services.

***

U.S. and European regulators have probed potential anticompetitive activity in CDS. In July 2013, the European Commission accused many of the defendants of colluding to block new CDS exchanges from entering the market.

***

“The financial crisis hardly explains the alleged secret meetings and coordinated actions,” the judge wrote. “Nor does it explain why ISDA and Markit simultaneously reversed course.”

In other words, the big banks are continuing to fix prices for CDS in secret meetings … and have torpedoed the more open and transparent CDS exchanges that Congress mandated.

The managing director at Graham Fisher & Co. (Joshua Rosner) said that the big banks are frontrunning CDS trades … and manipulating decisions on whether a the party “insured” by CDS has defaulted on its obligations, thus triggering an “event” requiring payment on the CDS.

By way of analogy, whether or not an insurance company pays to rebuild a house which has burned to the ground may turn on whether it finds the fire was arson or accidental.

This is a big deal … while hundreds of thousands of dollars might be at stake in the home fire example, many tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars ride on whether or not a country like Greece is determined to have suffered a CDS-triggering event.

Rosner notes:

The potential use of CDS to artificially manipulate corporate solvency, the imbalances in the amounts of CDS outstanding relative to referenced debt and ongoing allegations that ISDA’s Determinations Committee is deeply conflicted and “operates as a quasi-Star Chamber or cartel”, are finally being scrutinized.

As one source recently suggested, “It would be a surprise if determinations of default, made by a committee of interested parties, don’t lead to findings of manipulation similar to those found in LIBOR and FOREX”.

***

The fact that Pimco’s Chief Investment Officer criticized the determination that Greece had not triggered its CDS, even though Pimco was part of the unanimous vote making that determination, is profoundly troubling to say the least.

***

The fact that the [ISDA’s Determinations Committees] has no obligation to “research, investigate, supplement or verify the accuracy of information on which a determination is based” and members “may have an inherent conflict of interest in the outcome of any determinations” only adds credence to suggestions that the “CDS market is being manipulated and gerrymandered by the all-powerful investment banks”.

Interest Rates Are Manipulated

Bloomberg reported in 2014:

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc was ordered to pay $50 million by a federal judge in Connecticut over claims that it rigged the London interbank offered rate.

RBS Securities Japan Ltd. in April pleaded guilty to wire frauda s part of a settlement of more than $600 million with U.S and U.K. regulators over Libor manipulation, according to court filings. U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea in New Haventoday sentenced the Tokyo-based unit of RBS, Britain’s biggest publicly owned lender, to pay the agreed-upon fine, according to a Justice Department statement.

Global investigations into banks’ attempts to manipulate the benchmarks for profit have led to fines and settlements for lenders including RBS, Barclays Plc, UBS AG and Rabobank Groep.

RBS was among six companies fined a record 1.7 billion euros ($2.3 billion) by the European Union last month for rigging interest rates linked to Libor. The combined fines for manipulating yen Libor and Euribor, the benchmark money-market rate for the euro, are the largest-ever EU cartel penalties.

Global fines for rate-rigging have reached $6 billion since June 2012 as authorities around the world probe whether traders worked together to fix Libor, meant to reflect the interest rate at which banks lend to each other, to benefit their own trading positions.

To put the Libor interest rate scandal in perspective:

  • Even though RBS and a handful of other banks have been fined for interest rate manipulation, Libor is still being manipulated. No wonder … the fines are pocket change – the cost of doing business – for the big banks

Energy Prices Manipulated

Energy markets are manipulated as well …

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says that JP Morgan has massively manipulated energy markets in California and the Midwest, obtaining tens of millions of dollars in overpayments from grid operators between September 2010 and June 2011.

And Pulitzer prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston noted in 2014 that Wall Street is trying to launch Enron 2.0.

And the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations found that Enron itself (which massively manipulated energy markets) was enabled by the fraud of big banks such as Citigroup and Chase.

(And as noted above, oil prices are manipulated.)

Gold and Silver Are Manipulated

Deutsche Bank admitted this year that it participated with other big banks in manipulating gold and silver prices.

In 2014, Switzerland’s financial regulator (FINMA) found “serious misconduct” and a “clear attempt to manipulate precious metals benchmarks” by UBS employees in precious metals trading, particularly with silver. Reuters reported:

Swiss regulator FINMA said on Wednesday that it found a “clear attempt” to manipulate precious metals benchmarks during its investigation into precious metals and foreign exchange trading at UBS …

And the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority found that Barclays manipulated the price of gold for a decade, sending “bursts” of sell orders to manipulate the market.

Gold and silver prices have been “fixed” in daily conference calls by the powers-that-be for a long time.

Bloomberg reported in 2013:

It is the participating banks themselves that administer the gold and silver benchmarks.

So are prices being manipulated? Let’s take a look at the evidence. In his book “The Gold Cartel,” commodity analyst Dimitri Speck combines minute-by-minute data from most of 1993 through 2012 to show how gold prices move on an average day (see attached charts). He finds that the spot price of gold tends to drop sharply around the London evening fixing (10 a.m. New York time). A similar, if less pronounced, drop in price occurs around the London morning fixing. The same daily declines can be seen in silver prices from 1998 through 2012.

