Global Research

In the aftermath of the shoot outs in Crimea the Russian and Ukrainian Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko, have met with their higher political and military leaderships. 

Putin’s meeting took the form of a plenary meeting of Russia’s Security Council, the body which was partially and hurriedly convened on Monday. Poroshenko’s meeting was with the Ukraine’s National and Security Council, a body that has a similar name to Russia’s Security Council but which does not have the same all-encompassing powers, and whose remit is far more narrowly restricted to defence and security questions.

Poroshenko has also put the Ukrainian military in Donbass and along the border with Crimea on alert. He is also trying to contact the US and European leaderships to gain their support.  It is a certainty that over the next few hours ritual statements of support for Ukraine and criticisms and warnings to Russia will indeed come from the US and European leaderships.

Putting aside all the rhetoric, will these latest moves result in war between Russia and Ukraine in Crimea, and between Ukraine and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the Donbass?

Two things first need to be said.  Firstly the idea that there is peace in the Donbass is a myth.  Fighting goes on there every day on the contact line with the Ukrainian military regularly shelling militia positions and the militia shelling the Ukrainian military in return.  Firefights happen continuously  At the beginning of July Ukraine admitted losing 80 of its soldiers in fighting in the Donbass in the course of just one week, whilst towards the end of July Ukraine admitted losing 6 of its soldiers in a single clash on just one day.  Secondly the political situation in Ukraine is so unstable and the anti-Russian atmosphere there is so strong that it would be foolish to count on Ukraine showing any sort of restraint.  War is therefore unfortunately a very real possibility.

On balance however I doubt it will happen. The Kremlin’s brief summary of Putin’s meeting with the Security Council speaks only of discussions for “additional security measures and critical infrastructure protection in Crimea” and of a detailed review of “scenarios of counter-terrorism security measures along the land border, offshore and in Crimea’s air space.”  That suggests that the Russians are only looking at tighter security measures within Crimea itself, and that they at least have no plans to start a wider war.  That would of course be consistent with the whole approach the Russians have been taking ever since the Ukrainian conflict began in 2014.

As for Ukraine, though there are undoubtedly individuals there who are fully capable of starting a war and who show every indication of wanting to do so, I personally doubt that in the end Ukraine will take the plunge and go to war. Behind the ritual statements of support I expect both the US and the Europeans in private to be urging Ukraine to show restraint for two reasons:  firstly, because whatever they may pretend in public I am sure they have guessed the truth that it is the Russian account of the Crimean incident which is true; and secondly and far more importantly because they know that in any war between Ukraine and Russia – or even between Ukraine and the two People’s Republics of the Donbass – Ukraine would lose.

Obama certainly does not want another defeat in Ukraine in the middle of a US Presidential election campaign on his hands, especially since this would probably play into the hands of Donald Trump, though unfortunately the same cannot be said of some of the more psychopathic individuals who support Hillary Clinton, who seem to be yearning for confrontation with Russia on just about any pretext.  More to the point I just cannot imagine that Angela Merkel, facing criticism in Germany for her open-door refugee policy and with her anti-Russian policy coming under growing criticism from the SPD, the CSU and the German business community, wants another debacle in Ukraine on her hands.

In fact I suspect that some people both in the US and Europe are privately furious with the Ukrainians for landing them in this mess, whatever they may feel obliged to say in public.  Whether or ot that is so I expect that the telephone lines between Western capitals and Kiev are currently burning with urgent calls for restraint.  Despite the strength of the war party in Kiev I doubt that the Ukrainian authorities in the end feel strong enough to disregard these calls.

There will be dismay in Europe over something else.  The Europeans have stupidly linked the lifting of sanctions against Russia to the full implementation of the Minsk II Accords notwithstanding that they know perfectly well that it is Kiev not Moscow which is not honouring them.  The whole premise of this foolish step was that it would pressure Moscow to make concessions.  In the event not only has Moscow failed to make any concessions but Putin has now called off the next Normandy Four meeting, which was supposed to review progress in implementing the Minsk II Accords.  With growing public anger in Europe over the sanctions there must now be panic on the part of some European leaders that the Russians may be prepared to walk away from the whole Minsk II process – which the Europeans have foolishly linked the sanctions to – leaving these same European leaders high and dry.

Just as I suspect that the telephone lines between Kiev and Western capitals are currently burning with calls for restraint, so therefore I suspect that the telephone lines between Moscow and Western capitals are also burning with urgent calls to the Russians asking them to modify and explain their new hard line and to recommit to the Normandy Four format.  I would not be surprised if in return the Russians are being given private assurances that the Western powers will act to prevent Kiev from doing what it has just tried to do in Crimea ever again.  Whether of course the Russians would believe those assurances is another matter.

Having said all this I want to repeat again that the situation remains extremely dangerous.  Ultimately any decision for war or peace lies with Kiev.  No one in their senses would place any firm reliance on Kiev doing the sane thing. The next few days or hours will decide the issue.

Are we are now experiencing Operation Mockingbird 2.0? The CIA has been collaborating with the Mainstream Media (MSM) for some time is now selling one of the most ridiculous “Conspiracy Theories” in recent years (Obama’s “I killed Osama Bin Laden” Hoax tops the list).

Former CIA director, Michael J. Morell has claimed that the Republican presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump is an “Unwitting Agent” of Russia. Another lie or what we can call a “real conspiracy theory” is that Russia hacked into the DNC servers and obtained emails that exposed corruption within the Democratic Party with no evidence whatsoever which I will discuss shortly.

In fact, the MSM in collusion with the CIA has been relentless in their pursuit for decades to convince the public that alternative news sources publish conspiracy theories to discredit any questionable story that they themselves (the MSM) present to the public. The CIA created the “Conspiracy Theory” label in 1967 to discredit anyone (especially journalists) who questioned the U.S. government’s “Official Narrative” of a particular situation. Now, fast forward to 2016, Morell wrote a New York Times OP-ED claiming that Donald Trump is working for Russian President Vladimir Putin:

Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests — endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.

In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation

The MSM has been on a propaganda spree against Donald Trump in the last few weeks and it is accelerating. According to Morell, Mr. Putin recruited Trump to work in the interests of Russia which is absolutely absurd. First in response to Morell’s article, Russia did not annex Crimea, the majority of the people of Crimea voted in a referendum to leave the Ukraine and become a part of Russia. The referendum took place on March 16th, 2014 where close to 96% of the population voted in favor to reunify “Crimea with Russia”. Let’s not forget that the majority of the population in Crimea speaks Russian and share a very similar culture with Russia. Crimea was transferred to the Ukraine due to administrative measures under the Soviet Union in 1954. Second, Russia is not going to nor were they ever planning to invade the Baltic States. However, NATO forces are stationed close to Russia’s borders and Europe is in the process of placing missile defense systems on behalf of Washington which threatens Russia’s security.

Michael Morell is continuing Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program also established in 1967 to influence the media to report stories that favor Washington’s agenda. Operation Mockingbird recruited American journalists and news organizations to report stories that represented views of the CIA on behalf of Washington and major corporations. The CIA also funded various news organizations, magazines (Time magazine) and influenced foreign media companies to report stories they deemed acceptable.  Mr. Morell is now planting ridiculous stories or conspiracy theories within the MSM. The MSM is bought and paid for by the establishment and the CIA makes sure the stories they provide make it on the evening news. The MSM works for Washington and the CIA manages its content. The MSM do what they are told to do. In this case, Morell is planting a conspiracy theory against Donald Trump and Russia. What else can you possibly call what Morell wrote in the New York Times or said on PBS’s Charlie Rose?

Morell is in line with Hillary Clinton who has deep ties with the CIA. Morell is not the only one spreading conspiracy theories. Hillary Clinton and the DNC are also on board. Recent Hillary Clinton emails released by Wikileaks from a DNC hack were also blamed on Russia. However, the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange has signaled that the person who possibly sent him the emails ‘Seth Rich’, a Democrat staffer who was recently found dead might have been the person according to a Zero Hedge article titled ‘Wikileaks Assange Hints Murdered DNC Staffer Was Email -Leaker, Offers $20k Reward For Info’.  Assange is now offering a $20,000 reward for any information on the death of Seth Rich.

In today’s world, Russia is to blame for anything that happens around the world which brings us back to the days of the Cold War. The MSM in the US and UK led the charge with headlines that accused Russia for the DNC Hacking scandal. ‘Hillary Clinton campaign blames leaked DNC emails about Sanders on Russia’ (The Guardian), ‘Russian ties: Ex-intel official says evidence on hacked DNC servers points to nation state’ (Fox News), ‘Russian Intelligence Hacked DNC Emails’ (NBC) according to MSM headlines, Russia was guilty.

Hillary Clinton and members of the DNC are blaming Russia for the email hacks without any mention of what was actually in those emails in the first place. But that is not the issue, besides the emails only show that Hillary Clinton was working with the MSM media against US democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and that she sold weapons to the Islamic State terrorists as Secretary of State under the Obama administration. Wikileaks has approximately 1,700 emails that confirm the link between Clinton, Libya and Syria and the shipments of weapons directly to Al Qaeda and ISIS. But the content of the emails is not important, because what is more important to the MSM and the Clinton camp is that Russia hacked into their email servers. Realistically speaking, what could be more important than a government official who has been in Washington for more than 2 decades was involved with arming and funding terrorist groups? To the MSM, Russia (who has been fighting terrorists and winning on many fronts in Syria) is the enemy, the evil culprit behind the hacks.

On an RT News broadcast of Going Underground with Afshin Rattansi interviewed Julian Assange on the question of a Trump-Russia connection which he revealed a few important factors for the public to consider:

Hillary Clinton has done quite well strategically to try and draw connection between Trump and Russia because she has so many connections of her own,” now, my analysis of Trump and Russia is that there is no substantial connection. Why do I say that? Because Trump was trying to invest in Russia before Putin in the 1990s, after Putin, in fact nearly all the way up to the present moment, and he’s had no success,” Assange continued “He’s not managed to build hotels in Russia, so that shows how insubstantial his contacts are”

Israeli intelligence news agency also confirmed that Russia did not hack into the DNC servers according to a July 31st Sputnik news article:

However, analysts with the Israeli intelligence news agency DebkaFile found more holes in these assertions than a five-dollar block of Swiss cheese and came to the conclusion that the “hacking was almost certainly not carried out by GRU’s cyber warfare branch. First of all, the analysts blast the notion that a branch of Russian intelligence would leave obvious signatures, such as the terms “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear” as claimed by CrowdStrike to be found by investigators unless their goal was to undermine Trump’s candidacy.

They also raise the question of why Russia, who is focused on securing strategic and economic data, wasting scarce resources to determine the DNC’s opinion of Bernie Sanders’ religious orthodoxy. Then there is the fact that blaming the attack on Russia, a perennial punching bag for politicians and media whenever something goes wrong whether or not the claims are rooted in fact, was so brazenly quaint and also served as a reminder that the most famous leaker of US classified documents, Edward Snowden, continues to live free from prosecution in Russia

Edward Snowden also said that if Russia did hack the DNC, the NSA would obviously know who was behind it “Even if the attackers try to obfuscate origin, #XKEYSCORE makes following exfiltrated data easy. I did this personally against Chinese ops,” Snowden said on a twitter message. In an interesting turn of events, Snowden revealed in 2014 that the U.S. government (NSA) had spied on more than 122 world leaders and their governments.

Whether you like Donald Trump or not he is for a better diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation and has said that NATO is “obsolete.” Trump has called on European countries to fund NATO themselves which is something that Washington’s establishment does not want. They prefer to pay NATO with U.S. tax dollars instead. Washington prefers NATO forces in close proximity to Russia’s borders in any event that calls for a nuclear first strike capability against the Russian Federation.

The establishment including Michael J. Morell (who said he will vote for Clinton) wants Trump defeated come this November. The DNC, Michael Morell (who is also calling for Russian and Syrian government forces to be killed covertly in Syria to threaten Syrian president Bashar al-Assad) and the MSM puppets are now pushing the“Conspiracy Theory” narrative upon the public. They are desperate and they are running out of ammunition against Donald Trump, Russia and the alternative media. What is their solution? Spread misinformation and fake conspiracy theories to make their opposition less credible. That is all the ammunition they have left.

Even as tensions are rising with Russia in Eastern Europe and China in Asia, the United States has launched a new war in Libya and is preparing a major military escalation in the Middle East, nominally directed against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In an interview yesterday with USA Today, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigan confirmed that the US-led coalition is planning coordinated offensives against two ISIS-held cities—Mosul in northern Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. “If we are able to do simultaneous operations and synchronise the Mosul piece and the Raqqa piece, think about the problem that generates for [ISIS],” he said.

Harrigan, who recently took over command of air operations in the Middle East, said coalition war planes had been striking targets in both cities in recent months. “The team is focussed on force generation to try and make that simultaneous operation occur, because we see huge benefits from it,” he said, referring to the build-up of anti-ISIS ground forces in Iraq and Syria.

USA Today reported US troops are already operating extensively inside Syria, stating:

“US Special Operations Forces are helping to identify and organise Syrian rebel groups into a force that can take on the Islamic State [ISIS]. The force now numbers about 30,000 and had generated some surprisingly early successes, particularly around the northern city of Manbij.”

Within Iraq, US-led preparations have been underway for months to retake Mosul, the country’s second largest city, which still has a population of up to one million despite a mass exodus. Iraqi government forces last month seized the Qayyarah air base, 60 kilometres south of Mosul, which is being transformed into a major hub of operations for the upcoming offensive.

The US has funnelled in around 400 troops to carry out repairs, as well as to provide military advice, logistics, communications and intelligence to Iraqi ground troops, which have already begun seizing villages and towns to the south of Mosul. The air base’s runways are being upgraded and extended to allow large military transports to land, along with US and Iraqi fighters and helicopter gunships.

The anti-ISIS forces preparing for the Mosul offensive consist of an unstable coalition of Kurdish peshmerga militia, regular Iraqi army troops and Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilisation Forces, which are notorious for their atrocities against Sunni civilians during the battle for Fallujah. Already concerns are being raised about the potential for sectarian fighting and human rights abuses once Mosul is recaptured.

Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, the top US commander in Syria and Iraq, declared this week:

“We are going to try to get Mosul back as fast as we can. It’s one million people living under an oppressive rule under terrible conditions… The Iraqi security forces around Qayyarah are in a position now to begin that process and we’ll try to hurry that along as fast as we possibly can but putting an exact time on it, I’d rather not.”

MacFarland, who is due to be replaced, declared the US was winning the war against ISIS, reducing their territory in Iraq by more than half. “Although it’s not a measure of success and it’s difficult to confirm, we estimate that over the past 11 months we’ve killed about 25,000 enemy figures.” He provided no estimate of the number of civilians killed in the fighting or in US air raids.

The general also downplayed the role of US military forces, declaring they were only playing an “advise and assist” role at a distance and in specific locations. It is clear, however, that US troops are increasingly involved closer to the frontlines.

In an article late last month, the Washington Post reported: “While US Special Operations forces have already been advising elite counterterrorism troops and Kurdish peshmerga forces at their lower levels, the Qayyarah mission marks the first time since 2014 that US forces have advised Iraqi army battalions in the field.”

A small team of American combat engineers accompanied Iraqi forces on July 20 to advise on the task of constructing a temporary bridge over the Tigris River to the southeast of the town of Qayyarah. According to the Post, the US troops spent a few hours in the field in what was a “narrowly targeted mission, with limited battlefield exposure”—a model for “the restricted role that American commanders are planning for US ground forces in the Mosul operation.”

US generals are clearly concerned that American battlefield deaths will fuel anti-war sentiment at home, but have not ruled out putting US troops on the frontline. “In private, other senior officers are even more blunt, making reference to troops they lost in earlier Iraq deployments. This time, they will place Americans in the thick of fighting only if the overall mission is at risk,” the newspaper stated.

The timing of offensives in Iraq and Syria is also being driven by political considerations. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are increasingly attacking Republican nominee Donald Trump as being unfit to be commander-in-chief of US forces. A substantial military victory in the Middle East, no matter what the cost in Syrian and Iraqi lives, has the potential to boost Clinton.

The issue is clearly being discussed in Washington circles. An article on thePolitico website on August 1, entitled “Get ready for Obama’s ‘October Surprise’ in Iraq,” suggested that “the American public could be treated to a major US-led military victory in Iraq this fall, just as voters are deciding who will be the nation’s next president.”

The article cited unnamed senior US officers who insisted the Mosul offensive’s timing was not bound up with politics, but it did not rule out the possibility. “If Mosul is retaken, it would both mark a political triumph for Barack Obama and likely benefit his party’s nominee at the polls, Hillary Clinton, undercutting Republican claims that the Obama administration has failed to take the gloves off against Islamic State,” it noted.

A no-bid $10 million contract announced in late July is possibly the first instance in which the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged using private military contractors alongside American special operations forces fighting Islamic State in Syria.

The Western-backed regime in Ukraine announced Thursday that it was placing its military forces on the highest state of combat alert amid the ratcheting up of tensions with Russia in the wake of a reported terrorist provocation in Russian-ruled Crimea.

For its part, Moscow announced the staging of maneuvers in the Black Sea, with the Russian navy rehearsing tactics for the repulsion of a attack on Crimea.

The Ukrainian government, which on Thursday sent its ambassador to the United Nations to speak before the Security Council on the matter, charged that Russia has massed more than 40,000 troops in Crimea and on the Ukrainian border. As Crimea is the historic base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, it has always had a large deployment of the country’s military.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, dismissed the charge, declaring, “Instead of counting our military, they should be bringing an end to the conflict” in eastern Ukraine, where the Kiev government’s forces have continued to attack a separatist Russian-speaking minority, claiming some 10,000 lives since April 2014.

Moscow has charged the Ukrainian government with organizing a terrorist attack aimed at striking vital infrastructure inside Crimea, a territory that Russia annexed following a plebiscite in which the peninsula’s population voted for unification with Russia. The move followed the February 2014 coup, orchestrated by Washington and Germany and spearheaded by ultra-nationalist and fascist forces, which overthrew the elected, pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and installed a rabidly anti-Russian regime. The United States backed the putsch in a bid to escalate the US-led drive to encircle and militarily subjugate Russia.

A NATO official told the AFP news agency that the US-led military alliance was carefully following the rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine, declaring that “Russia’s recent military activity in Crimea is not helpful for easing tensions.”

State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau called the situation “very dangerous” and reiterated Washington’s position that “Crimea is part of Ukraine.”

Both dismissed Russia’s account of terrorist actions against Crimean territory by a Ukrainian-organized special operations squad.

Russia’s state security agency, the FSB, issued a detailed statement Wednesday, saying that the attacks were carried out on the night of August 6-7 under the direction of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. Further attempts at infiltration were repeated on August 8.

The statement said that one FSB agent was killed in the attempt to detain the Ukrainian operatives, whose object was described as the targeting of “critical infrastructure and life support facilities” in Crimea. A Russian soldier also was reportedly killed by fire from Ukrainian military units, including armored vehicles, in support of the operation.

The FSB claimed to have recovered “20 improvised explosive devices with a total explosive power of 40 kg [of] TNT,” along with land mines, grenades and special assault weapons.

The agency also presented evidence it said was given by a Ukrainian described as an operative of Ukrainian military intelligence and a leader of the special operations units, identified as Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Panov.

Sergei Aksyonov, Crimea’s prime minister, charged that the real source of the terrorist operations was Washington. “Ukrainian officials wouldn’t have had the courage for such actions … These are not their own actions and messages,” he said, adding, “the US State Department is looming behind them.”

There is every reason to suspect that this is the case. The provocation in Crimea comes in the midst of a drumbeat of escalating US rhetoric and actions taken against Russia. The US has stepped up its arming and funding of Al Qaeda-linked militias in Syria in an attempt to reverse the victories of Syrian government forces, which have been closely supported by Russian air power. On August 1, the US-backed jihadists shot down a Russian helicopter on a relief mission, killing all five aboard. In the media, former top officials and columnists with close government connections have called for US air strikes against the Russian-backed forces and the imposition of a “no-fly zone” that would inevitably spell a confrontation with Russia’s air force.

In Ukraine itself, Washington has worked to build up the military of the crisis-ridden, right-wing regime in Kiev headed by the oligarch Petro Poroshenko. A 500-strong US unit is presently on the ground in western Ukraine training Ukrainian forces, including members of fascist-led militias, while hundreds, if not thousands, of other US military personnel and contractors are regularly rotating in and out of the country. Last month, the US Navy joined with Ukrainian warships in the “Sea Breeze” exercises aimed at challenging Russia in the Black Sea. In July, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Ukraine for talks with Poroshenko, where he reiterated Washington’s support for the Kiev regime’s claims on Crimea.

The dangerous war tensions between Ukraine and Russia have been unleashed in the midst of an election campaign that has seen the presidential front-runner, Democratic candidate and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, attack the fascistic Republican candidate Donald Trump from the right, particularly over the question of Russia.

The Democrats have staged a neo-McCarthyite campaign against Trump, accusing him of being a puppet of Vladimir Putin, while also charging—with no evidence—that the Russian president was behind the WikiLeaks release of Democratic National Committee emails exposing attempts to rig the primaries against Clinton’s challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Among the charges leveled against Trump—again without substance—is the assertion that his campaign “watered down” the Republican platform’s language on Ukraine. The language, in fact, denounces the Obama administration for abetting a “resurgent Russia,” backs sanctions against Moscow, and calls for “appropriate assistance to the armed forces of the Ukraine.” The complaint was that it left out a reference to supplying them with “lethal weapons,” something the Obama administration itself claims it is not doing.

That Clinton attacks such policies from the right, with growing support from key figures in the US military and intelligence apparatus along with growing numbers of Republican policy makers, constitutes a clear warning. Preparations are being made for a direct military confrontation with Russia in eastern Europe, with provocations like those staged in Crimea serving as the likely trigger. Whether such a dangerous escalation of conflict, involving the world’s two major nuclear powers, will be postponed until after November is itself an open question.

A recent report by Andy Wilcoxson, who has been following the trials at the ICTY, states that the judgement in the Dr. Karadzic case, issued in March of this year, “exonerated” or cleared President Milosevic of the allegations made against him by the prosecution at the ICTY. However, the judgement contains other findings by these judges that muddy the waters and remind us that though they did accept certain favourable facts regarding Milosevic, their purpose was not to “clear” Milosevic but to convict Karadzic and so they used legitimate disagreements on strategy and tactics between Milosevic and Karadzic to diminish the role of Milosevic in this case and exaggerate the role of and belligerency of Karadzic.

The report by Wilcoxson quotes the following from the judgement;

the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan” to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb claimed territory.

And that,

 the relationship between Milosevic and the Accused had deteriorated beginning in 1992; by 1994, they no longer agreed on a course of action to be taken. Furthermore, beginning as early as March 1992, there was apparent discord between the Accused and Milosevic in meetings with international representatives, during which Milosevic and other Serbian leaders openly criticised Bosnian Serb leaders of committing ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ and the war for their own purposes.

And that,

from 1990 and into mid-1991, the political objective of the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership was to preserve Yugoslavia and to prevent the separation or independence of BiH, which would result in a separation of Bosnian Serbs from Serbia; the Chamber notes that Slobodan Milosevic endorsed this objective and spoke against the independence of BiH.

And,

The Chamber found that “the declaration of sovereignty by the SRBiH Assembly in the absence of the Bosnian Serb delegates on 15 October 1991, escalated the situation,but that Milosevic was not on board with the establishment of Republika Srpska in response. The judgment also says that “Slobodan Milosevic was attempting to take a more cautious approach.

And,

The judgment states that in intercepted communications with Radovan Karadzic,

“Milosevic questioned whether it was wise to use ‘an illegitimate act in response to another illegitimate act’ and questioned the legality of forming a Bosnian Serb Assembly.” The judges also found that “Slobodan Milosevic expressed his reservations about how a Bosnian Serb Assembly could exclude the Muslims who were ‘for Yugoslavia’.”

And that,

“Slobodan Milosevic stated that ‘[a]ll members of other nations and ethnicities must be protected’ and that ‘[t]he national interest of the Serbs is not discrimination’.” Also that “Milosevic further declared that crime needed to be fought decisively.”

And,

The trial chamber notes that “In private meetings, Milosevic was extremely angry at the Bosnian Serb leadership for rejecting the Vance-Owen Plan and he cursed the Accused.” They also found that “Milosevic tried to reason with the Bosnian Serbs saying that he understood their concerns, but that it was most important to end the war.”

and that,

 Milosevic also questioned whether the world would accept that the Bosnian Serbs who represented only one third of the population of BiH would get more than 50% of the territory and he encouraged a political agreement.

And that at a meeting of the Supreme Defense Council the judgment says that “Milosevic told the Bosnian Serb leadership that they were not entitled to have more than half the territory in BiH, stating that: ‘there is no way that more than that could belong to us! Because, we represent one third of the population. […] We are not entitled to in excess of half of the territory – you must not snatch away something that belongs to someone else! […] How can you imagine two thirds of the population being crammed into 30% of the territory, while 50% is too little for you?! Is it humane, is it fair?!’”

In other meetings with Serb and Bosnian Serb officials, the judgment notes that Milosevic,

“declared that the war must end and that the Bosnian Serbs’ biggest mistake was to want a complete defeat of the Bosnian Muslims.” Because of the rift between Milosevic and the Bosnian-Serbs, the judges note that, “the FRY reduced its support for the RS and encouraged the Bosnian Serbs to accept peace proposals.”

This is indeed what is contained in a few paragraphs in the 2,590 page “judgement” against Karadzic and these statements do reflect some of what President Milosevic presented in his defence at his show trial and what was in news accounts of the period. They are important to bring to the attention of the public once again and we must thank Mr. Wilcoxson for making this available to the public.

But the judges also state, at Paragraph 2644 that though “In May 1991, Slobodan Milosević told the Accused that his position should be that they were against the secession and wanted BiH to remain in Yugoslavia, to which the Accused agreed, in another conversation in July 1991, Milosević told the Accused that their objective was to “have disintegration in […] line with our inclinations” and that they “should take radical steps and speed the things up”.

At paragraph 2645 they continue,

“In other conversations, Slobodan Milosević told the Accused that the Serbs would not be divided into many states, and that this “should be the basic premise for your thinking”

At paragraph 2689 they state, “Despite these words of caution, Slobodan Milosević, in meetings with international representatives, did not accept the independence of BiH and spoke of the desire of all Serbian people to live together.”

At paragraph, 2691, they state,

“In December 1991, Milosević told the Accused that he should not give in to Izetbegović and that they had to stick to their line and that If they want to fight, we’ll fight” given that the Serbs were stronger.”

So the ICTY Judges were very sure to make it clear that both Milosevic and Karadzic were on the same page generally in seeking a “Greater Serbia,” a thread running throughout the Prosecution case against Milosevic in his case. Milosevic denied it in his trial since it was nothing but NATO propaganda.

Both Karadzic and Milosevic wanted to preserve the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as much as possible. That was their goal, not to create a Greater Serbia by ethnically cleansing non-Serb areas in the republics which had split off from the Federal Republic. But that is the mantra still chanted in the Karadzic case and the thesis of the prosecution case is that this alleged desire to create a Greater Serbia, was a “joint criminal enterprise” and, that from this ambition, all the crimes they allege against them were the consequence.

I will not go deeply into the concept of “joint criminal enterprise since it is a concept unknown to law anywhere in the world and is an invention by the prosecution of the ICTY and its American controlled staff, who crafted this idea from the RICOH anti-racketeering laws of the 1930’s in the USA used to target Al Capone. Essentially, being found a part of a “joint criminal enterprise” means that the proof of intent to commit a crime is not required, undermining the entire basis of western justice that there can be no crime without intent to commit one. Once one is found to be a member of such an “enterprise” lack of intent will not save you. It is the epitome of guilt by association. But it is important for the ICTY since without it the conviction of Karadzic would be impossible.

That there were differences of opinion between the two men and their governments on whether to form a Serb republic inside Bosnia, what form it should take and when it should be done and how it should be protected is hardly surprising. But it is clear that these judges did not consider their judgement to have cleared Milosevic of the central allegation made against him in his trial of wanting to create a Greater Serbia when seen in light of the other paragraphs in the judgement in which, as we see, they allege that Milosevic supported this ambition and supports fighting the government of Izetbegovic.

But what are we dealing with here? We are dealing with judges of the very tribunal that falsely imprisoned Milosevic, fabricated charges against him and his government, and ended up killing him. Milosevic does not need “exonerating” or “absolving” for no case was ever made out against him and he was never convicted of anything.

I have trouble accepting any finding of this illegal and fascist tribunal as “clearing” a man who was guilty only of defending his country against a NATO attack and who was then put through the humiliation of having to respond to the worst types of NATO propaganda dressed up as an indictment. That he did so with courage, tenacity and intelligence was plain for all to see who watched the trial progress. That is the reason that “trial of the century” suddenly went dark one day and public was cut off from seeing what was happening day by day during that long ordeal.

So, the facts brought to our attention by Mr. Wilcoxson are worthy of our attention so long as we recognize that the judgement in which they are contained is another piece of the propaganda against the Serbs designed to humiliate them in the eyes of the world and to humiliate their leadership.

I was not able to observe any of the Karadzic trial and so, from time to time, followed news reports, and reports of contacts who were involved in some way in the case. So, I am not able to comment on all the factual findings of the trial judges set on in their long judgement in which they condemn Karadzic and his government in page after page after tedious page. Those who are aware of the real history of events will realize that every paragraph of condemnation is nothing more nor less than the same NATO propaganda put out during the conflict but made to look like a judgement. For it is not a judgement.

A true judgement in a criminal trial should contain the evidence presented by the prosecution, the evidence presented by the defence, the arguments of both sides about the evidence and should contain references to witness testimony both as they testified in chief and in cross-examination. Then there must be a reasoned decision by the judges on the merits of each party’s case and their reasoned conclusions. But you will be hard pressed to find a trace of any of the defence evidence in this document. I could find none except for a few references in a hand full of paragraphs and some footnotes in both of which testimony of a defence witness was briefly referred to in order to dismiss it and to dismiss it because it did not support the prosecution version of events.

Even more shocking is that there is no citation of verbal testimony, that is, witness testimony, to be found anywhere in the judgement. Instead there are references to “experts”, always Americans, connected to the CIA or State Department, who set out their version of history which the judges accept without question. There is no reference to any defence experts, and very little reference to any defence facts or argument at all. Consequently, there are no reasoned conclusions from the judges as to why they decided to accept the prosecution evidence but not the defence evidence. From reading this one would think no defence was presented, other than a token one. That is not a judgement.

But there is something even more troubling about this “judgement.” It is not possible to make out if there were witnesses who testified in person because there are few references to any. Instead there are countless references to documents of various kinds and “witness statements.”

This is an important factor in these trials because the witness statements referred to are statements made, or are alleged to have been made, by alleged witnesses, to investigators and lawyers working for the prosecution. We know from other trials that in fact these statements are often drafted by prosecution lawyers, as well as investigators, and then presented to the “witnesses” to learn by rote. We know also that the “witnesses” often came to the attention of the prosecution by routes that indicate the witnesses were presenting fabricated testimony and were recruited for that purpose.

At the Rwanda tribunal, we made a point in our trial of aggressively cross-examining these “witnesses” and they invariably fell apart on the stand, since they could not remember the scripts assigned to them. We further made a point of asking the “witnesses” how they came to meet with prosecution staff and how the interviews were conducted and how these statements were created. The results were an embarrassment to the prosecution as it became clear they had colluded with investigators to manipulate, pressure and influence “witnesses” and that they were complicit in inventing testimony.

Further, it is important for anyone reading this “judgement” to be able to refer to the pages in the transcripts at which the witnesses testified, what they testified to, and what they said in cross-examination, because a statement is not testimony. It is just a statement.

A statement cannot be used as evidence. That requires the witness to get in the box and to state what they observed. Then they can be questioned as to the reliability as observers, their bias if any, their credibility and so on. But in this case we see only references to “witness statements”. This indicates that the judges based their “judgement” not on the testimony of the witnesses (if they were called to testify) but on their written statements, prepared by the prosecution, and without facing any cross examination by the defence.

It is not clear at all from this judgement that any of the witnesses referred to in the statements actually testified or not, If they did then their testimony should be cited, not their statements. The only valid purpose the statements have is to notify the prosecutor of what a witness is likely to say in the trial, and to disclose to the defence so they can prepare their case and then use the statements in the trial to cross examine the witness by comparing the prior statement with their testimony in the box.

The formula is a simple one. The prosecution witness gets in the box, is asked to state what he observed about an event and then the defence questions the witness,

 Mr. Witness, in your statement dated x date you said this, but today you said that. …Let’s explore the discrepancy.

That’s how it I supposed to go. But where is it in this case? It is nowhere to be found.

Since I was not at the trial to observe I have no idea if these witnesses testified or not. If they did not and the prosecution simply filed one written statement after another before the judges why was that allowed to happen? If they testified, then why are there so few references to the trial transcripts? How can any researcher, any academic, any one analyse this case without that? How can Karadzic even file an appeal argument without the transcript references the judges had to use? Of course, that very fact gives him a ground for appeal, that the judgement is not a reasoned one as is required by law.

To sum up the situation, we have a document before us called a “judgement” in which certain positive things are said about President Milosevic. All well and good. But taken in its entirety it is a hatchet job on Dr. Karadzic, a NATO propaganda tract made out to be a legal judgement.

It contains within it no sense of the defence case or what the facts presented by the defence were or if any were even presented, what the defence arguments were on the facts, nor their legal arguments. But most importantly we have no idea what the testimony was of most of the prosecution witnesses and no idea what the testimony was of defence witnesses. It is as if there was no trial, and the judges just sat in a room sifting through prosecution documents writing the judgement as they went. We must suppose that this is not far from the truth.

And while the paragraphs referring to Milosevic may give some small consolation to us for his kidnapping and forced transportation to the Hague and forced trial it is a nightmare for Dr. Karadzic, who was forced to undergo the same ordeal and ended up with a “judgement” that is not worth the paper it’s written on and which pretends to condemn him while protecting the NATO powers from responsibility for their crimes.

Putin and Erdogan met in the early afternoon of August 9, 2016 in Saint Petersburg to discuss a variety of topics that have been waiting for months to be addressed. The discussion focused on the security and cooperation vital for the future of both nations. Many experts perceive this meeting to be the first step of an impending strategic realignment between Ankara and Moscow.

I am gratified to honor another invitation from the Detroit Unitarian Universalist Church where I have spoken before from this pulpit and other areas of this historic structure. It is important that this institution remains within this area now known as Midtown as a beacon of solidarity with an open door to those who have ideas and personal instincts that challenge the dominant intellectual and spiritual cannons that have shaped the United States and world over the last several centuries.

Our topic today addresses three of the most important unresolved questions of the 21^st century where we find ourselves in a global community with the capacity to rapidly and effectively communicate and influence those around the world. Despite our technological achievements in the ability to generate, calculate, analyze, disseminate, and file data the world system of capitalism has failed to provide an adequate standard of living to the majority of humanity.

Right here in the city of Detroit people are being driven out through state-sponsored efforts utilizing the tax revenue of working families to evict and displace those who are literally paying for their own oppression and exploitation. Thousands more households remain without water due to the egregious cut-offs–and in the case of Flint, the water is not fit to drink.

Although there have been nine indictments related to the Flint water crisis and a civil suit filed by the Michigan Attorney General’s office in Lansing, no real effort is being made to rebuild the majority African American city as a wholesome and safe place to live and work. Now a situation has arose over the disposal of trash compounding the social ills related to lead poisoning in children, legionnaire’s disease, skin problems and inflated water bills for an unclean product.

How can the treatment of people in major metropolitan industrial and service-centered areas be allowed to deteriorate to such a degree without high level officials being held accountable by fellow politicians and the courts? Where does the federal government step in to ostensibly protect the “civil rights” of ordinary residents from the tyranny of their local governments and private corporations? The wealthiest people within society are excused from paying adequate taxes and are allowed to expropriate the working people and poor, many of whom are Black and Brown.

W.E.B. Du Bois on Race as a Social Construct

Race as a biological construct has been largely discredited by modern historians, social scientists, evolutionary biologists and geneticists. Nonetheless, there have been so-called “scholars” who have suggested that African people are inherently inferior to Europeans.

These pseudo-scientific and racist academic arguments are advanced utilizing the tools of the research academies without providing adequate controls or acknowledgements of the socio-historical circumstances surrounding the nationally oppressed communities in the U.S. By attributing a biological basis for performance, integration and the supposed lack thereof, in actuality provides a rationale for the maintenance and even the reinforcement of the social status quo in America.

In fact these arguments of African inferiority were utilized to justify the enslavement of millions of people within North America as well as throughout the western hemisphere, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The believe that Europeans only have something to offer the peoples of the oppressed world and nothing to learn from them is not a view based upon historical assessment but one rooted in colonial and imperialist thought processes.

Although historians of western civilization trace its antecedents back to ancient Greece they fail to cite the writing of many of the historians and philosophers such as Herodotus who wrote a firsthand account on his travels to Egypt in the fifth century B.C. Herodotus’ observations are at variance with the notions of an uncivilized and inferior people. Of course many western historians have claimed in the past that Herodotus was a storyteller, however, he was not the only one who wrote of the ancient Egyptians and Ethiopians in such glowing terms.

Arthur Jensen in his February 1969 article in the Harvard Educational Review suggested that African Americans based upon their general performance on IQ test had lower capacity for learning than did whites. One must keep in mind that this theory generated much controversy and came about during a period of militant mass struggle against racism by the African American people.

Another ideological and pseudo-scientific racist William Shockley who did work on the transistors in the 1950s also advanced similar views on African American genetic inferiority. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), “Despite having no training whatsoever in genetics, biology or psychology, Shockley devoted the last decades of his life to a quixotic struggle to prove that black Americans were suffering from “dysgenesis,” or “retrogressive evolution,” and advocated replacing the welfare system with a “Voluntary Sterilization Bonus Plan,” which, as its name suggests, would pay low-IQ women to undergo sterilization. Although his theories were universally condemned by biologists as racist pseudoscience, Shockley partly succeeded in rehabilitating eugenics as an ideology by providing the foundations for a new, more politically savvy generation of academic racists, including Arthur Jensen, Richard Lynn and Charles Murray.”

This same SPLC website notes: “William Shockley’s importance in the development of modern electronics cannot be overstated. While working at Bell Labs during the 1940s and 50s, Shockley led the team that invented the transistor, for which he and his collaborators won numerous prizes and awards. In 1965, however, Shockley’s career took an abrupt turn from internationally famous physicist to a racist crank when he gave an address at a Nobel conference on ‘Genetics and the Future of Man.’ In his lecture, Shockley warned of the threat of ‘genetic deterioration’ and ‘evolution in reverse,’ problems exacerbated, he claimed, by the Great Society welfare programs that allowed the less genetically fit to reproduce at will, free from the constraints of natural selection.”

Just within the last two decades another book written under the cloak of academic legitimacy entitled “The Bell Curve” is described as follows by the intelltheory.com website saying: “The Bell Curve, published in 1994, was written by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray as a work designed to explain, using empirical statistical analysis, the variations in intelligence in American Society, raised some warnings regarding the consequences of this intelligence gap, and propose national social policy with the goal of mitigating the worst of the consequences attributed to this intelligence gap. Many of the assertions put forth and conclusions reached by the authors are very controversial, ranging from the relationships between low measured intelligence and anti-social behavior, to the observed relationship between low African-American test scores (compared to whites and Asians) and genetic factors in intelligence abilities. The book was released and received with a large public response. In the first several months of its release, 400,000 copies of the book were sold around the world. Several thousand reviews and commentaries have been written in the short time since the book’s publication. “

One African American historian and social scientist, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, a Harvard graduate in 1896, wrote his doctoral dissertation on “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870.” Some seven years later in his work entitled “Souls of Black Folk”, he foresaw the role of racism within the global oppressive system over the course of the 20^th century.

Du Bois said in chapter two of this book that: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points, of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question ever forced itself to the surface despite effort and disclaimer. No

sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised,

sprang from the earth. What shall be done with Negroes? Peremptory military commands this way and that, could not answer the query; the Emancipation Proclamation seemed but to broaden and intensify the difficulties; and the War Amendments made the Negro problems of today.” (1903)

I would venture to say that the problem of racism and racial domination continues into the second decade of the 21^st century. The disproportionate rates of police killings, vigilante violence and incarceration are a reflection of systematic racial profiling and a culture of impunity directed towards African Americans.

Dr. Du Bois later wrote in another classic work entitled “Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward A History Of The Part Which Black Folk Played In The Attempt To Reconstruct Democracy In America, 1860-1880”, on the economic imperatives of the racial enslavement and colonization of the African people, that: “The giant forces of water and of steam were harnessed to do the world’s work, and the black workers of America bent at the bottom of a growing pyramid of commerce and industry; and they not only could not be spared, if this new economic organization was to expand, but rather they became the cause of new political demands and alignments, of new dreams of power and visions of empire. First of all, their work called for widening stretches of new, rich, black soil — in Florida, in Louisiana, in Mexico; even in Kansas. This land, added to cheap labor, and labor easily regulated and distributed, made profits so high that a whole system of culture arose in the South, with a new leisure and social philosophy. Black labor became the foundation stone not only of the Southern social structure, but of Northern manufacture and commerce, of the English factory system, of European commerce, of buying and selling on a world-wide scale; new cities were built on the results of black labor, and a new labor problem, involving all white labor, arose both in Europe and America.” (Introduction, 1935)

This same author continues saying: “Thus, the old difficulties and paradoxes appeared in new dress. It became easy to say and easier to prove that these black men (or women) were not men (or women) in the sense that white men were, and could never be, in the same sense, free. Their slavery was a matter of both race and social condition, but the condition was limited and determined by race. They were congenital wards and children, to be well-treated and cared for, but far happier and safer here than in their own land.”

Unfortunately, these same ideas are very much in evidence today in the second decade of the 21^st century. Such thinking reaffirms discrimination and racism suggesting that the African people deserve the oppression and exploitation that they are subjected to on a daily basis. Claiming that African American communities are the primary sources of criminality then therefore these already oppressed areas deserve to be occupied by the police.

Moreover, the failure of the local, state and federal governmental structures to address these issues is an even greater crime. The votes of the African American people directed towards the Democratic Party for all intents and purposes mean nothing. Beyond the symbolism of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia where many African Americans served as delegates and spoke from the rostrum, what they carried away back to their home areas in all likelihood will not amount to much in the way of political capital let alone financial resources.

These factors within the context of the broader political landscape, guides us into the second area of concern for our discussion today. How does race and class merge into a system of national discrimination and economic exploitation?

Class Domination and Racial Unrest

For nearly two centuries and a-half the African people in North America were subjected to British, French, Spanish and American slavery and colonialism. Even with the much heralded War of Independence from 1776-1783, African people remained enslaved by the newly-formed United States of America. Was this a real revolution or a counter-revolution against the gradual dissolution of the British slave system in Europe and the possibility of it extending into colonies of North America and the Caribbean?

