Global Research

The leader of the Taliban, who was killed in a US drone strike on May 21, allegedly traveled to Dubai 19 times and visited Iran twice, the Pakistani daily newspaper Dawn reported Tuesday.

A Pakistani passport and ID card recovered at the site of the US drone strike near the Afghan border bore the name Wali Muhammad and a valid visa showing him crossing into Pakistan from Iran on May 21, the day he was killed. Reports in the wake of Mansour’s death suggested frequent travels in and out of Pakistan and Dubai, where he was said to have a house and investments.

“Wali had a Pakistani passport and was travelling on it with a valid visa of Iran and Dubai,” a senior investigative agency official told Pakistan’s Dawn daily.

© AP Photo/ Abdul Malik

The official said Wali, widely believed to be the name used by Mansour in his foreign trips, had visited Dubai 18 times via Karachi airport and once via Quetta airport in the capital of Balochistan province.

The official said the ID card was issued to Wali in 2002 and renewed 10 years after expiry, whereas the passport was issued twice in 2006 and 2011 after the first expired. He reportedly traveled to Iran in February and March this year through the Taftan border town. His final trip before returning to Pakistan was on April 25.

In a detailed account of his itinerary, sources said Mansour crossed the immigration checkpoint at Taftan approximately six hours before his death. From there, he hired a car to travel to Quetta, launched near the regional city of Dalbandin, and resumed his journey before the drone struck the vehicle, killing him and his driver.

Sources said no relative has thus far claimed the charred body brought to the Combined Military Hospital in Quetta.

The outlet added that a DNA sample collected from the corpse would be tested in Islamabad, noting that Quetta lacks the relevant capabilities

What can we do about the powerful transnational agribusiness companies that have captured or at the very least heavily influence regulatory bodies, research institutes, trade agreements and governments? How can we assess the safety and efficacy of GMOs or their other technologies and products when narratives and decision-making processes have become distorted by these companies?

Through the ‘green revolution’ chemical-intensive model of agriculture these corporations and their powerful backers promoted and instituted, they have been able to determine what seeds are to be used by farmers, what is to be grown and what inputs are to be applied. This, in turn, has adversely effected the nutritional content of food, led to the over-exploitation of water and diminished drought resistance, degraded soil, undermined biodiversity, polluted the environment, destroyed farmers’ livelihoods and so much more: with 60 years’ farming experience behind him, Bhaskar Save outlined many of these impacts in his open letter to Indian officials some years back.

These powerful corporations increasingly hold sway over a globalised system of food and agriculture from seed to plate. And with major mergers within the agribusiness sector in the pipeline, power will be further consolidated and the situation is likely to worsen. While scientific innovation has a role to play in improving agriculture, the narrative about farming has been shaped to benefit the interests of this handful of wealthy, politically influential corporations whereby commercial interest trumps any notion of the public good.

The green revolution has proved to be disastrous in many areas (for example, see this, this and this). If the technology involved had been used more judiciously and genuinely in the public interest – and had not been married to geopolitical interests resulting in the creation of food deficit regions or instituted for the commercial gain of corporations – would we not now be in a better position? And would organic farming and agroecology have received greater attention and investment and be playing a much greater role (as research shows they should), even a dominant one, in agriculture?

Instead, while transnational agribusiness pays lip service to promoting a mix of different farming systems, alternative models are marginalised and continually discredited. PR replaces fact. Wild claims are made about the successes of the green revolution (or GMOs), which certainly should not be accepted at face value, and fail to acknowledge the massive external costs of this model.

How can the public, governments and regulatory agencies really evaluate the efficacy of technologies like GMOs when commercial interests continue to distort the narrative and hide behind slick public relations messages that are intended to mislead and misinform, while at the same time they co-opt politicians, trade policies, scientists and research?

There is of course enough independent evidence indicating the dangers, failures and shortcomings of GMOs to make anyone at least question the claims and motives of the industry, but this does not prevent the industry and its lobbyists misrepresenting the issue, smearing critics and using its enormous wealth and political clout to get GMOs onto the commercial market (see this), while suppressing research that is critical of its claims and technologies.

If we are ever going to have a system of food and agriculture that serves the interests of farmers, rural communities and consumers, rather than the interests of unaccountable corporations (that profit at the expense of human life) or extremely wealthy individuals like Bill Gates and others, we require transparency, accountability and a system of decision making that does not take place within the overbearing shadow of commercial influence.

With reference to GMOs, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI) (M) recently alluded to some of the issues mentioned above by stating:

“… there should not be any commercial release of GM crops without ensuring safety for humans, animals and the environment… The seed monopolies and agribusinesses only aim to maximise profits. They are not concerned about bio-safety or issues like biodiversity or the environment.”

The statement, which can be read in full here, continues:

“The Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture with agribusinesses like Monsanto, Wal-Mart, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and ITC in its Board made efforts to turn the direction of agricultural research and policy in such a manner as to cater their demands for profit maximisation. Companies like Monsanto during the Vietnam War produced tonnes and tonnes of “Agent Orange” unmindful of its consequences for Vietnamese people as it raked in super profits and that character remains.”

That character remains because the aim is always to maximise profit for shareholders.

In addition to promoting and supporting local food self-sufficiency and agroecology and shielding agriculture from the destructive impacts of manipulated trade and international commodity markets, what is also required to counter the power of these corporations is a leading role at national state level for the carrying out of public research that is free from the influence of commercial interests.

Again, focusing on GMOs, the CPI (M) continues:

“Hence we are of the opinion that all such experiments should be done exclusively by the public sector and the government institutions and no multinational corporations or monopoly agribusinesses should be allowed to undertake field trials… The government is facilitating profiteering by MNCs without addressing the concerns about bio-safety, monopoly control over seeds and having a fool-proof regulatory mechanism in place… the introduction of any such innovation… should be predicated on sound research and verification of claims open to public scrutiny.”

And in testing such claims, it should be not only the safety and environmental impacts of technologies that are taken into account, but also the potential effects on farmers, self-sufficiency, food security, biodiversity, nutrition, local economies and sustainability.

This approach should be based on democratic accountability and transparency and applies not only to India, but is also relevant for the US, Africa, Europe and every other country or region where transnational agribusiness has co-opted politicians and other key figures and bodies and behind the scenes has colluded with governments and agencies to gets its products onto the market.

India continues to dismantle its agriculture for the benefit of Western agribusiness at the behest of the World Bank, and what has happened in Africa has been described as a case study of how doctrinaire economics served corporate interests to destroy a whole continent’s agriculturally productive base.

If we do not strive to follow the route advocated for by the CPI (M) (and others, of course) on a global basis, we will have giant agribusiness conglomerates continuing to steam roll governments, farmers and the public into accepting patented seeds, poisonous chemicals, degraded environments and a centralised food production system that for the sake of profit (and geopolitical gain) aims to eradicate or marginalise traditional agriculture and successful alternative models across the globe.

One Humanity, One Planet, One World: Global Politics is Dehumanizing Mankind

By Mahboob A. Khawaja, May 23 2016

The Earth and Space are wired with secrecy, new and unthinkable weapons of mass destruction and global warming is a clicking time bomb for the future. The most hated and feared leaders do not have the intellectual and political capacity…

Americans: A Conquered People: The New Serfs. “Russia and China stand between Washington and Washington’s Goal of Hegemony over the Entire World”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, May 23 2016

As readers know, I have seen some optimism in voters support for Trump and Sanders as neither are members of the corrupt Republican and Democratic political establishments. Members of both political establishments enrich themselves by betraying the American people and…

U.S., UK, and EU, Are Now Dictatorships

By Eric Zuesse, May 23 2016

How can it be that in virtually all of the Presidential-candidate head-to-head Democratic versus Republican polling that was done of both Democratic and Republican candidates during the primaries, the preferred Democratic candidate against any one of the Republican candidates was…

Parallels Between Israel and 1930s Germany

By Uri Avnery, May 23 2016

(image) Uri Avnery “Please don’t write about Ya’ir Golan!” a friend begged me, “Anything a leftist like you writes will only harm him!” So I abstained for some weeks. But I can’t keep quiet any longer. General Ya’ir Golan, the…

Religious Extremists Waging a Quiet Revolution in Israel

By Jonathan Cook, May 23 2016

In a surprise move, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week forced out his long-serving defence minister, Moshe Yaalon. As he stepped down, Mr Yaalon warned: “Extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel.”He was referring partly to his…

More Game-Playing on MH-17?

By Robert Parry, May 24 2016

A newly posted video showing a glimpse of a Buk missile battery rolling down a highway in eastern Ukraine has sparked a flurry of renewed accusations blaming Russia for the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 killing…

Any informed observer, by now, should be fully aware that the Saudis are hurting financially. That is, they are hurting as much as any degenerate hedonistic ruling class of genetic royalty can be. But, while Saudi princes roll around in money and women and unspeakably depraved forms of entertainment and while they oversee a nation of slaves and prisoners, the bank accounts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are now at a low point.

After years of decadence and willingness to lavishly fund terror and propaganda all across the world and after agreeing to work with the United States in a suicidal attempt to hurt Russia at the oil export pump, Saudi Arabia is finally starting to realize that there may actually be a bottom to their bank accounts.

Even as major Saudi corporations begin going belly up (the Bin Laden group is essentially bankrupt), the Saudi government is now openly considering its massive contracting population in IOUs and tradable bonds.

As Bloomberg reports,

Saudi Arabia has told banks in the country that it is considering giving contractors IOUs to settle some outstanding bills, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

As payment from the state, contractors would receive bond-like instruments which they could hold until maturity or sell on to banks, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Companies have received some payments in cash and the rest could come in the “I-owe-you” notes, the people said, adding that no decisions have been made on the measures.

Saudi Arabia has slowed payments to contractors and suppliers, tapped foreign reserves and borrowed from local and international banks in response to the decline in crude oil, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue.

Even Moody’s the notorious lying agency that gave derivatives in the United States good credit ratings before the collapse, downgraded the Saudi long-term issuing rate from A1 to Aa3. Bloomberg reports,

Saudi Arabia’s economic growth is slowing as revenue from oil exports declines. Gross domestic product will likely expand 1.5 percent this year, the slowest pace since the global financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.

“Until there is greater clarity on this situation some negativity and increased speculation from investors and other market participants should be expected,” said Chavan Bhogaita, head of market insight and strategy at National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

This news comes as Saudi Arabia is threatening to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow families of the victims of 9/11 to sue the KSA. Although President Obama has already threatened to veto the bill, such threats were most likely hollow to begin with. After the news of the Saudi financial condition, however, it is even less likely that the Saudis would go through with their threat.

Of course, we still expect Obama to veto the bill.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 650 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

President Barack Obama’s announcement in Hanoi on Monday that Washington is lifting its four-decade-old arms embargo on Vietnam is described by the media, and Obama himself, as a decisive step in the “normalization” of relations between the US and Vietnam.

That process has been ongoing since the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1995. On the military front, the US agreed to sell Vietnam non-lethal military hardware in 2007, and last year it agreed to provide the Vietnamese coastguard with five unarmed patrol boats.

