Global Research

Early May U.S. Secretary of State Kerry set a deadline for “voluntary” regime change in Syria:

[He] said “the target date for the transition is 1st of August” in Syria or else the Assad government and its allies “are asking for a very different track.” Hoping that “something happens in these next few months,” he said the political transition would not include President Assad because “as long as Assad is there, the opposition is not going to stop fighting.”
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Kerry made those remarks after meeting with the UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. They agreed to establish a monitoring ceasefire center in Geneva, Switzerland, …

By the time of that statement, al-Qaeda in Syria and U.S. supported insurgents had already broken the February ceasefire announced by Russia and attacked Syrian government positions in the rural area south of Aleppo city.

Negotiations since May between Russia and the U.S. over Syria have not led to any tangible results. In retrospect the U.S. tactic seems to have been willful delay. The U.S. made some laughable offer to Russia and Syria to effectively accept defeat in exchange for common attacks on al-Qaeda. This was rejected without much comments.

The current attack on the government held Aleppo by al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al Nusra aka Fateh al Scam) was launched on August 1st. With up to 10,000 insurgents participating the attack was unprecedented in size. August 1st is exactly the same date Kerry had set as starting date for “a very different track”. This is likely not a random coincidence.

Despite the very large size of the “Great Battle of Aleppo” and its possibly decisive character for the war neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has so far reported on it.

The U.S. had long prepared for an escalation and extension of the war on Syria. In December and January ships under U.S. control transported at least 3,000 tons of old weapons and ammunition from Bulgaria to Turkey and Jordan. These came atop of hundreds of tons of weapons from Montenegro transported via air to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. According to the renown Janes Defense military intelligence journal these Bulgarian weapons ended up in Syria where the Syrian army confiscated some of them from al-Qaeda and U.S. supported insurgents.

During the ceasefire and negotiations with Russia, the U.S. and its allies continued to arm and support their proxies in Syria even as those were intimately coordinating and integrating with al-Qaeda. The U.S. does not consider these groups to be terrorists, no matter with whom they associate or whatever they do. Even when such a group beheads a 12 year old, sick child in front of running cameras the U.S. State Department continues to support them and opines that “one incident here and there would not necessarily make you a terrorist group.”

Good to know …

The Russian Defense Ministry warned since April that large amounts of weapons and men were crossing from Turkey to Syria:

The Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group (outlawed in Russia) in Syria is planning a major offensive with the aim to cut the road between Aleppo and Damascus, the chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff, Sergey Rudskoy, has said.
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“According to the information we have, about 8,000 Jabhat al-Nusra militants have concentrated to the southwest of Aleppo; up to 1,500 militants have gathered to the north of the city,” Rudskoi said.

A Jabhat al-Nusra spokesperson claimed that the attack on Aleppo was planned for “several month”. The U.S.-Saudi weapon supplies at the beginning of the year and the Russian observed deployment of forces in April were likely in preparation of the current attack on Aleppo. Kerry’s “very different track” remark fits right into these. But the large “very different track” attack failed.

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The attack started on Sunday and by Monday the 2nd the insurgents (green areas) managed to break Syrian government (red) defenses at the south-western border of Aleppo city. The plan was to break through roughly along the black line. Several vehicle based suicide attacks breached the Syrian front line. The insurgents captured the large, unfinished apartment project 1070 and several hilltop positions.

On Tuesday phase 2 launched when they attempted to take the Artillery Academy base a few hundred meters further east. But after intense Syrian and Russian air strikes and nightly counterattacks nearly all positions fell back into Syrian government hands. 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. A tunnel deployed bomb destroyed parts of the Syrian army positions in Ramouseh but the defense line held. The attack was repelled. Additional break-out attacks by the 2-3,000 fighters inside the besieged al-Qaeda controlled areas in east-Aleppo city failed too. Al-Qaeda never managed to brake the siege of the eastern areas and to thereby cut off the government held, densely occupied western areas from their supply route south towards Damascus.

Local fighting still continues on the front lines but the government positions seem secured and the attacking force is slowly grind down.

Al-Qaeda and allies had to deliver their attack from rural Idleb and Aleppo over open terrain towards the western Aleppo city borders. Here is where the Russian airforce and long range artillery concentrated their fire. As usual in such situations more attackers were killed on the approaches to the front line and in forward supply areas than on the front line itself. A Russian cruise missile evendestroyed (vid) an arms supply storage used by Jaish al-Islam, the al-Qaeda controlled insurgency alliance, in Bab al Hawa, Idleb, at the Turkish border. Several arms convoys on their way towards Aleppo were destroyed in other airstrikes.

Both sides currently accuse each other of minor gas attacks against each other civilians. The insurgents started these as they always do when they lose ground. This time the Syrian and Russian side immediately responded with their own claims. It is now he-said she-said – who can decide? These attacks or reports seem to be more diversions than serious incidents.

After the defeat of the third phase of their attack al-Qaeda and its allies broke off their original plan of an attack in six phases and pulled back. In Russian military doctrine such a situation demands a counterattack with a wide ranging, strategic pursuit of the retreating enemy. We may now see a lightning fast operation in which reserve troops held by the Syrian government proceed westwards and northwards from Aleppo under intense air cover.

There are no current plans on the government side to capture the insurgent areas in east-Aleppo which are under government siege. These can wait and their condition deteriorate before any costly move against them follows.

Reports of additional Russian attack planes arriving for the next phase of the conflict have not yet been confirmed.

All together Kerry’s “very different track” failed to achieve the desired aim. The government held Aleppo city was not cut off from the rest of the government held areas south of it. The attacking force, the largest insurgent concentration in this war, suffers up to 1,000 casualties and a large amount of its equipment was destroyed. A pursuit might shatter its remnants.

In another Syrian trouble spot Kurdish YPG fighters besiege and slowly conquer the Islamic State held city of Manbij in the east. They are supported by U.S. special forces and intense coalition air attacks. The city of Manbij is now mostly destroyed. The once 100,000 inhabitants are in dire straits. Up to 200 civilians fleeing the city were killed in U.S. air attacks. But as the operation is U.S. led no “western” humanitarian organization has lamented their fate.

Corporate media regularly attempts to present Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria as solely responsible for the ongoing conflict in the region. The media does report on events that contradict this narrative — albeit sparingly — but taken together, these underreported details shine a new light on the conflict.

10: Bashar al-Assad has a higher approval rating than Barack Obama

Despite Obama’s claims Assad is illegitimate and must step down, the fact remains that since the conflict erupted in 2011, Assad has held the majority support of his people. The elections in 2014 – which Assad won by a landslide with international observers claiming no violations – is a testament to the fact that although Assad has been accused of serious human rights violations, he continues to remain reasonably popular with the Syrian people.

Obama, on the other hand, won elections in 2012 with a voter turnout of a mere 53.6 percent of the American public; only 129.1 million total were votes cast. This means approximately 189.8 million American people did not vote for Obama. His current approval rating sits at about 50 percent.

9: The “moderate” opposition has been hijacked

There is no longer such a thing as “moderate” opposition in Syria – if there ever was. The so-called Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been dominated by extremists for years. The U.S. has known this yet has continued to support the Syrian opposition, despite the fact the New York Times reported in 2012 that the majority of weapons being sent to Syria have been ending up in the hands of jihadists. A classified DIA report predicted the rise of ISIS in 2012, stating:

“If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

Further, an FSA commander went on record not only to admit his fighters regularly conduct joint operations with al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria), but also that he would like to see Syria ruled by Sharia law.

Apparently, moderate can also mean “al-Qaeda affiliated fanatic.”

8: Assad never used chemical weapons on his own people

A U.N. investigation into the first major chemical weapons attack committed in early 2013 — an atrocity the West immediately pinned on Assad — concluded the evidence suggested the attack was more likely committed by the Syrian opposition. A subsequent U.N. investigation into the August 2013 attack never laid blame on anyone, including Assad’s forces. In December 2013, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh released an article highlighting deficiencies in the way the situation was handled:

“In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports…citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.”

7: Toppling the Syrian regime was part of a plan adopted shortly after 9/11

According to a memo disclosed by 4-star General Wesley Clark, shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon adopted a plan to topple the governments of seven countries within five years. The countries were Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Iran.

As we know, Iraq was invaded in 2003. American ally Israel tried its hand at taking out Lebanon in 2006. Libya was destroyed in 2011. Prior to this intervention, Libya had the highest standard of living of any country in Africa. In 2015, alone, it dropped 27 places on the U.N. Human Development Index rating. U.S. drones fly over Somalia, U.S. troops are stationed in South Sudan — Sudan was partitioned following a brutal civil war — and Syria has been the scene of a deadly war since 2011. This leaves only Iran, which is discussed below.

6: Iran and Syria have a mutual defense agreement

Since 2005, Iran and Syria have been bound by a mutual defense agreement. The Iranian government has shown they intend to fully honor this agreement and has provided the Syrian regime with all manner of support, including troops, a $1 billion credit line, training, and advisement. What makes this conflict even more dangerous, however, is the fact Russia and China have sided with Iran and Syria, stating openly they will not tolerate any attack on Iran. Russia’s military intervention in Syria in recent months proves these are not idle threats – they have put their money where their mouth is.

Iran has been in the crosshairs of the U.S. foreign policy establishment for some time now. George W. Bush failed to generate the support needed to attack Iran during his time in office — though not for lack of trying — and since 2012, sanctions have been the go-to mantra. By attacking and destabilizing Iran’s most important ally in the region, the powers that be can undermine Iranian attempts to spread its influence in the region, ultimately further weakening Iran.

5: Former Apple CEO is the son of a Syrian refugee

The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, was the son of a Syrian who moved to the United States in the 1950s. This is particularly amusing given the amount of xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism and hatred refugees and migrants seem to have inspired — even from aspiring presidents. Will a President Donald Trump create the conditions in which future technological pioneers may never reach the United States? His rhetoric seems to indicate as much.

4: ISIS arose out of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, not the Syrian conflict

ISIS was formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, which rose to prominence following the U.S.-U.K. led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is well-known that there was no tangible al-Qaeda presence in Iraq until after the invasion, and there is a reason for this. When Paul Bremer was given the role of Presidential Envoy to Iraq in May 2003, he dissolved the police and military. Bremer fired close to 400,000 former servicemen, including high-ranking military officials who fought in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. These generals now hold senior ranking positions within ISIS. If it weren’t for the United States’ actions, ISIS likely wouldn’t exist.

ISIS was previously known by the U.S. security establishment as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), but these fighters ultimately became central to Western regime change agendas in Libya and Syria. When the various Iraqi and Syrian al-Qaeda-affiliated groups merged on the Syrian border in 2014, we were left with the fully-fledged terror group we face today.

[Al Qaeda is a a construct of US intelligence going back to the Soviet Afghan war. It is supported covertly by the CIA, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, Turkish, and Saudi intelligence].

3: Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia wanted to build a pipeline through Syria, but Assad rejected it

In 2009, Qatar proposed a pipeline to run through Syria and Turkey to export Saudi gas. Assad rejected the proposal and instead formed an agreement with Iran and Iraq to construct a pipeline to the European market that would cut Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar out of the route entirely. Since, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have been staunch backers of the opposition seeking to topple Assad. Collectively, they have invested billions of dollars, lent weapons, encouraged the spread offanatical ideology, and helped smuggle fighters across their borders.

The Iran-Iraq pipeline will strengthen Iranian influence in the region and undermine their rival, Saudi Arabia — the other main OPEC producer. Given the ability to transport gas to Europe without going through Washington’s allies, Iran will hold the upper-hand and will be able to negotiate agreements that exclude the U.S. dollar completely.

2: Leaked phone calls show Turkey provides ISIS fighters with expensive medical care

Turkey’s support for hardline Islamists fighting the Syrian regime is extensive. In fact, jihadists regularly refer to the Turkish border as the “gateway to Jihad.” In May 2016, reports started emerging of Turkey going so far as to provide ISIS fighters with expensive medical treatment.

Turkey is a member of NATO. Let that sink in for a moment.

1: Western media’s main source for the conflict is a T-shirt shop in Coventry, England

This is not a joke. If you follow the news, you most probably have heard the mainstream media quote an entity grandiosely called the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” (SOHR). This so-called “observatory” is run by one man in his home in Coventry, England — thousands of miles away from the Syrian conflict — yet is quoted by most respected Western media outlets (BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, and International Business Times, for example). His credentials include his ownership of a T-shirt shop just down the road, as well as being a notorious dissident against the current Syrian president.

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Despite the fact much of the information in this article comes from mainstream outlets, those circulating it refuse to put all of the storylines together to give the public an accurate picture of what is going on in Syria.

Assad may be brutal — and should face trial for allegations of widespread human rights abuses — but this fact alone does not make the other circumstances untrue or irrelevant. People have the right to be properly informed before they allow themselves to be led down the road of more war in the Middle East, and consequently, more terror attacks and potential conflicts with Russia and China.

What if the results of Election 2016 failed to give either major party presidential candidate 270 Electoral votes? In this event, the Twelfth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution stipulates the President is elected by the House of Representatives, and the Vice President is elected by the Senate. This process is referred to as “contingent election”.

What are the chances of this event occurring?

Which House and which Senate is stipulated: the sitting or the newly elected? What deadline dates are imposed? What occurs when either the upper house or lower house – or both houses – reach a stalemate? When does the Supreme Court decide the outcome?

In an election year when voters are asked to believe “Trump is a Russian agent” and Hillary “should be shot by a firing squad”, polling firms are facing inordinate numbers of respondents choosing “Other”, “Not Sure”, “Won’t Vote” categories; voters who mask their preference and voters altogether unhappy with both major party candidates. For these reasons and more, the 2016 election has been dubbed the “The Year of Neither”.

Reuters/Ipsos 5 Day Rolling poll released July 29 asked, “If the election were held today would you vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?” Clinton led Trump 40.5% to 34.6%; Refused 11.7%; Other 8.2%; Wouldn’t Vote 5.0%.

The methodology used in this poll differed from previous Reuters/Ipsos polls. The category “Neither/Other” was changed to “Other” eliminating the option “Neither”.

This change proved controversial especially to neoliberal and pro-Trump web sites like ZeroHedge.com and Breitbart.com.

To explain why Reuters/Ipsos results three days earlier (July 26) using prior methodology had Trump ahead of Clinton by one-point but after new methodology (July 29) had Clinton ahead of Trump by six points, Zero Hedge concluded, “Trump was soaring in the polls … the real reason for the (Reuters/Ipsos) ‘tweak’ was to push Hillary back in the lead simply due to a change in the question phrasing methodology.”

A PR release circulated to conservative and pro-Trump web sites read, “Breitbart News noted the 17-point swing for Trump, which seems to have set off alarm bells at Reuters.”

Conspiratorial explanations aside, polling compiled and aggregated by RealClearPolitics.com in the week of July 25 to August 1 showed Clinton ahead by one to nine points in seven out of eight polls conducted by eight different pollsters. If Reuters “tweaked” it, so must have seven others.

Furthermore, Real Clear Politics RCP Poll Average (compiled poll averages) of the last three months shows Trump led only during two three-day periods from May 22-25 (+ .2%) and from July 25- 28 (+1.1%).

While Reuters/Ipsos polls are widely followed, so too are polls from Gallup, Pew, Rasmussen, NBC News/SM, CBS News, CNN/ORC, Economist/YouGov and others.

It hasn’t been a bad year for pollsters, according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com. In the 2016 primaries “the polling averages had a good track record of calling winners, with the polling front-runner winning the vast majority of the time.”

Silver rated pollsters based both on past accuracy and on two measurable methodologies.

How did they do? ABC/WaPo (A+); Monmouth (A+); Ipsos (A-); NBC (A-); CBS (A-); CNN (A-); Pew (B+); YouGov (B); Gallop (B-); Rasmussen (C+).

With Trump and Clinton vying for the highest negativity ratings, the system does allow for “third party” candidates.

Although third parties haven’t had an impact since Teddy Roosevelt won 27-percent of the popular vote in 1912, Green and Libertarian parties are on most state ballots. As of August 3, the Green Party (gp.org) has ballot access in 24 states and D.C., and the Libertarian party (lp.org) in 36 states.

In the 2012 presidential election, Jill Stein and the Green Party secured 0.36% of the popular vote and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian party secured 0.99% of the popular vote. Neither secured one electoral vote. This election year promises to yield significantly higher percentages for each candidate across the country, though.

Comparing 2012 and 2016 polling data averages compiled by RealClearPolitics shows as much.

Percentage share of popular vote by major party candidates:

 RCP Average Polling Data for July 9-31, 2012 showed the two major party contenders (Obama and Romney) together secured 92% of the popular vote:

2012: Obama (47%), Romney (45%) = 92% combined

RCP Average Polling Data for August 1, 2016 showed a significant drop by the two major party contenders (Clinton and Trump) who together secured only 80% of the popular vote –– a decline in the combined share of the popular vote of 12-percent.

2016: Clinton (42.2%), Trump (37.8%) = 80% combined

Percentage share of popular vote by third parties and “other”:

Taking up 10.6% of the popular vote this year (as of August 1) are Gary Johnson/Libertarian (7.4%) and Jill Stein/Green (3.2%). The remaining 9.4% are “Other” voters.

2012: Green and Libertarian share of popular vote = 1.35% combined (2012 Final)

2016: Green and Libertarian share of popular vote = 10.6% combined (July 31, 2016)

It is rare for a third party and independent candidate to earn electoral votes; none have since 1968 when George Wallace carried five Southern states earning 46. Ross Perot became the most successful independent candidate in 1992. He drew 19-percent of the total vote but not one electoral vote.

As Michael Medved at The Daily Beast pointed out in 2011, “No candidate without major party backing can be president if we don’t get rid of the Electoral College.”

Due to vagaries of the “winner-take-all” Electoral College system, a strong third party candidate or the sum of two or more “third parties” winning electoral votes could keep Trump or Clinton from reaching the 270 electors needed. It only happened once – in 1824 – when John Quincy Adams won despite Andrew Jackson having gained popular and electoral pluralities.

In such an event, the top three leaders in electoral votes are sent to the newly elected U.S. House (taking office January 3) where each state’s delegation gets one vote. Two-thirds of the House must be present and the winner needs a simple majority vote.

Because each state casts one vote, Vermont with its three electoral votes or New Hampshire with its four yield as much clout as California with its 55. Pundits predict that if thrown to the House, Republicans would control the outcome because they dominate more, smaller states.

The Vice President is elected separately by the newly elected Senate, which is limited to choosing from the top two, not three VP candidates. So if on January 3, 2017 Republicans control the House and Democrats the Senate we feasibly could have Donald Trump as President and Tim Kaine as Vice President.

What if either house or both houses reach a stalemate?

If the House is unable to elect a President by January 20, the Vice President-elect serves as Acting President until the impasse is resolved. If the Senate is unable to elect a Vice President by January 20, then the newly elected Speaker of the House serves as Acting President.

Further permutations exist and party strategists are already building “what-if” models.

For example, Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think-tank, explained in USA Today (June 1, 2016) how Gary Johnson could give us President Paul Ryan.

Let’s assume Gary Johnson campaigned strategically and won enough electoral votes to deny Hillary and Trump the 270 needed.

So what happens if the election goes to the House? … If even five of those red states refuse to vote for Trump, there’s no majority and no president … If the Democrats take the upper chamber, House Republicans will have to reach a presidential agreement to prevent Hillary’s vice presidential nominee from becoming acting president. And if the Republicans keep the Senate, it could be that they prefer Trump’s vice president to The Donald himself … Oh, and there’s one more possibility: If the Senate is tied — or enough senators abstain to again prevent a majority of the whole body — then we’ll have four years of President Paul Ryan, who as House speaker is next in line. Wouldn’t that be huge?

But Washington Post’s Amanda Skuldt will tell you why it is unlikely for a third party candidate to win the presidency (August 2). She maintains, “Political science says no … The answer lies in what is known among political scientists as Duverger’s Law.”

In the essay “Duverger’s Law: Why American Third Parties Are Hopeless Fantasies”, Brian Underwood explains “the number of major political parties in any given republican/democratic country is determined by the electoral structure of that country. States with proportional representation – those that award seats to political parties based on the total portion of the popular vote they receive – tend to develop a multi-party system. Single-district plurality voting systems in which seats are allocated district-by-district based on which candidate wins the most votes in that single district – such as the United States – produce a two-party system.”

So how could a third party succeed? Amanda Skuldt explains:

A critical mass of people would have to defect from one party to the new party, essentially causing the old party to crumble and the new (formerly third) party to take its place … That’s what happened the last time a third party won the U.S. presidency in 1860, putting Abraham Lincoln in the seat. The insurgent Republican Party replaced its predecessor, the Whig Party, after the Whigs unraveled over slavery during the 1850s.

Other than this, to encourage more third parties our voting systems would require dramatic revision, she concluded.

Generally, political pundits like to group voters into either the practical/pragmatic category or the idealist/pure one. Mrs. Clinton is all of the former and Bernie Sanders all the latter; leaving Donald J. Trump in the “yet to be classified” category.

But it is fair to say that 2016 is a “none of the above”, “neither”, “won’t vote”, “don’t know”, rowdy, tumultuous period that pundits might be humbled to learn the political science rulebook isn’t the guidebook to follow or apply in this political year.

Imagine if Bernie Sanders joined Jill Stein and pulled enough Millennial votes to win several electoral ones and Gary Johnson won several electors from a number of libertarian-leaning states, a “contingent election” would occur activating the Twelfth Amendment.

But if an “October Surprise” occurred – a large terrorist act on American soil that would benefit Donald Trump, or a hot war with Russia that would benefit Hillary – all bets are off!

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Scoreboard

As of August 1: RealClearPolitics’ RCP Average polling data on a 4-way race was Clinton (42.2%); Trump (37.8%); Gary Johnson/Libertarian (7.4%); Jill Stein/Green 3.2%).

Michael T. Bucci is a retired public relations executive who currently resides in New England. He has written nine books on practical spirituality collectively titled The Cerithous Material.

Notes:

1. Reuters/Ipsos Poll: Clinton vs. Trump, July 29, 2016. Reuters.

http://polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM651Y15_DS_13/filters/LIKELY:1/type/smallest/dates/20160710-20160729/collapsed/true/spotlight/1

2. “Hillary Lead Over Trump Surges After Reuters ‘Tweaks’ Poll”, Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, July 31, 2016.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-30/clinton-lead-over-trump-surges-after-reuters-tweaks-poll

3. “Shock Poll: Reuters/Ipsos Radically Changes Methodology to Favor Clinton”, Neil W. McCabe, Breitbart, July 29, 2016.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/07/29/reuters-ipsos-poll-change-methodology/

4. Real Clear Politics, aggregator of national election polling data.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com

5. “FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings”, Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, July 15, 2016.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

6. “None of the above? Options for voters unhappy with Clinton and Trump”, Richard Rainey, NOLA, June 10, 2016.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/06/third_party_scenarios_trump_cl.html

7. Green Party US homepage

http://www.gp.org

8. Libertarian Party homepage

http://lp.org

9. Federal Elections 2012, Federal Election Commission, July 2013. (pdf)

http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2012/federalelections2012.pdf

10. “Gary Johnson could give us President Paul Ryan”, Ilya Shapiro, USA Today, June 1, 2016.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/06/01/gary-johnson-12-amendment-electoral-college-elections-2016-column/85170378/

11. “Presidential election in Maine, 2016”, Ballotpedia.

https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_in_Maine,_2016

12. “How the Constitution could let the House stop both Clinton and Trump: 12th Amendment 2016?”, Andy Craig, The Old Dominion Libertarian, January 14, 2016.

https://olddominionlibertarian.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/how-the-constitution-could-let-the-house-stop-both-clinton-and-trump/

13. “An Electoral College tie, explained”, Holly Munson, Constitution Daily, November 6, 2012.

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2012/11/an-electoral-college-tie-explained/

14. “Election of the President and Vice President by Congress: Contingent Election”, Thomas H. Neale, LoC Congressional Research, August 16, 1999.

http://electoralcollegehistory.com/electoral/crs-congress.asp

15. “General Election: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein”, RealClearPolitics (accessed August 3, 2016).

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

16. “Drop the Fantasy of a Third-Party Candidate Winning in 2012”, Michael Medved. The Daily Beast, December 3, 2011.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/03/drop-the-fantasy-of-a-third-party-candidate-winning-in-2012.html

17. “Could a third-party candidate win the U.S. presidency? That’s very unlikely”, Amanda Skuldt, Washington Post, August 2, 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/02/could-a-third-party-candidate-win-the-u-s-presidency-very-unlikely/

18. “Duverger’s Law: Why American Third Parties Are Hopeless Fantasies”, Brian Underwood, The Mendenhall, October 5, 2012.

http://themendenhall.com/2012/10/05/duvergers-law-why-american-third-parties-are-hopeless-fantasies/

 

The presidential campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump fell deeper into crisis on Wednesday, with numerous media reports that top Republican officials were considering an “intervention” to redirect the campaign, or even an effort to remove Trump as the Republican nominee.

The discussions within the Republican Party establishment over the fate of the Trump candidacy coincide with a campaign by the Democrats and the Clinton campaign to attack the fascistic candidate from the right, as insufficiently committed to escalating war in Syria and aggression against Russia.

Several publications discussed the intricacies of Republican Party rules under which the Republican National Committee could replace Trump in the event he could be pressured to withdraw from the race—less than two weeks after accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican convention in Cleveland.

Rule 9 of the Republican Party states that the RNC “is hereby authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for President of the United States …” The “otherwise” gives the committee essentially open-ended power to remove the candidate and replace him.

ABC News reported that “senior party officials are so frustrated—and confused—by Donald Trump’s erratic behavior that they are exploring how to replace him on the ballot if he drops out.”

NBC News reported, “Key Republicans close to Donald Trump’s orbit are plotting an intervention with the candidate after a disastrous 48 hours led some influential voices in the party to question whether Trump can stay at the top of the Republican ticket.” NBC named RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, former Republican New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as among the group seeking to salvage the Trump campaign.

The Daily News reported, “Top aides, including campaign Chairman Paul Manafort have become paralyzingly frustrated with their inability to steer their boss away from waging unsavory fights—most recently his ongoing battle with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim-American parents of a fallen U.S. soldier whom Trump has attacked repeatedly since their appearance at last week’s Democratic National Convention.”

The New York Times chimed in, writing, “Republicans now say Mr. Trump’s obstinacy in addressing perhaps the gravest crisis of his campaign may trigger drastic defections within the party, and Republican lawmakers and strategists have begun to entertain abandoning him en masse.”

CNN said that RNC Chairman Priebus was “especially frustrated” with Trump because of his well-publicized refusal Tuesday to endorse either House Speaker Paul Ryan or Senator John McCain in upcoming Republican primaries, even though both have endorsed Trump in the presidential race.

CNBC reported conflicts within the inner circle of the Trump campaign, quoting an unnamed “longtime ally of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort,” who said that Manafort had lost control over the candidate. “Manafort not challenging (Trump) anymore,” the source wrote. “Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.”

In a further sign of conflicts within the Republican Party, Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, publicly declared his support for Ryan’s reelection Wednesday, although he claimed that Trump had approved his statement.

The media campaign was all the more extraordinary because there has not been the slightest hint from Trump or his top aides that he was considering withdrawal. On the contrary, the candidate has continued to campaign before large crowds, while denouncing his opponents, in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

There is no doubt that important sections of the financial aristocracy, including some of the most prominent backers of the Republican Party, have decided either to oppose Trump openly or sit out the November election.

The most prolific spenders on behalf of right-wing Republican candidates, Charles and David Koch, refused to give any support to Trump at a conference of some 400 donors Sunday in Colorado Springs. Not only that, they reportedly convinced others to rescind their own pledges of financial support to the Republican presidential candidate.

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, a billionaire who was the Republican candidate for governor of California in 2010, announced Tuesday night in an interview with the New York Times that she would be supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton and contributing heavily to her campaign. Whitman, who is close to 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, denounced Trump as an “authoritarian character” and a “dishonest demagogue” who “has exploited anger, grievance, xenophobia and racial division.”

Whitman told the Times that Clinton had called her personally a month ago soliciting her support. This was part of a larger effort by the Clinton campaign, which reached out to an array of billionaires, including Michael Bloomberg, Mark Cuban and Warren Buffett, during the same period it was supposedly “moving to left” in negotiations on the text of the Democratic Party platform with supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The Clinton campaign was quite happy to give verbal sops to Sanders supporters while it launched a post-convention shift to the right, currying favor with billionaires and attacking Trump as insufficiently patriotic and deferential in his treatment of the military—as demonstrated in his attack on the Khan family—and insufficiently belligerent on foreign policy, particularly in relation to Russia.

Trump’s claimed opposition to US wars in the Middle East, and his friendly statements about Russian President Vladimir Putin, are at odds with the foreign policy consensus in Washington. Both Democrats and Republicans back the US-NATO buildup in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, threatening war with a nuclear-armed Russia. The Obama administration is pouring weapons and special forces troops into the war in Syria, Russia’s lone Mideast ally, and has launched expanded bombing and drone missile attacks throughout the region, including North Africa.

These foreign policy considerations were spelled out most openly in the editorial Wednesday in the New York Times, headlined, “The Case for (Finally) Bombing Assad.” The Times demanded a harder line from the Obama administration against the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, including launching bombing raids on Syrian government targets.

The editorial devotes special venom for Russian President Putin, claiming “Mr. Putin is more interested in demonstrating that Russia and its friends are winning in Syria and the United States is losing. He will not alter his approach unless he becomes convinced that it has grown too expensive.” It concludes: “It is time for the United States to speak the language that Mr. Assad and Mr. Putin understand.”

There is an unstated corollary: a US presidential candidate whose commitment to the anti-Russia, anti-Syria campaign is judged questionable, is entirely unacceptable to the Times and the Wall Street and military-intelligence quarters for which it speaks.

The battle for Aleppo has forced the al Qaeda groups into their desperate last stand, as the Washington-driven proxy war on Syria moves into its final stages. The liberation of Aleppo will be the beginning of the end.

The online maps have been misleading. Even before the Russian air power intervention of September 2015 the Syrian Government controlled 85% of the country’s populated areas. But reclaiming all of Aleppo is critical for Syrian control of the north and of supply lines to the shrinking ground of ISIS in the east.

Syria’s major problem has been Turkey’s semi-open support for jihadist armies crossing the 800km northern frontier, and the Turkey-Saudi-Qatari backed advances of ISIS from the east. In the past 10 months the Syrian Alliance has successfully pushed back on both fronts. Further, since last month, Turkey is in disarray, with its own problems.

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Many follow the logic of dominant forces but, to understand the endgame in this war, the logic of resistance is no less important. Syria is proving that independent peoples who unite and resist can end up with a greater say in the outcome.

Washington’s war on Syria began with sectarian proxy armies sent in to topple the government in Damascus. The western media continues to speak of ‘moderate rebels’, but the evidence is clear that the US and its allies have backed every single armed group in Syria, including the western group led by the group formerly known as Jabhat al Nusra (now rebadged as ‘Jabhat Fatah al-Sham’, in a futile attempt to avoid Syrian-Russian bombing), and the eastern group DAESH-ISIS. They all share a similar vicious, sectarian ideology.

Despite all the bloodshed and rhetoric, Plan A’s aggression failed.

‘Plan B’ then aimed at partition of the country using, in part, what the US saw as its ‘Kurdish card’.

Never mind that any such partition is against the terms of UN Security Council resolution 2254, which reaffirms the UN’s ‘strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic’. The US ignores such niceties.

Nevertheless, Plan B is failing due to the coherence of Syria’s communities, their support for the Syrian Army, and strong regional solidarity, particularly from Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and the nationalist Palestinian militia.

Even Syria’s Kurdish militia have been coordinating with and relying on the Syrian Arab Army. Whatever Syria’s Kurds want, if put to a vote, Syrians would not support a federalisation which would weaken the country against its enemies.

Plan C

‘Plan C’ may be where forces better converge. Washington’s ‘rogue state’ is a very bad loser. It took Washington seven years to withdraw from Vietnam, after it knew it was losing. However Syria has a master diplomat, in the form of the Russian President, willing and able to cloak a North American retreat with ‘dignity’.

President Putin gave President Obama a way out, once before, back in September 2013, over the fake chemical weapons stunt, carried out by Jabhat al Nusra and its partners (see Anderson 2016, Chapter Nine). The dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile (held as a deterrent against Israel) prevented a US ‘limited’ missile strike on Syria.

We may well see a similar deal where Putin hails Obama’s statesman like role in helping bring peace to Syria, allowing Washington to put Syria ‘on the backburner’, as it did with Iran last year. Of course, this will be a monstrous lie, but one that could help end the bloodshed.

Regime change in Turkey would certainly help with such a plan. But whether or not Erdogan survives the mutiny of his own armed forces, a strategic and economic tide is turning against the Turkish role in Syria. As its proxy armies lose, Ankara is trying to repair its bad relations with Russia while worsening those with Washington. Erdogan, rightly or wrongly, blames the US for backing the recent coup attempt.

Any ‘Plan C’, in the few months that remain for the Obama administration, would probably leave unresolved the question of the US ideological campaigns and economic sanctions against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, Israel’s key opponents.

The experience of Washington’s previous wars in Latin America and Vietnam tell us that the USA will try to keep alive its myths, its ‘official history’, as long as possible.

Aleppo is the final turning point in this conflict because, after the liberation of Homs, Qsayr and Palmyra, definitive reverses are destroying the morale of both the jihadists and their sponsors. Not even fanatics are keen to join in an obviously losing cause.

Since last year the sectarian groups have been steadily ground down in rural Damascus. The capital, with a population swollen to between 7 and 8 million people, has had very little rocketing, mortars or car bombs this year. Street life is far more relaxed. Ceasefires have ‘worked’ here because the remaining armed groups (in the East Ghouta and Daraya) are substantially weakened and surrounded.

Yet, while Damascus regained some sense of security, a shocking war raged on in Aleppo. As usual, the western media lied incessantly, focussing exclusively on that part of the city held by the al Qaeda groups and now including less than 200,000 people in total, including a small army of intelligence agents from the US, UK, France, Turkey and Israel, and several western NGOs such the White Helmets.

In more recent days small groups of jihadists have been surrendering, to take advantage of a possible Presidential amnesty, while dozens of residents pass out through Syrian and Russian army controlled humanitarian corridors. Those checkpoints are run by commando units, including General Suheil al Hassan’s Tiger Forces, as check points still face jihadist suicide car-bombs, as they did in Palmyra.

Typically, there have been almost no western media stories about the 1.5 million in the government held area. Over April-May many dozens of people were murdered across Aleppo as civilian areas and major hospitals were bombed by the NATO-backed ‘rebels’. They were even filmed firing their ‘hell cannons’ while saying ‘throw it on the civilians’ (Anderson 2016, 9 May). Nothing of this emerged in the western corporate media.

In April-May the White Helmets claimed Russian or Syrian airstrikes had destroyed ‘al Quds hospital’, killing the last paediatrician in Aleppo. In fact, as Dr Nabil Antaki and the Aleppo Medical Association pointed out, that facility was not a registered hospital at all, rather a makeshift clinic in a damaged residential building in an al Nusra held area. In fact, there are dozens of paediatricians in Aleppo’s main public hospitals (Antaki and Cattori 2016; Beeley 2016; Makhoul-Yatim 2016).