For both commodities there were, on average, no comparable price changes at any other time of the day. These patterns are consistent with manipulation in both markets.

The Oil Market Is Manipulated

The big banks aided Unaoil in bribing governments worldwide to manipulate oil prices. The Age notes:

Bankers in New York and London have facilitated Unaoil’s money laundering ….

The European Commission says oil prices have been manipulated for many years.

And many commentators note that big banks play a big role in the mediation.

Other Commodities Are Manipulated

The big banks and government agencies have been conspiring to manipulate commodities prices for decades.

The big banks are taking over important aspects of the physical economy – including uranium mining, petroleum products, aluminum, ownership and operation of airports, toll roads, ports, and electricity – to manipulate market prices.

And they are using these physical assets to massively manipulate commodities prices … scalping consumers of many billions of dollars each year. (More from Matt Taibbi, FDL and Elizabeth Warren.)

The Mortgage Market Is Manipulated

Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo admitted this year that they fraudulently manipulated the mortgage and mortgage backed securities markets.

Indeed, the entire housing bubble which crashed in 2007 was caused by manipulation.

The big banks committed massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (and see this).

And they pledged the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this. This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car.

Everything Can Be Manipulated through High-Frequency Trading

Traders with high-tech computers can manipulate stocks, bonds, options, currencies and commodities. And see this.

Manipulating Numerous Markets In Myriad Ways

The big banks and other giants manipulate numerous markets in myriad ways, for example:

  • Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this
  • Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here
  • Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this
  • Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this
  • Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

And the big banks engaged in pervasive criminal behavior as well, by engaging in shenanigans such as:

  • Funding the Nazis (while we’re referring to funding the original Nazis many decades ago, the U.S. is now backing the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, and banks are undoubtedly involved in some of the support)
  • Launching a coup against the President of the United States (an old – but vital – story)

The Big Picture

The experts say that big banks will keep manipulating markets unless and until their executives are thrown in jail for fraud.

Why? Because the system is rigged to allow the big banks to commit continuous and massive fraud, and then to pay small fines as the “cost of doing business”. As Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz noted years ago:

“The system is set so that even if you’re caught, the penalty is just a small number relative to what you walk home with.

The fine is just a cost of doing business. It’s like a parking fine. Sometimes you make a decision to park knowing that you might get a fine because going around the corner to the parking lot takes you too much time.

Indeed, Reuters points out:

Switzerland’s regulator FINMA ordered UBS, the country’s biggest bank, to pay 134 million francs ($139 million) after it found serious misconduct in both foreign exchange and precious metals trading. It also capped bonuses for dealers in both units at twice their basic salary for two years.

Capping bonuses at twice base salary? That’s not a punishment … it’s an incentive.

Experts say that we have to prosecute fraud or else the economy won’t ever really stabilize.

But the government is doing the exact opposite. Indeed, the Justice Department has announced it will go easy on big banks, and always settles prosecutions for pennies on the dollar (a form of stealth bailout. It is also arguably one of the main causes of the double dip in housing.)

Indeed, the government doesn’t even force the banks to admit any criminal guilt as part of their settlements. In fact:

The banks have been allowed to investigate themselves,” one source familiar with the investigation told Reuters. “The investigated decide what they want to investigate, what they admit to, and how much they will pay.

Wall Street has manipulated virtually every other market as well – both in the financial sector and the real economy – and broken virtually every law on the books.

And they will keep on doing so until the Department of Justice grows a pair.

The criminality and blatant manipulation will grow and spread and metastasize – taking over and killing off more and more of the economy – until Wall Street executives are finally thrown in jail.

It’s that simple …

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Isn’t it rather odd that America’s largest single public expenditure scheduled for the coming decades has received no attention in the 2015-2016 presidential debates?

The expenditure is for a thirty-year program to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal and production facilities. Although President Obama began his administration with a dramatic public commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world, that commitment has long ago dwindled and died. It has been replaced by an administration plan to build a new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities to last the nation well into the second half of the twenty-first century. This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs, and production plants. The estimated cost? $1,000,000,000,000.00—or, for those readers unfamiliar with such lofty figures, $1 trillion.

Critics charge that the expenditure of this staggering sum will either bankrupt the country or, at the least, require massive cutbacks in funding for other federal government programs.

“We’re . . . wondering how the heck we’re going to pay for it,” admitted Brian McKeon, an undersecretary of defense. And we’re “probably thanking our stars we won’t be here to have to have to answer the question,” he added with a chuckle.

This nuclear “modernization” plan violates the terms of the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires the nuclear powers to engage in nuclear disarmament. The plan is also moving forward despite the fact that the U.S. government already possesses roughly 7,000 nuclear weapons that can easily destroy the world. Although climate change might end up accomplishing much the same thing, a nuclear war does have the advantage of terminating life on earth more rapidly.

This trillion dollar nuclear weapons buildup has yet to inspire any questions about it by the moderators during the numerous presidential debates. Even so, in the course of the campaign, the presidential candidates have begun to reveal their attitudes toward it.