While there are no immediate prospects for massive arms deals between Washington and Hanoi, the US gesture is aimed at drawing Vietnam more closely into the orbit of US imperialism and the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia.” It seeks in Vietnam, as in Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia and elsewhere in Asia, the creation of a string of military alliances and bases to contain and ultimately wage war against China. The Pentagon wants the right to utilize the same bases it built up during the Vietnam War and to pre-position military hardware in preparation for such a conflict.

What has stood in the way of “normalization” until now is the bloody history of US imperialism’s encounter with Vietnam. Between 1964 and 1975, the US military unleashed violence of near-genocidal proportions against the Vietnamese people.

The war, which cost the lives of at least 3 million Vietnamese, saw the deployment of a US military force that at its height numbered more than 536,000 troops, 58,000 of whom died in Vietnam. By the time the war was over, US warplanes had dropped more than three times as much explosives on Vietnam and neighboring Laos and Cambodia as were dropped all across Europe and Asia during the Second World War. In addition, some 20 million gallons of toxic chemicals were dumped on the Vietnamese countryside, turning at least 10 percent of it into wasteland and leaving behind a health crisis that still inflicts cruel deformities upon Vietnamese newborns.

The politicians, both Democratic and Republican, and the senior military commanders who planned and prosecuted this devastating war of aggression were responsible for the worst war crimes committed since Hitler’s Third Reich, though, of course, none of them have faced the equivalent of a Nuremberg Tribunal.

Despite US imperialism’s massive military power, it suffered a humiliating defeat, caused in the first instance by the immense heroism and sacrifice of the Vietnamese people. This was combined with the overwhelming hostility to the war and the growth of militancy within the American working class that made it impossible to continue the imperialist intervention.

The image of the last American personnel scrambling onto helicopters on the US Embassy rooftop in Saigon in April 1975 remains an indelible expression of the historic crisis and decline of US imperialism.

That 41 years later Vietnam is being drawn into the preparations for an even more bloody and catastrophic US war against China is an expression of the tragic fate of the Vietnamese Revolution.

Vietnam’s evolution in the aftermath of the US war provides an historical vindication—in the negative—of Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution. The liberation of this oppressed country from imperialist domination could, in the end, be accomplished only through a revolution of the working class, leading the oppressed masses behind it. Moreover, none of the immense economic problems confronting a war-shattered Vietnam could be resolved on the basis of nationalist policies such as those advanced by the Stalinist leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP). In the epoch of the domination of the world capitalist economy over all national economies, socialist transformation, while beginning on the national soil, could be completed only on the international arena.

The isolation of the Vietnamese Revolution was a function not only of the VCP’s Stalinist perspective of “socialism in one country,” but even more decisively of the betrayals of a series of revolutionary upheavals internationally at the hands of Stalinist, social democratic and trade union leaderships during the same period. From the May-June events in France in 1968 through to the collapse of Franco’s fascist regime in Spain in 1975, these leaderships all worked to prevent the revolutionary mobilization of the working class and to re-stabilize capitalist rule.

In the end, the Vietnamese Stalinist bureaucracy took the same road as its Chinese counterpart, adopting its Doi Moi (renovation) policy in 1986 and declaring the creation of a “socialist-oriented market economy” as its goal.

Vietnam has been transformed into a cheap labor platform for transnational capital, with its working class subjected to grinding exploitation and wage levels that are half those prevailing in China. Corruption pervades the ruling party, which represents the interests of foreign capital and the emerging financial elite within Vietnam itself, while using police state measures to ensure labor discipline.

The Obama administration is attempting to draw Vietnam more tightly into its economic orbit through its participation in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), whose principal aim is to counter China’s economic influence in the region. The agreement’s intended effects are to remove the remaining fetters on US capitalist investment and trade, while tearing down what remains of Vietnam’s state-owned enterprises.

China remains Vietnam’s number one trading partner, even as the US is its top export market. The ruling bureaucracy, while tilting toward Washington, still attempts to maintain a delicate balancing between the two.

The increasingly aggressive provocations being organized by the US military in the South China Sea and Washington’s drive to stoke tensions between China and neighboring states over control of islands, reefs and territorial waters will inevitably upset this balancing act, dragging Vietnam once again into the horrors of war.

Only the working class can prevent such a catastrophe. With its promotion of the penetration of Vietnam by foreign direct investment and the correspondingly rapid growth of capitalist production, Vietnam’s ruling bureaucracy and the wealthy layers it represents are creating their own grave diggers, in the form of a young and concentrated working class that will inevitably be drawn onto the road of class struggle.

A newly posted video showing a glimpse of a Buk missile battery rolling down a highway in eastern Ukraine has sparked a flurry of renewed accusations blaming Russia for the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 killing 298 people. But the “dash-cam video” actually adds little to the MH-17 whodunit mystery because it could also support a narrative blaming the Ukrainian military for the disaster.

The fleeting image of the missile battery and its accompanying vehicles, presumably containing an armed escort, seems to have been taken by a car heading west on H-21 highway in the town of Makiivka, as the convoy passed by heading east, according to the private intelligence firm Stratfor and the “citizen journalism” Web site, Bellingcat.

However, even assuming that this Buk battery was the one that fired the missile that destroyed MH-17, its location in the video is to the west of both the site where Almaz-Antey, the Russian Buk manufacturer, calculated the missile was fired, around the village of Zaroshchenskoye (then under Ukrainian government control), and the 320-square-kilometer zone where the Dutch Safety Board speculated the fateful rocket originated (covering an area of mixed government and rebel control).

Image: A screenshot of a Buk convoy, apparently traveling eastward on highway H-21 in Makiivka, Ukraine, on July 17, 2014, several hours before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down. (From a YouTube video)

In other words, the question would be where the battery stopped before firing one of its missiles, assuming that this Buk system was the one that fired the missile. (The map below shows the location of Makiivka in red, Almaz-Antey’s suspected launch site in yellow, and the general vicinity of the Dutch Safety Board’s 320-square-kilometer launch zone in green.)

Another curious aspect of this and the other eight or so Internet images of Buk missiles collected by Bellingcat and supposedly showing a Buk battery rumbling around Ukraine on or about July 17, 2014, is that they are all headed east toward Russia, yet there have been no images of Buks heading west from Russia into Ukraine, a logical necessity if the Russians gave a Buk system to ethnic Russian rebels or dispatched one of their own Buk military units directly into Ukraine, suspicions that Russia and the rebels have denied.

The absence of a westward-traveling Buk battery fits with the assessment from Western intelligence agencies that the several operational Buk systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, were under the control of the Ukrainian military, a disclosure contained in a Dutch intelligence report released last October and implicitly confirmed by an earlier U.S. “Government Assessment” that listed weapons systems that Russia had given the rebels but didn’t mention a Buk battery.

The Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) reported that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet on July 17 belonged to the Ukrainian government. MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014.

MIVD said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” capable of downing a plane at that altitude and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country,” whereas the MIVD said the ethnic Russian rebels had only MANPADS that could not reach the higher altitudes.

Ukrainian Offensive

On July 17, the Ukrainian military also was mounting a strong offensive against rebel positions to the north and thus the front lines were shifting rapidly, making it hard to know exactly where the borders of government and rebel control were. To the south, where the Buk missile was believed fired, the battle lines were lightly manned and hazy – because of the concentration of forces to the north – meaning that an armed Buk convoy could probably move somewhat freely.

Image: A photograph of a Russian BUK missile system that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt published on Twitter in support of a claim about Russia placing BUK missiles in eastern Ukraine, except that the image appears to be an AP photo taken at an air show near Moscow two years earlier.

Also, because of the offensive, the Ukrainian government feared a full-scale Russian invasion to prevent the annihilation of the rebels, explaining why Kiev was dispatching its Buk systems toward the Russian border, to defend against potential Russian air strikes.

Just a day earlier, a Ukrainian fighter flying along the border was shot down by an air-to-air missile (presumably fired by a Russian warplane), according to last October’s Dutch Safety Board report. So, tensions were high on July 17, 2014, when MH-17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, broke apart over eastern Ukraine, believed downed by a surface-to-air missile although there have been other suggestions that the plane might  have been hit by an air-to-air missile.

At the time, Ukraine also was the epicenter of an “information war” that had followed a U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, which ousted democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and replaced the Russian-friendly leader with a fiercely nationalistic and anti-Russian regime in Kiev. The violent coup, in turn, prompted Crimea to vote 96 percent in a hasty referendum to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. Eastern Ukraine and its large ethnic Russian population also revolted against the new authorities.

The U.S. government and much of the Western media, however, denied there had been a coup in Kiev, hailed the new regime as “legitimate,” and deemed Crimea’s secession a “Russian invasion.” The West also denounced the eastern Ukrainian resistance as “Russian aggression.” So, the propaganda war was almost as hot as the military fighting, a factor that has further distorted the pursuit of truth about the MH-17 tragedy.

Immediately after the MH-17 crash, the U.S. government sought to pin the blame on Russia as part of a propaganda drive to convince the European Union to join in imposing economic sanctions on Russia for its “annexation” of Crimea and its support of eastern Ukrainians resisting the Kiev regime.

However, a source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the analysts could find no evidence that the Russians had supplied the rebels with a sophisticated Buk system or that the Russians had introduced a Buk battery under their own command. The source said the initial intelligence suggested that an undisciplined Ukrainian military team was responsible.

Yet, on July 20, 2014, just three days after the tragedy, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on all Sunday morning talk shows and blamed the Russian-backed rebels and implicitly Moscow. He cited some “social media” comments and – on NBC’s “Meet the Press” – added: “We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.”

Two days later, on July 22, the Obama administration released a “Government Assessment” that tried to bolster Kerry’s accusations, in part, by listing the various weapons systems that U.S. intelligence believed Russia had provided the rebels, but a Buk battery was not among them. At background briefings for selected mainstream media reporters, U.S. intelligence analysts struggled to back up the administration’s case against Russia.

For instance, the analysts suggested to a Los Angeles Times reporter that Ukrainian government soldiers manning the suspected Buk battery may have switched to the rebel side before firing the missile. The Times wrote:

“U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 [Buk anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems.”

However, after that July 22 briefing — as U.S. intelligence analysts continued to pore over satellite imagery, telephonic intercepts and other data to refine their understanding of the tragedy — the U.S. government went curiously silent, refusing to make any updates or adjustments to its initial rush to judgment, a silence that has continued ever since.

Staying Silent

Meanwhile, the source who continued receiving briefings from the U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the reason for going quiet was that the more detailed evidence pointed toward a rogue element of the Ukrainian military connected to a hardline Ukrainian oligarch, with the possible motive the shooting down of President Vladimir Putin’s plane returning from a state visit to South America.

In that scenario, a Ukrainian fighter jet in the vicinity (as reported by several eyewitnesses on the ground) was there primarily as a spotter, seeking to identify the target. But Putin’s plane, with similar markings to MH-17, took a more northerly route and landed safely in Moscow.

Image: A side-by-side comparison of the Russian presidential jetliner and the Malaysia Airlines plane.

Though I was unable to determine whether the source’s analysts represented a dissenting or consensus opinion inside the U.S. intelligence community, some of the now public evidence could fit with that narrative, including why the suspected Buk system was pushing eastward as close to or even into “rebel” territory on July 17.