The mercenary gangs fired hundreds of rockets into the main part of Aleppo, gassed the Kurdish areas of the city and publicly beheaded a Palestinian boy, supposedly a spy for one of the Palestinian militia which fights alongside the SAA. Typically, the BBC gave prominence to jihadist claims that the publicly murdered 12 year old was ‘a fighter’ (BBC 2016). Distorted coverage to the end.

The western media, still on its war footing, ran false stories that ‘all of Aleppo’ was under siege, or that al Qaeda’s field clinics were the ‘only hospitals’ in Aleppo. For example, Australian state media reported: ‘Syrian city of Aleppo running out of food as regime forces surround city’. In fact, 15% of the population of Aleppo was under Syrian Army siege. At the same time the entire country of Syria is under siege by US, EU and Australian economic sanctions (ABC Radio National 2016).

Those stories matter less as they are displaced by the more immediate video testimony of residents leaving the al Qaeda areas, only to praise the Syrian Army and curse the western backed ‘moderate’ head choppers (Geopolitics 2016).

The western backed jihadists are losing and the region’s public mood is hardening. Syrian civil opposition leader Moustafa Kelechi (not allied to the armed groups) says the battle of Aleppo ‘is a war to crush the Takfiri groups’ bones’ (FARS News 2016). The Iraqi government, once thought a mere puppet of the US, has repeatedly confirmed its close cooperation with the Syrian Government’s struggle against terrorist groups (SANA 2016).

The regional alliance forged during this war – Syria, Iran, Russia, Iraq, Hezbollah and the nationalist Palestinian militia – will maintain a strong role in both the Syrian endgame and across the region.

Notes:

ABC Radio National (2016), ‘Syrian city of Aleppo running out of food as regime forces surround city’, 20 July, online:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/syria’s-aleppo-running-out-of-food/7643402

Anderson, Tim (2016) The Dirty War on Syria, Global Research, Montreal. (available online: 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria-washington-regime-change-and-resistance/5504372

Anderson, Tim (2016, 9 May) ‘The ‘Aleppo Hospital’ Smokescreen: Covering up Al Qaeda Massacres in Syria, Once Again’, Global Research, 9 May, online: 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-aleppo-hospital-smokescreen-covering-up-al-qaeda-massacres-in-syria-once-again/5524250

Antaki, Nabil and Silvia Cattori (2016) ‘Aleppo Doctor Attacks Western Media for Bias, Censorship and Lies’, Global Research, 1 May, online:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/aleppo-doctor-attacks-western-media-for-bias-censorship-and-lies/5522736

BBC (2016) ‘Syria conflict: Boy beheaded by rebels ‘was fighter’’, 21 July, online: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36843990

Beeley, Vanessa (2016) ‘Aleppo: US NATO False Flags, Lies and Propaganda’, 21^st century Wire, 4 May, online:

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/05/04/aleppo-us-nato-false-flags-lies-and-propaganda/

FARS News (2016) ‘Dissident Leader Sees Army Victories in Aleppo “Syria’s Winning Card in Geneva”’, 23 July, online:

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950502000650

Geopolitics (2016) ‘Trapped Aleppo residents begun flowing through 1^st humanitarian corridor’, 31 July, online:

https://geopolitics.co/2016/07/31/trapped-aleppo-residents-begun-flowing-through-1st-humanitarian-corridor/

Makhoul-Yatim, Amara (2016) ‘Nabil Antaki, the Syrian doctor who refused to leave Aleppo’, France 24, 21 May, online:

http://www.france24.com/en/20160520-syria-aleppo-nabil-antaki-doctor-maristes-civilians-civil-war

SANA (2016) ‘President al-Assad receives letter from Iraqi prime Minister: War carried on by Syrian and Iraqi armies is one’, 13 July, online:

http://sana.sy/en/?p=82559

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Obama’s Second Illegal War on Libya. Record of US-NATO War Crimes and Destruction

By Stephen Lendman, August 04 2016

The results are already in, even before the official campaign-finance final figures will become available after the election.

Though a large percentage of the people funding the campaign advertising will never be made public — due to recent Supreme Court decisions allowing “dark money” — data already exist on the final product of the campaigns (including both the above-board and the dark money), which is the booked advertising time for each of the two candidates at the start of their campaigns. (Similar proportions of donations go also to get-out-the-vote and other campaign-activities; so, these booked-advertising figures correlate rather well with across-the-board funding of the two campaigns.)

Advertising rates — the charges per second of air-time — get higher and higher the later and closer to Election Day the time is booked; so, any candidate who books late is really starved for funds and has little chance of winning; any candidate who does the booking early is getting a big break from the networks and from certain other media. This discount, for early booking, magnifies even further the cash-advantage of the candidate whom the oligarchs prefer.

However, normally, both Parties’ nominees have their own billionaires backing them (Republican billionaires backing the Republican nominee, and Democratic billionaires backing the Democratic nominee), and so there’s a real contest, they both have a chance; but not this time: Look at the figures, and you can see that, this time around, virtually all of the oligarchs are backing only one candidate: they have united around Clinton.

On August 2nd, Carrie Dann at NBC headlined, “Clinton, Allies Have Reserved $98 Million in Ads”, and she opened: “Hillary Clinton and her allies are poised for a TV ad blitz of nearly $100 million dollars, compared to less than $1 million currently reserved on the airwaves by backers of Donald Trump.” That’s a wipe-out of Trump, by the oligarchs.

The detailed total on ads that have already been aired was: “Through last week, Team Clinton had aired a total of $68 million in ads, while Team Trump had spent roughly $6 million.” The totals booked going forward are even more skewed in Clinton’s favor: $98 million for Clinton, $817,000 for Trump. (In other words: Trump’s ratio is even worse now, than it was leading up to the two Conventions.)

Going forward, it’s like a hundred-to-one advantage, Clinton over Trump.

Perhaps the reason why this is so, is: Clinton has already spoken privately with the heads of these companies (the companies owned by the oligarchs) and with their lobbyists, and she coordinates her campaign with their propaganda-operations. So: her messages are also their messages. (But what she has told them behind closed doors goes even beyond that, into her proposing new federal subsidies for their businesses.)

The historical background of the current developments in the U.S., has already been well covered in a lengthy paper by Ryan Patrick Alford, that’s appropriately-titled “The Dismantling of the Rule of Law in the United States”(especially see there “Citizens United,” which is a direct source of this).

But, whatever the reason: in the current U.S. Presidential race, there is no real contest at all, in terms of support by the oligarchs — and their support tends to be decisive. There is, amongst them, a near-100% unity around one nominee, as there has never been before in American history, at least going back to 1896, and perhaps to the founding of the republic. (Furthermore, back near the founding, there was no oligarchy; the nation started out as being, to a large extent, a democratic republic. It no longer is that.)

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

 

A recent ruling in a San Diego election integrity lawsuit should set a new trend in fighting voter suppression. Many citizens are concerned about the accuracy of voting machines, but feel powerless to challenge their findings. The court’s ruling upholds the viability of the “1% manual tally,” a method for citizens to test the machine results by comparing them to the paper ballot tally.

Ray Lutz is the director of Citizens Oversight, a nonprofit “dedicated to enabling citizens to provide needed oversight to our democracy.” When he hasn’t been leading the fight to decommission the San Onofre nuclear power plant, Lutz has put significant time into tracking the disastrous 2016 primary election in California.

Lutz noticed that the California election code required that 1% of “all ballots cast” must undergo a random audit comparing the ballots to the electronic tally.

He then noticed something else – that the San Diego registrar, Michael Vu, was not including the provisional ballots or the late-arriving VBMs (votes by mail) in his tally. This was about 37% of the entire vote – a discrepency of 285,000 votes that were not audited.

Lutz and Citizens Oversight filed suit days after the primary due to Vu’s failure to randomly sample the votes to check for fraud. Lutz’s attorney, Alan Geraci, emphasized that “the intention of the elections code is obviously to create an audit so that the people can know that the election has been done properly.” The county argued that seven other California counties were doing it the same way as Vu.

Michael Vu has a bad track record for election integrity. In 2004 Vu was the registrar in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, a swing state in the George W. Bush/John Kerry presidential race. Official vote counts gave the state – and thus the presidency – to George W. Bush by about 118,000 votes out of 5.5 million counted. A statewide recount, paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties, was marred in 87 of the state’s 88 counties by illegalities that led to felony convictions for two of Vu’s staff. During that election two female employees working under Vu illegally chose sample precincts for recounting ballots where they knew the count would yield a predetermined result.

This rendered the recount meaningless, according to Bob Fikrakis, an attorney, political science professor, and expert in election voting controversies. The workers were fired, indicted, and convicted. In 2007, shortly after the convictions, Vu was forced to resign by Cuyahoga County. Vu immediately moved to California and landed a job in San Diego weeks later.

Judge Joel Wohlfeil wasn’t impressed by Vu’s performance this time around either. The judge ruled that although his ruling was “moot” as the primary had been certified by the secretary of state, he would address the issues raised in the suit. He held that the registrar had the duty to follow the law and that no excuses were available.

Citizens Oversight will continue to execute legal remedies to get San Diego to either complete the rest of the audit encompassing the 37% of the ballots cast that were left out, restart the 1% manual tally audit from the start, or seek a complete 100% audit of the election. Similar action may take place in other parts of the state.

The group is also looking for volunteers to assist in oversight teams in the largest California counties. It is important to ensure that the 1% tally is properly conducted throughout California in the general election – and to make sure that the rights of election observers to view every aspect of the count is zealously protected. Throughout the state, hundreds of observers were denied the right to watch the count – they were separated by glass barriers from seeing what was going on and were frequently barred from taking photographs. This practice of suppression of observers resulted in the nullification of Austria’s general election on July 1.

In San Diego, the observers were able to see that election officials were modifying ballots with the use of white-out, with no checks or balances to the procedure. This YouTube video shows that Bernie Sanders’ name was whited-out in this process, with no good explanation as to why.

During one press conference on June 28, this video shows a giant shredding truck that was parked right in front of the registrar’s office, and which drove away when citizens started taking photographs.

Vu said no materials were removed from the registrar’s office. But why in the world would any registrar allow a shredding truck to come to the elections office in the midst of a count?

These concerns with electronic voting equipment are not theoretical. but extend throughout the United States. A research paper on the subject of possible election fraud has been recently released. One of the collaborators was Fritz Schueren, former president of the American Statistical Association and a statistics professor at George Washington University. Schueren said, “As a statistician, I find the results of the 2016 primary election unusual. In fact, I found the patterns unexpected [and possibly even] suspicious.”

Ray Lutz and Citizens Oversight have provided to all of us an invaluable tool to ensure election integrity.

Bill Simpich is an attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area who knows it doesn’t have to be like this.

The United States poses as a champion against the great threats facing global security and stability, an uphill battle it claims requires equally great sacrifices, especially in terms of defense spending. It must be just a coincidence that the many policy think-tanks promoting this notion just so happen to be funded by huge multinational defense contractors.

The Atlantic Council, for instance, includes among its corporate members, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Thales, Boeing and Northrop Grumman, just to name a few. So when Atlantic Council authors wrote about the subject of close air support (CAS) aircraft, it should come as no surprise that the development or procurement of a new system was the option of choice, this despite the fact that a brand new aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, was already supposed to fill this role.

The Atlantic Council’s article, “Starting with the Answer in Procurement: The USAF’s plans for new close support aircraft show an unusual willingness to move out quickly,” would claim:

…after years of hearing that the F-35A would be the sort-of replacement for the A-10C, it’s worth reviewing why it never could be. It’s not for the gun or the armor. It’s the increased threat: Russian motorized rifle brigades now run with lots of their own 30 mm guns, looking up. Missiles are now a bigger problem too. As Colonel Mike Pietrucha USAF wrote for War On The Rocks last month, the heat from that huge engine is itself a huge target for heat-seekers. Lockheed has worked hard to suppress the signature, but physics dictate there’s only so much that can be done. Overall, the hundred-million-dollar jet is just too expensive to hazard to for busting tanks that way.

The projected cost of the F-35 program in total is estimated to be well over 1 trillion USD. The cost for each aircraft averages 100 million USD. That the Atlantic Council’s authors deem it “too expensive” to use for one of the roles it was allegedly proposed to fill, should make US and allied taxpayers wonder just what they have mortgaged their futures for.

Currently for CAS, the US Air Force depends on the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, as well as multirole aircraft like the Lockheed Martin F-16. To replace the A-10, the US plans to use F-16’s more widely, that is, until a new CAS system is developed.
IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly’s article, “USAF considers future CAS options,” reports that:

In the short-term the USAF has plans to replace some A-10s with Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons, but in the medium- to longer-terms there are plans to procure or develop either a platform that that can operate either in a permissive environment only, or one that can operate in both a permissive and contested environment. The options are being considered under the auspices of the recently announced A-X project.

So in addition to the 1 trillion USD F-35 program, there will be an additional program to develop the next generation of CAS aircraft for the US Air Force. One wonders if the F-35’s other slated roles will also require parallel defense programs to fill as the fundamental flaws of the entire program begin to unfold.

The F-35 is Just One Symptom of a Wider Malady…

A trillion dollars spent on a useless aircraft that requires multiple parallel defense programs to compensate for, represents different problems to different people depending on their perspective. To some, it appears to be supreme incompetence and poor planning. To others, a tragic waste of national resources. But to others still, it appears to be the only logical conclusion a nation and its tax dollars can arrive at, when it is driven by special interests in pursuit of power and profits, rather than any particular purpose.

The 1 trillion USD going into the F-35 program is not disappearing into a black hole. Lockheed Martin is receiving that money. With it, it will purchase more lobbying power in Washington, more clout on Wall Street, more authors to pen favorable “policy” proposals within the halls of think tanks like the Atlantic Council and more journalists across the international press to promote these proposals to the general public. It will also use this wealth to help promote the wars that will in turn, drive demand for yet more costly defense programs it will undoubtedly share a stake in developing and profiting from.

While the F-35, the new CAS program being developed to augment it, and virtually every other defense program the US and its allies are moving forward with, are predicated on maintaining national defense, it appears quite clear that the self-preservation of the corporations involved takes primacy over the former.

The US will not be safer with the F-35 in the air. In conflicts like the 2008 Georgian invasion of South Ossetia, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine or the war raging in Syria, Russia has proven that a fraction of the resources spent on defense, if spent properly, can meet or exceed the performance of US-NATO military capabilities.

On what is a shoestring budget by comparison, Russia’s combination of pragmatic military spending and proper strategic planning and implementation has become a case study of how a Middle East intervention should be done. The Syria Russia is helping preserve through its military intervention is one with a stable, secular government that has and will continue to be a valuable ally against armed militants throughout the region. Compare this in contrast to the trillions of dollars spent on US interventions throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia where the apparent, or at least evident purpose was to divide and destroy nations, leaving them tinderboxes of violence and conflict as well as breeding grounds for extremism, seemingly, purposefully, inviting conflict after unending conflict.

The US is spending more to make the world a more dangerous place, with unnecessary weapons systems even analysts working for think tanks funded by their manufacturers admit are too expensive and impractical to use on the battlefield for the roles they were intended to fulfill.

It is not that the US and its industry are incapable in technical terms of creating a functional and premier national defense, it is that the US and its industry are incapable of adhering to a rational policy that would require such a national defense. Defense dysfunction amid a world intentionally destabilized, it turns out, is much better for business, and the F-35 with its emerging parallel defense programs it now requires, is symptomatic of this.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

The U.S. launched a major new military campaign against ISIS on Monday when U.S. planes bombed targets in Libya, responding to requests from the U.N.-backed Libyan government. Strikes took place in the coastal town of Sirte, which ISIS took in June of last year.

The strikes represent a significant escalation in the U.S. war against ISIS, spreading the conflict thousands of miles from the warzones in Syria and Iraq.

All of these attacks took place without congressional authorization or even debate.

“We want to strike at ISIL anywhere it raises its head,” said Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook. “Libya is one of those places.” He said the airstrikes “would continue as long as [the Libyan government] is requesting them,” and that they do not have “an end point at this particular moment in time.”

The U.S. has long planned to spread its military campaign to Libya. In January, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the U.S. was preparing to take “decisive military action against ISIL” in Libya.

Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald responded with a post headlined “The U.S. Intervention in Libya Was Such a Smashing Success That a Sequel Is Coming.”

The New York Times editorial board called the plan “deeply troubling” and said it represented a “significant progression of a war that could easily spread to other countries on the continent.”

The Times supported the U.S.’s initial intervention in Libya in 2011, when the U.S. led a NATO air campaign to oust longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. But after a mob raped and murdered Gaddafi, the country plunged into years of anarchy and militia rule.

President Obama would later call his failure to plan for Gaddafi’s removal his “worst mistake,” and thousands of ISIS fighters have since gained a significant foothold in the country.

At the Pentagon press briefing on Monday, when Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast asked Cook if the war was legal, Cook responded by citing a controversial 15-year-old congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution passed in the wake of 9/11.

The AUMF resolution authorizes military force against organizations that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” But the resolution has been invoked, first by George W. Bush and then by Barack Obama, to justify military action in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and numerous other countries.

The administration has argued that the 2001 AUMF applies to the war against ISIS, even though ISIS and al Qaeda are sworn enemies. Several members of Congress, including Hillary Clinton’s running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., have argued that the administration should seek congressional authorization to continue its war against ISIS. Such authorizations for the conflict have failed to gain traction in a divided Congress.

Even without the AUMF, it’s unlikely that the White House would have acknowledged any legal barrier to bombing Libya. In 2011, the U.S. continued its Libyan campaign even after Congress rejected a resolution to authorize it. The White House even delivered a report to Congress that argued that the U.S.-led bombing campaign did not count as “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution. That resolution limits unauthorized conflicts to 180 days.

While emphasizing that the U.S. is “prepared to carry out more airstrikes,” Cook could not confirm basic details about Monday’s operation. When Cook was asked if he had a “ballpark figure” of casualties from the airstrikes, he responded, “I don’t.”

In the past year, the U.S. has also conducted a handful of individual military strikes against ISIS targets in Libya. In February, the U.S. carried out an attack near the coastal city of Sabratha, aiming to take out ISIS operative Noureddine Chouchane. Cook described the attack as “very successful,” but a day later, the Serbian government announced that two kidnapped members of the Serbian diplomatic staff had died in the bombing.

Moscow says it had warned Washington about the use of toxic shells by a US-backed “moderate” militant group before the Tuesday attack that killed seven people and injured over 20 more in Syria’s Aleppo.

On Wednesday, Lieutenant-General Sergey Chvarkov, the director of the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria, said the information was given to the US on Monday, a day prior to the attack.

The Russian Ministry of Defense also confirmed that the attack in Aleppo was launched by a Takfiri terrorist group.

“On August 2, 2016 at 19 hours 05 minutes militants from the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki group, considered by Washington as ‘moderate opposition’, launched poisonous materials from the Sukkari district towards the eastern part of Aleppo,” read a statement released by the ministry.

Moscow has long insisted that the US-backed so-called moderate opposition groups in Syria should leave the areas held by terrorists. Washington claims it is unable to remove the opposition groups.

It also noted that the shells were fired from militant-held areas towards a residential area.

According to reports, the gas used in the attack was Chlorine, which is highly toxic and leads to respiratory problems and consciousness loss in those who come in contact to it.

Syrians wounded following shelling by militants receive treatment at a hospital in the al-Jamiliyah neighborhood on the government-controlled side of the city of Aleppo on July 8, 2016.

On April 7, 23 people lost their lives and over 100 others suffered breathing difficulties when Daesh terrorists carried out a chemical attack against members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood of Aleppo.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Back in 2014, the UN said it would no more update its death toll for Syria because it could not verify the figures that it received from various sources.

Another oil price downturn threatens to deepen the plunging levels of investment in upstream oil and gas production, which could create a more acute price spike in the years ahead.

Oil and gas companies have gutted their capex budgets, necessary moves as drillers went deep into the red following the crash in oil prices. But the sharp cutback in investment means that huge volumes of oil that would have otherwise come online in five or ten years now will remain on the sidelines.

The industry will cut spending by $1 trillion through 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie. Those reductions are creating a “ticking time bomb” for oil supply. The consultancy projects that the market will see 5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboe/d) less this year, compared to expectations before the collapse of oil prices. And next year, the industry will produce 6 mboe/d less than it otherwise would have had the spending cuts not been made.

This is creating the conditions for a supply crunch and a price spike. The reason is simple: demand continues to rise by some 1.2 million barrels per day each year, but supplies are no longer growing because of the spending cuts. That is not a problem today as production still slightly exceeds demand and high levels of crude oil and refined products sit in storage. But by as early as the end of 2016 the oil market could tip into a supply deficit. And because the industry has scaled back so intensely on capex, global supplies could fall short of demand for quite a while. The end result could be a dramatic price spike.

This scenario has been described before by Wood Mackenzie, which published an estimate earlier this year that put the total value of cancelled projects over the past two years at $380 billion, projects that would have yielded 27 billion barrels of oil and gas.

So far, the markets are not pricing in the brewing supply crunch. Oil prices continue to fall, and speculators have taken the most pessimistic position in months, selling off long bets and buying up shorts.

Oil analysts and forecasters do not see a rapid rise in prices either. A Bloomberg survey of 20 analysts revealed a median price forecast of just $57 per barrel in 2017. No doubt that record levels of inventories are on their minds – even if oil production itself flips into a supply/demand deficit, it could take years to work through storage levels.

“We’re looking at a market that’s still in a very slow process of rebalancing and we don’t think that you’ll get a sustainable deficit until the second quarter of 2017,” Michael Hsueh, a strategist at Deutsche Bank AG, told Bloomberg. “Those deficits are necessary to draw down global inventories, but that will still take until the end of 2018, it appears.”

But the swing from surplus to deficit could be more dramatic than many think. Now that oil is once again entering a bear market, with WTI and Brent dropping to $40 per barrel, the industry could be forced to slash spending even deeper than it already has, leaving even more oil reserves undeveloped. And in any case, it is possible that high storage levels and the two-year production surplus is leading to a myopic view of the future – just because the markets are oversupplied today does not meant that they will in several years’ time.

Wood Mackenzie says that while U.S. shale has been the hardest hit by the steep fall in investment, the shale industry will be the first to bounce back because of the short-cycle nature of shale drilling. The price spike will lead to a resurgence in shale, and Wood Mackenzie is predicting that shale production doubles from the 2015 high-watermark of 4.5 million barrels per day to 8.5 mb/d by the mid-2020s.

But that is a long way off for oil executives dealing with deteriorating balance sheets and rising debt levels.

In 2011, he and then secretary of state Hillary Clinton bore full responsibility for the rape and destruction of Libya, transforming Africa’s most developed country into a cauldron of endless violence, instability, turmoil and unspeakable human suffering – the aftermath of all US imperial wars.

They flagrantly violated international, constitutional and US statute laws – attacking another country threatening no others, killing tens of thousands of noncombatant men, women, children, the elderly and infirm.

They were warned in advance of chaotic conditions following an attack but went ahead anyway. They knew extremist groups would flourish in its aftermath – ISIS, Al Qaeda and others Washington supports.

Libya today has no central authority. Based in Tripoli, US-installed puppet rule (the so-called Government of National Accord – GNA) controls one small part of the country – a rival Benghazi government, disparate groups and tribes most of it.

Endless violence, disorder, human deprivation and misery reflect daily life – the legacy of America’s “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect” – code language for naked aggression, war OF terror on humanity, the horror no one can imagine without experiencing it firsthand.

Last year, war correspondent Jon Lee Anderson said “(t)here is no overstating the chaos of post-Qaddafi Libya.” Various elements compete for control. “Armed militias roam the streets…(N)early a third of the country’s population has fled across the border to Tunisia.” Others head for Europe – treated with disdain and internment under concentration camp conditions on arrival.

No country may attack another except in self-defense and only if authorized by Security Council members. In 2007, candidate Obama, a one-time University of Chicago Law School senior lecturer, said the following:

The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

He’s terror-bombed seven countries and used terrorist foot soldiers to do his dirty work since taking office. He repeatedly lied to the public about his actions.

Time and again he’s proved lawless, ruthless and never to be trusted. Raping Libya a second time has nothing to do with protecting America’s “national security interests” or restoring stability to a war-torn country – everything to do with US imperial viciousness.

Obama saying the United States, Europe and other countries “have a great interest in seeing stability in Libya because the absence of stability has helped to fuel some of the challenges that we’ve seen in terms of the migration (sic) crisis in Europe and some of the humanitarian tragedies that we’ve seen in the open seas between Libya and Europe” ignored America’s responsibility for transforming a stable nation under responsible leadership into dystopian hellishness.

He massacred Libyans mercilessly while claiming he “did the right thing (by) preventing what could have been…a bloodbath in Libya…”

On Tuesday, he lied calling indefinite aggression a “30-day mission” – on the phony pretext of combating the scourge of ISIS Washington created and supports.

He’s raped Libya since 2011, new terror-bombing continuing where earlier assaults left off, virtually certain to go on indefinitely, perhaps with varying degrees of intensity, supplemented with US and other NATO special forces on the ground operating covertly.

His tenure ends in January. If Hillary succeeds him, perhaps she’ll turn the entire region and beyond ablaze. 

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.

Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado warplanes stepped up their bombing operations in Iraq on Monday by striking what the Ministry of Defence (MOD) said was a training centre for the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh).

The RAF has been taking part in air strikes against ISIS in Iraq since 2014, and against Syria since last December, as part of US-led operations.

In a statement, the MOD said, “Tornados participated in a major coalition air strike on Saddam’s former palace in Mosul, used by Daesh as a headquarters and training establishment for foreign terrorists, while Typhoons destroyed a network of fortified positions on the outskirts of Manbij.”

According to the Independent, Britain was one of seven countries involved in the raid. News sources reported that the Tornados used two of their largest 2000 lb. Paveway laser-guided bombs to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets.

The bombings mark an escalation of Britain’s participation in imperialist military operations in the Middle East. Although RAF planes were not reported to be involved in this week’s US airstrikes on the Libyan coast city of Sirte, they are understood to have been involved in reconnaissance missions ahead of the bombings. British Special Forces are also operating in Libya, alongside those from France and Italy.

The latest strikes came just three weeks after Theresa May replaced David Cameron as Conservative Prime Minister.

Within five days of entering Downing Street, May signalled that under her premiership Britain’s military would step up its global operations. On July 18, she authorised a debate in parliament on the renewal of the UK Trident nuclear defence system. May set the tone of the debate, in which three quarters of the Labour Party backed the renewal of Trident. The prime minister replied with an unequivocal “Yes” to an MP who asked if she would be “personally prepared to authorise a nuclear strike that can kill a hundred thousand innocent men, women and children.”

May stated that her “Government will continue to meet our NATO obligation to spend 2 percent of our GDP on defence. We will maintain the most significant security and military capability in Europe, and we will continue to invest in all the capabilities set out in the strategic defence and security review last year.”

She named seven countries/regions of the world where Britain’s military would continue to intervene, stating, “We will meet the growing terrorist threat coming from Daesh in Syria and Iraq, from Boko Haram in Nigeria, from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, from al-Shabaab in east Africa, and from other terrorist groups planning attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

UK armed forces are already deployed in more than 80 countries across the world. Well over a decade after the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, 450 UK soldiers remain in Afghanistan and more than 275 military training personnel operate in Iraq. An additional 50 troops are to be deployed to Afghanistan due to the worsening security situation in the country and in line with the slowing and reversal of the US troop drawdown.

During a visit to the RAF’s base in Akrotiri, Cyprus on Tuesday, UK Defence Minister Michael Fallon stated that additional British troops would be deployed to Iraq this month to support ongoing military campaigns. In a move first announced last month, an additional 250 troops will bring the total number of British military forces to more than 500.

Emphasising Britain’s commitment to the US-led NATO alliance, Fallon said, “The uplift underlines that Britain is stepping up, not stepping back from our international commitments,” following the June 23 referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union (EU).

Last month, speaking of Syria at a Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) conference on airpower, Fallon said, “The RAF has not operated at this sustained operational tempo in a single theatre of conflict for a quarter of a century.”

The opposition Labour Party, as befitting its historic role in support of the predatory interests of British imperialism, was the critical factor in overturning an August 2013 vote against Syrian operations, due to widespread public opposition, combined with divisions within the political and military elite over their efficacy. The vote severely damaged British imperialism’s standing in Washington and helped force the Obama administration to retreat from open warfare aimed at deposing Bashar al Assad and installing a client regime.

In September 2014, parliament voted by a massive majority in favour of “the use of UK air strikes to support Iraqi, including Kurdish, security forces’ efforts against ISIL in Iraq.” Just 24 of 257 Labour MPs voted against, as then party leader Ed Miliband lauded military action. Air strikes by British warplanes in Iraq took place in the hours immediately following the vote.

Under new, nominally “left”, leader Jeremy Corbyn, Labour then played a critical role in allowing British bombing in Syria.

After Cameron called a vote in parliament last December for Britain to intervene militarily in Syria on the pretext of fighting ISIS, Corbyn authorised a free vote by Labour MPs on the issue. This meant they would not be censured or disciplined for supporting war. Corbyn did this knowing that a large contingent of Labour MPs would line up behind the Tory war resolution. In the event, 66 Labourites backed military action, giving the Tories their politically required majority.

In January, Fallon provided an update on the escalation of Britain’s operation in Iraq and cited the vital importance of the Syria vote. “After the vote in parliament we have doubled the number of strike aircraft and we have tripled the number of strikes—by day and night—that we are carrying out six days a week,” he said.

Addressing RUSI, Fallon noted, “Two years on from Parliament’s vote to authorise airstrikes in Iraq, seven months since the extension of that authorisation to Syria, we now have over 600 air and ground crews in RAF Akrotiri.” He boasted, “Our aircrew have flown more than 2,800 missions in Iraq and Syria. They’ve conducted 865 airstrikes in Iraq and, since December, 50 in Syria—more than any other nation except the United States.”

Fallon’s speech was a declaration of the global ambitions of British imperialism. “Last year”, crowed the Defence Secretary, “our pilots and aircrew deployed to more than 60 countries.”

Delivering his speech just days after the June 23 referendum vote on leaving the European Union, Fallon said, “The result of the referendum will not change our global outlook. Nor the shared threats we face.”

“To counter those international challenges … we must work even harder with our allies and partners, becoming, in the words of our SDSR [Strategic Defence and Security Review], international-by-design. And while we’ve opted out of one particular union, we take our global responsibilities seriously, as members of NATO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Northern Group of European nations, the Five Power Defence Arrangements in the Far East and permanent members of the UN Security Council.”

While nominally directed against ISIS militias, the aim of Britain’s military interventions is to secure a good portion of the spoils from the ongoing imperialist carve-up of the region. Moreover, these operations, which are being promoted in the bellicose language of May and Fallon, are in readiness for war against Russia and China, in alliance with the United States and NATO.

Fallon stressed that the RAF was operating in “Eastern Europe for the third year running … protecting our NATO allies against Russian aggression.” He added that the RAF’s capital investment program was being increased to more than £6 billion as “Our competitors are striving to close the capability gap” with Russia “exploiting forward-swept wing technology” and with “North Korea ‘miniaturising’ nuclear weapons.”

“And this is what disturbs me: the fact that people today, despite living with more safety and wealth and access to information than anyone in human history, feel as though the world is going crazy and something drastic must be changed.” — Mark Manson, Jul 28, 2016

How quick one judges.  The warning about taking the draught of knowledge deeply, as opposed to a shallow sip, before assuming all is clear, should be borne in mind.  A knife attack in London’s Russell Square by a nineteen-year old youth, leaving five injured and one fatality, becomes an instant magnet for terrorist assumptions and a rampant phenomenon.  (True, it was terrifying for those attacked, but an act of terrorism?)

At work here is the surfeit of spectacle, and availability.  Images, raw and unprocessed, race through the social media sphere, hurried on by clicks and “shares” with viral purpose.  Twenty-four hour channels do the rest, adding spin and padding to what really happened.  The packaging, on being released, gives the impression of being unprecedented.  We never saw the like, and some such.

The response to the Russell Square attack played this out in full, showing good lashings of availability bias. Nothing, it seems, is allowed to escape that fateful utterance of “terrorist attack”. Moments of mental instability become instances of terrorist acumen.  People are not permitted to be cranks; they must have also embraced a philosophical and political system.  The suggestion is not merely demeaning to ordinary intelligence, but to the content of actual terrorism that Europe has witnessed for centuries.

What is different now, suggests Mark Manson, is not the events so much as the means they are conveyed, and the way such information is duly processed. “Cameras, the internet, and most importantly, social media.  That is what’s new.”[1] All in all, the attention economy, dominated by a growing surplus of seekers and opportunists, becomes a case of gaining kudos for being in the appropriate place, where exposure is maximised.

This also demands an active complicity on the part of the consumer of the image, those wishing to over read their subject matter as exceptional when it is, in fact, dreary and uninspiringly prosaic.  The banal, in a special way, becomes the remarkable.

To that end, Manson suggests that such “constant awareness of every fault and flaw of our humanity, combined with an inundation of doomsayers and narcissistic nihilists commanding our attention space, is what is causing this constant feeling of a chaotic and insecure world that actually doesn’t exist.”

The police have kept step with this.  The modus operandi of the modern police statement is seemingly grouped around a few formulae: do not exclude terrorism as a possibility, however incompatible with the scene; suggest mental illness as a distinct possibility, because people who kill are unstable. (History suggests that the greatest killers are more stable ones disturbed by their rationalism.)

As Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley explained, “Early indications suggest mental health is a significant factor in this case and that is one major line of inquiry.”  Coupled with this, one had to also keep an “open mind” to the possibility of “terrorism as a motivation”.[2]

Another necessary requirement is that of reassurance. The blood is rushing, the pulses are racing through the community, and those calming pills are in order. “As a precautionary measure,” said Rowley soothingly, “Londoners will wake up this morning to notice an increased presence on the streets of officers, including armed officers today. We would urge the public to remain calm, alert and vigilant.”

The dosage of such reassurance has been increased by feeding the public the knowledge that a special team will operating to combat the next ISIS-inspired rampage.  The Daily Mail does its bit to fan the enthusiasm about the Hollywood styled “C-Men”, those “600 awesomely armed (and masked) Counter-Terrorism firearms officers who hit the streets today in vans, boats and motorbikes.”[3]

None of this is reassuring on two grounds, the first being the forecast by Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe that an attack was not a question of if but when.  Having given ballast to the prospect of a decent protective barrier, he had to also express a view that it might not work.  Expertise can always be found wanting.

The second relates to the frequency of knife attacks as a general point, which has been somehow muddled in the poorly made pie of confusion. Knifing incidents in London remain a serious and growing problem. Epidemic it may well be, but terrorism?

The less than rosy statistics suggest that knife attacks in England and Wales over 2015 increased by nine per cent, much of it assisted by an increase of dark web sales and types of weapons awash in youth circles.  In September 2015, the Met Police claimed that knife crime in London had risen by 18 percent, with 10 youngsters being stabbed to death in the nine months prior.[4]

The other troubling feature of such incidents is that the security state remains a hulk of imperfection, and even worse, a hoax in the name of protection. A supposed prophylactic against disorder in a city with the highest concentration of closed circuit cameras in the world still cannot cope with lethal attacks.  As ever, the solution of security remains the last bastion of the credible.

