Global Research

“Certain elements linked to terrorists in Syria are still shipping weapons and supplying their logistics from Turkey,” the Turkish-language daily, Karshi, cited a police report to the country’s public prosecutor about its operations in the city of Diyarbakir.

The newspaper, meantime, said that certain communities have also provided financial supports for the terrorists fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The daily also said the Al-Nusra and ISIL terrorist groups have established bases in Turkey to train recruits, adding that many explosive devices are even manufactured and assembled on Turkish soils.

Earlier on Tuesday, Spokesman of a Turkish political party revealed the Turkish government, since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, has been smuggling weapons to the terrorist organizations in Syria using a large number of ambulance vehicles.

“Turkey is a main cause of the war against Syria due to its miscalculations and arbitrary policies which caused the bloodshed of innocents in Syria,” the People’s Democratic Party in Turkey (HDP) Ayhan Bilgen told Syrian media, pointing out that terrorists leave Turkish camps for fighting in Syria and return back to the camps in Turkey.

The policy of Justice and Development party (AKP) negatively affected civil security in Turkey which became now in danger, affirming that AKP is seeking to liquidate HDP and moving it out of the Parliament, saying that what happens in the Southeastern of Turkey is demolishing cities with shells and explosives on the pretext of fighting terrorism and this is an incredible and unbelievable excuse.

Bilgen pointed out that the policy of AKP was completely wrong and based on unbalanced regional balances. He said that Turkish regime unlimitedly interfered in Syria’s affairs, supported terrorist organizations, and allowed foreign fighters to cross its border into Syria.

HDP spokesman called upon Turkish government to abandon terrorist organizations it supported including ISIL, al-Nusra Front, Sultan Abdel Hamid brigades, Ahrar al-Sham and others, and to support intra-Syrian dialogue.

The NATO has increased its presence in Eastern Europe 13 times for the latest years. In order to stop Russia’s revival, the US unwinds military conflicts plots at every possible way.

Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, President of the International Centre of Geopolitical Analysis explained in an interview to KP, that ‘if data on Russia-NATO power balance at the Western direction is analyzed, as well as military activity build-up rate at our borders, scale of combat equipment deployment, if the grade of Russia’s demonization is estimated, one can say that preparation to a real war is taking place. As such acts are usually undertaken at the forefront of a war.’

The expert noted that the Americans do everything possible today to clash Europe and Turkey with Russia and ignite a big military conflict. The problem from the US point of view is that Russia becomes not only a self-sustained state, but a global geopolitical player. Today all the old Soviet military bases are used by the NATO at full capacity.

He reminded that in Romania the NATO has reactivated one of the largest Soviet Air Forces base in Deveselu. In Poland Dutch-German-Polish corps have been deployed at the former military base of the Soviet times with a headquarters in Szczecin. Beside that, an active propaganda on alleged Russia’s intentions to devour Poland and the Baltics is being held.

However, the NATO is significantly ahead of Russia in the numbers of weapons. But the US is preparing for a nuclear conflict, as it is evidenced, Leonid Ivashov pointed out. ‘And here the main players are certainly not the Europeans. The main player is the Americans. Apart from task to stop Russia, they have yet another one here – not to let Europe get out of the US control. The Europeans have tried to carry out independent policy in economy, in politics, they don’t want to sign a colonial Transatlantic deal. And in military field there is a total American control. Even the Supreme Allied Commander Europe is an American. So they keep politicians and business in Europe through military obedience,’ the analyst highlighted.

According to him, the US practices forces build-up at the military stage in the Eastern Europe. ‘The Americans may not even carry out their ‘global strike’, but create an incident, which will generate an armed conflict. And then they will shed a tear that they don’t want to wage war, but are obliged to defend the NATO allies. It is important for them to wage war not in the territory of the US, but in Europe. As Europe is not only an ally for them, but a competitor in economy. They need to weaken Europe, And it is best of all to implement it orchestrating a conflict with Russia in Europe,’ the expert concluded.

Thus, Russia should be ready for provocations of any kind. ‘And we don’t need to conquer the Baltics or Poland for example. Even if they ask us to be our allies, or what is more, part of Russia. We shouldn’t take them. That is another civilization, and it will destruct us from inside,’ Leonid Ivashov added.

‘It should be kept in mind. We should act on equal terms, trade, not trust them regarding security issues in any case. Only balance of power is our guarantee of no war in the future,’ the expert concluded.

Poor Saudi Arabia. They don’t realize it yet but they have lost their oil war. The war in its current phase began in September, 2014, when the dying King Abdullah and his Minister of Petroleum, Ali Al-Naimi, told US Secretary of State John Kerry they would gladly join Washington in plunging world oil prices. It became clear the main Saudi motive was to eliminate the new growing challenge to their control of world oil markets by forcing prices so low that the US shale oil industry would soon go bankrupt. For Kerry and Washington the focus, of course, was to economically cripple Russia in the wake of new US sanctions by damaging their revenues from export of oil. Neither achieved their aim.

Now, however, it’s clear that Saudi Arabia, which along with Russia is the world’s largest oil producer, is going down a dark road to ruin. Washington seems more than happy to cheer them on.

The long-term Washington strategy since at least 1992, well before September 11, 2001 and Washington’s declaration of its War on Terror, has been by hook or by crook, by color revolution or outright invasion, to directly, with US “boots-on-the-ground,” militarily control the vast oil reserves and output of the major Arab OPEC oil countries. This is a long-standing institutional consensus, regardless who is President.

Cheney: ‘Where the Prize Ultimately Lies’

To appreciate the long-term strategic planning behind today’s chaotic wars in the Middle East there is no better person to look at than Dick Cheney and his statements as CEO of the then-world largest oilfield services company. In 1998, four years after becoming head of Halliburton, Cheney gave a speech to a group of Texas oilmen. Cheney told the annual meeting of the Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners Association in reference to finding oil abroad, “You’ve got to go where the oil is. I don’t think about it [political volatility] very much.”

During his first five years as CEO of Halliburton, Cheney took the company from annual revenues of $5.7 billion to $14.9 billion by 1999. Halliburton foreign oilfield operations went from 51% to almost 70% of revenues in that time. Dick Cheney clearly looked at the global oil picture back then more than most.

In September 1999 Cheney delivered a speech to the annual meeting of an elite group of international oilmen in London. One section is worth quoting at length:

“By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?

Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.”

The PNAC Warplan

Now let’s follow that bouncing ball sometimes called Dick Cheney a bit further. In September 2000 Cheney signed his name before his selection as George W. Bush’s vice presidential running-mate, to an unusual think-tank report that became the de facto blueprint of US military and foreign policy to the present. Another signer of that report was Don Rumsfeld, who would become Defense Secretary under the Cheney-Bush presidency (the order reflects the reality–w.e.)

The think-tank, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), was financed by the US military-industrial complex, supported by a gaggle of other Washington neo-conservative think tanks such as RAND. The PNAC board also included neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz, later to be Rumsfeld’s Deputy Secretary of Defense; ‘Scooter Libby,’ later Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff. It included Victoria Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan. (Notably Victoria Nuland herself went on in 2001 to become Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy adviser). It included Cheney-Bush ambassador to US-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and hapless presidential candidate Jeb Bush.

Cheney’s PNAC report explicitly called on the future US President to remove Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and militarily take control of the Middle East a full year before 911 gave the Cheney-Bush Administration the excuse Cheney needed to invade Iraq.

The PNAC report stated that its recommendations were based on the report in 1992 of then-Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney: “In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.”

At a time when Iran as a putative nuclear “threat” was not even on the map, PNAC advocated Ballistic Missile Defense: “DEVELOP AND DEPLOY GLOBAL MISSILE DEFENSES to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world. (emphasis added)

In the report Cheney’s cronies further noted that, “The military’s job during the Cold War was to deter Soviet expansionism. Today its task is to secure and expand the “zones of democratic peace; (sic)” to deter the rise of a new great-power competitor; defend key regions of Europe, East Asia and the Middle East; and to preserve American preeminence…”

The Cheney PNAC document of 2000 went on: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.“

The quote is worth reading at least twice.

A year after the PNAC report was issued, then-General Wesley Clark, no peacenik to be sure, in a March 2007 speech before the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, told of a Pentagon discussion he had had shortly after the strikes of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center and Pentagon with someone he knew in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s office.

Ten days after the 911 attacks, Clark was told by the former Pentagon associate, a general, that the Pentagon planned to invade Iraq. This was when Osama bin Laden, a bitter foe of the secular Baathist Socialist, Saddam, was being blamed for the terror attacks, and there was no 911 link to Iraq’s government. Clark related his conversation that day with the general:

“We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.”

“I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

These were all wars, or attempted wars from the US for military control of the most abundant proven oil regions of the world, what Cheney in 1999 described as, “where the prize ultimately lies.”

Since that time, the US State Department and a host of government-tied NGO’s such as National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, Soros’ Open Society Foundations and others, along with the CIA, have launched the US-orchestrated (“lead from behind” is the current slogan) Arab Spring series of “democratic” regime coups across the Middle East, including Hillary Clinton’s war against Qaddafi in Libya, against Bashar al Assad in oil-and-gas-rich Syria, in Iraq yet again, Egypt and other oil or gas states of the Middle East, including an failed 2009 Color Revolution, the so-called “Green Revolution” in Iran.

US Agenda in the Mideast 

The Washington Pentagon and US State Department agenda today in the Middle East has not varied one bit from that described by General Clark about his September 20 2001 Pentagon talk. It has expanded, but the aim is the same: full US military control of the heart of world oil flows, the Persian Gulf and beyond. As Henry Kissinger is alleged to have said during the first oil shock of the arly 1970’s (which he was instrumental in making happen), “If you control the oil, you control entire nations or groups of nations.”

Here we come to the September, 2014 Kerry-Abdullah deal. Washington ultimately has her eye on controlling the Saudi monarchy and its vast oil reserves, along with those of Kuwait and other Gulf Cooperation Council US “allies.” Britain, whom Charles de Gaulle referred to as “perfidious Albion,” is not the only perfidious world power.

After major surprises in their 2014 strategy of killing Russia’s oil revenue with Saudi help, when their own booming oil shale industry began to face major company bankruptcies, Washington was forced to recalculate. When Russia made its surprise entry into Syria on invitation of her legitimately elected President, Assad, on September 30, 2015, Washington was forced again to recalculate. Now the new plan seems to be to give Saudi Arabia “enough rope to hang herself” as that Soviet hangman, V. I. Lenin, was fond of saying.

When Prince Salman, the de facto Saudi King, fired the architect of Abdullah’s oil strategy to destroy US shale and regain world oil hegemony earlier this year and replaced him by ARAMCO chairman, Khalid Al-Falih, someone said to be more compliant with the 31-year-old erratic Prince Salman, Khalid immediately announced no plan to alter the low price high-production strategy of the Kingdom in order to kill the US shale rivals. That, despite mounting evidence the world oil market had undergone profound change since 2014.

It seems, however, that the US shale producers are far more resilient than the wily Prince Salman has calculated. On April 26, in testimony before the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s “Hearing to examine challenges and opportunities for oil and gas development in different price environments,” Suzanne Minter, Manager, Oil and Gas Consulting at Platts’ Analytics presented pretty interesting details that help explain why the volume of US shale oil has not yet collapsed despite a fall in global oil prices from around $103 a barrel in September 2014 to a range of $40-50 a barrel today. Most shale projects were to have gone under at prices below $65 or thereabouts.

In her testimony, Minter described extraordinary technology changes that have allowed US shale oil producers to survive and more. She noted that since 2012 US oil production grew by 57% from 6.1 million barrels per day (mmb/d) to a peak of 9.7 MMB/d in April of 2015. Almost all was due to new shale oil output. That’s 3.6 million barrels of US shale oil a day, a huge volume for the world oil market, including Saudi Arabia, to deal with.

Minter described the effects of huge technology improvements using the Texas Eagle Ford Basin shale region as an example: “Currently the Eagle Ford accounts for 13% of US crude production. In October, 2014 the rig count in the Eagle Ford peaked at 209 rigs. At that time, the average initial production (IP) rate for a well in the Eagle Ford was 436 barrels of crude per day and the average time it took to drill a well was 15 days. At that time, those 209 rigs, should they have remained in the basin, and continued to drill at that rate of one well every 15 days, would have ultimately produced 3.3 MMB/d of crude in the Eagle Ford by 2020.”

Then she describes the technology gains in production as well as time to drill and how many wells needed to get the same shale oil output. It’s impressive:

“In 2015 as producers cut their rig fleets, the rigs remaining now sit on the best known acreage. Resultantly, the average IP rate in the Eagle Ford increased by 50% to 662 barrels of crude per day and average drill times have fallen by 25% to 11 days. As a result, the current rig count of 49 in the Eagle Ford could theoretically hold production flat at the current estimated level of 1 MMb/d, so long as those 49 rigs stay in the basin through 2020 and continue to drill one well each every 11 days with an IP rate of 662 barrels each. This also means, that when recovery occurs, the Eagle Ford would only require 125 rigs to create the 3.3 MMB/d previously projected by 2020 that had once required 209 rigs to produce.”

Minter continued, “The time and the rate in which this energy entered the market appears to have stressed the system in ways unimagined” making the US producer, “the marginal supplier and price setter into the global market.” The Platts oil expert continued, “Drilled but uncompleted wells hold reserves that can be brought on line in a short period of time, thereby defining the concept of spare capacity. It is plausible to believe that US spare capacity may be close to rivaling OPEC’s current spare capacity. However, we believe that the prices needed to incentivize the US producer to complete their drilled but uncompleted wells may be much lower than global competitors believe or would like it to be. (emphasis added). Minter concluded, “Texas alone could introduce 1.25 MMB/d of oil into the global market and can do so in a short space of time – on average just 30 days. That’s more oil than the Saudis have threatened to flood the market with.”

So poor Prince Salman and his Royals may soon face an internal revolt by jealous and angry Royal rivals for destroying the finances of the once-super-rich Saudi Kingdom. The only fly in the US shale oil soup, however, is how long the shale oil bonanza can last. Shale oil reservoir depletion rates are significantly faster that with conventional wells. Some estimate that shale volumes in the US will drop dramatically, despite the new technologies, within five or so years. But by then Washington’s foolish Pentagon planners hope to have locked the entire Persian Gulf into their military grip, including the foolish Saudis. Both sides have a mad agenda.

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”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi met in Berlin yesterday to discuss Britain’s vote to exit the European Union. The leaders of the three largest euro zone economies held a joint press conference in advance of a two-day EU summit that begins today in Brussels. At the press conference, they pushed for a rapid exit by Britain and a massive build-up of EU military and police operations.

Despite the carefully scripted character of their remarks, it was clear that the Brexit vote has unleashed a series of financial and political crises with vast global ramifications. Stunned by Brexit, the EU is trying to integrate its remaining 27 member states on the basis of a further shift to the right, including increased austerity and a militarist foreign policy. This sets the stage not only for an escalation of attacks on the working class, but also for explosive international conflicts, including with Washington.

Merkel had previously distanced herself from demands that Britain immediately invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to initiate talks on the terms of its exit from the EU. Following the unexpected victory of the Leave campaign in last Thursday’s referendum, British Prime Minister David Cameron had announced that he would resign as Conservative Party leader and prime minister following the party conference in October and leave it to his successor to invoke Article 50.

Yesterday, however, Merkel aligned herself with European leaders demanding that London move rapidly to leave the EU. She declared, “We are united in considering that Article 50 of European treaties makes very clear that an EU member state that would like to leave the EU must notify the EU Council. Before this has taken place, no further step can be undertaken… This means, and on this we are united, that no informal or formal talks on a British exit from the EU can take place before a formal request on a British exit from the EU lies before the EU Council.”

Warning against anything that could “strengthen centrifugal tendencies,” Merkel called for a new “impulse” to drive forward the EU after Brexit. She identified as key issues the buildup of military and police forces and the boosting of business competitiveness.

With European and American stock markets continuing to tumble, Hollande cited the danger of a financial panic to justify a rapid separation of the EU from Britain. “Our responsibility is not to lose time in dealing with the issue of the British exit from the EU,” he said, “or [providing] the new impulse we need to give to the 27-member EU.” He added, “Nothing is worse than uncertainty. It generates political conduct that is often irrational. Uncertainty also generates financial conduct that can be irrational. The UK is already undergoing painful experiences of this, both financially and politically.”

After endorsing Merkel’s proposal to boost military and security spending, Hollande called for “social and budgetary harmonization in the euro zone,” saying that “this is one of our priorities.” With the euro zone countries already carrying out draconian attacks on wages and social rights, boosting military spending and standardizing EU countries’ budgets will inevitably involve new, even deeper attacks on working-class living standards.

Renzi, whose government is seeking EU approval for a new €40 billion bailout for the country’s banks, said, “We are sad about the decision of the British citizens, but it is a new era for Europe.”

EU calls for harsh treatment of Britain are exposing not only the breakdown of relations within Europe, but also a growth of tensions between Europe and the United States. US Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Europe yesterday to meet top EU and NATO officials. He warned the EU not to “start dreaming up vengeful premises” about how to deal with the Brexit crisis. Speaking to Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, he pointedly said that 22 EU member states were also in NATO, and that there should be “as much stability, as much certainty as possible.”

In an article on Monday titled “With Brexit, Washington’s Direct Line to the Continent Suddenly Frays,” the New York Times aired concerns of US officials that Brexit has undermined the US-European alliance. Compared to Britain, the Times wrote, “few nations were as willing to put a thumb as firmly on the scales of European debates in ways that benefit the United States.” The article, by David Sanger, the newspaper’s chief Washington correspondent, went on to lament, “Now that quiet diplomatic leverage—including moderating European trade demands and strong-arming nations to contribute more to NATO military missions—is suddenly diminished.”

Warning that “Germany still harbors deep suspicions of the United States,” and that “Paris often goes its own way,” the Times wrote that what made the US-UK relationship “special in an era of global diplomacy was Britain’s ability to act for Washington with the Europeans, to bridge the gap.” Sanger continued, “Now, as one White House official put it, the bridge has been wiped out by a surge that few predicted.”

The immediate aftermath of the referendum has already made clear that the Brexit crisis marks a historic turning point on a world scale, and that the rising conflict between the UK and the EU is charged with far wider conflicts deeply rooted in the contradictions of world imperialism.

The Brexit vote itself reflected the breakdown of the EU, undermined by deepening antagonisms between EU countries and widely discredited in the eyes of the working class as a result of years of austerity and social and economic retrogression. The bankruptcy of the EU and the impossibility of unifying Europe on a capitalist basis are only the expression within Europe of a broader, insoluble contradiction between globally integrated production and the nation-state system.

The last great crisis of British-European relations, French President Charles de Gaulle’s veto of British entry into the European Common Market in 1963 and 1967, was closely bound up with conflicts with Washington. Angry over rising US influence in France’s former colonial sphere, notably during Algeria’s war for independence from France, and frustrated by the economic advantages Washington derived from the dollar’s role as the world reserve currency, de Gaulle sought to limit US influence in Europe.

He withdrew France from the NATO military command and bluntly attacked Britain as a “Trojan horse” for US influence in Europe. After de Gaulle’s death, however, France bowed to the desire of other European countries to include Britain in the common market.

Over an entire period, however, tensions have been rising in US-European relations. The Stalinist dissolution of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism across Eastern Europe deprived the NATO alliance of the unifying effect of sharing a common adversary. Over the same period, the United States’ economic decline and its attempt to offset this decline by waging ever wider and bloodier wars in the Middle East and Africa, further intensified US-European tensions. France and Germany openly opposed the illegal 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

It is increasingly evident that the escalating US war drive against Russia and China in the aftermath of the 2008 Wall Street crash, which threatens to provoke a global nuclear war, has triggered deep opposition in sections of the European bourgeoisie. The EU countries defied the US “pivot to Asia” last year by joining China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Even though Berlin supported the 2014 Kiev putsch that installed a pro-NATO government in Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently denounced NATO military exercises led by the US and aimed at Russia as “warmongering.”

Now, threatened with being torn apart by the Brexit crisis, the EU is trying to survive by effecting a massive integration of its military and police forces, directed both at rising social anger at home and at external rivals, including the United States. This emerges clearly in documents prepared in advance of the EU summit that starts today—one by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and a second authored jointly by Steinmeier and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. Both are predicated on developing the EU’s ability to act militarily independently of Washington.

The Mogherini paper calls for “structured cooperation,” in which EU countries pool military equipment, units and their chains of command—essentially laying the basis for forming a common European army. “The EU will systematically encourage defense cooperation and strive to create a solid European defense industry, which is critical for Europe’s autonomy of decision and action,” the paper states.

The document reportedly indicates that Brexit will help repair the EU’s political and economic relations with Russia, which nosedived after Washington demanded that the EU impose punishing sanctions against Moscow. It says that the EU and Russia are “interdependent,” and pledges closer ties: “We will therefore engage Russia to discuss disagreements and to cooperate if and when our interests overlap.”

The Steinmeier-Ayrault paper, for its part, declares: “In an international environment ever more strongly characterized by diverging great power interests, France and Germany must work to develop the EU step by step as an independent global actor. The goal is to translate our knowledge and our civilian and military equipment into an ever more effective and realistic policy.”

Ukrainian security forces shelled the territory of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic 19 times over the past day, RIA Novosti reports from the headquarters of the LPR People’s Militia. “From June 27th to June 28th, 2016, 19 instances of shelling by the UAF were recorded in the LPR,” the LRP People’s Militia reported. According to this source, the most intensive shelling, featuring mortars from 82 to 120 mm calibre, infantry fighting vehicles and anti-aircraft installations, hit the positions of the People’s Militia in the Kalinovo, Veselogorovka, and Zolotoye-6 districts. 

Cities of the Donetsk People’s Republic also found themselves under Ukrainian shelling last night. The city administration stated that on the night of June 28th, Ukrainian security forces shelled the Kuibyshev district of Donetsk, damaging five houses and a gas pipeline. According to the administration, however, there were no victims.

Such information once again confirms that Ukraine is openly violating the principles of the Minsk Agreements. The government and military leadership of Ukraine have chosen the tactic of “neither war nor peace.” Without venturing on an open and full-scale offensive, Ukrainian army units and fighters of the so-called volunteer battalions daily open fire on the territories of the unrecognized republics of Donbass. They are also seizing the neutral territories (“gray zones”) designated by the OSCE mission as the demarcation line.

What is the point of such tactics?

These attacks cause harm to the armed forces of the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass, and such strikes are hitting the infrastructure of the republics and the defense systems of Donbass’ cities. These bombardments have a serious psychological impact on the civilian population of the DPR and LPR, and people get used to living in an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. What’s more, no one can say how much longer this situation will last.

Psychologically, uncertainty wears one down the most of all. As our sources in the DPR have reported, sometimes during serious shelling, many people run out of their homes and rejoice: finally, Ukrainian troops have begun an offensive! This means that militiamen and the peaceful population of Donbass are ready in advance to accept the inevitable losses associated with an offensive. They dream of quickly putting an end to this situation of uncertainty. Everyone in Donbass is sure that the next offensive by Ukrainian troops will end in their complete routing, which will be followed by a counter-offensive of the armies of the DPR and LPR that will liberate the cities of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics seized by Ukrainian troops.

Kiev is perfectly aware of the fatality of an offensive. Such would lead to military defeat and draw international condemnation of Ukraine. Thus, Ukrainian authorities have opted for the tactic of destroying the infrastructure and civilian population of Donbass without formally discarding the Minsk Agreements. The Donbass republics argue that the OSCE mission turns a blind eye to the numerous and daily violations of the ceasefire, thus giving confidence to the Ukrainian side and allowing it to employ the tactic of wearing down and bleeding out the enemy over a long period of time.

Translated by J. Arnoldski

Clashes are ongoing in Damascus’ East Ghouta as the Syrian Arab Army and its allies are advancing towards the village of Nashabiyah after the liberation of Al-Bahariyah last week.

On Monday, Al Nusra and its Turkmen allies launched an offensive in the Latakia province hitting SAA position at Jabal Al-Akrad and Jabal Turkmen. Pro-government forces, supported by Russian warplanes, were able to repel the advance, reportedly killing some 20 Jihadists.

The SAA has recaptured the village of Tal Sawwan in the western part of Homs province from ISIS. This move indicates that pro-government forces had regrouped in the area and now, they are ready to counter attack. In turn, ISIS units can not exploit the recent advances in the province because any further movement will stretch their ways of communication, making them vulnerable for attacks.

Weapons — including Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades —shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for the so-called “Syrian moderate rebels” have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to a joint investigation by the New York Times and al-Jazeera.

The theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights the messy, unplanned consequences of US-supported programs to arm and train rebels. There are no doubts that the stolen weapons have appeared, at least partly, in hands of Syrian Jihadi groups such Al Nusra.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has apologized for the death of the Russian pilot who was killed when a Russian jet was downed over the Syrian-Turkish border last November. In a letter to Vladimir Putin, Erdogan expressed “his deep sympathy and condolences to the relatives of the deceased Russian pilot”, argued that Ankara never had a desire “to down an aircraft belonging to Russia” and called Russia “a friend and a strategic partner”. In addition, Erdogan said he’s ready to fight terrorism together with Moscow. A half year of the sanctions has pushed Erdogan to send a love letter to Putin. What should we wait if the sanctions remain for a year?

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A global renewable energy transformation is underway. The proposed merger between Tesla and Solar City outlines the shape of things to come.

The integration of solar panels with battery storage and electric vehicles is the paradigm for both ecological global economic growth, and reaching the goals of the Paris Climate accord.

An integrated renewable energy company will combine electric vehicles, battery storage, and solar electric panels, all with rapidly expanding market share and plunging prices. Globally, investment in cheap and carbon free solar energy is already rapidly supplanting fossil fuels.

Whether or not Tesla’s corporate reorganization proceeds, this is the model for a global renewable energy company with a comprehensive and compatible product line.

Elon Musk of Tesla understands that the combination of increasingly cheaper solar panels with rapidly developing and affordable battery storage makes 100% renewable energy systems achievable globally.

Mega battery and photovoltaic factories, being constructed by Tesla and others like Faraday Future in the United States, and in India, China, Ghana, mean that global industrial productive might is being rapidly deployed for a renewable energy transformation.

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence estimates that at least 12 lithium ion mega-factories will come online by 2020. Seven of them in China. Sony is pushing forward with sulfur lithium battery development. China has passed the US in yearly production of electric vehicles by the start of 2016. 250,000 to 180,000 a year. China is now also global leader in lithium battery anode production. The French oil giant Total has bought the lithium battery company SAFT for $950 million as big oil is beginning to see where the sun is shining. And even the Saudis are now planning for major solar development as oil revenues collapse.

Profit driven renewable enterprises need sensible encouragement by fair market and utility rules, not carbon taxes, in order to continue to rapidly transform the global energy balance. Regulators and politician need to support, not sabotage the renewable energy transformation.

Instead of economically destructive and costly carbon taxes that would put a break on all economic activity, what’s needed is using the already successful renewable portfolio standards (RPS) mandating an ever increasing percentage of renewable energy.

The more renewables that are built , the lower the cost, the less pollution,the more good community jobs are created. California and its utilities and regulators are a good example of how we are moving rapidly toward a renewable turn.
California Utilities like PG&E and Southern California Edison have seen the future and it’s renewable. They’re investing big time in electric vehicle charging stations at the same time the state, led by Gov. Jerry Brown, mandates the phase in of more renewable power.The utilities understand that the renewable future mean more, not less, electric sales.

And it’s companies like Tesla, Faraday Future, China’s BYD, and Mercedes that aim to provide the vehicles to take advantage of this electricity and charging stations. And the batteries on these electric cars can also plug into the grid and your house to help provide supplemental power.

California regulations use RAM (Renewable Auction Mechanism) with competitive bids to help finance renewables,employing market forces to help keep pushing the cost of renewables down.

Wall Street investment in renewable energy is now far greater then in fossil fuels.Peabody Coal is bankrupt. On the same day the Solar City -Tesla merger was proposed, PG&E announced the planned shut down of Diablo Canyon, California’s nuclear last nuclear plant.

The sun is rising. Politicians and regulators need to assist our renewable entrepreneurs, workers and their unions, and communities hungry for clean sustainable jobs. We are witnessing the dawn of global ecological economic growth.

Roy Morrison’s next book is Sustainability Sutra forthcoming March 2017 from Select Books in NY

Fact check:

TESLA-Solar City Merger
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/tesla-makes-offer-to-buy-solarcity/421314/
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/21/11996508/tesla-solarcity-merger

Giant PV Production Factories
http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/as-solarcity-turns-giant-call-goes-out-for-supply-chain-20150611

India releases guidelines for ‘Ultra Mega’ solar power projects
By Tom Kenning Jul 07, 2015 11:53 AM BST 0
“Guidelines for implementing India’s plans for 20GW of solar capacity from “Ultra Mega solar power projects” in 25 parks have been published by the Ministry of new and Renewable energy (MNRE).

Each of the solar parks will have a minimum capacity of 500MW to be set up within five years from 2014/15 to 2018/19.”
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/india_releases_guidelines_for_ultra_mega_solar_power_projects

How Did China become the largest Solar PV Manufacturing … – Cstep.in
www.cstep.in/uploads/default/files/…/stuff/dc6ff09f580c30a0a6fc0d1a90ed813f.pdf

Ghana Africa’s largest solar (PV) power plant
5th August 2015
http://www.blue-energyco.com/africas-largest-solar-pv-power-plant/

“Blue Energy is to build Africa’s largest solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant in a move which could spark a renewable energy revolution in West Africa.
The giant 155-megawatt Nzema project will be one of the biggest in the world – only three solar PV plants in operation today are bigger. It will increase Ghana’s current generating capacity by 6% and will meet 20% of the government’s target of generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

The Nzema project will be the first to go ahead under Ghana’s 2011 Renewable Energy Act, which set up a system of feed-in tariffs, and it is a success for the government’s policy of attracting international finance. Last month Energy Minister Joe Oteng-Adjei announced he was seeking $1 billion of private investment to help Ghana achieve its renewables target.”

12 Mega-Lithium Battery Factories Under Construction Including 7 in China who leads in Electric Cars

/http://www.benchmarkminerals.com

http://www.discoveryinvesting.com/blog/2016/5/10/china-flanks-freeport-to-further-consolidate-the-lithium-ion-battery-business

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3540360/Faraday-Future-reveals-Nevada-megafactory-hopes-topple-Tesla-1billion-facility-build-mystery-electric-car-2018.html

Total buys lithium battery maker SAFT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-09/total-to-buy-french-battery-maker-saft-in-1-1-billion-deal

Saudis Go Solar
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/saudis-solar-energy/395315/

“Quietly, the prince is helping Saudi Arabia—the quintessential petrostate—prepare to make what could be one of the world’s biggest investments in solar power.

Near Riyadh, the government is preparing to build a commercial-scale solar-panel factory. On the Persian Gulf coast, another factory is about to begin producing large quantities of polysilicon, a material used to make solar cells. And next year, the two state-owned companies that control the energy sector—Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, and the Saudi Electricity Company, the kingdom’s main power producer—plan to jointly break ground on about 10 solar projects around the country.”

PG&E wants to own solar charging stations
http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/05/23/utilities-want-to-plug-in-more-electric-drivers/

Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric Car Charging
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1102396_utilities-to-lead-surge-of-electric-car-charging-in-southern-california

Chuina’s BYD Electric Vehicle plans
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/202ec13eda4944bda509070ca834ed20/chinese-electric-car-maker-enters-us-market-selling-buses

California Renewable Energy Plans

http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/

California Renewable Action Mechniam (RAM)
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/Renewable_Auction_Mechanis

California’s Last Nuclear Power Plant To Be Shut Down
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/21/482997213/californias-last-nuclear-power-plant-to-be-shut-down

Renewable Energy Investments: Major Milestones Reached, New World Record Set
Thur, Mar 24, 2016

“Coal and gas-fired generation attracted less than half as much capacity investment as renewables last year;
Renewables added more to global energy generation capacity than all other technologies combined;
For first time, developing world investments in renewables (up 19% in 2015) topped developed nations’ (down 8%);
World record total of $286 billion invested in renewables last year; makes $2.3 trillion over 12 years”

http://unep.org/newscentre/default.aspx?ArticleID=36112&DocumentID=27068
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-04/renewables-top-fossil-fuels-as-biggest-source-of-new-u-s-power

Since the June 7 California primary, the historic upheaval that coalesced around Bernie Sanders’ campaign has continued to defy the demands of the political establishment, but has also increasingly turned into a search for the way forward. After a powerful, year-long mass campaign over the hostile terrain of a rigged primary, our political revolution is at a crossroads.

The post-California period began with a revolt, following the AP’s preemptive anointment of Clinton. In the hours and days after this corporate media assault and the initial ballot results, there was a wave of angry social media reaffirming Sandernistas’ rejection of the establishment’s demands for capitulation. Elizabeth Warren’s full-throated endorsement of Clinton came shortly thereafter, and hundreds of thousands of people un-liked her Facebook page and otherwise registered their disgust online. The petition that Movement4Bernie and I launched two months ago, calling for Sanders to run independent or Green, caught on fire. It tripled its number of signatures in just a few days time, at an initial rate of 1,000 people an hour, and now has over 115,000 total.

a katz | Shutterstock.com

A huge debate is unfolding among millions of Bernie’s backers, providing an enormous opportunity for the left to raise the need for a political alternative to the Democratic Party. That’s why Movement4Bernie and Socialist Alternative are organizing a series of forums in dozens of cities across the country titled “Beyond Bernie: We Need a Party for the 99%.” These forums will both mobilize for the largest possible protests at the Democratic National Convention and create space for a broad-based debate on the way forward for the political revolution. My message at the events will be clear: If Bernie refuses to break from the Democratic Party, our movement should back Jill Stein as the strongest left alternative in the presidential election and use 2016 to prepare the ground for building a new movement-based political alternative.

Unfortunately, Bernie’s livestream speech a week after California pointed in a different direction. While Bernie refused to formally concede and reaffirmed his intention to continue the political revolution into the Democratic National Convention, he also sent the message that he was beginning to retire his campaign. His plan to contest the nomination in Philadelphia was left aside, while he took further steps toward Hillary in saying he looked forward to working with her to change the Democratic Party.

It was one part political revolution, one part concession, and five parts Democratic Party reform. Speeches by Bernie since then have further developed this changed approach. This has helped kick off a process that, no doubt, has some Sandernistas beginning to second guess their commitment to not support Wall Street’s favored candidate, Hillary Clinton.

But the rebellion is far from subdued. A Bloomberg Politics poll on June 14 showed that barely half of Sanders supporters are prepared to vote for Hillary.

While the Bloomberg poll left out Green Party candidate Jill Stein – the clear standard bearer for our political revolution going forward in this election – the latest poll that does include Stein shows support for her has increased to 7% nationally. While still an early reading that does not yet reflect the huge coming pressures to support “the lesser-evil” Clinton, it does show potential. It’s clear that despite a large majority of people still being unaware of Stein’s campaign and politics, there’s a real opportunity to win a strong left vote, numbering in the millions, to continue our political revolution.

Jill Stein’s platform has a great many similarities to Sanders’. She’s calling for Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage nationally, a rapid transition to renewable energy, and an end to mass incarceration. In some ways she goes further than Bernie, calling, for example, to cancel student debt altogether – which is absolutely correct – rather than merely reducing it. Her campaign and the Green Party also have political weaknesses, and I don’t agree with them about everything, but there can be no doubt that Stein deserves the strongest possible support from Sandernistas. If a large section of our movement is able to resist the growing pressure to fall into line behind Clinton, and instead put its energies into Stein’s campaign, it will spur the development of a much bigger fightback and lay the groundwork for building a new party of the 99%.

But while the recent polls show that a great many Sanders supporters aren’t ready to drink the Clinton Kool-Aid, they also hint at the largely unanswered questions many hold at present: whether to support Stein, to hold their noses and vote corporate Clinton, or to protest instead by voting right-wing “anti-establishment” with either libertarian Johnson or billionaire bigot Donald Trump. Johnson is at 9%, which gives a sense of where things could go if the left fails to build for Stein. This spread also illustrates something that my organization, Socialist Alternative, has been saying since long before this year’s race got underway: if we want to defeat the right we cannot do so by supporting corporate, neoliberal Democratic politicians. Until we build an organized left alternative, the political void will be up for grabs, and the establishment will move again to re-insert itself.

Dozens of high-profile messengers, including a long parade of left luminaries, will each in different ways make the case for a lesser-evil vote for Clinton in the coming weeks and months.

While these arguments will increasingly have a big effect, the genie has come out of the bottle, and even the corporate establishment is beginning to recognize that U.S. politics are not going to go back to the way they were.

But nothing is automatic. The right wing can also potentially strengthen itself out of this mass anger, just as the Tea Party built itself out of the fury at the Wall Street bailouts, while the left largely made excuses for Obama. For the left to win the things Bernie Sanders has demanded and we have fought for, we will need build a powerful mass movement based on our political independence from the two parties of neoliberalism.

To succeed at this we’ll need to confront and answer the genuine fears people have about not voting for Clinton to stop Trump. We should recognize we’ll be running up against decades of propaganda which has attacked independent politics and asserted that progressives must “vote blue, no matter what.” We need to sympathetically explain the case for supporting the strongest vote for Jill Stein; the case for a new mass party of the 99%; and why voting for Clinton undermines our political revolution. But we should not exaggerate or damage our own arguments, by saying things like “Clinton is worse than Trump,” or that there is “no difference,” or that it “doesn’t matter” if Trump wins. We have to genuinely and politically take on lesser evilism, by addressing the strategic questions about what’s really necessary to defeat the right. We won’t win over everyone right now. But our goal is to bring as many people with us as possible to not capitulate to the Democratic Party in November. The discussions with those we don’t convince will continue next year as they experience (most likely) Hillary Clinton in office.

As I explained recently in Jacobin, collapsing our movement behind a neoliberal Democratic politician like Hillary Clinton would sabotage the political revolution, abandon the incredible momentum and energy we have built over the past year, and in the end would help right-wing populists to gain strength. It would effectively throw more fuel on the fire, because it is the genuine anger of middle and working class people at bipartisan and blatantly pro-corporate policies that has helped created the basis, in a distorted way, for Donald Trump in the first place. We need to present a clear pro-worker alternative. The most important task will be building powerful mass movements of working people and youth to fight boldly for our interests and against the disastrous system of capitalism. Occupy Wall Street, the Fight for 15, and Black Lives matter, all show what is possible, only we need to take the fight to a higher level and on a much greater scale.

But we cannot ignore the presidential race in a presidential election year. Concretely, the continuation of the political revolution after Sanders means supporting Jill Stein.

The People’s Summit

The stated purpose of The People’s Summit last weekend was a mass discussion about the way forward. The event brought together an estimated 3,500 people in Chicago. The enormous potential to build a powerful movement was clear, with so many coming together eagerly looking for how to continue the political revolution.

Unfortunately, the answers to the key questions facing Sandernistas were not on offer: discussion of who to vote for in November was shockingly kept off the agenda, Jill Stein was denied a chance to speak, concrete strategies were not put forward (except to support “down ballot” Bernie Democrats), no organizational forms were proposed, and audience participation (by “the people”) was excluded.

At the Summit’s first session, Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!opened by telling a cautionary tale of 1968, when some activists refused to vote for establishment Democrat Hubert Humphrey, ending with a warning not to repeat the “mistakes of the past” (translation: not voting Democratic). These comments were later repeated and fleshed out for Monday’s Democracy Now! audience.

Of course the balking at demands to vote for Humphrey, especially by young people, had everything to do with a (correct) rejection of a Democratic Party administration that had just escalated the horrors of the Vietnam War. And what Gonzalez left out of his political parable was the broader outcome of the anti-establishment movement’s refusal to support the Democratic Party’s candidate that year. Republican Richard Nixon, under enormous pressure from that same revolt of youth and working people that was refusing to back down, was forced to concede more gains to the 99% than virtually any other president in U.S. history (with the exception of FDR’s concessions to the labor and socialist movements with the New Deal). These included the creation of major public programs for environmental protection (the Environmental Protection Agency), for workplace safety (the Occupational Safety and Health Act), and for racial and gender equality (Affirmative Action). It also resulted in, for the first time in U.S. history, a war being stopped by a protest movement, including a powerful revolt of the soldiers themselves.

None of this was because these policies in any way matched the conservative Nixon’s politics – they reflected instead the establishment’s need to stave off a deeper radicalization and upheaval driven by that same militant movement.

Had activists instead fallen in line and poured their energies into making a lesser-evil case for Humphrey, the brakes would have been put on the struggle, it would have been demobilized and demoralized. The apologetics for Humphrey, Johnson, and the Democratic Party would have become the theme of 1968, instead of revolution. Fortunately, what did happen was a powerful, ongoing, anti-establishment revolt that not only forced massive concessions from Nixon, but also later led to the outright defeat of a sitting president, again for the first time in U.S. history.