If Putin was the target, the attackers would need to spread immediate confusion about who was responsible to avoid massive retaliation by Moscow. A perfect cover story would be that Putin’s plane was shot down accidentally by his ethnic Russian allies or even his own troops, the ultimate case of being hoisted on his own petard.

Such a risky operation also would prepare disinformation for release after the attack to create more of a smokescreen and to gain control of the narrative, including planting material on the Internet to be disseminated by friendly or credulous media outlets.

The Ukrainian government has denied having a fighter jet in the air at the time of the MH-17 shoot-down and has denied that any of its Buk or other anti-aircraft systems were involved.

Yet, whatever the truth, U.S. intelligence clearly knows a great deal more than it has been willing to share with the public or even with the Dutch-led investigations. Last October, more than a year after the shoot-down, the Dutch Safety Board was unable to say who was responsible and could only approximate the location of the missile firing inside a 320-square-kilometer area, whereas Kerry had claimed three days after the crash that the U.S. government knew the launch point.

Earlier this year, Fred Westerbeke, the chief prosecutor of the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team [JIT], provided a partial update to the Dutch family members of MH-17 victims, explaining that he hoped to have a more precise fix on the firing site by the second half of 2016, i.e., possibly more than two years after the tragedy.

Westerbeke’s letter acknowledged that the investigators lacked “primary raw radar images” which could have revealed a missile or a military aircraft in the vicinity of MH-17. That apparently was because Ukrainian authorities had shut down their primary radar facilities supposedly for maintenance, leaving only secondary radar which would show commercial aircraft but not military planes or rockets.

Russian officials have said their radar data suggest that a Ukrainian warplane might have fired on MH-17 with an air-to-air missile, a possibility that is difficult to rule out without examining primary radar which has so far not been available. Primary radar data also might have picked up a ground-fired missile, Westerbeke wrote.

“Raw primary radar data could provide information on the rocket trajectory,” Westerbeke wrote. “The JIT does not have that information yet. JIT has questioned a member of the Ukrainian air traffic control and a Ukrainian radar specialist. They explained why no primary radar images were saved in Ukraine.” Westerbeke said investigators are also asking Russia about its data.

Westerbeke added that the JIT had “no video or film of the launch or the trajectory of the rocket.” Nor, he said, do the investigators have satellite photos of the rocket launch.

“The clouds on the part of the day of the downing of MH17 prevented usable pictures of the launch site from being available,” he wrote. “There are pictures from just before and just after July 17th and they are an asset in the investigation.”

Though Westerbeke provided no details, the Russian military released a number of satellite images purporting to show Ukrainian government Buk missile systems north of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk before the attack, including two batteries that purportedly were shifted 50 kilometers south of Donetsk on July 17, the day of the crash, and then removed by July 18.

Russian Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov called on the Ukrainian government to explain the movements of its Buk systems and why Kiev’s Kupol-M19S18 radars, which coordinate the flight of Buk missiles, showed increased activity leading up to the July 17 shoot-down.

Necessary Secrets?

Part of the reason that the MH-17 mystery has remained unsolved is that the U.S. government  insists that its satellite surveillance, which includes infrared detection of heat sources as well as highly precise photographic imagery, remains a “state secret” that cannot be made public.

Image: Secretary of State John Kerry denounces Russia’s RT network as a “propaganda bullhorn” during remarks on April 24, 2014.

However, in similar past incidents, the U.S. government has declassified sensitive information. For instance, after a Soviet pilot accidentally shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007 over Russian territory in 1983, the Reagan administration revealed the U.S. capability to intercept Soviet ground-to-air military communications in order to make the Soviets look even worse by selectively editing the intercepts to present the destruction of the civilian aircraft as willful.

In that case, too, the U.S. government let its propaganda needs overwhelm any commitment to the truth, as Alvin A. Snyder, who in 1983 was director of the U.S. Information Agency’s television and film division, wrote in his 1995 book, Warriors of Disinformation.

After KAL-007 was shot down, “the Reagan administration’s spin machine began cranking up,” Snyder wrote. “The objective, quite simply, was to heap as much abuse on the Soviet Union as possible. … The American media swallowed the U.S. government line without reservation.”

On Sept. 6, 1983, the Reagan administration went so far as to present a doctored transcript of the intercepts to the United Nations Security Council. “The perception we wanted to convey was that the Soviet Union had cold-bloodedly carried out a barbaric act,” Snyder wrote.

Only a decade later, when Snyder saw the complete transcripts — including the portions that the Reagan administration had excised — would he fully realize how many of the central elements of the U.S. presentation were lies.

Snyder concluded, “The moral of the story is that all governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.” [For more details on the KAL-007 deception and the history of U.S. trickery, see Consortiumnews.com’s “A Dodgy Dossier on Syrian War.”]

Image: Quinn Schansman, a dual U.S.-Dutch citizen killed aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Photo from Facebook)

In the MH-17 case, the Obama administration let Kerry present the rush to judgment fingering the Russians and the rebels but then kept all the evidence secret even though the U.S. government’s satellite capabilities are well-known. By refusing to declassify any information for the MH-17 investigation, Washington has succeeded in maintaining the widespread impression that Moscow was responsible for the tragedy without having to prove it.

The source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the Obama administration considered “coming clean” about the MH-17 case in March, when Thomas Schansman, the Dutch father of the only American victim, was pleading for the U.S. government’s cooperation, but administration officials ultimately decided to keep quiet because to do otherwise would have “reversed the narrative.”

Image: A screen shot of the roadway where the suspected BUK missile battery supposedly passed after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Image from Australian “60 Minutes” program)

In the meantime, outfits such as Bellingcat have been free to reinforce the impression of Russian guilt, even as some of those claims have proved false. For instance, Bellingcat directed a news crew from Australia’s “60 Minutes” to a location outside Luhansk (near the Russian border) that the group had identified as the site for the “getaway video” showing a Buk battery with one missile missing.

The “60 Minutes” crew went to the spot and pretended to be at the place shown in the video, but none of the landmarks matched up, which became obvious when screen grabs of the video were placed next to the scene of the Australian crew’s stand-upper. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Fake Evidence Blaming Russia for MH-17.”]

Image: Correspondent Michael Usher of Australia’s “60 Minutes” claims to have found the billboard visible in a video of a BUK missile launcher after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Screen shot from Australia’s “60 Minutes”)

Yet, reflecting the deep-seated mainstream media bias on the MH-17 case, the Australian program reacted angrily to my pointing out the obvious discrepancies. In a follow-up, the show denounced me but could only cite a utility pole in its footage that looked similar to a utility pole in the video.

While it’s true that utility poles tend to look alike, in this case none of the surroundings did, including the placement of the foliage and a house shown in the video that isn’t present in the Australian program’s shot. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “A Reckless Stand-upper on MH-17.”]

But the impact of the nearly two years of one-sided coverage of the MH-17 case in the mainstream Western media has been considerable. In the last few days, a lawyer for the families of Australian victims announced the filing of a lawsuit against Russia and Putin in the European court for human rights seeking compensation of $10 million per passenger. Many of the West’s news articles on the lawsuit assume Russia’s guilt.

In other words, whatever the truth about the MH-17 shoot-down, the tragedy has proven to be worth its weight in propaganda gold against Russia and Putin, even as the U.S. government hides the actual proof that might show exactly who was responsible.

(Research by Assistant Editor Chelsea Gilmour.)

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon andbarnesandnoble.com).

A group of U.S. intelligence veterans is calling on President Obama to expedite the FBI review of former Secretary of State Clinton’s alleged email security violations so the public can assess this issue in a timely fashion. 

.

.

MEMORANDUM

FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Introduction

Last Wednesday Robert Gates, CIA Director under President Bush-41 and Defense Secretary under President Bush-43, publicly commented that Secretary Hillary Clinton’s “whole email thing … is really a concern in terms of her judgment,” adding, “I don’t know what originally prompted her to think that was a good idea.”

What originally prompted her does not matter. As your Secretary of State and your subordinate, she willfully violated laws designed to protect classified information from unauthorized disclosure. It may be somewhat difficult for those not as immersed in national security matters as we have been to appreciate the seriousness of the offense, including the harm done in compromising some of the most sensitive U.S. programs and activities. This is why we write.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Pundits and others are playing down the harm. A charitable interpretation is that they have no way to gauge what it means to expose so much to so many. We do know, and our overriding concern is to protect the national security of our country from further harm. It would be a huge help toward this end, if you would order Attorney General Loretta Lynch to instruct the FBI to stop slow-walking the email investigation and release its findings promptly.

If you choose, instead, to give precedence to politics over national security, the American people will be deprived of timely appreciation of the gravity of the harm done; national security officials who do follow the rules will be scandalized; FBI investigators will conclude that that their job is more political than professional; and the noxious impression will grow that powerful people cannot be held accountable when they break the law. Worse: if the results of the FBI investigation remain under lock and key, dangerous pressures are likely to be exerted on the most senior U.S. officials by those who have the key – as we explain below.

We the undersigned Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have spent 400 years working with classified information – up to and including TOP SECRET, Codeword, and Special Access Programs (SAP). Given that experience, we believe that much of the commentary on the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton email controversy has been misplaced, focusing on extraneous issues having little or nothing to do with the overriding imperative to protect classified information.

As intelligence, military, and foreign service professionals, we are highly aware not only of that compelling need, but also of the accompanying necessity to hold accountable those whose actions compromise – whether for reasons of convenience or espionage – sensitive operations, programs and persons. In addition, we know that successful mutual cooperation with foreign intelligence services depends largely on what they see as our ability to keep secrets secret.

Background

Last August, Secretary Clinton handed over her private email server to the FBI, five months after she acknowledged she had used it for work-related emails as Secretary of State. She admitted to having deleted about 31,000 emails she described as personal. Media reports last fall, however, indicated that the FBI was able to recover the personal emails, and was reviewing them, as well as the 30,000 others she had described as work-related.

In January, the Department of State announced that, of the 30,000 work-related emails, at least 1,340 contained classified material. The Department retroactively classified 22 of those TOP SECRET and prevented their release. Among the 22 were some that, according to media reports, included information on highly sensitive Special Access Programs (SAP).

The White House has said it will do nothing to impede the FBI investigation and possible filing of charges against Clinton, if the facts should warrant that kind of action. Inasmuch as the outcome of the investigation is bound to have major political consequences, such White House assurances stretch credulity.

By all indications, the FBI is slow-walking the investigation and mainstream media are soft-pedaling the issue. As things now stand, most Americans remain unaware of the import of this industrial-scale compromise of very sensitive national security information in Secretary Clinton’s emails.

Our concern mounted in January when the Inspector General of the intelligence community wrote to the chairs of the congressional intelligence committees that he had received from one of the intelligence agencies two “sworn declarations” asserting that Secretary Clinton’s emails contained not only CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET information, but also information at the TOP SECRET/SAP level.

In 2009, you signed an Executive Order regarding SAP (Special Access Programs), so we assume you were briefed on their extremely high sensitivity and the consequent need to sharply limit the number of people allowed to be “read-in” on them. The mishandling of SAP information can neutralize intelligence programs costing billions of dollars, wreck liaison relationships assiduously cultivated for decades, and get a lot of people killed.