On the Republican side, the candidates—despite their professed distaste for federal expenditures and “big government”—have been enthusiastic supporters of this great leap forward in the nuclear arms race. Donald Trump, the frontrunner, contended in his presidential announcement speech that “our nuclear arsenal doesn’t work,” insisting that it is out of date. Although he didn’t mention the $1 trillion price tag for “modernization,” the program is clearly something he favors, especially given his campaign’s focus on building a U.S. military machine “so big, powerful, and strong that no one will mess with us.”

His Republican rivals have adopted a similar approach. Marco Rubio, asked while campaigning in Iowa about whether he supported the trillion dollar investment in new nuclear weapons, replied that “we have to have them. No country in the world faces the threats America faces.” When a peace activist questioned Ted Cruz on the campaign trail about whether he agreed with Ronald Reagan on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons, the Texas senator replied: “I think we’re a long way from that and, in the meantime, we need to be prepared to defend ourselves. The best way to avoid war is to be strong enough that no one wants to mess with the United States.” Apparently, Republican candidates are particularly worried about being “messed with.”

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has been more ambiguous about her stance toward a dramatic expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Asked by a peace activist about the trillion dollar nuclear plan, she replied that she would “look into that,” adding: “It doesn’t make sense to me.” Even so, like other issues that the former secretary of state has promised to “look into,” this one remains unresolved. Moreover, the “National Security” section of her campaign website promises that she will maintain the “strongest military the world has ever known”—not a propitious sign for critics of nuclear weapons.

Only Bernie Sanders has adopted a position of outright rejection. In May 2015, shortly after declaring his candidacy, Sanders was asked at a public meeting about the trillion dollar nuclear weapons program. He replied: “What all of this is about is our national priorities. Who are we as a people? Does Congress listen to the military-industrial complex” that “has never seen a war that they didn’t like? Or do we listen to the people of this country who are hurting?” In fact, Sanders is one of only three U.S. Senators who support the SANE Act, legislation that would significantly reduce U.S. government spending on nuclear weapons. In addition, on the campaign trail, Sanders has not only called for cuts in spending on nuclear weapons, but has affirmed his support for their total abolition.

Nevertheless, given the failure of the presidential debate moderators to raise the issue of nuclear weapons “modernization,” the American people have been left largely uninformed about the candidates’ opinions on this subject. So, if Americans would like more light shed on their future president’s response to this enormously expensive surge in the nuclear arms race, it looks like they are the ones who are going to have to ask the candidates the trillion dollar question.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?

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From Ukraine to Syria; Libya to Iraq: the West has repeatedly shown itself to be an imperial entity which brings nothing but chaos, devastation and destabilization to its victims. Contrary to spreading ‘freedom and democracy’ through its geopolitical endeavours, the West’s rap sheet in the 21st century is unrivalled in its immorality and malevolence.

Considering this reality, it is frankly absurd that the Western mainstream media and NATO chiefs have been peddling the narrative that Russia is the belligerent power in the world today. Unless you have been living under a rock in the 21st century, you will have witnessed NATO and the Western establishment leaping from one horror show to the next. Starting with the 2001 war in Afghanistan, the West set the 21st century on the dangerous path of perpetual war, with the remaining 84 years looking as war-torn as the initial 16 if warmongering sociopaths are allowed to be at the helm of the Western world.

Terrorist and Neo-Nazi Tools

345345345345345During a meeting at the end of June, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, condemned the belligerent policies of NATO and the wider West. Putin stated that Russia is “noticing persistent efforts by certain partners to maintain a monopoly on geopolitical dominance,” adding that the West often uses “terrorists, fundamentalists, far-right nationalists and even neo-fascists” as proxies in their imperial games.

It was clear from the very beginning that the 2013-14 Western colour revolution in Ukraine was spearheaded by various neo-Nazi forces, with many individuals with neo-Nazi ties taking up positions of power within the Ukrainian government following the coup. Andriy Parubiy for instance, one of the founders of the far right Social-National Party of Ukraine (whose flag incorporated a variation of the Wolfsangel  symbol used by the Nazis, and which later became the Svoboda party), was appointed as the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine just days after the government was overthrown in Kiev. Parubiy has been Chairman of the Ukrainian parliament since April of this year, yet there has been no outcry by the presstitutes in the West.

In Syria, the West has been supporting an array of terrorist forces, laughably trying to claim the rebels were predominately comprised of ‘moderate’ forces who were only seeking democracy. We know that the rebels were predominately made up of extremist forces, with US military intelligence reporting in 2012 that: “The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [(al-Qaeda in Iraq)], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” Despite this reality, the Obama administration still took the “willful decision” to support the terrorists trying to oust Bashar al-Assad, further demonstrating the nefarious nature of US foreign policy.

McCain: The Pre-eminent War Hawk

Out of all the war hawks who currently reside in Washington, one man stands head and shoulders above the rest. From supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine; to supporting terrorists in Syria: Senator John McCain has been heavily involved in two of the most destructive wars in recent years. McCain was a major cheerleader of the colour revolution in Ukraine, repeatedly meeting one of the other founders and present leader of the Svoboda party, Oleh Tyahnybok, amongst other figures.