Gerald Horne, an African American historian, asserts in his book “The Counter-Revolution of 1776” emphasizing that: “Exactly, many of whom–George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry–were all slave owners. Even a future U.S. president, who was not necessarily involved in slavery, John Adams, was a lawyer for slave owners. John Hancock, whose name appears on the founding document, was one of the key slaveholders in Massachusetts, for example. You have to realize that slavery was not a sideshow. There’s evidence to suggest that slave voyages and slavery itself was one of the most lucrative enterprises ever devised in the brain of human beings, sometimes profits of 1,700 percent. As you know living in North America there are those today within a stone’s throw of the studio who would sell their firstborn for a profit of 1,700 percent, let alone an African they did not know.” (Real News Network Interview, 2014)

Horne also says: “Well, U.S. historians today generally argue that despite these, quote, problems you’ve just articulated, slavery remained profitable up to the time it was abolished in the United States in 1865. And an entire superstructure had developed to justify slavery. What I mean is the ideology that Africans were inferior, that if Africans weren’t enslaved, they would butcher each other.”

It would take another ninety years after the consolidation of the victory by the Americans over the British to end slavery in the U.S. There was a Civil War during 1861-65, one of the bloodiest encounters on U.S. soil, to end legalized human trafficking and bondage. The Civil War cannot be viewed separately from the two centuries of African resistance to slavery. In the 19^th century alone, the impact of the Haitian Revolution of 1804; Gabriel insurrection plot of 1800; influenced by the Haitian Revolution; as was the rebellion along the German coast near New Orleans in 1811; the alleged African Methodist Episcopal church-based conspiracy organized by Denmark Vesey in Charleston South Carolina in 1822; the Nat Turner revolt of Southampton County Virginia of 1831; along with John Brown and his comrades’ raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in 1859, often considered the opening shots of the Civil War, played a pivotal role in the ultimate battles that, although not necessarily intending to do so, resulted in the destruction of slavery as a profitable economic system.

Nonetheless, it would take another century after 1865 for the failed process of Reconstruction to re-emerge during the late 1950s into the 1960s. Even with the passage of a series of Civil Rights Bills from 1957 to 1968, a white backlash to the struggle for equality and self-determination would place obstacles in the path of the African American people aimed at total liberation.

The system of class domination would continue although taking on a different character beginning in the 1970s. A restructuring of the world capitalist system after 1975 eliminated millions of jobs, African American owned businesses, homes and communities. The impact of these developments served to reinforced class domination, racial polarization and isolation along with political disempowerment.

In recent years the Great Recession, the worst economic downturn since the Depression of the 1930s, had a tremendous negative impact on the African American people. We have seen this clearly in the city of Detroit where we once had the largest home-ownership rate among African American and working class people in the U.S. Many of our communities have been systematically destroyed and there is no official plan for their restoration or remaking.

I for one do not believe that these communities can be rebuilt from the top down by people who do not have our interests in mind. Their plans do not include us in any systematic program of revitalization and resurgence.

The city of Detroit has one of the highest rates of concentrated poverty in the country. In a review of a research report published earlier this year, the Detroit Free Press wrote in April citing: “A study recently released by the Brookings Institution says that metro Detroit has the highest rate of concentrated poverty among the top 25 metro areas in the U.S. by population. In the six-county region (Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, St. Clair, Lapeer), 32% of the poor live in census tracts where at least 40% of the population is below the federal poverty line, according to an analysis of 2010-2014 census figures by researchers at Brookings, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. In 2000, only 9% of the poor in metro Detroit lived in census tracts with a high concentration of poverty, ranking the region 10th among the top 25 metro areas. Now, metro Detroit has the highest at 32%, more than twice the rate of areas like metro Chicago, Houston and the national average of 13.5%.”

Many of the so-called “development” projects and “new investment” are not geared towards empowering the working class and poor. These efforts are self-serving for the rich and their surrogates within the corporate and state structures.

For example, the building of stadia has been documented not to improve the overall conditions of downtown areas let alone the underdeveloped neighborhoods many of which are populated by African Americans and Latinos. Since the construction of Ford Field and Comerica Park since the late 1990s, the conditions of the majority African American community has worsened. Although promises were made that these prestige modern landmarks would generate peripheral employment and small business opportunities, these realizations have proven non-existent.

Later during the 1990s, there was the opening of three casino hotels also said to be the solution to the problems of economic decline. There would be not only thousands of jobs but abundant tax revenues that could provide better municipal services and educational resources.

However, the much trumpeted tax revenues from the casinos became a major focus of contention during the illegally-imposed bankruptcy of 2013-14, the largest in U.S. municipal history. After all was said and done, the tax capturing trustees were awarded land and other assets to settle with the federal court while tens of thousands of retirees, employees and their families were robbed of billions in pension and healthcare benefits.

Moreover, paralleling the opening of the stadia in downtown Detroit and the casino hotels were two other not unrelated events. In 1999, the State of Michigan with legislative and local governmental approval took over the Detroit Public Schools under the false claims of a fiscal emergency. This decision proved to be an unmitigated disaster prefiguring a precipitous decline within public education and its concomitant negative consequences.

This “state control” and destruction of DPS continued for more than five years when an elected board dominated by corporate interests took control continuing the process of looting the system resulting in the lowering of performance. Scores of schools were closed between the years of 1999-2009, when a so-called “emergency manager” was appointed by Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm.

After 2009, the situation worsened with the shuttering of even more schools, over 200, aggravating the problems of blight and abandonment in the city. A number of the buildings closed were high-performing schools that served as stabilizing factors in the communities. When schools close parents and others often move since the impact on the neighborhoods exacerbates existing difficulties.

These measures taken against the DPS are justified by using racist assumptions and accusations saying that the administrators and elected officials running the system are corrupt and inefficient. However, those who come to “administer” the system under the guise of “improvement” using corporate models of governance, expropriate far more resources than the petty-bourgeois interests could ever carry out. These imposed elements have the full backing of the capitalist system and the federal government. There crimes are often rationalized by the business media which serves as cheerleaders for the further draining of the system.

Also during the late 1990s, the bank-engineered predatory lending schemes drove hundreds of thousands out of Detroit. The city lost a quarter of its population, over 235, 000, during the course of the last census period of 2000-2010. These financial plans were carried out with the full backing of local, state and federal governmental structures.

Where are these issues to be addressed within American officialdom? With the national conventions of two major parties held last month, there was no discussion of these critical factors related to the African American condition. Yet one party in particular will focus its attention on the African American people for votes in November without offering any real solutions to the problems plaguing our communities across the U.S.

The Democratic Party represents the same ruling class interests as the Republicans. It was the Clinton campaign that came under scrutiny for its close ties to Wall Street. The outgoing administration of President Barack Obama supported and later implemented the bailout of the banks absent of any real effort to repair the damage done to working class and so-called middle classes during the Great Recession. I say supposed middle class because many of those who thought they were somewhat privileged soon discovered that they were not. Tragically for us, the capitalists understand class struggle to a greater degree than the workers and oppressed. They are waging constant warfare against the people on a multifaceted level from both domestic and foreign policy directions.

The wars of regime-change and occupation are racist and imperialist in their character. It has largely been the peoples of the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific and Latin America who have borne the brunt of these militarist policies fostered by successive Republican and Democratic administration. It was the Obama administration, with Clinton serving as secretary of state, which destroyed the North African state of Libya. The oil-rich country under the Jamahiriya system headed by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, had achieved the status of being the most prosperous nation on the continent. Gaddafi had served as the chairman of the continental-wide African Union (AU) in 2009. The political foundation for the transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), founded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1963, to the AU was laid down in Sirte, Libya at an OAU meeting in 1999.

Therefore, our struggle is not just a local one. It takes on global dimensions in the sense that the resources which should be utilized to improve the conditions of our communities are being squandered in these military adventures. Our young people are returning from these unjust wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and other geo-political areas as broken human being. Thousands have died and been wounded. Hundreds of thousands are suffering from wounds both physical and psychological. Many are inflicted with closed head injuries and what is often generally described as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Nevertheless, the Veteran Administration (VA) has failed to provide the healthcare and social services needed for the re-integration of these people back into an American society where joblessness and poverty are widespread. Disproportionately these youth are from nationally oppressed, working class, immigrant and poor communities, whom can hardly afford to be further exploited through the lies and false premises that guide the Pentagon and White House in their continuing mad rush to war.

American Justice and Social Transformation

Perhaps the most blatant form of national oppression has been illustrated through the accelerated rate of police killings against African Americans. Overall, over 1000 people were killed during 2015 by law-enforcement agents. A disproportionate amount of these victims were from the African American communities.

I wrote in an article at the beginning of this year noting: “The U.S. political and economic system is rooted in racist violence and state repression aimed at maintaining the status-quo of racial capitalism. Consequently, the burgeoning movement to halt the use of lethal force will have to address this history as part of the contemporary struggle for its abolition. As the economic fabric of capitalism and its state structures experience deeper crises, the level of violence and repression will escalate. A greater emphasis has been placed on blocking retail outlets and refraining from any form of conspicuous consumption on the part of the oppressed, attacking the base of the system which is built on the exploitation of the majority of working people and African Americans as a whole.” (Global Research, Jan. 5)

Reinforcing the use of lethal force, the prison industrial complex contains over 2.5 million people in the U.S., the largest per capita incarceration rate in the world. African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately held in penal institutions and subjected to law-enforcement and judicial supervision. On a broader level most people sitting and working as slaves in correctional facilities come from the working class and poor populations.

As far as I know there are no millionaires and billionaires on death row. Despite crimes committed by the banks and the industrial firms against African Americans and working class people in general through the theft of jobs, homes, economic opportunities and political rights, none have been held legally accountable.

Both major political parties offer no program for the closing of the prisons and jails. We know from history that successive administrations since the 1980s, both Democratic and Republican, have fostered the exponential growth in mass incarceration at a rate of 500 percent. Under the Clinton administration during the 1990s, the president signed the ominous crime bill; the effective death penalty act among other measures that impose mandatory minimum sentencing; denying employment opportunities and federally subsidized housing to ex-felons; fueling recidivism; and the consequent social control of the African American people.

One of the founding members of the Black Lives Matter hashtag and movement, Alicia Garza, said of the current race for the White House, that “the Clintons use the Black community as a way to garner more votes. Alicia Garza discussed the Black Lives Matter movement and ‘systematic racism’ in America with Bloomberg Businessweek. In her interview, she claimed that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton does not back up her claims that she cares for the Black community. Garza said that the Clintons routinely use the Black community for their own benefit. ‘The Clintons use Black people for votes, but then don’t do anything for Black communities after they’re elected. They use us for photo ops,’ Garza said.” (Bloomberg, Aug. 4)

Continuing in the interview, “Garza also had words for former President Bill Clinton, who she said angered her over a comment he made to black protesters. During a campaign event for Hillary Clinton, Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted Clinton’s event. Bill Clinton told the protesters that they were ‘defending the people who kill the lives you say matter.’ ‘I was angry about that for about a month—seriously, like every single day. It’s reprehensible for him to defend the impacts his policies have had on our communities,’ Garza told Bloomberg Businesssweek. Garza also declared that despite Clinton’s claims that ‘Black lives matter,’ she has participated in processes that had a negative effect on Black people. Early on, she would say, ‘Yes, Black lives matter,’ but she wouldn’t acknowledge her role in processes that fundamentally showed Black lives did not matter. She says that she is for economic justice, but she doesn’t support $15 an hour as the minimum wage,’ Garza told Bloomberg Businessweek.

Towards the end of the interview, Garza declared that the Black community is not ‘indebted’ to the Democratic Party in any way.”

The Way Forward Towards Total Liberation

Therefore I believe that the path to African American liberation is through independent mass organization and mobilization. How many times are we to be subjected to the lies and broken promises of the bipolar political party system in the U.S.? What do we get for our votes and tax dollars: more repression, poverty and political disempowerment?

The changing character of the world system requires new approaches to politics that proceed from the ground up and not vice versa. As long as we wait for the wealthy and their surrogates to bring about our freedom we will remain in neo-slavery and neo-colonialism.

Independent politics and organization requires new thinking. It demands full participation of the most impacted and oppressed as the leadership of the struggle. Absent of these essential ingredients we cannot move forward beyond the contemporary political impasse.

Let us begin a process of renewal and regeneration of ideas and work processes where we take responsibility for the liberation from oppression and economic exploitation. We need this to become a reality and this line of march can ensure that we take control of both our present and the future.

Note: This address was delivered in part before the congregation and guests at the Detroit Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday August 7, 2016. Azikiwe was the featured speaker at the morning services held at the church located in the Midtown area of the city.

Once upon a time, there was a man called James Buchanan. He was a Democrat, a Secretary of State and then the President of the United States. A good friend of mine, a historian, told me about him.

Buchanan was the last U.S. President who previously served as Secretary of State. He was a Pennsylvania native, and he took his place in the Oval Office in 1857.

Now, more than 150 years later, Hilary Clinton may be about to follow in his footsteps. And some footsteps they were!

Before serving as Secretary of State (in the administration of President James K. Polk), James Buchanan was a Senator, elected as a Democrat, same as Ms. Clinton.

While heading the State Department, the future President did some nasty, really nasty things, like provoking a war with Mexico and defining Washington’s colonialist policy towards Cuba and the Caribbean basin. Elected President at a time of growing animosity between the industrial anti-slavery North and agrarian pro-slavery South, he was unable to calm the passions of the opposing sides and to find a political solution to the crises. He committed some of the most outrageous errors, and to this day is remembered as one of the worst leaders in American history, being held responsible for the Civil War, which started just a few months after he retired. Before stepping down as a President, Buchanan’s only suggestion for averting the disaster was issuing “an explanatory amendment” reaffirming the constitutionality of slavery in the states, the fugitive slave laws, and popular sovereignty in the territories.

The National Intelligencer, then a leading opposition newspaper, published a biting, sarcastic piece about Buchanan’s adventurism and expansionism:

We must retrench the extravagant list of magnificent schemes which received the sanction of the Executive … the great Napoleon himself, with all the resources of an empire at his sole command, never ventured the simultaneous accomplishments of so many daring projects. The acquisition of Cuba … ; the construction of a Pacific Railroad … ; a Mexican protectorate, the international preponderance in Central America, in spite of all the powers of Europe; the submission of distant South American states; … the enlargement of the Navy; a largely increased standing Army … what government on earth could possibly meet all the exigencies of such a flood of innovations?

Sounds familiar?

Hillary Clinton, also a former Senator for the Democratic Party, also used her time at the State Department in the most ‘effective way’: she initiated a war in Libya, provoked a devastating civil war in Syria and masterminded coup in Honduras, while provoking and antagonizing left wing governments in virtually all parts of Latin America.

Running for President of the United States at a time of growing social tension and what is often described as ‘popular outrage’, Ms. Clinton, just like Mr. Buchanan, is now offering absolutely no new, progressive and effective solutions or reforms that could prevent the situation from slipping into a shattering social disaster. She is fighting for the status quo, and in the process eliminating her political opponents in the most Machiavellian fashion.

Many now predict that if Hillary Clinton is elected, her reign may lead into a real tragedy similar to the one that occurred in the United States a little over 150 years ago.

Unlike James Buchanan, she also sits on a pile of nuclear weapons, while doing her absolute best to antagonize and provoke two powerful and independent-minded nations: China and Russia. Her policies could easily lead to the most destructive international conflict, or even a series of conflicts. But it does not seem to distress her. She is on her ego trip, and on a crusade!

While history judges Mr. Buchanan simply as an inept, bigoted and trigger-happy imperialist and supremacist, Ms. Clinton also shares all those characteristics of her predecessor, but with her own unique touch: she is also in possession of those grotesque and deadly “qualities” of Dr. Strangelove.

*

Human beings are not as complex as we often think they are, and history tends to repeat itself.

Both of this year’s US Presidential candidates have, undoubtedly, their doubles in the not so distant past. While Donald Trump’s ones lived in the 20^th Century in Germany and Italy, Hilary Clinton had a homegrown predecessor; a man who was defending slavery and the status quo and who, most importantly, turned the United States into an aggressive imperialist and neo-colonialist power.

*

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

Russia’s Weakness Is Its Economic Policy

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and Michael Hudson, August 11 2016

According to various reports, the Russian government is reconsidering the neoliberal policy that has served Russia so badly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. If Russia had adopted an intelligent economic policy, Russia’s economy would be far ahead of where it stands today. It would have avoided most of the capital flight to the West by relying on self-finance.

The Criminality of American and British Illegal Immigrants in Syria

By Felicity Arbuthnot, August 11 2016

It’s really 19th century behavior in the 21st century. You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests. (Secretary of State, John Kerry, “Meet the Press”, 2nd March 2014.) Were it not so serious it would be hilarious. The British have voted to leave the European Union on the basis of the combination of a pack of lies by Government Ministers backing the “out” campaign and a whipped up xenophobia about all those “foreigners” taking jobs, homes, places on public transport etc. A truly shameful throwback to the era of hotels and boarding houses exhibiting signs saying: “No dogs, no blacks, no Irish.” Now they would add: “and no Europeans, no Arabs, no Muslims – only UK passport holders”, were the garbage in the media and spewed by the “Outers” to be believed.

Media Silence and the Agrochemicals Industry: The Slow Poisoning of Health and the Environment

By Colin Todhunter, August 11 2016

It’s an all too common tale of dirty deeds, shady deals and propaganda. Rosemary Mason’s recent open letter to journalists at The Guardian outlines how the media is failing the public by not properly reporting on the regulatory delinquency relating to GM food and the harmful chemicals being applied to crops. Much of the media is even (unwittingly) acting as a propaganda arm for big agritech companies.

NYT Insinuates Trump Wants Hillary Assassinated

By Stephen Lendman, August 11 2016

Times anti-Trump propaganda reached a new low with an August 9 article, editorial and commentary Its propaganda turned truth on its head, suggesting Trump wants “gun rights supporters…tak(ing) matters into their own hands” by assassinating Clinton if she prevails in November. What prompted such outrageous rubbish? At an August 9 North Carolina rally, he said “Hillary wants to abolish the Second Amendment…If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks.”

Bungling the Australian Census

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 11 2016

Each country needs its exceptionalist message, its sui generis theme. We do something here no one else does, and such like. In Australia, there are many things deemed exceptional. Compulsory voting, on pain of a fine, is one such case. Compulsory voting in a census is another extension of that same philosophy. To not submit, and be damned by the extortionist drive of the State.

Britain Not Officially at War but Fully Engaged on the Front-Line of Deadly War Zones

By Graham Vanbergen, August 11 2016

“We do not disclose details of all ongoing operations, (says the MoD), as disclosure would prejudice the security of the Armed Forces.” This is the stock answer given to any journalist attempting to enquire why it is that Britain is officially not at war with any country yet combat troops, special forces, fighter bombers and killer drones operate as though the opposite was true.

Anyone who has been following Ukraine related news over the last few days will be aware of reports of Russian troop movements in Crimea, of a shoot out there between the Russian security forces and alleged Ukrainian infiltrators which left several people dead, and of claims that Ukrainian sabotage groups had attempted to infiltrate the peninsula.

On  10th August 2016 came final confirmation of the incident from Russia’s counterintelligence and anti terrorism agency, the FSB (full statement attached below).  It reported separate incidents involving three Ukrainian sabotage groups connected to the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, shoot outs between FSB operatives and the Russian military and the Ukrainian military across the border line, and the deaths of one FSB operative and of one Russian soldier caught up in the shoot outs.  Other reports speak of the death of at least two Ukrainian infiltrators, and of the capture of several others, which claims however the FSB report does not confirm. The FSB report does however speak of twenty improvised explosive devices containing more than 40 kilograms of TNT equivalent, ammunition, fuses, antipersonnel and magnetic bombs, grenades and the Ukrainian armed forces’ standard special weapons being found in one of the locations involved in the incident.

The FSB report also says that several Ukrainian and Russian citizens belonging to an undercover spy ring operating inside Crimea have been arrested on charges of planning to help the saboteurs.  The FSB has named the ringleader as Yevgeny Panov, a resident of Ukraine’s Zaporozhye region born in 1977, who the FSB says is an employee of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate.  Presumably he has been working in Crimea for some time under cover.  The FSB says it has arrested him and that he is “giving evidence”.

The FSB has not identified the targets of the saboteurs other than saying that they were “critical infrastructure and life support facilities on the peninsula”.  Some Russian media reports have suggested that the intention was to create “false flag” incidents that would set Crimea’s Tatar and Russian communities against each other.  The reference to “critical infrastructure and life support facilities on the peninsula” does not however support this.  Rather it suggests an attempt to disrupt power supplies and possibly water treatment plants at the height of Crimea’s tourist season and on the eve of the elections.

The Ukrainians for their part deny all these allegations, claiming that the whole incident has been invented by the Russians.  The Western media, predictably enough, is following the Ukrainian line with wild speculations that the Russians have fabricated the whole incident in order to justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine during the Olympic Games.

Whilst the full truth of this incident will only become known over time – when or if people like Panov are put on trial – there is actually no reason to doubt that the Russian account is true.  The Russians are hardly likely to arrange the death of one of their own FSB operatives and of one of their soldiers in order to fabricate an incident like this, and the report of the capture of several of the saboteurs, and the confirmation of the arrest of the members of the spy ring which was created to support them, all but confirms that the Russian claims about this incident are true. Indeed given that Ukrainian leaders frequently speak of Ukraine being at war with Russia it is not difficult to see why they might authorise a sabotage mission of this sort in order to disrupt elections which would confirm the extent of Crimea’s integration into Russia.  Presumably the Ukrainian plan was to claim that the attacks were the result of local anti-Russian resistance cells, thereby fostering the fiction that there is opposition within Crimea to its unification with Russia.  It has been a cause of serious embarrassment to the Ukrainian leadership and its Western backers that there has been no real evidence of such opposition up to now.  The sabotage mission appears to have been intended to “correct” this.

Two days ago I reported about a meeting Putin had with his security chiefs which appeared to have been hurriedly convened in a secret location.  I speculated that the meeting was held to discuss the situation in Aleppo.  Whilst Aleppo undoubtedly was discussed at this meeting as shown by the presence of Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Kremlin’s account of the meeting – which referred to Putin’s forthcoming meetings with foreign leaders, of whom the two most important were President Erdogan of Turkey and President Rouhani of Iran with whom the topic of Syria and Aleppo would certainly be discussed – the meeting between Putin and his security chiefs undoubtedly also discussed the situation in Crimea, and the reports of the Ukrainian sabotage mission there.

Might there have been any other purpose to this Ukrainian sabotage mission other than to create the appearance of instability in Crimea during the tourist season and during the coming election season?  Putin in the joint press conference he held in Moscow following his meeting with Armenia’s President Sargsyan linked the incident to the attempted murder of Igor Plotnitsky, the leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic.  If true that would suggest that having despaired of a military victory the government in Kiev is now turning to assassination and sabotage tactics in order to keep the struggle with Russia going and to achieve its political goals.  Alternatively it could be that the Ukrainians have carried out these operations in preparation for the summer offensive in the Donbass that has been much talked about but which has yet to happen, though it is not clear how planting bombs in Crimea could aid a military offensive in the Donbass.  Yet another explanation is that the Ukrainians might be sensing a weakening in European support and might have launched the operation in order to heighten tensions and to rally support and to further undermine the Minsk II peace process.

My own opinion is that the most likely explanation for this frankly reckless action – which will cause serious embarrassment to some of Ukraine’s European backers even if they are not prepared to say so publicly – is the chaotic condition of the Ukrainian power structure and the perennial infighting that goes on there.  Given the luridly romantic language many members of the Maidan movement customarily like to indulge in I can easily see how the sabotage operation in Crimea and the murder attempt on Plotnitsky – if the two are indeed connected – might have been planned by individuals in Kiev who might think that the success of such operations would increase their credibility and popularity within the Maidan movement and therefore their chances of achieving political success in Ukraine.

Whatever the precise motivations behind this incident Putin has made it very clear that the Russians are taking it extremely seriously.  He has already said that there will no Normandy Four meeting with Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko at the forthcoming G20 summit in China.  Moreover and in contrast to what happened following the trial of Savchenko, whose actions were carried out in the Donbass and therefore in territory the Russians continue to recognise as Ukrainian, I expect the Russians to be much slower to agree to prisoner exchanges of the Ukrainian operatives who were involved in this mission and who they accuse of carrying out or planning to carry out violent actions on Russian territory.

Here is the text of the statement describing the incidents which has been provided by the FSB:

“The Russian FSB averted terrorist acts in the Republic of Crimea that were being prepared by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

The Russian FSB averted terrorist acts in the Republic of Crimea that were being prepared by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, and which targeted certain critical infrastructure and life support facilities on the peninsula.

The goal of the attacks was the destabilisation of the socio-political situation on the peninsula prior to the approaching elections to the federal and regional governmental institutions.

The search operations carried out during the night of 6/7 August 2016 in the vicinity of the city of Armyansk, Republic of Crimea, uncovered a group of saboteurs. While attempting to detain the terrorists, an FSB operative was killed by enemy gunfire. The following was discovered on the scene: 20 improvised explosive devices with a total explosive power of 40kg TNT, munitions, special detonators, standard-issue anti-personnel and magnetic land mines, grenades, and special-issue weapons used by Ukrainian armed forces’ special operations units.

The follow-on measures on the territory of the Republic of Crimea eliminated a network of agents operated by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Ukrainian and Russian citizens, engaged in the preparation of terrorist attacks, were arrested, and are now giving evidence. One of the organisers is Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Panov, born 1977, an inhabitant of the Zaporozhye Region of Ukraine, an operative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukrainian MOD, who has also been arrested and is giving evidence.

During the night of August 8, 2016, Ukrainian MOD special operations units attempted two more infiltrations by saboteur units which were prevented by the armed units of the FSB and collaborating entities. The infiltration effort was covered by heavy fire from the adjacent country, including by armored vehicles belonging to Ukrainian military. A Russian soldier was killed by the fire.

On the basis of the investigative and combat actions, the Crimea FSB Directorate’s investigations department has launched a criminal case. Additional investigative measures are being implemented. Places where large groups of tourists are concentrating and resting, and critically important infrastructure and life support facilities have been taken under additional security. A strengthened border control regime has been introduced on the border with Ukraine.”

(Translated by J. Hawk, as previously published on South Front)

The Serbian and Chinese defence ministries were the first to respond to Moscow’s international call for help in Syria, Russian news agency Tass reported on Tuesday.

“The Russian defence ministry is grateful to the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Serbia, who were the first to come out in support of the Russian-Syrian initiative to conduct a humanitarian operation,” the Russian ministry said in a statement.

“We count on further practical steps by these countries’ defence ministries in support of the Russian efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to the population of Aleppo,” it added.

Official invitations to join the operation have also been dispatched to the US military and to most European and Asian countries.

Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu announced the beginning of a major humanitarian operation in Aleppo on July 28.

Apart from calling for the help of armed forces worldwide, his ministry said it had asked various international humanitarian organisations, which also agreed to help.

Some 250,000 people are believed to live in rebel-held parts of Aleppo which have been under siege by Bashar al-Assad’s government forces backed by Russia for weeks.

The United Nations on Tuesday called for a ceasefire in the city to allow the delivery of food and medicines and water facilities to be repaired.

“The UN stands ready to assist the civilian population of Aleppo, a city now united in its suffering,” a UN statement said.

“At a minimum, the UN requires a full-fledged ceasefire or weekly 48-hour humanitarian pauses to reach the millions of people in need throughout Aleppo and replenish the food and medicine stocks, which are running dangerously low,” it added.

The US on Monday called on the UN Security Council to ensure that all sides in Aleppo received aid, not just areas loyal to al-Assad.

“If the fighting continues it is conceivable that civilians on both sides of Aleppo could be cut off from the basic assistance they need. We cannot allow this to happen,” said the US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power.

Power also urged Russia to “to stop facilitating these sieges and to use its influence to press the regime to end its sieges across Syria once and for all”.

Moscow however has accused Washington of politicising the humanitarian aid issue.

Russian military intervention in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad started last September but has been criticised by several international rights organisations over civilian casualties caused by air strikes.

The Russian military has denied intentionally endangering civilians.

This week marks two years since President Barack Obama initiated the latest US war against Iraq and Syria, launched in the name of combating the Islamic State militia. The American president cast the new military intervention as not only a continuation of the “global war on terrorism,” but also a crusade for human rights, invoking the threat to Iraq’s Yazidi population and insisting that he could not “turn a blind eye” when religious minorities were threatened.

The toll of this supposed humanitarian intervention has grown ever bloodier. According to a report released this week by the monitoring group Airwars to mark the anniversary, more than 4,700 civilian non-combatant fatalities have been reported as a result of the “US-led Coalition’s” air strikes (95 percent of which have been carried out by US warplanes). More innocent Iraqi and Syrian men, women and children have been slaughtered by American bombs in the course of two years than the total number of US soldiers who lost their lives during the eight years of the Iraq war launched by President George W. Bush in 2003.

All of Washington’s lies and pretexts about its latest war in the Middle East—as well as the decade-and-a-half of wars waged since 9/11—have been exploded in the course of the past several days as the US government and media celebrated purported victories by “rebel” forces in the battle for control of Aleppo, Syria’s former commercial capital.

That the “rebel” offensive has been organized and led by an organization that for years constituted Al Qaeda’s designated Syrian branch, and the operation was named in honor of a Sunni sectarian extremist who carried out a massacre of captured Syrian Alawite soldiers, gave none of them pause. So much for the hogwash about terrorism and human rights!

The scale of the military gains made by the Al Qaeda-led forces in Aleppo are by no means clear. They have, however, apparently succeeded in placing under siege the western part of the city, which is under the government’s control and where the overwhelming majority of the population lives. The “rebels” have killed and maimed hundreds of people with mortar and artillery rounds.

Washington and its allies, the Western media and the human rights groups that accused the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad of crimes against humanity for bombing the jihadists in eastern Aleppo are now indifferent when these imperialist-backed terrorists are killing civilians in the western part of the city.

Sections of the Western media have gone so far as to celebrate the exploits of “rebel” suicide bombers for providing a strategic “advantage” for the Western-backed militias. Among the most dishonest and duplicitous accounts of the recent fighting are those that have appeared in the pages of the New York Times, whose news coverage and editorial line are carefully tailored to serve the predatory aims of US imperialism.

In a Monday article on Aleppo, the Times wrote that the challenge to government control had been mounted by “rebels and their jihadist allies.” The article continued: “A vital factor in the rebel advance over the weekend was cooperation between mainstream rebel groups, some of which have received covert arms support from the United States, and the jihadist organization formerly known as the Nusra Front, which was affiliated with Al Qaeda.”

The newspaper reports this as casually as if it were publishing a report on the late artist formerly known as Prince. The Nusra Front changed its name to the Fatah al-Sham Front and announced its formal disaffiliation from Al Qaeda—with the latter’s blessing—just one week before it launched the offensive in Aleppo.

There is every reason to believe that this rebranding was carried out in consultation with the CIA in an attempt to politically sanitize direct US support for an offensive led by a group that has long been denounced by Washington as a terrorist organization.

The Times never names any of the “mainstream rebel groups” it says are fighting alongside the Al Qaeda militia, suggesting that they constitute some liberal progressive force. In point of fact, one of these groups recently released a video showing its fighters beheading a wounded 12-year-old child, and virtually all of them share the essential ideological outlook of Al Qaeda.

The Financial Times of London carried one of the frankest reports on the Aleppo “rebel” offensive, noting that it “may have had more foreign help than it appears: activists and rebels say opposition forces were replenished with new weapons, cash and other supplies before and during the fighting.” It cites reports of daily columns of trucks pouring across the Turkish border for weeks with arms and ammunition, including artillery and other heavy weapons.

The newspaper quotes one unnamed Western diplomat who said that US officials backed the Al Qaeda-led offensive “to put some pressure back on Russia and Iran,” which have both provided key military support to the Assad government.

The Financial Times also quotes an unnamed “military analyst” as stating that the character of the fighting indicated the Al Qaeda forces had received not only massive amounts of weapons, but also professional military training.

Significantly, even as the fighting in Aleppo was underway, photographs surfaced of heavily armed British commandos operating long-range patrol vehicles in northern Syria. Similar US units are also on the ground. These are among the most likely suspects in terms of who is training Al Qaeda’s Syrian forces.

They would only be reprising the essential features of the imperialist operation that gave rise to Al Qaeda 30 years ago, when the CIA—working in close alliance with Osama bin Laden—supplied similar support to the mujahedeen fighting to overthrow the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan.

While the blowback from that episode ultimately gave us September 11, the present operation in Syria holds far greater dangers. In what is now openly described by the corporate media as a “proxy war” in which Al Qaeda serves as US imperialism’s ground force, Washington is attempting to overthrow Russia’s key Middle East ally as part of the preparations for a war aimed at dismembering and subjugating Russia itself.

The frontrunner in the US presidential contest, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has repeatedly signaled that she intends to pursue a far more aggressive policy in Syria and against Russia, making neo-McCarthyite charges of Vladimir Putin’s supposed subversion of the US election process a central part of her campaign.

Whether Washington can wait till inauguration day next January to escalate its aggression is far from clear. The “rebel” gains in Aleppo may be quickly reversed and the fighting could end with the US-backed Al Qaeda militias deprived of their last urban stronghold.

US imperialism is not about to accept the re-consolidation of a Syrian government aligned with Moscow. Pressure will inevitably mount for a more direct and more massive US intervention, threatening a direct clash between American and Russian forces.

Fifteen years after launching its “war on terror,” Washington is not only directly allied with the supposed target of that war—Al Qaeda—but is preparing to unleash upon humanity the greatest act of terror imaginable, a third world war.

Lately, it’s been common to say that the “right has come out of the closet” in Brazil. More precisely, the authoritarian, fascist right, has done so and very publicly for that matter. The revolutionary potential of June 2013 [Ed.: see Bullet No. 851], even if convoluted and smeared by depoliticization, held enough of a threat to require immediate hegemonic renewal, especially at the ideological level. The hegemonic renewal of the right was empowered by the depoliticized aspects of the conflicts exposed in June, such as when desire for more investment in health and education became captured by an aimless fight against corruption permeated by ultra-nationalist, moralist, and authoritarian discourse. Speech that wasn’t acceptable in the past because it would out someone as a bigot came into fashion again.

A portion of the right that is configured in authoritarian terms takes pride in denying the history of the military dictatorship and its violations while asking for repression, torture, and a straightforward witch-hunt for communists. Some of their demands border on the absurd, as would be their claim that the Workers’ Party (PT) is communist (when whether it is even leftist is up for debate) or their opposition to Paulo Freire and his pedagogy, which is praised internationally. Hate is a huge part of the authoritarian right, which we have seen around Donald Trump’s politics in the U.S., but he does not define it alone. The authoritarian right has a precise political project that feeds on hate as well as on depoliticization, crisis, and the fear of social change and justice that could threaten the privilege of a few and the illusion of privilege of millions. This project has a particular and powerful weapon aimed at maintaining common sense: censorship.

Image: Fans protest President Michel Temer’s presence in Mineirão stadium: “Come Back Democracy.”

Frail Democracy, Authoritarianism’s Birthplace

Censorship is a traditional form of repressing dissent of all cadres under authoritarian regimes. But it also thrives in the context of diminishing democratic rights of liberal democratic regimes tending toward authoritarianism. As much as I would like to blame this on Michel Temer and the post-impeachment government, which is intent on taking away rights and selling Brazil out to the financial and imperialist market, it isn’t this simple. The current form of the authoritarian culture of censorship has ambiguous roots in antipetismo (anti Workers’ Party (PT in Portuguese) sentiment) and its derailment into anti-leftism as well as in the political choices made by the Workers’ Party in power to give into conservative pressure and stifle diversity and alternative perspectives.

In 2011, Dilma Rousseff vetoed a simple yet advanced project to fight homophobia in Brazilian schools, which involved an honest discussion of diversity and respect. The educational package was considered to be “gender indoctrination” by the evangelicals in Congress and congressman Jair Bolsonaro (known for his homophobic remarks/attacks and his praise of military dictators). Rousseff claimed that the material, carefully prepared by the Ministry of Education, was “inadequate” and the end of the story – except that this veto opened the doors to more censorship at the schools, culminating in the Escola Sem Partido project (to be examined later), and to more conspiracy theories about communists and their indoctrination of our children through Paulo Freire and “communist gender ideology.” Rousseff also subordinated women’s struggles to religious opinion by arguing that she would stay out of the abortion debate, and her government’s response to oppression was coloured by punitivist approaches even though there is a lively debate on how criminalization could worsen the problem of incarceration and the unfairness of the Brazilian justice system against the underprivileged.

Democracy, in the sense of a system that fosters liberty, social rights, diversity, justice, and recognition, wasn’t exactly in its best shape before the impeachment. In 2014, the most conservative congress in Brazil’s recent history was elected and it proceeded to make things worse. The ultra-political scenario in the making to oust Rousseff also contributed to it, since the more people hated the PT, the more they would hate the values they thought the PT represented, despite the current mismatch between the party and its historical roots. This was a turning point for social movements, which although criminalized by the PT governments – who can forget the World Cup persecutions and Rousseff’s own anti-terrorism bill? – began to face more than government surveillance, including actual public scrutiny and attacks from those captured by the authoritarian right-wing discourse of promoting the Brazilian flag’s motto of “order and progress,” which translates in reality to “status quo renewal.”

The Internet, of course, is a huge part of that process and it can’t be dismissed just because its anonymity and distance nurture hate and lack of empathy on a normal basis. If we recognize that social media was an important player in June 2013, we have to reckon with the fact that it was for better and for worse. The new social movements of the right have done well online, as has the space taken up by personalities such as Jair Bolsonaro, Reinaldo Azevedo, Olavo de Carvalho, and a range of other bigots whose audience expands into the regular non-fascist crowd depending on the topic of the day. They benefit from the general conservative nature of common sense in Brazil, which has done a fine job in suppressing the more progressive voices of June and rallying up forces against those who have endured in the left. The authoritarian right also counts on the power of the mainstream media for amplification. This adds to the most common expression of depoliticization as observed from a Gramscian perspective: people are led to believe in the values of the ruling class and to promote ideas and projects that work directly against them. Their practical consciousness tells them to go one way, but the ideological stronghold of the ruling class, now ever louder, pushes their theoretical consciousness away from an emancipatory perspective. Censorship serves to maintain this arrangement through manufactured consent and to repress those who can escape common sense, which includes the left and its base, as well as a wide range of social groups that hold on to the democratic values mentioned earlier, through coercion and threats of coercion.

Censorship as Coercion

The ruling class resorts to coercion whenever consent is threatened. Consent was threatened at a massive scale in June 2013. What could not be controlled with the assistance of false claims of neutrality core to the post-political aspects of the period had to be fought by instigating fear, hate, and disgust at the cultural level and by employing the justice system of the powerful and the police state at the institutional level. The cultural level is arguably more dangerous because it also contributes to censorship as consent and creates a scenario where enemies are everywhere and civility is no longer a requirement for living in a society. It is no wonder that the protests against Dilma Rousseff and in favour of Michel Temer were heavily populated by a mixture of hate, imbecility, and dishonesty. How else to characterize calls against corruption and for corruption at the same time? Or the attacks against teachers and public education? How about the giant inflatable soldier wearing a presidential ribbon in the middle of São Paulo’s Paulista avenue? These voices belong to generally white people from the middle to the upper classes who claim to stand up for decency and for honesty while some of their own attack a young man for wearing a red t-shirt or boast of “almost lynching” a famous actress who has spoken against the impeachment. Not to mention the self-proclaimed “communist hunters” or the military reservist who, the other day, spoke with pride of killing communists in Angola. The authoritarian right makes up only a portion of the right-wing that has benefitted from the current political crisis, but this does not make of fascism a small problem. The matter with fascists is often that what they lack in numbers they make up in connections and structural power.

This is where cultural censorship builds into the institutional realm. Societies are more and more litigious today, and this litigation is one of those strange symptoms of the assertion of liberal liberties. While everyone is free to litigate, only a few can do so with the certainty that the rules are in their favour the majority of time. This is why Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes thought it was appropriate to sue Homeless Workers’ Movement leader Guilherme Boulos for moral damages after Boulos published a column on the minister’s nefarious dealings in politics. Boulos won, but this has not discouraged other right-wing actors from suing or pressing charges against left-wing dissidence who voice their criticism and opposition. Mendes has now taken advantage from his judiciary power to propose that the court repeals the registry of the Workers’ Party, which would bring back precedents from the military dictatorship.[1]

Evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia is often threatening to sue everyone, especially journalists and LGBTQ activists, and Jair Bolsonaro gets to press charges against activists because he doesn’t appreciate name-calling unless it comes out of his mouth and is directed at an oppressed group or individual. Institutional censorship doesn’t even have to be personal. Another Supreme Court Justice, Rosa Weber, will be long remembered for subpoenaing Dilma Rousseff to explain her usage of the word “coup” to refer to the impeachment. A month earlier one of the right-wing parties took Rousseff to court to prevent her from addressing the nation about the impeachment. The right-wing opposition also sought to censor her by preventing the elected president from travelling to the United States to make a scheduled speech at the UN headquarters.

The Olympics, which just began in Rio de Janeiro, have been no exception. A previous agreement supported by the Rousseff administration to prevent public displays of protests inside the venues of mega-events is being taken farther than before by the Temer government. Just a few days into the competitions, the national force has thrown out supporters who were protesting with “Temer out” signs or simply shouting it out loud. What Rousseff started in terms of the repression of social movement voices has evolved into a more generalized censorship of speech under Temer.

Although censorship at the educational level is normalized through consent and curriculum control, the fragility of democratic conventions presents opportunities to punish teachers and students for their critical thought. The Escola Sem Partido project of general educational censorship and unitary thinking is still in the oven and we already have teachers being suspended or subpoenaed all over the country. In the state of Paraná, high school teacher Gabriela Viola, whose job is to teach Sociology, was suspended after her students produced a music assignment on Karl Marx, one of the founders of Sociology. The school director argued that the teacher had defamed the school; its employees later repressed a student protest in favour of the teacher with the help of the police. In the Federal District centred around Brasilia, District Deputy Sandra Faraj notified a public school in the periphery for teacher Deneir de Jesus Meirelles’ assignment on gender and sexuality. The theme is part of the national curriculum, but teachers are already being coerced into leaving content out of their classrooms to abide by the code proposed by the right in the Escola Sem Partido project.

Censorship as Consent

Nicknamed “Muzzle Law,” the Escola Sem Partido (School without a Party) project employs coercive methods against teachers in order to stifle critical thought at its “source” and to create a generation of pacified students and youth. Coercion for the teachers, consent from the students in the long run. Its proponents ask for prison time and heavy fines for teachers accused of the crime of “ideological harassment,” claiming that politics has no place in the classroom and that students are too vulnerable to be exposed to certain subjects. The real objective, however, is to further standardize pedagogical content, which is already heavily criticized in Brazil for its “banking model” of education, so that alternative and critical knowledge is left out of the curriculum. For instance, Brazilian curriculum has few elective options and they are often related to the arts. Technical content around Mathematics and Physics is prioritized over Sociology and History, and the nature of the university entrance system leads schools to focus on communicating the most amount of content in the shortest time. Students become overloaded and often resort to memorizing to make it through exams and all the way to university. Therefore, they are not exactly learning critical thought to its fullest potential today, but the few opportunities they currently have will be taken away if Escola Sem Partido goes through as national policy.