Bernie Sanders’ supporters are witnessing the beginnings of a spectacle of lesser evilism that will play out in multiple acts, over multiple weeks, in the time remaining before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. While paying lip service to the “political revolution,” its underlying intent is the exact opposite – to charm, sway, and bully Sandernistas to finally support Clinton.

There was a reason, of course, why this was done indirectly in Chicago. When Frances Fox Piven (co-chair of Democratic Socialists of America), in the “Democratic Socialism” workshop where I spoke, disagreed with my call for Sanders to run independent or on the Green Party ticket with Jill Stein, she also openly said that she would be voting for Clinton. There were boos from the crowd – a very large number of Sanders supporters are still angrily rejecting such appeals. The slow wooing of Sandernistas is the whole point of this carefully controlled dance.

For my workshop, I was warned in advance not to talk about third party politics. But I did it anyway, for which I was admonished multiple times by the chair of my session. Meanwhile, no Bernie Or Bust representative of any stripe was allowed on the main stage.

We did hear some discordant notes. National Nurses United Executive Director, RoseAnn DeMoro, blasted the Democratic establishment in the first session on Friday night. The day before on Democracy Now!she had gone even further, wondering aloud whether the Democratic Party could be reformed: “We saw the manipulation in the DNC of this election. We saw the horrendous campaign obstacles that we had to confront. It was a real eye-opener for the nurses, in particular, because they were across the country on the Sanders campaign, and they were, at first, quite stunned by the level of corruption, but eventually understood that you have to change things at a systemic level. So when Senator Sanders says that we have to transform the Democratic Party, we all kind of turn and look at each other and wonder, ‘With Wall Street’s money so invested in that party, is that possible any longer?’”

DeMoro raised the issue on the minds of many Sanders supporters. She’s absolutely right to pose the question, but it also urgently needs answering, because Sandernistas will increasingly be on the receiving end of some very bad advice, from people they thought they could trust.

The Next Five Months

If we take real stock of the situation, we have to recognize that Bernie said all along he was going to support the nominee of the Democratic Party. This was a fundamental contradiction built into his campaign when he launched it. When he chose to fight a political revolution against the billionaire class from within a party controlled by that same billionaire class, he also signaled his intent to support Wall Street’s candidate if he wasn’t able to defeat her in the rigged primary.

But leaving Bernie aside, a lot has been learned by Sandernistas along the way this last year.

An important minority, having experienced both the successes and limits of the Sanders primary campaign, now sees clearly the corporate and corrupt character of the Democratic Party. They’ve witnessed a seemingly endless series of undemocratic events over the past months, as well as the exposure of a number of prominent “left” Democrats.

Not least of which was the recent example provided by Elizabeth Warren.

It says a great deal about both Warren and the Democratic Party, in which she is the most high-profile “left” politician, that she never endorsed Bernie and has now enthusiastically endorsed Hillary. It would not be a stretch to say that had Warren endorsed and campaigned for Sanders, it could well have been the difference needed to defeat Clinton in the primary. But she did not.

It says a great deal about the whole of the Democratic Party leadership – which claims that its key priority is to defeat Trump – that it has fiercely backed Clinton in spite of the fact that the polls have shown Sanders to be the far stronger candidate in every matchup.

Because of course the problem is much larger than just Warren, Clinton, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz. At the heart of the matter is a political party that is thoroughly undemocratic and corrupt to its very core – one that answers to Wall Street, not working people. It’s the second most pro-capitalist party in the world, after the Republican Party.

If we are to break the stranglehold of corporate politics and stop the economic and environmental disaster they are creating, ordinary people will need to build a new mass party of our own – a party of the 99%. This is not optional. We will never win what we’re fighting for without our own political organization that fights with us, rather than against us. Had it not been for the backing of my organization, I would never have been elected and re-elected as a socialist in Seattle, because the Democratic Party has opposed me at every stage.

The next five months present a historic opportunity to build on what we’ve started and take a huge step in organizing the progressive forces prepared to take the next step. We simply can’t afford to waste that.

We can’t only fight against Clinton and Trump, we also have to be clear about what we are fighting for.

We need a party that, like Bernie, rejects all corporate cash and corporate influence. That fights alongside our movements. A party with genuine democratic structures; with a binding party platform; and with a bold, fighting, socialist program basing itself on solidarity and needs of the 99%. That stands for working people, youth, the LGBTQ community, people of color, women, the poor, and all the oppressed.

Such a party would need an active mass membership holding its elected leaders accountable, and with the ability to democratically recall them. It should include the participation of other smaller parties like the Green Party and Socialist Alternative, who could affiliate and make the case for their own politics inside it, while also helping to build it.

It is precisely these sorts of mass working class political parties that helped lead to real gains for ordinary people where they have existed. Bernie has often referred to how programs like socialized medicine, free higher education, and paid parental leave have been implemented in virtually every other major country. This is true, but they did not just materialize out of thin air or because of cultural peculiarities. They were won, in large part, because the working class rejected the “leadership” of big business and organized their own political parties. No genuine gains happen for working people under the rotten system of capitalism without an almighty battle – and for that our organized political independence will be vital.

With Bernie stepping out of the race, and likely endorsing Clinton, it will be up to us to continue the political revolution and to stand up against both Clintonism and Trumpism.

I hope you can attend our Beyond Bernie meetings, and get involved in the ongoing struggle. And if you haven’t already, please sign ourpetition calling on Bernie to run all the way, and share it widely.

Lastly, the Democratic National Convention at the end of July will be pivotal for our movement. This will be a huge organizing opportunity, if we use it effectively, to stand up en masse against the Democratic Party leadership and build support for Jill Stein. Organizing a huge turnout in Philadelphia, ideally with big walkouts from the DNC itself, can be a powerful act in driving our movement forward.

See you in Philly.

Kshama Sawant is Seattle City Council Woman and member of Socialist Alternative.

Major disruptions rarely happen, Brexit the latest, a surprise to most observers, reverberations felt in Britain, across Europe, in America and elsewhere.

David Cameron is stepping down as UK prime minister, though delaying his departure until October. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership is threatened.

Over half his shadow cabinet ministers intend standing down on Sunday or later in the week – following Brexit and his sacking Hillary Benn overnightSaturday, his foreign policy chief, saying “he has lost confidence in” Corbyn through a spokesman.

Reportedly Benn was planning to lead a leadership fight to replace him. Labour’s shadow health minister Heidi Alexander resigned after demanding a change in party leadership. Two Labour MPs submitted a no-confidence motion against Corbyn to be debated perhaps this week.

Benn issued a statement, saying “there is no confidence in our ability to win the next election, which may come much sooner than expected if Jeremy continues as leader.”

Corbyn rejected calls to resign. Asked if he’d stand for reelection in a leadership contest, he said: “Yes, I’m here.” Through his spokesman, he stressed he’s “the democratically elected leader of the Labour party and will remain so.”

An unnamed Labour source called Alexander’s resignation hugely significant because, unlike Benn, she was a “loyal and pragmatic” member of Corbyn’s team.

Her stepping down triggered other shadow cabinet ministers to follow suit, not easily replaced because other front-benchers may not fill the vacuum.

In her resignation letter, Alexander said “(i)t is with a heavy heart that I am writing to you to resign from the shadow cabinet. The result of the referendum last week means that our country is facing unprecedented challenges.”

More than ever, our country needs an effective opposition which can hold the government to account and which is a capable of developing a credible and inspiring alternative to an increasingly right-wing and backward-looking Conservative party.

As much as I respect you as a man of principle, I do not believe you have the capacity to shape the answers our country is demanding, and I believe that if we are to form the next government, a change of leadership is essential.

Former London mayor Boris Johnson appears the leading candidate to succeed David Cameron, home secretary Theresa May his main challenger. Others may contest for the job.

Summer campaigning will follow, Tories voting in September for Cameron’s successor, their choice announced at the party’s early October conference.

An online petition for a new referendum so far got over three million signatures in 48 hours, an unprecedented response, continuing to grow.

A previous article explained Britain’s government responds to all petitions getting at least 100,000 signatures. Parliament debates them, most often rejecting petitioners.

On Sunday, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said her country’s citizens opposed Brexit on Thursday by a 62 – 38% majority.

She’ll consider asking Scotland’s parliament to block a motion of legislative consent, saying “(i)f (it) judg(ed) this on the basis of what’s right for Scotland, then the option of saying that we’re not going to vote for something that is against Scotland’s interest, of course, that’s going to be on the table.”

Don’t get me wrong. I care about the rest of the UK. I care about England. That’s why I’m so upset at the UK-wide decision that’s been taken.

But my job as First Minister, the Scottish parliament’s job, is to judge these things on the basis of what’s in the interest of people in Scotland.

Perhaps a second Scotland independence referendum will follow, the 2014 one defeated, Sturgeon adding “(a) second (one) is clearly an option…

In the meantime, she and other ministers will explore options with Brussels on ways “to protect Scotland’s place in the EU.”

Things are fast-moving at a time of global economic weakness. Major uncertainties remain, reflected inFriday’s market turbulence, much more likely to come.

The sad reality is whatever lies ahead, monied interests will benefit at the expense of ordinary people, the way disruptive events always play out, rare exceptions proving the rule.

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.

Violence erupted on June 20-21 in City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality after a disagreement over the African National Congress (ANC) selection for a mayoral candidate.

In several townships surrounding the capital of Pretoria, crowds attacked public buildings, transport buses and commercial enterprises. Numerous locations and vehicles were torched resulting in the military being placed on standby.

Local and provincial police were able to contain the unrest after government employees and other workers were sent home by midday on June 21.

In an article published by Quartz, it reports that “The week of protests in Pretoria was preceded by the murder of an African National Congress (ANC) member, who was shot when gunfire broke out between two fighting factions of the ruling ANC party. In the KwaZulu-Natal province, five people were killed this month; their deaths were linked to disagreements over candidate lists for the ruling party in Pietermaritzburg, the province’s capital. In two other cities, Durban and Port Elizabeth, violent protests erupted over candidate lists.” (June 27)

South Africa is holding its local governmental elections on August 3 where over 200 different political parties will field candidates for mayors and municipal councils. The rival opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) are making efforts to increase their representation in cities, suburbs and rural areas angling in preparation for a greater portion of the national parliament in the 2019 assembly and presidential elections.

The unrest was immediately condemned by the ANC leadership and did not result in a change in its existing candidates’ list. The ruling party distanced itself from the violence saying that those involved were not ANC members but criminal elements seeking justification for looting and property destruction.

Tshwane Mayor Kgosientso ‘Sputla’ Ramokgopa on June 21 attempted to calm ANC supporters who were in favor him retaining his position, although the ruling party officials did not accept his nomination to stand again in the August 3 municipal poll. Ramokgopa’s Deputy Mapiti Matsena also sought to unify party members in support of the ANC’s selection of its candidate, Thoko Didiza, who is not from the Tshwane region but KwaZulu-Natal province.

Ramokgopa addressed members of the ANC in Atteridgeville along with Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi. Nonetheless, he was met with stiff resistance from residents shouting and chanting “No Sputla. No vote”, after being asked to accept Didiza as the party’s candidate.

Another report published in the state-run Zimbabwe Herald said on June 21 that “At least 21 Zimbabweans travelling to Johannesburg, South Africa were attacked and robbed of their valuables by violent protesters some 40km out of Pretoria along the N1 Highway on Tuesday morning. The protesters also burnt to a shell the Eagle Liner bus the Zimbabweans were travelling in after stripping the helpless passengers of their valuables. Eagle Liner proprietor Mr. Dhalib Ishemeal said the victims had taken refuge at Hammanskraal police station since the situation was still volatile.”

In a statement issued by Jesse Duarte, Deputy Secretary General of the ANC, she said “Comrade Didiza is a senior and seasoned leader of our movement with extensive experience in governance. Her nomination for mayoral candidacy demonstrates our commitment to strengthening the capacity of leadership at local government level across the board. We are confident that once elected by the people of Tshwane, she will continue to build on the solid foundation laid by Comrade Kgosientso Sputla Ramokgopa and his collective over the last 5 years. The ANC expresses its gratitude to Comrade Ramokgopa who is an extremely capable administrator who has ably led the Capital City as Executive Mayor. We have no doubt that he will not be lost to the organization.” (anc.org.za, June 20)

Responses of COSATU and the South African Communist Party

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has also condemned the violence and given a resounding endorsement to all ANC mayoral candidates.

COSATU in a press release issued by national spokesperson Sizwe Pamla urged the ruling party to “intervene and work with communities to identify the criminals that are vandalizing properties and assassinating other people. COSATU is calling on the ANC Gauteng and Tshwane leadership to intervene and act decisively to calm the situation and stop the ongoing political violence.”(cosatu.org.za, June 22)

This same media advisory continues saying “The ANC needs to act decisively to sort out the current turmoil, disunity, factionalism and ill-discipline that are taking place in Tshwane. The present situation is untenable and unsustainable for the African National Congress and leadership has to be decisive to calm things down and stop the deterioration. We cannot afford to have a situation where corruption and impunity dominate. The movement needs to cleanse itself of reactionaries, opportunists’ flatterers, patrons, factionalists and hangers-on, who are infiltrating and tearing the movement apart. This narrow focus on internal factional battles by the movement and the never-ending scandals, political violence and killings risk; not only weakening the movement but killing it and its political capacity to lead society.”

On June 21, the South African Communist Party (SACP) came out in full support of the ANC’s intervention in Tshwane endorsing the nomination of Thoko Didiza. This was spelled out in a statement released by SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary Jacob Mamabolo and Provincial Spokesperson Lucian Segami.

Mamabolo and Segami stressed “As part of the SACP’s intervention to deal with these sponsored acts violence we have appointed a Task Team led by our Provincial Chairperson Comrade Joe Mpisi to investigate involvement of any SACP and Young Communist League (YCL) members in these acts of criminality. The task team has commenced its work with immediate effect as of today and will be on the ground. The team will report on their findings to the Provincial Working Committee on Friday. (sacp.org.za)

This same statement goes on to say “Where any of our members are found to be involved in these acts of criminality, they will be dealt with decisively, without fear or favor. We therefore call on members of the SACP to desist from taking part in any of these acts of criminality. We call on members to continue with the door-to-door campaign, factory-to-factory campaign to deliver a two thirds majority ANC victory.”

Later on June 26, the SACP announced that five of its district leaders in Tshwane were charged with bringing the organization into disrepute following the violence in the capital. The party suspended the members for their alleged involvement in the unrest on June 20-21.

Mamabolo said of the charges that chaos and factionalism in Tshwane municipalities was a direct outcome of the failure of internal organizational discipline. “Those in senior positions can’t be allowed to act with impunity or complete disregard of ethics and morality.” (Eyewitness News, June 27)

The unrest illustrates the rising tensions inside the country which is undergoing an economic downturn amid the upcoming August 3 local governmental elections. Due to the reduction in commodity prices, growing joblessness and the declining value of the rand (national currency), the country is experiencing tremendous hardships.

Developments within the EU which is the leading economic bloc trading partner with South Africa will heighten uncertainties. A process of renegotiating trade agreements involving Britain and the EU could complicate economic relations in the short and medium terms which will have an impact on political developments inside the country.

INTRODUCTION

America’s announcement that Russia has committed ‘aggression’ against America, is an announcement that America is at war against Russia; and here is how America’s ‘news’ media have said that it’s the case — that Russia has aggressed — even as the U.S. government is still onlypreparing to attack Russia, and isn’t yet ready actually to invade that country. 

Right now, this propaganda is only psychological warfare, preparation of the U.S. public to accept that America’s invasion of Russia, when it comes, will be ‘defensive,’ not ‘offensive’. This psychological framing of the big invasion, in advance, is important in order for the American people to believe, when the invasion comes, that it’s some sort of ‘just’ war, not an aggression, and conquest, by NATO — America and its allies — against Russia. (At least some people in the global aristocracy are already buying nuclear-proof bomb-shelters, because they’re sufficiently well-connected to know what’s not being published.)

DISSECTING A KEY DECEPTION

On June 16th, Adam Johnson at FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) headlined “‘Allegedly’ Disappears as Russians Blamed for DNC Hack”, and he broke an enormously important news story about the Washington Post’s propaganda for the U.S. to go to war against Russia. It concerned the question of whether the Russian government had been, as the Post’s reporter Ellen Nakajima alleged, caught red-handed in a cyberattack against both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the U.S. government (particularly former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton).

In Adam Johnson’s opening, here was his blockbuster:

—

While the Post story by Ellen Nakashima was sourced to “committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach” — i.e., CrowdStrike, the security firm hired by the DNC — that attribution dropped out of the headline, presenting Russian government culpability as an unquestioned fact. This framing was echoed by dozens of media outlets who picked up on the story and uncritically presented Russian guilt in their headlines without qualification:

▪ Russian Government Hackers Broke Into DNC Servers, Stole Trump Oppo (Politico, 6/14/16)

▪ Russia Hacked DNC Network, Accessed Trump Research (MSNBC, 6/14/16)

▪ Russians Steal Research on Trump in Hack of US Democratic Party (Reuters, 6/14/16)

▪ Russian Government-Affiliated Hackers Breach DNC, Take Research on Donald Trump (Fox, 6/14/16)

▪ Russia Hacks Democratic National Committee, Trump Info Compromised (USA Today, 6/14/16)

▪ Russian government hackers steal DNC files on Donald Trump (The Guardian, 6/14/16)

▪ Russians Hacked DNC Computers to Steal Opposition Research on Trump (Talking Points Memo, 6/14/16)

▪ Russian Spies Hacked Into the DNC’s Donald Trump Files (Slate, 6/14/16)

▪ What Russia’s DNC Hack Tells Us About Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server  (Forbes, 6/15/16)

—

Here was the opening sentence of Nakashima’s ‘news’ report:

Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.

Here was the headline: “Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump”.

No evidence has ever been published indicating that either the story’s opening clause or its headline is true; and, the person who did the hacking says he’s not associated with the Russian government. Consequently, this ‘news’ story in the Washington Post is at least dubious, and is likely false.

The real question about the story, however, is: why was it published by a prominent U.S. ‘news’ medium, and then trumpeted in other prominent U.S. ‘news’ media, as if this allegation were established as being true, or even as if there were any sound reason to believe it to be true? Or, to put this matter another (and broader) way: Are the U.S. major ‘news’ media as untrustworthy now as they were when they stenographically transmitted to the U.S. public, as being ‘news’, the U.S. government’s mere propaganda line, thatSaddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction still existed, and that he was only six months away from having a nuclear weapon? (The attack against Iraq was thus, likewise, portrayed as being a ‘defensive’ act — not as being 100% aggression and unjustifiable, which it was.) Going back now to the first version of that question (why it was published by a prominent U.S. ‘news’ medium):

As I had reported on June 15th:

On Tuesday, June 14th, NATO announced that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO’s Article V “collective defense” provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country.

Or, as Germany’s Die Zeit had headlined the matter: “NATO Declares Cyberspace War Zone.” (You didn’t see that reported in U.S. ‘news’ media, did you? It’s very important news — as my report about the matter explained in detail, but Die Zeit’s did not. But at least they reported the fact — namely, that NATO had just announced a new policy: that a cyberattack constitutes now an act of war, an invasion which triggers Article V; that, for Russia to cyberattack a NATO country, would be Russian aggression, and would trigger NATO’s mutual-defense provision.)

In other words: the Washington Post’s story, which was immediately spread by other ‘news’ media, was alleging something to have occurred, that in NATO’s new doctrine constitutes an act of war against the United States by Russia. (Never mind: espionage is actually routine, and the U.S. government commits it even against allies such as Germany, and even taps into phone conversations of German Chancellor Angela Merkel who is more of a soldier for the U.S. than an enemy of the U.S. — but Germany is a fellow NATO member and so this new NATO doctrine doesn’t provide authorization for U.S. espionage against Germany to be treated as cause for Germany to invade the U.S. and to be joined by the rest of the NATO alliance in attacking the United States.

NATO is the anti-Russia military club; it’s designed to conquer Russia, certainly not to defend one NATO member against another. When a nation joins NATO, they’re already slaves of the U.S. government. Like Obama repeatedly says, “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.” The government in any nation that joins or stays in NATO, knows that their nation is “dispensable,” and they accept this: they have to, in order to be a part of NATO, which the U.S. controls. So: Obama could publicly tell this to America’s military, and no one would even blink at it; America’s exceptionalism is accepted as being not only real, but good.)

And, since what the Washington Post’s story was alleging there, has been called false by the person who did the hacking, the Post’s implication that Russia committed an act which NATO’s new policy labels as an act of war against the United States, isn’t only unfounded and likely false; it’s also mentally preparing the American public to go along marching toward nuclear oblivion, on that dubious basis — like America had marched into war against Iraq in 2003, on the basis of lies from the government and its stenographic press, but an invasion of Russia would be much worse than George W. Bush’s invasions were.

American ‘news’ media — the same ‘news’ media that had been in 2002 ‘reporting about ‘Saddam’s WMD’ etc. — are now speculating that the person who claims to have done the hack is lying to say he’s not an agent of the Russian government. In other words, the presumption by the U.S. government and its agents, is simply taken as fact. No mention is being made by these ‘news’ media, that NATO simultaneously with that hacking-event, has changed its policy so as to enable NATO to invade Russia on the basis of the presumption that Russia did the hack. Are those two events’ simultaneity — the policy-change, and the ‘Russian’ hack — merely coincidental? And are the public not supposed to notice that NATO’s policy-change is declaring espionage to be aggression — ‘justification’ for NATO to launch an attack, essentially NATO’s outlawing espionage on the part of any nation that isn’t in NATO? People aren’t supposed to even notice this?

All of this goes back to NATO’s alleged ‘justification’ for its now (very provocatively) pouring U.S. troops and nuclear weapons onto and near Russia’s borders with Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland (nations selected by Obama for their having rabidly anti-Russian leaderships): that ‘justification’ being Russia’s having supposedly ‘seized’ Crimea from Ukraine — which allegation against Russia is a lie, and which isn’t even NATO’s business, because Ukraine isn’t yet a NATO member, and therefore isn’t covered by NATO’s promise (Article V) to go to war to defend any NATO member against any invader. (The aristocracy’s propaganda is based upon the assumption that the public are simply fools: people aren’t supposed to recognize that even if Russia had invaded Ukraine, NATO has no business in this matter.)

And all of that goes back, in turn, to “How America Double-Crossed Russia And Shamed The West” — yet another lie by the U.S. government, that one having been made by U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1990, and now threatening to blossom into a full-fledged nuclear war: World War III.

Are these essential facts, including the relevant historical facts, being reported by the ‘news’ media to the American public, so as to enable us to vote knowledgeably in elections? Hillary Clinton supports — and Donald Trump, that ‘dangerous’ man, opposes — America’s overthrowing Russia’s allies, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych, but do most voters know anything about the realities here? Can a person reasonably say that such a country as the U.S. is a democracy, if the voters have no idea of what the main issue in this ‘election’ actually is? The main issue, this time around, is the buildup to World War III — and Clinton’s campaign says that the nation will be safer with her finger on the nuclear button, than with Trump’s finger on it. Both of the Presidential candidates are disliked by the American public; Bernie Sanders and John Kasich were liked by the American public (they were the only two Presidential candidates who had net-positive approval-ratings from the American public), but America’s ‘democracy’ has eliminated Sanders and Kasich and includes only those two candidates — Clinton and Trump — neither of whom is liked and respected by the public. This is today’s American ‘democracy’, in which the preferred candidates get eliminated from the competition.

So: is our government trying to drive the world into a ‘pretext’ to ‘justify’ the U.S. to invade Russia?

Why would it be doing that?

The same ‘news’ media that served the U.S. government to ‘justify’, on the basis of lies, an invasion of Iraq in 2003, is now ‘justifying’ an invasion of Russia, perhaps to occur in 2017. Why would they be doing that?

Here is information about why U.S. academics are highly dependent upon not publishing, nor accepting for publication, anything that would reveal to the public what’s really going on.

It seems that, every day, the real news is looking more and more like “The End of M.A.D. — The Beginning of Madness”. But most Americans don’t even know what “M.A.D.” (the system that has been preventing nuclear war) was. Meanwhile, the U.S. ‘news’ media are keeping these developments as secret, as hidden from and misunderstood by the public, as is possible to do.

Two things the U.S. aristocracy are essentially united upon are:

(1) the U.S. government’s effort to conquer Russia;

(2) not allowing their ‘news’ media to report either about that fact, or about any news-medium’s reporting about either that effort, or the pervasive control of America’s ‘news’ media by the aristocracy, which ‘news’ media not only are owned by members of the aristocracy, but are funded by advertisements from other members of the aristocracy, whose companies pay to advertise in them.

So: none of them want to cover this — and they don’t cover it. For example, how many Americans know that it was a U.S. coup that in February 2014 overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine next-door to Russia, and replaced him with a fascist, rabidly anti-Russian, regime, appointed by the Obama Administration, and that Crimeans had voted 75% for that overthrown President and so sought to abandon Ukraine and to rejoin Russia (from which they had been yanked by the Soviet dictator in 1954) — more than 90% of them voted for that, because they were terrified of the U.S.-installed regime: how many Americans know that? It’s not reported in America, because the U.S. aristocracy don’t want the public to know it — they want Americans to think that Russia ‘seized’ Crimea. That deception is essential because it’s the alleged reason for NATO’s being at war against Russia. There is no truthful reason for NATO’s war against Russia — none whatsoever.

In other words, the reality of the ‘news’ media in the United States is: in order for a ‘news’ medium to be able to acquire a large audience, what’s key is financial support of that ‘news’ medium by the aristocracy. Without that, no ‘news’ medium in the U.S. can acquire a large audience. American ‘news’ media are virtually entirely controlled by the U.S. (and allied)aristocracy. They separate themselves from the public, even more than masters were separated from their serfs. Though in rhetoric they express caring and concern about the public, in reality they have none whatsoever. In fact, the invasion that their agent Barack Obama is working towards would harm the public enormously more than even the invasions by their agent George W. Bush did. But the public know little to nothing about it, and misunderstand the little that they do know about it. And this ignorance and misunderstanding by the public provides the aristocracy the freedom they want, to surround Russia with nuclear weapons and hostile armies, until Russia will give in to the U.S. government’s demands — as if Russia will have no alternative but to do that. (But that’s why aristocrats are buying bomb-shelters, their Plan B, just in case.)

If it sounds crazy, it is; but the pattern for this was set in the buildup toward World War I. Aristocrats are simply crazy about their power. That’s what Obama was displaying whenhe said, “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come.” In other words: Russia is “dispensable,” just like any other country (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Brazil, etc.) that refuses to be controlled by the U.S. aristocracy. The only difference this time around is nuclear weapons; but, now, with the concept of ‘nuclear primacy’, even that is now considered, by the U.S. aristocracy, to be no fundamental change, after all, away from the pre-nuclear era; and, so, Obama is playing the role in the buildup to WW III that Kaiser Wilhelm had played in the buildup to WW I — he’s the demander who won’t even take “yes” for an answer: he needs to conquer any foreign power who resists him.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is terrified by Obama, but has made clear that he will never allow Russia to become a U.S. vassal state like Ukraine and the other ones that America has taken are (like Hillary Clinton’s exultation at conquering one of Russia’s allies — the killing of Gaddafi — was: “We came, we saw, he died. Ha, ha!!”). Putin is now saying flat-out no to that: he’s saying, America’s aristocracy might get rid of other governments that don’t become America’s stooges, but not of Russia’s government. He is saying that Russia will not be conquered, that it’s not going to become part of America’s empire.

On June 18th, Russia’s Tass News Agency published this about Putin’s statements that day (he was talking then about America’s building an anti-missile system to eliminate the nuclear missiles that Russia would be sending in retaliation against a NATO blitz-invasion of Russia — an anti-missile system that Obama has always promised is to protect against missiles from Iran or North Korea, not from Russia — Putin was saying that it’s actually being built in order to disable Russia’s ability to defend itself, Russia’s ability to strike back against a NATO-U.S. invasion):

—

“There’s no [nuclear] threat [from Iran], and the missile defense system [in Europe] is still being built, so we were right when we said they are deceiving us, they are not sincere with us [by] referring to the alleged Iranian nuclear threat during the construction of the missile defense system,” Putin said.

“It is like this actually — they tried to deceive us once again,” he said at a meeting with the heads of global information agencies.

“We know approximately which year the Americans will get a new missile that will have a range of not 500 kilometers but more, and from that moment they will start threatening our nuclear potential. We know what will be going on by years. And they know that we know,” Putin underscored.

He stated that the United States, “despite all our objections, all our proposals on real cooperation, does not want to cooperate with us, rejects our proposals and acts in accordance with its plan.”

“You may believe me or not, but we have suggested specific variants of cooperation, they have all really been rejected,” Putin said.

He recalled that missile defense system elements have been built in Romania. “What have they constantly said? ‘We need to protect ourselves from Iran’s nuclear threat.’ Where’s the Iranian nuclear threat? There’s none!” Putin said.

—

Obama simply ignores Putin’s objections, and refuses to speak with him. And his ‘news’ media (both Democratic and Republican) refuse to report the matter. So, the reality is publishable only outside the Western mainstream (and even most of its ‘alternative’) press. Westerners know only what their aristocracy allow them to know. And the buildup to nuclear war isn’t publishable, in the West.

The closest that we come to it is a puff-piece book review in the New York Review of Books about a former U.S. Secretary of Defense’s memoir espousing the need to get rid of nuclear weapons: it’s like Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize — it is divorced from the reality of America’s aggressive plan, since 1990, to surround and ultimately conquer Russia; it’s divorced from the plan that Obama himself is now racing forward, ‘Peace Prize’ or no. You’re not supposed to know anything about it. But you do know now, even if you didn’t before. And word of it can be spread to people who don’t know about it, only by sending them the URL of this article, so that they (just like you) can click onto the links here, on any allegation they doubt, and find out for themselves, what the documentation behind any questionable allegation here is. And then, each of you can discuss it, and come to your own individual conclusions about these matters.

America’s ‘news’ media are like those in the Soviet Union were: only by means of samizdat (prohibited literature) can the truth come to be known. That’s the reality: the reality is unpublishable, in the West. What the Soviet Union was — adictatorship — the U.S. now is. The economy isn’t like the Soviets’, but the political rule, by some form of crony aristocracy, is, regardless of whether one calls it thenomenklatura, or the fasces. Anyway: When the U.S.S.R. ended in 1991, Russia and the U.S.A. switched sides. And we’re not supposed to know this. But now we do.

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.

These guys now with us in the [Iceland] national team were brought up on artificial pitches. Many would have had youth coaching in an indoor dome. They could go out if the weather was good, but they always had good facilities to train. –

Heimer Hallgrímsson, joint Iceland football coach, BBC Sport, Nov 15, 2015

This has been a competition of defensive grit, stifling of goals.  More exceptions are starting to appear in the first elimination round. Germany sunk Slovakia by three goals in a typically clinical way; Belgium proved ruthless in its display slotting four through Hungary’s defences.  But the great wonder of football at this tournament, a team that came quite literally out of the blue of football existence, was Iceland.

Wonder as it might be, Iceland’s performance has not been a miracle so much as phenomenal hard work and dedication. As the great inventor and purveyor of direct current Thomas Edison was known to have claimed, genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.  That did not mean that at some point, Iceland were keeping company with such football minnows as Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.  Much more perspiration was required.

In the qualifying rounds, the team finished seven points clear of the Netherlands.  In Euro 2016, they held their own in the group stages, fashioning out draws against Hungary and Portugal, while sinking Austria.

This took them to a wonderful, free flowing match with England, taking two out of three chances on goal count in the first half.  England’s lion share looked poor and desperate relative to the Icelanders when they had the ball.  By the conclusion of the match, the latter had won a famous victory by two goals to one to march on the quarter finals.

Much silliness has been tossed around in attempting to understand the Icelandic achievement.  How, goes one question, did a nation of 330,000 go so far in the football stakes?  El Salvador, with a larger population of four million, was hammered 10-1 in their opening game of the 1982 World Cup.  Closer examination shows structure in the home game, along with dedication and a generous contribution of resources to youth talent.

Typical are the public training facilities that speckle the country, a network of breeding centres for Icelandic football.  “Everybody can see that these pitches are vital to us,” explained Arnar Bill Gunnarsson, head of football development the Iceland Football Association (KSI).

According to the KSI, there were 179 full-size pitches in the country by the end of the 2015, making that one full-size pitch for every 128 registered players in the country. To this can be added 166 mini and half-sized pitches that employ artificial turf.[1]  Such dome pitches have become realms of pursuit for the Icelandic footballer, havens of development away from harsh conditions.

Heimer Hallgrímsson, the national team’s joint head coach, sees such dome pitches as “a revelation”, the sort that all villages wanted.  Virtually every school in Iceland is close to one.[2]

The continued growth of such football is all the more impressive given the economic shocks the country has endured.  In terms of sheer scale, the banking crisis of 2008 was as calamitous as any country’s, if not more so. That did not prevent the publicly funded facilities for football from continuing to receive resources.  Public house football was a species to be nurtured, not ditched.

In time, these domes of training and practice gave birth to the “indoor kid” generation, the first players whom made their appearance at the European Under-21 Championship in 2011.  Many are on show at the championship in France.

Football, however, is hardly just training pitches in suitable conditions.  Iceland has one conspicuous omission to other countries of the football persuasion: professional club sides.  They make up for this lack in an abundance of coaches, with 639 holding a UEFA B license.

There is also another strain in Iceland’s football which can almost be regarded as singular in the modern professional tradition.  Within that cosmos is a distinct lack of elitism.  A strict, natural egalitarianism operates, the great leveller between players that has produced a marked esprit de corps among the players of the national team.

As Gunnarsson explained to Goal, “It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl or good or bad at playing football.  Up until the age of 19, you can train as much as you’d like.”  Rather heretical stuff to the professionalised devotees of the game.

With a calm head, the coaching staff comprising Hallgrímsson and Lars Lagerback have managed to wangle out superb performances from the team, reminding everybody that they are not in the business of imitating the inimitable. In that sense, they have truly come into their own.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.goal.com/euro2016/en/article/the-secret-behind-the-iceland-miracle/1quzrzppu5pmy1gc6jx6nxl0fw

[2] http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/30012357

It seems to have become one of the most popular ways of ridiculing somebody’s argument or position, calling into question someone’s sanity or even somebody’s right to their very own existence in recent years are “You’re a conspiracy theorist!”, “That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me!”  We hear such accusations let fly in TV and radio debates all too often as soon as anyone begins to question a perceived, generally excepted “truth”.  The accuser always seems supremely confident that this accusation is enough to immediately put the accused beyond the pale of all human reason and that all participants and viewers of the debate should be expecting men in white coats to arrive at any moment and the accused to be led away in the interests of all for “corrective treatment”.

The definition of conspiracy of the on-line dictionaries insists on the “evil, harmful, bad” side of things.  In other words; in the English language, it is impossible to conspire to do good.  This is one of the reasons why the accusation of being a conspiracy theorist remains an effective put down as it implies that the accused believes that their government, company bosses and colleagues, military or police commanders, friends and acquaintances or even members of their own family and partaking in secret, evil deeds and plots for harmful ends which have happened or are going to happen and hence at best implies lack of good faith and paranoia and at worst, extreme negativity, treachery; being a fifth columnist.  All labels with which most of us would wish not to be tarnished.

Here however are some alternative definitions of “conspiracy theorist”:

• someone who has seen through the bullshit (David Icke);
• someone who questions the statement of known liars (unknown).

It is clearly not possible to see these definitions as morally negative unless we are creators of bullshit or known liars.

Could it be that the time has come for a reappraisal of the definition of the word conspiracy because the following is palpably undeniable.  Every development in politics and affairs of state, every war, every campaign within a war, every attack and counter attack, every putsch, every terrorist act, every revolution and even every democratic election manifesto and campaign, every new bill passed, every budget or construction project proposed on a national or local level ad infinitum, throughout human history has been born of human planning, plotting or conspiracy depending upon which side we were or are on or how you view the proposals!  Effected to a lesser or greater extent by chance undoubtedly and maybe borne on a current of destiny as well!  The latter I will not discuss further here.  Not because I dismiss it. Heaven forbid.  Simply it is not important for the points I want to make.  One of the most important of which is this, in short: our history is littered with and shaped from, not conspiracy theories but conspiracy facts!

One of the earliest and most famous that springs to mind is that of The Trojan Horse.   A very cunning plot by the Greeks which broke the stalemate of the long siege of Troy and enabled them to conquer and ransack the city but by the current English definition, a conspiracy only from the point of view of the Trojans as for them it was “bad and harmful” but not for the Greeks.  But who amongst us now really sees one side or the other as the “evil” one?  So was it a conspiracy or not?

A Nazi soldier gets ready to murder two Soviet Slavic women during Operation Barbarossa, summer 1941. This incident probably took place in the Ukraine or Belarus.

There are times in history, usually more recent history, (examine and discuss) when there seems to have clearly been a good and evil side.  One such example I would posit is Operation Barbarossa.  Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union!  While this was of course a life saving event for Great Britain, even the most diehard anti communist must surely see that the invasion of Nazi forces into the USSR was unequivocally bad and harmful for the peoples of that empire as it promised no liberation at all;  only abject slavery or total oblivion whatever their position in Soviet society. It was clearly planned or plotted in advance but according to the English language, it was only a conspiracy from the point of view of the peoples of the USSR and the Soviet government, not from the point of view of Nazi Germany and her allies as they perceived that attack as beneficial to them at the time which, of course, is why they contrived and went ahead with it.

What about Operation Overlord- The Normandy landings or D-Day?  This massive military undertaking was literally years in the planning or plotting.  Was it a conspiracy?  According to the current English definition, only for the rulers of Nazi Germany as it can be argued that it was actually beneficial even for most Germans not actively involved in the Nazi hierarchy as it lead to their liberation as well as to that of the other nations of western Europe.  In spite of this, the German army fought like tigers on the western front to the bitter end but I digress.  I will however be returning to the D Day landings a little later for reasons that will become clear.

Surely therefore, it is obviously undeniable that the accusation of being a conspiracy theorist is in fact totally subjective and because of that, totally spurious from an objective, truth seeking point of view concerning any, as yet, unsolved or disputed events in human history or actuality and hence it follows that those using this accusation to discredit the ideas or theories of others have an agenda for doing so.  This agenda maybe conscious or subconscious but it is always there.

The purpose of this article is neither to prove or disprove any famous conspiracy theories and, although I, like anybody else, have my own ideas and suspicions, I am not putting them forward here.   What I am putting forward here is the fact that if you hear someone publicly dismissing somebody else’s ideas as conspiracy theories and especially if the “dismisser” is a western journalist, government spokesperson or a politician they are trying to prevent you thinking about something by ridiculing you into not delving further..  The unconscious agenda of such accusers I mentioned earlier is the cognitive dissonance caused when presented with information that contradicts long held and emotionally charged beliefs. The conscious agenda is of course blatant lying in order to cover up the truth.

Let us look at a concrete example.  In Toronto Canada there is a high profile televised political discussion called the Munk Debate. Here is the link to the particular episode I’m going to concentrate on.  The motion proposed on this occasion was “Be it resolved, The West should engage, not isolate Russia”.

As you can see this motion assumes that Russia is somehow wrong and the only question is how best to deal with Russia’s wrongness.  Given this obvious slant from the beginning the pro team of Vladimir Pozner and Stephen F. Cohen did a reasonable job but were unable to fend off the barrage of 100% truth inversions (all of which conforming to the strictly controlled and censored Canadian mass media slant) from the rabid, foaming at the mouth, jumping up & down, Jihadi anti- Putin and Russia team of Anne Applebaum and Garry Kasparov.  At around the 16^th minute Applebaum starts to speak about the Kremlin’s “massive” investment in their multi-language media “disinformation machine” including RT television.

At around 17.12 minutes in this recording she then states that “When Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down by a “Russian missile” over Ukraine this media machine immediately came up with all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories such as planes taking off already full of dead people” and explains that this is done deliberately by Russia and only by Russia  in order to cloud people’s minds until “they” don’t know what to think any more.  Well!  Sure!  Planes taking off full of dead people does sound pretty crazy doesn’t it.  I couldn’t believe my ears when I first heard that one actually but let’s look more closely at what she said before coming back to that.  How many conspiracy theories does she mention?  One?  Well, I count three and a half.  The above mentioned plus two and a half  more.  The statement that Russian media is disinformation is also a conspiracy theory as is the position that they alone came up with all these conspiracy theories.  Many of them are proposed and published  by westerners.

The accusation that MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile is also a conspiracy theory as well as propaganda because all weapons at that time on both sides were either Russian made or Soviet made.  Who is using them, how and why is the pertinent question which the western media always seeks to obfuscate. And yes, well, okay, true. I admit that the last sentence I’ve just written is another conspiracy theory at least for some of you.  Are you beginning to see how deep the rabbit hole goes and how ridiculous the allegation of conspiracy theorist is under any circumstances?

Fact.  The “official” version of 9/11 is every bit as much a conspiracy theory as all the others!