McCain has been a steadfast supporter of the terrorist forces in Syria, and has repeatedly called for US ground troops to be deployed to Syria. At the end of 2014, Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, accused McCain ofillegally entering Syria in 2013 to meet the Syrian rebels. McCain was also photographed meeting with what appears to be the so-called caliph of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, around the time of his illegal visit to Syria.

Despite all the rhetoric spewed from Western politicians about their commitment to freedom, democracy, peace and the rule of law, the West has supported an array of nefarious actors across the globe that threaten freedom, democracy, peace and the rule of law. Historians of the future will not be kind to Western imperialism in the first two decades of the 21st century; with the empirical evidence demonstrating that Western aggression is the most serious threat to global stability, not Russian aggression.

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

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A Primer: USAID and US Hegemony

July 9th, 2016 by Tony Cartalucci

A nation is its institutions. If those institutions are overrun and no longer exist, so too does the nation itself cease to exist. Institutions range from the offices of government, to education, to agricultural and economic development, to the management of natural resources, national infrastructure including energy and transportation, and security. These are the things we think about when we think about the concept of a modern nation-state.

Contrary to popular belief, the invasion and occupation of any particular nation is not a mere exercise of military might. It also, by necessity, involves the destruction or overrunning and eventual replacement of all the above mentioned institutions.

The most extreme modern-day example of this was the US invasion of Iraq, where Iraqi institutions from top to bottom were either entirely destroyed and replaced, or taken over by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The CPA was literally headed by an American, Paul Bremer, who, far from being a military man, was instead drawn from the US State Department and a background of chairing corporate-financier boards of directors.

The CPA assumed responsibility for all aspects of life in Iraq, from the privatization of Iraq’s economy, to “reconstruction,” to reorganizing the nation socially, politically, and economically.

The average onlooker will remember US President George Bush’s “shock and awe,” and may remember several of the more notorious battles of the invasion and subsequent occupation. What they rarely recall is the all encompassing dominion the US assumed over the nation through the CPA which was merely underpinned by US military forces. Yet despite the relatively dull nature of the CPA’s work versus security operations carried out by American forces, the CPA is what essentially “occupied” and ultimately conquered Iraq.

USAID and Co. – Low Intensity Invasion and Occupation 

Iraq and Afghanistan are extreme examples of the US exercising global hegemony, which included spectacular, full-scale military invasions, lengthy occupations, and nationwide “nation-building” carried out by various organizations utilized by the US to project power abroad.

One of these organizations is USAID. It should be, but rarely is, troubling to the world’s nations that USAID played an integral part in the invasion, occupation, and conquest of  Iraq and Afghanistan, while it also maintains an extensive presence everywhere else US interests have directed their attention.

USAID and a virtual army of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and front-companies it supports worldwide, are engaged in activities in other nations ranging from education, energy, natural resources, economic development, transportation, and security – or in other words everything foreign nations should already be attending to themselves.

USAID does not seek to genuinely partner with foreign governments, but instead, create networks that operate independently of and parallel to existing, indigenous institutions and networks. USAID and its expanding network of facilitators extends into any given nation, slowly assuming responsibility over all areas a sovereign government should be managing, leaving existing governments irrelevant, empty shells. When parallel networks gain critical mass, they can then be used as a means of removing existing governments from power, and installing a client regime in its place – one that answers to the special interests that sponsored and directed USAID’s activities to begin with.

USAID actively seeks to co-opt local talent – both individually and small groups of talented individuals. They generally target start-ups and independent NGOs which is why USAID and other US government-funded NGOs are increasingly engaged in co-working spaces – even sponsoring the creation and management of new spaces across the developing world to create a convenient poaching ground for local talent.

A Global Game of Go 

USAID does not exist to “aid” anyone. It functions solely to overrun a targeted nation by building their networks over existing indigenous ones, turning a nation’s people against itself, and making preexisting networks irrelevant.

They are essentially filling up the sociopolitical, geostrategic, technological, and information space with their own influence, displacing all else.

Unlike the Western game of chess, where players seek to eliminate their opponent’s pieces from the board in a game of strategic attrition, USAID and other organizations like it and the strategy they are pursuing is more comparable to the Eastern game of go. In go, players seek to place as many pieces as possible onto the board, assuming control over the most territory.

In this context, any nation could represent a board, with its own pieces scattered across it in areas like energy, education, healthcare, and security. USAID seeks to place its own pieces on this board, generally under the guise of charity or foreign aid. It continues placing its pieces on the board, backed with inexhaustible resources and the benefit of its true intentions often being poorly understood by the governments and the people of the nations it is operating in.

The US through USAID is essentially playing a game of go against an unskilled player who doesn’t even know the game has begun. USAID is then able to quickly and easily overwhelm the board with its “pieces” – NGOs it funds, organizations and talent it has co-opted, and entirely parallel institutions running various aspects of a targeted nation right under the nose of that nation’s government.