The project is aimed at institutionalizing depoliticization, which can only benefit the status quo and leave unchallenged the information fed through the media and common sense reproduction. Its name “without a party” is deceiving with a purpose. The crisis of representation exposed in June 2013 was partly carried into an overall rejection of political parties. This was deemed to be generally progressive by the Brazilian left, considering that the party format in Brazil’s pluriparty system has long been deformed to favour capitalist representation. The depoliticized evolution of anti-party rejection, however, backfired on the left for a variety of reasons: primarily, the growth of anti-leftism; secondarily, the illusion of neutrality held by the post-political proposals for managing the crisis of representation. This made claims such as “my party is my country” possible, and the ultra-nationalist tie to right-wing politics created the perfect façade for passing the right’s disgust for change and dissident voices as a call for ideological neutrality and against indoctrination. Interestingly, as Rodrigo Santaella points out, the notion of “doctrine” is natural to the religious groups that promote the project rather than the Brazilian left’s critical pedagogical outlook.[2]

Escola Sem Partido is named after a post-political notion of “School without a Party,” but promotes a “School of a Single Party” in the format desired to entrench right-wing values and stifle the leftist consciousness that thrives in critical environments such as schools and working places. This is why the right and its privileged base is so concerned with attacking Paulo Freire, while Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse are second and third to Karl Marx on the authoritarian right’s foreign ‘most wanted’ list. Freirean pedagogy is actually the opposite of indoctrination, as it fosters self-discovery and the process of creating emancipatory consciousness at the collective level, which poses an immense threat to common sense and the fatalist consent that sustains it. Censorship is an effective way for the right to create consent at all costs, especially during an economic and political crisis such as the way faced in Brazil today. Crises are appropriate periods for emancipatory politicization, as the contradictions of the systems of oppression become more and more apparent. If the left is muzzled through lawsuits and criminalization, and the educational and cultural terrains are censored at the source, the contradictions may still be recognized without their corresponding solutions. By winning the ideological dispute, the right also forecloses spaces of hope and can even manipulate struggle through false answers that reinforce the status quo. After all, censorship is not simply the nullification of the other, but always its continuous replacement with the norm.

Sabrina Fernandes is an activist in the Brazilian radical left, a critical pedagogue, and Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at Carleton University.

Notes:

1. “Gilmar Mendes abre processo que pode cassar registro do PT,” G1.

2. Rodrigo Santaella (2016) “Escola sem partido: A mentira, a ignorância e a disputa ideológica,” 31 July 2016.

Each country needs its exceptionalist message, its sui generis theme. We do something here no one else does, and such like. In Australia, there are many things deemed exceptional. Compulsory voting, on pain of a fine, is one such case. Compulsory voting in a census is another extension of that same philosophy. To not submit, and be damned by the extortionist drive of the State.

This is the somewhat authoritarian background colouring the recent bureaucratic disaster of the 2016 Australian census. It was prized by policy and number wonks as a vast improvement on previous forms, gathering the data about Australian citizens and residents in an unprecedented manner. The sugary advertisements urging people to vote on “census night” on Tuesday gave the impression we were dealing with a very minor inconvenience.

Across the country, families would gather around their computers, “log on” with their designated unique number, and fill in the forms with a minimum of fuss. Not only was the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) keen to get the numbers; it was keen to ensure that those figures were obtained in a manner green and tender. Good for the trees, friendly to the environment.

With all that buzz, not all was good in census land. There were suspicions about the very way, and scope of detail being sought. “Linkage keys”, to take one example, would be created, connecting census material to other data bases (medical, criminal, road traffic, educational).

The tone struck by the ABS did not inspire confidence. Undue hoarding, and preservation of private data, came to mind. Material gathered from every participating subject would be stored for four years, rather than the usual eighteen months. (Did this provide a foretaste of incompetence? A four year window, rather than a smaller one to work with?)

Another troubling feature for pundits and potential participants was what would happen with those linkage keys. Unsurprisingly, these would be a permanent fixture of the statistician’s dream, a record of reference long after the actual collected data of the subject had been destroyed.

Members of Parliament had also made very public statements that they disapproved of the way the census was being conducted and would withhold their names and addresses on the day of submission. Senator Nick Xenophon, for one, was happy to risk the $180 a day fine and the prospect of a jails sentence.

The Census minister Michael McCormack kept any blinkers he had close at hand. The census was “no worse than Facebook”; those with “a supermarket loyalty card” or “tap-and-go” system were supplying “more information indeed probably to what is available to ABS staff.”

Such comparisons were interesting yet terribly flawed, given that Facebook, for all its defects on what it does with data after gathering it from a user, still maintains an element of voluntariness to those using it. The Australian government was effectively forcing census participants to disclose details of considerable intimacy. Those remaining reticent would, at worse, be jailed.

McCormack also radiated a feeling of smug, grating confidence. No one does it better than the ABS; no one does censuses better than Australia. Until, of course, the crashing of the census site, the debacle, a technological calamity, the total balls up.In the characteristic words of the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, “This is an incompetent exercise. If they were handing out gold medals at Rio for incompetence, this Government would be on the winner’s podium absolutely.”[1]

What exactly happened? For one, the “stresses” of the system from having millions log on simultaneously on Tuesday evening was always going to challenge it, despite the ABS’s prior testing on whether its servers could handle 1 million forms per hour. A problematic calculation to begin with, given that online submissions may well have peaked around dinner time, and certainly more than a million an hour. Two stories have subsequently emerged, both running in awkward parallels to each other. The government line, one trumpeted by an increasingly crest fallen census minister, is that no hack had taken place. The world’s most secure census system still lay unbreached, the untouched gold standard.

Few believed this vacuous assumption, given that the ABS was insisting that any existing material that had been submitted online would be stored safely and had not been compromised. The ABS had, in fact, surreptitiously removed any statements from its site about data security as the crisis began unfolding. Kernels of truth could be found in the undergrowth of disinformation.

The ABS subsequently threw cold water on the government’s claim that no hack had taken place, with David Kalisch from the bureau suggesting that four hacking attacks had been initiated “from overseas”.[2] These had been initiated to burst the bubble of confidence or, in Kalisch’s words, inflicted as “a deliberate attempt to sabotage the census.”

That response showed how much of a muddle the ABS, and the Turnbull government, found themselves in. Neither could quite agree on what happened. The entire system seemingly suffered a meltdown, a collapse precipitated by four denial of service (DOS) attacks that had overwhelmed the system with simulated users.[3]

But such events are not hacking ones, even if they may well enable the compromise of data to take place with greater ease. Continuing with a Rio reference, it is surprising that the Russians were not blamed for that one. Give it time.

Then came the issue of technological hubris. No minister or statistician should ever be permitted to say that any computerised storage system is ever totally secure. As Richard Buckland, board director of the Australian Computer Society, observed in prosaic fashion, “There’s no way that the ABS could rule out a hack”. Generating a “pool of sensitive data” posed the most attractive of targets.

With some carefree disposition, integrity has become the word of the moment. The Australian treasurer, ever the bully from the pulpit of governance, suggested that Australians ignore the current crisis and do their duty.

Fill in the census, stated Scott Morrison, and forget any of this ever happened. The “integrity of this Census itself has not been compromised by the events of the last 24 hours, just as the integrity of the data itself has not been compromised in the last 24 hours.” Except that it has been – terribly.

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

Notes
[1] http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/census-2016-outage-labor-calls-for-census-minister-michael-mccormack-to-resign/news-story/7d8cd5bfaadfbc852311be165b0cc0b8
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-10/australian-bureau-of-statistics-says-census-website-hacked/7712216
[3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-10/there’s-no-way-the-abs-could-rule-out-a-hack:-experts/7712442

According to various reports, the Russian government is reconsidering the neoliberal policy that has served Russia so badly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. If Russia had adopted an intelligent economic policy, Russia’s economy would be far ahead of where it stands today. It would have avoided most of the capital flight to the West by relying on self-finance.

Washington, however, took advantage of a naive, gullible and demoralized Russian government which looked to Washington for guidance in the post-Soviet era. Russians thought that the rivalry between the two countries had ended with the Soviet collapse and trusted American advice to modernize the Russian economy with best-practice Western ideas. Instead, Washington abused this trust to saddle Russia with an economic policy designed to carve up Russian economic assets and transfer ownership into foreign hands. By tricking Russia into accepting foreign capital and exposing the ruble to currency speculation, Washington made sure that the US could destabalize Russia with capital outflows and assaults on the ruble’s exchange value. Only a government unfamiliar with the neoconservative aim of US world hegemony would have exposed its economic system to such foreign manipulation.

The sanctions that Washington imposed – and forced Europe to impose – on Russia show how neoliberal economics works against Russia. The policy’s call for high interest rates and austerity sank the Russian economy – needlessly. The ruble was knocked down by capital outflows, resulting in the neoliberal central bank squandering Russia’s foreign reserves in an effort to support the ruble but actually supported capital flight.

Even Vladimir Putin finds attractive the romantic notion of a global economy to which every country has equal access. But the problems resulting from neoliberal policy forced him to turn to import substitution in order to make the Russian economy less dependent on imports. It also made Putin realize that if Russia were to have one foot in the Western economic order, it needed to have the other foot in the new economic order being constructed with China, India, and former central Asian Soviet republics.

Neoliberal economics prescribes a dependency policy that relies on foreign loans and foreign investment. This policy creates foreign currency debt and foreign ownership of Russian profits. These are dangerous vulnerabilities for a nation declared by Washington to be “an existential threat to the US.”

The economic establishment that Washington set up for Russia is neoliberal. The head of the central bank Elvira Nabiullina, minister of economic development Alexei Ulyukayev, and the current and former finance ministers, Anton Siluanov and Alexei Kudrin, are doctrinaire neoliberals. This crowd wanted to deal with Russia’s budget deficit by selling public assets to foreigners. If actually carried through, this policy would give Washington more control over Russia’s economy.

Opposed to this collection of “junk economists,” stands Sergey Glaziev. Boris Titov and Andrei Klepach are reported to be his allies.This group understands that neoliberal policies make Russia’s economy susceptible to destabilization by Washington if the US wants to punish the Russian government for not following Washington’s foreign policy. Their aim is to promote a more self-sufficient Russia in order to protect the nation’s sovereignty and the government’s ability to act in Russia’s national interests rather than subjugate these interests to those of Washington. The neoliberal model is not a development model, but is purely extractive. Americans have characterized it as making Russia or other dependencies “hewers of wood and drawers of water” – or in Russia’s case, oil, gas, platinum and diamonds.

Self-sufficiency means not being import dependent or dependent on foreign capital for investment that could be financed by Russia’s central bank. It also means strategic parts of the economy remaining in public, not private, hands. Basic infrastructure services should be provided to the economy at cost, on a subsidized basis or freely, not turned over to foreign owners to extract monopoly rent. Glaziev also wants the ruble’s exchange value to be set by the central bank, not by speculators in the currency market.

Neoliberal economists do not acknowledge that the economic development of a nation with natural resource endowments such as Russia has can be financed by the central bank creating the money required to undertake the projects. They pretend that this would be inflationary. Neoliberals deny the long-recognized fact that, in terms of the quantity of money, it makes no difference whether the money comes from the central bank or from private banks creating money by making loans or from abroad. The difference is that if money comes from private banks or from abroad, interest must be paid to the banks, and profits have to be shared with foreign investors, who end up with some control over the economy.Apparently, Russia’s neoliberals are insensitive to the threat that Washington and its European vassals pose to the Russian state. On the basis of lies Washington has imposed economic sanctions on Russia. This political demonization is as fictitious as is the neoliberal economic propaganda. On the basis of such lies, Washington is building up military forces and missile bases on Russia’s borders and in Russian waters. Washington seeks to overthrow former Russian or Soviet provinces and install regimes hostile to Russia, as in Ukraine and Georgia. Russia is continually demonized by Washington and NATO. Washington even politicized the Olympic games and prevented the participation of many Russian athletes.

Despite these overt hostile moves against Russia, Russian neoliberals still believe that the economic policies that Washington urges on Russia are in Russia’s interest, not intended to gain control of its economy. Hooking Russia’s fate to Western hegemony under these conditions would doom Russian sovereignty.

Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bombers have destroyed an Islamic State chemical weapons factory and killed numerous personnel with concentrated high-explosive munitions airstrikes around the terrorist stronghold Raqqa in Syria.

Times anti-Trump propaganda reached a new low with an August 9 article, editorial and commentary

Its propaganda turned truth on its head, suggesting Trump wants “gun rights supporters…tak(ing) matters into their own hands” by assassinating Clinton if she prevails in November.

What prompted such outrageous rubbish? At an August 9 North Carolina rally, he said “Hillary wants to abolish the Second Amendment…If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks.”

Later on Fox News, he called gun owner rights “a strong powerful movement, the Second Amendment.”

Hillary wants to take your guns away. She wants to leave you unprotected in your home. This is a tremendous political movement. The NRA, as you know, endorsed me.

They’re terrific people…They agree 100% with what I said. And there can be no other interpretation. Even reporters have told me. I mean, give me a break.

In no way did his remarks suggest wanting Hillary assassinated – nothing indicating he wants her harmed in any way. Led by deplorable NYT reporting, the insinuation blasted across the media suggested otherwise.

Times editors disgraced themselves headlining “Further Into the Muck With Mr. Trump,” willfully lying, saying “Americans find themselves asking whether Donald Trump has called for the assassination of Hillary Clinton.”

Only easily manipulated ones, carpet-bombed by Times and similar rot insinuating it, blasting him round-the-clock on cable television, waging war by other means, willfully mischaracterizing everything he says, expressing one-sided support for Hillary.

Times editors ended their anti-Trump rant, calling on “Republicans…to repudiate Mr. Trump once and for all.”

Journalism Professor Robert Jensen once called Times columnist Tom Friedman “scary (featuring) underinflated insights, twisted metaphors, second-rate thinking, third-rate writing (and) hack journalis(m).”

On August 9, he disgracefully bashed Trump, calling him “illegitimate…a threat to the nation…the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal,” saying his “ambiguous wink wink to Second Amendment people” is the stuff that got former “Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin…assassinated.”

Jensen should have added he’s paid big bucks to lie, supporting war goddess Hillary while calling Trump “a disgusting human being…The likes of (him) should never come this way again.”

The disturbing irony of accusing Trump of wanting Hillary assassinated is unsupported by anything violent in his background. Whereas her orchestrated Libya and Syria wars, along with support for all other US ones since the 1990s slaughtered millions of defenseless human beings with the same right to life as herself.

Of all presidential aspirants in US history, she’s by far the most despicable, ruthless and dangerous, crucial to keep from succeeding Obama – politically, not violently.

I’ll repeat what I’ve said before about The Times. All the news it calls fit to print isn’t fit to read!!

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.

As part of the anti-Trump offensive of Republican former national security officials working in conjunction with the presidential campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden has been playing a particularly aggressive role.

The Clinton campaign and its media propagandists, first and foremost the New York Times, have enthusiastically embraced this architect of the Bush administration’s CIA torture program and the mass spying on the American people exposed in 2013 by Edward Snowden. This in itself is an indisputable indicator of the right-wing, war-mongering character of a future Clinton administration.

On Wednesday, the Times published an op-ed piece by Hayden titled “Classified Briefings and Candidates,” which argued that giving a President Trump access to the secrets and conspiracies of the US intelligence agencies would be a high-risk proposition with potentially serious consequences for US imperialist enterprises around the world.

The column includes two extraordinary paragraphs. The first reflects the combination of arrogance and contempt with which the unelected “deep state,” of which the CIA is a part, looks upon those more ephemeral figures elected to high office by the voters. The second is a blunt account of Hayden’s first briefing in November 2008 of President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

Here are the paragraphs:

“The briefings themselves will be intense. The president-elect will be shown great deference personally, but his or her campaign positions could be treated more harshly. This is the chance for the intelligence professionals to set the record, as they see it, straight.

“I had my own experience. After Election Day in 2008, I was briefing Mr. Obama on CIA renditions when Joseph R. Biden Jr., the vice president-elect, interrupted to observe that the agency had conducted that program—which entailed sending suspected terrorists to third countries—simply to “rough them up.” I rejected the contention and advised him that he needed to stop saying that. I haven’t heard him say it again.”

In the latter paragraph, Hayden quite openly refers to the CIA program that included systematic torture at CIA “black sites” around the world. He makes no bones about the program or his role in it. He brags of having silenced the impudent Mr. Biden and put him in his place.

Among other things, this little tale demonstrates that Obama and Biden knew about the CIA program of abductions and torture from day one and kept their mouths shut, concealing the existence of this illegal and criminal program from the American people.

At the onset of his administration, Obama announced that he would not seek to prosecute Bush administration officials for criminal actions either abroad or at home. That may be the only promise he has kept.

There is a postscript. The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted an investigation of the CIA torture program and drafted a detailed and voluminous report documenting its sordid operation and its cover-up by CIA and Bush administration officials. The 6,000-page report was approved by the committee in December of 2012, but the CIA and the Obama administration blocked its release.

In March of 2014, Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the time the chair of the intelligence committee, made an extraordinary appearance in the well of the Senate chamber to denounce Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, for having hacked into the computers of intelligence committee investigators as part of his efforts to disrupt their work and block their report. This, she explained, was a violation of federal law and the constitutional separation of powers.

The White House sided with Brennan, who was never prosecuted or reprimanded, and finally, in December of 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 525-page declassified, redacted summary of its report. It is an official US government account of criminal activities at the highest levels of the state.

With the help of Feinstein and company, and a corrupt media, the report disappeared from the news and public view almost as soon as it was released.

It’s really 19th century behavior in the 21st century. You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests. (Secretary of State, John Kerry, “Meet the Press”, 2nd March 2014.)

Were it not so serious it would be hilarious. The British have voted to leave the European Union on the basis of the combination of a pack of lies by Government Ministers backing the “out” campaign and a whipped up xenophobia about all those “foreigners” taking jobs, homes, places on public transport etc. A truly shameful throwback to the era of hotels and boarding houses exhibiting signs saying: “No dogs, no blacks, no Irish.” Now they would add: “and no Europeans, no Arabs, no Muslims – only UK passport holders”, were the garbage in the media and spewed by the “Outers” to be believed.

Targets of especially vicious denigration are “illegal immigrants.” Never mind many have fled for their lives, risking their all, from regions the UK has enjoined in destroying, hardly in a position to garner the right paperwork, renew or apply for passport, thinking they will at least find a safe haven on entry. They are treated like criminals and sneered at by a swathe of politicians. They “threaten our way of life” is the political mantra. RIP humanity.

Actually our “way of life” is kept going by those who surmount the bureaucratic hurdles. Before their arrival there were no shops open from 6 a.m., to midnight, take-away food outlets of every culinary culture, ditto restaurants. High streets across the country where “immigrants” have staked their all to somehow buy a premises and gradually build it, working all hours to create a pharmacy, food store, appliance store with handymen on call to fit your choice of item and numerous creative enterprises.

Post Brexit the xenophobia has been targeted at all these, as indeed the surgeons, doctors and nurses who staff the hospitals with dedication twenty four hours a day from all over the world, now wondering if the life they have built from their dedication in and to the UK will survive.

We want our country back” is the political-led cry, by Minsters and politicians who are served by a waiter from another country, whose food is cooked by a chef from elsewhere, whose expensive hotel room is cleaned, sheets changed by another prepared to work hours, often for minimum wage, few Britons would even consider.

So contrast this with the UK government considering it has the absolute right to send illegal immigrants: “ … carrying an arsenal of equipment including sniper rifles, heavy machine guns and anti-tank missiles” (1) to another country approaching four thousand kilometres away to “threaten their way of life.

The illegals are UK Special Forces, in Syria to assist the “moderate” head chopping, hand chopping, child-decapitating “rebels.” This gang, known as the New Syrian Army (NSA) have reportedly been trained by the US and UK in Jordan and are fighting US and allied spawned and funded ISIL. Note the surely US inspired name, the: “The New Syrian Army” – the US-friendly terrorists formed by the US in 2015 – surely intended to replace the State’s national, multi-ethnic, Syrian Arab Army (SAA.)

Let it never be forgotten that the entire fake “uprising” was engineered by the US Embassy in Damascus in 2006. (2)

In June this year, according to The Telegraph (3) a presumably self-styled “First Lieutenant” Mahmoud al-Saleh, of the NSA told The Times that he was being assisted by Special Forces: “They helped us with logistics, like building defences to make the bunkers safe,” he said.

Back in May, when an ISIL “armoured vehicle packed with explosives” killed eleven NSA members and injured seventeen others: “The wounded were flown in American helicopters to Jordan. The suicide attack damaged the structure of the al-Tanf base, with British troops crossing from Jordan to help them to rebuild their defences.”

According to The Telegraph: ‘The New Syrian Army’s spokesman refused to comment on the pictures of the Special Forces but acknowledged that they are helping. He told the BBC: “We are receiving special forces training from our British and American partners. We’re also getting weapons and equipment from the Pentagon as well as complete air support.”

Note the “British and American partners.” Was perfidy ever more perfidious? If in doubt, note the following also from The Telegraph:

The NSA emerged from a $500 million Pentagon programme aimed to create a well-trained rebel force to take on ISIL. However the project was abandoned after the first trained unit sent into Syria was kidnapped by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. A second batch of trainees defected and gave their weapons away.

Yet another Pentagon own goal.

Interestingly, The Guardian (4) reminds that the BBC: “ … images depict British special forces sitting on Thalab long-range patrol vehicles as they move around the perimeter of a rebel base close to the Syria-Iraq border.

The Thalab (Fox) vehicles are essentially modified, militarised and upgraded Toyota 4x4s used for long distance reconnaissance and surveillance missions, which were developed jointly in the middle of the last decade by a state-backed defence company in Jordan and the UK company Jankel.

The vehicles are surely coincidentally, not unlike like the long convoys of 4x4s so memorably depicted being driven by ISIL/ISIS. (5)

US Captain Scott Rye denied that a number of the NSA, paid up to $400 a month by the Pentagon (6) had left for contractual reasons. “He said that, while U.S. officials had been clear the program was to train fighters to combat Islamic State, the only document participants had to sign was one committing them to promote respect for human rights and the rule of law, a mandate issued by the U.S. Congress.” (Emphasis added.) This from the military representative of a nation to whom human rights and the rule of law has become a distant memory.

Yet another from the: “you could not make this up” file. The UK with it’s State xenophobia against immigrants, especially “illegal”, whatever the circumstances, the US with it’s 930 kilometres (580 miles) of barriers blocking their Southern neighbours from entry – send illegal immigrants on official US-UK government business in to another country to murder and to train people to murder and to overthrow yet another sovereign government.

When someone invents better words than “criminal”, “hypocrisy”, “mass murder”, please let me know.

Notes

1.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- 37015915

2.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/ syria-and-conspiracy-theories- it-is-a-conspiracy/29596

3.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/2016/08/08/british- special-forces-pictured-on- front-line-in-syria-for-first/ ?WTmcid=tmgoff_soc_spf_fb&WT. mc_id=sf32843342

4.  https://www.theguardian.com/ uk-news/2016/aug/09/pictures- appear-to-show-british- special-forces-on-syrian- front-line

5.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ news/article-3262837/U-S- officials-demand-answers- Toyota-convoys-carmaker-s- trucks-SUVs-appear-ISIS- videos.html

6.  http://mobile.reuters.com/ article/idUSKBN0P22BX20150622

It’s an all too common tale of dirty deeds, shady deals and propaganda. Rosemary Mason’s recent open letter to journalists at The Guardian outlines how the media is failing the public by not properly reporting on the regulatory delinquency relating to GM food and the harmful chemicals being applied to crops. Much of the media is even (unwittingly) acting as a propaganda arm for big agritech companies.

An open ‘Letter from America’ was penned in November 2014 warning countries in Europe and EU regulators not to authorise (chemical-dependent) GM crops because of the devastating effects on human health and the environment. Mason notes that David Cameron ignored that advice. The European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority also ignored it and have continued to allow GM into food and feed in the EU and sanction the ongoing use of dangerous pesticides.

While there is undoubtedly good work being carried out by individual journalists in this area, Mason feels the media should be doing more to hold officials to account and should report more accurately on the consequences of the genetic modification of food as well as the effects of agrochemicals.

Instead, there seems to be an agenda to confuse the public or to push these issues to one side. From BBC Panorama’s pro-GM programme last year, which was full of falsehoods and misrepresentations, to messages about ‘lifestyle choices’ being the main determinant of poor health, Mason implies that too many journalists are reinforcing the pesticides industry’s assertion that cancers are caused by alcohol use and that the catalogue of diseases now affecting modern society comes down to individual choice.

Mason stresses that the media constantly link alcohol consumption with seven forms of cancer and this ‘fact’ is endlessly reinforced until people are brainwashed and believe it to be true. This, she argues, neatly diverts attention from the strong links between the increasing amounts of chemicals used in food and agriculture and serious diseases, including cancers.

She goes on to document how international and national health and food agencies have dismissed key studies and findings in their assessments of the herbicide glyphosate, and she provides much evidence that the chemical industry (not just the agritech sector) has created a toxic environment from which no one can escape. These agencies are guilty of regulatory delinquency due to (among other things, scientific fraud) conflicts of interest, which has enabled transnational agritech companies to dodge effective regulation by public institutions that, despite claims to the contrary, are anything but independent.

A combination of propaganda disseminated by industry front groups and conflicts of interest effectively allow dangerous chemicals and GMOs into the food chain and serve to keep the public in the dark about what is taking place and the impacts on their health.

Mason outlines how the industry set out to discredit the ‘Seralini study’ (highlighting adverse health impacts of glyphosate – the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup – and GMOs) and describes how the Science Media Centre (SMC) in the UK did its utmost to prevent the British public from hearing about negative reports and studies concerning Monsanto and GMO technology. The UK SMC was fulfilling its remit to prevent a repeat of incidents such as the uncritical reporting in 1998 of the claim made by Árpád Pusztai that rats fed on GM potatoes had stunted growth and a repressed immune system.

In France, Seralini’s study was front page news but, according to Mason, journalists in the UK were manipulated and given little time to develop a potentially negative commentary. After the research was published, Professor Séralini was attacked by a vehement campaign orchestrated from within the industry as well as the industry-financed SMC.

Mason also documents how scientific fraud and corruption have also helped to fuel pro-GMO propaganda and get big agitech companies off the hook for their dangerous products. These companies have effectively coopted key academics and officials to do their bidding.

To reinforce her point, Mason cites William Engdahl to highlight the levels of collusion between the EU and the agritech sector over the reassessment of glyphosate. This exposed to the general public, for the first time in such a clear manner, the degree of corruption in not only Brussels but also in the so-called scientific bodies that advise it on what is safe and what not.

As with many of her previous open letters to officials and agencies, Mason cites an impressive array of evidence and studies to support her arguments. Readers are urged to read her letter in full: Open Letter to The Guardian. The letter was originally addressed to the editor-in-chief but has since been sent to other journalists at The Guardian.

Mason has been a tireless campaigner against harmful pesticides and GMOs for many years and has placed all of her correspondence with governments and regulators on the Academia.edu site – a platform for academics to share research papers and preview papers. She has done this to provide open access to information that will help the public to hold agencies and individuals to account over their willingness to sacrifice human health by using flawed science and corrupt practices in order to boost corporate profits.

In a little over five years, Mason has written and sent 36 documents to various agencies urging them to act. She has however received few replies. She did get a reply from the President of the National Farmers Union who wrote to defend the right of farmers to use chemicals to protect their crops, even though she had informed him (citing relevant evidence) that they were damaging the brains of children in Britain.

She has occasionally received brief responses from other officials who have effectively implied ‘move on, nothing to discuss’, despite the strong (peer-reviewed) studies and evidence used to support her case.

What Mason describes in her open letter is not unique to the UK or Europe. The model of chemical-intensive industrialised food and agriculture she alludes to is being rolled out across the globe thanks to the capture and cooptation of various international agencies and decision-making bodies at the national level.

Whether through strings-attached loans, rigged trade rules or corrupt trade agreements and intellectual property rights regimes co-written by powerful corporations, the result is a model of corporate-controlled, chemically drenched agriculture that leads to degraded soils, unsustainable pressure on (increasingly polluted) water resources, increased vulnerability to drought, less diverse diets, nutrient-deficient crops, the destruction of livelihoods, the undermining of local food security and the displacement of indigenous farming as well as the globalisation of bad food and poor health.

Although it may appear to be a case of ‘business as usual’ for industry and its well-funded lobbyists (whose ubiquitous presence in Brussels effectively puts paid to any credible  notion of ‘democracy’) and scientists, the pressure from various groups and tireless individuals like Rosemary Mason to hold the agritech cartel to account is incessant.

Aside from accessing Mason’s reports and open letters on the Academia.edu site, readers can consult the stream of reports listed on the Corporate Europe Observatory website that document how industry is contaminating our food, destroying our health and adversely impacting the environment, while certain officials facilitate the process.

So much scandalous stuff about her is known, it’s just a matter of time before the next shoe drops.

Instead of exposing her as unfit to serve, media scoundrels express one-sided support, focusing instead on bashing Trump, the most irresponsible denunciation of a presidential aspirant in US history.

Judicial Watch (JW) is a conservative watchdog organization, “promot(ing) transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.”

On August 9 and 10, it released three new damning reports on Hillary Clinton. One involved 296 pages of State Department records – including “44 email exchanges…not previously” disclosed to the department, raising the number to 171 – besides tens of thousands of others deleted to avoid disclosure.

JW findings contradict Clinton saying “as far as she knew” all government emails from her home-based private server were given to the State Department. She lied, compounding earlier willful deception – showing she’s untrustworthy, unfit to serve and criminally indictable.

What’s known from her emails is damning, showing special favors afforded wealthy Clinton Foundation donors, concealed influence selling now exposed.

As secretary of state, she pledged “(for) the duration of (her) appointment…not to participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which the (Clinton Foundation or Clinton Global Initiative) is a party or represents a party.”

Damning emails showed she lied. According to JW president Tom Fitton, “(t)hey show the Clinton Foundation, Clinton donors, and operatives worked with Hillary Clinton in potential violation of the law.”

Earlier in March, May and June, JW released other newly discovered Clinton emails at the time, dating from January 2009 when she began her tenure as secretary of state.

They show she knew about the security risk of using her home server and personal BlackBerry for official government business. They include potentially indictable evidence relating to “the battle between security officials in the State Department, National Security Administration, Clinton and her staff,” said JW.

“In response to a court order in other Judicial Watch litigation, she declared under penalty of perjury that she had ‘directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or are potentially federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.’ “

Newly released emails proved she lied. Can an exposed liar under oath on matters of state, guilty of perjury, be trusted to serve as US president and commander-in-chief of its military? Humanity trembles at the prospect.

A second JW report was about her involvement in New York City corruption, saying she, mayor De Blasio and developer Bruce Ratner “are carving up the city.”

It cited a Brooklyn-based Atlantic Yards project worth $5 billion, speculating on whether it’s “a giant boondoggle, generating torrents of cash for well-connected insiders.”

A third JW report included documents, showing Clinton’s then chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was alerted in advance about the inquiry into her emails – giving her plenty of time to conceal what she didn’t want revealed.

“Earlier this year, the State Department Office of Inspector General concluded that (her response to its request) was ‘inaccurate and incomplete.’ “

JW’s Tom Fitton commented, saying

“(t)his is evidence that Cheryl Mills covered up Hillary Clinton’s email system. (She) allowed a response to go out that was a plain lie.”

“And you can bet if Cheryl Mills knew about this inquiry, then Hillary Clinton did, too. This is all the more reason for Mrs. Clinton to finally testify under oath about the key details of her email practices.”

Instead of a daily blizzard of irresponsible Trump bashing, damning JW-released information on Clinton, and plenty more like it from other sources, should be feature front page news daily – demanding she be held accountable.

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.

This year the World Social Forum is being held in Montreal, regrouping committed social activists, anti-war collectives and  prominent intellectuals. 

Most of the participants are unaware that the WSF is funded by corporate foundations including Ford, Rockefeller, Tides, et al.  Much of this funding is channelled to the WSF organizers under the helm of the WSF International Council. 

This is an issue which has been raised on numerous occasions with progressive organizations and WSF activists: you cannot effectively confront neoliberalism and the New World Order elites  and expect them to finance your activities.

The World Social Forum operating under the banner of  “Another World is Possible” was founded in 2001 at its inaugural venue of Porto Alegre. Brazil.

From the outset in 2001, the WSF has been upheld as an international umbrella representing grassroots people’s organizations, committed to reversing the tide of globalization. Its stated intent is to challenge corporate capitalism and its dominant neoliberal economic agenda.

The World Social Forum at its inaugural meeting defined itself as a counter-offensive to the World Economic Forum (WEF) of business leaders and politicians which meets annually in Davos, Switzerland. The 2001 Porto Alegre WSF was held simultaneously with that of the WEF in Davos.

While  there have been many important accomplishments of the WSF, largely as a result of the commitment of grassroots activists, the core leadership of WSF  –rather than effectively confronting the New World Order elites– serves (often unwittingly) their corporate interests. In this process, co-optation has been achieved through the corporate funding of the WSF.

Among the two major accomplishments are the participation of the WSF in the February 2003 Worldwide protest against the US led war on Iraq. The WSF has also supported progressive movements and governments, particularly in Latin America.

In contrast, at the Tunis 2013 WSF, the final declaration paid lip service to to the US sponsored “Syrian opposition”.  Similarly the Al Qaeda affiliated Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which allegedly led the “Arab Spring” against the government of Muammar Gaddafi was tacitly upheld as a revolutionary force. Several workshops on  Libya applauded Western military intervention. A session entitled “Libya’s transition to democracy” focused on “whether Libya was better off without Muammar Gaddafi.”

[Update] Similarly, a Montreal WSF 2016 event on Syria refers to a country “in ruins as a result of a multifaceted  war between the dictatorship of Bashar al Assad and a host of opposition organizations,” echoing almost verbatim the narrative of the mainstream media.  The central role of US-NATO in destroying Syria as a sovereign country is not mentioned.

Funding dissent

From the outset in 2001, the World Social Forum was funded by governments and corporate foundations, including the Ford Foundation which has ties to US intelligence.

The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Ford, Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Wall Street and Big Oil), etc. with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle co-optation of  a small number of key individuals within “progressive organizations”, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement. Many leaders of these organizations have in a sense betrayed their grassroots.

The corporations are funding dissent with a view to controlling dissent.

The Ford Foundation (which has links to the CIA) provided funding under its “Strengthening Global Civil Society” program during the first three years of the WSF.

When the WSF was held in Mumbai in 2004, the Indian WSF host committee declined support from the Ford Foundation. This in itself did not modify the WSF’s relationship to the donors. While the Ford Foundation formally withdrew, other foundations positioned themselves.

The WSF (among several sources of funding is supported by a consortium of corporate foundations under the advisory umbrella of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE). 

This organization, which previously went under the name of The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), has played a central role in the funding of successive WSF venues. From the outset in 2001, it had an observer status on the WSF International Council.  

In 2013, the Rockefeller Brothers representative Tom Kruse co-chaired EDGE’s program committee. At the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kruse was responsible for “Global Governance” under the “Democratic Practice” program. Rockefeller Brothers grants to NGOs are approved under the “Strengthening Democracy in Global Governance” program, which is broadly similar to that put forth by the US State Department.

A representative of the Open Society Initiative for Europe currently sits on EDGE’s Board of directors. The Wallace Global Fund is also on its Board of Directors. The Wallace Global Fund is specialized in providing support to “mainstream” NGOs and “alternative media”, including Amnesty International, Democracy Now (which supports Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president of the US).

Several members of the EDGE BoD, however, are from non-corporative and family foundations with a social mandate. (see below).

In one of its key documents (2012), entitled Funders Network Alliance In Support of Grassroots Organizing and Movement-Building  (link no longer available) EDGE acknowledged its support of social movements which challenge “neoliberal market fundamentalism.” including the World Social Forum, established in 2001:

“From the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (1994) to the Battle in Seattle (1999) to the creation of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001), the TINA years of Reagan and Thatcher (There Is No Alternative) have been replaced with the growing conviction that “another world is possible.” Counter-summits, global campaigns and social forums have been crucial spaces to articulate local struggles, share experiences and analyses, develop expertise, and build concrete forms of international solidarity among progressive movements for social, economic and ecological justice.”

But at the same time, there is an obvious contradiction: another world is not possible when the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by an alliance of corporate donors firmly committed to neoliberalism and the US-NATO military agenda.

The following is the EDGE Montreal WSF Communique. The donors not only fund the activities, they also influence the structure of the WSF venue, which was determined in Puerto Alegre in 2001, namely the decentralized and dispersed mosaic of “do it yourself” workshops.

With regard to the Montreal WSF, the Consortium of Donors (EDGE) intent is:

“…to develop an intersectional space for funders and various movement partners – organizers thought leaders and practitioners – to build alignment by cultivating a shared understanding of the visions, values, principles and pathways of a “just transition.”  (See http://edgefunders.org/wsf-activities/)

“Just Transition” implies that social activism has to conform to a “shared vision” with the corporate foundations, i.e. nothing which in a meaningful way might upset the elite structures of global capitalism.

From the standpoint of the corporate donors “investing in the WSF” constitutes a profitable (tax deductible) undertaking. It ensures that activism remains within the confines of  “constructive dialogue” and “critique” rather than confrontation. Any deviation immediately results in the curtailment of donor funding:

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))

The limits of social dissent are thereby determined by the “governance structure” of  the WSF, which was tacitly agreed upon with the funding agencies at the outset in 2001.

“No Leaders”

The WSF has no leaders. All the events are “self-organized”. The structure of debate and activism is part of an an “open space” (See y Francine Mestrum, The World Social Forum and its governance: a multi-headed monster, CADTM, 27 April 2013, http://cadtm.org/The-World-Social-Forum-and-its ).

This compartmentalized structure is an obstacle to the development of a meaningful and articulate mass movement.

How best to control grassroots dissent against global capitalism?

Make sure that their leaders can be easily co-opted and that the rank and file will not develop “forms of international solidarity among progressive movements” (to use EDGE’s own words), which in any meaningful way might undermine the interests of corporate capital.

The mosaic of separate WSF workshops, the relative absence of plenary sessions, the creation of divisions within and between social movements, not to mention the absence of a cohesive and unified platform against the Wall Street corporate elites, against the fake US sponsored “global war on terrorism”, which has been used to justify and US-NATO’s  “humanitarian R2P interventions (Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, etc).

The corporate agenda is to “manufacture dissent”.“The limits of dissent” are established by the foundations and governments which ultimately finance this multimillion dollar venue. The financing is twofold:

1. Core financing of the WSF Secretariat and the Costs of the WSF venue.

2. Many of the constituent NGOs which participate in the venue are recipients of donor and/or government support.

3. The WSF venue in Montreal also receives funding from the Government of Canada as well as from the Quebec provincial government.

What ultimately prevails is a ritual of dissent which does not threaten the New World Order. Those who attend the WSF from the grassroots are often misled by their leaders. Activists who do not share the WSF consensus will ultimately be excluded:

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

“Another World is Possible” is nonetheless an important concept, which characterizes the struggle of the peoples movements against global capitalism as well as the commitment of thousands of committed activists who are currently participated in the Montreal 2016 WSF.

Activism is being manipulated:  “Another World is Possible”  cannot, however, be achieved under the auspices of the WSF which from the outset was funded by global capitalism and organized in close liaison with its corporate and government donors.

The important question for activists in Montreal:

Is it possible to build “an Alternative” to global capitalism, which challenges the hegemony of the Rockefellers et al and then asks the Rockefellers et al to foot the bill?  

We call upon participants of the Montreal World Social Forum (WSF) to raise and debate these issues: the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by corporate foundations (and governments) which are firmly committed not only to the tenets of neoliberalism but also to the US-NATO led military agenda.

Why would they fund organizations which are actively campaigning against war and globalization? The answer is obvious. …

Interlocking Agencies that Conspire to “Create Terror”: We Do Not Need the Police to “Create More Terrorists”

By Mark Taliano, August 10 2016

Unsuspecting citizens are paying for a nexus of interlocking agencies that conspire to create terror, war, and police-state legislation in a War of Deception that serves to devastate humanity. Without its arsenal of fabricated war pretexts, and its fabricated Fear apparatus, the warmongering oligarchy would be denuded and reveal itself as the mass-murdering terrorist entity that it is.

How Long Can Economic Reality Be Ignored?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, August 10 2016

Trump and Clinton have come out with the obligatory “economic plans.”  Neither them nor their advisors, have any idea about what really needs to be done, but this is of no concern to the media. The presstitutes operate according to “pay and say.”  They say what they are paid to say and that is whatever serves the corporations and the government.  This means that the presstitutes like Hitlery’s economic plan and do not like Trump’s.

Cell Towers and Cellphones. Microwave Radiation, Electromagnetic Pollution, Impacts on Human Health

By Joachim Hagopian, August 10 2016

“Electromagnetic pollution may be the most significant form of pollution human activity has produced this century, all the more dangerous because it is invisible and insensible.” — Andrew Weil, MD, bestselling author We live in the information age when we’re bombarded every single day with incoming data to process and interpret whether it’s true or not. Because the government and mainstream media have an agenda of false narratives and disinformation propaganda to willfully keep people confused in the dark, the American public is starved for the truth and in record numbers has sought it from alternative media outlets on the World Wide Web.

Obama versus Trump, Putin and Erdogan: Can Coups Defeat Elected Governments?

By Prof. James Petras, August 10 2016

“Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested”. — James Clapper, US Director of Intelligence on Turkish Coup (Financial Times 8/3/16, p. 4) Washington has organized a systematic, global, no holds barred campaign to oust Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump from the electoral process.  The virulent anti-Trump animus, the methods, goals and mass media resemble authoritarian regimes preparing to overthrow political adversaries.

Refugee Trauma: Australia’s Remorseless Detention Camp on Nauru

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 10 2016

“Do I have to kill myself to go to Australia?” — Asylum seeker, Nauru, March 2, 2015. Human sensibility has been given another sound beating with the leak of 2,116 incident reports from Australia’s remorseless detention camp on Nauru.  The reports total some 8,000 pages covering the period of May 2013 to October 2015 and were published by the Guardian on Wednesday.[1] The newspaper notes that children are heavily, in fact “vastly over-represented in the reports” featuring in a total of 1,086 incidents despite making up only 18 percent of the detained population.  Even the bureaucratic “ratings” of harm and risk given by the private security firm Wilson’s can’t varnish the brutalities.

A Nonviolent Strategy to End War

By Robert J. Burrowes, August 10 2016

There is a long history of anti-war and peace activism. Much of this activism has focused on ending a particular war. Some of this activism has been directed at ending a particular aspect of war, such as the use of a type of weapon. Some of it has aimed to prevent a type of war, such as ‘aggressive war’ or nuclear war. For those activists who regard war as the scourge of human existence, however, ‘the holy grail’ has always been much deeper: to end war.

Trump and Clinton have come out with the obligatory “economic plans.”  Neither them nor their advisors, have any idea about what really needs to be done, but this is of no concern to the media.

The presstitutes operate according to “pay and say.”  They say what they are paid to say and that is whatever serves the corporations and the government.  This means that the presstitutes like Hitlery’s economic plan and do not like Trump’s.

Yesterday I listened to the NPR presstitutes say how Trump pretends to be in favor of free trade but really is against it, because he is against all the free trade agreements such as NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic partnerships.  The presstitutes don’t know that these are not trade agreements.  NAFTA is a “give away American jobs” agreement, and the so-called partnerships give away the sovereignty of countries in order to award global corporations immunity from laws.