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

Notes

Deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea will pose a serious threat to China’s strategic security, and China will by no means compromise such interests, read an editorial published in the People’s Daily on Wednesday.

The commentary, under the byline of Zhongsheng, comes as South Korea commits to the plan despite public outcry.

The following is the translation of the article:

As tensions mount in the Korean peninsula, it is irreproachable that South Korea wants to pursue a stronger sense of security. However, things will be different if its policy negatively affects the regional strategic balance and undermines the security interests of other countries.

South Korea must bear in mind that state-to-state relationships are by no means a game, especially when it comes to security issues involving core national interests.

Experts expects THAAD to raise regional tensions rather than deter the DPRK’s nuclear and missile threats, which the South Korean government cited as a main reason for the THAAD deployment on its territory. With the THAAD deployment, South Korea now enters the U.S. missile defense network, which would harm the geopolitical balance in the region and provoke strategic change from China and Russia.

A Russian newspaper pointed out that the US is trying to excuse its long-term presence around China and Russia under the pretext of the North Korean nuclear issue.

Though South Korean decision-makers are fully aware of the hidden motives of the US, they are stiff-necked in binding its destiny with the THAAD despite public opposition.

But Seoul may not able to afford the domino effect brought by its decision, as the price will be regional stability and the security interests of its neighbors.

The Korean Peninsula issue may finally encounter a dead end and nobody will be able to guarantee absolute peace on the powder keg. Amid such severe circumstances, the policy makers of South Korea should double their prudence to avoid the worst possibility.

The rushed and risky decision made by Seoul and Washington have crossed the security bottom line drawn by the South Korean public. A poll released on Monday showed that public support for South Korean President Park Geun-hye has dropped. Some 60.7 percent view her governance negatively, and her support among those around 20 years old was below 10 percent.At the same time, the South Korean public staged protests against the government’s surrendering of its national interests, and the opposition party has urged the government to rescind its decision on the THAAD deployment.

As a matter of fact, the US and South Korea once promised to negotiate with China on the deployment of the THAAD system, but later turned hostile and announced the rushed decision. However, their plans to strengthen defensive capabilities at the cost of other countries’ security would be a one-sided calculation.

During the 4th China-Russia consultations on Northeast Asian security on July 28, diplomats of the two countries expressed serious concern over the THAAD deployment, agreeing to safeguard the interests of both countries in most reliable and effective ways. The two comprehensive strategic partners also agreed to highlight their strategic security interests.

Analysts stressed that  deploying missile defense systems may fuel a dangerous arms race in Northeast Asia, as China and Russia would probably take counter-measures that the US and South Korea cannot afford.

According to the experts, the THAAD deployment will bring nothing good to Seoul, but trap the country in a military confrontation between the three powers. Once a conflict breaks out, South Korea will inevitably be the first target.

China is and will always be committed to building amicable partnerships with its neighbors, but such amicability must be based on a premise that other countries also take a peaceful development path like China.

As the THAAD deployment in South Korea will certainly impose a serious threat to China’s strategic security, China will by no means stay indifferent and compromise its security interests.

No one can underestimate China’s resolution and strength to safeguard its national security as it never fears external threats.

 

Silence is a word pregnant with multiple meanings: for many a threat; for others a nostalgic evocation of a time rendered obsolete by technology; for others a sentence to boredom; and for some, devotees of the ancient arts of contemplation, reading, and writing, a word of profound, even sacred importance.

But silence, like so much else in the present world, including human beings, is on the endangered species list.  Another rare bird – let’s call it the holy spirit of true thought – is slowly disappearing from our midst.  The poison of noise and busyness is polluting more than we think, but surely our ability to think.

I am sitting on a stone step of a small cabin on an estuary on Cape Cod.  All is quiet.  Three feet in front of me a baby rabbit nibbles on grass, and that nibbling resounds. A mourning dove moans intermittently.  I see the wind ripple the marsh grass and sense its low humming.  I feel at home.

I am dwelling in silent stop-time.

It strikes me how rare silence has become; how doing nothing seems so un-American.  Noise and busyness have become our elements.  While I watch the rushes sway, I wonder why wherever you turn people are rushed and stressed.  A frantic anxiety prevails everywhere.  Whether you ask the young, the middle-aged, or the retired, they all report stress and lack of time.  “It’s crazy,” you often hear them say. “It” is never defined.

Clearly there are powerful forces that profit from this noisy busyness, this connected way of technological consumption, this contraction of time.  Everyone seems to have their reasons why they are in such a state, but few imagine how and why it may be “engineered.” They don’t have the quiet time to do so.

Or they don’t want to.

When I speak of noise I am not thinking primarily of the din we associate with city life – cars, trucks, taxis, horns, sirens, congestion, etc. – a world rushing to get somewhere for unknown reasons.  That noise, alas, is hard to avoid, even in small towns or suburbs. If I travel a half mile from where I sit in silence, I will encounter such noise as people speed by in cars on their search for a vacation from it.

Being in a secluded spot on Cape Cod for a few days is a luxury.  I realize that.  So too is having these minutes to write these words.  Yet I know also that I am choosing to do so, and that for me the luxury is also a necessity.  How could I live without “doing nothing” in silence?  Even the computer I am typing these words on tells me I am wrong: it wants to correct my words “doing nothing” to “doing anything.”  I’m surprised it doesn’t tell me that I should be having “fun,” though perhaps doing anything is the equivalent.

The noise of modern life is hard to avoid completely, and, in any case, it is the least disruptive of the silence I have in mind.  There is another kind of noise that is self-imposed and whose purpose, consciously or not, is to make sure one is not “caught” by silence.  As those who flee from silence know, it can be dangerous to one’s reigning assumptions about self and the world.  Noise seems more comforting.

We all know people who go from morning till night, day in and day out, without ever pausing to enter the sounds of slow silence.  One doesn’t have to look far for them; technology has made them the rule.  They race through their lives in the cocoon of technological noise.  They’re informed, in touch, tuned in to everything but their own souls.  They drown themselves in the incessant noise of televisions and radios, or the busyness of telephone calls, texting, or trivia “that has to be done.”  They are always planning, going, organizing, and scheduling activities.  Or talking – endless chatter about the weather or shopping or the latest mainstream media’s blaring headlines.

They choose to fill their lives with distracting noise in order to avoid the silence that might force them to confront issues of self-knowledge that are the stuff of great books, true art, a fully human life; self-knowledge that connects the individual to his social circumstances in his historical period; knowledge that might allow them to grasp the sources of the profound anxiety and despair that induces their franticness. This is what C. Wright Mills called the sociological imagination.

For fifteen years the United States has been living under an official state of national emergency and constant, paralyzing fear – a fear that keeps people moving as fast as they can so they don’t stop and look back and see what has happened to them and why and where they are heading – over the cliff.

It is another day now and I am sitting in the shade of a tree looking out on a beautiful harbor filled with sailboats.  A seagull swoops and sails before me.  A strong wind picks up from the west. This water is the playground of the wealthy. Unlike the poor, they can buy outer silence. They seem to have plenty of time to think deep thoughts, such as where did all their money come from. From corporations that are part of the military-industrial complex?  By exploiting others?  I suspect they use their “free” time to think of other things.

For some reason the rough water reminds me of all those refugees fleeing war and chaos on the Mediterranean Sea.  Desperate people. Why must they die seeking refuge?  Why must they flee their homelands? Who drove them to the boats?  The sea and silence brings these thoughts to my mind?  Silent reverie can do that. It can conjure up disturbing thoughts.

I often write about such matters.  Most of what I write is serious stuff, what people refer to as “heavy” writing: wars, assassinations, coups, etc. – a lot of history, social issues, philosophical and theological questioning.  And I find that many people find it tough to take.  They can’t find the time or silent concentration to read it closely and study to see if my analyses are correct.  I think they choose not to take the time to enter the cocoon of silent concentration it demands. They will nod or demur, but not delve any deeper.  Deeper means danger.

Those hundreds of thousands of fleeing boat people, for example; who is responsible for their fate?  Who started the wars that drove them from their homes?  Might we be implicated?  Do we bear responsibility?  Can we be silently attentive enough to hear their cries and explore the facts?  Is the noisy busyness a self-imposed distraction from the truth?  Do we live in bad faith?

Can we stop talking, stop moving, and stop doing long enough to contemplate such matters?

Can we shut up long enough to listen to what the silence might reveal?

What are we running away from?  Are there truths so deep and so disturbing that they must be “silenced”?

I think so.

Slow silence would allow us to understand how the leaders of the United States are pushing the world toward the ultimate silence of nuclear conflagration by provoking war with Russia. Most people are too “busy” and too distracted – and therefore too ignorant – to notice. So for them it’s not happening. It’s not happening, as Harold Pinter said of all the countless war crimes committed by the United States while the American people were hypnotized into thinking otherwise: “It never happened.  Nothing ever happened.  Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening.  It didn’t matter.  It was of no interest.”

We were too busy to notice. All we could hear was noise, propagandistic bedlam.

A society suffering from socially induced attention-deficit disorder is a society in a state of disintegration.  Focused on the noisy foreground of conventional thinking fueled by a mass media spewing out endless distractions and pseudo-events, most people are lost in a cacophonous mental chaos.

I’m not sure if there is any point in writing these words.

But I am sure that the art of writing implies the art of reading.  The writer creates and the reader recreates; both demand silence, a not-doing, the cessation of all noise that serves to prevent true thought. Can you hear me?

The machines must be turned off. “Our inventions,” Thoreau noted, “are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.”

It is not hard to turn a switch, pull a plug, or press a button; the hard part is wanting to.  Harder still, but equally necessary, is the quieting of the mind, the silencing of the incessant internal chatterboxes that accompany us everywhere.

Unless by some miracle we reject the bill of goods of noisy busyness that has been sold to us to sow confusion, we are doomed.  That might sound hyperbolic, but it is not.  We are being led to the slaughter by crazed elites who are pushing for a world war.  We are drowning in lies and more lies, lies compounded by noisy repetition.

“There ain’t nothing more powerful than the odor of mendacity….You can smell it. It smells like death.”  That’s what I recently heard Big Daddy say in a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote that someday they will sell us the rain; in saying that he implied that any essential, beautiful aspect of life could be destroyed by a society hell-bent on destruction through war and consumerism. Now that they have sold us noise and speed to eliminate slow silence, we are in far deeper trouble. We can’t think straight, if we can think at all. And clear thinking has never been more important.

Gandhi, the revolutionary, put it perfectly,

“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.  Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”

As Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dances and sways to the music and jubilation of Vancouver’s gay pride parade, many Canadians swell with pride, secure in the knowledge that we represent freedom, generosity of spirit, and cultural/religious pluralism.  Surely, we possess all the attributes of a mature, democratic society.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Beneath the “liberal” veneer, our government supports Wahhabism, misogyny, terrorism, madrassa/Wahhabi schools, death squads, death cults, and civilian massacres.

Instead of furthering the causes of knowledge, growth, humanity, and civilization, we are fostering barbarity and ignorance.

These are the forces growing in the Middle East, thanks to Canada’s complicity in NATO, its support for Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and its support for the mercenary terrorists invading and occupying Syria.

Islam is not the root of the destruction in the Middle East; we are.

All of this has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and yet Canada remains transfixed by fabricated mainstream media (MSM) stories that serve as the propaganda apparatus for Western-supported terrorists, including ISIS and all the terrorists invading Syria. The author writes in “The West’s Establishment Lies And Crimes Are Leading Us To The Unthinkable’ that

Ostensibly “neutral” information sources are not neutral at all. So-called “Non-Governmental Organizations” (NGOs), including very governmental sources such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) the CIA, Mossad etc. as well as oligarch (ie Soros) funded foundations, are all embedded with the terrorists, and these are the sources that are the foundation for corporate/mainstream media (MSM) “news” stories.

The White/al Qaeda Helmets, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), and Avaaz are just a few of the many corrupt NGOs lying about the War on Syria. Add to this Qatari -based Al Jazeera, and Western media’s modus operandi of trotting out “experts” who have conflicts of interest  but who nevertheless pose as “neutral” sources of information, and we see that the media serves as an agency for imperial war, rather than as an agency for truth and justice.

Most Canadians, captured by the propaganda, are immune to publicly available, evidence-based research, as they passively accept the comforting lies and illusions.

We are taught to hate Islam, and tacitly embrace Saudi Wahhabism, even as the truth resides in the genuine teachings of Islam – and all the world’s religions –as best represented by the culture of Syria and its peoples, our fabricated “enemy”.

The voice of truth and evidence-based reality is an enduring, slow-burning flame, not easily extinguished; unlike its counterpart, the voice of lies and deceptions, which burns intensely for a time, but then devours itself.

The truth in Syria is that there are no “moderate rebels”, and that the “opposition” does not include gun-toting terrorists who occupy sections of Syria, murder civilians, launch Hell-Cannon ordnances, launch toxic/poison gas rockets, and attempt to impose Wahhabist teachings in occupied areas. Professor Chossudovsky correctly explains that,

(The) US counterterrorism bombing campaign under “Operation Inherent Resolve” does not target terrorists.

Quite the opposite. Both ISIS-Daesh and Al Nusra are protected by the US led coalition.

The forbidden truth is that the counterterrorism campaign is directed against the Syrian people.

A recent wikileaks document adds more evidence to a mountain of already-existing evidence which demonstrates that the West arms and supports the terrorists. Julian Assange explains in a Democracy Now interview that

“the disastrous, absolutely disastrous intervention in Libya, the destruction of the Gaddafi government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country, weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS, that’s there in those emails. There’s more than 1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection, that we have released, just about Libya alone.”

The terrorists are proxies/strategic assets for the West. We create them, lead them, support their infrastructure, and sustain them. Western, open-sourced documentation proves this.  The author writes:

The ugly truth about the genocidal Western designs for Syria (has been) well documented for years by sources including former Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief Michael Flynn, by Generals Dempsey, and  Clark, by Vice-President Biden, and by publicly available Defence Intelligence Agency documents, as well as from other open source documents. “

The strategy of creating and using proxy mercenaries to destroy, plunder, and control, non-belligerent countries is not new either.

Chossudovsky explains in “Bill Clinton Worked Hand in Glove with Al Qaeda: ‘Helped Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base’ “that

With regard to Syria, the recruitment of jihadists (according to Israeli intelligence sources) was launched prior to 2011 under the auspices of NATO and the Turkish High command in liaison with the Pentagon.

And that,

In retrospect, the Obama Administration’s covert support of the ISIS in Syria and Iraq bears a canny resemblance to the Clinton administration’s support of the Militant Islamic Base in Bosnia and Kosovo. What this suggests is that US intelligence rather than the White House and the State Department determine the main thrust of US foreign policy, which consists in supporting and financing ‘Jihadist’ terrorist organizations with a view to destabilizing sovereign countries.

Historical memory teaches us that the Western-prosecuted dirty war against Syria is consistent with previous illegal wars of aggression, and western-sourced evidence demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that we are, yet again, the terrorists.

Western media consumers need to reject the fabricated msm news stories – allied as they are to the terrorist cause—and embrace evidence- based documentation instead. We also need to learn from history, and avoid perpetrating the same deadly mistakes. We can no longer allow history to “repeat itself”.

Turkey’s Attempted Coup – Cui Bono? An [Organized] Gift From Allah?

By Felicity Arbuthnot, August 02 2016

«L’Italia valuta positivamente le operazioni aeree avviate dagli Stati uniti su alcuni obiettivi di Daesh a Sirte. Esse avvengono su richiesta del governo di unità nazionale, a sostegno delle forze fedeli al governo, nel comune obiettivo di contribuire a ristabilire la pace e la sicurezza in Libia»: questo è il comunicato diffuso della Farnesina il 1° agosto. Alla «pace e sicurezza in Libia» ci stanno pensando a Washington, Parigi, Londra e Roma.

Gli stessi paesi che, dopo aver destabilizzato e frantumato con la guerra lo Stato libico, vanno a raccogliere i cocci con la «missione di assistenza internazionale alla Libia». L’idea che hanno traspare attraverso autorevoli voci. Paolo Scaroni, che a capo dell’Eni ha manovrato in Libia tra fazioni e mercenari ed è oggi vicepresidente della Banca Rothschild, ha dichiarato al Corriere della Sera che «occorre finirla con la finzione della Libia», «paese inventato» dal colonialismo italiano. Si deve «favorire la nascita di un governo in Tripolitania, che faccia appello a forze straniere che lo aiutino a stare in piedi», spingendo Cirenaica e Fezzan a creare propri governi regionali, eventualmente con l’obiettivo di federarsi nel lungo periodo. Intanto «ognuno gestirebbe le sue fonti energetiche», presenti in Tripolitania e Cirenaica.
È la vecchia politica del colonialismo ottocentesco, aggiornata in funzione neocoloniale dalla strategia Usa/Nato, che ha demolito interi Stati nazionali (Jugoslavia, Libia) e frazionato altri (Iraq, Siria), per controllare i loro territori e le loro risorse. La Libia possiede quasi il 40% del petrolio africano, prezioso per l’alta qualità e il basso costo di estrazione, e grosse riserve di gas naturale, dal cui sfruttamento le multinazionali statunitensi ed europee possono ricavare oggi profitti di gran lunga superiori a quelli che ottenevano prima dallo Stato libico. Per di più, eliminando lo Stato nazionale e trattando separatamente con gruppi al potere in Tripolitania e Cirenaica, possono ottenere la privatizzazione delle riserve energetiche statali e quindi il loro diretto controllo.

Oltre che dell’oro nero, le multinazionali statunitensi ed europee vogliono impadronirsi dell’oro bianco: l’immensa riserva di acqua fossile della falda nubiana, che si estende sotto Libia, Egitto, Sudan e Ciad. Quali possibilità essa offra lo aveva dimostrato lo Stato libico, costruendo acquedotti che trasportavano acqua potabile e per l’irrigazione, milioni di metri cubi al giorno estratti da 1300 pozzi nel deserto, per 1600 km fino alle città costiere, rendendo fertili terre desertiche.

Agli odierni raid aerei Usa in Libia partecipano sia cacciabombardieri che decollano da portaerei nel Mediterraneo e probabilmente da basi in Giordania, sia droni Predator armati di missili Hellfire che decollano da Sigonella. Recitando la parte di Stato sovrano, il governo Renzi «autorizza caso per caso» la partenza di droni armati Usa da Sigonella, mentre il ministro degli esteri Gentiloni precisa che «l’utilizzo delle basi non richiede una specifica comunicazione al parlamento», assicurando che ciò «non è preludio a un intervento militare» in Libia. Quando in realtà l’intervento è già iniziato: forze speciali statunitensi, britanniche e francesi – confermano il Telegraph e Le Monde – operano da tempo segretamente in Libia per sostenere «il governo di unità nazionale del premier Sarraj».

Sbarcando prima o poi ufficialmente in Libia con la motivazione di liberarla dalla presenza dell’Isis, gli Usa e le maggiori potenze europee possono anche riaprire le loro basi militari, chiuse da Gheddafi nel 1970, in una importante posizione geostrategica all’intersezione tra Mediterraneo, Africa e Medio Oriente. Infine, con la «missione di assistenza alla Libia», gli Usa e le maggiori potenze europee si spartiscono il bottino della più grande rapina del secolo: 150 miliardi di dollari di fondi sovrani libici confiscati nel 2011, che potrebbero quadruplicarsi se l’export energetico libico tornasse ai livelli precedenti.

Parte dei fondi sovrani, all’epoca di Gheddafi, venne investita per creare una moneta e organismi finanziari autonomi dell’Unione Africana. Usa e Francia – provano le mail di Hillary Clinton – decisero di bloccare «il piano di Gheddafi di creare una moneta africana», in alternativa al dollaro e al franco Cfa. Fu Hillary Clinton – documenta il New York Times – a convincere Obama a rompere gli indugi. «Il Presidente firmò un documento segreto, che autorizzava una operazione coperta in Libia e la fornitura di armi ai ribelli», compresi gruppi fino a poco prima classificati come terroristi, mentre il Dipartimento di stato diretto dalla Clinton li riconosceva come «legittimo governo della Libia». Contemporaneamente la Nato sotto comando Usa effettuava l’attacco aeronavale con decine di migliaia di bombe e missili, smantellando lo Stato libico, attaccato allo stesso tempo dall’interno con forze speciali anche del Qatar (grande amico dell’Italia). Il conseguente disastro sociale, che ha fatto più vittime della guerra stessa soprattutto tra i migranti, ha aperto la strada alla riconquista e spartizione della Libia.

Manlio Dinucci

The Italian foreign ministry says the country’s government would “consider” opening up its Sigonella military air base in Sicily in order to allow US jets to hit Islamic State militants in Libya, should Washington approach the government.

On 1 August 1838, enslaved Africans in the British Empire won their emancipation from slavery. Emancipation Day is now commemorated throughout the Anglophone Caribbean as a public holiday or national observance. Emancipation was not a gift from Britain or White abolitionists. It came from the accumulated covert and overt acts of resistance by enslaved Africans.

Under the leadership of Jamaica’s Sam Sharpe, he and his enslaved comrades made the decision to carry out a general strike if the capitalist enslavers did not pay for the former’s labour after 25 December 1831. British colonialism engaged in a show of military force in response to the threat of a general strike.

The insurgents initiated the Emancipation Rebellion on 28 December 1831. The 1831-32 Emancipation Rebellion involved about 60,000 of the island’s 300,000 enslaved Africans.  They destroyed one hundred and forty-five plantations valued at two hundred thousand pounds (£200,000). Close to two hundred rebels and fourteen whites were killed in the rebellion.

However, this attempt at emancipation from below forced the British to abolish slavery from above by passing the Act for the Abolition of Slavery on August 28, 1833. The legislation took effect on August 1, 1834 with the introduction of the slavery-like Apprenticeship system. It was used to extract 401/2 hours per week of free labour from Africans under the guise of preparing them for full freedom in six years.

The “apprentices” were supposed to be paid for 131/2 per hours of labour per week after the stipulated hours of unpaid work. The resistance of Africans to the continued exploitation of their labour power and the physical violence of the planters led to Britain’s abandonment of the Apprenticeship regime on August 1, 1838.

What is the meaning of Emancipation Day to the African-Caribbean working-class? Emancipation Day sends a clear message to the labouring classes that capitalism exploited their ancestors’ labour under chattel slavery and is doing the same to theirs under wage slavery. Capitalism denies African workers the right to control how their labour is used and the fruit of collective work (profit) is distributed.

What is the meaning of Emancipation Day to the African-Caribbean working-class? Emancipation Day is a continued reminder of the need for British imperialism to pay reparations for the enslavement of Africans and colonial exploitation. British imperialism paid twenty million pounds (£20,000,000) to the White capitalist enslavers for losing their “property” – enslaved Africans. The emancipated Africans did not get a penny for their unpaid labour and inhumane and brutal treatment during slavery.

What is the meaning of Emancipation Day to the African-Caribbean working-class? Emancipation Day is a mocking memo to the African labouring classes that they live in societies in which they do not exercise political power over economic and social policies that impact their lives.

During slavery, the capitalist planters and British colonialism controlled the legislative assemblies and executive power. In the (in)dependent states of the Caribbean, the bourgeoisie or middle-class elements are in full control of the political system – not the masses.

What is the meaning of Emancipation Day to the African-Caribbean working-class? Emancipation Day is an annual announcement to the labouring classes that anti-African racism is still a source of oppression and exploitation in their lives. In countries across the region, people with high stereotypical African features (darker skin, broader nose and thicker lips) are usually clustered at the bottom of society.

What is the meaning of Emancipation Day to the African-Caribbean working-class? Emancipation Day is a painful reminder that working-class African women are still being clobbered by the (un)holy trinity of patriarchy, capitalism and racism. Slavery was a brutal regime of exploitation for enslaved African women. The descendants of enslaved African women are over-represented in today’s unenviable statistics on the indicators of social and economic well-being.

What is the meaning of Emancipation Day to the African-Caribbean working-class? Emancipation Day is closely tied to the idea that the use of liberatory violence might be an effective antidote to the violence of oppression. Emancipation Day is a timely reminder of the fact that collective resistance is the path to changing exploitative conditions.

The Caribbean regimes that celebrate Emancipation Day as a public holiday or national observance have no problem acknowledging the contribution of Sam Sharpe in Jamaica, Bussa in Barbados or Kofi in Guyana, all leaders of armed rebellions. However, the political elite do not sanction the people’s use of violence to deal with the structural violence of poverty, inadequate housing, sexism, unemployment and underemployment, limited access to education and health care, homophobia and racism.

What is the meaning of Emancipation Day to the African-Caribbean working-class? Emancipation Day is communicating to the masses that they must organize to give birth to the Second Emancipation. This phase of emancipation calls for the elimination of racism, patriarchy, capitalism and other systems of oppression that affect the people’s lives. It also demands the self-organization of the masses.

While it is great for the people to commemorate Emancipation Day, this day must also be used to reflect, critique, assess, deliberate and plan for the next year of struggle. The states across the Caribbean are fine with using distracting bacchanals/festivals such J’ouvert in Antigua and Barbuda, and Anguilla, Bay Fest in The Bahamas, and Emancipation Day and Culturama Day in St. Kitts and Nevis to divert the people’s attention away from collective political resistance. Toronto’s Emancipation Day-related Caribana festival is used in a non-political manner by civil society forces.

However, it is the responsibility of the revolutionary organizers to use Emancipation Day to strengthen the class consciousness, feminist commitments and anti-racist opposition of the labouring classes. If the organizers are working directly with the people, their day-t-o-day organizing work would be a reflection of the Second Emancipation’s programme of action. August 1, 1838 or Emancipation Day tells us that humanity’s quest for freedom cannot be smothered by oppression.

Should you fear receiving the needle from a stranger?  Yes.  Should you fear receiving it from a person you know all too well as a historical abuser?  Even more so.  Empires do it, states do it, and even local agencies do it.  Let’s all, as it were, vaccinate for all in this perverted paraphrasing of the Cole Porter song, the assumption that the medical facility cures, and the giver and administrator knows all.

The motivation here in Puerto Rico, benighted by its US territorial status, has become more acute given the issue of the Zika virus, the latest pandemic thrust that has made health authorities nervous, and populations frantic.  Having spread from Brazil, Latin America is bracing for a surge in infections, courtesy of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

On August 1, it was reported that some 5,500 confirmed infections existed in the territory, though such “actual numbers are far greater”.[1]  Up to 50 pregnant women a day may be contracting the virus, though even that number is sketchy.

But the local populace distrusts the material coming out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), thinking such figures an embellishment of authority.  A lingering battle between federal and local health officials over how to cover the problem in the 78 municipalities has also put pay to any systematic response.

Given that the CDC, while sermonising about the high figures of Zika contractions, has bungled on such matters as approving the use of the insecticide naled, suspicions are entirely understandable.

Used to kill insects, primarily adult mosquitoes, naled has the following description on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment fact sheet: “Naled interferes with cholinesterase, a compound in the insect’s body that directs nerve cell activity. This causes the insect’s nervous system to be overstimulated, resulting in respiratory paralysis (inability to breathe) and death.”[2]

The department’s note after this grim description is meant to be reassuring, being registered by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Agriculture.  (It is, however, banned in the European Union, an inconvenience best left unmentioned.)

Only small amounts need be used in diluted quantities, while over 90 percent breaks down within 30 hours.  That said, it had to be “applied properly at very small concentrations” to prevent health problems to humans.  Less emphasis is placed on the fact that naled has other environmental effects, such as killing freshwater fish, birds and bees.

The other glitch in the whole business is that the use of naled was a dismal failure in 1987 when it was deployed to fight a dengue outbreak.  This all had a ring of familiarity to it, given that the United States had made Puerto Rico its laboratory in the testing of Agent Orange prior to its malicious deployment in Vietnam.

In the sceptical observation of Dr. Iván González Cancel of the Puerto Rican College of Physicians and Surgeons, a possible plot was afoot.  “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but I think this is an experiment with the CDC using Puerto Rico as a laboratory.”

The CDC, evidently lacking a memory in that regard, has done little to assuage residents.  It even began surreptitiously importing naled last month, a point that infuriated Gov. Alejandro García Padilla.  The CDC’s own officials even went so far as to suggest that “there is no guarantee it will work this time.”[3]  This could literally be a futile spraying in the wind.

Local protests have taken place, with participants fully dressed in gas masks and sporting bee puppets.  Federal officials have received a tongue lashing from local radio personalities for the nasty symptoms of colonialism (New York Times, Jul 31).

And Puerto Rico has seen much of it, very much a victim of colonial powers over half a millennium. Its status is inextricably tied, in dire fashion, to the “Territorial Clause” (Art IV, section 3) of the US Constitution, which would permit Congress, argues Linda Backiel, to “sell or trade Puerto Rico to whomever it wanted, without ever looking south to see what Puerto Ricans thought about it.”[4]

As was often the case with US efforts to buy, bully and maim their newly won territories into submission, the most accurate observers were the military members themselves.  US commanding officer General Guy V. Henry would say with piercing clarity, notably on the subject of small pox vaccination in the territory after the Spanish American War:

“Hardly had the last representatives of Spanish misrule turned their back upon the island before the American military administration… set on foot, as an act of beneficence to the newly subordinated people vaccination of the entire population.”

For old time’s sake, Washington has made it clear that it will seize control of the Puerto Rican economy, facilitated by an established fiscal control board.  This fact attests, not so much to Puerto Rican profligacy as colonial misrule.

Such legacies run deep, and the sting of colonialism, undue experimentation and bully boy exploitation will mean that any spray programs initiated will be blamed on other motivations. It also feeds other theories that the Zika virus, with its carriers, is all a grand stage show.

As former health secretary advising Governor Padilla, Dr. Johnny Rullán, surmised after attempting, in vain, to persuade incredulous audiences about the value of any naled-led spray campaigns, “Any microcephaly cases that occur now will be blamed on the spray.”

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

Notes

On Friday, July 29th, Reuters quoted Turkey’s Prime Minister as responding to the US government’s admission that key CIA assets in Turkey are now in Turkish prisons and being charged with participating in the coup attempt: Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim echoed [President] Erdogan’s feisty tone: ‘This is a confession’.

This was said by Yildirim in response to:

“The director of US national intelligence, James Clapper, said on Thursday the purges were harming the fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by sweeping away Turkish officers who had worked closely with the United States. The head of US Central Command, General Joseph Votel, said he believed some of the military figures whom the United States had worked with were in jail.”

The Reuters report also noted that, “Yildirim also said Turkey would shut down an air base near Ankara which served as a hub for the coup plotters as well as all military barracks used by them”. It failed to note that this air base is America’s Incirlik Air Base, but later in the story did note that, “Turkey hosts US troops and warplanes at Incirlik Air Base, from which the United States flies sorties against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria”. The connection between that and “an air base near Ankara which served as a hub for the coup plotters as well as all military barracks used by them” wasn’t made, but the implications of this connection for the US-Turkey-Saudi-Qatari-UAE-Kuwaiti effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are significant: That US-Saudi-led invasion of Syria will now have to end. Not only will the Western alliance’s pathway of access of jihadists into Syria now be terminated, but also US control of this NATO air base will end – unless the Turkish Prime Minister’s statement of Turkish government policy becomes reversed. The only person who could reverse it is President Tayyip Erdogan – the man whom the coup had especially targeted to capture and perhaps kill.

Turkey has been a vital ally of the US-Saudi-Qatari-Kuwaiti operation to replace the secular pro-Russian Bashar al-Assad in Syria, by a jihadist Sunni anti-Russian leader who will allow pipelines to be constructed through Syria into the European Union to replace Russian oil and gas there by Saudi oil and Qatari gas. Almost all of the tens of thousands of jihadists fighting in Syria have entered Syria through Turkey. Furthermore, the vital supply-lines of US and other Western weapons and medical supplies to these jihadists, have also been entering through Turkey.

Consequently, if the US and its Saudi, Qatari, UAE, and Kuwaiti, allies, were to lose Turkey as being an ally in this operation, then the entire Western effort to remove Assad would fail, because all polling that has been done in Syria, even by Western pollsters, shows that Assad’s public support there is well above 50%, and that no possible competitor against him in any free and fair election would come anywhere close to that percentage. (Indeed, polls show that overwhelming margins of the Syrian people loathe the jihadists – and loathe the US for backing them.) For this reason, too, UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon has condemned the US government’s demand that Assad be removed from power and essentially replaced before any democratic process in Syria can be established. America’s demand for a dictatorship to be imposed that’s to America’s liking, as a prerequisite for ‘democracy’ to become established there, has been repeatedly rejected by the UN’s Secretary General.

On 25 February 2016, RFK Jr. bannered “Syria: Another Pipeline War”, and he documented, sometimes from Kennedy family archives, that the US CIA has been trying since 1949 to overthrow the secular Syrian government and replace it with a sectarian Sunni one, which would allow the West’s fundamentalist-Sunni allies to replace Soviet, subsequently Russian, oil and gas, by oil and gas from those fundamentalist-Sunni US allies, from which the big Western oil companies would then be taking a cut of the profits.

As I headlined on 10 November 2015, “Uprising against Assad was Engineered in Washington”, and I reported that ever since Barack Obama first entered the White House on 20 January 2009, he secretly harbored the hope that he would be able to oust Assad. This was before the ‘Arab Spring’ even started. I later headlined “Obama’s Invasion Plan of Syria Was Drawn Up by Kim Roosevelt in 1957”, but I didn’t know then that that plan, which was drawn up by the same CIA operative who had organized the replacement of democracy by dictatorship in Iran in 1954, wasn’t the first such CIA effort in Syria – that the first was actually in 1949.

So, it seems that the failure of Obama’s coup attempt in Turkey will make impossible, for him, his aspiration to be the US President who delivers Saudi oil and Qatari gas to the EU through Syria. If at first you don’t succeed, try try again, says an old adage. Under Obama, they did try again. And, yet again, it has (apparently) failed.

There is set to occur on August 9th in St. Petersburg a private meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Investigative reporter, Tom Fawthrop has just returned from the site of the Don Sahong – a hydrodam being constructed in the middle of an eco-paradise of wetlands in Southern Laos where over 200 fish species have been recorded.

The Four Thousands Islands (Sipangdon) in southern Laos, has long beguiled explorers tourists and locals with its vast number of islets, spectacular waterfalls and 26 major islands. Over a stretch of 50 kms the mighty Mekong River splits into seven major braided channels. This pristine area of precious wetlands screamed out for international protection as provided for under the Ramsar Convention, a protection that has been embraced by Cambodia just two kilometres away across the border. But the Lao authoritarian state opted for a hydropower dam, rather than Ramsar protection for endangered dolphins, the abundant fisheries and one of the region’s most cherished waterscapes.

Malaysian real estate company Mega-First MFCB has selected the worst possible site for the dam which has blocked the only channel (out of the seven channels) that is deep enough and wide enough for large fish to migrate, a channel that has provided an all year round effective fish passage around the rapids, rocks and waterfalls over the millennia.

The Don Sahong dam construction launched in January 2016 has already stopped the water flow along the Hou Sahong channel (see the video) disrupting fish navigation and depriving hundreds of fishing families of their livelihood.

Earth-moving machinery, trucks and several thousand Chinese workers from construction giant Sino-hydro, which signed the contract with Mega-First Malaysia, have occupied Saddam Island and built a bridge to the mainland.