In coordination with other US State Department-funded political fronts and NGOs, the business of then eliminating indigenous institutions and overthrowing established governments in favor of proxy institutions run by Western interests and client regimes bent to the will of the US, can begin in earnest.

Targeted nations often realize too late that the “space” on the board has been dominated by these foreign interests with whatever remains of indigenous institutions and networks so badly neglected and atrophied, they stand little chance of putting up any resistance.

Counterinsurgency Manuals are USAID’s “Rule Book”

USAID’s version of “go” has its own rule book of sorts, found easily online as free downloads from any number of US government websites in the form of counterinsurgency manuals. In these manuals, it is described how gaining control over any given population requires controlling the basic essentials that population depends on – everything from energy production to education, to garbage collection and job creation.

By controlling these aspects in any given population, one then controls that population itself. It is the key to not only defeating an “insurgency,” it is also the key to running a successful insurgency oneself. USAID projecting its influence into any given nation is in fact a sort of insurgency – a literal attempt to take control of a government – however incremental and patient the nature of that insurgency might be.

Areas included in US counterinsurgency manuals as essential to control include (but are not limited to):

  • police and fire services,
  • water,
  • electricity
  • education and training,
  • transportation,
  • medical,
  • sanitation,
  • banking,
  • agriculture,
  • labor relations,
  • manufacturing and,
  • construction

When inquiring into how many of these are regularly included in USAID programs, the answer is virtually all of them.

Beating USAID’s Game 

For any given nation, USAID should be listed as a foreign agency and its activities heavily restricted. Every penny they administer, if allowed to operate at all, should go straight into government programs. USAID programs should be made subordinate to government institutions, carried out by government institutions, and its role in such programs credited subordinately to government institutions. USAID should be strictly forbidden to operate independent networks, programs, workshops, contests, and meetings anywhere beyond America’s borders.

But more importantly, nations must understand the “go” board their territory and populations represent. They must create and place their own superior pieces upon this board in such numbers and of such quality that there is no room for USAID’s pieces to begin with. By doing so, a nation is not just countering USAID and the conspiracy it represents, it is defeating it at the most fundamental level this “game” is being played.

A nation creating strong institutions and networks within their own borders to manage and move forward those areas essential to the progress of modern civilization precludes the need for “foreign aid” in the first place. It is not just a matter of pride that a nation need not rely on “foreign aid,” but a matter of its survival, as “aid” is not given freely, and as in the case of USAID, serves as a vector for hegemony’s projection into the very heart of one’s nation.

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

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Unaccountable killer cops turning Black communities into battlegrounds made overnight Thursday’s incident inevitable.

It was just a matter of time – nor likely the last instance of justifiable public outrage exploding. People and communities take so much before reacting.

Until killer cops are held accountable for false arrests, extreme brutality, other forms of abuse and murdering Black youths, Dallas may prove a shot across the bow for what’s to come – a declaration of war against longstanding injustice.

This week’s headline-making police executions of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, MN respectively reflect daily incidents across America – cops brutalizing Blacks unaccountably, over 1,000 cop killings in 2015, disproportionately affecting unarmed Blacks.

According to Dallas police chief David Brown, snipers opened fire on police around 8:45PM Thursday – five officers killed, 10 wounded, some seriously, Brown saying suspects intended planting explosives at downtown Dallas locations.

Shootings occurred during a nonviolent Black Lives Matter protest over Baton Rouge and Minnesota Blacks murdered by police in cold blood. A so-called person of interest is in custody along with a suspect (allegedly armed with a rifle) and others.

More gunfire was reported near El Centro College. According to the Dallas Morning News, one cop killed was a Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) officer.

A civilian was wounded. A woman near the shooting is in custody. A person of interest turned himself in. Shootings reportedly were from elevated positions with rifles.

Police aren’t certain if all suspects are in custody. One reportedly died from a “self-inflicted gunshot wound,” according to Fox News. More likely, cops killed him.

A suspicious package was found, secured by bomb squad police. Downtown Dallas is described as a “major crime scene.”

In Warsaw, Poland attending an anti-Russia NATO summit, Obama’s pretense of concern for racial disparities and America’s criminal injustice system rang hollow.

Saying “we can do better than this” belies his phony war on terrorism, imperial madness, unbridled militarism, neoliberal harshness, destruction of fundamental freedoms, indifference to human suffering, Big Brother watching everyone, and favoring privileged interests over all others.

Cops in America serve and protect the powerful at the expense of most others, especially people of color.

The nation’s gulag prison system, the world’s largest by far, attests to its barbarity – mostly filled with poor, disadvantaged Blacks and Latinos. Many are falsely convicted or locked in cages for illicit drug possession offenses too minor to matter.

Criminal injustice defines America, reinvented Jim Crow, enforced by killer cops – America more a police state than democracy.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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Video: Who is Behind the ISIS? Michel Chossudovsky

July 8th, 2016 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

“NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command [2011] are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters…  

Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, … is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria.” (Israel’s Intel DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)

 

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Clinton Revealed “Intelligence Methods” and Sources

FBI director Comey said today that Hillary Clinton running emails containing government information on an unsecured, private server was not as bad as former CIA director Petraeus sharing classified documents with his lover.