‘It Wasn’t That Bad’

All those directly or peripherally involved in the investigation of the Clinton email issue know very well that it could have a direct impact on who is likely to become the next President of the United States, and they will be making decisions with that reality in mind. They know that it is with you that “the buck stops,” and they are sensitive to signs of your preferences. Those were not difficult to discern in your commencement address at Howard University on May 7, in which you strongly advocated the same basic policy approaches as those espoused by one Democratic presidential candidate – Hillary Clinton.

Your White House has also made excuses for deliberate security violations by Secretary Clinton that would have gotten senior officials like us fired and probably indicted. We look with suspicion at what we see as contrasting and totally inappropriate attempts by the administration and media to play down the importance of Secretary Clinton’s deliberate disregard of basic security instructions and procedures.

It appears that the option chosen by the White House is using the declared need for “thoroughness” to soft-pedal and delay completion of the investigation for several more months, while the corporate media sleeps on. Four months have already gone by since the smoking-gun-type revelations in the intelligence community Inspector General’s letter to Congress, and it has been well over a year since Secretary Clinton first acknowledged using an insecure email server for official business.

Another claim emanating from your White House is that Clinton was careless in managing her emails and has admitted as much, but that she has not damaged American national security. She has called it a “mistake,” but security officials of the National Security Agency explicitly forewarned her against violating basic laws and regulations designed to prevent the compromise of classified information.

NSA, FBI Have Enough Evidence

Surely, enough time has passed, and enough material has been reviewed, to permit a preliminary damage assessment. The NSA has the necessary information and should, by now, have shared that information with the FBI. Secretary Clinton’s server in her house in Chappaqua, New York, was not a secured device. Her email address incorporated her initials, “hdr” (apparently for her maiden name, Hillary Diane Rodham). It also included the “clinton” server identity, so it was easy for a hacker to spot.

Anyone with the proper equipment, knowledge and motivation might have been able to obtain access. That is what hackers are able to do, with considerable success, against government servers that are far better protected than the private email server located in her New York State home.

In fact, there have been reports that Secretary Clinton’s emails were, indeed, hacked successfully by foreigners. The Romanian hacker who goes by the name Guccifer claimed earlier this month that he had repeatedly hacked her email server. He described the server as “like an open orchid on the Internet” and that “it was easy … easy for me, for everybody.” Guccifer has been extradited from Romania and is now in jail in Alexandria, Virginia, where the FBI is said to be questioning him on the emails. There have also been credible claims that Russian intelligence and other foreign services were able to hack the Secretary’s server.

Another argument being surfaced, in a transparent attempt to defend Secretary Clinton, has to do with intent. It is said that she did not intend to have classified information on her computer in New York and had no intention of handling secret material in a way that would be accessible to foreign intelligence or others lacking the proper security clearances and the need-to-know.

But while intent might be relevant in terms of punishment, it does not change the fact that as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, then Senator Clinton had clearances for classified information for years before becoming Secretary of State. She knew the rules and yet as Secretary she handled classified information carelessly after a deliberate decision to circumvent normal procedures for its safeguarding, thus making it vulnerable to foreign intelligence, as well as to criminal hackers.

Anyone who has ever handled classified material knows that there are a number of things that you do not do. You do not take it home with you, you do not copy it and share it with anyone who does not have a clearance and a need-to-know, you do not strip off the classification marks and treat it as unclassified, and you do not transfer it to another email account that is not protected by a government server.

If you have a secured government computer operating off of a secure server that means that what is on the computer stays on the computer. This is not a matter of debate or subject to interpretation. It is how one safeguards classified information, even if one believes that the material should not be classified, which is another argument that has been made in Clinton’s defense. Whether or not the classification is unnecessary is not your decision to make.

Apart from the guidelines for proper handling of classified information, outlined in Executive Order 13526 and 18 U.S.C Sec. 793(f) of the federal code, there is some evidence of a cover-up regarding what was compromised. This itself would be a violation of the 2009 Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

Numerous messages both in New York and in Washington have reportedly been erased or simply cannot be found. In addition, the law cited above explicitly makes it a felony to cut and paste classified information removing its classification designation. Retaining such information on a private email system is also a felony. In one of Secretary Clinton’s emails, she instructed her staff simply to remove a classification and send the information to her on her server.

So the question is not whether Secretary Clinton broke the law. She did. If the laws are to be equally applied, she should face the same kind of consequences as others who have been found, often on the basis of much less convincing evidence, guilty of similar behavior.

Some More Equal Than Others

Secretary Clinton’ case invites comparison with what happened to former CIA case officer Jeffrey Sterling, now serving a three-and-a-half-year prison term for allegedly leaking information to New York Times journalist James Risen. Sterling first came to the media’s attention when in 2003 he blew the whistle on a botched CIA operation called Operation Merlin, telling the Senate Intelligence Committee staff that the operation had ended up revealing nuclear secrets to Iran. When in 2006 James Risen published a book that discussed, inter alia, this amateurish cowboy operation, the Department of Justice focused on Sterling as the suspected source.

In court, the federal prosecutors relied almost entirely on Risen’s phone and email logs, which reportedly demonstrated that the two men had been in contact up until 2005. But the prosecutors did not provide the content of those communications even though the FBI was listening in on some of them. Risen has claimed that he had multiple sources on Operation Merlin, and Sterling has always denied being involved.

Jeffrey Sterling was not permitted to testify in the trial on his own behalf because he would have had to discuss Operation Merlin, which was and is still classified. He could not mention any details about it even if they were already publicly known through the Risen book. No evidence was ever produced in court demonstrating that any classified information ever passed between the two men, but Sterling, an African American, was nevertheless convicted by an all-white jury in Virginia based on “suspicion” and the presumption that “it had to be him.”

The contrast between the copious evidence – some of it self-admitted – of Secretary Clinton’s demonstrable infractions, on the one hand, and the very sketchy, circumstantial evidence used to convict and imprison Jeffrey Sterling, on the other, lend weight to the suspicion that there is one law for the rich and powerful in the United States and another for the rest of us.

Failing to take steps against a politically powerful presidential candidate and letting her off unscathed for crimes of her own making, while an institutionally unprotected Jeffrey Sterling sits in prison would be a travesty of justice not dissimilar to the gentle wrist-slap given Gen. David Petraeus for giving his mistress extremely sensitive information and then lying to the FBI about it.

Your order to then-Attorney General Eric Holder to let Gen. David Petraeus off easy created a noxious – and demoralizing – precedent in the national security community indicating that, whatever the pains taken at lower levels to prevent compromise of duly classified information, top officials are almost never held accountable for disregarding well-established rules. These are some of the reasons we are so concerned that this is precisely the direction in which you seem to be leaning on the Clinton email issue.

In our view, the sole legitimate reason for disclosing classified information springs from the only “oath” we all took – “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.” When, for example, Edward Snowden saw the U.S. government grossly violating our Fourth Amendment right to be “secure” against warrantless “searches and seizures,” he gave more weight to that oath (ethicists call it a supervening value) than to the promise he had made not to disclose information that could harm U.S. national security.

Possibly Still Worse Ahead

You might give some thought, Mr. President, to a potentially messy side of this. What is already known about NSA’s collect-it-all electronic practices over the past several years strongly suggests that NSA, and perhaps the FBI, already know chapter and verse. It is virtually certain they know what was in Secretary Clinton’s emails – including the ones she thought she had deleted. It is likely that they have also been able to determine which foreign intelligence agencies and other hackers were able to access the emails.

One ignores this at one’s peril. Secretary Clinton’s security violations can have impact not only on whether she becomes your successor, but also on whether she would, in that case, be beholden to those who know what lies hidden from the rest of us – perhaps even from you.

Intelligence professionals (in contrast to the occasional political functionary) take the compromise of classified information with utmost seriousness. More important: this is for us a quintessentially nonpartisan issue. It has to do, first and foremost, with the national security of the United States.

We are all too familiar with what harm can come from blithe disregard of basic procedures designed to protect sensitive intelligence and other national security information. Yes, the lamentable unevenness in how such infractions are handled is also an important issue – but that is not our main focus in the present context.

The Truth Will Out

Not all workers at the NSA or the FBI are likely to keep their heads in the sand, as they watch very senior officials and politicians with their own agendas disregard laws to safeguard the nation’s security. We know what it is like to do the difficult, disciplined work of protecting information from being compromised by strictly abiding by what often seem to be cumbersome rules and regulations. We’ve been there; done that.

If you encourage the Department of Justice and the FBI to continue slow-walking the investigation, there is a good chance the truth will come out anyway. As you are aware, the Justice Department, the FBI, and NSA have all yielded recent patriots who, in such circumstances, decided that whistleblowing – rather than silence – was the only way to honor the oath we all swore – to support and defend the Constitution.

To sum up our concern regarding how all this plays out, if you order the Justice Department and FBI to pursue the investigation with “all deliberate speed,” so to speak, and Secretary Clinton becomes president, the juicy email secrets in the hidden hands of the NSA and FBI are likely to give those already powerful institutions a capacity for blackmail that would make J. Edgar Hoover’s mouth water. In addition, information hacked by foreign intelligence services or Guccifer-like hackers can also provide useful grist for leverage or blackmail.

Taking Care the Laws Are Faithfully Executed

We strongly urge you to order Attorney General Loretta Lynch to instruct FBI Director James Comey to wind up a preliminary investigation and tell the country now what they have learned. By now they – and U.S. intelligence agencies – have had enough time to do an early assessment of what classified data, programs and people have been compromised. Realistically speaking, a lengthier, comprehensive post-mortem-type evaluation – however interesting it might be, might never see the light of day under a new president.

We believe the American people are entitled to prompt and full disclosure, and respectfully suggest that you ensure that enforcement of laws protecting our national security does not play stepchild to political considerations on this key issue.

On April 10, you assured Chris Wallace, “I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department, or the FBI – not just in this [Clinton email] case, but in any case. Full stop. Period.”

We urge you to abide by that promise, and let the chips fall where they may. Full stop. Period.

So foreign ministers from the 28 NATO member-nations met in Brussels for a two-day summit, while mighty military power Montenegro was inducted as a new member.

Global Robocop NATO predictably discussed Afghanistan (a war NATO ignominiously lost); Iraq (a war the Pentagon ignominiously lost); Libya (a nation NATO turned into a failed state devastated by militia hell); Syria (a nation NATO, via Turkey, would love to invade, and is already a militia hell).

Afghans must now rest assured that NATO’s Resolute Support mission – plus “financial support for Afghan forces” – will finally assure the success of Operation Enduring Freedom forever.

Libyans must be reassured, in the words of NATO figurehead secretary Jens Stoltenberg, that we “should stand ready to support the new Government of National Accord in Libya.”

And then there’s the icing on the NATO cake, described as “measures against Russia”.

Stoltenberg duly confirmed, “We have already decided to enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of our alliance. Our military planners have put forward proposals of several battalions in different countries in the region. No decision has been taken on the numbers and locations.”

These puny “several battalions” won’t cause any Russian planner to lose sleep. The real “measure” is the deployment of the Aegis Ashore system in Romania last week – plus a further one in Poland in 2018. This has been vehemently opposed by Moscow since the early 2000s. NATO’s argument that the Aegis represents protection against the “threat” of ballistic missiles from Iran does not even qualify as kindergarten play.