The acting director of the Cambodia’s Inland Fisheries Institute, Chheng Pen told the Ecologist “The fish are trapped in dry season. It became a killing zone for two months. The migratory fish could not move upstream deeper into Lao because the water was too shallow.”

 A small colony of Irrawaddy Dolphins and many villagers have suffered a periodic noise barrage from the din of dynamite blasting for several months. Dolphins are ultra-sensitive to sound. The excavation is scaring the landscape and shatters the normal serenity of this unique ecosphere of rock formations, flooded forests and waterways.

On the opposite bank (a 15-minute ride by boat) lies Cambodia. Preah Rumkel is an eco-tourism site on the Cambodian side that attracts many visitors who come to watch the dolphins. Chhith Sam Ath, programme director of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Cambodia says: “Cambodian people have a deep respect for dolphins and want to see dolphins and fisheries protected.”

The Importance of the Mekong Fisheries

Sipangdon fisheries has been 4,000-tonnes-a-year business with 70% consumed by Lao people. Based on first-sale prices and the Mekong River Commission’s (MRC’s) recently released figures the total wild-capture fish catch in the Mekong in 2015 was 2.3million tonnes and is worth about $11 billion.

http://www.mrcmekong.org/news-and-events/newsletters/catch-and-culture-vol-21-no-3

Chhith Sam Ath, says: “The Don Sahong Dam is an ecological time bomb that threatens the food security of millions and a population of critically endangered Mekong Irrawaddy dolphins. The dam will have disastrous impacts on the entire river ecosystem all the way to the Delta in Vietnam.”

The Mega-First Corporation claim they have come up with an engineering solution to divert fish away from the Sahong channel to Hou Xang Phuek and Hou Saddam – two much smaller channels that have been artificially deepened.

However, Dr So Nam, from the MRC fisheries unit, reports that MRC technical experts have concluded “Hou Saddam and the Hou Xang Phuek channels cannot compensate for fish losses from Sahong and there will also be an impact on the Khone Falls.”

Has the Mekong River Omission Failed to Protect the Mekong Ecosystem?

The 1995 Mekong Agreement that created the MRC (The Mekong River Commission) was based on the four-member states Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. All decisions were to be made by consensus, hence Mekong dam projects are not subject to any veto and the MRC secretariat is really only an advisory body.

Increasingly the Mekong has become an arena of unilateral ‘water grabbing’ for the sole purpose of hydro-dam construction by China and Lao, with scant regard for good governance in water sharing or for the protection of the rich biodiversity of the longest river in SE Asia.

The six dams built on the Upper Mekong by China were built without any consultation (Beijing has never joined the MRC). The MRC has a detailed consultation process, but it failed to curb the zealous drive of the developers and the determination of the Lao Government to ride roughshod over all the objections and protests over the two dams launched on the Lower Mekong.

The Xayaburi Dam was launched in 2012 and this year the Don Sahong Dam. Construction started and in both cases building commenced before the MRC consultation process had been completed.

The new MRC chief Pham Tuan Phan explained, “The MRC is not a regulatory body for the management of water-related resources. Nor can it approve or disapprove any development projects such as hydropower development.”

The Lao regime steamed ahead against of a tide of opposition from Cambodia, Vietnam, civilians and riverside communities that was expressed during the six months MRC-run consultation process known as the PNCPA [MRC public consultation process Procedures for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement.)

MRC leaders have passively watched the ongoing erosion of the Mekong River’s unique biodiversity with the apparent justification “we have no regulatory powers” to stop the rush to build dams. Many critics say this is an all too glib excuse for not accepting a greater responsibility as an advisory body, with considerable scope for advocacy based on their own research.

Dr Philip Hirsch the director of the Mekong Research Centre (University of Sydney) told the Ecologist “The MRC’s fisheries programme has produced reports that advised against proceeding with Don Sahong (dam). Yet the MRC leadership has not used these scientific reports to make a proactive recommendation against the dam. The Secretariat and its CEO have played an overly cautious game in which fear of offending governments, has taken precedence over its duty of care for the river.”

Cambodian fisheries expert Chheng Phen is depressed by the looming prospect of more dams and shrinking fish stocks. If the cascade of nine dams on the Lao side of the Mekong goes ahead, which the HDI Delta Study projects a 55% loss of fisheries if 11 dams go ahead. “I am very disappointed in the failure of the MRC consultation process. They have failed to protect fisheries, I feel very sorry for Cambodian people who rely on fish.”

 The MRC has a stock response to such criticism. “We understand certain stakeholders have different expectations about the role of the MRC that go beyond our mandate under the 1995 Mekong Agreement. Unfortunately, it’s very challenging to balance everyone’s interests and impossible to satisfy all parties.”

But the MRC mandate does in fact clearly refer to protection of the environment. There is nothing in the 1995 Agreement that prohibits the CEO and the secretariat from expressing stronger concerns about the destruction of the Mekong, dam by dam.

The fact that a clear majority of Mekong citizens have clearly rejected the two Lao dams as documented by the MRC consultation feedback from riparian stakeholders in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, could be used as mandate for the MRC to raise concerns about reckless dam development much more stridently. The CEO can readily cite article 3 (mandate for environmental concern) and article 7 of the Mekong Agreement (which specifics that where harm is done to the river calls for a suspension of projects can be made) www.internationalrivers.org/blogs/263/changing-tides-for-a-common-future-the-mrc-and-hydro-diplomacy

Has the MRC forgotten the landmark SEA Report (the Strategic Environmental Assessment Report) that concluded that the only way to protect the Mekong was to declare a moratorium on all dam-building for 10 Years?

They commissioned this independent study on the environmental impacts of the 11 scheduled dams on the mainstream Mekong but has never endorsed it. The recommendation to suspend all dams clashed with the pro-business tilt of “sustainable hydro-power” and the political agenda of the Lao PDR to utilise its part of the mainstream Mekong for maximum profit by selling electricity to Thailand, regardless of the environmental cost to the Mekong itself.

Dr Hirsch points out that the SEA “expressly warned against using the Mekong mainstream as an experimental site for untested mitigation approaches”. Vietnam has endorsed the report but the Lao team threatened to “walk out” if it was ever brought up again by the secretariat. A former CEO capitulated to this threat. And the dams go on being built.

Destroying the Mekong Dam by Dam

Two more dams on the mainstream Mekong are currently being readied for construction. Altogether a total of nine dams are being planned by the Lao Ministry of Energy.

During this year’s drought when the Mekong river hit its lowest point for 100 years, downstream countries could only get some trickle of relief, if China turned on the tap and released water from its six dams. And nobody needed to ask who is the new overlord and master of the once mighty Mekong?

China’s geo-political power has been greatly enhanced by its cascade of dams, and its control over water resources. It has even set up its own Lancang-Mekong committee to deal with Mekong affairs posing a challenge to an already weak MRC suffering major budget cuts. 

 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-03/15/c_135190799.htm

But climate change scientists warn this is the worst of times to build new dams, when the vital glaciers of Tibet – the common source of many great rivers including the Mekong – are melting. Water flow is diminishing year on year. And by the time more dams in Laos come online, the water flow maybe insufficient to drive the turbines which means, in effect, the Mekong River’s rich biodiversity may well be needlessly sacrificed to build ineffective dams that can no longer deliver the promised supply of electricity.

If future dams become unviable, there is no technology in the world that can recover the lost biodiversity and reverse the damage done to the Mekong. Machinery can be restored but the fragile ecosystems and nature can never be resurrected.

Vietnamese scientists are increasingly aware of this developmental madness. Wetlands scientist Nguyen Huu Thien, a participant in the SEA environmental report on dam impacts toldme: “If all the Mekong dams go ahead, then Vietnam will cease to be a rice exporter, and the delta denied sediment flow will no longer be able to support 18 million population. Social unrest, migration and other problems should not only concern Hanoi but all the Asian governments.”

The failure of the MRC should motivate other international agencies, not only Asian. The collapse of the Mekong ecosystem has global implications and several UN agencies UNDP, FAO and WFP that regularly buy Mekong rice for humanitarian missions would be directly affected by this impending disaster.

At a recent conference in the Delta capital of Can Tho, Dr Tran Dinh Thien director of Vietnam’s Institute of Economics declared: “We can only save the Mekong by shedding the narrow pond mentality of making profit from the river in the name of development” adding “there must be a Mekong River Protection Fund to protect the flow and a global movement to protect the river as an ecological and cultural asset of the world”

https://youtu.be/TPXRVe35h7c

Tom Fawthrop has previously reported on dams, ecology, human rights, rebellions and military coups in the South East Asia for Al Jazeera TV, The Economist, the Guardian and The Ecologist. He is also a documentary filmmaker and has directed two films about dams on the Mekong and the Salween (Eureka films).

In capitalism, the state’s primary role is to secure the interests of private capital. The institutions of globalised capitalism – from the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO right down to the compliant bureaucracies of national states or supranational unions – facilitate private wealth accumulation that results in the forms of structural inequalities and violence (unemployment, poverty, population displacement, bad food, poor health, environmental destruction, etc) that have become ‘accepted’ as necessary (for ‘growth’) and taken for granted within mainstream media and political narratives.

When referring to Western countries, those narratives like to use the euphemism ‘austerity’ for deregulation, privatisation and gross inequalities and hardship, while hiding being the mantra ‘there is no alternative’. When referring to India, they use the euphemism ‘assisting development’ for corporate imperialism, while hiding behind the term ‘investing in’.

Each year, in August, India commemorates the anniversary of independence from Britain. In the 1990s, however, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture. In return for up to £90 billion in loans, India was instructed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies and run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.

According to the World Bank’s lending report, India has easily been the largest recipient of its loans in the history of the institution, and these conditions form part of the broader World Bank-backed development plan for India that involves the mass displacement of people in order to restructure India for the benefit of powerful corporations.

When a creditor demands changes are made to an economy in this way – changes that will ultimately radically alter the social fabric of a country – it leads many to question just how much ‘independence’ remains.

In June, the National Alliance of People’s Movements stated that the real impacts of this “dangerous financial institution” – the World Bank – works only to increase the profitability of its “shareholders” and further the cause of powerful capital.

Hostage to neoliberal capitalism

Hundreds of thousands of farmers in India have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops and economic liberalisation. Facilitated by the WTO and the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, there is a deliberate strategy to make agriculture financially non-viable for India’s small farms, to get most farmers out of farming and to impose the World Bank sanctioned model of agriculture. The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial (GM) agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns.

If you want to see the kinds of eventual impact this could have, look no further than what has happened in Mexico on the back of NAFTA, in terms of rising food insecurity, bad health and poisoned agriculture (not to mention a devastated economy with former workers driven into the arms of drug cartels to make a living).

The opening up of India to foreign capital is supported by rhetoric about increasing agricultural efficiency, creating jobs and boosting GDP growth. This jargon is used to try to convince the public that an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few – via, for instance, deregulations, privatisations and lower labour and environmental protection standards – is for their own benefit because it is good for ‘growth’.

We can already see the outcome of these policies across the world: the increasing power of unaccountable financial institutions, record profits and massive increases in wealth for elite interests and, for the rest, disempowerment, mass surveillance, austerity, job losses, the erosion of rights, weak unions, cuts to public services, environmental degradation, spiraling national debt and opaque, corrupt trade deals, such as TTIP, CETA, RCEP (affecting India) and TPA.

PM Modi recently stated that India is now one of the most business friendly countries in the world. The code for being ‘business friendly’ translates into a willingness by the government to facilitate much of the above, while reducing taxes and tariffs and allowing the acquisition of public assets via privatisation as well as instituting policy frameworks that work to the advantage of foreign corporations.

When the World Bank rates countries on their level of ‘Ease of Doing Business’, it means national states facilitating policies that force working people to take part in a race to the bottom based on free market fundamentalism. The more ‘compliant’ national governments make their populations and regulations, the more ‘business friendly’ a country is.

In the realm of agriculture, the World Bank’s ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’ entails opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and patented seeds.

Rather than improve poor management, inept bureaucracies and deficiencies in food logistics, the mantra is to let ‘the market’ intervene: a euphemism for letting powerful corporations take control; the very transnational corporations that receive massive taxpayer subsidies, manipulate markets, write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights thereby indicating that the ‘free’ market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clichés about letting the market decide.

According to the neoliberal ideologues, foreign investment is good for jobs and good for business. But just how many actually get created is another matter, as is the amount of jobs destroyed in the first place to pave the way for the entry of foreign corporations.

For example, Cargill sets up a food or seed processing plant that employs a few hundred people, but what about the agricultural jobs that were deliberately eradicated in the first place or the village-level processors who were cynically put out of business so Cargill could gain a financially lucrative foothold?

The process resembles what Michel Chossudovsky notes in his 1997 book about the ‘structural adjustment’ of African countries. In ‘The Globalization of Poverty’, he says that economies are:

“opened up through the concurrent displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor, state enterprises are privatised or closed down, independent agricultural producers are impoverished.” (p.16)

If people are inclined to think farmers would be better off as foreign firms enter the supply chain, we need only look at the plight of farmers in India who were tied into contracts with Pepsico. Farmers were pushed into debt, reliance on one company and were paid a pittance

India is looking to US corporations to ‘develop’ its food and agriculture sector with foreign investment in retail, cold storage and various other infrastructure. Looking at what this could mean for India, food policy analyst Devinder Sharma describes how the industrialised US system of food and agriculture relies on massive taxpayer subsidies and has destroyed many farmers’ livelihoods.

The fact that US agriculture now employs a tiny fraction of the population serves as a stark reminder for what is in store for Indian farmers. Sharma notes that agribusiness companies (whose business model in the US is based on overproduction and taxpayer subsidies) rake in huge profits, while depressed farmer incomes, poverty and higher retail prices become the norm.

The long-term plan is for an overwhelmingly urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Wal-Mart-type supermarkets that offer a largely monoculture diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security (Bhaskar Save’s analysis of what the Green Revolution did for India makes for interesting reading).

The alternative would be to protect indigenous agriculture from rigged global trade and trade deals and corrupt markets and to implement a shift to sustainable, localised agriculture which grows a diverse range of crops and offers a healthy diet to the public (alongside appropriate price and/or income support and infrastructure).

Instead, we see the push for bogus ‘solutions’ like GMOs and an adherence to neoliberal ideology that ultimately privileges profit and control of the food supply by powerful private interests, which have no concern whatsoever for the health of the public: for example, see this new report on how the food lobby destroys heath in the EU and this on how taxes in the US ultimately promote obesity and disease by supporting the health damaging practices of the food industry.

Is this what Indians want to see happen in India to their food and health?

Unfortunately, the process is already well on track as ‘Western diseases’ take hold in the country’s urban centres (see ‘India: Obesity, Malnutrition and the Globalisation of Bad Food’).

Devinder Sharma has highlighted where Indian policy makers’ priorities lie:

“Agriculture has been systematically killed over the last few decades… 60 percent of the population lives in the villages or in the rural areas and is involved in agriculture, and less than two percent of the annual budget goes to agriculture… When you are not investing in agriculture… You are not wanting it to perform…”

Support given to agriculture is portrayed as a drain on the economy and is reduced and farmers suffer yet it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year. On the other hand, corporate-industrial India has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs, despite the hand outs and tax exemptions given to it [see this and this].

The number of jobs created in India between 2005 and 2010 was 2.7 million (the years of high GDP growth). According to International Business Times, 15 million enter the workforce every year. And data released by the Labour Bureau shows that in 2015, jobless ‘growth’ had finally arrived in India.

So where are the jobs going to come from to cater for hundreds of millions of agricultural workers who are to be displaced from the land or those whose livelihoods will be destroyed as transnational corporations move in and seek to capitalise small-scale village-level industries that currently employ tens of millions?

Monsanto in India

Thanks to its political influence, Monsanto already dominates the cotton industry in India with its GMOs. It is increasingly shaping agri-policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the ‘contemporary East India Company‘, and regulatory bodies are now severely compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest where decision-making over GMOs are concerned.

However, Monsanto’s enterprise in India is corrupt. Vandana Shiva has described how on a global level the company has succeeded in imposing the false idea of ‘manufacturing’ and ‘inventing’ seeds in order to slap patents on them (in India’s case, ‘royalties’). Monsanto’s collection of royalties as ‘trait value’ or as a ‘fee for technology traits’ is an intellectual property rights category that does not exist in any legal framework. It was concocted by Monsanto lawyers to work outside of the laws of the land and is thus illegal. Shiva also notes that the introduction of GMOs without approvals, and thus Monsanto’s original entry into India, was a violation and subversion of India’s biosafety regulations.

In India, the Biological Diversity Act 2002 grants explicit rights to farmers over ownership of plant varieties. Even if a breeder holds a right (patent) to a variety, they cannot prevent the farmer from producing or saving the seed. It acknowledges that a breeder does not create a seed from thin air. Seeds are not ‘invented’ but have been developed by farmers over many generations. However, this does not fit the corporate business model of companies like Monsanto, where farmers are to be consumers who purchase corporate owned and controlled products (seeds and chemicals).

While Monsanto works on or around that particular obstacle, it is also hard at work with its propaganda campaign to convince us all that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. Its claims are always hidden behind a flimsy and cynical veil of humanitarian intent (helping the poor and hungry), which is easily torn away to expose the self-interest that lies beneath. The world (including India) does not need GM to feed itself. GM and these humanitarian sentiments are little more than a Trojan horse aimed at securing greater control of food and agriculture.

Various high-level official reports (listed in this piece) in India have advised against adopting GM food crops, and, in addition to numerous other bodies and sources (many of which are documented here), the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report stated that smallholder, traditional farming (not GMOs) can deliver food security in low-income countries through sustainable agri-ecological systems. The roots of hunger and food poverty are political are related to an increasingly globalised and exploitative system of industrialised agriculture and food production. The companies behind the GM project are part of that system: they fuel it and profit from it. Patents, royalties and GMOs ensure more profit and greater control over food and agriculture.

Agriculture and the projection of US power

In his book ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation‘, William F Engdahl describes how the oil-rich Rockefeller family set out to control and profit from global agriculture via the Green Revolution. Along with other players (eg Cargill), Rockefeller interests set out to destroy family farms in the US and the indigenous agriculture and food security of other countries. This hegemonic strategy was actively supported by their proxies in the US government and facilitated globally through ‘free’ trade agreements, the IMF, World Bank and WTO.

GMOs represent the ultimate stranglehold of US interests over global food via ‘terminator’ seed technology, seed patenting and intellectual property rights.

The political backing for GMOs by the US State Department, the strategic position of the US GM biotech sector in international trade agreements (from TTIP to the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture) and at the WTO and the push to get GMOs into India does not bode well.

Given the history of the US in using agriculture as a tool to leverage global influence, in India on 15 August, we would do well to remember that patriotic sentiments have always been used by the powerful to help disguise the true nature of power.

On Tuesday, US and British media published new claims of Syrian government use of chemical weapons in the rebel-held northern city of Saraqeb, in Idlib province. The story, put forward by the antigovernment Idlib Civil Defense or “White Helmets” group, alleges that 30 civilians experienced breathing troubles after chlorine gas canisters were dropped from a helicopter in a residential part of the city. No deaths were reported.

The claim was first reported on the Idlib Civil Defence Facebook page. The group posted a YouTube video that purported to show area residents wearing oxygen masks.

Saraqeb is located in the same region that saw a Russian helicopter downed a day earlier, killing all five servicemen on board. Moscow strongly denied that any chemical weapon attack had taken place. In a statement, Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov said that the Idlib Civil Defense claims were fabricated.

Meanwhile, Syrian government claims that rebel groups had killed five people in a chemical weapon attack on the government-held portion of Aleppo were virtually ignored by Western media. This deadly attack was verified by Aleppo’s health director, Mohamad Hazouri. “Five civilians were killed and eight others suffered suffocation due to a terrorist attack with shells containing poisonous gas,” he told the state-run news agency, SANA.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported yesterday that rebel shelling of government-held parts of Aleppo had killed 30 civilians since Monday, including women and children.

These facts were not reported in a lengthy Guardian article dedicated to the alleged government attack in Saraqeb. Other major US and British news sources, including BBC, Reuters, Fox and CBS, also focused their coverage on allegations of a government attack.

US State Department spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that Washington is “not in a position to confirm” the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. Nonetheless, he threateningly added that if the allegations were confirmed, it would be “extremely serious.”

Allegations and insinuations that the Syrian regime is waging chemical warfare should be taken as a warning. In August and September, 2013, the Obama administration seized on claims of a Syrian government sarin gas attack—later proven by journalist Seymour Hersh and others to be fabricated—to bring the US to the brink of yet another full-scale war in the Middle East. Obama ultimately decided against direct US involvement after the British parliament scuttled UK entry, and amid mass popular disaffection with war and sharp divisions within the military-intelligence apparatus.

Obama’s last-minute pullback from direct US involvement has been the source of sharp recriminations in American ruling circles. Proponents of an attack, including the current Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, viewed the decision as a humiliating retreat that would embolden Russia, which maintains its only foreign naval base in Syria.

The new claims come amid a rapid erosion in the position of the US-backed Islamist rebels in Syria. Government forces, backed by Russian air power, have made consistent gains over the past year, culminating in the current siege on the rebel-held city of Aleppo. Western portions of the city are already in government hands.

In an attempt to break the siege, rebel forces led by the Al Nusra Front—recently rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of Syria)—have launched a last-ditch offensive, attacking Aleppo on its southwestern outskirts.

The outcome remains unclear, though a Russian military spokesman, Sergey Rudskoy, claimed on Monday that the Islamist forces had been badly beaten. On Tuesday, rebel forces claimed that they had expanded their attack and that they had gained ground in certain Aleppo neighborhoods. This was disputed by Rami Abdel Rahman of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who stated that government forces had retaken five of the eight positions the rebels had gained on Sunday.

Iranian forces and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah are also reportedly involved in the fighting against Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

“[T]his is really their last stand,” Middle East analyst Firas Maksad told Al Jazeera of the Islamist rebels. “If they lose Aleppo, which they’ve held a major portion of now for about four-odd years, they might as well have lost all the battle for Syria.”

The Islamists’ position is further threatened by the rapprochement between the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and both Russia and Syria. Erdogan narrowly survived a US-backed coup on July 15, after he signaled his intention of normalizing relations with Damascus and Moscow.

Erdogan, who was reportedly alerted to the coup by Russian intelligence, has responded to US machinations by taking further steps toward cooperation with Russia. He will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on August 9 to discuss greater economic cooperation, including a proposed natural gas pipeline, dubbed Turkstream, that would bypass the US client state in Ukraine.

Turkey has been the main staging base for both Islamist fighters and weapons supplied by the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to fuel the fighting in Syria.

With its five-year-old war for regime change in Syria failing, the Obama administration is prepared to do almost anything to prevent defeat in a war that has already killed over 400,000, made upwards of 10 million into refugees, and destroyed what had been, prior to 2011, one of the most advanced Arab societies.

The US and its proxy fighters are clinging to sections of Aleppo, a city that had served as the major supply route for weapons distributed to Islamists across Syria—and where 250,000 people are believed to still reside. The US has sought to scuttle Russian proposals to evacuate the city through humanitarian corridors. US ambassador to the United Nations called the proposal “chilling,” and Secretary of State John Kerry has claimed that it is a “ruse.” For its part, Russia claims that Islamist militias are preventing residents from evacuating.

The US has opposed every serious effort at a negotiated settlement to the war, insisting that there can be no peace discussions without the removal of Bashar al-Assad. That is, Washington insists that the bloodletting must continue until regime change is achieved and Syria is reduced to a vassal state of the US.

November 1995 – New York Times Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N. Reports UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 30—

As many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf war because of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who surveyed the country for the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The study also found steeply rising malnutrition among the young, suggesting that more children will be at risk in the coming years. The results of the survey will appear on Friday in The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Association.

That was over 20 years ago. Today, including sanctions and the Bush/Blair attack of Iraq landmark researchproves that the US-led ‘war on terror’ has killed much higher numbers than previously reported. Counting in Afghanistan and the sanctions prior to the so-called War-on-Terror the horrifying number of fatalities is concluded at somewhere over six million.

In this environment, drone attacks and state sponsored murder such as is extrajudicial executions carried out by the USA and more recently the UK have followed on from truly appalling evidence of coalition abuse of torture and abuse of prisoners, much of it so bad the public were excluded from viewing an orgy of depravity via heavily redacted documents. Read The Torture Report or the first pages of the Senate Intelligence Committee REPORT for some truly shocking facts or indeed “US Stalling Release Of Thousands Of Torture Photos Worse Than Abu Ghraib” by MintPress.

Around the world, in secret detention centres, the United States assisted by Britain, was, and still is, brutalising Muslim detainees in the name of the war on terror. These reports graphically demonstrate nothing but another bloody stain on what was supposed to be a model to the world of justice. You would think all citizens of America and Britain would have insisted that individuals involved in such acts of wanton barbarity would have been brought to a court of justice in shackles.

Far from it. Soon your kids will be able to play the video game. Yes, that’s right, a game to do exactly what these reports have gone to such lengths to condemn.

A team of video-game designers have been working for the last two years on perfecting a more visceral way of experiencing horrifying modern day torture techniques as adopted in US prisons such as Abu Ghraib. The idea is to bring players “uncomfortably close to the abuses that took place in one particularly infamous prison camp.”

The Atlantic reports that

“In the game, which is still in development, players assume the role of an American service member stationed at Camp Bucca, a detention center that was located near the port city of Umm Qasr in southeast Iraq, at an undetermined time during the Iraq War. Throughout the game, players interact with Iraqi prisoners, who are clothed in the camp’s trademark yellow jumpsuits and occasionally have black hoods pulled over their heads. The player must interrogate the prisoners, choosing between methods like waterboarding or electrocution to extract information. If an interrogation goes too far, the questioner can kill the prisoner.”

The developers relied upon actual allegations of the abuse suffered by prisoners in archived news articles and a leaked Red Cross report to assist in the design of the game.

Accordingly, the developers say they chose to have the player grapple with life-like assignments to experience the role of American prison camps in Iraq that ends with the radicalisation of the next generation of fighters and terrorists in the form of ISIS from where so much death and destruction has emanated.

The Atlantic interviewed the game designers and finally reported that the team were “Worried for their safety if their names were associated with what’s likely to be a controversial video game, the designers, a group of five graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University and New York University, asked to remain anonymous in this story.”

The fact that the US and UK discarded the United Nations Convention against Torture to prove its case for going to war in the first place should not allow for the sanitising of such horrific and brutal abuses via a video game to be somehow enjoyed, especially as torture victims continue in their struggle against a justice system that denies them exactly that – justice.

The Atlantic seem to have trivialised the story by turning torture into an interesting read with contributors and experts enthusiastic about realism and ensuring a good game player experience with their advice. The reality is that torture is no better than rape, paedophilia, murder or any other heinous crime that only the sick minded, psychotic and insane would somehow find gratifying.

Instead of simply profiting from the inflicted life-long pain of others, these students need help.

In a previous article (published on  July 29) I focussed on Hilary Clinton’s involvement in the destruction of Libya in 2011. 

Happy Fifth Anniversary, Hillary Clinton, You’ve Destroyed Libya… We Await Your Next War By Edward Curtin, July 29, 2016

In that piece I wrote that Libya had disappeared from mainstream media coverage, but that it will reappear if US/NATO forces decide to bomb again.  I suggested that such bombing may be fast approaching.

That bombing has arrived quicker than I thought; it commenced on Monday, August 1, and some MSM have reported it, although not prominently.  The prime minister of Libya’s western-backed government based in Tripoli, Fayez Serraj, said that he requested that the US assist his troops by bombing Islamic State forces in Sirte, Libya’s main petrochemical port, where the Tripoli government’s soldiers are engaged in a ground offensive to retake Sirte from ISIL.

As usual, the double-talk about the role of American ground forces’ involvement continues.  Washington and Tripoli, while admitting US special operation forces are operating in Libya, deny that they are involved in this bombing campaign or in any combat operations in the country.

Being “invited in” and conducting “limited operations,” are phrases straight from Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.  Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said the air strikes “would continue as long as [the Libyan government] is requesting them” and they don’t have “an end point at this particular moment in time.”  Cook also said that the legal justification for this bombing, which will no doubt be sustained, is ‘Authorization for Use of Military Force,’ approved by Congress on September 18, 2001 as a result of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

That document reads as follows:

(A) In General – That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Thus the legal justification for the bombing of ISIL in Libya is that they were involved in 9/11, even though ISIL didn’t exist then and is an arch-enemy of al Qaeda.

This is the same justification Barack Obama used for war against Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia.

In 2011 the justification for bombing Libya was to protect Libyans from allegedly being slaughtered by Muammar Gaddafi.  That was pure propaganda.

While self-contradictory in the extreme, such apologia are part of a calculated vicious circle whereupon terrorists are created and supported, then attacked, producing more terrorists, who are bombed, resulting in more chaos, the breakdown of central governments, new terrorists, more chaos, ad infinitum.  Call it the “circle game.”

The result is that any country in the region that opposes U.S.policies is destroyed (Iran being the current exception), while those who support US policies are rewarded, no matter how repressive they are.

A Libyan example of the circle game is the current U.S. bombing of ISIL forces in Sirte in support of the Western-backed government in western Libya, while “secretly” supporting General Khalifa Haftar, an enemy of the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, by also bombing his political enemies in eastern Libya, including those who have been fighting ISIL.

The journalist Karim el Barput put it this way to Al Jazeera,

“The government in Tripoli is launching an offensive in Sirte against ISIL, and so we have the bizarre situation where Western governments are diplomatically and publically supporting the government in Tripoli, but then their militaries are supporting Haftar in the east.”

Haftar, a CIA asset and proxy of Egyptian dictator General Abdel el-Sisi, lived in the U.S. for nearly twenty years, residing just outside Washington DC in Falls Church and Vienna, Virginia, in cozy proximity to his patron in Langley.  He became a U.S. citizen, and is now a powerful warlord back in his home country.  It is another familiar story.

After five years off the radar of the MSM, we can expect the US/NATO war against Libya to intensify and receive more attention.  It will be a tale we’ve heard before: bombings and suicide attacks, assassinations, “collateral damage,” militias here, militias there, etc.

All this will be justified in the name of protecting Americans from those who allegedly attacked us on 9/11. It is a shell game.

Cui Bono?

America’s debauched political system is rigged to assure one of its two neocon-infested duopoly wings wins every time.

The choice each “election” is between the lesser of two abominable evils no sensible person should support.

This year, Hillary is by far the most dangerous of two unacceptable options. Subservience to Wall Street and escalated war on humanity is certain if she succeeds Obama.

Who can support such madness! Is Trump any better? At the margins at most. Whoever heard of a billionaire tycoon populist serving everyone equitably, concerned about anything besides himself and special interests he represents.

Americans face the same dilemma each “election.” Their only sensible option is vote independent or stay home.

The Green Party has a presumptive dream ticket – to be confirmed at its August 4 – 7 national convention at the University of Houston.

Its theme: “Houston, We Have A Solution, Vote Green 2016.” Presumptive presidential nominee Jill Stein, a longtime practicing physician, wants to use her professional skills to heal a sick nation.

A Harvard College, Harvard Medical School graduate (1973 and 1979 respectively), she retired from medical practice, teaching and research to enter politics.

Twice she ran for Massachusetts governor, once for its House of Representatives, the position of Secretary of the Commonwealth, was a town of Lexington representative, then headed the Green Party ticket in 2012.

Campaigning she said “(y)ou can’t just be a non-Trump and deserve one’s vote.” The best way to stop “neofascism” is by stopping Hillary’s “neoliberalism.”

Putting another Clinton in the White House will fan the flames of this right wing extremism. We have known that for a long time, ever since Nazi Germany.

In the tradition of FDR’s New Deal, Jill advocates a “Green New Deal,” progressivism entirely absent in America today, unattainable under Republican or Democrat leadership.

An earlier article explained her agenda, policies serving everyone equitably and fairly, putting people needs and peace above profits, militarism and endless wars on humanity.

In announcing her candidacy for president in June 2015, she said “I have a people-powered campaign. I am running with the only national party that does not take corporate funding.”

She’s beholden solely to a progressive agenda putting people needs, concerns and fundamental rights first.

African American human rights activist Ajamu Baraka is her presumptive vice-presidential running mate. On August 1, Jill tweeted the announcement, saying she’s “(h)onored” to have him join her ticket.

He calls himself “root(ed) (in) the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.”

He’s a former UN Human Rights founding executive director, associated with other human rights groups, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, an academic and writer.

He currently serves on the boards of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Africa Action, Latin American Caribbean Community Center, and the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights.

In 2001, he was chosen “abolishionist of the year” by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. He’s an anti-imperialist, calling US foreign policy “disastrous.”

In 2013, he said inviting Obama to participate in the 50th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights March on Washington “should be taken as an insult by everyone who has struggled and continues to struggle for human rights, peace and social justice.”

Stein/Baraka in 2016: A ticket deserving universal support, an antidote to out-of-control militarism, endless wars, neoliberal harshness and tyranny over fundamental freedoms – an easy choice in November.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

 

According to the Associated Press, Palestine’s National Olympic Committee declared that the Israeli authorities have taken hold of the Palestinian 2016 Olympic team’s uniforms and equipment, forcing the Palestinian team to travel to Brazil without its gear.

The Secretary-General of the Palestinian NOC Munther Masalmeh stated that the gear has not cleared customs yet. On the other hand, Daily Herald reports that “Israel Tax Authority, which oversees customs, says it has heard nothing of the matter but would be happy to assist if approached by the Palestinians.”

Therefore, Palestine’s athletes are headed for the Rio 2016 Olympics without uniforms or equipment. The Olympians include two swimmers, two runners, a judoka and a dressage rider.

Mayada Sayyad has qualified to the 2016 Olympic marathon, while Christian Zimmerman booked his spot at the dressage riding event. Meanwhile, swimmers Mary Al-Atrash and Ahmed Gebrel were granted Universality Tickets to the 50-meter freestyle and 200-meter freestyle races at Rio 2016. Additionally, Simon Yaacoub was invited to compete in the extra-lightweight category at the judo tournament and Mohammed Abu Khoussa will run in the 100-meter sprints.

Israeli authorities have made a habit of intruding on Palestinian sports. The Palestinian NOC’s official website actually includes a report titled “Israeli Occupation Transgressions against Palestinian Sports,” which illustrates a series of unexplained detentions of the national team, athletes and sports personnel.

Palestine has previously asked the football governing body FIFA to ban Israel for hindering the movement of Palestinian athletes based on alleged security reasons. These efforts were unsuccessful.

This decision comes ten years after Milosevic was assassinated in the ICTY prison. He was poisoned.

The ICTY is complicit  in his death.

The distinguished judges are not only responsible for the death of Slobodan Milosevic, they are responsible for “legalizing” an illegal invasion of a sovereign country as well as covering up the most heinous crimes committed by US-NATO against the former Republic of Yugoslavia.   

At the outset of Milosevic’s defense, the ICTY denied him the fundamental right of self defense and appointed two bogus British amicus curiae. The latter were appointed without the consent of the defendant.

Milosevic was also denied medical treatment while in detention.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research Editor, August 3, 2016 

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has determined that the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was not responsible for war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

In a stunning ruling, the trial chamber that convicted former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic of war crimes and sentenced him to 40 years in prison, unanimously concluded that Slobodan Milosevic was not part of a “joint criminal enterprise” to victimize Muslims and Croats during the Bosnian war.

