Global Research

After baseless allegations from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that the Russian government was behind a hack of the DNC’s emails, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump sarcastically quipped that he hoped Russia would find and release the deleted emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server from her time as secretary of state. The New York Times failed to note the sarcasm and treated the comments as evidence of high crimes against the state. It was an example of the modern day red-baiting against Trump, who is portrayed as being in league with Russian President Vladimir Putin to conspire against the United States itself.

The Times said Trump was “essentially urging a foreign adversary to conduct cyberespionage against a former secretary of state.” While Trump is such a narcissitic buffoon that it is often difficult to discern when he is being facetious, he was clearly making a joke.

But treating the comment in the spirit it was intended would mean passing up a golden opportunity to bash Trump for what has become common knowledge in mainstream political analysis: Trump is anti-American for being diplomatic instead of vilifying Russia and Putin at every opportunity. They scrutinize and make a point of every statement Trump makes that fails to antagonize Russia for actions the US government doesn’t antagonize other countries for.

While they merely imply “urging” cyberespionage is treasonous rather than state it explicitly, the Times finds it so important that they place it in the lead paragraph. This is curiously prominent, much more prominent that when President Barack Obama literally joked about incinerating a family with a remotely guided missile.

At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2010, Obama said:

The Jonas Brothers are here. (Applause.) They’re out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But, boys, don’t get any ideas. (Laughter.) I have two words for you – predator drones. (Laughter.) You will never see it coming. (Laughter.) You think I’m joking. (Laughter.)

Unlike Trump’s joke, which warranted its own headline (“Donald Trump Calls on Russia to Find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails”), Obama’s joke wasn’t mentioned in the Times’ headline about the event (“Obama and Leno Share a Time Slot“) nor the lead. Their summary of the night’s newsworthiness noted “jokes about Representative John Boehner’s tan, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s lack of restraint and the Fox News-MSNBC divide.”

You had to go all the way down to the eighth paragraph to find the briefest possible mention of Obama’s obscene drone murder joke/threat:

Mr. Obama noted the presence of the Jonas Brothers, who can count Sasha and Malia Obama among their fans. But the First Father warned the band: ‘Two words: predator drones.’

If another world leader hypothetically ran a global assassination under which he unilaterally assumed the power to kill anyone he wanted in the world, anywhere, any time, with the only criteria needed to order someone’s death being internal deliberations within the executive branch, it would produce such a frenzy in corporate media they would devote themselves nearly exclusively to beating the drums for regime change, much as they did leading up to the Iraq War.

If that hypothetical leader then joked about people he was killing, it would undoubtedly be a banner headline on the front page for days or weeks. There would certainly be apoplectic outrage, and you most definitely wouldn’t have to scroll down to the eighth paragraph to learn about it.

Mark Karlin wrote in Buzzflash at Truthout in 2014 that Obama’s mock threat to the Jonas brothers “evoked the US indifference to those persons killed overseas by drone strikes. That is because the guffaws of the corporate media were based on the subconscious premise that Obama’s boasting of his power to authorize kill strikes is limited to people of little note to DC insiders, Middle-Eastern civilians (collateral damage) and persons alleged to be terrorists or in areas where terrorists allegedly congregate.”

As  Jeanne Mirer, president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, writes in Drones and Targeted Killing: “If the person against whom lethal force is directed has not been convicted of a crime for which a death sentence is permissible in the state where the killing occurs, the targeted killing is also an ‘extrajudicial’ killing, outside of any legal process. Targeted extrajudicial killing is, by its very nature, illegal.” [1] But corporate media like the New York Times could not care less that Obama is violating international human rights law and the US Constitution by assassinating people.

What produces the greatest moral outrage in the Times and the media elites is perceived attacks on the American state, or perceived threats to American supremacy. Thus theTimes calls Trump’s joke “another bizarre moment in the mystery of whether Vladimir Putin’s government has been seeking to influence the United States’ presidential race.”

What is supposedly bizarre is unclear. What is dubbed a “mystery” is really nothing more than a conspiracy theory. The Times cites the DNC’s accusations that Russian intelligence agents hacked the committee’s emails. The DNC’s frantic finger pointing at Russia are a transparent tactic to distract from the damning content of the emails themselves, as Nadia Prupis has written at Common Dreams.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange noted in an interview with Democracy Now that any such claims are “simply speculation” and when Hillary’s campaign manager Robby Mook was asked in a TV interview to name the experts he was citing as evidence, Mook refused flatly.

The Times validates the DNC’s objective evidence-free accusations by saying American intelligence agencies have confirmed with “high confidence” the Russian government was behind the attack. They have not publicly presented any evidence at all, but their word at face value is good enough for the Times to consider it damning proof.

American intelligence agencies and the military have a motive to hype the Russian “threat” to justify their own budget requests and advance the US government’s policy of global hegemony, presumably unaware that the Cold War ended 25 years ago.

In case Russia’s transgressions are not self-evident enough for Times readers, they call attention to Trump’s refusal to condemn Russia’s “seizure” of Crimea and willingness to consider whether to lift sanctions against the Russian government as a “remarkable departure from United States policy.”

It would be a departure from US policy against Russia. But it is not US policy to sanction countries for incorporating territory outside their recognized borders in general. Quite the opposite in fact. Unlike Crimea, which voted with roughly 97 percent support to join Russia in a peaceful transition to re-integrate itself into the country it had been part of for several centuries, Israel seized the Palestinian territories nearly 50 years ago through violent military aggression against the unanimous wishes of both the Palestinians themselves and nearly the entire Middle East and beyond. In the subsequent half century, the US has showered Israel with more than $150 billion in aid while fighting tooth and nail any attempt in the United Nations to hold Israel to account for its indisputable violations of international law.

The US has also generously gifted millions of dollars in aid to countries like Indonesia after they had seized East Timor and carried a genocidal assault against nearly one third of the country’s population and sponsored France’s attempts to reconquer their former colony Vietnam after World War II (before stepping in directly and unleashing the most horrific military assault on a country’s people and environment in modern times.)

But policies of supporting other country’s human rights and international violations are not of interest to the Times if those countries are seen as allied with US “interests” or “values.” It is only when someone questions whether it is necessary to continue treating another government as an enemy that they are called on to take a hard-line in standing up for international law.

The Times calls Russia “often hostile to the United Sates” while NATO continues to encircle the country from all sides and Obama has ordered what amounts to a permanent buildup of NATO personnel and weapons along Russia’s borders and instigated a new nuclear arms race by spending $1 trillion to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal and make weapons more usable, i.e., more likely to be employed.

In another article titled “As Democrats Gather, a Russian Subplot Raises Intrigue,” theTimes asks what they purport to be a widespread question: “Is Vladimir V. Putin trying to meddle in the American presidential election.”

While this is merely another conspiracy theory without any actual evidence supporting it, it is the case that countries often do meddle in the elections of other countries. But it is almost always the US government itself doing it to others, which explains why it is ignored by the Times and the rest of the media establishment.

In Rogue State, William Blum lists twenty cases of US interference in the elections of sovereign countries (including Russia itself):

Philippines, 1950s
Italy, 1948-1970s
Lebanon, 1950s
Indonesia, 1955
Vietnam, 1955
British Guyana, 1953-64
Japan 1958-1970s
Nepal, 1959
Laos, 1960
Brazil, 1962
Dominican Republic, 1962
Chile, 1964-1970
Portugal, 1974-75
Australia, 1974-75
Jamaica, 1976
Nicaragua, 1984, 1990
Haiti, 1987-1988
Russia, 1996
Mongolia, 1996
Bosnia, 1998

But the actions themselves are not the issue. Not all violations of international law or subversion of state sovereignty are created equal. If the US government is the perpetrator of such actions, they are glossed over or ignored entirely. But when the US itself is seen as the subject of such violation (even when it is purely in the imaginations of conspiracy theorists and others seeking to demonize official enemies, as appears to be the case in the current moment) any one who doesn’t join forcefully in the demonization is vilified relentlessly, as Trump is experiencing in the pages of theTimes and across the mainstream media.

References

[1] Cohn, Marjorie. Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Olive Branch Press, 2014. Kindle Edition.

[2] Blum, William. Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. 2016. Kindle Edition.

Diez años después de que Slobodan Milosevic, ex presidente de la desaparecida Yugoslavia, muriera en extrañas circunstancias, el Tribunal Penal Internacional ha exonerado al político servio de la responsabilidad en supuestos crímenes de guerra cometidos en Bosnia (…).

Diez años después de que Slobodan Milosevic, ex presidente de la desaparecida Yugoslavia,  muriera en extrañas circunstancias,  el Tribunal Penal Internacional ha exonerado al  político servio de la responsabilidad en supuestos crímenes de guerra cometidos en Bosnia entre los años 1992-1995 .

En un fallo extraordinariamente revelador, pero que los medios de comunicación occidentales han procurado mantener discretamente silenciado, la Sala de Primera Instancia del Tribunal de La Haya que condenó a Radovan Karadzic llegó en su sentencia a la conclusión, unánime, de que Slobodan Milosevic no había formado parte  en una “empresa criminal conjunta” para “limpiar étnicamente” a Bosnia  de musulmanes y croatas.

La sentencia establece que las comunicaciones interceptadas entre Milosevic y Radovan Karadzic ponen en evidencia  que el primero había calificado  como ‘un acto ilegítimo en respuesta a otro acto ilegítimo” el intento de la asamblea serbobosnia de expulsar a los musulmanes y croatas del territorio bosnio.

Asimismo, los jueces del Tribunal Internacional también encontraron pruebas irrefutables de que “Slobodan Milosevic había expresado sus reservas acerca de que una Asamblea serbobosnia pudiera excluir a los musulmanes  de Yugoslavia.”

La sentencia dice, igualmente, que en  el curso de  reuniones celebradas con  serbios y  funcionarios serbios-bosnios , “Slobodan Milosevic había afirmado que  los miembros de otras naciones y grupos étnicos debían de ser protegidos,  y que en el interés nacional de los serbios no debe figurar la discriminación en contra de otras etnias” En aquella ocasión “Milosevic declaró, además, que el crimen de los grupos étnicos debía ser combatido con energía.”

UN VILIPENDIO GENERALIZADO

Slobodan Milosevic fue vilipendiado de manera sistemática  por toda la prensa occidental y por los políticos  de los países de la OTAN. Los medios de comunicacion de la época lo calificaron como el “carnicero de los Balcanes “, y lo compararon con Hitler. Fue acusado igualmente de   “genocida” y de ser “un monstruo sediento de sangre”, según rezaban los titulares de los grandes rotativos europeos y estadounidenses  de entonces. Con la utilización de ese cliché falsificado se trató de justificar no sólo las sanciones económicas contra Serbia, sino también los bombardeos de la OTAN en 1999 sobre Serbia , así como la encarnizada guerra de Kosovo.

El político serbio pasó los últimos cinco años de su vida en prisión, defendiendo  tanto a su país como a sí mismo de las horrendos cargos de los crímenes cometidos durante una guerra  que ahora el Tribunal Internacional ha reconocido que Slobodan Milosevic trató siempre de  detener.

No obstante, en su última sentencia el Tribunal Internacional de La Haya no hizo nada para que  fuera pública explicitamente conocido que en ella quedaba limpio el nombre de Milosevic de los crímenes de los que se le acusaba. Sigilosamente, los jueces enterraron entre más de 2.590 páginas  su inocencia, a sabiendas de que la mayoría de la gente nunca se iba a molestar en leer entero  tan profuso veredicto. Pero afortunadamente no ha sucedido asi.

¿UN CRIMEN  ENCUBIERTO?

En estas circunstancias, vale la pena recordar que Slobodan Milosevic murió en todavía  inaclaradas circunstancias. Formalmente, su muerte  se debió a un  ataque al corazón. Este se  produjo apenas dos semanas después de que el Tribunal Interlacional rechazara su solicitud para someterse a una cirugía de corazón en Rusia. Fue encontrado muerto en su celda,  72 horas después de que su abogado enviara una carta al Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Rusia,en la que denunciaba que  Milosevic estaba siendo deliberadamente envenenado.

En un informe oficial del Tribunal de La Haya acerca de la investigación realizada sobre su muerte, se confirmó que se había encontrado rifampicina en   un análisis de sangre realizado postmorten.

La presencia de rifamicina – un medicamento que nunca le había sido prescrito por sus médicos – en la sangre de Milosevic, había estado contrarrestando los efectos del  farmaco que estaba tomando contra la presión alta, hecho que  multiplicó las posibilidades de que sufriera un infarto, que finalmente terminaria siendo la causa de su muerte .

Todas estas circunstancias dieron lugar a la fundada sospecha  de que  poderosos intereses geopolíticos preferían un Milosevic muerto, antes de que finalizara el juicio, a ver cómo el Tribunal Internacional terminaba absolviéndolo por falta de pruebas. Un gran número de cables  del Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos, filtrados por Wikileaks, confirmaron que el Tribunal estuvo discutiendo sobre la condición médica deMilosevic, así como sobre los registros médicos realizados por personal de la Embajada de Estados Unidos en La Haya, sin que para ello contaran con el consentimiento de los jueces. Todos  hechos ponen en tela de juicio que la muerte de Milosevic se debiera simplemente a “causas naturales”, tal y como pretendieron presentarla los medios occidentales.

Redacción CS

Anti-Russian hysteria in America reached its apogee this week as Democrats tried to divert attention from embarrassing revelations about how the Democratic Party apparatus had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders by claiming Vlad Putin and his KGB had hacked and exposed the Dem’s emails.

This was rich coming from the US that snoops into everyone’s emails and phones across the globe. Remember German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone being bugged by the US National Security Agency?

Unnamed US ‘intelligence officials’ claimed they had ‘high confidence’ that the Russian KGB or GRU (military intelligence) had hacked the Dem’s emails. These were likely the same officials who had ‘high confidence’ that Iraq had nuclear weapons.

Blaming Putin was a master-stroke of deflection. No more talk of Hillary’s slush fund foundation or her status as a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street. All attention was focused on President Putin who has been outrageously demonized by the US media and politicians.

Except for a small faux pas – a montage of warships shown at the end of the Democratic Convention is a blaze of jingoistic effusion embarrassingly turned out to be Russian warships!

Probably another trick by the awful Putin who has come to replace Satan in the minds of many Americans.

And what a joy for the war party that those dastardly Ruskis are now back as Enemy Number One. Much more fun than scruffy Arabs. The word is out: more stealth bombers, more warships, more missiles, more troops for Europe. The wicked Red Chinese will have to wait their turn until Uncle Sam can deal with them.

I always find conventions depressing affairs. Rather than the cradle of democracy, they remind me of clownish Shriners Conventions. Or as the witty Democratic advisor Paul Begala said, `Hollywood for ugly people.’ What, I kept wondering, is the rest of the world thinking as it watching this tawdry spectacle?

One thing that that amazed me was the Convention’s lack of attention to America’s longest ever war that still rages in the mountains of Afghanistan. For the past thirteen years, America, the world’s greatest military and economic power, has been trying to crush the life out of Afghan Pashtun mountain tribesmen whose primary sin is fiercely opposing occupation by the US and its local Afghan opium-growing stooges.

The saintly President Barack Obama repeatedly proclaimed the Afghan War over and staged phony troops withdrawals. He must have believed his generals who kept claiming they had just about defeated the resistance alliance, known as Taliban.

But the war was far from being ‘almost won.’ The US-installed puppet regime in Kabul of President Ashraf Ghani, a former banker, holds on only thanks to the bayonets of US troops and the US Air Force. Without constant air strikes, the US-installed Ghani regime and its drug-dealing would have been swept away by Taliban and its tribal allies.

So the US remains stuck in Afghanistan. Obama lacked the courage to pull US troops out. Always weak in military affairs, Obama bent to demands of the Pentagon and CIA to dig in lest the Red Chinese or Pakistan take over this strategic nation. The US oil industry was determined to assure trans-Afghan pipeline routes south from Central Asia. India has its eye on Afghanistan. Muslims could not be allowed to defeat the US military.

Look what happened to the Soviets after they admitted defeat in Afghanistan and pulled out. Why expose the US Empire to a similar geopolitical risk?

With al-Qaida down to less than 50 members in Afghanistan, according to former US defense chief Leon Panetta, what was the ostensible reason for Washington to keep garrisoning Afghanistan? The shadowy ISIS is now being dredged up as the excuse to stay.

This longest of wars has cost nearly $1 trillion to date – all of its borrowed money – and caused the deaths of 3,518 US and coalition troops, including 158 Canadians who blundered into a war none of them understood.

No one has the courage to end this pointless war. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Afghans are being killed. Too bad no one at the Democratic or Republican Conventions had time to think about the endless war in forgotten Afghanistan.

Relations between Ankara and Washington are deteriorating rapidly following the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey, which the Turkish government believes was supported by the Obama administration. In a series of stunning statements on Friday, delivered from the bombed-out ruins of a police base in Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan directly accused the US government of backing the coup.

Erdogan denounced statements by top US military and intelligence officials attending a security conference in Aspen, Colorado who criticized him for launching a purge of the Turkish army in the aftermath of the coup. US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper rebuked Erdogan for arresting Turkish military officers close to Washington. “Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested,” he fumed. “There’s no question this is going to set back and make more difficult cooperation with the Turks.”

Gen. Joseph Votel, the chief of the US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, warned that the purge was “something to be very, very concerned about” because it could harm the campaign against the Islamic State (IS) militia in Syria. NATO Supreme Commander General Curtis Scaparrotti declared, “Some of the officers that we have our relationships with in Turkey are now either detained, in some cases retired as a result of the coup. We’ve got some work to do there.”

Erdogan angrily charged Votel with supporting the coup, saying,

“The US general stands on the coup plotters’ side with his words. He disclosed himself via his statements… Is it up to you to decide on this? Who are you? Instead of thanking the state for repelling the coup attempt, you stand with the coup plotters.”

Referring to the US-based Turkish Islamist Fethullah Gülen, whom he accuses of organizing the coup, Erdogan said:

“The coup plotter is in your country. You are nurturing him there. It’s out in the open.” He added, “My people know who is behind this scheme… they know who the superior intelligence behind it is, and with these statements you are revealing yourselves, you are giving yourselves away.”

The Turkish president attacked US and European ruling circles for expressing concern that escalating arrests of army officers would harm Turkey’s future. He pledged to continue the crackdown in the army. “What are their concerns?” he asked. “They are concerned about the suspensions, detentions, arrests and the like and the increase in them. Are they going to increase? If the people are guilty, they will.”

The statements by both Erdogan and the US officials underscore the drastic deterioration in relations between Washington and Ankara that had already occurred prior to the coup. Far from welcoming Erdogan’s survival, Washington is attacking a government that narrowly survived a coup attempt that claimed over 270 lives and nearly led to Erdogan’s assassination.

The coup has exposed the explosive tensions growing behind the scenes within the NATO alliance, of which Turkey is a member state. The attempted putsch took place against the backdrop of a warming of relations between Turkey and Russia that cuts across US policy in the Middle East, in particular, US plans to undermine Russian influence by orchestrating the overthrow of Moscow’s sole surviving Arab ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Turkish government recklessly shot down a Russian jet involved in fighting US-backed rebels in Syria. In the aftermath of that incident in November of last year, Turkey has become increasingly concerned that the Syrian war is strengthening the position of separatist Kurdish forces. Under those conditions, Ankara intitated a broad shift in its foreign policy this spring. It signaled that it might cease backing the Syrian war, which it had agreed to support shortly after Washington launched it five years ago.

After the ouster of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in May, his replacement, Binali Yıldırım, proposed to bring Turkish foreign policy back to the “good old days.” He said he intended to “increase the number of friends and reduce the number of enemies.”

In June, Erdogan sent Moscow a letter calling Russia “a friend and a strategic partner.” The letter stated, according to the Kremlin, “We never had a desire or a deliberate intention to down an aircraft belonging to Russia.”

Coincidentally or otherwise, Davutoglu has made statements indicating that he gave the shoot-down order in November–though he later retracted them–and the pilot who shot down the Russian warplane in November flew a rebel F-16 fighter over Ankara during the failed coup.

On July 13, two days before the coup, Yıldırım even included Syria in the list of countries with which Turkey intended to improve ties. He said, “I am sure that we will return ties with Syria to normal. We need it. We normalized our relations with Israel and Russia. I’m sure we will go back to normal relations with Syria as well.”

Since 2001, US imperialism has laid waste to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria in order to install pro-US puppet regimes, crush Russian influence and dominate the Middle East. It takes little imagination to recognize that powerful sections of the American bourgeoisie, which historically backed three successful coups in Turkey (1960, 1971 and 1980), might have at least tolerated last month’s coup attempt in order to cut off developing ties between Russia and Turkey.

The US foreign policy establishment is, moreover, deeply disturbed by the policies Erdogan outlined after the coup, indicating that he was considering an alliance with Russia and Iran. In a telephone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani a few days after the coup, Erdogan said that Turkey is now “even more determined to work hand-in-hand with Iran and Russia to resolve regional issues and strengthen our efforts to return peace and stability to the region.” Erdogan is now scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on August 9.

US officials in Aspen insisted that such alliances were unacceptable to Washington. Clapper accused Moscow of trying to “drive a wedge between Turkey and the West, specifically Turkey and NATO.”

As for Scaparrotti, he declared,

“We will watch closely how this relationship develops. I would be concerned if they were departing from the values that are the bedrock of the Washington Treaty [which founded NATO]—the rule of law.”

Under these conditions, US claims that Washington had no advance warning of the coup are simply not credible. Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base, which hosts more than 5,000 American soldiers and is the main base for the US-led bombing campaign against Syria and Iraq, was the organizing center of the putsch. Pro-coup fighter jets flew in and out of Incirlik as the coup unfolded. Shortly after the coup failed, the base commander, General Bekir Ercan Van, was arrested along with other pro-coup soldiers at the base.

Given that Incirlik is the site of dozens of US nuclear weapons, no credibility can be given to claims that US intelligence was unaware that a coup against Erdogan was being organized from there. Were that truly the case, it would represent a CIA intelligence breakdown of stunning proportions.

It is now being reported that Ankara received warning of the coup and Erdogan escaped assassination only because of reports from Russian forces that US-linked assassins were on the way to kill him.

Russian forces at the nearby Khmeimim airbase in Syria reportedly intercepted coded radio signals containing information about preparations for a coup and shared them with the Turkish government. Erdogan left a hotel in Marmaris only minutes before 25 rebel soldiers descended on the hotel and began shooting. Ultimately, hundreds were killed and thousands wounded as rebel army units bombed the Turkish parliament and attacked pro-Erdogan protesters and loyal military and police units.

A pro-coup officer captured by the Turkish government, Lieutenant Colonel Murat Bolat, told the conservative Yeni Savak newspaper that his unit was designated to detain and possibly murder Erdogan after receiving precise information on Erdogan’s location from US sources.

“A person in the meeting, whom I guess was an officer from the Special Forces, said, ‘Nobody will be allowed to rescue the president from our hands,’” he said, indicating that this meant Erdogan was to be shot after he was captured if the forces who had arrested him faced any counterattack.

Yeni Safak also identified US General John F. Campbell as the “man behind the failed coup.” According to the newspaper, the former commander of the Resolute Support Mission and United States Forces in Afghanistan worked with a team of 80 CIA operatives, distributing $2 billion to pro-US and pro-Gülen elements in the Turkish military to prepare the coup.

The Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate has carried out with tens of thousands of participants a peace march from the Donbass up to Kiev. Just outside the city the procession was stopped. The government, which considers the march very suspicious, has so far responded with a sense of proportion. However, right-wing extremists might try to escalate the situation through provocations.

Tens of thousands of people had come to the monument for the baptism of the medieval Kievan Rus, according to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. This Thursday the christianization more than 1000 years ago in the former Soviet Union is remembered. The competing Orthodox Kyivan Patriarchate invites their believers to prayer service as well.

Eyewitnesses reported of up to 20,000 supporters of the church, praying for peace and the preservation of Ukraine. Previously two peace marches with hundreds of pilgrims from the West and East of the country already came together in Kiev.

For the religious peace march the Ukrainian government prohibited people from arriving as a closed group in the capital, the German State broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) reported.

Ukrainian nationalists accusing the participants of the march of “spying activities” for Moscow. On June 27, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate had called for a Christian peace march for the Eastern Ukraine. However, up until now the government has sensibly responded in this case and allowed the march. Participants will be allowed to march in smaller groups to the final event.

The peace march began on July 3rd in the Donetsk region and is performed daily. The march is joined every day by thousands of priests, monks, nuns and families, reports Larissa Voloshin from the online newspaper Kyiv.ua. The photos from the march show that numerous young males participate as well.

While one march started in the eastern part of the country, the other one started in Ternopil Oblast.  Ternopil is located in western Ukraine. Both processions were to meet in Kiev on 27 July.

What the protesters want to show that the East and the West of the country are forming the State and that the war in the eastern Ukraine should end.

Voloshin reported that the peace march also has to do with a power struggle in the Ukraine.

The Kiev government wants to get the Ukrainian Orthodox Church “out of the control” of the Moscow Patriarchate,  but the Church is defending itself against this and wants to maintain its ties to Moscow.

Translated from German by South Front, minor edits by Global Research

The Syrian Army has seized a major militant warehouse in the recently liberated Aleppo neighborhood of Bani Zeyd.

Most of captured weapons are from the US and Turkey and include such things as advanced US anti-tank missiles and launchers (BGM-71 TOW).

.

Video by Anna News (Russian)

On Friday evening, the New York Times published a lead story under the headline, “Russian Spies Said to Hack Systems Used in Clinton’s Run,” alleging that hackers associated with the Russian government infiltrated computer systems linked with the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

This inflammatory piece was the latest in a series of articles and columns that have appeared over the past several days in the Times and other news outlines claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin is involved in an attempt to influence the 2016 election.

Friday’s report, like those that have preceded it, contained not a single fact to support the explosive allegations made in its headline.

It is not until the end of the article that the reader learns that all of its claims are based on the statements of a source that insists on remaining anonymous. There is no reason to believe that this so-called source has provided the Timeswith any information to back up his or her claims. No one knows who this person is, assuming he or she even exists, or whether this information was not made up out of the whole cloth by the Times.

Earlier last week, the Times declared that American intelligence agencies had “high confidence” that “the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee,” based on similar statements from unnamed, anonymous sources. The DNC emails were released by WikiLeaks.

This campaign fits the classic definition of an amalgam; a series of disconnected assertions about unsubstantiated events usually for the purpose of framing up a targeted party or parties.

The ongoing campaign to present the release by WikiLeaks of documents showing widespread election fraud by the DNC is aimed at attacking the candidacy of Donald Trump from the right by portraying him, in the words of Times columnist Paul Krugman, as a “Siberian candidate” beholden to Putin.

It is bad enough that the Times is seeking to whip up anti-Russian sentiment for the purposes of swaying the results of an election, but its campaign is even more sinister. The Times, and the section of the ruling class for which it speaks, is seeking to exploit the supercharged electoral environment to instigate popular hostility to Russia, which in turn is aimed at providing a broader popular base for full-sale American intervention in the Middle East.

The ongoing anti-Putin propaganda campaign comes in the aftermath of a number of developments that have sharpened US tensions with Russia. First, last month’s attempted military coup in Turkey, which clearly had American backing, was thwarted by 11th hour intelligence provided to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by Russia.

In the weeks leading up to the coup, Erdoğan had made a rapprochement with the Putin government, going so far as to apologize on June 27 for the downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber last November, and declaring Russia a “friend and strategic partner.”

Simultaneously with its overtures toward Russia, Turkey has backed off from its support for “rebels” fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, many of whom were affiliated with the Islamic State.

“Turkey has been cracking down on some of the transit of foreign fighters who are flowing into as well as out of Turkey,” John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, complained to Yahoo News two days after Erdoğan’s apology to Russia.

The closure of Turkey as an avenue for Islamist fighters to flow into Syria, together with ongoing Russian operations against ISIS forces and US-backed rebels, has led a to series of reversals for the CIA’s Islamist proxy forces in Syria. Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, is on the verge of being cleared of ISIS/rebel forces by the Syrian government.

In 2013, the Obama administration decided to pull back from its threat to intervene more directly in Syria in the face of divisions within the ruling class and overwhelming popular opposition to the instigation of yet another war.

Now, however, the entire CIA-sponsored insurgency is facing comprehensive defeat without a rapid and massive escalation of American military involvement. This would be a major political setback for American efforts to dominate the Middle East.

As the Times put it last week, “The fall of eastern Aleppo to government forces would be a major turning point in the war and would solidify Russia’s place as the most prominent foreign power involved in the conflict.”

It is to be noted that in recent days the US media has been trumpeting the imminent fall of Aleppo as a human rights disaster, while saying virtually nothing about recent American bombings in nearby cities that have resulted in the loss of hundreds of civilian lives.

The Democratic Party platform includes a bitter denunciation of Russia, which it accuses of “propping up the Assad regime in Syria, which is so brutally attacking its own citizens.” The Platform declares that a Clinton administration “will not hesitate to stand up to Russian aggression.” This is the sort of rhetoric that was associated with the the extreme right-wing Goldwater faction of the Republican Party at the height of the Cold War. It is now being used by the Democratic Party, and this must be viewed as an indication that its policy makers are planning a major escalation of US military operations.

In the lexicon of American politics, there is something known as an “October surprise:” the deliberate provocation of a foreign policy crisis to rally the population around the flag, galvanize public support for military intervention and ensure the victory of the candidate favored by the party in power.

There may be in these events the making of an October surprise; or perhaps one that takes place in September… or even August.

Even as the issue of war has been kept deliberately in the background of the 2016 elections, hardly mentioned at the conventions of either party, the escalating and increasingly virulent denunciations of Russia make it clear that the stage is being set for an escalation of direct military involvement in Syria, possibly resulting in a war with Russia, a nuclear-armed power.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law  and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is a criminal defense attorney at the trial and appellate levels.

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: In spying on entire planet through the NSA, as revealed by Edward Snowden, does the US government fight terrorism as he claims or is it an excuse to spy on activists who are against the imperialist policy of the United States? Are this phone-tapping legal?

Pr. Marjorie Cohn: The US government is really trying to fight terrorism but the use of metadata to target people with drones is unreliable. The US government may have a cell phone number that belongs to a “suspected terrorist”, but the target may have given his phone to anyone (his mother, etc.), so the targeting is notoriously imprecise. Surveillance is used within the United States to monitor suspected terrorist activity, but can also be abused to spy on dissidents.

As jurist, do you think that with these phone-tapping and this massive espionage, the United States can again speak about democracy and about freedom of speech? Aren’t we in fascism?

The extensive surveillance occasioned by advances in technology is used to target and curtail constitutionally protected activity in the United States. Edward Snowden provided an important service when he revealed the extent of the surveillance. More recently, a member of the intelligence community provided “The Drone Papers” to The Intercept. The source, who has remained anonymous because of the Obama administration’s aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers, said, “It’s stunning the number of instances when selectors are misattributed to certain people” characterizing a missile fired at a target in a group of people as a “leap of faith”. According to “The Drone Papers”, during a five-month period almost 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.

How do you explain that the United States supports both Israel, has created Al Qaeda – according to Hillary Clinton’s confessions – and armed and trained Daesh? When will we see the end of the neocons’ creative chaos, in your opinion?

The U.S. uncritically supports Israel in order to provide a “friendly” base of operations in the Middle East. George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq and Obama’s regime change in Libya created vacuums that led to the rise of the Islamic State. Hillary Clinton, who is supported by many neocons, will likely continue the extend the policies of the Obama administration, including no-fly-zones and regime change in countries such as Syria.

Why does the American administration hide the war crimes of Israel?

The U.S. government sees Israel as a critical ally in the Middle East which is why it continues to provide Israel with more military aid than it supplies to any other country. By providing this assistance, U.S. leaders are aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity Israel has committed against the Palestinians, most recently in the summer of 2014. U.S. leaders rarely criticize the policies of the Israeli government as it continues its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.

Is the weight of the Zionist lobby in the USA always determining in the major political decisions?

The pro-Israel AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is probably the most powerful lobbying organization in the United States. But in concluding the recent Iran nuclear deal, the Obama administration stood up to both AIPAC and the Netanyahu government, which vigorously opposed the deal.

The US presidential election offers us Hillary Clinton faced Donald Trump, don’t you think that these two characters are dangerous for humanity? How do you explain the political vacuum that allowed these two candidates holders of all dangers?

Donald Trump poses a real danger to the United States and probably other countries as well. He is a proven racist, sexist, and exploits his workers. He was described by the ghostwriter of their book “The Art of the Deal” as a sociopath, that is, a person with no conscience. He has promised to appoint Supreme Court justices like the late Antonin Scalia, who opposed reproductive rights, universal health care, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, voting rights, immigrants’ rights, labor rights, LGBT rights and environmental protection. Trump could move the high court radically to the right for decades to come.

Although Hillary Clinton is much better than Trump on all these issues, she has advocated a hawkish foreign policy, which will likely mean the use of more military force in other countries, such as Syria. Many neocons support her candidacy.

As a renowned jurist, do you think that modern man can judge the leaders who have failed in their mission and have caused wars and crimes, like George W. Bush and Tony Blair? Can we judge today western politicians?

George W. Bush and Tony Blair committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, including illegal wars of aggression and torture. They should be brought before a tribunal and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The most likely venue would be in other countries under “universal jurisdiction”, in which a country can bring foreign nationals to justice for the most heinous crimes.

We see that the ICC only judges African leaders. Why does it not judge the war criminals among the western ruling political class who enjoy a peaceful existence?

There is tremendous political pressure on the ICC to avoid prosecuting officials in western countries, including the United States and Israel. Even though the U.S. and Israel are not parties to the Rome Statute, their leaders can be prosecuted in the ICC if they are arrested in the territory of a country that is a party to the treaty. The Bush administration threatened some 100 countries (parties to the ICC) with the withholding of foreign aid if they sent U.S. nationals to The Hague for trial in the ICC.

How do you explain the words of Henry Kissinger who promises a total war?

Henry Kissinger is a war criminal who did significant damage to world peace when he was U.S. secretary of state.

You are an anti-war activist since the Vietnam War. Since that time, the imperialist wars continued, the mobilization of peoples has declined or disappeared. What is your outlook on weakness in the anti-war resistance today?

A month before Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, 11 million people around the world protested in the streets. That movement was not sustained. But the Occupy Movement followed by the Bernie Sanders movement has mobilized millions of people. Although they have not yet focused on foreign policy, that will likely happen, assuming the movement can be sustained.

The US imperialism and its Western allies don’t stop giving lessons to the whole world on democracy, freedom of speech, etc. Don’t you think that it is hypocritical on the part of these countries that have committed genocides? It’s hard to mention all the examples: Vietnam, Cambodia for the USA, Algeria for France, Iraq for GB and USA, etc.?

The U.S. government has indeed been hypocritical when it selectively criticizes other countries for human rights violations. I say ‘selectively’, because the U.S. does not criticize countries like Saudi Arabia, an important U.S. ally, for its egregious violations of human rights. The CIA overthrew democratically elected leaders in Iran, Guatemala and Chile, to name a few.

Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught from 1991-2016, and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She lectures, writes, and provides commentary for local, regional, national and international media outlets. Professor Cohn has served as a news consultant for CBS News and a legal analyst for Court TV, as well as a legal and political commentator on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and Pacifica Radio.

The author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Lawand co-author of Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice(with David Dow) and Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent(with Kathleen Gilberd), Professor Cohn is editor of and contributor to The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, andDrones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

Her website:http://marjoriecohn.com/

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton continued her bid for support from right-wing elements disaffected with her Republican opponent Donald Trump, giving her first post-convention interview to Fox News, the semi-official cable network of the Republican right.

Her campaign kept up its criticism of Trump from a right-wing, patriotic standpoint with a series of Clinton surrogates attacking Trump as unfit to be commander-in-chief and suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin was intervening in the US election on his behalf. (See “Democratic Party seeks to turn elections into referendum on aggression against Russia.”)

Clinton’s one-on-one interview Sunday with Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday, was her first appearance on the right-wing cable network since she declared her candidacy more than 15 months ago.

Fox has waged a furious campaign against Clinton over that period, centered on allegations that she was responsible for the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, at the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, and claims that her use of a private email server while secretary of state had compromised US national security.

Significantly, however, Sunday’s interview by Wallace began with a question on Democratic Party claims that Russian intelligence agencies had hacked into the computer system of the Democratic National Committee and released emails from DNC officials showing that they had collaborated with the Clinton campaign to undermine her main challenger for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

“Do you think that Vladimir Putin wants to defeat you or see you defeated and Donald Trump elected president?” Wallace asked.

Clinton replied,

“We know that Russian intelligence services, which is part of the Russian government, which is under the firm control of Vladimir Putin, hacked into the DNC. And we know that he arranged for a lot of those emails to be released.”

No serious evidence has actually been presented in support of the allegation that the Russian government is responsible for the theft and leaking of the DNC emails, and not a shred of evidence has been put forward to back the claims of a Trump-Putin alliance. These charges have been widely promoted by the New York Times to create a political climate in which Clinton can attack Trump from the right, presenting herself as an advocate of a more belligerent and militarist policy towards Russia.

Clinton continued,

“And we know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin, whether it’s saying that NATO wouldn’t come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together because of Russia’s aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine.”

She added, in truly McCarthyite fashion,

“for Trump to both encourage that and to praise Putin despite what appears to be a deliberate effort to try to affect the election I think raises national security issues.”

Clinton went on to outline a generally right-wing perspective on economic and social policy, rebuffing suggestions from Wallace that she was “offering more government programs” and “more spending, more entitlements, more taxes.” She answered “no, no, no” to these claims, adding that her so-called “jobs program,” based on infrastructure spending (along lines already backed by the current Republican Congress) was “going to be public/private sector. I mean, I’m looking for ways to start an infrastructure bank, seed it with federal dollars, but bring in private investors who want to make those commitments.”

In a subsequent panel discussion, Julie Pace of the Associated Press reported that the Clinton campaign was seeking to line up prominent Republicans and retired military figures who would vouch for the Democratic candidate to Republican voters. The Democrats’ strategy was to portray Clinton as “a steady hand on foreign policy, a steady hand on commander-in-chief, someone who understands military threats, threats from abroad, that could be what leads some of these people to line up behind her.”

This is combined with an effort to present Trump as an unpatriotic critic of the US military, initially based on his comments at campaign rallies and at the Republican convention that the US military was “a disaster.” The criticism of Trump as insufficiently pro-military was expanded to a full-scale media barrage over Trump’s crudely racist and anti-Muslim comments about the family of Humayun Khan, a US Army captain who was one of the first Muslim-American soldiers killed in the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Khizr Khan, the soldier’s father, an immigrant from Pakistan and a lawyer in the Washington, DC area, spoke at the Democratic National Convention on its final day, as one of a series of speakers chosen to portray Trump as unfit to play the role of commander-in-chief for US imperialism.

Khan denounced Trump’s frequent anti-Muslim slurs and his call for a complete ban on Muslim immigration, which would have prevented his own family from moving to the United States in 1980 and thus deprived the US military of the services of his son in the Iraq war 24 years later.

Trump responded in character to Khan’s convention appearance in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News recorded Friday for broadcast Sunday morning. He directly attacked the family, noting that Ghazala Khan, the young soldier’s mother, who appeared at the Democratic convention side-by-side with her husband in traditional Muslim garb, “had nothing to say.” Trump continued: “She probably—maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me, but plenty of people have written that.”

The clear insinuation of this slur was that Mrs. Khan had been forbidden to speak by her husband or was otherwise barred by her Islamic faith from speaking publicly because of her sex. The truth was that Ghazala Khan has high blood pressure and does not speak in public about her son’s death, as she explained in a statement to the press this weekend.

The Khan-Trump controversy was the main subject of discussion on the Sunday television interview programs, with NBC, ABC and CNN all airing interviews with Khizr Khan, while Trump himself, his campaign manager Paul Manafort and a leading surrogate, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, were all grilled on the issue.

Much of the media punditry consisted of declarations that Trump had “crossed the line” by publicly smearing a “Gold Star mother” (the mothers of US soldiers killed in action may join the Gold Star Mothers Club, a congressionally chartered patriotic support group). The effect of this line of criticism was to transform Trump’s anti-Muslim smear into an attack on the military and allow the Democrats to wrap themselves in the flag, which is Clinton’s apparent strategy for the final 100 days of the presidential campaign.

Even more reactionary was the appearance of retired Gen. John Allen on the same program that broadcast Trump’s comments about Ghazala Khan. Allen was a major speaker at the Democratic National Convention—a highly unusual role for a retired Marine Corps general and former commander of US forces in Afghanistan.

He gave the main indictment of Trump as unfit to be commander-in-chief during the Thursday night session of the convention, in the same group of speakers that included Khizr Khan, in the hours leading up to Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech.

Allen appeared on ABC Sunday to respond to Trump’s criticism of him as a “failed commander” in the US war against ISIS. (After retirement, Allen was a presidential envoy in the Middle East, coordinating the US-led “coalition” now at war with Islamic State forces in both Iraq and Syria.)

Allen declared that Trump had no credibility on military policy, since he had never been to either Afghanistan or Iraq. He went on to denounce Trump’s criticism of the Obama administration as though it was an attack on the US military. “He’s called it a disaster,” Allen said. “He says our military can’t win anymore. That’s a direct insult to every single man and woman who’s wearing the uniform today.”

The retired general continued that a President Trump would order US soldiers to engage in war crimes:

“He’s talked about needing to torture. He’s talked about needing to murder the families of alleged terrorists. He’s talked about carpet-bombing ISIL. Who do you think is going to be carpet-bombed when all that occurs? It’s going to be innocent families.”

No one should conclude from this that General Allen is genuinely outraged at the prospect of US forces carrying out torture, murder and the carpet-bombing of innocent people. Such practices have gone on every day in US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. What concerns him is Trump’s pledge to proclaim such methods as the official policy of the US government—a declaration sure to spark even greater resistance to US forces in the Middle East, as well as politically undermining US allies.

More significant—and ominous—was Allen’s response when Stephanopoulos asked him what US military officers would do in response to an order from a President Trump enshrining torture and carpet-bombing as US policy.

The retired general declared, “That’s a great question, George. And I think we would be facing a civil-military crisis, the like of which we’ve not seen in this country before.” He went on to repeat the phrase “civil-military crisis” three more times, expressing the hope that a quiet conversation might dissuade President Trump from issuing such orders, while leaving unstated, but open, the possibility of outright military defiance.

Allen’s comments are truly extraordinary. They give expression to the increasing tendency on the part of the American military to free itself from civilian authority. While presented in this case as the military balking at illegal orders to commit war crimes, the far more likely scenario is one in which the military brass demands that its nominal civilian overseers drop any restrictions on the unlimited use of military violence against its enemies.

Dear Senator Sanders,

Last summer you said you would not run as a third party candidate if you did not win the Democratic nomination. You said, “the reason for that is I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States.” This was before the unexpected and unprecedented success of your grassroots campaign where you won 22 states and almost half of the delegates in a primary process that was stacked against you every step of the way.

We take you as a man of your word and we certainly don’t want Trump to be president either. A Trump presidency would be a terrible step backwards for working people, people of color, immigrants, students, retirees, the LGBTQ community, the environment, and the entire world, which is why more than ever we need you to reconsider the situation and make a third party run.

Polls show that Hillary Clinton, the official Democratic nominee, is an incredibly weak candidate in the general election. Even after spending $57 million in ads (vs. $4 million by Trump) she is trailing slightly, and Trump is actually leading in several important swing states. Frankly, Hillary Clinton does not have the credibility to take on the dangerous appeal of Donald Trump.