But the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history, William Binney – the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”) – explains why Comey’s statement is nonsense.

By way of background, recall that – when the American press reported that U.S. intelligence services tracked Bin Laden through his satellite phone – he stopping using that type of phone … so we could no longer easily track him.

This is exactly what government officials mean whenever they say that someone – say Edward Snowden, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, or Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning – is threatening national security by “revealing confidential information-gathering methods or sources.”

Also by way of background, Binney pointed us to an article from March written by former NSA analyst, counterintelligence officer and War College professor John Schindler:

Just-released State Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act [here] detail a bureaucratic showdown between Ms. Clinton and NSA at the outset of her tenure at Foggy Bottom.

***

One senior NSA official, now retired, recalled the kerfuffle with Team Clinton in early 2009 about Blackberrys. “It was the usual Clinton prima donna stuff,” he explained, “the whole ‘rules are for other people’ act that I remembered from the ’90s.” Why Ms. Clinton would not simply check her personal email on an office computer, like every other government employee less senior than the president, seems a germane question, given what a major scandal email-gate turned out to be. “What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it?” the former NSA official asked, adding, “I wonder now, and I sure wish I’d asked about it back in 2009.”

He’s not the only NSA affiliate with pointed questions about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were really up to—and why they went to such trouble to circumvent federal laws about the use of IT systems and the handling of classified information.

***

As I explained in this column in January, one of the most controversial of Ms. Clinton’s emails released by the State Department under judicial order was one sent on June 8, 2011, to the Secretary of State by Sidney Blumenthal, Ms. Clinton’s unsavory friend and confidant who was running a private intelligence service for Ms. Clinton. This email contains an amazingly detailed assessment of events in Sudan, specifically a coup being plotted by top generals in that war-torn country. Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only 24 hours before.

To anybody familiar with intelligence reporting, this unmistakably signals intelligence, termed SIGINT in the trade. In other words, Mr. Blumenthal, a private citizen who had enjoyed no access to U.S. intelligence for over a decade when he sent that email, somehow got hold of SIGINT about the Sudanese leadership and managed to send it, via open, unclassified email, to his friend Ms. Clinton only one day later.

NSA officials were appalled by the State Department’s release of this email, since it bore all the hallmarks of Agency reporting. Back in early January when I reported this, I was confident that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from highly classified NSA sources, based on my years of reading and writing such reports myself, and one veteran agency official told me it was NSA information with “at least 90 percent confidence.”

Now, over two months later, I can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011, email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeedbased on highly sensitive NSA information. The agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthal’s highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.

Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified “Top Secret / Special Intelligence.” Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program, or SAP, several of which from the CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.

Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from their reports. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” one of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.

How Mr. Blumenthal got his hands on this information is the key question, and there’s no firm answer yet. The fact that he was able to take four separate highly classified NSA reports—none of which he was supposed to have any access to—and pass the details of them to Hillary Clinton via email only hours after NSA released them in Top Secret / Special Intelligence channels indicates something highly unusual, as well as illegal, was going on.

Binney explained to Washington’s Blog the serious nature of Clinton’s breach of GAMMA classified information:

The compromise of this kind of cryptology success has a number of impacts on the ability of NSA to produce accurate intelligence on foreign targets of highest interest.

(1) This lets the leaders of a foreign country know that their communications have been compromised and thatwe read what they are saying, planning and intending to do.

(2) It compromises the fact that a particular type of encryption is readable. Not just the leadership; but, also all the others in that country and around the world that are using that encryption.

(3) It lets our potential adversaries know our technology capabilities in attacking encryption.

(4) If other countries (like Russia or China or any others) know the encryption system involved, then they too will look at it for any weakness or flaws that would allow reading the system.

(5) It alerts adversaries to look into that system for structural errors in encryption design also look for human error in using the system or a combination of both that would make the system vulnerable.

(6) This presents the country using that system the opportunity to feed false information into the intelligence produced by NSA which means the free world.

(7) For NSA, this means that they have to find other ways to validate any intelligence they get from this encryption to insure the validity of the information they get.

The target country may stop using that encryption for leadership (as was the case with GAMMA GUPY) but may continue to use it at other levels of communication; but, over time, they have been alerted to this weakness and will move as fast as they can to replace it with other encryption.

GAMMA GUPY was the U.S. spy program which installed an antenna on the roof of the United States Embassy in Moscow to eavesdrop on top officials of the Soviet Union in Moscow as they chatted with each other on their car telephones.  When nationally-syndicated journalist Jack Anderson reported on GAMMA GUPY in 1971, it alerted the Soviet leadership … so they immediately stopped talking in a way that could be overheard.

Binney continued:

This [Clinton’s email hijinks] is real serious, on the order of what Jack Anderson compromises in 1971 dealing with the “Gamma Gupy” source.

This is the most sensitive intelligence, and [Clinton] and her staff took it out of classified reports and put excerpts in open source on her server.

***

All in all, this is a rather devastating compromise of technical capability and a commensurate loss of high value intelligence.

I know this kind of technical explanation is rather difficult for the public to understand and comprehend, but it is rather devastating to people responsible for intelligence production.