Especially as it has proved impossible to prove over the years and seems indeed, ever easier to disprove.  When governments and the mainstream media tell us a version of events after a terrorist act or invasion or murder etc they then accuse anybody who voices doubts or proposes another version of events of being conspiracy theorists but the governments and main stream media are themselves conspiracy theorists until, I repeat, there emerges incontrovertible proof and evidence to confirm one of the conspiracy theories as the conspiracy fact.

Back to Applebaum’s “planes taking off full of dead people”. When I first heard that one I was literally seething at the sheer stupidity of such an insane theory being voiced almost immediately after the disaster.  At the time I was still only just emerging from an umbilically wet, comforting “womb warmth” world where our western governments were working for our best interests but were just rather incompetent at doing it.   In the immediate aftermath of that tragedy I reluctantly assumed that the self defense forces had mistaken it for a US backed Kiev bomber or that a guided missile had locked on to the airliner by error or evil destiny.  After all at the time, they were being attacked by the air-force of the US installed Kiev government everyday and, in spite of having no aircraft themselves had been increasingly successful in downing their attackers.

Then came the immediate barrage of western press headlines.   From Britain for example: The Sun:  PUTIN’S MISSILE  and PUTIN’S LOOTERS ROB BRIT VICTIM  The Daily Mail:  PUTIN’S KILLED MY SON    The Daily Mirror:  PUTIN’S VICTIMS to name but a few.

US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that the US had proof of exactly what kind of missile was used and where it was fired from.  He stated, as reported by The Guardian, that “all the evidence surrounding the downed Malaysian airlines flight MH17 points towards pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine being to blame.”    Well.  All those newspaper headlines are simply conspiracy theories and as it turns out, more insane than the dead-bodies-taking-off idea.

While Kerry’s accusations could have seemed feasible at the time, the fact that not one jot of “all that evidence” has been made public twenty two months later reduces his words to a conspiracy theory too.  The headlines are totally insane because of the lack of motive.  The fact is, after taking into account the ill fated crew and passengers of MH17 and their families, loved ones and friends there is simply not one human being on earth out of all seven billion of us who had less motive to get involved in shooting down a passenger plane anywhere in the world, let alone over Eastern Ukraine than Russian president Vladimir Putin and his government followed by The Donetsk Republic’s armed forces who were and are fighting at home, on their own land for their very existence.

In the shock of the immediate aftermath, European governments some of whom had been resisting US pressure to impose sanctions on Russia as punishment for having saved Crimea, at the behest of Crimeans, from invasion by ultra racist Ukrainian US backed rebels bent on their eradication one way or another, caved in and sanctions were imposed.  Anyone placing themselves in the position of detective would see straight away, that the new Ukrainian government had massive motive for and massive profit to gain from MH17’s downing if it could be pinned on Russia, followed by those governments who had plotted and helped the coup in Kiev -the US, UK, Dutch, Polish, Swedish and EU baron’s to name the main players.  That in itself is of course not proof that they were complicit but it would be one of the areas where any real investigation would concentrate a lot of effort and inquiry.

In the Munk Debate, broadcast on the 11^thApril 2015, more than eight months after the tragedy, Applebaum is careful to avoid pointing the blame specifically at Putin personally while using language that generally insinuates instead.  Could it just be that legal advice has something to do with that.  Another video, which judging by its title indicates that she “apparently” knew all the details of what happened,seems to have disappeared completely from the net:    “Anne Applebaum: MH17 attack | what happened. How it happened and who was responsible.”  If anybody saw it or has a transcript it would be great to know what she actually said here.

Meanwhile as more and more theories as to how this tragedy occurred were coming forth , spurred on by the lack of any evidence being made public, including the content of the black boxes, some aspects of the plane full of already dead people theory were beginning to seem, well, just slightly less insane.  On March 8^th 2014 Malaysian airlines flight MH370 disappeared on route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.  It’s fate remains a mystery to this day.   Such a story is the very oxygen of conspiracy theorists, some well intentioned and some undoubtedly less so and the internet and You Tube is not lacking in explanations.  Many posit the idea that the plane was hi-jacked to the closed US military island base of Diago Garcia and many, made and published before the downing of MH17 and all those I saw, none of which were made by Russians or the Russian media, predict that this missing plane would turn up being used in a future false flag event.

After the downing of MH17, it didn’t take long for the idea to gain circulation that it was in fact the missing MH370 and that it had been transported to Donbass and blown up on the ground maybe with the preserved bodies of the ill fated passengers of MH370 inside or that it had even taken off from Amsterdam with the bodies inside etc!  Well dear reader, maybe you, like me find all these theories pretty far fetched if not ridiculous or maybe in very bad taste.  The fact however is that neither you nor I can absolutely rule them out no matter how far fetched they seem because there is a small window of possibility.  The US and her allies have the means to pull off such an operation and the motive.

We would do well to remember the film of an explosion on the horizon that was broadcast by all the world’s mainstream media, including Russian, as the explosion of MH17 hitting the ground.  As many quickly pointed out, a plane, still over half full of fuel, blown up at high altitude by a ground to air or air to air missile would have left smoke trails in the sky as it fell.  That seems beyond all scientific doubt but absolutely no traces in the sky appear in that video so that would seem to suggest that either it does not show the impact of MH17 but something else (more likely in my opinion) or, well yes, the plane was in fact blown up on the ground. There has also been a historical precedent for such an idea albeit on a much smaller scale physically but, nonetheless of great historical significance.

Operation Mincemeat which was made famous as a book and a film called The Man Who Never Was.  This was a plan executed in April 1943 to fool the Germans into thinking that the allied invasion of Sicily would in fact happen in Greece.  A dead body was procured, dressed up in a British officer’s uniform, given a false identity and a briefcase chained to his wrist containing “top secret” documents about the allied invasion of Greece not Sicily.  The dead body was made to look like the victim of a plane crash of the coast of nominally neutral but in fact pro German Spain.  In reality however his body was delivered to the area by a submarine.    The plan worked so well that when the actual allied invasion of Sicily began the German’s thought it was just a diversion and didn’t respond having transferred the majority of their forces to Greece.

When, the following year, just after the D Day landings, the Nazis found genuine top secret plans in an abandoned landing craft, they refused to believe them being sure it was another such ruse as operation Mincemeat.  Here’s a link (now promise not to laugh) to a Daily Mail article on the whole subject.  It does just suggest that the idea of already dead bodies in planes might have a certain feasibility after all which is something Anne Applebaum, among many others, doesn’t want you to think about.

I repeat that I am not supporting or debunking any conspiracy theories here.  I cannot prove, or disprove just as you cannot prove or disprove any of the above mentioned theories or, for example, that Aliens exist or that they don’t exist therefore we cannot dismiss or confirm one hundred percent those theories involving aliens either.  It really is that simple.

As for the conscious or unconscious agendas I talked about earlier, I would, in spite of his virulence, put Garry Kasparov in the unconscious camp.  He so often loses control of his emotions and his discourse which is clearly out of all reality.  I wonder if he has ever asked himself why he thinks and feels that which he does, I very much doubt it.  Berezovsky was someone with a very similar mind set in my opinion.  Anne Applebaum on the other hand seems to be squarely in the conscious camp.

In other words, she is deliberately lying in order to, not distort the truth but totally reverse it in true Orwellian style.  I don’t claim to know exactly what her motive is.  Due to the fact thather husband was the Polish foreign secretary (he was one of the EU politicians who brokered and signed the ill fated deal with the Yanukovych government in Kiev that didn’t even last twenty four hours), her finances had to be made public and, as many pointed out, she benefited from a huge spike in earnings as soon as the Ukrainian crisis began in 2013 followed by an ongoing scandal concerning the disclosure of their earnings in subsequent years but I find it hard to believe somehow that her motive is solely financial.  Maybe simply anti-Russian racism and/or a commitment, ideological and self interested, to financial world takeover of the US, western debt based fractional reserve banking system.  Whatever the reason is, it has to be admitted that she is a very effective propagandist who’s discourse remains coherent, controlled, pointed but utterly premeditated and false.

In fact her tirade in the Munk Debate against Russia since Putin became president is in reality one of the most concise and accurate descriptions of today’s USA and also post putsch Ukraine that I’ve ever heard.  Her total insistence that the western media is truthful and objective is also a 100% truth inversion.   Russian media has become infinitely more truthful and objective than its western counterpart which has descended into out and out double speak.   I have never seen or heard her lose her temper or be overtaken by emotions of any kind.  It must be said however that I’ve never seen her in debate against someone who actually takes her apart as it would be eminently possible to do.  That, of course, is anything but coincidence.

“Truth is by nature self-evident.  
As soon as you remove the cobwebs
of ignorance that surround it, 
it shines clear”  – Mahatma Gandhi.

As many of us have already noticed it is not a comfortable experience when our emotionally charged, often, long held beliefs are challenged by adverse, contradictory information which we are unable to ignore.  It takes the kind of courage not given to all to accept and analyse the cognitive dissonance that comes in such situations and to ask why it is happening and many people, including plenty that I know personally, simply refuse to believe anything that contradicts the, invariably “cozy” world  which they have allowed to be constructed for themselves.  Such people often become defensive and sometimes down right aggressive when pressed.  This is because they can’t ignore the information, only smother it or block it from their conscious mind.

The reason that some information is impossible to ignore is a very important phenomenon as basically this means that it is fundamental truth or at the very least the grain of truth that can lead us out of the pit of lies.   If, for example, somebody tells you or I that the Earth is flat, we are not going to feel any surge of panic or cognitive dissonance of any kind for obvious reasons but try telling an American who comes from a staunch, traditionally Democrat family and has a deeply entrenched – indoctrinated belief that the Democrats are “the good guys”, the ones who care about other people and the poor at home and abroad and are anti-war etc, that, in fact, Obama and Clinton are among the most dangerous warmongers in history, responsible for illegal invasions and that they are just puppets of the military, industrial complex, Wall Street and “some people” called the Illuminati and sparks will certainly fly.   There is an excellent video on-line called “Confronting Cognitive Dissonance – The Eyeopener”:

At 4.54 an American lady begins to describe her physical reaction when she understood that she was receiving very uncomfortable information about 9-11 which, much as she wanted to, she just could not ignore.  Her reaction is courageous and very moving and anyone who dismisses her as a conspiracy theorist can only be mal-intentioned or seized by cognitive dissonance themselves.  It is our intuition or as some like to say “our gut”; in truth, our connection to universal intelligence, that tells us whether such information is real or not.  This is the same phenomenon as the moment of inspiration that artists and scientists have when a new scientific understanding or invention, poem, novel, song, symphony is born.

First the moment of inspiration and insight; then starts the hard work of creation, building, experiment, investigation, trial and error and bringing forth.  Every single human being is connected to universal intelligence, not just an elite few, but intuition, just like any other human faculty, becomes stronger the more we use it.  The vital fact here is that we all know the truth when we here or see it whether we like it or not.  Again, “Truth is by nature self-evident.  As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear”.

We live in a time of massive change where the world seems to have been turned upside down at such lightning speed that many of us feel that we can’t keep up which is of course disturbing.  I use words like “seems” and “feels” because this is an illusion.  In fact this situation has been growing for a long time.  Centuries in fact and some would say millennia.  This particular moment in history started, was started (examine & discuss) at the beginning of the 1990s.  I would liken it to a wave that as it comes in slowly to shore, grows and swells inexorably until it finally crashes leaving that which was on the top, on the bottom.  That which seemed democratic and free, undemocratic and tyrannical, that which seemed to be built on solid foundations, built on quicksand, that which seemed good, evil and vice versa.  Above all, there are no ideologies left although for those with the aforementioned long held emotional attachment to this or that ideology = products of Man’s ego, this is pretty hard to accept.  What’s left on the shore as the wave recedes is simply right or wrong, good or evil, truth or falsehood.   In fact a world of fundamental polar opposites.  Many.  Especially in the western world lulled by the media bubble of unreality are seemingly, on the surface, unaware of these massive shifts.

My own awakening only came with the Ukrainian crisis as I have already documented in “NATO Through the Looking Glass”.  I now live in a totally different world and it is much more frightening than the one I was living in up to three years ago but I’m getting used to it and in no way want to return to unconsciousness.  I now question everything and am exercising my intuition and faith, in the true sense of the word, every day.  What this reveals is infinitely more terrifying than the cozy “womb warmth” I used to live in but the payback is that things line up and actually make sense and I feel much healthier for it.  The many layered onion skins that were enveloping my perception are falling away one after another and I’m very aware that this process is very far from over but the idea of crawling back into my former mind set is impossible for me.  It would be akin to committing suicide.  I’m also very aware that, thank God, I am very far from being the only one undergoing this process.

Of course, like so many others during these times, I’ve got used to being called a conspiracy theorist which is probably why I was moved to write this article. I am proud to be in the camp  inhabited and moved by people such as the lady in the “Confronting Cognitive Dissonance” video who states that she felt physically sick when she understood that her government, which she had more or less trusted up until that moment might have been behind 9-11. Such people are searching for truth and discovering themselves.  The other kind of conspiracy theorists are those who invent or propagate conspiracy theories for money and power and, or because they want to convince us that their particular prejudice is the one and only true prejudice whoever it be directed against.  “It’s all the fault of the people I’ve learned to hate and you must agree with me.”  Perennially popular targets remain: The blacks, the Jews, Monarchs, business people, immigrants and Russians to name but a few and these conspiracy theorists are of course the 100% polar opposite of the former.

One looking for the truth and the other, deliberately trying to destroy it. The American Lady reluctantly facing up to her realization that the official government conspiracy theory about 9-11 doesn’t hold water and the fear of looking into what seems to be at first glance, the darkness of the abyss or:   Anne Applebaum’s constantly and professionally reiterated conspiracy theories about Putin being a tyrannical dictator and mafiosi obsessed with world domination who has to be stopped by the “free, democratic” West before he, followed by his “brainwashed” millions in Russia will march in “good old” WWII style to enslave us all.  I leave you to contemplate these two examples.  These two absolute, polar opposites.  The seeker for truth and the bald faced liar for gain!

Marcus Godwyn is the British musician and amateur essayist who has been around Russians for the last 30 years. The original text was subject to editorial trimming.

Genocidal corporate media presstitutes follow the all-too-familiar script of blaming the victim for the crimes perpetrated by aggressor nations.

NATO terrorists, for example, are invading and occupying Syria, and the Syria government is blamed for the ensuing disasters, but the presstitutes omit this this from their narratives and instead find creative ways to blame the al Assad government whose duty it is to protect Syria, its sovereignty, and its territorial integrity.  When terrorists are occupying cities, as they do in Syria, innocent people will always be victimized, including during government operations to clear out the terrorist infestations, but the presstitutes blame the Syrian government, not the NATO terrorists.

President Assad is fraudulently demonized for a war perpetrated by aggressors who are tasked with destroying Syria so the West can further the destruction under a fraudulent Responsibility To Protect (R2P) mandate, wherein criminal West promises to save Syrians from the West’s own terrorists.  It’s basically a mafia –style protection racket writ large:  If Assad steps down, we’ll “protect you” and replace him with a Wahhabi stooge government, and everyone will be happy.

The reality of course, is that if the Western terrorists win the war, Syria will be totally destroyed, much like Libya, Iraq, and the Ukraine.

The crimes of the aggressors have been well-documented for years, and all but ignored by the presstitutes.

A 2012 Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo stated unequivocally that the U.S support for ISIS was  willful.  In an interview with Mehdi Hasan, MIchael T. Flynn, former director of the DIA, was blunt.

To Hasan’s question,

In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups [Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you’re worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?

Flynn responded, “ I hate to say it’s not my job…but that…my job was to…was to to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be.

The New York Times newspaper, another propaganda outlet, can’t help but reveal the truth, even if indirectly, when, in a recent article, “C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say” it acknowledged that “ Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia  (were) intended for Syrian rebels.”

Meanwhile, UN Security Council Resolution 1373 states clearly that,

(A)ll States shall: (a) Refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts, including by suppressing recruitment of members of terrorist groups and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists.

All of this evidence assigns guilt directly to the West for the disaster befalling Syria. The West’s actions contradict international law, and they expose the lies of the presstitute media that typically vilifies the Assad government rather than the real perpetrators (including themselves).

Yet another recent article, “U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels”, indicates that the West is also behind the financing of the terrorists.  The writers revel that,

When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria’s embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Financing terrorists is also a violation of UN Resolutions (and international law). UN Resolution 2199 “urges”,

 States to prevent the terrorist groups from gaining access to international financial institutions and reaffirmed States’ obligations to prevent the groups from acquiring arms and related materiel, along with its call to enhance coordination at the national, regional and international level for that purpose.

Add to this the fact that now Israel is publicly admitting that it prefers ISIS to the Syrian government, and we see that the presstitute narratives are falling apart yet again.

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s media advisor correctly assesses the damage committed by Western media outlets that propagate false narratives about Syria:

 The false narrative, propagated about Syria was as dangerous to the Syrian people and the safety and security of Syrians as the terrorist acts perpetrated by terrorists because it isolated the reality in Syria from the public understanding in the West and the world at large and it prevented creating a level of understanding between western countries and the Syrian people about what is going on.

What will be the next story advanced by the genocidal media to account for the clear criminality of the West and its terrorists?

How many more thousands of innocent people will lose their lives because of the Western lies, and the grovelling presstitute media echo chambers covering for the criminality of the Western foreign policies?

Though the chemical industry gets wide praise for eliminating the hazardous chemical BPA from our water bottles and other daily use products, the replacement material may turn out to be even worse.

Before we consider the new danger, let’s look at the old one.

BPA (bisphenol-A) — is a chemical found  in plastic bottles, in the lining of food cans, in bottle tops, and in water supply lines.  It can seep into whatever it contains.

BPA is used to make polycarbonate plastic, said to be “a lightweight, high-performance plastic that possesses a unique balance of toughness, optical clarity, high heat resistance, and excellent electrical resistance.”

What’s in the plastic of your water bottle?  Photo credit: Brave Heart / Fickr

As well as being a primary ingredient of plastics, BPA also interferes with hormones — the powerful chemical messengers that control nearly every major function of the body. For this reason, it is called an “endocrine disruptor.”

Exposure to BPA in adulthood has numerous effects, including stem cell and sperm cell defects, the risk of prostate and breast cancers, liver tumors, rising blood pressure, andobesity (Bhan et al., 2014; Prins 2014). Fetuses exposed to BPA can develop food intolerance. Early BPA exposure can lead to delayed effects, including those indicative ofaltered brain function.

These are just a representative handful of harms, drawn from a much larger body of at least 200 publications (some have estimated a thousand publications). The sheer quantity of results represent a massive accumulation of scientific evidence that BPA is harmful.

Chemical manufacturers have begun removing BPA from their products. Sunoco no longer sells BPA for products that might be used by children under three. France has anational ban on BPA food packaging. The EU has banned BPA from baby bottles. These bans and associated product withdrawals are the result of epic scientific research and some intensive environmental campaigning.

But these restrictions are not victories for human health. Nor are they even losses for the chemical industry.

For one thing, the industry now profits from selling premium-priced BPA-free products. These are usually made with the chemical substitute BPS — which current research suggests is even more of a health hazard than BPA.

But since BPS is far less studied, it will likely take many years to build a sufficient case for a new ban.

From BPA to BPS — Bad to Worse?

The chemical most frequently used to make BPA-free products is called BPS. As its name implies, BPS is very similar in chemical structure to BPA.

However, BPS appears to be absorbed by the human body more readily than BPA and is already detectable in 81% of Americans.

BPS is now looking likely to be even more toxic than BPA. Like BPA, BPS has been found to interfere with mammalian hormonal activity.

In addition, to a greater extent than BPA, BPS, alters nerve cell creation in the zebrafish brain and causes behavioral hyperactivity in zebrafish larvae. These  results were observed at extremely low chemical concentrations, 1,000-fold lower than the official US levels of acceptable human exposure.

Time and again, synthetic chemicals have been banned or withdrawn only to be replaced by others that are equally harmful, and sometimes are worse.

Neonicotinoids — which the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) credits with creating a global ecological catastrophe — are modern replacements for long-targeted organophosphate pesticides. And organophosphates had previously supplanted DDT and the other organochlorine pesticides from whose effects many bird species are only now recovering.

What can be done about this?  First, we need to understand the full extent of the problem. That means stripping away the mythologies surrounding risk assessment. When we do this, we see why chemical regulations don’t work.

EPA Headquarters in Washington DC.
Photo credit: Coolcaesar / Wikimedia

“Risk Assessment” Is an Illusion

The experiments currently being performed by toxicologists are incapable of generating predictions of safety that can be applied to other species, or even to the same species when it exists in other environments, or eats other diets.

Since numerous experiments have shown that this most basic element of chemical risk assessment is invalid, the protection chemical risk assessments claim to offer is a complex illusion.

What is known about the technical limitations of toxicology and the overall scientific rigor of chemical risk assessment? And are these assessments being performed by competent and well-intentioned institutions?

The standard assays of toxicology involve the administration (usually oral feeding) of chemicals in short term tests of up to 90 days to defined strains of organisms (most often rats or mice). These test organisms are of a specified age and are fed standardised diets.

The results are then extrapolated to other doses, other age groups and other environments. Such experiments are used to create estimates of harm. Together withestimates of exposure they form the essence of chemical risk assessment.

To say that both estimates are prone to error, however, is an understatement.

Limits to Estimating Exposures and Harms

Until 2013, no one appreciated that the main route of exposure to BPA in mammals is absorption through the mouth — and not the gut.

The mouth is an exposure route whose veinous blood supply bypasses the liver, and thisallows BPA to circulate unmetabolized in the bloodstream. Before this was known, many toxicologists dismissed as implausible reports of high BPA concentrations in human blood. They had assumed that BPA was absorbed via the gut and rapidly degraded in the liver.

Fifty years ago no one knew that many synthetic chemicals would evaporate at the equator, and condense at the poles, from where they would enter polar ecosystems.

Neither did scientists appreciate that all synthetic fat-soluble compounds that were sufficiently long-lived would bio-accumulate as they rose up the food chain — and thus reach concentrations inside organisms sometimes many millions of times above background levels.

Nor until recently was it understood that sea creatures such as fish and corals would become major consumers of the plastic particles flushed into rivers. These misunderstandings are all examples of historic errors in estimating real world exposures to toxic substances.

Until it was too late, scientists were not aware that a human with an eighty-year lifespan could have a window of vulnerability to a specific chemical as short as four days.

Neither was it known that the effects of chemicals could be strongly influenced by the time of day they are ingested.

Real world exposures are very complex. Thus it is impossible for risk assessment experiments to be “realistic”. The reason is that actual exposures are always unique to individual organisms and vary enormously in their magnitude, duration, variability, and speed of onset — all of which influence the harm they cause.

Additionally, many regulatory decisions do not recognise that exposures to individual chemicals typically come from multiple sources. This failing is often revealed following major accidents or contamination events.

Regulatory agencies will assert that actual accident-related doses do not exceed safe limits. However, such statements usually ignore that, because regulations function in effect as permits to pollute, many affected people may already be receiving significant exposures for that chemical prior to the accident.

Obstacles to estimating harm originate from the fact that organisms and ecosystems are widely diverse. The solution adopted by chemical risk assessment is to extrapolate. Extrapolation allows the results of one or a few experiments to “cover” other species and other environmental conditions.

Most of the assumptions required for such extrapolations, however, have never been scientifically validated. Lack of validation is most obvious for species not yet discovered or those that are endangered. But in other cases they are known to be invalid .

Even more extreme extrapolations are employed in ecological toxicology. For example, data on adult honey bees is typically extrapolated to every stage of the bee life cycle, to all other bee species, and sometimes to all pollinators — without any evidence whatsoever.

Such assumptions may seem absurd, but they are the primary basis of the claim that chemical risk assessment is comprehensive.

FDA tests the safety of BPA use on food contact applications at the National Center for Toxicological Research NCTR in Jefferson, Arkansas. Photo credit: FDA / Wikimedia

Potential Harm Not Tested

Another crucially important limitation is that, for budgetary and practical reasons, toxicologists necessarily focus on a limited number of specific “endpoints”. An endpoint is whatever characteristic the experimenter chooses to measure. Typical endpoints are death (mortality), cancers, organism weight, and organ weights; but endpoints can be more subtle measures like neurotoxicity.

There is a whole politics associated with the choice of endpoints, which reflects their importance in toxicology, including allegations that endpoints are sometimes chosen for their insensitivity rather than their sensitivity; but the inescapable point is that no matter what endpoints are chosen, there is a much vaster universe of unmeasured endpoints.

These typically include: learning defects, immune dysfunction, reproductive dysfunction, multigenerational effects, and so on. Ultimately, most potential harms don’t get measured by toxicologists and so are missing from risk assessments.

Compounding the Problem

Another example of the difficulty of estimating real life harms is that organisms are exposed to mixtures of toxins. The question of toxin mixtures is extremely important..

All real life chemical exposures occur in combinations, either because of previous exposure to pollutants or because of the presence of natural toxins. Many commercial products moreover, such as pesticides, are only available as mixtures, whose principal purpose is to enhance the potency of the product.

Risk assessments, however, just test the “active ingredient” alone These estimates are based on the assumption of a linear dose-response relationship for the effect of a single chemical, at various doses.

But the question for any risk assessment should be whether the assumption is reliable for the novel compound under review.

False Assurance

To summarize, the process of chemical risk assessment relies on estimating real world exposures and their potential to cause harm by extrapolating from only a few simple laboratory experiments. The resulting estimates come with enormous uncertainty. For good reason, in many cases the results have been extensively critiqued and shown to be either dubious or actively improbable.

Yet extrapolation continues. The alternative is to actually measure these different species, using different mixtures, and under different circumstances. Given the challenges this would entail, the continued reliance on simplistic assumptions is understandable if not forgiveable.

Nevertheless, one might  have thought that such important limitations and unproven assumptions would be frequently noted as caveats to risk assessments. They should be, but they are not.

Following the UK’s traumatically disastrous outbreak of Mad Cow Disease (BSE) in the 1980s, during which most of the UK population was exposed to infectious prions following highly questionable scientific advice, this exact recommendation was made inthe Phillips report.

Lord Phillips proposed that such caveats should be specifically explained to non-scientific recipients of scientific advice. In practice, nothing changed.

When an unusual scientific document does discuss the limitations of chemical risk assessment (such as this description of the failure of interactions between pesticides to extrapolate between closely related species), it rapidly becomes obvious just how much our knowledge is dwarfed by actual biological and system complexities. As any biologist ought to expect, in this study the errors multiplied and the standard assumptions of risk assessment were overwhelmed even by ordinary life situations.

For good reasons, therefore, many experts are concerned about the number and quantity of man-made chemicals in our bodies. Recently, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics linked the emergence of new diseases and disorders to chemical exposure. They specifically mentioned obesity, diabetes, hypospadias and reproductive dysfunction and noted:

“The global health and economic burden related to toxic environmental chemicals is in excess of millions of deaths”. The Federation acknowledged this to be an underestimate.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces, supported by Russian warplanes, have seized the al-Ramliyeh village and the nearby hilltops in the southern parts of Hama province. Some 60 al-Nusra militants have been reportedly killed and a number of the terrorist group’s vehicles destroyed in the clashes. The village of al-Ramliyeh is located south of the al-Salamiyeh city in the province of Hama. Recently, heavy clashes erupted in the area between pro-government forces and Al Nusra-lead militant groups that are operating in the area.

Separately, the SAA, supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces, has launched military operations in the Aleppo province, liberating the al-Asamat area in the Malah Farms north of Aleppo City. The SAA’s Tiger Forces are the main striking force of the government in the area. Russian warplanes have conducted up to 100 air strikes in the areas near Aleppo City since the start of operations. By the situation on June 27, pro-government forces control the whole Malah Farms. They have a strategic importance because a major part of the militant groups’ supply lines to Aleppo City is heading there.

The Jaysh Al Islam militant group has claimed that the Syrian Arab Air Force’s helicopter gunship was downed over Bahariyah in the East Ghouta last night. The group allegedly used the 9K33 Osa. It’s a Soviet-made, mobile, low-altitude, short-range tactical surface-to-air missile system. Pro-government sources say that the helicopter gunship has managed to land safely, denying the militants’ claims.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have continued advances in the ISIS-controlled city of Manbi in Aleppo province, reaching the city’s cemetery. Now, SDF units (mainly Kurds) are deployed in a striking distance from Manbij’s city center. However, mines and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) set by ISIS terrorists slow down the SDF’s advances in the area. Kurdish units have also seized the Al-Aljani gas station, besieged the Al-Haram roundabout and advanced to the eastern grain silo complex. Pro-Kurdish sources report that at least 60 ISIS militants have been killed in recent clashes. Omar Bin Khattab mosque has been surrounded by Kurds. Up to 30 ISIS militants are there.

On June 27, The Iraqi Army, counter-terrorism forces, the Iraqi Federal Police and the Iraqi Popular Mobilization units liberated the Al Jolan district of Fallujah. It had been the last district, controlled by the ISIS terrorist group. Now, the Fallujah is fully under the control of the government. Now, Iraqi forces are securing the city in order to prevent terrorist attacks.

in the province of Salah ad Din, Iraqi forces are conducting military operations in order to liberate the strategic city of Shirqat, controlled by the ISIS terrorist group. Iraqi forces have already liberated the villages of Ibrahim al-A’li, Makhul, Ayn Dibis and Ayn al Bayḑah from ISIS in the area.

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It is understandable why elites would think this way, but it does not stand up to scrutiny and exposes humanity to untold dangers.

Stephen Walt, a world famous professor of international relations, has presented an interesting ‘case against peace‘ that might explain some of the most recent trends in international affairs.

Walt presents an argument that essential says that a state of war allows for domestic social cohesion to occur, because:

When the wolf is at the door, domestic quarrels are put aside in order to deal with the more immediate danger.

George Simmel, a sociologist, is also quoted by Walt and proceeds to explain how, in his opinion, ‘peace time’ can lead to domestic unrest:

A group’s complete victory over its enemies is thus not always fortunate in a sociological sense. Victory lowers the energy which guarantees the unity of the group; and the dissolving forces, which are always at work, gain hold.

Walt explores the work of another political scientist, Michael Desch, who said:

The cold war was the ‘perfect’ type of threat. It never escalated to a major war … although it was serious enough to be a unifying factor.

Walt acknowledges that the 9/11 attacks created a similar unifying atmosphere, yet notes that it quickly collapsed after the true reality of the threat turned out to be based upon lies:

The threat from al Qaeda and its ilk is just not serious enough to galvanize the national unity that a genuine international rivalry produces.

Domestic terrorism continues to shock us, but it’s hard to rally the nation over the long term when the risk of dying in a terrorist incident is still about 1 chance in 4 million each year.

Walt concludes with this:

Reducing external dangers turns out to have a downside: The less threatened we are by the outside world, the more prone we are to ugly quarrels at home. Even worse, peace may even contain the seeds of its own destruction.

Now if we examine recent trends, we can see how this thesis is being applied.

Political elites have continued to shift their rhetoric in recent years to portraying Russia as the enemy of the Western world, and particularly the United States, in a way that we might see as attempting to produce that ‘genuine international rivalry’ that Walt speaks of.

Many believe that stoking domestic tensions is beneficial to those in control, and at a certain level it is, but domestic harmony is far more conducive to economic growth. The ‘police state takeover’ would be of massive short term gain to elites, but in reality it would be of little gain at all in the long term.

The rise of anti-Russian rhetoric in particular may be a drive towards implementing the ‘case against peace’, in order to keep a working population in motion and generating the massive economic activity that ultimately is the thing that keeps the US on top of everybody else.

There are however, some very worrying aspects of the ‘case against peace’ that Walt does not consider. The first is that a real threat does not necessarily incite mass social cohesion. The war in Vietnam was framed as a fight against the ‘real’ threat of communism, yet huge protests and massive social unrest occurred against it. Moreover, despite being in the height of the post-9/11 us-against-them mentality, London saw its biggest protest in history take place against the Iraq War.

Desch calls the Cold War the ‘perfect type of threat’, because ‘it never escalated into a major war’, but fails to mention that it very well could have done, which would have destroyed far more than just social cohesion and made a ‘normal life’ impossible for centuries to come.

It is also not necessarily true that it is only a threat from ‘the outside world’ that maintains domestic harmony. Why would we risk something that may escalate into a ‘major war’, when there are perhaps other ways of achieving social calm? In the Western world as it stands, most social unrest can be traced back to the fact that we have a massively unequal society – financially speaking. We might, instead of stoking conflict with an international, military super power like Russia, seek to create an economic reality that allows people to maintain a prosperous and fulfilling life.

Walt contends that the ‘case against peace’ means for:

A recurring cycle of conflict where periods of peace give way to new sources of tension and division.

This is the saddest part of the entire argument. We, as humans, need to find alternative means of dealing with our ‘sources of tension and division’ other than ‘a recurring cycle of conflict’ that the ‘case against peace’ advocates. Until we do that, we will be doomed to follow the mistakes of the past.

Listening to the imperial media one might be excused for thinking that nothing dramatic is happening in the Ukraine and that the crisis has basically leveled off in some way. Well, why not? They just had recent elections and, apparently, that went well, Russia is still showing her usual bad will and threatening behavior towards Europe, but at least Putin was forced to release the Ukrainian Jeanne d’Arc (aka Nadezhda Savchenko), and there is hope that the united front of the EU and NATO will eventually force Putin to stop his aggression against the Ukraine and to comply with the Minsk Agreements. Oh, and the Ukrainian National Bank has announced, I kid you not, a return to growth (by 0.1%) for the first quarter of the year.

Alas, the disconnect between this kind of nonsense and reality is total. Yes, elections did take place, but they were anything but free, the neo-Nazis are now more influential than ever and the fact that Putin did agree to exchange Savchenko for 2 Russian citizens accused of being, I kid you not, GRU Spetsnaz operators, was just a slick way for him to stop Savchenko from being his problem while making her Poroshenko’s (and even Timoshenko’s).

As for the Minsk Agreements, Russia is not party to them at all, she just is a guarantor along with Germany and France. But yes, Poroshenko is still in power, people are still finding goods in stores and no new “Maidan” has taken place. So, externally, things are not too bad.

Radiokafka / Shutterstock.com

The problem with that rosy image is that nobody at Langley really believes it.

The folks at Langley know that the Ukrainian economy is basically dead and coasting to its inevitable breakdown on inertia. They know that the government services are barely kept alive by western aid and that even that is not enough to maintain the authority of the central government which is gradually becoming irrelevant and replaced by local ‘authorities’ (oligarchs and mobsters).

Even more importantly, they now have lost any hope of drawing Russia into this conflict and they are seeing clear signs that the “European front” is cracking: France, Italy and others are already showing signs of discontent with the current situation, as has Germany (all these countries have their own “Langleys” who are making exactly the same dire predictions). So the big question for the USA is what to do next?

The initial plan was to make the Ukraine a sort of “black hole” which would suck in all the economic, political, and military resources of Russia, ideally by having Russia occupying the Donbass. But now that the Russians have declined to get sucked in, it is Europe which is now threatened with the Ukrainian black hole.

The Americans probably realize by now that it is too late to put Humpty Dumpty together again and they are right. While, in theory, a join effort of the USA, EU and Russia could, at a huge cost, try to rebuild the Ukraine, political realities make such a joint action impossible, at least for the foreseeable future. They also realize that, courtesy of Mrs Nuland’s candid words, the blame for the disastrous outcome in the Ukraine will be put on the USA (which is not quite fair, the Europeans are also guilty as hell, but such is life). And if “losing Syria” was bad enough, then “losing the Ukraine” will do irreparable damage to the USA simply by debunking the myth of the USA’s omnipotence. This is very serious, especially for an Empire which has basically given up on negotiations or diplomacy and which now only delivers ultimatums.

So what are the US options here?

It is hard to predict at this time what the US might try to do. The normal US practice in such a situation is to simply declare victory and leave. That would work in Africa or Asia, but smack in the middle of the European continent that is hardly an option as it would result in a PR disaster.

The second option could be to basically blame the Ukrainians themselves for everything and try to protect Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova from the inevitable consequences of the spreading chaos. The risk here, at least from the US point of view, is that Russia and her Novorussian allies would be more or less free to move in the created vacuum and that is something the USA absolutely cannot accept. The Americans would have visions of Zakharchenko in Kiev or pro-Russian riots in Odessa and that is simply beyond unacceptable.

Which leaves option three: to deliberately blow up Ukraine.

Rostislav Ishchenko, in my opinion the best specialist of the Ukraine on the planet, has recently began warning that such a mechanism is already in place: to turn the civil war into a religious war pitting not Latins (“Roman Catholics”) against the Orthodox, but various Orthodox group against each other. Let me explain.

Like everything else in the Ukraine, the history of the various Orthodox jurisdictions in the Ukraine is very complex and goes far back for centuries. I cannot go into a detailed discussion of this very interesting topic here, but I want to offer some key pointers.

There are three main groups which all call themselves the “true” or “canonical” Ukrainian Orthodox Church: the biggest one is the Autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, followed by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate and, finally, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Of course, all three of these churches claim to be the true representative of the legitimate Ukrainian Orthodoxy.

[Full disclosure: I personally don’t consider any of them to be legitimate or truly Orthodox so I don’t have a personal stake in this one].

They are:

The AUOC-MP is the biggest of the three. It is self-governing, but not fully independent. It is probably the biggest of the three churches and it is in full communion with all of the other “official” (read: “state approved”) Orthodox Churches out there. The AUOC-MP is viewed as the “hand of the Kremlin” by the nationalists.

The UOC-KP was founded by a former Bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate, Filaret Denisenko who created a “schism” (a unilateral separation in contradiction to the Canons of the Church) from the Moscow Patriarchate (which is ironic since Filaret was a former “deputy” (locum tenens) to Patriarch Pimen I of the Moscow Patriarchate and even considered a front-runner to succeed him). Even by Soviet standards Filaret was always known to be an exceptionally immoral, corrupt and unprincipled man, but the Moscow Patriarchate only excommunicated him when he broke-off from the MP to create his own “church”.

The UAOC is basically a 1921 creation of the Ukrainian National Republic of 1917 (just as the Moscow Patriarchate is a 1937 creation of the Bolshevik state of 1917) and it represents the “non-Soviet” version of Ukrainian Christianity, with several of its clergymen have been persecuted by the Soviet state.

What makes this situation truly unique are two factors:

• Historically, the territory which is today known as the Ukraine has mostly been part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople between the 10th and 17th century (this is a gross simplification, but basically correct).
• The modern Patriarchate of Constantinople is in a desperate quest for relevance (by itself it is tiny and subject to the Turkish authorities) and has extremely bad relations with Moscow

There is, therefore, at very real risk that the authorities in Kiev will decide to declare the AUOC-MP as an “aggressor country Church” and that they will order all the parishes, monasteries and other building currently owned by the clergy of the AUOC-MP to be forcibly transferred to either the UOC-KP and/or the UAOC.

There is also a possibility that the Patriarch of Constantinople might decide to “heed the cries of the faithful” and recognize either the UOC-KP and/or the UAOC as an autonomous part of the Constantinople Patriarchate thus basically taking the entire Ukraine under his control. And even if the authorities in Kiev don’t formally declare the AUOC-MP as a fair game for pogroms and illegal expropriations, they can just look away and let the neo-Nazi death-squads (like the infamous “Aidar”) do the dirty job for them.

How big is this risk?

I would assess it as high. To create civil disturbances is the ideal way for the regime in Kiev to blame the “hand of Moscow” for all the problems.

The spineless Europeans would have to follow the (US) party line and blame Putin for “stirring up the Russian-speakers” in the Ukraine and “using the pro-Moscow Russian minority initiate a new phase in the hybrid war against the sovereign Ukraine”. Such a confrontation would also allow the oligarch controlled political factions to unite with the real neo-Nazis who are currently in a “moderate opposition” mode. For the oligarchs, this would be the perfect opportunity to murder their neo-Nazi opposition (Savchenko for example) and blame it on “Moscow’s agents”. Last but not least, the eruption of intra-Orthodox clashes would be the perfect pretext to further unleash the SBU (Ukie KGB) against any opposition party.

Just as in the war against the Donbass, Putin would be put under tremendous pressure inside Russia to “do something about this” and some will not shy away form demanding that Russian tanks be sent to Kiev. Of course, Putin would never agree to such a folly, but that refusal would most definitely hurt him in the Russian public opinion, yet another good result from such an intra-Orthodox conflict in the Ukraine.

For the time being, the Empire is limiting its anti-Russian informational war to petty actions like the banning of Russian athletes from the Olympics in Brazil, focusing solely on Russian hooligans in France and giving the Eurovision to a political singer against all Eurovision rules. These are annoying for sure, but they are very limited in their effects: yes, it makes Russia look like the “uncivilized bad guy” in the eyes of the TV-watching idiots in the West, but a lot of people are not buying into this and see straight through it all, and it just serves to consolidate the support of the Russian people for Vladimir Putin. At the end of the day, turning Western public opinion against Putin is useless. What the Empire would really want is to turn the Russian public opinion against Putin – that is The Prize, at least for the folks in Langley.