The March 24th Karadzic judgment states that “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.

The Karadzic trial chamber found 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.”

The judges noted that Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic both favored the preservation of Yugoslavia and that Milosevic was initially supportive, but that their views diverged over time. The judgment states 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.”

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 says that “Slobodan Milosevic was attempting to take a more cautious approach”

 

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’.”

The judgment notes that in meetings with Serb and Bosnian Serb officials “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.”

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.”

The judgment states 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.”

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.”

The Tribunal’s determination that Slobodan Milosevic was not part of a joint criminal enterprise, and that on the contrary he “condemned ethnic cleansing” is of tremendous significance because he got blamed for all of the bloodshed in Bosnia, and harsh economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia as a result. Wrongfully accusing Milosevic ranks right up there with invading Iraq only to find that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction after all.

Slobodan Milosevic was vilified by the entire western press corps and virtually every politician in every NATO country. They called him “the Butcher of the Balkans.” They compared him to Hitler and accused him of genocide. They demonized him and made him out to be a bloodthirsty monster, and they used that false image to justify not only economic sanctions against Serbia, but also the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia and the Kosovo war.

Slobodan Milosevic had to spend the last five years of his life in prison defending himself and Serbia from bogus war crimes allegations over a war that they now admit he was trying to stop. The most serious charges that Milosevic faced, including the charge of genocide, were all in relation to Bosnia. Now, ten years after his death, ICTY admits that he wasn’t guilty after all.

The ICTY did nothing to publicize the fact that they had cleared Milosevic of involvement in the joint criminal enterprise. They quietly buried that finding 1,303 pages into the 2,590 page Karadzic verdict knowing full well that most people would probably never bother to read it.

The presiding judge in the Radovan Karadzic trial, O-Gon Kwon of South Korea, was also one of the judges in the Slobodan Milosevic trial. Milosevic’s exoneration by the Karadzic trial chamber may be an indication of how the Milosevic chamber would have eventually ruled, at least on the Bosnia charges, if Milosevic had lived to see the conclusion of his own trial.

It’s worth recalling that Slobodan Milosevic died under a very suspicious set of circumstances. He died of a heart attack just two weeks after the Tribunal denied his request to undergo heart surgery in Russia. He was found dead in his cell less than 72 hours after his attorney delivered a letter to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which he said that he feared he was being poisoned.

The Tribunal’s official report on the inquiry into his death confirmed that, “Rifampicin had been found in a blood sample taken from Mr. Milosevic on 12 January 2006.” And that “Mr. Milosevic was not told of the results until 3 March 2006 because of the difficult legal position in which Dr. Falke (the Tribunal’s chief medical officer) found himself by virtue of the Dutch legal provisions concerning medical confidentiality.”

The presence of Rifamicin (a non-prescribed drug) in Milosevic’s blood would have counteracted the high blood pressure medication he was taking and increased his risk of the heart attack that ultimately did kill him. The Tribunal’s admission that they knew about the Rifampicin for months, but didn’t tell Milosevic the results of his own blood test until just days before his death because of “Dutch legal provisions concerning medical confidentiality” is an incredibly lame and disingenuous excuse. There is no provision of Dutch law that prohibits a doctor from telling the patient the results of his own blood test — that would be idiotic. On the contrary, concealing such information from the patient could be seen as malpractice.

This all gives rise to well-founded suspicion that powerful geopolitical interests would rather Milosevic die before the end of his trial than see him acquitted and have their vicious lies exposed. U.S. State Department cables leaked to Wikileaks confirm that The Tribunal did discuss Milosevic’s medical condition and his medical records with U.S. Embassy personnel in The Hague without his consent.They clearly didn’t care about medical confidentiality laws when they were blabbing about his medical records to the American embassy.

It’s an unsatisfying outcome that Milosevic has been quietly vindicated for the most serious crimes that he was accused of some ten years after his death. At a minimum financial compensation should now be paid to his widow and his children, and reparations should be paid to Serbia by the western governments who sought to punish Serbia in order to hold Milosevic “accountable” for crimes that their own Tribunal now admits he wasn’t responsible for, and was in fact trying to stop.

Bernie Sanders supporters are flocking to Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party presidential candidate, with donations to her campaign exploding nearly 1000% after Bernie endorsed Hillary Clinton. Stein salutes Sanders for the progressive populist movement he began and says it is up to her to carry the baton. Can she do it? Critics say her radical policies will not hold up to scrutiny. But supporters say they are just the medicine the economy needs.

Stein goes even further than Sanders on several key issues, and one of them is her economic platform. She has proposed a “Power to the People Plan” that guarantees basic economic human rights, including access to food, water, housing, and utilities; living-wage jobs for every American who needs to work; an improved “Medicare for All” single-payer public health insurance program; tuition-free public education through university level; and the abolition of student debt. She also supports a basic income guarantee; the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, separating depository banking from speculative investment banking; the breakup of megabanks into smaller banks; federal postal banks to service the unbanked and under-banked; and the formation of publicly-owned banks at the state and local level.

As with Sanders’ economic proposals, her plan has been challenged as unrealistic. Where will Congress find the money?

But Stein argues that the funds can be found. Going beyond Bernie, she calls for large cuts to the bloated military budget, which makes up 55% of federal discretionary spending; and progressive taxation, ensuring that the wealthy pay their fair share. Most controversial, however, is her plan to tap up the Federal Reserve. Pointing to the massive sums the Fed produced out of the blue to bail out Wall Street, she says the same resources used to save the perpetrators of the crisis could be made available to its Main Street victims, beginning with the students robbed of their futures by massive student debt..

It Couldn’t Be Done Until It Was

Is tapping up the Fed realistic? Putting aside for the moment the mechanics of pulling it off, the central bank has indeed revealed that it has virtually limitless resources, as seen in the radical “emergency measures” taken since 2008.

The Fed first surprised Congress when it effectively “bought” AIG, a private insurance company, for $80 billion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remarked, “Many of us were . . . taken aback when the Fed had $80 billion to invest — to put into AIG just out of the blue. All of a sudden we wake up one morning and AIG has received $80 billion from the Fed. So of course we’re saying, Where’s this money come from?”

The response was, “Oh, we have it. And not only that, we have more.”

How much more was revealed in 2011, after an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the 2010 Wall Street reform law prompted the Government Accounting Office to conduct the first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve. It revealed that the Fed had provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the economic crisis. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else,” said Sanders in a press release.

Then there was the shocker of “quantitative easing” (QE), an unconventional monetary policy in which the central bank creates new money electronically to buy financial assets such as Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities (many of them “toxic”) from the banks. Critics said QE couldn’t be done because it would lead to hyperinflation. But it was done, and that dire result has not occurred.

Unfortunately, the economic stimulus that QE was supposed to trigger hasn’t occurred either. QE has failed because the money has gotten no further than the balance sheets of private banks. To stimulate the demand that will jumpstart the economy, new money needs to get into the real economy and the pockets of consumers.

Why QE Hasn’t Worked, and What Would

The goal of QE as currently implemented is to return inflation to target levels by increasing private sector borrowing. But today, as economist Richard Koo explains, individuals and businesses are paying down debt rather than taking out new loans. They are doing this although credit is very cheap, because they need to rectify their debt-ridden balance sheets in order to stay afloat. Koo calls it a “balance sheet recession.”

As the Bank of England recently acknowledged, the vast majority of the money supply is now created by banks when they make loans. Money is created when loans are made, and it is extinguished when they are paid off. When loan repayment exceeds borrowing, the money supply “deflates” or shrinks. New money then needs to be injected to fill the breach. Currently, the only way to get new money into the economy is for someone to borrow it into existence; and since the private sector is not borrowing, the public sector must, just to replace what has been lost in debt repayment. But government borrowing from the private sector means running up interest charges and hitting deficit limits.

The alternative is to do what governments arguably should have been doing all along: issue the money directly to fund their budgets.

Central bankers have largely exhausted their toolkits, prompting some economists to  recommend some form of “helicopter money” – newly-issued money dropped directly into the real economy. Funds acquired from the central bank in exchange for government securities could be used to build infrastructure, issue a national dividend, or purchase and nullify federal debt. Nearly interest-free loans could also be made by the central bank to state and local governments, in the same way they were issued to rescue an insolvent banking system.

Just as the Fed bought federal and mortgage-backed securities with money created on its books, so it could buy student or other consumer debt bundled as “asset-backed securities.” But in order to stimulate economic activity, the central bank would have to announce that the debt would never be collected on. This is similar to the form of “helicopter money” recently suggested by former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to the Japanese, using debt instruments called “non-marketable perpetual bonds with no maturity date” – bonds that can’t be sold or cashed out by the central bank and that bear no interest.

The Bernanke proposal (which he says could also be used by the US Fed in an emergency) involves the government issuing bonds, which it sells to the central bank for dollars generated digitally by the bank. The government then spends the funds directly into the economy, bypassing the banks.

Something similar could be done as a pilot project with student debt, Stein’s favorite target for relief. The US government could pay the Department of Education for the monthly payments coming due for students not in default or for whom payment had been suspended until they found employment. This would free up income in those households to spend on other consumer goods and services, boosting the economy in a form of QE for Main Street.

In QE as done today, the central bank reserves the right to sell the bonds it purchases back into the market, in order to reverse any hyperinflationary effects that may occur in the future. But selling bonds and taking back the cash is not the only way to shrink the money supply. The government could just raise taxes on sectors that are currently under-taxed (tax-dodging corporations and the super-rich) and void out the additional money it collects. Or it could nationalize “systemically important” banks that are insolvent or have failed to satisfy Dodd-Frank “living will” requirements (a category that now includes five of the country’s largest banks), and void out some of the interest collected by these newly-nationalized banks. Insolvent megabanks, rather than being bailed out by the government or “bailed in” by their private creditors and depositors, arguably should be nationalized – not temporarily, but as permanent public utilities. If the taxpayers are assuming the risks and costs, they should be getting the profits.

None of these procedures for reversing inflation would be necessary, however, if the money supply were properly monitored. In our debt-financed system, the economy is chronically short of the money needed to support a dynamic, abundant economy. New money needs to be added to the system, and this can be done without inflating prices. If the money goes into creating goods and services rather than speculative asset bubbles, supply and demand will rise together and prices will remain stable.

Is It in the President’s Toolbox?

Whether Stein as president would have the power to pull any of this off is another question. QE is the province of the central bank, which is technically “independent” from the government. However, the president does appoint the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, Chair and Vice Chair, with the approval of the Senate.

Failing that, the money might be found by following the lead of Abraham Lincoln and the American colonists and issuing it directly through the Treasury. But an issue of US Notes or Greenbacks would also require an act of Congress to change existing law.

If Stein were unable to get either of those federal bodies to act, however, she could resort to a “radical” alternative already authorized in the Constitution: an issue of large-denomination coins. The Constitution gives Congress the power to “coin Money [and] regulate the value thereof,” and Congress has delegated that power to the Treasury Secretary. When minting a trillion dollar platinum coin was suggested as a way around an artificially imposed debt ceiling in January 2013, Philip Diehl, former head of the U.S. Mint and co-author of the platinum coin law, confirmed:

In minting the $1 trillion platinum coin, the Treasury Secretary would be exercising authority which Congress has granted routinely for more than 220 years. The Secretary authority is derived from an Act of Congress (in fact, a GOP Congress) under power expressly granted to Congress in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8).

The power just needs to be exercised, something the president can instruct the Secretary to do by executive order.

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt engaged in a radical monetary reset when he took the dollar off the gold standard domestically. The response was, “We didn’t know you could do that.” Today the Federal Reserve and central banks globally have been engaging in radical monetary policies that have evoked a similar response, and the sky has not fallen as predicted.

As Stein quotes Alice Walker, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

The runaway success of Sanders and Trump has made it clear that the American people want real change from the establishment Democratic/Republican business-as-usual that Hillary represents. But real change is not possible within the straitjacket of a debt-ridden, austerity-based financial scheme controlled by Wall Street oligarchs. Radical economic change requires radical financial change, as Roosevelt demonstrated. To carry the baton of revolution to the finish line requires revolutionary tools, which Stein has shown she has in her toolbox.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. She can be heard biweekly on “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

A 2010 correspondence found in the WikiLeaks Hillary Clinton Email Archive reveals that Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times met secretly with US State Department officials prior to the newspaper’s coverage of WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs. The correspondence was made public by WikiLeaks’ release of emails from a private, unsecured server used by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

In view of the Times’ long record of parroting the official line of the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, the revelation that the US government has become the paper’s unofficial editor comes hardly as a surprise.

The purpose of Gordon’s meeting with officials of the State Department was nothing other than damage control: to warn them of what to expect far enough in advance to adjust their press releases accordingly, while making every assurance that his paper would cherry-pick leaked documents to spin coverage in favor of American foreign policy while burying its most criminal offenses.

The hundreds of thousands of documents detailing war crimes in Iraq—now known as the Iraq War Logs—were obtained by WikiLeaks from whistleblower Chelsea Manning. A private in the US Army at the time of the leaks, Manning has been treated with marked cruelty and brutality at the hands of the US government. She is now serving a sentence of 35 years and may be kept in solitary confinement indefinitely.

The revelation of the correspondence again makes clear the degree to which the “fourth estate” is completely integrated into the capitalist state. Notwithstanding the sheer level of cynicism contained within the brief report, one is given a sense of just how much is the total subservience of the so-called “free press” to Washington’s military-intelligence apparatus. Names such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan (director of the CIA) and Keith Alexander (director of the NSA) may as well be added to the masthead of every major American newspaper.

Gordon, the Chief Military Correspondent for the Times, has a long history of service to US imperialism. He gained notoriety in 2002 after co-writing a story with Judith Miller that put forward the bogus claim that Saddam Hussein was procuring aluminum tubes to further a nonexistent nuclear weapons program. During the first phase of the Iraq War, he was the only journalist embedded with the Allied Command.

For his part, Gordon’s coverage of the WikiLeaks documents over the rest of 2010 was extraordinarily tame, focusing only on details that presented American foreign policy in a favorable light. In one article, he invoked WikiLeaks to accuse the government of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad of funneling weapons to Hezbollah. Others included stories which accused both Iran and Syria of “meddling” in Iraq, accused Ukraine (then under since-ousted President Yanukovych) of illegally selling arms to southern Sudan, and criticized France’s attempt to sell a Mistral ship to Russia.

The email in question held the subject line “WIKILEAKS – OSD/PA MEETING WITH MICHAEL GORDON OF NYT” and was written on October 20, 2010, two days before the official release of the documents to the Internet. The email appears to have been written by a lower-level State Department official and was then forwarded to Clinton by Jake Sullivan, former Deputy Assistant to President Barack Obama, National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, and Deputy Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He is now top foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election campaign.

The content of the original email consisted of a summary report of the meeting with Gordon. He began by informing officials the exact time the first round of stories would be posted online. He then assured officials that the Times was “not the major news player” for WikiLeaks and that the organization was “much more focused on European publications.” In view of the fact that the Times was only one of a few major world publications given exclusive access to the documents before their release to the public, Gordon’s statement can only mean that the paper was committed to covering up the full extent of the criminality exposed within them.

Gordon went on to describe, in detail, the official line the Times’ coverage would take. The report states:

“[Gordon] confirmed the 5-6 themes we’ve been discussing that will be the focus of NYT stories

• More on civilian casualties than has been public so far

• More on detainee abuse than has been public so far

• Iranian involvement in Iraq

• More on contractors than has been public so far – although on this one, he didn’t

seem like there would be any great surprises here

• A small report on the US hikers”

Gordon also informed officials of two stories the State Department evidently had not anticipated at all:

“The ‘surrender to the helicopter’ issue, which is the focus of a story his colleague is working on – and, apparently, the focus of other news stories (he said this a couple of times); Kurdish-Arab tensions, and the US role in deconflicting those tensions. Gordon said that for him, this was the most important topic long-term – but he also said this will be of much less interest to European papers doing stories.”

The email concluded with the following statement: “NYT has adhered to the process followed after their first meeting at the WH (when the Af/Pak documents were released), and has gone to great efforts to redact names, as well as information regarding force protection and intelligence.” This makes clear that not only had representatives of the Times (likely Gordon himself) aided in the cover-up of information deemed potentially harmful to the American ruling class, but that they had been meeting with government officials to discuss matters of the press for some time.

Gordon is by no means the only Times journalist working overtime to downplay the revelations made by WikiLeaks. His colleague, Roger Cohen, penned a hack opinion-piece on WikiLeaks in December 2010 titled “American Diplomacy Revealed – As Good.” Throughout the article, Cohen made the spurious claim that the only revelation WikiLeaks presented was the competency of the military-intelligence apparatus: “They are, to judge from the WikiLeaks dump of a quarter-million of their private or secret cables, thoughtful, well-informed and dedicated servants of the American interest who write clear, declarative English sentences.. . Overall, my longstanding admiration for America’s conscientious diplomats has been redoubled.”

Bill Keller, then the Times’ Executive Editor, argued in favor of prior restraint in an extraordinary series of comments. In November of 2010, he made the infamous Orwellian statement:

“We agree wholeheartedly that transparency is not an absolute good. Freedom of the press includes freedom not to publish, and that is a freedom we exercise with some regularity.”

This statement by Keller was clearly addressed not to the majority of the Times’ readers, but meant to reassure the military-intelligence apparatus that uses the paper as a propaganda conduit.

The secret passing of information by Gordon to the State Department is Keller’s dictum put into practice. Although this is but one piece of evidence, damning as it may be, it must be viewed in light of the contemporary political context. The Times continues to play a crucial role in the political life of the “liberal” American ruling elite that today is seeking to manipulate public opinion into supporting already far advanced preparations for war against Russia and China.

Airstrikes in Libya were authorized by U.S. President Barack Obama as part of an open-ended campaign against the Islamic State group.

The United States have launched an open-ended airstrike campaign in Libya against the Islamic State group in what Washington said was a positive response to calls by the U.N.-backed government in Libya.

The latest campaign comes four years after NATO, led by the U.S., Britain and France, intervened in the country’s Arab Spring-inspired uprising against longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Since then, the country has been mired in chaos, with three different competing governments, a situation that has been exploited by extremists.

“The first airstrikes were carried out at specific locations in Sirte today causing severe losses to enemy ranks,” Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Seraj said on state TV. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the strikes did not have “an end point at this particular moment in time.”

Monday’s airstrikes were the third the U.S. has carried out against the extremist group in Libya. The last acknowledged U.S. airstrikes in Libya were in the western city of Sabratha in February.

The new Libya campaign has been authorized by U.S. President Barack Obama, who previously said the 2011 NATO intervention “didn’t work” and was one of the things he regrets the most about his eight years in office.

The Islamic State group seized the coastal city of Sirte, the hometown of Gaddafi, last year, making it their most important base outside Syria and Iraq.

Libyan forces began an offensive to retake the city in May and fighters of the Islamic State group are now besieged in a few square miles of the center, where they hold strategic sites.

Just months before leaving office, the new intervention in Libya marks the latest front Obama has started in the Middle East as U.S. forces continue airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, while more ground troops have been sent to Iraq and special forces are fighting alongside the Kurdish-Arab coalition in northern Syria known as Syria Democratic Forces.

News of the new intervention had been circulating since early this year. Back in March, journalist and founder of The Intercept website Glenn Greenwald ridiculed the West’s fresh intervention when he titled an article on the issue: “The U.S. Intervention in Libya Was Such a Smashing Success That a Sequel Is Coming.”

“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.”

(J. Edgar Hoover, Elks Magazine, August 1956.)

On 23^rd May Sean Adl-Tabatabai wrote what now surely seems a prophetic article: “Erdogan Is Preparing For Military Coup In Turkey.” 

The writer warned that:

“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be out of control. He is cracking down on opposition, imprisoning opponents and seizing media outlets … the Turkish leader has threatened to dissolve the Constitutional Court.” This at a time when: “ …the security problems have deteriorated amidst a wave of terrorism.”

Moreover:

“The events make the Turkish military emerge on political landscape again after many years of marginalization during ‘Sultan’ Erdogan’s rule. The divisions between the Turkish military and Erdogan have a long history, but today it is amplified by tumultuous events in and outside the country. For instance, the plans to create a buffer zone in Northern Syria and send the Turkish troops to Syria and Iraq are opposed by military brass.” (Emphasis added.)

“The Turkish military has long seen itself as the ‘guardian of Turkish democracy’ of the staunchly secular state, created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish Republic.”

“Related Events”: Preparing a Military Coup Leading up to a  “Failed Coup”? 

On 5^th May, Erdogan had sacked his Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu leading to Murat Yetkin, writing in the daily Hurriyet: “As long as Erdogan is President, it will not be important who the Prime Minister is.”

Davutoglu had seemingly been reluctant to endorse Erdogan’s plan to change Turkey’s constitution, creating a US style Presidential system but without the constitutional safeguards pertaining to the US (inadequate as some may think they are) and other Presidential democracies.

On 24^th May Erdogan appointed close ally and former Transport Minister Binali Yildrim in Davutoglu’s place. Yildrim had also been responsible for government censorship and expanded state surveillance. Crackdowns on thousands of websites led to Cyber-Rights.Org stating that: “the current Turkish law on controlling internet content, through its procedural and substantive deficiencies, is designed to censor and silence political speech.”

Apart from being dogged by claims of questionable financial dealing, Yildrim has also been accused of being a segregationist, his wife reportedly sitting apart at an official dinner. He is also quoted as declining to go to a particular university after he saw students mixing together in the gardens which, he reflected, would lead him down the wrong path.

Two days after Yildrim became Prime Minister the Speaker of the Turkish parliament, Ismail Kahraman, sparked demonstrations when he talked of the new constitution President Erdogan hoped to achieve: “For one thing, the new constitution should not have secularism”, he said, according to the Turkish media.

“It needs to discuss religion … It should not be irreligious, this new constitution, it should be a religious constitution.” 

Erdogan’s AK Party has roots in political Islam thus pushing to replace the existing constitution toward Sharia law. As Speaker, Kahraman is overseeing efforts to draft the new constitutional text. His comments were widely believed to be a testing of the political waters on behalf of the President.

In context, in the most recent (April 2013) comprehensive survey of attitudes to Sharia law in majority Muslim countries, Pew Research Center found a mere 12% of Turks were in favour of making it the country’s official law.

All in all NATO ally Turkey and would be EU Member was sailing in choppy political waters before the coup and the numerous question marks surrounding it.

President Erdogan was vacationing in the breathtakingly picturesque port town of Marmaris on the Mediterranean coast of south west Turkey when he was alerted to the crisis on Friday, 15 July. He escaped just minutes before a gang rushed the hotel to kill him, we are told.

Marmaris, incidentally, is historically no stranger to drama – and there has been plenty of fleeing from there. The region of it’s location was invaded by Alexander the Great in 334 BC, conquered by Mehmed the Conquerer in the mid-fifteenth century and in 1798 Admiral Lord Nelson “and his entire fleet sheltered in the harbor … en route to Egypt to defeat Napoleon’s armada during the Mediterranean campaign.” In 1958 the town was almost entirely destroyed by an actual earthquake, not a political one. (Wikipedia.)

Minutes after Erdogan left the hotel: “Around twenty five soldiers in helicopters descended (on it) shooting … in an apparent attempt to seize him”, according to CNN Turk.

Not finding him there, oddly the helicopter-facilitated soldiers apparently never thought to seek his vehicle on the road to the nearest airport, Dalaman, a one and a half hour’s drive away.

Further, once in the air: ‘A former military officer with knowledge of the events claimed:

“At least two F-16s harassed Erdogan’s plane while it was in the air en route to Istanbul.

“They locked their radars on his plane and on two other F-16s protecting him.

“Why they didn’t fire is a mystery.” ‘ Indeed.

Back in the severely damaged Presidential palace, with Parliament also ravaged and debris strewn and with, already 265 dead and 1,440 injured, President Erdogan was quoted as announcing the attempted coup: “A gift from Allah.”

Arrested immediately were 2,839 army personnel with 2,745 Judges and Prosecutors ordered detained, as the purge the of accused conspirators began.

In under a week 60,000 people had been fired or detained and 2,300 institutions closed on Erdogan’s orders. Latest figures stand at 70,000 including media, health, education and judiciary purged or interned according to the State sponsored Anadolu news agency – which may be the only news outlet standing since: “at least 131 newspapers, television and radio stations, magazines, publishers and news agencies” have been ordered closed this week alone.” (Independent, 31^st July 2016.)

The NATO ally President and would-be European Union Member is clearly not a freedom of the press enthusiast. Reports claim that even prior to the coup attempt – since 2014 – 1,845 journalists, critics and writers have faced accusations of insulting the President – which carries a potential jail sentence.

Of the latest crack down, states Tyler Durden (2) in Zero Hedge, staggeringly:

“In his first ‘emergency powers’ decree … Erdogan authorised the closure of 1,043 private schools, 1,229 charities and foundations, 19 trade unions, 15 universities and 35 hospitals … The government also announced it would seize the properties of all these schools, universities and private institutions.”

A “nice little earner” as the saying goes, in fact surely one of the largest real estate grabs in history. Interestingly the seizures took place just two days after Standard and Poor’s Global Ratings: “ … cut Turkey’s credit rating deeper into junk territory, saying (the) failed coup has undermined the country’s economy and investment environment.”

“The rating now stands at double-B, with a negative outlook, which indicates additional downgrades could follow.” (Wall Street Journal, 20^th July.)

Nothing like some prime real estate to fall back on in hard times.

The legality of the real estate grab? Perhaps, as human rights, the law itself is on hold, since Judges have become an endangered species.

Further purge figures are chilling. According to The Independent, by 21^st July 2016:

·      9,000 police officers were sacked

·      6,000 military personnel arrested

·      15,200 teachers and education staff sacked

·      6,500 education ministry staff suspended

·      1,577 university Deans ordered to resign

·      8,777 Interior Ministry workers dismissed

·      1,500 Finance Ministry staff fired

Two hundred and fifty staff, including administrative and management have been fired from Turkish Airlines, Europe’s fourth largest carrier

Landline operator Turk Telekom, thirty percent State-owned, has fired employees in “cooperation with the security forces” with some managers reportedly summoned by prosecutors.

Additionally, 50,000 passports have been cancelled.

Amnesty International has already issued an alarming Report (3) claiming:

“ … credible reports that Turkish police in Ankara and Istanbul are holding detainees in stress positions for up to 48 hours, denying them food, water and medical treatment … In the worst cases some have been subjected to severe beatings and torture, including rape.

“… The grim details that we have documented are just a snapshot of the abuses that might be happening in places of detention,” said Amnesty International’s Europe director John Dalhuisen.

Further:

(There are) “multiple reports of detainees being held in unofficial locations such as sports centres and a stable. Some detainees, including at least three Judges, were held in the corridors of courthouses.”

Moreover:

“ … 650-800 male soldiers were being held in the Ankara police headquarters sports hall. At least 300 of the detainees showed signs of having been beaten. Some detainees had visible bruises, cuts, or broken bones. Around 40 were so badly injured they could not walk. Two were unable to stand. One woman who was also detained in a separate facility there had bruising on her face and torso.”

“Lawyers described how people were brought before prosecutors for interrogation with their shirts covered in blood.” The full Report on a NATO ally and EU aspirant Member is a shocking read – as is the near silence of NATO Member nations and those of the EU. The West is remarkably selective over those deemed despots who “torture and kill their own people.”

In another alleged atrocity:

“The top counter-terrorism official responsible for Turkey’s campaign against Islamic State (went to) a ‘meeting’ at the Presidential palace in Ankara. He was later found with his hands tied behind his back, shot in the neck, according to a senior official.” (4)

Ironically, Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe and is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. It is also signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

Mr Erdogan is also reported as seeking to introduce constitutional changes bringing the Turkish intelligence agency and military Chief of Staff directly under his control. Just four days after the alleged coup he talked of bringing back the death penalty for a horrifying 8,777 people who have not even been charged or tried yet.

“Why should I keep them and feed them in prisons, for years to come?” he is quoted as saying. (5)

It has to be asked, how did the President and his loyalists, taken by surprise by an attempted coup, organize the logistics of the arresting, rounding up, firing of 70,000 people in such a short space of time?

List names, addresses, places of work, organize teams to apprehend them, write letters or visit them to fire them. An operation of such magnitude would surely take weeks, if not months to organize. 

Discussing the all with a canny, politically savvy Turkish businessman, his view: “No, he didn’t plan it but he got everything he wanted from it – again – so who did to put him in to such a driving seat …?

Incidentally, the dictionary definition of “cui bono” is: “a principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain.” (Merriam Webster.)

Notes  

1.     http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3694546/At-height-Turkish-coup-bid-rebel-jets-Erdogans-plane-sights.html 

2.     http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-23/first-emergency-decree-erdogan-shuts-down-thousands-hospitals-schools-charities 

3.     https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/07/turkey-independent-monitors-must-be-allowed-to-access-detainees-amid-torture-allegations/ 

4.     http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/07/the-after-coup-purges-in-turkey-continue-the-erdogan-administration-is-firing-any-public-servant-who-might-just-might-not.html#more 

5.     http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-pm-warns-against-feeling-revenge-after-coup-496420178

 

 

California Civil Law Suit against George W. Bush Et Al: DOJ Blocks Submission of Chilcot Report

By Inder Comar, August 02 2016

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has just released its report,  “Extreme Measures: Abused  Children Detained As National Security Threats.”

From my reading of the report, Israel and the US are the two worst abusers.  Boko Haram is a distant third.

Which country is the worst abuser, Israel or the US?  Taking into account that the US is responsible for the violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria that has resulted in torture and detention, if we include these victims in the American total, then the US is the Number One torturer of children.  As it is unlikely that Israel could get away with abuse of Palestinian children without Washington’s support, we can add Israel’s abuses to Washington’s total.

Guantanamo Bay is a great distance away from Washington’s wars against Muslims in Afghanistan, North Africa and the Middle East.  Yet even at Guantanamo, where the only violence is the violence that the US military inflicts on detainees, the US government tortured children, according to the Human Rights Watch report.

What kind of military tortures children?  The only answer that I can come up with is a military that has no self-respect.

What kind of US government would pay two US psychologists $81 million to help the CIA devise torture techniques? 

Only a lawless government with no respect for US law and international law.

Think back to the torture memos written by US Department of Justice (sic) officials John  C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee. These memos justifying the US government’s torture of detainees despite the prohibition of torture by both US statutory law and international law to which the US is a signatory have been denounced by civil libertarians as the work of legal incompetents or criminals or both.  Yet, John Yoo is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, and for his service to the White House torturers Jay Bybee was appointed a US federal judge to the second highest court.  If Hitlery becomes president, Bybee and Yoo could end up on the Supreme Court.

The positions held by Yoo and Bybee tell the world all that is needed to know that the United States is a lawless entity and that this lawlessness is accepted by America’s legal, political, and educational institutions and by the American people.

What self-respecting parent would send a son or daughter to study law at a university that hosts a “legal scholar” who discounts law in behalf of torture?

If you were a judge on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and a torturer was appointed to the court, would you welcome the criminal or resign in protest against a government that has no respect for its own laws?

How many NSA officials have resigned over illegal spying on the American people?

How many FBI officials have resigned over false flag frame-ups of “terrorists?”

When the Democratic National Committee can hire Americans for $50 per night to fill up the empty seats at the Democratic convention, what does that tell you about the price of American integrity?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-28/did-dnc-hire-actors-below-minimum-wage-work-convention

Do you remember the 775 Guantanamo detainees described by the US Secretary of Defense and the Vice President of the US as the most dangerous, most violent men on earth?  We will never know how many of these detainees were tortured in an effort to elicit a confession in support of the government’s unfounded claims, but nine of them died in custody.

We do know that despite torture and the assurances from the highest officials that the detainees were dangerous and violent, as of July 12, 2016, 90 percent of the detainees have been released without charges.  Only 76 remain, and apparently there is no evidence that can be used to charge them.  Apparently, they are being held only in order to save the US government from being 100 percent wrong. Being 90 percent wrong is close enough for government work.    See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Guantanamo_Bay_detainees   

and  http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees

Do you remember those photos of the torture of the Abu Ghraib prisoners?  As horrifying as the photos are, they are the mild part.  Others photos were not released.  The photos reveal more than torture.  The photos reveal the extreme pleasure that the US soldiers got from torturing the prisoners.  They were having the time of their life abusing other humans!

Some feminists have excused the female soldier, one of the several grunts punished while the higher officials responsible went scot free, with the rationale that she was only getting back at the male gender for the abuses she, as a female, had suffered from men.

The Abu Ghraib photos required silencing.  Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, appointed Major General Antonio Taguba to compile a report based on an investigation of the torture.  All Gen. Taguba had to do was to explain away the torture and be promoted from 2-star to 3-star general.

If that is what Sanchez intended, he chose the wrong man.  Gen. Taguba filed an honest report, finding:

That between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force (372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police Battalion, 800th MP Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison (BCCF). The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements (ANNEX 26) and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence…In addition to the aforementioned crimes, there were also abuses committed by members of the 325th MI Battalion, 205th MI Brigade, and Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taguba_Report

Instead of becoming a 3-star general with lucrative consulting opportunities and board memberships at the end of his military career, Taguba was sent into retirement.

See: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/25/the-generals-report

Seymour Hersh’s report on “The General’s Report” shows a US military whose leaders, both military and civilian, are devoid of integrity.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/25/the-generals-report

If we contrast the fate of Gen. Taguba, who took the US Military Code seriously, with the mindlessness of Fox “News” and its incoherent insouciant Medal of Honor winner, Dakota Meyer, who is displayed on need, we can see how integrity was lost to ignorance and propaganda.

Mischaracterizing Democratic convention delegates protests, “no more war,” as disrespect for the military, Dakota Meyer declares that “America is the beacon of hope.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/medal-honor-recipient-reacts-disrespect-140945017.html

That is not the way the world sees it.  In every world poll, the United States is ranked overwhelmingly as the greatest threat to peace,  with Israel as the runner-up. The “threats”, such as North Korea and Iran,  designated by the warmongers in Washington hardly register as threats in world polls.

Long ago Americans were divided into “liberals” and “conservatives” and set against one another, while those who did the dividing took away our civil liberties and prosperity. Both the Fox “News” imbecile and the Medal of Honor winner, who think of themselves as “conservatives,” believe that it is liberals who are disrespectful of the military and that their hatred of the military is why “liberals” are opposed to war.  Of course, informed Americans are aware that it was conservatives who did not want to get into wars.  It was conservatives, not liberals who opposed US involvement in WWI and WWII. Liberals were hot to trot.

It has escaped Fox “News” and the Medal of Honor winner that Democrat Hitlery is all in favor of war and wants more of it.  The people who don’t want war are the ones that understand that WWIII will be nuclear and bring an end to life on earth.  The people denigrated by the Fox “News” imbecile and the insouciant Medal of Honor winner are the people who are trying to save not only the United States but all life on earth from the stupid, reckless, arrogant war crowd.

To whom is America “the beacon of hope”?  Is America the beacon of hope to the millions of peoples who have been killed, maimed, and displaced by America’s wars during the past 15 years?  Is America the beacon of hope to the Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Ghetto that Israel uses for a shooting gallery?  Is America the beacon of hope to the Latin American peoples whose representative governments Washington routinely overthrows?  Is America the beacon of hope to the Russians and Chinese who are being encircled with military bases and demonized with hostile words and misrepresented with lies?  Is America the beacon of hope for the middle class whose jobs and future were offshored?  Is America the beacon of hope to the poor whose public assistance was wiped out by Clinton’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996?