As I have reported on many occasions, the Oligarchs’ government lies to us about everything, including economic statistics.  For example, we are told that we have been enjoying an economic recovery since June, 2009, that we are more or less at full emploment with an unemployment rate of 5% or less, and that there is no inflation.  We are told this despite the facts that the “recovery” is based on the under-reporting of the inflation rate, the unemployment rate is 23%, and inflation is high.

GDP is measured in current prices.  If GDP rises 3% this year over last year, the output of real goods and services might have risen 3% or prices might have gone up by 3% or real output might have dropped but is masked by price increases.  To know what really happened the nominal GDP number has to be deflated by the amount of inflation.

In times past we could get a reasonable idea of how the economy was doing, because the measure of inflation was reasonable.  That is no longer the case. Various “reforms” have taken inflation out of the measures of inflation.  For example, if the price of an item in the inflation index goes up, the item is taken out and a cheaper item put in its place.  Alternatively, the price rise is called a “quality improvement” and not counted as a price rise.

In other words, by defining inflation away, price increases are transformed into an increase in real output.

The same thing happens to the measure of unemployment. Unemployment  simply isn’t counted by the reported unemployment rate.  No matter how  long and hard an unemployed person has looked for a job, if that person hasn’t job hunted in the past four weeks the person is not considered to be unemployed.  This is how the unemployment rate is said to be 5% when the labor-force participation rate has collapsed, half of American 25-year-olds live with their parents, and more Americans age 24-34 live with parents than independently.

Finanial reporters never inquire why government statistics are designed to provide an incorrect picture of the economy. Anyone who purchases food, clothing, visits a hardware store, and pays repair bills and utility bills knows that there is a lot of inflation.  Consider prescription drugs.  AARP reports that the annual cost of prescription drugs used by retirees has risen from $5,571 in 2006 to $11,341 in 2013, but their incomes have not kept up.  Indeed, the main reason for “reforming” the measurement of inflation was to eliminate COLA adjustments to Social Security benefits.

https://www.rt.com/usa/334004-drug-prices-doubled-years/

Charles Hugh Smith has come up with a clever way of estimating the real rate of inflation—the Burrito Index.  From 2001 to 2016 the cost of a burrito has risen 160 percent from $2.50 to $6.50.  During these 15 years the officially measured rate of inflation is 35 percent.

And it is not only burritos. The cost of higher education has risen 137% since 2000.  The Milliman Medical Index shows medical costs to have risen far above official inflation from 2005 to 2016. The costs of medical insurance, trash collection, you name it, are dramatically higher than the official rate of inflation.

Food, tuiton and medical costs are major outlays for households.  Add zero interest on savings to the problem of coping with major cost increases when real incomes are stagnant and falling.  For example, grandparents cannot help grandchildren with their student loan debt when zero interest rates force grandparents to draw down their savings in order to supplement essentially frozen Social Security benefits during a time of high inflation.  Savings are being taken out of the economy.  Many families exist by paying only the minimum payment on their credit card balance, which means that their debt grows monthly.

Real economists, if there were any, looking at the real economic picture would see an economy collapsing into widespread debt deflation and impoverishment.  Debt deflation is when consumers after they service their debts have no discretionary income left with which to drive the economy with purchases.

The reason that Americans have no income from their savings is that public authorities put the welfare of a handful of “banks too big to fail” above the welfare of the American people.  The enormous liquidity created by the Federal Reserve has gone into the financial system where it has driven up the prices of financial instruments.  There has been a stock market recovery but not an economic recovery.

In the past liquidity implied economic growth. When the Federal Reserve loosened monetary policy, the increase in consumer demand caused an increase in the output of goods and services.  Stock prices would rise anticipating higher profits.  But in recent years financial markets have not been driven by fundamentals, which are adverse, but by the liquidity that the Federal Reserve has pumped into the banking system in order to save a handful of over-sized banks and insurance giant AIG, all of which should have been allowed to fail.

The liquidity had to go somewhere and it went into the prices of stocks and bonds, causing a tremendous asset inflation.

What sense does it make to have zero interest rates when high inflation is eating away the real value of money?  What sense does it make to have high price/earnings ratios when the consumer market cannot expand?  What sense does it make to have a stable dollar when the Federal Reserve has created far more dollars than the economy has created goods and services? What sense does it make to undermine the financial condition of pension funds and insurance companies with zero interest rates, leaving them with no fixed income hedge against the stock market?

It makes no sense.  We are in a trap in which collapse seems the only way out. If interest rates reflected the real rate of inflation, the hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives would blow up, the stock market would collapse, unemployment could not be hidden with under-measurement, budget deficits would rise.  What would public authorities do?

When crisis hits, what happens to corporations that used profits and borrowed money, that is, debt, to buy back their own stocks in order to keep the price high and, thereby, executive bonuses high and shareholders happy and disinclined to support takeovers?  Chaos and its companion Fear take over from Contentment.  Hell breaks loose.

Is more money printed?  Does the money find its way into consumer prices?  Do we experience simultaneously massive inflation and massive unemployment?

Don’t expect the presstitutes, the politicians, or Wall Street to confront any of these questions.

When the crisis occurs, it will be blamed on Russia or China.

“Electromagnetic pollution may be the most significant form of pollution human activity has produced this century, all the more dangerous because it is invisible and insensible.” — Andrew Weil, MD, bestselling author

We live in the information age when we’re bombarded every single day with incoming data to process and interpret whether it’s true or not. Because the government and mainstream media have an agenda of false narratives and disinformation propaganda to willfully keep people confused in the dark, the American public is starved for the truth and in record numbers has sought it from alternative media outlets on the World Wide Web.

To circumvent people from grasping the full implications of the ruling elite’s control agenda, hundreds of government shills and internet trolls have been deployed, saturating the net with the expressed purpose of muddying the waters, creating disinfo fog of war to obscure, bury and withhold vital information and knowledge from being accessed and fully grasped by the global masses. Additionally, the fast track pathway to global governance – the TPP and TTIP agreements – are geared to seal off internet flow of lifesaving information that could increase global awareness and coalesce into worldwide resistance and opposition to New World Order tyranny.

CIA invented labels from nearly a half century ago like “conspiracy theory” and its recent mutations like “tin foil hat” and fringe element fanatics have methodically conditioned the public to discard and categorically deny the negative truth that exposes government perpetrators’ treasonous betrayal of American citizens as well as Empire’s global transgressions – especially since 9/11.

In actuality a conspiracy theorist is one who questions the statements of known liars. Speaking of known liars, George W’s admonition to disregard conspiracy theories was just the post-9/11 beginning to squelch the truth that makes him a guilty murderous war criminal of his own people. The same cover-up followed the inside job of the JFK assassination that his daddy played a part in, just like his daddy’s daddy financed Hitler. Unfortunately there’s nothing new about the US government murdering presidents who threaten status quo corruption as well as exterminating national populations to gain oppressive authoritarian control. Democide is the killing of citizens by its own government. Six times more victims in the last century died from democide than fighting in all the century’s wars combined that include humanity’s two bloodiest ones on record. History repeats as the federal government’s currently waging a not so secret war against the American people.

Chief among its formidable lethal arsenal is the feds’ war to control our minds through propaganda, having been crafted and honed now for over a century. Shaping public opinion and perception of reality through any and all means necessary involves deceitful weapons of mass destruction manifesting 24/7 through insidious applications of social engineering, various CIA mind control techniques delivered by mass media propaganda, corporate controlled mass consumerism, and six oligarch owned and operated mega-media corporations controlling the outflow of news and information.

This centralized global spigot spews out materialistic values, warped, distorted messages, dogma and false truths spoon fed globally for mass consumption as the not so covert means to manipulate, brainwash and control the human population. Twenty-first century technology has shrunken our planet into a global village of mass consumers to be pliably manipulated and controlled. This presentation will outline how a sinister globalist agenda is using the incredibly powerful telecom industry as yet another WMD for mass mind control, soft kill eugenics and, when deemed most advantageous, a convenient fast kill, genocidal method for culling the human herd.

Over the last quarter century, cell phones have all but replaced the conventional landline telephone system. 91% of Americans from adolescent to adult ages utilize cellphones as their primary means of spoken word communication, often including texting and other online interactive options as well.

Much has been written about the paradoxical effect that wireless cellphones and tablets offer as convenient multimodal transmitters that both instantly expand our opportunity to interact with fellow humans within a readily accessible cyber-world while simultaneously alienating us from real time, face-to-face, eye-to-eye communication and real world human connection. Today a quick glance observation at any public setting – airports, libraries, doctors’ offices – and the vast majority of people are seen busily interacting with their push button machines far more frequently than direct live conversation with even accompanying friends and family. Like lab rats compulsively pushing levers, people habitually check their cellphones over a hundred times a day. Hi-tech toy gadgetry has become the singular, most addictive device known to modern man. IPhones and Wi-Fi devices control how we increasingly preoccupy our daily waking hours more so than any other modern invention since the radio-television era.

For the last couple decades, countless scientific studies have been warning us of the serious damage being done to our brains and bodies as a consequence of our excessive cellphone habits. The radiation literally fries our neurons, alters our DNA with fractured strand breaks, and causes rising rates of brain cancer, tumors and associated other life threatening diseases. A new study from the British Medical Journal led by Dr. Enrique Navarro concludes that living near cell towers inhibits brain functioning, diminishes memory, disrupts the normal sleep cycle and causes widespread irritability. And an analytical review of all research conducted a half dozen years ago determined that 80% of all studies have determined that a direct correlation does exist between tower proximity and adverse symptoms, tumors and cancer.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the governmental agency that regulates the telecommunications industry, has purposely maintained dangerously high tolerance for the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) – 1.6 watts per kilogram, a radiation level standard that’s literally killing people. Paid off with bribes by the largest telecom giants, the FCC has refused to accurately readjust to lowering its hazardous threshold to save lives despite the preponderance of research showing that it would. Instead at a public meeting last month at the FCC headquarters, the federal agency that’s supposed to protect public safety showed its colors shutting down any dissenting voice. Likewise, Washington has chosen to protect the multibillion dollar industry by historically refusing to fund research that might otherwise decisively reveal the truth and thus hinder telecom growth. The FCC allows the industry to hire its own bogus pseudo-scientists to fudge its own inconclusive data to falsely claim cellphone use poses no serious threat to human health.

Just as the FDA is a bought and paid for Big Parma whore intentionally allowing damaging drugs on the market without adequate testing, and the EPA looks the other way when giant corps. like Monsanto spread deadly contaminants throughout our air, soil and water supply, corruption across all federal and state levels could care less about public health and safety, but instead blindly support transnational killers to ensure maximum profits are achieved at horrific human cost. These across the board policies are consistent with how the US government operates as a corrupt oligarchy acting on behalf of Fortune 500’s special interests – not the people’s, knowing a growing number of Americans are becoming sick, suffering and dying as a result of a government that’s turned its back on its citizens. The cold hard facts clearly show that Washington is a fascist crime cabal at war with its own people, now eliminating us through slow death, soft kill methods that only pad telecom/Monsanto/Big Pharma/health industry profits.

True to form, the co-opted FDA, EPA, World Health Organization (WHO) and American Cancer Society have all gone public claiming that radiofrequency (RF) radiation from cellphones and cell towers carry no determined health effects. That said, in 2011 even the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) conceded to classifying radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as “a possible carcinogen to humans.” Then last October another recent study coordinated by IARC examined over 300,000 nuclear workers from US, UK and France and found even low level radiation exposure over time increases the risk of cancer.

But from the American Cancer Institute’s own website, it states that non-ionized radiation from cell towers and cellphones “do not directly damage the DNA inside cells.” This is a blatant lie. Two decades ago pioneering scientist Dr. Narendra Pal Singh and Dr. Henry Lai empirically demonstrated that DNA single and double strand damage does occur at only 2.45 GHz radiation, a rate of one fifth the level producing previously known toxic biological effects and well below the so called FCC regulated “safe” levels that cellphones emit. Lai and Singh’s valuable research supports the widely accepted (amongst honest observers) the very logical conclusion that cumulative DNA damage occurs over time from prolonged use of cellphones. Two years ago a peer review of 80 studies found that 92% showed that non-ionized radiation from cellphones do damage DNA. Yet the Cancer Institute chooses to continue living the lie.

Megras and Xenos found that five generations of mice exposed to extremely low RF rates from .168 to 1.053 microwatts per square centimeter sustained irreversible sterility. These relative low exposure amounts are equivalent to living near a cellular tower. Thus humans living, attending school and working so close to towers are being dangerously radiated, yet the current FCC safe standard remains at 579 microwatts per square centimeter, a full 500 times higher than what causes sterilization in mice. In a related study, males who carry cellphones on belt clips or in their pants pocket have a measured sperm count 30% lower than men who don’t. The globalist overpopulation cheerleaders wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sweeping all this established hard evidence under the carpet just like the tobacco industry perpetrated for decades has been but a temporary fix strategy that buys more time to sell more wireless products and build thousands of more towers. But just over two months ago for the first time in history even a US federal study under the National Institutes of Health confirmed what the prevailing body of honest researchers have indicated all along – that radiation emitted from chronic use of cellphones does in fact lead to rising cancer rates. The former head of NIH’s National Toxicology Program (NTP) that performed the research study states that the findings between radiation exposure and rare forms of brain and heart cancers are definitely causally-connected. This NTP research is the most comprehensive and robust long term (2 years) investigation measuring varying exposure levels of radiofrequencies on rats ever conducted. But this study applies only to simulated radiation emitted from chronic cellphone use only, not exposure to the radiofrequency waves dangerously released from massive cell towers at close distance nor other wireless devices commonly found in both the home and workplace.

Cellphone and cell tower radiation also cause lowered immune systems and alter hormonal levels, adding further complications posing a serious detriment to human health. Still other recent studies from earlier this year for the first time are indicating that certain individuals experience physical pain accompanied by physiological bodily changes from tower signals at even low, regular levels. This finding validates the very real existence of a growing population of about 5% around the world who may be especially sensitive to wireless radiation. Their medical condition known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) typically afflicts them with physical pain, headaches, nosebleeds, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety. Previously many uninformed and/or biased medical practitioners automatically dismissed individuals suffering from EHS as hypochondriacs. Lawsuits have generally ruled against those claiming EHS, citing medical literature that concludes it’s merely a psychosomatic illness not caused by electromagnetic radiation. However, last August a French court ruled in favor of a victim complainant. EHS appears to be following the same path that Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome and Fibromyalgia Syndrome have undergone in their gradual acceptance within the medical community.

In order to provide service to millions of customers globally, cellphone companies have constructed cell towers and antenna towers across an entire overlapping region since the 360 degree radius of each tower only extends less than 25 miles. That’s why thousands into the millions of towers have been springing up around the globe, especially in densely populated areas where cell phones are at peak use. The trade industry website WirelessEstimator.com lists an updated total amongst the top 121 telecom companies of 118,173 towers in the US. However, the same site maintains that the tower count as of 2009 that includes rooftop antenna transmitters and cell towers number 247,081, further admitting that there is no accurate count. Yet another site antennaesearch.com has an updated US tally of 612,477, and 2,456,899 with wireless rooftop antennas included. Thus, the guesstimated range is enormously wide and for all intents and purposes unknown, but rapidly growing daily around the world.

Meanwhile, a wireless news site article from a year ago stated that due to exponential consumer demand for mobile data, Cisco estimates that by 2019 US mobile traffic will soar to 7 times its 2015 rate. This foretells a far denser concentration of yet even more harmful towers erected in ever-closer proximity to America’s vast sprawling urban population, typically impacting and endangering America’s youth in schools, adults in office buildings and families living in multistory apartment complexes.

In view of thousands of towers built next to or even on school grounds, a growing body of research on children and pregnant mothers is also producing extremely alarming results. Many public schools and universities are also being given cash bribe incentives to permit towers on their premises. Though some local parent and community advocacy groups are beginning to fight back, many education officials are choosing money over their own young people’s health and well-being. Meanwhile, it’s been shown that children absorb twice as much cell phone and tower radiation in the brain, up to three times in the hypothalamus and hippocampus regions, and their blood brain barrier leaks at the smallest traces of radiation. And incredibly kids’ bone marrow takes in ten times the amount of harmful RF waves as adults.

Spiked rates of electromagnetic pollution and its devastatingly harmful effects on human health is a pandemic train wreck currently exploding across the USA and the entire world. And as a direct consequence of chronic, indiscriminate use over the last 25 years, rare forms of brain cancer are now beginning to skyrocket. Predatory telecom giants and bribed governments are exploiting the fact that this weapon of mass destruction cannot be felt as an odorless, tasteless, silent, invisible killer.

All of this is bad enough news, dumbing down citizens and making us ill at national levels, but it’s just now becoming more widely known that a far more diabolical plan is presently in place that is zapping Americans with deadlier levels of radiation from cell towers than before. The most appalling realization is these dangerously higher levels of radiation emanating from weaponized cell towers have absolutely nothing to do with cell phone transmission, but everything to do with democide. They prove that the US government has shifted its soft kill eugenics plan to a faster hard-boil roast of the American population.

A former senior scientist from DARPA, the US deep state black ops research lab that channels all advanced technologies into military WMD’s, recently went public alerting fellow Americans that the federal government is misusing lethal cell tower transmissions as an “act of terrorism” against the US population. With a PhD from Princeton in computational physics and nearly three years at the DARPA Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr. Paul Batcho is a more than credible source who knows what he’s talking about. When he first began noticing high powered radiation radiating from cell towers in his home in St. Petersburg and surrounding areas of central Florida and Tampa, he followed standard protocol contacting his previous employer DARPA along with DHS, informing them that he believes that the cell towers present a “terrorist” threat. After his repeated attempts to alert authorities drew no response, Batcho contacted longtime activist-writer Dave Hodges of The Common Sense Show. The scientist has written:

These transmissions will cause harmful health affects in the form of enhanced microwave radiation illness. It is imperative that these frequency bands be measured and verified by an official source. These frequency bands do not exist naturally, and there is a technology targeting individuals. The verified measurement and existence of these RF band transmissions constitutes a terrorist act.

The FCC officially limits cell towers to 400 watts of energy output for cell phone data transfer. However, it’s been reported that mammoth sized cables leading into a typical cell phone tower is capable of emitting far greater power, especially when equipped with amplifiers. This makes the enormous level of microwave radiation each tower can project a potential mega-death weapon. And this is the alarm that Paul Batcho is railing against. The death ray machine that each tower represents can generate enough juice to literally cook every human within its city limits. So if the elitist powerbrokers in control plant these WMD’s strategically and so densely across America happen to desire the US population dead, or perhaps under the guise of an invading foreign enemy on American soil, these tower transmitters could conceivably eliminate the entire living population with several million towers at full wattage throttle.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at: http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/.

Interviewed by Tass ahead of meeting with Putin, Erdogan was asked to explain his agenda. Restoring ruptured economic relations was very much on his mind.

He called his visit “a new landmark in bilateral relations, a clean slate from which to start anew.” He thanked Putin for being the first foreign leader to express support for his leadership by phone after the aborted events of July 15.

“Mr. Putin acted quickly and practically without delay,” he said. “I express my gratitude to him.” At the same time, his comments on resolving years of Syrian conflict were less than reassuring.

On the one hand, Erdogan said “Russia is fundamentally the key and most important player in establishing peace in Syria…(I)f necessary, we’ll also involve Iran…Qatar, Saudi Arabia and America.”

While adding “(w)e don’t want Syria’s disintegration,” he ignored his longtime aim to annex northern portions of its territory illegally. He supports “the departure of Bashar Assad,” irresponsibly calling him “guilty for the deaths of 600,000 people.”

“Syria’s unity cannot be kept with Assad. And we cannot support a murderer (sic) who has committed acts of state terror. Let the Syrian people themselves elect an individual they want to see in power.”

In June 2014, they overwhelmingly reelected Bashar Al Assad with an 89% majority – a process independent observers called open, free and fair. Syrians want no one else leading them.

Despite clear evidence proving it, Erdogan denied involvement in aiding ISIS and other terrorists in Syria – operating from Turkish territory, receiving heavy arms, munitions and medical care for its wounded.

Hard facts show Erdogan, his family members and other Turkish officials profit hugely from selling stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil. He denied all charges.

He said cold-blooded Jabhat al-Nusra (renamed Jabhat Fatah al Sham) killers “should not be considered as a terrorist organization…This is an incorrect approach,” he added.

He ducked responsibility for slaughtering Kurds domestically, in Syria and Iraq, calling them terrorists, saying “ensur(ing) peace (requires) destroying” them.

He lets CIA and other NATO elements operate from Turkish territory, supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups. He’s complicit in waging war on Assad, in slaughtering Syrian civilians, serving his own agenda while aiding Washington’s.

Arms, munitions and military equipment from America, Turkey and other nations pour into Syria through its border.

Nothing so far suggests Erdogan ended support for US-backed terrorists. On August 8, the day preceding his St. Petersburg visit, the Financial Times headlined “Outside help behind rebel advance in Aleppo,” saying:

“(T)he offensive against President Bashar al-Assad’s troops may have had more foreign help than it appears.” One unnamed source said “tens of trucks (were spotted) bringing in weapons” cross-border “daily for weeks…weapons, artillery – we’re not just talking about some bullets or guns.”

“(C)ash and supplies (have been) ferried in for weeks.” While meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg, Erdogan continued actively aiding terrorists slaughtering Syrian civilians.

Did their discussion change things? No evidence so far suggests it, but it’s too early to tell. Turkey is a NATO member with close ties to anti-Assad regimes.

He wants normalized relations with Russia restored while insisting Assad must go – showing he and Putin remain intractably apart on resolving Syria’s conflict diplomatically, at least so far.

Will he shift from being anti-Assad to allying with Russia in combating terrorism in Syria – or at least stop supporting it?

Will he close Turkey’s border with Syria to halt daily flows of weapons, munitions and terrorist fighters to replenish depleted ranks?

Will he change from anti-Syrian belligerent to supporting Russia’s peace initiative? The fullness of time will tell which way he goes. Count on nothing positive unless he proves it conclusively and sticks by any commitment he may make.

Given his complicity with Washington throughout years of conflict as a NATO member and for his own self-interest, it’s hard being optimistic for what lies ahead.

Despite strained relations with Washington, he may try playing the US and Russia card simultaneously, proving he can’t be trusted if that’s his intention.

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.

Headline: Ukraine claims Russian invasion possible ‘at any minute’

Of course this sensationalized claim is as true as it is empty. A possible invasion has been as true for decades as it is now, and it will be just as true as long as Russia and Ukraine share a border (currently almost 1,000 miles long). Since September 2014, Ukraine has been building “Project Wall” along about 110 miles of the Russian border, an admitted “jobs project” reminiscent of the Maginot Line of the 1930s between France and Germany. But a possible invasion is a far cry from an imminent invasion, and a farther cry from an actual invasion, neither of which is shouted among the current cries of wolf in the region.

More realistically, reports from Ukraine in early August suggest that the long-simmering, chronic near-crisis there, while perhaps warming a degree or two, remains a long-simmering, chronic near-crisis (or perhaps, as some optimists suggest, a “frozen conflict”). For now, the unstable stasis of Ukraine seems to suit the needs of the major players – Russia and the U.S./NATO – if not the people actually on the ground in Ukraine, slowly being ground up by the unbroken hostilities of a broken culture. Geopolitically, the structure of peace in Ukraine seems to have more fault lines than support members. This has been true for many years, so maybe the rickety construction will continue to hold, however shakily – until the parties find the will to settle their differences somewhat rationally, or until someone decides to kick out the jambs.

The only constant in the Ukrainian meta-construct is that the country is and remains a shaky buffer against direct confrontation between the world’s two most deadly nuclear-armed states.

The perimeter of Independence Square, known as Maidan in Kiev in 2014. (photo: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images) go to original article

The headline shown above is from the Irish Times, over a story quoting unnamed sources in the Kiev government, who in turn quote unnamed sources in Crimea. Nothing in the story, taken as a whole, supports the fearmongering headline. Even Kiev acknowledges that Russian troop movements are exercises, of unstated scale at an unstated distance from the border. Even less ominously, Kiev reported that the Russians closed several (not all) Ukraine-Crimea border crossings along the 114-mile border, then reopened them after several hours, for unstated reasons.

Reporting the same news, the American propaganda outlet Radio Free Europe (RFE) based its story on reports from unnamed “Crimean Tatar activists” who said some border crossings were closed and undefined but “unusually large concentrations of Russian hardware” were seen in the northern region. RFE also quoted Nariman Celal (or Dzhelalov) describing movement of equipment but not troops, also reported by the Crimean Human Rights Group. And RFE quoted a Tatar member of Ukraine’s parliament and member of the Poroshenko Solidarity Party, Refat Chubarov, a Crimean Tatar exile since 1968, as saying the Russian activities appeared to be a training exercise. In the past, Chubarov has described Crimea as a territory of fear for Tatars: “they are prosecuted, sentenced on fabricated charges, forced to leave their land.”

Luhansk assassination attempt 350 miles from Crimea

During the past year, in the breakaway provinces of eastern Ukraine, several rebel commanders have been killed in attacks similar to the August 6 roadside bombing that injured Igor Plotnitsky, the head of the Luhansk People’s Republic since 2014, and two guards riding in the same car. A third guard was killed. Plotnitsky was hospitalized with reportedly severe liver and spleen damage, but was reportedly in stable condition on the evening of the bombing. Luhansk authorities blamed the attack on Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies. Kiev denied involvement. Plotnitsky himself blamed the U.S. in an online audio:

I am alive and healthy. The war is not over, and behind the Ukrainian government are the intelligence services of the U.S., those who try to roil the situation in Ukraine and in the world in general.

Since declaring independence in 2014, Luhansk has reportedly had an internal power struggle among various factions. Nevertheless, Plotnitsky helped shape the 2015 Minsk peace agreement that achieved an erratic cease-fire and reduced fighting in the region. According to the Moscow correspondent of the Los Angeles Times:

Shortly after declaring independence [in 2014], Luhansk split into several warring enclaves that were controlled by Cossacks, far-right nationalists and other pro-Russia forces. Plotnitsky consolidated control by removing and exiling his opponents whose supporters accused him of trying to assassinate them. Two of Plotnitsky’s main rivals were killed last year [2015] in car explosions. Plotnitsky’s advisor was gunned down in April.

The attack on Plotnitsky comes in the midst of increased violence in the Donbas region, with reports of armed combat and increased shelling on both sides of the ceasefire line established by the Minsk agreement of February 2015. Reporting the highest level of civilian casualties in a year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, reported on August 3:

The escalation of hostilities and the accompanying civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine over the last two months are very worrying. Civilians are once again having to flee to improvised bomb shelters in their basements, sometimes overnight, with increasing frequency – the price of the ceasefire violations is too high for the women, men and children in eastern Ukraine….

The many casualties we have documented in recent weeks suggest that neither Ukrainian forces nor the armed groups are taking the necessary precautions to protect civilians. We urge all sides to respect the ceasefire provisions, to remove combatants and weapons from civilian areas, and to scrupulously implement the provisions of the Minsk Agreements.

The UN High Commissioner also called on the Kiev government to act on its promise to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Since the Rome Statute provides for personal, individual accountability for criminal actions, the commissioner argued, its adoption will increase incentive for all parties to act lawfully and protect civilians.

According to an Associated Press report on August 6, “the worst of the fighting in eastern Ukraine [is] now over,” having the effect of releasing a flood of weapons into the rest of Ukraine, creating a “supermarket” for millions of illegal weapons. Crimes committed with guns have more than doubled since 2014. Weapons are also reportedly being smuggled to Europe and to the Middle East. Ukraine has classified all information it has on illegal arms trade.

U.S. shadow war with Russia quietly escalates in smallish increments

After twenty years of stealth aggression, U.S./NATO efforts provoked the Ukrainian coup that drove Russian ally and Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych out of office and out of the country. Facing a hostile takeover of a country on the Russian border, Russian president Vladimir Putin took over Crimea and incorporated it into Russia, which a majority of Crimeans may have preferred, rather than remaining part of a hostile and chaotic Ukraine. If U.S./NATO apparatchiks saw that coming in the wake of their coup, they had no effective plan to head it off, and the ensuing “that’s-not-fair” tantrum by the stymied West is what we’ve had to live with ever since. Russia continues to integrate Crimea into Russia. The U.S./NATO forces continue to bring military threats to Russia’s European borders. This is a quiet cold war, but just as dangerous as the original Cold War.

Since 2014, the U.S. has spent more than $600 million in Ukraine just training the National Guard and the Armed Forces, according to U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Michael Carpenter. The U.S. is also the largest donor of military equipment to Ukraine, more than $117 million since 2014 (out of a total of $164.1 million from all donors combined). Affirming that these supplies and training are part of continuing Western pressure on Russia by bringing a neighboring state into the NATO military alliance, Carpenter also indicated the Ukrainian forces remain substandard:

They still have a lot of work ahead. Especially, if Ukraine wants to create a new army, compatible with NATO forces, by 2020. This requires a lot of efforts put into structural reorganization, logistics reform, military health system etc.

There are U.S. troops in Ukraine at any given moment, in the hundreds if not thousands, moving in and out with different missions, making any reliable count a transient fact. The Russians also have troops in Crimea, which they consider Russia. And there are likely Russian troops and/or irregulars in eastern Ukraine, present at the behest of the disputed current governments. (A year ago, Ukraine was citing Russian forces on both sides of the Ukraine border as evidence of imminent war, as reported by the Independent, like the Irish Times’ war “at any minute” this year.)

The U.S. commander of NATO frets about the Russians’ ability to move troops more quickly than NATO can, comparing recent training exercises (and assuming what the general says is true). This is designed to raise fear of the Russians. But in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of NATO stealth aggression, there is an unspoken assumption that Russian maneuvers within Russian borders are far more threatening than U.S. troop movements on Russia’s borders, some 5,000 miles from Washington. In this Washington wonderland, somehow it makes sense for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to continue its 15-year-long war in Afghanistan, which is not really that close to the North Atlantic.

What happens if the U.S./NATO forces just stop advancing?

So we have a presidential election underway, right? That means there’s a possibility of power shifting to saner heads than we’ve seen since 1992, at least in theory. So what have the candidates been saying?

Hillary Clinton has called Putin a bully and said she’s stood up to him in the past. She doesn’t talk much about her role as Secretary of State when she chose Dick Cheney puppet Victoria Nuland to stir up the catastrophic Ukraine coup that has brought us to the present unstable mess. Still to be sorted out are the donations Ukrainian oligarchs made to the Clinton Foundation before Mrs. Clinton helped destabilize the country. In an ironic prelude to recent hacking accusations in the current campaign, back in 2011 Secretary Clinton accused Putin of rigging his election and he accused her of meddling in Russian politics. In 2014, Clinton compared Putin’s annexation of Crimea to Adolf Hitler’s 1938 unopposed occupation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The comparison is as politically raw as it is historically distorted, but never mind, Hitler analogies are useful as a measure of the desperation of their users. Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, is concerned that Clinton sees war as “the first instrument of choice.” If Clinton has any plans to defuse the U.S.-Russian confrontation, she’s kept them well hidden.

Almost a year ago, Donald Trump told a conference on Ukraine that the Russians invaded Ukraine because “there is no respect for the United States…. Putin does not respect our President whatsoever.” He said it was Europe’s problem to clean up the mess, about which he has showed no comprehension, saying it didn’t matter to him whether or not Ukraine was in NATO. More recently Trump, apparently meaning something else, said that Putin is “not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going into Ukraine, all right, you can mark it down.” That makes sense if one assumes that Crimea is a fait accompli and that Putin has no desire to embrace the fractious chaos of the rest of Ukraine (beyond maintaining the irritant of Donbas independence).” Of course Trump did not explain it that way, or any other coherent way.

What’s interesting here is that the worse candidate, in his inchoate and apparently mindless way, is stumbling down a road that could lead to peace. The more experienced candidate appears to remain determinedly committed to a course that leads inevitably, sooner or later, to a nuclear confrontation. No wonder Russians are saying, according to USA Today, that Trump’s “rude jokes and fun is like a fresh breeze” and that Trump would be more likely than Clinton to improve U.S.-Russian relations.

And even less wonder that a former CIA director and deputy director is castigating Trump and endorsing Clinton. The CIA has such a wonderful record of alerting the President to bin Laden, affirming WMDs in Iraq, promising the success of the Ukrainian coup, and preventing the rise of the Islamic State, among its peak accomplishments. Michael Morrell, CIA 1980-2013, published an August 5 Op-Ed in The New York Times headlined: “I ran the C.I.A. Now I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton.” That’s a mixed notice well calculated to exacerbate cognitive dissonance, or in more colloquial terms: That’s a joke, right?

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Unsuspecting citizens are paying for a nexus of interlocking agencies that conspire to create terror, war, and police-state legislation in a War of Deception that serves to devastate humanity.

Without its arsenal of fabricated war pretexts, and its fabricated Fear apparatus, the warmongering oligarchy would be denuded and reveal itself as the mass-murdering terrorist entity that it is.

Most recently, in Canada, Justice Catherine Bruce disclosed the true nature of an RCMP terror plot when she overturned terror convictions against two patsies – John Nuttal and Amanda Korody – who were set up by police operatives to commit a terrorist act for which they would otherwise be totally incapable of performing.

Bruce stated the obvious when she observed that,

Simply put, the world has enough terrorists. We do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people who have neither the capacity nor sufficient motivation to do it themselves.

The “forbidden truth” is that agencies of Canada’s federal government created a false flag terror event with a view to:

• create an atmosphere of fear (aimed at the general public as well as politicians),
• create  Islamophobia
• create a false pretext for a War on Terror (translated: illegal imperial invasions using un-Islamic terrorists as proxy armies)
• create a pretext for unconstitutional, fascist, police state legislation  (C-51 legislation)

Unsuspecting, otherwise peace-loving citizens, are also being duped into paying for Private Intelligence Contractors (PICS) who receive lucrative government contracts to engage in a full spectrum of activities designed to create and sustain war crimes.

The author writes in “Full Spectrum Dominance”, Private Intelligence Contractors and “Engineered Consent” that,

Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) is likely the largest (and least known) PIC, with a huge staff (about 40,000 in 2007, likely more now), and it is fully integrated into the War Machine.

Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele report in “Washington’s $ Billion Shadow, that

‘SAIC’s friends in Washington are everywhere, and play on all sides; the connections are tightly interlocked. To cite just one example: Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of defense, whose confirmation hearings lasted all of a day, is a former member of SAIC’s  board of directors …’

The U.S. government, through its incestuous relationship with SAIC, effectively created false intelligence – with impunity —as a fabricated pretext to wage the illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

Fake intelligence reports were also used to pin the East Ghouta (false flag) terror event on the Assad government, and to provoke a direct U.S/Coalition military invasion to depose Syria’s democratically-elected President.

A memo from “Veterans intelligence Professionals for Sanity” (VIPS) indicated that,

some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as ‘plausible denial.’

The CIA specializes in the commission of crimes beneath which the protective shield of “plausible deniability” can be invoked should suspicions of CIA complicity be aroused.

Professor Tim Anderson and others also demonstrate, with sustainable evidence, that the East Ghouta gas attack was false flag terrorism.

The Pentagon’s use of PICS to perpetrate war crimes is now becoming normalized.  According to Kate Brannen in “Spies-for-Hire Now at War in Syria”, the Pentagon publicly disclosed the terms of a contract with a PIC called Six3 Intelligence Solutions to provide “intelligence analysis services” in a number of countries, but most notably, Syria.  The public may not be aware that such an intervention in Syria is illegal, or that Six3 Intelligence Solutions has a proven track record as interrogators at the Abu Ghraib torture chambers, or that it will no doubt offer the CIA plenty of “plausible deniability” to perpetrate crimes with impunity.

Whereas the government and its agencies should be using our tax dollars to “create no harm”, and to further the cause of peace and prosperity, it is clear beyond any reasonable doubt that governing agencies are creating much harm, through stealth and deception, thanks to the steady flow of tax dollars streaming into its coffers.

There is a long history of anti-war and peace activism. Much of this activism has focused on ending a particular war. Some of this activism has been directed at ending a particular aspect of war, such as the use of a type of weapon. Some of it has aimed to prevent a type of war, such as ‘aggressive war’ or nuclear war. For those activists who regard war as the scourge of human existence, however, ‘the holy grail’ has always been much deeper: to end war.

There is an important reason why those of us in the last category have not, so far, succeeded. In essence, this is because, whatever their merits, the analyses and strategies we have been using have been inadequate. This is, of course, only a friendly criticism of our efforts, including my own. I am also not suggesting that the task will be easy, even with a sound analysis and comprehensive strategy. But it will be far more likely.

Given my own preoccupation with human violence, of which I see war as a primary subset, I have spent a great deal of time researching why violence occurs in the first place – see

‘Why Violence?‘ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice‘.  – and by taking or teaching strategic nonviolent action in response to many of its manifestations.

Moreover, given that I like to succeed when I work for positive change in this world, I pay a great deal of attention to strategy. In fact, I have written extensively on this subject after researching the ideas of the greatest strategic theorists and strategists in history. If you are really keen, you can read about this in The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.

However, because I know that most people aren’t too interested in scholarly works and that nonviolent activists have plenty of worthwhile things to do with their time, I have recently been putting the essence of the information in the book onto two websites so that the strategic thinking is presented simply and is readily available.

One of the outcomes I would like to achieve through these websites is to involve interested peace and anti-war activists from around the world in finalizing the development of a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to end war and to then work with them to implement it.

Consequently, I have been developing this nonviolent strategy to end war and I invite you to check it out and to suggest improvements. You can see it on the Nonviolent Campaign Strategy website. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/

If you are interested in being involved in what will be a long and difficult campaign, I would love to hear from you.

You might also be interested in signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ where the names of many nonviolent activists who will work on this campaign are already listed.

Ending war is not impossible. But it is going to take a phenomenal amount of intelligent strategic effort, courage and time. Whether we have that time is the only variable beyond our control.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

As Hillary Clinton attempts to seal Henry Kissinger’s endorsement, documents reveal how he undermined Jimmy Carter’s human rights agenda in Argentina.

It seems like the whole universe opposes him with an unprecedented daily blizzard of anti-Trump articles, commentaries and editorials in US print media and what passes in America for television news – stuff no respectable independent news director would allow on air.

Make no mistake. He’s not above reproach, not by a long shot. He didn’t get to be a billionaire by being a good guy. He’s unaccountable for lots of unsavory baggage, what it takes to become a corporate tycoon. Maybe he’s not all bad.

His anti-establishment sounding rhetoric rattles bipartisan power brokers, especially Wall Street, war-profiteers and other corporate interests wanting no changes from current policies – not even around the edges, the most to be hoped for from a Trump presidency if elected.

Giving overwhelming opposition from powerful interests and media scoundrels, it’s hard imagining him having any chance to succeed Obama.

He calls things rigged against him. America’s sordid history of election rigging shows he’s right, today with electronic ease and other dirty tricks.

Clinton was chosen to succeed Obama last year before campaigning began. Trump’s nomination defied predictions. Long knives emerged to stop him straightaway after announcing he’d seek the GOP nomination last year. They continue their daily dirty work, especially after he got it.

Why? He says things on the stump other aspirants for high political office wouldn’t dare, virtually unique in US presidential races.

Some comments are outrageous like wanting a wall on Mexico’s border and “a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Others suggest important steps in the right direction if implemented – including a new role for NATO, rapprochement with Russia (the best hope for preventing WW III), perhaps better relations with China, Iran and other independent countries, opposition to TPP and other jobs-destroying trade deals, as well as hopefully less eagerness for war to be America’s top geopolitical strategy of choice.

Advocating these type policies even rhetorically mobilizes America’s bipartisan establishment militantly against anyone suggesting them – wanting Trump defeated in November by fair or foul means.

Electing Clinton assures continuity on steroids, accelerating America’s war on humanity at home and abroad.

If Trump emerged victorious, defying long odds against him, at least they’d be a chance for turning US policy modestly in the right direction.

Preventing WW III is the best reason for opposing Clinton. Trump would rather make money from planet earth than destroy it.

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

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

“Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested”. — James Clapper, US Director of Intelligence on Turkish Coup (Financial Times 8/3/16, p. 4)

Washington has organized a systematic, global, no holds barred campaign to oust Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump from the electoral process.  The virulent anti-Trump animus, the methods, goals and mass media resemble authoritarian regimes preparing to overthrow political adversaries.

Comparable propaganda efforts led to political coups in Chile in 1973, Brazil 1964, ad Venezuela in 2002.  The anti-Trump forces include both political parties, a Supreme Court judge, Wall Street bankers, journalists and editorialist of all the major media outlets and the leading military and intelligence spokespeople.

Washington’s forcible and illegal ouster of Trump is part and parcel of a world-wide campaign to overthrow leaders and regimes which raise questions about aspects of the imperial policies of the US and EU.

We will proceed to analyze the politics of the anti-Trump elite, the points of confrontation and propaganda, as a prelude to the drive to oust opposition in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The Anti-Trump Coup

Never in the history of the United States, has a President and Supreme Court Judge openlyadvocated the overthrow of a Presidential candidate.  Never has the entire mass media engaged in a round-the-clock one-sided, propaganda war to discredit a Presidential candidate by systematically ignoring or distorting the central socio-economic issues of their opposition.

The call for the ouster of a freely elected candidate is nothing more or less than a coup d’état.

Leading television networks and columnists demand that the elections be annulled, following the lead of the President and prominent Republican and Democratic Congressional and Party leaders.

In other words, the political elite openly rejects democratic electoral processes in favor of authoritarian manipulation and deception.  The authoritarian elite relies on magnifying tertiary, questionable personal judgement calls to mobilize coup backers.

They systematically avoid the core economic and political issues which candidate Trump has raised – and attracted mass support – which challenge fundamental policies backed by the two Party elites.

The Roots of the Anti-Trump Coup

Trump has raised several key issues which challenge the Democratic and Republican elite.

Trump has drawn mass support and won elections and public opinion polls by:

(1)  rejecting the free trade agreements which has led major multinationals to relocate abroad and disinvest in well-paying industrial jobs in the US

(2)  calling for large scale public investment projects to rebuild the US industrial economy, challenging the primacy of financial capital.

(3)  opposing the revival of a Cold War with Russia and China and promoting  greater economic co-operation and negotiations.

(4)  rejecting US support for NATO’s military build-up in Europe and intervention in Syria, North Africa and Afghanistan.

(5)  questioning the importation of immigrant labor which lowers job opportunities and wages for local citizens.

The anti-Trump elite systematically avoid debating these issues; instead they distort the substance of the policies.

Instead of discussing the job benefits which will result from ending sanctions with Russia, the coupsters screech that ‘Trump supports Putin, the terrorist’.

Instead of discussing the need to redirect investment inward to create US jobs, the anti-Trump junta mouth clichés that claim his critique of globalization would ‘undermine’ the US economy.

To denigrate Trump, the Clinton/Obama junta resorts to political scandals to cover-up mass political crimes.  To distract public attention, Clinton-Obama falsely claim that Trump is a ‘racist’, backed by David Duke, a racist advocate of “Islamophobia”.  The anti-Trump junta promoted the US- Pakistani  parents of a military war casualty  as victims of Trump’s slanders even as they rooted for Hillary Clinton, promotor of wars against Muslim countries and author of  military policies that sent thousands of US soldiers to their grave.

Obama and Clinton are the imperial racists who bombed Libya and Somalia and killed, wounded and displaced over 2 million sub-Saharan Black-Africans.