For a variety of reasons, many justified and some not, people don’t trust her. We are now faced with two of the most disliked presidential candidates in the history of the country. Unfortunately, too many people are disillusioned with politics and the lack of inspiring viable candidates will only hurt voter turnout. If there was ever an opportunity to break the corporate two party duopoly, this is it. So, we respectfully ask you to consider Jill Stein’s offer of a united Green Party ticket.

A Sanders/Stein campaign would be more popular than Hillary Clinton and more successful against Trump. If polling shows you in the lead before the election, we trust that Secretary Clinton would do the right thing and not be a spoiler.

The stakes are too high. If Donald Trump wins, all the progressive change we have fought for will vanish. Secretary Clinton’s recent vice presidential pick makes us question that she will run the kind of economically populist campaign it will take to defeat Trump. Furthermore, in light of the platform committee discussions, it makes us question where she really stands on important issues such as the TPP, fracking, single payer healthcare, war and military spending, Israeli occupation of Palestine, financial regulation, and money in politics.

With your steadfastness and consistency in talking about the issues, you educated us and inspired a whole generation to get involved in politics. We look forward to continuing the political revolution and working with your successor organizations, however right now the country still needs you to run for president.

In Solidarity,

Ace Acosta, Field Organizer (NV)
Rolando Aguirre, Regional Field Director (NV, AZ), Delegate Team (WA)
Betsy Avila, Deputy Digital Outreach (NV)
Rob Byrne, National LGBT Outreach Coordinator
Ricky Cárdenas, Field Organizer (NV, WA), Regional Field Director (CO, CA)
Carol Čizauskas, Field Organizer, Outreach Coordinator (NV)
Alicia De Toffoli, National Women’s Outreach Coordinator
Giulianna Di Lauro, National Latino Strategist, Field Director (Puerto Rico)
Benjamin Erkan, Field Organizer (KS, WY, NY, CA)
MacKenzie Ewing, Regional Field Director (IA), Field Director (NE), Constituency Outreach Coordinator (OR), Field Organizer (CA)
Anthony Garcia, Regional Field Director (NV), Deputy Field Director (AK)
Matthew Glasgo, Field Organizer (NV, MN)
Austreberto Hernandez, Field Organizer (NV)
Wesley Irwin, Field Organizer, Chair of the Caucus Advisory Group (WA)
Phillip Kim, Labor Outreach (NV, WA, CA)
Marc Leonard, Field Organizer (NV, UT, CA)
David Lewis, Field Organizer (IA, KS, MO, WY, IN)
Laura Llamas, Outreach Coordinator (NV)
Billie McFadden, Field Organizer (NV)
Alonso Montes, Deputy Field Organizer (NV)
Kevin F. Solis, Outreach Coordinator (NV), Field Organizer (WA, CA)
Andee Sunderland, Outreach Coordinator (NV)
Caesar Vargas*, National Latino Outreach Deputy Director

*current staff

On Saturday, Tass reported what looks like Washington’s dirty handiwork, perhaps complicit with its NATO allies, saying:

Russia’s “Federal Security Service (FSB) revealed virus software for cyber-spying in computer networks of about 20 organizations located in Russia.”

The attack targeted “information resources of the state authorities, scientific and defense companies, enterprises of the defense industry and other objects of the country’s critically important infrastructures.”

(C)learly, it was a targeted virus spread, planned and made professionally. Specialists say the malicious software, judging by the style of programming, names of files, parameters of their use and by methods, is similar to the software, which was used in much-spoken-about earlier revealed cyber-spying, revealed both in territory of the Russian Federation and around the globe.

The newest sets of the said software are made individually for every ‘victim,’ on the basis of unique features of attacked machines.

The virus is spread by target attacks on computers by sending an electronic message, containing a malicious attachment.

As the software gets inside the system, it launches necessary modules and becomes able to intercept the network traffic, listen to it, make screenshots, turn on web cameras and PC microphones, mobile devices, to record audio and video files, reports on use of keys and so forth.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), ministries and authorities are taking all necessary steps to minimize damage and restore targeted agencies to proper working order.

An FSB statement said operations infected include “IT assets of government offices, scientific and military organizations, defense companies, and other parts of the nation’s crucial infrastructure…”

Cyberattacking Russia followed hacked DNC emails, revealing electoral rigging to anoint Hillary party nominee – Moscow baselessly blamed, no evidence presented suggesting its involvement.

An attack this sophisticated and extensive had to have been planned long before DNC emails were hacked, a convenient pretext to launch it.

Provocative US anti-Russian policies perhaps now include cyberwar. Did Washington declare war on Russia (as well as China) without anyone noticing, paying attention or reporting it?

Will things turn red hot if Hillary succeeds Obama?

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

On March 31st, Le Devoir, the last independent daily newspaper in Quebec, reported that Montreal would host the next World Social Forum (WSF) in 2016. The article refers to the recent decision of the International Council (IC) of the World Social Forum announced with great fanfare in Tunis. It also specifies that it is the first time that a Social Forum is to be held in the Northern hemisphere, after numerous past successes in the South in Latin American countries and in post-revolutionary Tunisia.

Though the proponents of the Montreal proposal welcomed with the greatest joy the International Council’s green light, several fundamental questions remain unanswered, especially regarding the plausibility of their aims. Core issues are still unresolved, namely the level of local and international participants, funding sources and, most importantly, the real political impact of the magnitude of required resources on social groups and movements already grappling with many difficulties in Quebec and in the rest of Canada. The stakes and the risks are high. It is time for the proponents of the event, if they are serious about turning it into a real political success, finally address the issues raised by their project.

1- Who will be the 80,000 people expected at the WSF 2016?

The proponents of the WSF in Montreal announced a record mobilization of 50,000 to 80,000 people. However, this estimate appears unrealistic considering, first, the last WSF experience in Tunis that gathered 48,600 people and, second, the past Canadian experiences of Social Forums. A quick look at the number is revealing. In In 2007, 5,000 people joined the first Quebec Social Forum in Montreal. In 2009, they were only 3,500. In August 2014, the first Peoples Social Forum held in Ottawa brought together between 5,000 and 6,000 people from Quebec, Canada, and First Nations. The issue of the number of participants is important because it is an indicator of the political success of the event but also the finances, since every participant pays registration fees.

According to the global statistics of the World Social Forum, compiled after every event, local participants systematically constitute 80% of the total participation. Moreover, past forum experiences in Quebec teaches us that on average, the province is only able to mobilize 4,000 people each time. Therefore, to be able to reach the estimated 50, 000 to 80,000 participants, the Montreal WSF would need to mobilize between 40,000 and 64,000 Quebecers. That would represent quite a challenge as it would need to boost the average participation by a 1000% to 1500%.

The level of international participation for the event is another layer of uncertainty. Because of Canadian visa restrictions, high costs of transport and accommodation for those coming from overseas during in the high tourist season, many international participants will face great obstacles before being able to attend. Given the importance of those barriers, proponents of the WSF in Montreal admitted the problem in their own original presentation of Montreal’s candidacy to the International Council. As a “solution”, they suggested a “massive use of the Internet’s potential to foster 1,000 simultaneous remote Social Forums in the four corners of the world”. By their own volition, they were proposing to “solve” the potentially lacking international participation by discouraging their physical presence in Montreal. Yet, international participants represent 20% of the expected participation. Since the last IC meeting in Tunis, proponents of the Montreal WSF have adjusted their solution and decided to launch a major campaign demanding that the Canadian government reduces the level of visa restrictions. However, since the current Conservative government is currently doing exactly the opposite, it seems highly uncertain that this campaign, as important as it is, will facilitate the entry in Canada of participants from the Global South.

The Canadian (outside Quebec) and Aboriginal participation is also a huge challenge given the size of the Canadian state. For the People Social Forum in August 2014, a solidarity fund of nearly 40,000$ had been set up mainly to allow the participation of indigenous communities and people from the West and Maritimes who otherwise would never have been able to participate. Even at the preparatory meetings, such funds had been put forward with the same goal in mind, which is to ensure their participation. Will this be the case of the WSF 2016? The question must be raised and addressed since it seems no resources were set up to facilitate participation from outside Quebec during the initial assemblies held in Montreal.

2- Who will pay the 2.4 million that the project requires?

The proponents of the Montreal WSF are proposing a total budget of 2.4 million, including 1.6 million from participants registration fees, sponsorships, and government programs. They also spoke of a total of $830,000 in services and facilities that they hope to receive for free from volunteers, universities and colleges as well as the city of Montreal.

The financial analysis of the previous three Social Forums held in Canada, however, reveals problems with each of these budget lines.

First, with an average turnout of 5,000 people for the three previous forums in Canada, none of them could gather more over $100,000 from the registration fees. More importantly, previous experience has taught us that the money generated by the Forum itself (the registrations of participants, groups and activities) never exceeded 40% of total revenues. In Ottawa, for the People Social Forum, only 25% of the total budget came from those sources. This is far from the 66% announced by the promoters of the Montreal WSF 2016.

Worse, should there be a deficit, who will be held accountable? In Tunis in March 2015, the organizers reached a deficit of at least 30 000 euros caused by a level of participation lower than expected. In 2009, the low participation levels at the 2nd Quebec Social Forum imposed on the organizers a deficit of more than $20,000 dollars. At the end, civil society groups, namely the labor sector in the Canadian experience, have to endorse the bill. In a context of austerity, placing the bet that local civil society groups will be able to absorb any deficit resulting from the Montreal 2016 is a dangerous move and one that social movements do not need right now.

Secondly, the budget involves nearly a million in voluntary services that would be offered, for free, to the event. However, volunteers do not come freely. At the very minimum, they need to be housed, transported, and fed. Reserving venues and spaces is also an issue. The WSF 2016 proponents expect to have access to two universities, one college, the Palais des Congrès, (Montreal’s Convention Centre) as well as some outdoor sites. Even if all those venues are available, any experienced organizer know that a “free space” actually costs money to cover security, insurance, technical assistance, equipment, furniture, permits and much more.

Third, despite the existence of letters of support from various levels of government (Canada, Quebec, and the City of Montreal), the involvement of these authorities is not at all guaranteed. Social forums are political: they aim to mobilize and organize those who are fighting against increasingly restrictive and neoliberal policies promoted by those specific authorities. To assume that the federal and provincial governments and the municipality would support an initiative whose final aim is to organize the struggle against their reactionary policies is a highly unrealistic position. More importantly, if the authorities do not, with little surprise, decide to invest money in the project, are we going to impose the burden on trade unions and social groups to financially supporting an event with estimated costs five times exceeding that of the latest experience?

3- What are the political objectives of the WSF 2016?

If the issues of money or participation could be seen as “technicalities” by some, the main question raised by the possibility of a WSF in Montreal is much more fundamental. It is articulated around the very political objectives of the project. According to its proponents, the aim of the process is to “boost local social struggles by giving them international resonance”. Though the intention appears honourable, even considering the excepted difficulties regarding the mobilization in Quebec, Canada and internationally, the usefulness of this “international resonance” remains to be demonstrated for social movements in Quebec and Canada who are already involved on multiples fronts against the provincial and federal governments. In that context, we must ask the question of the proportionality of the human and financial investments required by the WSF 2016 in relation to the expected benefits for the very social movements it aims to boost.

So far, on the question of the very purpose of the Forum and the expected results, the documentation offered by proponents of the WSK 2016 only manages to provide vague logistical answers. They tell us of long demonstrations that will open and close the event, “1500 self-organized activities” will happen within a “World Social Territory” of “3 km from UQAM to Concordia University” with “gathering places” on the “premises of these two universities, the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal (a college), the Emilie Gamelin Place, the Place des Festivals, the Victoria Square and the Convention Centre. That is certainly a lot of space. But it doesn’t answer the question as to the expected or desired outcomes of the event for the social struggles here. The WSF 2016 only exists for the event and will not survive its own process.

To highlight the importance of a clear political project behind a Social Forum, it serves to look at the initial goals of the 2014 People Social Forum. Thirty months were required to build, through social movements, a social forum with the aims of creating historical alliances between Quebec, Canada, and First Nations. It was an innovative project in the context of an all-out attacks by the federal government against all spheres and sectors of civil society. The premise was – and still is – that different groups and movements from Quebec, Canada, and First Nations must learn to work together because they have a common enemy. Those links and alliances must be nurtured, not discarded.

So far, the project of the Montreal WSF appears without any purpose. The event does not seem to address any political issue other than its own occurrence in August 2016. Moreover, the achievements of the People Social Forum are ignored as demonstrated by the lack of willingness to involve or retain any commitment from the sheer number of social groups and movements who were involved in the People Social Forum. It is revealing to compare the list of groups that supported each event. As far as the Montreal WSF is concerned, there is a blatant lack of representation from movements in English Canada and indigenous movements. There is even a stark absence of important groups in the Quebec civil society, the very basis, at least in theory, of the Montreal WSF. Where are the important women’s rights groups? The students? Where are environmental groups and citizens active on the climate justice front? The labour groups and the unions? Not only did those important groups have not yet expressed support for the Montreal WSF, but the overwhelming majority of them have not been approached or consulted on the matter of the political orientations of the event.

4- Is the WSF 2016 rooted in social movements?

The lack of prior consultation with local social movements and others social justice actors speaks to the disconnection between the WSF project and the people. The fact that those behind it chose to first convince the International Council of the merit of their project before convincing local movements, who are supposed to be at the heart of the process and are supposed to be the main beneficiaries of it is another indicator of that disconnection. The majority of those involved in the WSF 2016 main organizing body are individuals neither connected to local social movements nor representing any of them.

The same mistake was done in 2009 when organizing for the second Quebec Social Forum. At that time, social movements were barely consulted during the process. As a result, most of them chose to simply sit idly without engaging. In the end, there was a significant decline in the 2009 forum compared to the 2007 one. Unfortunately, the same recipe for a forum without connections to social movements is still presented to us for 2016.

After the death of the Quebec Social Forum in 2009, the idea of a new social forum in Canada was revived during the People Social Forum as bridges between French Canada, English Canada and Indigenous movements were built. Yet, the work done during that process, though it was unprecedented, doesn’t seem to have left traces as, only 18 months later, we find ourselves in a process focused mainly on Quebec. It may constitute a desirable side track for some members of the large nationalist Quebec left who do not wish to bother themselves with endless conversations with the anglophones or the indigenous communities. How can we claim to be ready for a World Social Forum in Canada if not a single debate with those two groups were held?

5- How to hold a real WSF 2016 on those conditions?

Several fundamental concerns remain unanswered here. Will the social groups and movements mobilize for the event? What expectations should we have in terms of support to local struggles? What is real involvement from outside Quebec, including indigenous movements and from overseas? What are the financial implications for movements already struggling on many fronts, both at the provincial and federal levels? What are the long-term prospects?

We can ask many others questions, like regarding the real risk that the occurrence of the Montreal WSF damages a world process that is already reflecting on its own difficulties, with the latest Tunisian experience having received a very mixed assessment. But the fundamental question here is: How to move forward? Is it really possible, or even necessary, to hold a WSF when we know that it is not connected to any social base and that it might turn into the faulty Quebec Social Forum experience.

For reasons of its own, the International Council decided to support the Montreal initiative of the WSF 2016. But the Council is neither Quebec nor Canada. It knows little about realities and struggles here. The fact that they approved the project should not be enough, by itself, to impose through magical thinking a world social forum on local grassroots groups and social movements with unreasonable expectations, important investments and murky benefits.

If the Montreal WSF project is to move forward, then these questions must be answered now.

What’s especially interesting there, is that in all of these missions, except for Iraq, the U.S. was doing it with the key participation of the Saud family, the royals who own Saudi Arabia, and who are the world’s largest buyers of American weaponry.

Since Barack Obama came into the White House, the operations — Libya, Yemen, and Syria — have been, to a large extent, joint operations with the Sauds. ‘We’ are now working more closely with ‘our’ ‘friends’, even than ‘we’ were under George W. Bush

Here are before-and-after pictures, of what the U.S. government has achieved, in the Middle East:

https://twitter.com/MAL0mt/status/701077438525263873/photo/1,

As President Obama instructed his military, on 28 May 2014:

When issues of global concern do not pose a direct threat to the United States, when such issues are at stake — when crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more dangerous direction but do not directly threaten us — then the threshold for military action must be higher. In such circumstances, we should not go it alone. Instead, we must mobilize allies and partners to take collective action. We have to broaden our tools to include diplomacy and development; sanctions and isolation; appeals to international law; and, if just, necessary and effective, multilateral military action. In such circumstances, we have to work with others because collective action in these circumstances is more likely to succeed.

So: ’we’ didn’t achieve these things only on our own, but instead in alliance with the royals of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and other friendly countries, which finance jihadists everywhere but in their own country. And, of course, all of ‘us’ are allied against Russia, so we’re now surrounding that country with ‘our’ NATO partners before we do to it what we’ve previously done to Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. America is becoming even more ambitious, because of ‘successes’ like these in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine.

The United States has been the great champion of ‘democracy’ throughout the world. And these are are some of the results of that ‘democracy’. ‘We’ are spreading it abroad.

‘Our’ latest victory has been ‘our’ spreading it to Ukraine. No country is closer to Russia than that.

Inside America, the term that’s used for referring to anyone who opposes this spreading of ‘democracy’, is ‘isolationist’, and this term is imported from the meaning that it had just prior to America’s joining World War II against Hitler and other fascists. Back in that time, an “isolationist” meant someone who didn’t want to defeat the fascists. The implication in the usage of this term now, is that the person who is an ‘isolationist’ is a ‘fascist’, just as was the case then. It’s someone who doesn’t want to spread ‘democracy’.

To oppose American foreign policy is thus said to be not only ‘right wing’, but the extremist version of that: far right-wing — fascist, perhaps even nazi, or racist-fascist. (Donald Trump is rejected by many Republicans who say that he’s ‘not conservative enough’. Democrats consider him to be far too ‘conservative’. The neoconservative Democrat Isaac Chotiner, whom the Democratic neoconservative Slate hired away from the Democratic neoconservative The New Republic, has headlined at Slate, “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?” and he answered that question in the affirmative.) George Orwell dubbed this type of terminological usage “Newspeak.” It’s very effective.

Studies in America show that the people who are the most supportive of spreading ‘democracy’ are individuals with masters and doctoral degrees (“postgraduate degrees”). Those are the Americans who vote for these policies, to spread American ‘democracy’, to foreign lands. They want more of this — more of these achievements. (Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders nationwide among the “postgraduate” group.) Some of these people pride themselves on being “technocrats.” They claim that the world needs more of their ‘expertise’. Lots of them come forth on the ‘news’ media to validate such invasions as Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria after 2011, etc. Almost all of them possess doctoral degrees. This shows what they have learned. They are the most employable, the highest paid, the most successful, in their respective fields.

After all: ‘democracy’ is not for amateurs. It’s only for people who take instruction, and who do what they are told. But, told by whom? Whom are they obeying? Do they even know? In any organization, when an instruction is issued, is it always easy to know who issued it? And what happens to a person who doesn’t carry it out? There is a winnowing process. The constant survivors are the ones who rise from that process, and who ultimately win the opportunity to issue some of the instructions themselves. These people are the wheat; everybody else is chaff, which gets discarded, in a ‘democracy’.

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.

Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein has gotten more media coverage than ever before since Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton and hundreds of Bernie delegates walked out of the Democratic National Convention chanting “JILL NOT HILL.” Stein still faces exclusion from the nationally televised presidential debates and steep ballot access barriers in many states. I spoke to Rick Lass, the Stein campaign’s ballot access coordinator, who said the campaign expects to spend half a million dollars just getting on the ballot.

Ann Garrison: Rick Lass, could you give us a summary of the state of Jill Stein’s ballot access drive now?

Rick Lass: Definitely, we’re movin’ right along. Things are goin’ quite well. We’ve, since we last talked, got on the ballot in a couple more states and August is our big month. We’ve got seven filings on August 1st and 2nd, another couple on August 10th, and another 15 between August 10th and Sseptember 9th. We’re actively petitioning in every state we haven’t filed in already, and things are lookin’ good.

Dr. Jill Stein addressed the Black Men for Bernie rally at the Democratic National Convention. The group now supports Dr. Stein.

AG: I heard that one state you didn’t manage to get on in was Oklahoma?

RL: That’s right. They had a really high requirement of 40,000 signatures and a mid-July deadline. So there’s actually three states that we’re definitely not on. Oklahoma, North Carolina and Indiana. We will be write-in candidates in North Carolina and Indiana, but Oklahoma doesn’t allow write-ins.

AG: That means that Jill will be officially registered as a write-in, so that a write-in vote for Jill will be counted, right?

RL: In Indiana and North Carolina, right, but not Oklahoma.

AG: What about Georgia, which also had really high signature requirements before a legal decision lowered them?

RL: In Georgia we turned in 10,000 signatures, a little more than that, and we need 7500 to be valid. So we’re waiting, it’s been three weeks now almost since we filed, and we haven’t heard anything. They have a very rigorous test, just like the State of Nevada, where we filed 8500 and needed 5500 to be valid. And they actually compare the signature on the petition to the signature that they have on file that they’ve scanned of the person’s original voter registration form. And they use that to disqualify certain signatures, which just seems absurd if you consider the person may have registered to vote 10 years ago or 15 years ago, or they might be signing the petition in 110 degree heat in Las Vegas in a shopping center parking lot somewhere and not be quite so careful as if they’re in a government office signing an official form. So, in Nevada we’ve actually appealed the decision. They said we fell short by 600, and in Georgia, we’re waiting to hear but we’re very optimistic.

AG: OK, so are you optimistic that Jill Stein will be on the ballot in most states?

RL: Well, most definitely. I still think we’re gonna be on in 46 states.

AG: Now I believe that Jill would have to get 15% in a major, nationally recognized poll to be able to get into the presidential debates. Is that right?

RL: I think you need three major recognized polls, and that’s why there’s a lawsuit that was filed almost four years ago against the Commission on Presidential Debates for their exclusive, monopolistic way of handling what used to be done fairly by the League of Women Voters. I was never a huge fan of Ross Perot but due to the fact that Ross Perot was on the debate stage back in ’92, he got a very good percentage of the votes because people realized they had another choice and, instead of sitting home, they went out and voted to overturn the two-party system. And ever since then, they have not allowed a so-called third party candidate on the debate stage.

AG: OK, I’ll try to catch up with you again to see how it goes in the critical month of August.

RL: Thanks for getting in touch and keeping people informed.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist who contributes to the San Francisco Bay View, Counterpunch, Global Research, the Black Agenda Report and the Black Star News, and produces radio for KPFA-Berkeley and WBAI-New York City.  In 2014, she was awarded the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize by the Womens International Network for Democracy and Peace.  She can be reached at [email protected].

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it. John Lennon

The American Empire is playing a dangerous game with its nuclear weapons arsenal. The US-NATO and Israel alliance has declared directly and indirectly that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are a threat to world peace and security.

Let’s be clear on who is the real threat to world peace and it is not the countries I just mentioned, it is Washington’s geopolitical ambitions to bring its enemies under their sphere of control. Washington’s geopolitical moves are antagonizing its enemies which can ignite a catastrophic world war that can go to nuclear at a moment’s notice. The threat of a nuclear war is at almost the same level of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but if you listen to the main-stream media (MSM) you may never know what is really going on concerning world events.

The first woman and U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has threatened Iran with nuclear strikes while Israel maintains its own nuclear weapons arsenal which is also a threat to its neighbors in the Middle East, especially Iran.

Washington is placing NATO troops and Missile Defense Systems close to Russia’s borders and giving the U.S. Navy the green light to a possible confrontation with China’s naval fleet in the South China Sea. Washington’s bellicose actions are indeed provocative. As I mentioned in a 2013 article ‘Hawaii: 120 Years of US Occupation: Militarism and “America’s Pacific Century’ Hillary Clinton who was Secretary of State at the time wrote an article in 2011 titled ‘America’s Pacific Century’ for Foreign Policy Magazine where she defined what the U.S. role would be in the Pacific region:

Strategically, maintaining peace and security across the Asia-Pacific is increasingly crucial to global progress, whether through defending freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, countering the proliferation efforts of North Korea, or ensuring transparency in the military activities of the region’s key players

America’s strategy in the South China Sea is to isolate China at all costs while empowering their vassal states in the region with political, economic and military support. According to a July 12th article by The Guardian, China has rejected a ruling by an international tribunal in The Hague which claims that the Philippines has legal rights in the South China Sea “over strategic reefs and atolls that Beijing claims would give it control over disputed waters of the South China Sea.”

The ruling is a moral justification for the U.S. Navy to patrol the South China Sea while advancing Washington’s strategic goals. First it allows Washington to block any trade or cooperation agreements between China and its neighboring countries which can leave Western business interests out of the loop which is why the Obama regime continues to push the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) which gives US corporations unlimited power in the region. The TPP is one of the agreements under Obama’s “Asian Pivot” that puts corporate power over government’s who sign on to the TPP. Under the TPP, laws that protected the working-class people and labor unions before their governments sign on to the TPP would be diminished.

The agreement will also end regulations that effect health, safety and environmental standards and the list goes on. Corporations like Monsanto would become a major benefactor in agriculture sector throughout the entire region. Second, it gives Washington an excuse to remain in the South China Sea to protect its corporate interests and its allies from the “China Threat” following the objective of “Full-Spectrum Dominance” in the Asia-Pacific region.

Washington’s propaganda campaign against China reinstates the willingness and insanity of provoking a war against a nation who has a relatively strong military force of over 2.3 million troops on land, sea and air including its own nuclear arsenal. Not to mention China is America’s creditor which means in short “don’t bite the hands that feeds you!” Washington’s aggressive foreign policy stance has accelerated since Obama got into the White House.

The Obama administration (and a possible Hillary Clinton presidency to follow) is also risking a possible conflict with Russia. In the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton said that “I’m proud to stand by our allies in NATO against any threat they face, including from Russia” following the same path as her “Neocon” supporters. Clinton’s speech shows what she will most likely do in Washington and that is to risk countless lives to further advance U.S. strategic goals.

The elites or the “Armchair Warriors” (because they instigate war from the comfort of their mansions where they throw costume parties wearing animal heads or from their offices in the White House, Downing Street, Tel Aviv and the Pentagon) do not in any way fight wars themselves, but support and even lobby for war that benefits the Military-Industrial Complex. We can also call them “Chicken Hawks” which are those who support and advocate for war as many do in Washington, but avoid any form of military service or draft (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) when called upon to serve. Washington’s politicians are quick to use their own populations for their military adventures who are mostly from poor and in some cases from the middle class and their favorite “undocumented immigrants” (who are promised American citizenships) from Latin America. The U.S military and the Washington-backed NATO troops are pawns of unwinnable wars that can escalate into a thermo-nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia.

Wall Street, the Military-Industrial Complex, corporations and the politicians are willing to lead the world into an Armageddon-type scenario. Washington is confident that they can defeat its adversaries with their military power but the U.S. has never faced countries like Russia, China or Iran. Russia has more advanced military technologies including its air and missile defense systems known as the S-500 which can counter any US-NATO missile or fighter jet at a moment’s notice. Irrational decisions made by Washington’s establishment means two things, first, they must be really politically and historically ignorant on Russia’s stance when it comes to its sovereignty and they must really despise humanity, but one thing is certain; they want the U.S. to remain as the world’s standing superpower. Wars after war, countless lives have been lost on all continents over the last 250 years or so. War is America’s pastime. Wars contribute to the spread of disease and famine. Countless Western interventions in the last 100 years alone have caused chaos, economic despair for many nations who lay victim to Western Imperial agendas.

From Banking to GMO’s: The Armchair Warriors want Humanity under their Control

The armchair warriors advocate for economic policies that essentially enslave humanity with their banking institutions such as Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the International Bank for International Settlements (BIS), JP Morgan Chase, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Goldman Sachs is one of the financial institutions that managed to steer the world into debt peonage. Jose Manuel Barroso was an EU bureaucrat and President of the European Commission was just hired by Goldman Sachs is a prime example of the revolving doors between government and corporations.

Why are we as human beings subjected to this madness and despair so that the top 1% can control our natural resources and our lives? Western politicians, top-level military men (General Breedlove), think tanks such as the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) or the Heritage Foundation, the Main-Stream Media (MSM) and multinational corporations are leading the world to destruction and chaos. They advocate the need to control humanity’s healthcare with their prescription drugs and vaccines that hurt and kill thousands of people annually. They advocate for Genetically Modified foods (GMO’s) and support corporations such as Monsanto who are producing the unhealthiest foods for public consumption. GMO foods do lead to future health problems which do guarantee permanent patients so that Pharmaceutical corporations can continue to earn profits from their “legal” drugs. A monopoly made in Washington.

The West will Suffer Major Consequences of a Nuclear War

Russia and China are prepared for any confrontation with the United States if any peace agreement were to fail (obviously, Washington does not want peace). Russia will not hesitate to retaliate if Washington and its NATO patsies were foolish enough to launch a pre-emptive strike on Russian soil committing the world to a nuclear war. China recently announced that preparations are underway for any possible confrontation with the U.S. and any of its allies in The Global Times; a Chinese-government source clearly states what is at stake concerning U.S. maneuvers in the South China Sea:

China should speed up building its military capabilities of strategic deterrence. Even though China cannot keep up with the US militarily in the short-term, it should be able to let the US pay a cost it cannot stand if it intervenes in the South China Sea dispute by force. China is a peace-loving country and deals with foreign relations with discretion, but it won’t flinch if the US and its small clique keep encroaching on its interests on its doorstep. China hopes disputes can be resolved by talks, but it must be prepared for any military confrontation. This is common sense in international relations

Washington is also placing NATO Missile Defense Systems in Europe that threatens Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin faced off with Journalists in the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum  on June 17th and said the following in regards to a possible war with the West:

The “Iranian Threat” does not exist but the NATO Missile Defense System is being positioned in Europe. That means we were right when we said that their reasons are not genuine, they were not being open with us. Always referring to the “Iranian Threat” in order to justify this system, once again they lied to us, now the system is functioning and being loaded with missiles. As you (Journalists) should know these missiles are put into capsules, which are used in the Tomahawk long range missile system.

So, these are being loaded with missiles that can penetrate territories within a 500km range, but we know that technologies advance, and we even know in which year the U.S. will accomplish the next missile…this missile will be able to penetrate distances of up to 1000km, and then even further… And from that moment on, they will start to directly threaten Russia’s nuclear potential.

We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger — this is what worries me.

“How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore”

Washington’s insanity will for sure destroy Western civilization with Europe taking the first nuclear strikes when Russia retaliates after a U.S. led NATO strike. Are the armchair warriors going to the front lines to fight alongside US-NATO soldiers? Of course not because they have their pawns in place that will be killed or seriously maimed if a war or a nuclear war was to take place, but no worries because they have the pharmaceutical drugs that will heal your life crippling wounds. Not only is the Obama administration threatening Russia’s borders, Hillary Clinton has threatened Iran in the past with a nuclear strike against any action they may take against Israel or “violate” any terms within the nuclear deal between the P5 +1 (Russia, China, France, the UK and the U.S. plus Germany) and Iran in 2015. Is a nuclear war inevitable?

The Aftermath of a Nuclear War: The Top 1% and the Mission to Mars

In 2015, the main-stream media, in this case Newsweek published an article titled ‘Star Wars’ Class Wars: Is Mars the Escape Hatch for the 1 Percent? It claims that wealthy billionaires are planning an escape from planet earth and leave the rest of the human race behind:

It’s nice to know Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have a plan. They will help the richest people in the world go to Mars and start over, leaving the other 99 percent to suffer on a dying, warring planet. The only solace for those of us left here will be that the Biebs should be prosperous enough to go with them

But those who have the political power and most of the world’s wealth at their disposal are in the midst of creating a plan to leave Earth in case of an apocalyptic scenario whether by a world war or an unstoppable life-threatening disease or any other catastrophe. They have it all figured out. The billionaire founder of Space X, Elon Musk and others like him have an ambitious dream and that is to colonize planet “Mars.” Yes, you heard this right the next planet closest to the sun. Maybe they want to step out into the sun and get an instant sun tan instead of heading out to their private beach or their local overpriced sun tan salons? Living on Mars does not seem like something the average human being would like to do at some point in their lives, maybe visit as a tourist but to live for the rest of their lives? I highly doubt it.

Perhaps Musk is not the only elite multi billionaire who would want to live on another planet or in space far away from the madness of our planet. Besides many of the financial and political elite created the situation that led to war, poverty and disease in the first place for their own benefit whether it was financial or political. According to an interesting article on Elon Musk’s vision of colonizing mars by www.science.com titled ‘Now Is the Time to Colonize Mars, Elon Musk Says’ quotes Musk who addressed an audience at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and said“now is the first time in the history of Earth that the window is open, where it’s possible for us to extend life to another planet,” he continued “That window may be open for a long time — and hopefully it is — but it also may be open for a short time,” he added. “I think the wise move is to make life multiplanetary while we can.”

According to Newsweek, Musk wants humans to become a “multiplanet species” and maintain an outpost as an “insurance policy” if something catastrophic were to occur on earth:

Colonizing Mars has long been a passion of Musk’s. Indeed, the entrepreneur has repeatedly said that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species. Having a self-sustaining outpost on the Red Planet would serve as an insurance policy, making humanity’s extinction unlikely even if something goes terribly awry here on Earth, Musk said Tuesday. Colonizing Mars would have other benefits as well, he added; the effort would greatly advance science discoveries and technological capabilities, and it would help inspire and excite people from all walks of life and from all around the globe 

I do agree that colonizing mars would “advance science” but that is as far as I would go for such a project. Musk’s plan to send “people from all walks of life and around the globe” sounds nice but in all actuality is unrealistic. Who would reach Mars? Those with wealth and fortune from mainly the West not the 99 percent will get to go to Mars (and of course if you are willing to live the rest of your life on the red planet).

Hollywood has produced several films on the subject on the concept of living in space, whether on another planet or on a spaceship (Star Trek). The 2013 film “Elysium” starring Matt Damon as a former convict named Max da Costa who works on an assembly line for a company that produces weapons and robots that monitors Earth under a police state controlled by Elysium, a spaceship that circles in the Earth’s orbit. Elysium is home to the ultra rich and politically powerful and under the supervision of the Secretary of Defense ‘Delacourt’ played by Jodie Foster (who reminds me of Hillary Clinton). The film takes place in the year 2154; Earth is “overpopulated” with all of the people living in extreme poverty and starvation with no technology or a healthcare system to cure them from sicknesses and life-threatening diseases. Elysium has all the technology for their own people (the ultra rich and the political establishment) that can prolong their lives in relative comfort while humans who live on earth suffer from various diseases. I will not tell you about how the film ends. However, the film examines how those in power would control planet earth from space with surveillance systems that monitor human activity along with robots and drones to keep the order in place. The film depicts the future of humanity living under a dictatorship while rotating the earth’s orbit. I would not at all be surprised that some of the elitists in Western circles would jump on an opportunity to control earth from a spaceship.

War and Chaos Really Scares the Elites

Creating chaos is orchestrated by those in power who have enormous influence in the financial, military and political sectors of society. It is quite bizarre in understanding how the global elite would want to dominate the world and control humanity so that they can enjoy their vast fortunes and power of control because they are entitled to because of who they are. The elite or the armchair warriors want to enslave society with their financial manipulations which they call “capitalism” or more like “Crony Capitalism.”

 Chaos is a formula for restoring order, an order that imposes control over people. We can also say that it is a divide and conquer strategy which allows the rulers to control both sides of the fight. Once they lose that control, they panic for their own safety. Isn’t that pathetic? They start the wars, impose debt slavery on the population and then social unrest becomes uncontrollable. So what is the solution for the elites? Live on a distant planet because the environment they created on Earth is now far too dangerous for them to cope with.

Personally, I prefer planet earth as to living on Mars; I would not want to live on Mars even if it was remotely possible. I like planet earth, its beautiful oceans and lakes, its people, its beaches and its various cultures etc. Mars is a dream for Musk and it won’t happen anytime soon. For now New Zealand might be their only option. An interesting article by The Guardian in 2015 with a headline title that says it all ‘As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes’ regarding an interview at the Davos Economic Forum with Economist Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking said that

 “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.”  

The “armchair Warriors” or the “chicken hawks” or whatever you prefer to call them have been in preparation for an economic depression, social unrest or a nuclear war for some time because of the situations they themselves created. Humanity needs to stop these maniacs from destroying us and we can by continuing to inform the public on the dangers of US-NATO and Israeli alliance and its network of vassal states (including Gulf State Monarchies for example) who pose the real threat to humanity. I do believe that we can win this battle and that the criminal elitist cabal who rule our earth will face an unprecedented resistance in the months and years to come. I am optimistic. There is still time and hope for a peaceful solution to emerge, but time is running out.

More than 90,000 people have fled Sirte and the clutches of IS. Many left with nothing other than the stories of desperate conditions inside the city

At the back of a carpet shop in Tripoli Street, one of the main roads through Misrata, citizens collect essential items for refugees. There are shoes, clothes, mattresses, books and games for children and even food baskets for young couples who cannot afford a wedding lunch.

The donations will be shared among the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled Sirte and the clutches of the Islamic State group. The UN says more than 90,000 have left – two thirds of the city’s population – including 35,000 in the two months since the start of a Libyan offensive to take back the city. Among them are 3,000 children under the age of three.

Misrata, Beni Walid and Tarhouna have taken in the vast majority, many of whom arrived with nothing other than the clothes on their backs and stories of their break for freedom from desperate conditions inside the city.

Fatima is in line at the carpet shop with her 13-year-old daughter Aisha, one of her five children. Until a few months ago they lived in Sirte.

“My husband is blind and has a heart problem,” Fatima told Middle East Eye. “When we were in Sirte we lived with his family, sharing the food and expenses, and as long as I could work my salary was enough to guarantee children what they needed.”

Then Islamic State arrived, and the end of our lives began. They took possession of all aspects of our lives.

Holding a picture of her eldest son, Ali, 15, Fatima said: “They wanted to recruit our children. We knew there were spies everywhere who controlled the boys who went to their lessons. Young people were forced to listen to their sermons.”

The situation became desperate for Fatima as food and medicine began to run out.

At that point my husband and I began to think of escape. We were afraid of being stopped at a checkpoint and kidnapped, as we knew it was happening to many others.

But one night we took courage and we fled. I did not want my son to be corrupted by their ideology, but at the same time I was afraid they would kill him. For this, we fled.

‘I tried to resist till the end’

Another refugee, Ibrahim, met with MEE in a hotel in Misrata. He asked to remain anonymous for fear IS would kill his brother, whom they abducted and forced to fight.

They took him from our home, at night, after having ransacked everything. The same thing happened to many other young people.

They forced them to train, we know that around Sirte there are several training camps and we saw weapons arriving all the time during these months.

“I tried to resist till the end. I did not want to leave Sirte without my brother, but when the bombing started I convinced my mother to flee,” he said.

Ibrahim recounted the punishing conditions inside Sirte after IS arrived in 2014, and the reign of terror exacted on its population.

They controlled everything: the port, the air base, the radio station, they stopped all communication with the outside, they closed banks. They taxed my shop, my family was starving.

They forced citizens to attend public executions. Many people were beheaded and hanged on a scaffold on the roundabout in Zafran.

I was forced to attend public executions seven times… they passed in the street with loudspeakers threatening retaliation for those who did not attend.

They killed innocent people, accusing them of witchcraft, blasphemy, or spying.

I can never forget the faces of my fellow citizens killed. I will never forget the pain of their families and the fear of all of us.

The IS fighters were mostly foreign, he said.

The largest group was Tunisian, and there were soldiers from Yemen, Chad, Nigeria. Their judges were mostly Nigerians. The leaders were not Libyans – they were mostly Syrians and Iraqis.

They were carrying lots of currencies; there were Libyan dinars but also euro and so many dollars.

There was a prison in a school, in the Ribat area, and another at the central bank, we were all terrified of their Islamic police, terrified of ending up on their lists.

A friend of mine was sentenced to be publicly flogged because the Islamic police claimed to have seen him smoking in public.

He said he hated fleeing, but there was no alternative.

And I pray for the civilians left in Sirte. Because I fear that they are used as human shields.

Many people ask me why I had not run away before. I answer: because Sirte is my home, because I wanted my brother back, because I was hoping that someone might save us.

Forces loyal to the Libyan unity government, based in Tripoli, have been inching towards Sirte for two months. Reports from the front lines suggest British and American forces are directing the Libyan campaign, but progress is slow.

And the many thousands who have fled death must find a new way to live until their city is liberated.

“Now I’m here in Misrata and I pray every morning to find a job to feed my mother,” Ibrahim said.

Fatima is also struggling. “We feel deeply alone,” she said. “I have three jobs to pay the rent of the house we found, but if I pay the rent little or nothing remains to buy food.

I had to ask Aisha to start working with me. I do not want her to do menial work too. I clean houses and ask her just to cook.

Libyan forces launched a counter-offensive around Sirte two months ago (AFP)

Bolivian President Evo Morales on Friday accused the United States of continuing to plot against his government via embassy personnel.

Bolivia expelled Philip Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador to La Paz, eight years ago, saying the envoy conspired to strengthen Bolivia’s right-wing political opposition against Morales’ progressive left-leaning government.

“Despite the expulsion…the U.S. government doesn’t stop in its zeal to conspire against our democratic and cultural revolution,” Morales said through his Twitter account.

The complaint comes a day after Interior Minister Carlos Romero met with U.S. Charge d’Affaires Peter Brennan, who acknowledged having met with opponents to the government.

According to the Bolivian News Agency (ABI), Romero told Brennan that the meetings with opposition leaders “antagonized” the bilateral relationship and were considered interferring in domestic affairs.

On Thursday, minister of the Bolivian Presidency, Juan Ramon Quintana, was on hand for the presentation of a book titled “BoliviaLeaks,” on U.S. attempts to derail Morales’ first term (2006-2010).

As Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Morales launched major reforms to empower the indigenous population, including nationalizing the oil industry, which had been under the control of foreign multinationals.

The United States considers Bolivia a nightmare, fearing our “process of reforms can spread to other countries on the continent,” said Quintana.

While it is common knowledge by now that the failed and/or staged Turkish coup two weekends ago was nothing more than an excuse for Erdogan to concentrate even more power and eradicate all political and independent opposition, a story that has gotten less attention is the sudden, and acute deterioration in US-Turkish relations. This culminated two days ago when the Commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM) General Joseph Votel was forced to deny on the record having anything to do with the attempted coup in Turkey following pointed allegations from the very top in the local government that the US orchestrated last Friday’s “coup”, according to a statement released by the US military on Friday.

As Stars and Stripes reported late last week, the recent failed coup and jailing of military leaders in Turkey could impact U.S. operations there against the Islamic State group, Gen. Joseph Votel said Thursday at a security conference in Colorado. Votel said the coup attempt in Turkey two weeks ago left him “concerned” about how U.S. operations and personnel at Incirlik Air Base will be affected.

Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command

“Turkey of course …sits on an extraordinarily important seam between the central region and Europe,” Votel said at the Aspen Security Forum. “It will have an impact on the operations we do along that very important seam. Obviously, we are very dependent on Turkey for basing of our resources…I am concerned it will impact the level of cooperation and collaboration that we have with Turkey.”

Yeni Safak, a daily paper known for its loyal support of Erdogan, even reported retired Army Gen. John F. Campbell, former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, was the mastermind behind the attempted overthrow. However, the paper also reported White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called the allegations against the general unsubstantiated.

Votel said Thursday that the United States was “continuing to work through some of the friction that continues to exist” following the failed coup. He did not elaborate.

The general did say some of the arrested Turkish officers worked with U.S. personnel to coordinate airstrikes against the Islamic State group. “Yes, I think some of them are in jail,” Votel said of certain key Turkish military liaisons.

As a result of the coup attempt, U.S. air operations were temporarily suspended and the Turkish government cut power to Incirlik.