America is a beacon of hope only to the One Percent who loot and plunder both our economic future and our civil liberties.

People can be intelligent without being brave, and they can be brave without being intelligent.  Our soldiers fit in the later category.  They do the work for the One Percent and are paid for their physical and emotional injuries with medals.

In the past 15 years “the beacon of hope” has destroyed in whole or part seven countries–Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria.  The “beacon of hope” has overthrown representative governments in Honduras, Ukraine, Egypt, Argentina, and Brazil, installing in their place right-wing crooks, and is working hard to overthrow the elected governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.  The extraordinary range of death and suffering for which “the beacon of hope” is responsible is unprecedented.

As if this is not enough, “the beacon of hope” is now recklessly and irresponsibly threatening two nuclear powers–Russia and China–with military encirclement justified with the most blatant and transparent lies.  We hear the propaganda 24/7.  Even the “liberal” NPR specializes in telling lies about Russia.  Is it hopeful to convince two nuclear powers that the US is preparing to attack?

It is Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, who says he doesn’t want conflict with Russia and sees little point to NATO.  Yet, the “liberal” media doesn’t miss an opportunity to demonize Trump, just as the presstitutes demonize the peace-seeker, Vladimir Putin.

The presstitutes are screaming:  “Give us Hitlery and more war!”

Feminists want Hitlery for war on the glass ceiling.

The neoconservatives want Hitlery in order for them to achieve their ideology of world hegemony.

The military/security complex and Wall Street want Hitlery for their profits.

Why is Donald Trump, the candidate who wants to avoid dangerous conflict with nuclear powers, being demonized, instead of Hillary?

More talk of war, repression and national oppression amid worsening social conditions in the United States and globally

Now that both the Republican National Convention (RNC) and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) are completed in Cleveland and Philadelphia, the political character of these capitalist parties in the United States are clear for all conscious people to see. There was nothing new that developed among the leading forces within either of the organizations that ostensibly represent the American electorate.

In Philadelphia at the RNC, the forces of billionaire real estate magnate Donald Trump dominated the gathering with speeches calling for the U.S. to return to its past glory. What glory one may ask?

Are they speaking of going back to the 1940s and 1950s when racial segregation was still legal in the country and any remote notions of equality and self-determination for African Americans would be considered communistic warranting an investigation by the Congress for subversion?

Or do they seek an even further retreat into the early 20^th century when lynch law was considered the norm where African Americans could be accused of crossing the racial and social boundaries designated by the ruling class in both the North and the South and could face deadly consequences?

Also the questions of imperialism and militarism were only addressed from the perspective of the effectiveness of an agenda for global domination that is articulated by the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), State Department spokespersons operating in the best interests of the defense industry and international finance capital. Of course notions over whether the wars of the last quarter century in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Colombia, etc. were necessary interventions never reached the podium. The ideas advanced revolve around the “toughness” of the capitalist-imperialist state in its willingness to exert U.S. influence around the world.

Trump’s positions which seem to advocate a protectionist economic and foreign policy are highly questionable and clearly demagogic. Modern day capitalism is tantamount to globalization or as most socialist say, imperialistic. How can one man such as Trump reverse the course of modern-day imperialism without the backing of the social class in which he represents?

V. I. Lenin clearly pointed out a century ago in 1916 during World War I in his seminal work entitled “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”, that “Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general.

But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly.

Free competition is the basic feature of capitalism, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large-scale industry and forcing out small industry, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale industry, and carrying concentrations of production and capital to the point where out of it has grown and is growing monopoly: cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of millions. At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system.”

Consequently, Trump, like his Democratic Party counterparts, who we will take on in the next section, are attempting to sell the electorate on false dreams of an America where jobs will be brought back at decent wages therefore eliminating the need for immigrant labor. Xenophobia, racism and this imaginary “protectionism” is the future of U.S. capitalism. Such an ideological position defies logic and the historical development of capitalism over the last century.

The Democrats and Their Illusionary “Diversity” Under Capitalism and National Oppression

In Philadelphia at the DNC this same general line advocated by the Trump wing of the Republican Party also prevailed. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats seek to once again frighten African Americans, Latinos, Middle Easterners, Asians, Women, the LGBTQ communities, people living with disabilities, environmentalists and even peace advocates that their brand of capitalist-imperialism is safer and more productive.

These two political wings of the ruling class rely on different constituencies to carry out the same objectives. The Democrats must get the votes of the nationally oppressed, the working class and their trade unions, the majority of women and other exploited sectors of the proletariat and racially excluded groups. Hillary Clinton cannot win without these important constituencies who numerically now make up the majority of the population.

Yet despite the long list of African Americans and other nationally oppressed groups which served as delegates to the DNC and spoke from the rostrum, they have no real authority within the Democratic Party. The trick here is to take the most oppressed and exploited and get them to vote and work against their own interests. This same strategy is shared by the Republican as well utilizing racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ bigotry and militarism. White working and middle class people are encouraged to vote for Trump because he will supposedly expel the Islamist threat both domestically and internationally and bring good paying employment back to the U.S.

After the passage of a series of Civil Rights bills during 1957-1968, the national oppression of African Americans went from a classical colonial model to one of neo-colonialism. In other words allow selected politicians and entertainers serve as a buffer between the African American masses and the ruling class without any fundamental transformation of the capitalist ownership and relations of production.

Kwame Nkrumah, the former President of the first Republic of Ghana (image right), a leading Pan-Africanist and Socialist who served as the chief strategist of the African Revolution from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, wrote in the conclusion of his groundbreaking study entitled “Neo-Colonialism: The Last State of Imperialism” that

“When Africa becomes economically free and politically united, the monopolists will come face to face with their own working class in their own countries, and a new struggle will arise within which the liquidation and collapse of imperialism will be complete.

As this book has attempted to show, in the same way as the internal crisis of capitalism within the developed world arose through the uncontrolled action of national capital, so a greater crisis is being provoked today by similar uncontrolled action of international capitalism in the developing parts of the world. Before the problem can be solved it must at least be understood. It cannot be resolved merely by pretending that neo-colonialism does not exist. It must be realized that the methods at present employed to solve the problem of world poverty are not likely to yield any result other than to extend the crisis.”

Therefore, the imperialist-militarism and jingoism which flowed from the podium during the final night of the DNC represents the actual program of this purported “liberal wing” of the capitalist class. Nonetheless, there is no solution to be found in the endless wars of destabilization and conquest led by Washington and Wall Street.

The only solution lies in the formation of a mass party of the working class and oppressed which speaks directly for and in the interests of the people. What we can expect from the Democrats and the Republicans is much of the same propaganda and broken promises. The future resides with the efforts of the exploited and the oppressed when they are organized, mobilized and deployed in their own name.

It is important that those committed to peace and social justice take cognizance of this historic civil law suit directed against a former president of the United States including senior officials of his administration.

 An Iraqi mother against alleged war criminal George W. Bush, et al.

This is a civil suit. It seeks compensation. While it  does not contemplate a criminal indictment, it nonetheless constitutes a far-reaching legal initiative by Californian human rights lawyer Inder Comar (image right). 

The political ramifications are far-reaching.  

Forget the ICC and the Hague tribunals, which serve the interests of US-NATO. Within the US legal system, e.g in California, the State of New York, Nevada, etc. a civil complaint against GWB et al, Barack Obama and/or a war criminal of your choice (e.g. Hillary Clinton) can be launched at the State and District level. 

We call upon Global Research readers to spread the word.

We are also launching a donation drive in support of the Saleh vs. Bush legal suit.  To donate

click here and tag a one time donation to “legal action against Bush” 

Global Research will transfer your donation to cover the legal expenses of Sundus Shaker Saleh

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research Editor, August 2, 2016

*      *     *

In papers filed Monday, August 1, 2016, the Department of Justice opposed the submission of the Chilcot Report to the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit in an ongoing litigation related to the legality of the Iraq War.

With the Rio Summer Olympics starting on August 5, there is huge controversy about Russian participation.  On the basis of a report by Canadian lawyer Richard Mclaren (the “Mclaren Report”), the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has recommended the banning of all Russian athletes from the Rio Games. Before his report was even issued, Mclaren influenced the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) in their decision to ban all Russian athletes from track and field events, including those who never failed any doping tests, in Russia or elsewhere.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been under media pressure to ban all Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics.  The NY Times has carried many reports and editorials.  The Daily Mail in London went so far as to publish a front page story falsely claiming the “entire Russian team banned from Olympics” two days before the IOC decision to the contrary.

Ultimately the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided against banning all Russian athletes across all Olympic sports. They decided that that each sporting federation should decide the issue on their own. At the same time the IOC imposed special conditions on Russian athletes which prevent them from competing if they have ever tested positive, even if their suspension has already been served, unlike the rules for other Olympic competitors. In the wake of this decision, there have been aggressive attacks on the IOC and its president,for “failing” to impose collective punishment on the entire Russian team.

How Did we Get Here?

The sequence of significant events is as follows:

In February 2014, the Winter Olympics were held in Sochi Russia.  The same month, 900 miles to the northwest, a bloody coup unfolded in Kiev Ukraine . This led to Crimea seceding and re-uniting with Russia which led to Western sanctions and rising international tension.

In December 2014 , German TV network “ARD” showed a documentary “How Russia Makes its Winners” by Hajo Seppelt. The documentary includes interviews with Vitaliy and Yuliya Stepanov.

In January 2015, the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) established an“Independent Commission” to look into the ARD documentary allegations.

In November 2015, the WADA Independent Commission released a 300+ page report claiming widespread use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in Russian athletics. The report recommended the prohibition of numerous athletes, coaches and trainers plus de-certification of Moscow Laboratory and firing of its director, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov.

In December 2015, Russian authorities suspended or fired numerous officials and asked to see the evidence which WADA’s accusations and assertions were based on. Dr. Rodchenkov emigrated to USA.

In early May 2016,  the American TV program “Sixty Minutes” broadcast a story about Russian doping primarily based on testimony from Vitaliy and Yuliya Stepanov, now living in the USA.  The NY Times published articles about Russian doping test manipulations based on Dr. Rodchenkov.

On19 May 2016, WADA appointed Richard Mclaren to investigate the media allegations.

On 16 July 2016, just three weeks before the start of the Rio Olympics, WADA published the Mclaren report.

Problems with the Mclaren Report

The Mclaren Report has strongly influenced media reports, public opinion and official decisions regarding Russian participation in the Olympics. Following are significant problems with the investigation and report :

* The report relies primarily on the testimony of the chief culprit, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov.   The Independent Commission found Rodchenkov to be “at the heart of the positive drug test cover-up”.

While it’s possible that Rodchenkov’s is truthful, it’s also possible he is lying or misleading to redirect responsibility away from himself.

* The report asserts that Rodchenkov is credible and truthful with little demonstrated proof.  The November 2015 Independent Commission report concluded that Dr. Rodchenkov was not credible. The fact that Rodchenkov was aware of techniques for manipulating test results is not evidence of State control; he was the main culprit. The former director of Moscow Laboratory has admitted his involvement in urine sample swapping, design of a steroid cocktail not easily traced, and more. He was instrumental in helping some athletes cheat the system. He is the person with most motivation to implicate others, especially higher up. The fact that Rodchenkov was involved in extorting athletes for money suggests opportunism not integrity.

* The investigation did not consider the factual corrections or counter-arguments of Russian authorities.  Mclaren says “The IP did not seek to interview persons living in the Russian Federation …. I did not seek to meet with Russian government officials and did not think it necessary….”  Since the Russian Ministry of Sport and other agencies are accused of serious violations in this report, this is a strange absence and strong evidence of bias. It is a basic standard of fairness to hear both sides of a controversy before reaching a conclusion.

* The investigation excluded a written rebuttal supplied by one of the accused Russian individuals.  Mclaren says, “I also received, unsolicited, an extensive narrative with attachments from one important government representative described in this report. In the short span of 57 days that I was given to conduct this IP investigation it was simply not practical and I deemed such interviewing would not be helpful.” (P21)  Since one of the main purposes of the investigation was to determine the truthfulness of Rodchenkov’s accusations, this decision to not consider the ‘unsolicited’ information is shocking. It should have been mandatory to evaluate the arguments and information coming from Russian authorities.

* As reported by Sports Integrity Initiative, there are numerous inconsistencies in the Mclaren Report (also called the IP report). For example “The IP report appears to contain two different versions – both from Rodchenkov – about how ‘protected’ Russian athlete samples were able to be identified at the laboratory.” Also, “The IP Report and IO Report contain conflicting accounts of how samples taken at the Sochi 2014 Olympics were consolidated for shipment to the laboratory.” These unexplained contradictions, not noted by Mclaren, reflect adversely on Rodchenkov’s credibility and the investigation.

* Curiously, the primary “whistle-blowers”, Vitaliy and Yuliya Stepanov, are not interviewed for the report. They appear prominently in the ARD videos and the ‘Sixty Minutes’ report. In those appearances there are more contradictions. In the “Sixty Minutes” report, Vitaliy is described as a “low level” doping control officer. In the ARD movie (“How Russia Makes its Winners”) Vitaliy is described as an adviser to the Director General who worked personally with Minister of Sports and was a trainer of doping control officers. In both documentaries Vitaliy comes across very sympathetically and is only concerned with “clean sport”. However at 5:45 of the first Seppelt video we learn that Vitaliy was procuring the drugs and helping his wife Yuliya cheat.  In fact, Vitaliy and Yuliya Stepanov only joined the anti-doping crusade after Yuliya was caught doping (by Russian controls).

* The investigation was neither thorough nor comprehensive.  The Mclaren investigation had a mandate to carry out a “thorough and comprehensive investigation” to corroborate or refute the public allegations of Dr. Rodchenkov.  Prof. Mclaren acknowledges that “The compressed time frame in which to compile this Report has left much of the possible evidence unreviewed. This report has skimmed the surface of the data.”  By relying primarily on testimony and evidence provided by Rodchenkov, and excluding testimony and data from Russian Ministry of Sports officials, it is clear the investigation was neither thorough nor comprehensive.

* Prof. Mclaren was biased.  Long before his investigation was complete, Mclaren was using his position to confidentially influence the IAAF to ban the entire Russian track and field team from the Rio Olympics. He also influenced Canadian and American athletes to launch a campaign to ban the entire Russian team. This action was denounced by the President of the European Olympic Committees who said ,  “Firstly, the McLaren report is meant to be a totally independent report that must remain totally confidential until its publication on Monday, 18 July 2016 at 09:00 in Canada.  It is clear from the e-mail and letter that both the independence and the confidentiality of the report have been compromised.  My concern is that there seems to have been an attempt to agree an outcome before any evidence has been presented. Such interference and calls ahead of the McLaren Report publication are totally against internationally recognized fair legal process and may have completely undermined the integrity and therefore the credibility of this important report.”

* The Mclaren Report fails to identify specific cheaters and instead casts suspicion on all Russian athletes.  The investigation had a specific mandate to “Identify any athlete that might have benefited from those alleged manipulations to conceal positive doping tests.” (P3) Instead of doing that,  Mclaren vaguely talks about “many” or “dozens” of cheaters.  The Mclaren report says “The IP investigative team has developed evidence identifying dozens of Russian athletes who appear to have been involved in doping. The compressed time-line of the IP investigation did not permit compilation of data to establish an anti-doping rule violation.”  The report effectively smears the reputation of innocent and clean Russian athletes.

* The Mclaren report ignores WADA statistical data regarding test violations.  Data from WADA shows that while Russians had the most overall test violations, numerous countries including Belgium,France, and Turkey have higher percentage of test violations given the number of athletes and tests. This is factual not anecdotal information that should have been referenced in an objective report.

Conclusions

The Mclaren report and WADA decisions have been excessively influenced by sensational and exaggerated media reports.  Vitaliy and Yuliya Stepanov have been the explosive witnesses whose testimony is portrayed uncritically in the ARD and “Sixty Minutes” videos. As mentioned earlier, the Stepanovs were both involved in doping before becoming whistle-blowers. Yuliya Stepanova says “All athletes in Russia are doping. You cannot achieve the results you’re getting, at least in Russia, without doping. You must dope. ” This is exaggerated and false. It denies the existence of clean Russian athletes, the intense training and honest hard work of many Russian athletes and coaches. It has fallen on people like world record holder Yelena Yisinbaeva to challenge the false assertions and question why she is being punished.

Doping is a long standing problem in many countries. Some of the most spectacular examples include Ben Johnson (Canada, 19998), Marion Jones (USA, 2000), and Tyson Gaye (USA, 2013). WADA statistics confirm that doping is a global problem. In 2011 a scientific study estimated that 29 – 45% of all track and field athletes internationally were doping. Sebastian Coe, current President of IAAF, tried to suppress news of the study.

Yes, doping is a problem in Russia, as in many countries.  Russian authorities acknowledge this and have taken significant efforts to clamp down and stop the doping.  If there are still some cheaters and violators that does not negate the overall positive trend. There is significant evidence that the assertion that doping in Russia is “state sponsored” is substantially false, no matter how many times it’s repeated.

Following WADA’s Independent Commission report in late 2015,  Russian athletes have been tested through international certified laboratories. The frequency of testing has increased in an effort to demonstrate compliance with anti-doping rules and regulations. If there was still concern that Russian athletes were somehow cheating, the testing regime at the Rio Olympics could be escalated. Instead, WADA and the Mclaren Report recommended banning all Russian athletes from the Olympics.

This looks like a politically motivated action. There is the politics of the IAAF where there have been accusations of leadership corruption. There is the politics of WADA and the concern with their own “image”. And looming overall, there is the politics of international contention and propaganda. Barely a day passes without an‘anti Russia’ story in the media.

One of the founding goals of the Olympic movement is to promote peaceful society instead of conflict.  WADA has an important task that deserves support but not if it becomes a politically biased crusade.  As shown above, the Mclaren Report has major deficiencies. The targeting of Russia and indiscriminate punishment of their athletes is a betrayal of the Olympic spirit.

Rick Sterling is a retired aerospace engineer who now writes about international issues.

He can be reached at [email protected]

Five Russian servicemen were killed Monday when US-backed Islamist opposition militias shot down a helicopter in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province. The downing of the helicopter took place as fighting raged in Aleppo between US-backed opposition militias and Russian and Syrian government forces.

The helicopter was shot down near Saraqeb, halfway between Aleppo and Khmeimim air base, where many Russian aircraft operating in Syria are housed. It was the single biggest Russian loss of life in Syria since Moscow launched a military intervention to back the Syrian regime in September of last year.

Russian Defense Ministry official Sergey Rudskoi said,

“Today there has been a terrorist attack that resulted in the loss of a Russian military transport helicopter Mi-8, which was returning to base after completing a humanitarian mission to deliver food and medical supplies to Aleppo residents. It carried a crew of three and two officers from the Russian center for the reconciliation of warring factions in Syria. The helicopter was gunned down over territory controlled by the al-Nusra Front terrorist group and related groups of the so-called ‘moderate opposition.’”

The French daily Le Monde confirmed that “the wreck’s identification number indeed corresponds to that of a helicopter that is armed but used for research and medical evacuation purposes.” The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the helicopter had indeed delivered humanitarian aid to Shia villages near Aleppo surrounded by Sunni Islamist opposition forces.

While it remains unclear how the helicopter was shot down, there is a very real danger that this event could escalate into an all-out diplomatic or even military confrontation between Russia and the United States. There are multiple reports that the embattled Islamist forces in the area, which are linked to Al Qaeda, might have shot down the Russian helicopter with a missile provided by the US government.

“I’ve heard some local sources where the helicopter was downed speaking of the possibility of MANPADs—shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missiles—being used in that context,” freelance journalist Alaa Ibrahim told Russian state-owned Russia Today .

The Reuters news agency wrote that there was a “prospect—which could cause a major diplomatic incident—of the helicopter having been brought down by a US-supplied weapon.” It continued: “The United States has equipped some rebel groups with TOW anti-tank missiles, which can also be used against helicopters.”

It is quite possible that Washington provided such weapons to the Islamist opposition for use against Russian and Syrian government forces. The US is growing increasingly desperate as the situation facing its Islamist proxies, whom it has supported for five years in a bloody war for regime-change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, grows darker by the day.

The military situation appears to be turning decisively against the Islamist opposition militias. The noose around east Aleppo has been tightening ever since July 7, when Syrian regime forces cut the Castello road going north from Aleppo to Turkey.

Decimated by Russian air power, the anti-Assad forces were stunned by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement earlier this month that he would seek better relations with the Syrian regime. They now fear that Turkey may permanently cut off their supply lines.

The opposition faces being crushed across the entire north of Syria and is mounting a desperate last-ditch offensive to try to break the encirclement of its forces in Aleppo.

US-backed forces are attacking Aleppo from the southwest of the city, trying to rescue opposition forces who find themselves encircled by Syrian government forces in the east of Aleppo. That city, which has been devastated by four years of fighting and looting by Islamist militias, is now being plunged into some of the most violent fighting it has seen.

The Islamist counterattack is being mounted by two militias, the al-Nusra Front, until last week Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, which has renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of Syria), and Ahrar al-Sham. The areas of Aleppo held by the US-backed forces have long been critical to the Islamist opposition, giving it a foothold in what was once Syria’s economic capital, near key supply bases in Turkey from which the NATO powers have supported it.

Russian sources said 42 civilians had been killed and 98 wounded as opposition militias shelled areas of Aleppo held by Syrian government forces.

They claimed that the opposition forces had suffered a major defeat after they launched an offensive with four suicide attacks by al-Nusra fighters in armored vehicles rigged with explosives. Syrian regime forces counterattacked, with air support from Russian strategic bombers. Rudskoi stated, “More than 800 militants were killed during the fighting; 14 tanks, 10 infantry fighting vehicles, more than 60 vehicles with mounted guns were destroyed.”

A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Aleppo. Areas of the city controlled by the opposition are home to an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people. There are mounting reports of shortages of food and other basic supplies. Russian officials claim they have gathered 14 tons of humanitarian supplies, of which 2.5 tons have been delivered by helicopter or other means of transport, and they are appealing to residents to leave via “humanitarian corridors” set up around the city.

Virtually the entire population remains trapped in horrific conditions, however. Russian military sources themselves claim that only 169 people managed to flee through the “humanitarian corridors” this weekend. They also reported that opposition militias had executed four people whom they caught trying to flee through the corridors.

US, European and United Nations sources are charging Russian and Syrian government forces with carrying out war crimes in Aleppo. UNICEF claimed that four hospitals and a blood bank had been hit by air strikes, and US Secretary of State John Kerry attacked the Russian “humanitarian corridor” strategy for potentially being a “ruse.”

However, the attempts of Washington and its NATO allies to posture as humanitarians, shocked by the violence of the forces led by Moscow and Damascus, are shot through with hypocrisy. It was they who launched the proxy war that has now cost an estimated 400,000 lives. Airstrikes by US war planes in northern Syria have killed more than 200 civilians in just the last two weeks.

Washington and its allies have worked closely and openly with “rebel” forces such as al-Nusra that are linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist group that carried out the September 11 attacks in the US. They continue to shield them as part of their drive to topple Assad and deprive Russia of a key ally.

Whatever embarrassment al-Nusra’s ties to Al Qaeda may cause in Washington, powerful sections of the US ruling elite are signaling that they will continue backing the opposition. There is a grave danger that, in order to rescue its Islamist proxies from defeat, the US government will launch a broader intervention in Syria and the Middle East that could provoke an all-out military collision with Russia.

A key weapon of the neo-liberal establishment in delegitimising the emergence of popular organisation to the left, is to portray all thinkers outside the Overton window as dangerous; actively violent, misogynist and racist.

WikiLeaks have once again done the world a great service by publishing smoking gun evidence that the Democratic National Committee – which was supposed to be a neutral body overseeing the Democrats primary election – was doing everything possible to tilt the field against Bernie Sanders. Just one of the ways that was done was by secretly promoting to the media the idea that Sanders’ supporters were violent, misogynist and intimidatory thugs.

One of the major events used to further this trope was the Democratic state convention in Nevada. This is a powerful demonstration of a phenomenon that we are witnessing daily in the UK – the use of the mainstream media to perpetrate the trope, despite the existence of irrefutable evidence that the narrative being put forward by the mainstream media is factually untrue.

I have posted this video before, but please look at it now, whether again or for the first time. This is video of the actual events at Nevada taken from the heart of the “Barbarian crowd of Sanders supporters. The media characterisation of the events you are watching – a characterisation that was spread in active collusion between the media and neo-liberal politicians – includes accusations which we see repeated again and again, of violence, physical threat, misogynist abuse and spitting. What the actual evidence shows is something which we are seeing again and again as the actual reality – neo-liberal members of the paid political class astonished and indignant that their “position” and authority is not being treated with deference by ordinary people. Watch the video.

It is important to say that there is a lot of other video evidence available. This is the clearest I can find. No evidence appears anywhere online which bears out the stories of violence, abuse and spitting – which is quite astonishing given that the entire mainstream media carried and promoted those stories.

The Labour Party constituency meeting at Brighton gives us a precise analogy to the Nevada Democrats meeting. Again claims were made of violent intimidation, swearing and spitting. Again, in this age where everybody has a video camera in their pocket, there is absolutely zero objective evidence of this behaviour and a great deal of evidence to the contrary. It appears the real sin of the Brighton Labour Party members was to elect pro-Corbyn officers. That election has now been annulled. The National Executive Committee of the Labour Party is playing precisely the role against Corbyn that the NDC played against Sanders.

None of this is new. From the start, the Labour establishment has attempted to portray ordinary members as thugs. 7 months ago Stella Creasy claimed that a violent and intimidatory mob had gathered outside her constituency office, and in consequence she and her staff had been too scared to go to work. Here is a video of the actual incident.

Again the obvious and glaring disparity between what actually happened – this “peace vigil” was led by the local vicar to urge Creasy to withdraw her support for bombing Syria – and what Creasy claimed had happened, was ignored by the mainstream media. The mainstream media has become the home of fact free journalism. If you want to find anything approaching truth, you have to go surfing the social media.

It is highly significant that among the “demands” made in a recent letter by 44 anti-Corbyn female MPs was that demonstrations at their offices should be banned, and anyone who participates in one expelled from the Labour Party. I think that in itself says enough about their sense of entitlement and attitude to free speech.

Just a couple more examples of many score I could give. The “brick through Angela Eagle’s window” story is repeated continually by the mainstream media to show the violence of Corbyn supporters. But in fact the broken window was in a stairwell of an office block, actually on a different face of the building to the one on which Angela Eagle’s office has windows. There is no evidence at all that Ms Eagle’s office was the target, let alone that a Corbyn supporter was the perpetrator. I have been able to find no evidence of the existence of the brick. What is interesting, is that on this common stairwell, not connected to the Labour Party, a Party poster was used to close up the void, thus giving a photo opportunity that all of the mainstream media used and reinforcing the false impression – more than impression, false statement in the entire mainstream media – that it was Ms Eagle’s window that was broken. How did this happen? Emergency glaziers carry boards. I have also seen no evidence of the existence of the brick. Was it a literal brick? Where did it come from? Or was it, perhaps, a lump of Portland cement?

My all time favourite for mainstream media distortion of a story comes, naturally, from the BBC. Labour MP Marie Rimmer has been brought to trial for kicking a canvasser. This is how the BBC reported it. This really is beyond satire.

To us Scottish nationalists, the portrayal of those who challenge the status quo as violent and racist is something that we have lived with for years. That is why I use the expression “vauntie cybernat” at the top of my blog, “cybernat” having become the mainstream media term for barbarian during the referendum campaign.

The smearing of critics of the status quo being violent, threatening racists and misogynists was demonstrated perfectly in the killing of the petition against the BBC’s obnoxiously right wing and obviously biased political correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg. A whole wave of obscene, vile and threatening online abuse was alleged to be associated with the petition, but careful investigation – of which zero was done by the mainstream media – proved this to be an outright lie.

Finally, we come to the slur that Corbyn supporters are anti-Semitic. As I have stated before, one obvious flaw in this charge is that almost all Corbyn supporters enthusiastically cheered on Bernie Sanders. Again, the slightest examination of the facts shows that in many cases the accusation absolutely does not stand up, as with the Ruth Smeeth incident where the man demonstrably did not say what she quoted him as saying. Again the mainstream media had no interest in simply provable actual fact.

What has been extremely reprehensible has been the tendency to the mainstream media to slip in, as the Guardian did with the case of Luciana Berger, examples of genuine and appalling anti-Semitic abuse, without making clear that in these cases the perpetrators (and somebody was convicted) were from the far right and had absolutely nothing to do with Corbyn and his supporters. Much the same is true of references to the murder of Jo Cox.

The Establishment will always attempt to characterise any root challenge to its hegemony and ideology as violent, atavistic and subscribing to appalling beliefs and behaviour. The theme of challengers as “Barbarians” runs through history. We will have to put up with it for some time. The good news is, they are seriously rattled.

Was it meant as an epic parody or an insult to his audience’s intelligence? It was hard to tell.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to social media to apologise for last year’s notorious election-day comment, when he warned that “the Arabs are coming out to vote in droves” – a reference to the fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian.

In videos released last week in English and Hebrew, Mr Netanyahu urged Palestinian citizens to become more active in public life. They needed to “work in droves, study in droves, thrive in droves,” he said. “I am proud of the role Arabs play in Israel’s success”.

Pointedly, Ayman Odeh, head of the Palestinian-dominated Joint List party, noted that 100,000 Bedouin citizens could not watch the video because Israel denies their communities electricity, internet connections and all other services.

Swiftly and predictably, the reality of life for Israel’s 1.7 million Palestinians upstaged Mr Netanyahu’s fine words. In a radio interview, Moti Dotan, the head of the Lower Galilee regional council, sent a message to his Palestinian neighbours: “I don’t want them at my [swimming] pools.” Sounding like a mayor in the southern United States during the Jim Crow-era, he added: “Their culture of cleanliness isn’t the same as ours. Why is that racist?”

Dotan was no extremist, observed the liberal newspaper Haaretz. He represents the Israeli mainstream. Notably, Mr Netanyahu did not distance himself from Mr Dotan’s remarks.

At the same time, Samar Qupty, star of a new film on Palestinians in Israel called Junction 48, was questioned for two hours and then strip searched at Ben Gurion airport and denied her hand luggage before being allowed to fly to an international film festival.

Stories of state-sponsored humiliation at the airport are routine for Israel’s Palestinian academics, journalists, actors and community leaders – in fact, for any Palestinian active in the public sphere.

The list of restrictions on Palestinian citizens is long and growing. A database by the legal group Adalah shows that some 60 Israeli laws explicitly discriminate against non-Jews, with another 18 in the pipeline.

Two laws passed last month intensify the repression of dissent. An Expulsion Law is designed to empower Israeli MPs to oust Palestinian lawmakers whose views offend them, while a Transparency Law stigmatises human rights groups working to protect Palestinian rights.

Recently leaked protocols reveal that the police have secretly awarded themselves powers to use live fire against Palestinian protesters in Israel, even if they pose no danger. Yet another law threatens jail for any Palestinian citizen who tries to dissuade another from volunteering in the Israeli army.

Growing numbers of Palestinian citizens, including poets and writers, are being jailed or put under house arrest for posts on social media the Israeli authorities disapprove of.

Defence minister Avigdor Lieberman recently compared the work of the Palestinians’ national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Darwish is banned from school curriculums.

The culture minister, Miri Regev, meanwhile, has tied state funding for theatre and dance companies to their readiness to perform in Jewish settlements, illegally located in the occupied territories in the West Bank.

In his video, Mr Netanyahu said: “Jews and Arabs should reach out to each other, get to know each other’s families. Listen to each other.”

And yet his officials have just halved funding for the training of Palestinian student teachers, though not Jewish ones, to deter the former from pursuing teaching careers. Jewish schools face severe staff shortages, but Israel’s educational segregation is so complete that Palestinian citizens cannot be allowed to teach Jewish children.

Mr Netanyahu also extolled his government for a promise to increase funding for Israel’s near-bankrupt Palestinian local authorities. He forgot to mention, however, that he had conditioned the money on the same councils demolishing thousands of homes in their jurisdiction. For decades Palestinians in Israel have been routinely denied building permits.

Israel’s Palestinian citizens were not fooled by Mr Netanyahu’s video. But as their leaders noted, they were not the intended audience. The video was a cynical PR exercise aimed firmly at the Europeans, who have been discomfited by Israel’s increasingly repressive climate and the government’s regular incitement against its Palestinian minority.

Mr Netanyahu is worried about a backlash in the West, including growing support for the boycott movement, European efforts to revive peace talks, and potential moves at the United Nations and International Criminal Court.

Palestinians in Israel have known worse repression than they currently endure. For Israel’s first two decades they lived under military rule, locked into their towns and villages and largely invisible unless they agreed to do and say as they were told. Palestinian MPs could be elected to the parliament but only if they were first approved by Zionist parties like Mr Netanyahu’s.

The Israeli right sounds ever more nostalgic for that era. Slowly the ethos of the military government for Israel’s Palestinians is returning – and the perfume of Mr Netanyahu’s soothing words about ending “discord and hate” will not cover the stench.

Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism 

Even before the ink was dry on the meaningless platform resolutions passed at last week’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, the administration of President Barack Obama has bombed the North African state of Libya.

This latest attack continues the more than five year war against the people of Libya, once the most prosperous state in Africa, now destroyed at the aegis of U.S. imperialism, NATO and its regional allies. Under the cover of fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS), the White House seeks to further cover-up its culpability in creating the worst humanitarian crisis since the conclusion of World War II.

In 2011, the Obama administration deployed hundreds of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel to facilitate the counter-revolutionary militias that were funded by imperialism to overthrow the Jamahiriya government under the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi. Tens of thousands of people died in the war which relied upon the blanket bombing of the civilian and state institutions reducing the North African state to destitution, impoverishment and the center of destabilization throughout the region.

This latest round of aerial bombardments are being presented to the U.S. and world opinion as a defensive measure against the Islamic extremists who have a base in the embattled country along the western coastal cities including Sirte, the home area of Gaddafi. However, it was the U.S. which created the conditions for the formation of ISIS in their war against Iranian influence in Iraq and the attempts to remove the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

According to the Washington Examiner, “A Pentagon statement says the airstrikes were conducted at the request of the new Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) and were authorized by President Obama acting on the recommendations of Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford. Forces aligned with the new government have already captured territory surrounding the city of Sirte, and the Pentagon said American airstrikes were designed to enable the Libyan government-backed forces ‘to make a decisive, strategic advance.’” (Aug. 1)

The article goes on to say

“While the U.S. has conducted unilateral strikes aimed at individual Islamic State members, this is the first time the U.S. has provided air cover for Libyan fighters on the ground. The strikes were described as consistent with the U.S. approach to combating the Islamic State by working with ‘capable and motivated local forces.’ The Pentagon said it plans more strikes in the coming days.”

Nonetheless, as per usual, the administration provides no end-game to the bombings. In 2011, Obama called the U.S. involvement in Libya as “limited” and that the Pentagon was “leading from behind.” Yet the deployment of CIA operatives even prior to the beginning of the bombings on March 19, 2011, was revealed in a report published by the New York Times.