Obama and Clinton are the Islamaphobes who bombed and killed and evicted five million Muslims in Syria and one million Muslims in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

In other words, Trump’s mistaken policy to restrict Muslim immigration is a reaction to the hatred and hostility engendered by the Obama- Clinton million-person Muslim genocide.

Trump’s “America First” policy is a rejection of overseas imperial wars – seven wars under Obama-Clinton.  Their militarist policies have inflated budget deficits and degraded US living standards.

Trump’s criticism of capital and job flight has threatened Wall Street’s billion-dollar profiteering – the most important reason behind the bi-partisan junta’s effort to oust Trump and the working class’s support for Trump.

By not following the bi-partisan Wall Street, war agenda, Trump has outlined another business agenda which is incompatible with the current structure of capitalism.  In other words’ the US authoritarian elite does not tolerate the democratic rules of the game even when the opposition accepts the capitalist system.

Likewise, Washington’s quest for ‘mono-power’ extends across the globe.  Capitalist governments which decide to pursue independent foreign policies are targeted for coups.

Obama-Clinton’s  Junta Runs Amok

Washington’s proposed coup against Trump follows similar policies directed against political leaders in Russia, Turkey, China, Venezuela, Brazil and Syria.

Russian President Putin has been demonized by the US propaganda media on an hourly basis for the better part of a decade.  The US has backed oligarchs and promoted economic sanctions; financed a coup in the Ukraine; established nuclear missiles on Russia’s frontier; and launched an arms race to undermine President Putin’s economic policies in order to provoke a coup.

The US backed its proxy Gulenist ‘invisible government’ in its failed coup to oust President Erdogan, for failing to totally embrace the US Middle East agenda.

Likewise, Obama-Clinton have backed successful coups in Latin America. Coups were orchestrated in Honduras, Paraguay and more recently in Brazil to undermine independent Presidents and to secure satellite neo-liberal regimes.  Washington presses forward to forcibly oust the national-populist government of President Maduro in Venezuela.

Washington has escalated efforts to erode, undermine and overthrow the government of China’s President Xi-Jinping through several combined strategies.  A military build-up of an air and sea armada in the South China Sea and military bases in Japan, Australia and the Philippines; separatist agitation in Hong Kong, Taiwan and among the Uyghurs; a US- Latin American- Asia free trade agreements which excludes China.

Conclusion

Washington’s strategy of illegal, violent coups to retain the delusion of empire stretches across the globe, ranging from Trump in the US to Putin in Russia, from Erdogan in Turkey to Maduro in Venezuela to Xi Jinping in China.

The conflict is between US-EU imperialism backed by their local clients against endogenous regimes rooted in nationalist alliances.

The struggle is ongoing and sustained and threatens to undermine the political and social fabric of the US and the European Union.

The top priority for the US Empire is to undermine and destroy Trump by any means necessary.  Trump already has raised the question of ‘rigged elections’. But each elite media attack of Trump seems to add to and strengthen his mass support and polarize the electorate.

As the elections approach, will the elite confine themselves to verbal hysteria or will they turn from verbal assassinations to the ‘other kind’?

Obama’s global coup strategy shows mixed results: they succeeded in Brazil but were defeated in Turkey; they seized power in the Ukraine but were defeated in Russia; they gained propaganda allies in Hong Kong and Taiwan but suffered severe strategic economic defeats in the region as China’s Asian trade policies advanced.

As the US elections approach, and Obama’s pursuit of his imperial legacy collapses, we can expect greater deception and manipulation and perhaps even frequent resort to elite-designed ‘terrorist’ assassinations.

Libya’s post 2011 King Idris Flag

It is rare for a historian to write a history of a significant issue and bring it into the present time; even rarer when the work coincides with the reemergence of that issue on the world stage.  Paolo Sensini has done just that with Sowing Chaos: Libya in the Wake of Humanitarian Intervention (Clarity Press, 2016).  It is a revelatory historical analysis of the exploitation and invasion of Libya by colonial and imperialistic powers for more than a century.

It is also timely since the western powers, led by the United States, have  once again invaded Libya (2011), overthrown its government, and are in the process (2016) of creating further chaos and destruction by bombing the country for the benefit of western elites under the pretext of humanitarian concern.

As with the history of many countries off the radar of western consciousness, Libyan history is a tragic tale of what happens when a country dares assert its right to independence – it is destroyed by violent attack, financial subterfuge, or both.

Although an Italian and Italy has a long history of exploiting Libya, a close neighbor, Sensini stands with the victims of colonial and imperial savagery.  Not an armchair historian, he traveled to Libya during the 2011 war to see for himself what was true.  Despite his moral stand against western aggression, his historical accuracy is unerring and his sourcing impeccable.  For 234 pages of text, he provides 481 endnotes, including such fine sources as Peter Dale Scott, Patrick Cockburn, Michel Chossudovsky, Pablo Escobar, and Robert Parry, to name but a few better known names.

His account begins with Italy’s 1911 war against Libya that “Francesco Saverio Nitti charmingly described …. as the taking of a ‘sandbox’.”  The war was accompanied by a popular song, “Tripoli, bel suol d’amore” (Tripoli, beauteous land of love).  Even in those days war and love were synonymous in the eyes of aggressors.

This war went on until 1932 when the Sanusis’s resistance was finally crushed by Mussolini.  First Italy conquered the Ottoman Turks, who controlled western Libya (Tripolitania); then the Sanusis, a Sunni Islamic mystical militant brotherhood, who controlled eastern Libya (Cyrenaica).  This Italian war of imperial aggression lasted 19 years, and, as Sensini writes, “was hardly noticed in Italy.”

I cannot help but think of the U.S. wars against Afghanistan and Iraq that are in their 15th and 13th years respectively, and counting; they are not making a ripple on the placid indifference of the American people.

Sensini presents this history clearly and succinctly.  Most of the book is devoted to the period following the 1968 overthrow of King Idris by the Free Unionist Officers, led by the 27 year old captain Mu’ammar Gaddafi.  This bloodless coup d’état by military officers, who had all risen from the poorer classes, was called “Operation Jerusalem” to honor the Palestinian liberation movement.  The new government, The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), had “three key themes …. ‘freedom, socialism, and unity,’ to which we can add the struggle against western influences within the Arab world, and, in particular, the struggle against Israel (whose very existence was, according to Gaddafi, a confirmation of colonialization and subjugation).”

Sensini explains the Libyan government under Gaddafi, including his world theory that was encapsulated in his “Green Book” and the birth of what was called “Jamahiriyya” (State of the Masses).  Gaddafi called Libya the “Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriyya.”

Under Gaddafi there was dialogue between Christians and Muslims, including the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and visits from Eastern Orthodox and Anglican religious leaders.  Fundamentalist Islamic groups criticized Gaddafi as a heretic for these moves.  Gaddafi described Islamists as “reactionaries in the name of Islam.”  His animus toward Israel remained, however, due to the Palestinian issue. He promoted women’s rights, and in 1996 Libya “was the first country to issue an international arrest warrant with Osama bin Laden’s name on it.”

He had a lot of enemies: Israel, Islamists, al Qaeda, the western imperial countries, etc.  But he had friends as well, especially among the developing countries.

A large portion of the book concerns the U.S./NATO 2011 attack on Libya and its aftermath.  This attack was justified and sanctioned by UN Resolutions 1970 (2/26/11) and 1973 (3/17/11).  These resolutions were prepared by the work of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) that in 2000-2001 produced a justification for powerful nations to intervene in the internal affairs of any nation they chose.  Termed the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), it justified the illegal and immoral “humanitarian” attack on Libya in 2011.  The ICISS, based in NYC, was founded by, among others, the Carnegie Corporation, the Simons, Rockefeller, William and Flora Hewitt, and John D. and Catherine MacArthur foundations, elite moneyed institutions devoted to American interventions throughout the world.

When the US/NATO attacked Libya, they did so despite the illegality of the intervention (an Orwellian term) under the UN Resolutions that prohibit arming of ‘rebels’ who do not represent the legal government of a country.  On March 30, 2011 the Washington Post, a staunch supporter of US aggression, reported an anonymous government source as saying that “President Obama has issued a secret funding that would authorize the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and other support to Libyan opposition groups.”  None of the mainstream media, including the Washington Post, noted the hypocrisy of reporting illegal activities as if they were legal.  The law had become irrelevant.

The Obama administration had become the opposite of the Kennedy administration.  Whereas JFK, together with Dag Hammarskjold the assassinated U.N. Secretary General, had used the UN to defend the growing third world independence movements throughout the world, Obama has chosen to use the UN to justify his wars of aggression against them.  Libya is a prime example.

Sensini shows in great detail which groups were armed, where they operated, and who they represented.  The US/NATO forces armed and supported all sorts of Islamist terrorists, including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), led by Abu al-Laith al Libby, a close Afghan associate of Osama bin Laden, and al Qaeda’s third in command.

“These fanatical criminals (acclaimed as liberators by the mainstream media worldwide) were to form Libya’s emerging ruling class.  These were people tasked to ensure a democratic future for Libya.  However, the ‘rebel’ council of Benghazi did what it does best – ensuring chaos for the country as a whole, under a phantom government and a system of local fiefdoms (each with a warlord or tribal chief).  This appears to be the desired outcome all along, and not just in Libya.”

Sensini is especially strong in his critical analysis of the behavior of the corporate mass media worldwide in propagandizing public opinion for war.  Outright lies – “aligning its actions with Goebbels’ famous principle of perception management” and the Big Lie (thanks to Edward Bernays, the American father of Public Relations) – were told by Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and repeated by the western media, about Gaddafi allegedly slaughtering and raping thousands of Libyans.  Sensini argues persuasively that Libya was a game-changer in this regard.

Here, the mass media played the part of a military vanguard.  The cart, as it were, had been put before the horse.  Rather than obediently repackaging and relaying the news that had been spoon fed to them by military commanders and Secretaries of State, the media were called upon actually to provide legitimation for armed actors.  The media’s function was military. The material aggression on the ground and in the sky was paralleled and anticipated by virtual and symbolic aggression.  Worldwide, we have witnessed the affirmation of a Soviet approach to information, enhanced to the nth degree.  It effectively produces a ‘deafening silence’ – an information deficit.  The trade unions, the parties of the left and the ‘love-thy-neighbor’ pacifists did not rise to this challenge and demonstrate against the rape of Libya.

The US/NATO attack on Libya, involving tens of thousands of bombing raids and cruise missile, killed thousands of innocent civilians.  This was, as usual, explained away as unfortunate “collateral damage,” when it was admitted at all.  The media did their part to downplay it. Sensini rightly claims that the U.S./NATO and the UN are basically uninterested in the question of the human toll.  “The most widely cited press report on the effects of the NATO sorties and missile attacks on the civilian population is most surely that of The New York Times.  In ‘Strikes on Libya by NATO, an Unspoken Civilian Toll’, conveniently published after NATO’s direct intervention had ceased.  The article is truly a fine example of ‘embeddedness’:”

While the overwhelming preponderance of strikes seemed to hit their targets without killing noncombatants, many factors contributed to a run of fatal mistakes.  These included a technically faulty bomb, poor or dated intelligence and the near absence of experience military personnel on the ground who could direct air strikes.  The alliances apparent presumption that residences thought to harbor pro Gaddafi forces were not occupied by civilians repeatedly proved mistaken, the evidence suggests, posing a reminder to advocates of air power that no war is cost or error free.

The use of words like “seemed” and “apparent,” together with the oft used technical excuse and the ex post facto reminder are classic stratagems of the New York Times’ misuse of the English language for propaganda purposes.

Justifying the killing, President Obama “explained the entire campaign away with a lie.  Gaddafi, he said, was planning a massacre of his own people.”

Hilary Clinton, who was then Secretary of State, was aware from the start, as an FOIA document reveals, that the rebel militias the U.S. was arming and backing were summarily executing anyone they captured: “The State Department and Obama were fully aware that the U.S.-backed ‘rebel’ forces had no such regard for the lives of the innocent.”

Clinton also knew that France’s involvement was because of the threat Gaddafi’s single African currency plan posed to French financial interests in Francophone Africa.  Her joyous ejaculation about Gaddafi’s brutal death – “We came, we saw, he died” – sick in human terms, was no doubt also an expression of relief that the interests of western elites, her backers, had been served.

It is true that Gaddafi did represent a threat to western financial interests.  As Sensini writes, “Gaddafi had successfully achieved Libya’s economic independence, and was on the point of concluding agreements with the African Union that might have contributed decisively to the economic independence of the entire continent of Africa.”

Thus, following the NATO attack, Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank.  Sensini references Ellen Brown, the astute founder of the Public Banking Institute in the U.S., who explains how a state owned Central Bank, as in Libya, contributes to the public’s well-being.  Brown in turn refers to the comment of Erica Encina, posted on Market Oracle, which explains how Libya’s 100% state owned Central Bank allowed it to sustain its own economic destiny.  Encina concludes, “Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy [and Clinton] but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.”

In five pages Sensini tells more truth about the infamous events in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American colleagues than the MSM has done in five years.  After the overthrow of Gaddafi, in 2012 Stevens was sharing the American “Consulate” quarters with the CIA.  Benghazi was the center of Sanusi jihadi fundamentalism, those who the US/NATO had armed to attack Gaddafi’s government.  These terrorists were allied with the US.  “Stevens’s task in Benghazi,” writes Sensini, “now was to oversee shipments of Gaddafi’s arms to Turkish ports.  The arms were then transferred to jihadi forces engaged in terrorist actions against the government of Syria under Bashar al-Assad.”  Contrary to the Western media, Sensini says that Stevens and the others were killed, not by the jihadi extremists supported by the US, but by Gaddafi loyalists who had tried to kill Stevens previously.  These loyalists disappeared from the Libyan and international press afterwards.  “The reports now focused on al-Qaida, Islamists, terrorists and protesters.  No one was to mention either Gaddafi … or his ghosts.”

The stage for a long-term Western intervention against terrorists, who were armed by the US/NATO, was now set. The insoluble disorder of a vicious circle game meant to perpetuate chaos was set in motion.  Sensini’s disgust manifests itself when he says, “Given its record of lavish distribution of arms to all and sundry in Syria, the USA’s warning that, in Libya, arms might reach ‘armed groups outside the government’s control’ is beneath contempt.”

Sowing Chaos: Libya in the Wake of Humanitarian Intervention is a superb book.  If you wish to understand the ongoing Libyan tragedy, and learn where responsibility lies, read it.  If the tale it tells doesn’t disgust you, I’d be surprised.

In closing, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a stalwart and courageous truth teller, has written a fine forward where she puts Libya and Sensini’s analysis into a larger global perspective.  As usual, she pulls no punches.

I was privileged to visit Syria as part of the US Peace Council delegation.  We spent six intense days in Syria at the end of July 2016. During this time we met with President Bashar Al Assad, the Grand Mufti Hassoun, many opposition leaders and dissidents, parliamentary speakers and members, Syrian NGOs, education ministers, university directors, health sector officials, lawyers, Chamber of Commerce and many more.

The experience was enriching, overwhelming and emboldening as we all realised to what extent our governments are attempting to destroy this noble country that is surviving through stubborn unity and resistance against the attempts to fracture their society along sectarian lines that never existed prior to the US allied illegal intervention.

The following is an interview Henry Lowendorf and I gave to Syria TV at the end of our trip. It was an emotional experience, the testimonies we had heard during our short time were compelling and moving. Meeting President Bashar Al Assad and listening to his wise and pertinent analysis of events in Syria and globally were a wake up call for us, living under true tyrants and oligarchs whose intent is mass murder, theft and rape of sovereign nations in order to feed their inhumane and ravenous hegemony. Henry and I both struggled to keep emotions under control during the interview.

Thank you Syria for welcoming us with such generosity and hospitality despite the ravages being inflicted upon you by our governments and their media/NGO propaganda operatives.  

Six Tu-22M3 bombers took off from the Russian territory and carried out concentrated air strikes on ISIS targets near al-Sukhnah and Arak in the Syrian province of Homs. The bombers destroyed the terrorists’ control centres and concentrations, ammo storage, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 12 crossover utility vehicles with weapons were near Palmyra and Arak. A command and control centre and a large field camp located near al-Sukhnah were also destroyed by the air strikes.

The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces have been making major advances in northern Latakia after redeployment of significant jihadist forces to Aleppo city. Pro-government forces have already captured Shir al-Qaboo, al-Qantarah and the strategic town of Kinsibba.

The situation remains tense in southwestern Aleppo.

The Jaish al-Fatah operation room holds positions in the corridor to the militant-controlled areas in eastern Aleppo while clashes are reported at the Cement Plant and in the 1070 Apartment Project. The jihadists also shell the pro-government positions in the 3000 Apartment Project. However, they have not been able to launch a successful advance there. The Syrian army’s artillery and the Russian and Syrian air power have been striking on targets in the 1070 Apartment Project, the Ramouseh Artillery Base and the jihadists’ rear.

The both sides have difficulties with providing supplies to the besieged areas because the opened corridors through the Castello Highway and the Alramousa road don’t allow free passage of aid convoys. If the jihadists are able to widen the opened corridor and launch constant delivers to eastern Aleppo, it will be a major military, PR and diplomatic blow to the Assad government and its Russian and Iranian allies. Some believe that if this redline is passed, Moscow could be pushed to use ground forces in order to save its achievements of the operation in Syria that had already drawn significant human, organizational and financial resources.

Follow us on Social Media:
http://google.com/+SouthfrontOrgNews
https://www.facebook.com/SouthFrontENTwo
https://twitter.com/southfronteng

In a damning judgment, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce ruled Friday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) broke the law and “manufactured” a terrorism plot as part of a months-long entrapment operation that ended in a Vancouver-area couple being arrested and ultimately sentenced to life in prison.

John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were arrested July 1, 2013 and accused of planting bombs on the grounds of the British Columbia legislature in Victoria.

But Justice Bruce found that the couple would never have taken any action had it not been for the active encouragement and coercion of undercover RCMP officers. “This was not a situation in which the police were attempting to disrupt an ongoing criminal enterprise,” declared Bruce in her 210-page judgment. “Rather, the offences committed by the defendants were brought about by the police and would not have occurred without their involvement. By any measure, this was a clear case of police-manufactured crime.”

Undercover officers posing as Islamist extremists, befriended the isolated couple, who were recent converts to Islam, and encouraged them to act on statements they had made decrying the killing of Muslims in US-led wars and threatening to wage jihad and die as martyrs for Islam. Subsequently, the police suggested and facilitated the legislature bomb plot, removing obstacles that the police themselves acknowledged Nuttall and Korody would not have been able to overcome alone, and going so far as threaten them when they appeared reluctant to proceed.

Justice Bruce found that “Operation Souvenir,” which involved over 240 RCMP officers and cost $900,000 in overtime hours alone, breached the Criminal Code and tarnished the administration of justice.

Calling police claims Nuttall and Korody constituted a grave threat to public safety “quite farcical,” Justice Bruce wrote, “I find that the RCMP knowingly facilitated a terrorist activity by providing money and other services to the defendants that helped and made easier the terrorist activities.”

The spectre of the defendants serving life sentences for a crime that the police manufactured, exploiting their vulnerabilities, by instilling fear that they would be killed if they backed out … is offensive to our concept of fundamental justice.

The Crown has announced it will appeal Justice Bruce’s ruling.

Despite Bruce issuing a stay on proceedings, with the life imprisonment sentences for both being quashed, Nuttall and Korody were brutally rearrested within a few hours. They appeared before a provincial court judge Friday afternoon and were compelled to sign peace bonds, a draconian power at the disposal of the state to restrict the activities of so-called terrorist suspects even if they have not been convicted of a crime. Nuttall and Korody will be restricted from certain areas, including the legislature grounds, synagogues and Jewish cultural centers, are not allowed to visit certain internet sites, and must regularly report to a bail officer.

In comments to the press, Crown lawyer Peter Eccles claimed Justice Bruce’s decision would undermine the police’s ability to pursue terrorism suspects and sought to link Nuttal and Korody to the recent horrific attacks carried out by lone perpetrators in Germany and France, even though the court had just ruled that there was no evidence to support the suggestion that the couple intended to carry out an attack. He declared, “As we’ve seen even in the last six weeks, lone participants are undeniably the greatest challenge law enforcement faces.” Such scare-mongering neglects to mention the fact that the individuals who have carried out such attacks have frequently been disorientated, alienated and sometimes radicalized by the aggressive policies of war abroad and repression of refugees and attacks on democratic rights at home.

The state’s power to use peace bonds was expanded dramatically under Bill C-51. This sweeping police-state law was rushed through parliament by the previous Conservative government with the backing of the then-opposition Liberals in the wake of attacks on armed forces personnel in Ottawa and St. Jean-sur-Richelieu in October 2014 that killed two people. In fulfillment of an election pledge, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has pledged to make cosmetic changes to the legislation, including implementing a parliamentary oversight committee, but intends to leave the peace-bond system untouched.

Nuttall and Korody’s conviction as “terrorists” was itself an important element in the right-wing, anti-democratic campaign whipped up by the political elite and media last year to justify ramming Bill C-51 through parliament without any serious public debate.

More broadly, the constant invocation of the threat of “terrorism” has been exploited to accustom the population to a drastic assault on their basic democratic rights, as well as to legitimize Canada’s expanded involvement in military operations in the Middle East in alliance with the United States.

The Liberal government upholds the key provisions of Bill C-51, including the right of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) to actively disrupt vaguely defined “threats” to public security, the right of the police to detain terrorist suspects for up to seven days without charge, a new criminal offence of promoting terrorism in general, and a catch-all ban on “terrorist propaganda” that could be used to clamp down on social and political opposition to the government.

The fate that befell Nuttall and Korody makes clear the dangers faced by working people from authorities wielding such unchecked powers.

The couple, who lived in a basement apartment in a Vancouver suburb, were extremely socially isolated and recovering drug addicts. They rarely left their home, and were described by the judge as “naive,” “childlike” and “gullible.” Even police briefing notes presented at the original trial acknowledged Nuttall was possibly “developmentally delayed.”

Marilyn Sandford, Nuttall’s attorney, pointed out that her client suggested a number of outlandish ideas for attacks, including hijacking a nuclear submarine and firing rockets across the border at Seattle.

When the couple showed signs of refusing to go through with the legislature attack, they confronted threats from the undercover officers, including warnings they would be killed. They were also induced with offers of jobs and help in an elaborate escape plan.

Finally, when a new primary investigator was appointed to the case a week before the alleged plot was to take place, he had the couple removed from their home to get rid of distractions. Vaz Kassam explained to the court that other officers were frustrated because the pair were not preparing for the attack as planned.

“The police decided they had to aggressively engineer the plan for Nuttall and Korody and make them think it was their own,” Bruce noted.

Maureen Smith, Nuttall’s mother, said the pair would require counseling to recover from the ordeal they had experienced over the past three years.

The media immediately sought to portray the vast undercover sting, which theNational Post admitted was ordered at “senior levels,” as simply an error or bungled operation. The Post commented in its article, “It took one clear-headed judge to see through the stupidity and explain to the public the true facts of this policing and prosecutorial affront.”

In reality, the methods employed against Nuttall and Korody are standard practice for the security and intelligence apparatus in Canada, which functions in close collaboration with its partner organizations in the United States.

In a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published in 2014, the organization noted a worrying trend in Canada of “discriminatory investigations, often targeting particularly vulnerable individuals (including people with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent), in which the government—often acting through informants— is actively involved in developing the plot, persuading and sometimes pressuring the target to participate, and providing the resources to carry it out.”

HRW also issued a specific warning related to the prosecution of Nuttall and Korody. Andrea Prasow, HRW’s deputy director in Washington, compared the proceedings in BC to the US government’s determined efforts to entrap vulnerable individuals in concocted “terrorism” plots in the aftermath of 9/11. “What we’ve seen allegations of [in BC] are at least similar practices to what we’ve seen in the US,” she commented last June following the original convictions.

In the so-called VIA Rail terror plot, an undercover FBI agent and other security officials used an elaborate entrapment scheme to implicate Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser in a plan to derail a passenger train traveling between Toronto and New York. The agent repeatedly refused to answer questions in court, citing the secrecy of his work, and the media was banned from the courtroom and prohibited from reporting his two weeks of testimony.

Even though two psychiatrists ruled that Esseghaier was mentally unfit for the sentencing process, declaring him potentially schizophrenic, the judge ignored pleas from his lawyers to consider delaying sentencing and placing him in a hospital for treatment. Esseghaier and Jaser were sentenced to life in prison last September.

“El grado de civilización de una sociedad se mide entrando a sus cárceles” , Fiódor Mijailovich Dostoyevski

Medios de prensa en Costa Rica han anunciado en estos recientes días la decisión del juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez de ordenar al Estado el cierre definitivo de la Unidad de San Sebastián, por tratarse de una verdadera “jaula humana” (ver  nota  de La Nación). En esta otra  nota del medio digital CRHoy, se precisa que las autoridades de Costa Rica deberán reubicar a más de 1260 personas privadas de libertad.

El jurista Roy Murillo Rodríguez es un juez ejecutor de la pena: se trata de una figura legal que no necesariamente existe en todas las legislaciones penales, y que permite  a quienes ostentan este cargo, proceder a visitas regulares a centros de detención, como parte de sus funciones.

Recordemos que hace tres años, se leyó por parte de otra entidad pública costarricense a cargo de visitas regulares a los centros de detención en Costa Rica (pero ajena al sistema judicial) que: “La Defensoría de los Habitantes consideró que las cárceles costarricenses “son depósitos de personas” que violan la dignidad humana tanto de reos, como del personal técnico y de seguridad. Así se consignó en el informe anual sobre la situación en el 2012, del sistema penitenciario, trabajo elaborado por el Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de la Tortura de la Defensoría” (ver  nota  de La Nación del 28 de mayo del 2013).

Políticas de “mano dura”, “mano firme”, y leyes altamente represivas en Costa Rica adoptadas hace algunos años, así como el uso abusivo de la detención preventiva ante la presión ejercida por los medios de comunicación, explican, al menos en parte, el problema de hacinamiento actual que sufre el sistema carcelario costarricense (y en particular la Unidad de San Sebastián), al igual que muchos otros en América Latina. Con relación a la detención preventiva, se lee en una reciente  nota  publicada en Perú en el sitio Ius360, algunas valoraciones que pueden aplicar a la situación de algunos jueces costarricenses: “Coyuntura y realidad nacional: En muchos casos, los magistrados de los juzgados de investigación preparatoria tiene un rol provisional en la jerarquía judicial; con lo cual, esperan cumplir con la exigencia social de aplicar “mano dura” contra la delincuencia y temor al escándalo mediático. Medios de Comunicación: Es común que los medios de comunicación ataquen tanto al propio Estado como a los operadores de justicia en su accionar; más aún si este accionar no es acorde con lo esperado por el común de las personas (no siempre lo legalmente correcto o debido)”. 

Sobre las penas de cárcel, el mismo juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez, en una entrevista en el año 2014 concedida a la periodista Natalia Rodríguez Mata, recordaba que mientras la tenencia de droga se sanciona en España con 4 o 5 años, 3 años en Argentina, el mínimo impuesto en Costa Rica es de 8 años (ver   entrevista  en YT, del Programa Sobre la Mesa, Canal 15 UCR, emisión del 19/06/2014, “Política Carcelaria en Costa Rica”, Minuto 21:00).

La luz de una visita ante la oscuridad rampante

Como es bien sabido, tradicionalmente las cárceles de un Estado constituyen lugares sombríos, mantenidos voluntariamente en una suerte de oscuridad institucionalizada: la única ventana de esperanza para los que en ellos cohabitan a diario, es la luz que puede arrojar la visita de un ente fiscalizador externo al sistema carcelario como tal. Precisamente, entre 1991 y el 2002, Costa Rica lideró exitosamente duras negociaciones en el seno de las Naciones Unidas: estas culminaron con la adopción, el 18 de  diciembre del 2002, en Nueva York, de un novedoso instrumento internacional, bajo la forma de un protocolo facultativo. El objetivo de este tratado arduamente negociado (y cuya adopción se dio mediante un inusual voto, con tan solo cuatro votos en contra: Estados Unidos, Islas Marshall, Nigeria y Palau) es el de prevenir significativamente los malos tratos y la tortura en los centros de privación de libertad con base en un sistema de visitas regulares a lugares en los que, por alguna razón, personas se encuentran privadas de su libertad (Nota 1)

El sistema establecido en el Protocolo Facultativo a la Convención contra la Tortura de Naciones Unidas consta de un mecanismo internacional (el Subcomité para la Prevención de la Tortura o SPT) y uno nacional, el Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención (MNP), que cada Estado Parte debe establecer en función de su marco normativo e institucional.

En el caso de Costa Rica, Estado que ratificó el Protocolo en el 2005, el MNP es un órgano adscrito directamente a la Defensoría de los Habitantes (u Ombudsman), creado mediante la ley 92014 adoptada en febrero  del 2014 (ver  sitio oficial  del MNP).  Anterior a esta ley, un Decreto Ejecutivo del 2005 designaba de manera provisional a la Defensoría de los Habitantes como MNP.  La opción costarricense, no exenta de críticas, fue seguida por otros Estados, como México o la misma España (ver  informe  del MNP español adscrito al Defensor del Pueblo): en el caso de España, la discusión previa a la designación del MNP en el 2010 dio  lugar a un intenso debate (Nota 2), al igual que en el caso de México, cuya designación de su MNP fue antecedida por una larga serie de consultas entre el 2004 y el 2007 auspiciadas por Naciones Unidas para intentar conciliar posiciones encontradas (Nota 3).

En su primer informe de labores del 2014 luego de su creación mediante ley (ver texto completo), el MNP de Costa Rica concluye recordando las serias limitaciones con las que desempeña sus labores: “Se reitera que el MNPT adolece de una infraestructura (oficina) adecuada y suficiente para desarrollar su trabajo, lo cual representa un problema, debido a que no se tiene espacio para alojar a los (as) dos funcionarios (as) nuevos (as), para lo cual se deberán tomar medidas emergentes. De tal manera, para el presupuesto del año 2016, se solicitarán los recursos correspondientes para la construcción de las oficinas del Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de la Tortura” (p. 59).

Al momento de redactar estas líneas, el Protocolo Facultativo cuenta con 81 Estados Partes (ver  estado oficial  de firmas y ratificaciones). Mientras que, con excepción de Belice, los demás Estados anglófonos del hemisferio americano (incluyendo a Canadá y a Estados Unidos) se mantienen distantes de dicho instrumento, en América Latina, faltan al llamado Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Haití y República Dominicana (Estados que, al igual que los precitados Estados anglófonos, no han considerado oportuno ni tan siquiera suscribirlo); así como Venezuela, que lo ha firmado más no ratificado.

Imagen extraía de portada de  publicación  sobre la implementación del Protocolo Facultativo a la Convención de Naciones Unidas contra la Tortura, (APT/Suiza).

De algunas iniciativas novedosas

Mencionemos que el tema de la privación de libertad ha generado desde varios años en Costa Rica valiosas iniciativas por parte de algunas entidades sociales y personas,  en particular en el ámbito cultural y artístico: ver por ejemplo esta  nota  del 2014 sobre presentación en la Alianza Francesa de un poemario, así como esta  nota  sobre encuentro sobre danza y cárceles del 2011 y el artículo de la Revista Perfil “El arte, redescrubiendo a los privados de libertad” del 2011.  En una reciente entrevista a una poeta costarricense galardonada en el 2016 en España, Paola Valverde Alier (ver  nota ), se lee que: “Me tocó trabajar durante cuatro años dando clase de poesía en una cárcel de hombres aquí en Costa Rica. Tenía 17 años y me acompañaba mi mamá al no tener cédula”.  En esta  nota  del 2006 de La Nación sobre otro espacio para la poesía en varias cárceles de Costa Rica, se lee que: “Uno de los grupos, integrado por Espinoza, Marenco, Valverde, Ilama y Mora, llegó al centro penal de Cocorí, ubicado en Cocorí, a las 9:30 a. m. Lo jóvenes regalaron cuatro rondas de poemas a más de 40 internos que se reunieron en el gimnasio de la cárcel. Con el lema de que “la poesía salva”, Paola Valverde presentó a los invitados y, de inmediato, cada quien se lanzó con su artillería”. En una nota anterior, del año 2003, sobre los talleres de poesía de Paola Valverde Alier, se lee que: “Creo que es un espacio de formación muy importante porque amplía los horizontes de los privados de libertad. Ellos siempre están deseosos de aprender y muestran un gran interés en la materia, sus apreciaciones y sus comentarios son mucho más profundos que otros que he escuchado como profesor universitario”.

También merece mención la elaboración y venta de artesanías en exposiciones nacionales por parte de los privados de libertad (ver  nota  de CRHoy del 2013). Las posibilidades de trabajo de los privados de libertad fue objeto de una interesante tesis en el 2011 (ver  texto completo ) de Licenciatura en Derecho en la Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), por parte de la entonces estudiante Maricel Gómez Murillo, en cuanto a su alcance real en la práctica y las mejoras requeridas. Según el autor de otra tesis universitaria (ver  nota  publicada en el Semanario Universidad del 2013) “para los privados de libertad, la oportunidad de participar en la expresión creativa puede convertirse en una experiencia exitosa en cuanto a su rehabilitación y sus procesos de reeducación, pues se ha demostrado que el disfrute y los logros alcanzados propician una reintroducción al sistema educativo de muchos de ellos“.

No obstante estas y muchas otras iniciativas que no dejan siempre rastro en medios de prensa, las condiciones de hacinamiento y el deterioro de la infraestructura están alcanzado niveles tan críticos en Costa Rica, que hacen a un lado estos esfuerzos, e interpelan al sistema carcelario costarricense y, más generalmente, a la sociedad costarricense como tal.  La cárcel de San Sebastián no es la única en mantener altos índices de hacinamiento. Por ejemplo, en este   artículo   del juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez publicada en la Revista de la Maestría en Ciencias Penales en el 2014, leemos que: “en la cárcel de San José (San Sebastián) con espacio para 664 internos, hay 1191 –un 79,6% de hacinamiento, el más alto por centro penitenciario en estos momentos – y en San Carlos, con espacio para 442 personas tenemos a 763 sujetos – 72,6%. Peor aún, en este último recinto carcelario, en la unidad de indiciados, con espacio para 104 hay 236 personas, sea un hacinamiento del 126,9%” (p. 659).

Las razones alegadas por el juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez en el caso de San Sebastián

Luego de repasar de forma muy detallada la gran cantidad de sentencias de la  Sala Constitucional  de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Costa Rica no acatadas por las entidades recurridas del Ministerio de Justicia a cargo de la Unidad de San Sebastián,  y precisar, datos en mano,  sus hallazgos en calidad de juez ejecutor de la pena, el juez Roy Murillo Rodríguez concluye que:

“En definitiva la cárcel de San Sebastián es hoy una jaula humana deteriorante, aplastante y humillante y esa situación no puede ser tolerada por esta autoridad. El hacinamiento unido a las pésimas condiciones de infraestructura y la gravísima limitación para el acceso a luz y ventilación natural –nótese que se trata de una estructura de tres niveles donde los pocos espacios para la luz y el aire se han ido limitando por razones de seguridad al techar esos accesos- han convertido ese espacio carcelario en un calabozo gigante. Nos encontramos ante un evidente ejercicio de terror de Estado que no es válido en una Democracia y que no puede prolongarse sino que por el contrario se hace necesario cesar con urgencia. Ya no se trata solamente de un problema de hacinamiento sino de una infraestructura y condiciones penitenciarias deterioradas y lesivas de la dignidad humana.  Son más de veinte años que la autoridad judicial ordinaria y constitucional ha esperado soluciones y la degradación y trato inhumano que esa cárcel impone no puede tolerarse bajo ningún motivo o razón. Conforme el pacto fundacional de la sociedad democrática costarricense, ni un solo ciudadano puede ser expuesto a condiciones degradantes y humillantes como las que impone el Centro de Atención Institucional de San José. ”

(Véase “Medida correctiva de cierre definitivo del Centro de Atención Institucional de San José, N° 1023-2016” con fecha del 20 de julio del 2016,   texto completo  reproducido por DerechoalDia).

En la parte final y resolutiva de su resolución, se lee que:

“Por lo tanto, conforme los artículos 5 de la Convención Americana de Derechos Humanos, 33 de la Constitución Política, 51 del Código Penal, las Reglas Mínimas, los Principios y Buenas Prácticas para la Protección de las Personas Privadas de Libertad en las Américas y el Reglamento de Derechos y Deberes de los Privados y Privadas de Libertad, así como la Ley de Creación del Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de la Tortura, se ordena la clausura o cierre definitivo del Centro de Atención Institucional de San José, el que vencido el plazo de dieciocho meses a partir de la firmeza de esta resolución, no podrá funcionar más para la custodia de población penal institucionalizada, plazo que se otorga considerando los efectos y la crisis que generaría el cierre inmediato del centro penal, ordenándose a la autoridad penitenciaria que a partir de la notificación de esta resolución NO INGRESARÁ UN SOLO PRIVADO DE LIBERTAD MÁS a dicho Centro Penitenciario y en adelante, deberá asegurar el egreso –por resolución judicial que ordene libertad, por traslado a otros centros penitenciarios o a otros programas de atención- de al menos setenta privados de libertad cada mes, hasta su completo desalojo”.

Es menester indicar que una solicitud del mismo juez relacionada con la misma Unidad de San Sebastián, sólidamente respaldada desde el punto de vista técnico (ver  nota  de prensa publicada en La Extra), había ordenado en setiembre del 2013 que no se ingresará a más personas en San Sebastián (véase  texto completo  de las medidas correctivas del 24 de setiembre del 2013, reproducidas por DerechoalDia). Se leyó en aquel entonces por parte de la jurista Cecilia Sánchez Romero (quien ostenta desde el 2015 la cartera del Ministerio de Justicia en Costa Rica) que: “No permitamos hoy que la propia institución conspire contra esta garantía, pretendiendo someter a revisión la decisión de un juez de ejecución de la pena, que no ha hecho más que cumplir con sus obligaciones constitucionales y legales. Un juez que resuelve con fundamento jurídico, con apoyo en normativa procesal, con sólido respaldo de pronunciamientos de la Sala Constitucional en la materia y, por supuesto, con un elemental sentido de humanidad” (ver   nota   publicada en DerechoalDia).

Sistema penitenciario ante escrutinio internacional

Se podría pensar que un espacio que se  sitúa en las mismas entrañas de un Estado, como lo son sus cárceles, no interesa mayormente la esfera internacional. Es posiblemente lo que algunas autoridades estatales desearían, dejando a manos de entidades fiscalizadoras adscritas al mismo aparato estatal represivo el examinar la situación que impera en ellas.

No obstante, la realidad es otra: la situación de los privados de libertad dentro de un Estado no escapa al ámbito del derecho internacional. Por ejemplo, cuando en materia de derechos humanos se menciona la lucha contra la tortura (o su prevención), se incluye también la lucha contra los tratos o penas crueles, inhumanos o degradantes que violentan los principios más básicos de la dignidad humana: los malos tratos que lleguen a calificarse como inhumanos, o crueles, o degradantes, son tan violatorios como la tortura, razón por la que ambas expresiones son indivisibles y así consta en los numerosos instrumentos internacionales de derechos humanos.

Los estándares internacionales, en particular los establecidos en el marco del sistema interamericano de derechos humanos, así como la jurisprudencia en materia de integridad personal y privación de libertad (ver  estudio ) de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos constituyen a ese respecto una útil guía para todos los Estados del hemisferio americano. En uno de sus fallos (ver sentencia en el caso Montero Aranguren y otros versus Venezuela), la Corte Interamericana sentenció que:

“el espacio de aproximadamente 30 centímetros cuadrados por cada recluso es a todas luces inaceptable y constituye en sí mismo un trato cruel, inhumano y degradante, contrario a la dignidad inherente del ser humano y, por ende, violatorio del artículo 5.2 de la Convención” (párr. 89).

Para dar otro ejemplo en América Latina, el Procurador General en Colombia, en el año 2003, ya advertía en un pronunciamiento (ver  texto completo ) que:

“De acuerdo con el parámetro internacional, cualquier sistema de reclusión o prisión que trabaje bajo condiciones de hacinamiento superiores a 20 por ciento (es decir, 120 personas recluidas por 100 plazas disponibles) se encuentra en estado de “sobrepoblación crítica”. Una situación de “sobrepoblación crítica” puede generar violaciones o desconocimiento de los derechos fundamentales de los internos” (p. 3).

Foto extraída de  artículo  de prensa del 2015 titulado “Hacinamiento en cárceles alcanza cifra récord de 51%”, La Nación (Costa Rica), 11 de marzo del 2015

Recientemente, en el mes de marzo del 2016, la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH), a raíz de la inspección in situ realizada por otro ente habilitado a realizar visitas, el Relator sobre Derechos de las Personas Privadas de Libertad, había hecho públicas sus recomendaciones al Estado costarricense sobre el deplorable estado en el que se encuentran sus cárceles. La Unidad de San Sebastián no escapó a dicho examen, al externar por parte del Relator de la CIDH que:

“Asimismo, la Relatoría observó con suma preocupación las precarias condiciones de infraestructura y salubridad. En particular, la Relatoría constató la falta de ventilación en los dormitorios y el calor que prevalece en los mismos. De igual forma, en los diferentes pabellones visitados en la Cárcel de San Sebastián, la delegación de la CIDH observó la falta de privacidad en el uso de servicios sanitarios, así como la total ausencia de espacios para guardar objetos de tipo personal. La Relatoría también recibió diversos testimonios de los internos respecto a las dilaciones en sus procesos judiciales respectivos. Asimismo, expresaron quejas relacionadas con la supuesta falta de atención médica, en particular, sobre la demora en recibir dicha atención y la falta de servicios dentales” (ver texto del informe detallado reproducido en esta  nota  de nuestro blog).

Con relación a la detención preventiva, el órgano interamericano señaló que en vez de ser usado de manera excepcional, es la regla a la que recurren los jueces costarricenses en muchos casos, de manera abusiva. En su informe de marzo del 2016 sobre Costa Rica, sobre este preciso punto, se lee que:

“… una persona privada de libertad en la cárcel de San Sebastián manifestó que “No nos investigan para detenernos. Nos detienen para investigarnos”. En la cárcel de San Sebastián, que alberga únicamente a internos en prisión preventiva, las autoridades penitenciarias informaron que el 34% de las personas salen de la cárcel a más tardar 15 días después de su ingreso, y que el 60% deja el penal en un periodo de 60 días; no obstante, refirieron también que en muchos casos la permanencia de los internos era “indefinida”,  incluso personas que habían permanecido en el centro penitenciario por más de ocho años. De igual forma, las autoridades manifestaron su preocupación ante el “regular” uso de la prisión preventiva –que se reflejaría en que aproximadamente una tercera parte de personas en prisión preventiva permanece en la cárcel durante 15 días– y las consecuencias que su uso traería en el aumento del hacinamiento, el “desgaste económico” para el Estado, y el estigma en la vida de las personas. Por otra parte, una funcionaria judicial señaló que “la permanencia entre uno y tres meses de la mayoría de los reos demuestra que en realidad no se justifica la aplicación de [esta medida]””.