Every Russian military planner knows the Aegis is not defensive. This is a serious game-changer – as in de-localizing US nuclear capability to Eastern Europe. No wonder Russian President Vladimir Putin had to make it clear Russia would respond “adequately” to any threat to its security.

Predictably all Cold War 2.0 hell broke loose, all over again.

A former NATO deputy commander went ballistic, while saner heads wondered whether Moscow, sooner rather than later, would have had enough of these shenanigans and prepare for war.

That worthless Patriot

A case can be made that the Beltway – neocons and neoliberalcons alike – do not want a hot war with Russia. What they want, apart from racking in more cash for the Pentagon, is to raise the ante to such a high level that Moscow will back down – based on a rational cost analysis. Yet oil prices will inevitably rise later in 2016 – and under this scenario Washington is a loser. So we may see a raise of interest rates by the Fed (with all the money continuing to go to Wall Street) trying to reverse the scenario.

Comparisons of the current NATO buildup to pre-WWII buildups, or to NATO when opposed to the Warsaw Pact, are amateurish. The THAAD and Patriot missiles are worthless – according to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) themselves; that’s why they tried to improve them with Iron Dome.

Meanwhile, those new NATO army “battalions” are inconsequential. The basic thrust behind the Pentagon’s moves under neocon Ash Carter continues to be to draw Russia ever further into Syria and Ukraine (as if Moscow actually was involved in, or wanted, a Ukrainian quagmire); trap Russia in proxy wars; and economically bleed Russia to death while crippling the bulk of oil and natural gas income to the Russian state.

Russia does not want – and does not need – war. Yet the “Russian aggression” narrative never stops. Thus it’s always enlightening to come back to this RAND corporation study, which examined what would happen if a war actually took place. RAND reached an“unambiguous” conclusion after a series of war games in 2015-2015; Russia could overrun NATO in a mere 60 hours – if not less – if it ever amounted to a hot war on European soil.

The Rand Corporation is essentially a CIA outpost – thus a propaganda machine. Yet it’s not propaganda to state the Baltic States and Ukraine would completely fall in less than three days before the Russian Army. However, the suggestion that additional NATO air power and heavily armored combat divisions would make a material difference is bogus.

The Aegis changes the game in the sense that it qualifies as a launch area for US missile defense. Think US missiles with minimum flying time – around 30 minutes – from Moscow; that’s a certified threat to the Russian nation. The Russian military has also been “unambiguous”; if it is ascertained that NATO – via the Pentagon – is about to try something funny, there are grounds for a preventive strike by Iskander-M systems out of Transnistria – as in the destruction of the US missiles by conveniently armed precision weapons.

Meanwhile, Moscow has pulled a stunning success – of course, it’s far from over – in Syria. So what’s left for the Pentagon – via NATO – is essentially to play the scare tactics card. They know Russia is prepared for war – certainly much better prepared than NATO. They know neither Putin nor the Russian military will back down because of kindergarten scaremongering. As for a too conciliatory tone by the Kremlin towards Washington, things may be about to change soon.

Say hello to my S-500

The Russian military are about to test the first prototypes of the S-500 Prometey air and missile defense system, also known as 55R6M Triumfator M – capable of destroying ICBMs, hypersonic cruise missiles and planes at over Mach 5 speeds; and capable of detecting and simultaneously attacking up to ten ballistic missile warheads at a range of 1300 km. This means the S-500 can smash ballistic missiles before their warheads re-enter the atmosphere.

So in the case of RAND-style NATO pussyfooting, the S-500 would totally eliminate all NATO air power over the Baltic States – while the advanced Kornet missile would destroy all NATO armored vehicles. And that’s not even considering conventional weapon hell.

If push comes to nuclear shove, the S-400 and especially the S-500 anti-missile missiles would block all incoming US ICBMs, cruise missiles and stealth aircraft. Offensive drones would be blocked by drone defenses. The S-500 practically consigns to the dustbin stealth warplanes such as the F-22, F-35 and the B-2.

The bottom line is that Russia – in terms of hypersonic missile development – is about four generations ahead of the US, if we measure it by the development of the S-300, S-400 and S-500 systems. As a working hypothesis, we could describe the next system – already in the drawing boards – as the S-600. It would take the US military at least ten years to develop and roll out a new weapons system, which in military terms represents a generation. Every Pentagon planner worth his pension plan should know that.

Russian – and Chinese – missiles are already able to knock out the satellite guidance systems for US nuclear tipped ICBMs and cruise missiles. They could also knock out the early alert warnings that the satellite constellations would give. A Russian hypersonic ICBM flight time, launched for instance from a Russian nuclear sub all the way to the US East Coast, counts for less than 20 minutes. So an early warning system is absolutely critical. Don’t count on the worthless THAAD and Patriot to do their job. Once again, Russian hypersonic technology has already rendered the entire missile defense system in both the US and Europe totally obsolete.

So why is Moscow so worried by the Pentagon placing the Aegis system so close to Russia’s borders? A credible answer is that Moscow is always concerned that the US industrial military-complex might develop some really effective anti-missile missiles even though they are now about four generations behind.

At the same time, Pentagon planners have reasons to be very worried by what they know, or hint. At the same time the Russian military – in a very Asian way – never reveal their full hand. The key fact of the matter needs to be stressed over and over again; the S-500 is impenetrable – and allows Russia for the first time in history to launch a first strike nuclear attack, if it ever chooses to do so, and be immune to retaliation.

The rest is idle babbling. Still, expect the official Pentagon/NATO narrative to remain the same. After all, the industrial-military complex is a cash-devouring hydra, and a powerful enemy is a must (the phony Daesh “caliphate” does not count).

The Threat Narrative rules that Russia has to meekly accept being surrounded by NATO. Russia is not allowed any response; in any case, any response will be branded as “Russian aggression”. If Russia defends itself, this will be“exposed” as an unacceptable provocation. And may even furnish the pretext for a pre-emptive attack by NATO against Russia.

Now let those Pentagon/NATO planners duly go back to play in their lavish kindergarten.

This incisive article was first published three  years ago in September 2013. It focuses on the process leading up to Obama’s air campaign allegedly against ISIS initiated in September 2014.  The title  reveals what is now an ongoing process of destroying both Iraq and Syria as nation states.

*      *      *

If the Obama Administration orders the US military to attack Syria, Iraq will burst into flames overnight. Several Iraqi groups have declared that they would attack US interests inside Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East in retaliation.

Violence in Iraq has intensified as a result of the US-led covert war on Syria. This has made the Iraqi government very eager to see an end to the fighting in the neighboring country. When it comes to its position on the Syrian conflict, Iraq is in the same camp as Russia, Iran, and China. Baghdad firmly supports Russian, Iranian, and Chinese calls for a negotiated settlement, and is opposed to any ideas of a US attack on Syria.

The Militia Factor

A US strike on Syria will not only see Syrian retaliation. There will be a regional response against a US attack that will include Iraq.

While Mohammed Javad Zarif, the foreign minister of Iran [image below], has denied that Tehran will target American interest in Iraq, he has warned that a US attack on Syria will not be able to contain the violent consequences.

Iran may not intervene directly inside Iraq to attack the interests of the US, as Foreign Minister Zarif emphasized during a press conference in Baghdad he held with his Iraqi counterpart, but this does not mean that the Iraqi groups allied to Iran will not attack US interests inside Iraq.

Mohammed Javad Zarif, the foreign minister of Iran (Reuters)

Iraqi militias like Asayib Ahl Al-Haq have openly warned that they will retaliate against the United States.

If the US attacks Syria, then Iraq cannot avoid being drawn into the conflict. Even if the Iraqi government declared itself neutral, in one way or another Iraq will be drawn into a war against the United States. American officials are aware of this too. The Wall Street Journal has even reported that US officials have said that the US Embassy in Baghdad was a potential target if a US attack on Syria takes place.

Overtly emphasizing the Iranian connection, the Associated Press had this to report on the repercussions that the US would face inside Iraq from an attack on Syria: “Iranian-backed Shiite militias are threatening to retaliate against American interests inside Iraq if the United States goes ahead with strikes against the Tehran-allied government in Syria, according to Iraqi security officials and militants themselves.”

The Threat to Oil Production

The Iraqi militias will attack the major business interests of the United States inside Iraq. American oil interests inside Iraq are especially vulnerable. What this essentially translates to in the vernacular is“kiss your sweet oil goodbye, Yankees.”

Reuters has reported that American oil companies are under close watch by the militias inside Iraq and that Exxon has moved “most of its workforce from the southern West Qurna-1 oilfield project to Dubai until tensions ease.”

The operations of Exxon Mobil and the Anglo-American oil giant BP will both come under attack in Iraq and be paralyzed. If US allies such as Britain get involved, then they too can expect their companies, like the Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, to be attacked and paralyzed.

Reuters / Atef Hassan

The Regional Chain of Resistance

The mainstream media in the US, Western Europe, and the Arab petro-sheikhdoms are quick to point to an Iranian connection with the militias in Iraq, whereas the Shiite Muslim nature of these militias has provided an opportunity for the mouthpieces of the Arab regimes of the Persian Gulf to demonize and slander the Shiites as a threat to the Middle East.

These mouthpieces are essentially running a smear campaign about a Shiite Muslim conspiracy. The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, a tool of Saudi propaganda owned by Prince Khaled bin Sultan, has alleged that these Shiite militias are getting ready for a sectarian regional war that will see them eventually go to fight in not only Syria, but also in Bahrain and Yemen.

An Iraqi retaliation against the US goes beyond Iranian influence. The Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr, who does not always see things eye to eye with Iran, promised twice with high fanfare in 2006 — once during a visit in Tehran and a second time while in Damascus—that his forces would help either Syria or Iran in any possible future wars against the US. The Iraqi cleric even emphasized that the US, the UK, and Israel were the common enemies of Syria and Iraq and working to divide the people of both countries. Even though Sadr has decided to distance himself from the events in Syria and has disagreements with Tehran, many of his followers are supportive of Damascus.

The bottom line is that Iraqis will use the opportunity of a Pentagon strike on Syria to retaliate against the US in sympathy and solidarity with Syrians. Moreover, some of these militias, including the one controlled by Moqtada Sadr, fought as resistance movements against the US and UK forces occupying Iraq. This has cultivated a sense of commitment to any regional project that opposes and resists the US and its allies. This has fixed these Iraqi groups to the Resistance Bloc that includes Syria.

Iraq, Baghdad (Reuters / Ahmed Saad)

While the misleading reports about the plans of these Iraqi militias to create a network to act regionally are mostly propaganda, the anticipation of a regional war in the Middle East is not.  An attack on Syria will not be contained within Syrian borders. It will escalate regionally in the Middle East and even develop into a global conflict outside of the Middle East’s borders.

Beyond Syria and Iraq…

If it decided to attack Syria, the US would literally be putting a match to a powder keg in the Middle East. Iraq would just be the start. The whole neighborhood would eventually catch fire.

Aside from taking extra security measure in Iraq, the US government has asked many of its diplomatic staff to leave the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. The US has also urged American citizens to leave Lebanon, because Lebanon will almost automatically be drawn into an American conflict with Syria. Hezbollah and other Lebanese groups are allied to Syria and will support Damascus against the US and its allies.