So what better way would there be to set Ukraine (further) ablaze while giving the Russian people the impression that “Putin has betrayed the Orthodox people”, than to trigger a religious war ?

We all know the famous words of a US officer in Viet-Nam “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”. There is now a real risk that the US might decide to destroy the Ukraine in order to “save it”, especially if the Neocons re-take full control of the Executive under Hillary.

A referendum on the future of the United Kingdom (UK) within the European Union (EU) divided both the ruling Conservative Party (CP) and its main rival, the Labor Party.

Results from the vote gave the Leave side a 52-48 percent profound victory that reversed the decision of 1973 when Britain entered the-then European Economic Community.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation on June 24 paving the way for Boris Johnson, the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), who led the political break with Downing Street, placing him in a position to succeed the incumbent when he steps down in the immediate future. On the Labor side of the aisle, Jeremy Corbyn, considered as a representative of a more leftwing trend within the party, is also under fire for taking the same position as the Conservatives supporting the Remain forces although in a very lackluster fashion.

Corbyn spoke after Cameron before the UK parliament on June 27 and was heckled by members of his own party. Over 20 shadow cabinet ministers for Labor have resigned demanding that Corbyn relinquish his leadership position.

International financial markets have plunged in response to the British vote to withdraw from the EU. Bank stocks have tumbled significantly with Barclay’s and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) suspending trade during a brief period on June 27. The British pound suffered its largest loss in over three decades.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, a Conservative MP, made a national address in an effort to calm fears among capitalist investors stressing that this was only a temporary correction and that it would not rise to level of 2008 when the world fell into the most severe recession since the Great Depression. Standard & Poor downgraded the British economy amid the decline in markets on June 27.

The debate surrounding the Brexit vote has been acrimonious and violent. Labor MP Jo Cox, a proponent of Remain, was assassinated by a right-wing zealot leading up to the election. Simon Wooley, who monitors racial incidents in Britain, said over the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on June 27 that incidents of racism and xenophobia had increased by 57 percent over the last few weeks before and after the referendum.

Responses to Brexit by Several African States

The decision by British voters to quit the EU has implications far beyond its own nation.

Both neighboring Scotland and Northern Ireland, which are part of the United Kingdom, voted in a comfortable majority to Remain.  These developments have prompted calls from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Northern Irish Sein Finn Deputy Leader Martin McGuinness to hold their own referendums on independence from Britain.

With Britain being the largest former colonial power which controlled vast territories of the world in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, North and South America, its economic and cultural influence is immense. The Commonwealth of Nations, which was established by the British monarchy, still encompasses 53 countries linked by economic relations.

Consequently, numerous African states have various responses to the Brexit referendum and its potential impact on their political and economic affairs. Throughout the leading African states there has been an economic downturn over the last year resulting from the decline in commodity prices, the devaluation of currencies, a reduction in foreign direct investment along with the effects of El Nino in the southern region as well as the escalation of social and labor unrest in states such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana.

South African leaders stressed the need to limit the impact of the outcome. The EU is the largest economic bloc trading partner with South Africa requiring the government to renegotiate trade agreements with both the UK and Brussels.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan attempted to reassure the people that the country was capable of dealing with the effects of the Brexit vote.

An article published by Business Day Live noted “Gordhan urged business, labor and the government to continue co-operating to support investor confidence. Business Unity SA (Busa) CEO Khanyisile Kweyama said the long-term implications of Brexit on the local economy were yet to be fully understood. Of particular concern was Brexit’s immediate effect on the rand and local markets, she said. The rand tumbled more than 7% to R15.67/$ following the news, but has since recouped some of those losses.” (June 24)

Zimbabwe welcomed the outcome citing London as the main culprit in the sanctions regime that has crippled the economy for the last decade-and-a-half. The state-run Herald newspaper acknowledged that the UK, EU and the United States were united in their economic sanctions against the government of President Robert Mugabe, the leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ruling party. (June 26)

ZANU-PF Foreign Affairs secretary Ambassador Joey Bimha emphasized that the government was looking forward to an EU policy shift on Zimbabwe. Bimha said: “We will wait and see developments after this. It is not something that we can make a judgment at this point in time. In the EU, there were a number of countries which supported it (Britain) in maintaining those sanctions and those countries remain in the bloc and can still push a policy that the sanctions remain in place. It is not anything we can celebrate about in terms of removal of sanctions. Government will for now monitor the situation.” (June 26)

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mwanananga Mwawampanga, took an historical approach saying the abuse some African states endured under the control of Britain, the break-up was welcome. “Briefly, I can say it might be sad for Britain and Europe, but Brexit is good for Africa, it is good for Zimbabwe.”

Former Zimbabwe Ambassador to the EU Christopher Mutsvangwa said now that Britain is departing from the EU, “Brussels should return to unfettered productive engagement.” He went on to say “Constructive multi-dimensional engagement was fettered by neo-colonial pretensions of post imperial nostalgia.”

Nigeria facing an economic downturn like South Africa with currency devaluations, foreign exchange liquidity problems and rising unemployment, expressed regret over the vote but will struggle to deal with the potential negative consequences of the historic decision.

According to News24, the news agency “reported that the decision of Britain to pull out of the European Union will undoubtedly have a negative impact on Nigerians as the country is a member of the British Commonwealth. Nigeria has strong economic ties to Britain with it being the second largest trading partner in Africa, behind South Africa.”

The Egypt Daily News reported that Brexit is having a negative impact on its financial markets already strained due to domestic unrest and the lack of capital inflows. The paper said “Brexit impacted the Egyptian Exchange’s (EGX) performance on Sunday (June 26), with stocks dropping by 5.54%, closing at 6,851.6 points. As a result, the EGX lost any profits achieved throughout 2016, and its performance turned from a positive to a negative, registering losses of 2.2% since the beginning of 2016.” (June 27)

Inside Britain leading left parties in the country supported the Leave position noting that the EU is an imperialist construct that has intensified exploitation of the working class. The various parties did differ on the rising split within the Labor Party which on June 27 resulted in high-level defections from the opposition under Corbyn’s leadership.

The Morning Star of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), Proletarian Online of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Marxist-Leninist (CPGB-ML) and The New Worker of the New Communist Party of Britain (NCP), all called for their members, supporters and readers to reject staying within EU.

Obama’s “Humanitarian” Bombing Campaign “Against” the Islamic State (ISIS)

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 27 2016

The humanitarian pretext is bogus, the air strikes are illegal, extensive war crimes have been committed, Obama is no protecting civilians. The civilian deaths resulting from the air strikes are deliberate.

The 2016 U.S. Election: A Possible Repeat of the 1964 Election?

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, June 28 2016

The way this 2016 election campaign is unfolding, there is a good chance that it could be a repeat of the 1964 U.S. election. In both instances, a Democratic presidential candidate is facing a flawed and frightening Republican presidential candidate

Blaming Moscow for Brexit Vote. “The Perfect Gift for Vladimir Putin”

By Stephen Lendman, June 27 2016

Putin bashing is a virtual cottage industry, blaming him for almost anything a constant Western headline theme.Following Brits voting for Brexit, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said Putin and ISIS “might be happy” with the outcome. Foreign Secretary Philip…

How Obama Collaborated with Clerics in Tehran to Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Program

By Prof. Akbar E. Torbat, June 28 2016

The following describes how President Obama’s administration along with a number of NGOs secretly collaborated with the clerics in Tehran to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program and engineered Hassan Rouhani’s presidential election to make that happen. How the Deal Was Initiated…

Why Hillary Clinton Won’t Allow Her Corporate Speeches to be Published

By Eric Zuesse, June 27 2016

In a previous report, I indicated “Why Hillary Clinton’s Paid Speeches Are Relevant”, but not what they contained. The present report indicates what they contained.   One speech in particular will be cited and quoted from as an example here, to…

Brexit set to Impact Israeli Trade with Britain

By Anthony Bellchambers, June 27 2016

Brexit could seriously impact the Israeli economy and its bilateral trade with Britain as UK becomes free from being a signatory to the EU-Israel Association Agreement that gives unrestricted access to Israeli exporters from the Middle East into the British…

A public notice placed in the Jakarta Post on June 23 outlined plans to sell the estate and plantations on the estate in public auctions on June 30, July 7 and July 14. Interested parties were invited to make contact in order to hear further details of the property.

The properties in question are highly controversial and subject to numerous challenges and complaints in the Peruvian courts, at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and by investment regulators. The Peruvian government has investigated these properties and already ordered the suspension of operations as the owners failed to secure the relevant authorisations prior to clearance of the forest.

Satellite imagery has shown that these companies are clearing primary forests without permits and contrary to Peruvian laws and RSPO norms.

The RSPO itself has insisted on a suspension of operations as indigenous peoples have filed complaints accusing the company of taking their lands without their consent.

The same indigenous people have filed a lawsuit in Peru in which they are suing both the regional government and the company called Plantaciones de Pucallpa for the illegal acquisition of their traditional lands. Meanwhile, the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange is investigating the complaint by more than 60 Peruvian organisations which requests the delisting of United Cacao Ltd, which is also part of the same consortium operating in Peru.

According to Marcus Colchester, senior policy advisor at Forest Peoples Programme, “The proposed sale of these properties in Peru reflects the dark side of the palm oil sector whereby companies professing to uphold sustainability and business ‘best practice’, in line with RSPO and IFC standards, choose to sell off their properties when they are caught violating the standards or the law. When the International Finance Corporation (IFC) was challenged over its financial support for Wilmar in Indonesia in 2009 and found to be in violation of its own Performance Standards, it promptly divested from all its other palm oil properties in Indonesia. When Jardines was challenged over its palm oil property in Tripa, it sold the company off instead of sorting out the problems on the ground.”

Additional government regulations, in both host and home countries, are needed to hold transnational companies to account for their legal, human rights and environmental violations.

Forest Peoples Programme has contacted the Jakarta Post, urging further investigations of the Peru case and prospective buyers to be aware of these ‘trash and run’ practices.

There have been recent reports that the US administration is quite determined to “wash its hands” of the problem of Ukraine before the presidential election in November. Clearly President Obama is reluctant to pass on to his successor the conflicts that began on his watch and which Washington provoked at least in part. He also wants to make things easier for the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and her campaign. Thus, for all practical purposes, the US is no longer encouraging Kiev to sabotage the Minsk agreements, instead racheting up its demands that the agreements be honored, since there is no other way to bring the Ukrainian issue to a close.

It was interesting that during Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman’s three-day US visit, which ended June 17, Barack Obama could not find the time to meet with him. But during that period he did hold a heavyweight meeting in the Oval Office with the Saudi Arabian defense minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That’s quite natural: such are Washington’s foreign-policy priorities. Ukraine lags far behind Saudi Arabia on the scale of precedence.

Groysman’s biggest meeting was with Vice President Joe Biden, the administration’s point man on Ukraine. If one believes the official reports from Kiev, that meeting, like every other engagement the Ukrainian PM has had in America, boiled down to two issues – a discussion of the fight against “Russian aggression”, including “within the context of the implementation of the Minsk agreements”, and also support for “the ongoing successful reforms in Ukraine”. In his conversations with Samantha Power – the US ambassador to the UN who among senior US diplomats is perhaps the staunchest supporter of taking a hard line against Moscow – Groysman has listed “Russia, corruption, and populism” as the biggest threats facing Ukraine. The Ukrainians are once again circulating the fairy tale that Washington is fully supportive of Ukraine’s modi operandi and is on the verge of awarding Kiev a multi-billion-dollar bailout.

However, the US has a markedly different interpretation of Groysman’s negotiations. The White House has stated that Biden actually promised $220 million to help Ukraine pursue its reforms. But discussions about this modest sum have been held numerous times since the beginning of the year. It’s odd that the cash hasn’t shown up yet. Apparently, these promises, just like the other strategies to fuel Kiev financially, such as guarantees of credit, IMF loans, and the like, all hinge on political commitments from Ukraine’s leaders to resolve the situation in the eastern part of the country. Biden was blunt about Washington’s concern over “the worsening situation in eastern Ukraine” and stressed “the importance of a speedy implementation of the Minsk agreements”. However, Biden made no mention of either the “separatists” or Russia, which means that Kiev is simply expected to uphold its part of the bargain.

One sign that the mood now emerging in Washington might not be to the liking of Ukraine’s leaders can be seen in the statement made by National Security Advisor Susan Rice on the eve of Groysman’s visit. In an interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, she mentioned that the White House believes that the conflict in Ukraine can be resolved by the end of the year and is making every effort to ensure that the peace agreement is being honored by the time Barack Obama leaves office. Rice also noted that US authorities are stepping up cooperation with their French and German counterparts in order to implement the Minsk agreements, but that dialog with Russia on this issue remains a top priority. “We are hopeful if the Russians want to resolve this – and we have some reason to believe they might – we have the time and the wherewithal and the tools to do so”, stated Rice. However, she refused to prognosticate and stressed the impossibility of guaranteeing that the electoral reforms stipulated by the agreement would be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament.

Faced with the intransigence of the Ukrainian authorities, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer, added an additional arrow to his arsenal of reasons why Kiev should be committed to the Minsk agreements. Pifer noted that the very existence of those agreements makes it possible for Chancellor Merkel to show the EU why the sanctions against Russia should be continued.

According to Geopolitical Futures, a new online publication managed by George Friedman, the founder and former chairman of Stratfor, a private intelligence publishing and consulting firm, there are three explanations for the Obama administration’s rush to “wash its hands” of Ukraine.

The first is the disagreement in Europe about whether to continue the sanctions against Russia. The West would have to form a united front in order to win concessions from Moscow and that’s not happening. Plus, the Kremlin continues to draw certain European governments and parties over to its side, thus weakening the West’s negotiating position. Therefore, the terms for resolving the Ukrainian issue could eventually become even less favorable for the US than they are now.

The second reason for Washington’s urgency regarding Ukraine is its concern over another foreign-policy issue – the Islamic State (IS). To drive IS out of Syria, the US needs Russia’s assistance both on the battlefield as well as at the negotiating table. The third reason is the Obama administration’s fear that the next US president may take a different stance toward the parties involved in the Ukrainian conflict. This obviously means Donald Trump, whose victory Democrats are trying to prevent at all costs, but which cannot yet be ruled out.

Yet Geopolitical Futures suggests that the current administration’s efforts might not meet with success, due to the fact that foreign leaders, including those in Ukraine and Russia, will take a wait-and-see attitude, given the uncertain outcome of the US presidential election. The White House is in a race against time, and the prospects for signing a deal with Moscow over Ukraine that is in America’s interests will gradually dwindle away. At the same time, the authors of that analytical report believe that successful cooperation with Russia over Ukraine could facilitate progress on US goals in Syria.

Television trailers for re-runs of Yes, Minister – a sitcom beloved of Margaret Thatcher because it allowed her to blame civil servants for her own misjudgements – contained the line: “I’m not interested in the truth… what shall I tell Parliament?” It always gets a laugh, but in a few weeks’ time, who will be laughing?

Tony Blair has been keen to get his reaction in first ahead of the long-delayed Chilcot report into the Iraq War, fuelling suspicion that he will refuse to accept any verdict that he committed Britain to the invasion before he told Parliament and the public. In an interview, the former Prime Minister said he did not think anyone could say he did not make his position clear ahead of the 2003 war that led to the toppling of Saddam Hussein. So far, so utterly predictable. But he is right to be worried.

And the inquiry has been  too easy-going” in grilling ­witnesses about the lead-up to the war, a former UK diplomat said. Carne Ross said Sir John Chilcot was running a “narrow” investigation, with the standard of questioning “ pretty low”.At the Hay literary festival in Powys, author Tom Bower forecast that criticism of Blair will not go far enough. Bower, the author of a scathing biography of Blair that portrays him as a man with few policies and no ideology, said:

“Chilcot in my view will criticise the wrong people, the easy targets… the Cabinet Secretary, the Chief of the Defence Staff, who was not told the truth. The man obviously to blame is Blair… but he won’t be blamed for lying, that will not happen.”

Ian Hernon is Deputy Editor of Tribune.

Political fallout from the Brexit vote didn’t take long to unfold. David Cameron began it by announcing his resignation, effective when Tories meet in October, he said.

On Tuesday, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s greater austerity announcement didn’t surprise. Days before last Thursday’s vote, he claimed Brexit would cause a 30 billion pound public finance hole – public health service, education, transport and other spending cuts needed, as well as tax hikes to make up for the alleged shortfall.

At the time, he said “(f)ar from freeing up money to spend on public services…quitting the EU would mean less money. Billions less. It’s a lose-lose situation for British families.”

Brexit supporters responded by accusing him of threatening to break key Tory 2015 campaign pledges, notably Cameron’s “manifesto for working people,” saying “as a majority government, we will be able to deliver all of it.”

Included were increased National Health Service spending, tax-free childcare, and no income, VAT, rail fare, or National Insurance tax hikes.

All politicians lie. Believe nothing they say. What they do alone matters, serving special interests exclusively at the expense of beneficial social change.

On Tuesday, Osborne said “(i)t’s very clear that (Britain) is going to be poorer as a result of what’s happening to the economy.” Conditions are weakening, likely headed for recession.

Instead of promising vitally needed fiscal stimulus, directed at helping Britain’s most disadvantaged, along with a jobs creation program for the nation’s unemployed and underemployed, Osborne announced social spending cuts and counterproductive tax hikes.

“We are in a prolonged period of economic adjustment in the UK,” he said. “We are adjusting to life outside the EU…” He lied claiming “it will not be as economically rosy as life inside the EU.”

Longer-term, responsible governance, entirely absent in Britain, could make things much better. Osborne sounded like Obama earlier calling for “shared sacrifice” – failing to explain he meant making ordinary Americans sacrifice so privileged ones could share.

We have a plan, Osborne ranted. “We are absolutely going to have to provide fiscal security to people. We are going to have to show the country and the world that the government can live within its means.”

Asked if he meant spending cuts and tax hikes, he said “(y)es, absolutely.” On Monday, S&P Global Ratings lowered Britain from AAA to AA with a “negative” outlook, calling Brexit “a seminal event…lead(ing) to a less predictable, stable, and effective policy framework in the UK.”

Fitch cut its rating from AA+ to AA, citing a negative outlook. Some financial analysts predict recession, stagflation and contagion.

Separately, Cameron is meeting with other EU leaders in Brussels on Tuesday for the first time since last Thursday’s vote.

Britain seeks to maintain the “strongest possible” economic ties with its member states, he said – at the same time, ruling out a second referendum.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said Britain’s capital needs more autonomy to protect its economic and financial interests. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faces a no-confidence vote after most of his shadow cabinet ministers resigned on Sunday, replaced on Monday.

He remains steadfast, his spokesman saying “(t)he people who elect the leader of the Labour party are the members of the Labour party, and Jeremy has made that crystal clear.”

“He’s not going to concede to a corridor coup or backroom deal which tries to flush him out. He was elected by an overwhelming majority of the Labour party. He is not going to betray those people and stand down because of pressure.”

“(I)f there is another leadership election, (he’ll) be standing again…This is not about any individual. This is about democracy of the movement.”

So far, Lisbon Treaty Article 50, initiating the Brexit process, hasn’t been invoked – highly unlikely in the weeks and months ahead despite reports indicating otherwise.

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.

With admiration, many have been observing Iceland’s handling of the banking crisis that jolted the entire world in recent years. Now experiencing a unique economic recovery, the Icelandic public became aware in 2008 that the nation’s private banks had borrowed some $120 billion dollars, ten times the size of Iceland’s economy, creating an economic bubble which forced housing prices to double, and saddled the nation’s people with debt.

While other Western nations initiated bank bailouts in 2008, a popular uprising in Iceland led to a peaceful revolution against corrupt government and banks, and has since become the example for the global movement for liberation from central banking and unaccountable government.

In the duration of five months, the main bank of Iceland was nationalized, government officials were forced to resign, the old government was liquidated, and a new government was put in its place. [Source]

The resolve of Iceland’s people to correct the systemic problems in their government and economy was again demonstrated in 2015 when dozens of high-level financial executives were jailed for their involvement in manipulating Iceland’s financial markets after financial deregulation in 2001.

After Iceland suffered a heavy hit in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, which famously resulted in convictions and jail terms for a number of top banking executives, the IMF now says the country has managed to achieve economic recovery—“without compromising its welfare model,” which includes universal healthcare and education. In fact, Iceland is on track to become the first European country that suffered in the financial meltdown to “surpass its pre-crisis peak of economic output”—essentially proving to the U.S. that bailing out “too big to fail” banks wasn’t the way to go. – Claire Bernish

Following the resignation of Iceland’s former prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, who quit after being implicated in fraud by the release of the Panama Papers in April of 2016, the public has again grown impatient with the political class. While another US presidential election enters the severe mud-slinging phase, this time between a career politician with an alleged lengthy criminal past, and an arrogant celebrity businessman, Iceland has just demonstrated that a true political outsider and common person can be elected to the office of president.

Guðni Jóhannesson, a professor of history, has just been elected president of Iceland, ousting the 20-year incumbent, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, with 39% of the popular vote. The political newcomer also beat chief opponent, businesswoman Halla Tómasdóttir, meaning that the office of president will not be held by a career politician or businessperson.

President elect Jóhannesson, a scholastic expert on political history, diplomacy and the Iceland constitution, has never been a member of a political party, is a husband and father, and reportedly chose to run for president after the release of the Panama Papers.

The global struggle for honest money will only heat up in the coming years when the next financial bubble bursts. Sovereign, anti-globalist movements to correct systemic issues will be more common, such as we have just seen with Brexit. Recently, Switzerland also made overtures against the current banking model by seeking a referendum to ban commercial banks from printing money.

Iceland again sets a unique example of leadership for populist movements around the world who are eager for an end to corrupt politics, central reserve-banking tyranny and the takeover of government by corporate interests.

Reserve banking is the policy that guarantees insurmountable debt as the outcome of all financial transactions. [Source]

Sources:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/johannesson-leads-icelands-presidential-vote-partial-result-000003789.html?ref=gs
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/11/370156273/iceland-experiments-with-a-jubilee-of-debt-forgiveness
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36628444

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and Offgrid Outpost, a provider of storable food and emergency kits. Alex is an avid student of Yoga and life.

Saudi Arabia is surrounded by controversies these days, and its role in different conflicts in the Middle East has challenged its global reputation and standing. The Kingdom’s year-long military assault on Yemen has been called into question both by its close allies and conventional detractors, as the international community grows more concerned over the staggering civilian casualties in the impoverished Arab country, largely blamed on the Saudis, and partly laid at the Houthi rebels’ door.

The cross-party International Development Committee at the UK Parliament has recently released a report, implicitly accusing the Saudi-led coalition forces of breaching the international humanitarian law (IHL).

The British MP Steven Twigg has called on the Parliamentary Committees on Arms Exports Controls to consider a temporary ban on further arms exports to the kingdom, already accused of using the British weapons against the non-combatants in Yemen.

At the same time, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was caught off-guard before the questioning eyes of the global observers when he recently revealed that he was left with no choice but to make a painful decision and remove the name of Saudi Arabia and its allied nations active in Yemen from a blacklist of children rights violators under the undue pressure by the Saudi diplomats and some GCC and OIC member states. According to a June 2 UN report on children and armed conflict, Saudi Arabia-led coalition was responsible for 60% of child deaths and injuries in Yemen in 2015, killing 510 and wounding 667.

A Foreign Policy In Focus columnist and anthropologist tells Truth NGO that the UN’s decision to de-list Saudi Arabia and the coalition countries “does make the UN look vulnerable to pressure, not a good thing when the need for an effective international organization has never been greater.”

Dr. Conn Hallinan believes the American public doesn’t view Saudi Arabia very favorably, even though the Saudi lobby in the United States is working strenuously to boost up the Kingdom’s public image.

“The American public does not think highly of Saudi Arabia. The monarchy’s repression of women is well known, and there is growing knowledge of the Saudi’s perverse influence on Islam. Where the Saudi’s have influence is through lobbying of Congress and they have generally been successful in that endeavor,” he said.

Mr. Conn M. Hallinan is a noted columnist and writer penning op-eds on such issues as the U.S. foreign policy, EU politics and Middle East current affairs. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He oversaw the journalism program at the University of California at Santa Cruz for 23 years, and won the UCSC Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

In the following interview with Conn Hallinan, we discussed Saudi Arabia’s military expedition in Yemen, its future relations with the United States and its involvement in the recent UN scandal.

Q: It was recently reported that the United Nations removed the name of Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces in Yemen from a blacklist of children rights violators under pressure from Riyadh and its GCC partners. What impacts would the UN’s decision, publicly revealed by Mr. Ban Ki-moon, have on the international body’s credibility? Won’t it impart the message that the Secretary General is vulnerable to pressure?

A: The demand by Saudi Arabia and some of its GCC allies to remove the country from the list was really a scandal. It also put the U.S. and the United Kingdom in an uncomfortable spot because the Saudi-GCC air campaign and naval blockade [as] the source of most of the damage being inflicted on Yemeni children could not be carried out without the active help of both western powers. Ban Ki-moon certainly looked weak, though hardly for the first time. The UN Secretary General had invited Iran to the first round of talks aimed at ending the Syrian civil war and then reversed himself 24 hours later because the Americans and Saudis objected.

It does make the UN look vulnerable to pressure, not a good thing when the need for an effective international organization has never been greater. On everything from climate change to rising tensions in Ukraine, the South and East China seas, and Central and South Asia, the UN has an important role to play. It can’t play that role if it is seen caving in to Saudi Arabia or the U.S.

Q: The U.S. Senate endorsed the “Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act” on May 18, allowing the victims and families of victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia over its possible role in the tragedy. The bill is still pending the House of Representatives’ decision. Saudis have warned that they would sell off $750 billion in the U.S. Treasury securities held by the Kingdom if it is passed, and the White House said it would block the Congressional action. Have the Saudi warnings paid off and compelled the Obama administration to veto the bill? What does the whole episode signify about the Saudis’ influence on the U.S. government?

A: So far, President Obama is holding firm on his threat to veto the bill, but Hillary Clinton – most likely the next president – has endorsed it, so this is still up in the air. Certainly the Saudis have influence in the U.S., but most of that is strategic rather than financial. The threat to divest their holdings and $750 billion would probably hurt Saudi Arabia more than the U.S. Saudi Arabia would lose its strategic investments in their recently purchased oil refinery at Port Arthur, Texas and 26 distribution centers to sell the oil under the Shell label. Most of that $750 billion is in Treasury securities, but that amount of money would not have a profound impact on the more than $14 trillion owned by other investors, not counting the securities owned by the U.S. government. The Saudis would depress the value of their investments with such a move, something they can’t do right now with oil at historic lows and Saudi debt on the rise.

Saudi Arabia needs that money to placate its own growing population, a population that is among the youngest in the Middle East. Young people cannot find jobs in Saudi Arabia, and the Kingdom’s largest construction company, the Binladin Group, just announced it was laying off 77,000 workers. The Saudis like to use foreign labor because it tends to be more docile than the native workforce. Over 10 million non-Saudis work in the Kingdom. That means fewer jobs for young Saudis and restive young people scare the monarchy, as well they should. As long as the Kingdom shovels out money to keep them quiet – $130 billion in the aftermath of the Arab Spring – and uses its repressive police, the monarchy hopes to keep the lid on. Cut that budget, a task the International Monetary Fund has strongly recommended, and it’s not clear how firmly that lid is on. To show how low the mighty are fallen, Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch just downgraded the Kingdom’s credit rating and the monarchy has had to borrow money.

The U.S. supports Saudi Arabia because support of the monarchy is in its strategic interests. Washington might not get a lot of oil from Saudi Arabia anymore, but its allies do, and the Americans fear who would take the monarchy’s place.

So Saudi Arabia has influence, but not because of its money. For instance, in spite of strong lobbying efforts by the monarchy and Israel, it could not block the Iran nuclear agreement, an agreement that fits with U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East. The U.S. recognizes that you can’t keep Iran’s 80 million people, huge energy supplies, and strong industrial base under lock and key forever, and the U.S. would love to get in on the growing European stampede to invest in Iran. Boeing looks like it just landed a multi-billion dollar deal to sell commercial airliners to Tehran. The Saudi monarch fears Iran, and not just because it is Shiite. The Saudi monarchy got along just fine with the Shah. What the Saudi royal family fears the most is the word “republic” in Iran’s title.

Q: The Saudi military intervention in Yemen since March 15 has resulted in massive civilian deaths and destruction of urban infrastructure. The UN Security Council had not approved this unilateral engagement. Is the Saudi-led war on Yemen a legitimate action? What’s your assessment of the international responses to this year-long conflict?

A: Saudi intervention in Yemen is a clear violation of international law. A country can only take military action if it is attacked, or there is imminent danger. The Houthis don’t like the Saudis – they have fought them before, but they pose no threat to the Saudi regime, and they were certainly not about to march on Riyadh. The Saudis made up an excuse that the Houthis threatened them with Scud missiles. But the Houthis only got the missiles after the Yemeni army fled and Saudi Arabia intervened. And the Scuds never posed a danger in any case. Now the Saudis are saying they have ended the “Scud threat,” which is code for “We are getting out butts kicked, spending $200 million a day, have isolated ourselves from our allies Pakistan and Egypt, and there is a growing chorus of international criticism. Maybe we should rethink this whole intervention thing.”

In a sign of how badly the Saudis misjudged the situation in Yemen, their strongest military ground force, the United Arab Emirates, just announced they would be withdrawing from major military activities and concentrating on counter-terrorism operations. Translation? The ground war was a debacle and no air war wins without a ground war. The Saudi army is useless for anything but beating up on Shiites in south and eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The GCC armies are aimed at their own people. When they came up against the battle-hardened Houthis they got whipped. The Pakistanis warned the Saudis, but the current Riyadh leadership is a combination of over-the-top aggressive and totally inept. They got involved in a quagmire in Syria and Yemen; totally bungled the plan to pump more oil in order to lower its price, and thus drive off foreign competition and regain market supremacy. The Saudis thought oil would go to $80 a barrel, but they failed to take into account the slowdown in the Chinese economy and instead oil dropped below $40; [and they] stonewalled the Mecca stampede that killed thousands of pilgrims.

The international community has disgraced itself in Yemen. It has largely remained silent in the face of an endless string of war crimes, civilian casualties, widespread destruction of civilian houses and hospitals, not to mention the growing hunger by upwards of 12 million people. Partly the lack of response is that countries do not want to criticize the U.S. and the United Kingdom, who have made the war possible. The international community is ready to be outraged by Kosovo, Ukraine and Libya, but somehow Yemen doesn’t come up on the radar.

Q: For quite a while, the role of foreign interest groups and advocacy organizations in swaying the U.S. government’s policies has been subject to a hot debate. While there’s been much talk about the power of Israeli lobby in the United States, there are reports of the growth of an extensive network of law, lobby and public relations firms tasked with improving Saudi Arabia’s public image in the United States. Do such investments by Saudi Arabia have an impact on the broader U.S. public’s perception of the Arab Kingdom and its role in the Middle East? Do you consider the Saudi lobby as much influential as the Israeli lobby is?

A: The American public does not think highly of Saudi Arabia. The monarchy’s repression of women is well known, and there is growing knowledge of the Saudi’s perverse influence on Islam. Where the Saudi’s have influence is through lobbying of Congress and they have generally been successful in that endeavor. However, they suffered a setback on the Iran nuclear pact, and there is a rising chorus of editorials and columns on how Saudi Arabia’s extreme version of Islam, Wahhabism, has sparked terrorist groups all over the world.

The Saudi lobby works best when it works in the shadows, because, as I said, the Kingdom is not popular with most Americans. The Israeli lobby is different. Israel is well thought of by most Americans, although that is changing somewhat, and the lobby has strong support among Jews and non-Jews. However, even that lobby got a bloody nose over the Iran deal. However, Clinton is far more pro-Israel than Obama. If she is elected, one suspects she will be more supportive of Tel Aviv. Originally she opposed the Iran deal but later came around to support it.

Q: Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and its strict interpretation of Islamic texts have compelled some commentators to draw an analogy between the Kingdom and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. In an op-ed in The New York Times, Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud described Saudi Arabia as “an ISIS that has made it.” Do you see any connection between the ideology and worldview sustained by Saudi Arabia and Daesh? Are there authentic links binding them financially, militarily or politically?

A: Ideologically, they are identical. The Islamic State practices Wahhabism, including its war on the Shiites, which doesn’t mean they are allies. Daesh hates the Saudi monarchy and has called for the liberation of Mecca and Medina from the House of Saud. There have been some 20 Daesh bombings in Saudi Arabia, most aimed at the monarchy’s Shiite population. Daesh is a direct outgrowth of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Wahhabism. The Saudis don’t claim they have created a caliphate – in this they differ from the Islamic State, but otherwise they are the same.

I am sure there are Saudis who support Daesh; indeed a recent poll demonstrated that, and money does flow from Saudi Arabia to the Islamic State. But the two are enemies. Daesh wants the House of Saud out, and the monarchy sees IS as a real threat. In a formal sense there are no military, political or financial ties, but clearly some Saudis support Daesh. And Wahhabism is the glue that links the two together. There is no little irony in that.

Q: Finally, what do you think of the future of U.S.-Saudi relations, especially now that the tensions seem to be simmering between the two allies? Will the next U.S. president be committed to developing the economic and political connections with Saudi Arabia, given the Kingdom’s frustration at the White House over its persistence in securing the nuclear deal with Iran, which the royal family believes will weaken the seven-decade-old partnership between Riyadh and Washington?

A: I do not foresee a major rupture, although the current Saudi leadership is quite unstable, making bad choice after bad choice. However, the Middle East is a major strategic concern for the U.S., and we don’t intend to throw that overboard. The partnership is weakened, in part because the U.S. no longer relies on Middle East oil, and in part because the Saudis keep doing things that annoy us and create problems. But in the end, the U.S. wants a Middle East that it can influence – “control” is no longer an option, plus we have our own problems in Asia with a rising China, and Saudi Arabia is part of that formula, along with the other monarchies of the Gulf, and Israel.

Clinton will be friendlier to the Saudis than Obama, because the latter resented Saudi Arabia’s efforts, as well as Turkey’s, to pull the U.S. into the Syrian civil war and Yemen. Clinton was all for attacking Assad and getting directly involved in Syria. She still wants to set up a “no fly zone,” something that would directly challenge the Russian air force. If Trump gets elected? Well, besides me moving to Mars, who knows?

Republicans, not all, but most, like the monarchy and hate Iran and many of them follow a version of Christianity that is a little like Wahhabism, so I imagine relations would be good. But with Trump’s out-of-control Islamophobia, and his general “bull in a china shop” approach to foreign policy, who knows? As I said, Olympus Mons is looking pretty good these days. And as the movie “The Martian” demonstrated, you can always grow potatoes. We Irish are good at that.

Has American political reality finally set in for GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump?

From that point on, began the process of Trump’s ‘rehabilitation’ on the Israel-Palestine.

On March 10, 2016, there stood Trump, still as the presumptive underdog, at CNN’s GOP Debate in Miami – alongside a wall of Republicans candidates who were all firmly in the pockets of the Israel Lobby including Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, his remarks on the illusive peace process could have been considered seminal back then:

I would like to at least have the other side think I’m somewhat neutral as to them, so that we can maybe get a deal done.

Campaign rival Cruz hit back, questioning Trump’s support for Israel saying, “I don’t think we need a commander in chief who is neutral between the Palestinian terrorists and one of our strongest allies in the world, the nation of Israel.”

Everyone, including the media, seemed so shocked by Trump’s unorthodox comments that they went near catatonic on this issue afterwords. It was as if Trump had pole-vaulted over the perennial swamp that is the GOP foreign policy platform. The Lobby didn’t waste any time however. In the eyes of the Israeli Lobby, taking a ‘neutral’ stance or daring to recognize Palestine or Palestinians, is synonymous with attacking Israel and Jews. This is a simple law of political physics in America at the moment and will remain so as long as the lobbyists continue shoveling millions of dollars per month into the pockets of both prospective candidates and elected officials nationwide.

Predictably, he was attacked viciously by his opponents, especially Cruz. It seemed as if Trump has broken ranks in a way that was unfathomable for any Republican politician seeking office in the United States of America.

Of course, the Israeli press didn’t take kindly to Trump’s vision of peace and harmony, and from this point onward, pressure began to mount on Trump to conform to the American political orthodoxy on this issue.

Soon, Trump was summoned on March 21st, to AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, where he delivered a resounding speech which seemed good enough for the lobby that night, but the job wasn’t finished just yet.

Later on in May, Trump continued to evolve, now employing doublespeak on the issue, saying he would still like to negotiate “a deal” but that Israel should keep building illegal settlements in the West Bank of Palestine, and that Israel needs to ‘keep going’ and ‘keep moving forward.’

I’d love to negotiate peace. I think that, to me, is the all-time negotiation…I would love to see if peace could be negotiated. A lot of people say that’s not a deal that’s possible. But I mean lasting peace, not a peace that lasts for two weeks and they start launching missiles again. So we’ll see what happens.

I think Israel should have – they really have to keep going. They have to keep moving forward [with constructing illegal settlements].

Finally, the penny ultimately dropped. With the GOP’s Big Tent event rapidly approaching, Trump’s platform on Israel has been fully baked. Sputnik News reports:

“David M. Friedman, a real-estate attorney serving as Trump’s main advisor on Israel, said the Republican presidential candidate and reality television star would not support the recognition of the Palestinian state without “the approval of the Israelis.” Friedman also remarked that Trump was unconcerned with the inhabitants of the West Bank, because “nobody really knows how many Palestinians live there.”

“Trump made Friedman a part of his campaign staff in April, at a meeting with Orthodox Jews, naming him and Jason Greenblatt, another real-estate lawyer and Trump’s chief attorney, as his advisors on Israel. Friedman said at the time, “Mr. Trump’s confidence is very flattering. My views on Israel are well known, and I would advise him in a manner consistent with those views. America’s geopolitical interests are best served by a strong and secure Israel, with Jerusalem as its undivided capital.” Friedman has made no secret of his feelings about a two-state solution with Palestine, writing that, “It was never a solution, just an illusion that served both the US and the Arabs.”

Another devastating blow to the native Palestinians, currently under military occupation by an invading force – backed by the US, to the tune of $3 billion per year in direct military aid (free money for weapons and equipment).

Against his former declarations to the contrary, Trump is also now accepting outside money, from multiple sources. Funny how the political poles shift. How quickly a raging populist becomes a cynical realist. Even for a self-made billionaire, money still buys friends and influence.

With that out of the way, it’s finally safe for the lobby to get behind Donald in a general election, should they wish to.

There it is. The genealogy of Donald Trump’s evolving stance on Israel.

Many of the toxic chemicals escaping from fracking and natural gas processing sites and storage facilities may be present in much higher concentrations in the bodies of people living or working near such sites, new research has shown.

The study found traces of volatile organic compounds such as benzene and toluene are linked to chronic diseases like cancer and reproductive and developmental disorders.

In a first-of-its-kind study combining air-monitoring methods with new biomonitoring techniques, researchers detected volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released from natural gas operations in Pavillion, Wyoming in the bodies of nearby residents at levels that were as much as 10 times that of the national averages.

Photo by courtesy of Coming Clean

Some of these VOCs such as benzene and toluene are linked to chronic diseases like cancer and reproductive and developmental disorders. Others are associated with respiratory problems, headaches, nosebleeds, and skin rashes.

“Many of those chemicals were present in the participants’ bodies at concentrations far exceeding background averages in the US population,” notes the study, titled “When the Wind Blows: Tracking Toxic Chemicals in Gas Fields and Impacted Communities,” which was released last week.

Some residents of Pavillion have for years been concerned about the rise in health issues that they suspected were connected to emissions from the gas production activities. This tiny town of less than 250 people has been at the center of the growing debate on fracking since 2008 when locals began complaining that their drinking water had acquired a foul taste and odor back in 2008.

In 2014, air monitoring data showed some toxic chemical emissions at oil and gas sites in Wyoming were up to 7,000 times the “safe” levels set by US federal environmental and health agencies. In March of this year, Stanford University researchers found evidence that fracking operations near Pavillion were contaminating the local groundwater.

Now this new study, conducted by researchers with the national environmental health organization Coming Clean, establishes clearly that at least some of these harmful chemicals are making their way into the bodies of nearby residents.

The study focused on measuring ambient levels of a specific family of VOCs named BTEX chemicals — which include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes — because these chemicals are known to be hazardous to human health even at low levels. Researchers then used new biomonitoring methods to detect these chemicals in 11 local residents who volunteered to participate in the study by wearing air quality monitors and providing blood and urine samples, and found evidence of eight hazardous chemicals emitted from Pavillion gas infrastructure in the urine of study participants.