The-then NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said of this notion of a limited leading from behind that without the assistance of the Pentagon the mission in Libya could have never been carried out. It is the U.S. that supplies much of the war material such as fighter jets, bombs, intelligence mapping and diplomatic cover in all modern-day wars of regime-change and imperialist conquest.

The Democratic Party and the War Machine

These military actions in Libya are by no means a surprise to those who watched the Democratic National Convention (DNC) during the week of July 25. There was never any acknowledgement from anyone speaking from the podium of the failures of Pentagon and CIA military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and other geo-political regions.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who served in the first administration of Obama voted in favor of the intervention and occupation of Iraq carried out by President George W. Bush, Jr. Although Obama claimed that he opposed the Iraq war when he got into office the war was continued despite the drawing down of thousands of ground troops. However, the redeployment of Pentagon troops and intelligence operatives in Iraq is escalating into the thousands.

It was Obama who accelerated troop deployments in Afghanistan where the war also moves forward with an announcement at the recent NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland that there would be an increase in western troop levels in Central Asia as well as Eastern Europe targeting the Russian Federation in a renewed Cold War. Moreover, Clinton served as the public face of the Pentagon-NATO bombing of Libya to the point of calling for the capturing and killing of Gaddafi, where she joked and laughed in its aftermath on October 20, 2011.

During the week of August 1, it was the Democratic leadership that maintained a posture of support for the families of slain war soldiers. Nevertheless, it has been quite obvious that under the Obama administration the plight of currently serving and discharged military personnel has been far less than adequate. Many Afghan and Iraq war veterans are homeless, incarcerated and suffering from numerous physical and psychological ailments.

Despite the vast funding through the tax dollars of working families and the expropriation of resources of other countries, the services for veterans in many cases are non-existent. Suicide rates among veterans are reported to be as high and over 220 per day in the U.S. This grim set of circumstances involving the economic draft of youth due to the structural unemployment and poverty wages; the deployment to wars aimed exclusively for the acquisition of natural resources, strategic land masses and waterways; combined with blatant disregard towards the needs of the no longer enlisted soldiers has resulted in a human services crisis of monumental proportions.

A Political Economy of Imperialist War

The only rationale for permanent war in the age of imperialism is for economic gain along with maintaining a political advantage over other regional blocs such as the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, political alliances that have emerged in South America, Central America and the Caribbean and the rival European Union (EU). Even though the EU is a subordinate inter-imperialist rival to the U.S., the recent withdrawal from the EU by the British electorate has sent shockwaves through the world capitalist markets.

Consequently, there is the prospect for a continuation and even expansion in the production of military hardware which will be a source of profit for the defense industry and Wall Street. Declining energy and commodity prices have placed a dent in the profitability margin for the oil industry which reaped a windfall in the aftermath of the above-mentioned wars waged in the Middle East, Central Asia and the African continent. Other avenues of exploitation are needed by the capitalist system and these are the imperatives which are driving the dominant factions within both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Although the capitalist parties in Britain and the U.S. are facing internal rebellions from both the right and the social democratic left, these institutions appear to have outlasted their functionality as instruments for the social containment of the working class and the nationally oppressed. This is why even the semblance of bourgeois or parliamentary democracy are absent within the context of intra-party affairs. Trump can walk in and take over the Republican Party without ever having to hold public office. Clinton with her laundry list of indiscretions and racism towards African Americans and other oppressed peoples is being sold to the electorate as a defender of “diversity” and stability.

The renewed bombing of Libya signals the escalation of war against the peoples of the so-called Global South and those oppressed nations and communities within the imperialist states themselves whether in Europe or North America. To counter these provocations an international anti-imperialist movement must be built. This is the task of the organizations committed to reversing the tide of imperialist war and economic exploitation.

The Convention of the US Democratic Party in Philadelphia ended with a big schism. And this schism divides not only the supporters of Hillary Clinton and her opponents but also Bernie Sanders and the movement that he led and symbolized until just a few days ago.

The senator from Vermont who attracted thousands across America to his rallies and ignited them with his speeches looked ridiculous and helpless in Philadelphia. His speech endorsing Hillary turned in a matter of seconds a charismatic leader who had embodied the hopes of millions of people into a provincial pathetic old man who does not understand what is happening around him. With a confused smile on his face he repeated that Hillary would be an excellent president, that the party had adopted the most progressive platform ever; he coaxed his indignant supporters to “live in the real world”, clearly demonstrating lack of connection with the new political reality which had made possible his ascent to prominence in the national political arena.

Sanders garners very little support now: he is pitied at best. Young people who sympathize with him ask everyone not to criticize him too harshly since it was he who raised the banner of the movement, awakened them and brought them together. But they are mistaken in attributing their own accomplishments to him. In the last 20 years, a candidate similar to Sanders has appeared in almost every primary election only to get filtered out in the early stages of the race.

The fact that Bernie did not succumb to the same fate can be explained not by his special talents and merits but by the long overdue need for social change in American society, which accumulated imperceptibly over the years and suddenly exploded. This need is objectively generated by the systemic crisis and the contradictions of neoliberalism that have to be resolved by whatever means possible. Nothing but an excuse was needed for this spontaneous sentiment, particularly acute among young people, to turn into a political movement. The excuse was Bernie’s nomination as a candidate. A wave caught him and carried him forwards.

As long as he was making his speeches, which reflected the mood of the people, everything was going quite well. But when the time came for serious political decisions, the  senator from Vermont failed to become a leader, demonstrating  total   helplessness.

What has happened cannot be explained just by the individual qualities of one person. Bernie’s capitulation in Philadelphia was prepared in the course of his campaign by the left intellectuals from the circles close and not so close to him. All of them – from Noam Chomsky to Michael Moore, unanimously reiterated that Donald Trump, a brawler and a homophobe, is the main danger, and that support for Hillary is the only way to prevent the catastrophe that would inevitably befall the world if the Republican candidate won the election.

Now these people are in panic: they succeeded in breaking up Sanders’ movement, forcing him to surrender, but now they suddenly realize that the most likely outcome of this situation will be a victory for Trump. Looking at the electoral fraud, the corruption of the Democratic Party apparatus, the machinations and lies, millions of people have reasonably concluded that Trump is not the “greater evil” in today’s American politics. Sanders’ capitulation tore away the last moral justification from under the political rhetoric of the Democrats. For those who followed the election, hoping for a change, and who now feel how profound the impending crisis is, it has become clear that nothing good can be expected from these politicians. And since even the best, most honest of the Democrats has surrendered so shamefully, everything is hopelessly rotten.

If Trump wins the election, it will be possible to argue with complete certainty that Sanders ensured this outcome at the moment he declared his support for Clinton, thereby betraying not only his supporters, his voters and himself, but also American democracy. Now it is the moral duty of any decent American to punish the Democrats. All of them. Including Bernie.

And they will do it, even if they don’t vote for Trump: they will stay at home, or vote for the Green party candidate Jill Stein or libertarian Gary Johnson. By doing this they will open the road for Donald Trump. This will be the beginning of a new epoch for the United States and the world, the epoch in which the place of the neoliberal consensus will be taken by the uncertainty of risk and freedom. In reality, we know very little about Trump today, not counting his politically incorrect statements, which do not really matter, because they do not suggest any practical actions, except for the laughable project of the border wall construction. But if Trump is really half as dangerous as the liberal mass media insist, he cannot be stopped by lacklustre support for the “lesser evil”. Only the enthusiasm of a mass radical mobilization around an alternative program of transformation can stop him, the program that Sanders tried to propose and abandoned in Philadelphia.

One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. And in conditions where concern for the interests of the eggs is the most important ideological principle, no omelette can be made. The trouble is that all the efforts of the politically correct egg protectors are worthless. In the course of the story the eggs will be broken anyway,  but the omelette will not be made.

The policy of  the “lesser evil” is a recipe for a disaster. In a period of crisis  adherence to the principle of risk minimization does not work. It always produces the worst possible outcome. In the situation of a more- than-likely Trump victory only those on the left who did not support Hillary will survive politically. Everybody else will drown together with her.  Attempts to preserve the integrity of a mechanism that does not work are burdened with the potential for apocalyptic disaster on a planetary scale. In the conditions of unending crisis, the calls on the left to accept the lesser evil in the name of avoiding the greater evil will lead us from one disaster to another.

There is nothing accidental about these successive capitulations of the left.  There is a common element behind all of them: rejection of the simple principles that define the identity of the left.  Half a century ago these principles were self-evident but now it is time to recall them. The first of them is class interests. Not the abstract demagogy of sympathy towards the weak, inclusiveness, and rights of minorities, but the specific interests of real working class people including the “white males” so despised by the liberals. In fact, the “white males” are a notion invented by the liberals specifically to undermine class solidarity and discredit the labour movement.

In reality about fifty percent of “white males” are women, and not less than a third are representatives of other, non-white, races. But that makes no difference for the purposes of the liberal discourse. The logic of unity for the sake of solving common problems and achieving common goals is portrayed in this discourse as an attempt by the “white males” to discriminate against the minorities with their special, particular, private interests. It does not matter that the defense of these special interests leads not only to the discrimination against the majority but also  generates the “war of all against all”, in which the minorities end up being the first casualty. The aim of this kind of politics is not to protect the minorities but to fragment the society, while providing the liberal elite with the privilege of redistributing resources among the minorities, who become their clientele.

One of the recent supporters of Sanders noted in an Internet discussion of his capitulation: “the senator from Vermont had to make a choice: what is more dangerous – Trump’s homophobic rhetoric or the dictatorship of financial capital promoted by Clinton. He concluded that the homophobic rhetoric is worse”.

This provides the most accurate insight into what the “real world” is for Sanders…

The second historic principle of the left was the vision of a historical perspective, and building of a strategy based upon it. In the 1930s politicians as different as  Roosevelt, Trotsky, and Stalin had this common vision. It was based on an understanding of objectively urgent problems of development, the solution of which is the essence of historical progress. It is characteristic that the liberal left in the USA continues to identify themselves as “progressives” while not even discussing the issue of historical progress, and what it could mean today. Apart from organizing some humanitarian events, of course.

In the meantime, the issue has become more than clear. Overcoming neoliberalism is the urgent historical task of today – not because we don’t like this system, or because it does not correspond to our values, but because it has exhausted its potential for development and can survive only by devouring the resources needed for basic reproduction of society. In other words, the longer this system stays in existence, the more it will self-destruct and undermine all our livelihoods.

The connection of the historical perspective to class interests is determined by the answers to simple pressing questions: will jobs, which make possible not just survival, but also the cultural, professional and moral development of workers, be created? Will the unions and other organizations of workers be strengthened? In the course of the last two and a half decades the left has been in unison criticizing neoliberalism, the World Trade Organization, the weakening and de-solidarization of the working class. But they are reluctant to admit that the opposite theorem is also true: in the conditions of capitalism only protectionism leads to strengthening of workers’ positions in the labour market, to strengthening of labour unions and the political organizations based on them. Western European protectionism gave birth to a potent social-democratic movement: support of the domestic industry by the Russian governments of Vitte and Stolypin created the preconditions for the revolution of 1917.

Without a transitioning of the old industrial countries to protectionism, a consolidation of the labour movement in the countries of the global South, which also need to protect their own markets and their own industry, is similarly impossible.  Democratic control and the welfare state are similarly impossible without protectionism. Bernie’s campaign raised these issues but when the question arose of what is worse – Trump’s protectionist program with its anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican flavor or Hillary’s anti-social agenda packed into an impeccable politically correct lexicon, the choice was made in favour of the latter. Millions of American workers, regardless of the colour of their skin, their gender or their sexual orientation, will make a completely different choice. By voting for Trump they will be responding  not to his scandalous rhetoric, even if they like it, but rather making an intelligent decision based on their interests as labourers in the conditions of capitalism. Trump only needed his scandalous rhetoric to attract the attention of the lower classes of society, to send them a signal, to stand out from a homogenous mass of dull political figures. Now is the time for a substantive discussion. Neoliberal politics has to be dismantled; the societal model has to be changed. If protectionism becomes a fact, the preconditions for a new welfare state will be created: the basis for a new popular movement, now without Sanders and the liberal left, will arise.

The third principle, which was always fundamental for left politics is the struggle for power. Precisely for power, not for representation, influence or presence in the dominant discourse.  It is telling that it was precisely Sanders’ attempt to start a real struggle for power that aroused the indignation of many left radicals, who perceive this kind of behaviour as something completely obscene. And, by contrast, when the Vermont senator abandoned his positions, he consoled himself and his supporters by drawing attention to the way the Democratic Party had adopted the most progressive platform in its history, though anyone who knows how the American state really works understands very well that this program isn’t worth the paper it is written on. All the levers of power (not only in the administration, but also in the party) are in the hands of people who will never allow realization of these ideals.

The struggle for power requires corresponding organization and corresponding mechanisms of mobilization much sturdier than network structures. But most of all it requires strong will and political independence. This is why no matter how  frustrated and embittered the supporters betrayed by Sanders are, the alternative for them should not be support for Trump.

The main problem with Trump is not that he is a misogynist, but that he is a capitalist. To be sure, his victory may be a necessary step in a process of overcoming neoliberalism, and dismantling the corrupt political system, but it will not lead to the triumph of a positive social programme. This task can only be solved by an organization which is built consciously and is progressive in the true historical meaning of this word. Will it be built around Jill Stein and her Green Party or will it be created by the activists who came out of the Sanders’ movement? The answer to this is something we will know in the very near future. But the alternative has to be built now, irrespective of its chances of prevailing in the current political cycle. Political struggle requires patience and perseverance.

The political turn currently under way in the United Sates and Western Europe is changing the conditions under which people in the whole world live and struggle. It is opening new opportunities for them. The opposite is also true: SYRIZAs betrayal, Sanders’ capitulation, Corbyn’s wavering: these are not just issues in Greek, American or British politics. They are failures or weaknesses for which not only the left but humanity as a whole will have to pay the price.

The neoliberal system, which the likes of Hillary Clinton and Francois Hollande are trying to preserve, is already so dysfunctional, so implicated in the processes of natural decay, that every day of its survival undermines the basic mechanisms of reproduction of society. If we are not ready to fight for its deconstruction, it will break down naturally anyway. But then the alternative will not be “another possible world” as imagined by the anti-globalists, but rather spontaneously mushrooming chaos and barbarism.

The paralysis of will that has afflicted the left movement during the epoch of neoliberalism has to be overcome. A great global drama in which everyone will have to play his role is about to start. We have to accept responsibility for the risky decisions, understanding that one cannot be nice and pleasant to everybody, and also that one cannot win without struggle and sacrifice.

Boris Kagarlitsky is the Director of the Institute of Globalisation and Social Movements, a TNI fellow and co-ordinator of the TNI Global Crisis project and Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements in Moscow, that also runs Rabkor. He is also member of the edotirial board of Defend Democracy Press.

Boris’s latest books are Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System (Pluto Press, February 2008), The Revolt of the Middle Class (Kulturnaya revolutsiya, 2006). He won the Deutscher Memorial Prize for his book, The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State (Verso 1988).

A newly-released video attributed Daesh [Arabic acronym for “ISIS” / “ISIL”] urged Takfiri militants to stage attacks in Russia. The threat comes amid Russia’s repeated warnings that Daesh terrorism in Syria and Iraq could soon spread to other parts of the world.

While its authenticity could not be confirmed, Reuters reported that the video is thought to have come from the terrorist group’s Telegram account.

A 9-minute subtitled video shows armed militants launching attacks on vehicles and tents, as well as replenishing arms supplies somewhere in the desert. The footage ends with one of the masked militants encouraging the group’s supporters to mount attacks on Russian soil, while personally threatening President Vladimir Putin.

The alleged Daesh members did not elaborate on why Russia had been designated as its next “target,” however.

The danger posed by the looming return of radicalized Daesh recruits from Syria, where they went to fight in the Takfiris’ ranks, was one of the main reasons Russia launched its airstrike campaign against the militants there.

“There are an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 fighters from Russia and other CIS member states fighting for ‘ISIL’,” Putin said last October after Russia launched its bombing campaign in Syria at the request of Syria’s president, Bashar Assad.

“We certainly cannot allow them to use the experience they are getting in Syria on home soil,” the president stressed, calling on the creation of a broad international coalition to curb the spread of terrorism.

Russia had largely achieved the stated goals of its operation in Syria by the time Putin ordered the withdrawal of the bulk of Russia’s forces in March.

Recently, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu estimated that some 2,000 fighters hailing from Russia, including 17 warlords, had been killed in the course of the five-month air campaign.

Shoigu also warned that the world should brace for a more protracted crises similar to that in Syrian, given the alarming security situation in the world.

“In these circumstances, Russia will be forced to adequately respond to potential threats,” he stressed.

Afghanistan has become another breeding ground for terrorists close to Russia’s borders, posing an immense challenge to the overall security and stability of the Central Asia.

“The Afghan branch of ‘ISIS’ is definitely specialized against Central Asia. Russian is even one of their working languages,” Zamir Kabulov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Asia and Middle East Department, said back in April, estimating that the number of Daesh fighters in Afghanistan has increased tenfold since last year.

“There are now 10,000 ‘ISIS’ fighters in Afghanistan. A year ago there were a hundred,” stated the diplomat.

In one of the most violent attacks to rock the Afghan capital recently, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest during a mass Shiite demonstration in Kabul, killing 80 people and injuring 23 on July 23. That terrorist act was claimed by Daesh.

Al-Qaeda in Syria and associated forces are currently driving a large scale attack from the south-west into Aleppo city. Their aim is to create a new corridor between the Idleb/Aleppo rural areas they occupy and the besieged al-Qaeda controlled areas in east-Aleppo. Between 5,000 and 10,000 al-Qaeda fighters, using U.S. supplied equipment, are taking part in the battle. Formally some of the fighters are “moderates” but in reality all this groups are by now committed to implement Sharia law and to thereby suppress all minorities. They made some initial progress against government forces but are under fierce attack from the Syrian and Russian air forces.

The Russian General Staff has warned since April that al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra aka Fateh al Sham) and the various attached Jihadi groups were planing a large scale attack on Aleppo. An al-Qaeda commander confirmed such long term planning in a pep-talk to his fighters before the current attack.

This shines a new light on the protracted talks Secretary of State Kerry has had for month with his Russian colleague. The U.S. tried to exempt al-Qaeda from Russian and Syrian attacks even as UN Security Council Resolutions demanded that al-Qaeda and ISIS areas be eradicated. Then the U.S. tried to make an “offer” to Russia to collectively fight al-Qaeda should Russia put its own and Syrian forces under U.S. control. We called this offer deceptive nonsense. All this, it now seems, was delaying talk to allow al-Qaeda to prepare for the now launched attack.

Another step in the delaying, though a failed one, was the re-branding of Jabhat al-Nusra as Fateh al-Sham. Some “western” media called that a split from al-Qaeda but in reality is was a merging of al-Qaeda central and Nusra/al-Qaeda in Syria under a disguising new label. Al-Qaeda’s Qatari sponsors had demanded the re-branding so al-Qaeda in Syria could publicly be sold to “western” governments and their public as “moderate rebels”. But the sham failed. It was too obvious a fake to be taken seriously. The “western” support for al-Qaeda will have to continue secretly and in limited form.

The current attack on Aleppo is serious. The Syrian army lacks ground forces. Significant professional ground forces from Iran were promised but never arrived. Iran was still dreaming of an accord with the U.S. and therefore holding back on its engagement in Syria. The Afghan farmer battalions Iran recruited are not an alternative for professional troops. Defending against an enemy that is using lots of suicide vehicle bombs to breach fortifications and death-seeking Jihadis to storm field positions is difficult. It demands diligent preparation excellent command and control.

If this attack can be defeated the huge losses al-Qaeda will have to take might end its open military style war. If al-Qaeda succeeds with the attack the Syrian army will need very significant additional ground forces to regain the initiative.

But no matter how that battle goes strategically the U.S. is sniffing defeat in its regime change endeavor. It is now proposing to split Syria. Syria and all its neighbors are against this. It will, in the end, not happen, but the damage Washington will create until it acknowledges that fact could be serious. Russia can and should prevent such U.S. attempts of large scale social engineering.

Russia on the other side has now to decide if it wants to escalate enough to create more than the current stalemate. Over time a stalemate becomes expansive and it may, at any time, suddenly turn into defeat. The U.S. negotiation positions so far were obviously not serious. The U.S. delayed to allow for further large attacks on the Syrian government. The alternative for Russia is to either leave Syria completely or to escalate enough to decisively defeat the Jihadis. That is not an easy decision.

Today some Jihadis shot down another Russian helicopter over Syria. The bloody body of the dead pilot was dragged through the mud by some local nuts and the video thereof proudly presented. If the Russian government needs some public pretext to go back into Syria it now has it. Also today the Islamic State threatened to attack Russia within its border. Another good reason to return to Syria in force. Of note is that Russia is already extremely pissed over the unreasonable hostile climate towards it in Washington DC. It will have consequences.

The Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei today acknowledged that the nuclear agreement with the U.S. is a failure. The U.S. did not deliver on its end. Iranian money is still blocked in U.S. controlled accounts and no international bank wants to do business with Iran because the U.S. is threatening to penalize them. The conclusion, Khamenei says, is that no deal with U.S. over any local issue in the Middle East is possible and that all negotiations with it are a waste of time. This new public position may finally free the limits the Rouhani government of Iran had put on Iranian deployments to Syria. Why bother with any self-limitation if the U.S. wont honor it?

How the situation in Syria will develop from here on depends to a large part on Turkey. Turkey is changing its foreign policy and turning towards Russia, Iran and China. But how far that turn away from the “west” will go and if it will also include a complete turnaround on Syria is not yet clear. Should Turkey really block its borders and all supplies to the Jihadis, the war on Syria could be over within a year or two. Should (secret) supplies continue, the war may continue for many more years. In both cases more allied troops and support for the Syrian government would significantly cut the time (and damage) the war will still take. That alone would be well worth additional efforts by Syria’s allies.

Will Tehran and Moscow agree with that conclusion?

Bernie Sanders won the presidential nomination, but he was cheated out of it by the Democratic National Committee which is the operating body for the Democratic Party.

They helped Hillary win the nomination by combining vote miscounts and appointing super delegates whom no one elected to vote for Hillary. So, she won this nomination illegitimately. All of Bernie Sanders’ supporters know that.

They have turned against Hillary, and it is unlikely that many of them will vote for Clinton. The Democratic National Committee said:

“Who do they dislike more than Hillary? The Russians”, as they’ve been demonizing the Russians for the last 3-4 years.

So, the Americans are told to dislike the Russians. That’s why they blame Putin for WikiLeaks’ release of the emails that showed how the Democrats were cheating with votes. Hillary is a crook in many ways. But she has escaped prosecution because she is too useful for the oligarchs. So they shift all the blame onto Putin, saying that this is all a Russian plot to get Donald Trump elected. Is that what this is? I don’t think this will fool many people. It will be played with in the media because the media is not honest, not independent. It’s like the old Soviet media – it has to answer to the master and can’t say much independently. It’s not going to fool the American people that all this email thing was done by Putin.

The Democrats are looking for a boogeyman, for somebody to shift the blame onto away from them. They don’t even realize that in doing so they are making Russia look like a cyber superpower. Well, it may be a cyber superpower, but we all know that Clinton’s emails did not reach WikiLeaks via Russia. It’s just something they made up. The media simply went along with it. I don’t think that many people will believe this. It just makes the Democratic National Committee look even more ridiculous. It steals an election from the candidate that people wanted and tries to blame Putin for doing that.

Bernie Sanders, when he supported Clinton, discredited himself and demoralized all his supporters. Therefore, they turned away from him too. That eliminates him as a leader. He ruined it for himself. If he had gone to the convention and said: “You stole the elections from me! I’m the one who won”, he would be the most popular American today. He could run as an independent candidate and win. But he didn’t have the courage to do that. He gave up, surrendered. The oligarchs are accustomed to people surrendering to them. They think that Putin will surrender to them too.

Bernie Sanders does not have the support of the oligarchs. The military security complex, Wall Street, and the Israel Lobby are not behind him. He is not their agent. His support came from Democratic voters themselves. So he doesn’t have the power to prevail, unless he really takes the fight to Hillary. But he wasn’t really risky to do that. Bernie Sanders is considered an outsider to the oligarchs. They did not found his campaign. But now he has been broken as a political leader and it is the end for him.

The media will all support Clinton and attack Trump. But this eventually loses its credibility. Fewer people depend on the media because it has lied about so much and for so long. Much more important is how Trump handles himself. If he continues to say that he doesn’t want a conflict with Russia, that NATO is a problem and other issues, then he will win regardless of the oligarchs and the media. He needs to stick to the point that he is against offshoring Americans’ jobs. The fact that corporations have moved middle-class jobs overseas really hurts Americans and the American economy. He is against having tensions with Russia. He realizes that there is no real need for NATO. So, people are supporting him for these reasons. If he sticks to these issues, he will win. But the question is what could he do even if he gets into office. It may turn out that he can do nothing, but he’s the only hope we have.

But at this moment, there is the chance that the Democrats will try to sabotage the elections.

Voting in the US is largely handled by electronic machines. It has no paper trail. So, whoever programs those machines can determine the voting outcome.

And nobody will ever know. Unless Trump has some kind of experts who can ensure that the voting machines are programmed correctly, I suspect that the machines will be programmed to vote for Hillary, especially because so many in the Republican political establishment are opposed to Trump. If he relies on them, they will cooperate with Hillary’s people and program the machines so that Hillary wins. There is no paper balance to recount it. This is the way a lot of elections have been stolen in recent years. This may happen again.

On top of a hill overlooking the Tapajós, the fourth-largest tributary of the Amazon in Brazil, lies a village of around 130 Indigenous families, who live between the river and their small fruit and manioc farms.

Walking tracks lead deep into the forest to where men hunt and women gather spicy ants to flavour their cassava flour.

This village of wood and palm-thatched houses, and the area surrounding it, is called the Sawré Muybu.

It is one of many Indigenous villages along the Tapajós River that are home to the Munduruku people.

In just a few years this village may find itself an island, surrounded by the reservoir of a large hydroelectric dam. Others nearby will be underwater.

The São Luiz do Tapajós dam is the first of four slated to be built on the Tapajós River. This first dam would block the river, creating a reservoir that would submerge an area nearly the size of New York City – including important parts of the Sawré Muybu Indigenous land.

The project has attracted significant international interest. A group of western companies, including French state-owned EDF, have set up a group to study their options in the region. Chinese firms are also reportedly interested, and so is German giant Siemens, and US General Electric who manufacture the turbines used in these projects.

Whether or not the Munduruku have any say in the plans hinges on how this land is officially recognised under Brazilian law.

The Sawre Muybu land

The dam licensing process has stalled due to a report from the Brazilian Indigenous agency FUNAI which states that this is Indigenous land.

In a last-ditch action before her impeachment, outgoing Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff moved to have these lands approved for federal recognition as Munduruku Indigenous Territory by the Justice Ministry, a move that may have killed the project.

As a result the invitation for bids for contracts to participate in building the dam – set for August – has recently been postponed by Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer.

But the change to a government that is hostile to environmental licensing means the political weather is again uncertain.

“The government says we don’t exist in this land. The government doesn’t want to recognise us,” a softly-spoken young Munduruku woman (who prefers not to be named) tells me.

“Indigenous women are warrior women, we will fight to the death. And one day, we will win.”

If the dam is built, it would mean the permanent relocation of Indigenous people, officially forbidden by the Brazilian Constitution outside of times of war or disease outbreaks.

That may be why Maurício Tolmasquim, president of the Energy Research Company – which is part of the Brazilian Ministry for Mines and Energy – has denied that the Munduruku have lived on the land for any longer than 30 years or so.

“For us this land, this earth, is very important,” says Chief Arnaldo Caetano Kabá Munduruku, the Chief-of-Chiefs of the Munduruku people. He wears traditional Munduruku beaded straps across his chest made from seeds, and a red feather cap – traditional for important occasions.

“God gave it to us, to care for her and preserve her forever. We take care of our land. We always nourish her. She nourishes us every day, us and our children,” he says.

State of war

The Munduruku people – who number around 12,000 in total, all along the Tapajós River – say that they are living in a state of war.

“The people in the village are always worried about this. We go to sleep worrying about this, we don’t sleep well worrying about this business,” says Chief Arnaldo.

So they are “self-demarcating” the Sawré Muybu land, with the hope of prompting official approval from the government.

To do this they are putting up signs around the perimeter of a 700 square mile expanse of Amazon jungle. It is arduous and dangerous work, especially on the so-called “dryline”, the border deep within the forest where small-scale gold miners and illegal loggers lurk.

The day before the attempt to demarcate the dryline, a military police officer was killed in an ambush close to the village. The officer was accompanying an illegal logging operation with the Brazilian environmental agency IBAMA.

Gold miners – already numerous in this part of the Amazon – use mercury in their prospecting, which runs into the river. Mercury is poisonous to humans.

More roads, such as those used to transport machinery to dam construction sites, will mean more mining and logging.

Another Belo Monte?

The Munduruku have seen how Indigenous people have suffered from the building of the Belo Monte dam on a neighbouring Amazon tributary, the Xingu River.

The Belo Monte is now the third-biggest by installed capacity in the world, after the Three Gorges dam in China and the Brazilian–Paraguayan Itaipu dam. Construction has just been completed.

“We have been there and we saw it with our own eyes, what the dam has done to the fish. Everything is finished there. We went there and didn’t see any nature there,” says Chief Valto Datie Munduruku, the chief of a neighbouring village within the Sawre Muybu.

Indigenous people impacted by Belo Monte – such as the Kayapó and the Juruna, among others living in the so-called Xingu Bend – were not consulted before its construction.

This was because their land was not going to be directly flooded by the project.

But in reality, Belo Monte has changed the lives of Indigenous and riparian communities completely. Those that once relied on fish from the river to eat are now dependent on government handouts for food provisions.

The local town near Belo Monte, Altamira, swelled to nearly double its size during the construction of the dam. Violence, prostitution and murder rates have rocketed. Raw sewage flows into the Xingu due to lack of the infrastructure promised by the government.

“There are still a lot of dead fish appearing every day on the river,” says journalist Sue Branford, after visiting the area last year. “They are sending out boats every day collect dead fish. One biologist told me ‘You can see the fish coming up for air; they can’t breathe because water is so polluted’”.

Federal prosecutor Thais Santi considers the destruction of Indigenous people by the Belo Monte project so severe that she has called it “ethnocide”. She is bringing a charge against the Brazilian government.

Unique culture

The Munduruku were among the most valiant in their efforts to protest against the construction of the Belo Monte.

They are now determined to protect their own land.

All along the Tapajós River are sacred places. The most prominent in the Munduruku belief system is the Atravessia dos Porcos, or Crossing of the Pigs, which is the site where the river itself was created by Karosakaybu, a revered Munduruku ancestor with supernatural powers.

The fish are also important. At the Garganta do Diabo, or Devil’s Throat, rapids form at the meeting of two rivers, where fish migration patterns deliver abundant food for the Munduruku once a year. Soon, it could be completely covered by the 7.6 kilometre-long, 53 metre-high São Luiz dam.

“The government is trying to lie to our people. They have not come here to the village to have the consultation, the conversation, about what is going to happen,” says Chief Arnaldo.

“But our people only say one thing: We do not want the construction of this hydroelectric dam on our river, because it is sacred for us,” says Chief Arnaldo. “We have lived here for all time. We are from here, we were created here. Because of this we will not give up.”

The whole community – apart from the children, who play with monkeys and parakeets, remaining blissfully unaware of the crisis – are locked in the struggle.

And the women are among the most determined to ensure they can stay on their land.

“Indigenous women are warrior women, we will fight to the death. And one day, we will win.”

(The women in this article cannot be named out of concerns for their safety)

… Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That’ll be next. – Donald Trump at a news conference July 27, 2016

That’s the money quote that was widely reported as what Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump said that day about Russia and Hillary Clinton’s emails. It is hard to read those sentences as anything but cynical joking, but most of the media, the empty-headed commentariat, and Democratic shills all made a fundamentally bad-faith effort to inflate the joke into something sinister to serve their various agendas.

Trump’s offhand comment was almost universally misreported in a provocative, interpretive, and stupid manner – even Democracy NOW! headlined the story: “Trump Asks Russia to Hack Hillary Clinton’s Email.” That is just wrong.

There is nothing in Trump’s snide remarks inviting anyone to hack anything. Trump expresses “hope” that Russia can “find” 30,000 emails that are missing because Clinton had them deleted from her private server after unilaterally deciding they were not government property. It would be more accurate to say that Clinton hacked herself to eliminate the emails, except she didn’t need to hack, she just needed reassurance from other pliable lawyers that destroying potential evidence was no problem.

As for any invitation to the Russians to hack Clinton’s emails now, that’s so stupid that it’s more than likely deliberately stupid. Clinton’s private server was disconnected many months ago (or years?) and is literally hack-proof. It’s also in FBI custody. And there’s no reason to believe it would be worth hacking by anyone, since Clinton has already deleted, disabled, or destroyed pretty much everything on it.

Saying that “Donald Trump invites Russia to hack into Clinton’s emails,” as the Los Angeles Times did July 27, is at best dishonest mindless sensationalism, but most likely a deliberate political lie. A more accurate interpretation of what Trump actually said would be along the lines of: maybe Russia can find Clinton’s deleted emails somewhere, in the cloud or something, since the U.S. government has failed to figure out what’s been concealed from the American public (or has kept it concealed). If Trump was baiting the Democrats, they took the bait – hook, line, and sinker.

Trump called for selective transparency

Trump implied that if the Russians could find Clinton’s missing emails, they should share them with the media and “probably be rewarded mightily.” There is nothing wrong in asking for this particular transparency, which is clearly in the public interest. But Trump is no more honest than the rest. If reciprocity is a measure of fairness, then he should also be calling for the Russians, or some 15-year-old geek in a basement somewhere, to hack the IRS and release Trump’s tax returns. That, compared to hacking Clinton’s out of service servers, is at least a theoretical possibility.

Compounding its duplicity, the L.A. Times went on to reiterate the lie that has become a widespread media meme: “Donald Trump dared a foreign government to commit espionage on the U.S. to hurt his rival….” Not only are Clinton’s emails beyond the reach of any hacker, it would be impossible to commit espionage even if it were possible to hack them. Clinton had a private server precisely to keep her emails outside U.S. government control and any prying eyes, official or not. Even when the Clinton server was up and running, hacking it would have been legally and morally ambiguous. That hack would have been essentially a crime against another criminal set-up.

The larger context for this herding of the media wagons around the Clinton candidacy was the actual hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) email system that went undetected for about a year. When Wikileaks started releasing DNC emails, attachments, and voice mails on July 22, the Democratic Party’s professional staff was revealed to be small-minded, biased, and dishonest. That was actually a public service. It was also no great surprise, especially to Sanders supporters, but it was a bit startling to see it all revealed so nakedly and shamelessly.

Corrupt DNC exposed just as convention about to begin

Damage control suddenly became a Democratic Party necessity lest the party’s venality and corruption become the issue. Within days of the exposure of the campaign, the government rushed to the rescue. Led by the Democrat-in-chief (who kept his hands clean), the partisan executive branch countered with anonymous leaked stories, attributing the DNC hack to one of its favorite scapegoats, Russia. Right on cue, Clinton allies were accusing Trump of treason. Welcome to Cold War II (which has been on for awhile now, actually). The basic framing meme, as it appeared in a New York Times lede July 26, was straight forwardly disingenuous:

American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.