Turkey and Israel, both major cheerleaders of a US-led attack will certainly get involved. Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan has even foolishly declared that Turkey will join the US in any military action without thinking of the consequence for Turkey, as if the fighting in Kurdistan or the instability on the border has not been enough for him and the AKP. Faisal Mekdad, the deputy foreign minister of Syria, has also warned that his country will militarily retaliate against Israel, Jordan, and Turkey in response to an American attack against Syria.

Syria does not stand alone either. It has many friends and allies around the world. Russia, Iran, and China, Syria’s three most powerful backers, form a formidable opposition to the US and its allies.

Maalula, a historic Christian town near Damascus, Syria (AFP Photo)

For the sake of diplomacy, the Iranian government, Syria’s staunchest ally, has avoided making any direct threats against the US and prevented its military commanders from making any aggressive statements that could aggravate the situation after President Obama announced his plans to strike Syria. Tehran, however, would become involved in the conflict. Together with Syria, the involvement of Iran, Hezbollah, various Palestinian groups, and their Iraqi allies would turn the entire region from the Eastern Mediterranean to NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan into a giant conflict zone.

If American oil corporations are expecting disruption in Iraq as a result of an American attack on Syria, then they should be aware that expansion of the conflict would disrupt global oil supplies. Economically, the entire world will feel the pain generated from such a conflict. The prices of oil and gas will go up. This will lead to higher fuel, transportation, and production prices that will raise costs in almost every sector. Airfare, public transportation, food products, industrial goods, heating, and shipping prices will become greater as a result.

Then there is the reaction of Moscow, Syria’s other big strategic partner, which has to be considered by the United States. President Putin has made it extremely clear that the Russian Federation will support Damascus if the US does attack it directly. The US cannot ignore the Russian naval presence off the Syrian coast or Russia’s military capabilities. If the situation escalates, the Russian naval armada in the Mediterranean could assist Syria.

The Chinese have even sent a warship as an indicator of where they stand.

No wonder there is a popular campaign in the US against the war in Syria that in its satirical message asks Americans to support Obama “kickstart World War III” by attacking Syria.

In San Diego a veteran attempted to take his own life inside the VA hospital because his mental health appointments had been repeatedly canceled on him with only a day’s notice over the last several years dating back to 2013. In New Jersey after walking nine miles from his home another 51-year old Navy veteran of the first Gulf War set himself on fire in protest directly in front of his New Jersey Veterans Affairs clinic to make his dramatic point that the US fails miserably in taking care of those who sacrifice their lives for their nation’s wars. Veterans across the country are making dramatic statements willing to end their life due to their sheer frustration dealing with the largest and thoroughly broken health care system in the United States.

Having one Veterans Affairs Secretary two years ago resign replaced by another – both West Point graduates – still isn’t getting the job done. Current Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald, no sooner appointed and on the job out in LA with television cameras rolling talking it up with homeless veterans, he lied claiming he served in the Special Forces. Funny how cadets get through four years at the academy never lying, cheating or stealing, but once they graduate their honor code goes right out the window… like Petraeus who graduated a year behind me lying to the FBI telling them he never violated top secret clearance as CIA director when he’d given his mistress binders chock full of classified material. McDonald graduated two years behind me.

Nearly two years ago the Phoenix Veterans Medical Center came under immediate fire when it was discovered that nearly 40 veterans had died while on a phantom waiting list among 1700 other veterans yet to be electronically scheduled much less ever seen by actual medical staff. A hospital whistleblower contacted the local press to trigger the biggest veterans scandal in history resulting in mounting pressures to fix the grossly incompetent and corrupted system entrusted to care for the medical needs of men and women who served our nation honorably and earned the right to be taken care of by the country they all were willing to die for. Now two years later they are still dying still apparently waiting for medical treatment on still forgotten waiting lists. But today some are choosing to die by choice making their bold yet desperate final statement just to show America that the promises to correct the corrosive system caught not caring for them a couple years ago still doesn’t care. This latest incident is the second high profile suicidal act in as many weeks dramatically taking place on VA grounds.

The fiery suicide in front of the New Jersey VA clinic is a flashback to Buddhist monks burning themselves alive in public protest in Vietnam decades ago and more recently in Tibet and India. The public nature of self-immolation creating the ultimate sacrificial spectacle executed before the world for the expressed purpose of the greater good is reminiscent of the Buddhist monk who in 1963 Saigon doused in gasoline flames protested the brutally oppressive anti-Buddhist policies of the then US puppet government in South Vietnam – the Catholic Diem regime. Within a very short time after that, the same month that the only Catholic president John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, the (Catholic) Saigon government was also overthrown followed within the year by President Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin false flag igniting escalation of the Vietnam War.

Buddhist monks’ ancient practice of self-immolation in Southeast Asia quickly spread to America where at least three more US citizens set themselves ablaze, indelibly associating this form of protest against expanding US involvement in the highly unpopular, immoral Vietnam War. Since that 1963 Saigon incident, death by self-immolation is estimated to have occurred more than 1000 times in over three dozen countries.

These two back-to-back veteran suicide incidents at VA hospitals mark the latest high profile casualties in the war against America’s veterans. But suicides as a way out of the pain and misery that veterans are suffering is nothing new. Multiple studies over recent years repeatedly show that veterans across our nation are killing themselves in epidemic record numbers. It’s been two years now since the VA was caught in the shameful national scandal where veterans seeking medical care were being placed on invisible, off-the-books lists, waiting and dying prior to either being seen by a doctor or waiting a year or longer for claims approval to initiate health services. This presentation examines the ongoing plight of military veterans since those headlines began uncovering the gross improprieties that were being regularly committed not just at the Phoenix Veterans Health Center but systemically in VA hospitals and clinics across the country.

But since the Phoenix VA story broke the end of April 47 months ago, last September the Department of Veterans Affairs became embroiled in yet another scandalous embarrassment when two of its top executives were caught bilking the taxpayers out of close to half million dollars over some highly inflated bogus moving costs. Their tactics were both ruthless and deceitful, forcing two regional directors out of their positions so that they could take over charging the VA Benefits Administration exorbitant relocation costs in the process. The Inspector General even referred the case to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Their illicit finagling even included shifting to cushier jobs with lesser responsibilities at the same near $200 thousand annual salaries. Working together the duo even made their shady moves after the VA scandal had burst onto the headlines, apparently oblivious to the fact that the VA would be closely scrutinized and monitored by audits, Congressional oversight, and the IG’s office which eventually busted them.

Several years ahead of the two year old scandal, solid proof had begun surfacing that America was failing its former warriors. Based on data compiled from 1986-1997 a groundbreaking 2007 study indicated that veterans were twice as likely to die by suicide as Americans who never served their nation in uniform. A 2010 study showed that women veterans between the ages of 18 and 34 were three times more likely to commit suicide than women at large. Perhaps the sexual assault epidemic in a closed unjust military legal system may have something to do with the high suicide rate of young former female soldiers. These disturbing statistics ushered in the current crises suggesting that military experience itself – putting your life on the line for your country – could be connected to the all too frequent choice to later take your own life. This unsettling trend came at a time when the US was bogged down losing two costly wars simultaneously in Afghanistan and Iraq where 2.7 million troops were deployed and has become the urgent wake-up call for the Veterans Affairs Department to provide better resources and care in efforts to reverse this growing suicide epidemic.

In response the VA sponsored a 2012 study analyzing death certificates from 21 states from 1999 to 2011 disclosing that the alarming veteran suicide rate was even worse than first thought, revealing up to 22 veterans a day to be committing suicide. That’s nearly one every hour both day and night every single day of the year! What surfaced from this shocking news is that no centralized system has even been in place to track veteran suicides. Once the government uses them up as frontline fodder, neither the military nor the feds even bother keeping track of what happens to our former soldiers. Since that revealing 2012 VA study, the VA has apparently not dared to conduct any further research since it undoubtedly would only dig a deeper hole for itself of complete and utter failure to deliver adequate care to its more than 22 million veterans that comprise 13% of all adult Americans.

The VA has a history of covering up the numbers and not taking responsibility for its abject failure. After admitting that 790 veterans under its care committed suicide in 2007, even MSM outlets like CBS reviewing public records from 2005 found that 6,256 veterans killed themselves. Reacting to the heat after caught fudging the numbers, from an internal memo written by VA mental health expert Dr. Ira Katz:

 Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities.

Instead of firing his ass for his feeble cover-up attempt, Katz has been promoted to acting director of mental health operations at the VA headquarters. Katz lied again in an interview with The Arizona Republic claiming that while suicides amongst men in the general US population are rising, amongst the veteran population because of his and the VA’s great work in progress giving himself a B+, the suicide rate for VA patients is now “stable.” Meanwhile, the VA’s own national suicide prevention hotline has observed the volume of calls jump 17% from 2009 to 2012, as of June 2012 responding to 17,000 calls per month. From 2011 to 2014 the number of suicides from young male vets who have served in overseas deployments has skyrocketed by 70%. A spokesman for Vets-Help.org said that the available death records fail to accurately account for all the veteran suicides, which he estimates to be closer to 30-35 every day.

Using the stress-vulnerability model to understand the many co-occurring factors leading to a decision to end life, genetic predispositions, environmental sociological upbringing and experience within the nature-nurture mixed combo interact with stressful and traumatic events in adulthood, in this case on the battlefield of war that can drive a soldier or veteran shortly after discharge (as many studies show) or decades later in middle or old age to volitionally end life (as still a number of other studies confer, including the VA sponsored 2012 research).

Shortly after the suicide crisis came to light, pro-government rags like the Washington Post began running articles pointing out that the average age of veterans killing themselves was closer to 60. The criminal government illegally sending our young men and women to die in oil wars for corporate profit having nothing to do with protecting our so called freedom did its best damage control diffusing the alarming suicide rates by quickly countering with statistics showing that the returning soldiers from the current Middle East wars where soldiers were redeployed on combat tours as many as five times to two concurrent warfronts were not suiciding nearly as much as either recent veterans never deployed in combat nor near as much as the older vets from the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

A US Army study published in February last year was out to provide the definitive answer to the oft-quoted 22 a day number swirling around Washington and veteran groups alike. So it examined the records of 1.3 million soldiers on active duty in Afghanistan and Iraq and tallied up the suicide deaths of those combat vets discharged from 2001 to 2007 to conclude that between 2001 and 2009 allegedly less than one suicide a day occurred amongst Iraq and Afghanistan deployed veterans. Of course if there ever was an organization that would wish to downplay the “insanity of war equals suicide” equation, it would be the US Army since along with the US government and VA it would have the most to gain from replacing the “22 a day” with a more humane sounding “less than one a day.”

The obvious aim is to mislead the public so we don’t connect the dots and blame the out of control suicides on our warring government. A carefully coordinated PR agenda made this corrected distinction very explicit, promoted by both Washington and mainstream media to deny that the inhumane and prolonged exposure to war insanity imposed on many of our soldiers has little or nothing to do with the rising suicide rates amongst our veterans. And that’s another boldface lie perpetrated against both the American people and especially military veterans used as human fodder for the war profiteering banksters and military security complex to maintain US Empire hegemony at all cost. Proof of this comes in the egregious way the government continues to mistreat and abuse its veterans.