“The biomonitoring confirmed what we knew,” Wilma Subra, an award-winning biochemist and one of the scientists involved in the project, told Earth Island Journal. “This clearly indicates that there is a need of control mechanisms to curb the emissions in order to reduce exposure of those living near these operations.”

The study leaders, however, also note that because VOCs are so ubiquitous in products and in our homes, it is possible that some of the VOCs detected in participants’ bodies came from multiple sources. They are calling for further biomonitoring testing of people living or working near oil and gas sites to better understand how these chemicals travel through the environment and to prevent our exposure to them.

“If your drinking water is contaminated with toxic chemicals you might be able to make do with another source, but if your air is toxic you can’t choose to breathe somewhere else,” Deb Thomas, the director of ShaleTest and one the study leaders, said in a statement.

Maureen Nandini Mitra, Editor, Earth Island Journal. In addition to her work at the Journal, Maureen writes for several other magazines and online publications in the US and India. A journalism graduate from Columbia University, her work has appeared in the San Francisco Public Press, The New Internationalist, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, The Caravan and Down to Earth.

Después del triunfo del ‘Brexit’ en el referéndum realizado el pasado jueves 23 de junio, la economía mundial entró en un episodio de gran turbulencia: miles de millones de dólares dólares se esfumaron de las principales bolsas de valores en cuestión de horas, con lo cual, se incrementaron los riesgos de que estalle una nueva crisis bancaria en Europa. De acuerdo con Ariel Noyola, el desmoronamiento rápido del proyecto de integración europeo parece bastante improbable, pues aunque en varios países ya se ha convocado a celebrar referéndums para salir de la Unión Europea, la mayoría de naciones de Europa continental forma parte además de la Eurozona, y hasta el momento, a excepción de los partidos políticos de extrema derecha, no existen fuerzas políticas que estén dispuestas a abandonar la moneda común.

Aunque las principales encuestadoras publicitaron durante varias semanas que los británicos estaban convencidos de su permanencia en la Unión Europea, la postura a favor de la salida del Reino Unido (el llamado ‘Brexit’) se impuso finalmente en el referéndum celebrado el pasado jueves 23 de junio por un margen de diferencia de casi cuatro puntos: 51,9 por ciento votó a favor frente a 48,1 por ciento en contra.

Sorpresivamente, el primer ministro, David Cameron, anunció su dimisión momentos después; la libra esterlina registró su peor cotización desde 1985; y las principales plazas bursátiles se desplomaron. Tanto en la región de Asia-Pacífico como en el Continente europeo, los mercados de valores retrocedieron entre 6 y 10 por ciento. En definitiva, la salida inminente del Reino Unido de la Unión Europea abrió un nuevo escenario de gran incertidumbre en un momento de extrema vulnerabilidad para la economía mundial.

Turbulencia financiera en escala mundial

A principios de junio, el Banco Mundial redujo de nueva cuenta su previsión de crecimiento para la economía global para el año 2016, de 2,9 a 2,4 por ciento; el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) por su parte, advirtió recientemente que el nacionalismo económico puede socavar la libre movilidad de los flujos de comercio e inversión entre países; en tanto que el Banco de Pagos Internacionales (BIS, por sus siglas en inglés) vigila con lupa los riesgos subyacentes a una nueva ‘guerra de divisas’.

Es que la cooperación monetaria internacional atraviesa actualmente uno de sus mayores desafíos, y por eso, ante el peligro de que los mercados de crédito se contraigan de un momento a otro, el Banco Central Europeo (BCE) a cargo de Mario Draghi, y el Banco de Inglaterra, a cargo de Mark Carney, salieron a la palestra para dejar en claro que no escatimarían recursos para garantizar la estabilidad financiera.

A lo largo de la jornada, pero sobre todo tras las primeras señales de que el ‘Brexit’ había triunfado en las urnas, el BCE intervino violentamente en el mercado de deuda soberana para evitar una escalada de las primas de riesgo (‘risk premiums’) de los bonos de las economías de la periferia: Grecia, España, Italia, Portugal, etc. Mientras, el Banco de Inglaterra ya tenía preparada una poderosa batería de 250 mil millones de libras esterlinas para defender el tipo de cambio frente de los ataques de los especuladores.

El Sistema de la Reserva Federal (FED) por su parte, bajo el mando de Janet Yellen, puso en marcha una serie de líneas de crédito (‘swap’) para proveer liquidez adicional junto con otros bancos centrales del Grupo de los 7 (G-7, conformado por Alemania, Canadá, Estados Unidos, Francia, Italia, Japón y Reino Unido) en caso de que la volatilidad en los mercados financieros se saliera de control.

Pero los planes de contingencia de las autoridades monetarias fueron insuficientes. Las bolsas de valores mundiales registraron pérdidas por más de 2 billones de dólares en menos de 24 horas. Cabe destacar además que la debacle de la libra esterlina precipitó la fuga masiva de capitales de cartera de la bolsa de valores de Londres, que de inmediato se refugiaron en Wall Street. De cara a la turbulencia financiera, los inversionistas bursátiles buscan protección en títulos financieros más seguros, básicamente en el dólar y metales preciosos que sirven como reserva de valor, el oro y la plata, por ejemplo.

No obstante, la compra masiva de dólares no hizo sino profundizar la debacle de los precios del resto de las materias primas (‘commodities’), ya de por sí muy bajos en comparación con los años previos a 2009. Por ejemplo, los precios de referencia internacional del petróleo, el West Texas Intermediate (WTI) y el Brent, que habían registrado una buena racha durante los meses de abril y mayo, cayeron de nuevo.

Los precios de los hidrocarburos están ahora por debajo de los 50 dólares por barril, situación que agudiza la deflación (caída de precios) y que, combinada con las tendencias de bajo crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) y el desplome de los beneficios del sector financiero, incrementa exponencialmente los riesgos de que estalle una nueva crisis bancaria en Europa.

El ‘Brexit’ no implica forzosamente el fin de la integración europea

El voto a favor del ‘Brexit’ puso de manifiesto el enorme rechazo de la integración europea. La política económica aplicada en el Reino Unido ha seguido básicamente, la misma pauta que el resto de los países de Europa continental: liberalización indiscriminada del comercio de bienes y servicios, desregulación del sector financiero, y una política en materia laboral que mantiene estancado el incremento de las remuneraciones salariales, y que pretende suprimir las prestaciones sociales de los trabajadores.

Está claro que el sueño de una Europa democrática, social y solidaria es solamente eso, una fantasía. El ‘Estado de Bienestar’, ése que se construyó tras la segunda posguerra, hoy prácticamente está desmantelado. La calidad de una democracia no puede evaluarse únicamente por la celebración de un referéndum y por el respeto de sus resultados de parte del Gobierno. La democracia significa, sobre todo, la participación directa en las principales decisiones que atañen a una sociedad, tanto en el ámbito de la economía como en el campo de la vida política.

Y es aquí donde la construcción de la Unión Europea tiene sus principales fallas: el diseño del proyecto de integración se ha convertido en un asunto reservado para las élites empresariales. Las grandes corporaciones han sido las principales beneficiarias de la puesta en marcha de un ‘mercado común’, son ellas las que insisten en aprobar cuanto antes el Tratado Transatlántico de Comercio e Inversiones (TTIP, por sus siglas en inglés) promovido por el Gobierno de Estados Unidos, son ellas las que promueven la ofensiva de la Organización del Tratado del Atlántico de Norte (OTAN).

Es cierto que Europa necesita de forma urgente un rediseño institucional, sin lugar a dudas. De hecho, luego del triunfo del ‘Brexit’, en varios países se ha propuesto llevar a cabo referéndums para abandonar la Unión Europa; sin embargo, hay que tomar en cuenta que la mayoría de los países de Europa continental forman parte también de la Eurozona, no es este el caso del Reino Unido, que siempre se resistió a adoptar la moneda común.

Y hasta el momento las fuerzas progresistas en Europa no se han propuesto precisamente abandonar el euro. Recordemos por ejemplo el caso de Grecia en 2015: con un Gobierno de izquierda, la troika (integrada por el Banco Central Europeo, la Comisión Europea y el Fondo Monetario Internacional) rechazó todas las propuestas del programa económico de Syriza. Y aunque el Gobierno griego convocó a un referéndum para rechazar las condiciones leoninas del tercer programa de rescate, finalmente la austeridad fiscal volvió a imponerse.

El primer ministro, Alexis Tsipras, siempre se mostró reacio a que Grecia abandonara la Eurozona (el llamado ‘Grexit’), con todo y que hasta la fecha se ha revelado imposible poner en marcha una política económica alternativa y, al mismo tiempo, cumplir con las exigencias de la troika. A mi juicio, el gran drama que vive Europa en estos momentos es que quienes proponen la salida del euro y, luego entonces, de la Unión Europea, son dirigentes de partidos políticos de  extrema derecha, aquellos que utilizan la retórica xenofóbica para desviar la atención de las verdaderas causas de la crisis y que, digámoslo con claridad, no tienen ninguna intención de conseguir el renacimiento de Europa…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez : Economista egresado de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

In October 2010, Dr. Renaud Piarroux, a French epidemiologist, was invited by the government of Haiti to investigate the unexpected appearance of cholera in towns and villages along the Artibonite River, the country’s largest. Piarroux had extensive cholera experience, notably with a serious outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The outbreak had startled everyone: cholera had never been known in Haiti before, and within days of its first known case on Oct. 14, it had infected thousands and killed scores.

Like any good epidemiologist, Piarroux knew that finding the source of an epidemic is critical — especially in a country as poor as Haiti, which had scarcely recovered from the earthquake of January 2010 that had killed a couple hundred thousand people. (The death toll has been a subject of controversy.)

His search — and shocking discoveries — are at the centre of Deadly River: Cholera and Cover-Up in Post-Earthquake Haiti by Ralph R. Frerichs.

Rumours blamed sewage from a camp of Nepali peacekeepers. Jonathan Katz, an American journalist, had documented those suspicions, but they were far from proven. The United Nations peacekeeping force, known as MINUSTAH, had been installed in Haiti after the 2004 ouster of democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But instead of keeping hostile armed forces from attacking one another, the peacekeepers were a kind of heavy-handed police force.

So MINUSTAH was highly unpopular, and might be just a scapegoat. But it was also true that cholera had been a problem in Nepal just before the peacekeeping contingent had left for Haiti.

Three weeks after the start of the outbreak, Piarroux started his investigations in the village of Mèyé, just downstream from the Nepali camp. While he couldn’t get into the camp, he learned that a sanitation truck routinely pumped the sewage out of a tank in the compound and transported it to a hilltop pit — where it routinely overflowed into the stream below when it rained.

Outbreak evidence suggested massive sewage spill

But that wouldn’t be enough, Piarroux knew, to trigger a sudden outbreak infecting hundreds within days. The Artibonite is a big river; for enough cholera bacteria to infect so many people so fast, an enormous quantity of contaminated sewage would have been required.

He moved down the river to the sea, finding village after village infected — except for a few on higher ground that drew their water from other sources.

The timing of the cases meant a massive plume of sewage had moved down the Artibonite past thousands of Haitians who used the river for drinking, irrigation, bathing and washing clothes. For the plume to resist dilution, many symptomatic cases must have discharged their feces into their river in a very short time. If those cases were in the Nepali camp, almost all the soldiers must have been ill — a possibility loudly denied by the camp commander and the Nepali army back in Kathmandu.

Meanwhile, Piarroux was startled to find UN agencies like the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) — and the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — uninterested in finding the source of the outbreak. They speculated that it might have come from Vibrio cholerae bacteria in the sea, but said the focus should be on treating the cases. Even then-president René Préval said he wasn’t interested in the source.

Piarroux’s suspicions were further aroused when the UN peacekeeping force issued a news release saying the first cholera cases had been reported by the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) on Sept. 24. The date was three weeks before the first confirmed cases on Oct. 14 — and MSPP had made no such report.

Piarroux was no stranger to the politics of public health, but this was baffling. The American and UN authorities seemed to be committed to an “environmental” origin for cholera in the Caribbean Sea. Perhaps it had been churned up by the earthquake nine months earlier, or by a hurricane. The theory of importation by the Nepalis, they said, had no evidence to back it up.

Piarroux knew better, but the UN and U.S. agencies even brought in a team of investigators who had built their careers on the theory of environmental cholera. They paid little attention to his findings.

The truth: known in days, concealed for months

But just before leaving Haiti, Piarroux received a secret document: a report by the MSPP, made in the very early days of the outbreak. With remarkable speed, the ministry had sent a team to the Artibonite River and identified the source as the Nepali camp. They’d been denied entry to the camp, but local residents provided plenty of details.

So within days of the outbreak the Haitians had known its source — and so had CDC and PAHO. Why hadn’t they said so, and why had Préval dismissed the idea of finding it?

Piarroux had a pretty good idea. Haitian governments stand or fall at the pleasure of the U.S. government. Washington had probably been behind the ouster of Aristide, and had imposed MINUSTAH rather than send in its own troops — a politically and financially expensive proposition.

So Haiti was (and is) ruled by a coalition of UN and U.S. agencies plus a chaotic mass of non-governmental organizations. The government in Port-au-Prince was (and is) far from sovereign. Préval had understood his situation, and had sent Piarroux the ministry report anonymously, to help him tell the world what he himself could not.

The U.S.’s big concern in the fall of 2010 was the impending election to replace Préval. Riots and worse would erupt if the UN peacekeepers were named as the source of cholera. Rather than admit their error, the UN and U.S. agencies went straight to obfuscation and misdirection.

A massive international coverup to protect US, UN

And, alarmingly for any serious public health expert, a lot of public health experts went along with the scam. While thousands of Haitians were dying in puddles of their own vomit and diarrhea, the experts did their considerable best to lie to the world about why those people were dying.

Once back in France, Piarroux found it hard to publish his findings, but they eventually made it into print — in the CDC’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. He was soon embroiled in debates with his opponents who claimed environmental origins for the epidemic, but his own evidence was simply too strong, and theirs too weak. Eventually, the Nepalis were understood to be the importers of cholera: Piarroux learned that a whole truckload of their sewage had been dumped straight into the river.

Piarroux has revisited Haiti several times, promoting his plan not to “control” cholera but to eliminate it by smothering new outbreaks before they can spread. But the current government prefers to go along with the control program, effectively making cholera endemic.

As of mid-May 2016, cholera has sickened over 780,000 Haitians while killing over 9,000 of them. According to PAHO, between Jan. 1 and April 30 of 2016, 13,859 have fallen ill with cholera and 150 have died — more than the same periods in 2014 and 2015.

Early in the outbreak, Piarroux was contacted by Dr. Ralph R. Frerichs, professor emeritus of epidemiology at UCLA. Frerichs was also alarmed at the official response to Haiti’s cholera. Their online communications grew into face-to-face contact, and eventually into a years-long debriefing in which Piarroux detailed his experiences in Haiti. That in turn led to this book, the best yet written on Haiti’s cholera. It is also a medical thriller, a crash course in basic epidemiology and a primer on the politics of global health.

Frerichs writes brilliantly, letting facts and events speak for themselves. The result is a damning indictment of the national and international health agencies — and the cynical governments that rule them.

The coverup organized by the CDC, the World Health Organization and other UN agencies was a violation of medical ethics on an international scale. They sacrificed Haiti simply to escape political embarrassment.

In fairness, though, none of the great health agencies is a free agent. As science writer Sonia Shah recently noted, “private interests have commandeered the public-health agenda.” WHO has been on an ever-dwindling budget for decades. CDC isn’t allowed to do research into firearm deaths as a public health issue. Both rely on “donations” from corporate benefactors, not solely on public tax dollars. And the benefactors too often dictate the agenda.

So we get as much public health as our political and corporate masters find convenient. In the case of Haiti, that is very little public health indeed.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton responded to the referendum vote in Britain to leave the European Union by reaffirming her claim to be the most qualified commander-in-chief for American imperialism in a crisis situation.

In initial statements from her campaign, and then in a speech delivered Sunday to the US Conference of Mayors meeting in Indianapolis, Clinton evaded the political issues posed in the Brexit campaign, particularly the anti-immigrant prejudice pumped out by both sides, Leave and Remain. Instead, she pledged to maintain the “special relationship” between Washington and London, i.e., Washington’s reliance on London to line up behind its policies in Europe and internationally. She also reiterated her support for the NATO alliance.

Clinton then turned to her central message—the argument that she is the most reliable and trustworthy defender of the status quo, declaring: “This time of uncertainty only underscores the need for calm, steady, experienced leadership in the White House to protect Americans’ pocketbooks and livelihoods, to support our friends and allies, to stand up to our adversaries, and to defend our interests.”

This has been the axis of the Clinton campaign since winning enough delegates to forestall the challenge of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Clinton has concentrated on challenging her Republican opponent Donald Trump’s qualifications for holding the highest US office on grounds of temperament and character, rather than rebutting his anti-immigrant chauvinist, militarist and authoritarian policies.

In this way, she hopes to appeal to significant sections of Wall Street, the Republican Party establishment and the military-intelligence apparatus that view Trump as an erratic figure who could provoke mass opposition within the United States and internationally.

As she has done repeatedly, Clinton sought to link Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin in her Indianapolis speech, declaring, “No one should be confused about America’s commitment to Europe—not an autocrat in the Kremlin, not a presidential candidate on a Scottish golf course.” A constant theme in her foreign policy pronouncements has been the suggestion that Trump is the choice of Moscow in 2016.

Speaking to the mayors Sunday, she referred to the impact of Friday’s plunge in financial markets worldwide, noting that $100 billion was lost from 401(k)s. Wall Street lost far more than that amount, and that is what Clinton and the US financial aristocracy are really concerned about, not what American workers lost in their meager retirement accounts.

“Our priority now must be to protect American families and businesses from the negative effects of this kind of tumult and uncertainty,” she continued. Clinton made the speech only hours after being endorsed by Republican banker Henry Paulson, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush, and principal organizer of the 2008 Wall Street bailout.

Without mentioning Trump, Clinton cast herself as the more reliable defender of the global interests of American imperialism. She said, “We need leaders…who understand that bombastic comments in turbulent times can actually cause more turbulence; and who put the interests of the American people ahead of their personal business interests. And we need leaders who recognize that our alliances and partnerships are among our greatest national assets, now more than ever.”

This was a clear reference to Trump’s typically vulgar comments, made at the golf course he owns in Turnberry, Scotland, where he boasted that the plunging value of the British pound would generate more customers from the US and other countries for his Scottish venture and put more money in his pocket.

But Clinton said nothing about Trump’s public embrace of the Leave campaign before the referendum, his endorsement of its racist anti-immigrant appeal, or his celebration of the outcome as a harbinger of a Republican victory in the US election in November.

Trump sent out a fundraising email Friday night hailing the Brexit result. “These voters stood up for their nation—they put the United Kingdom first, and they took their country back,” he wrote, while asking for campaign contributions. “With your help, we’re going to do the exact same thing on Election Day 2016 here in the United States of America.”

Clinton has avoided any discussion of the issue of immigration as a factor in the Brexit result, even though both the Leave and Remain campaigns, in different ways, sought to foment and appeal to anti-immigrant prejudice.

One of her chief aides, Jennifer Palmieri, a former Obama White House official, did take up the issue of immigration at a press briefing Friday. “Britain and the United States are different countries,” she said, going on to point out that the nonwhite population of the United States is 26 percent, double the 13 percent in Britain. The logic of this argument is that while racist demagogy might be successful in Britain, it would be less so in the United States because white voters make up a smaller proportion of the electorate.

Clinton made a remark along similar lines in her speech in Indianapolis, saying, “We have to reaffirm that the United States and the United Kingdom are different countries in many important ways—economically, politically, demographically.”

Such comments shed light on the cynical electoral calculations of the Clinton campaign. The Democratic candidate aims to combine backing from Wall Street and the national-security establishment with support from minority voters historically tied to the Democratic Party and the votes of layers of the upper-middle class, including substantial sections of Republican voters offended by Trump’s vulgar racism and misogyny.

The Clinton campaign offers nothing to the working class, white, black or Hispanic, because the Democratic Party long ago abandoned any policy of social reform to create jobs and improve the living standards and social conditions of working people, becoming instead a more and more open and direct instrument of Wall Street.

To read the full 5o pages report click here

https://www.openthebooks.com/assets/1/7/Oversight_TheMilitarizationOfAmerica_06102016.pdf

The following describes how President Obama’s administration along with a number of NGOs secretly collaborated with the clerics in Tehran to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program and engineered Hassan Rouhani’s presidential election to make that happen.

How the Deal Was Initiated

In 2001, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund financed a New York based organization called “Iran Project” which aimed to re-establish Washington relations with Tehran. [1] Iran Project was led by a number of former American diplomats who developed relationships with some Iranian diplomats, including Mohammad Javad Zarif, then a young diplomat working at Iran’s mission in New York. The Project staff arranged secret meetings with the Iranians affiliated with the Institute for Political and International Studies, a think tank linked to Iran’s Foreign Ministry, and they briefed the State Department and the White house. The main objective of the Project was to dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure by installing a favorable government in Tehran. However, the meetings were suspended after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005. President Ahmadinejad stayed firm against the US pressures to preserve Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration and in particular the then Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to use military force against Iran. The Wall Street investor, George Soros had opposed the US-led military interventions around the world. [2] Soros wanted to promote the US political and economic influence by means of soft power and color revolutions in the form accomplished in Eastern Europe. [3] After President Barack Obama came to the White House in 2009, he covertly promoted the so-called Green Movement to depose president Ahmadinejad. However, the movement failed and Iran continued to progress on its nuclear program.

In March 2012, the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria at CNN, said diplomatic negotiations with Iran would only work if the United States was willing to give the Islamic Republic security assurances that it would survive. [4] He suggested, the US should ignore the Islamic Republic’s human rights abuses and guarantee to protect the regime against threats in exchange for concessions to abandon its nuclear activities. Under this plan, the clerical regime would be preserved under the US protection similar to the Arab monarchies and sheikdoms in the Persian Gulf region.  In exchange, the clerics would cooperate to protect US interests in the region. Therefore, instead of regime change policy that had been pursued by the Bush administration and economic pressures and prior covert operations against Iran by Obama’s administration, the new policy became to engage with the clerics in Tehran. [5]

In the meantime, several rounds of nuclear negotiations had been going on between Iran’s team headed by Saeed Jalili and 5+1 group of countries in various locations, including one in Moscow in June 18-19, 2012, which did not result in what the West desired. Subsequently, under the US pressure, the EU member countries imposed economic sanctions against Iran effective on July 1, 2012. Suffering from harsh economic pressures, the clerics felt President Ahmadinejad’s firm stance against the West could destabilize their regime. Hence, they decided to bypass the president and secretly negotiate with the White House.  They sent a separate team to Muscat to negotiate a nuclear deal through a back channel with the White House. Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said acted as mediator between the two governments.

Also, several NGOs, including the National Iranian American Council and Iran Project lobbied to make the negotiations possible. The Rockefeller Brothers Funds and the Soros Open Society foundations via Ploughshares Fund were the main donors to finance the NGOs and media outlets to derail Iran’s nuclear program.  Funds from these sources and the White House efforts to develop direct dialogue with the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei paved the way for the nuclear deal. Since Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had issued fatwa to forbid manufacturing nuclear bombs, President Barack Obama secretly exchanged letters with him and promised not to overthrow the regime. Obama’s engagement with the clerics in Tehran became so intense that the Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial “they [the Democrats] now own the Ayatollahs”.  [6] In July 2012, secret meetings with the new team resumed in Muscat, Oman.  An idea in the meetings was to let Iran enrich a very small amount of uranium to save face.

Rouhani’s Engineered Election

To pave the way for approval of the secret agreement, a cleric had to succeed president Ahmadinejad. George Soros had met with the former cleric president Mohammad Khatami a couple of times and wanted to bring him back to the presidency.  Since Khatami was barred to run in 2013 presidential elections, the Green movement changed its color to Violet for promoting another cleric Hassan Rouhani to become president. With the help of the US-based NGOs along with Western media’s propagandas and collaboration of reformists in Iran, Hassan Rouhani became president in 2013.

The announcement of Rouhani “elected” as president in June 2013, was highly surprising because most Iranians hate to see clerics ruling their country. How would it be possible that the only cleric among eight pre-selected candidates by the regime became president? After the announcement, no accusation of rig elections was made as is usually the case when the US does not like an elected candidate in the Third World. The observers assumed Rouhani’s rig election was engineered to destroy Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the US protection of the clerics to rule Iran.

Professor Hooshang Amirahmadi who heads the American Iranian Council, said the presidential election in 2013 was “engineered” to make Hassan Rouhani the preferred candidate so that the secret nuclear deal could be concluded. [7] Actually, the Key members of Rouhani’s administration were selected from the same group of former Iranian diplomats at Iran’s United Nations mission, the so-called New York Circle (Halgheh New Yorkiha), which included Zarif as Foreign Minister. Zarif had earlier established friendly relations with some well-known Americans. Over a decade before, Zarif had met then Senator John Kerry first in a party hosted by George Soros. [8] Zarif led Iran’s negotiator team, which included Ali Akbar Salehi, Abbas Araghchi, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, and Hussein Fereydoon, Rouhani’s younger brother who had formerly served in the Iranian UN mission. Subsequently, Rouhani with the consent of Leader Khamenei, accepted all major US demands to seal the nuclear deal.

The Concealed Facts Revealed

In fact, a scenario for the nuclear deal had been prepared years earlier and was shown in the television series 24, which aired on Fox in 2010 in the United States. In an episode in the series there is a peace conference between President of the United States “Allison Taylor” [Hillary Clinton] and President “Hassan” [Rouhani] of the fictional Islamic Republic of “Kamistan” [Iran]. [9] President Hassan agrees to dismantle his country’s nuclear program. In exchange the sanctions on his country are lifted and for political maneuvering the country is permitted to have only 6000 centrifuges, which was exactly the same number as in the Lausanne’s nuclear agreement.

Information revealed after implementation of the nuclear deal by the US press provided more clues on how the nuclear accord was sealed. In May, 2016, several news articles appeared in the US press which confirmed the negotiations had been secretly going on for some time and as a matter of formality, some details were left out to be negotiated after the deal became public.  The key article appeared in the New York Times Magazine, which interviewed Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser at the White House. [10] According to Rhodes, secret meetings had been arranged since July 2012 in Muscat, between a team from the White House and an Iranian team sent by the Leader Khamenei to negotiate on the nuclear issue.

Rhodes said he “created an echo chamber” of experts to sell the nuclear deal in spring of 2015.  He added “they were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.” Other articles and a book titled “Alter Egos” by Mark Landler revealed more information. John Kerry had been involved in Iran’s deal even before he became secretary of state. In December 2011, when Kerry was still in the Senate, he “held his own secret talks in Oman which created the predicate for the State Department’s channel”. According to Landler, Jake Sullivan, the Deputy Chief of Staff was a member of a three-person team that conducted the back-channel talks.  More secret meetings through Omani channel followed in 2012, with Deputy Secretary Bill Burns’ participation. The basic framework of the nuclear deal was laid down in the secret talks that began in July 2012 in Muscat and continued in Geneva and New York. [11] After John Kerry assumed office as the Secretary of State on February 1, 2013, he formally took over the negotiations.The negotiations later accelerated when Hassan Rouhani became Iran’s president.

On the whole, Hassan Rouhani’s election was engineered to finalize the nuclear accord. Rouhani with backing of the Leader Khamenei conceded to the West’s demands to sacrifice Iran’s national interest in exchange for preserving their clerical rule in Iran.  The Western powers propped up the clerics to have another puppet government in the Persian Gulf region.

Professor Akbar E. Torbat teaches economics at California State University, Los Angeles. He received his PhD in political economy from the University of Texas at Dallas. Email: [email protected], Webpage: http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/atorbat

NOTES 

[1] Iran Project, http://iranprojectfcsny.org/ and http://theiranproject.com Also see Peter Waldman, How Freelance Diplomacy Bankrolled by Rockefellers Has Paved the Way for an Iran Deal, July 2, 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-07-02/how-freelance-diplomacy-bankrolled-by-rockefellers-has-paved-the-way-for-an-iran-deal
[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/dick-cheney-iran-deal-military-force/404296/
[3] Soros, George, the Bubble of American Supremacy, Public Affairs, New York 2004.
[4] Kissinger: Talks work only if US gives Iran something, 16, March 2012, p. 1, http://iran-times.com/kissinger-talks-work-only-if-us-gives-iran-somthing/
[5] The Confrontation with Iran: A Covert War, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30305.htm , the cover war included using computer malwares to cripple Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and sabotage of nuclear installations and assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists by Israel Mossad; the last one assassinated on January 11, 2012. Also see DAVID E. SANGER, Obama Order Sped up Wave of Cyber-attacks against Iran, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 .
[6] The Wall Street Journal, Democrats and the Ayatollahs, September 3, 2015
[7] Hooshang Amirahmadi Responds to Ben Rhodes’s Thoughts on Nuclear Accord
May 12, 2016, http://www.us-iran.org/news/2016/5/12/amirahmadi-on-voice-to-america
[8] Michele Hickford, You will NOT BELIEVE who was best man at John Kerry’s daughter’s wedding, July 28, 2015,
http://allenbwest.com/2015/07/you-will-not-believe-who-was-best-man-at-john-kerrys-daughters-wedding/
[9] Serial 24, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlihBeBfpR0 , also Persian VOA https://www.facebook.com/348107372048510/videos/390516254474288
[10] DAVID SAMUELS, The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign Policy, May 6, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html?_r=0
[11] Landler, Mark, Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle over American Power, Random House, 2016. pp 235-37

Almost 2 years ago, August 8, 2014, Obama launched a bombing campaign against Syria and Iraq, in defiance of international law. 

The US Air Force with the support of a coalition of 19 countries has relentlessly waged an intensified air campaign against Syria and Iraq allegedly targeting  the Islamic State (ISIS) brigades.   

The counterterrorism operation was granted a humanitarian R2P mandate: at the outset, the bombing campaign was allegedly directed against the Islamic State mercenaries (ISIS) with a view to protecting the Yazidis of Northern Iraq. 

Obama: A Pack of Lies

According to Obama, military action was needed to protect innocent civilians and prevent ISIS’ advance on Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region. 

In his Nationwide address on August 7, 2014, Obama also intimated the need to send in US ground troops:

Good evening. Today I authorized two operations in Iraq — targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel, and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death. Let me explain the actions we’re taking and why…. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.

I’ve, therefore, authorized targeted airstrikes, if necessary, to help forces in Iraq as they fight to break the siege of Mount Sinjar and protect the civilians trapped there. …

….

Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, “There is no one coming to help.” Well today, America is coming to help. We’re also consulting with other countries — and the United Nations — who have called for action to address this humanitarian crisis. (emphasis added)

US Sponsored Genocide. 

The humanitarian pretext is bogus, the air strikes are illegal, extensive war crimes have been committed, Obama is not protecting civilians. The civilian deaths resulting from the air strikes are deliberate. And Obama says America is “responsibly preventing a potential act of genocide.

Washington is Providing Support to Al Qaeda entities which are Fighting the Syrian Government

The unspoken objective of the US-led coalition is to PROTECT the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL Daesh) and other Al Qaeda affiliated groups which in large part are responsible for the destruction and killings of civilians.  In this regard, DoD documents (excerpt below) confirm unequivocally the US mandate to support rather than fight Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists. 

DoD documents

The air strikes have largely targeted civilian infrastructure. The unspoken mandate is to destroy both Iraq and Syria, their infrastructure, institutions and their economy.

Since the onset of Obama’s war against the ISIS,  according to official DoD figures, the US-led coalition has “flown an estimated 91,821 sorties in support of operations in Iraq and Syria.” (August 8, 2014-April 1, 2016) Ironically, only a small fraction of these sorties were  strike sorties:  a total of 12,685 strikes (8,661 Iraq / 4,024 Syria) (August 8, 2014-June 1st 2016). The majority of the strike sorties were conducted by the U.S. air force.

• U.S. has conducted 9,663 strikes in Iraq and Syria (5,876 Iraq / 3,787 Syria)
• Rest of Coalition has conducted 3,022 strikes in Iraq and Syria (2,785 Iraq / 237 Syria)

There is evidence that a large number of these sorties has been geared towards supplying the ISIS with weapons and ammunition, etc.

The ratio of strike sorties to total sorties (13.8%) is unusually low. In Libya in 2011, NATO flew 26,500 sorties since officially taking charge of of the Libya mission on 31 March 2011. More than 50% of the sorties were strike sorties (over 3,000 targets hit in 14,202 strike sorties).

The US-led coalition’s stated objectives are summarized below:

Putin bashing is a virtual cottage industry, blaming him for almost anything a constant Western headline theme.

Following Brits voting for Brexit, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said Putin and ISIS “might be happy” with the outcome. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond accused him welcoming a British exit.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, US-supported Putin antagonist Garry Kasparov called Brexit “the perfect gift for Vladimir Putin. An EU without Britain is exactly what the Russian president wants, a weakened institution with less power to confront his assaults on Europe’s borders.”

Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tweeted “(s)hocked by Brexit vote! Losers: EU, UK, US, those that believe in unity of a strong, united, democratic (sic) Europe. Winners: Putin.”

“I genuinely complement Putin for his victory tonight on Brexit. Tonight is a giant victory for Putin’s foreign policy objectives.”

Astonishing comments – out of line, irresponsible, offensive and plain wrong! Whatever his personal views, Putin, of course, had nothing to do with Brexit voting.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented, calling Thursday’svote “a purely intra-British and intra-EU problem.”

“It is evident that the British people should make a difficult, fateful choice. Its decision will surely seriously affect the future of Great Britain and the EU on the whole.”

“At that, really respecting the choice of the people of this or that country, we proceed from the fact that the choice should take place without any pressure, all the more so from outside.”

“So we are respectfully watching the Britons holding this important referendum. When its results are summed up, it will be possible to make relevant assessments.”

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “(w)e have already got(ten) accustomed to the Russian factor (as) one of persistent tools in the US election campaign. But (its) use or (injecting) President Putin in the Brexit issue is new for us.”

He noted how many times Russia’s leader stressed having cooperative relations with the EU and its member countries, adding:

“In speaking about Britain in particular, then of course we are interested that our relations, which are rather deplorable now, (be) revived and become…mutually beneficial.”

“Russia has repeatedly signaled its readiness to show the necessary flexibility, but (it) has its limits. It is not boundless.”

“We welcome the wish of the (British) parliamentarians to talk as the way out of those difficult situations in which we get involved sometimes can be found only in dialogue.”

US pressure created Western adversarial relations with Russia, a reckless policy risking eventual confrontation – perhaps likely if Clinton succeeds Obama.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

In a previous report, I indicated “Why Hillary Clinton’s Paid Speeches Are Relevant”, but not what they contained. The present report indicates what they contained.  

One speech in particular will be cited and quoted from as an example here, to show the type of thing that all of her corporate speeches contained, which she doesn’t want the general public to know about.  

This is the day’s keynote speech, which she gave on Wednesday, 25 June 2014, to the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a lobbying organization in DC, at their annual convention, which in 2014 was held in San Diego. The announcement for attendees said: “Wednesday’s Keynote session is sponsored by Genentech, and is open to Convention registrants with Convention Access and Convention Access & Partnering badges only. Seating is limited.” Somehow, a reporter from a local newspaper, the Times of San Diego, managed to get in. Also, somehow, an attendee happened to phone-video the 50-minute interview that the BIO’s CEO did of Clinton, which took place during the hour-and-a-half period, 12-1:30, which was allotted to Clinton.

The Times of San Diego headlined that day, “Hillary Clinton Cheers Biotechers, Backing GMOs and Federal Help”, and gave an excellent summary of her statements, including of the interview. Here are highlights:

— It was red meat for the biotech base. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a 65-minute appearance at the BIO International Convention on Wednesday, voiced support for genetically modified organisms and possible federal subsidies. … 

“Maybe there’s a way of getting a representative group of actors at the table” to discuss how the federal government could help biotechs with “insurance against risk,” she said.

Without such subsidies, she said, “this is going to be an increasing challenge.” …

She said the debate about GMOs might be turned toward the biotech side if the benefits were better explained, noting that the “Frankensteinish” depictions could be fought with more positive spin.

“I stand in favor of using seeds and products that have a proven track record,” she said [at 29:00 in the video next posted here], citing drought-resistant seeds she backed as secretary of state. “There’s a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are.” [that too at 29:00] …

Minutes earlier, Gov. Jerry Brown made a rousing 3-minute pitch for companies to see California as biotech-friendly.

“You’ve come to the right place.” …

Brown had some competition for biotech boosterism in the form of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the longtime Clinton ally who pitched his own state as best for biotech. …

[Clinton was] Given a standing ovation at the start and end of her appearance. 

In other words: As President, she would aim to sign into law a program to provide subsidies from U.S. taxpayers to Monsanto and other biotech firms, to assist their PR and lobbying organizations to eliminate what she says is “a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are” concerning genetically modified seeds and other GMOs. In other words: she ignores the evidence that started to be published in scientific journals in 2012 showing that Monsanto and other GMO firms were selectively publishing studies that alleged to show their products to be safe, while selectively blocking publication of studies that — on the basis of better methodology — showed them to be unsafe. She wants U.S. taxpayers to assist GMO firms in their propaganda that’s based on their own flawed published studies, financed by the GMO industry, and that ignores the studies that they refuse to have published. She wants America’s consumers to help to finance their own being poisoning by lying companies, who rake in profits from poisoning them.

Her argument on this, at 27:00 to 30:00 in the video of the 50-minute interview of Clinton, starts by her citing the actual disinformation (that’s propagandized by the fossil-fuels industries, which actually back her Presidential campaign) that causes the American public to reject the view that humans have caused global warming. At 27:38 in the video, she said “98% of scientists in the world agree that man has caused the problem” of global warming, and she alleged that the reason why there is substantial public resistance to GMOs is the same as the reason why there’s substantial public resistance to the reality that global warming exists and must be actively addressed: Americans don’t know the science of the matter.

She received several applauses from this pro-GMO audience, for making that false analogy. The reality, that it’s false, is that on 15 May 2013, the definitive meta-study, which examined the 11,944 published studies that had been done relating to the question of global warming and its causes, reported that “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” The meta-study was titled “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”. So, Clinton’s statement “98%” was only 0.9% off regarding the size of the scientific consensus. However, her implication that the public’s rejection of that actual 97.1% of experts’ findings on global warming, is at all analogous to the public’s rejection of the actually bogus finding by GMO industry ‘experts’ that GMOs are safe, is pure deception by her. The reality is the exact contrary: The fossil-fuels industries have financed the propaganda ‘discrediting’ the scientists’ consensus about global warming, much like the GMO industries have financed the deception of the public to think that ‘scientists’ ‘find’ that GMOs are safe. In fact, as was reported in Scientific American, on 23 December 2013, “’Dark Money’ Funds Climate Change Denial Effort”, and the study they were summarizing, from the journal Climate Change, was titled “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations”. It found that:

“From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding CCCM [climate change counter-movement] organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions to CCCM organizations. Instead, funding has shifted to pass through [two] untraceable sources [both of which had been set up by the Kochs: Donors Trust, and Donors Capital Fund].“

On 23 April 2016, Politico headlined “Charles Koch: ‘It’s possible’ Clinton is preferable to a Republican for president”, but this isn’t the only indication that Hillary is merely pretending to be their enemy. On 24 February 2016, I headlined “Hillary Clinton’s Global-Burning Record” and summarized and linked to news reports such as the opening there: “On 17 July 2015, Paul Blumenthal and Kate Sheppard at Huffington Post bannered, ‘Hillary Clinton’s Biggest Campaign Bundlers Are Fossil Fuel Lobbyists’ and the sub-head was ‘Clinton’s top campaign financiers are linked to Big Oil, natural gas and the Keystone pipeline.’”

In other words: the same pro-GMO lobbyists who applaud Hillary for verbally endorsing the science that affirms global warming, applaud her for endorsing their own fake ‘science’ which asserts that GMOs have been proven safe. They just love her lie, which analogizes them to the authentic scientists who (97.1%) say that global warming exists and is caused by humans’ emissions of global-warming gases.

Also, she expressed the wish that: “the federal government could help biotechs with ‘insurance against risk,’ she said. Without such subsidies, she said, this is going to be an increasing challenge,” because otherwise, biotech companies might get bankrupted by lawsuits from consumers who might have become poisoned by their products. She wants the consuming public to bear the risk from those products — not the manufacturers of them to bear any of the risks that could result from those manufacturers’ rigged ‘safety’ ‘studies’ (a.k.a.: their propaganda).

In other words: the reason why Hillary Clinton won’t allow her 91 corporate speeches, for which she was paid $21,667,000, to be published, is the lying political cravenness of her pandering to those corporations there. Each group of lobbyists is happy to applaud her lying, regardless of whether her lies include insults against another group of lobbyists, to whom she might be delivering similar lies to butter them up at a different annual convention or etc.

In other words: she’s telling all of them collectively: You’re my type of people, and the public who despise you are merely misguided, but as President I’ll set them straight and they’ll even end up paying part of the bill to be ‘educated’ about these matters, by my Administration, and even part of the bill to pay corporations’ product-liability suits.