En el 2013, en su  informe  sobre el uso de la detención preventiva, la misma Comisión exhortaba en sus conclusiones a todos los Estados Miembros de la OEA a:

“1.  …adoptar las medidas judiciales, legislativas, administrativas y de otra índole requeridas para corregir la excesiva aplicación de la prisión preventiva, garantizando que esta medida sea de carácter excepcional y se encuentre limitada por los principios de legalidad, presunción de inocencia, necesidad y proporcionalidad; evitando así su uso arbitrario, innecesario y desproporcionado. Estos principios deberán guiar siempre la actuación de las autoridades judiciales, con independencia del modelo de sistema penal adoptado por el Estado.

2. Intensificar esfuerzos y asumir la voluntad política necesaria para erradicar el uso de la prisión preventiva como herramienta de control social o como forma de pena anticipada; y para asegurar que su uso sea realmente excepcional. En este sentido, es esencial que se envíe desde los niveles más altos del Estado y la administración de justicia un mensaje institucional de respaldo al uso racional de la prisión preventiva y al respeto del derecho presunción de inocencia” (p. 121 del informe de la CIDH titulado “Informe sobre el uso de la prisión preventiva en las Américas”, 2013).

Gráfico publicado en el 2014 por el Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención (MNP) de Costa Rica, órgano técnico adscrito a la Defensoría de los Habitantes, sobre el aumento vertiginoso de la tasa de personas privadas de libertad por cada 100.000 habitantes en Costa Rica

Al analizar brevemente las recientes observaciones realizadas por otra entidad internacional, el Comité de Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas, al informe de Costa Rica, nos permitimos referir (ver nuestra modesta  nota   publicada en DerechoalDía del 10 de abril del 2016) a un aspecto que, según todo pareciera indicar, no despertó mayor interés por parte de la prensa nacional y mucho menos por parte de las autoridades costarricenses:

“Finalmente, entre muchos de los señalamientos realizados, quisiéramos incluir en estas muy breves referencias lo que se lee en el punto 25 por parte del Comité de Derechos Humanos, y que ameritaría una explicación detallada por parte de las autoridades: “25. Preocupa al Comité que el Estado parte no haya proporcionado información sobre investigaciones y sanciones por violaciones de derechos humanos cometidos por agentes del orden en centros de detención y por miembros de la Policía, especialmente relacionadas con tortura y malos tratos (art. 7 y 10) ”.

A modo de conclusión: el resultado de advertencias desoídas

Sin lugar a dudas, la situación de las personas privadas de libertad se ha convertido en Costa Rica en un verdadero lunar en materia de derechos humanos. Recomendaciones de unos y otros no parecieran encontrar eco alguno ante un parco aparato estatal. Una obra que lleva el sello de la Comisión Nacional para el Mejoramiento de la Administración de la Justicia (CONAMAJ) publicada en el 2003 concluía ya que:

“Mientras tanto, en lo que respecta a esta realidad tantas veces invisibilizada, todo indica que tras los muros de la prisión costarricense sigue prevaleciendo el “universo del no-derecho”, cimentado sobre la persistente devaluación de los derechos fundamentales de las personas privadas de libertad” (Nota 4).

Una zona de “no derecho” en un Estado de Derecho constituye un señalamiento que, en buena teoría,  debiera ser inmediatamente objeto de atención por parte de sus autoridades: en efecto, el “no derecho” desatendido tiende, usualmente, a extenderse.

En esta breve nota de Informa-tico publicada el 25 de junio del 2014, titulada “Día Internacional de la lucha contra la Tortura y los malos tratos La lucha contra la tortura y los malos tratos en Costa Rica“, nos permitíamos concluir nuestras líneas con las palabras redactadas en el 2001 (es decir hace … 15 años) por el entonces Presidente de la Sala Constitucional de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Costa Rica:

“Nuevamente, ante reclamos desatendidos y advertencias desoídas, se recurre a entidades internacionales, con una leve diferencia con relación a otras experiencias recientes: no se trata de víctimas o de comunidades indignadas por la desatención del Estado a sus legítimos reclamos, sino que se trata esta vez del mismo Estado costarricense procediendo a hacer un llamado a estas entidades internacionales… para forzarlo (¿forzarse?) a cumplir con exigencias mínimas en cuanto a condiciones de detención se refiere. Las consecuencias para un sistema penitenciario (ya colapsado) de las políticas represivas de las últimas administraciones debería de constituir un primer ejercicio al que se proceda, en aras de encontrar vías y soluciones duraderas a un problema que, lejos de circunscribirse a las paredes de una cárcel, afecta a la sociedad costarricense como tal. Ya en el año 2001 el Presidente de la Sala Constitucional de Costa Rica, Luis Paulino Mora alertaba: “Con mucha razón se ha dicho que el grado de verdadera democracia y libertad de un país puede medirse por el tipo de cárceles que tenga. Si ello es así, vergüenza nos da a muchos vernos en el espejo de cárceles desgarradas” (Nota 5).

Pese a esta y otras innumerables advertencias hechas, sea desde fuera de Costa Rica o desde la misma Costa Rica, sea desde el mismo sistema judicial, sea desde fuera del mismo, la situación ha ido empeorando. Con relación a las diversas sentencias judiciales relacionadas a la Unidad de San Sebastián, sería interesante verificar si no estamos ante un caso en el que el Estado costarricense se muestra particularmente renuente a acatar lo que le ordenan… sus propios jueces.

Nicolas Boeglin

Nota 1: Remitimos a nuestro lector a la descripción detallada de dicho proceso de negociación internacional en el que Costa Rica puso a disposición de este instrumento lo que posiblemente haya sido el mejor equipo de su aparato diplomático en muchos años en IIDH – APT, EL Protocolo Facultativo a la Convención de las Naciones Unidas contra la Tortura y Otros Tratos o Penas Crueles, Inhumanos o Degradantes, San José- Ginebra, APT / IIDH, 2004, en particular páginas 50-73. Texto completo de la obra disponible aquí.

Nota 2: En el caso de España, además de fustigar la falta de transparencia en el diálogo durante el proceso de designación del MNP español (ver nota de la AEDIDH  – Asociación Española para la Aplicación del Deerchop Internacional de los Derechos Humanos –  del 2007), se criticó duramente la designación de la Defensoría del Pueblo como MNP. Se lee en un comunicado de varias ONG españolas del 2010 que: “al estar incluido dentro de la estructura de otra institución del Estado, no se garantiza su independencia funcional del Mecanismo, ni dispondrá de recursos y financiación propios y diferenciados; al estar dentro de la estructura del Defensor del Pueblo, la amplitud de su mandato podría hacer que pasara desaperciba la función de prevención del mecanismo, basado en las visitas periódicas y que requieren alto grado de especialización”.  Se leyó, por parte de especialistas, que. “Sería recomendable, si se quiere potenciar el impacto del Protocolo, que en España se optase por la creación de un órgano mixto en el que tuviesen cabida el Defensor del Pueblo y las organizaciones de la sociedad civil, incluyendo no solo a las ONG, sino también al sector académico, las asociaciones de familiares de presos, asociaciones religiosas, etc…”: véase CEBADA ROMERO A., “El Protocolo Facultativo a la Convención de Naciones Unidas contra la tortura y los centros de internamiento de extranjeros en España”, in MARIÑO MENENDEZ F.M. & CEBADA ROMERO A. (Editores), La creación del mecanismo español de prevención de la tortura, Madrid, Iustel, 2009, pp. 195-221, p. 211.

Nota 3: El suscrito tuvo la oportunidad de asistir a tres de las cuatro rondas de consultas que se organizaron en México entre el 2005 y 2007 entre autoridades nacionales y organizaciones mexicanas de la sociedad civil, con presencia de observadores internacionales (León, Guanajuato, diciembre del 2005; Querétaro, mayo del 2006 y México DF, marzo del 2007). Perceptible, y pese a los ingentes esfuerzos de organismos internacionales invitados a participar y facilitar el diálogo, la desconfianza pareció imponerse ronda tras ronda y, al final, la designación inconsulta por parte de las autoridades de México de la Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH) como MNP en el 2007, evidenció que la desconfianza por parte de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil era fundamentada. El mismo miembro mexicano del Subcomité Internacional para la Prevención de la Tortura, el académico Miguel Sarre es enfático: “es inaceptable que la CNDH monopolice la función de MNP, cuando sólo debiera ser una parte, una pieza del mecanismo que ya constituye el sistema nacional no jurisdiccional de protección a los derechos humanos en México, formado por 32 comisiones públicas locales de derechos humanos y la CNDH”: véase SARRE M., “El Protocolo Facultativo de la Convención contra la tortura: un instrumento generador de cambios estructurales necesarios para prevenir la tortura”, in MARIÑO F.M. MENENDEZ & CEBADA ROMERO A. (Editores), La creación del mecanismo español de prevención de la tortura, Madrid, Iustel, 2009, pp. 99-116, p.113. Las conclusiones y recomendaciones de estas cuatro consultas en México están consignadas en, OACNUDH, Oficina de México, Aportes al debate sobre el diseño e implementación en México del Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de la Tortura y Otros Tratos o Penas Crueles, Inhumanos o Degradantes, México DF, 2008, pp. 323-345. Texto de esta publicación disponible aquí.

Nota 4: Véase CHAN MORA G. y  GARCÍA AGUILAR R., Los derechos fundamentales tras los muros de la prisión, CONAMAJ, San José, 2003, p. 214.

Nota 5: Véase MORA L.P., “Sobrepoblación penitenciaria y derechos humanos: la experiencia constitucional ”, in CARRANZA E., (Coord.), Justicia Penal y sobrepoblación penitenciaria, San José, ILANUD, 2001, pp. 58-84, p. 84.

Nicolas Boeglin : Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, UCR

Hillary Clinton and the Big (Neoliberal) Lie

By Eric Draitser, August 09 2016

This election season has brought to the surface an issue that, until recently, seemed to have become a neoliberal sacred cow, the holy writ of the lords of capital: free trade. And while this cornerstone of US economic hegemony has come under fire from a deeply reactionary, and to varying degrees racist and xenophobic, perspective, as expressed by Donald Trump, it has nevertheless sparked a much needed conversation about free trade and its destructive impact on both the American working class, and the Global South as well.

Global Implications of the Local Governmental Elections in South Africa

By Abayomi Azikiwe, August 09 2016

African National Congress remains dominate party over two decades after democratic transformation Perhaps the most observed local elections in decades were held in the Republic of South Africa on August 3. In final results of this poll the ruling African National Congress (ANC) gained 54 percent of the vote to the opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA) 26 percent. In actual percentages the ANC won twice as many votes as the DA and many more times as the putative ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which garnered approximately eight percent.

¡Fidel 90 y más! Fidel Castro: A Revolutionary Legacy

By Isaac Saney, August 09 2016

On August 13 Fidel Castro Ruz, the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, turns 90. Progressive, anti-war and social justice forces across the world will join in the celebration of the life of one of the world’s most influential and significant leaders. It is especially worthwhile and necessary to mark and valorize the life and times of a man whose heart, without missing a beat, has withstood more than 600 assassination attempts by U.S imperialism.

Turning off the Tap: Site C and Water Privatization in Canada

By Jennifer O’Keeffe, August 09 2016

Site C Dam is a proposed 60-metre high, 1,050m length dam on the Peace River on Treaty 8 territory in northeastern British Columbia (see image below), a project that if built, would create an 83km reservoir submerging 78 First Nations heritage sites in violation of the Constitution Act, but how does it connect to continental water diversion? To date, much has been said in the media regarding the issue of Site C Dam, but very little has touched on the matter of NAFTA and water.

Understanding Transversality: Spain’s Podemos

By Juan Antonio Gil de los Santos, August 09 2016

When the 15-M movement broke out onto the streets across Spain in 2011, it didn’t coalesce into a series of political parties on either end of the political spectrum. In fact, there was a common declaration that stood out among all of the indignados: “They don’t represent us”. This referred to the “Regime of ‘78”  and the dominant political actors that have been ruling Spain since the death of Franco, and have made the rupturing of the social contract possible over the last 30 years.

Former acting director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morell during a televised interview with American talk show host Charlie Rose, openly conspired to commit a raft of war crimes in Syria, suggesting that the US should take measures to “covertly” kill Russians and Iranians through armed proxies on the ground.

He also suggested targeting Syria’s senior leadership through a series of terrorist attacks in and around Damascus, according to CBS News.

During the interview, Morell would state:

I’d give them the things that they need to both go after the Assad government but also to have the Iranians and the Russians pay a little price. When we were in Iraq, the Iranians were giving weapons to the Shia’a militia who were killing American soldiers. The Iranians were making us pay a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price.

Charlie Rose would then interrupt Morell to clarify by stating:

You make them pay the price by killing Russians? And killing Iranians?

To which Morell replied emphatically:

Yes. Yes. Covertly. You don’t tell the world about it, right? You don’t stand up at the Pentagon and say we did this. Right? But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran. 

Morell’s plans echo those laid out by other US policymakers, including those at the Brookings Institution.

And indeed, this appears to be precisely what the US has already been doing. At least two Russian helicopters have been shot down over Syria. The first near the Syrian city of Palmyra by terrorists from the self-proclaimed Islamic State using what Russian sources claimed was a US-made TOW anti-tank missile system, which is also capable of shooting down slow, low-flying aircraft.

The second more recently was over territory in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province controlled by US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organisation, Jabhat Al Nusra. The helicopter was engaged in humanitarian operations relieving a town besieged by Western-backed militant groups.

Nursa forces are now leading a US-backed offensive on the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Both incidents appear to be the precise manifestation of Morell’s admitted conspiracy to kill Russians covertly, with Moscow apparently having gotten the message, and subsequently relaying it to the rest of the world by linking the incidents to US-armed terrorist organisations.

“Morell’s Plan” Could Never Work 

Morell’s plan to kill Russians and Iranians, has not deterred Moscow or Tehran. Unlike the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, predicated on a premeditated lie as clearly exposed by the recent UK government-published Iraq Inquiry, Russia and Iran are engaged in Syria at the behest of the Syrian government.

Furthermore, their objective is not simply to project Russian and Iranian power beyond their borders, but to prevent the collapse of Syria into a NATO-induced Libya-style failed state that will serve as a staging ground for the spread of war back over their own borders. In other words, unlike the US’ intervention in Iraq seeking extraterritorial geopolitical gain, Russia and Iran’s intervention is based on very real and immediate existential concerns.

Thus, Morell’s plan to kill Russians and Iranians was an ill-conceived attempt to convince both nations to capitulate to US designs in Syria today, so that an even greater loss of Russian and Iranian lives could be embarked upon by wider proxy war in the near future.

In the process of organising this ill-conceived plan, the US has now further implicated itself as a state-sponsor of terrorism, further undermining its own pretext for intervention in Syria to allegedly “fight terrorism.”

With US-made TOW missiles conveniently, or very likely, covertly falling into the hands of designated terrorist organisations and being turned against Russian and Iranian forces, the US has also further undermined its own narrative revolving around its primacy as a stabilising force both within the region and globally.

TRANSCRIPT: SELECTED EXCERPTS ON TRUMP, PUTIN AND WAR ON SYRIA

Copyright Charlie Rose Inc.

HEADLINE:  Conversation with Mike Morell

BYLINE: CHARLIE ROSE

August 8, 2016

Selected Excerpt (emphasis added)

The Republican presidential nominee delivered a major policy address today in Detroit, Michigan. He stressed his ability to create new jobs and bring prosperity to those who have the very least. Mike Morell is a former acting and deputy director of the CIA who is also a contributor to CBS News but recently resigned in order to publicly endorse Hillary Clinton. On Friday, he wrote a scathing op-ed said in “The New York Times” where he called Trump a poor and dangerous commander-in-chief. Donald Trump, Morell writes, is not only unqualified for the job but he may well pose a threat to our national security

CHARLIE ROSE: Mike Morell is here. He`s a former acting and deputy director of the CIA who is also a contributor to CBS News but recently resigned in order to publicly endorse Hillary Clinton. On Friday, he wrote a scathing op-ed said in “The New York Times” where he called Trump a poor and dangerous commander-in-chief. Donald Trump, Morell writes, is not only unqualified for the job but he may well pose a threat to our national security. I am pleased to welcome Mike Morell back to this table. Welcome.

….

MIKE MORELL: No. In fact, they say, they say that two of their biggest concerns, right, is his narcissism and the constant need to feed it, and two, that he doesn`t listen. He doesn`t listen to anybody. And when that, don`t listen to anybody scares the heck out of me. You are who you are, you`re not going to change when you become the president of the United States. I didn`t see the entire speech today.

What I did see were references to isolation, right, references to we got to take care of ourselves rather than the rest of our world. You know, references to trade, you know bad trade deals, that all concerns me. You know, here`s what I would like to see him do. I would like to see him stand up tomorrow and denounce Putin`s military incursion into Ukraine. I would like to see him denounce Putin`s annexation of Crimea.

I`d like to see him denounce Putin`s assistance to the rebels in eastern Ukraine that resulted in the shoot down of the Malaysian airliner. I`d like to see him renounce what Putin is doing in Syria supporting a butcher and a dictator, right. I`d like to see him just stand up and denounce Putin and I`ll tell you that at the end of the day Putin would have more respect for him than he does now.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why do you think he doesn`t do that? I mean, some of those things had come at different ways, for example why he doesn`t denounce Putin in Ukraine. Do you think it`s because he believed Putin did the right thing or he believes it`s okay?

MIKE MORELL: No.

ROE: Or he believes that it`s okay for them to take over Crimea?

MIKE MORELL: No, I think…

CHARLIE ROSE: Or because he just doesn`t understand the consequences of providing leadership of a country that is, you know, the world`s greatest power.

MIKE MORELL: You know, the single thing in my op-ed that got most attention was I said this guy has been recruited.

CHARLIE ROSE: So said he`s an agent of the Russian Federation.

MIKE MORELL: Unwitting.

CHARLIE ROSE: Unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

MIKE MORELL: Unwitting agent of federation. He`s been recruited by Putin. That`s why he`s taking the positions he`s taken.

CHARLIE ROSE: And you suggest he`s recruited by the way that Putin played to his ego.

MIKE MORELL: Putin is a trained intelligence officer. He was a very talented KGB officer, right. He`s trained to look at an individual and play to them and to get them to do what he wants them to do, right. And that`s what an agent is.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, you really think that Vladimir Putin sat there, watched American politics and said, I`ll be better off from my objectives for Russia if in fact Donald Trump is elected, and therefore what I will do is do everything I can to make him an agent at my wishes. If I support him he`d become an agent of my wishes.

MIKE MORELL: So, I think there`s two things going on, right. One I wrote about and one I didn`t.

CHARLIE ROSE: And you got to say, OK, go ahead, because when you — you never talk about speculations you do not know.

MIKE MORELL: I do not know this.

CHARLIE ROSE: What Putin thinks and what he`s trying to do with respect to Trump.

MIKE MORELL: Look. I happen to know something about how you recruit people, OK. So, I`ve got a lot of experience with that. So, it`s kind of like my — it is my professional assessment, right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

MIKE MORELL: That this is what Putin has done.

CHARLIE ROSE: You`re riding on skills you learned at the CIA.

MIKE MORELL: Yes. But I think — I think — I think Putin was thinking two things. One, Putin does not like Secretary Clinton.

CHARLIE ROSE: People that I talked who know Putin say that it is more that than it is Donald Trump as an agent.

MIKE MORELL: I think it`s both, right. I think it`s both. You and I have had a conversations, have that many conversations around this table about Russia and Putin, right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

MIKE MORELL: And we sat around this table that there`s one thing above all else that Vladimir Putin fears, and that is a Arab spring green revolution- style uprising in the streets of Moscow, all right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly.

MIKE MORELL: And that`s what happened after the parliamentary elections during Barack Obama`s first term, right. People — the Russian middle class was in the streets. He blamed that on Secretary Clinton. He believes that Secretary Clinton was behind that. She wasn`t.

CHARLIE ROSE: It is part of an overall view he has about of chaos and the strong state and it`s necessary to have a strong state and you cannot allow people on the streets.

MIKE MORELL: Right. So, part of it he`s afraid of her, right. The other part of it is he wants…

CHARLIE ROSE: That is so much more than Secretary Clinton. I mean that doesn`t seem like a smart, wise intelligence agent to say that was all about Hillary Clinton.

MIKE MORELL: Look, there are a lot of things that he believes that aren`t true. A lot.

CHARLIE ROSE: But foreign policy comes from the White House more than it does from the state department. And she was the agent of — she was a representative and implementer of foreign policy of Barack Abama.

MIKE MORELL: There are a lot of things that he believes that simply aren`t true, right. He believes, he really believes, right, that the United States was behind the Democratic movement in Ukraine.

CHARLIE ROSE: He does. But he said it to me. (Inaudible) when I was there.

MIKE MORELL: He believes that. Deep in his heart. He`s not making it up, right. He believes this.

CHARLIE ROSE: I believe the CIA (inaudible).

MIKE MORELL: Where (ph) is the CIA, right. So that`s one thing. The other thing is I do believe absolutely that he looked at Trump and said this is the guy who I can play, right. All I have to do is compliment him, tell him how great it is and he`s going to come to my side of the fence.

CHARLIE ROSE: For me to — go ahead — but you got to prove, what`s your best exhibit of where he has done that and he`s once again doing it again?

MIKE MORELL: Here`s my best exhibit, OK. My best exhibit is, give me another reason why Donald Trump would have said all of the incredibly positive things he has said about Putin as a person and about Russian policy. That is at odds with the United States of America in a campaign where nobody`s really focused on Russia. Why would he have done that?

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, one example that`s Donald Trump being Donald Trump. In other words, Donald Trump, this guy sort of says certain things and so he responded to it by intuition, by instinct, all that kind of stuff without putting it in an international conflict context. You see what I mean.

MIKE MORELL: Which is — yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: I mean that`s who he is.

MIKE MORELL: Yes, but you`re making my point.

CHARLIE ROSE: He spends his time on tweets, he spends his time watching television as all — people oppose him a lot of time. It doesn`t mean he doesn`t get the job done on the campaign trail. He obviously won the Republican nomination.

MIKE MORELL: But you`re making my point, right. You`re absolutely making my point that his personality, right, gets him to react in these ways that are inconsistent with American interests.

CHARLIE ROSE: And because he — but to react is — I would argue, I`m now arguing the other side. I don`t want to use the term devil`s advocate but to react that way, does not make him — it makes him — it doesn`t make him a tool of the Russian Federation. It doesn`t make him an unwitting agent because he hasn`t done anything than offer some words up, responded to a guy who says some nice things about him, OK, but stay with me.

MIKE MORELL: Yeah, I disagree, but go ahead.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, you disagree, in what way?

MIKE MORELL: I disagree because…

ROSE What has he done other than said some things.

MIKE MORELL: He has undermined U.S. policy, western policy, with regard to Russia, right. He has told all of those people who follow him, right, the low 40 percent of the people who follow him and believe his every word that Putin is a good guy and Putin is a good leader, right. That undermines what the United States is trying to do.

Putin, you know, has his intelligence agencies, right, try to get that kind of propaganda. This has been free propaganda for Vladimir Putin in the United States of America. No doubt. And Charlie, Putin would never ever say this, of course, but I believe Putin sees Trump as a tool of his now and that`s why I said what I said.

CHARLIE ROSE: He thinks he can elect Trump.

MIKE MORELL: He wants Trump to be elected. And there is, you know, there is some evidence that he`s trying to help that along.

CHARLIE ROSE: But president Obama says I don`t trust Vladimir Putin. That`s an opinion about Vladimir Putin.

MIKE MORELL: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Donald Trump says whatever he says, he likes him or he said.

MIKE MORELL: He just saying he`s a great leader.

CHARLIE ROSE: He`s a great leader.

MIKE MORELL: He`s a great leader he`s a guy I can work with.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but hold on a second of great leader. I mean, is he — is he — take a look at what he has done with respect to Russia as president. Has he been a terrible leader? Has he been a good leader?

MIKE MORELL: Yes, terrible.

CHARLIE ROSE: Has he made Russia more of a player in the world than it was earlier.

MIKE MORELL: Yes, so this is a conversation you had with the vice president, right. So yes, he`s made Russia more of a player, but I will tell you that I believe at significant cost to Russia. Think about it this way — think about it this way, Charlie. Who is — just think about Ukraine for a second and we`ll come back to Syria.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK.

MIKE MORELL: OK. If you look at Syria — if you look at Ukraine and you ask who is the big loser, with Ukraine, right? Well, first of all, Ukrainian people, who had their aspirations crushed. Second, the United States and the west, which were shown to be unable to stop Putin, right. So we lost something. But the biggest loser in my view, the absolute biggest loser in my view was the Russian economy, the Russian middle class…

CHARLIE ROSE: What sanctions did…

MIKE MORELL: …and the future — not only sanctions, not only sanctions, right, which have crippled the economy. But Russia`s only future is to be integrated with the west. And because of what Putin did in Ukraine, he made sure that that`s not going to happen for at least a decade. So Russia`s the big loser. This guy is not a great leader, he`s a horrible leader. He`s undermining the future of his own country by trying to be seen as a greater power. He`s not benefiting — Russia`s not benefiting from being seen as a great power it`s actually being undermined.

CHARLIE ROSE: “The New York Times” today, today made the point, because I`m sure you read — I can`t see it on the front page but it made the point that what Putin had done in Syria had changed the dynamic.

MIKE MORELL: True.

CHARLIE ROSE: And was a net plus for Vladimir Putin. This is “The New York Times” reporting today.

MIKE MORELL: Yes, for Vladimir Putin.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, for Russia. You think it just Putin as a leader and is not for Russia.

MIKE MORELL: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because he represents Russia.

MIKE MORELL: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: He is the…

MIKE MORELL: So I agree, the vice president told you, right, that Putin, you know, Putin would like to get the hell out of there.

CHARLIE ROSE: And the president told me that too, both in interviews.

MIKE MORELL: Yes, right. And I think that`s right because he understands he`s paying a price. This is very expensive. This is extremely expensive for an economy that can`t pay for it. There are Russian soldiers, right, just like in Ukraine — there are Russians soldiers who are coming home dead. It`s a political cost to him as well. So, this is not as brilliant strategic stroke on Vladimir Putin`s part.

CHARLIE ROSE: When you look at Secretary Clinton, tell me how you think she is different in looking at the world from Barack Obama.

MIKE MORELL: Look, here`s the way — here`s the way that I think about her. And then maybe we can get to the differences, which is hard. You know —

CHARLIE ROSE: That it seems to be important if you want to know where he wants to take the country and it`s simply a third term for the Obama administration.

MIKE MORELL: A lot of time with her in the situation room, a lot of time with her.

CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, this is right where I want to go. So, you what?

MIKE MORELL: OK, a lot of time in the situation room, time with her at the State Department, time with her with foreign visitors visiting Washington, foreign leaders visiting Washington, time with her overseas meeting with foreign leaders — a lot of time with her. I`ll tell you the first thing that always struck me in the situation room, and this is going to sound small but it`s not.

It`s not small at all and we`ll compare it to Trump. She was always prepared, you know. There are big thick books, right, that people have to go through, you know. And I would spend hours going through these books for these meetings. It was absolutely clear to me that she had read through these books, she was prepared, she knew what she was talking about, right. That`s unusual for principles. I simply don`t see Donald Trump doing that. She asked really good questions.

She was not locked into her view. She would change her view if somebody made a compelling argument. She was — she was one of the few cabinet members who came into the situation room and didn`t automatically take the bureaucratic view of her department. I mean she was — Leon Panetta was this way, Bob Gates was this way, right. They went…

CHARLIE ROSE: They were different than the bureaucratic view of the institution they serve whether the state or defense or CIA.

MIKE MORELL: Yes, yes, yes, and incredibly impressed me, right, that they would go to what they thought was the best thing for their country even if it was at odds with the bureaucratic view of their own, you know, their own department. The other thing…

CHARLIE ROSE: Bob Gates said the other day that one of the central qualities of a president he respected was a, temperament and b, they listened. He said every good president he knew was a good listener.

MIKE MORELL: And I saw that over and over again, right, and I saw it in just the questions that she asked and how carefully she answered them and then how those answers were reflected in her views as the conversation moved forward, right. And she was calm and she was collected. And she was tough. I thought she was the toughest person in the room. In terms of…

CHARLIE ROSE: In terms of what she advocated?

MIKE MORELL: Yes, yes. Toughest in terms of — toughest in terms of —

CHARLIE ROSE: Her analysis of the…

MIKE MORELL: Toughest. No, no. Toughest in terms of understanding that — and I put this in the op-ed — toughest in terms of understanding that for diplomacy to be effective, that there had to be a belief on the part of the adversary that you were willing and able to use force if necessary, right? She understands that. She understands that diplomacy without that cannot be effective.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, let me just stop you there. Because I`m — we now talk about what it is to be president day to day and to be, you know, head of the CIA and recommend things to the president. It is the idea of when you use force. It is argued that that — that the president who will probably claim rightly so, that he uses force.

He used his force with drones. He used his force against Osama Bin Laden. He`s used force on a number of times. But often people make a sharp distinction between when she`s prepared to use force whether it`s Syria or whether it`s Libya or whether it`s somewhere else than the president is.

MIKE MORELL: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, that`s one way you try to understand where she stands and how she`s different from Barack Obama and you`ve been in the room with both of them. And you know how they talk, how they argue. And not — well to make the point, that what you argue is not necessarily what you believe. You can make an argument to try to understand the problem.

MIKE MORELL: So, you know, she was pushing aggressively, quite frankly along with Leon Panetta and Dave Petraeus for us to be more supportive of the moderate opposition in Syria, in late 2012, early 2013 when Assad was…

CHARLIE ROSE: On his heels.

MIKE MORELL: Was on heels, right. And there were many people who thought he was about ready to go. And not only to push him, right, but also to give diplomacy some leverage.

CHARLIE ROSE: True.

MIKE MORELL: Right. You can`t — you can`t…

CHARLIE ROSE: That`s what the 51 diplomats who made the letter argued. You need to have — diplomats need leverage from the military on the ground to be able to negotiate what is in the best interest the country they represent.

MIKE MORELL: Right. And I think based on the conversation in the sit room, that she thought that significant assistance to the moderate opposition, that you could do that without going down a slippery slope to U.S. military involvement.

CHARLIE ROSE: Which is what the president thought?

MIKE MORELL: Which is what the president feared, I think.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.

MIKE MORELL: And I think that was the difference between the two at the end of the day, right. So, I believe that she — I believe she understands that you can — that you can go a certain distance, right, without having to go the rest of the way, that each step in the process can be a specific decision and just because you take one step doesn`t mean that you have to take all of them.

CHARLIE ROSE: This conversation is about why you wouldn`t trust Donald Trump but admired Hillary Clinton and believed she would be an effective force. Let`s go down the lines in terms of important points. How would she be different? What is her position on ISI and what is about it that recommends itself to you that has not been done?

MIKE MORELL: Yes. So, she`s very supportive of what the president`s done. She would go a little bit further is what she said, right. So she would, you know, show would — more Special Forces, consider no-fly zone.

CHARLIE ROSE: The president has been doing that gradually.

MIKE MORELL: Gradually, right. And so he`s been getting — moving down the line, right, and she would just do more of that. You said something really important earlier, Charlie, which was for this to end, right, there`s got to be — Russia and the United States and quite frankly the Iranians have seen a table for two.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, absolutely.

MIKE MORELL: That there`s got to be an agreement on a transition to a new government, right. I think she understands that for us to have leverage in that conversation, that we got to have more skin in the game from a military perspective. Not U.S. troops — not U.S. boots on the ground but more skin on the game, right.

That`s why she`s talking about a no-fly zone, right. That`s why she`s talking about more Special Forces. She understands that that is necessary for the leverage you need in those political discussions.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is that possible because it looks like Russia`s moving away from that kind of agreement?

MIKE MORELL: I don`t know if it`s possible, right. I don`t know if it`s possible.

CHARLIE ROSE: Then maybe they`re waiting for the next president?

MIKE MORELL: Now we switch to Michael Morell`s view, and you said you wanted to touch on all these, right. I`d switch to Michael Morell`s view for a second. So, I think that given where we are — because I don`t think — I think it`s possible to squeeze ISI down to almost nothing in Iraq and Syria.

But I fear without a resolution to the Syrian civil war, that other jihadist groups are just going to pop up in its place. Al-Nusra, right, which is the Al-Qaeda group in Syria is already growing in strength, right, as a result of — for lack of resolution of the Syrian civil war.

CHARLIE ROSE: And is redefining itself.

MIKE MORELL: So that`s got to be resolved, right. That Syrian civil war has to be resolved and you have to be able to convince the Russians and the Iranians that it`s in their interest. Here`s quite frankly what I would recommend. I would recommend that we, that — let me back up a second.

So, the outcome we want is a transition from Assad to a government that can represent all the Syrian people, but we want to do it without destroying the institutions of the Syrian government.

CHARLIE ROSE: Which is what we did in Iraq?

MIKE MORELL: Which is what we did in Iraq and which is what happened on its own in Libya.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

MIKE MORELL: So we want to make our transition keeping the Syrian military, the Syrian Security Services, keeping them as intact as possible, right, as we want to do.

CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly what Putin says he wants to do.

MIKE MORELL: So you don`t want to destroy those things, right. You don`t want to destroy those things. So here`s what I think you want to do. I think you want to covertly, not openly but covertly, but you certainly want them to know, you want to covertly tell the moderate opposition that you`re supporting to go after — this is a big deal — to go after the Russians and the Iranians who are on the ground.

They got to pay a price for what they`re doing. Just like we made the Russians pay a price in Afghanistan for what they`re doing. We have to make them pay a price. We have to make them…

CHARLIE ROSE: By supporting the Mujahedin.

MIKE MORELL: Yes. We have to make them to want to go home. We have to make them want to have a deal, right, so that`s number one.

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, how do we do that?

MIKE MORELL: We ask the moderate opposition — we give the moderate opposition weapons.

CHARLIE ROSE: What is it they want that they don`t have?

MIKE MORELL: You know, Dave Petraeus could tell you exactly what they want. You know, I`m not a military guy.

CHARLIE ROSE: In Afghanistan we (inaudible).

MIKE MORELL: Right. But I`d give them the things that they need to both go after the Assad government, but also to have the Iranians and the Russians pay a little price. When we were in Iraq, the Iranians were giving weapons to the Shi`a militia who were killing American soldiers, right. The Iranians were making us pay a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price. The other thing we need to do…

CHARLIE ROSE: We make them pay the price by killing Russians?

MIKE MORELL: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And killing Iranians?

MIKE MORELL: Yes. Covertly. You don`t tell the world about it, right. You don`t stand up at the Pentagon and say we did this. Here`s the other thing I want to do, I want to go after — I want to go after those things that Assad sees as his personal power base, right. I want to scare Assad. So, I want to — I want to go after his presidential guard. I want to bomb his offices in the middle of the night.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, that happened about two years ago as you remember when his brother in law was…

MIKE MORELL: I want to destroy his presidential aircraft on the ground. I want to destroy his presidential helicopters. I want to make him think we`re coming after him, right. I`m not advocating assassinating him, I`m not advocating that. I`m advocating going after that what he thinks is his power base, right, and what he needs to survive.

I want him to think about this is not going to end well for me, right. I want to put pressure on him, I want to put pressure on the Iranians, I want to put pressure on the Russians to come to that diplomatic settlement.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because that`s the only thing that will achieve it if they feel like they`re hurting.

MIKE MORELL: Yes. This is me talking here.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, well do you think Hillary Clinton believes as you do —

MIKE MORELL: I don`t know, I have not talked to her about this.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK.

MIKE MORELL: I do believe she believes that we need more diplomatic leverage.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why did you come to this conclusion? Because there was a failure of everything else and it wasn`t happening? It was moving not towards that kind of agreement…

MIKE MORELL: We`re moving away from it.

CHARLIE ROSE: Away from it.

MIKE MORELL: We`re moving away from it. That`s what “The New York Times” article said. That`s what I believe.

CHARLIE ROSE: “The New York Times” article also said that we — that the Saudis had stopped supplying weapons to the opposition forces too.

MIKE MORELL: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: The Saudis.

MIKE MORELL: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me talk about people in the region.

MIKE MORELL: Yeah, this is a good one.

CHARLIE ROSE: What do we need to do?

MIKE MORELL: Our allies in the region — I`ll leave (ph) a couple things. They believe that the United States of America — they believe that the Obama administration is not listening to them, right. That they`ve got points of view they feel strongly about — another thing they believe is that the United States does not have their back, particularly with regard to Iran.

They believe that we don`t understand that they see Iran as their Soviet Union, right. So there are two things I`d say about Secretary Clinton here. One is, they do believe that Secretary Clinton listens and I think where Secretary Clinton is on Iran, based on what I`ve heard her say and based on what I`ve read is look, the nuclear deal, a really good thing, I think.

She thinks that — I think that too, but at the same time I think she believes that I know, based on what she said that she believes that we need to push back harder against Iranian malign behavior in the region, right.

CHARLIE ROSE: A support should we be doing.

MIKE MORELL: Let me give you an example and I think we`ve talked about this around the table. They provide money and assistance to terrorist groups, Hamas, Hezbollah, right. Hezbollah could not exist without the support it gets from Iran.

They supply money and weapons to Shi`a groups in the region who are trying to overthrow governments. Best example is Yemen, right, where they provided weapons and money to the Houthis who actually overthrew the government there.

CHARLIE ROSE: Where they`re competing with the Saudis.

MIKE MORELL: Where they`re competing with the Saudis, right. So, a very simple example, right, ships leave Iran filled with weapons for the Houthis, right. I believe the U.S. Navy should board those ships and if there are weapons on them, they should turn them around and send them back. That`s pushing back against Iranian bad behavior.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is that what Secretary Clinton believes needs to do? Be more aggressive in terms of the Iranian behavior.

MIKE MORELL: Yes. So, use the nuclear…

CHARLIE ROSE: Which is not part of the deal?

MIKE MORELL: So, use the nuclear agreement — use the nuclear agreement to try to forge a more positive relationship at the same time while you push back, right, against their bad behavior.

CHARLIE ROSE: North Korea, Secretary Clinton said it`s a real risk, North Korea. What should we do? What would Secretary Clinton do? We don`t what Donald Trump would do. I don`t.

MIKE MORELL: Donald Trump has said what he would do. He had said he`d sit down and talk to Kim Jong-un. He said he would invite Kim Jong-un to come to the United States of America for a conversation.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me stop you there. Forget that it came from Donald Trump. Is it a mistake to talk to Kim Jong-un?

MIKE MORELL: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: To talk to him?

MIKE MORELL: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because you give him credibility?

MIKE MORELL: Because what he wants more than anything else is for the United States of America to acknowledge that he is a nuclear power and that he will remain a nuclear power. And it is the policy of the United States of America and I don`t think Mr. Trump gets any of this — understands any of this, right. It is the policy of the United States of America for North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons. That is our policy.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, as a condition to talking, get rid of your weapons?

MIKE MORELL: As a condition, yes, yes. You have to — you have to get rid – -we`re not going to recognize you. We`re hot going to normalize relations with you until you agree to get rid of your weapons, right. And what Donald Trump said is come talk to me, right. And so he would give him incredible credibility.

CHARLIE ROSE: China and the South China Sea. What should we be doing with respect to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea potentially building bases there?

MIKE MORELL: Yeah, so, can I just back up a second and then take the 25,000 foot view and then come back to the South China Sea. And here I think — I think president Obama and Secretary Clinton understand this perfectly. The most important bilateral relationship for the future of East Asia, for the future of the world I think is the relationship between Washington and Beijing, and there are two things, as a strong statement but I believe it to be true.

There are two things that are pulling us together in a good way and two things that are pulling us apart. The two things pulling us together, Charlie, are one, we both have an interest, we both have an interest in the success of the Chinese economy particularly a reforming Chinese economy, right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because of its impact on the global economy.

MIKE MORELL: Because of its impact on the global economy.

CHARLIE ROSE: And the confidence it gives them as a state.

MIKE MORELL: Absolutely, absolutely. And the disincentive it gives them for messing around, right. Two is, and I base this, you know, on my own conversations with Chinese officials, you know, my counterparts, base this on conversation with my counterparts in China. I believe there are growing numbers of places in the world where our national security interests overlap than actually where they are in conflict. And I believe there`s potential for us to cooperate together.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do the Chinese believe that?

MIKE MORELL: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do they want to do that?

MIKE MORELL: Yes. I think they believe it and I think increasingly they`re coming to understand would be in their interest. So that is potentially pulling us together, right — two positive things. What are the two negative things? The two negative things are we both have large militaries on the same place on the planet, right. That means you have…

CHARLIE ROSE: The Pacific.

MIKE MORELL: The pacific. So, that means you have — what does that mean? It means you have to plan for war against each other, and we both do. It means you have to equip yourself in terms of weapons systems for war against each other, and both of us do. And it means you have to exercise those forces for war against each other and both of us do. Both sides see all three of those things. That leads to a national tension in the relationship that pulls you apart. And then you got…

CHARLIE ROSE: But they also — they are very upset about the fact, you know, that we seem to be increasing our relationship with India and Vietnam and Philippines and drawing a circle around them.

MIKE MORELL: Yes, and that comes to the final point that`s pulling us apart, and you`re absolutely right. So the final thing that`s pulling us apart is, you know, we are the power in East Asia and we`re established co- power. They are a rising power. They don`t have a lot of say. They want more say in the world around them as they gain strength, right. They want more say, we have it. How does that get resolved, right?

I think there`s an answer to that that president Obama understands and that Secretary Clinton understands, and that is that we will give China more room to exercise influence if they play by the rules of the international order. So, what does that mean, right? What does that mean? It means for example that I think it was a mistake for the United States of America to push back when China want to create a regional development bank.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right. Clearly, that looks like — because Europe broke ranks right away.

MIKE MORELL: The Brits broke rank immediately, right. So, you don`t push back on stuff like that where they`re actually trying to play by the rules, right. You push back on the South China Sea stuff where they are breaking the rules, right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Mr. Xi, tear down those islands.

MIKE MORELL: And I think that`s the right approach. I think president Obama understands that. I think that he`s taken us down the road towards a better solution to this relationship long term and I think she will continue in that direction.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is it fair to say — I`ve got to close this — Is it fair to say the two, since you were there although they were there at the time, Osama Bin Laden and all that, but the two changes that are so apparent to decision makers today, one is cyber and the other is in a sense the rise of non-state actors.

MIKE MORELL: I agree a hundred percent, agree a hundred percent. I`d still list, well, put it this way. I`d list terrorist attacks against the United States of America including the homeland as the number one threat, the non- state actor, right.

CHARLIE ROSE: And with that, the potential that they somehow might acquire or buy some weapon of mass destruction whatever it might be?

MIKE MORELL: Yes. That`s a serious issue, right. And then I think the second, the fastest growing threat, and number two on the list is cyber in all of its dimensions, from what nation states do, to criminal groups, to hacktivists, to all of this different people doing all these different things on cyber.

CHARLIE ROSE: And the political development that you`ve written about in which is apparent in much of this is not of that magnitude, is the rise of populism.

MIKE MORELL: And in the United States.

CHARLIE ROSE: In the United States.

MIKE MORELL: You know, I was asked — Charlie, I was asked by an Australian think tank — an Australian think tank came to me and they said, they said, you know you`ve analyzed the politics of other countries for 30 years. Would you analyze your own and write something for us. So I did, and in this piece I wrote, which was published a couple weeks ago, I said there are three big dynamics here in the United States. One is what I call income insecurity, right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

MIKE MORELL: There`s been a whole bunch of people that have been left behind by globalization and technology.