The diplomatic spat continued on Friday when comments made at an Erdogan’s rally once again blasted Votel for criticizing Turkey’s  post-coup attempt purge saying “Who are you? Know your place.” Erdogan went on to hint once more that the United States planned the failed government overthrow bid.

To this Votel again responded that “any reporting that I had anything to do with the recent unsuccessful coup attempt in Turkey is unfortunate and completely inaccurate,” Votel said. He was responding to an interpretation of comments made at a think tank in Washington, DC by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accusing Votel of sympathizing with the coup plotters.

* * *

Meanwhile, Turkey’s war of words against the US escalated on Friday, when Turkey’s authoritarian despot Erdogan condemned the West for refusing to show solidarity with Ankara, accusing NATO ‘allies’ as being more concerned about the fate of coup supporters than the survival of Turkey are not friends of Ankara. Erdogan blasted the West for criticizing the massive purge of Turkey’s military and other state institutions which has seen 60,000 people detained, removed or suspended over suspected links with the coup and for cancelling 50,000 civilian passports which many worry is but a prelude to an expansion of the reign of terror inside the country.

“The attitude of many countries and their officials over the coup attempt in Turkey is shameful in the name of democracy,” Erdogan told hundreds of supporters at the presidential palace in Ankara.

“Any country and any leader who does not worry about the life of Turkish people and our democracy as much as they worry about the fate of coupists are not our friends,” said Erdogan, who narrowly escaped capture and perhaps death on the night of the coup.

As Sputnik notes, the statements come in response to US National Intelligence Director James Clapper’s statement on Thursday that the purges were harming the fight against Daesh in Syria and Iraq by stripping away key Turkish officers who had worked closely with the United States.

“My people know who is behind this scheme… they know who the superior intelligence behind it is, and with these statements you are revealing yourselves, you are giving yourselves away.”  The remarks come at a troubling time only one day after over 5,000 protesters yelling “death to the US” marched towards NATO’s critical Incirlik Air Base which houses between 50 and 90 US tactical nuclear weapons before security officials successfully dispersed the raging demonstrators.

* * *

Which brings us to today, and the news that NATO’s critical Incirlik Air Base was hours ago completely blocked off by Turkey, with all inputs and outputs to the Adana base having been closed according to Turkey’s Hurriyet among rumors of yet another coup.

As the Turkish Minister for European Affairs, Omar Celik, tweeted moments ago, this is just a routine “safety inspection”, although it has not stopped local papers from speculating that a a second Gulen-inspired coup attempt may be underway.

Hurriyet has raised concern that the closing may be tied to an attempt by the Erdogan regime to prevent a second coup attempt.

Some 7,000 armed police with heavy vehicles have surrounded and blocked the Incirlik air base in Adana used by NATO forces, already restricted in the aftermath of a failed coup. Unconfirmed reports say troops were sent to deal with a new coup attempt. Hurriyet reported earlier that Adana police had been tipped off about a new coup attempt, and forces were immediately alerted. The entrance to the base was closed off.  Security forces armed with rifles and armored TOMA vehicles used by Turkish riot police could be seen at the site in photos taken by witnesses.

Indeed, the massive presence of armed police supported by heavy vehicles calls into question the Turkish government’s official line that the lock down at the Incirlik base is merely a “safety inspection.”?

Local media has focused on the base after the failed coup in Turkey occurred the night of July 15. Although the main scenes of the events were Istanbul and Ankara, Incirlik was shut down  for a time by local authorities shortly after the putsch, and several Turkish soldiers from the base were deemed by Turkish officials to be involved in the overthrow attempt. The lockdown at Incirlik follows a massive wave of protests on Thursday when pro-Erdogan nationalists took to the streets yelling “death to the US” and called for the immediate closure of the Incirlik base. Security personnel dispersed the protesters before they were able to make it to the base. And while there has been no official statement from US armed forces stationed at Incirlik at this time, the situation continues to develop in front of the air bBase as more heavy trucks have been dispatched to surround and block access to the critical military facility.

It is unclear if Erdogan is naive enough to think that he can out-bluff and out-bully the US and keep Incirlik hostage until he gets Gulen repatriated by Obama on a silver platter, a hostage “tit for tat” we first described two weeks ago. If so, one wonders, if he is doing so alone, or with the moral support of others, perhaps such recently prominent enemies of Erdogan as Vladimir Putin. Recall that just over a month ago Erdogan publicly apologized to Putin for downing the Russian Su-24 fighter jet in November, and called Putin “a friend.”

Finally, at least as of this moment, it appears that theairspace around Incirlik is closed.

“He [Bill Clinton] wanted people to know the real Hillary.” John Podesta, Jul 28, 2016

Moving beyond idea, beyond type, beyond cardboard cuts, was always going to be a central feature of the Democratic National Convention in 2016. With a US presidential election set to run between two largely unpopular characters, Hillary Clinton needed to show that she was a touch more than merely the tried and the failed.

To a large degree, the convention watchers felt that the task had been achieved, though that takes a good deal of presumption and make believe. The brush of humanity had been run over the candidate, and she was there, glowing away for the task at hand.

To this could be added another act of fundamental deception.  The Democratic Convention was also advertising itself as a broad church of acceptable differences, one where a range of factions and politics had come together under a fusing, non-crooked maternal gaze.

The cameos came thick and fast. There was the attempt by the running mate, Tim Caine, to show how sympathetic the Clintons, and the campaign, are to Hispanics. (I speak Spanish, so I feel how they feel.) Michelle Obama’s speech, in an attempt to promote Clinton, ended up being a pitch that looked somewhat presidential.

Then there was husband Bill, whose account was as all his accounts have been: clipped, adjusted and moderated for the audience at hand.  His attempt at recalling the love story from the time they met at the law library had its notable omissions, a point made even nastier by the fact that he committed a war crime, effectively, to distract a leering US public from his infidelity.

This effort was particularly greasy in its evocation of the fiddler and fondler, the man who saw that girl, whom he wanted.  “In the spring of 1971, I met a girl.”  Even as elder establishment, there was a sense he would creep up and so something distinctly seedy, though vocalised as folksy and reassuring, a grooming voice.

There were dot points he returned to, insisting that his wife was “the best darn change-maker I have ever known.”  But she was also a figure of motherly domesticity, having assisted daughter Chelsea to pack for her university dorm, having been the “designated worrier”.

The challenge put to delegates and to the audience was whether the image of Hillary generated by the GOP Convention was plausible, and how well it sold.  “What’s the difference in what I told you and what they said?  One is real and the other is made up… you just have to decide which is which, my fellow Americans.” With the Clintons, fabrication and reality are not indistinct.

The machine of an old mainstream party did eventually find its natural political rhythm.  But that is largely the problem for the Democrats and the manager that are running it.  An echo chamber has crept up around the politics of the United States, a chamber fed by the language of strategy, false presumption and disenfranchisement.  The pollster, the focus group, and the policy wonk come first.

Nothing in the pulverising nature of the Trump train resembles that chamber.  If there is a rule of engagement, break it. If a convention exists, run it into oblivion.  Flirt with treason if need be, because the world of business knows no treason, only numbers and profit. (The wiles of capitalism are never patriotic, merely self-interested.)  His suggestion that Russians hack Democrat sources and anything connected with Clinton to identify missing emails that somehow went into the ether was hysterical.

The Convention yielded a ghastly choice, an attempt to curb and stifle rival arguments and mask the reality of an intense, very American alienation. The Clinton machine attempted to choke the Sanders movement, and the final sense that the Vermont senator had keeled over was his insistence to supporters at the DNC that they step into the Clinton fray.

Clinton, in efforts to draw those Sanders’ souls into her orbit, spoke of how the US needed “your ideas, energy and passion.” That was “the only way we can turn our progressive platform into real change for America.”[1]

Arguments that a revolution had commenced and would continue were much like removing the nerve from the patient. Given that Sanders, according to Aaron Blake of the Washington Post, won more under-30 votes during the primaries than Clinton and Trump combined, speaks staggering volumes about a movement in search for a home.[2]

There was nothing human about this performance; the humanisation project stuttered in efforts to show “the real Hillary”.  Even pop references by such outlets as Time to the “balloon” buzz after Thursday, when the couple are filmed enjoying the cascading colours of inflatables, cannot erase that fact.  As one Twitter user remarked, “Why were people so worried about humanizing Hillary Clinton?  Just give her a balloon!”[3]

To the White House goes not so much the best brand, but the best sold one. The entire DNC show was a desperate attempt to retain a legacy and restrain others, while selling a broken product. The aim from the start was clear, a step to attain the prize that has become a symptom of modern American politics: the dynasty president.  Trump truly has a mine to work with.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT

University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

 Notes

[1] http://www.npr.org/2016/07/28/487817725/fact-check-hillary-clintons-speech-to-the-democratic-convention-annotated

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/20/more-young-people-voted-for-bernie-sanders-than-trump-and-clinton-combined-by-a-lot/

[3] https://twitter.com/tylermenzel/status/758870136870666240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Political developments are often emotionally charged, and even journalists who are expected to maintain an objective approach to reporting can find themselves swept away by sensational headlines and the temptation to wade into controversy without fully analysing background information that might significantly alter established narratives.

Because of this, some journalists find themselves playing the role of commentator rather than investigator, often leaving out critical information in a rush to contribute to one of two sides amid a political divide. In some cases, journalists may appear to be doing their job by “investigating” deeper into news stories, but do so in a transparently one-sided manner, thus negating their role as an objective observer.

And more often than not, these papers appear to be taking their lead from foreign news sources, particularly those in Europe and North America. One would expect newspapers from region to region to develop their own unique angles and perspectives regarding the news, but upon following the money, we will soon see why this more often than not doesn’t happen.

The Industrialised Journalist Mill

Pravit Rojanaphruk, currently a commentator at Thailand’s Khoasod English, is perhaps one of the most transparent examples of just what is wrong with newspapers across Asia. He proudly boasts of his various Western media affiliations and fellowships with his Twitter profile reading as follows:

MSc (Oxon), British Chevening Scholar 2001-2002, Reuter Fellow 97-98, Katherine Fanning Fellow 2009, Salzburg Sem. Fellow.

If these scholarships and fellowships actually cultivated real principles of journalism within recipients, they might actually be noteworthy milestones in a journalist’s career.

However, what they instead represent, is a concerted attempt by the Western media to extend its influence further abroad, and to help align global news coverage uniformly to their perspective and to serve their interests.

Journalists like Pravit, then, serve as an extension of Western media coverage rather than a representation of Thai journalism. Journalism by definition is the reporting of news, and news is by definition noteworthy information.

What Pravit and others like him are prone to do, however, is interweave opinion and commentary into what is often strained, spun or even fabricated information. And this is done to align Thai news with those expectations and norms taught to them during their fellowships abroad in Europe and North America.The Reuters Journalism Fellowship Programme alone has processed hundreds of journalists around the world, putting them through between 1-3 terms at the University of Oxford to undergo a program of stringent indoctrination into the ways of Western journalism. It is virtually impossible for a fellow to undergo this process and leave as an independent journalist.Activities, according to the Reuters Institute’s own website include:

• Attend seminars given by a diverse and high-level range of guest speakers who will share their insights into key industry trends and developments
• Work with an experienced supervisor, usually an Oxford academic, to produce a research paper of publishable quality
• Visit world-class news organisations and gain insights into how they are approaching industry challenges. Previous visits have included trips to Thomson Reuters, The Financial Times, The BBC, The Economist and The Guardian
• Join trips to key UK cultural and political organisations and institutions. Previous destinations have included Oxfam, the House of Commons and Stratford-upon-Avon, home of Shakespeare
• Exchange ideas and experiences with a diverse and international peer group. Around 25 Fellows a year join us from high-level media organisations all over the world. Strengthen your network, develop a global set of contacts and gain insights into international trends and developments
• Benefit from the extensive learning facilities offered by the University of Oxford, including the world-famous Bodleian Library and access to various seminars and lectures across the university. You are also encouraged to engage with the university’s cutting edge specialist research facilities, including centres for African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Eastern and Western European, Japanese and Chinese studies
• Be given visiting scholar status of Green Templeton College

For inexperienced young men and women who aspire to be journalists, to be afforded this opportunity would be both immensely flattering and emotionally as well as professionally transformative. For a young journalist in Thailand to be afforded the opportunity to travel to the UK, to attend one or more terms at the world renowned University of Oxford and to be given an opportunity to see the inner workings of news organisations like the BBC, Thompson Reuters, The Economist and The Guardian would be an overwhelming experience. And it is meant to be.

If Only Real Journalism Was Being Promoted… 

The journalists who complete such fellowships and return to their home countries, are forever linked to the institutions and individuals they met and worked with during their time abroad. They take back with them to their home countries not the tools of an objective journalist, but the indoctrination, culture, interests and angles of a Western-centric worldview. To those who have completed the fellowship, they often confuse this Western-centric worldview with being “objective,” but it is most certainly not.

We can look at the Reuters fellowship program and see news organisations like Thompson Reuters, the BBC, The Economist and The Guardian held up as examples of journalism. This is despite their active manipulation of information toward particular political objectives rather than accurately informing the public.

In particular, these news services played crucial roles in promoting wars like the US-UK led invasion of Iraq in 2003, intentionally obfuscating critical information the public and policymakers required to make an honest assessment of the decision to go to war.

The BBC in particular has been embroiled in impropriety ranging from deceptive news coverage to paid-for documentaries and even criminal conduct committed by individuals, and covered up institutionally.

But news organisations serving special interests is nothing new. One must expect this realistically, to a certain degree, regarding any news organisation operating around the world. It is not a matter of whether or not they are serving special interests, it is a matter of whose interests they are serving.

While Thai-based news organisations would be expected to serve special interests in Thailand, they do not, specifically because of the Wests industrialised ‘journalist mills.’ These fellowship programs, training seminars and campaigns are undertaken to ensure the widest possible consensus globally to Western special interests, regardless of what nation journalists may be from or what nations they are currently operating in.

That is why The Nation and the Bangkok Post feature editorial slants nearly indistinguishable from those of Western news agencies. While Pravit is very open and proud of his indoctrination into this system of mass-produced consensus, others employed across the Thai media are not. Some digging, however, into the backgrounds of journalists who repeatedly and suspiciously repeat talking-points originating from abroad usually reveals a similar and extensive “resume” of foreign fellowships, education and indoctrination.

History is Repeating Itself   

Understandably, for people hearing this for the first time, it sounds like an incredible conspiracy theory. However, upon thoughtful examination, it is merely the predictable repetition of history unfolding.

Ancient Roman historian Tacitus (c. AD 56 – after 117) would adeptly describe the systematic manner in which Rome pacified foreign peoples and the manner in which it would extend its sociocultural and institutional influence over conquered lands.

In chapter 21 of his book Agricola, named so after his father-in-law whose methods of conquest were the subject of the text, Tacitus would explain:

His object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses. He educated the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared to the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization’, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.

We can easily see how fellowships fill a similar role today, with the West, openly aspiring to construct an international order, “educating” potentially influential foreigners in both English and “the liberal arts,” encouraging a preference for Western culture and perspectives and convincing them that such indoctrination is a novelty of ‘civilisation’ rather than a feature of control and a vector for Western influence into any particular country.

Under the British Empire, similar education and missionary programs were created to replace independent and unique local perspectives and culture with the uniform perspective and culture of Britain, serving British aspirations of global hegemony.

Cambridge University Press’ Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860 would note in a chapter extract that (our emphasis):

Christian missionary activity was central to the work of European colonialism, providing British missionaries and their supporters with a sense of justice and moral authority. Throughout the history of imperial expansion, missionary proselytising offered the British public a model of ‘civilised’ expansionism and colonial community management, transforming [imperial] projects into moral allegories. Missionary activity was, however, unavoidably implicated in either covert or explicit cultural change. It sought to transform indigenous communities into imperial archetypes of civility and modernity by remodelling the individual, the community, and the state through western, Christian philosophies. In the British Empire, and particularly in what is historically known as the ‘second’ era of British imperialism (approximately 1784–1867), missionary activity was frequently involved with the initial steps of imperial expansion.

It is a bit ironic then that Britain, against which cultural colonialism was first used by the Romans, became a centre of power used then to disseminate cultural colonialism in service of naked imperialism under the British Empire, is now being used to disseminate a “softer” version of it under the guise of journalism and academia.

Like the sons of chiefs in Britannia, foreign journalists like Thailand’s Pravit Rojanaphruk probably have honestly convinced themselves that these features of control and manipulation are instead the “novelties of civilisation.”

What Nations Can Do. 

It is important for policymakers and the public alike to understand this aspect of modern journalism to both be aware of how it impacts news coverage, and of what possible measures can be taken to combat modern day cultural colonialism.

One possible measure could be national programs that attempt to recruit and build up a corps of local journalists who represent their nation’s best interests, culture and perspectives. These journalists can then fill the ranks of local newspapers and TV stations, as well as influence news conferences and seminars both local and international from their own nation’s perspective, rather than merely amplifying those of nations running international “fellowship” programmes.

For Thailand who has large government-funded news organisations like Thai PBS, universities and trusted news professionals, untainted by foreign indoctrination, can develop a truly Thai brand of journalism that is taught to political science and journalist students in school, and reinforced through the same sort of activities conducted by foreign fellowships overseas.

In essence, instead of depending on foreign fellowships and joint news organisation-university programs abroad, Thailand should develop is own domestically, as well as well-funded news organisations for Thai journalists to work at safely, securely and far from the ego-ensnaring temptations extended by foreign interests.

The New Atlas is a media platform providing geopolitical analysis and op-eds. Follow us on Facebook andTwitter. 

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.

It’s a massacre of civilians “with a human face”. It’s nonetheless a criminal undertaking perpetrated at the highest levels of the US government, in coordination with America’s allies including France, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.  

The western media applauds.

Amply documented, The US led coalition is routinely providing support to the Al Qaeda affiliated “opposition” rebels in Syria including the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh), while also accusing ISIS-Daesh of  sponsoring the recent terror attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice. 

Diabolical Project

While civilian casualties resulting from the US sponsored air raids are blamed on the government of Bashar al Assad, France’s president Francois Hollande states without evidence that ISIS-Daesh was behind the terrorist attacks in Paris and Nice, thereby justifying acts of retribution (i.e. bombings of Syrian  civilians) allegedly against Daesh’s stronghold in Northern Syria.

In response, the Syrian government in two letters addressed respectively to the president of the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary-General, has called for an end to “the attacks and atrocities committed against civilians, calling for bringing the perpetrators to justice.”

The Syrian government was referring to the routine bombings of civilians as well as Western support of ISIS-Daesh and Al Qaeda affiliated “opposition” rebels. Meanwhile, Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate  has conveniently changed its name. It is no longer considered a terrorist organization, it’s a moderate rebel force according to Western opinion.

In its letters to the UN Security Council, the Syrian government condemned  France, US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for supporting the so-called “moderate opposition”:

The ministry cited two recent massacres, the first committed yesterday [July 28] by the US-led Coalition in al-Ghandoura village near Manbej city north of Aleppo. 45 civilians were brutally killed by the Coalition’s air raids in the village and 50 others were injured.

On the heels of this appalling crime, ISIS brutally murdered 24 civilians from the locals of al-Bweir village near Manbej, the letters said.

The ministry cited striking similarities between the massacres committed by the US-led Coalition and the terrorist organizations in an attempt to exacerbate the situation across Syria following the Syrian army’s recent wins in Aleppo city. (SANA)

To which Washington responded, pointing to unfortunate “collateral damage”.

The counter-terrorism operation (Inherent Resolve) is coordinated by US Central Command.

USCENTCOM refers to “civilian casualty allegations” by the Syrian authorities. The matter is dismissed:

US Central Command (CENTCOM) acknowledged that the airstrikes “may have resulted in civilian casualties,” but did not name a figure, pending a likely future investigation.

CENTCOM said the aerial bombardment had been aimed at driving out ISIS forces concentrated in Manjib, a strategic waypoint on the road to the Islamists’ “capital city” of Raqqa.

Commenting on the CENTCOM statement, White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said on Friday that “they’ll see if additional action is necessary,” without elaborating.

He added that “this administration, the United States government takes all measures during the targeting process to avoid or minimalizing civilian casualties.”  ( RT,  July 29, 2016)

The Incirlik Air Base in southeast Turkey — from which US pilots launch bombing raids on Daesh forces in Syria — is home to about 50 B-61 nuclear bombs. That makes it NATO’s largest nuclear storage facility.

Each bomb has a yield of up to 170 kilotonnes, nearly a dozen times more powerful than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. The bombs are stored in underground vaults within aircraft shelters that in turn are protected by a security perimeter.

Last week, Incirlik was in the headlines because it appears it was one of the command centres of the attempted coup that sought to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

After the coup had been thwarted, the commander of Incirlik was arrested and charged with complicity in the overthrow attempt.

Jonathan Marshall of Consortium News, who has been researching this year the inner workings of the base, reports:

“The security of the bombs is premised on them being defended by loyal NATO forces. In the case of Incirlik that loyalty proved uncertain at best. Power to the base was cut after mutinous troops used a tanker plane from the base to refuel F-16s that menaced Ankara and Istanbul”.

He goes on in his latest report to observe:

“One can easily imagine a clique of Islamist officers in a future coup seizing the nuclear bombs as a bargaining chip with Ankara and Washington or, worse yet, to support radical insurgents in the region.”

Writing in Foreign Policy, Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, asks, “Does it seem like a good idea to station American nuclear weapons at an air base commanded by someone who may have just helped bomb his own country’s presidential palace?”

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert with the Federation of American Scientists, argues that

“the security situation in Turkey and in the base area no longer meet the safety requirements that the US should have for storage of nuclear weapons. You only get so many warnings before something goes terribly wrong. It’s time to withdraw the weapons.”

Most tellingly, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis recently wrote that if NATO really does house tactical nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base, “this poses a very dangerous problem”.

In April 2009, US President Barack Obama, in front of an adoring crowd in Prague, spoke of his plans and dreams for a nuclear-free world. Years later, he does not have that much to show for it.

When Dimitri Medvedev was Russia’s president, they did fashion an agreement that cut their armouries of intercontinental missiles by a substantial amount.

Even so, Obama — in order to win the support necessary for ratification by Republicans in the Senate — he had to agree to a long-term $1 trillion modernisation of America’s nuclear armoury.

Obama has made no progress on curtailing short-range “tactical” missiles based in Europe and Turkey. He has produced no rationale for keeping them or indeed those bombs stored at Incirlik.

Nevertheless, as his presidency winds to a close, Obama is preparing to challenge the Republican congressional leaders and the heads of Senate foreign relations and armed services committees.

He is garnering wide support for his reported plan to implement at least a part of his Prague nuclear agenda through a series of executive orders. US presidents have the right to make laws on their own say so. However, unlike a law legislated by Congress, a successor can simply nullify them.

Obama apparently believes that Hillary Clinton would not overturn his actions, even though she is more hardline than he is.  (Donald Trump is another matter.)

The Washington Post reported this month that the executive options Obama is considering include declaring a “no first use” policy for the United States nuclear arsenal and a UN Security Council resolution affirming a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons as envisaged by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was conceived in the time of president John F. Kennedy but which Congress has long refused to ratify.

Obama is also considering offering Russia a five-year extension of the START treaty’s limits on deployed nuclear weapons, a delay in the development of a new nuclear cruise missile, called the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon, and cutting back long-term plans for modernising the nation’s nuclear arsenal, which the Congressional Budget Office reports will cost about $350 billion over the next decade.

Certainly if this were done — along with the closure of the Incirlik nuclear armoury — Russian public opinion might start to take Obama seriously again. Even at this late stage President Vladimir Putin could be persuaded to take some initiatives of his own.

Indeed, a benign atmosphere might also make possible a solution to the Ukraine crisis. A running sore is the last thing Obama wants to leave behind.

This “ban the bomb” president should not leave office without having done what he said he would.

According to Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy advisor, Jeremy Bash, if Clinton is elected she will order a “re-set” of US policy toward Syria to emphasize the “murderous” nature of the Assad regime. As the Telegraph reports, Hillary Clinton will breathe new life into the “Assad must go” camp. She will likely launch a full-scale US invasion of Syria.

Said Bash:

A Clinton administration will not shrink from making clear to the world exactly what the Assad regime is. It is a murderous regime that violates human rights; that has violated international law; used chemical weapons against his own people; has killed hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children.

Of course claims that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people is the long since disproven neocon cri de guerre to push Obama into an attack on the Syrian government. The 2013 gas attack near Ghouta was likely a provocationby the rebels hoping to draw the US directly into their fight.

This “he gassed his own people” line is the Syrian version of Saddam’s “WMDs,” a lie repeated ad infinitum to make the case for war.

As far as violating international law, the entire two year US intervention in Syria is in clear violation of international law. The US has no legal right to bomb Syria.

Clinton’s advisor informs us that as president his boss would involve the US in everyone else’s affairs: “Mrs Clinton believes that problems around the world can more easily be solved when America is involved and in each of those problems or crisis,” he told the Telegraph

If Hillary becomes president and gets her way with a Syria “re-set” the prime beneficiary will be radical Islamists. There literally is no secular, moderate opposition to the Assad government.

How do we know the jihadists will come out on top? Her last great intervention, the “liberation” of Libya should be precedent. Gaddafi was no angel, but until shortly before he was overthrown he was a Washington ally, a secular counterpart to creeping Islamization of the region. After the 2011 “liberation” strongly backed by Hillary, Libya has turned into a hellhole of competing radical Islamist militias and warlords. ISIS and al-Qaeda were unheard of in Libya before Hillary got her hands on it. Now it is rotten with them.

When it comes to Syria, Hillary means war.

Today President Obama signed into law a GMO labeling bill that discriminates against more than 100 million Americans. The bill recently passed through Congress and allows companies and producers to use QR codes, 1-800 numbers and other difficult to access technology to label food products that contain GMOs, instead of clear, on-package text.

The law also sets a dangerous precedent to override the sovereignty of states, as many state labeling laws, including Vermont’s recently enacted GMO labeling law, are now void. Consumer, food safety, farm, environmental, and religious groups along with several food corporations representing hundreds of thousands of Americans condemned the bill when it was before Congress. The FDA said the bill’s narrow and ambiguous definition of “bioengineering,” would “likely mean that many foods from GE sources will not be subject to this bill” and that it “may be difficult” for any GMO food to qualify for labeling under the bill. Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson said the bill raised “serious questions of discrimination” and left “unresolved matters of equal protection of the law”.

The following is statement from Andy Kimbrell, executive director at the Center for Food Safety:

I don’t know what kind of legacy the president hopes to leave, but denying one-third of Americans the right to know what is in the food they feed their families isn’t one to be proud of. This law is a sham and a shame, a rushed backroom deal that discriminates against low-income, rural, minority and elderly populations. The law also represents a major assault on the democratic decision making of several states and erases their laws with a vague multi-year bureaucratic process specifically designed to provide less transparency to consumers.

No evidence links Russia to hacking DNC emails. Accusations suggesting otherwise are baseless – the latest bashing episode, for geopolitical purposes, shifting attention from Hillary’s disturbing record, and electoral rigging of the primaries. 

Israeli military intelligence/Mossad connected DEBKAfile said  “an analysis by (its) intelligence and cyber defense sources has determined that” DNC emails hacking “almost certainly (was) not carried out by (Russia’s GRU) cyber warfare branch.”

Its determination is contrary to unjustifiable assertions by senior DNC officials, Obama, the Clinton campaign, administration-connected cyber espionage experts and mainstream media – pointing fingers the wrong way.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov categorically denied Russian “direct or indirect interference in (America’s) election process,” adding:

We see that the Russian card is in the red corner on the writing table of all Washington politicians during the election campaign, and that very often they make it a trump card in their game.

According to DEBKAfile (DF), blaming Russia is baseless “in…light of four facts:”

1. Little is known in the West about Moscow’s “cyber warfare system” other than it’s “highly effective.” If it hacked DNC emails, “no obvious signatures (like) ‘Fancy Bear’ and/or ‘Cozy Bear’…would have been left behind for investigators to discover.”

2. Intelligence operations, including Russia’s, nearly always focus on “seeking security, strategic and economic data.” It’s hard imagining Moscow would divert “stretched” resources to investigating other matters.

3. The private information security company CrowdStrike, hired by the DNC and FBI, claiming it “cracked the case in two hours is hardly credible.”

“Getting to the bottom of an APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) calls for extra-powerful computers, working in conjunction with the internet service provider (ISP), and consuming weeks, if not months of analysis.”

4. Blaming Russia for hacking DNC emails provides US conspiracists “with a convenient reminder” that Edward Snowden remains free from prosecution in Russia – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as well, given asylum in Ecuador’s UK embassy.

Blaming Russia is a convenient way to shift attention from a legally challenged, illegitimately anointed Democrat party nominee – the greatest threat to world peace in modern memory.

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.

Thailand faces an upcoming referendum regarding a new national charter meant to put the country back on track after over a decade of political conflict revolving around US-backed proxy Thaksin Shinawatra.

Shinawatra and his foreign sponsors have increased pressure on the Thai government as the vote in early August nears. 

This includes maneuvering into place overt fronts engaged in political agitation, and leveraging the West’s monopoly over the international media to portray any attempt to crackdown on such fronts as heavy-handed and unjust.

Bangkok-based English newspaper the Nation in their article, “Thai junta refuses to accredit election monitors in referendum vote,” reports that:

The Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) said that repeated attempts to gain accreditation to monitor the August 7 referendum, Thailand’s first trip to the polls since the military took power in 2014, were met with silence.

What the Nation does not report is who ANFREL is, who funds them, or the obvious conflicts of interest involved in their “monitoring” work across all of Asia, including Thailand.

ANFREL is funded by the US State Department through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, convicted financial criminal George Soros‘ “Open Society Institution” (OSI), and even the Australian government and the British Embassy.

This is according to ANFREL’s own annual reports, this one from 2010 (.pdf), where they admit on page 7 (11 of 33 of the pdf) that:

Regarding the budget for 2010, NED has provided supported for administration expenses while other activities have been supported on a project by project basis by AusAid, USAID, OSI, Euro-Burma, Netherlands Embassy, TAF, Misereor and the British Embassy.

ANFREL’s 2011 report also makes mention of US State Department NED subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), on page 5 (3/30 of the .pdf). In all of ANFREL’s annual reports, none of these organizations are mentioned by their full names, and in no part of the annual reports are ANFREL’s financial sponsors fully and transparently enumerated.

ANFREL’s local affiliate in Thailand, PNet (under the Open Forum for Democracy Foundation (GNDEM)), is also openly funded by the US government. On GNDEM’s own website, it states:

GNDEM appreciates the support provided by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the support that the NED and USAID have provided to the process surrounding the Declaration of Global Principles for Nonpartisan Election Observation and Monitoring by Citizen Organizations.

One wonders whose best interests are served by such “monitoring” groups who apparently cannot find any support in the very region they supposedly serve, and instead rely entirely on foreign funding from nations who have historically sought to control and subjugate Asia, its people, and their resources.

ANFREL Picks Sides, So is Incapable of Impartial “Monitoring” 

More alarming than ANFREL’s foreign sponsors or the fact that it serves as an instrument for foreign interests to interfere with the internal political affairs of sovereign nations in Asia – particularly in light of the US’ own allegations that Russia is doing likewise in regards to US elections – is the fact that the US State Department, the NED, NDI, and Open Society are also engaged in funding overt opposition groups across Asia, including in Thailand.

The US NED, NDI, Open Society, and the International Republican Institute (IRI) are engaged in funding and supporting opposition groups including the so-called “Umbrella Revolution” in Hong Kong, the “Bersih” street movement in Malaysia headed by now-jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, and deceptive media fronts like Prachatai in Thailand, who openly and repeatedly attack Thailand’s indigenous institutions, while providing cover for US-backed opposition groups, including Thaksin Shinawatra’s Peua Thai Party (PTP) and his ultra-violent street front, the so-called “red shirts.”

Even on ANFREL’s own website, they repeatedly support Malaysia-based Bersih, applauding them for contrived awards bestowed upon them by the same foreign interests funding their disruptive behavior. On ANFREL’s Facebook page, they even allege that Bersih serves as part of their monitoring network.

An organization like ANFREL which masquerades as an “election monitoring” organization, that has clearly picked sides and openly backs and supports opposition groups, cannot in any way be trusted to impartially monitor elections. Then again, would honest, impartial observers expect a foreign-funded “monitoring” organization to not be used to manipulate the outcome of elections?

The Thai government’s move to deny ANFREL accreditation is clearly justified. But despite this, that the Western media is able to portray the barring of a clearly compromised, biased organization as an obstruction to free and fair voting, illustrates how the US uses both fraudulent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the media in tandem to pressure, manipulate, and meddle in the affairs of nations around the world.

Thailand’s ability to accurately and concisely expose what the reasoning was behind its decision regarding ANFREL through independent media organizations would do much in blunting the counterattack across the Western media Thailand now faces. Having failed to do this, however, Thailand will likely face a difficult choice between weathering the concerted campaign of abuse now targeting them, or capitulating regarding ANFREL and allowing it to meddle in Thailand’s upcoming referendum with absolute impunity.

Also important to note, Thailand’s stability and ability to move forward with a new charter dovetails with the larger conflict unfolding across Asia as Washington and Beijing attempt to assert Western and Eastern control, respectively, over the Asian region. A destabilized Thailand, or worse yet, one handed back under the control of Shinawatra and his allies, would serve to tip the balance in Washington’s favor. It is no wonder then, why the US has invested so heavily in manipulating political events unfolding in Thailand – it is about more than just Thailand, it is a smaller part of a much larger hegemonic project.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

The 2016 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia was a multi-layered, raucous display of political theater. A host of delegates loyal to Senator Bernie Sanders were inside in large numbers exclaiming “No more war” during former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s speech and raising all kinds of progressive, rebellious signs and banners against the Hillary crowd. Although Hillary addressed them directly in her acceptance speech, “Your cause is my cause,” those dissatisfied delegates in the hall saw her rhetoric for what it was: insincere and opportunistic.

She said she’d tax the wealthy for public necessities, but declined to mention a sales tax on Wall Street speculation that could bring in as much as $300 billion a year to support such initiatives. She opposed “unfair trade agreements,” but remarkably omitted saying she was against the TPP (the notorious pending Trans Pacific Trade Agreement backed by Obama that is receiving wide left/right opposition).

She paid lip service to a “living wage” but avoided endorsing a $15 an hour minimum wage, which would help single moms and their children – people she wants us to believe have been her enduring cause. Few people know that it took until the spring of 2014 before candidate Clinton would come out for even a $10.10 minimum wage. News reports noted that Clinton, a former member of Walmart’s board of directors and Arkansas corporate lawyer, was wrestling with how to support $10.10 per hour without alienating her Wall Street friends.

“Caring for kids” doesn’t extend to encircled Gaza’s defenseless children, hundreds of whom were killed by American-made weapons wielded by the all powerful Israeli military. Gaza is the the world’s largest open air prison and under illegal blockade. Remember, as Secretary of State, Hillary fully backed war crimes, condemned by almost all countries in the world. On the stage in Philadelphia, she spoke of backing Israel’s security without any mention of Palestinian rights or the need to end Israel’s illegal occupation of the territories.

It is true, as numerous speakers repeated, Clinton is “most qualified and experienced,” but her record shows those qualities have led to belligerent, unlawful military actions that are now boomeranging against U.S. interests. The intervention she insistently called for in Libya, with Obama’s foolish consent, over-rode the wiser counsel of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (and his generals), who warned of the chaos that would follow. He was proven right, with chaotic  violence now all over Libya spilling into other African countries. This is but one example of what Bernie Sanders meant during the debates when he referenced her “poor judgement.”

The media coverage of political conventions tends to sink to the level of the circus. The PBS/NPR coverage with some half dozen reporters and two commentators proved to be thin, light, soft and superficial. Otherwise smart media communicators were reduced to very heavy focus on exactly what the Party’s manipulators wanted. “What is Hillary really like?” Of course the stage was filled with frothy admiration, awe and acclamation. But why didn’t the media point out some of the factual omissions, the contradictions to the endless sugarcoating of the nominee?

To her credit, NPR/PBS reporter, Susan Davis, did blurt out that the Convention program was mostly about personality and character with little policy. Reporters did, however, point out that unlike all other candidates, Hillary Clinton has not had a news conference since last December to showcase her supposed experience, qualifications and knowledge!

Why wouldn’t Hillary Clinton, in her attack on Donald Trump, demand the release of his tax returns? Hillary and Bill have regularly released their tax returns. Maybe because Trump would demand Hillary release her secret Wall Street transcripts of her $5,000-a-minute paid speeches to big bankers and other businesses.

To her verbal credit, Hillary Clinton raised the “unpatriotic” charge against too many U.S. corporations (not all she added) when it comes to our country. Born in the U.S.A, grown to profit on the backs of American workers, bailed out by American taxpayers and occasionally by the U.S. Marines overseas, these giant companies have no allegiance to country or community. They are, with trade agreements and other inducements, abandoning America’s workers and escaping America’s laws and taxes.

Hearing the word “unpatriotic” applied to those companies I could imagine these firms’ executives and P.R. flacks shuddering for the only time during her 55-minute address. The stigma of being “unpatriotic” to their enabling native country can have consequential legs for turning public opinion even more deeply against these monetized corporate Goliaths.

Stung by the consistently high “untrustworthy” ratings since polling started asking that question (only Trump exceeds her in most polls), she declared again that no one achieves greatness alone, that it takes us working together, that it “Takes a Village,” alluding to her earlier book. If that is true, then Together must have more power than the Few. “Together” should include workers, consumers, small taxpayers, voters and communities who are excluded from power, from the tools of democracy – electoral reforms and clean elections, more unions and cooperatives, access to justice for wrongful injuries and against crony capitalism and corporate crime and greater citizen empowerment. Does she have an agenda for a devolution of power from the few to the many so that we can be “stronger together,” (her slogan for 2016)? No way. Mum’s the word!

This immense gap has been the Clinton duo’s con job on America for many years. Sugarcoating phrases, populist flattery, getting the election over with and jumping back into the fold of the plutocracy is their customary M.O.

An anti-Hillary campaign button sums it up. Imagine a nice picture of Hillary with the words “More Wall Street” above her head and the words “More War” below her head.

Alert voters could see it coming at the Convention: the militarism for Hillary the Hawk on day four in Philadelphia and the arrival of the corporate fat cats. Or, as the New York Times headlined: “Top Donors Leave Sidelines, Checkbooks in Hand.”

The best thing Hillary Clinton has going for her is the self-destructive, unstable, unorganized, fact and truth-starved, egomaniacal, cheating, plutocratic, Donald Trump (See my column“Cheating Donald”).

That’s where our nation’s two-party political leadership is today. When will the vast left/right majority rise to take over and reverse the eviscerating policies and practices of this political duopoly?

In April, Wells Fargo & Co admitted to defrauding the United States government for nearly an entire decade, which subsequently led to the housing market collapse — and the United States punished no one.

Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N), Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), have all previously made the same admission and settled similar federal lawsuits — again, with no one being held criminally responsible.

While low-level bankers have been thrown in jail as apparent scapegoats in places like Iceland, not a single high-level CEO or officer has faced punitive criminal action — until now.

On Friday, three senior Irish bankers were jailed for up to three-and-a-half years for their conspiracy to defraud investors, subsequently causing the economic collapse of 2008.

According to a report in Reuters, the trio will be among the first senior bankers globally to be jailed for their role in the collapse of a bank during the crisis.

Watching these criminal bankers use the governments of the world to fleece the taxpayers in a series of bailouts and scams to defraud the people has been infuriating.

As Reuters reports,

The lack of convictions until now has angered Irish taxpayers, who had to stump up 64 billion euros – almost 40 percent of annual economic output – after a property collapse forced the biggest state bank rescue in the euro zone.

The crash thrust Ireland into a three-year sovereign bailout in 2010 and the finance ministry said last month that it could take another 15 years to recover the funds pumped into the banks still operating.

Former Irish Life and Permanent Chief Executive Denis Casey was sentenced to two years and nine months following the 74-day criminal trial, Ireland’s longest ever.

Willie McAteer, former finance director at the failed Anglo Irish Bank, and John Bowe, its ex-head of capital markets, were given sentences of 42 months and 24 months respectively.

Unlike the bankers who remain protected in America’s legal system, the Irish have decided to lay down the law.

“By means that could be termed dishonest, deceitful and corrupt they manufactured 7.2 billion euros in deposits by obvious sham transactions,” Judge Martin Nolan told the court, describing the conspiracy as a “very serious crime”.

“The public is entitled to rely on the probity of blue chip firms. If we can’t rely on the probity of these banks we lose all hope or trust in institutions,” said Nolan.

In the United States, the people have been forced to file their own legal action against the criminal bankers as the government does absolutely nothing to stop their crimes.

Despite the bankers’ best attempts at foiling the private actions against them, the people have pushed through.

A newly revived antitrust lawsuit, according to the appeals court, could be devastating to these 16 banks, including Deutsche Bank AG, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, UBS AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Barclays Plc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc., and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“Requiring the banks to pay treble damages to every plaintiff who ended up on the wrong side of an independent Libor‐denominated derivative swap would, if appellants’ allegations were proved at trial, not only bankrupt 16 of the world’s most important financial institutions, but also vastly extend the potential scope of antitrust liability in myriad markets where derivative instruments have proliferated,” the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York said in the ruling.

Until the people wake up to the atrocities being carried out against them by criminal bankers who control the government, this fleecing of the citizenry will continue. To all those who bank with any of these huge banks — pull your money out today, move it to a local bank, or find another alternative.

Failing to do so only sustains their criminal behavior. Please share this story with your friends and family as it will most assuredly be a mere blip on their televisions and deliberately easy to miss.

Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist

Upgrades of six US air bases set to stock modernized B61 nuclear bombs are continuing in Turkey and Europe, according to US and German researchers. They claim Turkey’s Incirlik base stocks at least 50 such US weapons.

Modernizations of security perimeters around nuclear bomb vaults and infrastructure at the six US air bases were continuing apace, reported the Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) newspaper on Wednesday.

Moscow reacted on Wednesday saying it would take countermeasures if the US placed new nuclear weapons in Germany.

“Unfortunately, if this step is implemented it may disrupt the strategic balance in Europe,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

The US provided the bulk of the funding but extras such as runway refurbishments came out of the national budgets of the five ‘guest’ NATO partners – Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

Congress boosted spending in 2011 after an air force review concluded that “most” US storage sites in Europe did not meet US defense department standards.

Nuclear vaults reinforced

The FR cited the non-governmental Berlin Institute for Transatlantic Security (BITS) and findings of the nuclear-critical Federation of American Scientists (FAS) compiled from budgetary data given to the US Congress.

FAS researcher Hans M. Kristensen said commercially available aerial photos showed new perimeter construction works around 12 aircraft shelter-vault complexes at the US Aviano air base in Italy and 21 such aircraft shelters at Incirlik, where the perimeter had double fencing and intrusion detection equipment.

Special weapons maintenance trucks were also being replaced and upgraded, he said.

Incirlik, close to war-torn Syria, has been used in recent months for US-led airstrikes on jihadist IS militants in Syria.

Those activities have coincided with a Russian military buildup via Tartus, a Soviet-era naval base in Syria’s coastal Mediterranean region of Latakia.

50 estimated at Incirlik

Kristensen estimated that Incirlik’s vaults currently held 50 B61 nuclear weapons.

For the anti-IS operation, US F-16 jets had been relocated from Aviano, Italy to the Turkish NATO base under a “unique” arrangement.

“The Turks have declined US requests to permanently base a fighting wing at the [Incirlik] base,” he wrote.