The reason why Clinton doesn’t want those speeches to be made public is that she doesn’t want the voters to know that she intends to use their money to propagandize to them for the benefit of those corporations, and also to protect those corporations from liability for harms their products cause the public.

This is called (by the propagandists) ‘capitalism’ and ‘democracy’. Mussolini, with pride, called it sometimes “fascism,” and sometimes “corporationism.” But whatever it’s called, it’s what she supports, and what she represents, to the people who are paying her. And even most of her own voters would find it repulsive, if they knew about it. So: she can’t let them know about it. And she doesn’t.

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.

Now I know Jeremy Corbyn is a bit of a wimp when it comes to the cut and thrust of politics but blaming him for Brexit is surely a step too far? But that’s just what the BBC has been doing all day.

The BBC, along with some renegade Labour Party members, spent much of its ‘news’ coverage asking why hasn’t Corbyn resigned? Interviewed as he left his home this morning, the BBC reporter shouted at him:

“Most of your shadow cabinet cabinet has resigned! Surely Mister Corbyn your position is now untenable?”

The argument goes as follows: Corbyn was, let us say less than enthusiastic in his support for the Remain camp, which ‘allowed’ those lumpen proletarians who helped elect him, the ones who never vote–that crucial few percent that made the difference–to vote the ‘wrong way’. So if the Establishment despised Corbyn before its debacle of an own goal, they now hate him with a vengeance!

Looking back on the past two days (is that all it’s been?), it’s clear the Establishment was stunned by the result. This is especially true of the state broadcaster, the BBC, which has spent millions of our license money trying to persuade us to vote Remain. How galling eh, not to say embarrassing. All those university degrees in journalism and public relations came to nought.

Hence the vitriolic attacks by the BBC itself, not just the elite that it interviews, on Corbyn. It’s all his fault because he didn’t lead his flock to the slaughter.

Losing the Referendum wasn’t in the plan! This wasn’t meant to happen!

And now, the rest of the political elite have to contend with Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. It’s all well and good wheeling them out on Question Time but what do you do with a posse of racists, plus some hangovers from Middle England, led by a fat guy who wants Cameron’s job, when they appear to have captured the Tory Party and of course, the government? How embarrassing. In all likelihood, the Tory Party and the Labour Party will split. It’s the end of an era.

And, as I predicted, now the elite and its minions have recovered somewhat, the search is on for a way out of the democratic result. One BBC minion today on the news, remarked that perhaps now the people who voted Brexit have woken up to the enormity of their ‘mistake’, they probably wish they’d voted the other way! Ah, if only we could do it all over again? And of course, what’s really insulting about this comment, is that it implies that those who voted Brexit are too stupid or ignorant to to know the ‘right’ way to vote!

Well, Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland to the rescue as it’s likely that she will try to veto the result on the grounds that the English, well some of them, well actually most of them, and the Welsh, voted the ‘wrong’ way and thus illegally deprived Scotland of its membership of the EU (Scotland voted overwhelmingly to Remain). Lawyers to the rescue!

This is fascinating, if true. Perhaps we’ll see just how much stock capitalism really does put in its much vaunted democracy now that it’s recovered somewhat from its stunning defeat at the polls.

Watch this space…

PS: Why isn’t the media and especially the BBC attacking Cameron and the Tory government? After all, they created this situation, not Corbyn

Brexit could seriously impact the Israeli economy and its bilateral trade with Britain as UK becomes free from being a signatory to the EU-Israel Association Agreement that gives unrestricted access to Israeli exporters from the Middle East into the British market.

Britain’s decision to leave the EU will enable more accurate identification of those lobbyists in and around the House of Commons whose agenda it is to influence Members of Parliament to pass legislation and trade deals that are advantageous not to the UK but to Israel.

This is particularly relevant to the pharmaceutical and defence procurement sectors where millions of pounds of contracts are concluded with Israeli firms by the NHS and government defence departments as a result of pernicious lobbying by pro-Israel interests in both Brussels and London.

All this will now change as any remaining future British trade with Israel will now need to be far more transparent and based on open competition instead of free trips to Israel and other often covert inducements offered by lobbyists in order to secure UK government contracts.

Borrowing a line from librettist WS Gilbert: “Things aren’t always as they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream.”

Venezuelan extremists wanting democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro ousted stacked their recall petition with hundreds of thousands of fraudulent signatures – some fake names, others deceased, as well as minors too young to vote, discrediting the legitimacy of their campaign.

Britain is following suit. Anti-Brexit proponents petitioning parliament for a second referendum so far collected around 3.5 million signatures since Friday – a red flag. This many this fast suggests something rotten.

Despite its population of less than one thousand, 41,118 signatures came from Vatican City as of Sunday afternoon, nearly 25,000 from North Korea.

According to a House of Commons petition committee spokeswoman, fraud is so rampant it’s already removed 77,000 signatures, likely many more to come. Perhaps most are fake.

What’s already known discredits the campaign. It should be abandoned straightaway even though holding a second referendum would be unprecedented, extremely unlikely to happen.

Brexit campaigner Evelyn Farr urges rejecting the second referendum petition, saying “(i)t is headline news abroad that three million people are anti-Brexit and the same false impression is being conveyed by our own press.”

“Given that some MPs are proposing not to vote through Brexit legislation, thereby ignoring the will of the people in a fair and democratic referendum, the implications are quite serious. This is fraud, and it needs to be exposed and stopped.”

Analysis so far shows only 353,000 of the 3.5 million signatures are from Britain. Perhaps most are also fake.

The petition will remain open for six months unless invalidated and shut down. Evidence shows it’s rife with fraud, a discredited sham.

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.

A group of U.S. intelligence veterans urges President Obama to resist the “reckless” call for a wider Syrian war from 51 State Department officials in a recent “dissent memo.”

MEMORANDUM FOR:  Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Subject:  Beware Foggy Bottom Dissent

Dissent and disagreement within the foreign policy and national security bureaucracy only comes to the public’s attention when there are deep and fundamental differences of opinion about the execution and objectives of a U.S. policy.  Instances of dissent emerged during the war in Vietnam and have reappeared periodically, e.g., during the Contra War in Central America in the 1980s and the Cold War with the Soviets. We can now add Syria to this list.

The latest media buzz came with the leak that 51 “State Department Diplomats” signed a dissent letter advocating direct U.S. bombing as a tool to force Syria into submission to our government’s dictates.  U.S. Foreign Service Officers are a unique collection of highly educated people, who take great pride in having passed the Foreign Service Exam.  Yet even among such “bright people,” some succumb to the forces of careerism and the pressures to politicize intelligence.

Unfortunately the dissent signers are calling for America to threaten, and if our bluff is called, commit acts of overt, aggressive war against the forces of a sovereign nation on its own territory. One whose supporters include Russia, the world’s other big nuclear power.

The line of thought — that it is America’s right and duty to employ large-scale death to enforce its leaders’ will on other peoples — adheres to the noxious notion that the U.S.A. enjoys uniquely privileged standing as the “sole indispensable country in the world.” If this was ever an arguably legitimate position, that time is long gone — and today demonstrably blinds its adherents to common sense.

Such thinking is not new. Theodore Roosevelt popularized it as we went to war to annex Spanish territories in the Philippines and Caribbean — at the cost of over half a million indigenous lives — more than a century ago. We saw it, in spades, with the “Best and the Brightest” — those responsible for destroying Vietnam.  Three million Vietnamese people died in that war (according to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara), and another two million or so in its Indochina spin-offs. After this slaughter and the deaths of scores of thousands of its own troops, the U.S. endured a complete and humiliating defeat, one affecting its foreign policy and domestic politics to this day. Their bright successors supported the attack on Iraq in 2003, the catalyst for an outbreak of violence that has brought death reaching into the millions — again — in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and other neighboring locales we’ll eventually read about. This aggression has created millions more traumatized refugees.

The memo, a draft of which was provided to The New York Times (and Wall Street Journal), presumably by one of the State Department employees who authored it, claims American policy has been “overwhelmed” by the unrelenting violence in Syria and calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.”  Furthermore, per the NYT:

“In the memo, the State Department officials wrote that the Assad government’s continuing violations of the partial cease-fire, officially known as a cessation of hostilities, will doom efforts to broker a political settlement because Mr. Assad will feel no pressure to negotiate with the moderate opposition or other factions fighting him. The government’s barrel bombing of civilians, it said, is the ‘root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region.’

“The memo acknowledged that military action would have risks, not the least of which would be increased tension with Russia, which intervened in the war on Mr. Assad’s behalf last fall.  Russia subsequently helped negotiate the cease-fire. Those tensions increased on Thursday when, according to a senior Pentagon official, Russia conducted airstrikes in southern Syria against American-backed forces fighting the Islamic State.”

The dissenters were smart enough to insist they were not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia,” but rather a credible threat of military action “to keep Mr. Assad in line.” Easier said than done! The 51 are silent on this point of major importance.

The foundational premise of their dissent is that Assad’s “barrel bombing” (followed by chemical attacks) on civilians provoked civil war in Syria. It’s true that the initial phase of the Syrian Spring seems to have been largely spontaneous. Facts show, however, that outside interveners — primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia — cooperated in lighting the match that brought the inferno of civil war. Covert funding and provision of weapons and other material support to opposition groups for strikes against the Syrian Government provoked a military reaction by Assad — which created a pretext for our enlarged support to the rebel groups.

A large body of evidence also suggests that it was the U.S.-backed rebel forces that employed chemical weapons on civilians, and then blamed Assad, in a propaganda effort to advance international public support for overt American intervention.

U.S. actions against Syria have been widely perceived to be part of a broader proxy battle with Iran, being pursued to push back against its expanded influence in the Middle East. But Iran’s emergence as a regional power was not the result of a magical event. It was a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and our subsequent decision to eradicate every vestige of the Baathist party and to install Iraqi Shia leaders with close ties to Iran in the positions of leadership.

We have thus helped start a war and then have the audacity to pretend to be shocked at the consequences of our own action.

The State Department dissenters were not the first to land a blow in this new PR battle over the course of U.S. policy in Syria. The Department of Defense and CIA appear to have entered the fray two weeks ago. According to a report in The Daily Beast, DOD and CIA are in a “cat fight.”

Two Department of Defense officials told that media outlet that they are not eager to support rebels fighting in the city of Aleppo because they are believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda in Syria, or Jabhat al Nusra. The CIA, which supports those rebel groups, rejects that claim, saying alliances of convenience in the face of a mounting Russian-led offensive have created marriages of battlefield necessity, not ideology.

“It is a strange thing that DOD hall chatter mimics Russian propaganda,” one U.S. official, who supports the intelligence community position, wryly noted about Pentagon claims that the opposition and Nusra are one in the same.

The intelligence community, which backed opposition forces in Aleppo, believes ISIS cannot be defeated as long as Assad is in power. The terror group, they say, thrives in unstable territories. And only local forces — like the ones backed by the CIA — can mitigate that threat.

“The status of the opposition is resilient in the face of horrendous attacks by the Syrian and Russian forces,” a U.S. intelligence official explained to The Daily Beast. “The defeat of Assad is a necessary precondition to ultimately defeat [ISIS]. As long as there is a failed leader in Damascus and a failed state in Syria, [ISIS] will have a place to operate from. You can’t deal with ISIS if you have a failed state,” the U.S. official observed.

This unnamed official conveniently ignores the fact that the U.S. is working aggressively to facilitate Syria’s failure. We are astonished. After 15 years of strident rhetoric about waging a war on Al Qaeda, we have now come full circle to witness the CIA and a vocal bloc within the State Department advocate to arm and train an Al Qaeda affiliated group.

It’s impossible to know whether or not the eruption of this dispute is a slap to the face of President Obama simply because the President appeared to support the overthrow of Assad but then backed away from the precipice of militarily taking him out.

The influence of Saudi Arabia in helping push and promote “regime change” in Syria cannot be underestimated. The Saudis also have reportedly funneled significant money into key sectors of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and, it would appear, have obtained considerable influence over our national security policy. More evidence is coming to light that the Saudis have given significant amounts to the Clinton Foundation.

A recent report on the Petra News Agency site (which was subsequently taken down and claimed to have been a “hack”) raises some important concerns. On Sunday a report appeared on that website that included what were described as exclusive comments from Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The comments included a claim that Riyadh has provided 20 percent of the total funding to the prospective Democratic candidate’s campaign.  Although the report did not remain on the website for long, the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs later re-published an Arabic version of it, which quoted Prince Mohammed as having said Saudi Arabia had provided with “full enthusiasm” an undisclosed amount of money to Clinton.

In light of Hillary Clinton’s strong advocacy for imposing a No Fly Zone in Syria, which would put us on track for stepped up intervention in Syria  and a military confrontation with the Russians, it is natural to wonder if Saudi donations had any influence over the direction of U.S. policy in Syria and support for rebel groups?

In sum, the latest memo from the 51 State Department officers is just one more alarming indication of disarray and failure within the U.S. foreign policy establishment.  Notably, most of their children and grandchildren will not be in the military ranks of those called on to fight this war. They are too smart and too “valuable” to engage in such ridiculous endeavors. So something called a “Volunteer Army” was assembled, populated by “volunteers” — mostly from the inner-cities and the small towns of our country, where jobs and education are elusive.

This almost unprecedented dissent letter from 51 emboldened State Department hawks is an alarming new sign of the reckless direction that well-organized elements of the U.S. foreign policy establishment seek to take us. Thus, we appeal to you, as Assistant to the President for National Security, to help President Barack Obama stand firm against such institutional destructiveness and to sort out the disarray and bureaucratic contention among his “Team of Rivals.” If the 51 are sincere in their advocacy of a let’s-try-some-more-of-the-same-but-tougher policy, we would expect them to welcome the personal risks involved in being sent off to bash Bashar with “standoff” — or — “closer-quarter” weapons. This could provide them initially with a sense of affirmation — then later, an education.

(Also see earlier remarks by individual VIPS members: by Ann Wright, here, by Elizabeth Murray and Ray McGovern here; by Philip Giraldi, here.)

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

William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

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

Larry Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

Michael S. Kearns, Intelligence Officer, USAF (ret.); former Master SERE Instructor.

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003

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

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned in opposition to launching of Iraq War)

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has announced his intentions to reinforce positions within Syria, particularly in Aleppo. Al-Manar in its article, “S. Nasrallah: Hezbollah Will Reinforce Troops in Aleppo to Achieve Major Victory,” would report that:

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah confirmed on Friday that the party will send more troops to Syria’s Aleppo where a major battle goes on in order to defeat the takfiri-terrorist project backed by Saudi and the US.

Nasrallah would add that the US and its regional allies were preparing to flood Syria with thousands of additional terrorist proxies in a bid to seize Aleppo. He also pointed out how the so-called “ceasefire” was used by various US-Saudi backed terrorist groups to retrench and prepare for the next phase of fighting.

Nasrallah Warned the World in 2007 of Syria’s Coming Catastrophe  

In 2007, Nasrallah would give an interview to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?”

In it, Nasrallah would state the following while discussing the ongoing civil war in Iraq, years before the onset of the current Syrian crisis:

Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state.” 

He believed that attempts would be made to drive Shia’a from Lebanon and Syria as far as southern Iraq, which may explain why the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) finds itself operating conveniently in both Syria and Iraq, serving as a tool to influence not just Syria, but the entire region geopolitically.

Hersh’s 2007 article would also reveal another important aspect of US foreign policy evident at the time and now prophetic in retrospect. The article stated that (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

In essence, Hersh’s research and interviews revealed that even as early as 2007, the US was working together with regional allies like Saudi Arabia to bolster armed terrorist groups and their political networks, including the Muslim Brotherhood, in preparations to divide and destroy the region, including Syria, as well as Lebanon.

Syria’s Fight is Lebanon’s Fight, is Hezbollah’s Fight 

Prominent clearinghouses for Washington talking points, dressed up as journalism like the Daily Beast, have insisted that Hezbollah’s fight in Syria is divorced from the organization’s alleged purpose – which the Daily Beast claims simplistically is “fighting Israel.” In its article, “Hezbollah Fighters Are Fed Up With Fighting Syria’s War,” and in typical Western “journalistic fashion,” the Daily Beast defers to a handful anonymous anecdotal tales to bolster an otherwise baseless premise promoting this factually flawed narrative.

Hezbollah’s purpose for existing is not to “fight Israel.” It is to protect the nation of Lebanon and the people of the Shia’a faith from all threats. Hersh’s 2007 article would reveal that in addition to protecting Shia’a populations, even former CIA operator Robert Baer would admit that Hezbollah would also play a primary role in protecting other minorities across the region, including Christians, when Washington’s Al Qaeda-led proxy war began.

Since Hezbollah’s actual purpose for being is the defense of Lebanon – it is not difficult to see why it has invested itself so heavily in the war raging in neighboring Syria.

The belligerence of Israel’s current regime is only one of many threats that loom large over Lebanon’s future. The expansion of extremist groups ranging from Al Nusra and Al Qaeda, to the Islamic State, fueled by US, Saudi, Turkish, Qatari, and Jordanian cash, arms, and political backing, is another. It constitutes an existential threat not only to Syria, but to its neighbors including Lebanon.

Lebanon, in fact, has served as one of many conduits through which the US-led proxy war’s fighters have moved along with significant amounts of material support. This has led to clashes within Lebanon itself between extremist groups and both Hezbollah and the Lebanese military who attempted to interdict the flow of men and materiel.

But the current impact of Syria’s war on Lebanon is only one threat the nation and its defenders face. The other is the prospect of Syria’s government collapsing and terrorist groups bolstered by the West and its regional allies prevailing – and then spreading.

Libya is a Warning to Syria’s Neighbors: “You’re Next” 

As seen in Libya, the Western-induced collapse of a government and subsequent regime change is only the first step of the West’s wider ambitions. Libya was then used as a springboard to send fighters and weapons to other nations targeted by Washington for “regime change.” This included Syria itself.

Observers of the Syrian conflict may recall that in late 2011 and early 2012, Libya contributed a significant number of fighters and weapons to the Syrian conflict, entering the country via NATO-member Turkey with the assistance of the United States government, and spearheading the invasion of Syria’s largest city Aleppo.

In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group,” would report:

Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”

It should be noted that US-backed terrorist leader Belhadj is now rumored to play a pivotal role in ISIS’ presence in Libya.

Another Telegraph article, “Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels,” would admit:

Syrian rebels held secret talks with Libya’s new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

It is no coincidence that US-backed terrorist Belhaj would immediately marshal Libyan fighters and weapons to wage America’s proxy war in Syria after the fall of the Libyan government in 2011.

Later that month, some 600 Libyan terrorists would be reported to have entered Syria to begin combat operations and subsequently, CNN whose Ivan Watson accompanied terrorists over the Turkish-Syrian border and into Aleppo, revealed that indeed foreign fighters were amongst the militants, particularly Libyans. It was admitted that:

Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade’s ranks.

A volunteer Libyan fighter has also told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a “platoon” of Libyan fighters to armed movement.

CNN also added:

On Wednesday, CNN’s crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way.

The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as … a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.

With this all in mind, one can only imagine how much greater the reach of these terrorist groups will be with Syria as yet another hub to train, stage in and traffic weapons and fighters from, as the West shifts its proxy war toward Lebanon, Iran, and even as far as southern Russia and western China.

Lebanon, without Syria’s government and military, and with Iran fighting a proxy war that will inevitable cross over into its territory should Syria fall, does not stand a chance against proxies backed by US-led multinational sponsorship of terrorism.

Police patrol in western China where US-backed terrorism actively seeks to undermine peace and stability in a bid to destabilize Beijing. Syria’s fall to US-backed terrorists will enhance America’s ability to project wider terror, further, including China.

Syria’s battle is Lebanon’s battle. It is also Iran’s battle, as well as Russia’s and even China’s. These nations do not support and defend the Syrian government out of an obligation to an ally alone. They do so with the realization of where the conflict will lead to later if not ended in Syria now.

This is precisely why Syria, Russia, Iran, and Lebanon – and to a lesser extent, China – cannot afford to abandon Syria.

This is also why “assurances” from the US that if only “regime change” is accomplished in Syria, the conflict will end, cannot and should not be entertained.

“Regime change” did not end the conflict in Libya, nor Libya’s role in supporting wider conflicts beyond its borders. It will not end in Syria either. It will only lead to the next, and much larger conflict.

Hezbollah is not fighting for “Assad” in Syria. Hezbollah is fighting for Lebanon and the stability of the entire region upon which Lebanon’s future depends.

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

The outcome of Thursday’s referendum in Britain could create a domino effect with similar plebiscites held in other EU countries, Igor Korotchenko, the editor of National Defense journal with close ties to the Defense Ministry, told RIA Novosti.

Omar Mateen had been on the FBI’s radar for some time before he opened fire at a nightclub in Florida, killing 49 and wounding 53 people. Now the public is asking why the FBI didn’t do something to prevent the tragedy.

Glenn Greenwald responded with an article in The Washington Post, “The FBI Was Right Not to Arrest Omar Mateen Before the Shooting”. He warned that pressure on the FBI to be more pro-active will inevitably lead to more draconian anti-terror legislation and the loss of even more civil liberties in the name of preventing the unpreventable.

But there is a legitimate reason to question the FBI. There are times when the Bureau seems to be playing dangerous games with dangerous people, as shown in the article below.

This was first published in June of 2013. At the time, we said there were ‘aspects of the Boston Marathon bombing where the official story just doesn’t add up. But what if these inconsistencies point to something amiss on a far deeper level? What if the FBI’s initial claim that it didn’t know who the Tsarnaev brothers were — when in fact it knew about them for several years — hides an even bigger embarrassment?

Update. Last month, WhoWhatWhy’s James Henry reported that, despite public denials, the FBI secretly flagged Tamerlan as a terrorist threat in his immigration records. And the Bureau admitted that it conducted a six-month-long “assessment” of Tsarnaev, two years before the bombing. But then the FBI said it closed the investigation after it“found no link or ‘nexus’ to terrorism”.

Contradicting that statement, both the FBI and CIA had actually put Tsarnaev’s name on the terrorist “watch list,” stating that he “may be armed and dangerous” — and that screening him is “mandatory” if he attempts to board an airplane.

So why didn’t they do so?

*       *       *

Was Tamerlan Tsarnaev a Double Agent Recruited by the FBI?

by Prof. Peter Dale Scott

June 23, 2013

Amid the swirl of mysteries surrounding the alleged Boston bombers, one fact, barely touched upon in the mainstream US media, stands out: There is a strong possibility that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers, was a double agent, perhaps recruited by the FBI.

If Tsarnaev was a double agent, he would be just one of thousands of young people coerced by the FBI, as the price for settling a minor legal problem, into a dangerous career as an informant.

That he was so coerced is the easiest explanation for two seemingly incompatible incidents in his life:

The first is that he returned to Russia in 2012, ostensibly to renew his Russian passport so he could file an application for US citizenship.

The second is that Tsarnaev then jeopardized his citizenship application with conspicuous, provocative — almost theatrical — behavior that seemed more caricaturethan characteristic of a Muslim extremist.

False Notes

While walking around in flashy western clothes in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, he visited his cousin, Magomed Kartashov, a prominent Islamist leader, already on the Russians’ radar. The two reportedly spent hours discussing Tsarnaev’s wish to join a terrorist cell there in the Caucasus. Later, Russian authorities asked Kartashov if he had tried to incite Tsarnaev with “extremist” views. Kartashov said it was the other way around: he had tried to convince Tsarnaev that “violent methods are not right.”

Experts agree that Tsarnaev could not have expected such provocative activity to escape the notice of the vigilant Russian authorities.

Back in America, Tsarnaev again called attention to himself as a radical Muslim. Just one month after he returned from his trip, a YouTube page that appeared to belong to him featured multiple jihadist videos that he had purportedly endorsed.

And in January 2013, he got himself thrown out of a mosque in Cambridge for shouting at a speaker who compared the Prophet Mohammed to Martin Luther King Jr. Tsarnaev rarely attended this mosque, but he must have known it was moderate. (He had done something similar the previous November at the same mosque.) Typically, jihadists are trained to blend in, to be as inconspicuous as possible. Did Tsarnaev go to this mosque with the express intent of smoking out possible radicals?

The key to Tsarnaev’s puzzling behavior may lie in the answer to another question: when exactly did Tsarnaev first come to the attention of the FBI? The timeline offered by the agency, and duly reported in the mainstream media, has been inconsistent. One story line focused on the FBI’s response to an alert from Russian authorities.

Eric Schmitt and Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times, wrote, on April 24, 2013,

The first Russian request came in March 2011 through the F.B.I.’s office in the United States Embassy in Moscow. The one-page request said Mr. Tsarnaev ”had changed drastically since 2010” and was preparing to travel to a part of Russia “to join unspecified underground groups.”

The Russian request was reportedly based on intercepted phone calls between Tsarnaev’s mother and an unidentified person (The Guardian [London], April 21, 2013). According to another source, several calls were intercepted, including one between Tsarnaev and his mother.

So was it the Russian alert in March 2011 that first prompted the FBI to investigate Tsarnaev? This conclusion seems undermined by another report in the Times — written four days earlier by the same two reporters plus a third — that dated the agency’s first contact with Tamerlan and family members at least two months earlier, in January2011.

If the FBI interviewed Tsarnaev before the Russians asked them to, then what prompted the agency’s interest in him? Were his contacts here as well as in Russia considered useful to American counterintelligence?

The Canadian Connection

Although it’s not known why the Russians were intercepting phone calls involving the Tsarnaevs, one reason might have been Tamerlan’s connection, direct or indirect, with a Canadian terrorist named William Plotnikov. According to USA Today, a Russian security official told the AP that Plotnikov had been detained in Dagestan in December 2010 on suspicion of having ties to the militants and during his interrogation was forced to hand over a list of social networking friends from the United States and Canada who like him had once lived in Russia, Novaya Gazeta reported. The newspaper said Tsarnaev’s name was on that list, bringing him for the first time to the attention of Russia’s secret services.

According to a slightly different version, Plotnikov, “while under interrogation in the militant hotbed of Dagestan, named Tsarnaev as a fellow extremist.”

The similar backgrounds of Plotnikov and Tsarnaev make it likely that they had indeed been in contact. Both were recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Both had successful boxing careers in North America, and both surprised their friends by converting to Islamist extremism.

Plotnikov was a member of the Caucasus Emirate, an al-Qaeda ally, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been searching for him since 2010. By 2011 the United States had joined the Russians in targeting this terrorist group as an al-Qaeda ally, and had offered $5 million for information leading to the capture of the group’s leader Dokka Umarov. (Moscow Times, May 27, 2011)

Plotnikov was killed in July 2012 in a shootout between militants and police in Dagestan. Tsarnaev left Dagestan for America two days after Plotnikov was killed.

US and Russia Share Concerns

Tsarnaev’s hopes for a Russian passport would have been put at risk by his openly provocative behavior in Dagestan  unless he was acting as an informant. But for which government, the US or Russia?

The United States and Russia have two shared concerns in the “arc of crisis” stretching from Afghanistan to the Caucasus — terrorism and drugs. The two problems are interrelated, because drugs, especially in the Caucasus, help finance terror operations. This vitally affects Russia, both because it has one of the highest heroin death rates in the world, and even more because some of its member republics, like Dagestan, are up to 80 percent Muslim. This shared concern has led to a successful joint US-Russia anti-drug operation in Afghanistan.

Was Tamerlan Tsarnaev caught up in a similar counter-intelligence operation?

The FBI’s Dysfunctional Informant Program

One of the more controversial features of the FBI’s informant program is the frequency with which FBI agents coerce young people into the dangerous role of informant, as a price for settling a minor legal problem. Tsarnaev fits the mold. His successful career as a boxer was interrupted and his application for US citizenship was held up (and perhaps denied) because “a 2009 domestic violence complaint was standing in his way.” This alone would mark him as a candidate for recruitment.

Thousands of vulnerable young people avoid our overcrowded prisons by agreeing to become snitches, sometimes wearing a wire. In this way a person whose only crime may have been selling marijuana to a friend can end up risking his career and even his life. And for what?

According to Sarah Stillman in The New Yorker,

The snitch-based system has proved notoriously unreliable, fuelling wrongful convictions. In 2000, more than twenty innocent African-American men in Hearne, Texas, were arrested on cocaine charges, based on the false accusations of an informant seeking to escape a burglary charge. This incident, and a number of others like it, prompted calls for national legislation to regulate informant use.

After 9/11, the coercive techniques of the FBI drug war, along with half of the agents using them, were redirected to surveillance of Muslims. The emphasis was no longer on investigation of specific crimes, but the recruitment of spies to report on all Muslim communities.

In 2005 the FBI’s Office of the Inspector General found that a high percentage of cases involving informants contained violations of the FBI’s own guidelines. Its report noted that since 2001 the rules had been loosened to reflect the new emphasis on intelligence gathering and. by extension, the bureau’s urgent need for informants.

According to the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, … nearly every major post-9/11 terrorism-related prosecution has involved a sting operation, at the center of which is a government informant. In these cases, the informants—who work for money or are seeking leniency on criminal charges of their own — have crossed the line from merely observing potential criminal behavior to encouraging and assisting people to participate in plots that are largely scripted by the FBI itself. Under the FBI’s guiding hand, the informants provide the weapons, suggest the targets and even initiate the inflammatory political rhetoric that later elevates the charges to the level of terrorism.

A writer for Mother Jones, Trevor Aaronson, also investigated the FBI’s informant-led terrorism cases for over a year; he too found that in a number of cases, “the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity.”

Refuse the FBI and See What Happens

And what happens to Muslims who refuse to become spies? The case of Ahmadullah Niazi is not atypical. Niazi was one of several members of a California mosque who sought a restraining court order against another member — actually an FBI informant — who was flagrantly advocating violence in their midst. When Niazi was subsequently asked to become an informant himself and refused, he was arrested on charges of lying to immigration officials about alleged family connections to a member of Al Qaeda. The charges were ultimately withdrawn, but by then both Niazi and his wife had lost their jobs.

Another Muslim, Khalifa al-Akili, when pressured to become an informant, complained to the Guardian newspaper in London that “he believed he was the target of an FBI ‘entrapment’ sting.” One day after the Guardian contacted al-Akili, the FBI arrested him on a felony charge for illegal gun possession, based on the fact that two years earlier he had used a friend’s rifle (at a firing range), something he was prohibited from doing since he already had a drug conviction on his record. Al-Akili was held without bail as a potential threat to the public, and ultimately convicted.

These recruitments were taking place in a climate of fear. In addition to the tens of thousands of Muslims in America who were interviewed or investigated after 9/11, there were also by 2003 (according to an American imam’s compilation of US Government figures), 6,483 detained or arrested, 3,208 deported, 13,434 in process of deportation, and 144,513 interviewed and then registered under a Special Registration program of the Justice Department.

It is instructive to study how the FBI handled drone victim Anwar al-Awlaki. Right after 9/11, Awlaki was the “go-to” imam for the US media, because of his willingness to denounce the atrocity as anti-Islamic. But a few years earlier, while a Muslim cleric in San Diego, he had been twice arrested and convicted for soliciting prostitutes. According to Awlaki, he had been set up both times, because the US government had been trying to recruit him as a spy:

In 1996 while waiting at a traffic light in my minivan a middle aged woman knocked on the window of the passenger seat. By the time I rolled down the window and before even myself or the woman uttering a word I was surrounded by police officers who had me come out of my vehicle only to be handcuffed. I was accused of soliciting a prostitute and then released. They made it a point to make me know in no uncertain terms that the woman was an undercover cop. I didn’t know what to make of the incident. However a few days later came the answer. I was visited by two men who introduced themselves as officials with the US government … and that they are interested in my cooperation with them. When I asked what cooperation did they expect, they responded by saying that they are interested in having me liaise with them concerning the Muslim community of San Diego. I was greatly irritated by such an offer and made it clear to them that they should never expect such cooperation from myself. I never heard back from them again until in 1998 when I was approached by a woman, this time from my window and again I was surrounded by police officers who this time said I had to go to court. This time I was told that this is a sting operation and you would not be able to get out of it.

Awlaki’s allegations may have been at least partly true. In 2002, when he came under suspicion in Operation Green Quest, an investigation of Muslim nonprofit organizations, the FBI reportedly did try to flip him, using prostitution charges.

According to U.S. News,

FBI agents hoped al-Awlaki might cooperate with the 9/11 probe if they could nab him on similar charges in Virginia. FBI sources say agents observed the imam allegedly taking Washington-area prostitutes into Virginia and contemplated using a federal statute usually reserved for nabbing pimps who transport prostitutes across state lines.

Were the FBI’s recruitment efforts successful? Another Muslim “person of interest,” Ali al-Timimi, tells a strange tale about al-Awlaki’s unnaturally provocative behavior:

When Awlaki came to his home, Timimi said, he started talking about recruiting Western jihadists. “Ali had never, in his whole life, even talked to the guy or met him,” Timimi’s [CHK SPELLING] lawyer, Edward MacMahon, told me. “Awlaki just showed up at his house and asked him if he could assist him in finding young men to join the jihad.” MacMahon said that Timimi was suspicious of Awlaki showing up “completely out of the blue” (Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars, 71).

Timimi’s attorneys argued that Awlaki was wearing a wire at the time, and asked that the US Government produce the tapes, which would show Timimi’s rejection of Awlaki’s terrorist request. The Government refused, on the grounds that “We are aware of no authority for this request.” Timimi, a promising research scientist, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Another glaring indication that Awlaki had been flipped is the ease with which he was able to return to the US from studies in Yemen in 2002, even though there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

On October 9, 2002, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Colorado “abruptly filed a motion to have the warrant for Awlaki’s arrest vacated and dismissed.”

On October 10, Awlaki and his family arrived at JFK airport on a flight from Saudi Arabia. After a brief period of confusion, Customs officials released them and recorded later that the FBI had told them “the warrant had been removed on 10/9.” In fact, documents show the warrant was still active, and was only vacated later that day.

Asked to comment on these anomalies, former FBI agents indicated there were only two likely explanations: either the bureau let the cleric into the country to track him for intelligence, or the bureau wanted to work with him as a friendly contact.

Does a similar analysis apply to the FBI’s curious “relationship” with Tamerlan Tsarnaev?

Despite Tsarnaev’s inflammatory behavior, as reported by the Russians and also in this country, a senior law enforcement official told The New York Times that intelligence agencies never followed up on Tsarnaev once he returned to the US, because their investigation “did not turn up anything and it did not have the legal authority to keep tabs on him”

This claim sounds strange in the light of recent revelations about widespread surveillance of telephone and Internet traffic of ordinary Americans and the ease with which law enforcement officials obtain warrants to probe more deeply into the activities of anyone suspected of ties to “terrorists.”

The case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, like that of Anwar al-Awlaki, leaves many unanswered questions. But one thing seems clear: the FBI’s informant program, especially when dealing with the War on Terror, has proliferated wildly out of control.

President Barack Obama, like other leaders who were taking the gruel of Brexit for his breakfast serving, did not react well to the referendum result. Over time, he has been unduly chiding in his manner, reproachful about the affairs of another country in how it would vote on its relationship with the European Union.

In April, Obama warned British voters that a trade deal with the United States would be a rather tough thing from outside the European Union.  “It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we’re actually able to get something done.”[1]

Whatever pretence the United States maintains about the equal order of states, sovereignty and its “special relationships,” traditional imperial values are powerful. Much of this has seeped sufficiently into the body politic of the US to make anything that seems like rebellious fracture in Europe seem dangerous.

The case for Britain’s exit from Europe has been treated as a dramatic blow against the imperium’s three main concerns on the continent: its own, fragile economic recovery, the broader trade agenda spearheaded with the EU, and matters of security.

The economic aspect got a jolt when the collaring markets, ever the deities to be worshipped by major capitals of the globe, did their stuff in wiping off $2 trillion in value on Friday.  “I must say,” conceded Vice President Joe Biden, “we had looked for a different outcome.  We would have preferred a different outcome.”  Never spook the markets, especially with daft notions of democratic practice.

Another spoiler for the Obama administration lies in the chances to get the much vaunted yet problematic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Act between the EU and the United States done by January.  Things already seemed rather mucked given the growing hostility to the deal on both sides of the pond.  It has dawned on some European lawmakers that the TTIP is less a citizen’s charter than that of a corporation’s.

Obama’s insistence here has been to keep stand by previous statements that Brexit would lead to a banishment of Britain to the back of the negotiating queue.  White House spokesman Eric Schultz reiterated the point immediately after the vote.  “Obviously, the president stands by what he said and I don’t have an update of our position.”[2]  Bad children who openly disregard the wishes of their teachers tend to find themselves at the back of the classroom.

As for the security agenda, Britain’s suggested exit is being treated as the disengagement of a valuable, pro-US partner on the continent.  Fanciful observations have been made that Washington will look with keener interest to Berlin and Paris.  Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations urged that, “We… maintain our trans-Atlantic consensus on how to deal with a resurgent Russia and the growing threat of ISIS.”[3]

For decades, having Britain in European arrangements was tantamount to Rome having faithful Greeks in its foreign policy.  The point had been made by former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan during the North African campaigns of the Second World War.Britons would become the modern Greeks of future US administrations.  “We …. are Greeks in this American empire… We must run the Allied Forces HQ as the Greeks ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius” (SundayTelegraph, Feb 9, 1964).

Sensing an aspect of this facet unravelling, the Mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin suggested that Britain’s exit from European arrangements meant one less voice on the anti-Russia bandwagon.  “Without the UK, there will be nobody in the EU to defend sanctions against Russia so zealously.”[4]  Other European countries had been less than enthusiastic to impose sanctions on the Kremlin.  Not Britain, egged on Washington.

Andrei Klepach, deputy chairman of the Russian State Development Bank Vneshekonombank (VEB), went so far as to make a prediction at this detachment from the European bloc.  Brexit might well provide changes for “good potential for growth in the value of securities” that would benefit the Russian economy.[5]

There remains a conspicuous fear in the US Republic that civilization must be a centralising endeavour.  Smaller states only matter if they are wedged into a series of agreements and arrangements with an overseeing hegemon.  The hegemon dictates the measures to be taken, even if they may be cushioned by promises of good relations and a false sense of autonomy.

While Donald Trump has been dismissed as a lunatic on this subject, amongst others, his statements about the way Obama behaved on Britain’s referendum were relevant.  Was it the business of a US president to tell the British voter how to go about his or her business?  No.  A close ally of empire, and the US project in Europe, had flown the coop.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/24/leave-campaign-obama-trade-warning-eu-referendum

[2] http://www.euronews.com/2016/06/25/obama-stands-by-back-of-queue-warning-on-post-brexit-uk-trade-deal/

[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-usa-biden-idUSKCN0ZA24G

[4] https://twitter.com/@MosSobyanin

[5] http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/news/article/russia-reacts-to-brexit-referendum/573389.html

War with Russia appears increasingly likely as the US and its NATO satraps continue their military provocations of Moscow.

As dangers mount, our foolish politicians should all be forced to read, and then re-read, Prof. Christopher Clark’s magisterial book, ‘The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.’ What is past increasingly appears prologue.

Prof. Clark carefully details how small cabals of anti-German senior officials in France, Britain and Russia engineered World War I, a dire conflict that was unnecessary, idiotic, and illogical. Germany and Austria-Hungary of course share some the blame, but to a much lesser degree than the bellicose French, Serbs, Russians and British.

We are seeing the same process at work today. The war party in Washington, backed by the military-industrial complex, the tame media, and the neocons, are agitating hard for war.

US and NATO combat forces are being sent to Russia’s western borders in Ukraine, the Baltic and Black Sea. NATO is arming, financing ($40 billion so far) and supplying Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Prominent Americans are calling for the US to attack Russian forces in Syria. US warships are off Russia’s coasts in the Black Sea, Baltic and Pacific. NATO air forces are probing Russia’s western air borders.

Some of this is great power shadow boxing, trying to cow insubordinate Russia into accepting Washington’s orders. But much appears to be the work of the hard right and neocons in the US and Europe in spite of the desire of most Americans and Europeans to avoid armed conflict with Russia.

Hence the daily barrage of anti-Russian, anti-Putin invective in the US media and the European media controlled by the US. Germany’s lapdog media behaves as if the US postwar occupation is still in force – and perhaps it is. Germany has not had a truly independent foreign policy since the war.

In an amazing break with Berlin’s normally obsequious behavior, German’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, just demanded that Washington and NATO stop their ‘sabre-rattling’ against Russia. He speaks for many Germans and other Europeans who are deeply alarmed by the alliance’s provocations of Russia.

In fact, many Europeans want to see the end of NATO-imposed sanctions against Russia that were ordered by the US. No one in Europe cares about Russia’s re-occupation of Crimea. The sanctions have been a big backfire, seriously hurting EU exports to Russia at a time of marked economic weakness. Nor are any Europeans ready to fight a war, or worse, even court nuclear war, for such dark-side-of-the-moon places as eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk or Mariupol.