In my view, this is much worse than what Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning or any of the other whistleblowers have done.

Some are in prison for as many as 35 years. Others have just been ruined and kept from getting anything but menial jobs.  But, those in high positions get a pass for much worse offenses.

Indeed.

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Vladimir Putin has finally taken the kid gloves off.

The Russian president was meeting with foreign journalists at the conclusion of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 17th, when he left no one in any doubt that the world is headed down a course which could lead to nuclear war.

Putin railed against the journalists for their “tall tales” in blindly repeating lies and misinformation provided to them by the United States on its anti-ballistic missile systems being constructed in Eastern Europe. He pointed out that since the Iran nuclear deal, the claim the system is to protect against Iranian missiles has been exposed as a lie.

The journalists were informed that within a few years, Russia predicted the US would be able to extend the range of the system to 1000 km. At that point, Russia’s nuclear potential, and thus the nuclear balance between the US and Russia, would be placed in jeopardy.

Putin completely lost patience with the journalists, berating them for lazily helping to accelerate a nuclear confrontation by repeating US propaganda. He virtually pleaded with the western media, for the sake of the world, to change their line:

We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.

Does anyone in the reeking garbage heap that is mainstream western media have a conscience? Do they even have enough intellect to get what Putin is saying – that they are helping to push the planet towards World War III?

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The long delayed Iraq Inquiry Committee Chilcot report took seven years to complete, filled 12 volumes, yet excluded what’s most important – declaring the 2003 Iraq war illegal, flagrantly violating international law, destroying the cradle of civilization, raping it for control and profit, and demanding accountability for those responsible.

Its 2.6 million words pronounced no judgment on Blair’s partnership with GW Bush’s naked aggression against a nonbelligerent country, based entirely on misinformation and Big Lies.

US, Britain and co-conspiratorial “coalition” partners attacked and occupied Iraq based on falsified claims about nonexistent WMDs, no evidence of chemical or biological ones, mushroom-shaped cloud hysteria, manipulated intelligence, a fabricated Al Qaeda connection, and other phony threats.

Intelligence was willfully cooked to fit policy. Britain’s so-called Dodgy Dossier generated fear to enlist public support for war, justifying the unjustifiable.

Bush, Blair & Co. are war criminals, responsible for millions of deaths, vast destruction, along with endless violence and chaos, US-created and supported ISIS now acting as imperial foot soldiers.

Blair acted internally on his own, willfully lied, mislead parliament, his senior ministers and Britain’s public – inventing a nonexistent threat “with a certainty that was not justified,” said Chilcot.

War on Iraq was entirely based on lies. Genocidal crimes followed. Yet neither Bush or Blair faces accountability – at home or by the International Criminal Court (ICC) – established by the Rome Treaty to prosecute individuals for crimes of war, against humanity and genocide.

Chilcot said Britain “invade(d) Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was (a first) not a last resort.”

Saddam Hussein posed no regional threat, said Chilcot. Britain with America and coalition partners acted extrajudicially. His report stopped short of demanding what’s most important – long-denied accountability.

Bush, Blair & Co. belong in the dock, prosecuted for Nuremberg-level high crimes – ones Chief Justice Robert Jackson called “the supreme international crime against peace.”

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

 

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Amid raging corruption, social pathologies and outright political thuggery, a new gang of vassal regimes has taken-over Latin America. The new rulers are strictly recruited as the protégé’s of US financial and banking institutions. Hence the financial press refers to them as the “new managers” – of Wall Street.

The US financial media has once again provided a political cover for the vilest crimes committed by the ‘new managers’ as they launch their offensive against labor and in favor of the foreign and domestic financiers.

To understand the dynamics of the empire’s new vassal managers we will proceed by identifying (1) the illicit power grab (2) the neo-liberal policies they have pursued (3) the impact of their program on the class structure (4) their economic performance and future socio-political perspectives.

Vassals as Managers of Empire

Latin America’s current vassalage elite is of longer and shorter duration.

The regimes of longer duration with a historical legacy of submission, corruption and criminality include Mexico and Colombia where oligarchs , government officials and death squads cohabitate in close association with the US military, business and banking elites.

Over the past decades 100,000 citizens were murdered in Mexico and over 4 million peasants were dispossessed in Colombia. In both regimes over ten million acres of farmland and mining terrain were transferred to US and EU multinationals.

Hundreds of billions of illicit narco earnings were laundered by the Colombian and Mexican oligarchy to their US accounts via private banks.

The current political managers, Peña in Mexico and Santos in Colombia are rapidly de-nationalizing strategic oil and energy sectors, while savaging dynamic social movements – hundreds of students and teachers in Mexico and thousands of peasants and human rights activists in Colombia have been murdered.

The new wave of imperial vassals has seized power throughout most of Latin America with the direct and indirect intervention of the US. In 2009, Honduras President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a military coup backed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Zelaya’s program of agrarian reform, regional integration (with Venezuela) and constitutional elections was abolished. Zelaya was replaced by a US vassal, Roberto Micheletti who proceeded to murder several hundred landless rural workers and indigenous activists.