In a recent National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) study released a year ago the fallacious claim that it was the older veterans committing so much suicide that were skewing the results was somewhat refuted in the latest NIMH findings. The results clearly show that the recent younger veterans are also committing suicide at far higher rates than the population at large that never served. But keep in mind that the NIMH like the WHO and CDC are all federal extensions of US Empire racing towards the ruling elite’s New World Order and one world government. So the conclusions reached by NIMH would predictably fall short of confirming what most rational thinking human beings already intuitively believe, that regardless of the systematic military brainwashing to turn human beings into unfeeling fighting robotic machines prior to combat deployment, the insanity of especially immoral wars where US soldiers are routinely ordered to commit crimes against humanity makes us very fallible humans inherently vulnerable to war trauma that in turn can cause serious psychological impairment, depression and yes, suicidality.

As an epidemiologist and suicide expert in the NIMH study Michael Schoenbaum explains:

People’s natural instinct is to explain military suicide by the ‘war-is-hell’ theory of the world. But it’s more complicated.

Thus the NIMH inexplicably found that the suicide rate for recent veterans who were never combat deployed was a full 16% higher than the recent veterans returning home from multiple combat tours on two warfronts. Of course this result indirectly maintains the “innocence” of the federal government’s endless foreign war policy sending US troops around the world in harm’s way to fight morally unjustifiable, nonstop imperialistic Empire wars, in effect absolving the warmongering neocon government from accountability in causing the disturbing exponential rise in veteran suicides. Even the NIMH researchers could not explain away this counter-intuitive anomaly.

What we do know from perhaps the most unpopular war in US history and the first actual defeat suffered by US armed forces in Southeast Asia during the 1960’s and early 1970’s is that 80% of the Vietnam combat veterans 20-25 years after their war experience were still reporting recent Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Thus the debilitating traumatizing effects of war on soldiers as well as civilians tend to permanently leave emotional scars that last a lifetime.

As a case in point, my decorated war hero father who served our nation for 20 years on submarines during the Second World War and Korean War was forced at gunpoint by his superior officers – one a Medal of Honor winner – to machine gun innocent non-Japanese civilian fishing boat families in Pacific waters simply because they were members of the Asian race. Throughout his postwar life even 70 years later he was still suffering from the haunted lingering images and memories of killing defenseless unarmed women and children. This disgraceful, long covered-up racist War Department policy was simply to kill any and all Asians encountered in the Pacific theater seas in order to safeguard the security of all US naval ship locations from being covertly reported to the Japanese military as identified sitting duck targets for subsequent attack. Of course this US policy was no different from the racist practice of singling out only Japanese Americans for labor camp roundups during that same war. Yet no such policy ever existed against German Americans or German fishing boats in North Atlantic waters. But the main point here is my father’s enduring PTSD symptoms plagued his conscience and nocturnal sleep with disturbing nightmares throughout his entire life till he died at 100.

If the damage caused by war trauma is commonly a permanent condition inflicted on virtually all war participants, it would also hold that it could easily account for being a contributing causal factor in suicides occurring either one year or 50 years after combat experience. There are numerous studies that contradict the rather strange and questionable US Army and NIMH findings, clearly demonstrating that veterans returning from recent US wars are far more likely to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and/or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). As much as 20-30% returning from Mideast wars are estimated to sustain TBI and up to 31% PTSD. Combat vets are more apt to beat their spouses (Vietnam War vets 4.4 times more likely to engage in domestic violence), 62% more likely to end up divorced, suffer from severe drug and alcohol addiction, engage in violent criminal behavior, find themselves unemployed, homeless, in and out of hospitals and/or prisons suffering from a pervasive pattern of self-destructive behavior that too often leads to premature death and suicide than veterans who never saw even a day of combat or fought in any war.

The rate of illicit drug use within the preceding 12 months by Marines that had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan was about twice the rate of non-deployed Marines (16-18% and 9% respectively). In 2004 near half of veterans in federal prison (46%) were serving time for drug offenses and they were on average given a year longer prison sentence than non-veterans for the exact same crime. With the odds that veterans are twice as likely to become chronically homeless than the non-veteran population, 40% of all homeless men in America are veterans and of those one third are combat vets.

A 2012 study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that PTSD-afflicted combat veterans from recent Middle East wars are more than twice as likely to be arrested for criminal behavior and commit violent crimes as non-combat veterans. Half of Vietnam War veterans with PTSD have been arrested one or more times. And as of 2012 nearly an incredible quarter million aging Vietnam War era veterans were in prison and 17,000 active duty soldiers were either serving time in the brig or awaiting judicial proceedings. Additionally, a 2009 study of combat Marines suffering from PTSD were six times more likely to be busted for drugs and 11 times more likely to be issued a bad conduct discharge.

Despite their added technical skills, leadership skills, training and experience gained as members of the armed forces, recent veterans across the age spectrum during the post 9/11 era have consistently lagged significantly behind their peer group in employment numbers. At least a 1.5% or higher differential separates fresh out of uniform veterans and their civilian counterparts at every age level. Even after accounting for the expected adjustment period transitioning from the military to civilian life, it’s been found that out of a cross-sampling of 4,000 new veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars three years ago, 16% were unemployed. From that jobless group more than one out of three reported being out of work for over a year and nearly one in five for more than two years. So much for adjusting to civilian life.

Reasons for this across-the-boards job disparity between vets and civilians could reflect the widening cultural divide between the 99+% of the US civilian population and the less than one half of 1% in uniform in today’s volunteer armed forces. While the overall US population may still be disingenuously paying lip service to the clichéd mantra “support our troops,” American employers may be discriminating against hiring veterans fresh out of the military. Another perhaps even more plausible explanation may be that veterans’ civilian counterparts applying for the same jobs may hold the competitive edge in attaining a higher level of education.

In any event, on top of all their problems and crosses to bear, veterans are struggling mightily to find work in this post 9/11 world and, especially amongst the male population that already tends to be more traditional and macho, a typical male derives much of his identity from what he does for a living, providing for his family, and if chronically unable to make it in today’s increasingly competitive job market, a growing sense of failure, utter powerlessness and deepening depression often lead to suicidality. And especially men experienced in firearms and war violence tend to follow through to finality their suicides in contrast to females who are more apt to use the far less lethal method of drug overdose in their suicide attempts.

Speaking of drugs, another aspect of today’s plight of at-risk war veterans is the overuse of addictive Big Pharma medications, be they opioid painkillers, tranquilizers for treating insomnia, anxiety, mental confusion, angry outbursts, hallucinations associated with PTSD or antidepressants for elevating depressed moods or mood stabilizers for erratic unstable moods. The ensuing ravages of snowing under thousands of returning war veterans with combat trauma through overly prescribed pharmacological drugs only worsens their mental stability, social functioning and prognosis. Yet the VA is notorious for overprescribing major psychotropic medications that also too frequently become a lethal cocktail for either accidental overdose or intentional suicide. Then mixing them with alcohol abuse makes for even a deadlier combination. Big Parma drugs merely smother symptoms, never addressing the root cause and too often over-sedating troubled veterans turning them into addicted zombies.

It’s been determined that the biggest accidental killer in the US is prescription drug overdose surpassing motor vehicle accidents, particularly amongst the younger age group of white Americans from 25-34 that also happens to be the same age group that’s served in recent wars. The death rate by prescription overdose of this group has skyrocketed five times in just 15 years from 1999 to 2014. An estimated 125 Americans are dying every day from drug overdoses. Servicemen and women injured in wars are treated with heavy doses of opioid pain relievers, the drug most often involved in lethal overdoses. As out of control as the drug overdoses from prescription drugs is amongst the civilian population, veterans are dying at a rate 33% higher rate. The US crime cabal government’s illegal heroin smuggling operation out of the world’s largest opium producer Afghanistan where US soldiers have been ordered to stand guard over the poppy fields has also directly contributed to the recent surge of OD deaths. But you’ll never find out that information watching the network news. A bereaved wife of an Army soldier who had died from a prescription overdose testifying at a House subcommittee hearing stated:

Keeping our men and women doped up to keep them quiet and happy is not treatment. It is cruelty and torture and in too many cases it’s manslaughter.

The bottom line is drugs alone are disastrous. Without extensive conjoint therapy that includes helping veterans build a long-term social support system along with employment assistance and in many cases long-term care, the treatment outcome for huge numbers of our mentally and emotionally wounded veterans will sadly remain very bleak.

As a double whammy, alcohol, nicotine and substance abuse and dependency are extremely common amongst active duty military personnel but even more so amongst returning veterans. Often compounded by co-occurring diagnoses like PTSD or TBI, highly addictive drugs (prescription, over-the-counter or illegal) are frequently misused to self-medicate trauma, grieving and loss, depression, anxiety, anger, boredom, and failure to adjust. And then those veterans who never seek treatment and support or are placed on an indefinite VA hold or given the VA runaround eventually stop making efforts to receive help and fall through the ever-widening cracks of an overburdened, broken system. Obviously those vets are at the gravest risk of self-harm.

In a study conducted five years ago 12-15% of the near 90,000 soldiers screened returning from Iraq were identified as having alcohol problems. Longitudinally from 1980-2005 15-20% of troops were found to be frequent heavy drinkers. More than half (53%) of those recently deployed to Iraq were identified as heavy binge drinkers. More than one in four out of 6,527 soldiers were screened for alcohol misuse and 12% for alcohol related behavioral problems. Those exposed to life-threatening situations and war atrocities scored significantly higher in the survey. Among a smaller sample of male soldiers over 50% smoked tobacco prior to deployment increasing during time in Iraq to near 60%. The increase in smoking for female troops went from over 40 to over 50%. Amongst veterans in 2007 one in four smoked compared to one in five in the civilian population. But for younger vets born between 1975 to 1989, the rate of smokers increased to 37%.

It’s also important to be cognizant of who exactly is funding and conducting the research on veterans. Certainly any and all government linked sources would maintain a vested self-interest in producing research outcomes that either minimize or do not negatively reflect or incriminate government policy or policymakers. Most often it’s major think tank corporations that draw their primary income source from government contracts such as the Rand Corporation, the MITRE corporation (heavily implicated in geoengineering spraying of toxic heavy metals on vast Western populations weakening and impairing human health), as well as VA and Congressionally funded studies. Thus it’s no different from the same corrupt game that Big Pharma engages in when it buys off the FDA to approve untested, harmful drugs or Monsanto buying research results claiming its GMO’s and chemical products are harmless to our health and environment when it’s been proven beyond a question of doubt that Big Money like Big Government and Big Media all spew out disinformation and propaganda lies 24/7 to manipulate, brainwash, control and harm us human beings around the world.

Both the Veterans Health Administration and US military have gone to great lengths to purportedly beef up their suicide prevention program initiated in 2007 already a half dozen years into the longest wars in American history. But expanding their program efforts to adequately treat and support soldiers’ medical and mental health needs have fallen drastically short of the enormously increasing demands. In all its bumbling failures and shortcomings to correct its identified problems and improve its care and treatment of veterans, not one senior official at Veterans Affairs has been terminated for the gross negligence responsible for thousands of veterans dying while waiting for service. Former acting VA Inspector General Richard Griffin had this to say:

Once someone loses his job or gets criminally charged for doing this, it will no longer be a game. And that will be the shot heard around the system.