CHARLIE ROSE: Conventional wisdom is that they are attracted to the candidacy of Donald Trump.

MIKE MORELL: They were attracted to the candidacy of Bernie Sanders who said I will fix this with income redistribution and they are attracted to the candidacy of Donald Trump who simply says I`ll fix it.

CHARLIE ROSE: All about trade.

MIKE MORELL: I`ll fix it by tearing up trade deals and making better deals. I`ll fix it by telling Ford Motor Company you cannot move to Mexico, right. How do you do that? So that`s one, right. Second, right, is the belief — that first one is not a small percentage of the population because real incomes for American households, for the majority of American households that have been going down for the last generation, right. So this is real.

I think it`s a failure of our education system not to keep up with changes in globalization and technology but that`s a whole different issue. The second is the belief among a lot of people, right, that establishment candidates, establishment politicians can`t get anything done. A lot of people believe that.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because of gridlock in Washington.

MIKE MORELL: Yeah, and so those people who believe that went to — went to non-establishment candidates on both sides, right. Sixty-five percent of the vote cast during the primaries was from non-establishment candidates. And then the third is, and this is sad for me as an American to say, as I believe that there is some number of uneducated white Americans who fear the browning of America, who fear the growth and the number…

CHARLIE ROSE: Change in the demographics.

MIKE MORELL: And the influence of minorities in America manifested by the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. And they are attracted to Donald Trump`s xenophobia. And I think those are the three dynamics that launched him, right. And you know, the first one — all three of them need to be addressed, right. All three of those things need to be addressed. I happen to believe that she will do a much better job addressing those issues than he will and that`s why I did what I did.

CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for coming.

MIKE MORELL: Always great to be with you, Charlie.

CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for joining us. See you next time.

US-backed militias fighting against the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad have broken through the Russian and Syrian government encirclement of their positions inside the war-ravaged northern Syrian city of Aleppo, according to Western media.

During fierce battles over the weekend, the US-backed, Islamist-led militia coalition known as Jaysh al Fateh overran military bases in southwest Aleppo and secured an access road connecting the city to the rest of the country. Russian war planes and Syrian and Iranian ground forces counterattacked Sunday, targeting the anti-Assad forces with aerial bombardments and artillery.

According to Syrian opposition leader Anas al-Abdah, the Islamist offensive has achieved “almost a miracle,” leaving the anti-Assad forces poised to “break the siege and move into a stage where we are talking seriously about liberating the city.” The offensive has carved out a slim corridor linking Aleppo to rebel-held areas, raising the possibility of resupply operations for the desperately besieged Western-backed forces.

The encirclement of Washington’s extremist groups inside Aleppo, who have been reduced to a diminishing pocket in the city’s north and western sectors in the face of a redoubled Syrian offensive backed by Russian air power and Iranian ground forces, came as a humiliating reversal for US imperialism. Washington has orchestrated a relentless civil war in Syria since 2011, killing hundreds of thousands of Syrians, without achieving its aim of toppling the Damascus regime and installing a neocolonial puppet government.

During the opening phases of the US-NATO orchestrated war, the anti-Assad militias seized control of large areas of the city, which they sought to utilize as a base of operations and object of plunder. Prior to the outbreak of the war, Aleppo’s population numbered between 1 and 2.5 million, according to varying estimates. Today, some 50,000 civilians are estimated to eke out an existence amid the rubble. The city as a whole has been without electricity and running water for more than a year, and entire neighborhoods are completely razed to the ground.

In recent weeks, with the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withdrawing support for the rebels in retaliation for Washington’s involvement in the failed July military coup attempt, the American-backed militias have faced the imminent possibility of defeat.

It is not coincidental that the ferocious US-backed assault is unfolding on the eve of Turkish President Erdogan’s trip to St. Petersburg for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday. There are well-grounded fears in American ruling circles that Erdogan will reach a broad-based agreement with Putin, one that would close-off all remaining supply routes necessary for sustaining the war against Damascus.

The cause of the sudden reversal in the fortunes of the anti-government forces, who, if US media reports can be believed, have seized the initiative from the jaws of total defeat, was quietly acknowledged in reports published by the New York Times on Saturday and Monday, titled “Military Success in Syria Gives Putin Upper Hand in US Proxy War” and “Rebel Offensive in Syria Challenges Government Siege of Aleppo.”

As Saturday’s Times piece noted, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been supplying the Al Qaeda-linked militias with virtually unlimited supplies of sophisticated antitank missiles and other weaponry.

The US-backed rebel coalition, which has been dominated by the Al Nusra Front, “would receive new shipments of the antitank weapons as soon as the missiles were used,” according to comments from a rebel commander made in 2015, and quoted by the Times Saturday.

“We ask for ammunition and missiles, and we get more than we ask for,” the anti-Assad commander said.

The shipments of advanced Stinger missile systems, which are capable of destroying, among other things, commercial jetliners during takeoff and landing, as well as military-grade helicopters, have continued up to the present.

In contrast to the Obama administration’s assertions that the shipments were being curtailed and funneled exclusively to “moderate forces,” in reality the CIA has been surging support for the encircled anti-Assad militias in Aleppo, foremost among which are the Al Nusra fighters.

As the Times update on Monday forthrightly acknowledged: “A vital factor in the rebel advance over the weekend was cooperation between mainstream rebel groups, some of which have received covert arms support from the United States, and the jihadist organization formerly known as the Nusra Front, which was affiliated with Al Qaeda.”

The infinite mendacity and hypocrisy of both the Times and the American imperial policy it defends could hardly find sharper expression.

The newspaper presents the change in name and formal disaffiliation of Al Nusra from Al Qaeda as some distant memory, when it, in fact, was announced barely a week and a half earlier. It, like most of the Western media, now cheers on the supposed battlefield successes of the so-called “rebels,” who, until the end of July, swore allegiance to Al Qaeda, supposedly the main target of Washington’s 15-year-long “war on terrorism.”

Moreover, in recent weeks, as US intelligence outfitted the surrounded Al Qaeda “rebels” in preparation for a new bloody offensive, America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, has touted steps toward a US-Russian military cooperation pact in Syria, the centerpiece of which would supposedly have been joint strikes against Al Nusra. While Kerry was pledging military cooperation with Moscow, along with joint “counterterrorism” operations, the CIA was giving weapons hand over fist to the Al Qaeda-affiliated forces, dumping fuel on a simmering US-Russian proxy conflict with the potential to engulf broad areas of the Middle East and Europe in all-out war.

The downing of a Russian Mi-8 transport helicopter over Syria’s Idlib province Monday, which produced the largest single death toll for Russian forces operating in Syria since Moscow launched its intervention last year, grimly illustrated the lethal dynamics being unleashed by American imperialism’s ever more reckless pursuit of unchallenged hegemony over the strategic Levantine nation.

The US media celebrations of the “rebel” victory cannot be taken at face value, and must be weighed against reports from the Syrian government side, which have presented the scope of the rebel counteroffensive in more modest terms. Whatever the true extent of the rebel advances on the ground, it is already clear that the intensified fighting will serve as the political basis for a major military escalation by Washington.

In an interview with Fox News this weekend, Democratic presidential frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, issued bellicose threats against Russia, stating that “the facts raise serious issues about Russian interference in our elections, in our democracy.” Clinton has made clear her intention to pursue a massive escalation of the Syrian war and the broader US war drive against Russia if she wins the White House, saying during last year’s Democratic Party debate, “We have to stand up to his [Putin] bullying and specifically, in Syria.”

While the Obama White House prefers to delay a major escalation until after the elections, the weakness of the American position on the ground is forcing the administration to consider direct strikes against Damascus. Former Obama administration adviser, Dennis Ross, suggested last week that the White House should “begin speaking in a language that Mr. Assad and Mr. Putin can understand,” and employ direct cruise missile and drone strikes against Assad’s military infrastructure.

In the event that the government crushes the rebel attack, powerful factions within the US establishment can be counted on to press for the most aggressive measures against Assad, to be launched in the name of salvaging the American proxy forces, which have been built up at a cost of billions in CIA-supplied cash and weapons.

Even should the Al Qaeda-linked forces complete the breakout, and reassert control over Aleppo and the surrounding region, this will only set the stage for a massive government counterattack, and thus provide a suitable political pretext for further escalation by Washington. Beneath the fog of war in Syria, the only certainty is the constantly growing tendency toward a US-Russian clash that poses the gravest dangers for humanity.

“Turkey is slowly leaving the Atlantic system. That is the reason behind this coup. That is the reason why NATO is panicking. This is much broader and much bigger than Erdogan. This is a tectonic movement. This will affect Turkish-Syrian relations, Turkish-Chinese relations, Turkish-Russian relations and Turkish-Iranian relations. This will change the world.” — Yunus Soner, Deputy Chairman Turkish Patriotic Party

“It is becoming clear that the attempted putsch was not just the work of a small clique of dissatisfied officers inside the armed forces; it was rather the product of a vast conspiracy to take over the Turkish state that was decades in the making and might well have succeeded.” — Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch

A new Clinton ad explains much about why America’s war party fears Trump.

He calls NATO “obsolete” and may try normalizing ties with Russia for the first time since an alliance of necessity against Nazi Germany during WW II – a disaster for US warmongers like Clinton, needing adversarial relations to further their global hegemonic objectives.

Her ad says “(w)e don’t know why Trump praises Putin.” He calls him “a very strong leader for Russia.” Earlier he said he’s “a very outstanding man, unquestionably talented.”

He favors a new role for NATO. He’s no peacenik, but unlikely to start WW III.

Compared to Clinton, he’s the lesser of two dark forces. Give him credit for wanting rapprochement, not confrontation with Russia, provided he’d follow through if elected president.

His potential geopolitical shift from longstanding US policy has opponents like former acting CIA director Michael Morell calling him an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” posing a threat to national security, he claimed.

Neocons like Morell, Clinton and numerous others infesting Washington believe peace initiatives gaining traction represent America’s greatest geopolitical threat – especially ending longstanding adversarial relations with Russia.

A statement signed by Michael Chertoff (former DHS secretary), Michael Hayden (former CIA director), Robert Zoellick (former World Bank president, NED board member), John Negroponte (former National Intelligence director) and 46 other former Republican national security officials said “(n)one of us will vote for Donald Trump.”

“From a foreign policy perspective, (he’s) not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

“[He’d ]  weaken US moral authority as the leader of the free world…(H)e has little understanding of America’s national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances, and the democratic values on which US foreign policy must be based. At the same time, he persistently compliments our adversaries and threatens our allies and friends.”

“…Donald Trump is not the answer to America’s daunting challenges and to this crucial election. We are convinced that in the Oval Office, he would be the most reckless President in American history.”

All this and more because he believes NATO is outdated and favors normalizing relations with Russia. Make no mistake. Trump is a deplorable choice for president – yet favoring two important steps in the right direction shows he’s not all bad.

Humanity’s top priority is avoiding another global war, likely with nuclear weapons if one erupts, threatening humanity’s survival.

Chances for the unthinkable are far too high to risk under Hillary if she succeeds Obama. Her deplorable record since the 1990s shows she’s a “war goddess”, extremely hostile to Russia, China and all other independent sovereign states.

Her geopolitical strategy of choice is war. She supports use of nuclear weapons and US-led NATO aggression “to preserve our way of life.”

Trump responded to the letter’s signatories, saying they’re “the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.”

They’re “nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power.” He’s right. Many are responsible for pre-and-post-9/11 wars of aggression – anti-peace extremists everyone should denounce.

Clinton is the establishment choice for president. She’ll likely succeed Obama by fair or foul means.

If Trump surprises and wins, he’ll likely not diverge much from longstanding US domestic and foreign policy. Candidates say anything to get elected. In office they continue dirty business as usual.

Yet unthinkable global war is much more likely under Clinton than him – why it’s crucial to oppose her candidacy for the nation’s highest office or any other public one.

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.

Site C Dam is a proposed 60-metre high, 1,050m length dam on the Peace River on Treaty 8 territory in northeastern British Columbia (see image below), a project that if built, would create an 83km reservoir submerging 78 First Nations heritage sites in violation of the Constitution Act, but how does it connect to continental water diversion?

To date, much has been said in the media regarding the issue of Site C Dam, but very little has touched on the matter of NAFTA and water.

Peace River BC

The spin behind the necessity of the project has largely concentrated on exaggerated claims of the energy needs of Vancouver, to the BC Liberals’ power requirements for the LNG and Fracking industry, to providing below-market value energy to Alberta in exchange for agreeing to their pipelines. Recently, the Justin Trudeau Government approved two additional permits for Site C Dam despite recommendations against the project by the Royal Society of Canada and 250 of Canada’s top scientists on the basis that Site C Dam is an ecological catastrophe and gross violation of rights under the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Rights and violates our own Constitution.

Little, however, has been noted by the media about the NAWAPA (North America Water Power Alliance) connection to Site C Dam, and that is something all Canadians should be seriously concerned about.

NAWAPA is a continental water diversion plan drafted by the US Army Corps of Engineers during the 1950s -1960s. Essentially the plan involved diverting (stealing) water from Canada via the Rocky Mountain Trench to Southern California. The rivers of Canada in British Columbia and the Yukon were an integral part of this plan.

In 1964 Parsons Company published a paper called NAWAPA: “North American Water and Power Alliance,” by Roland P. Kelly, Technical Program manager of  “The Ralph M. Parsons Company”.  Essentially the paper estimates that NAWAPA could provide water supply to the continent (i.e) The United States for 100 years. In the proposal, the project would divert approximately 69,000,000 acre-ft to the United States Annually. In Water and Free Trade: The Mulroney Government’s Agenda for Canada’s Most Precious Resource, agrologist Wendy Holm discusses the core aspects:

“ The NAWAPA plan proposed by Ralph Parsons Co. of Los  Angeles envisaged building a large number of the worlds biggest dams to trap the Yukon, Peace and Liard Rivers into a reservoir that would flood one-tenth of British Columbia to create a canal from Alaska to Washington State that would supply water through existing canals and pipelines to most areas of the continent..”(31)

Roland P. Kelly argues

“Since the water resources of the continent were placed by nature without regard to political boundaries, it seems logical…to figure out a distribution system maximizing these resources without regard to these boundaries”(31).

Obviously, the implications of this project would have devastating environmental and human impacts, in addition the destruction of eco-systems and diversion of water would serve as an accelerant to climate change.

With regard to the Site C Dam, it is worth noting that the proposed dam site falls directly on the lines drawn in the original NAWAPA plans. Site C and the Columbia River Project are integral to the implementation of NAWAPA, thus calling into question the nature of the project in relationship to continental water diversion plans.

It is of the upmost importance to note that, once impounded behind the dam, the Peace River is subject to NAFTA as a water commodity, thus putting the people of Canada at risk of loosing water rights if privatization of BC Hydro occurs. One might reasonably question BC Hydro’s managed fiscal state of ‘$18.1 billion in approximate debt’ as being a primer for manufactured privatization to occur. The only potentially saving factor in the political manoeuvring behind Site C and Continental Water Sharing is the fact that the Province of British Columbia is located on un-ceded territory. The Governments’ title to water is, therefore, invalid and any quiet agreements made by our politicians with regard to NAWAPA would not be recognized under International Law despite corporate interests involved.

The law must be the personal concern of every citizen, to uphold for our neighbours as well as for ourselves. What does it say if the Government of Canada is found in violation of section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and recently the violation of the Wildlife Act? It is time for people to start asking questions, who is benefitting from this project and what is going on behind the scenes?

http://www.wrri.nmsu.edu/publi sh/watcon/proc11/Kelly.pdf

Jennifer O’Keeffe, Former COPE Council Candidate 2014
Vancouver B.C.

When the 15-M movement broke out onto the streets across Spain in 2011, it didn’t coalesce into a series of political parties on either end of the political spectrum. In fact, there was a common declaration that stood out among all of the indignados: “They don’t represent us”. This referred to the “Regime of ‘78”  and the dominant political actors that have been ruling Spain since the death of Franco, and have made the rupturing of the social contract possible over the last 30 years.

Juan Antonio Gil de los Santos, Podemos MP

The 15-M movement saw people come together from diverse places, not just ideologically, but in terms of their perspectives and their understanding of reality. Yet if there was something that truly united them it was their common diagnosis of the current situation, namely an unsustainable disequilibrium between the establishment (an elite armed with political and economic power, ready to do anything to keep their position), and the outsiders (ordinary people that don’t participate in the decision making process), the widening gap between these two groups, and the forcing of the latter into an increasingly precarious position.

The establishment makes use of its power and its vast resources, they have ossified the institutions that were supposed to protect the rights of the outsiders, they have become increasingly out of touch with reality, and over time have completely broken the fragile balance created by the Constitution of ‘78, which brought democracy and social rights to the Spanish people after 40 years of dictatorship. The 1978 Constitution guaranteed – among other things – the right to decent housing, the right to healthcare, and the right to work. These promises have been greatly compromised by austerity, with major cuts to education and healthcare, labor reforms that increase the precariousness of the workers, and foreclosures that have left families homeless across the country.

Pushed to the limit, and having discovered the establishment’s deception, popular movements took to the streets to get rid of those who put their own interests above the social majority.

They did this in an organized manner, without partisan support, going beyond the outdated left-right axis. The indignados, as opposed to those unaffected elites who refused to resign, stood for social justice, freedom, democracy and the common good, and demanded greater democracy in the economy. They demanded that the political class be empathetic to this view and to stop being the institutional continuation of the IBEX35 (the 35 most powerful businesses in Spain).

Time passed, general elections were held, the Troika and austerity continued, misery grew and spread, but the 15-M movement never disappeared. It matured, incubating within it a solution which it wasn’t going to find outside.

“Start a party and run in the elections”, someone said to those people in the streets with their assemblies and proposals, shared by an immense majority of society. Soon he would wish he had bitten his tongue.

This is how Podemos began, as the inheritor of the 15-M movement. Though it would be unjust not to mention the many years of struggle for common welfare and for more just social models, in the form of organizations or activists from parties that share our goals. In the first stage, many people came together in the same space – both veteran activists as well as those who hadn’t engaged in politics until then – some already organized and some yet to organize.

The double challenge then began: that of channeling popular power into a shared line of action and that of organizing a party as a sum of parts, but harmonized by diverse collectives. Podemos has transitioned from movement to party, with the objective of entering institutions, to transform them, to put them on the side of the people.

After the success in the 2014 EU Parliamentary elections, where Podemos won five seats, the party-movement attracted more people, who began to identify for the first time with a project that aimed at bringing down the barriers of outmoded politics, and recovering the hope of achieving its desired aims. Many people who abstained from voting in past elections became activists in the 15-M movement. The moment arrived when political organization opened the door to a series of electoral opportunities, which will prove to be crucial for the future of Spain.

Through assembly debates in local “circles” they discussed the political and organizational models with which they would face these different elections. In October 2014 the proposals with the most votes were discussed in the founding congress of Podemos in Vistalegre. Podemos was founded upon a transversal political model – meaning that it is committed to building a broad consensus among diverse groups of people for things like the defense of free, public and universal healthcare, the social right to housing, and regaining lost labour rights.

But what exactly do we mean by “a transversal political model”? Transversality can be understood as the act of building majorities. Not electoral majorities per se, but social majorities made up of identities based on common goals; building inclusive identities adapted to today’s society. An example is that of the identity of “working class”, which was a necessary identity when they were organizing to overcome their class conditions 50 years ago, but which is not appropriate to the modern world.

It is in this transversality that there is a clear reflection of citizens that came together in the streets in 15-M. It is this important subject which I would like to focus upon in this article. Because it is thanks to this transversality – this broad appeal – that we have been successful. It has resulted in  governments having changed in cities such as Cadiz, Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Transversality has made it possible to take projects anchored in minority objectives and integrate them into major projects with real possibilities of reaching the government, and transforming institutions from within, the essential element to successfully carry out the projects.

Of course  commonly identified goals and lines of action by the social majority is not sufficient. They must be ready to take institutions back from the privileged elite. It is their duty to join forces and provide tools of participation and action so that the social majority feel not only represented but have real resources to be heard. This is reflected in Podemos’ current organizational model which provides various channels for participation.

We must not forget that within the organization there may be many different levels of participation. On the one hand there is the core or “nucleus”, the people who are the most heavily involved, and on the other there are supporters that participate to varying degrees. The lines of action must be oriented towards the social majority to which it aspires, not the nucleus. Towards supporting communities in their struggles – whether or not they support Podemos – in an effort to construct a major identity that is conscious of the importance of change and that (contrary to what boredom and the media blitz has produced in them) it is in their hands to carry out. And so groups like public servants, healthcare professionals, teachers, the unemployed, regardless of ideology based on outdated left-right divides, are gradually adding to the construction of large consensuses such as the defense of free, universal public health, the social right to housing, the recovery of lost labour rights, the fight against corruption, etc.

It is true that many of us come from very progressive environments, some of us will cringe to recall the legend of the POUM, or are avowed Republicans, others feel a sense of pride when the Internationale is sung, others are anarchists, some consider themselves eco-socialists or feminists, others come from being active in big parties. Some are newcomers to politics, but are as concerned as those who have been in activism since they were born.

Therefore with this in mind it is essential that we always remember that activist spaces are a means and not an end in themselves, to reach the broad social majority that needs us. We must be prudent not to assimilate activist spaces one hundred percent with that hegemonic project that is being constructed around us everywhere, and we must escape the perverse dynamics of the old politics that lead nowhere. Our goal is not to proselytize the extreme left, but we need to look beyond our activist navel, to regain the hope of people who feel identified with, and involved in, the project, and to recover the momentum that occurred early in the movement.

Juan Antonio Gil de los Santos
@juangilpodemos
MP in Andalusia for Podemos

The Balfour Declaration is a letter from then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Walter Rothschild, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The critical part of this short letter said:

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

This was a prime example of colonial arrogance by which Britain, which was not then in occupation of Palestine, promised the Zionist Federation, which did not represent all Jews, without the consent of the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, the Palestinians, to facilitate the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine. The letter was dated 2 November 1917.

Thus, November 2017 will mark the centenary of Balfour and rumours abound that the British government plans to mark it in some form. Israel’s recently arrived Ambassador Mark Regevclaimed: “It’s being taken very seriously at the highest levels. We’re hoping to do a public celebration together with the British government.” The former spokesman for Israel’s prime minister talked up the possible events, saying that “senior leadership from both sides [will be] uniting to celebrate Balfour.”

Former British Prime Minster David Cameron told leaders of the Jewish community, “I want to make sure we mark it together in the most appropriate way.” He said this without any consultation with British Palestinians about whether, and how, they would wish to see the Balfour centenary commemorated. This seems to be at best misguided and, at worst, a demonstration of Britain’s double standards when it comes to the Palestine-Israel issue. Israel was not established on empty land; it has been built on the homeland of the Palestinian people. How then can it be logical for the British government not to consult the Palestinians, either in Palestine or in the UK, about the Balfour centenary?

The notion that Britain should “celebrate” the Balfour Declaration is extremely offensive to every British Palestinian I have talked to and to the Palestinian leadership. Balfour gave the green light to the Zionist movement, which perpetuated the lie that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land”. The truth is that Jews, like Muslims and Christians, were citizens of many countries, including Syria and Iraq, and Palestine was inhabited by a people, the mainly Muslim but also Christian and Jewish, Palestinians. Had Israel not been created in Palestine, it is quite logical to assume that Palestine would have eventually gained independence and that Arab Jews, just like their Christian and Muslim brethren, would have continued to live in all the Arab countries in which they had thrived for centuries.

The Balfour Declaration and Britain’s League of Nations Mandate rule in Palestine were key reasons for the growth of Jewish migration to Palestine, which accelerated following the Second World War and the Holocaust. The creation of Israel as Britain rushed to abandon Palestine left the Palestinians at the mercy of murderous Zionist terror groups hell-bent on expelling as many if not all of them from their homeland. The injustice felt in the Middle East at the creation of Israel also contributed to the tensions that led to Arab Jews leaving their home countries for the nascent Zionist state.

The injustice of the lack of a viable Palestinian state and the continuing refugee catastrophe continues to this day. How can Britain celebrate this? Even if Britain claims that it is not “celebrating” Balfour, but simply “marking” the document’s centenary, that will also offend Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation in Palestine, and in the refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, as well as the diaspora.

If fair minded people read the text of the Balfour Declaration and then look at what happened subsequently, they will surely find it difficult to accept that the conditions implicit in the British government’s “favour” have been fulfilled. Israel brazenly flouts the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” on a daily basis, and has done since its creation in 1948. Its illegal occupation continues to oppress, humiliate and generate hatred. Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip — described by David Cameron as “a prison” — continues unabated. House demolitions in the first half of 2016 are already markedly up on 2015. Settler violence has escalated and Jewish terror has taken the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The fact is that Britain has not even recognised Palestine as a state following the October 2014 Parliamentary vote requesting the government to do so. Add to this that 2017 also marks the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and other Arab land and Israel’s refusal to end this, and it is obvious that any reasonable person would say that a “celebration” of the Balfour Declaration would be completely inappropriate. If you do something shameful, as Britain did, from a Palestinian perspective, then you would do far better to apologise for it than to mark or celebrate it.

The argument for a celebration of Balfour is that the Jewish community in Britain see the creation of Israel as a major achievement in which the declaration played a major part. However, not all British Jews share this view. Has the government consulted widely even within the Jewish community about possible Balfour events? There is no evidence that it has. If it does mark the centenary in some way then it should know that there will be many Jews in Britain siding with the oppressed Palestinians to mark the Catastrophe (Nakba) that the creation of the state of Israel represents to them. Discussions among Palestinian groups in Britain and supporters of justice for Palestine are ongoing in order to formulate a suitable response to the governments’ intentions.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian leadership has finally stirred itself and threatened to sue Britain for the Balfour Declaration. What that really means and to which court the Palestinians would make a case remains unknown. It may be yet prove to be another example of the Palestinian leadership making grandiose claims which lead to nothing and are then retracted. This, though, remains to be seen.

As we approach 2017 with Israel entrenching its military occupation of Palestine and senior politicians articulating their rejection of a Palestinian state, Britain should avoid inflaming the situation by marking Balfour in any way. A more helpful act would be to establish an inquiry into Britain’s role in the creation of Israel and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Its role would be to establish the facts and to assess how justice can be brought to the Holy Land as the Balfour centenary approaches. This would be far better than “celebrating” what is indeed a dark chapter of Britain’s colonial history.

Author’s Introduction

This article was first published in 2013 focussing on the May 2013 Tunis World Social Forum.

This year the World Social Forum is being held in Montreal, regrouping committed social activists, anti-war collectives and  prominent intellectuals. 

Most of the participants are unaware that the WSF is funded by corporate foundations including Ford, Rockefeller, et al.  Much of this funding is channelled to the WSF organizers under the helm of the WSF International Council. 

This is an issue I have raised on numerous occasions with progressive organizations and WSF activists: you cannot effectively confront neoliberalism and the New World Order elites  and expect them to finance your activities. The corporations are funding dissent with a view to controlling dissent. 

The Ford Foundation (which has links to the CIA) provided funding under its “Strengthening Global Civil Society” program during the first three years of the WSF.

When the WSF was held in Mumbai in 2004, the Indian WSF host committee declined support from the Ford Foundation. This in itself did not modify the WSF’s relationship to the donors. While the Ford foundation formally withdrew, other foundations positioned themselves.

More recently, the WSF has been funded by a consortium of corporate foundations under the advisory umbrella of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE).

This organization, which previously went under the name of The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), has played a central role in the funding of successive WSF venues. From the outset in 2001 it had an observer status on the WSF International Council. 

A member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is on EDGE’s board of directors. A representative of the Ford Foundation sits on its Conference Program Committee, which defines funding orientations. The Wallace Global Fund which has a working relationship to EDGE, is specialized in providing support to “mainstream” NGOs and “alternative media”, including Amnesty International, Democracy Now (which supports Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president of the US).

The following is the EDGe Communique. The donors not only fund the activities, they also determine the structure of the WSF venue. The decentralized and dispersed mosaic of do it yourself workshops.

We call upon participants of the Montreal WSF to raise these issues: the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by an alliance of donors which includes corporate foundations firmly committed not only to neoliberalism but also to the US-NATO led military agenda.

Why would they fund organizations which are actively campaigning against neoliberalism?  The answer is obvious.

 *        *       *

The Anti-Globalization Movement and the World Social Forum. Is “Another World” Possible?

by Michel Chossudovsky

May 15, 20013

The World Social Forum operating under the banner of  “Another World is Possible” was founded in 2001 at its inaugural venue of Porto Alegre. Brazil.

From the outset in 2001, the WSF has been upheld as an international umbrella representing grassroots people’s organizations, committed to reversing the tide of globalization. Its stated intent is to challenge corporate capitalism and its dominant neoliberal economic agenda.

The World Social Forum at its inaugural meeting defined itself as a counter-offensive to the World Economic Forum (WEF) of business leaders and politicians which meets annually in Davos, Switzerland. The 2001 Porto Alegre WSF was held simultaneously with that of the WEF in Davos.

Yet upon careful review, the WSF  –rather than effectively confronting the economic and financial elites– actually serves their interests. 

From the outset in 2001, the World Social Forum was funded by governments and corporate foundations, including the Ford Foundation which has ties to US intelligence.

The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Ford, Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Wall Street and Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle co-optation of  a small number of key individuals within “progressive organizations”, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement. Many leaders of these organizations have in a sense betrayed their grassroots.

The Tunis 2013 World Social Forum  

The World Social Forum gathered this year [2013] in Tunis. The March 26-30, 2013 venue included more than 50,000 participants from NGOs and people’s organizations from around the World.  More than 4000 organizations from 127 countries were represented.

 Members of the WSF International  Council meets Tunisia’s interim Prime Minister Ali Larayedh

The International Council of the World Social Forum meets in downtown Tunis. (WNV/Marisa Holmes)

Many important issues were debated and discussed in separate workshops. The structure of the program –which included more than 1000 separate sessions– was that of a mosaic of different and separate initiatives. http://www.fsm2013.org/programme/27/1

impacts of austerity measures in the EU, environment, social justice, women’s rights, global warming, sustainable development, Palestine, the Arab Spring, among other themes

While the thrust invariably consisted in a critique of global capitalism and imperialism, the issue of US-led militarization was not addressed in a meaningful way. An aura of divisiveness prevailed, which was in part the result of the way the program was organized in a multitude of “do it yourself” workshops.

There was no united WSF position against US-NATO led wars, let alone Western intervention with a view to destabilizing sovereign countries. In fact quite the opposite:  a session was held on how to overthrow the Syrian government, involving the participation of so-called Leftists:

…[W]hile four Syrian communist and two Kurd organizations discussed future action against the regime, supporters of al-Assad held a rally in the central square. The two groups did not cross paths, so no confrontation took place, but the tension was palpable.

Participants in the debate held by the Syrian communists and Kurds told IPS that they had agreed on a document recognizing the importance of the individual and collective rights of all ethnic groups in Syria, which is especially significant for the Kurds, the largest minority.

They also agreed to hold a day of solidarity with the Syrian uprising, in the first week of May. (See Common Dreams, March 30, 2013)

How US-NATO with the support of Israel, Qatar and Saudi Arabia was waging an undeclared war on Syria was not the object of a cohesive debate. Nor was the issue of Al Qaeda mercenaries funded covertly by Washington and Brussels.

While the “Arab Spring” was put forth as a revolutionary landmark, the US-NATO sponsored armed insurrections in Libya (2011) and Syria (2011-2013) were considered to be part of the “Arab Spring”:

“Now, we are at a crossroads where retrograde and conservative forces want to stop the processes initiated two years ago with the [Arab Spring] uprisings in the Maghreb-Mashreq region that helped to bring down dictatorships and to challenge the neoliberal system imposed on the peoples. These uprisings have spread to all continents of the world inspiring indignation and occupation of public places. (Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly, see full text below)

The uprisings in the “Mashreq” and “Maghreb” referred to in the Final Declaration essentially pertain to Syria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The text of declaration is vague. It does not take a position with regard to US-NATO intervention in Libya and Syria.

What the WSF document intimates (by default) is that the US sponsored “Syrian opposition”  is  “also” a genuine grassroots pro-democracy movement, comparable to that of Egypt. Similarly the Al Qaeda affiliated Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which led the “Arab Spring” against the government of Muammar Gaddafi is also considered to be a revolutionary force. It should be noted that Libya under Gadaffi was the only country in Africa which rejected the neoliberal economic agenda implemented under the helm of the IMF.

Several workshops on  Libya tacitly applauded Western military intervention. A session entitled “Libya’s transition to democracy” focused on “whether Libya was better off without Muammar Gaddafi.” Several “progressive” NGOs and “alternative media” which had supported NATO’s humanitarian bombings against Libya were present in Tunis. No statement as to the criminal nature of NATO’s humanitarian bombing campaign against Libya was made by the WSF.

The Libyan NGOs in attendance were funded by their government and by Western foundations, with the approval of the Libyan Ministry of Culture and Civil Society established in 2011 in the wake of the NATO led military intervention.

Sessions were also held on “political Islam” as part of an anti-imperialist front  without addressing the broader issue as to how “Political Islam” was used in the course of The Arab Spring to further the goals of the Imperialist powers. The result was the installation of Islamic governments in Egypt and Tunisia and the reinforcement rather than the repeal of the neoliberal economic policy agenda.

The legitimacy of the US “Global War on Terrorism” is not an object of debate under the auspices of the WSF. Nor is the fact that Washington covertly supported key leaders of the Arab Spring movement, as well as several civil society organizations. The April 6 Movement in Egypt had the support of the US embassy, Kefaya (Enough) was funded by US foundations. Both of these organizations were present at the WSF sessions in Tunis.

Aminata Traoré, the former minister of Culture of the deposed government of Mali, speaking at the World Social Forum in Tunis underscored how military intervention was used to enforce neoliberal economic policy.

Traore stated that: “The war that was imposed today in Mali is not a war of liberation of the Malian people, but a war of plunder of resources.” While addressing the WSF, she deplored that many WSF activists were supportive of France’s intervention.

Generally speaking, an understanding of imperialist wars in support of a neoliberal agenda has over the years not been a central component of the WSF debate. Moreover, many of the participant NGOs are in fact supportive of NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” Mandate.

The Funding of the World Social Forum

The WSF is funded by governments and foundations. The Ford Foundation under its “Strengthening Global Civil Society” program provided funding during the first three years of the WSF.

When the WSF was held in Mumbai in 2004, the Indian WSF host committee declined support from the Ford Foundation. This in itself did not modify the WSF’s relationship to the donors. While the Ford foundation formally withdrew, other foundations positioned themselves.

In addition to government support, the WSF has been funded by a consortium of corporate foundations under the advisory umbrella of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE). This organization, which previously went under the name of The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), has played a central role in the funding of successive WSF venues. From the outset in 2001 it has an observer status on the WSF International Council.

While channeling financial support to the WSF, it acts as a clearing house for major foundations. EDGE describes itself  as “a unique and diverse community of donors, foundation officers and advisors across the international philanthropic landscape … with shared commitment to global social change.”

Shortly before the WSF venue in Tunis, EDGE Funders –together with the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le Progrès de l’Homme (FPH)– convened in Paris a consortium of some two dozen WSF grantmakers. EDGE is also facilitating the presence of these grantmakers at the Tunis venue. (See  http://www.edgefunders.org/events/)

In one of its key documents, entitled A Funders Network Alliance In Support of Grassroots Organizing and Movement-Building  EDGE acknowledges its support of social movements which challenge “neoliberal market fundamentalism.” including the World Social Forum, established in 2001:

“From the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (1994) to the Battle in Seattle (1999) to the creation of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001), the TINA years of Reagan and Thatcher (There Is No Alternative) have been replaced with the growing conviction that “another world is possible.” Counter-summits, global campaigns and social forums have been crucial spaces to articulate local struggles, share experiences and analyses, develop expertise, and build concrete forms of international solidarity among progressive movements for social, economic and ecological justice.”

But at the same time, there is an obvious contradiction: the campaign against neoliberalism is financed by an alliance of donors which includes corporate foundations, firmly committed to the free-market and neoliberal economic policy under the helm of the IMF.  

A member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is on EDGE’s board of directors. A representative of the Ford Foundation sits on its Conference Program Committee, which defines funding orientations. The Wallace Global Fund which has a working relationship to EDGE, is specialized in providing support to “mainstream” NGOs and “alternative media”, including Amnesty International, Democracy Now.

The Rockefeller Brothers representative –who co-chairs EDGE’s program committee– is Tom Kruse. At the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kruse is responsible for “Global Governance” under the “Democratic Practice” program. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kruse served as an adviser to the Bolivian government of Evo Morales on trade and investment policy, debt relief and macroeconomic reform. Rockefeller Brothers grants to NGOs are approved under the “Strengthening Democracy in Global Governance” program, which is broadly similar to that put forth by the US State Department.

From the standpoint of corporate donors including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, “investing in the WSF” constitutes a profitable undertaking. It ensures that activism remains within the confines of  constructive dialogue and critique rather than confrontation. Any deviation immediately results in the curtailment of donor funding:

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))

The limits of social dissent are thereby determined by the “governance structure” of  the WSF, which was tacitly agreed upon with the funding agencies at the outset in 2001.

“No Leaders”

The WSF has no leaders. All the events are “self-organized”. The structure of debate and activism is part of an an “open space” (See y Francine Mestrum, The World Social Forum and its governance: a multi-headed monster, CADTM, 27 April 2013, http://cadtm.org/The-World-Social-Forum-and-its ).

This compartmentalized structure is an obstacle to the development of a meaningful and articulate mass movement. It indelibly serves the interests of  those who fund the WSF including the tax free foundations and the governments.

How best to control grassroots dissent against global capitalism?

Make sure that their leaders can be easily co-opted and that the rank and file will not develop “forms of international solidarity among progressive movements” (to use EDGE’s own words), which in any meaningful way might undermine the interests of corporate capital. 

The mosaic of separate workshops, the relative absence of plenary sessions, the creation of divisions within and between social movements, not to mention the absence of a cohesive platform against US-NATO humanitarian interventions, in Syria, Libya and Mali: all of these are part of a strategy to “manufacture dissent”

“The limits of dissent” are established by the foundations and governments which ultimately finance this multimillion dollar venue. The financing is twofold: 

1. Core financing of the WSF Secretariat and the Costs of the WSF venue.

2. Many of the constituent NGOs which participate in the venue are recipients of donor and/or government support.   

What ultimately prevails is a ritual of dissent which does not threaten the New World Order. Those who attend the WSF from the grassroots are often misled by their leaders. Activists who do not share the WSF consensus will ultimately be excluded:

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

“Another World is Possible” is nonetheless an important concept, which characterizes the struggle of the peoples movements against global capitalism as well as the commitment of thousands of activists who participated in the WSF.

It cannot, however, be achieved under the auspices of the WSF which from the outset was funded by global capitalism and organized in close liaison with its corporate and government donors.

The important question for activists:

Is it possible to build “an Alternative” to global capitalism, which challenges the hegemony of the Rockefellers et al and then ask the Rockefellers et al to foot the bill?

Appendix

Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly – World Social Forum 2013, 29 March 2013, Tunisia

As the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum of Tunisia, 2013, we are
gathered here to affirm the fundamental contribution of peoples of Maghreb-Mashrek (from
North Africa to the Middle East), in the construction of human civilization. We affirm that
decolonization for oppressed peoples remains for us, the social movements of the world, a
challenge of the greatest importance.

Through the WSF process, the Social Movements Assembly is the place where we come
together through our diversity, in order to forge common struggles and a collective agenda to
fight against capitalism, patriarchy, racism and all forms of discrimination and oppression. We
have built a common history of work which led to some progress, particularly in Latin America,
where we have been able to intervene in neoliberal alliances and to create several alternatives
for just development that truly honors nature.

Together, the peoples of all the continents are fighting to oppose the domination of capital,
hidden behind illusory promises of economic progress and the illusion of political stability.
Now, we are at a crossroads where retrograde and conservative forces want to stop the
processes initiated two years ago with the uprisings in the Maghreb-Mashreq region that
helped to bring down dictatorships and to challenge the neoliberal system imposed on the
peoples. These uprisings have spread to all continents of the world inspiring indignation and
occupation of public places.

People all over the world are suffering the effects of the aggravation of a profound crisis of
capitalism, in which its agents (banks, transnational corporations, media conglomerates,
international institutions, and governments complicit with neoliberalism) aim at increasing
their profits by applying interventionist and neocolonial policies.

War, military occupations, free-trade neoliberal treaties and “austerity measures” are
expressed in economic packages that privatize the common good, and public services, cut
wages and rights, increase unemployment, overload women´s care work and destroys nature.
Such policies strike the richer countries of the North harder and are increasing migration,
forced displacement, evictions, debt, and social inequalities such as in Greece, Cyprus,
Portugal, Italy, Ireland and the Spanish State.

They re-enforce conservatism and the control over women´s bodies and lives. In addition,
they seek to impose “green economy” as a solution to the environmental and food crisis, which
not only exacerbates the problem, but leads to commodification, privatization and
financialization of life and nature.

We denounce the intensification of repression to people´s rebellions, the assassination of the
leadership of social movements, the criminalization of our struggles and our proposals.

We assert that people must not continue to pay for this systemic crisis and that there is no
solution inside the capitalist system! Here, in Tunes, we reaffirm our committment to come
together to forge a common strategy to guide our struggles against capitalism. This is why we,
social movements, struggle:

*Against transnational corporations and the financial system (IMF, WB and WTO),
who are the main agents of the capitalist system, privatizing life, public services and common
goods such as water, air, land, seeds and mineral resources, promoting wars and violations of
human rights. Transnational corporations reproduce extractionist practices endangering life
and nature, grabbing our lands and developing genetically modified seeds and food, taking
away the peoples’ right to food and destroying biodiversity.

We fight for the cancellation of illegitimate and odious debt which today is a global instrument
of domination, repression and economic and financial strangulation of people. We reject free
trade agreements that are imposed by States and transnational corporations and we affirm
that it is possible to build another kind of globalization, made from and by the people, based
on solidarity and on freedom of movement for all the human beings.

[We struggle] for climate justice and food sovereignty, because we know that global climate change is a
product of the capitalist system of production, distribution and consumption. Transnational
corporations, international financial institutions and governments serving them do not want to
reduce greenhouse gases. We denounce “green economy” and refuse false solutions to the
climate crisis such as biofuels, genetically modified organisms and mechanisms of the carbon
market like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which
ensnare impoverished peoples with false promises of progress while privatizing and
commodifying the forests and territories where these peoples have been living for thousands of
years.

We defend the food sovereignty and support sustainable peasant agriculture which is the true
solution to the food and climate crises and includes access to land for all who work on it.
Because of this, we call for a mass mobilisation to stop the landgrab and support local
peasants struggles.

[We struggle] Against violence against women, often conducted in militarily occupied territories, but
also violence affecting women who are criminalized for taking part in social struggles. We fight
against domestic and sexual violence perpetrated on women because they are considered
objects or goods, because the sovereignty of their bodies and minds is not acknowledged. We
fight against the traffic of women, girls and boys.

We defend sexual diversity, the right to gender self-determination and we oppose all
homophobia and sexist violence.

[We fight] For peace and against war, colonialism, occupations and the militarization of our
lands.

We denounce the false discourse of human rights defense and fight against fundamentalism,
that often justify these military occupations such as in Haiti, Libya, Mali and Syria. We defend
the right to people’s sovereignty and self-determination such as in Palestine, Western Sahara
and Kurdistan.