Range depends on aircraft

The FR said the B61 nuclear bomb – first devised in the 1960s – had been “modernized” so it could be set to explode at various strengths of up to ten-times the devastation inflicted at Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

It also has the capability to be steered toward a target placed it between short-range “tactical” and long-range “strategic” atomic weapons, the FR said.

US believed to store 20 B61s at Germany’s Büchel base

“It now comes down to the range of the carrier aircraft,” it said.adding that congressional papers pointed to the development of a so-called B61-13 from 2038.

Refurbished runway at Büchel

BITS author Orfried Nassauer said investments by Gemany’s Bundeswehr were scheduled at Büchel, widely believed to be the sole US nuclear-equipped air base in Germany.

The base’s runway – located in Germany ‘s hilly, western Eiffel region – was to be fully refurbished and fitted with a modern instrument-landing system next year, he said.

A member of German federal parliament’s defense committee, Social Democrat (SPD) Thomas Hitschler recently told the Rhein-Zeitung newspaper that the German government planned to invest 120 million euros at Büchel.

German public ZDF broadcasting’s investigative magazine “Frontal 21” reported on Monday that the US planned to stationed new atomic bombs at Büchel.

Removal long demanded

In 2009 and again in 2011, Germany’s then foreign minister Guido Westerwelle demanded the removal of all US nuclear weapons presumed to be at Büchel. The demand, made for decades by peace activists, was backed in a 2010 Bundestag resolution.

A “Wikileaks” paper showed later that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign policy advisor Christoph Heusgen distanced Berlin from such calls in talks with Washington.

The FR said Germany had never been allowed by the US to have access to the B21s. During the Cold War, German Tornado jets located at Büchel had trained with mock metal devices.

Upgrades also in Belgium and Italy

The FAS’s Kristensen said security upgrades were also under way or planned at the US’ Operations Center-Command at Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium and a nuclear weapons vault support facility at another air base in Ghedi., Italy.

In July, Italian prosecutors said two arrested IS adherents, a Pakistani and a Tunisian, were suspected of listing Ghedi among their potential targets.

The prosecutors said, however, that the site was “never in danger” because the pair, based in Brescia in northern Italy, had not set their plans in motion.

On July 12^th, 2016 the UN arbitration decision against China’s claim of territorial islands based on “historical rights” ruled in favor of the Philippines, serving as the latest international war machine’s ratcheting up imminent all-out war. The United Nations as a globalist extension of American Empire’s dominance over the rest of the world is just another engineered US machination designed to instigate further conflict and tension as the latest face of Obama’s announced 2011 Asian pivot, pushing, prodding and provoking a high risk military showdown against re-designated cold war enemy China being potentially pinned in on all sides by US attempted aggression.

A recent example is Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s April trip to secure a military alliance with India, exploiting the strained Beijing-New Delhi relations over their mutual border dispute. Moreover, a visit last month to Washington by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi cemented the US-Indian military alliance in preparation for war against China. But with both the Asian pivot and the TPP stalling during this election year, a number of Asian countries are moving towards increased neutrality rather than buckling under to US Empire’s mounting pressures to align with the United States against China.

Over this weekend the ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met at a conference in the Laos capital to decide how to respond to The Hague slamming China over the South China Sea dispute and, with nearly half the ASEAN members also contesting islands with China, aside from the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam, the meeting ended up deadlocked. It’s being reported that Laos and Cambodia are unwilling to take a stand against China having been given recent Chinese aid and loans. And similar to Carter’s April India visit, John Kerry is opportunistically flying into Vientiane on Monday morning to apply his undue superpower persuasion pressing ASEAN to also formally back the UN’s decision against China.

With the Western elitist influenced UN proclamation rendering illegal China’s reformation claims in the South China Sea, the tribunal’s stiff ruling is being heralded as a much needed victory for the globalists and US Empire. The relentless assault on China in recent years simultaneously combined with the same propaganda war tactics and militarized threat being used against China’s prime allied partner Russia is producing an outcome that recklessly endangers every human life on our planet. The US-NATO-UN’s divisive agenda is a driving force racing us towards World War III against the two Eastern nuclear powers.

After ruling last year that it held jurisdiction despite China’s objections, the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration earlier this month ruled that China does not possess any legitimate claim over dozens of contested islands in the South China Sea and that specifically the islands in the Scarborough Shoal located 140 miles (225km) from the Philippine coastline do not belong to China due to its deemed violation of UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). UNCLOS stipulates a 22km (near 14 miles) maritime boundary and legal access to economic resource development within 370km (230 miles). The Hague tribunal flatly rejected China’s “nine dash line” map that carves up the vast bulk of the disputed sea waters claimed as China’s historical precedent. The panel’s decision is non-binding and in fact illegal since arbitration requires both conflicting parties to voluntarily seek resolution. China never chose to participate. Thus in response to the ruling, the Chinese ministry claims, “The award is null and void and has no binding force.”

The Hague ruling charges China’s reclamation efforts as “causing severe harm to the coral reef environment,” violating the UN Convention. Funny how the UN never criticizes the US for wreaking total environmental havoc and destruction in the Pacific islands still under colonial rule in Okinawa Japan or the Marianas or Guam where the native populations and ecological habitats are being poisoned and wantonly degraded by Empire’s total disregard for local life and health carrying out its massive military operations. Again, US and UN exceptionalism and double standard hypocrisy rule supreme every time. And true to hypocritical form, while the US is busily admonishing China for its unwillingness to follow the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s finding, the US itself refuses to ratify the Law of the Seas Convention.

Though the legal challenge contesting China’s regional island claims were initiated in 2013 by the Philippines, actually it was the United States throwing its full weight around the globe despite its ocean’s width away. Not one Filipino attorney was a member of the legal team that filed the lawsuit to the arbitrator – all American lawyers from a high rolling Boston legal firm other than a small British contingent. Long before this month’s decision, China asserted that it would not comply with the UN ruling due to never recognizing the UN’s jurisdiction over sovereign maritime matters. China has consistently called for bilateral negotiations between China and Philippines as the only viable sovereign resolution to the territorial dispute. Even the recently elected Philippine presidentconcurred that a bilaterally reached agreement is the most judicious option available to resolving the controversy. Under the previous Aquino administration in 2012, Philippine’s former US naval base at Subic Bay was reoffered the US Empire after the Philippine Senate in 1992 had ordered it off limits to US military due to repeated rape and murder cases of underage Filipina girls.

One of the elitist Boston attorneys handling the recent victorious case against China on behalf of the US, I mean the Philippines, in aWall Street Journal article earlier this year answered the question “what if China simply ignores a judgment that goes against it?” The attorney smugly stated that 95% of the time a losing nation complies with international maritime decisions, citing not wanting to jeopardize its world reputation and influence as factors leading to court ruled submission.

Given that the Hague tribunal is already rigged, over-stacked with representatives from imperialistic Western nations, and the fact that the UN has long played a prejudicial, criminal role actively or passively enabling the US-NATO aggressor to defiantly break every international law invading, occupying and otherwise warring against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Syria and Yemen just to name its half dozen short list, destroying nation after nation in its wake by willfully turning each into a failed state as the West slaughters four million Muslims.

Meanwhile, the sheer hypocrisy of US Empire’s exceptionalismpermits it to bully and pressure other countries into rigid compliance with international rules and UN mandates that apply to every nation on earth except the US. If America can thumb its nose at international law with complete impunity, in a lesser vein, China is simply exercising its inherent right as a regional power inasmuch as asserting a buffered self-defense against Empire’s continued long arm of targeted aggression directed against Beijing.

The US and its Pacific naval fleet have opportunistically placed itself as the “might makes right” enforcer for all the smaller Asian nations like the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan that also are staking claims to islands that China views as its own territorial possessions in the South and East China Seas. But astute writer-analyst Tony Cartalucci points out the deceptive cover the US is hiding behind:

Part of America’s agenda in the South China Sea is to provoke and then portray tensions in the region as being solely between China and its neighbors, with the United States feigning the role as peacekeeper – thus justifying its continued military, political, and economic “primacy” over Asia.

Just as Putin and Russia have been the brunt of a 24/7 propaganda campaign to demonize as the enemy, so too has China. A recent Council on Foreign Relations white paper titled “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China” further delineates Empire’s arrogant sense of entitlement in the form of its “primacy” and control over the Pacific:

Because the American effort to ‘integrate’ China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to US primacy in Asia – and could result in a consequential challenge to American power globally – Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy.

In January another hawkish DC think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) pounded the war drums, strongly recommending the US Empire deploy extra nuclear attack submarines and begin installing advanced long range missiles in the Asian Pacific in order to effectively combat China’s advancing military prowess as a direct hegemonic threat.

The bottom line is the imperialistic, unipolar powered US Empire will not allow China to assert itself even regionally. And because what CFR and its fellow warmongering think tank policymakers want, CFR et al always historically gets from its White House puppets. Beginning last October Obama began sending US Navy destroyers – cruisers three times now – to aggressively patrol and trespass within the 12 nautical mile limit of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as provocative acts of war directly defying China’s territorial claims. A number of highly visible joint naval exercises between the integrated US 7^th and 3^rd Fleets and Pacific allies Japan, Australia, Philippines and Vietnam have increasingly challenged China’s military posturing in the tension-filled region. The latest was last month’s with the US, India and Japan. The merging of the two US naval fleets comprise two thirds of all US combat vessels and is yet one more sign that the US Empire is once again heading the world to global war.

As if that’s not enough of an indicator that the world will soon be engulfed in military mayhem, at an annual conference last month held in Singapore labeled the Shangri-La Dialogue, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter threatened China “could end up erecting a Great Wall of self-isolation” should it proceed with its plans claiming the disputed islands.

To further attempt to intimidate China, Carter boasted that it would “take decades for anyone to build the kind of military capability the United States possesses.” Carter then named all the US allies in the Pacific it has in its pocket ready to go to war against China, starting with Japan and Australia, followed by Philippines, India, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Laos. Next the general who is Japan’s defense minister accused China of challenging the US imperialistic “ruled-based global order.” Vietnam’s deputy defense minister sitting right next to the Chinese admiral in attendance bluntly warned China that if it refuses to comply with the UN ruling, it “would lead to military conflict.” The Chinese admiral’s response to the entire group’s overt threats was that his nation has no intention to retreat nor back down, having “no fear of trouble.” This foreboding lead-up to this month’s anti-China decision casts US Empire and its puppet allies inevitably on a perilous military collision course with China.

China’s “self-isolation” that warmongering neocon Carter promised, refers to the US plan to use its full spectrum dominance on the high seas by controlling the crucial narrow maritime passageway linking the Indian Ocean where Middle Eastern oil and near half of the world’s total cargo, two thirds of all natural gas shipments, a third of all oil and 10% of commercial fish catch, worth a total of $5.3 trillion annually flow through the South China Sea into the Asian Pacific. By interdicting and cutting off China’s supplied shipments of vital oil and critical raw materials, thus choking China’s lifeblood to either sustain itself much less win a global war, the US Empire foolishly believes it can deliver its checkmated blow to China. To further compound this increasingly dangerous, deteriorating situation, back in November 2013 in response to encroaching US, Japanese and South Korean warships, spy planes and fighter jets invading what China believes is its legitimate sea and airspace,

China launched an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) policy requiring non-Chinese aircraft intending to fly over the South China Sea to first request entrance into China’s designated airspace. US planes often defy China’s ADIZ. In recent months as tensions in the South China Sea have escalated, a growing number of too close for comfort encounters have ensued. US Empire’s imperialistic provocations are forcing China as the burgeoning regional, if not world power, to react to America’s unilaterally imposed game of chicken now being perilously played at humanity’s expense.

Obama’s infamous Asian pivot has everything to do with maintaining unipolar US global hegemony, going out of its way (across the earth’s biggest ocean) to flex its muscle in order to challenge, thwart and minimize China’s surging regional power at all cost. Washington’s primary agenda in Asia is to militarize, manipulate and coerce Japan along with every other Pacific nation into becoming China’s enemies, risking to war against both China and Russia with potentially disastrous consequences. Western propaganda portrays China as the regional bully, unwilling to submit to international law, while Empire has enjoyed its unchallenged role as the global bully for numerous decades.

An identical pattern has already taken place against Russia as US Empire actively recruited and transformed every former Soviet bloc nation in Eastern Europe into a hostile, anti-Russian Western bloc of NATO puppet allies. War criminal Bush one betrayed Gorbachev in 1991, reneging on his promise not to move NATO “one inch eastward” towards Russia.

This unabated global chessboard cheating to put the big squeeze to isolate and weaken Russia, China and Iran with hostile neighbors at their every doorstep has created an out of control arms race that has the planet dangerously teetering on the edge of worldwide war and total self-annihilation.Just as US foreign policy has ravaged the Middle East with nonstop oil wars for decades and engaged in divide and conquer balkanization of Arab nations designed to keep them weak and fighting amongst themselves per the Greater Israel Project, so too is this same ruthlessly self-serving, Great Game being played out currently in Pacific Asia for its vast, untapped underwater gas and oil reserves buried beneath the coveted South China Sea.

Empire’s naked neocolonial aggression involves exploiting unlimited energy resources anywhere in the world while neutralizing key enemies as America’s predatory, vested self-interest (or more accurately the parasitic ruling elite’s self-interest only, clearly neither America’s nor Americans’ nor any Asian countries’). Because the world’s only superpower has gotten away with raping and pillaging the planet at will for decades, Empire is banking on its retaining its global unipolar dominance for years to come by more of the same tactics.

But Washington’s megalomaniacal neocons’ rush to provoke confrontation and war with the Eastern powers totally fed up with Empire’s lies and insatiable one-sided lust for continued absolute world dominance, control and utter global destruction, carry grave risk of dooming humanity and all life on earth.

Clearly over the last several years the Western ruling elite’s agenda has ultimately been bent on triggering unthinkable levels of violence and earthly destruction between the forces of the West and East fought in every corner of the globe. Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Empire a quarter century ago that left the US Empire the last superpower still standing, put simply, sharing global power in a bipolar world with Eastern nations runs counter to New World Order’s one world government tyranny.

Be it the US military, NATO or ISIS, all are simply malevolent tools misused by evil-minded globalists to promote planetary destabilization and destruction in order to usher in their New World Order. Their Great Game must be stopped. before it’s too late.

We citizens of the world must finally rise up and begin holding accountable the controlling psychopaths who’ve hijacked for far too long both humanity and our only planet we call home.

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

(Please read the previous parts prior to this article)

Insular ASEAN has a strategic role in presiding over maritime access points to the region and beyond, but it’s mainland ASEAN and its political stability that most directly affect China’s core strategy at the moment. It’s highly unlikely that circumstances will rapidly change to the point where China is completely cut off from the South China Sea and the international waterways around it, but it looks ever case that its access will come under the watchful gaze of the Chinese Containment Coalition (CCC) and that the potential for military-strategic blackmail might one day arise. In order to counteract this crippling scenario, Beijing is progressively taking steps to circumvent its full dependence on the waterways and balance this with a more substantialized on-the-ground infrastructure presence, the ASEAN Silk Road and the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor.

Both of these ambitious projects were comprehensively discussed at the beginning of the research’s ASEAN focus, and it’s predicted that the US will go to extraordinary lengths to disrupt their full implementation. To remind the reader, the Law of Hybrid War is “to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects through externally provoked identity conflicts (ethnic, religious, regional, political, etc.) within a targeted transit state”, so it naturally follows that Color Revolution and Unconventional War schemes with be hatched against these countries in order to stop China’s strategic ‘escape’ from maritime containment. There are essentially three situational theaters in mainland ASEAN – Indochina, Thailand, and Myanmar – and the research will progress to examining each of these Hybrid War battlefields in that sequential order.

Indochina Backgrounder

The first area to be studied is Indochina, taken to mean the former French colonies of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. As with the other countries that have been geopolitically dissected thus far, it’s imperative that the reader first acquaint themselves with a relevant historical background prior to commencing the Hybrid War investigations. This will imbue the individual with an understanding that allows them to recognize the utility of certain socio-political variables to the scenarios that are subsequently described.

The Indosphere Meets The Sinosphere:

Indochina lies precisely at the geographic convergence point of Indian and Chinese civilizations, and as such, there’s actually a clear delineation point between them inside this subregion. For the most part, Cambodia and Laos fell under Indian cultural influence and their historical kingdoms were “Indianized” to a broad extent, while Vietnam was under Chinese control for over a millennium from 111 BC to 938 AD. The effect of these separate civilizational forces on such a small geographic area was to accentuate identity differences between these two adjacent parts, the legacy of which continues into the present day and is likely to once more become a driving factor in forthcoming events.

By itself, the civilizational separateness that “Indianized” Cambodia and Laos feel towards “Sinified” Vietnam wouldn’t coalesce into a sufficient agent for political action on its own, but the historical trend of Vietnamese expansionism at their expense (some of it subjectively so, other parts only perceived as such) reveals itself to be the catalytic cause. Neither country outright rejects Vietnamese influence, nor are they in an economic position to do so even if they wanted to, but the point is that their history of relations with Vietnam undoubtedly plays a role in why these two states want to diversify away from their former mono-dependence on their neighbor (experienced from 1975-1991) and achieve a balance through complementary relations with civilizationally similar Thailand and economically expanding China.

Caught In The Middle:

Being situated between their larger Thai and Vietnamese neighbors, Cambodia and Laos have historically been under pressure from both of these powers and eventually turned into the object of their conquests. The golden age that each of these modern-day states had prior to their submission came during the era of Cambodia’s Khmer Empire and Laos’ Lan Xang kingdom, stretching between 802-1431 and 1354-1707, respectively. After that, each of these once-glorious entities fell under the control of the Kingdom of Ayyuthaya, nowadays referred to as Thailand. Vietnam didn’t become a significant player in the rest of Indochina until after it completed its centuries-long “Nam tiến”, which was the state’s piecemeal incorporation of the southern parts of the country that only ended in the early 1800s.

Siamese Ebb, Vietnamese Flow:

After Vietnam’s contemporaneous consolidation, it fought two wars with Thailand from 1831-1834 and1841-1845 over Cambodia, but the object of their mutual rivalry eventually requested French “protection” in 1867 and threw off both of its neighboring rivals. It became France’s second colony after “Cochinchina”, the southern part of Vietnam, fell to an invasion and was occupied by the Empire a couple years earlier in 1862. Just a little over three decades later, Laos was added to the list of French conquests in 1893 following the Franco-Siamese War of the same year.

With their Indochinese imperial realm acquiring a great deal of strategic depth and coming to encompass almost the entirety of its eventual territory, the French were in a comfortable position to accelerate the economic exploitation of their colonies, with a concentrated focus on what is today Vietnam. It should be noted, however, that modern-day Vietnam was actually divided into three separate colonies by the French – Tonkin, Amman, and Cochinchina – but taken as an aggregate, Vietnam’s colonial economic output was much more valuable to Paris than Cambodia and Laos’. The period of French Indochina was also the first time that these two states were grouped together under the same umbrella as Vietnam, heralding a state of affairs that would go on to continue with various ups and downs until the end of the Cold War.

World War II And Greater Thailand:

Indochina was largely spared from the ravages of Japan’s traditional wartime occupational practices, although by no means was it totally immune. Still, Tokyo had less of a militant presence in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos than it did in Indonesia and the Philippines, for example, and the entire territory of French Indochina remained under their control until the end of the war. What’s notable about this period though isn’t necessarily the influence that Japan exercised over the former French colonies, but the role that Thailand played in reasserting its territorial claims eastward.

Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram (popularly known as Phibun) became Prime Minister of Thailand in 1938 and led his country on an irredentism campaign to re-annex parts of Cambodia and Laos after the Franco-Thai War from 1940-1941. He also expanded Thailand’s territoryinto northeastern Myanmar’s present-day Shan State and the northern territories of Malaysia, all of which he claimed used to be part of his kingdom prior to the advent of colonialism. Thailand was able to get away with all of this because it was an ally of fascist Japan at the time, and it wasn’t until 1946 that it rescinded all of its irredentist claims as part of a deal in exchange for joining the UN.

Despite representing an outburst of militant Thai nationalism, this brief period was not overly influential in determining the future attitudes of Cambodians and Laotians towards Bangkok, partly because of the civilizational similarities between all three peoples and also due to the fact that only portions of their respective territory (and not all of it) were annexed. Another factor that played a role was that the annexations were only in effect for five years. After World War II, Vietnam’s influence replaced Thailand’s and remained the paramount social factor impacting on these two countries’ affairs.

The First And Second Indochinese Wars:

The struggle against the French and Americans was a heroic one of epic proportions, and readers should look more into it on their own time if they have an interest in these exploits. For the sake of time and scope, the summarized relevance of this period of time to the research at hand is that it represented the on-the-ground expansion of (North) Vietnamese influence into Cambodia and Laos, with the Vietnamese communists training and supporting their Khmer Rouge and Pathet Laos counterparts during the entire conflict. In fact, if it wasn’t for crucial support from Hanoi, neither Phnom Penh nor Vientiane would have cast off their respective pro-Western governments, with all three countries liberating themselves from imperialism in full during the dramatic year of 1975. Alas, the conclusion of these two anti-imperialist wars weren’t a harbinger for the end of the region’s conflicts in general, and a few forthcoming ones would soon break out that would derail Indochina’s dynamics.

Post-Imperialist Conflicts:

Vietnam vs. Cambodia

The first war that broke out after the end of the anti-imperialist struggle was the one between Vietnam and Cambodia in 1978-1979. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge government had turned on its former Vietnamese benefactors and began aggressively demanding territorial revisions in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region. The supposed reasoning for this is that the lands of the late Cochinchina had historically been inhabited by ethnic Khmer (the majority demographic in Cambodia) and were only forcibly incorporated into Vietnam after the end of Nam tiến. There were also intra-communist Cold War considerations at play too, with Vietnam and its Laotian ally being aligned with the Soviet Union, while Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge authorities were very close to China (partly in order to balance against Vietnam’s 19^th-century historic interests over the country). Although Vietnam righteously and quite accurately claimed that it was liberating Cambodia from the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge (which had killed up to a quarter of the country’s population in only four years’ time), it’s clear in retrospect that it was also pursuing clear geopolitical interests at the same time, installing a pro-Vietnamese government in Pol Pot’s wake and bringing the country fully under its influence as a result.

Vietnam vs. China

As an immediate response to the overthrow of China’s regional ally, Beijing invaded the northern part of Vietnam in mid-February 1979, intent on punishing its erstwhile partner and sending the strongest possible message that it totally denounced its actions. Neither side gained anything tangible from this brief but bloody campaign, but it’s worthwhile to remind the reader that this conflict occurred after China had already de-facto sided with the US in the Cold War. Seen from this vantage point of contextual insight, it’s evident that Beijing was enforcing Washington’s will by proxy against its hated Vietnamese enemy, whether it wittingly did so or was unknowingly guided into this scenario.

The exacerbation of intra-communist Cold War tension between China and the USSR also played to the US’ grand strategic advantage, and it was shortly after this conflict ended that the US took the decision to provocatively arm the Afghan Mujahedin on 3 July, 1979 in order to provoke a Soviet intervention.  In the grand global scheme of things, China had put the Soviets’ position in Southeast Asia on the relative defensive while also ensuring that it would redirect a sizeable number of its forces to defending the joint border. Concurrently, the US started using radical Islam to stir up trouble in the USSR’s southern front with Afghanistan, and it was only one year later in 1980 that the anti-Soviet,CIA-influenced Solidarity movement would be created in order to tempt an Afghan-like intervention in Eastern Europe.

Taken together, the situationally coordinated anti-Soviet advances that had popped up in this short two-year period in Southeast Asia, the Chinese frontier, Afghanistan, and Poland are evidence that the US was serious in influencing a concerted effort aimed at destabilizing the USSR along as many of its strategic fronts as possible. Seeing as how this also coincided with the “Reagan Doctrine” of ‘rolling back’ the Soviet influence in Africa (e.g. Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique) and Latin America (Nicaragua), it can be said that the Sino-Vietnamese War was actually the opening salvo in this forthcoming worldwide campaign.

Vietnamese-Thai Border Skirmishes

After militarily withdrawing from Indochina, the US resorted to using Thailand as itsLead From Behind to promote their strategic vision in the region. Both Washington and Bangkok supported the Khmer Rouge and other insurgents against the Cambodian-based Vietnamese forces and newly installed pro-Hanoi government, effectively giving the Cambodian Civil War the foreign support that it needed to continue indefinitely. As part of its anti-insurgent campaign, the Vietnamese military would launch raids along the joint Thai-Cambodian border, even engaging in select cross-border attacks against fleeing militants.

The tensions that boiled up with Vietnam all along Thailand’s southeastern border with Cambodia would later directly express themselves in the Thai-Laotian Border War of 1987-1988, during which Bangkok and Vientiane (the latter supported by the Vietnamese forces that were based in the country) had a brief military conflict over their disputed frontier. Despite not resulting in any status quo changes, the incident was symbolic in the sense that it showed that the entire Thai-Indochinese border region was ‘fair game’ for proxy conflicts, especially considering that the Vietnamese military was based in both Cambodia and Laos at the time. The escalation of border tension with Laos was significant in that it occurred at the period of time when hostilities between Thailand and Vietnam were subsiding over Cambodia, thus showing that the US-backed authorities in Bangkok were insistent on advancing their anti-Vietnamese goals in some form or another no matter what third-party state was used to achieve these ends.

Interestingly enough, the US’ proxy policy of Southeast Asian destabilization via its Lead From Behind partner of Thailand carries with it a strong foreshadowing of what would later happen in the Mideast after the formal US military withdrawal in 2011. Just as the US withdrew from South Vietnam in 1973 but later used Thailand as its base of covert operations to destabilize its regional foe, so too did it do something similar by withdrawing from Iraq in 2011 but using Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to continue promoting its anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian agendas, albeit in a more accelerated manner than it had done vis-à-vis Vietnam. Therefore, clear links of strategic continuity can be witnessed between the US’ Cold War policy in Indochina after 1973 and its current one in the Mideast after 2011, with both being characterized by an asymmetrical proxy offensive that follows a conventional retreat.

Indochina After The Cold War:

The changing global dynamics brought about by the end of the Cold War had a monumental impact on Indochina. First off, the most noticeable change was that Vietnam formally withdrew its military from Cambodia and Laos, thereby lessening the direct expression of its influence over these two neighboring states. In turn, Vietnam was able to concentrate its focus on internal economic affairs as opposed to external military-political ones, and the Western community lifted its anti-Vietnamese sanctions that were initially implemented in response to the 1978 Vietnamese-Cambodian War and subsequent military presence there. Due to the institutional relief that Vietnam experienced from this and the positive reaction that the pro-Western members of the region had to these dual developments, Hanoi was able to rapidly incorporate itself into the global economy, joining ASEAN in 1995 and establishing very close trade ties with the US, Japan, and South Korea afterwards.

Cambodia and Laos would go on to join ASEAN as well, albeit in 1999 and 1995, respectively. Instead of moving closer to the US and its East Asian allies, however, they would actually opt to intensify full-spectrum relations with China and Thailand. While both maintain cordial and somewhat close ties with Vietnam (Laos much more so than Cambodia), it can subjectively be assessed that they are no longer as strongly under its influence as they once were. Laos is integrating itself into the ASEAN Silk Road and becoming the literal link between China and Thailand, whereas Cambodia has blossomed into a bastion of Chinese economic and diplomatic influence. The current governments of these two Indochinese states are firmly in the sphere of the multipolar world, with their position exponentially increased by Thailand’s new pro-multipolar leadership.

That isn’t to say that Vietnam isn’t somewhat multipolar as well, seeing as how it beneficially cooperates with Russia in the economic and military realms, but overall the country has come under the strong influence of the unipolar anti-Chinese states of the US and Japan, with the TPP being the ultimate epitome. Going forward, it’s expected that Vietnam will balance its South China Sea maritime strategy with ambitious asymmetrical mainland inroads into its former ‘backyards’ of Cambodia and Laos, partly out of its own desire to economically entrap these two states into its subregional TPP influence zone, but also due to the US’ strategic guidance in using Hanoi’s historical proxy leadership over them to complicate China’s One Belt One Road plans.

The Vendetta Against Vietnam

Vietnam is currently one of the US’ closest strategic partners in the South China Sea, with bilateral relations on the strong upswing out of the shared economic interests and the joint vision of containing China. While ties are unprecedentedly positive between these two states, Vietnam might one day begin reasserting its strategic sovereignty against the US vis-à-vis a possible improvement of relations with China.

That doesn’t look all that probable in the given moment, but it certainly can’t be disregarded, especially since China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner and likely will remain so for at least the rest of the decade (despite the TPP and barring any anti-Chinese sanctions over the Spratly Islands dispute).  In the event that Vietnam more pragmatically engages China and perhaps even chooses to fully participate in the One Belt One Road project, then it would draw the strong consternation of the US, whether this is publicly expressed or relegated to backdoor talks.

Just as the US stands to manipulate domestic Hybrid War factors in the presently pro-American countries of insular ASEAN, so too could it do so in Vietnam if Hanoi doesn’t behave as “loyally” as Washington envisions it to be. One of the possible ‘symptoms’ of an assuredly sovereign state policy would be if Vietnam refuses to go along with some of the US’ CCC practices, for which it would obviously experience certain punitive repercussions. For this reason, it’s useful to explore what kind of destabilization potentials exist in Vietnam and game out the various means for how the US could possibly manipulate them if its newfound ally wavers in its strategic anti-Chinese commitment.

The six most realistic variables and scenarios can be categorized into those that deal with ethnic, regional, and social divides, and they will be examined in that order below. The ethnic groups function as support actors, while the social ones are expected to be the primary ones that take the lead in sparking the destabilization. The regional divide that’s explained below allows for a supportive and encouraging backdrop for ideological predisposed or indoctrinated individuals, and it also creates high hopes for those that are already entertaining anti-systemic notions.

Ethnic:

Khmer Krom

A little more than one million Khmer inhabit the southern reaches of Vietnam, and in the past their presence was used by Pol Pot as justification for Cambodia’s historic claims over the Mekong Delta. While the issue itself has largely receded in the decades since Vietnam put a stop to the aggression in 1979, it still remains possible that this demographic could be used in some manner to stir local anti-government discontent. As it currently stands, the Cambodian government is anathema to such suggestions, both out of multipolar pragmatism and stark remembrance of how disastrously it turned out last time around, but that doesn’t mean that a third-party actor (either the US directly or via one of its many NGO pawns) could do aggravate the situation instead.

There’s no practical way that the Khmer Krom could ever destabilize the whole of Vietnam, but a coordinated campaign could be implemented to use them as bait for provoking a military crackdown that leads to collateral damage against ethnic Vietnamese and/or international condemnation, especially if this scenario is mixed with a labor rights dispute of some sort. What’s pivotal in this example is that the Khmer Krom, separate in culture and language from the majority Viet ethnicity, are vulnerable to identity mobilization and thenceforth to being led into a bloody confrontation with the state, with the end result of the clashes (collateral damage, misleading media exposure) being more important than whatever short-term aims the ethnic group had been misled into coalescing around.

Hmong

Infamous for their collaboration with the US military during the Vietnam War, this scattered ethnic group poses a joint destabilization threat to both Vietnam and Laos. The Hmong are divided through dialect but united through geography, occupying a crescent of territory from northern Vietnam into northeast Laos. There are estimated to be over one million Hmong in Vietnam and less than half of that in Laos, so altogether they only form a recognizable percentage of the population in the latter (which has about 6.7 million people). The Hmongs’ significance derives from their identity in being a restive, anti-communist demographic with experienced cross-border travel between Vietnam and Laos, raising the tactical prospects that they could once more be used for drug and/or weaponssmuggling.

While the ones that remained in both countries after the US retreat have mostly been re-incorporated into society, if they were to resort back to their illegal transnational practices (whether being contracted by an intelligence agency to do so or out of their own pursuit of profit), they could create some trouble in this rugged and underpopulated frontier despite their miniscule numbers. Strategically speaking, any eruption of instability in Laos could then more easily spill over into Vietnam, with the Hmong communities once more plying their militant trade across the border and potentially arming distressed factory workers that are preparing for a local, regional, and/or nationwide uprising. Just like with the Khmer Krom, the Hmong by themselves are not in any position to destabilize Vietnam aside from being an isolated nuisance, but if their specific on-the-ground advantages are utilized in a certain manner, then they could be used as a force multiplier in any larger unfolding scenario.

Degar/”Montagnard”

Degar people areal

These mutually synonymous terms are used to refer to the native people of the Western Highlands. These Christianized tribal groups were allied with the French and US forces during the First and Second Indochinese Wars, and in terms of geopolitical importance, they abut the country’s borders with Cambodia and Laos and are located at a critical position in the country’s south. They have a history of rebelling against all aspects of Vietnamese rule, be it from the former South or the current reintegrated state, and they partook in a low-intensity anti-government insurgency that wasn’t disbanded until 1992.

The Degar join the likes of their fellow Khmer Krom and Hmong minority compatriots in being unable to affect significant disturbances on their own (especially with the current Cambodian government being unwilling to offer them any type of sanctuary to do so), but having the opportunity to maximize the potential of other destabilization scenarios if their actions are coordinated in sync. For example, if the 2001 “land rights” unrest and 2004 Easter protests (both of which were instigated from abroad) were to repeat themselves in some form concurrent with violent labor disputes elsewhere in the country, then it could possibly offset the authorities and create an opening for asymmetrical advances such as a renewed insurgency.

Furthermore, Degar destabilizations could ultimately lead to a large refugee flow into Cambodia if they end up failing, and this carries with it a risk to the Kingdom’s overall balance. The northeastern provinces bordering the Western Highlands are rural and mostly underpopulated, so it’s possible that this demographic could exploit the feeble governance there in order to set up anti-Vietnamese training camps. For now, at least, this doesn’t seem likely at all, but if Phnom Penh were in the midst of putting down its own anti-government riots (likely initiated under the cover of a labor revolt and to be explained in the relevant section), then it could be expected that this might occur to some extent.

Regional:

The days of a distinct division between North and South Vietnam are long gone, but certain socio-cultural differences still remain between the two. The reunification of the two entities after 1975 was fraught with many challenges, but none so more difficult than integrating the formerly capitalistic market of the South into the state-controlled system of the North. After experiencing some economic turbulence related to this undertaking and feeling the winds of American-supported global change that were sweeping across the world, the Vietnamese authorities decided to progressively open up their economy through the 1986 Doi Moi reforms. What’s ironic about this is that it represented an about-face for the communist state, which had just gone through great lengths to implement a strict top-down system in the South, but only to retreat from this policy about a decade later.

Other than some of the global and structural factors that were at play and exerting an undeniable impact, it’s unmistakable that Southern-based liberals also had a role over this decision. It’s not to insinuate that they had any ulterior motives in doing so, but that they genuinely believed from their experience that the economic model previously in place in South Vietnam was relatively more efficient than the one that they were later ordered to transition into by the North. No matter the degree of influence that the Southern liberals had over initiating the Doi Moi reforms, the fact remains that they were a comparative reversal of the previous system and an embrace of capitalist principles, the same operating structure that had earlier been in place in the South.

The pertinence of that period to the present is that the pro-Western economic thinking of that time is once more on the ascent in Vietnam, and with it, the possibility of a complementary pro-Western foreign policy. The last time that Hanoi followed the lead of Western influencing factors in the mid-1980s, it ended up unassumingly doing the West’s foreign policy bidding a few years later by withdrawing from Cambodia and Laos at the end of the Cold War. This time, Vietnam is on the verge of entering into the forthcoming TPP arrangement, and it’s playing a more militant role in the CCC hand-in-hand with this development. Whereas in the past it may have been contextually pragmatic for Vietnam to implement Doi Moi and remove its troops from the rest of Indochina, no such rationale can be evoked when it comes to the TPP and the CCC, both of which Vietnam is lunging into head-first.

It’s the author’s understanding that the 1980s Doi Moi and Cambodian and Laotian withdrawals symbolized the victory of the ‘spirit of the South’, or in other words, of certain policies that wittingly or unwittingly corresponded to Western preferences. In the same vein, joining the TPP and the CCC, and perhaps reinvigorating soft (economic) Vietnamese influence in Cambodia and Laos, accomplishes the same thing, albeit this time in full and witting compliance to the US’ regional vision. Therefore, the regional differences in Vietnam are less of a geopolitical nature and more of an ideological one, with the North (in ideas, not necessarily in terms of actual politicians) typically representing independent pragmatism, whereas the South symbolizes pro-Western bandwagoning. Ultimately, it’s the rivalry between these two camps that defines the current state of Vietnam’s international economic and political decision making, with the South obviously in charge at the moment. Should that change, then it’s likely that the US would fall back on utilizing the country’s ethnic and/or social destabilization variables in order to enact pro-Southern pressure on the government to bring it back in line with its CCC preferences.

Social:

Banned Religious Groups

One of the largest social disruptors in Vietnam could potentially come from the religious community in the country. Freedom of religion is guaranteed in Vietnam per the 1992 Constitution, and the country currently boasts a belief rate of around 46%, with 16% practicing Buddhism, 8% partaking in Christianity (be it Catholicism or Protestantism), and the rest following unorganized traditional beliefs. On the whole, these individuals are peaceful and apolitical, and it’s very rare for regular believers to encounter any sort of trouble from the state. The issue arises when adherents of banned Buddhist and Christian organizations such as the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam and the Vietnam Evangelical Fellowship, to name just two of them, illegally gather for services and proselytization practices. As a general rule, such groups are banned because they have a track record of engaging in political practices, and this is why they could present such a difficult challenge for the authorities if they go out of control.

To expand on this idea, so-called “religious freedom” is a powerful rallying cry for indoctrinated individuals and those susceptible to Western liberal-democratic thought. The general concept holds that governments should unrestrictedly allow any and all religions to be practiced, including obscure cult beliefs affiliated or unaffiliated with a major religion. Obviously, the individuals experiencing some type of state restriction on their religious practices (whether semi-conventional or outright cultish) are the ones most eager to reverse this state of affairs, and they may go about recruiting related co-confessionalists (as in the case of the banned Buddhist and Christian organizations) in order to assist them in this endeavor. At this point, what’s important to concentrate on is broader religious affiliation (be it Buddhist, Christian, or sympathy to both) being used as a mobilization issue for non-state agenda-driven actors. It doesn’t matter whether they use their socio-physical networks to agitate against state atheism and certain religious “restrictions” or any other object of protest, since the saliency lies in them simply organizing a critical mass of demonstrators that can ultimately disrupt the state’s stability.

Another critical component of this disruption strategy is that the religious-driven organizations and their affiliates could easily mislead their congregants to the conclusion that the only way for them to achieve their goals is through a violent overthrow of the state. They might point to “state-suppression” of their prior ‘activism’ as ‘evidence’ that working within the system is futile, thus compelling them to resort to Color Revolution and Unconventional Warfare practices (Hybrid War) in order to actualize their objectives when the time is right. While keeping their faith and religiously motivated end goal of regime change a secret, they can then take to recruiting other citizens to join their ‘dissident’ cause, most likely using a more encompassing and non-religious rallying issue such as workers’ rights to broaden their movement’s base.  There’s a high chance that the majority of people brought into this fold might not be aware of the regime change purposes of the growing underground movement, being guided instead into thinking that they’re lending their support to a short-term, low-intensity protest movement about a seemingly ‘legitimate’ issue such as workplace safety. Unbeknownst to them, they’re actually being attached to a preplanned provocation that will inevitably result in violence, with the most ardent of the religious believers leading the way in sparking the militant conflict against the authorities.

To summarize the strategic framework that’s been articulated above, select members of the banned religious community in Vietnam and their supportive state-approved counterparts could quite easily band together in building a covert anti-government network. The more radical of the bunch could have already been convinced that the only way to affect the tangible change that they’re aiming for is to violently overthrow the government, and they’ll probably keep these intentions hidden from the more moderate members of the group. Even if this religiously affiliated organization sought to commence a destabilizing protest or an outright putsch, they’d likely fail without garnering enough supporters in advance. Since it can safely be assumed that the vast majority of Vietnamese are against a violent overthrow of their government, the only way to get them to physically support the regime change movement is to conceal its ultimate intentions, using more inclusive and broad-based language such as protecting/advancing labor rights and other non-religious issues that the majority of people could relate to in order to motivate them enough to come out in the street with their support. Even then, it’s not guaranteed that the scheme will appeal to enough people to make it effective, but the vehemence of the religiously motivated core organizers might be enough to give it some gusto.

Labor Rights Activists

The final Hybrid War factor impacting on Vietnam is also the most important, and it deals with the forthcoming institutionalized unionization in the country. One of the TPP’s precepts is that it mandatesthat Vietnam “legalize independent labor unions and workers’ strikes”, which in and of itself is certainly a welcome and positive gesture, but considering the regime change reputation that Washington has mustered, such a seemingly innocuous and well-intentioned prerequisite must defensively be viewed with the utmost suspicion. The author doesn’t intend to imply that all labor unions and workers’ strikes are potentially nefarious fronts for anti-government plots, but that under certain national conditions, there’s no doubt that they could be used as vehicles for advancing this agenda.

Vietnam has been dragged into a stereotypical dilemma – on the one hand, it needs to ensure and better workers’ rights and conditions, but at the same time, it needs to prevent its reforms from being abused by politically motivated actors. The crux of the problem is that the state waited so long to legalize these labor privileges, so that neither it nor the citizenry fully know what to expect. Hanoi is predicating its decision on the notion that this move will strengthen the government’s appeal and preempt socio-economic disturbances, but it might inadvertently end up weakening its power over the country and ushering in the same type of destabilization that it hopes to avoid.

It’s inevitable that some of the unions will be co-opted by politically motivated elements or outright created as front organizations for them, yet their magnetic appeal and the popular acceptance that they’re expected to attain in Vietnamese society could indicate that an uncontrollably large segment of the population might vehemently be in support of them. As was earlier stated, there’s nothing inherently wrong with labor unions, but from the Hybrid War perspective, these groups are capable of gathering a large amount of people and assembling highly charged and easily manipulatable crowds that could be turned against the government. For example, if the unions and their supporters enter into a confrontation with the authorities (which is bound to happen in any organized labor dispute and/or strike) and provocateurs steer the situation along a preplanned scenario of violence, then the government reaction, no matter how justified it may be, could end up upsetting many people and enflaming anti-government sentiment.

There’s no clear-cut solution to handling this dilemma, and it’s obvious that both the state and the citizenry will have to learn as they go along. As regards the government, it needs to be able to identify the difference between a peaceful and legitimate labor-related protest and one which is on the verge of bubbling into an anti-government riot. It also needs to learn how to handle such incidents so that it doesn’t unwittingly do more harm than good in the tactics that it uses in breaking such demonstrations up. Alternatively, the public needs to get a handle on what sorts of behaviors are acceptable and which aren’t, and legitimate protesters need to learn how to police their own ranks to root out any provocateurs before they have the chance to act. The issue, as mentioned previously, is that neither side has the necessary experience to engage in this sort of civil society discourse without there being some unavoidable ‘growing pains’ such as Color Revolution infiltration and/or overreactive government crackdowns, both of which may serve to exacerbate preexisting anti-state sentiment and advance an externally directed regime change scenario.

Out of all of the variables discussed thus far, the “labor rights activist” one is the most all-encompassing, since it can conceivably envelop most of the working-age population within its ranks in some form or another. It doesn’t matter if they’re card-carrying members or sympathetic citizens, what’s important for the Hybrid War observer to realize is that the banner of labor rights is capable of organizing millions of people for the same shared objective, and that this critical mass of individuals can be guided against the government by adept practitioners of crowd-control psychology. Put another way, an untold number of regular, law-abiding, and well-intentioned citizens could get drawn into participating in what they believe to be a labor rights-focused protest, but only to in effect function as human shields protecting a radical core of urban terrorists that are intent on attacking the state. These political and/or religious radicals aim to provoke ‘incriminating’ and visually-documented police-on-protester violence that could then deceptively be disseminated as ‘truth’ and used to help recruit more people into the growing anti-government movement.