America’s numb-brained Republican members of Congress, who could not find Crimea on a map if their lives depended on it, may be counted on to beat the war drums to please their big donors and hard right religious donors.

The only Republican to buck this trend is Donald Trump who, for all his other foolish positions, has the clear sense to see no benefit for the US in antagonizing Russia and seeking war in Europe or the Mideast.

What the US and its sidekick NATO has done so far is to antagonize Russia and affirm its deeply held fears that the west is always an implacable enemy. But it seems very unlikely that the tough Vlad Putin and his battle-hardened nation is going to be cowed into submission by a few thousand US and NATO troops, a few frigates and some flyovers. Ever since Frederick the Great, wise European leaders have learned not to fight with Russia.

Not so President Obama’s strategic Walkures, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and, until recently, Hillary Clinton. They proved the most bungling military-strategic leadership since Madame de Pompadour was briefly given command of France’s armies by King Louis XV and proved an epic disaster.
One shudders watching Hillary Clinton aspire to be a commander-in-chief.

It’s also inevitable that land, sea and air provocations against Russia will eventually result in accidental clashes and a stern Russian response. All one needs is a Sarajevo II terror incident to spark a big shooting war between nuclear powers.

The enraged liberal reaction to the Brexit vote is in full flood. The anger is pathological – and helps to shed light on why a majority of Britons voted for leaving the European Union, just as earlier a majority of Labour party members voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

A few years ago the American writer Chris Hedges wrote a book he titled the Death of the Liberal Class. His argument was not so much that liberals had disappeared, but that they had become so coopted by the right wing and its goals – from the subversion of progressive economic and social ideals by neoliberalism, to the ethusiastic embrace of neonservative doctrine in prosecuting aggressive and expansionist wars overseas in the guise of “humanitarian intervention” – that liberalism had been hollowed out of all substance.

Liberal pundits sensitively agonise over, but invariably end up backing, policies designed to benefit the bankers and arms manufacturers, and ones that wreak havoc domestically and abroad. They are the “useful idiots” of modern western societies.

Reading this piece on the fallout from Brexit by Zoe Williams, a columnist who ranks as leftwing by the current standards of the deeply diminished Guardian, one can isolate this liberal pathology in all its sordid glory.

Here is a revealing section, written by a mind so befuddled by decades of neoliberal orthodoxy that it has lost all sense of the values it claims to espouse:

There is a reason why, when Marine le Pen and Donald Trump congratulated us on our decision, it was like being punched in the face – because they are racists, authoritarian, small-minded and backward-looking. They embody the energy of hatred. The principles that underpin internationalism – cooperation, solidarity, unity, empathy, openness – these are all just elements of love.

One wonders where in the corridors of the EU bureaucracy Williams identifies that “love” she so admires. Did she see it when the Greeks were being crushed into submission after they rebelled against austerity policies that were themselves a legacy of European economic policies that had required Greece to sell off the last of its family silver?

Is she enamoured of this internationalism when the World Bank and IMF go into Africa and force developing nations into debt-slavery, typically after a dictator has trashed the country decades after being installed and propped up with arms and military advisers from the US and European nations?

What about the love-filled internationalism of Nato, which has relied on the EU to help spread its military tentacles across Europe close to the throat of the Russian bear? Is that the kind of cooperation, solidarity and unity she was thinking of?

Williams then does what a lot of liberals are doing at the moment. She calls for subversion of the democratic will:

The anger of the progressive remain side, however, has somewhere to go: always suckers for optimism, we now have the impetus to put aside ambiguity in the service of clarity, put aside differences in the service of creativity. Out of embarrassment or ironic detachment, we’ve backed away from this fight for too long.

That includes seeking the ousting of Jeremy Corbyn, of course. “Progressive” Remainers, it seems, have had enough of him. His crime is that he hails from “leftwing aristocracy” – his parents were lefties too, apparently, and even had such strong internationalist principles that they first met at a committee on the Spanish civil war.

But Corbyn’s greater crime, according to Williams, is that “he is not in favour of the EU”. It would be too much trouble for her to try and untangle the knotty problem of how a supreme internationalist like Corbyn, or Tony Benn before him, could be so against the love-filled EU. So she doesn’t bother.

We will never know from Williams how a leader who supports oppressed and under-privileged people around the world is cut from the same cloth as racists like Le Pen and Trump. That would require the kind of “agile thinking” she accuses Corbyn of being incapable of. It might hint that there is a leftwing case quite separate from the racist one – even if Corbyn was not allowed by his party to advocate it – for abandoning the EU. (You can read my arguments for Brexit here and here.)

But no, Williams assures us, Labour needs someone with much more recent leftwing heritage, someone who can tailor his or her sails to the prevailing winds of orthodoxy. And what’s even better, there is a Labour party stuffed full of Blairities to choose from. After all, their international credentials have been proven repeatedly, including in the killing fields of Iraq and Libya.

And here, wrapped into a single paragraph, is a golden nugget of liberal pathology from Williams. Her furious liberal plea is to rip up the foundations of democracy: get rid of the democratically elected Corbyn and find a way, any way, to block the wrong referendum outcome. No love, solidarity, unity or empathy for those who betrayed her and her class.

There hasn’t been a more fertile time for a Labour leader since the 1990s. The case for a snap general election, already strong, will only intensify over the coming weeks. As the sheer mendacity of the leave argument becomes clear – it never intended to curb immigration, there will be no extra money for the NHS, there was no plan for making up EU spending in deprived areas – there will be a powerful argument for framing the general election as a rematch. Not another referendum, but a brake on article 50 and the next move determined by the new government. If you still want to leave the EU, vote Conservative. If you’ve realised or knew already what an act of vandalism that was, vote Labour.

Euroskepticism isn’t confined to Britain. According to a Pew Research (PR) study conducted in April and May, it’s on the rise in other European countries.

“The British are not the only ones with doubts about the European Union,” said PR’s Bruce Stokes. “The EU is again experiencing a sharp dip in public support in a number of its largest member states.”

French and Greek anti-EU sentiment is greater than in Britain. Significant numbers of Germans, Spaniards, Swedes, Dutch citizens, Italians and others across Europe lost faith in a system harming their economic well-being, along with how Brussels is handling the refugee crisis.

Majorities in Britain and Greece, “along with significant minorities in other key (EU) nations, want some powers returned from Brussels to national governments,” said PR.

Sentiment is evenly split. A slight 51% majority of respondents view the EU favorably. “A median 42% in these 10 (largest) nations want more power returned to the their national capitals…”

Only 19% “favor giving Brussels more power.” A fourth of respondents prefer the status quo. Over two-thirds call Brexit a bad thing.

Anti-EU sentiment grew as economic conditions deteriorated, exacerbated by neoliberal harshness, paying bankers first, and disapproval over “Brussels handling of the refugee issue.”

The 1957 Treaty of Rome founding EU document obligates its initial six member states and subsequent ones “to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the people of Europe.”

Early this year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron got Brussels to exempt Britain from the Rome Treaty’s “references to ever closer union” among member states.

Disagreement over centralized governance v. devolution prevails across Europe. According to PR, majorities in six of its 10 surveyed countries support greater independence.

“(L)ittle enthusiasm” exists for empowering Brussels more than already – 6% in Britain, 8% in Greece, 34% in France, the strongest backing registered, two-thirds in the country expressing opposition.

In the wake of Thursday’s vote, EU leaders fear Brexit may spark contagion, referendums if held in other member states going the same way as Britain.

Protracted hard times exacerbated by force-fed austerity sparked growing public discontent, especially in France. Street rage since March against anti-worker legislation, enacted by decree, shows no signs of ending.

Thursday’s UK vote was the beginning of a protracted process, to be intentionally drawn out to counter Brexit sentiment, continuing for many months, market turbulence and other disruptions along the way.

Headlines hyping Britain leaving the EU belie reality. The same goes for EU leaders telling Cameron to get on with it – issuing a statement, saying “give effect to this decision of the British people as soon as possible, however painful that process may be.”

Chances for Brexit are virtually nil because powerful US and European interests reject it.

In the end, expect EU unity to be preserved, Britain remaining a member state, perhaps granted some insignificant cosmetic changes, creating the illusion of what Brexit supporters want.

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.

According to a new report, the Japanese government worked in concert with TEPCO to purposely cover up the meltdown at Fukushima in 2011.

“I would say it was a coverup,” Tokyo Electric Power Company President Naomi Hirose announced during a press conference. “It’s extremely regrettable.”

Masataka Shimizu, president of TEPCO at the time of the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear disaster, told employees not to go public with the term “meltdown” — allegedly in capitulation to pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office.

For two months, TEPCO officials euphemized the meltdown in public statements as “core damage,” even as they had full knowledge of the true extent of the catastrophe. Though a few company officials initially used the term “meltdown,” it abruptly vanished from public discussions just three days after the disaster struck.

According to the report, Shimizu rushed a note to Vice President Sakae Muto as he held a press conference that warned him against using the word meltdown.

Though the three lawyers who authored the report did not find direct evidence, they surmised it was “highly likely” governmental pressure was behind the amelioration of information about the scope of the disaster.

As CBS News reported, former officials from the Prime Minister’s Office denied all allegations a coverup had taken place. In fact, former government spokesman and current secretary general of the opposition Democratic Party denounced the report as “inadequate and unilateral” — particularly as the lawyer-authors are allied with the current ruling party.

Attorney Yasuhisa Tanaka, who headed the panel investigation, admitted TEPCO likely didn’t intentionally cover up that a meltdown had occurred, saying,

“Looking at the situation back then, we think it was too difficult for Tepco to use the term meltdown because even the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency couldn’t use it,” because of pressure from the government,  Japan Times noted.

That agency had been Japan’s nuclear watchdog in March 2011, at the time of the disaster.

Notably, five years after the catastrophe, TEPCO revealed the existence of a company manual in which a meltdown is ‘official’ once 5 percent or more fuel rods have suffered damage. But, asJapan Times explained:

As of March 14, 2011, Tepco estimated that 55 percent of the fuel rod assemblies in reactor No. 1 and 25 percent of those in reactor No. 3 were damaged but did not declare they were damaged until May that year.

In euphemizing the meltdown, TEPCO and the Japanese government left countless civilians in peril; despite evacuations, many had been reluctant to leave their homes and might have done so sooner had the full scope of a meltdown been clear.

TEPCO remains embroiled in controversy over secrecy and alleged incompetent handling of the cleanup of Fukushima. In February this year, three former TEPCO executives werecharged with negligence over the disaster.

Trump and Clinton agree more than disagree on major issues, despite both presidential aspirants and media scoundrels suggesting otherwise, serving as a collective mouthpiece for a she devil, war criminal, racketeer menace.

Trump’s only redeeming quality is he’s not her, hardly a reason to support him. The presidential contest between two deplorable candidates should encourage groundswell campaigning for none of the above – urging voters choose from among independent aspirants or opt out.

Their one-sided support for Israel, contemptuous of Palestinian rights, is one of many reasons to reject them.

Clinton is like Obama – backing unlimited settlement expansions while claiming otherwise, rejecting peace while faking support, and opposing Palestinian statehood while pretending to back it.

Trump is much the same – one-sidedly pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian, clear in an interview his co-advisor on Israeli affairs David Friedman gave Haaretz.

As president, he’d support the illegal Israeli annexation of West Bank land, rejecting Palestinian statehood as a US national security interest, according to Friedman, likely to become Trump’s ambassador to Israel if he defeats Clinton.

His policy on Israel/Palestine is contradictory, incompatible with conflict resolution – saying he’ll try to achieve peace while undermining it by supporting unlimited settlement expansions on stolen Palestinian land, a formula for endless conflict.

He’ll only endorse Palestinian statehood with Israel’s consent on its terms, mindless of the rights of a long-suffering people under illegal occupation harshness.

“This is an issue that Israel has to deal with on its own because it will have to deal with the consequences,” said Friedman. Trump’s “feeling about Israel is that it is a robust democracy” – ignoring its Zionist zealotry, its apartheid viciousness, its contempt for rule of law principles.

“The Israelis have to make the decision on whether or not to give up land to create a Palestinian state,” Trump insists, according to Friedman. “If (they) don’t want to do it, he doesn’t think they should do it. It is their choice…He does not think it is an American imperative for it to be an independent Palestinian state.”

All that matter for Trump is what Israel wants. If it deems a Palestinian state desirable “to enhance (its) longterm security – which I think we are very skeptical about…we will respect this decision,” Friedman explained.

What Palestinians want and deserve doesn’t matter. Friedman saying Trump “has no doubt that Israel wants peace” runs counter to hard, indisputable facts. He has things backwards.

Like America, Israel needs invented enemies, confrontation, instability and state-sponsored terror to advance its imperial agenda. Peace and stability defeat it.

As president, Trump would offer one-sided support like previous US leaders, fundamental Palestinian rights considered unimportant.

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.

23rd of June 2016, the people of Britain made a momentous decision. After 40 years as part of the European Union they voted to turn their backs on it. This decision has immense consequences for the future of Britain, Europe and the world.

The referendum result was a crushing vote of no confidence in the Establishment. It caused shock waves in the markets which last night were confident of the victory of a vote to remain. The Leave side won by a margin of 52 % to 48%: more than 1.2 million votes more than Remain, with the English shires and Wales voting strongly in favour of Brexit. But Scotland voted massively against. Voter turnout was very high: in Scotland 67%, in Wales 72% and in England 73%.

Once again the opinion polls were shown to be wrong. Up until the last minute they were predicting a narrow win for Remain. But the pollsters got the result badly wrong, as they had done in last year’s general election. The reason for this failure is that the pollsters failed to understand the deep mood of discontent that exists in society.

The ruling class and its political representatives were in a state of shock. They have no understanding of the realities of life for the majority of people in Britain. The same lack of understanding was shown by the irrational behaviour of the stock markets on the eve of the poll. In the 48 hours before the referendum the stock markets were booming and the pound soared to its highest level for months, at one point reaching almost 1.5 to the dollar.

News of the referendum result immediately provoked sharp falls on the stock markets of the world and the pound slumped to its lowest level since 1985. These are early warning signals of the recession which will soon hit the British economy, the shock waves from which will rapidly spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world. The political fallout of this shock result was felt immediately. David Cameron, badly weakened politically, announced he will step down as prime minister by October.

The Blairite right-wingers who rule the roost in the Parliamentary Labour Party were equally taken aback by the referendum result. These Tories in disguise were enthusiastic in their support for the Europe of the bankers and capitalists, and were surprised when a significant section of the working class, including many traditional Labour voters, gave them a kick in the teeth.

Why?

The people who voted ‘Leave’ did so for many different reasons. Some progressive and some reactionary. The anger of former industrial and mining communities in the North that have been condemned to years of economic decline, loss of employment, poverty and marginalisation, was evident. Such communities feel alienated from a remote political class that rules them from Westminster, and even more alienated from a remote bureaucracy in Brussels that has done nothing for them.

When the Remain camp talked of being more prosperous inside the EU, large layers of working class people merely shrugged their shoulders. They have seen the rich people getting ever richer while they and their families become ever poorer. The benefits of the European Union – the rich man’s club – are for the few, not the many. This has led to a growing sense of injustice that created a feeling of anger and indignation against the Establishment, the result of which was manifested in yesterday’s vote.

The result reveals the existence of a seething mood of discontent in society. It also shows to what extent the political class is out of touch with the feelings of ordinary people. This is an international phenomenon. It was shown by the Scottish referendum on independence in 2014, the Spanish general election in December 2015, the rise of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, the huge support for Sanders in the Democratic Party primaries and, in a distorted way, even the rise of Donald Trump in the USA.

The argument of the Remain camp to the effect that membership of the EU meant prosperity and higher living standards for all had a hollow ring for many people in Britain living on low wages. For these people the EU promise of prosperity was a complete fraud and deception.

To people on the receiving end of the crisis of capitalism, the message of the Remain campaign sounded like the complacency of well-heeled middle class professional politicians in London. It was like a voice from people living on a different planet speaking a language that was incomprehensible to ordinary people. The fact that Labour MPs – overwhelmingly middle-class Blairite right-wingers – found this shocking shows how little they understand about the real situation in Britain. And these people consider themselves to be great realists!

On the other hand, the right-wing leaders in Britain are naturally euphoric. The referendum campaign has already had the effect of pushing the centre of gravity of British politics to the right – at least temporarily. Even though they have not gained their immediate objective, the Thatcherite right wing will continue to press for their reactionary policies inside the Tory leadership.

UKIP’s Nigel Farage, who last night thought that they had lost, said: “Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom.” Farage’s dream will soon turn out to be a nightmare for the British people. No sooner had he spoken than dark clouds began to gather around UKIP’s rising Sun.

Crisis in the Tory Party

“He who the gods wish to destroy they first make him mad.” This would be a very adequate epitaph for David Cameron and the leaders of the British Conservative party. Decades of inglorious decline have reduced Britain to a second rate power off the coast of Europe. This unpalatable truth has never been accepted by the right wing of the Conservative Party who dream about the restoration of Britain to its former greatness. Boris Johnson’s proud boast that 23 June 2016 would be “Britain’s Independence Day” shows just how far they are removed from reality. Now reality is about to teach them a very harsh lesson.

The British ruling class and its political representatives today bear no relation to the farsighted masters of the globe of whom Trotsky wrote in the past. They are ignorant, stupid and short-sighted. In that respect they are faithful mirrors of the bankers and capitalists who can see no further than the end of their own noses and are addicted to speculation, short termism and parasitism. These, and not Brussels, are the people who really rule Britain today and will continue to do so tomorrow.

The leader of the Conservative party Mr Cameron has many features of the class he represents. Like his friends the City traders, he seems to be addicted to gambling. But whereas they speculate in shares and equities, the Tory party leader gambles with the destinies of whole nations. He took a very reckless gamble with the Scottish referendum and narrowly won. Now he has taken an even greater gamble on Britain’s membership of the European Union and he has lost. The consequences for Britain and the Tory party will be incalculable.

The first victim is Cameron himself. Like the noble Romans of old he has fallen on his sword in expiation of his sins. The humiliated Tory Leader gave a statement in Downing Street at 8.15am, by which time the FTSE100 had opened with a 500 point plunge – the biggest on record. In his farewell speech he said: “I will do everything I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months. But I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.”

The rifts in the Tory party

The leaders of the Brexit camp are reactionaries of the worst kind. At best, they represent the traditional right-wing Tory Little Englander tendency that has always been present. It represents the views and prejudices of the Tory rank and file: the shopkeepers, retired colonels, estate agents and other reactionary riffraff that in the past was kept firmly under control by the ruling clique of aristocratic Tory grandees. This rabid chauvinistic rabble was let off the leash by Margaret Thatcher who herself came from this very layer.

Just as the right-wing leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party is out of touch with its working class base, so the leaders of the Conservative party in parliament – respectable and well-heeled old Etonians like Cameron and Osborne – are out of touch with the Tory rank and file who come from a different class and have a different psychology.

The Tory leaders represent the big banks and monopolies and the City of London and look down with condescending contempt at the right-wing fanatics in the constituency parties. This is a fault line that was skilfully exploited by the likes of Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. People like Gove, the convinced right-wing Thatcherites and Eurosceptics, are a more faithful reflection of the opinions of the rank and file and fervently uphold their right-wing principles.

Johnson and Gove had repeatedly denied they have ambitions to replace Cameron as Prime Minister, but nobody believes them. After an intensely bitter and personalised campaign, the divisions will remain and become intensified. At a certain point, an open split in the Party will become a distinct possibility.

From the very beginning the referendum campaign was characterised by the sharpness of its tone. Virulent personal attacks became the norm, with Tory leaders hurling insults and publicly accusing each other of lying. These mutual attacks opened up deep wounds in the Tory Party that will not easily be healed.

The Conservative party is now clearly divided into two sharply opposed camps. On the one hand, there are the so-called “progressive” Tories represented by Cameron and Osborne. Ranged against them, and with strong support in the ranks of the Tory activists, are the right-wing Thatcherite free marketeers of the likes of Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith, aided by former Mayor of London Boris Johnson. The last named is now favourite for future Tory Party Leader.

Boris Johnson

An extrovert, publicity seeking egotist and Old Etonian, Boris Johnson is a man with big ambitions. It is an open secret that he has been preening himself to step into the shoes of the present Prime Minister David Cameron. Having stood down from the position of Mayor of London, he manoeuvred himself into a leading position in the Brexit campaign, which he clearly saw as a stepping stone to number 10 Downing Street.

Johnson’s complete lack of principle was shown in an article by Michael Cockerell in The Guardian, on Wednesday 22nd June where we read the following:

Johnson drove to his Oxfordshire bolthole [in February] to make up his mind. He was due to deliver his well-rewarded column for the Daily Telegraph. He wrote two articles – one putting the case for the status quo, the other for Brexit. I was told by someone who saw both drafts that the case for staying in was the more powerful and persuasive.

When I put this to Johnson on the campaign trail, he huffed and puffed. ‘I don’t know your source, but it is true that I did write two articles,’ he said. ‘And the second one said that, irrespective of my objections to the way that the EU was going, in order to support my party and the prime minister it would be better to stay in. And I thought in the end that wasn’t a good enough reason’.

Boris Johnson only knows one principle, and that is the career of Boris Johnson. He climbed on the Eurosceptic bandwagon as a means of ingratiating himself with the Tory rank and file and the Eurosceptic wing of the parliamentary party. This tactic seems to have worked rather well. Hours before the result was announced, prominent Tory leaders of the Out campaign signed a letter to David Cameron asking him to stay on as prime minister. This was a calculated tactic, designed to present themselves in a favourable light as loyal supporters of the Party Leader. It resembles the loyalty that was shown to Julius Caesar by his friend Brutus shortly before he stuck his knife in.

Johnson has already achieved his objective in this campaign, currying favour with the right wing of the Tory party and placing himself in a good position to take over from David Cameron when the latter finally resigns his position as party leader in October. From that point of view, a small gesture of pretended loyalty cost him nothing and will gain him further points in the leadership of the Tory party.

Nigel Farage

On the extreme right wing of the Brexit tendency stands Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader who for years has attempted to push his xenophobic, anti-Europe and anti-immigration line. Until recently he was held at arm’s length by all respectable politicians. But the EU referendum campaign has placed him centre stage in British politics. This has serious implications for the future.

Just over one week before the referendum Farage proudly unveiled a huge poster depicting vast numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers – all of them with brown and black faces – with the slogan “breaking point”. This barely concealed racist demagogy was a crude attempt to distract workers from the real causes behind unemployment and the housing crisis. You have no jobs? Blame the immigrants! You have no houses? Blame the immigrants! The health service is in crisis? Blame the immigrants!

Here we have the entire content of the Brexit campaign. All other factors – sovereignty, democracy, an end to interference by Brussels – were entirely incidental to this main reactionary message. When asked about this poster, Michael Gove said: “when I saw that I shuddered.”

But as a TV interviewer pointed out to him, a shudder is a purely personal reaction that was not translated into action in the form of a public condemnation. This little incident adequately expresses the relation between people like Gove and Farage.

There is nothing new about the veiled racist message peddled by Ukip, of course. But there is something new about the way in which this poison, which was hitherto regarded as unacceptable by the mainstream political parties, has now become acceptable. A poisonous atmosphere has been introduced into British politics.

The mechanism whereby anti-immigration, xenophobic and implicitly racist views have become acceptable is as follows. Nigel Farage puts forward these views in a more or less open manner, which comes close to racism, albeit in a rather more subtle and disguised manner than the British National party and other openly fascist groups. Johnson and Gove cannot openly support Farage and his openly xenophobic views, but have gradually sidled over to him, repeating his message in a sly and underhand manner, while publicly protesting against his “excesses”.

In an interview on Channel 4 News Farage was asked what he thought of the fact that Tory MPs like Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, who previously regarded him with contempt, were now repeating his anti-immigration message, the Ukip leader replied that it made him very happy. When he was further questioned about rumours that Boris Johnson would be prepared to offer him a position in a future government, Farage protested that he knew nothing of any such proposal. But it is clear that such proposals are being discussed behind the scenes.

What now?

The victory of Brexit ought to trigger withdrawal from the EU by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty (The Treaty of Lisbon introduced an exit clause for members who wish to withdraw from the Union, under Treaty on European Union Article 50). But these are unchartered waters. Such a thing has never happened before, and indeed was never intended to happen. The process of separation will be long and complicated, commencing with a minimum two-year negotiation period on the terms of the “divorce”. But as is generally known, divorce tends to be a highly controversial, bad tempered and bitter experience.

Ironically, pro-Leave campaigners say this does not need to happen immediately. They would prefer to have the UK out of the bloc by the general election slated for May 2020. However, these decisions are not entirely in their hands. In general, the anti-EU camp has had an excessively optimistic view of how things would proceed if Britain voted to leave. Now we will see the harsh reality of Britain’s position vis-a-vis Europe.

The reaction of other European leaders to Britain’s decision to jump ship will be one of shock, anger and resentment. The idea that Britain could establish friendly and cooperative relations with the EU once it had left is sheer utopianism. The plain fact is that Angela Merkel and the other European leaders cannot afford to do any favours to Britain, even if they wanted to, which they certainly do not.

Already there are growing reports of a general increase of Eurosceptical feeling throughout the continent. According to the opinion polls, anti-EU feeling is running higher in France than in Britain. Marien Le Pen is demanding a referendum. Other Eurosceptic parties will follow suit. This could lead ultimately to the breakup of the EU.

Therefore, if Brussels were to give Britain an easy ride, it would encourage others to follow their example. That is out of the question. The British ruling class will soon find that it is out in the cold. And it is the working class and the poor who will feel the draught more than anyone else.

The predictions of the Remain camp of a severe economic crisis are based on fact. A crisis in Britain is now being prepared that will hit the working class hard.

On the other hand, the promises of Johnson and the others that by leaving the EU the country could “take back control” will soon be seen to be without foundation. The negotiations would determine whether or not the UK remains part of the single market without being in the Union, as Norway currently does. However, this would mean the UK would still have to accept free movement of labour.

Other options include a Canadian-style free trade deal, a Swiss-style bilateral agreement, or reverting to the basic terms of commerce offered by membership of the World Trade Organisation. But all these options would require lengthy and complicated negotiations, which will be accompanied by increasing unemployment and falling living standards.

The pro-Brexit side has already signalled that they expect a short-term financial crisis. Boris Johnson tries to allay people’s fears by saying that the pound “naturally fluctuates”. However, the present fluctuation is clearly on a downward slide. And the billionaire currency speculator George Soros is warning that the impact will be bigger than 1992 crash.

These warnings are already coming true. The FTSE 100 crashed nearly 500 points within minutes of opening this morning. The drop immediately wiped around £124 billion off the value of the UK’s 100 largest listed companies. If it closes the day down that much, it could be the biggest one day drop in the index’s history. This is a warning of things to come.

The British economy will shrink. Business investment will fall, as will house prices and the pound. That will mean imported goods become more expensive, leading to a rise in prices. In other words, the working class of Britain have been deceived by the advocates of Brexit, just as they would have been deceived by the supporters of Remain. In either case the ruling class would make them pay for the crisis of their system.

Repercussions for Scotland

The result of this referendum has enormous implications for the future of Scotland. It deepens the fault line separating Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom. Scotland has voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% – with all 32 council areas backing Remain.The Scotland Stronger In Europe campaign said the scale of the Remain majority in Scotland was “exceptional”.

But this result will raise a lot more questions than it answers in Scotland. The problem is that the UK as a whole has voted to Leave – raising the prospect of Scotland being taken out of the EU against its will. The Scottish government’s external affairs secretary, Fiona Hyslop, said “all options were being looked at” in order to “protect Scotland’s interests” and warned there would be “consequences” if the UK made a decision against the will of the Scottish people.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Scotland had delivered a “strong, unequivocal vote” to remain in the EU. Ms Sturgeon said the vote had made clear “that the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union”. She indicated that this result would place on the agenda a new referendum on Scottish independence. Her predecessor as first minister, Alex Salmond, was even more emphatic, saying he believed there should now be a second independence referendum.

Mr Salmond told the BBC: “It means that Nicola Sturgeon has to go forward with the manifesto, which as you remember said the Scottish Parliament should have the right to call a second referendum on Scottish independence if there was a material and significant change in the circumstances, like Scotland being dragged out of the European Union against the will of the Scottish people. Now that has happened and I’m certain that Nicola will go forward on that manifesto commitment”.

Thus, Cameron’s reckless gamble has once again placed in jeopardy the United Kingdom, which may well end up with Great Britain being transformed into Little England.

Reactionary implications

The victory of Brexit does not mean a strengthening of the revolutionary or left-wing tendency as some deluded people imagine, but on the contrary, a victory for the forces of reaction – albeit a temporary one – not only in Britain but also throughout Europe. Those who are celebrating such a development are Marine Le Pen, Alternative fur Deutschland and other reactionary chauvinist and anti-immigration outfits. Marine Le Pen the leader of the National front party has demanded a referendum in France, as have right-wing leaders in Holland and other countries.

In an attempt to answer the argument that Brexit would spell economic disaster, the other side stepped up the anti-immigration propaganda. The mood became uglier and more poisonous by the day. There can be no doubt whatsoever that this played a role in the brutal murder of Jo Cox.

The anti-immigration demagogy of Nigel Farage contains an implicitly racist and xenophobic message. Despite his anti-immigration views, however, Farage himself is not a fascist, but he is undoubtedly a pacemaker for fascism in the future. While it would be entirely incorrect to exaggerate the strength and significance of the fascist organisations in Britain, which at the present are reduced to miniscule, although virulent, sects on the margins of politics, the barely concealed racist tone of the anti-immigration lobby undoubtedly creates favourable conditions for the growth of such tendencies.

Consequences for Labour

As one could have predicted, the Leave vote is being utilised by the Blairites in the Labour Party to stir up a new campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. These Blairite MPs claim that Corbyn’s efforts to keep Britain in the EU were “insufficiently enthusiastic”. Poor Jeremy! If they could blame him for the weather they would do so. The right-wing Blairites are determined to get rid of him no matter what he does.

Defending himself against the oft-repeated accusation that his campaign for remaining in the EU had been what many saw as “half hearted”, he said: “There were many people who were not particularly happy with the EU. The point I was making was there were good things that had come from Europe – working conditions and environmental protections – but there were other issues that were not being addressed properly – particularly economic inequalities in Britain…Therefore I said that my project was that we should vote to remain to change and reform the European Union.”

Unlike the party leader, the right-wing Blairites in the parliamentary Labour Party were extremely enthusiastic about the capitalist European Union. In this they were completely united with Cameron, Osborne and the City of London. But they were and are completely and utterly out of touch with Labour voters.

These well-heeled middle class carpetbaggers do not understand the mood of resentment, distrust, even hatred that is felt by ordinary working class people against the political establishment in Westminster – the right-wing Labour gang included. The fact is that most working class people now see no real difference between the Blairite MPs and the Tories. The referendum campaign has served to confirm them in this belief – which of course is well founded.

The Blairites are politically indistinguishable from the Cameron wing of the Conservative party. They come from the same social class, enjoy the same privileged lifestyle, are members of the same clubs and have exactly the same class psychology. During the referendum campaign they happily campaigned shoulder to shoulder with Cameron and Osborne, politicians that are hated by the working class for their vicious policy of cuts and austerity – a policy which in most respects is accepted by Labour’s right wing.

The pro-Corbyn rank and file movement Momentum issued the following statement this morning:

We recognise that people voted ‘Leave’ for many reasons. Much of this vote reflected anger in communities which have experienced many years of industrial decline with the subsequent loss of secure employment. Many such working class communities have been utterly neglected for years by those in power. Millions appear to have chosen ‘Leave’ to vote against the unfettered globalisation that has seen living standards stagnate or fall, as the cost of living rises. We share this scepticism of big business dominance, austerity and distant elites, be they British, European or Global, and share that demand for a country where working people have control.

Many ‘Leave’ voters usually vote for Labour or are working people Labour should represent. Now the Party and the whole labour movement needs to show the country that it alone can offer working people genuine control over their lives, workplaces and communities.

Labour must clearly demonstrate how it will improve lives through policies that will increase wages, tackle the housing crisis, and give people a greater say at work and in their communities.

If we do not, we will not only be failing to advance the policies that will benefit working people but also could enable the populist right, who blame immigrants, not the powerful for the problems in our country. Part of the Leave campaign empowered these racist, reactionary forces, who peddle hatred and offer false hope. We must redouble our efforts to stop migrant scapegoating, focus our attention on the needs and desires of the overwhelming majority, and offer a real programme of hope for our people.

Although we will leave the EU, our movement remains an internationalist one. We must continue to work with our friends, partners and allies across Europe in the shared struggle against austerity, to tackle climate change and to build a sustainable economy with full employment for all the peoples of Europe.

Many of these sentiments we can agree with. But it is high time that Momentum realised that the right wing of the parliamentary Labour Party has declared war on Jeremy Corbyn and will never rest until he is removed. The crisis of the Tory party, which has now deepened as a result of the referendum, poses the question of the general election in the near future. The right wing will now intensify its vicious campaign to remove Jeremy Corbyn before that occurs.

A period of political instability in Britain is now inevitable. Already there are calls for a new general election so that MPs from both sides can put forward their plans for what to do next. Conservative backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said a general election in the autumn was “not impossible”. Others have suggested new elections in March or June 2017 is more likely.

Ever since Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party there has been a furious campaign in the media, fully backed by the Blairite faction of the parliamentary Labour Party, claiming that Jeremy Corbyn is “unelectable”. The real problem for the ruling class, however, is precisely the opposite. The Tory government is deeply unpopular and split from top to bottom. Yesterday’s vote was really a referendum, not on the EU, but on the Cameron government. The result is plain for all to see.

In the short term the likes of Johnson and Gove will most likely take over the leadership of the Tory party and form a new Conservative government. They will then go on the offensive against the working class. Instead of less austerity we will have more. Many people see the vote to Leave as an end to austerity, but they will get a shock and will feel betrayed. This will in turn provoke a worker backlash and eventually put class struggle back on the agenda in a big way.

If a general election takes place under these conditions, it is likely that Labour could win. This is a prospect that is viewed with horror by the ruling class. They will do everything in their power to prevent it. Using their stooges in the parliamentary Labour Party, they will move heaven and earth to get rid of Corbyn before any such election. If they fail, it is possible that the Blairites will organise a split in the party and move to link up with the Cameron wing of the Tories. On the other hand, it is not at all clear that the Conservative party itself will remain united.

Jeremy Corbyn says he will not resign over the defeat of the Remain campaign for which he does not bear the slightest responsibility. The blame for this should be placed firmly at the door of Labour’s right wing, which has lost all credibility in the eyes of working class people. We saw that in Scotland, where the right wing lead the Labour Party to destruction, and now we see it again south of the border.

It is about time that Momentum made up its mind where it is going. It is necessary to pick up the gauntlet that has been thrown down by the Labour right wing and throw it back in their face. Let Momentum begin by campaigning for the deselection of those Labour MPs who consistently oppose, denigrate and attack the Party Leader, discrediting and dividing the Labour Party and aiding and abetting the Tories. That is the only way in which Labour can succeed in renovating itself and presenting a credible left-wing alternative to the discredited and reactionary Tory government.

What is not to be done

There’s an old saying: “A man who rides on the back of a tiger will find it difficult when he has to get off.”

During the referendum campaign we saw the development of a United Front. The dominant voice in this front was the voice of open, shameless reaction. The blatantly racist message of Nigel Farage received a respectable cover from Gove and Johnson, who in turn received support from certain Labour politicians who reflected the most reactionary and retrograde trends, tinged with nationalism, that are part of the negative heritage left behind by moribund Stalinism.

To these tendencies one must add a number of left groups, some of them calling themselves Marxists, who attempted to justify their support for Brexit with all sorts of peculiar arguments and intellectual juggling. To these we are entitled to ask a simple question and receive a simple answer: in what way did support for the Brexit campaign raise the level of class consciousness of the British workers? We would be very interested to hear the answer. We do not believe for a moment that a positive one is possible.

Some have tried to answer that the Brexit campaign was aimed at the establishment in general and the Cameron government in particular. There is just a grain of truth in this argument, which nevertheless is a striking example of sophistry that takes a small particle of truth and ignores the mass of information that completely contradicts it.

It is true that the Cameron government is hated by the working class which desires with all its heart to strike back at it, to weaken it and to overthrow it. That is a progressive instinct which we support wholeheartedly. However, it is not sufficient to pose the question of overthrowing the Cameron government. It is above all a question of what will replace it. At this point the falsity and hollowness of the arguments of the so-called left advocates of Brexit are glaringly exposed.

If Gove or Johnson take over the leadership of the Conservative Party, they would immediately intensify the vicious policy of cuts and austerity that was launched by Cameron and Osborne. They have already hinted at the fact that austerity must continue, backtracking on the promises they made during the referendum campaign. These are the advocates of free market economics in the Thatcher style. They would step up the campaign for privatisation of national assets, push forward the programme of privatisation of the national health service and make further inroads on the rights of the working class.

After the murder of Jo Cox, some of these left supporters of Brexit hastened to protest that they disassociated themselves from racism and xenophobia, advocating a campaign against racism. But how is it possible to do this while simultaneously continuing to participate in a campaign that is actively fomenting xenophobia and racism? This is the political equivalent of attempting to square the circle.

Of course, we have no illusions whatever in the role played by the EU regulations in defending the rights of British workers. But it is perfectly true, as Jeremy Corbin correctly warned, that the right-wing Tories would immediately utilise the breakaway from Europe as an excuse for making a bonfire of what they considered to be unnecessary and irksome regulations, starting with all those regulations that limit the hours of the working week, defend minimum rates for pay, pensions, holidays and the like.

In what way this can be interpreted as a movement to the left is a mystery to everyone except those sorry “Marxists” who so enthusiastically jumped on the reactionary Brexit bandwagon. They must now take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

What attitude should Marxists take?

The answer to this question is really very simple. That is progressive which serves to raise the class consciousness of the working class. That is reactionary which tends to lower class consciousness. In what way did support for Brexit raise the consciousness of the British working class?

The reactionary nature of the Brexit Campaign was clear for all to see. It was based almost entirely on xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and had clear overtones of racism. It appealed not to class consciousness but based itself on the most backward, retrograde and even reactionary sentiments of the most backward layers of the working class.

To pander to such a campaign, to support it in any shape or form, could not possibly be presented as raising the consciousness of the class but rather an opportunist attempt to curry favour with the most backward layers. But as Trotsky explains, the attempt to gain short-term popularity by swimming with the tide is the surest way to prepare a disaster for tomorrow.

Let’s get this straight. This was a row between two rival segments of the ruling class and the Tory party. There is not an atom of progressive content on either side of this argument. And there is nothing that says that the working class has to take sides every time there is a split in the ruling class, on the contrary.

It is true that there were many other factors involved in the massive swing towards Brexit that included significant sections of the working class. There is a powerful feeling of alienation from the establishment and its political representatives, the Tories and Labour’s right wing. There is a deep-seated feeling, particularly in areas of high unemployment and poverty, that “they do not represent us.”

Many people will have voted yesterday not so much on the question of whether Britain should or should not be inside the European Union but simply as a protest vote against the Tory government and all its works. This is an entirely understandable, correct and progressive instinct. However, even the most progressive instincts of the working class can be abused and used for reactionary purposes.

In the 19th century Karl Marx faced a similar situation when there was a split in the British ruling class on the question of protectionism or free trade. Marx considered the question and came to the conclusion that although in principle free trade was more progressive than protection, he nevertheless recommended that the workers should abstain from supporting either side in this dispute. That is a very sound class position, and one which we must adhere to at the present time.

I repeat what I said in my last article: “There is not an atom of progressive content in either the Brexit campaign or the Remain campaign. They stand for the interests of two wings of the ruling class and the Tory Party. Neither has anything in common with the working class. We can have nothing to do with either.”

Referendums, like elections, can tell us part of the story, but only part. They are like a snapshot that reveals the state of mind of the public at a given moment in time. However, it is impossible to arrive at a full picture of the process unless we take it as a whole. Like the waves of the ocean, we are only looking at the surface. In order to understand the real significance of the result, we must penetrate below the surface. Only if we look below the figures, it is possible to discern the deep currents that are flowing strongly in the depths of British society.

Only an independent class position could have cut across the fog of confusion, explaining that the real cause of unemployment and bad housing was the crisis of capitalism and the attempts of the Tories to put the entire burden of the crisis on the shoulders of the working class and the poorest sections of society.

Had Corbyn maintained a principled position of opposition to the European Union, explaining clearly its class nature, posing an internationalist and socialist alternative, there would not have been the confusion that we saw among large layers of the population. Instead, the entire question was reduced to a futile argument as to whether the working class would be better off inside or outside the capitalist European Union.