We denounce the installation of foreign military bases to instigate conflicts, to control and
ransack natural resources, and to foster dictatorships in several countries.

We struggle for the freedom of organization in trade unions, social movements, associations
and other forms of peaceful resistance. Let’s strengthen our tools of solidarity among peoples
such as boycott, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel and the struggle against NATO and
to ban all nuclear weapons.

*[We struggle] For democratization of mass media and building alternative media, that are
fundamental to overthrow the capitalist logics.

Inspired by the history of our struggles and by the strength of people on the streets, the Social
Movements Assembly call upon all people to mobilize and develop actions – coordinated at
world level – in a global Day of mobilization on the XXXX (day to decide)

Social movements of the world, let us advance towards a global unity to shatter the capitalist
system!

No more exploitation, no more patriarchy, racism and colonialism! Viva la revolution! Long live
the people’s struggle.  

*        *        *

Michel Chossudovsky’s International Best Seller. Order directly from Global Research Publishers

This election season has brought to the surface an issue that, until recently, seemed to have become a neoliberal sacred cow, the holy writ of the lords of capital: free trade. And while this cornerstone of US economic hegemony has come under fire from a deeply reactionary, and to varying degrees racist and xenophobic, perspective, as expressed by Donald Trump, it has nevertheless sparked a much needed conversation about free trade and its destructive impact on both the American working class, and the Global South as well.

But free trade having become a campaign issue has also spotlighted for the umpteenth time the breathtaking hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton who I have previously referred to as the high priestess of the Church of Free Trade and Neoliberalism. For it is, in fact, Hillary Clinton who has for more than two decades been one of the loudest and most resolute voices championing neoliberalism and free trade. And still, despite her record, Clinton today presents herself as a friend of the working class. The same working class that has been all but eviscerated by the policies she herself has supported.

This is, of course, not to say that Trump is somehow the great defender of workers and the poor – his long track record as a predatory, racist real estate developer illustrates his complete lack of concern for oppressed communities and workers. Still, like a sadistic dentist, Trump has deliberately struck a nerve in the body politic of the US. For Trump has managed to eschew the typical right wing cultural wedge issues of gay marriage, abortion, and the like in favor of the core economic concerns of the working class.

Whatever one’s opinion of Trump, one can say with certainty that his reintroduction of the free trade into the national conversation has forced Hillary Clinton onto the back foot.

Hillary Clinton, NAFTA, and the Attack on American Workers

“I think that everybody is in favor of free and fair trade, and I think that NAFTA is proving its worth.” Or so Hillary Clinton said in 1996, more than two years after the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted under her husband’s administration. At the time one could still labor under the illusion – or perhaps it was delusion? – that NAFTA was going to benefit workers in the US, Canada, and Mexico by allowing for the free flow of goods (and capital) leading to decreased prices for many consumer goods. Indeed, that was precisely the mythology that was peddled at the time.

While it’s true that many experts and workers alike, especially those on the Left, were deeply suspicious about the inflated claims of the glorious benefits of the NAFTA utopia of the future, the concept was made into policy, and the policy translated into a grim reality for US workers. As the Economic Policy Institute noted in 2013:

By establishing the principle that U.S. corporations could relocate production elsewhere and sell back into the United States, NAFTA undercut the bargaining power of American workers, which had driven the expansion of the middle class since the end of World War II. The result has been 20 years of stagnant wages and the upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power.

Without question, NAFTA was a direct assault on the US working class. Its repercussions are still being felt today. As the Economic Policy Institute further explained, NAFTA had four major negative impacts:

1. The loss of at least 700,000 jobs due to production moving to Mexico. Some of the heaviest losses were felt in California, Texas, Michigan and other manufacturing-dependent states, particularly those in the Rust Belt.
2. Allowed employers to drive down wages, slash benefits, and undermine and destroy unions. Because capital could always threaten to simply close up shop and move to Mexico, workers had little recourse but to accept the assault on their standards of living.
3. It devastated the Mexican agricultural and small business sectors which led to the dislocation of millions of Mexican workers and small farmers, many of whom were forced to migrate to the US in search of work, thereby creating the immigration “problem” that Trump and his reactionary base have seized upon.
4. It was the model free trade agreement, the blueprint upon which others were based. It laid the foundation for the neoliberal trade model wherein capital reaps the benefits while labor shoulders the costs.

Obviously, one could point out myriad other negative effects of NAFTA. But perhaps even better than that, one could simply take a drive down Interstates 80 and 90 – crossing through New Jersey, upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, etc. – and get off almost anywhere and see the impacts for one’s self. Countless shuttered factories, depressed and often nearly abandoned towns and cities, and populations blighted by unemployment and the social breakdown that goes with it. The bleakness of the post-NAFTA industrial landscape is difficult to articulate, and is often completely hidden from view, especially for many working people in the population centers on the East and West coasts.

And this depression, both economic and psychological, is what Donald Trump has rather cynically exploited. The scapegoating of Mexican immigrants as economic parasites feasting on the blood of the American worker is a fairly predictable, though highly effective, means of marshaling support from the working class, in particular the white working class.

However, the political opportunism notwithstanding, it was not Donald Trump, but rather Hillary Clinton, who consistently was the unyielding supporter of NAFTA. As White House documents from the Clinton administration revealed, Hillary was one of the principal salespeople for NAFTA, going so far as to speak at a confidential White House briefing on NAFTA in November 1993, just a few days before it was approved by Congress. The documents also prove the fact that Hillary was, as John Nichols wrote in The Nation in 2008, “the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA.”

Clinton lobbied for NAFTA all throughout the halls of power in Washington, but also before the American people on television and in the major media. In short, NAFTA can be seen as one of Hillary’s crowning achievements; heavy is the head that wears such a crown.

Hillary the Hypocrite

Today Hillary Clinton shamelessly presents herself as a friend of working people. She trots out the elites of organized labor, concerned primarily with their own positions atop demoralized and fragmented unions, and trumpets their endorsements of her. And even these working class backstabbers have to grit their teeth and smile as they kneel before the high priestess herself in hopes of eight more years of privileged relations and fine dining.

But behind closed doors, everyone in America who even casually follows politics knows the truth: Hillary Clinton is a crusader for free trade and neoliberalism.

And that’s precisely why Hillary’s anti-free trade posture at election time is so deeply cynical, to say nothing of the insult to working people. In 2007-2008, in the midst of a hotly contested primary campaign against then Senator Barack Obama, Clinton repeatedly claimed that she was anti-free trade, and critical of NAFTA. In a debate in late 2007, Clinton admitted that NAFTA had been a mistake “to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would.”

Of course, these were just the populist sentiments that Clinton knew she needed to utilize in order to deceive organized labor, and the working class in general, that she was an ally, rather than a devout worshiper at the altar of the god of neoliberalism.

After Obama became president and appointed Clinton Secretary of State she immediately reverted to being the great champion of free trade. Indeed, in her position as America’s top diplomat Clinton traveled the world preaching the gospel of free trade. And by this point she had a new holy scripture to tout: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Clinton unabashedly lied during Democratic national debates on the issue of the TPP, saying that she now opposes it, despite having been in favor of it as late as 2012 when she said the TPP “sets the gold standard in trade agreements.” While she now masquerades as a protectionist opposing a deal that would be bad for working people, she has demonstrated her unflagging support for this type of so called free trade in the past.

To get a sense of just how insidious the TPP is for American workers, and in fact citizens of every country involved in the deal, consider the words of the Grand Poobah of the American Left, Noam Chomsky, who correctly explained that the TPP is “designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity.” In his characteristically soft-spoken manner, Chomsky manages to encapsulate the overarching danger that the TPP represents. And in so doing, he further implies that Hillary Clinton represents a serious threat to American workers.

Similarly, as Secretary of State, Clinton vocally backed the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), hailing it as an “economic NATO”. Leaving aside the terrifyingly ironic turn of phrase, Hillary’s support of TTIP represents support for yet another massive free trade deal that would have serious negative effects on workers, and indeed the majority of citizens, in the US and Europe. As Politico noted, “TTIP covers around a third of global trade. It would create an open market of 829 million consumers and expand a trade relationship that’s already worth €2 billion every day.”

And, just as with the TPP, TTIP is as much a political and geopolitical weapon as it is an economic arrangement. While TPP is aimed at economically isolating China (despite the raving lunacy of Donald Trump who argues just the opposite, that TPP will unfairly benefit China), TTIP is directed against Russia in hopes of depriving Moscow the chance at deepening economic ties with Europe.

And this is precisely why Clinton is the darling of both Wall Street and the neoconservative establishment. From the right wing financier Koch Brothers’ admission of support for Hillary, to the obvious backing of George Soros,Warren Buffett, and countless other liberal (and some conservative) Wall Street ghouls, Clinton has the near unanimous endorsements of the One Percent. It should be added that she is also being supported by arch-neocons such as Max Boot, who described Clinton as “vastly preferable,” Robert Kagan who sees Hillary as “saving the country,” and Eliot Cohen who described Clinton as “the lesser evil by a large margin.”

The reason for the near unanimous support is simple: Clinton will deliver all the economic policies, including TPP and free trade, that the Masters of Wall Street demand. And she’ll do it all while coldly smiling at every worker she meets on the campaign trail. She will also pursue just the sort of aggressive and belligerent foreign policy that makes neocons salivate at the prospect of more and bigger wars.

Ultimately, Clinton represents the very worst of the American political class – a cynical manipulator whose thirst for blood and war is matched only by her thirst for power. Lies flow from her mouth into the US political scene like water into a vast ocean. And, like water, she erodes the once sturdy rock of the working class in the United States.

African National Congress remains dominate party over two decades after democratic transformation

Perhaps the most observed local elections in decades were held in the Republic of South Africa on August 3.

In final results of this poll the ruling African National Congress (ANC) gained 54 percent of the vote to the opposition party the Democratic Alliance (DA) 26 percent. In actual percentages the ANC won twice as many votes as the DA and many more times as the putative ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which garnered approximately eight percent.

With 100% of results transmitted, the official breakdown from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is follows:

Africa National Congress (ANC)

Councils won = 175

Seats = 5,124

Votes = over 16 million (53.91% support)

Democratic Alliance (DA)

Councils won = 23

Seats = 1,729

Votes = over 8 million (26.89% support)

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)

Councils won = 0

Seats = 731

Votes = over 2.4 million (8.2% support)

In a statement issued on August 5 with 94 percent of the vote already tallied, the ANC said “As results from municipal elections continue to come in to the IEC National Results Center in Pretoria, an unprecedented 14 million South Africans have cast their ballots in favor of the African National Congress (ANC) in this election. This translates to 54% of the national vote, and dramatically exceeds numbers recorded in the previous municipal election. In 2011, the ANC secured 8.1 million votes. Whilst we have received overwhelming support from our people, we will reflect and introspect where our support has dropped.”

The same statement goes on emphasizing “As results continue to come in, ANC votes are expected to increase even further. They are a ringing endorsement of the ANC’s service delivery program by the citizens of South Africa. These figures come at a time of intense speculation around voter apathy and citizen’s alleged lack of interest in political processes.”

Jackson Mthembu, the ANC Chief Whip in Parliament noted: “We are quite humbled and very happy that people of South Africa still trust the African National Congress. Of course we have had setbacks in areas like the Nelson Mandela Bay but we are magnanimous in victory and also magnanimous in defeat because we are democrats. At the national level, the people of South Africa have — in their majority — still voted for the African National Congress. As you can see, we are standing at over 50 percent. We are now at over 54 percent nationally and that amounts to over 13 million votes that people of South Africa have given to the ANC – out of the 26 million voters we have in the country.” (Aug. 5)

The Role of the Corporate and Bourgeois Governmental Media

Much speculation about the outcome was the pre-occupation of many corporate and governmental media outlets from South Africa itself to Europe and North America. Predictions that the African National Congress (ANC) would suffer catastrophic losses in its governing status in municipalities, townships and rural areas was much anticipated by opposition parties inside the country as well as others who have for years predicted that the non-racial democratic political system was unsustainable.

This same outlook has guided the reporting of the results and their significance for one of the world’s youngest nations which has been subjected to white minority-rule for centuries where during 1652 to 1994, the European population and ruling class sought to eradicate all forms of resistance by the African people. These elections in South Africa took place within the broader regional and international context of intensified warfare and destabilization campaigns against all states and parties which are considered part of the so-called “emerging economies.”

South Africa along with the entire sub-continent has been suffering from an economic downturn due to several factors including a drought, the sharp decline in commodity prices, and its concomitant impact on the generation of foreign exchange needed to purchase industrial goods and services. The value of the South African national currency, the rand, has declined to nearly 15-1 against the U.S. dollar.

Since the ascendancy of the ANC government in 1994 there has been a systematic disinvestment of private capital from the nation with other countries such as Mexico and Ghana now ahead of South Africa in gold production. Even the price of the much-needed platinum resources has declined in the aftermath of the international slump in commodity values. The mine owners have steadfastly resisted the demands of labor unions both those allied with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and others such as AMCU which has challenged COSATU, a close ally of the ANC, for the membership of the workers.

Nonetheless, these issues are usually not taken into consideration by media agencies and commentators many of whom have never been favorable to the ANC. Since 2015, the ANC-dominated government has been at loggerheads with the United States administration of President Barack Obama over South African participation in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) as well as charges by the ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe who has accused the U.S. embassy of fostering a regime-change strategy inside the country.

Privately-owned media firms which constitute the overwhelming number of news outlets inside South Africa failed to account for the general trends prevailing internationally. The losses of the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay around Port Elizabeth and in the Municipality of Tshwane, encompassing the capital of Pretoria, were never attributed to the decline in foreign exchange revenues and the large-scale unemployment stemming from the downsizing in industrial employment and its peripheral effects in the commercial and service sectors.

Imperialism Seeks to Destabilize Independent and Anti-Imperialist States

South Africa and the Southern Africa region are not standing alone in the current international crisis of economic underdevelopment. Since the decline in oil and other commodities prices over the last two years, states such as Russia, China, Venezuela, Brazil, Zimbabwe, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, among others, have seen a precipitous drop in economic performance.

With specific reference to states such as South Africa which are governed by former national liberation movements turned political parties, the traditional opposition to such organizations have never ceased. This must be taken into consideration in light of the actual program of the Democratic Alliance in South Africa which encompasses a heavier reliance on international finance capital as part of its platform to ostensibly improve the economy.

The EFF says that it supports the nationalization of mining and land to the benefit of the African majority inside the country. Nevertheless, the strongest political rhetoric relayed by the EFF inside and outside of parliament where it holds over twenty seats in Cape Town, is directed not against the still white-dominated ruling class interests but the ANC. The EFF blocked with the DA in a failed impeachment resolution submitted to parliament earlier in the year saying the President Jacob Zuma had violated the constitution.

This is the same constitution that ANC and other revolutionary organizations and trade unions fought for over a period of decades. These struggles between the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the western-backed opposition groups will continue over the next three years when national elections are to be held for the presidency and the legislative structures.

Shawn and Ricardo film and serve process on Defendants DNC Services Corp. and Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz at DNC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the fraud class action Wilding et al. v. DNC Services Corp. et al.

It took two attempts, but the job got done! Thanks, guys.

To learn more about the DNC fraud class action (and to make a contribution to Jam PAC), please visit http://jampac.us/

The Class Action includes 121 Plaintiffs.

For details click: http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/1-CLASS-ACTION-COMPLAINT-6-28-16.pdf

Update: Since the filing of the lawsuit, Attorney Shawn Lucas who is featured in the video, dies under Mysterious Circumstances. A young Attorney, 38 years old with a firm commitment to Social Justice and Truth in Politics.

Shawn Lucas, who served the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz with election fraud papers in early July “has been found dead under suspicious circumstances” 

“According to a police report dated August 2nd, Lucas’ girlfriend came home and found him unconscious on the bathroom floor. Paramedics responding to her 911 call found no signs of life. The cause of death has not been confirmed.

Shawn Lucas was known to many frustrated Democrats as the young man depicted in a viral video serving the DNC and Wasserman Schultz with election fraud lawsuit papers.

“The rumor spread on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, where many users were concerned that Lucas’ death may have been connected to his role as the process server for the DNC lawsuit. Some versions asserted Lucas was the “lead attorney” on the case, but we were unable to corroborate that claim. 

Lucas was named in a motion [PDF] filed on 22 July 2016 by the DNC, seeking to dismiss the suit on partial grounds of improper service,” Snopes reports.

Official Who Served DNC Election Fraud Papers Found Dead

See Reports published on Global Research

Sudden Death of Attorney Who Served the Lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Charges of “Fraud, Deceptive Conduct … and Negligence”By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, August 08, 2016

Lead Attorney In Anti-Clinton DNC Fraud Case Mysteriously Found DeadBy Tyler Durden, August 08, 2016

Hiroshima – A Criminal Enterprise From Which Nothing Has Been Learned

By Felicity Arbuthnot, August 08 2016

When Paul Tibbets was thirteen years old he flew a bi-plane over Florida’s Miami Beach dropping a promotional cargo of Babe Ruth Candy Bars directly on to the promotional target area. 30 years later: “I was told I was going to destroy one city with one bomb.

Rio Olympics 2016: US Intelligence Ops, Soldiers and Police Deployed. Mass Street Protests

By Stephen Lendman, August 07 2016

This year, it resembles militarization seen in war zones with tens of thousands of soldiers, police and other security operatives infesting Rio, the site of the games – hosted by an illegitimate US-supported coup d’etat regime. Mass street protests rocked opening night, continued on Saturday, perhaps remaining unrelenting through the August 21 closing ceremony – media downplaying or ignoring them.

The 2016 Democratic National Convention: Voices from the Streets of Philadelphia

By Michael Welch, August 07 2016

The Democratic Party may have presented themselves as a unified force to go after Republican Donald Trump in November, but such unity was not evident in the streets of Philadelphia. Legions of people collected in the streets of Philadelphia to express their concerns as the Democratic National Convention got underway the week of July 25th.

Toxic Modus Operandi of the UN Security Council. Ban Ki-moon: “It Is Unacceptable For Member States To Exert Undue Pressure.”

By Carla Stea, August 07 2016

Human Rights Watch stated during today’s UN Security Council meeting on Children and Armed Conflict:  “Unlawful air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition have killed and maimed hundreds of children in Yemen and damaged dozens of schools, but the coalition strong-armed the Secretary-General in an attempt to escape scrutiny.  The coalition should be returned to the Secretary-General’s list of shame until it stops its indiscriminate bombardment of Yemen’s civilians.”

Washington’s Strategic Defeat: Erdogan Trumps Gulenist Coup

By Prof. James Petras, August 08 2016

For the past decade, the US intelligence agencies operating in Turkey have worked closely with the increasingly influential parallel government of Fethullah Gulen.  Their approach to power was, until recently, a permeationist strategy, of covertly taking over political, economic, administrative, judicial, media, military and cultural positions gradually without resort to elections or military coups. They adopted flexible tactics, supporting and shedding different allies to eliminate rivals.

Detained for Terror: Proposed Indefinite Detention Laws in Australia

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 08 2016

The reactive dimension of global politics – at least at the level of many states – is a broader statement about how far things have rotted.  Nothing is more reactive than a State’s response to terrorism, actual or perceived.  The pure evidentiary dimension is neglected in favour of procedural fluff and unmeasurable contingencies. The box-ticking bureaucrat takes precedence over the judicial officer.

Call it conspiracy theory, coincidence or just bad luck, but any time someone is in a position to bring down Hillary Clinton they wind up dead. In fact, as we noted previously, there’s a long history of Clinton-related body counts, with scores of people dying under mysterious circumstances. While Vince Foster remains the most infamous, the body count is starting to build ominously this election cycle – from the mysterious “crushing his own throat” death of a UN official to the latest death of an attorney who served the DNC with a fraud suit.

As GatewayPundit’s Jim Hoft reports, on July 3, 2016, Shawn Lucas and filmmaker Ricardo Villaba served the DNC Services Corp. and Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz at DNC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the fraud class action suit against the Democrat Party on behalf of Bernie Sanders supporters (this was before Wikileaks released documents proving the DNC was working against the Sanders campaign during the 2016 primary).

Shawn Lucas was thrilled about serving the papers to the DNC before Independence Day…

Shawn Lucas was found dead this week…

According to Snopes Lucas was found dead on his bathroom floor.

We contacted Lucas’ employer on 4 August 2016 to ask whether there was any truth to the rumor.

According to an individual with whom we spoke at that company, Shawn Lucas died on 2 August 2016. The audibly and understandably shaken employee stated that interest in the circumstances of Lucas’ death had prompted a number of phone calls and other queries, but the company had not yet ascertained any details about Lucas’ cause of death and were unable to confirm anything more than the fact he had passed away.

An unconfirmed report holds that Lucas was found lying on the bathroom floor by his girlfriend when she returned home on the evening of 2 August 2016. Paramedics responding to her 911 call found no signs of life.

*  *  *

This follows the death of 27 year-old Democratic staffer Seth Conrad Rich who was murdered in Washington DC on July 8.The killer or killers appear to have taken nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone.

Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a “lead” saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an “ongoing court case” possibly involving the Clinton family.

So, to summarize, courtesy of Janet Tavakoli, the Clinton related suspicious deaths so far this election cycle:  Five in just under six weeks – four deaths plus one suicide…

1) Shawn Lucas, Sanders supporter who served papers to DNC on the Fraud Case (DOD August 2, 2016)

2) Victor Thorn, Clinton author shot himself in an apparent suicide.  (DOD August, 2016)

3) Seth Conrad Rich, Democratic staffer, aged 27, apparently on his way to speak to the FBI about a case possibly involving the Clintons. The D.C. murder was not a robbery. (DOD July 8, 2016)

4) John Ashe, UN official who allegedly crushed his own throat while lifting weights, because he watched too many James Bond films and wanted to try the move where the bad guy tries to…oh, never mind. “He was scheduled to testify against the Clintons and the Democrat Party.” (DOD June 22, 2016)

5) Mike Flynn, the Big Government Editor for Breitbart News. Mike Flynn’s final article was published the day he died, “Clinton Cash: Bill, Hillary Created Their Own Chinese Foundation in 2014.” (DOD June 23, 2016)

It must be coincidence, right?

If former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne is to be believed, this is business as usual for the Clintons. Excerpt via Zero Hedge:

BYRNE: I feel so strongly that people need to know the real Hillary Clinton and how dangerous she is in her behavior. She is not a leader. She is not a leader.

SEAN: She does not have the temperament?

BYRNE: She doesn’t have the temperament. She didn’t have the temperament to handle the social office when she was First Lady, she does not have the temperament.

SEAN: She’s dishonest.

BYRNE: She’s dishonest, she habitually lies, anybody that can separate themselves from their politics and review her behavior over the past 15 years…

With the Rio Olympics now underway and with the Western media still grumbling about the IOC’s refusal to impose a blanket ban on Team Russia, this is good moment to summarise briefly the key facts about the Russian Olympic Doping Scandal.

 On August 6, the Jaish al-Fatah operation room seized the Ramouseh Artillery Base and the Ramouseh Neighborhood from the pro-government forces, de-facto, breaking the Aleppo siege and setting up a siege on the government-controlled areas of western Aleppo. However, the govt. forces are still able to supply the area via the Castello Highway. The first aid convoy arrived western Aleppo last night.

According to Tass, both leaders will discuss “views on how, at what pace and in what sequence” to restore normalized bilateral relations – ruptured after Turkey downed a Russian warplane in Syrian airspace last November.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said prior to last year’s incident, “(w)ork was underway on an entire range of issues related to trade, economic and investment cooperation…”

Both leaders will “exchange views on regional problems” – notably Syria. At stake for Turkey is restoration of trade. Billions of dollars were lost after Russia imposed sanctions in response to Ankara’s hostile act.

“This will be a historic visit, a new beginning,” Erdogan claimed.

“At the talks with my friend Vladimir, I believe a new page in bilateral relations will be opened. Our countries have a lot to do together.”

“Without Russia’s participation, it’s impossible to find a solution to the Syrian problem. Only in partnership with Russia will we be able to settle the crisis in Syria.”

Throughout the conflict, Turkey partnered with Obama’s war, serving as a safe haven and launching pad for ISIS and other terrorist fighters to cross freely into Syria, providing them with arms and munitions, profiting from selling stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil.

In return for normalizing ties, Putin demands Erdogan to reverse his current policies. He wants his support for terrorist fighters ravaging Syria ended.

He’s capitalizing on strained relations between Ankara and Washington over the disruptive July 15 events, Erdogan’s coup d’etat power grab blamed on cleric Fethullah Gulen living in America, a longtime CIA asset, Turkey suggesting possible US involvement in what happened.

Russia’s intervention in Syria last September at the behest of its government changed things dramatically on the ground. At the same time, Turkey’s support for terrorist fighters indispensably aids Washington’s regional imperial agenda.

Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel from occupied Golan, and Turkey border Syria – Turkish territory bordering its entire northern area, a key launching pad for conflict. Eliminating it would be a major step toward resolution. An opening exists.

Putin seeks to capitalize on it despite knowing the risk of dealing with an international outlaw at war with his own people, systematically eliminating opponents, consolidating hardline rule – his promises meaningless unless proved otherwise.

In the interest of hoped for restoration of regional peace and stability, it’s a gamble well worth taking.

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.

On Thursday I judged that the U.S. supported al-Qaeda attack in southwest Aleppo was failing. “Despite the failure of their main thrust, al-Qaeda and its allies launched a third phase attack towards Ramouseh district a few hundred meters further north. A tactical mistake as the attackers failed to build a decisive Schwerpunkt. … Local fighting still continues on the front lines but the government positions seem secured and the attacking force is slowly getting ground down.”

That judgement was premature.

The Jihadis retreated after their first three attacks but renewed their efforts with fresh troops on the next day. This time they concentrated on one focal point. Another frontal assault throughout Friday failed, but a fifth major strike followed in the darkness of Friday night.

A total of five vehicle borne suicide bombs broke the defense line of the Syrian government forces and Jihadi forces stormed into the wide area of the Artillery Academy. The compound is a hard to observe mixture of small open fields, garages, office and quarter buildings.

The sparsely manned defense lines were overwhelmed or circumvented. By Saturday night most of the academy was in the hand of the Jihadis. A small corridor to the Jihadi held east-Aleppo was opened but is not secured.

The Syrian government forces are bringing up reserves and additional forces. A counterattack is likely to follow soon. The battle for Aleppo is now the strategic Schwerpunkt, the focal point of the fight for north-Syria if not of the whole war.

According to earlier reports by the Guardian journalist Chulov, Vice News and Dutch TV, east-Aleppo is essentially empty. The population has long fled to government held areas. “Spookstad“,  ghost-town, is the title of the Dutch TV documentary from there. “Western” media now laud the Islamists for lifting the siege the Syrian government held over the area. But the new Jihaid corridor in south-west Aleppo is cutting off 1.5 million people in government held west-Aleppo. Now these are under siege with the besieging forces having promised to slaughter many of them. This is somewhat recurrence of the situation in 2013 when west-Aleppo, to little attention of the media, was also cut off from all resupplies by “moderate rebel” forces.

The “western” think-tank and media fanboys of al-Qaeda are celebrating the breaking the siege of east-Aleppo while a much bigger siege is created against a much larger population. Their cheer-leading for al-Qaeda is literarily indistinguishable from al-Qaeda’s own propaganda.

The Russian air force was heavily engaged, but not very visible in the defense of the Artillery Academy. Its main focus are the supply lines of the Jihadists. But efforts in the logistic depth of the theater always take some time to show significant effects on the front lines. What was regrettably missing was direct helicopter support for the defenders. Russia has a number of excellent front line helicopters in Syria. But there was arguably reason not to use them. Last Monday a Russian helicopter was shot down some 40 kilometers south of Aleppo and all crew and passengers were killed. The Russians believe that the helicopter was taken down my a man portable air defense missile (MANPAD) delivered to Jihadis either by or with the knowledge of the U.S. They fear that the attackers of Aleppo have a significant number of these weapons.

The breaking of a corridor towards east-Aleppo was announced as only the first part of a plan to conquer and occupy all of Aleppo. More than 5,000 attackers took part in the first phase. There are rumors – unconfirmed – that an additional 10,000 attackers have been activated and are on the march towards the city.

The whole attack on Aleppo was planned since at least April. U.S. Secretary of State Kerry prevented Russian reactions against the preparations and build up by holding out a possible cessation of hostilities and a political solution of the conflict. At the same time the U.S. and its allies delivered new weapons and equipment to al-Qaeda in Syria and its aligned forces. Videos from the Jihadi front lines show every fighter in well kept uniforms and armored vests with plenty of weapons and ammunition available.

The current attack on Aleppo is only one part of a larger U.S. plan to bring Syria (as well as Russia and Iran) to its knees. We do not yet know all the plan’s phases, parameters and aims. We also do not know the responses the other side has prepared to counter them. All observers (including me) should keep that in mind when judging the day-to-day changes of the situation.

Although much discourse currently abounds about what constitutes threats to citizen security, there is a shortage of analysis about Euro-American colonialism as racist terrorism – for profit.  It is remarkable too, that there are disclaimers in historical accounts that represent Danish colonialism as “mild” when there was nothing hesitant about the application of over two centuries of racist Danish colonial terrorism in the Virgin Islands.

Moreover, while the USA currently wages wars, ostensibly against terrorism [a nameless, faceless enemy] and claims to be deploying democracy as a foreign policy, this narrative is a cover-up.  In reality, USA occupation and aggression entails extraordinary human rights violations, which are normalised as governance of places like the Virgin Islands.

Rothschild Francis, Civil Rights Activist, St. Thomas

There is no doubt that the cruel conspiracy of enslavement, enacted among Europeans, Arabs and Africans, unleashed raw, racist terrorism on over 40 million Africans, at home and in the Diaspora.

Denmark, the 7th largest European coloniser, maintained colonies for almost two centuries. The extent of injustice meted out to the majority class before and after the USA purchase of the Virgin Islands and its people – an illegal and immoral transaction with Denmark, propelled Rothschild Francis, icon from St. Thomas, to become  a passionate social justice activist.

Rothschild Francis was a civil rights leader in the Virgin Islands after the 1917 transfer from Danish to United States sovereignty. His foray into politics was born from a need to address the causes of the economic, social and political disparities that created undue hardships for Virgin Islanders (http://stthomassource.com/content/news/local-news/2013/10/11/analysis-rothschild-francis-and-fight-democracy-part-1).

Street Mural, Frederickstead, St. Croix

Despite the fact that Africans won their emancipation from Danish enslavement in 1848, the Danish and United States of American government authorities illegally entered into a transaction of sale of the Virgin Islands for the lucrative sum of $25 million in gold.

Today Virgin Islanders cynically say that this was the most expensive real estate transaction ever; the islands’ budget is still supported by the Federal government, nearly a century after Transfer. This  ongoing investment demonstrates that the strategic value of the so-called Territory [a term that rattles peoples’ nerves] is even more important than the current settler colonials might care to admit.  The terrorist dimension of this Transfer was that “Custody claims by both the United States and Denmark not only caused fragmentation of the records but denied Virgin Islanders access to their collective memory”

(http://americanarchivist.org/doi/pdf/10.17723/aarc.64.1.h6k872252u2gr377).

Having garnered immeasurable wealth and prestige from criminal colonial pursuits, it is  scandalous that there has been a rigging of European history, a consensus of forgetting that facilitates the psychotic condition called colonial amnesia. This systematic suppression of colonial memory has disfigured the moral compass of the European Continent.

I have often pondered the contradiction that Europeans pride themselves on being the champions of Christianity yet justified their terrorist practices. Despite all the morality that they set out to bestow on colonised people of colour, it is amazing that no-one was tapping anyone on their enslaving shoulders to remind and restrain each other in the name of said moral responsibility.

What is even more profound was that after the cantankerous enslavement system was routed by rebellious African resistors and their European and mixed race free allies, von Bismark, then German Chancellor, hosted 14 European nations for six months (1884-85) to scramble for Africa.  They all agreed to participate in the dastardly African underdevelopment (Rodney, 1973) with no one recorded as voicing any objection.

Since being employed as an International Fellow at the Flensburg Maritime Museum in Germany to curate an exhibition and write a paper on Danish Colonial Legacy in Flensburg, the Virgin Islands and Ghana from an African Caribbean perspective, I have had to do some serious critical reflection on this psychosis of forgetting, a sort of self-hypnosis, which enables Danes and Germans alike, who have to be considered together because of their entangled histories, to convince themselves to this day, that their Empire days was a project of noble civilisation of backward Africans. The political economy of the carving up of the African Continent is conveniently forgotten.

Even my consciousness that the European refusal to acknowledge the criminality of racist colonial terrorism is a ruse to refuse to recognise reparations responsibility had not prepared me for the bald double unconsciousness regarding colonial memory. This contrived amnesia is a pathology that demands a forensic audit. Such pervasive schizophrenia must mean of course, that there is collusion among all institutions of socialization – home, school, media, popular culture, church, musea, politics -in a word, society, to bury any evidence or remorse. As one participant from a research encounter observed,  “They all put a blanket on the past.”

Describing this rationalisation as repression, Andersen (2013) elaborates that

The initial experiences of colonialism have been screened at different points in time rendering the past in versions very far from the actual historical events themselves. Recently, new claims for reparations for slavery and colonialism in the former Danish West Indies have challenged the existing notions of the colonial past in Denmark. These claims have not resulted in an official Danish politics of regret…as witnessed in other former colonial states. Whereas, a radical break away from the earlier conceptions of the colonial past is demanded, instead new figurations and renarrations have been used to try to incorporate the new challenges to the historical imaginary into the older layers of memory without radically breaking away from it, creating somewhat surprising results that questions (sic) the notions of a uniform global memory and understanding of historical injustices (Andersen, 2013: 1, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10767-013-9133-z#/page-1).

Problematic characterisation of the Virgin Islands, decontextualising the production of rum from enslavement

When I presented on these issues at the Flensburg World Cafe, held Thursday (July 28, 2016) at the Flensburger Schifffahrtsmuseum, it was fascinating to marshal the panoramic range of response to the revelations of multilayered colonial realities that I encountered when I visited the Virgin Islands of the United States from June 26-July 7, 2016. I went to find out what people thought about the Flensburg Maritime Museum creating this project as a contribution to the 2017 centennial commemoration of the sale of the Virgin Islands and its people to the United States of America.  It was pointed out sharply that the Danes had no authority to have entered into that transaction, from which it earned $25million (in gold, mind you), and neither did the US – because the enslaved had won their freedom 69 years before that and the free were consigned to colonised status in one fell swoop.  However, they were heartened that the project provided a poignant opportunity for critical reflection on Danish colonial terrorism, which has been practically overwhelmed by the paradoxes of USA occupation.

The twilight of Danish colonialism is still visible in the enduring ruins of the Whim Estate in St. Croix

This condition of USA settler colonialism is treated with utmost delicacy as critical analysts of this criminality have been psychosocially and socio-economically victimised for speaking out. I imagine this Big Brother response is seen as mandatory since revelations about this dilemma are not congruent with popular propaganda about the USA as the dispenser of development.

People in the VI were also unaware of the branding of Flensburg as Rum City and its enrichment from the resources of sugar and rum, produced from the unremunerated labour of enslaved Africans. Incredibly, those engaged in the rum trade rationalise that they were not as bad as  their peers  doing the human trafficking side of the transatlantic triangle. Like hello? What part of the Marxian theory of the surplus value of labour is not being addressed here? If you traded in rum and sugar, you were complicit in the terrorist system of dehumanisation and torturous production and reproduction that the system entailed. But it seems that for Euro-Americans, the jury is still out on the logic of this argument.

As was also discussed during the World Cafe presentation in Flensburg, the political economy of the annual family-day Rum Regatta celebration has not traditionally been questioned – people just never even wondered where the rum came from!

I called upon the wisdom of Paulo Freire to try to empathise with the wounding that both coloniser and colonised experienced in the Holocaust of Enslavement. Incidentally, I am deliberately reiterating this concept of Holocaust because the word is a catalyst for re-thinking and re-membering that resonates in Denmark-Germany. Besides, Jews did not have a monopoly on the experience of the concept.

Speaking to the liberation of the oppressed, Freire says,

At all stages of their liberation, the oppressed must see themselves as women and men engaged in the ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Reflection and action become imperative when one does not erroneously attempt to dichotomize the content of humanity from its historical forms (Freire, 1970: 66).  

The embodiment of African Emancipation: Freedom! 

Freire elaborated that

the dialogical character of education as the practice of freedom does not begin when the teacher-student meets with the students teachers in a pedagogical situation, but rather when the former first asks herself or himself what she or he will dialogue with the latter about. And preoccupation with the content of dialogue is really preoccupation with the program content of education (1970: 93).

Freire provides further illumination about the status of colonial amnesia embraced by Europeans who dominated Africans, a condition with which we have to become intimate in order to subvert its morbid persistence.  His answer to his rhetorical question was for me the flashpoint for understanding what the process of repression consists of and the imperative of revolutionary thinking in order to transform the status quo:

Why do the dominant elites not become debilitated when they do not think with the people? Because the latter constitute their antithesis, their very reason for existence. If the elites were to think with the people, the contradiction would be superseded and they could no longer dominate. From the point of view of the dominators in any epoch, correct thinking presupposes the non-thinking of the people (ibid.: 131).

Liberation demands taking a third-eye view of terrorism, an ancient form of emotional intelligence.

Damn! This is not a walk in the park is it? But as my dad used to say back in the  day, “A habit is a cable: you weave a thread of it every day and it soon becomes so strong that you cannot break it.” So this habit of colonial amnesia is deep. It must therefore be traumatic for the dominant class to experience someone like me prodding the skeletons in the closets of history to enflesh themselves and reveal that as Shakespeare declared in Hamlet, via a speech by Marcellus, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The playwright was, clearly, very intimate with the truth about the lies.

Instead of the protracted denials of culpability however, wouldn’t it make more sense, in the interest of healing the breach and providing the elusive  moral responsibility with some space to flourish, to just admit wrongs and seek mechanisms of social transformation?

References

Andersen, A.N. “We Have Reconquered the Islands”: Figurations in Public Memories of Slavery and Colonialism in Denmark 1948–2012, Published online: 7 February 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013, (http://americanarchivist.org/doi/pdf/10.17723/aarc.64.1.h6k872252u2gr377).

Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum, New York and London, 1970, (http://www.msu.ac.zw/elearning/material/1335344125freire_pedagogy_of_the_oppresed.pdf).

Hamlet Quotes – Something is rotten in the state of Denmark with explanation,

Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespeare Quick Quotes: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2010. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com//quickquotes/quickquotehamletdenmark.html

World Cafe: http://www.flensburg.de/Kultur-Bildung/Kultureinrichtungen/Schifffahrtsmuseum/Programm

Rodney, W. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, London and Tanzanian Publishing House, Dar-Es-Salaam, 1973.

Dr. Imani Tafari-Ama, Curator, Flensburger Schiffahrtsmuseum.
[email protected]

The reactive dimension of global politics – at least at the level of many states – is a broader statement about how far things have rotted.  Nothing is more reactive than a State’s response to terrorism, actual or perceived.  The pure evidentiary dimension is neglected in favour of procedural fluff and unmeasurable contingencies. The box-ticking bureaucrat takes precedence over the judicial officer.

The Turnbull government has come down rather heavily in its response to a spate of attacks in France and Germany, deciding that it is time that something be done in the face of this supposed global madness.  The prime minister Malcolm Turnbull decided to press the issue in a letter to state leaders urging for the creation of a national regime to indefinitely detain terrorists even after the point of serving their sentence.

Civil liberties lawyer Greg Barnes has made the point that such assessments are fundamentally specious. They lack coherence, dimension and remain presumptuous.  The chances, therefore, of a person locked up for years on terrorist charges then engaging in acts of murderous mayhem on leaving, did not compute.

The point is an ominous one for at least 13 prisoners convicted over what has been said to be Australia’s largest terrorism plot in New South Wales and Victoria.  After concluding their sentences, the individuals involved in the Pendennis network, led by Melbourne cleric Abdul Benbrika, would have little guarantee of release.

Buttering in the face of such extralegal nonsense is always deemed necessary.  The Commonwealth Attorney-General George Brandis explained over the weekend that, “All of the attorneys, as the first law officers of our respective jurisdictions, understand the gravity of the threat that terrorism poses to Australia and its people.”[1]

What Brandis fails to mention is that such officers also owe it to the legal profession, its servants and the citizens of a country, to reassuringly ensure that liberties are not unduly tarnished, let alone entirely abandoned, as is being suggested by these measures.  The insolence of office, one so gleefully embraced, comes to mind.

With that merry insolence, the views of such officers are indifferent to habeas corpus, and the notion that a person who does time has (and here is a novelty), actually discharged the burdens placed upon him for such offences. Terrorism is simply being rendered, rather nonsensically, exceptional, an offence that demands special treatment.

If detention were to be infinite, the hierarchy of punishment would have to be abandoned in favour of an arbitrary notion of convict and permanently incarcerate if you can.  This would effectively eliminate the notion of sentencing as having any value bringing, instead, the fictional notion of a hypothetical terrorist attack to the fray.

Instead of expressing outrage at the heavy-handed, not to mention clumsy approach of the Commonwealth government, the NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton, congratulated Turnbull “on this initiative.  The stakes are high for NSW: make no mistake.  We have more people in our prisons than any other state that would be subject to these laws.”[2]  All the more reason, one would have thought, for not endorsing such regulations.

Upton’s shoddy reasoning pivots on mere words: “terrorism” qualifies for blanket imprisonment and detention.  Terrorism posed such a risk to the community it meant that no one could be “complacent”.

The situation becomes even more peculiar given the observations by such individuals a Greg Moriarty, national counter-terrorism coordinator and evidently self-proclaimed amateur penologist.  All agencies in the business of “national counter-terrorism” were “committed to preventing people from becoming terrorists; to disrupting and diverting people who are heading down a path towards violent extremism; and to rehabilitating people who are convicted for terrorism offences.”

But for all such noble ventures, there would always be those eggs that would stay rotten, where it was “not possible, or where there are significant areas of doubt”.  This mealy-mouthed assertion is a neat illustration about executive paranoia, enabling people to be detained at the pleasure of the sovereign.

In Australia’s legal soil, noxious precedents flower that enable the Attorney-Generals at all levels of government to push for an agenda hostile to the detainee.  In mental health administration, there are those permanently kept away from trial (and hence a genuine testing of their cases) for reasons of psychic disturbance.

The High Court has also done its bit to add to the regulatory framework of indefinite detention by arguing that stateless individuals can be indefinitely kept at the discretion of the State, a sort of administrative purgatory where risk from the detainee might manifest.   The case of Ahmed Al-Kateb remains something of a nightmare in that regard, an outcome premised on the shallow notion that non-judicial detention is entirely permissible provided it be for the purposes of removal.[3]

There was just one problem for Al-Kateb: his argument that any detention could not be lawful if it has ceased to have a valid basis for removal from Australia was dismissed with more than a bit of contempt.

There are also those deemed genuine refugees under the United Nations Refugee Convention who are not permitted out of Australia’s brutal detention regime because they have been assessed, courtesy of the domestic espionage network ASIO, as a security risk.  All that, despite having no formal charges level.  The proposed change by Turnbull, to that end, remains dangerously, and lamentably consistent with enlarged and unaccountable executive power.

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

Notes