Along the same lines, nationwide or strategically focused regional labor disputes and strikes could be used to enact economic war against a targeted state from within, especially if the “union” has been co-opted by externally directed anti-government elements or is an outright front organization for them. In the circumstances where this is the case, the external actor (in mostly every imaginable situation, this would be the US and its intelligence/NGO apparatus) can inflict a two-for-one destabilization against their target. If the state is compelled to violently crack down on the rioters in order to restore order, then this could be manipulated against it via the social and physical anti-government ‘activist’ networks in generating even more dissatisfaction against the authorities; but at the same time, if the government doesn’t react and it allows the labor dispute and/or strike to continue indefinitely, then it risks experiencing a prolonged economic loss, especially if the factory, industry, and/or locale chosen for the disruption is of a strategic nature. In both instances, there isn’t a ‘win-win’ solution for the authorities, and they’re pressed to choose what they believe will be the lesser of two evils.

Putting the state on the defensive and forcing it to continuously react to these sorts of strategic lose-lose dilemmas are precisely the sort of tactics that Hybrid War practitioners specialize in. No matter what specific form they take or whatever particular issue the infiltrated or front organization claims to support at the time (be it labor rights, “free elections”, or the environment, for example), the indisputable pattern is that they always find a way to lure as many civilians into their ranks as possible in order to use them as human shields and ‘collateral damage’ for their preplanned anti-government provocation. The next step follows naturally enough, and it’s that the average citizen who hears about what happened (either on their own or via a nifty NGO-directed social media campaign) starts to lose faith in the government, largely unaware that what they had seen or read was totally staged and/or guided to occur by a foreign intelligence agency. The compound effect of this occurring on a large enough scale and with a certain context-specific frequency is that the population begins to either actively turn against the authorities and/or passively comes to accept the individuals that are fighting against them and whatever new state entity emerges in the wake of the current one’s possible defeat.

The Chances For A Hybrid War Crisis In Cambodia

Moving along in the book’s examination of Hybrid War threats in mainland ASEAN, it’s time now to turn to Cambodia, the first of the studied states to most likely be in the US’ regime chance crosshairs. Up until this point, the research was addressing countries where engineered Hybrid War scenarios were possible only in the event that their governments strayed from the general anti-China line (to varying degrees of rhetoric and form) that the US had ‘preferred’ that they abide by. Cambodia is a completely different matter altogether, since it’s the first ASEAN state that the book addresses in which bilateral relations with China are at an extraordinarily high level.

Although not a key node in Beijing’s primary ASEAN Silk Road from Kunming to Singapore, there are plans in motion to make it a supporting spoke, and the close ties between Beijing and Phnom Penh have drawn the ire of the US. Cambodia occupies a strategic position in China’s ASEAN strategy, and thereby it’s likely that it will experience some sort of renewed regime change destabilization in the coming future despite not being a chief transit state for Beijing’s transnational connective infrastructure designs. Additionally, the US is aware of the strategic regional advantages that it would gain from overthrowing Cambodia’s current government, and these calculations further increase the odds that long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen might become Washington’s next regime change target.

This segment of the research begins by explaining the geopolitical significance that Cambodia has to China and the mainland ASEAN region. Afterwards it looks into the present political situation in the country and highlights the determined efforts of the ‘opposition’ in trying to topple Hun Sen. Finally, the last part draws attention to the most realistic Hybrid War scenario facing Cambodia, which just like in Vietnam, is the infiltration of the labor rights movement and its hijacked repurposing into the optimal regime change instrument.

Why Strategists Care About Cambodia:

The average reader might be perplexed about why ASEAN’s poorest state has any significance whatsoever in terms of Great Power planning, but the answer lies no so much in economics (although there’s plenty of opportunity there, as will later be explained), but in geopolitics. This is partly explained by China’s historical relations with Cambodia and general strategy towards ASEAN, but it’s also due to the demographic and state-to-state destabilization potential that Cambodia could potentially release towards its neighbors if it ever became a pro-American satellite state.

The China Factor

The most important issue to address in describing Cambodia’s geostrategic significance is its relationship with China. In the eyes of Beijing’s decision makers, Cambodia occupies a similar geopolitical importance to China as Serbia does to Russia, in that the strong partnership between the two allows the Great Power to ‘jump’ past a wall of obstructionist states. In the instance of mainland ASEAN, these historically had been Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, with the first two actually becoming pretty pragmatic towards China since the end of the Cold War. Even if those two diplomatic successes hadn’t been achieved, the relationship with Cambodia allows China to maintain a strategic presence in the Gulf of Thailand and have a firmly committed ally in the ranks of ASEAN. Most importantly in terms of China’s contemporary global strategy, Cambodia has proven to be the ideal testing ground for China’s overseas investment vision. The lessons that it learned by investing $9.17 billion in the nearby state during the period from 1994-2012, begun during the early days of China’s international rise and carried into the present, were obviously instrumental in helping it acquire the feel for managing similar overseas projects. Altogether, these experiences would blend together and contribute to forming the global One Belt One Road vision, with China’s initial investment forays in historically allied Cambodia undoubtedly playing an influential role.

From the Cambodian perspective, its leadership has historically looked to China as a type of ‘big brother’ in helping it hedge against Thailand and Vietnam. The historical memory of having been an object of rivalry between these two powers, and in one sense or another, the military basing ground for each of them at different times, weighs heavily on its decision-making imperatives. The collapse of the Khmer Empire brought Cambodia under the Siamese (Thai) fold for centuries, whereas the country was institutionally closer with Vietnam during the French imperial period. During the Vietnam War, its territory was continuously traversed by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, and although the Vietnamese later liberated Cambodia from the genocidal Khmer Rouge, nationalist elements interpret the subsequent years as an unnecessary military occupation by an historic rival. Aside from the decade-long Peoples Republic of Kampuchea period from  1979-1989 when it hosted Vietnamese troops and was barred from dealing with China, there’s a clear continuity of pragmatic relations with its ‘big brother’ that was practiced by Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and then Hun Sen. Nowadays, other than the political-economic benefits that it reaps from its partnership with China, Cambodia also gains elevated prestige in ASEAN simply by being so closely aligned with Beijing, which has thus transformed the country from a diplomatic backwater to a premier outpost for regional states to engage China’s interests in the region.

From an overall perspective, Chinese-Cambodian relations are a win-win for both sides, and they’re about to be taken to a totally new level of mutual benefit through the Greater Mekong Region’s “Central Corridor” project. To remind the reader, this is one of the various connective projects in mainland ASEAN, with this particular route being a branch of the North-South Corridor through Laos. The Central Corridor branches off from Vientiane and slithers southwards down the country’s spine towards Cambodia, following the Mekong River along the way. This variation of the ASEAN Silk Road is important in its own right because of the potential that it has for deepening trade between China and Cambodia via an optimal unimodal system (solely ground-based as opposed to transshipment from boat to land), but it lacks the geostrategic capability of providing Beijing with an alternative route to the Indian Ocean. The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor fully avoids the South China Sea headache and Strait of Malacca bottleneck, while the primary ASEAN Silk Road through Thailand has the possibility of doing so in the region of southern Thailand. This explains why Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand have a higher chance of falling victim to the US’ anti-Chinese plans (either in co-opting their elite or wreaking havoc) than Cambodia does, although Phnom Penh’s chummy ties with Beijing unquestionably puts it on the target list as well, albeit in a relatively lesser prioritization.

Transnational Ethnic Trouble

The Khmer ethnic majority in Cambodia are a very proud people, infused with the civilizational glory of the ancient Khmer Empire. Accordingly, they’re also very patriotic, and their manifestations of pride could sometimes translate into nationalist demonstrations that put Thailand and Vietnam in an uncomfortable position. The reason that Cambodia’s neighbors feel uneasy at the exercise of Khmer patriotism is because they have their own Khmer minority within their borders, a legacy that nationalists have tried to exploit by attributing it to colonialism. In the case of the Thailand, these are the Northern Khmer that inhabit the northeastern region of Isan and live close to the Cambodian border. They constitute around a quarter of the population in Buriram, Sisaket, and Surin provinces. There are also scattered segments of the Western Khmer living in Chanthaburi and Trat provinces, although they have less of an impactful contemporary presence than in Isan. All told, it’s estimated that there are a little over one million Khmer living in Thailand. The situation with the Khmer Krom in southern Vietnam was already discussed in the earlier section about that country’s Hybrid War vulnerabilities, but to revisit the details for a moment, there are also about one million Khmer living there as well.

The geographically contiguous presence of ethnic Khmer diaspora living in the Thai and Vietnamese border regions means that a nationalist-driven Cambodia could pose a serious threat to the region’s stability. At the moment, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that Hun Sun would ever proceed down this destabilizing path, but in the event that he’s overthrown by a Pravy Sektor-like band of ultra-nationalists, it’s foreseeable that this demographic variable could become a complication in Cambodia’s bilateral relations with each of these states. If history is an indication, then a future nationalism-obsessed government might follow in the Khmer Rouge’s footsteps and stage aggressive border provocations against Vietnam, possibly to the point of tempting Hanoi to launch a retaliatory strike to snub out the threat just as it did back in 1979. Drawing a parallel to the present, this might turn out to be a Southeast Asian variation of the “Reverse Brzezinski” stratagem, with the entire provocation predicated on the intent of dragging Vietnam into a quagmire (in this scenario, possibly as punishment for bettering relations with China).

Using these strategic principles, the same concept can actually more realistically be applied towards Thailand in the Khmer-populated areas of its already distressed Isan region. Bangkok has been rapidly warming up to Beijing since the 2014 military coup and is now an integral transit state for the ASEAN Silk Road, thus meaning that any future Khmer-nationalist government in Cambodia would most likely be directed or implicitly guided by the US to targeted Thailand before Vietnam. The only thing that needs to happen to turn this Hybrid War projection into an actual plan is for an ultra-nationalist opposition movement to seize power in Phnom Penh just as they did in Kiev two years ago, most likely following a similar template of urban terrorism as their pro-American predecessors on the other side of Eurasia. In fact, such a possibility is actually being actively prepared for, the specifics of which will be explored more in-depth when the research discusses the internal political situation in Cambodia.

Border Rumblings

Aside from the asymmetrical destabilization that a hyper-nationalist Cambodian government could bring to its Thai and Vietnamese neighbors, there are also more conventional dangers that would go with this type of American-imposed government as well. As the reader likely realized by this point, Cambodia hasn’t always had positive relations with its two largest neighbors, and these have also manifested themselves into border disputes, the most recent and acute of which is the one with Thailand. The two countries almost went to war in 2008 over a disputed patch of land right near the Preah Vihear Temple in northern Cambodia. The reasons for the disagreement extend well past the physical territory in question and broach the larger historical and cultural issues, but the immediate root of the problem was the use of differing imperial-era border maps to support either case. The problem was eventually settled in Cambodia’s favor by the International Court of Justice in 2011, but because of the broader historical-cultural disagreements at play and the potential for a Khmer-nationalist Cambodian government to aggravate the situation with Northern Khmers, there’s a plausible chance that Phnom Penh might render irredentist claims against Thailand one day. Adding a branch to this scenario, the US might extend some form of outward or implicit diplomatic support for this initiative in order to pressure the Bangkok authorities and incite grassroots reactionary violence against the Northern Khmer in Isan.

Border marker No.314 between Vietnam and Cambodia.

The border situation with Vietnam hasn’t been as dramatic as the one with Thailand since the time of the Khmer Rouge, and currently there aren’t any feasible scenarios that it could apply against its eastern neighbor. The Khmer Krom are vastly outnumbered in southern Thailand when compared to the majority ethnic Viet, unlike the situation in the underpopulated provinces of Isan where they form a critical mass concentrated nearby the border. The prospective problem, then, isn’t so much ethnic irredentism (which is logically impossible to pull off against Vietnam), but a militant dispute over their recently delineated border. Historic flukes and random kinks along their frontier had long marred bilateral relations after the Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia, and even now, the border demarcation issue been exploited by the nationalist opposition in the latter in an attempt to score political points. Sam Rainsy, head of the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNPR) and the country’s main opposition leader,criticized Hun Sen for allegedly ceding land to Vietnam. His politically ally, Senator Hong Sok Hour, was arrested in August 2015 for presenting a forged government document that purportedly ‘proved’ Rainsy’s accusation, and the opposition leader himself was later issued his own arrest warrant in early January 2016 for involvement in the case. By that time he had already fled to France to avoid doing jail time for an unrelated defamation offense, but the fact that this issue has continued to bubble indicates that Rainsy may militantly act on his supposed claims if he ever succeeds in violently seizing power.

King Of The Cambodian Political Jungle:

The mentioning of Sam Rainsy is a perfect time to transition the research into discussing the internal political setup in the country. In a sense, it can read as a lead-up to what most likely will be a forthcoming Color Revolution attempt sometime between now and the July 2018 general elections. There are only two main players – Prime Minister Hun Sen and opposition leader Sam Rainsy – but only one can be king of the Cambodian political jungle.

Hun Sen

Cambodia’s prevailing leader has been in some capacity or another of the premiership since 1985, making him one of the world’s longest-serving heads of state. He was briefly a member of the Khmer Rouge before defecting to Vietnam, after which he reentered his homeland following its liberation by the Vietnamese military. He became Prime Minister in 1985 and served under the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party, which later rebranded itself as the Cambodian People’s Party in 1991 and continues to hold power to this day. Hun Sen was almost booted from the government after losing the disputed 1993 elections, but after protesting the result and threatening that he’d lead the eastern part of Cambodia to secession, an agreement was reached whereby he’d serve in the position of co-Prime Minister.

His counterpart Norodom Ranariddh attempted to clandestinely seize power in 1997 through the use of covertly infiltrated Khmer Rouge and mercenary units to the capital, but Hun Sen was able to preempt the coup and stage his own countermoves that removed his rival from power and solidified his sole leadership. The next and last threat to his premiership came during the aftermath of the 2013 elections, whereby Sam Rainsy and his newly formed Cambodian National Rescue Party clinched 44.46% of the vote compared to Hun Sen and the Cambodian People’s Party’s 48.83%, which prompted Rainsy to accuse the authorities of fraud. The resultant protests descended into riotous behavior and closely resembled a Color Revolution attempt at times, but the drama was officially resolved when both parties agreed to a parliamentary power-sharing proposal on 22 July, 2014. Still, the close election results and the regime change behavior that was exhibited for a prolonged period afterwards indicates that a repeat of such events is very likely to happen in 2018, if not beforehand.

Looked at more broadly in an international perspective, Hun Sen is an adept pragmatic, skillfully able to maneuver his country between its two historical rivals and still retain the dominant political position within his country. Although he began his career as being ardently pro-Vietnamese during his premiership of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, he moderated his approach the moment that his nominal ally’s military forces departed from his country. While never taking any anti-Vietnamese moves, he then swiftly sought to replace his former patron’s role with that of China, as has been the historic post-independence tradition of most Cambodian leaders. This decision was made on geopolitical grounds in hedging against both Vietnam and Thailand, although not doing so in an aggressive security dilemma-like manner that would jeopardize profitable relations with each. Consequently, he was able to retain his country’s friendship with Vietnam while making positive inroads with Thailand, and his partnership with China allowed Cambodia to secure its strategic independence and safeguard its decision-making sovereignty in what otherwise could have been a complicated geopolitical situation (especially after having just emerged from a ravenous US-supported civil war).

Sam Rainsy

Cambodia’s main opposition leader is the son of Sam Sary, one of the organizers of the Dap Chhuon Plot. Also known as the Bangkok Plot, this failed 1959 coup attempt sought to remove Sihanouk from power and is suspected of having been assisted by the CIA.  Rainsy moved to France in 1965 and remained there for 27 years until 1992, after which he returned to his homeland and became a member of parliament. Since then, he has consistently remained involved in politics and founded the Khmer Nation Party in 1995, before changing its name to the Sam Rainsy Party in 1998. It’s interesting to note that he initially chose nationalistic name for his organization, which corresponds to the thesis that his opposition movement seeks to capitalize on such sentiment and may plan to take it to a destabilization international extent against Thailand and/or Vietnam if he ever attains full power.

Rainsy’s own actions attest to his nationalist bent, since he was arrested in 2009 for encouraging villagers to destroy border markets along the Vietnamese frontier, for which he was found guilty in-absentia for inciting racial discrimination and intentionally damaging property. He was pardoned by the King in July 2013 and returned that month to run in the general elections under the newly formed Cambodian National Rescue Party, a merger organization composed of his namesake party and the “Human Rights Party”. He eventually lost the vote and used his defeat as a rallying cry for organizing a Color Revolution attempt to seize power, which as was mentioned, ended up diffused after a parliamentary power-sharing proposal was agreed to.

True to his nationalist ‘credentials’, he continued to agitate that Hun Sen was apparently ‘ceding’ land to Vietnam, and he worked hand-in-hand with his political ally Senator Hong Sok Hour in having the latter produce a forged government document ‘proving’ this outrageous charge. His sidekick was soon arrested, and when Rainsy’s own parliamentary immunity was stripped from him and a warrant issued for his arrest during a visit to ‘supporters’ tin South Korea, he opted to evade the courts and currently remains abroad. Days before, he had gone on social media to intimate that Suu Kyi’s electoral victory forebodes well for what he believes will be his own forthcoming one in Cambodia, seemingly confirming that he too might also have been groomed by the CIA for future leadership. Overall, in assessing Sam’s political strategy, it’s evident that he has repeatedly gone out of his way to emphasize Khmer nationalism, which for the reasons described in the previous section, could end up being very destabilizing for the region if he ever succeeds in seizing power.

Constructing Cambodia’s Next Regime Change Scenario:

Rainsy The Rascal

Wrapping up the research on Cambodia, it’s now time to finally address the most likely scenario in which Hun Sen’s government could be overthrown. Sam Rainsy, like has been earlier described, is a clear nationalist and has sought to fuse his aggressive ideological rhetoric and provocations with Color Revolution tactics. His near-victory in the 2013 elections demonstrates that there’s a sizeable proportion of the population that agrees with him, although not quite enough to democratically legitimize his leadership aspirations. Rainsy will face arrest due to his two outstanding warrants (one for defamation and the other for his involvement in Senator Hour’s forged government documents case) if he returns to Cambodia, and Hun Sen has recently said that he’d “cut off [his] right hand” before he allows his rival to be pardoned again. In all probability, he’s likely to do whatever it takes to make sure that Rainsy doesn’t come back to Cambodia before the July 2018 elections, seeing as how he so bluntly put his entire reputation on the line through his dramatic threat.

Thematic Backdrop

What will probably happen then is that Rainsy will become a type of political symbol either through his ‘self-imposed exile’ (as he styles it) or the ‘political martyrdom’ that would result in his return to Cambodia. If he chooses the latter, it might be a lot easier to stir the Color Revolution pot and paint him as following in the footsteps of Tymoshenko or Suu Kyi, two of his regime change predecessors whose imprisonment catapulted them to global (Western) media stardom. No matter how it occurs, it’s certain that the Color Revolution movement will aim to socially precondition both the Cambodian masses and the foreign media into viewing the upcoming vote as a battle between a pro-Chinese (and possibly even falsely slandered as a pro-Vietnamese) “dictator” and a pro-Western “democrat”, bringing the tiny Southeast Asian state into the forefront of global attention. By that time, the Color Revolution infrastructure would be in place and the opposition can then commence their regime change operation, knowingly taking it as far as urban terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, thus representing the latest Hybrid War battleground.

Tactical Considerations

Be that as it may, the scenario can actually be fast-forwarded and deployed before the elections. Like with the newer Color Revolution templates that have been experimented with across the world, a concrete “event” such as a ‘disputed election’ or some other conventional rallying cry need not actually happen in order to spark the premeditated insurgency. What’s most important is that the necessary social infrastructure be capable of gathering large crowds of ‘human shields’ (civilian protesters) in order to protect a small core of violent provocateurs and engineer what can later manipulatively be made to appear as a “bloody government crackdown” against “peaceful protesters”. While nationalism is visibly a strong unifying force in Cambodian society, patriotism is equally as strong, and even though these two could clash (manifested by anti-government and pro-government demonstrators, respectively), the patriots might neutralize the disruptive “nationalists” and spoil their plans for a larger uprising. Along the same lines of thinking, a minor border spat in one of the frontier villages might not be enough to motivate people in the capital to come out to the streets in protest, especially since they have to worry about their own mouths to feed in ASEAN’s poorest state.

Labor Unions’ Unifying Role

That last point is actually the most important, and it’s precisely the one that’s capable of bringing large segments of the population out to protest against the government. Unlike in Vietnam, labor unions are already legalized in Cambodia and have played an active role in the country’s post-civil war history. The threat of labor disturbances has become increasingly common in the past few years, and garment workers recently prevailed in pressuring the government to once more raise their minimum wage in October 2015, this time to $140 a month from the previous $128 that they succeeded in gaining the year prior. To put this into context, the minimum wage had earlier been $80 a month in 2012, before being raised to $100 a month for 2014 prior to the aforementioned increases, all of which were the result of threatening labor strikes and engaging in selective clashes with police. Just like the author argued in the preceding analysis for Vietnam, there’s nothing at all inherently wrong with an organized labor movement that agitates for worker’s rights, but the danger presents itself when these organizations are exploited by politically minded actors working for regime change ends.

Hun Sen is the Prime Minister of Cambodia.

Unleashing The Dogs Of Hybrid War

In the prospectively forthcoming scenario for Cambodia, labor rights activists take center stage in leading a renewed anti-government movement, perhaps even before the July 2018 elections. They may either do so independently as part of their strategy to continuously raise the minimum wage, or they might craft a provocation in order to prompt a “government crackdown” against the “peaceful protesters”. Additionally, if Hun Sen accepts Washington’s offer to join the TPP but then gets cold feet like Yanukovich did with the EU Association Agreement, then that event in and of itself might be the spark needed to ‘justify’ the preplanned anti-government movement. No matter which route is finally decided upon, the end result is that the labor movement, particularly one which involves the country’s 700,000 garment factory workers (responsible for $5.8 billion in exports for 2014), takes the leading role in opposing the authorities.

This critical mass of individuals could then enact or threat to enact a paralyzing strike that would cripple the country’s economy and immediately cast it as an unpredictable and unstable place to do business in. The nationalist appeal of this campaign would be maximized if it’s coordinated in such a way as to target Vietnamese business, which account for $3.46 billion worth of projects in Cambodia and are the country’s sixth largest investor.

Expectedly, the ‘labor protesters’ will link up with the Cambodian National Rescue Party to create a unified front against Hun Sen, and the combined sum of their efforts might realistically be enough to topple the government. The only alternative in such a case would be large-scale state-inflicted violence, which even if it’s done in the interests of self-defense and the preservation of overall peace and harmony, could be damage the authorities’ legitimacy to the point of unwittingly engendering even more anti-government sentiment. Worse still, Western countries could pull out their investments and cooperate with ASEAN in sanctioning Phnom Penh. In this dire scenario, Hun Sen hangs on to power by a thread and the consequent economic warfare that’s launched against the country is impactful enough to lead to his government’s dissolution within the next few years.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the post-graduate of the MGIMO University and author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Hybrid Wars 5. Breaking the Balkans

‘Most of the questions involving the Flint water crisis and Gov. Snyder are still unanswered,’ says Common Cause

Six additional state employees now face criminal charges for hiding unsafe lead levels leading up to the Flint water crisis—but Gov. Rick Snyder and his top officials continue to evade accountability.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced the charges in a press conference on Friday, in which he vowed that “the families of Flint will not be forgotten; we will provide the justice they deserve.”

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette on Friday charged six more state employees with felonies for their alleged role in Flint’s water contamination. (Screenshot)

Of those charged, Schuette said: “Their offenses vary but there is an overall theme and repeated pattern. Each of these individuals attempted to bury, or cover up, to downplay or hide information that contradicted their own narrative, their story. Their story was there was nothing wrong with Flint water and it was perfectly safe to use.”

“These individuals concealed the truth,” he said. “They were criminally wrong to do so.”

According to news reports, those charged are Michigan Department of Health and Human Services workers Nancy Peeler, Corinne Miller, and Robert Scott and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality employees Leanne Smith, Adam Rosenthal, and Patrick Cook.

MLive reports:

Peeler, Miller and Scott were charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to commit misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty.

Shekter Smith was charged with misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty.

Cook is accused of misconduct in office, conspiracy to engage in misconduct in office and neglect of duty.

Rosenthal was charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to tamper with evidence, tampering with evidence and neglect.

According to the Detroit News:

Peeler and Scott’s charges center around a report epidemiologist Cristin Larder prepared last fall showing elevated blood lead testing in Flint residents last July, August and September, according Jeff Seipenko, an investigator in Schuette’s office.

“Scott and Peeler conspired together and with others known and unknown to effectively bury Larder’s report warranting further investigation,” Seipenko said Friday morning in court. “Defendants Peeler and Scott’s failure to disclose Larder’s report was to the detriment of the health and welfare of the citizens of Flint.”

Three other local and state employees were charged in April, bringing the total number of people charged in connection to the health crisis to nine.

Schuette said Friday that his team was “way far from done”—offering a modicum of assurance to those seeking accountability from Snyder and other top officials.

And Andrew Arena, lead investigator in the case and former head of the FBI office in Detroit, added: “You don’t start at the top. Like organized crime, we are working our way up in the DEQ and expanding the scope of investigation.”

But Special Prosecutor Todd Flood may have eroded some of that confidence by declining to say at Friday’s press conference whether he has interviewed Snyder or the governor’s former top aide, Dennis Muchmore, or issued subpoenas to either man to compel testimony under oath in a deposition.

“The charges filed today against six state employees involved in the Flint water crisis are a step in the right direction to ensure our government is accountable to its citizens,” the pro-democracy group Common Cause and its Michigan affiliate said in a statement on Friday.

“However, there is still a lack of transparency and accountability surrounding the crisis in Flint,” the statement continued. “Most of the questions involving the Flint water crisis and Gov. Snyder are still unanswered. The people of Flint, and the entire state of Michigan, deserve to know the full extent of Gov. Snyder’s involvement and knowledge of this crisis.”

Meanwhile, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver told the Democratic National Convention this week that in her city, the

“water is still not safe to drink or cook with from the tap. Our infrastructure is broken, leaking and rusting away. Our local economy, already down when the water crisis struck, struggles to rebound. And there are many more Flints across the country where environmental issues are hurting our kids and families.”

She specifically called out the “Republican state government” for using Michigan’semergency manager law “to take over control of the city.”

When in doubt, it’s Russia’s fault, Vladimir Putin designated the West’s No. 1 bad guy.

He’s blamed for virtually anything Washington and NATO contrive. A longterm adversarial relationship persists, risking potentially devastating consequences.

Facts never interfere with Western propaganda, outrageous accusations featured with no corroborating proof.

The New York Times is the lead disseminator, mouthpiece for Washington and Hillary’s campaign, journalistic ethics and principles discarded entirely – neocon/neoliberal credentials replacing them.

Citing an unnamed “federal law enforcement official,” The Times accused Russia of hacking into Hillary’s computer system. Her campaign blames Moscow for “trying to sway the outcome of the election,” according to The Times, adding:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, also said on Friday that its systems had been hacked.

What happened

“appears to have come from an entity known as ‘Fancy Bear,’ which is connected to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, according to an official involved in the forensic investigation.”

American intelligence agencies have told the White House they have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee.

Fact: Believe nothing US sources, the Clinton campaign and their media echo chamber report – especially from The New York Times, Hillary’s press agent, conducting an ongoing campaign to get her elected in November.

Fact: Blaming Russia for virtually anything without verifiable proof is part longstanding Putin bashing.

He’s vilified solely for political reasons, notably his support for nation-state sovereignty, diplomacy over force in resolving conflicts, and multi-world polarity – positions Washington opposes, irreconcilably opposite its hegemonic agenda.

The possibility of Hillary succeeding Obama next year should terrify everyone, energizing mass activism to stop her.

Her ruthless agenda includes endless wars of aggression. The issue in November is simple and unambiguous, without a shadow of a doubt: Hillary must be defeated! Humanity’s fate depends on it!

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

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

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

Visit his blog site atsjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

Speaking to MEE, Labour leader calls for powers for Parliament to control arms sales to Saudi Arabia and oversee deployment of special forces

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has demanded a root-and-branch review of Britain’s alliance with Saudi Arabia in the wake of the brutal Saudi interventions in Bahrain and the Yemen.

Corbyn: ‘If we want to live in a world of peace, then there has to be a foreign policy that reflects that’ (AFP)

Speaking to Middle East Eye, Corbyn called for a fundamental change in Britain’s relationship with the Middle East, establishing a foreign policy based on democracy rather than military interventions. The Labour leader said that Britain’s relationship with the Saudi monarchy should focus on human rights – not arms sales.

“We have got to look again at the whole arms relationship with Saudi Arabia and look again at the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia, sustained by the supply of arms largely, but not exclusively, from Britain which is used… both in Bahrain and in Yemen. Bahrain has now had significant Saudi involvement for quite a long time to prop up the regime there,” Corbyn said.

The Labour leader claimed that the British government was responsible for the deaths of Bahraini protesters: “Well who’s guilty? Who is responsible? Are we not responsible? We sold those arms knowing they were going to be used in Bahrain.”

He said Britain was “incredibly selective” on human rights issues. “We sign up of course to the Universal Declaration, the European Convention and we do have the Arms Export Control Committee in Parliament, but we are actually very selective about this and we’ve done precious little about Saudi Arabia for a very long time.”

Corbyn said that if he became prime minister he would reinstate human rights advisers in British embassies around the world, put human rights clauses in the contracts British firms make, and clamp down on arms sales: ”If we want to live in a world of peace, live in a world of justice towards human rights, then there has to be a foreign policy that reflects that. That is where I’m at.”

Call for war powers act

Breaking new ground, Corbyn called for an American-style “war powers act” to give Parliament new powers to block military intervention. He said the “parliamentary convention now requires that for the deployment of British troops there has to be a parliamentary mandate. Except – and they’ve all used the except – when there are special forces involved. The question of this of course goes back a long way to Vietnam in 1963, when the US managed to have I think 50,000 advisers to the South Vietnamese government before the Congress was even invited to vote on whether or not it should be involved in the Vietnam War. I think the parallel is a very serious one.”

He insisted that MPs should have oversight and control over when British special forces – and not only the regular army – get involved in combat.

Asked about MEE reports establishing the presence of British special forces in Libya, the Labour leader said: “Clearly Britain is involved. Either through special forces in Libya or through arms supplies to Saudi Arabia to the war in Yemen. And indeed by the same process to the supply of anti-personnel equipment that is being used in Bahrain by Saudi Arabia. So I think we have to have a War Powers Act that is much more watertight on this.”

He said the effect of British intervention in Libya has been to destroy the state and create in its place an arms bazaar: “A number of us pointed out in debates in the House at that time that if you simply destroyed the structure of the Libyan state, which is what happened, then you will end up with a series of warring factions.

And the spread of arms which were given to the opponents of Gaddafi has then spread into Mali and many other places. So we’ve actually created an arms bazaar of in some cases relatively small scale arms, but nevertheless very powerful ones.

Backing for Blair prosecution

Corbyn said he supported the families of British soldiers killed in Iraq in their efforts to bring a private prosecution against former prime minister Tony Blair.

He pointed to the words he used when he apologised on behalf of the Labour Party for the invasion of Iraq: “The words I said during the apology [were]: ‘those that are responsible for the war in Iraq must be prepared to face up to their responsibilities’.

“People must face up to their responsibilities for what they did. I met the families of the soldiers who died, and when you meet a family of anyone who has died it’s very hard. I meet the families of young people who have been stabbed to death. It’s very hard for them to understand their son’s life has gone through a random act of violence.

If you join the army,  you join knowing there are risks involved. Obviously. And then you die in a war like Iraq. And then it becomes apparent that the war was based on misinformation or deception, that it wasn’t a necessary war, that it wasn’t a defensive war, and your son or daughter has died in that particular conflict. It’s very hard for those families to come to terms with that, so I spent a lot of time over the past years talking to the families of those that have died. They are very, very impressive people. I think the way Reg Keys and Peter Bradley have conducted themselves is very, very impressive.

The families are appealing for funds to create a team of lawyers that will mount a private prosecution accusing Blair of “misfeasance in public office” on the grounds that he misused his constitutional powers, which led to mass casualties.

Corbyn told MEE he viewed the departure of Hilary Benn as shadow foreign secretary as a chance to develop Labour policy regarding Israel and Palestine.

He said that thanks to recent changes in Labour’s foreign affairs team “you will see more on this from me,” adding that “I will be developing foreign policy a great deal and my views and determination to promote a peace settlement in the Middle East which obviously has to involve recognition of Palestine as something that is very important to me.”

Confident mood

A tanned Corbyn, who on Thursday saw off a legal challenge over his place on the ballot for a new leadership contest brought by Labour MPs, appeared more relaxed and confident than at any time since he was elected Labour leader 10 months ago.

He laid down a clear marker to the majority of Labour MPs who had repeatedly called for him to step down. He said he was dismayed at the way they had launched a coup against him following the Brexit vote: ”I was appalled at the way it was conducted and the way it was designed to cause maximum damage to the party day in day out. I was invited to resign. I absolutely refused to do so. I said I’m responsible for the people who elected me. I’m responsible for the mandate I was given. I will carry out that responsibility – and so I have.

I think some of them [Labour MPs] are confusing the position of the parliamentary party with the party as a whole. The parliamentary party is very, very important, but it is not the entirety of the Labour Party, and I have reached out in a way no other leader ever has in appointing people to my shadow cabinet last September who were very critical of me; some of whom remained critical within the shadow cabinet.

Corbyn said he expected more former shadow ministers who had joined the parliamentary revolt against him to return to the front bench, as MP Sarah Champion did this week.

The Labour leader spoke of his political heroes from the British radical dissenting tradition. He cited the British pamphleteer and political activist Tom Paine as one of his main influences and William Godwin as another, adding that “long-term political changes often come from quite profound and very brave individuals”.

When asked whether he saw himself in the tradition of Paine and Cobbett, Corbyn replied: “You don’t want to put yourself into history too quickly. But I do draw inspiration from those people that stood up in very difficult circumstances.”

Second referendum not ruled out

However, Corbyn notably failed to rule out a second referendum on last month’s Brexit vote.

He ruled one out for “the immediate future,” adding “one has to respect the result”.

However, he added that “at some point in the future, somebody might say we ought to have a referendum on how we deal with the future with Europe”.

The Labour leader presented himself as a new kind of political leader, challenging the elitist, modernising politics of Tony Blair and David Cameron.

The New Labour project was very much Third Way economics, it was aggressive foreign policy, and it was essentially marketisation of a lot of public services. I’m trying to take things in a very different direction of a human rights, democracy-based foreign policy rather than an interventionist one, and an economically interventionist economy in Britain in order to promote good-quality jobs and employment as well as promote decent levels of public service.

With Labour Party membership now more than half a million since his election and still growing, he claimed that he had brought a “new audience” into British politics.

I think there is, because it’s an involvement of a new audience in politics who felt very disillusioned. It is very difficult to measure everything on the basis of personal contact, emails, postcards, whatever it happens to be. But I meet a significant number of people – a significant number of people have contacted me and said ‘I’ve now become interested in politics because what I see with the Labour Party at the moment is that you’re trying to reach out in a way that no one has reached out before.’

How long will this go on? How long will we see the photographs of a Mr. Tsipras and his Finance Minister in despair. Yet the blood-letting continues.

Already new austerity measures are being projected for 2018 – between 5.4 billion EUR asked by Europeans and 9 billion EUR requested by IMF – and the securing of the Greek debt sustainability through deep restructuring measures (meaning more selling of public assets to foreign corporations), as reported by journalist Yannis Kibouropoulos.

Tsipras and Juncker. CC.

Yes, € 9 billion by the IMF, of all institutions! The very organization that has ostensibly pledged with Greece’s creditors to forgive some of the debt to let the country breathe. This noble idea seems to have given in to the abject, murderous greed of the banks, one among them, the Deutsche Bank, currently the most vulnerable and indebted in the world, not just in Europe, for its derivative exposure of almost € 66 trillion, or about the world’s GDP. The globe’s most criminal financial speculator is to be paid more of Greek blood to nurture its horrendous vampire thirst for more criminal acts, clubbing the weakest of this globe, sucking out the last drop of blood.

When does it stop? – When does the Greek People stand up and demand that the government stop unilaterally this bloodletting – which of course affects none of the ‘leftist’ SYRIZA’s decision makers, to the contrary, we can only imagine how they are being compensated for allowing this monster theft of the peoples’ assets to continue – apparently endlessly, until the last straw, the last drop of water, the last health clinique has been privatized by foreign corporations.

Greece’s debt to GDP today stands at close to 200% in mid-2016, as compared to a mere 109% in 2008 when the man-made crisis started, inspired by the FED-IMF-Wall Street- ECB-EC – instigated by the one big western criminal schemer organization. It was supposed to trigger the crisis in Europe for saving the dollar – and as a by-product steal European peoples’ social assets, assets that belong to the people who paid for it. Greece was to be framed. Her debt was unsurmountable and would affect all of Europe. Greece – the EU country that contributed barely 2% to Europe’s GDP, was ‘guilty’ of provoking a European crisis that eventually had and still has worldwide implications. How ridiculous!

A debt-GDP ratio of 109% was and is totally manageable, without outside interference. Incidentally, the US current debt today is about what Greece’s debt was in 2008. Is anybody paying attention to it? – Of course not. The masters of the universe have all the rights. They make the law but are not accountable for any of them, not even the ones they make. That’s the stupefied world we are living in.

But would it have occurred to anyone to discard the lie-riddled propaganda jargon from the IMF and Co. and ask the question how Greece could be targeted as the culprit? How was this possible? – Not even today this question is asked. The lies and manipulations of the nefariously criminal killer troika and its occult behind the scene corporate-finance handlers seem to be all persuasive. – Killer troika – yes killer – thousands if not ten thousands of people have died prematurely due to lack of access to medication, health services, proper housing – and by suicide through sheer despair.

From the very beginning, when this trend of purposeful destruction of an entire population and her country became clear, there was the one solution that would have salvaged Greece and make it a happy country again: Leave the Euro zone! – And if necessary even the European Union. But with indoctrinated fear of an uncertain future, with the proud notion of belonging to and remaining in the Eurozone – and with a purposeful neglect of the Syriza government informing the people with the truth about the debt-onslaught – nobody dared to question the government on why it defied the overwhelming people’s vote against the austerity packages in July 2015. – Sorry, it wasn’t ‘nobody’, but it wasn’t a critical mass, it wasn’t the right influential people to ask that question – and to oppose the government’s handling of Greece’s ‘crisis’, and why SYRIZA was working in connivance with the troika. Those who did ask were sidelined. They were not snotty enough wanting to stick to the fraudulent Euro.

As of this day, there is a majority of Greek – of middle-class Greek, that is – who after more than six years externally imposed annihilation still want their country (almost nothing of it is theirs any more), to remain in the fraudulent pyramid scheme called Eurozone. These people, who are also the ones who influence the Greek power elite, have apparently little regard for those Greek that can hardly survive, for those Greek, who have lost their pensions, their health services, their employment and have no time to think about politics, whose life is entirely dedicated to survive from one day to another – or eventually to commit suicide, as many do. Are the statistics of suicides for despair published in Greece? By now they have reached the thousands.

Have these middle-class hangers-on to power any idea and compassion for their fellow citizens whose head is more under water than above? Do they have enough compassion to discard their pride to belong to this illegal Eurozone and to associate with their destitute brothers? – Yes, illegal, because what the troika are doing thanks to the common currency, called Euro, defies any standards of international law, all of the agencies behind this economic killing are disobeying their one charters and constitutions. Take the IMF – one of its principal rules is no lending to countries whose debt has made them financially unviable. This rule is being broken in Ukraine, in Greece and elsewhere, just anywhere where the empire wants to suck blood and achieve total subordination – on its way to full spectrum dominance.

Do you know, People of Greece – that the EU as well as the Euro has never been a European idea? That both are actually constructs of the CIA? The EU was never meant to become a political federation with a common goal and with common development objectives. To the contrary, whenever such a concept ‘threatened’ to become a reality, Washington pushed for admitting new countries, especially the former Eastern Bloccountries which were presumably due to their Soviet past all ferociously anti-Europe and pro-Washington. This was the age-old tactic of divide to conquer- and it succeeded. It was pushed through via the UK which was Washington’s Trojan Horse in Europe – hopefully no longer after BREXIT.

Have you noticed, People of Greece, how there is an ever growing integration between the EU and NATO? – Do you want to continue being militarized by foreign forces that are every day more threatening world peace?

So – why stay in the EU and the Eurozone, when all indications point to another direction? The writing is clearly on the wall.

My appeal to the People of Greece, take BREXIT as an example; dare to say NO to the system that enslaves you. Greek – take back your national sovereignty, your national currency, make the Greek Central Bank Greek again, working for the Greek economy, with a public banking system and interest free loans, to re-launch the Greek economy! – And you will be fine and happy again in no more than 5 years. You – People of Greece – have all the stamina and resourcefulness to drive your country forward and into a prosperity ‘made in Greece’.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, Chinese 4th Media, TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author ofImplosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. 

Glyphosate herbicides, harmful pharmaceuticals, infected blood transfusions, mercury preservative in infant vaccines, organophosphate insecticides, GM technology and fluoridation of the water supply . . . the damage to human and environmental health has been incalculable.

As Professor Jacqueline McGlade, Chief Scientist and Director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment of the United Nations Environment Programme, said in her preface to Late lessons from early warnings: science, precaution, innovation:

There is something profoundly wrong with the way we are living today. There are corrosive pathologies of inequality all around us — be they access to a safe environment, healthcare, education or clean water. These are reinforced by short-term political actions and a socially divisive language based on the adulation of wealth . . .

One thing that has become clearer over the past decade is that certain chemical substances are highly stable in nature and can have long-lasting and wide ranging effects before being broken down into a harmless form. The risk of a stable compound is that it can be bio-accumulated in fatty tissues at concentrations many times higher than in the surrounding environment . . . So exposure to toxic chemicals and certain foodstuffs are at risk of causing harm, especially to vulnerable groups such as foetuses in the womb or during childhood when the endocrine system is being actively built. Even with small dose exposures, the consequences can in some instances be devastating with problems ranging from cancer, serious impacts on human development, chronic diseases and learning disabilities.

Professor McGlade points out that well-informed individuals and communities would ‘more properly’ set ‘the power to act’, than current political systems which have become ‘silted up by vested interests and a determination to protect assets’ – and, we would add, to accumulate profits. She calls for “a more ethical form of public decision-making based on a language in which our moral instincts and concerns can be better expressed . . .”

Above, a book by Claudia Miller, M.D., M.S., a tenured Professor in Environmental and Occupational Medicine and Vice Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA), who has written extensively on the health effects of low-level chemical exposures.

One simple measure could be adopted. Every scientific report or review should be prefaced by a declaration of the researcher’s competing financial interests

From the Nature/ British Dental Journal’s declaration of the authors’ competing financial interests Critique of the review of ‘Water fluoridation for the prevention of dental caries’ published by the Cochrane Collaboration in 2015, we learn that – out of 17 – these authors had such an interest – see footnote, with names added to the initials in the list.

The Cochrane review noted- amongst many other findings – that only two studies since 1975 have looked at the effectiveness of reducing cavities in baby teeth, and found fluoridation to have no statistically significant impact – and within the ‘before and after’ studies none showed the benefits of fluoridated water for adults.