Washington moved to organize a constitutional cover by promoting a highly malleable landowner, Porfirio Lobo Sosa to the presidency.

The State Department next ousted Paraguyan President Francisco Lugo who governed between 2008-2012. Lugo promoted a moderate agrarian reform and a centrist regional integration agenda.

With the backing of Secretary of State Clinton, the Paraguayan oligarchy in Congress seized power , fabricated an impeachment decree and ousted President Lugo .He was briefly replaced by Vice President Federico Franco (2012-2013).

In 2013, Washington backed , the capital, Asuncion’s, notorious crime boss for President, one Horacio Castes – convicted for currency fraud in 1989, drug running in 1990, and most recently (2010) money laundering.

The Honduras and Paraguayan coups established (in miniature) the precedent for a new wave of ‘big country’ political vassals. The State Department moved toward the acceleration of banking takeovers in Brazil, Argentina and Peru.

In rapid succession, between December 2015 and April 2016 vassal managers seized power in Argentina and Brazil. In Argentina millionaire Mauricio Macri ruled by decree, by-passing constitutional legality. Macri fired scores of thousands of public service workers, closed social agencies and appointed judges and prosecutors without Congressional vote. He arbitrarily arrested social movement leaders – violating democratic procedures.

Macri’s Economic and Finance Ministers gained millions of dollars by ‘buying into’ multinational oil companies just prior to handing over private options on public enterprises.

The all-encompassing swindles and fraud carried out by the ‘new managers’ were covered up by the US media,who praised Macri’s professional team.

Moreover, Macri’s economic performance was a disaster. Exorbitant user fees on utilities and transport for consumers and business enterprises, increased three to ten-fold, forcing bankruptcy rates to soar and households to suffer light and gas closures.

Wall Street vulture funds received seven billion dollar payment from Macri’s managers ,for defaulted loans purchased for pennies over a dollar ,twenty-fold greater then the original lenders.

Data based on standard economic indicators,highlights the worst economic performance in a decade and a half.

Price inflation exceeds 40%; public debt increased by twenty percent in six months. Living standards and employment sharply declined. Growth and investment data was negative. Mismanagement, official corruption and arbitrary governance, did not induce confidence among local small and medium size businesses.

The respectable media, led by the New York Times, theFinancial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post falsified every aspect of Macri’s regime. Failed economic policies implemented by bankers turned cabinet ministers were dubbed long-term successes; crude ideologically driven policies promoting foreign investor profiteering were re-invented as business incentives.

Political thugs dismantled and replaced civil service agencies were labelled ‘a new management team’ by the vulgar propaganda scribes of the financial press.

In Brazil, a phony political power grab by Congressional opportunists ousted elected President Dilma Rousseff .She was replaced by a Washinton approved serial swindler and notorious bribe taker, Michel Temer.

The new economic managers were predictably controlled by Wall Street, World Bank and IMF bankers. They rushed measures to slash wages, pensions and other social expenditures , to lower business taxes and privatize the most lucrative public enterprises in transport, infrastructure, landholdings , oil and scores of other activities.

Even as the prostitute press lauded Brazil’s new managers’, prosecutors and judges arrested three newly appointed cabinet ministers for fraud and money laundering.  ‘President’ Temer is next in line for prosecution for his role in the mega Petrobras oil contracts scandal for bribes and payola.

The economic agenda by the new managers are not designed to attract new productive investments. Most inflows are short-term speculative ventures. Markets, especially, in commodities, show no upward growth, much to the chagrin of the free market technocrats. Industry and commerce are depressed as a result of the decline in consumer credit, employment and public spending induced by ‘the managers’ austerity policies.

Even as the US and Europe embrace free market austerity, it evokes a continent wide revolt. Nevertheless Latin America’s wave of vassal regimes, remain deeply embedded in decimating the welfare state and pillaging public treasuries led by a narrow elite of bankers and serial swindlers.

Conclusion

As Washington and the prostitute press hail their ‘new managers’ in Latin America, the celebration is abruptly given way to mass rage over corruption and demands for a shift to the political left.

In Brazil, “President” Temer rushes to implement big business measures, as his time in office is limited to weeks not months. His time out of jail is nearing a deadline. His cabinet of ‘technocrats’ prepare their luggage to follow.

Maurico Macri may survive a wave of strikes and protests and finish the year in office. But the plunging economy and pillage of the treasury is leading business to bankruptcy, the middle class to empty bank accounts and the dispossessed to spontaneous mass upheavals.

Washington’s new managers in Latin America cannot cope with an unruly citizenry and a failing free market economy.

Coups have been tried and work for grabbing power but do not establish effective rulership. Political shift to the right are gyrating out of Washington’s orbit and find no new counter-balance in the break-up of the European Union.

Vassal capitalist takeovers in Latin America generated publicist anesthesia and Wall Street euphoria; only to be rudely shocked to reality by economic pathologies.

Washington and Wall Street and their Latin America managers sought a false reality of unrestrained profits and pillaged wealth. The reality principle now forces them to recognize that their failures are inducing rage today and uprisings tomorrow.

 

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