This is old school Red-baiting (applied to a no longer Red Russia) with even less intellectual integrity than McCarthy-era smearing. No wonder that no evidence was produced by these unnamed spooks, all they had to do was impugn Putin, Putin, Putin, and people’s minds started shutting down with pre-programmed fear. A few days later head spook (and the first to go on record) James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, kept the story alive by pretending to downplay it (sort of) in good spook fashion, while also slyly influencing the presidential election. Some of what Clapper said about the DNC hacks:

Was this to just stir up trouble or was this ultimately to try to influence an election? Of course, that’s a serious – a serious – proposition… We don’t know enough [yet] to … ascribe a motivation, regardless of who it may have been. [Emphasis added]

Having said the intelligence community doesn’t know who did it or why, intelligence chief Clapper went on to identify and ascribe motive to – you guessed it – Russia:

They believe we’re trying to influence political developments in Russia, we’re trying to affect change, and so their natural response is to retaliate and do unto us as they think we’ve done to them.

Is there any reason to think the U.S. doesn’t do this stuff to Russia when the U.S. does it to Germany and other allies? Clapper knows better, that’s why he made an apparent allusion to the movie “Casablanca,” winking to the insiders while hoping most people don’t get it:

I’m somewhat taken aback by the hyperventilation on this…. I’m shocked someone did some hacking – that’s never happened before.

In “Casablanca,” Captain Renault, a cynical state official, bowing to the Gestapo, decides to shut down Rick’s café because of illegal gambling:

Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]

Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.

And so it is with DNI Clapper, who is shocked to find that hacking is going on in the world, although he stops just short of admitting the U.S. presumably is or tries to be at the cutting edge of world hackery. In Clapper’s case, his “winnings” would be a wider acceptance by Americans of others doing to them what their own government does to others – as well as to Americans:

I think we’re going to be in a state of suppression of extremism in whatever manifestation or form it takes, whether it’s al Qaeda or ISIS or some other group that’s spawned. This is going to be a long-haul proposition, and I think the same is true in the whole realm of cybersecurity…. I think we just need to accept that, and not be quite so excitable at yet another instance of it.

Wait, say what? Weren’t we talking about Russia, or did al Qaeda or ISIS hack the DNC? Or did they all? Is there anyone who didn’t hack the DNC?

Political hacking is so much worse than, say, torture, or assassination

In what plays like a comic version of good cop/bad cop, former CIA Director Leon Panetta, an avowed Clinton partisan who spoke at the Democratic Convention, used his speech to add to the hyperventilation over the DNC emails release. Panetta, long a defender of Bush-era torture, raised the stakes of the false political charge that Trump asked Russia to hack Clinton. Panetta, without a scintilla of evidence on display, claimed that Trump was asking Russia to involve itself in the U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf, all but calling it treason (which others have done):

He asked the Russians to interfere in American politics…. Think about that for a moment. Donald Trump wants to be president of the United States [and] Donald Trump is asking one of our adversaries to engage in hacking or intelligence efforts against the United States to affect our election.

It would be at least as true to argue that Trump asked the Russians to contribute to American justice, which has failed to hold Clinton meaningfully accountable for her missing emails, or any other aspect of her unilateral effort to personally privatize a corner of government.

Panetta also repeated the lie that Trump asked Russia to hack the currently unhackable Clinton computers. Then he expanded that deceit to include the entire Clinton campaign, which he dishonestly equated with the United States. It’s worth remembering that Trump’s remarks were directed at the emails that have gone missing from Clinton’s private server when she was Secretary of State (2009-2013). The inspector general of the State Department has found that Clinton’s server was vulnerable to outside intruders during all or most of the time Clinton was responsible for managing its security. In that respect, it’s possible or even likely that Russia (and others) could have copied and kept all of Clinton’s emails, both the ones she turned over and the ones she deleted. That state of affairs is in itself another kind of joke. It’s also an unresolved Clinton scandal. For Trump to make fun of it as he did is to mock a perverse reality. It’s a reality that Panetta, like other Clinton loyalists, would like to deny it into non-existence, or at least distract from it with his own unreality. Panetta’s demagoguery would have you conclude that Putin is actually Trump’s metaphorical running mate:

No presidential candidate who’s running to be president of the United States ought to be asking a foreign country, particularly Russia, to engage in hacking or intelligence efforts to try to determine what the Democratic candidate may or may not be doing…. This just is beyond my own understanding of the responsibilities that candidates have to be loyal to their country and to their country alone, not to reach out to somebody like Putin and Russia, and try to engage them in an effort to try to, in effect, conduct a conspiracy against another party….

Keeping the public’s eye off the ball is no laughing matter

Panetta is a smart, experienced guy, so he must be aware of what a colossal joke this is, even though CNN chose to swallow it whole. The DNC hack had little to do with the current presidential campaign and almost everything to do with the Democrats’ covert campaign against Bernie Sanders. Any honorable Democrat would denounce that. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned under pressure, without noticeable contrition, and Hillary Clinton promptly rewarded her with an honorary chairmanship of the Clinton campaign. The last thing Clinton wants is to run against the specter of a martyred Sanders. She would much, much prefer to run against Vladimir Putin and his imaginary alliance with Donald Trump. This is consistent with her decades-long demonization of Russia and support for American/NATO soft aggression against Russia initiated by President Clinton more than 20 years ago.

By omission, Panetta endorses this Clinton policy of needlessly risking war, making endangerment equivalent to patriotic loyalty and, in time-dishonored fashion, equating the reduction of war between Russia and the U.S. somehow with disloyalty. It’s neo-liberal logic, so it doesn’t have to make sense. Especially not when it’s part of the framing of a false campaign trope.

“The Russians are hacking, the Russians are hacking” cry is already losing steam. New reports that someone hacked the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) or the Clinton campaign itself were downplayed or later minimized in quasi-denial. Early in the week, even before Trump’s provocation, Robert Mackey of The Intercept had assessed the sketchiness of evidence that the Russians were to blame.

Principled pushback against Panetta would not be difficult. For all his disdain for Putin’s Russia, Panetta has long been a champion of American authoritarianism that is unmatched in the world: the “right” of the president of the U.S. to assassinate by drone, in any foreign country, any person the president determines, in secret, with no due process, to be a legitimate target, even a U.S. citizen. There’s a difference between hacking and beheading. Is there any other chief executive in the world with such freedom to kill people with no accountability?

It is a reality of American life these days that there is little public objection to having a President exercise arbitrary, life-or-death power over any one of 7.4 billion people in the world. More common than objection to this plain crime against humanity is widespread acceptance, and sometimes even gratitude for the president’s “restraint” in assassinating only a few hundred people, maybe only half of them innocent civilians.

Hillary Clinton has not opposed the U.S. having an executioner-in-chief. Neither has Donald Trump objected. Even Bernie Sanders hasn’t objected, although he said the power should be used carefully and sparingly. Trump’s sarcastic joke about 30,000 missing emails may not have been all that funny, but the self-serving windbaggery and open deceit the joke provoked are actually hilarious, or would be if the stakes were not so high. Unless something unexpected happens, come January 2017, either Trump or Clinton will have the power to kill at will.

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.

This article was published ten years ago following the assassination of president Milosevic. The ICTY, which has declared his innocence, was complicit in his assassination ordered by US-NATO. 

Based on the evidence provided by the ICTY themselves (some of it clearly inadvertant as a result of their clumsy coverup in the immediate aftermath of his death) i.e., public statements from ICTY officials (doctors/toxicologists) that they performed blood tests on January 12 which revealed the presence of the Leprosy drug ‘Rifampicine’ in Milosevic’s blood but kept it secret from Milosevic,his doctors,lawyers and the entire world for TWO MONTHS until March 7, is clear evidence of foul play on the part of officials in the ICTY.

The fact that the ICTY had to change their story repeatedly resulting in numerous self- contradictory and inconsistent statements also points to a clear coverup.

For example, once the Dutch NOS TV station revealed certain facts soon after Milosevic’s death – especially that Milosevic had a blood test on January 12 – which the ICTY doctors themselves admitted was performed in order to find out why Milosevic’s heart medication wasn’t working – and yet failed to tell anyone in the world including Milosevic himself until March 7 – and yet he dies three short days after writing a letter to the Russian embassy complaining of being poisoned.

The constantly changing stories by ICTY officials – all contradictory of one another – given for his death were also highly suspicious.

They first said it was “natural causes”, then said “possibly suicide”, then they said he took the “wrong medicine” – without explaining how he could have possibly taken the medicine without them knowing – since he was always closely watched and was ONLY given medicine by the prison dispensary in the presence of armed guards.

Then they changed their story yet again by claiming that he must have been “poisoning himself in secret” in a “complex plot to escape to Russia” – even though this necessitated the involvement of his lawyers,doctors, the Russian government and even the ICTY ITSELF (since it was known Milosevic was under strict 24/7 Video surveillance & ALL medicine as indicated previously had to be taken from the prison dispensary in the presence of armed prison guards then how on earth could he be “poisoning himself” in secret?!)

The “poisoning himself in secret” story just didn’t make any sense; realizing the absurdity, the ICTY offials simply changed their story yet again and LIED by making the ludicrous claim that he WASN’T monitored 24/7 and that “alcohol and other drugs” were being “smuggled in” to the prison for months before his death!!

But since this necessitated knowing involvement on the part of ICTY officials/guards, they had to change their story yet again by claiming that though the prison guards knew about this alleged smuggling of alcohol and drugs for months,somehow,because of sheer “incompetence”, nothing was done about it by the higher ups (i.e the judges/prosecutors) and Milosevic was happily able to poison himself for months on end (and presumably also get drunk)!

The fact that soon after Milosevic’s death the Dutch NOS TV station revealed that the ICTY ADMITTED that they KNEW about the presence of the Leprosy drug in his blood since January 12 – but supposedly did nothing about it for two entire months really threw a spanner in the works. This is where the cover up simply fell apart and blew a massive hole in the ICTY’s initial “we didn’t know he was poisoning himself so couldn’t do anything about it” story.

Someone INSIDE the ICTY had to administering the Leprosy drug to Milosevic covertly without his knowledge and that was clearly revealed in the complaint letter that Milosevic wrote to the Russian embassy on March 8 after he received the blood test report -the day before – on March 7 -TWO MONTHS late.

Since in this letter Milosevic makes clear that the ICTY has repeatedly refused to let him go to Russia for heart surgery (even as late as his last appeal of February 24,2006 his request for medical treatment was denied)Milosevic pointed out that Russian specialists would quickly detect the Leprosy drug in a routine blood test – and thus clearly PROVE his poisoning by the ICTY – is it any surprise that the letter doesn’t get delivered until AFTER his death?

Then they changed their story yet again and said that Milosevic WASN’T poisoned because they found no PRESCRIBED drugs in “toxic concentrations”. How cute. Meaning he wasn’t poisoned by the medicines he was SUPPOSED to be taking.

Even though ICTY officials admit that the Leprosy drug, ‘Rifampicine’, is an UNPRESCRIBED drug which apart from interfering with (i.e., blocking) heart medication – in effect acting as a POISON – it also quickly dissipates from the body leaving no trace of its presence (which they themselves admit) they still had the audacity to attempt to mislead the public by twisting the facts to make it sound as if he just simply wasn’t poisoned in any way at all.

The fact that the ICTY blood test report of January 12 did not get delivered to Milosevic until March 7 – two months late – causing him to write his very concerned letter on March 8, outlining his grave fears about being poisoned, and the fact that his MArch 8 lettr did not get delivered to the Russian embassy until well AFTER Milosevic’s death speaks volumes about who the only murderer could possibly be: NATO.

Since NATO have on numerous occasions publically admitted that they own – and ipso facto – control the ICTY, it can also be proved by the fact that Clinton’s former “peace envoy”, Richard Holbrooke was even able to intervene recently directly with the president of the ICTY on behalf of an ICTY-indicted KLA mass murderer, Mr.Ramush Haradinaj, to have Mr. Haradinaj released from The Hague prison without him having to even face trial – let alone be convicted for his crimes – also speaks volumes about what kind of “court” the ICTY truly is.

Published ten years ago by Global Research

STATEMENT OF TIPHAINE DICKSON, LEGAL SPOKESPERSON OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE TO DEFEND SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, AT THE ICDSM PRESS CONFERENCE HELD AT THE BELAIR TULIP IN THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS, MARCH 14th, 2006.

Tiphaine Dickson

This press conference was initially planned last week, to present a request signed by well-known jurists, including the former Attorney General of the United States, Mr. Ramsey Clark, and prominent political figures, including a member of the Russian Duma, the Czech Parliament as well as the European Parliament, which was filed last Friday with the Security Council of the United Nations as well as the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY, to direct the latter institution to permit President Milosevic to receive the specialized medical treatment his well-known and longstanding medical condition required at the Bakoulev Center in Moscow.

It obviously pains me to have made this last trip to The Hague without any hope that Slobodan Milosevic’s health will ever be stabilized.

What an indecent end to a disgraceful process, starting on day one, when in a blaze of astonishing irony, the president of Yugoslavia was indicted by this body for allegations of crimes against Humanity in Kosovo, a claim backed by evidence so slender and biased that it was inversely proportional to its political and indeed its military charge.

The bombing itself—all 78 days of it—was executed in violation of international law, a classic case of aggression, held by the Nuremberg Tribunal to be the supreme international crime in that it holds within it the accumulated evil of all other war crimes.

That the NATO bombing was a violation of international law was acknowledged by Wesley Clark, to the US weekly The New Yorker, but that admission was deemed inadmissible before this Security Council institution, the ICTY. Mr Milosevic was prevented from raising General Clark’s candid admission before this body, although it was so obviously germane to his defense.

NATO short-circuited the Security Council to bomb, yet instrumentalized a Security Council body to indict President Milosevic and kept bombing, as the Prosecutor announced that because of the indictment of the President of the country being bombed in violation of international law, the president, the reprentative of his people, was no longer a suitable guarantor in any peace negotiations.

Disgraceful from the start.

And so it went, with President Milosevic’s removal from then Yugoslavia, without as much as a court order to the director of the Belgrade jail in which he was being held, and in violation of a decision by Yugoslavia’s constitutional court.

And it ground on, with every single request for provisional release, based on his ill-health, denied.

Was the presumption that President Milosevic would abscond? Such a conclusion is preposterous, as in four years, he made clear his tireless commitment to defending himself, and above all he demonstrated his unrelenting passion for setting out the facts about the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.

His commitment to presenting his case, that there were no Balkan wars but indeed one war, waged against Yugoslavia, was evident for all to observe.

This was most obvious when President Milosevic was poised to begin his defense in late August 2004. His health was better than it became in recent months, yet, incredibly, Dr. Falke, the ICTY prison doctor, reported that Slobodan Milosevic would not have the ability to represent himself in the proceedings against him.

Contrast this finding—a matter of law, which in any event, a medical practitioner is not entitled to determine—with the trial Chamber’s subsequent findings questioning the necessity of specialized medical care in Moscow.

Contradictory positions with a common thread: the violation of the rights of an accused person.

That Pavle Strugar, accused before the ICTY, may receive hip replacement surgery—a minor procedure—based on the guarantees of Montenegro, seems absurdly inconsistent with the denial of complex vascular and cardiac care in a renowned specialized facility in Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council.

I can tell you that President Milosevic was hoping that our letter to the Security Council and to the Trial Chamber would be persuasive, and that this press conference could help him receive treatment so that he could finish his defense without fear of a hypertensive crisis or constant ringing in his ears.

But that is not to be.

Our hope is that the confidentiality of all medical records, doctors’ notes, prescription protocols and records, as well as test results be waived and be available for scrutiny and for discussion, without exception.

We will shortly be requesting that the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, waive the civil and criminal immunity of certain individuals who by systematic neglect, potential medical malpractice, or worse, precipitated the death of a man, who even in death, stands wrongfully accused of having been its cause.

We hope, and are fully confident, that the truth will emerge.

America’s “Humanitarian Massacre” of Syrian Civilians. The “Counter-Terrorism” Campaign Is Directed against the Syrian People

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 31 2016

Both militant and Syrian government sources have estimated the counteroffensive in southwest Aleppo to involve approximately 5,000 fighters moving in from Idlib province.

The operation seeks to break the now full encirclement of Aleppo by government forces.

Faced with an attempt to overthrow his government, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the coup as “a gift from God” – and wasted no time in exploiting it to further entrench his authoritarian regime.

Turkish government broadcaster TRT was seized by a group of military officers calling themselves the “Peace in the Country Council” on July 15, who announced that they had taken over the country. Within 24 hours, the coup attempt had failed. Erdoğan responded by calling his supporters to the streets. Once his government’s survival was guaranteed, it quickly became clear that one coup’s failure was becoming another’s success.

The authoritarian president has been seeking to concentrate more power in his own hands. However, his ambitions were frustrated last year by the success of the left-wing Kurdish-led People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in elections. This blocked plans by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to change the constitution, which required winning two-thirds of parliamentary seats.

Erdoğan’s use of the failed coup to launch one of his own was borne out by scenes on July 16 and following days. Mobs of Erdoğan’s right-wing Islamist supporters beat and lynched soldiers surrendering after the coup and launched attacks on neighbourhoods inhabited by minorities and supporters of the left. It has been further borne out by a huge purge that has targeted not just the military, judiciary and civil service, but also the media, academia and civil society. The purge deepened pre-existing moves by Erdoğan to control these institutions.

Unravelling the Coup

The HDP opposed the coup, as did the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and other Kurdish groups that have been mounting armed resistance against the Turkish state’s brutal military onslaught over the past year.

HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş said on July 19th:

Kurdish guerillas could have taken advantage of this attempt and seized many cities, but this would be playing into the hands of the pro-coup mindset.

[The] Kurdish movement, by not making a choice between the two pro-coup mindsets, maintained a dignified stance that insists on the democracy struggle of the peoples. However, people like Erdoğan do not have the capacity to understand this dignified stance.

Both the left and the movement of the long oppressed Kurdish minority (which makes up about 20 per cent of Turkey’s population) warned that whoever was the victor in fighting between coup-makers and Erdoğan’s forces, democracy and the people would lose.

It is not clear who was behind the failed coup. There has been some speculation that the whole thing was Erdoğan’s “Reichstag fire” – a faked coup to rally support for the president and justify further restrictions on democracy. This conspiracy theory is not as outlandish as it might seem, given the Byzantine workings of the Turkish state. Erdoğan’s inner circle has worked in close cooperation with the military in the past year’s war against the Kurdish people and in the sponsorship of armed groups in the Syrian Civil War.

The theory has been fuelled by incongruities in the events on the night of the coup. These include pro-coup air force jets intercepting, but not shooting down Erdoğan’s plane when he returned to the largest city, Istanbul, and the failure of the coup plotters to take over pro-government commercial media outlets. This allowed Erdoğan to rally support in an interview conducted over FaceTime.

However, these facts could also be explained by incompetence on the part of the coup plotters, less support than anticipated from the military or the attempted coup being executed prematurely after being discovered by the intelligence service, the MIT.

Furthermore, as left-wing journalist Ali Ergin Demirhan pointed out on Sendika10.org on July 17th: “Given that Turkey’s is a NATO army, it is well-nigh impossible for the army to conduct a successful coup against the wishes of the U.S. and EU (that is, NATO).” Support from the U.S. and EU was not forthcoming.

The “Reichstag Fire” theory was boosted when Erdoğan blamed the “parallel state” for the coup – code in AKP jargon for the followers of Fethullah Gülen, a U.S.-based Islamic preacher who was an ally of Erdoğan until 2014. The AKP government had allowed Gülen’s supporters to infiltrate the institutions of Turkish state. The aim was to displace supporters of “Kemalism”, the right-wing secular ethnic nationalist ideology of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the Turkish Republic in the 1920s.

In 2014, Gülenists in the judiciary tried to bring corruption charges against members of Erdoğan’s inner circle. Since then, the AKP has carried out several purges against Gülenists in the state apparatus.

However, a July 21 statement by the Brussels-based Kurdistan National Congress explained:

It is important to specify that this coup was not undertaken by Gülenists.

Due to the conflict between the AKP and the Gülenists, sympathizers of Gülen may have taken part in the coup attempt. But by saying ‘the Gülenists attempted the coup’, AKP-Erdoğan are trying to create a platform on which they can suppress Gülen’s supporters even more.

By labelling the coup as Gülenists (who many people see as worse and more reactionary than them), they are hoping to rally support in order to take revenge on the putschists. In other words, they are trying to kill two birds with one stone.

It is evident that this attempt was backed by a large part of the army. If they had planned and executed it more professionally, it may have succeeded.

In this regard, it cannot be said that it was undertaken by Gülenists or a minority; there isn’t enough of a Gülenists presence in the army to pull off a coup.

There has also been speculation that Kemalists were behind the coup. Until the 1990s, Kemalism was dominant in the Turkish state. When its predecessors first rose to power in the ’90s, the AKP’s Islamism was a challenge to the Kemalist establishment. Kemalist ideology includes an extreme form of secularism based on the French ideology of laïcité, which, among other things, bans people wearing Islamic clothes from higher education and public sector employment.

For much of its existence, the Turkish republic has been under military rule. The armed forces have traditionally seen themselves as the guardians of the state’s Kemalist ideology. Conflict between the AKP and Kemalism has often manifested as conflict between the government and the army, resulting in large-scale purges in 2009 and 2013. This ironically benefited Gülen’s supporters. It is likely that Kemalists were involved in the failed coup. However, the two large Kemalist parties, the MHP and CHP, both opposed the coup.

Ethnic Minorities

For much of his rule, Erdoğan has been at loggerheads with the Kemalists, but in the past year there has been a rapprochement based on the violent oppression of common enemies. Primarily, this has been the Kurds. Extreme ethnic nationalism was always central to Kemalist ideology. As Turkey’s largest minority, the Kurds were subjected to forced assimilation from the Turkish Republic’s birth in the 1920s. (The other two main minorities – Armenians and Greeks – were ethnically cleansed shortly before and during the republic’s birth.)

The state not only banned Kurdish culture, Kurdish names and the Kurdish language, it even banned the letters “q”, “w” and “x” because these exist in Kurdish but not Turkish. Thousands of people were forcibly moved to cities in a bid to erase their ethnic identity.

After the PKK initiated armed resistance in 1984, about 30,000 Kurds were slaughtered by the military and paramilitaries. The Humanitarian Law Project documented 18,000 extrajudicial executions of Kurdish civilians.

When Erdoğan was first elected as prime minister in 2003, his government took a more liberal approach toward the Kurds. The Kurdish language remained banned from use for official purposes, but speaking it was no longer a crime and the letters “q”, “w” and “x” were legalized. The PKK remained illegal, and its leader Abdullah Öcalan remained imprisoned in an island dungeon. But the regime held sporadic talks with the PKK and Öcalan, culminating in the 2013 peace process.

The AKP regime was initially more liberal than its Kemalist predecessors in other respects. However, it was also fiercely neoliberal. In 2013, protests against the privatization of public space in Istanbul’s Gezi Park mushroomed into a nationwide youth-led movement for economic opportunities, civil liberties and against increasing moves by Erdoğan to concentrate power in his own hands.

This “Gezi Park” movement involved Turkey’s large, highly militant but perennially factionalized ‘old left’. Most significantly, though, it sparked the creation of a ‘new left’, similar to anti-neoliberal movements erupting at the same time in public squares in southern Europe and incorporating the feminist, LGBTI, environmentalist and other movements.

The HDP managed to unite most of the old and new left with the Kurdish movement into an electoral force strong enough to deny the AKP a two thirds majority in elections in July last year. In doing so, the HDP secured significant parliamentary representation for forces threatening to both Turkey’s Islamist and Kemalist elites.

Erdoğan’s response was to call a second election, restart the war against the Kurds and launch violent crackdowns against the opposition. There were mass arrests of academics, closure of newspapers and the flattening of Kurdish towns and cities. The regime also used mob violence against leftists, Kurds, religious minorities and those seen as non-conformist.

Significantly, Islamist AKP supporters stood shoulder-to-shoulder with secular fascist “Grey Wolves” affiliated to the Kemalist MHP in this mob violence. Despite this, the second election, on November 1, still failed to give the AKP its two thirds majority or keep the HDP out of parliament.

The renewed war against the Kurds put the armed forces at the centre of politics again. Why a section of the armed forces turned against the regime is unclear. The air force most clearly sided with the coup, while the MIT, the Special Forces Command and the Turkish National Police most clearly opposed it. The bulk of army land forces stayed out of the fighting, leading to speculation that they may be biding their time for another coup attempt.

It is possible that Erdoğan’s foreign policy may be a factor. When the civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Erdoğan gave support to mainly Islamist armed groups fighting the Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, hoping to gain influence over a post-Assad regime. Some groups were supplied with arms and logistical support, while others were directly created and run by the MIT. The extent of Turkish involvement in Syria grew and its objectives changed with the rise of the revolution in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) in 2012. In Rojava, a left-wing movement led by Kurdish forces ideologically allied to the PKK had become a key player in Syria’s conflict.

With crushing Rojava the main objective, and various Turkish-backed armed groups failing to do so, Turkish support went to the groups that Erdoğan viewed as most likely to be able to accomplish this: first the al Qaeda-aligned Nusra Front, then ISIS. Western governments have consistently downplayed its NATO ally’s support for ISIS – the West’s official arch-enemy. But at certain times, Turkey’s relationship with the West was strained by the constant traffic of jihadis through Turkey, on the one hand, and the U.S.’s tactical alliance with the Rojava-based forces on the other.

Turkey’s air force shot down a Russian military plane last November in a move intended to force the U.S. to side more closely with Turkey. But all it achieved was a hostile relationship with Russia.

Furthermore, Turkey seems to have suffered blowback from its involvement in Syria in the form of ISIS terrorism in Turkey. Initial ISIS attacks in Turkey suggested the relationship between the AKP and ISIS remained strong. The June 5 attack in Diyarbakir last year, which killed four people, and the October 10 attack in Ankara, which killed more than 100, targeted the HDP and were straight out electoral violence on behalf of the AKP.

Last year’s July 20 attack in Suruç, which killed 33 left-wing youth travelling to Kobanê to help reconstruct the iconic ISIS-ravaged Rojava town, also eliminated militant opponents of the government. There is evidence the police enabled all these attacks.

However, since then, ISIS attacks in Turkey have become more indiscriminate, targeting random civilians and tourists. The reason might be that as ISIS failed to crush Rojava, Turkey has given more support to other armed proxies in Syria.

Suspending Democracy

Just before the failed coup, the Erdoğan government normalized relations with Russia and with Israel. Relations with Israel had become strained after the Israeli murder of Turkish activists attempting to break the blockade of Gaza in 2010. There were also reported moves toward normalising relations with Assad’s ally, Iran, and even Assad himself.

Whether the failed coup-makers were opposed to this policy shift, or opposed to Erdoğan’s previous policy in Syria is a matter for speculation. Interestingly, Iran was one of the first countries to condemn the coup, even before it was certain it had failed. What is certain is that whether the coup succeeded or failed, the result would be the same inside Turkey – greater violence and oppression.

The coup’s failure has strengthened Erdoğan and the Islamist wing of the Turkish state and political elite. On July 16, pro-Erdoğan mobs beheaded and beat to death captured soldiers – many of whom were conscripts who were unaware they were taking part in a coup, having been told by their commanders that they were responding to a terrorism alert in Istanbul. Since then these mobs have, with support from the police, attacked neighbourhoods that are populated by Kurds, the Alevi religious minority, other minorities and leftists in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities.

Syrian refugees have also been targeted, suggesting ethnic nationalism, as well as Islamism, has fuelled the mob violence. However, Sendeka10.org reported on July 17 that residents of these communities militantly resisted the mobs, in some cases successfully.

A purge of the armed forces is understandable after a failed coup, but Erdoğan is using the pretext to achieve the concentration of power he has been striving for. About 7000 people, civilians as well as soldiers, have been arrested. Journalists have had their credentials revoked and TV stations have had their licenses taken away. About 15,200 education workers and more than 2800 members of the judiciary have been sacked.

On July 21, Erdoğan declared a state of emergency and suspended the application of the European Convention on Human Rights.

HDP spokesperson Ayhan Bilgen responded: “If the coup was successful they would have declared a state of emergency. The AKP government who claim that they pushed back the coup and protected democracy now declares a state of emergency and does what would have happened.”

JINHA Women’s News Agency responded that Kurds had been living under a state of emergency for the past 36 years. But the response of the Kurdish movement, the left and Turkey’s militant working class communities has shown that resistance will continue even in the face of greater repression.

As Ali Ergin Demirhan put it: “Ultimately, it behoves everyone who says no to both a coup and an Islamist dictatorship to remember the third option presented at Gezi as a model for resisting for democracy.” •

Tony Iltis writes for Green Left Weekly, where this article first appeared.

What is the purpose of the European Union? This question has been on the minds of everyone following the UK vote in favor of Brexit. Yet in the mad scramble to make sense of the United Kingdom’s rejection of the EU, little lucid commentary has been made. European leaders, the fawning media, and UK citizens alike portrayed the vote as either a refusal of EU austerity, or unhappiness with immigrants and open borders.

So which one was it: a rejection of austerity or immigration? 

Were UK citizens fed up with austerity measures, and with unreasonable and onerous regulations and taxes paid to the EU bureaucracy? Or were Brexiters caught up in a fever of anti-immigrant nationalism and populist demagoguery, egged on by the odious Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage?

In truth, this is a misleading either/or question: UK citizens were fed up with both lax immigration controls and EU-imposed austerity. By framing the question this way, political commentators miss the larger picture: it is globalization that is the cause of the disintegration of Western political systems and civil society, and it is globalization, i.e. predatory capitalism, that is the root cause of the anger and rage felt by voters of Brexit.

This rage was displaced: for white, working class UK citizens facing declining living standards and social mobility, immigrants are easy targets for their fury to be unleashed on. The undemocratic, sclerotic, neoliberal rule emanating from the EU also made for a useful scapegoat. No one can doubt the contempt and disregard EU leaders have for ordinary citizens, and for a genuine people’s democracy. Besides each member nation offering citizens their own referendum to stay or leave, what else can be done?

This brings us full circle, back to the question: what does the EU stand for? Reduced to a single word, there can be no doubt that at the moment, the EU’s leadership unflinchingly promotes globalization, the tentacle-like network of transnational capitalism, along with all its militarist, industrialist, oligarchic, and kowtowing media trappings.

What seems to have gone unnoticed, except for a few astute observers, was the lack of talk about the UK and EU’s role in the wider world. As the venerable Andre Vltchek explains:

“Almost no commentator bothered to notice what was truly shocking about the entire referendum process: an absolute lack of progressive ideology, of internationalism and concern for the world as a whole. Both sides (and were there really two sides there) presented a fireworks of shallow selfishness and of pettiness. The profound moral corruption of the West was clearly exposed… Everybody in Europe now wants more, more and more. Screw austerity! ‘Give us more benefits!’ Provide us with better wages, job security, and shorter working hours!” 

A cautionary tale was revealed last year when former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis explained his dealings with the Eurogroup, which convenes to discuss Euro currency matters. After the Eurogroup issued a communiqué without him, Varoufakis rightly asked for clarification. Here’s the response:

“The meeting was briefly halted. After a handful of calls, a lawyer turned to him and said, ‘Well, the Eurogroup does not exist in law, there is no treaty which has convened this group.’”

Varoufakis elaborates:

 “What we have is a non-existent group that has the greatest power to determine the lives of Europeans. It’s not answerable to anyone, given it doesn’t exist in law; no minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. No citizen ever knows what is said within . . . These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.”

This is the new boss, same as the old boss. EU finance leaders are unaccountable to their citizens, just as European and world business leaders are plotting to unravel national and supranational regulatory structures by imposing the TTIP, TISA, and TTP trade deals.

Yet there is another vision of Europe which can supplant the consumerist, neoliberal mold that the EU is turning into, ostensibly in order to compete with the US and China. The idea of a universal world culture, with dignity and egalitarian democracy for all peoples, is what Europeans should strive for. This is hinted at in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which sets the tone for future forms of limited international governance and worldwide social justice initiatives, cultural and environmental rights, and individual liberties.

This sketch of a livable future world confederation, with nonviolent social relations, has its roots in the great Immanuel Kant’s “Perpetual Peace”. Imagine if all EU policy-makers were required to read such a revelatory work, and form legislation based on it.

Of course, the pro-capitalist EU leadership won’t take action without momentum from civil society. For this to happen, what Bassam Tibi calls a Leitkultur (“Leading Culture”) must develop. This means that the postmodern illusions of superficial multiculturalism and cultural relativism must be squashed. For Tibi, Enlightenment values, based on universal rights, secularism, pluralism, and democracy must be protected and expanded for all Europeans, which could re-engage and spark interest among citizens to rework the wider social fabric.

Additionally, this may have the effect of dislodging people in the West from their Eurocentric bubbles. With significant progress, widening empathy for others could foster the internationalism needed to provide poorer countries with the resources, technology, and solidarity to vanquish poverty, improve quality of life, and fight against Western-backed tin-pot dictators in the developing nations.

In his essay “The Idea of Europe”, George Steiner explains the need to rise above our corporate, consumer worldview:

“It may be that the future of the ‘idea of Europe’, if it has one, depends less on central banking and agricultural subsidies, on investment in technology or common tariffs, than we are instructed to believe. It may be that the OECD or NATO, the further extension of the Euro or of parliamentary bureaucracies on the model of Luxembourg are not the primary dynamics of the European vision. Or if, indeed, they are, that vision is hardly one to rouse the human soul… Making money and flooding our lives with increasingly trivialised material goods is a profoundly vulgar, emptying passion.”

While Steiner is in favor of European integration, for him, a proviso is necessary: Europe must not give in to the standardization, to the tyranny of the masses, and the homogeny of Anglo-American culture, or the authoritarianism of the emerging East Asian model. Europeans must embrace their differences, their local traditions, even as they maintain a wider Union to stave off warfare and unbridled economic competition.

For Europe to thrive and maintain global influence, the traditions of great art, literature, and radical humanism should be nurtured, with economic preferences given to small businesses and cooperatives. This is in contrast to the US-UK “merchant model” of the transnational conglomerates, or their Asian counterparts, the Korean Chaebols and Japanese Keiretsus.

We know what the EU stands for now: globalization and all its discontents. The dreary, neoliberal perspective of leaders like Hollande and Merkel must be replaced: it is the most radical ideas of visionaries like Kant, Tibi, and Steiner that should be upheld. In doing so, the myopia and selfishness of the capitalist worldview becomes all too clear. By embracing universalism, the roots of world conflict can be addressed: material poverty in the developing nations would be history within a few short years, if, for example, the West reallocated their military budgets to such ends. Conversely, the spiritual emptiness of rampant consumerism and sensationalist media could be vanquished in the West, if compassion and solidarity is expanded towards Asia, Africa, Latin America, and indigenous peoples across the globe. Capitalism, and the expanded version of globalization are Europe’s past: the only possible future is to embrace universalism.

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and the environment. You can find his ebook of collected essays here. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, and Counterpunch. You can email him at [email protected]