In view of the authors’ competing interests it is not surprising thatthey cast doubt on the validity of the unfavourable findings of the Cochrane Review, which is ’unconstrained by commercial and financial interests’.

–

Notes:

1. A. J. Rugg-Gunn: AJRG was a member of the MRC (UK) working group on water fluoridation and health and is a trustee of The Borrow Foundation (long associated with milk fluoridation).
2. A.J. Spencer: AJS is a member of the Australian Government Department of Health, Nutritional Reference Values Fluoride Expert Working Group and the National Health and Medical Research Council Fluoride Reference Group.
3. H.P. Whelton: HPW is Principal Investigator of the FACCT study funded by the Irish Health Research Board and is an evaluation of the impact of changes in the policy on children’s oral health in Ireland. She is an independent advisor to the British Fluoridation Society.
4. C.Jones: CJ is a member of the British Fluoridation Society, the Cochrane Oral Health Group and commented on the Cochrane review protocol.
5. J. F. Beal: JFB is vice-chairman, British Fluoridation Society.
6. P.Castle: PC is a communications adviser to the National Alliance for Equity in Dental Health and the British Fluoridation Society. 
7. P.V. Cooney: PVC was Chief Dental Officer for Canada.
8. J. Johnson: JJ is President, American Fluoridation Society. 
9. M.P. Kelly: MPK is co-investigator on the CATFISH study of a water fluoridation scheme in Cumbria.
10. M.A. Lennon: MAL was a member of the Advisory Panel for the York Review, a member of the MRC Expert Group and formerly Chair of the British Fluoridation Society.
11. J. McGinley: JMcG is manager, Fluoridation Activities, American Dental Association.
12. D. O’Mullane: DO’M is a member of the Irish Expert Body on Fluorides and Health.
13. P.P. Sharma: PPS is the President, Ontario Association of Public Health Dentistry. 
14. W.M. Thomson: WMT was a member of the panel which produced the Royal Society of New Zealand report on community water fluoridation.
15. S. M. Woodward: SMW works for The Borrow Foundation.
16. S.P. Zusman: SPZ is Chief Dental Officer with Israeli Ministry of Health.

Possibly I have spent too many years ‘abroad’, outside of North America and Europe. Perhaps I don’t feel ‘white’, or ‘Western’ anymore. Or who knows, maybe I never really felt too ‘Western’ anyway, thanks to my Russian and Chinese blood.

That could help to explain why, when I listened to the acceptance speech delivered by Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, I felt detached. In fact I felt great emptiness. I understood the words and their meaning, and I was even able to analyze what these words would mean to the world, were this forceful man to be elected to the highest office in the most powerful country on Earth. But for a while, inside, I felt nothing; absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, exhaustion.

Outside my window was a great mass of water, separating the historic Penang Island from the rest of Malaysia. Cargo ships were majestically sailing to and from the nearby port, and it was raining heavily.

Photo by IoSonoUnaFotoCamera

I was watching Donald Trump’s speech live on Al-Jazeera. There was hardly any other choice available, as in this suddenly pro-Western country there were no international alternative channels, for which I work for– no RT, no Press TV, and no Telesur.

Trump spoke and spoke, much longer than expected. Whenever cameras showed people listening to his speech, I felt a sense of déjà vu, that I had witnessed all this on many other occasions. Like when Obama was speaking and thousands of people were, religiously, as if in a trance, moving their lips, whispering ‘yes we can’…  like when George W. Bush was being sworn in. Like…

The Messiah has arrived! Oh, that need for a religious experience, which is so omnipotent in the United States. The evangelical, putatively religious Trump (in reality, the man has no religious passion of any kind except a case of unquenchable Narcissism), defending ‘little people’! How lovely, honest and unexpected. Bravo!

And then, a few hours later, came the first ‘reviews’ of the speech. And the Western ‘left’ began doing something extremely weird, unexpected and in my opinion, thoroughly sick: in their indirect way, many prominent writers and alternative publications, actually endorsed Trump, while firing constant salvos of accusations against Hilary Clinton. (For the record before going any further: I am NOT arguing here that Clinton does not deserve all the hatred and contempt that any decent person, wherever s/he may be on the political spectrum, would level at a woman who has been, along with her huckster husband, little but an abject corporate shill and dangerous warmonger practically her entire public career. By the same token, there’s no question that the Democrats continue to be the more hypocritical side of the murderous duopoly, and that their betrayals are by now normalized, not to mention that, as witnessed with Sanders, they remain the graveyard of progressive movements.)

In any case, let us continue.

One could read directly or between the lines: “You see, the Democrats actually betrayed the ‘little people!’ They teamed up with big business, and they ruined the middle class. And now, so many good but angry folks will actually vote for Trump, because at least he is honest and he is sick of the establishment…”

Of course I am simplifying, but yes, there was that clear self-congratulatory tone I have written about in so many essays and analyses. Trashing Hilary Clinton, and trashing Democrats, was suddenly in vogue. One writer after another had to demonstrate to the world that he or she is simply too bright to believe that the Democratic Party is still the party left of center, and that it is still the force which is ready to defend the interests of the ‘common people’.

For years and decades, I thought that this was not a secret. The Republicans and Democrats were two sides of the same, crooked coin. Western ‘democracy’ —which never really came anywhere near its promise—was dead, in both North America and Europe. Why this sudden explosion of trivial statements, why this repetition of something that is so obvious, and for such a long time?

And then it hit me, as if a heavy sandbag had crashed on my head: many so-called left-wingers in the West actually do like Donald Trump! They really do! And they truly enjoyed his speech. And if it weren’t so embarrassing, they would put that religious fanatical mask on their face, hug each other, shed a few tears and begin whispering: “Yes we can!”

Yes, obviously the West’s anti-Communist ‘left’ also needs its Messiah. It needs a bunch of good Samaritans as well as those truly bad capitalists who are now suddenly ‘seeing the light’ and ‘changing their course’. It needs ‘popular revolts’.

The similarities are simply beyond amusing. Benito Mussolini Trump – the US President to be? (Source : prince.org)

Most of the West’s left has no ideology, really. It is too cowardly to aim at true revolution, and it is too Western and ‘Christian’ to actually push for internationalist ideas, ideals and solutions. And so it justifies its existence by concentrating on several local social issues, defending the interests of those so-called ‘little people’ who reside predominantly in both Europe and North America.

Now let us be very careful and define this correctly – let me repeat it once again: we are talking about the social issues that are preoccupying the West, and we are talking about the interests of those ‘little people’ living in North America and Europe, and perhaps in Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan (which had already been defined as a ‘honorary white nation’ by South African apartheid).

Africa, the Middle East, Asia, or Latin America: be damned! Nobody in Paris or New York cares about what is being done to those parts of the world. At most, a few people in the West shout, once in a while: “Stop the wars!” Or: “Down with our foreign interventions!” But the tremendous and continuous plunder of the planet by the Empire never really becomes the main concern of the so-called Western left. It is mainly because the entire West benefits from it, including those sacred ‘little people’ (not to be confused with the ‘un-people’, defined as such by George Orwell and inhabiting almost the entire non-Western world).

In his recent outstanding essay “COMMUNIST CHINA vs. CAPITALIST PHILIPPINES vs. IMPERIAL FRANCE”, published on this site and his China Rising blog, my Beijing-based friend and comrade Jeff J. Brown, explained:

Westerners are deluded and brainwashed into believing that thanks to capitalism, they have their great monuments, skyscrapers, plazas, parks, museums, infrastructure, prosperity, luxury and grotesque super-consumption. Wrong. They can live like the Hampshire hogs of humanity, only because of the larcenous extraction and exploitation of 15^th-21^st century imperialism and colonialism.

So, who suffers the indignities, humiliation and hand-to-mouth existence of capitalism? The 30,000 children who die every day… for a lack of clean water, food, shelter and medical care, along with their surviving family members in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. These 30,000 young innocents, 11,000,000 per year who die like starved rats, really ought to be sacrificed on altars of expropriated super-consumption, their throats slit in ritualistic fashion on the National Mall in Washington, DC; Hyde Park in London and Place de la Concorde in Paris. Ten thousand children in each capital, slaughtered every sunrise, so that Westerners can continue to luxuriate like sated gods and goddesses. It should be the civic duty of every Eurangloland citizen to at least witness it once in their life, if not plunge the knife themselves in a sacrifice’s neck, as atonement for their vulgar excesses.

People like Jeff and I cannot stomach to live in the West, anymore. And those moral and powerful statements, like those above, are constantly censored in the mainstream media. Both of us care about the ‘small people’, we care very much. But we mainly care about the common and small people living all over the world, people who are, somehow, much smaller, much tinier, weaker and more defenseless, that the tiniest ones in the West.

Such issues are not discussed by the US Presidential candidates, or by the would-be leaders in Europe. Such issues are actually taboo. All mainstream politicians in the West are well aware of the fact that their voters (those ‘small people’) do not want to hear anything about the suffering of others, no matter how excessive and monstrous the suffering is (and especially if that suffering is due to the global ‘arrangement’ which sustains astronomically high standards of living in the West, at the expense of impoverished and robbed masses in virtually all other parts of the world).

The West’s ‘small people’ only want to hear about their own misfortunes and ordeals. They want to be pitied. They want a much better deal than the one they are getting these days. If they go to the barricades, it is not to protest against the holocausts which their countries are committing all over the world. It is only to get more, more and more, for themselves, by any means available, and no matter who is really paying the bill.

In his “Donald Trump and the Revolt of the Proles”, Mike Whitney recently argued:

Liberals and progressives love to point across the aisle and accuse their opponents of racism, misogyny and xenophobia, but that’s not what the Trump campaign is all about. And that’s not what Brexit was about. While it’s true that anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise in Europe and the US, the hostility has less to do with race than it does jobs and wages. In other words, Brexit is a revolt against a free trade regime in which all the benefits have accrued to the uber-rich while everyone else has seen their incomes slide, their future’s dim and their standard of living plunge.

Donald Trump knows perfectly well how to cash in on those sentiments.

He is promising to make America great again. “America first!”

He creates an imaginary country, which almost resembles a war zone, where cops are not murdering but are being murdered, and where homicide rates have risen sky-high, somehow due to those ‘bad immigrants’ who are destroying both American lives and the country’s resources.

He is naming some of the names of those parents in the US who recently lost their children. He drops three names of the parents… And somehow it works; what he is doing is extremely effective. He is a talented demagogue.

I have encountered thousands of parents who lost their children, in the US-sponsored wars and coups, all over Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. And those I saw were only a handful compared to those millions, tens of millions of the silent victims. But these are not Americans. They should not be ‘first’. They are nothing more than just some insignificant numbers, statistics and yes, ‘un-people’.

Trump’s United States resembles a ‘failed’ state. In many ways it is, of course, but mostly for quite different reasons than he is presenting.

In his speech, he singles out one country, one true ally of the United States – it is Israel. (Both parties are simply repugnant in their wooing of the Jewish vote, especially reactionary Zionist tycoons like Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas magnate Trump is hoping will donate the campaign $100 million in the next few weeks.—Eds.)

He further antagonizes China, calling its actions ‘criminal’. And he insults Iran, a country that had been suffering, for decades and centuries, from Western imperialism and colonialism.

He utters some usual Christian fundamentalist rhetoric, just so no one forgets where he stands in respect to the most aggressive religion, which has been devastating the Planet for so many centuries.

And it goes on and on, it seems that it will never stop, the same as the rain outside the window of my hotel room in Penang.

But it does stop, at some point, as everything in this world usually does. And then the roaring applause comes, and the camera shows some people crying, overwhelmed by emotion. Their leader has just spoken! Their leader just promised to make their country great again. Their leader declared that he is on their side – on the side of the ‘common people’, of hard-working Americans.

And then, almost immediately, the commentaries, analyses begin to appear online.

For some time, I cannot believe what I am reading. Several ‘progressive’ writers and publications are openly, or covertly, expressing their support for a real-estate magnate, who keeps promising to build an impenetrable wall around the United States of America! Yes, really, dudes: Bravo!

The fact that there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties, is something that I thought till now has been common knowledge for at least several decades. But it also appears that there is almost nothing that remains of the West’s ‘left!

I kept thinking about what several people recently told me in Beijing, Moscow, Iran and Latin America: “most of the so-called ‘left’ in Europe and the United States actually hates Communists and all socialist countries. It hated the USSR and now it hates China and Venezuela. And Russian as well as Chinese people don’t trust them, anymore; they don’t see them as an ally, but as yet another aggressive threat.”

And now comes Donald Trump, the Messiah! I’m afraid that the consensus among US ‘progressives’ will soon be: in order to damage corporatism and to defeat Hillary Clinton, let’s vote for Donald Trump!” Or is this consensus already there?

Vote for a fascist, vote for someone so clearly, so openly a fascist, in order to defeat market fundamentalism.

I think: “Damn it! No way! Never!”

Fascism and imperialism are two sides of the same coin.

If you really have that neurotic tick that forces you to stick some piece of paper into a box, periodically, every few years, then go and vote for your cat or your neighbor’s bulldog. They’d do a much better job as President. If they are not on the ballot, just add them, with your pen or a marker, then stick the paper in and go home. And you’ll not have to face the judgment and verdict of history, a few years or decades later!

Oh, and please, do not forget: both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were fully on the side of their ‘small people’. They wanted them to recover their pride, to get well-paid jobs, all sorts of social benefits. German and Italian trains began to run on time. Hitler began building the legendary Autobahns, and he believed that each German family should own its own automobile. (Volkswagen is not called “the People”s Car” for nothing!).

Both Germany and Italy were to become the greatest countries on Earth.

There was just one tiny detail and, so to speak, a defect throwing a shadow on those ‘noble’ designs: for Germans and Italians to thrive, millions, even tens of millions of human beings had to vanish! They were to be bombed, torn to pieces, gassed, or burned alive. Or forced into abject domination. But it did not matter much, did it? As these people were only lower beings, nothing more.

So long as that white ‘chosen’ race, those ‘supermen’ and ‘superwomen’ got their benefits and pride back, no price was considered to be too high.

If Hilary Clinton gets elected, the world will be on fire. She has demonstrated her ruthlessness, her ability to destroy entire nations. She may even force China and Russia into a military conflict with the West. Corruption will flourish, and the horrific corporatism will continue ruling over the Planet. We know what is ahead!

But the horrors that the humanity would have to endure, if Donald Trump gets elected, are unimaginable. Although, ‘to his credit’, he is honest, and he is providing plenty of hints. Nobody, absolutely nobody who will go and vote for him in November, will be able to later say that he or she ‘did not know’.

Both the choices given to the voters by the US regime are appalling.

But the true choice should not be between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump, but between this profoundly sickening and defunct system, and something totally different and new!

The bottom line is: to vote for either of these two candidates would be unpatriotic, but above all, it would be thoroughly immoral!

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

During the occupation of Iraq U.S. intelligence and military services contracted CACI International Inc, a U.S. company in Virginia, to provide “intelligence services” in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. CACI employees were directly involved in torturing Iraqi prisoners.

The U.S. army recently contracted CACI for “intelligence analysis services” in Syria. The Syrian government has not invited or otherwise allowed U.S. military or its contractors to enter the country. Any such activities infringe on Syria’s sovereignty and are thereby in violation of international law.

The re-engagement of such a controversial company for services in the area boosts the recruitment appeal of the Islamic State.

A recent U.S. Department of Defense Contracts Press Announcement (Release No: CR-143-16, July 27, 2016) lists under the rubric “Army”:

Six3 Intelligence Solutions Inc., McLean, Virginia, was awarded a $ 9,578,964 modification (P00001) to contract W564KV-16-C-0058 for intelligence analysis services. Work will be performed in Germany, Italy, and Syria, with an estimated completion date of June 29, 2017.

CACI does business under the name Six3 Systems and Six3 Intelligence Solutions. The web-domain six3systems.com reroutes directly to www.CACI.com.

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The announcement was found by Micah Zenko.

As of 2014 CACI, aka Six3 Systems, was still accused of direct involvement in torture and interrogations in Abu Ghraib:

A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit against CACI International Inc by four former Iraqi detainees who claimed the U.S. defense contractor’s employees directed their torture at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
…
Writing for a unanimous three-judge 4th Circuit panel, Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan also said Congress has a “distinct interest” in not turning the United States into a “safe harbor” for torturers.
…
The lawsuit accused CACI employees who conducted interrogation and other services at Abu Ghraib of directing or encouraging torture, in part to “soften up” detainees for questioning, while managers were accused of covering it up.Photos depicting abuse of Abu Ghraib detainees emerged in 2004. Some detainees claimed they endured physical and sexual abuse, infliction of electric shocks, and mock executions.

The re-hiring of this company for services to U.S. forces against Syria and ISIS is of great propaganda benefit for the Islamic State. Some of those who endured treatment by CACI employees will join ISIS to take revenge for their suffering. Relatives of those who were tortured and humiliated by CACI personnal will feel urged to use this chance for retaliation. Islamists in other countries will find motivation in this repeat of “western” denigration of their (religious) honor.

Many leading figures of the Islamic State are former prisoners of U.S. military and intelligence in Iraq. Al-Jawlani, the head of al-Qaeda in Syria aka Jabhat al Nusra, is also a former U.S. prisoner in Iraq. Will these people meet familiar faces when they come into contact with CACI employees in Syria?

The question is not theoretical.

Islamic State media just released video from inside a camp in Jordan which shows U.S. personnal providing military and intelligence training to anti-Syrian-government “rebels”.

(via Anna Ahronheim)

Such training seems to include ideological indoctrination.

(via Hassan Ridha)

Publishing this video is a great Public Relation success for the Islamic State. It is another example of the direct benefit to IS from U.S. military and intelligence activities in and around Syria.

The publishing of the video suggests that the Islamic State penetrated -one way or another- a U.S. training camp in Jordan. Will the “intelligence services” provided by CACI in Syria likewise be open to Islamic State infiltration?

_—
Sidenote:

^*The contract series W564KV is handled by the 409th Contracting Support Brigade of the U.S. Army Contracting Command in Kaiserslautern, Germany. Other contracts in the series seem to relate to general facility management, probably for U.S. bases in Syria. A somewhat similar numbered contract (W564KV-12-C-0058) as the CACI one above was announced in 2012:

Lenoir City, Tenn., was awarded a $17,172,085 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the top secret security guard services. Work will be performed in Germany, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 27, 2017.

The release by Wikileaks of a trove of emails from high-ranking Democratic Party officials has confirmed what many Americans – both progressive and conservative – have suspected throughout this election cycle: that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) actively conspired against Bernie Sanders in an attempt to ensure the nomination for Hillary Clinton.

But it wasn’t simply party apparatchiks like the disgraced Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the recently resigned Chair of the DNC and close ally of Clinton, but also their trusted cronies in the corporate media who actively collaborated with DNC officials to ensure that nothing too critical of Hillary would make it into the Mighty Wurlitzer of contemptibly ‘respectable’ journalism.  Indeed, what the Wikileaks revelations expose to the world is the fact that there’s nothing democratic about the Democratic Party, or America’s alleged democracy in general.

More specifically however, the question that really must be asked is: why Hillary Clinton?  What is it about this woman that unites nearly the entirety of the political, financial, socio-cultural, and military establishment?  Is it really just hatred of Donald Trump?  Or is there something more insidious, something that makes Hillary the irresistible flame of belligerence and exceptionalism to which the corporate-imperialist moths are slavishly attracted?

From Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact

For months the sentinels of the liberal media fortress derided all allegations of a DNC conspiracy against Bernie Sanders and the millions of Americans who #FeelTheBern, caricaturing these accusations as no different from the Illuminati-Freemason-Rothschild-Lizard People.  Articles like Bernie Sanders Fans’ DNC ‘Collusion’ Conspiracy Theory is Embarrassing Garbage and Can we please stop with the Bernie Sanders conspiracy theories? were staples of the campaign once it became clear that the Berners were a real political force, and that the Sanders campaign could actually pose a threat to the establishment’s preferred proxy, Hillary Clinton.

And with each new article the level of condescension and derision seemed to increase to the point where Sanders’ supporters had been transformed into the embarrassingly clichéd tinfoil-hat wearers of Alex Jones land.  But here we are, just a few months later, and Hillary Clinton has knelt for her coronation as Queen of the imperial castle.  And in the midst of the insufferable Hollywood endorsements, the amnesiac revisionism, and the identitarian phantasmagoria, something amazing happened on the internet: the conspiracy theories were proven true.

Indeed, the Wikileaks emails show direct interventions against Bernie by the DNC.  For instance, in late May, just three weeks before the all-important California primary, a DNC staffer emailed DNC Communications Director, Luis Miranda, pitching him a story about Bernie’s campaign being “a mess.”  Specifically, the staffer wrote,

“Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess…It’s not a DNC conspiracy, it’s because they never had their act together.”

What is particularly damning about the email is not that Bernie’s campaign was disorganized (entirely plausible), but rather that DNC staffers and communications director were attempting to manufacture and propagate news stories with that narrative, rather than acting as the impartial party functionaries that they shrilly proclaim themselves to be.  In fact, corporate media outlets did indeed pick up parts of that narrative in the days and weeks leading up to the California primary, specifically the fact that Bernie’s campaign was poorly organized in terms of delegate education and other issues.

Even more egregious is the email from Communications Director Luis Miranda to a number of high-ranking DNC officials, including Wasserman-Schultz, in which he notes that the DNC was able to suppress key information from this New York Times article.  Miranda was pleased that he was “able to keep him from including more on the JVF [Joint Victory Fund], it has a mention in there, but between us and a conversation he had with Marc Elias he finally backed off from focusing too much on that.”

This information is quite damning as it’s clear that Miranda, the spokesman for the DNC, deliberately attempted to shield Clinton from media criticism over the highly dubious “joint fundraising venture” the Joint Victory Fund, which is essentially a Hillary-DNC fundraising machine.  While the JVF gets a passing mention in the article, there is no substantive examination of it, nor is there any context or comparison to the Bernie Sanders campaign whose fundraising was almost entirely based on small, individual contributions.  In contrast, JVF included on its list of donors the Pritzker Group, Saban Capital Group, and other major players in finance capital and industry.  Perhaps this information might have been valuable to the American public trying to decide whether to support Bernie or Hillary.

Or how about the Politico reporter who agreed to allow the DNC to review his article about Clinton’s fundraising before it was published?  Does this strike you as real journalism?  In an April 30, 2016 email, National Press Secretary and Deputy Communications Director Mark Paustenbach wrote to his boss Luis Miranda noting that Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel “gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors…Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”

In a sadly predictable, and grossly unethical, move, the DNC seems to have worked out deals with major media outlets that allowed them to censor corporate media stories about the Clinton campaign, or at the very least to slant them so as to make Clinton look like something less than the Voldemort of Wall Street and capital.

But it goes much further, and indeed gets even more unethical, than just collusion between corporate media and the DNC.  The emails also reveal attempts to smear Sanders with quite literally any information that might damage him in key primary states.  For instance, this email exchange between top DNC officials shows that they intended to “get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. [sic] He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”  Clearly, in Kentucky and West Virginia, the DNC wanted to use Sanders’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof, against him.  Such tactics are, to put it bluntly, reprehensible.

And of course we could go on and on with dozens of other emails demonstrating the level of collusion within the DNC, and with its media partners, to effectively undermine the Sanders campaign while propping up Clinton.  I guess those arrogant pundits who derisively referred to the “embarrassing conspiracy theories” have some ‘splaining to do.

Why, Exactly, Is Everyone #WithHer?

For veterans of US politics, it should be relatively obvious why Hillary Clinton has been the clear darling of the establishment from the beginning of the race.  And, considering the Democratic Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the financial elites in the US, it almost goes without saying why the DNC would carry water for the Clinton campaign.  Her record really speaks for itself.

Hillary Clinton is an unabashed warmonger, a woman who has demonstrated time and again her willingness to bomb, invade, and destroy nations all over the globe.  From championing her husband’s criminal bombing of Serbia, to supporting George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, to being the principal cheerleader for bombing and destroying Libya and Syria, Hillary’s devotion to the military-industrial complex and the mentality of the Cold War is beyond dispute.

While running for Senate in 2000, Clinton explicated her foreign policy outlook when, according the New York Times, “She cited American involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo as examples of foreign engagements she favored on moral and strategic grounds.” And, according to Hillary biographer Gail Sheehy, Clinton proudly proclaimed “I urged [Bill Clinton] to bomb [Serbia].”  One could be forgiven for thinking these are the smug, egomaniacal claims of a sociopath; they are, but they’re also the words of America’s likely next president.

But aside from simply delighting in the death and destruction she can rain down upon weaker nations, Hillary is also the standard-bearer for finance capital and Wall Street.  Her connections to Goldman Sachs and nearly every major bank make her statements about reining in Wall Street both laughable and deeply infuriating; there’s only so much cynicism a country can take.  So, wealthy benefactors like George Soros, the Pritzker family, Haim Saban, and many others fall over themselves to line up behind the First Woman PresidentTM just as they did behind The First Black PresidentTM.

And this point must not be understated.  Identity politics is one of the principal levers by which the Democratic Party keeps liberal America in line.  Never mind that The First Black PresidentTM expanded AFRICOM, killed the single most important African leader, continued the oppression and exploitation of millions of Africans all over the continent, presided over the rapid expansion of drone assassinations, and so much worse; forget all that, I mean, he’s black.  Similarly, Hillary is able to translate her gender into political currency, one that allows the Democratic Party to continue the charade that it is a party for everyone.

And of course, who could forget economic policy?  Clinton represents the best of what Wall Street has to offer.  She is a devout neoliberal, the high priestess of the Church of Free Trade.  She and her husband presided over the passage of NAFTA which has devastated millions of Mexican families while gutting the American industrial base, all the while making superprofits for Big Agribusiness, Big Retail, and big banks.

In effect, Clinton is quite similar to Obama in that both have an insatiable appetite for war and the economic orthodoxy of neoliberalism.  As such, both are the quintessential Democrats: political snake-charmers whose smiles and warm embraces hide the coldness of their hearts, whose devotion to the multicultural rainbow belies their deep hatred of the working class and poor.

And of course, it is imperialism abroad and neoliberalism at home that makes an establishment leader.  It is a reckless disregard for the rights of ordinary Americans, as well as those around the world, that makes one “Presidential.”  It is a deep sociopathy that truly demonstrates that a politician is ready for the office.  So, given that, it would seem that America is indeed #ReadyForHillary.

Longstanding US policy has no regard for human life.

High crimes committed globally, notably in its war theaters. Syria is in the eye of the storm, US aggression continuing against a sovereign independent state, now in its sixth year with no prospects for resolution.

On Friday, Damascus responded to US-led “coalition” airstrikes, killing or injuring nearly 100 civilians in the city of Manbij near Aleppo – Obama’s latest atrocity against a beleaguered people.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said Damascus “condemns in the strongest terms targeting innocent civilians and infrastructure by the so-called international coalition and (foreign-supported) armed terrorist groups,” citing its Foreign Ministry.

It demanded UN action to stop “attacks and atrocities committed against civilians, calling for bringing the perpetrators to justice.”

Commenting on Jabhat al-Nusra’s announcement of changing its name to Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, the ministry described it as a desperate attempt to erase its notorious track record of crimes and bloodletting.

The myth of so-called “moderate opposition” permits “overt support for terrorism roiling Syria and the world.”

US-led deadly airstrikes on civilians along with its death squad mercenaries reflect Washington’s longstanding imperial ruthlessness – raping and destroying countries into submission, puppet regimes replacing sovereign governance, aiming for hegemonic global dominance no matter the human cost.

Over half a million Syrian deaths attest to America’s barbarity – along with millions more in multiple other war theaters post-9/11 alone – a policy of endless carnage, appalling ruthlessness, no end to this in sight.

Separately, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said (US-supported) Jabhat al-Nusra renaming itself to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham won’t change Moscow’s policy to destroy the group entirely.

“(A)ttempts of terrorists to change their image are in vain,” the Ministry said. “No matter (what) it…call(s) itself, (it) has been and remains an illegal terrorist organization…”

It

“has no other aim but to create the so-called Islamic Caliphate through cruel and barbarous methods. Consistent fight against these fanatics will be continued with the support of the world community until they are fully destroyed.”

No so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria exist. All anti-government forces are imported death squads. Operating with foreign support makes conflict resolution unattainable.

It’s time for Syria with the support of Russia to act decisively in waging actions on all terrorist elements in Syria, stepping up operations to eliminate them all – the only way to restore peace and stability.

Diplomacy hasn’t worked and won’t because Washington wants war, not peace until Assad is forcibly ousted.

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 atsjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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Turkey is a NATO member, the second largest militarily.

It hosts 50 nuclear weapons at a base about hundred kilometres from the Syrian border – ISIS territory. Each of them with a capacity of up to six times a  Hiroshima bomb.

Great to have them there now, right?

It’s been secular, quite West-oriented, Muslim, European and modern. Different. Diverse. And has wanted to join the EU.

But it was told by Brexit Cameron that it may take more than 3000 years and by French warrior President Sarkozy that it just doesn’t belong.

However, the EU could use it and paid it to get rid of its war-created refugee problem. It pledged its decency and humanity with Turkey.

It’s a very close ally of the U.S. too, but with warming relations to Russia.

Then it falls apart in some kind of strange coup and in 5 days about 60,000 people are purged or arrested, 2300 institutions closed down. One-man rule by decree.

More troubles and violence can be expected down the road. Who will be put in all these people’s place?

But no particular outcry, some ‘worries’ expressed but mostly endorsement of the dictatorial leader.

Imagine the headlines and the words Western politicans and human-rights cheerleaders would speak if it had been Russia or Iran.

No mention of suspension from NATO, or of sanctions.

Don’t worry too much: NATO protects freedom, human rights, democracy and peace as it always has. Oh really?

So of course, it’s stability and militarism before human rights, democracy and freedom. Particularly when a lot is at stake and the strongman is our strongman.

Or perhaps not so much longer?

Jan Oberg

“Labour Party in Turmoil!”  “Is Labour going to split?”  “The Labour Party is increasingly anti-Semitic”  “45 female Labour MPs tell Corbyn ‘Abuse is in your name’”  “Eagle accuses Corbyn supporters of ‘bullying’ Labour rebels”  “The Breaking of the Labour Party”  “Jeremy Corbyn’s deselection threat means Labour’s civil war is now a fight to the death”….

The strident anti-Corbyn headlines are endless.  Almost every day a new headline drums the message home: Jeremy Corbyn must go.  So many ‘false’ stories.  Take the story of Corbyn ‘threatening rebel MPs with deselection’.  When he launched his leadership campaignCorbywas asked if he could move to deselect unsupportive MPs.  His concise answer was that if proposed constituency boundary changes come into force before the next general election, “there will be a full selection process with every constituency.”

That is the way the rules work, and no, he doesn’t favour changing the rules.  He acknowledged that some Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) may well want to replace their current MP with one whose views support their own.  He also later pointed out that, as Leader, he has no power to intervene, one way or the other.  That is also how the rules work.  Cue a whole set of headlines based on Corbyn’s ‘threats’.

How the very democratically elected Labour leader keeps his cool under this constant onslaught of verbal abuse and false smears being fed into the right-wing media from the very MPs who should be supporting him is a wonder.

His reaction to the nastiness has been called Zen-like. As a person who believes in peaceful dialogue and who never resorts to threats and bullying, he lets it all wash over him, although he did admit to a trade unionist at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival that he worried about the effect it might have on his family.

He’s right to worry.  The pressure will only get worse in the next few weeks as the ‘New Labour’ MPs who are trying so desperately to get rid of Corbyn feed the mainstream media with false stories about him and his many supporters, some of whom have been labelled as dangerous thugs.

The person to whom Corbyn spoke later told a Momentum meeting that she had been approached by the BBC – the reporter wanted to interview Corbyn.  He also wanted to speak to an anti-Corbyn person – ‘for balance’.  Was there an anti-Corbyn person there he could speak to?  At Tolpuddle, the birthplace of modern unionism?  A vain hope.

Stories have been fed to the media from the day Corbyn was elected as leader last September.  Since the pre-arranged and unsuccessful attempt to oust him via a ‘vote of no confidence’, false stories have come thick and fast.

The willing media have been used as a tool by the remnants of Tony Blair’s New Labour.  Media Lens documented how very biased the angles of the headlines and articles have been in their efforts to belittle and smear a politician who is known and respected for his honesty and principles.  The London School of Economics published a damning study into the media coverage following Corbyn’s election last year.

It is a sorry and dirty tale.  As the press refused to even publish details of Corbyn’s tireless travelling across the country, making speech after speech asking people to back Remain in the recent EU referendum, his enemies among Labour MPs were able to dishonestly claim he ‘had not done enough’ to prevent the vote for Brexit.

If the media even bothered to report Corbyn’s reaction to the accusations, it was misreported.  Craig Murray posted a powerful piece giving examples of events where the media reported an entirely different story to what actually happened, usually involving violence and ‘thuggish’ behaviour, if not sexist, misogynist or racist as well.

It really is time that the elite, the politicians and the media caught up with the fact that now just about everything gets filmed by the public on their phones, and they can only deny the evidence by refusing it a space in their papers and on their TVs.

Having been democratically elected, with the largest mandate any UKleader has received, Corbyn refused to resign his position, despite all the pressure from his ‘fellow’ MPs.  Up springs a leadership challenge in the person of Angela Eagle, who then came out with a story that a brick had been thrown through the window of her constituency office (see Craig Murray above).

Eagle, who looks set to be deselected by her constituency party at the next general election, made other mistakes, much to the amusement of the ‘Corbynistas’.  Then another challenger appeared – Owen Smith.  Owen who?  Few Labour members were familiar with the name, but surprisingly, Eagle stepped back and Smith became the sole challenger.

The CLPs are also having a difficult time.  They are expected to nominate their preferred candidate for the leadership election.  But, as Croydon North demonstrates, many CLP anti-Corbyn committees are doing their best to exclude pro-Corbyn members from taking part in the votes.

When Brightonand Hove CLP held its AGM recently it elected a new executive committee, which happened to be pro-Corbyn.  The next day Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) annulled the vote and suspended the branch.  It has also, undemocratically, suspended all constituency meetings across the country until after the leadership election.  Many CLPs are reported to be holding unofficial meetings at the local pub!

A Labour peer, who claims to have supported Corbyn, now says she’s surprised by his lack of energy in shadow cabinet meetings.  Probably because he is working harder and going to many more meetings than she does.  He has also been accused of not having any policies.  In response, former Labour MP Chris Williamson offered this:

His commitment that a future Labour Government would build council houses and regulate private sector rents struck a chord with millions affected by the housing crisis. 

His pledge to scrap tuition fees and reintroduce student maintenance grants was greeted with acclaim by everyone who is dismayed by the commodification of higher education. 

His promise to renationalise the railways and take a stake in our utilities is hugely popular with the vast majority of the British public who are sick of being ripped-off by these privatised industries. 

His determination to substantially increase the minimum wage, invest in hi-tech manufacturing and stop corporations offshoring skilled and semi-skilled jobs is acknowledged as plain common sense. 

His guarantee that a future Labour government would repeal the anti-trade union legislation, clamp down on tax evasion and stop British dependencies being used as tax havens would improve the living standards of millions. 

Funnily enough, Owen Smith appears to have stolen most of them and is now claiming them for his own, as though people wouldn’t know they’d been there all along.  As the Telegraph notes:

The lack of vision in Owen Smith’s campaign means he has had to borrow someone else’s: Jeremy Corbyn.

If this wasn’t enough to cope with, a funder of the Labour Party, a billionaire called Michael Foster (perhaps one of those that Peter Mandelson felt intensely relaxed about being filthy rich) went to court, claiming that the NEC took the wrong decision when it ruled that Corbyn, as the current leader, should automatically be on the ballot paper.

It is worth noting that Foster gave £400,000 to Labour.  But in just two days 183,000 people registered (and paid a fee of £25 to do so) so they could vote for Corbyn.  Many of these were full members of the party who had been denied the vote because they hadn’t been members for long enough – another shameful and undemocratic attempt by the establishment to block Corbyn.

Through these people, many of whom could ill afford the fee, Labour has just been given over £4.5 million.  Beat that, Mr Foster.

Foster lost his case and Corbyn remains on the ballot paper, but one wonders quite what the anti-Corbyn brigade were hoping for.  Having tried to force Corbyn into resigning, they went for a leadership contest.  None of the leaders of the coup could have stood against Corbyn.  They are still too closely linked to Tony Blair and needed someone safer.

With Eagle gone, their ‘safe’ candidate Owen Smith is looking every inch the loser.  Apart from having been a lobbyist for Pfizer and not having much experience as an MP, he also has a long history of making misogynistic remarks – hardly a vote winner except with fellow misogynists.

Had Corbyn been removed from the ballot, the old New Labourites would have automatically found themselves with a leader that probably no one wants.  As it is, if Corbyn wins and remains as leader, they have threatened to force another leadership election next year.  And the year after that.  In fact, they appear quite willing to destroy the party just to rid Westminster of Corbyn.

What is it about this man that so frightens them?  He is not perfect, but perhaps it is simply that his principles are so clear, so unbendable or unbreakable, that he makes these self-important people all look small – which, in competition with someone of his stature, they are.

But what is even more worrying from their point of view is that when this aging, non-egotistical and upright politician speaks, he makes every individual in the huge crowds that he attracts feel and look big.  And every day there are more people joining the crowd.  Labour now has well over half a million members, more than all the other UK parties combined.

People don’t follow Corbyn because they believe he will change the world for them, but because he makes them believe that they can change the world.  And they’ll make a start by changing the Labour Party.

When I think of the recent developments in the USA (Dallas shooting, Orlando shooting) and Europe (Nice, murdered priest, Germany shooting) I get this unpleasant feeling that something is not quite right.

For one thing, the perpetrators are absolutely ridiculous: pseudo-Muslims who turn out to be drinking homosexuals, ex-patients of mental institutions – the kind of people I call “overnight Muslims”: they all make darn sure to say Allahu Akbar a number of times, but other than that, they have no sign of Islam at all.

In fact, far from being trained Daesh fighters, they are all losers with weak personalities. Exactly the kind of people the special services (and religious sects) like to prey upon because they are weak and easy to manipulate. Oh yes, I know, the good folk a Daesh do end up claiming that the perpetrator is one of them, but that really proves nothing (except maybe that Daesh is desperate to increase its notoriety).

I have no proof of that, of course, but I am getting the very strong feeling that somebody is putting a great deal of effort to scare the bejesus out of the TV-watching crowd. But why? Why would anybody go to the effort to create a completely fictional threat?

And should we really dismiss all the innumerable witnesses who speak of “more than one shooter”? What about the absolutely ridiculous police “overkill” when hundreds of policemen are sent in to deal with one single shooter. Does that not strike you as odd? Am I the only one with the feeling that what is shown to us is a carefully choreographed show?

Roman Yanushevsky / Shutterstock.com

Then there is the canard about the Islamic threat. Okay, it is true that all these Islamo-terrorists told the cops, and anybody else willing to listen, that they are killing infidels for the greater glory of God. That reminds me of the passports helpfully found in NY on 9/11 (and at the Charlie-Hebdo attacks) or how the alleged Islamic-terrorists of 9/11 left copies of the Quran in the bars were they were getting “lap dances”.

The problem with all that nonsense is that there is exactly zero real evidence that any of these terrorists had any real Islamic education or beliefs. Besides, even if every single one of them turned out to be a deeply religious and pious Muslim, that would hardly prove anything. The IRA was “Roman Catholic” and yet nobody spoke of a “Catholic threat”. True, there is a very real threat to the entire Middle-East from the Daesh crazies (yes, the very same ones whom the US wants the Russians to stop bombing), but there is no evidence whatsoever of any real subordination/coordination between the Takfiris in the Middle-East and the perpetrators of the recent mass murders in the USA and Europe.

The cui bono, of course, immediately points to those interests who desperately want the prop-up the shaky “Islamic threat” myth: the Zionists, of course, but also the Neocon elites in the USA and the EU.

Think of it: their great hope was that Russia would “invade” the Donbass (or, even better, the entire Ukraine) against the Nazi crazies in the Neocons put in power in Kiev. Such a Russian move would have been used as a “proof” that the evil revanchist Russkies are about to rebuild the Soviet Union, invade Eastern Europe and maybe even drive their tanks to the English channel. And if enough people would buy the “Russian threat” theory, they would also have to accept larger military budgets (to further fatten the US MIC) and more US forces deployed in Eastern Europe (where they would provide a much needed, and sometimes only, source of income). Then all the internal problems of Europe could be blamed on, or at least eclipsed by, the Russian threat (in the “Putin wants a Brexit” style). But that irritating Putin did not take the bait and now Europe is stuck without a credible threat with which to terrorize people. NATO, of course, and its prostitute-colonies in the Baltics and Poland, likes to pretend that a Russian invasion is imminent, but nobody really believes this. According to some polls, even the people in the Baltics are dubious about the reality of a Russian threat (forget Poland: a country with a national hero like Pilsudski is a hopeless case).

But then, almost at the same moment when the Neocons came to realize that the Russians were not taking the bait, the steady flow of refugees coming from the Middle-East and Africa suddenly sharply increased, courtesy of the mayhem and chaos created by the Neocon policies in the Middle-East. How long do you think it took the rulers of the Empire to realize the fantastic opportunity this influx of refugees had just created for them?

First, this wave of refugees creates a series of major social problems which all could be used to provide distractions from the massive credibility crisis and economic woes of the EU. No matter how bad the economic indicators are, you can always “hide them” behind a headline like “Refugee rapes 79yo woman at German cemetery” (true case, just click on the link to see for yourself).

Second, just at the time when the ruling comprador elites of the EU are threatened by popular discontent, the refugee crisis creates the perfect pretext to adopt emergency legislation and, possibly, introduce martial law.

Third, the worse the crisis in Europe becomes, the better it is for the US Dollar which becomes the safe(r) currency to run to.

Fourth the more military units, as opposed to regular police forces, are deployed in Europe, the more the Europeans will get used to the notion that “only the military can protect us”.

Fifth, if, at the end of the day, the EU really tanks and riots, uprisings and chaos spread – guess who will show up to “save Europe yet again”? That’s right – Uncle Sam and NATO. Pretty good for an otherwise illegitimate leftover from the Cold War, no?

Ideally, the European population should become polarized between, on one hand, those who pretend they like the refugees are no problem at all, and those who blame everything on them. The more polarized the society becomes, the more there will be a “need” to keep law and order.

Does that all look familiar to you?

Yes, of course, this is also exactly what is happening in the USA with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

While there are plenty of immigrants in the USA, they are mostly Hispanics and Asians who adapt rather well to US society. The good news for the US “deep state” is that Blacks in the USA can very much accomplish the same function as the refugees do in Europe: they are a vocal, mostly deeply alienated minority, with a great deal of pent-up anger against the rest of society which can very easily be set-off to create riots and commit crimes. It is also rather easy to find a few crazies amongst these Blacks to start murdering policemen (the ideal symbol of the oppressive White establishment) and create a sense of crisis acute enough to justify the use of police, National Guard and, potentially, military forces to restore and uphold “law and order”.

Is it really a coincidence that the US Presidential elections features two extremely polarizing figures like Hillary and Trump and that low-levels of violence have already been triggered by the hysterically anti-Trump propaganda of the US corporate media? Just imagine for one second what could happen in the USA if a “lone gunman” was to kill either Hillary or Trump? The society would literally explode and law and order would have to be “restored”.

The modalities might be different, but in both the EU and the USA we now see heavily armed and generally militarized forces in the streets to “protect” us from some exotic and scary threat.

Might that have something to do with the fact that the ruling elites are absolutely hated by the vast majority of Europeans and Americans? Of course it does!