The whole question was posed in the wrong manner. In fact, it makes little difference to the working class whether Britain remains in the EU or not. Either way, the capitalist class will continue its attacks against living standards and workers’ rights. The real alternative is to conduct a vigorous struggle against cuts and austerity, for the socialist transformation of society in Britain, Europe and a world scale. That starts with the battle to defeat the Blairite right wing in the Labour Party, to strengthen Corbyn and get a Left Labour government elected to carry out all this. That is the only hope for the future.

No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?

The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.

For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.

Yes, they are that nuts.

If the fault line for the Tories is Europe, for Labour it is the Middle East. Those opposing Corbyn are defined by their enthusiasm for bombing campaigns that kill Muslim children. And not only by the UK. Both of the first two to go, Hilary Benn and Heidi Alexander, are hardline supporters of Israel.

This was Benn the week before his celebrated advocacy of bombing Syria:

Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn told a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) lunch yesterday that relations with Israel must be based on cooperation and rejected attempts to isolate the country.

Addressing senior party figures in Westminster, Benn praised Israel for its “progressive spirit, vibrant democracy, strong welfare state, thriving free press and independent judiciary.” He also called Israel “an economic giant, a high-tech centre, second only to the United States. A land of innovation and entrepreneurship, venture capital and graduates, private and public enterprise.”

Consequently, said Benn, “Our future relations must be built on cooperation and engagement, not isolation of Israel. We must take on those who seek to delegitimise the state of Israel or question its right to exist.”

Heidi Alexander actually signed, as a 2015 parliamentary candidate, the “We Believe in Israel” charter, the provisions of which state there must be no boycotts of Israel, and Israel must not be described as an apartheid state.

This fault line is very well defined. The manufactured row about “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party shows exactly the same split. In my researches, 100% of those who have promoted accusations of anti-Semitism were supporters of the Iraq War and/or had demonstrable links to professional pro-Israel lobby groups. 100% of those accused of anti-Semitism were active opponents of the Iraq War. Never underestimate the Blairite fury at being shown not just to be liars but to be wrong. Iraq is their Achilles heel and they are extremely touchy about it.

No rational person would believe Brexit was Jeremy Corbyn’s fault. No rational person would believe that now is a good moment for the Labour Party to tear itself apart. Extraordinarily, the timing is determined by Chilcot.

Thursday’s vote in the UK to leave the European Union triggered a global stock sell-off Friday, prompting fears of a global market crash, recession or both.

Despite polls showing a slight lead for the leave campaign in the week leading up to the vote, markets appear to have been unprepared for the Brexit result, having placed heavy bets on a “remain” outcome.

European stocks led the sell-off, with the UK’s FTSE 100 down by more than 3 percent, Germany’s DAX losing 6.8 percent and France’s CAC 40 declining by 8 percent, as trading volumes on Europe’s stock exchanges hit a new record. The EURO STOXX 50 index fell by 8.6 percent.

Stocks were also pummeled in Asia, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index falling by nearly 8 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down by 610 points, or 3.4 percent, its biggest fall since August 2015. The Standard & Poor’s 500 erased all of its gains for the year, while the Nasdaq suffered its biggest loss in five years, descending into correction territory. Major banks led the sell-off, with Citigroup falling 9.4 percent and JPMorgan Chase plummeting 6.9 percent.

Stock markets in the EU’s weaker “periphery” fared worst of all, with markets falling by more than 12 percent in Spain, Italy and Greece. Shares in Italy’s two largest banks, Sanpaolo and UniCredit, fell by more than 23 percent, and trading in some Italian banks never even opened.

The only stocks to fare well, tellingly, were those of defense companies, while investors poured into gold and “safe haven” government bonds.

The pound at one point fell to its lowest level against the dollar since 1985, and was down 8.1 percent at the end of the trading day in New York.

Moody’s Investors Service responded to the vote by downgrading the outlook on the UK’s credit rating from “stable” to “negative,” warning of a “prolonged period of uncertainty.” The ratings agency warned of “diminished confidence and lower spending and investment to result in weaker growth.”

The referendum is expected to have its sharpest impact on companies that use the UK as a staging platform for trade and financial transactions with the rest of Europe. Morgan Stanley said it could move one sixth of its British workforce to other EU countries, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said similar moves could follow at his firm.

A source at a major US financial firm told Reuters, “The juniors are freaking out. I will tell them to focus on their job and wait for the volatility to pass, but the reality is much, much starker. We’ll have a crash and big layoffs.”

Joe Rundle, an official at the UK-based financial services firm ETX Capital, told Reuters, “Leave’s victory has delivered one of the biggest market shocks of all time… Panic may not be too strong a word.”

Ford said it would cut jobs in Britain as a result of the vote, declaring that it would “take whatever action is needed” to shore up profitability. Its Asian competitors Toyota and Nissan, whose car production in the UK is designed almost entirely for export, particularly to the European Union, hinted at similar steps. Only ten percent of Toyota’s car production in the UK targets the domestic market.

The stock sell-off was likely tempered somewhat by the expectation that global central banks would respond to the crisis with new infusions of cash into the financial markets. The Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve issued statements to the effect that they would do whatever was necessary to rescue the financial markets. Futures markets are now betting that the Federal Reserve will not raise the benchmark federal funds rate until mid-2018.

“The future of the EU itself is now clouded, as a rising chorus of populist voices in places like the Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain will no doubt call for reconsideration of their own membership,” David Joy, chief market strategist at Ameriprise, told the Financial Times.

In an interview with the financial channel CNBC, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan said the problems expressed in the Brexit vote were more serious than suggested by most commentators. He said the existence of the euro currency was threatened, declaring that Greece would sooner rather than later be forced out of the currency bloc. He pointed to the political strains created by the exit of the UK and noted that France and Germany had gone to war against one another on several occasions.

Greenspan went on to say that the underlying problem was a “massive slowing” of real income growth across Europe and the US, which he linked to a decline in the growth of productivity and a “huge contraction” in capital investment. As a step toward resolving the crisis, he called for slashing the growth of social entitlements.

The vote also points to a growing tide of protectionist sentiment. Earlier this month, the World Trade Organization reported that anti-trade polices carried out around the world had hit the highest level since 2009. “This vote is a step away from free trade,” Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at Nuveen Asset Management, told the Associated Press.

The Financial Times quoted analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch saying the vote would add to a “long string of confidence shocks hitting an already vulnerable US and global economy.” Michael Mullaney, chief investment officer of Boston-based Fiduciary Trust Co., told the Wall Street Journal, “The probability of a global recession that we were teetering on before Brexit is now more in play.”

In the midst of reports circulating around an uptick in U.S. military movement inside the United States, a recent sighting of U.N. vehicles being carried on flatbed trucks is now making its rounds on the Internet and alternative media networks.

The U.N. vehicles were spotted near I-81 near Lexington, VA and were being carried by flatbed, two to a trailer.

Not much information exists beyond the sighting, except to say that there have been numerous reports of an increase in military movement in the NC, VA, West VA, and Ohio region.

The fact that the sightings of the new military movements carrying construction equipment are taking place at the same time that U.N. vehicles are being sighted in the same vicinity have many wondering whether or not the U.S. military is working with the U.N. in setting up some type of field base. Others, however, are taking a more relaxed view pointing to the regularity of military convoys and the need to transport new U.N. vehicles in some way or other.

At this point, we must be clear that all we have is speculation regarding the sightings and that the purpose of this article is only to report the sightings and the theories being put forward by commenters and commentators.

If you have any other information regarding the mysterious troop movements seen in the South and Midwest or the U.N. vehicles and their destinations or purpose, please feel free to post in the comments below.

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

The latest allegations follow the possible implication of 175 deputies and senators, a staggering 30 percent, of Brazil’s entire National Congress.

Brazil’s acting President Michel Temer allegedly received a bribe of US$296,000 that Engevix company owner Jose Antunes Sobrinho paid through intermediaries, Brazilian magazine Epoca reported Saturday.

The report cited allegations by the executive in efforts to secure a plea bargain with federal authorities.

In his proposed plea bargain, Antunes alleges that Joao Batista Lima, owner of the Sao Paulo-based architecture firm Argeplan and a close friend of Temer, had received work contracts in exchange for granting bribes to the current Brazilian head-of-state.

Lima, a former military police colonel, has repeatedly been accused of being the “key person involved in the dirty work” between companies and PMDB politicians.

If his plea bargain request is granted, Antunes says that he can prove Temer received a bribe of US$296,000 in exchange for a construction contract that was awarded to Argeplan to build the Angra III nuclear-generation unit, which forms part of Brazil’s sole nuclear power plant.

Police detained José Antunes Sobrinho, a partner of construction company Engevix, for allegedly bribing officials of Eletronuclear, the nuclear-generation unit of Eletrobras, to win contracts.

The latest allegations follow the possible implication of 175 deputies and senators, a staggering 30 percent, of Brazil’s entire National Congress.

Class, nationalist, and ethnic elements are all involved in the Brexit vote in a complex integration of protest.

Press and media emphasize the nationalist and ethnic (immigrant-anti-immigrant) themes but generally avoid discussing or analyzing the event from a class perspective. But that perspective is fundamental. What Brexit represents is a proxy vote against the economic effects of Free Trade, the customs union called the European Union. Free trade deals always benefit corporations and investors.

Free trade is not just about goods and services flows between member countries; it is even more about money and capital flows and what is called direct investment. UK corporations benefit from the opportunity to move capital and invest in cheap labor elsewhere in Europe, mostly the newly added members to the EU since 2000, in eastern europe. Free trade also means the unrestricted flow of labor. Once these east european countries were added to the EU treaty, massive inflows of labor to the UK resulted. Just from Poland, more than a million migrated to the UK alone.

In the pre-2008, when economic conditions were strong and economic growth and job creation the rule, the immigration’s effect on jobs and wages of native UK workers was not a major concern. But with the crash of 2008, and, more importantly, the UK austerity measures that followed, cutting benefits and reducing jobs and wages, the immigration effect created the perception (and some reality) that immigrants were responsible for the reduced jobs, stagnant wages, and declining social services. Immigrant labor, of course, is supported by business since it means availability of lower wages. But working class UK see it as directly impacting wages, jobs, and social service benefits. THis is partly true, and partly not.

So Brexit becomes a proxy vote for all the discontent with the UK austerity, benefit cuts, poor quality job creation and wage stagnation. But that economic condition and discontent is not just a consequence of the austerity policies of the elites. It is also a consequence of the Free Trade effects that permit the accelerated immigration that contributes to the economic effects, and the Free Trade that shifts UK investment and better paying manufacturing jobs elsewhere in the EU.

So Free Trade is behind the immigration and job and wage deterioration which is behind the Brexit proxy vote. The anti-immigration sentiment and the anti-Free Trade sentiment are two sides of the same coin. That is true in the USA with the Trump candidacy, as well as in the UK with the Brexit vote. Trump is vehemently anti-immigrant and simultaneously says he’s against the US free trade deals. This is a powerful political message that Hillary ignores at her peril. She cannot tip-toe around this issue, but she will, required by her big corporation campaign contributors.

Another ‘lesson’ of the UK Brexit vote is that the discontent seething within the populations of Europe, US and Japan today is not accurately registered by traditional polls. This is true in the US today as it was in the UK yesterday.

The Brexit vote cannot be understood without understanding its origins in three elements: the combined effects of Free Trade (the EU), the economic crash of 2008-09, which Europe has not really recovered from having fallen into a double dip recession 2011-13 and a nearly stagnant recovery after, and the austerity measures imposed by UK elites (and in Europe) since 2013.

These developments have combined to create the economic discontent for which Brexit is the proxy. Free Trade plus Austerity plus economic recovery only for investors, bankers, and big corporations is the formula for Brexit.

Where the Brexit vote was strongest was clearly in the midlands and central England-Wales section of the country, its working class and industrial base. Where the vote preferred staying in the EU, was the non-working class areas of London and south England, as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland is dependent on oil exports to the EU and thus tightly linked to the trade. Northern Ireland’s economy is tied largely to Scotland and to the other EU economy, Ireland. So their vote was not surprising. Also the immigration effects were far less in these regions than in the English industrial heartland.

Some would argue that the UK has recovered better than most economies since 2013. But a closer look at the elements of that recovery shows it has been centered largely in southern England and in the London metro area. It has been based on a construction-housing boom and the inflow of money capital from abroad, including from China investment in UK infrastructure in London and elsewhere. The UK also struck a major deal with China to have London as the financial center for trading the Yuan currency globally. Money capital and investment concentrated on housing-construction produced a property asset boom, which was weakening before the Brexit. It will now collapse, I predict, by at least 20% or more. The UK’s tentative recovery is thus now over, and was slipping even before the vote.

Also frequently reported is that wages had been rising in the UK. This is an ‘average’ indicator, which is true. But the average has been pulled up by the rising salaries and wages of the middle class professionals and other elements of the work force in the London-South who had benefited by the property-construction boom of recent years. Working class areas just east of London voted strongly for Brexit.

Another theme worth a comment is the Labor Party’s leadership vote for remaining in the EU. What this represents is the further decline of traditional social democratic parties throughout Europe. These parties in recent decades have increasingly aligned themselves with the Neoliberal corporate offensive. That’s true whether the SPD in Germany, the Socialist parties in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece, or elsewhere. As these parties have abdicated their traditional support for working class interests, it has opened opportunities for other parties–both right and left–to speak to those interests. Thus we find right wing parties growing in Austria, France (which will likely win next year’s national election in France), Italy, Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Hungary and Poland’s right turn should also be viewed from this perspective. So should Podemos in Spain, Five Star movement in Italy, and the pre-August 2015 Syriza in Greece.

Farther left more marxist-oriented socialist parties are meanwhile in disarray. In general they fail to understand the working class rebellion against free trade element at the core of the recent Brexit vote. They are led by the capitalist media to view the vote as an anti-immigrant, xenophobic, nationalist, right wing dominated development. So they in a number of instances recommended staying in the EU. The justification was to protect the better EU mandated social regulations. Or they argue, incredulously, that remaining in the free trade regime of the EU would centralize the influence of capitalist elements but that would eventually mean a stronger working class movement as a consequence as well. It amounts to an argument to support free trade and neoliberalism in the short run because it theoretically might lead to a stronger working class challenge to neoliberalism in the longer run. That is intellectual and illogical nonsense, of course. Wherever the resistance to free trade exists it should be supported, since Free Trade is a core element of Neoliberalism and its policies that have been devastating working class interests for decades now. One cannot be ‘for’ Free Trade (i.e. remain in the EU) and not be for Neoliberalism at the same time–which means against working class interests.

The bottom line is that right wing forces in both the EU and the US have locked onto the connection between free trade discontent, immigration, and the austerity and lack of economic recovery for all since 2009. They have developed an ideological formulation that argues immigration is the cause of the economic conditions. Mainstream capitalist parties, like the Republicans and Democrats in the US are unable to confront this formulation which has great appeal to working class elements. They cannot confront it without abandoning their capitalist campaign contributors or a center-piece (free trade) of their neoliberal policies. Social-Democratic parties, aligning with their erstwhile traditional capitalist party opponents, offer no alternative. And too many farther left traditional Marxist parties support Free Trade by hiding behind the absurd notion that a stronger, more centralized capitalist system will eventually lead to a stronger, more centralized working class opposition.

Whatever political party formations come out of the growing rebellion against free trade, endless austerity policies, and declining economic conditions for working class elements, they will have to reformulate the connections between immigration, free trade, and those conditions.

Free Trade benefits corporations, investors and bankers on both sides of the ‘trade’ exchange. The benefits of free trade accrue to them. For working classes, free trade means a ‘leveling’ of wages, jobs and benefits. It thus means workers from lower paid regions experience a rise in wages and benefits, but those in the formerly higher paid regions experience a decline. That’s what’s been happening in the UK, as well as the US and north America.

Free Trade is the ‘holy grail’ of mainstream economics. It assumes that free trade raises all boats. Both countries benefit. But what that economic ideology does not go on to explain is that how does that benefit get distributed within each of the countries involved in the free trade? Who benefits in terms of class incomes and interests? As the history of the EU and UK since 1992 shows, bankers and big corporate exporters benefit. Workers from the poor areas get to migrate to the wealthier (US and UK) and thus benefit. But the indigent workers in the former wealthier areas suffer a decline, a leveling. These effects have been exacerbated by the elite policies of austerity and the free money for bankers and investors central bank policies since 2009.

So workers see their wages stagnant or decline, their social benefits cut, their jobs or higher paid jobs leave, while they see immigrants entering and increasing competition for jobs. They hear (and often believe) that the immigrants are responsible for the reduction of benefits and social services that are in fact caused by the associated austerity policies. They see investors, bankers, professionals and a few fortunate 10% of their work force doing well, with incomes accelerating, while their incomes decline. In the UK, the focus and solution is seen as exiting the EU free trade zone. In the US, however, it’s not possible for a given ‘state’ to leave the USA, as it is for a ‘state’ like the UK to leave the EU. And there are no national referenda possible constitutionally in the US.

The solution in the US is not to build a wall to keep immigrants out, but to tear down the Free Trade wall that has been erected by US neoliberal policies in order to keep US jobs in. Trumpism has come up with a reactionary solution to the free trade-immigration-economic nexus that has significant political appeal. He proposes stopping labor flows, but proposes nothing concrete about stopping the cross-country flows of money, capital and investment that are at the heart of free trade.

Disruptive Brexit reverberations will be around a long time – even though in the end Britain isn’t likely to leave the EU, not as long as powerful monied interests oppose it.

Confrontation with Russia and/or China would serve the same purpose. So would manufactured economic and financial turmoil, perhaps likely given inflated asset valuations, gold resurfacing as a safe haven.

Crisis focuses public attention away from where power brokers don’t want it to go to where they want it directed. Shock waves work the same way every time. They’ve begun.

Meanwhile, UK and US media commented in the aftermath of Brexit voting. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was quoted, saying the EU must not fall into “depression and paralysis” going forward, adding “(w)e won’t let this Europe be taken away from us.”

On Saturday, founding EU members Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are meeting in Berlin – Steinmeier hosting his counterparts, discussing what’s next after Brits voted for Brexit.

On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host EU President Donald Tusk, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and French President Francois Hollande – ahead of 27 EU leaders (excluding Britain’s Cameron) meeting in Brussels for two days.

The BBC commented on what other European media said. France’s Le Monde headlined “Brexit wins, the markets fall.”

Weekly news magazine Le Point called Thursday’s vote “an earthquake in Europe.” Le Figaro headlined “the result is irreversible,” quoting Serge Gainsbourg’s song title “je t’aime…moi non plus (I love you…me neither).”

Liberation declared “Europe will never be the same again.” Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said Europe “may be plunged into the worst crisis in its history.” Maybe its editors forgot about WW I and II.

Der Tagesspiegel fears a “worst-case scenario” – a “chain reaction” of other countries following Britain’s lead.

Italy’s La Stampa reported on “24 hours in which the world has changed.” Spain’s El Paos said Brexit “requires reconstruction of the EU,” citing an “accumulation of threats…”

According to La Razon, Thursday’s vote “obliges Brussels to redefine a common project that is now in crisis,” claiming possible “Brexit epidemic.”

The BBC said Brexit “reverberations…are felt beyond Europe.” Ahead of Thursday’s vote, London’s Guardian claimed “running wild risks is not British…The EU referendum is like a vote taking place in another country entirely…”

In the vote’s aftermath, London’s Independent headlined “Britain’s future now hangs in the balance – and unfortunately there’s little room for optimism.”

The London-based Financial Times said “Britain turns its back on Europe…swe(eping) away 50 years of foreign policy,” calling the Brexit vote “a moment of extraordinary political upheaval.”

Anti-Brexit NYT editors criticized Thursday’s vote, saying “(d)efying the warnings of every major economic and political institution in Britain, Europe and the United States, millions of voters across Britain concluded that a gamble on a dangerous unknown was better than staying with a present over which they felt they had lost control.”

Neocon Washington Post editors stressed “(s)topping dark forces in our post-Brexit world,” wondering what’s next for Europe?

The Wall Street Journal said “ ’Brexit’ sen(t) shockwaves across Europe…spark(ing) an immediate political crisis in Britain…”

When all is said and done in the months ahead, Brexit won’t likely happen because powerful interests oppose it.

Thursday’s referendum was non-binding. Parliamentarians representing entrenched interests have final say.

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.

Face it, NATO and its allies would have labelled Jesus Christ the Butcher of Damascus if this had suited their agenda of forced regime change in Syria. 

Anyone who saw the vilification of Alex Salmond during the run-up to the referendum on Scottish Independence, or of Corbyn during the British Labour leadership campaign, by ‘responsible organs of the Press’, must have come to full realisation of how totally unbridled, how totally unprincipled, the Establishment and its mouthpieces can be once they declare war.

The Establishment has been demonising popular leaders who threaten its hegemony for centuries.  If you believe Bashar al Assad evil, purely on the claims of the Establishment and its press, then you probably accept that Joan of Arc was a witch, Bonny Dundee was depraved, Napoleon ate babies, Ares Velouchiotis was a sick sadist, Arthur Scargill was corrupt, Alex Salmond is the new Ghengis Khan, and Jeremy Corbyn everything thrown at him last year.  (I’m guessing the traditional view of Richard III is suspect as well…)

In the case of Bashar al Assad, the accusations range from gassing his own people (long disproved), to the frankly batty one of being responsible for 90% of the deaths in Syria (even though almost half of all deaths have been soldiers from the Syrian Arab Army – presumably Assad has been killing his own soldiers …).  The hollowness of the accusations has been well documented.

The attack on al Assad is reinforced by creating an equivalence between all secular leaders in the Middle East – they are, or were, defined without exception as evil dictators.  George Galloway jubilantly declared his support for the Arab Spring in a strongly worded critique of Gaddafi in a radio broadcast in February 2011. ‘I have been waiting for these Arab dictatorships to fall, and it appears that one after the other they are falling, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya’ – Galloway clearly does not see Iraq as part of the pattern.

Galloway repeated this sentiment again at the Oxford Union in October 2012, in relation to Syria, though admittedly he had turned against the idea of military intervention.  While the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may indeed have had considerable popular support, Galloway in 2012 appears to have been still unaware of the huge demonstrations in support of Gaddafi in Libya the previous year. In Syria too, big demonstrations in support of the al Assad government took place from a very early stage, notably in Damascus and Aleppo.

The Arab Spring has been well exposed as a propaganda tool to enable Western powers, with the help of oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia, to destabilise secular, progressive, independent countries like Libya and Syria and put in place a pliant leadership. In this interview recorded in Damascus 2013, a Syrian soldier gives his own take on the Arab Spring:

An integral part of the campaign against al Assad is the smearing of those who are sceptical about the negative claims regarding al Assad, don’t like bloody proxy wars  dressed up as revolutions and moreover support Syria’s right to control its own destiny.

They are termed Assadistas, fascists, truthers, monsterphiliacs even (yes I’ve got links, no I’m not promoting the authors here).  The argument goes something like, ‘the evil dictator Bashar al Assad gassed his own people, you are trying to prove he’s  not an evil dictator and didn’t gas his own people, therefore you are a fascist supporting an evil dictator’.

Inevitably the campaign to undermine those investigating the truth about Syria extends to preventing them from discussing their findings publicly.  British journalists Owen Jones and Jeremy Scahill, both dedicated supporters of forced regime change in Syria, were instrumental in preventing Mother Agnes Mariam, a nun based in Homs, from speaking at the Stop the War Coalition.  That STW buckled to such pressure is a shameful moment in their history.

The concerted efforts to stop Tim Anderson, author of The Dirty War on Syria, from speaking at the Crossing the Border conference on the refugee crisis to be held on Lesvos, Greece in July, is another example of the determination of regime change advocates to stifle open discussion, though this time without success.

The attack was orchestrated by Syrian Solidarity UK (usually referred to by the unfortunate acronym SSUK), notable for its strong support for the White Helmets who are embedded with al Qaeda in Syria (Jabhat al Nusra).   At the same time the group published a hit piece against the Syrian Solidarity Movement, which is led by a group of pro-Syrian activists and journalists, including Dr Anderson.

If Bashar al Assad were a war criminal he would not have the support of his people, and Syria would not have been able to hold off against externally funded forces as it has done for five years. Before the Syrian war Bashar al Assad was the most popular leader in the Arab world. Polls showthat Bashar al Assad still has the support of the majority of Syrians.

Al Assad’s position within Syria is now stronger than ever.  Syrians view with horror the thought that extremist takfiris who have collaborated with the West might have a permanent role in Syria’s future, and are more than ever determined to resist sectarianism.  The al Assads are seen as representing the tolerant, multi-confessional country they are so proud of.

Bashar is an Alawite, his wife Asma is Sunni, and they make a point of showing solidarity with Syria’s Christian community, exemplified by the couple’s surprise attendance at choir practice at the Church of Our Lady of Damascus last Christmas, a few days after the church suffered a mortar attack. If Bashar al Assad is deposed, it will not be by the will of the Syrian people.

It’s doubtful that the media sport of Russia-bashing will ever go out of fashion. As they say, no journalist or analyst ever hurt their career by focusing their ire on Moscow.

Hysterical op-eds about the Evil Empire and its malevolent leader are ten a penny these days — and most of them, while very often scant in the facts department and ample in the conspiacy department, can be skimmed over and forgotten about. More of the same. No point getting too hyped up about it.

But every so often, a piece comes along that is so bad, on so many fronts, that it deserves a response. A recent piece in the Boston Globe meets the requirements. “Putin’s Russia is a poor, drunk soccer hooligan,” proclaimed the headline. If there was an award for excellency in Russia-bashing, this piece would surely be the winner.

© Anton Denisov

I know it’s hard to imagine, but it gets worse than the headline. Russia, the author wrote a few paragraphs in, is like an “oiled, aged, but still buff, body builder” who hides his “geriatric walker” off-stage — and “Boozy Yeltsin” was a“fitting representative” for the country. Funny, huh?

Fact-checking. Who needs that?

Let’s be perfectly clear: It would be a mistake to believe this piece was an attempt to inform the reader of the realities of modern Russia. Because the purpose of this piece was not to inform. Its single, glaringly obvious intent was to paint the worst possible picture of a country — for no other reason, it would appear, than sheer malice. To do this, facts were cherry-picked, statistics were delivered out of context without regard for overall long-term trends — and yes, some parts were just entirely untrue. Like the dubious claim that Russia’s life expectancy rate has been “declining”, when in fact, it has been rising. But why let pesky facts get in the way of a good narrative? As one Twitter user wrote to me: “punditry is the most fact-checking-free segment of media today and also the most popular means of disseminating info (sic)”. In other words, if readers took this piece at face value, they have been misled. Sold as a “closer look” at Russia, this article provides anything but. In fact, it’s simplistic and downright deceitful.

Regarding the life-expectancy assertion, this is pretty easy to fact check. Russian life expectancy reached a historic high in 2013 (71.2 years) and increased again in 2014-2015 (71.4 years). In 2016, life expectancy has reportedly continued to increase at a more rapid rate, although detailed data are not yet available. Where am I getting all of this? From an actual expert in Russian demographics who reads data and favors facts over fakery. And he’s no fan of Vladimir Putin, either. I know to some this combination of not being a Putin fan and at the same time having the decency and integrity to focus on facts (even when they paint Russia in a somewhat positive light) might be shocking, but such people do really exist.

Context helps

Lest it be forgotten, when we talk and write about Russia, we’re talking and writing about a country that is in many ways still recovering from a devastating and calamitous blow to its system less than 25 years ago. A country that had to be pulled back from the edge of very real ruin, not the kind of constantly impending imaginary ruin that columnists drool over today.

Therefore, reeling off a list of negative-sounding statistics as the author of the Globe piece has done, provides no historical context with which the reader can evaluate the successes or failures of the country that Russia is today. And as much as it pains some to admit, there have been some successes. Focusing with tunnel-vision on the negatives does not do anyone any good if the overarching goal is to understand.

Telling the reader that infant mortality is “two to three times higher than the rest of the world” is another example. It ignores completely, for example, that infant mortality in Russia decreased by 12 percent in 2015 and that even since Russia’s recent economic crisis took hold, mortality indicators have improved significantly. The crude effort to mask positive improvements to suit the ‘Russia is collapsing’ narrative is increasingly transparent and authors who employ the tactic do not appear to be at all concerned with painting a fair picture for their readers.

Pride in prejudice

Unfortunately, if the author’s Twitter feed is anything to go by, he actually seems to have taken some pride in angering “Russian Twitter trolls” and the “pro-Putin crowd”. Russian Twitter trolls, by the way, are Twitter users who dare to risk a positive or even neutral utterance about Russia in any capacity. The juvenile crusaders against these terrible trolls know that if someone disagrees with them, that person is a troll, end of discussion. Because that’s the level of discourse we’re dealing with today: If you disagree with me, you’re a troll and I’m going to block you because in today’s messed up world, cognitive dissonance is another mental stressor that I just don’t need. I have often been critical of American foreign policy in this column. But you can be sure my next headline won’t be:‘Obama’s America is a dumb, obese criminal delinquent’. Because, well, that would be a bit over the top and insulting, wouldn’t it? People would gasp and tell me how unfair it was. Americans aren’t all stupid and obese, they would declare. And they’d be right. But somehow it’s not a problem to imply, directly or indirectly, that all Russians are poor and drunk. Nah, that’s totally fine.

“A small group of very powerful people have been using the cover of globalization to undermine the powers of nation states with the ultimate goal of creating an unelected World government under their control.”  

The Honourable Paul Hellyer, from the introduction of his book The Money Mafia.

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Paul Hellyer was first elected to the Canadian Parliament in 1949. He served in cabinet under Liberal Prime Ministers Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson, and Pierre Trudeau. He eventually resigned from cabinet and from the Liberal caucus in 1969 after the recommendations of a Task Force he had chaired on housing and urban renewal were rejected.

Hellyer has since seen a relatively small group of elites, what he calls “the Cabal,” embracing different methods for undermining the will of the people through their elected governments. Two of the major instruments Mr. Hellyer has called attention to, in his writings and in his speeches, are corporate globalization, including so-called trade agreements like NAFTA, and the shifting of money making and lending power, both in Canada and abroad, to private banking institutions.

In an attempt to reverse the tide, Hellyer founded and led a new political party, the Canadian Action Party, back in 1997. He has authored several books, including Goodbye Canada, One Big Party: To Keep Canada Independent, and his latest, The Money Mafia: A World In Crisis. He is also a speaker on the world stage.

In this week’s feature length interview, the last of the 2015-2016 season, Hellyer talks about how the Free Trade agreements with the United States have undermined Canadian sovereignty, the re-direction of Canadian military and foreign policy, the economic consequences of borrowing from private banks versus the publicly owned Bank of Canada, as well as how the Trans-Pacific Partnership will finally dismantle whatever is left of Canada as a sovereign nation.

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

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

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

The UK’s exit from the EU is further evidence of the unraveling of an old order from which Israel has long prospered

The conventional wisdom, following Britain’s referendum result announced on Friday, holds that the narrow vote in favor of leaving the European Union – so-called Brexit – is evidence of a troubling resurgence of nationalism and isolationism across much of Europe. That wisdom is wrong, or at least far too simplistic.

The outcome, which surprised many observers, attested to the deeply flawed nature of the referendum campaign. That, in turn, reflects a key failing of modern politics, not only in Britain but in most of the developed world: the re-emergence of an unaccountable political class.

The most distinctive feature of the campaign was the lack of an identifiable ideological battlefield. This was not about a clash of worldviews, values or even arguments. Rather, it was a contest in who could fearmonger most effectively.

The Brexit leadership adopted the familiar “Little Englander” pose: the EU’s weak border controls, the influx into the UK of East Europeans driving down wages, and the threat of millions of refugees fleeing crisis-zones like Syria were creating a toxic brew that emptied of all meaning the UK’s status as a sceptred isle.

The heads of the Remain camp traded in a different kind of fear. Brexit would lead to the flight from the UK of capital and its associated economic elite. Sterling’s collapse would bankrupt the country and leave pensions worthless. Britain would stop being a player in the modern global economy.

Those favoring the EU had an additional card up their sleeve. They accused Brexit’s supporters of being racists and xenophobes who preferred to blame immigrants than admit their own responsibility for their economic misfortune.

Pandora’s box

Set out like this – and it is hard to over-estimate how simplistically confrontational the arguments on both sides were – it is easier to understand why the Brexit camp won.

The EU referendum opened up a Pandora’s box of division rooted in class that many hoped had been closed in the post-war period with the temporary advance of the welfare state and social democratic policies.

However inadvertently, the Remain leaders championed the cause of a wealthy elite that included the bankers and hedge fund managers who had until recently been publicly vilified for their role in the financial crash of 2008.

That was a slap in the face both to the working class and to much of the middle class who paid the price for the economic elite’s reckless and self-serving profligacy and its subsequent demands for gargantuan bail-outs.

Those favoring the EU – who typically suffered least from the 2008 crash – only added insult to injury by labeling its victims as “racists” for demanding reassurances that politicians would again serve them, not an economic elite.

Economic pillage

There is an argument to be made that the EU is not chiefly responsible for the economic problems faced by British workers. Since the rise of Margaret Thatcher in the late 1970s, figures from across the British political spectrum have been deeply in thrall to a neoliberal agenda that has clawed back hard-won workers’ rights.

It is revealing that some of the super-rich – including media moguls – lobbied for an exit. They clearly believe that, outside the EU, they will be able to rape and pillage the British economy at even greater speed, unconstrained by EU regulations.

Nonetheless, the EU has become the fall guy for popular resentment at the neoliberal consensus – and not without good cause.

It is seen, correctly, as one of the key transnational institutions facilitating the enrichment of a global elite. And it has become a massive obstacle to member states reforming their economies along lines that do not entail austerity, as the Greeks painfully discovered.

This is the deeper cause of the alienation experienced by ordinary Brexiters. Unfortunately, however, no one in the leadership of either the Leave or Remain camps seriously articulated that frustration and anger or offered solutions that addressed such concerns. The Remainers dismissively rejected the other side’s fears as manifestations of racism.

This played straight into the hands of the Brexit leadership, led by far-right figures in the Conservative party like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, as well as Nigel Farage of the Ukip party, Britain’s unwholesome version of Sarah Palin.

This millionaires’ club, of course, was not interested in the troubles of Britain’s new precariat – a working class permanently stuck in precarious economic straits. They only wanted their votes. Stoking fears about migrants was the easiest way to get them – and deflect attention from the fact that the millionaires were the real culprits behind ordinary people’s immiseration.

No love for EU

Support for Brexit was further strengthened by the lackluster performance of the heads of the Remain camp. The truth is that the two main party leaders, who were invested with the task of defending the EU, were barely persuaded of the merits of their own cause.

Prime minister David Cameron is a long-time Euro-sceptic who privately shares much of the distrust of the EU espoused by Johnson and Gove.

And the recently elected leader of the Labour opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, is no lover of the EU either, though for reasons very different from the right’s.

Corbyn is part of Labour’s old guard – relics of a democratic socialist wing of the post-war Labour party that was mostly purged under Tony Blair’s leadership. Labour under Blair became a lite version of the Conservative party.

And here we reach the crux of the problem with the referendum campaign.

There was a strong and responsible leftwing case for Brexit, based on social democratic and internationalist principles, that Corbyn was too afraid to espouse in public, fearing that it would tear apart his party. That opened the field to the rightwing Brexit leadership and their ugly fearmongering.

Left’s case for Brexit

The left’s case against the EU was frequently articulated by Tony Benn, a Labour minister in the 1960s and 1970s. At an Oxford Union debate in 2013, a year before he died, Benn observed: “The way that Europe has developed is that the bankers and multi-national corporations have got very powerful positions and, if you come in on their terms, they will tell you what you can and can’t do – and that is unacceptable.

My view about the European Union has always been, not that I am hostile to foreigners but that I’m in favor of democracy. … I think they are building an empire there.

Nearly 40 years earlier, in 1975, during a similar referendum on leaving what was then called the EEC, Benn highlighted what was at stake. Britain’s parliamentary democracy alone “offered us the prospect of peaceful change; reduced the risk of civil strife; and bound us together by creating a national framework of consent for all the laws under which we were governed.”

His warning about “civil strife” now sounds eerily prophetic: the referendum campaign descended into the ugliest political feuding in living memory.

For Bennites and the progressive left, internationalism is a vital component of the collective struggle for the rights of workers and the poor. The stronger workers are everywhere, they less easily they can be exploited by the rich through divide-and-rule policies.

Globalisation, on the other hand, is premised on a different and very narrow kind of internationalism: one that protects the rights of the super-rich to drive down wages and workers’ rights by demanding the free movement of labor, while giving this economic elite the freedom to hide away their profits in remote tax-havens.

Globalisation, in other words, switched the battlefield of class struggle from the nation state to the whole globe. It allowed the transnational economic elite to stride the world taking advantage of every loophole they could find in the weakest nations’ laws and forcing other nations to follow suit. Meanwhile, the working and middle classes found themselves defenseless, largely trapped in their national and regional ghettoes, and turned against each other in a global free market.

Corbyn played safe

Corbyn could not say any of this because the Labour parliamentary party is still stuffed with Blairites who fervently support the EU and are desperate to oust him. Had he come out for Brexit, they would have had the perfect excuse to launch a coup. (Now, paradoxically, the Blairites have found a pretext to stab him in the back over the Remain camp’s failure.)

Instead Corbyn headed for what he thought would be the safe, middle ground: the UK must stay in the EU but try to reform it from within.

That was a doubly tragic mistake.

First, it meant there was no prominent figure making a progressive case for Brexit. Many ordinary voters know deep in their hearts that there is something profoundly wrong with the neoliberal consensus and global economic order, but it has been left to the far-right to offer them a lens through which to interpret their lived experience. By stepping aside, Corbyn and the real left allowed Johnson and Farage to forge unchallenged the little Englander case for Brexit.

Second, voters are ever more distrustful of politicians. Cameron and Corbyn’s failure to be candid about their views on Europe only underscored the reasons to assume the worst about the political class. In a choice between the uncomfortable and perfunctory posturing of the Remain leaders and the passionate conviction of Johnson and Farage, people preferred fervor.

Compromised politics

This is a much wider phenomenon. Corbyn’s appeasement of the Blairites is another example of the deeply tainted, lesser-evilism politics that requires Bernie Sanders to tell his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton, warmonger-in-chief to the military-industrial complex, to stop a loud-mouth billionaire thug, Donald Trump.

Increasingly, people are sick of these endless compromises that perpetuate and intensify, rather than end, inequality and injustice. They simply don’t know what levers are left to change the ugly reality in front of them.

The result is an increasingly febrile and polarised politics. Outcomes are much less certain, whether it is Corbyn becoming Labour leader, Sanders chasing Clinton all the way to the Democratic convention, or Trump being on the cusp of becoming US president.

The old order is breaking down because it is so thoroughly discredited, and those who run it – a political and economic elite – are distrusted and despised like never before. The EU is very much part of the old order.

There is a genuine question whether, outside the EU, the UK can be repaired. Its first-past-the-post electoral system is so unrepresentative, it is unclear whether, even if a majority of the public voted for a new kind of politics, it could actually secure a majority of MPs.

But what is clear to most voters is that inside the EU it will be even harder to fix the UK. The union simply adds another layer of unaccountable bureaucrats and lobbyists in thrall to faceless billionaires, further distancing ordinary people from the centers of power.

Disturbing trend for Israel

Finally, it is worth noting that the trends underpinning the Brexit vote should disturb Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just as they already are troubling the political class in Europe and the US.

Like the EU, Israel too is pillar of the old global order. A “Jewish homeland” emerged under British protection while Britain still ran an empire and saw the Middle East as its playground.

After the European colonial powers went into abeyance following the Second World War, the role of patron shifted to the new global hegemon in Washington. The US has endlessly indulged Israel, guarded its back at the United Nations, and heavily subsidised Israel’s powerful military industries.

Whereas the US has propped up Israel diplomatically and militarily, the EU has underwritten Israel’s economic success. It has violated its own constitution to give Israel special trading status and thereby turned Europe into Israel’s largest export market. It has taken decades for Europe to even acknowledge – let alone remedy – the problem that it is also trading with illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

If the EU starts to unravel, and US neoliberal hegemony weakens, Israel will be in trouble. It will be in desperate need of a new guarantor, one prepared to support a country that polls repeatedly show is mistrusted around the world.

But more immediately, Israel ought to fear the new climate of polarised, unpredictable politics that is becoming the norm.

In the US, in particular, a cross-party consensus about Israel is gradually breaking down. Concerns about local national interests – of the kind that exercised the Brexiters – are gaining traction in the US too, as illustrated last year by the fallout over Israel’s stand-off with the White House over its Iran agreement.

Distrust of the political class is growing by the day, and Israel is an issue on which US politicians are supremely vulnerable. It is increasingly hard to defend Congress’ historic rock-solid support for Israel as truly in American interests.

In a world of diminishing resources, where the middle class is forever being required to belt-tighten, questions about why the US is planning to dramatically increase its aid to Israel – one of the few economies that has prospered since the 2008 crash – are likely to prove ever-more discomfiting.

In the long term, none of this bodes well for Israel. Brexit is simply the warning siren.