I am convinced that what is taking place is the gradual suppression of the civil society under the pretext of protecting it – us – from some very scary threat. I am also convinced that part of this plan is to polarize our society as much as possible to create civil strife and to hide the real systemic and structural problems of our completely dysfunctional society and discredited and illegitimate political order.

The panem et circenses (bread and games) only works in a society capable of providing enough wealth to its people to enjoy them. But when an Empire is agonized, when its military cannot win wars anymore, when its leader is being ridiculed, when its currency is being gradually weakened and even replaced and when its power is not feared anymore, then the Empire becomes unable to provide the minimal conditions needed to keep its subjects quiet and obedient. At this point the choice becomes simple: either find an external enemy or, at least, identify an internal one. This time around, the AngloZionist found what they think is the perfect combo: a diffuse/vague external threat (Islam) and an easily identifiable internal “carrier” threat (refugees in Europe, Blacks in the USA). The fact that the US government has been planning for various kind of emergency rule or martial law situations for years is not much of a secret (see: National Security Presidential Directive 51 and National Continuity Policy Implementation Plan or Rex84 ) but now there is also evidence that the Germans are also planning for it. In fact, we can be confident that they are all doing it right now as we speak.

The last time around, when the Empire felt the need to regain control over Europe and prevent the election of anti-US political parties to power they engaged in the notoriousGLADIO false flag campaign to neutralize the “Communist threat” (see full documentary here). It appears that the same people are doing the same thing again, but this time against the putative “Islamic threat”. And just to make sure that the common people really freak out, it appears that the AngloZionists have settled on a rather counter-intuitive plan:

1) officially (politicians) condemn any anti-Islamic rhetoric

2) unofficially (media, public figures) warn of an threat of Islamic extremism

3) take some highly visible but totally useless measures (TSA, anti-terror training) to prepare for an Islamic attack

4) covertly but actively foster and support Daesh-like Takfirism in the Middle-East and oppose and subvert those who, like the Russians, the Iranians and the Syrian, really fight it on a daily basis.

What does such an apparently illogical and self-defeating plan achieve? Simple! Itmaximizes fear and polarizes society.

That kind of artificial polarization is nothing new. For example, this is why those who hate Obama call him a socialist (or even a communist) while those who hate Trump call him a fascist (when in reality both Obama and Trump are just the figureheads of different capitalist factions of the same 1% elite).

What our imperial overlords really want is for us to either fight each other or, at least, fight windmills. Look at the American public – it is totally obsessed with non-issues like homosexual marriage, gun control vs “active shooters”, Black Lives Matter vs cops, and the time tested pro-life vs anti-abortion protests. To some minority of Americans these issues do matter, I suppose, but for the vast majority of Americans these are total non-issue, meaningless crap which does not affect them in any way other than through the corporate media. This really reminds me of the Titanic’s orchestra playing while the ship was sinking: the Empire is cracking at all its seams, there is a very real chance of a nuclear war with Russia and we are seriously discussing whether trannies should pee in male or female toilets when in the Target store. This is crazy, of course, but this is hardly coincidental. This is how our leaders want us: terrified, confused and, above all, distracted.

Frankly, I am pessimistic for the near to mid-term future. When I see how easily the “Islamic threat” canard has been bought not only by official propagandists but even by otherwise mostly rational and educated people, I see that 9/11 has taught us very little. Just like a bull in a bullfight we are still willing to go after any red rag put before our noses regardless of who is actually holding that rag or actually making us bleed.

The good news is that regardless of our gullible passivity the Empire is coming down, maybe not as fast as some of us would wish, but fast enough to really worry our rulers. Look at the Israelis – they have already read the writing on the wall and are now in the process of changing patrons, hence their newfound big friendship with Russia – a marriage of convenience for both sides, entered into with both sides holding their noses. Ditto for Erdogan who has apparently decided that neither the EU nor the US could be considered reliable protectors. Even the Saudis have tried, however clumsily and crudely, to get the Russians on their side.

For the time being the “Islamic threat” show will continue, as will the “active shooters”, Black Lives Matter and all the rest of the program brought to us by the Empire. False flags will contiune to flutter in great numbers in the Empire’s hot air.

This video was aired on Russia’s State TV Network “Russia 1”.   Click the image to view with complete English subtitles

Click image to view video on vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/174777588

The Democratic Party that once was concerned with workers’ rights, the elderly, civil rights, and the constitutional protections of America liberty no longer exists. As the just completed Democratic presidential primaries and the Democratic presidential convention have clearly demonstrated, the United States now has two Republican parties in service to the One Percent.

The organized Democrats–the Democratic National Committee–have shown themselves to be even more venal and corrupt than the Republicans. Leaked emails document that the Democratic National Committee conspired with the Hillary campaign in order to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. It is clear that Sanders was the choice of Democratic Party voters for president, but the nomination was stolen from him by vote fraud and dirty tricks.

The DNC and the media whores have tried to discredit the incriminating emails by alleging that the leaked emails resulted from a plot by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in behalf of “Putin’s American agent,” Donald Trump. “A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin,” as the presstitute scum put it.

This diversionary tactic has not worked. Not even Americans are stupid enough to fall for it.

Consequently, the corrupt “leader” of the DNC had to resign and was unable to deliver her speech at the nominating convention from fear of being booed off the stage.

Sanders’ supporters have abandoned Hillary and the fake “Democratic Party.” Probably most of them will vote for the Green Party candidate.

The organized Republicans–the Republican National Committee–and the zionist neoconservatives wanted to block Donald Trump from the nomination just as the DNC blocked Sanders, but could not. The neoconservatives are organizing for Hillary as she is their warmonger and Trump says he is not, but as the Presidential contest is really a contest between the two Republican parties about which gets to be the whore for the One Percent, the RNC, impressed with Hillary’s lack of voter support, seems to be sticking with Trump. Better to be a well-paid whore than to be out in the cold.

In the coming presidential election, the outcome will probably be determined by whether the powerful oligarchic interest groups decide whether Trump is an actual threat or whether they can cosy up to him and rope him in by appointing his government.

Trump’s disability is that no matter how able an individual is, that person cannot simultaneously make themselves a multi-billionaire and be knowledgeable of economic and foreign policy issues. The bald fact is that Trump, if he becomes president, does not know whom to appoint in order to have the support from his government to effect the changes for which his supporters hope he stands.

When a person becomes President, that person doesn’t suddenly become an encyclopedia with full knowledge. The President is dependent on the information flows from his government. If those information flows support the interests of Wall Street, the corrupt “banks too big to fail,” the military-security complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and the extractive industries (energy, mining, timber), the President’s decisions will support these material interests.

Donald Trump is the American people’s choice, because he is opposed to the offshoring of American jobs–a corporate practice that has enriched the One Percent at the expense of the American middle class.

Donald Trump is the American people’s choice, because he opposes the fabricated, gratuitous conflict with Russia. Even Americans understand that taking war to a major nuclear power will not end well.

Donald Trump is the American people’s choice because he realizes that NATO–an organization whose purpose disappeared 25 years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of the coup against Gorbachev by extreme elements of the Soviet Communist Party–now serves as a vehicle and cover for Washington’s aggressions, which are war crimes under the international statutes that Washington created. Washington’s wars benefit some of the One Percent at the expense of both the 99 Percent and millions of innocent peoples in many countries.

What will happen now is that the presstitutes will demonize Donald Trump even more than they have demonized Vladimir Putin. The scum presstitutes will do everything that they can possibly do to make a vote for Trump into an act of treason against America.

Now that the presstitutes have learned that they can tell the most blatant lies–Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasions–without being held accountable, they know that they can lie about Trump.

And they will. To the hilt.

But the presstitutes have lost credibility. A person has to be an imbecile to believe a word that they say.

“Progressives” will wander off the track. They will be turned off by Trump’s stand on immigration, which is where the American people stand. “Progressives” will be worried about whether the ‘fascist” Trump will persecute transgender and homosexual people or revoke the right of women to abort the unborn. To “progressives” this will seem all important as Washington and its NATO vassals hurl the world into nuclear war.

Neither can any intelligence be expected from the defunct American left-wing. The American left-wing supports the official story of 9/11, the excuse for the last 15 years of illegal wars and the American Police State. To find the American left-wing totally allied with the official explanation of what is in reality a false flag event, committed in order that the neoconservatives would have their new Pearl Harbor in order to invade the Middle East, is demonstrable proof that the American left-wing is irrelevant.

The American left interprets 9/11 and subsequent false flag events as oppressed peoples striking back at their oppressors. The emotional satisfaction of this takes the impotent American left-wing out not only of action but of relevance in commentary. The American left-wing has become an asset of the enemy–the neoconservatives who control policy in Washington.

So, where do we stand? The answer is that we are closer to nuclear annihilation than ever before. I know of what I speak. I held the highest security clearances. I was a member of a secret committee that enabled President Reagan to end the Cold War.

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin is doing everything he can possibly do to avoid the nuclear war that the crazed American neoconservatives are bringing to humanity. For his efforts in behalf of planet Earth he is demonized 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year after year. For simply stating facts, I am described by the presstitutes as “an apologist for Putin.”

The endless lies about Russia have convinced the Russian media that Washington is mobilizing its NATO vassals for an attack on Russia.

Read the transcripts to this Russian media broadcast.

Click image to view video:

https://vimeo.com/174777588

If you aren’t scared after absorbing this Russian news broadcast, you are stupid beyond belief. The message is clear: the West has declared war on Russia but is trying to keep Russia off guard by denying it.

The video of the Russian news broadcast also shows the dismissive way the Russian media was treated at the recent NATO conference in Poland. The non-entity representatives of the non-entity countries of Latvia, which has been ruthlessly looted by the West, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland, and the Ukraine representative either refuse to speak to the Russian media or use the interview to repeat Washington’s false accusations against Russia. These imbeciles insulting Russia are representatives of countries that Russia could destroy in a few minutes. If these idiots think Washington could save them, they are as stupid as the Polish colonels who thought that the British guarantee in March 1939 meant anything and could save Poland from the rash action of sticking Poland’s fingers in Hitler’s eye. This Polish stupidity provoked by the stupid British set off World War II with the British and French declaration of war against Germany, thus consigning Poland to Soviet rule for a half century. Some guarantee! The imbecile Chamberlain who wanted peace started WWII with Britain’s worthless “guarantee.”

Does it make you feel safe that the arrogant warmongering imbeciles in Washington have convinced a nuclear power the equal of the United States that America is going to attack?

Moreover, Russia is a nuclear power allied with another nuclear power, China, which has had enough of Washington’s imbecilic provocations. Are you willing for “your” government to lead your future into nuclear war with two nuclear powers?

Here we Americans are going into a presidential election and the overpowering fact of our time–that Washington is threatening humanity with nuclear war–is not a subject for discussion! What is the matter with us Americans? Are we stupid beyond all belief? We sit stupidly, thinking that issues of no importance are the most important issues of our time while “our” insane government provokes nuclear war. Have any people in history failed their obligation to this extent? If so, who?

My case rests. There is no countervailing evidence against the fact that unadulterated evil rules the West and is driving the world to extinction. Western democracy is a total failure. Democracy could not prevent the crazed warmonger Hillary from presidential nomination despite the opposition of the American people.

How long can Russia, and China, wait before they conclude that they have to pre-empt the coming attack from Washington? Does anyone, even stupid Americans, think that once Russia and China are convinced that they are targets for attack that they will just sit there and await the attack?

Do peoples as guilty of dereliction of duty as Western peoples are have any right to survive?

Leading up to Monday’s Democratic Party convention, Hillary chose Blue Dog Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her VP. This was followed by the Wikileaks release of Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mail files showing it acting as the Clinton Campaign Committee even to the point of using the same lawyers as her own campaign to oppose Bernie Sanders.

The response across the Democratic neocon spectrum, from Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post to red-baiting Paul Krugman and the Sunday talk shows it was suggested that behind the Wikileaks to release DNC e-mails was a Russian plot to help elect Trump as their agent. Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul lent his tattered reputation to claim that Putin must have sponsored the hackers who exposed the DNC dirty tricks against Bernie.

The attack on Trump was of course aimed at Sanders. At first it didn’t take off. Enough delegates threatened to boo DNC head (and payday-loan lobbyist) Debbie Wasserman Schultz off stage if she showed her face at the podium to gavel the convention to order. The down-note would have threatened the “United Together” theme, so she was forced to resign. But Hillary rewarded her loyalty by naming her honorary chairman of her own presidential campaign! If you’re loyal, you get a pay-off. The DNC was doing what it was supposed to do. No reform seems likely.

The Democratic machine orchestrated a media campaign to distract attention by attributing the leaks were to a Russian plot to undermine American democracy (as if the e-mails did not show how undemocratic the DNC had operated in stacking the primaries). A vote against Hillary would be a vote for Trump – and a vote for Trump would really be for Putin. And as Hillary had explained earlier, Putin = Hitler. The media let it be known that attacking Wasserman Schultz – and by extension, Hillary’s neocon policies – makes one a Russian dupe. This theme colored the entire convention week.

Endorsing Hillary’s presidential bid on Monday evening, Sanders joined in the chorus that this November will pit Good against Evil – or as Ray McGovern put it on RT’s Cross Talk, at least proxies for Netanyahu vs. Putin. Wall Street Senator Chuck Schumer went on TV to heave a sigh of relief that the party was indeed united together.

Many Sanders’ supporters felt no obligation to follow his obeisance. Many walked out after he closed Tuesday’s state-by-state roll call by throwing his support behind Clinton. Others chanted “Lock Her Up”.

VP Kaine as Hillary’s stand-in if she’s indicted or seems unelectable

The potential “Hillary Republicans” who are turning away from Trump – whose ranks include Mike Bloomberg, the neocon Kagan family (Robert and Victoria Nuland) and William Kristol – far outnumber the Sanders supporters who may stay home or vote for Jill Stein on the Green Party ticket. Hillary sees more votes (and certainly more campaign contributions and future “speaking fees”) from the Koch Brothers, George Soros, Wall Street, Saudi Arabia and the corporatist Chamber of Commerce.

Kaine recently has fought to “free” small and medium-sized banks from being subject to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. He has long supported the TPP, deregulation of Wall Street, and most everything that Sanders opposes. Appointed as DNC head by President Obama in 2008, he dismantled Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy, not bothering to fight Republicans in the South and other solid Republican states. His move let them elect governors who gerrymandered their voting districts after the 2010 census.

The DNC designated these “neglected” states to come first in the presidential
primaries. They were the ones that Hillary won. Sanders won most of the swing states and those likely to vote Democratic. That made him the party’s strongest nominee – obliging the DNC to maneuver to sideline him. His criticism of big donors and Citizens United threatens to dry up the source of funding not only for Hillary but also for the DNC. They are going after the money – whose chief providers are Wall Street, neoliberal corporatists and New Cold War neocons.

Bernie’s campaign targeted Wall Street and corporate deregulation (the essence of TTP and TTIP) as the key to the One Percent’s monopolization of income and wealth since Obama’s post-2008 sacrifice of the economy on the altar of rescuing banks and their bondholders. That is why the Wall Street’s Donor Class that controls the Democratic Party machine want to discourage new voter enrollment and turnout. The last thing they want is an influx of new voters advocating real reform. Millennial newcomers are more progressive, born into a generation that has no opportunity to obtain jobs and housing as easily as their parents. So it’s best to keep out independents in favor of the old-time voters with brand loyalty to Democrats.

Demonizing Trump for saying what Bernie Sanders has been saying

Trump made his quip about Russia in what actually was an eloquent and funny press conference.[1] The media took this out of context to depict him as urging the Russians to hack into our e-mails. What he actually said was that if Russia – or China, or somebody “sitting in his bed” – did indeed read Hillary’s State Department and Clinton Foundation dealings, they should do the world a favor and release them to reveal her self-dealing.

Trump is right in saying that there has not really been a recovery for the Rust Belt or for the 99 Percent. Hillary brazens it out by claiming that Obama’s neoliberal economics have helped wage-earners, despite the debt deflation blocking recovery. She promises to continue his policies (backed by his same campaign funders).

That would seem to be a losing strategy for this year’s election – unless the Democrats gain control of the electronic voting machines, especially in Ohio. But the Republicans may decide to throw the election to Hillary, who is fortunate to have Donald Trump as her opponent. Demonized as Putin’s “Siberian candidate,” he has become the Democrats’ unifying force: “Hillary isn’t Trump.”

That’s what voting for the “lesser evil” means. Hillary’s message is: “Even though we support TPP and a New Cold War, at least you’ll have a woman at the helm. Anyway, you have nowhere else to go, because the other side is even more evil!” Her logic is that (1) if you criticize Hillary, you’re supporting Trump; (2) Trump is the Siberian candidate; hence (3) Criticism of Hillary, NATO’s New Cold War escalation or the TPP’s anti-labor treaty and financial deregulation is pro-Russian and hence anti-American.

All that strategists for the One Percent need to do is fund an even worse party platform to the right of the Democrats. So the choice will be between Evil A (economic evil with ethnic and sexual tolerance) and Evil B (without such tolerance).

It doesn’t have to be this way. But Sanders gave up, not feeling up to the task. Having mocked him as a socialist, Hillary is acting as the Joe McCarthy of the 2010s, mobilizing a wave of commie bashing against her Republican opponent.

On Monday leading up to the convention, the Democratic Party’s cable channel MSNBC kept juxtaposing pictures of Trump and Putin. Criticizing Hillary’s neocon stance supporting Ukraine’s military coup is depicted as support of Russia – while other commentators followed President Obama claiming that criticism of TPP means making China the new leader of Asia. The message is that criticizing NATO’s adventurism risks being called a Soviet – I mean, Russian – puppet.

Bernie’s dilemma – and that of other would-be reformers of the Democratic Party

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s I heard labor leaders ask whether there really was nowhere to go except the Democratic Party. Most who joined got co-opted. Instead of moving the Democratic Party to the left, its leadership machine corrupted labor, and in due course the anti-war movement and socialists who joined hoping to move it to the left.

What then is Bernie’s plan to save his followers from being forced to make one compromise after another? The party machine demonizes policies with which Hillary’s neocons disagree, and demand support of NATO escalation and Obama’s (and Hillary’s and Kaine’s) underlying support of the TPP on the pretense that this will help rather than hurt labor. Hillary has denounced Bernie’s socialized medicine on the ground that it is utopian (as if Canada and the eurozone are anti-capitalist utopias).

While Trump sent out tweets and gave interviews about how Hillary and Debbie have screwed Bernie’s supporters, Sanders made no parallel attempt to ask why progressive Democrats didn’t applaud Trump’s assertions that he would wind down confrontation with Russia, that NATO is obsolete and needs restructuring, and his opposition to the TPP. Bernie didn’t seize the opportunity to mobilize non-partisan support for their critique of neoliberal economic policies. He cast his lot with Hillary, contradicting his claim during the primaries that she was not qualified to be president.

After Sanders ended Monday evening’s opening by endorsing Hillary Clinton, the MSNBC camera crew went down to talk to his supporters. They eagerly asked the first one who she would vote for, after hearing Bernie’s endorsement. “For Jill Stein,” the lady said, explaining that there was no way she would vote for Hillary.

The next interview produced a similar result. “I just don’t trust her,” the Bernie supporter said. A third said the same thing. The MSNBC booth tried to save face by assuring viewers that everyone they talked to had said they were going to vote for Hillary. But it sounded hollow. I suspect that viewers didn’t trust the TV media any more than they trusted Hillary.

The problem facing Hillary’s rivals is that she has wrapped herself in the legacy of President Obama. Having shied from criticizing the president, Sanders and his supporters are facilitating what may be a Lame Duck session sellout after the November election. My fear is that Obama will try to “save his legacy” by joining with the Republicans to drive through the TPP, and also may escalate the New Cold War with Russia and China so as to make it easier for Hillary to sign onto these moves.

Selecting Tim Kaine as her running mate means neoliberal, pro-TPP business as usual. Hillary didn’t oppose TPP. She just said she would put in rhetoric saying that its “purpose” was to raise wages – whereas most voters have shown themselves to be smart enough to realize that the effect will be just the opposite.

Yet Sanders endorsed her. Evidently he hopes to keep his position within the Party chairing the Senate Minority Budget Committee, while simultaneously trying to promote a revolution outside the Democrats. I was reminded of a Chinese proverb: When there is a fork in the road, a man who tries to take two roads at once gets a broken hip joint.

This straddle may have led Sanders to miss his big chance to make a difference. He is trying to take two roads at once, continuing to run as an Independent senator while caucusing with the Democrats without being able to block TPP and new Wall Street giveaways and more favoritism to the One Percent he has so eloquently denounced. Revolutions are a matter of timing. As a former YPSL he might have recalled what happened when Trotsky shied from breaking from Stalin after Lenin died early in 1924. Soon it was too late, and all Stalin’s opponents were purged. The moment was not seized.

Bernie has been an effective catalyst in this year’s election campaign. But as in chemistry, a catalyst is not really part of the equation. It merely helps the equation take place. Sanders didn’t say, “Thank god for Wikileaks. It shows that I was right and the DNC needs radical reform.” He left it to his supporters to hold up anti-TPP signs. His new message was “trust Hillary.” But even so, she will not forgive him for being against her before he was for her. He may still end up being marginalized in 2017.

I had hoped that in addressing the convention, Sanders would have said that its aim was not only to elect a president but congresspersons and officials all down the line. He could have mentioned the people he is supporting, starting with Wasserman Schultz’s opponent in Florida’s House race (supported by Obama as well as Hillary).

Bernie’s supporters who walked out on Tuesday have been duly radicalized. But he himself seems akin to be an American Alex Tsipras. Tsipras thought withdrawal from the eurozone was even worse than capitulating to austerity, while Sanders believes that withdrawing from the Democrats and backing a political realignment – perhaps electing Trump in the interim is even worse than Hillary’s pro-Wall street Obama-like agenda.

Matters were not improved when Bill Clinton gave a hagiographic biography of Hillary emphasizing her legal aid work to protect children, without mentioning how the 1994 welfare “reform” drastically cut back aid to dependent children. Madeline Albright said that Hillary would keep America safe, without mentioning Hillary’s promotion of destabilizing Libya and backing Al Quaeda against Syria’s government, driving millions of refugees to Europe and wherever they might be safer.

The many anti-TPP signs waved by Sanders delegates on Wednesday saw Hillary say that she would oppose TPP “as currently written.” This suggests that a modest sop thrown to labor – a rhetorical paste-on saying that the TPP’s aim was to raise living standards. This simply showed once again her sophist trickery at lawyering, giving her an out that she and long-time TPP supporter Tim Kaine were sure to take.

Obama’s brilliant demagogy left many eyes glazed over in admiration. Nobody is better at false sincerity while misrepresenting reality so shamelessly. Probably few caught the threatening hint he dropped about Hillary’s plan for corporations to share their profits with their workers. This sounds to me like the Pinochet plan to privatize Social Security by turning it into exploitative ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Programs). The idea is that wage withholding would be steered to buy into the company’s stock – bidding it up in the process. Employees then would end up holding an empty bag, as occurred recently with the Chicago Tribune. That seems to be the great “reform” to “save” Social Security that her Wall Street patrons are thinking up.

One might think that the Democrats would see the Obama administration as an albatross around their neck, much as Gore had Bill Clinton around his neck in 2000. Gore didn’t want him showing his face in the campaign. Yet Hillary presents herself as continuing the Obama policies with “business as usual,” as if she will act as his third term.

Voters know that Obama bailed out the banks, not the economy, and that Hillary’s campaign backers are on Wall Street. So this year would seem to have been a propitious time to start a real alternative. Hillary is mistrusted, and that mistrust is spreading to the Democratic Party machine – especially as the Koch Brothers and kindred backers of failed Republican candidates find neoliberal religion with Hillary. A third party Green/Socialist run might indeed have taken off – with Sanders stealing Trump’s thunder by pre-empting his critique of TPP, free trade and NATO, adding Wall Street and Citizens United campaign financing.

This fall’s presidential debates

Hillary and even Bernie assured the Democratic convention again and again how much President Obama has revived the economy from the “mess” that Bush left. While Trump centers his disdain on the TPP (much as he knocked Jeb Bush out by saying that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake), he can reply, “What recovery? Have you voters reallyrecovered from 2008?”

Hillary and other speechmakers at the Democratic convention criticized Trump for saying that “things are bad.” But according to the July 13 NBC/WSJ poll, 73% of voters believe that the country is going “off on the wrong track.” If Trump shifts his epithet from simply “Crooked Hillary” to the more nuanced “Crooked Wall Street and their candidate, Crooked Hillary,” he’ll score a ratings spurt.

Debt deflation and shrinking markets over the next two years do not provide much hope for increasing the minimum wage – which wouldn’t help much if one can’t find a job in the first place! By 2018 the continued stagnation of the 99 Percent may lead to a midterm wipeout of Democrats (assuming that Hillary wins this year against Trump), catalyzing an alternative party (assuming that she does not blow up the world in her neocon military escalation on the borders of Russia and China).

The problem with Trump is not mistrust; it is that nobody knows what policies he will back. The media are giving him the same silent treatment they did with Bernie, while accusing him of being in Putin’s pocket. He did admit selling some real estate to Russian nationals. Perhaps some of these gains fueled his presidential campaign …

The solution is not to save the Democratic Party, but to replace it. The debate reminds me of that about the Soviet Union in the 1950s: Is it a degenerated workers’ state, or a Stalinist bureaucratic mutation going the opposite direction from real socialism?

I wonder how many years it will take for Hillary to end up booed so loudly that she has to leave hotels and other speaking venues via their back alleys, much as Lyndon Johnson had to sneak out to avoid the anti-war booers leading up to the 1968 election.

Michael Hudson’s new book, Killing the Host is published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by Islet. He can be reached via his website, [email protected]

Notes

[1] Available on https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HGHWou0h1kk). This should be seen as an antidote to most media coverage.

For a run-down on Russia-Trump accusations see Lambert Strether, “Hoisted from Comments: Can We Even Know Who Hacked the DNC Emails?”Naked Capitalism, July 28, 2016.

Focusing on domestic issues, Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech sidestepped the deep concerns anti-war Democrats have about her hawkish foreign policy, which is already taking shape in the shadows, reports Gareth Porter.

As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the Assad regime in Syria.

The clear signals of Clinton’s readiness to go to war appears to be aimed at influencing the course of the war in Syria as well as U.S. policy over the remaining six months of the Obama administration. (She also may be hoping to corral the votes of Republican neoconservatives concerned about Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.)

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at NATO conference in Munich, Germany, Feb. 4 (Official Defense Department photo)

Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of Defense, explicitly called for “limited military strikes” against the Assad regime.

And earlier this month Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director, who has been advising candidate Clinton, declared in an interview that the next president would have to increase the number of Special Forces and carry out air strikes to help “moderate” groups against President Bashal al-Assad. (When Panetta gave a belligerent speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, he was interrupted by chants from the delegates on the floor of “no more war!”

Flournoy co-founded the Center for New American Security (CNAS) in 2007 to promote support for U.S. war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then became Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Obama administration in 2009.

Flournoy left her Pentagon position in 2012 and returned to CNAS as Chief Executive Officer.  She has been described by ultimate insider journalist David Ignatius of the Washington Post, as being on a “short, short list” for the job Secretary of Defense in a Clinton administration.

Last month, CNAS published a report of a “Study Group” on military policy in Syria on the eve of the organization’s annual conference.  Ostensibly focused on how to defeat the Islamic State, the report recommends new U.S. military actions against the Assad regime.

Flournoy chaired the task force, along with CNAS president Richard Fontaine, and publicly embraced its main policy recommendation in remarks at the conference.

She called for “using limited military coercion” to help support the forces seeking to force President Assad from power, in part by creating a “no bombing” zone over those areas in which the opposition groups backed by the United States could operate safely.

In an interview with Defense One, Flournoy described the no-bomb zone as saying to the Russian and Syrian governments, “If you bomb the folks we support, we will retaliate using standoff means to destroy [Russian] proxy forces, or, in this case, Syrian assets.”  That would “stop the bombing of certain civilian populations,” Flournoy said.

In a letter to the editor of Defense One, Flournoy denied having advocated “putting U.S. combat troops on the ground to take territory from Assad’s forces or remove Assad from power,” which she said the title and content of the article had suggested.

But she confirmed that she had argued that “the U.S. should under some circumstances consider using limited military coercion – primarily trikes using standoff weapons – to retaliate against Syrian military targets” for attacks on civilian or opposition groups “and to set more favorable conditions on the ground for a negotiated political settlement.”

Renaming a ‘No-Fly’ Zone

The proposal for a “no bombing zone” has clearly replaced the “no fly zone,” which Clinton has repeatedly supported in the past as the slogan to cover a much broader U.S. military role in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Panetta served as Defense Secretary and CIA Director in the Obama administration when Clinton was Secretary of State, and was Clinton’s ally on Syria policy. On July 17, he gave an interview to CBS News in which he called for steps that partly complemented and partly paralleled the recommendations in the CNAS paper.

“I think the likelihood is that the next president is gonna have to consider adding additional special forces on the ground,” Panetta said, “to try to assist those moderate forces that are taking on ISIS and that are taking on Assad’s forces.”

Panetta was deliberately conflating two different issues in supporting more U.S. Special Forces in Syria. The existing military mission for those forces is to support the anti-ISIS forces made up overwhelmingly of the Kurdish YPG and a few opposition groups.

Neither the Kurds nor the opposition groups the Special Forces are supporting are fighting against the Assad regime.  What Panetta presented as a need only for additional personnel is in fact a completely new U.S. mission for Special Forces of putting military pressure on the Assad regime.

He also called for increasing “strikes” in order to “put increasing pressure on ISIS but also on Assad.” That wording, which jibes with the Flournoy-CNAS recommendation, again conflates two entirely different strategic programs as a single program.

The Panetta ploys in confusing two separate policy issues reflects the reality that the majority of the American public strongly supports doing more militarily to defeat ISIS but has been opposed to U.S. war against the government in Syria.

A poll taken last spring showed 57 percent in favor of a more aggressive U.S. military force against ISIS. The last time public opinion was surveyed on the issue of war against the Assad regime, however, was in September 2013, just as Congress was about to vote on authorizing such a strike.

At that time, 55 percent to 77 percent of those surveyed opposed the use of military force against the Syrian regime, depending on whether Congress voted to authorize such a strike or to oppose it.

Shaping the Debate

It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for figures known to be close to a presidential candidate to make public recommendations for new and broader war abroad. The fact that such explicit plans for military strikes against the Assad regime were aired so openly soon after Clinton had clinched the Democratic nomination suggests that Clinton had encouraged Flournoy and Panetta to do so.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. (Photo by Lorie Shaull, Wikipedia)

The rationale for doing so is evidently not to strengthen her public support at home but to shape the policy decisions made by the Obama administration and the coalition of external supporters of the armed opposition to Assad.

Obama’s refusal to threaten to use military force on behalf of the anti-Assad forces or to step up military assistance to them has provoked a series of leaks to the news media by unnamed officials – primarily from the Defense Department – criticizing Obama’s willingness to cooperate with Russia in seeking a Syrian ceasefire and political settlement as “naïve.”

The news of Clinton’s advisers calling openly for military measures signals to those critics in the administration to continue to push for a more aggressive policy on the premise that she will do just that as president.

Even more important to Clinton and close associates, however, is the hope of encouraging Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have been supporting the armed opposition to Assad, to persist in and even intensify their efforts in the face of the prospect of U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria.

Even before the recommendations were revealed, specialists on Syria in Washington think tanks were already observing signs that Saudi and Qatari policymakers were waiting for the Obama administration to end in the hope that Clinton would be elected and take a more activist role in the war against Assad.

The new Prime Minister of Turkey, Binali Yildirim, however, made a statement on July 13 suggesting that Turkish President Recep Yayyip Erdogan may be considering a deal with Russia and the Assad regime at the expense of both Syrian Kurds and the anti-Assad opposition.

That certainly would have alarmed Clinton’s advisers, and four days later, Panetta made his comments on network television about what “the next president” would have to do in Syria.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Desde varias semanas circula en la red un llamado colectivo suscrito por una gran cantidad de profesores de derecho internacional, asistentes e investigadores, titulado “Contra una invocación abusiva del derecho de legítima defensa para hacer frente al terrorismo” (A plea against the abusive invocation of self-defence as a response to terrorism  / Contre une invocation abusive de la légitime défense pour faire face au défi du terrorisme).

Entre los suscriptores, que ya llegan a los 230 profesores y a medio centenar de asistentes/investigadores (véase la lista disponible  aquí  al 28 de julio, regularmente actualizada por el Centre de Droit International de l´Université Libre de Bruxelles, ULB), encontramos a renombrados miembros de la comunidad académica del derecho internacional, así como a  docentes e investigadores mucho más jóvenes provenientes de diversas partes del mundo.  El objetivo de este manifiesto colectivo consiste en denunciar la invocación abusiva del argumento jurídico de la legítima defensa por parte de los Estados  en el contexto de la lucha contra el denominado “Estado Islámico” (más conocido por sus siglas ISIS, EJIL o Daesh).

La legítima defensa en la Carta de San Francisco de 1945

Como bien se sabe, la Carta de Naciones Unidas es extremadamente clara con relación a la única excepción a la prohibición del uso de la fuerza consagrada como tal desde 1945: la legítima defensa (y las operaciones militares realizadas con la aprobación del Consejo de Seguridad bajo el Capítulo VII de la Carta). No obstante, desde el 11/S, diversas interpretaciones hechas por Estados Unidos y por sus aliados con relación a la noción de legítima defensa intentan justificar legalmente acciones militares unilaterales o colectivas en el territorio de otros Estados, sin contar con el consentimiento previo de sus autoridades.  La compilación sistemática de cada bombardeo registrado en Siria y en Irak por parte de la denominada “coalición” liderada por Estados Unidos  (véase los  ilustrativos gráficos  realizados por la ONG Airwars.org) evidencia que las bombas que caen en suelo sirio e iraquí provienen en su inmensa mayoría de aeronaves norteamericanas. Al revisar con detenimiento la figura 9, para el único mes de julio del 2016 (al corte del 25 de julio), se contabilizan en Siria 4414 bombardeos norteamericanos y 249 realizados por los miembros de la “coalición” (la cual cuenta con nueve integrantes, a los que hay que restar Canadá desde febrero del 2016).

En una reciente nota publicada en el sitio del European Journal of International Law (EJIL) sobre este mismo llamado colectivo, se lee que: “Particularly since 9/11, several States have supported a broad reading of the right to use force in self-defence, as allowing them to intervene militarily against terrorists whenever and wherever they may be. A consequence of that conception is that any State could be targeted irrespective of whether that State has ‘sent’ the irregular (in this case terrorist) group to carry out a military action or has been ‘substantially involved’ in such an action” (Nota 1).

Las extrañezas de la diplomacia francesa

El uso de la fuerza de un Estado (o de una coalición de Estados) amparado en el ejercicio de la legítima defensa solo se puede realizar de conformidad las reglas vigentes en el ordenamiento jurídico internacional, y las interpretación de estas hecha por la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CIJ),  en particular en cuanto al alcance exacto de las disposiciones de la Carta de Naciones Unidas. Sobre este punto en particular, es de recordar que los delegados de Francia presentaron un sorprendente proyecto de resolución a sus homólogos en el Consejo de Seguridad días después de los atentados de Paris del 13 de noviembre  del 2015  (véase el texto completo  de la « blue version » circulada entre las delegaciones)  evitando toda referencia a la Carta en su parte dispositiva: se trató, sin lugar a dudas, de una verdadera “première” de la diplomacia francesa en Naciones Unidas que ameritaba, como mínimo, ser señalada como tal (Nota 2). Como nos permitimos escribirlo en su momento en las páginas del sitio jurídico Derecho al Día (Costa Rica), “… en la ciencia del derecho, la ambigüedad de los términos y la confusión que conlleva su uso son particularmente útiles cuando las reglas son claras. Resulta evidente la prontitud con la que los delegados de Francia intentaron justificar desde el punto de vista jurídico sus acciones militares en Siria, obviando el hecho que la resolución adoptada no refiere expresamente a acciones militares, las cuales solamente pueden ser las previstas en el Capítulo VII de la Carta” (Nota 3).

También tuvimos la oportunidad de analizar en una breve nota   (titulada “Francia en guerra: breves apuntes desde la perspectiva internacional” publicada el 25/11/2015 en la Revista Pensamiento Penal, Argentina) el juego de palabras al que Francia procedieron las autoridades francesas de manera muy sutil días después del atentado de París del 13 de noviembre del 2015, recordando extrañamente lo oído en Estados Unidos en el 2001 después del 11/S:

“Lo que podríamos denominar un sutil “glissement sémantique” al que ha procedido Francia en días recientes responde en gran medida a la necesidad de justificar (de manera un tanto retroactiva …) sus bombardeos del 27 de setiembre y los realizados después del 13 de noviembre. El representante francés en Naciones Unidas el pasado viernes 20 de noviembre fue muy explícito al respecto, después de aprobada una resolución por parte del Consejo de Seguridad (resolución 2239 (2015) adoptada de forma unánime por el Consejo de Seguridad): “Cette résolution encadre notre action dans le cadre du droit international et dans le respect de la Charte des Nations Unies qui est notre bien commun, qui est notre trésor commun. Il offre aussi une garantie de lutte efficace contre le terrorisme transnational. Les attentats du 13 novembre ont constitué une agression armée contre la France. Nos actions militaires dont nous avons informé le Conseil de sécurité dès l’origine, qui étaient justifiées par la légitime défense collective, peuvent désormais se fonder également sur la légitime défense individuelle conformément à l’article 51 de la Charte des Nations Unies » (ver texto del discurso pronunciado). Es de recalcar que lo que no dice el representante de Francia, es que las referencias expresas a la misma Carta de las Naciones Unidas incluidas en la resolución 2249 (ver texto en francés al final de este enlace ) se deben a las enmiendas propuestas por Rusia al texto original propuesto por la delegación francesa”.

La nota precitada nuestra fue ilustrada con una foto en la que el Presidente galo aparece posando con el primer diplomático que vino a visitarlo personalmente después de los atentados del 13 de noviembre: el Secretario de Estado norteamericano John Kerry (17 de noviembre). El primer destino  en el exterior del mismo presidente se daría días después (el 24 de noviembre del 2015) en su visita a su homólogo en Washington.

El llamado inequívoco de los especialistas en derecho internacional

El texto de este llamado de la comunidad académica del derecho internacional, que han suscrito  diversos especialistas en derecho internacional y sus mentores (texto disponible aquí  en francés, en inglés, en portugués, en español y en árabe) considera, entre otros puntos que:

« De esta manera, ha sido justificado, en nombre de la legítima defensa, un número importante de intervenciones militares, como aquella contra Al-Qaida, el Levante (EIIL, también conocido como Daesh), o contra grupos afines. Si bien algunos Estados han minimizado dichos precedentes por su carácter excepcional, existe un gran riesgo que el derecho de legítima defensa se transforme rápidamente en una llave que permita justificar de manera sistemática el origen de acciones militares en todas las direcciones y en forma unilateral.  Ahora bien, sin oponernos por principio al uso de la fuerza contra los grupos terroristas – particularmente en el actual contexto de la lucha contra Daesh – nosotros, profesores e investigadores en derecho internacional, estimamos que dicha invocación creciente del derecho de legítima defensa es objetable. El derecho internacional prevé en efecto una serie de medidas para luchar contra el terrorismo que deberían ser utilizadas previo a la invocación de la legítima defensa ».

Para los firmantes del texto,

«… el terrorismo representa un desafío en lo concerniente a su prevención y represión, en particular esto implica la persecución y el juzgamiento de los autores de dichos actos terroristas. Las herramientas que ofrece el derecho en ese sentido son variadas: ellas hacen referencia principalmente a una cooperación policial et judicial, que posee como principal objetivo la represión de los crímenes cometidos y la prevención de su repetición. Si bien dicha cooperación merecería ser profundizada y mejorada, ella ha demostrado su eficacia en varias ocasiones, a través del desmantelamiento de redes, desbaratamiento de atentados o de la detención de sus autores. El hecho de situarse en forma inmediata en el plano de la “guerra contra el terrorismo” y la “legítima defensa”, haciendo referencia generalmente a un estado de excepción derogatorio del derecho común, podría desembocar en el riesgo de minimizar, olvidar o inclusive ignorar este último”.

Cabe señalar que académicos e investigadores en derecho internacional pueden aún suscribir este texto, ello hasta el próximo 31 de julio.  El documento recuerda algunas verdades sobre el alcance preciso de ciertas reglas, que conocen perfectamente bien los diplomáticos en Nueva York, pero cuyos homólogos en el Consejo de Seguridad se han encargado de interpretar de manera ambigua, en particular desde el inicio de las operaciones militares aéreas en  Siria (Nota 4).

Este verdadero manifiesto global en favor de una interpretación correcta de la Carta de 1945 precisa que:

« … es el Consejo de Seguridad a quien le incumbe, conforme al Capítulo VII de la Carta de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas, la responsabilidad primordial en el ámbito del mantenimiento y el restablecimiento de la paz. Este último ha calificado en diferentes oportunidades al terrorismo internacional como una amenaza contra la paz y resulta lógico que, exceptuando los casos de urgencia que no permitan disponer del tiempo suficiente para su tratamiento, sea dicho órgano el responsable de decidir y, posteriormente, coordinar y supervisar una acción eventual de seguridad colectiva. La práctica consistente a confinarlo a un rol de productor de resoluciones ambiguas y con un alcance principalmente diplomático, como por ejemplo en el caso concerniente a la adopción del a resolución 2249 (2015) relativa a la lucha contra Daesh, debe ser superada en beneficio de un retorno a la letra y espíritu de la Carta, en orden a asegurar un punto de vista multilateral de la seguridad. /…/ El simple hecho que el Estado sea, a pesar de sus esfuerzos, incapaz de dar término a los actos terroristas en su territorio, no puede ser suficiente para justificar el bombardeo de su territorio sin su consentimiento. Dicho argumento no encuentra justificación alguna en los textos jurídicos existentes, ni en la jurisprudencia establecida por la Corte Internacional de Justicia. Su aceptación implicaría llevarnos a los abusos más graves y, como consecuencia de ello, las operaciones militares podrían llevarse a cabo contra la voluntad de un número importante de Estados, bajo el único pretexto que estos último no serían, a la vista la potencia interviniente, suficientemente eficaces en la lucha contra el terrorismo.».

Con relación al otro Estado del hemisferio americano que ha acompañado a Estados Unidos en su campaña de bombardeos aéreos en Siria, en febrero del 2016, las nuevas autoridades electas en Canadá optaron por suspender todos los bombardeos aéreos en Siria, y también en Iraq. En esta   nota oficial  de las Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) se lee que:

“In accordance with Government of Canada direction, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) ceased airstrike operations in Iraq and Syria on 15 February 2016. From their first sortie on 30 October 2014 to 15 February 2016, the CF-188 Hornets conducted 1378 sorties resulting in 251 airstrikes (246 in Iraq and 5 in Syria), expended 606 munitions and achieved the following effects: 267 ISIL fighting positions, 102 ISIL equipment and vehicles, and, 30 ISIL Improvised Explosive Device (IED) factories and ISIL storage facilities”.

Cabe mencionar que en el 2015, un jurista canadiense concluyó un muy completo artículo sobre las bases jurídicas de los bombardeos aéreos canadienses en Siria y en Irak en los siguientes términos, que nos permitimos reproducir:

“However, there is a further legal hurdle for Canada to overcome. Unless Canada can attribute ISIS´ attacks in Iraq to Syria, then the question becomes whether Canada may lawfully target ISIS, as a nonstate actor in Syria’s sovereign territory, using the ‘unwilling or unable’ doctrine to prevent ISIS’ extraterritoriality attacks against Iraq. This justification moves significantly away from the Nicaragua, Congo and Israeli Wall cases’ requirement for attribution. There appears to be a lack of consensus on whether opinion juris and state practice have accepted the “unwilling or unable” doctrine as customary international law. There is no escaping the conclusion that Canada’s air strikes on Syria are on shaky, or at least shifting, legal ground ” (Nota 5).

Con relación a las muertes y daños a la población causados por estos bombardeos aéreos cuya legalidad es altamente cuestionable, se lee en un reciente  informe  de junio de 2016 dedicado a analizar los regitros oficiales militares de Estados Unidos en Siria lo siguiente:

”This raises concerns that important, corroborating information was either never identified or discounted with little justification, a concern confirmed by a comparison to an investigation by Airwars into one of the strikes involved, which demonstrates that open source data was overlooked. As a result of these apparent shortcomings, it is highly likely that there is a significant amount of information regarding civilian harm and its strategic impact that the United States simply does not know”(p. 55).

A modo de conclusión

Este manifiesto colectivo, ampliamente difundido en redes  sociales y universitarias,  y en algunos medios de prensa en Europa y Canadá, viene también a  poner en evidencia la existencia de una comunidad académica de especialistas en derecho internacional, unida y dispuesta a demostrarlo cuando un grupo de Estados optan por una peligrosa deriva interpretativa que amenaza la base del ordenamiento jurídico internacional consagrado desde 1945.

Los firmantes del llamado colectivo, cuyo número aumenta día con día, incluyendo a académicos de muy diversas edades y partes del mundo, concluyen reafirmando de manera solemne que:

Nota 1: Véase CORTEN O., « A Plea Against the Abusive Invocation of Self-Defence as a Response to Terrorism”, European Journal of International Law (EJIL Talk), July 14, 2016, disponible  aquí .

Nota 2: Véase nuestra modesta nota publicada en Francia,  BOEGLIN N., «Attentats à Paris: remarques à propos de la résolution 2249 », Actualités du Droit, 6 décembre 2015, disponible  aquí . La misma fue publicada en español unos días antes en el sitio de Voltaire.net.org bajo el título, “La Resolución 2249 no autoriza a bombardear Siria”, 3 de diciembre del 2015, disponible aquí. También remitimos a lector a la nota redactada después del debate parlamentario acaecido en el Reino Unido a finales de noviembre del 2015 que concluyó con la autorización al Ejecutivo británico para proceder a  bombardeos en Siria: BOEGLIN N. «Arguments based on UN resolution 2249 in Prime Minister´s report on airstrikes in Syria: some clarifications needed », Global Research, December 3, 2015, disponible aquí  así como en el sitio de Human Rights Investigation, December 4, 2015, disponible aquí .

Nota 3: Véase nuestro breve análisis, BOEGLIN N., “Francia en guerra: breves apuntes desde la perspectiva del derecho internacional”, Derecho al Dia, 26 de Noviembre del 2015. Texto de la nota disponible aquí.

Nota 4: Sobre la controvertida noción de Estado « unwilling or unable » que justificaría, para algunos diplomáticos y militares, operaciones militares en su territorio sin contar con el consentimiento previo de sus autoridades, véase: CORTEN O., “The ‘Unwilling or Unable’ Test: Has it Been, and Could it be, Accepted?”, Leiden Journal of International Law, 2016. Texto y referencias del artículo disponibles aquí .

Nota 5: Véase LESPERANCE R.J. , “Canada’s Military Operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the Law of Armed Conflict”, Canadian International Lawyer, Vol. 10 (2015), pp. 51-63, p. 61. Texto completo del artículo disponible  aquí .

The Neo-Con “West” And Global Destruction. A “New World Order” of Globalized Despair

By Mark Taliano, July 29 2016

The neo-con “West” and its allies want to destroy the Middle East so that they can control the Middle East. Under the auspices of their imperial “New Middle East” project, the criminals (U.S–led NATO, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Israel, are targeting everything that they falsely profess to cherish.

A Decade of Evidence Demonstrates The Dramatic Failure Of Globalisation

By Graham Vanbergen, July 29 2016

According to wikipedia, Globalisation is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects of culture. However, over the last ten years there has been a sea change decline in all the indicators that would measure the success of this model.

A New Low in US Presidential Politics: The Anointment of Hillary, the Neocon “War Goddess”

By Stephen Lendman, July 29 2016

Anointing her by electoral rigging to lead one wing of America’s duopoly system reveals the deplorable state of the nation – tyranny posing as democracy. A new low in presidential politics was reached with a candidate representing Washington’s lunatic fringe, a neocon war goddess drooling for endless conflicts.

Former American Colony Takes Center Stage In South China Sea Dispute

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, July 29 2016

The Philippines was under American colonial rule from 1898 to 1946. Despite gaining independence, the island nation is now being used as a tool to apply pressure on China, America’s biggest rival in the South China Sea.

Sugar-Coated Lies: How The Food Lobby Destroys Health In The EU

By Colin Todhunter, July 29 2016

Over half the population of the European Union (EU) is overweight or obese. Without effective action, this number will grow substantially in the next decade warns an important new report.‘A Spoonful of Sugar: How the Food Lobby Fights Sugar Regulation in the EU’, by the research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), notes that obesity rates are rising fastest among lowest socio-economic groups.

The Psychology of Ideology and Religion

By Robert J. Burrowes, July 29 2016

Two of the drivers of world affairs that manifest in the daily decisions that affect our lives are ideology and religion.Ideology is the term widely used to describe the underlying set of values, myths, ideas, attitudes, beliefs and doctrine that shape the behavioral approach to political, economic, social, cultural and/or ecological activities of an individual or organization.

 

Anointing her by electoral rigging to lead one wing of America’s duopoly system reveals the deplorable state of the nation – tyranny posing as democracy.

A new low in presidential politics was reached with a candidate representing Washington’s lunatic fringe, a neocon war goddess drooling for endless conflicts.

If elected, Hillary risks committing greater high crimes of state than her predecessors, including possible nuclear war – why it’s crucial to defeat her in November. Humanity’s fate hangs in the balance.

Her Thursday night acceptance speech was what you’d expect – featuring rambling lofty rhetoric, dreary and dull pontificating, empty promises, an unprincipled display of dishonesty.

Claiming “economic and social justice issues (are) front and center where they belong” on her agenda belies her record as a corrupt lawyer, first lady, US senator, secretary of state and influence-peddler to the highest bidders through the Clinton Foundation, for self-aggrandizement and wealth enrichment.

Hillary represents a new low in US politics, featuring unrestrained imperial lawlessness, endless wars of aggression, risking WW III by confronting nonexistent Sino/Russian threats, serving monied and warmongering interests exclusively, along with ignoring the welfare and concerns of ordinary people.

Defeating her presidential ambitions tops all other priorities for people everywhere.

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.

Attacks on doctors, teachers and agricultural advisers were also a deliberate Contra tactic encouraged by their U.S. advisers.

The internationalists. Some may consider them simply tourists. I don’t know how they are looked upon in official U.S. circles. Reagan calls them ‘terrorists.’ Of course, they do terrify him, and rightly so. The internationalists in the field of culture, health, construction, information … internationalists in solidarity, to put it simply. In the chapel in the little settlement of Santa Clara a Delegate of the Word defined them clearly: `The internationalists internationalize love.’
—Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga

In the 1980s many thousands of people from all over Europe and North America traveled to Nicaragua to demonstrate their solidarity with the Nicaraguan Revolution led by the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN). They joined women and men from all over Latin America and the Caribbean who also rallied in a great wave of solidarity defending Nicaragua’s revolution against the terrorist aggression of the U.S. government under President Reagan. For people in North America, the foremost figure of that solidarity is Benjamin Linder, who was murdered by U.S. armed and supported Contra fighters in 1987. Less remembered are European martyrs like Albrecht Pflaum from Germany and Pierre Grosjean from France, both doctors, who were murdered in separate Contra attacks in 1983. 2016 marks thirty years since the deaths in 1986 of five other Europeans. Maurice Demierre, Joël Fieux, Ambrosio Mogorrón, Yvan Leyvraz and Berndt Koberstein. It is worth remembering these people now because their example and vision entirely contradict what Europe has become under the misrule of the European elites.

Pierre Grosjean and Albrecht Pflaum

Maurice Dèmierre was a Swiss agronomist working in rural areas of Nicaragua’s north western department of Chinandega. From a devout Catholic family, Maurice was sentenced to three months in prison as a conscientious objector against his country’s national military service. He was 28 when his vehicle set off a couple of U.S. Claymore mines on Feb. 16, 1986. The explosion killed Maurice and five of his Nicaraguan passengers. Such incidents were very common in Nicaragua because the U.S. government encouraged the Contra fighters it armed and trained to deliberately target civilians so as to create fear and paralyse normal social and economic activity.

Among the most notorious of these attacks were one near San Juan de Limay and another near San Jose de Bocay destroying public transport vehicles and murdering almost 60 people all told, leaving dozens wounded. Attacks on doctors, teachers and agricultural advisers were also a deliberate Contra tactic encouraged by their U.S. advisers.

Ambrosio Mogorron was a Basque doctor in the area around San Jose de Bocay in northern Jinotega one of the most intense war zones at the time. He too, like Maurice Dèmierre, died on May 24, 1986 along with 9 others when a U.S. anti-tank mine detonated under his pick-up vehicle, carrying 12 Nicaraguans, while he was helping organize a vaccination campaign in the many remote communities around San José de Bocay. His Nicaraguan co worker Senia remembers,

“When we brought the bodies to San José de Bocay it was night time. People resisted believing it was Ambrosio and kept lifting the coffin cover to be sure it was him, with much weeping. They brought him every kind of flower. If the Contra had any support in the area it certainly fell away with Ambrosio’s death.”

At the time he died Ambrosio had been working for years accumulating data on leishmaniasis, the much feared disease better know as “mountain leprosy” and had accumulated analysis of around 2500 cases in the region.

Maurice Demierre and Ambrosio Mogorron

Orlando Rizo was the regional director of health in those days and recalls “Ambrosio was indeed what you might call a popular leader. I don’t think the Contra respected him. They respected nothing and their Radio “September 15th” had threatened him. But it’s quite possible he gave medical attention to family members of Contra fighters. It’s normal for us to do that in certain areas if the family turns up for a consultation. For us, Ambrosio symbolized life. He had three qualities, a deep conviction of the cause of the people and what it meant to work, live and if necessary die for that cause. Then his bravery, working for six years in really difficult circumstances and, finally, his humility. He was an example for all of us.”

In the deadliest attack involving European volunteers, five people were killed when their vehicle was ambushed near Zompopera in northern Nicaragua on the way south to Matagalpa. This attack killed Yvan Leyvraz, Joël Fieux and Berndt Koberstein as well as their Nicaraguan comrades, Mario Acevedo and William Blandón. Yvan, 31 when he died, was an electrician from Lausanne, Switzerland. He had left his country objecting to its policy of national military service and traveled through Latin America before arriving in Nicaragua in 1983. For a while Yvan worked around the town of La Dalia. A woman Nicaraguan cooperative member remembers, “Here in the country around Yale we’d never seen a housing project for people in poverty. It was something unusual, seeing the effort those comrades made to build 42 houses and the school. People were grateful for that help since we’d never had it before. Yvan finished the project here and went to build projects elsewhere while we continued finishing building the settlement. At the same time in La Dalia we trained a group of workers to coordinate with the brigade of Swiss workers. When Yvan left, people were ready to carry on building.”

Berndt Koberstein, 29, was a German mechanic from Freiberg, then in East Germany, who first came to Nicaragua in 1981 to help install a printing press for the Sandinista Youth. Very active in his local communist party in Germany, Berndt intensified his solidarity work after the murder of Albrecht “Tonio” Pflaum in 1983. He returned to Nicaragua to work in the town of Wiwilí in northern Jinotega installing drinking water systems for local people there. When the vehicle Berndt and his companions traveled in was attacked, Berndt was unarmed and was shot dead during the combat. Yvan Leyvraz was killed by a rocket propelled grenade as he tried to get out from the vehicle under fire. Joël Fieux took a weapon and fired back at the Contra attackers until he too was shot dead.

Yvan Leyvraz, Joel Fieux and Berndt Koberstein

From France, Joël Fieux, a communications worker, was 28 when he died. He had left France to avoid military service there in 1980 and settled in Nicaragua in 1983. Joël’s partner Fatima remembers,

“We were good friends and accomplices too, as well as being a couple. He liked the country life, friendships with rural people, getting to know rural idiosyncrasies and problems… He was never afraid of getting involved in the difficulties of the war and getting out to the farthest corners of the region around Jinotega and Matagalpa, setting up radio communications for the people facing the brunt of the Contra war…I don’t want to talk about his absence because I prefer having his presence here in my heart and I think many people feel the same as me, remembering his way of being. For some he was a teacher, for others an unruly worker, a dreamer, a great cook who loved his food, a great friend, and for me, my great love.”

At Ben Linder’s funeral in Matagalpa in 1987 following his murder in La Camaleona near San José de Bocay, Daniel Ortega said,

“From La Camaleona where the mercenaries murdered him following the plans of the CIA , to El Cuá, Río San Juan, Oregon and Washington, the song full of love, full of peace, and of Benjamin Linder’s hopes, multiplies with his sacrifice. What’s more powerful than war? And what is more powerful than a hundred million dollars or the threat of invasion? Far more powerful is the power of love among peoples, the example and sacrifice of people like Benjamin…”

Similarly, leading Sandinista strategist Orlando Nuñez Soto wrote in relation to these internationalist martyrs,

“In every historical moment, a part of youth reminds older generations of the need for and the commitment to freedom. Each generation sees a mortal struggle in which each of us choose either to defend the status quo or to change it. Maurice, Yvan, Joël and Berndt, like so many young people were on the side of hope to be able to change the world so as to build a new world”.

As contemporary Europe struggles to free itself from its squalid, corrupt elites and to remake itself from its all too pressing history of brutal colonialism and genocidal war, its peoples could well take inspiration from the great example of their heroes and martyrs in the cause of international peace and justice in Nicaragua.

Two of the drivers of world affairs that manifest in the daily decisions that affect our lives are ideology and religion.

Ideology is the term widely used to describe the underlying set of values, myths, ideas, attitudes, beliefs and doctrine that shape the behavioral approach to political, economic, social, cultural and/or ecological activities of an individual or organization. This organization might be a political party, government, multinational corporation, terrorist group, non-government organization, community or activist group.

Religion usually describes the belief in a superhuman controlling power involving a God or gods; it entails a system of faith and worship as well as, like ideology, an underlying set of values, myths, ideas, attitudes, beliefs and doctrine that shape the behavioral approach to political, economic, social, cultural and/or ecological activities of an individual or organization.

At the macro level, there are worldwide or regional ideologies such as capitalism, fascism, conservatism, communism, socialism, feminism, pacifism and environmentalism as well as religions including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. There are also variations of these major ideologies and religions. But even at the micro level, the local service club, neighborhood charity and sporting club operates in accordance with an ideology or religion that is shared by its members too.

Frequently, a shared ideology or religion is a functional way for like-minded people to find each other and to work together to achieve a shared aim. When this helps to achieve a desirable social outcome, the shared ideology or religion has a valuable purpose.

Unfortunately, however, often enough the shared ideology or religion has a dysfunctional basis and the outcome is detrimental both individually and socially with the (violent) consequences sometimes reverberating throughout a national or even global society. This is why it is useful to understand the psychology of ideology and religion.

When a child is very young, they start to learn from the people around them. Predominantly, they learn by being participants, one way or another, in the events in which they are involved. That is, when their parents, other significant adults (such as relatives, school teachers and religious figures) or an older sibling involve the child in an activity, the child is taught and copies the mental responses and behaviours of those around them. This is what is called ‘socialization’.

However, it is important to identify the ideological/religious elements in this process too. First, there are ideological and religious imperatives around raising children. These imperatives are sometimes deliberately shaped by an ideology or a religion but, often enough, they are simply copied on the advice of, or by observing the behavior of, other nearby adults.

Second, and more importantly however, the child unconsciously acquires a set of values, myths, ideas, attitudes, beliefs and doctrine (in relation to social, cultural, political, economic, religious, sporting and ecological issues) that are approved by the adults in the child’s life.

There is much that is functional about this process and, historically, it can explain a great deal about human behavior, including in particular cultural contexts.

But I would like to discuss the dysfunctional aspects of this process which arise from the way in which the child’s fear is deliberately played upon so that, consciously or unconsciously, they copy the ideology or religion of the adults around them. And the reason that the child does this is so that the ideology or religion that they acquire, together with the behavioral outcomes that arise from this, does not scare these same adults.

In an ideal world, a child would be socialized in an environment devoid of fear and in which they are loved, there is no ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ or ‘utterly invisible’ violence – see ‘Why Violence?’ – damaging them in any way, they have their needs met and they are utterly free to choose (and later change if they wish) the values, myths, ideas, attitudes, beliefs and doctrine by which they will live their life, preferably with the benefit of substantial aware listening from adults while they work this out for themselves. Needless to say, this never happens.

In fact, the typical child is endlessly terrorized into adopting some version of the individual ideologies and religions, which are sometimes bizarrely conflicting, of the people around them.

This means that a fixed set of values, myths, ideas, attitudes, beliefs and doctrine – including those in relation to violence – become fearfully and unconsciously embedded in the child’s mind and they cease to be values, myths, ideas, attitudes, beliefs and doctrine that are easily and consciously accessible for review and reconsideration in light of new information or evidence. Let me briefly illustrate this point.

For some people, it is easy to laugh at or be outraged by the absurd statements they hear uttered by a very conservative politician, especially if they display a pronounced bias against a particular racial or religious group or a class of people. But to a conservative, their ideology is imperative and it reflects a childhood of being terrorized into believing certain things. There is no conscious awareness of this unconscious terror and even if asked, they would readily proclaim that they are not terrified (because they have been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of this terror, which is why it is now unconscious to them).

Similarly, most socialists are very attached to the ideology that puts class (based on the production relations of capitalism) predominantly at the centre of their analysis, feminists usually believe that gender relations under patriarchy are the primary problem in society, many people who combat racism view white domination as the core issue in social oppression, and religious fundamentalists believe that they know the one truth to the exclusion of people of other faiths. Irrespective of the proclaimed original basis of the ideology or religion, often enough, at least some of its adherents also learn to believe that violence is the appropriate behavior for achieving some or all of their aims.

The issue in this context, however, is not whether any of these people is right or wrong but why they hold so tenaciously to a worldview that they do not willingly and fearlessly subject to ongoing scrutiny. And that is why the psychology of ideology and religion is so important.

If any person is willing to fearlessly and open-mindedly consider other worldviews and analyses of society’s social relationships and problems, as well as how to tackle these problems, then it is likely that their ideology or religion is one that has been genuinely and intelligently acquired of their own free will and their mind will be capable of analysis and reconsideration if compelling evidence of the merits of an alternative worldview or explanation is made available. They are also likely to be highly tolerant of other worldviews as some religions, for example, specifically teach.

But if someone, whatever their ideology or religion, is dogmatically insistent on their own worldview, then their fear of further analysis and reconsideration will be readily apparent and it is a straightforward conclusion that they were terrorized out of the capacity to think fearlessly for themselves when they were a child. They are also more likely to behave violently.

If you would like to read a detailed explanation of how a child is terrorized, to a greater or lesser extent, into unconsciously absorbing a version of the ideologies and/or religions of the adults around them, you can do so in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice.’

These documents explain the visible, invisible and utterly invisible violence to which children are subjected throughout childhood and which few survive. Moreover, it is this adult violence against children that leads to all other manifestations of violence.

Now, you might well ask: Is this simply my ideology? Well perhaps it is. But five decades of research, which included substantial reading and thoughtful consideration of many ideologies and religions, led me to this conclusion. Nevertheless, I remain happy to review my beliefs in this matter if someone offers me compelling evidence in support of another explanation.

Even better, when I witness Christian parents raising children who have chosen to be Muslims and conservative parents raising children who have chosen to be anarchists and… I will have all of the evidence I need to know that I am wrong.

If you would like to work towards creating a world in which fear does not shape every single outcome of human endeavor, you might like to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

In essence, most children are terrorized into believing what the adults around them want them to think. This is because most adults are far too (unconsciously) frightened to let children think for themselves and to then let them believe and behave as they choose.

Consequently, therefore, it is fear, often mediated through ideology and religion, that drives most human behavior.

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

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on July 25 details of a “U.S. plan” for military cooperation and intelligence sharing with Russia on Syria were expected to be announced in early August. Kerry’s statement followed the meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of a meeting of Southeast Asian nations in Laos.

According to the plan, Russia and the U.S. will share intelligence to coordinate air strikes against the Syrian Al Qaeda branch “Jabhat Al Nusra” and prohibit the Russian and Syrian air powers from attacking the so-called “moderate rebels.”

However, the ongoing progress on the ground remains questionable. Al Nusra is the most powerful “opposition group” in Syria, excluding ISIS. According to the group’s statements, Al Nusra currently stands at 60,000 fighters, although this number is impossible to verify. The group’s units are able to conduct a classic warfare with usage of artillery, battle tanks and other equipment, including drones, as well as they conduct guerrilla warfare and terror attacks of suicide bombers.

According to intelligence information, Al Nusra has been receiving direct support from Turkey and Saudi Arabia and indirect support through the U.S. programs aimed to train “moderate rebels” in Syria. In other words, if Washington agrees to coordinate its efforts against the terrorist group with Russia, the US-backed Syrian opposition will lose its main striking power.

Entirely by accident, the very same day with Kerry’s statement, Abu Mohammad Al Golani, leader of Al Nusra, made a public statement announcing that Jabhat Al Nusra has separated from Al Qaeda, organizationally and taken a new name, Jabhat Fateh Al Sham (Sham Liberation Front).

This move signifies the start of full-scale rebranding campaign, clearly aimed to evade the effects of Russian-U.S. deal to coordinate efforts against the terrorist group. Al Nusra is aiming to depict itself as a “moderate opposition group,” adjusting to the constant pressure from Russians that had pushed Washington to accept the deal. It’s easy to expect a series of reports in the Western media that will depict Al Nusra’s rebranding as an important step on the way to better “democratic” Syria. Because, now, when the group changed its name, nobody has to doubt that it remains a terrorist organization. These reports will likely call the group “rebels” and hide the original source of “opposition fighters” from Jabhat Fateh Al Sham. Indeed, they have never avoided doing this.

It’s possible to expect that Al Nusra’s rebranding will allow the U.S. to avoid any significant actions under the long-awaited deal with Russia, claiming that there is no such entity as Jabhat Al Nusra at the battlefield. Moreover, Jabhat Fateh Al Sham units will likely further shuffle with vestiges of the so-called “moderate opposition.” Strategically, it could create a foothold for the groups’ foreign sponsors to push the terrorist group as a part of the Vienna talks and post-war Syria consensus.

A Muslim youth commits a terrible violent crime and then takes his own life. His suburban family, immigrants in the US for more than two decades is advised to relocate; his parents are divided over how to handle the crisis; his teenage siblings, shunned and mocked by classmates, retreat into fantasy; the community in which they were once so nicely integrated spurns them.

The scenario could be any national news story. Whatever the perpetrator’s motive or mental state, his crime is a ‘Muslim’ one– an uncivil act; everything associated with him becomes tainted. The religion itself is blighted and criminalized. The violence is seen as further evidence that Islam bears responsibility.

Our media’s preoccupation with and prejudgment of this category of crime is so intense that Muslims find themselves floundering in its wake. With regular frequency, Muslim writers pen commentaries explaining our angst, and cohorts of Muslim spokespeople appear on TV to refute generalizations about Islam and to assure others of the peace-loving nature of our religion and our community.

We know the scenario too well. Yet those eloquent efforts seem naïve, ineffective and superficial. At the same time we find precious few attempts by our Muslim creative community to explore the human repercussions of these events at a deeper level:–through novels, film and drama.

I can think of just three writers, Hanif Kureishi, Wajahat Ali and Laila Halaby who’ve addressed Muslim family experience in these turbulent decades in the West where our social lives are thrown into turmoil, where we are psychologically traumatized, and where our own spiritual values are undermined.  (“My Son the Fanatic”, a 1994 story by London-based Kureishi was made into an good film; Ali’s 2005 play “Domestic Crusaders”   was later published as a book; Halaby’s novel “Once in a Promised Land” appeared in 2007. I suppose we could include “My Name Is Khan” a 2010 Indian-produced film set largely in the USA.)

We now have a novel that tackles this contemporary theme in a fresh and effective approach. Rajia Hassib’s  “In the Language of Miracles” explores how one American Muslim family is impacted by violence. I don’t know if Hassib intended her fictional piece to be a domestic prism through which to view the American Muslims’ experience of “terror” in our midst. Because there’s nothing explicit here about what’s commonly labeled “Islamic terror”. For me however, her story is essentially a metaphor of our recurring nightmare– alleged “Islamic violence” directed at Western targets.

The plot of “In the Language of Miracles” is an astute tactic to remove the crime from its normally fraught political context to explore what transpires when a simple youth, motivated by jealousy, family tensions and personal stress, carries out an ordinary (American) killing. What happens to his family and his community?”

This cleverly crafted story opens with a veiled reference to a past family tragedy when Cynthia, a (white) neighbor invites the Al-Menshawy (Muslim) family to a forthcoming event; it’s the first anniversary memorial of her daughter Nathalie’s death. The invitation precipitates divisions among family members: Samir, the father and a successful doctor, his wife Nagla suffering from unspecified ailments, their son Khaled, their daughter Fatima, and Nagla’s mother Ehsan visiting from overseas. Each reacts differently to the neighbor’s invitation and we are pulled into the evolving drama over the few days between that awkward announcement and the ceremony itself. We soon learn that the al-Menshawys not only also lost a child, Hosaam, by suicide; it was their son who killed Nathalie, his longtime childhood friend.

We hardly have time to mourn Hosaam or to learn his motives since author Hassib’s story focuses around Nathalie’s approaching memorial which is to be a community affair with speeches and a tree planting. Flyers are posted on social media and across the town, stirring up the community’s grief and anger; not unexpectedly much emotion is directed at the killer’s family.

What should they do? Samir insists they attend the memorial where he intends to make a statement. Nagla rejects this; she’s unfocused and indolent, a condition likely precipitated by the death of Hosaam. Her surviving son Khaled is withdrawn while Fatima tries to ride above the fray. (She’s recently befriended another Muslim girl and is perhaps becoming more devout.) Khaled, rejected by all but one school friend, retreats into social media and seeks out a young woman in New York City. With this stranger he’s able to share his distress and revisit events leading to Hosaam’s action. He returns to his troubled home in New Jersey in time for the memorial but too late to rescue his father from his blundering performance there.

The story is presented through Khaled’s eyes, from his grandmother’s pseudo-Islamic incantations and dream interpretations during a childhood illness to his alienation from his brother, the son for whom Samir had high expectations. (In the final chapter we find Khaled and his sister residing in the US while their father, humiliated after his misstep at the memorial, has returned to Egypt with Nagla and their grandmother.)

To build the character of Samir whose psychology Hassib seems most interested in exploring, she takes us back to his arrival in New York as a medical graduate from Egypt to begin his residency. While achieving his ambitions of establishing his own clinic and enjoying social acceptance among Americans, Samir has eschewed his Egyptian culture and his religion. Yet he misreads the very culture he feels so proud to be part of; his children are unanchored and his wife is ill. Worst, he completely disregards his own son’s death anniversary.

Tellingly, the least acculturated family member, grandmother Ehsan, offers her folk remedies, common sense, and some invocations of Islamic texts that she barely understands to address the pain of her traumatized family. She alone seems to possess the cultural integrity to properly recognize the death anniversary of their child Hosaam. In familiar simple Islamic tradition she prepares special pastries and spends the day at the cemetery to commute with his spirit (and to scrub offensive graffiti off his gravestone) where she also consoles a grieving stranger at a nearby grave.

Published in 2015, “In the Language of Miracles” offers plenty of material on the domestic side of Islam, on migrant trauma, and on the sociology of Muslim Americans. In this debut novel, Rajia Hassib establishes herself as an Arab American writer of great talent.

When American firms dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion a year, you’d expect to hear about it.  Not so with the global arms trade.  It’s good for one or two stories a year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual statistics on the state of the business come out.

It’s not that no one writes about aspects of the arms trade. There are occasional pieces that, for example, take note of the impact of U.S. weapons transfers, including cluster bombs, to Saudi Arabia, or of the disastrous dispensation of weaponry to U.S. allies in Syria, or of foreign sales of the costly, controversial F-35 combat aircraft.  And once in a while, if a foreign leader meets with the president, U.S. arms sales to his or her country might generate an article or two. But the sheer size of the American arms trade, the politics that drive it, the companies that profit from it, and its devastating global impacts are rarely discussed, much less analyzed in any depth.

So here’s a question that’s puzzled me for years (and I’m something of an arms wonk): Why do other major U.S. exports — from Hollywood movies to Midwestern grain shipments to Boeing airliners — garner regular coverage while trends in weapons exports remain in relative obscurity?  Are we ashamed of standing essentially alone as the world’s number one arms dealer, or is our Weapons “R” Us role such a commonplace that we take it for granted, like death or taxes?

The numbers should stagger anyone.  According to the latest figures available from the Congressional Research Service, the United States was credited with more than half the value of all global arms transfer agreements in 2014, the most recent year for which full statistics are available. At 14%, the world’s second largest supplier, Russia, lagged far behind.  Washington’s “leadership” in this field has never truly been challenged.  The U.S. share has fluctuated between one-third and one-half of the global market for the past two decades, peaking at an almost monopolistic 70% of all weapons sold in 2011.  And the gold rush continues. Vice Admiral Joe Rixey, who heads the Pentagon’s arms sales agency, euphemistically known as the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, estimates that arms deals facilitated by the Pentagon topped $46 billion in 2015, and are on track to hit $40 billion in 2016.

To be completely accurate, there is one group of people who pay remarkably close attention to these trends — executives of the defense contractors that are cashing in on this growth market.  With the Pentagon and related agencies taking in “only” about $600 billion a year — high by historical standards but tens of billions of dollars less than hoped for by the defense industry — companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics have been looking to global markets as their major source of new revenue.

In a January 2015 investor call, for example, Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson was asked whether the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration and five other powers might reduce tensions in the Middle East, undermining the company’s strategy of increasing its arms exports to the region.  She responded that continuing “volatility” in both the Middle East and Asia would make them “growth areas” for the foreseeable future.  In other words, no worries.  As long as the world stays at war or on the verge of it, Lockheed Martin’s profits won’t suffer — and, of course, its products will help ensure that any such “volatility” will prove lethal indeed.

Under Hewson, Lockheed has set a goal of getting at least 25% of its revenues from weapons exports, and Boeing has done that company one better.  It’s seeking to make overseas arms sales 30% of its business.

Good News From the Middle East (If You’re an Arms Maker)

Arms deals are a way of life in Washington.  From the president on down, significant parts of the government are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life.  From the president on his trips abroad to visit allied world leaders to the secretaries of state and defense to the staffs of U.S. embassies, American officials regularly act as salespeople for the arms firms.  And the Pentagon is their enabler.  From brokering, facilitating, and literally banking the money from arms deals to transferring weapons to favored allies on the taxpayers’ dime, it is in essence the world’s largest arms dealer.

In a typical sale, the U.S. government is involved every step of the way.  The Pentagon often does assessments of an allied nation’s armed forces in order to tell them what they “need” — and of course what they always need is billions of dollars in new U.S.-supplied equipment.  Then the Pentagon helps negotiate the terms of the deal, notifies Congress of its details, and collects the funds from the foreign buyer, which it then gives to the U.S. supplier in the form of a defense contract.  In most deals, the Pentagon is also the point of contact for maintenance and spare parts for any U.S.-supplied system. The bureaucracy that helps make all of this happen, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, is funded from a 3.5% surcharge on the deals it negotiates. This gives it all the more incentive to sell, sell, sell.

And the pressure for yet more of the same is always intense, in part because the weapons makers are careful to spread their production facilities to as many states and localities as possible.  In this way, they ensure that endless support for government promotion of major arms sales becomes part and parcel of domestic politics.

General Dynamics, for instance, has managed to keep its tank plants in Ohio and Michigan running through a combination of add-ons to the Army budget — funds inserted into that budget by Congress even though the Pentagon didn’t request them — and exports to Saudi Arabia.  Boeing is banking on a proposed deal to sell 40 F-18s to Kuwait (image left) to keep its St. Louis production line open, and is currently jousting with the Obama administration to get it to move more quickly on the deal.  Not surprisingly, members of Congress and local business leaders in such states become strong supporters of weapons exports.

Though seldom thought of this way, the U.S. political system is also a global arms distribution system of the first order.  In this context, the Obama administration has proven itself a good friend to arms exporting firms.  During President Obama’s first six years in office, Washington entered into agreements to sell more than $190 billion in weaponry worldwide — more, that is, than any U.S. administration since World War II.  In addition, Team Obama has loosened restrictions on arms exports, making it possible to send abroad a whole new range of weapons and weapons components — including Black Hawk and Huey helicopters and engines for C-17 transport planes — with far less scrutiny than was previously required.

This has been good news for the industry, which had been pressing for such changes for decades with little success. But the weaker regulations also make it potentially easier for arms smugglers and human rights abusers to get their hands on U.S. arms. For example, 36 U.S. allies — from Argentina and Bulgaria to Romania and Turkey — will no longer need licenses from the State Department to import weapons and weapons parts from the United States.  This will make it far easier for smuggling networks to set up front companies in such countries and get U.S. arms and arms components that they can then pass on to third parties like Iran or China.  Already a common practice, it will only increase under the new regulations.

The degree to which the Obama administration has been willing to bend over backward to help weapons exporters was underscored at a 2013 hearing on those administration export “reforms.”  Tom Kelly, then the deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, caught the spirit of the era when asked whether the administration was doing enough to promote American arms exports.  He responded:

“[We are] advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through… and that is something we are doing every day, basically [on] every continent in the world… and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.”

One place where, with a helping hand from the Obama administration and the Pentagon, the arms industry has been doing a lot better of late is the Middle East.  Washington has brokered deals for more than $50 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia alone for everything from F-15 fighter aircraft and Apache attack helicopters to combat ships and missile defense systems.

The most damaging deals, if not the most lucrative, have been the sales of bombs and missiles to the Saudis for their brutal war in Yemen, where thousands of civilians have been killed and millions of people are going hungry.  Members of Congress like Michigan Representative John Conyers and Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy have pressed for legislation that would at least stem the flow of the most deadly of the weaponry being sent for use there, but they have yet to overcome the considerable clout of the Saudis in Washington (and, of course, that of the arms industry as well).

When it comes to the arms business, however, there’s no end to the good news from the Middle East.  Take the administration’s proposed new 10-year aid deal with Israel.  If enacted as currently planned, it would boost U.S. military assistance to that country by up to 25% — to roughly $4 billion per year. At the same time, it would phase out a provision that had allowed Israel to spend one-quarter of Washington’s aid developing its own defense industry.  In other words, all that money, the full $4 billion in taxpayer dollars, will now flow directly into the coffers of companies like Lockheed Martin, which is in the midst of completing a multi-billion-dollar deal to sell the Israelis F-35s.

“Volatility” in Asia and Europe 

As Lockheed Martin’s Marillyn Hewson noted, however, the Middle East is hardly the only growth area for that firm or others like it.  The dispute between China and its neighbors over the control of the South China Sea (which is in many ways an incipient conflict over whether that country or the United States will control that part of the Pacific Ocean) has opened up new vistas when it comes to the sale of American warships and other military equipment to Washington’s East Asian allies.  The recent Hague court decision rejecting Chinese claims to those waters (and the Chinese rejectionof it) is only likely to increase the pace of arms buying in the region.

At the same time, in the good-news-never-ends department, growing fears of North Korea’s nuclear program have stoked a demand for U.S.-supplied missile defense systems.  The South Koreans have, in fact, just agreed to deploy Lockheed Martin’s THAAD anti-missile system.  In addition, the Obama administration’s decision to end the longstanding embargo on U.S. arms sales to Vietnam is likely to open yet another significant market for U.S. firms. In the past two years alone, the U.S. has offered more than $15 billionworth of weaponry to allies in East Asia, with Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea accounting for the bulk of the sales.

In addition, the Obama administration has gone to great lengths to build a defense relationship with India, a development guaranteed to benefit U.S. arms exporters.  Last year, Washington and New Delhi signed a 10-year defense agreement that included pledges of future joint work on aircraft engines and aircraft carrier designs.  In these years, the U.S. has made significant inroads into the Indian arms market, which had traditionally been dominated by the Soviet Union and then Russia.  Recent deals include a $5.8 billion sale of Boeing C-17 transport aircraft and a $1.4 billion agreement to provide support services related to a planned purchase of Apache attack helicopters.

And don’t forget “volatile” Europe.  Great Britain’s recent Brexit vote introduced an uncertainty factor into American arms exports to that country. The United Kingdom has been by far the biggest purchaser of U.S. weapons in Europe of late, with more than $6 billion in deals struck over the past two years alone — more, that is, than the U.S. has sold to all other European countries combined.

The British defense behemoth BAE is Lockheed Martin’s principal foreign partner on the F-35 combat aircraft (right), which at a projected cost of $1.4 trillion over its lifetime already qualifies as the most expensive weapons program in history.  If Brexit-driven austerity were to lead to a delay in, or the cancellation of, the F-35 deal (or any other major weapons shipments), it would be a blow to American arms makers.  But count on one thing: were there to be even a hint that this might happen to the F-35, lobbyists for BAE will mobilize to get the deal privileged status, whatever other budget cuts may be in the works.

On the bright side (if you happen to be a weapons maker), any British reductions will certainly be more than offset by opportunities in Eastern and Central Europe, where a new Cold War seems to be gaining traction.  Between 2014 and 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, military spending increased by 13% in the region in response to the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The rise in Poland’s outlays, at 22%, was particularly steep.

Under the circumstances, it should be obvious that trends in the global arms trade are a major news story and should be dealt with as such in the country most responsible for putting more weapons of a more powerful nature into the hands of those living in “volatile” regions.  It’s a monster business (in every sense of the word) and certainly has far more dangerous consequences than licensing a Hollywood blockbuster or selling another Boeing airliner.

Historically, there have been rare occasions of public protest against unbridled arms trafficking, as with the backlash against “the merchants of death” after World War I, or the controversy over who armed Saddam Hussein that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf War.  Even now, small numbers of congressional representatives, including John Conyers, Chris Murphy, and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, continue to try to halt the sale of cluster munitions, bombs, and missiles to Saudi Arabia.

There is, however, unlikely to be a genuine public debate about the value of the arms business and Washington’s place in it if it isn’t even considered a subject worthy of more than an occasional media story.  In the meantime, the United States continues to hold onto the number one role in the global arms trade, the White House does its part, the Pentagon greases the wheels, and the dollars roll in to profit-hungry U.S. weapons contractors.

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and a senior advisor to the Security Assistance Monitor. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Our thanks to TomDispatch.

If anyone doubted that a percentage of the global population are akin to zombies, the incidents following the release of Pokémon Go have surely convinced you. Despite the game only being released in early July, we have already seen a man driving into a tree and a women getting locked in a graveyard whilst chasing these furry little creatures.

Pokémon describes the game on their website in the following way:

“Travel between the real world and the virtual world of Pokémon with Pokémon GO for iPhone and Android devices. With Pokémon GO, you’ll discover Pokémon in a whole new world—your own! Pokémon GO is built on Niantic’s Real World Gaming Platform and will use real locations to encourage players to search far and wide in the real world to discover Pokémon… In Pokémon GO, the real world will be the setting!”

Pokémon Go, Google, the State Department, the CIA and the DoD

The company behind Pokémon Go is a San Francisco software developer called Niantic, Inc, which was formed in 2010 as an internal startup at Google. The founder and current CEO of Niantic is John Hanke, a man who has connections both to the State Department and the CIA.

Before moving to San Francisco to study at the University of California, Hanke previously worked for the US State Department in Myanmar. Hanke also founded Keyhole, Inc in 2001, a company which specialized in geospatial data visualization applications. Google acquired the company in 2004, with many of the applications developed by Keyhole being instrumental in Google Maps and Earth. In 2003, the CIA’s venture-capitalist firm, In-Q-Tel, invested in Keyhole, with the CIA’s own website proudly detailing this investment:

“The CIA-assisted technology probably most familiar to you is one many of us use on a regular basis:  Google Earth. In February 2003, the CIA-funded venture-capitalist firm In-Q-Tel made a strategic investment in Keyhole, Inc., a pioneer of interactive 3-D earth visualization and creator of the groundbreaking rich-mapping EarthViewer 3D system. CIA worked closely with other Intelligence Community organizations to tailor Keyhole’s systems to meet their needs. The finished product transformed the way intelligence officers interacted with geographic information and earth imagery.”

One of the other intelligence organizations the CIA worked alongside was the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which is partly under the control of the US Department of Defense (DoD).

So we have a somewhat enigmatic former State Department employee with connections to the CIA and the DoD, being the CEO of a company that created what seems to be a silly, harmless game. What’s going on?

Selling and Sharing Your Data

Like so many new technologies in our digital age, Pokémon Go is constantly gathering information on the user and then openly admitting that they will share this data with anyone who wants it.

As James Corbett pointed out in his article titled: The CIA’s ‘Pokémon Go’ App is Doing What the Patriot Act Can’t, the privacy policy of the app states that Niantic will share all the information they gather (which is a lot) with the state and private organizations:

“We cooperate with government and law enforcement officials or private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We may disclose any information about you (or your authorized child) that is in our possession or control to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate.”

Corbett also details how the game requires the user to give excessive access to Niantic/CIA/NGA/DoD (including access to the users Google account and camera).

Oliver Stone on PG: “Totalitarianism” and a “New Level of Invasion”

Speaking at this year’s Comic-Con, Oliver Stone – the award winning filmmaker and director of the new film on Edward Snowden – had some very insightful views on the new craze and the growing business of data-mining. As Vulture magazine reported in a recent article, Stone denounced the game as a “new level of invasion” and a new form of “totalitarianism:”

“I’m hearing about it too; it’s a new level of invasion. Once the government had been hounded by Snowden, of course the corporations went into encryption, because they had to for survival, right? But the search for profits is enormous. Nobody has ever seen, in the history of the world, something like Google – ever! It’s the fastest-growing business ever, and they have invested huge amounts of money into what surveillance is; which is data-mining.”

Stone continues:

“They’re data-mining every person in this room for information as to what you’re buying, what it is you like, and above all, your behavior. Pokémon Go kicks into that. It’s everywhere. It’s what some people callsurveillance capitalism; it’s the newest stage. You’ll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society, where they will know how you want to behave and they will make the mockup that matches how you behave and feed you. It’s what they call totalitarianism.”

Predicting Human Behavior

It is interesting that Stone doesn’t just warn about the commercial aspect of data-mining, but the fact that the more data governments and private corporations collect on the citizens of the world, the easier it becomes to predict their behavior. It is not just Stone that is warning about this reality however. At the start of last year, the UK governments own surveillance commissioner, Tony Porter, revealed how data obtained from CCTV cameras can be used to “predict behavior.”

As we progress through the 21st century and more advanced algorithmic systems are developed to process the tsunami of data, intelligence agencies and governments will increasingly be able to predict (and manipulate) the behavior of their populations and the populations of foreign countries. We are already far along this path, will the trajectory for the future heading straight towards levels of surveillance far beyond even what George Orwell envisaged; with the fight for digital privacy being a major battleground in this century for those who value freedom.

Pokémon Go looks more like a Trojan horse of the CIA and the wider intelligence-security-data-mining-Big-Brother complex, than just a silly, innocent game.  With all these connections to the State Department, the CIA and the DoD, no wonder some countries are reportedly considering banning the game.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.