On top of all this criminal negligence, veterans are also experiencing a profound sense of betrayal not just from the VA. It’s been confirmed that their own government sees them as the new enemy, equating veterans as potential homegrown terrorists. An uncovered 2009 internal Homeland Security document that DHS director Janet Napolitano vigorously defended explicitly targets returning veterans as major national security threats, anticipating that large numbers of veterans growing increasingly angry will vengefully use their military expertise against their federal government especially in response to deep state’s rising oppression and tyranny. The nation that sent them into harm’s way so the rich can get richer now views its former warriors as the newly identified domestic enemy ready to lead the people’s insurgency in efforts to overthrow the current neocon regime entrenched in Washington. Under the label of “radicalized anti-government extremists,” the current fascist totalitarian police state oligarchy perceives veteran patriots as its most “clear and present” danger, even more so than the jihadist terrorists the US created and still supports.

When soldiers and former soldiers begin to see how they’ve been so badly misused and abused by their government and “superior officers,” too often ordered to commit war crime atrocities on foreign lands against people and nations that pose no threat to America, this bitter pill of reality becomes too hard to swallow. Vets ultimately realize that the nation they love clearly acts in the interests of a corrupt central banking system, Wall Street corps and the military security complex over the interests of protecting the American people that veterans took sworn oaths to defend. Eventually an existential crisis and cognitive dissonance of immense proportions suddenly or gradually implodes within a veteran to reach this sad and bitter conclusion. Facing the cold hard reality that the nation they nearly died for in the end treats them like shit, coming home suffering from PTSD, TBI and severe depression, when they seek help they run into a brick wall of red tape bureaucracy. The VA is severely shorthanded especially in professional mental health staffing, and unable to meet the overwhelming demand. Thus veterans get lost within a chaotic, inept, CYA culture of corruption, only to learn that the VA system continues to demonstrate it doesn’t care. Meanwhile, vets are frequently compounded by a myriad of personal and social problems attempting to make the adjustment to civilian life within a bankrupt economy and too few jobs to offer, so amidst growing alienation and isolation, too many veterans fall through the cracks concluding that suicide is the most viable and ultimately only option for them.

The fact remains that the feds in power since 9/11 have illegally and treasonously trampled on the US Constitution that they too once took sworn oaths to uphold and have chosen to blatantly violate, relentlessly engaging in a sinister plot to criminalize dissent in America by any means necessary. For defending ourselves, our Constitution and our nation against this growing tyrannical threat and grossest injustice that our Founding Fathers warned us against, we are all now being targeted in their crosshairs. But the entire world long victimized by this powerful elite are fast waking up. We are reaching the tipping point of critical mass when the oppressors can no longer hide from the truth and the karmic accountability that awaits them.

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/

Over 100 people are feared dead after seven blasts targeted several locations in the coastal towns of Jableh and Tartus, Syria’s Latakia province, according to media reports. The locations are close to two Russian military facilities: the Khmeimim airbase and the Tartus naval base.

According to Ikhbariya TV, there were up to three explosions in the coastal town of Jableh near the local railway terminal. RIA Novosti and state TV also report a fourth explosion, at the emergency unit of a local hospital.

#جبلة||
صور اولية للاستهداف الارهابي الذي ضرب كراج جبلة ولم يعرف حتى الان ان كان صواريخ او عبوات او انتحاري pic.twitter.com/KggOwZrYye

— Ahmad nasser el dine (@ahmadalinasser1) May 23, 2016

Sham FM radio claims that the first explosion in Jableh occurred at the entrance to the town, where a car with an estimated equivalent of 250 kg of TNT inside blew up.

Another three explosions were reportedly carried out by suicide bombers, and at least one of them was believed to be a woman.

#طرطوس||
صور الاستهداف الارهابي لمدينة طرطوس بالقرب من الكراج ولم يعرف حتى الان ان كان عبوات او انتحاري pic.twitter.com/GgTKO4xZfh

— Ahmad nasser el dine (@ahmadalinasser1) May 23, 2016

#Syria city of Jableh in #Latakia targeted by militant rockets this morning. pic.twitter.com/ZoGfVVc3wt

— Aldin Abazović (@Ald_Aba) May 23, 2016

Three more blasts were reported in a residential area of another coastal town, Tartus, eyewitnesses told RIA Novosti.

At least 20 were killed there, SANA and RIA Novosti said citing police sources.

According to Syrian state TV, one of the Tartus explosions was a car bomb, while another was caused by a suicide bomber.

People inspect the damage after explosions hit the Syrian city of Tartous, in this handout picture provided by SANA on May 23, 2016. © SANA / Reuters

Both towns targeted by Monday attacks are close to facilities used by the Russian task force in Syria.

The port of Tartus has been used for years by the Russian Navy as a feeder base. The port has been extensively used for delivering military supplies to the Russian contingent in the country.

An eye-witness of the blast in Tartus told RT that the bus station that was targeted was destroyed.

“Most of the bus-station is down, completely destroyed. It’s very new to this city, it’s never happened before. People are angry, and sad.”

The Martyr Basil al-Assad International Airport, next to Jableh, has hosted Russia’s Khmeimim airbase and reconciliation center since September 2015.

Syrian army soldiers and civilians inspect the damage after explosions hit the Syrian city of Tartous, in this handout picture provided by SANA on May 23, 2016. © SANA / Reuters

Syrian journalist and RT contributor Alaa Ibrahim, who is currently in Damascus, described the attack in Jableh to RT, predicting the death toll may rise throughout the day.

“The last attack was on a hospital, a female suicide attacker with a veil on her head came into the hospital in Jableh city and blew herself up, killing over 15 new persons and destroying the emergency room, the main emergency room of the city, which will make it more difficult to help those who suffered in other explosions, making the death toll likely to rise in the upcoming hours,” Alaa Ibrahim stated.

He also said it is the first time the cities of Tartus and Jableh, which support the Assad government, have been targeted and claimed it is a clear sign to the government to beware.

“These are not ordinary attacks. These are some of the largest attacks we’ve seen since the war in Syria began. […] The cities of Jableh and Tartus are considered to be the main ‘castles’ of support for the Syrian government. A large number of government supporters reside in these areas. A large number of soldiers coming from Jableh and Tartus were killed fighting for the Syrian government. This is why ISIL [Islamic State/IS, formerly ISIS] made it very clear to carry out these attacks with such ferocity,” Alaa Ibrahim pointed out.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad a telegram of condolence over the deaths of civilians in Monday’s attacks.

“The Russian president stressed that this tragedy was more evidence of the barbaric, inhumane nature of the terrorist groups who unleashed a bloody war against the people of Syria,” the telegram reads.

President Putin also confirmed Russia’s readiness to continue cooperation with Syria in countering terrorism, the Kremlin press service reports.

The Earth and Space are wired with secrecy, new and unthinkable weapons of mass destruction and global warming is a clicking time bomb for the future.

The most hated and feared leaders do not have the intellectual and political capacity to solve nay problems which they have created.

Humanity looks to men of intellect, scholars of integrity for solutions, certainly not to the warmongers destroying life and habitats throughout the globe. Rationality asserts that the future belongs to the global citizenry not to the few sadistic warlords, and that an informed and politically mature and active global citizenry must have the opportunity to exercise its rights, choice and freedom to develop the futuristic global institutions and governance by integrating the moral and spiritual values of man, humanity and the living Universe as the rational forces of global conscience for a sustainable future.

Being one Humanity on One Planet and One World, people of the world to which the Universe belongs, have never allowed any abstract institutions or governments or egomaniac leaders to act on their behalf? The message and its spirit are clear that mankind as ONE rational force must act to safeguard the future.

To Comprehend the Current Global Affairs

In 2008, Presidential candidate Obama inspired hope (“yes, we can”) for political change but it turned out to be a fallacy of perception and hope. The world is more dangerous place in 2016 than when a colored President Obama making history moved into the White House. In scholarly terms, politics is a game of pretension and obsession to egomaniac ideals to enhance one’s own image and interest for power. You can’t blame Obama squarely for all the wrong idealistic perceptions he generated to win the two presidential elections.

Modern democracy is fast becoming a willful house of deception and exploitation for the rich and privileged ones. Was the 2011 Protest Movement not a revulsion against the same ideals?  President Obama is leaving the presidency and the political world in much worst conditions than when he assumed the office.  War is the only goal and policy aim that he pursued, not much different that of beleaguered George W. Bush did to dehumanize the American culture and victimize the humanity with new brand of terrorism.  History speaks loud and clear. History will judge leaders and nations by their actions, not by their claims. None of these characters had any vision for universal harmony and sustainable political change or to foster peace and co-existence across many divided national lines of greed and hegemonic controls. American politicians do what political financiers and lobbyists dictate them to do – to loath the mankind with the fear of insecurity and continuous war agenda.

The Arab Middle East is virtually destroyed; its masses bombed, terrorized and displaced as unwanted refugees across many European national frontiers. The real problem of Palestine is replaced by the current wars to capsize the whole of the Arab world.  Who is responsible for all the intriguing wars and backdoor conspiracies to kill one another? Have all the Arab people lost their sense of thinking and rationality?  How would the future generations view them in a critical analysis? Were they so inept and stupid not to think of their own future and sustainability? The aggressors have carved up subjective titles and labels of sectarian killings, daily bloodbath and terrorism. As if it was not part of their planned scheme of things to dismantle the Arab freedom and human dignity. Was this perpetuated cruelty and darkness not the explicit outcome of the American and British war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan?  Who will rebuild the century’s old cultures, human habitats and reputable ancient values that have been systematically destroyed by the war mongers?

In “How the United States and Britain Lost the Bogus War in Iraq and Afghanistan” (Global Research), this author clarified the pertinent facts of the bogus war:

Michel Meacher, British Environment Minister under PM Blair (“This War on Terrorism is Bogus”) – provides reliable insight into the real reasons for the ‘War on Terrorism’. He claims that the “war on terror” is flatly superficial:

“the 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination … the so-called ‘war on terrorism’ is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives … in fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11.”

David Swanson (“ISIS, Weapons Makers, Thugs Benefit from This Crime.” Dissident Voice), points out how the US weapon manufacturers have increased the cost of weapon sales by 19% and are ultimately the beneficiary of the war against ISIL.  The coalition of war led by the US against ISIL is nothing but a paradox of self-contradictory coercive arrangement.

The U.S. France, Germany, UK, Saudi Arabia, and Arab Gulf countries aim is to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, which happens to be the goal of ISIL and other groups fighting in Syria. President Putin is shielding the besieged Bashar Al-Assad from final collapse and making gains in Syria and Arabian strategic thinking. Many Arab leaders are impressed by Putin’s decisive action to protect his client state. They could open new markets for Russian weapons and influence in the Arab world. President Obama remained in-between without any prompt action to oust Bashar Al-Assad. The current sectarian wars do not appeal to any holiest mission.

The US and Russia are bombing to support their war economy and find a convenient pretext to kill the Arab people. American foreign policy aims at and acts like double-edge Razor King to install authoritarian regimes in the frontline Arab states and manipulate them for illegitimate purposes and exploitation of the natural resources. When these former neo-colonial tribal agents turned kings and princess become a liability, the US implies Plan “B” to get them killed by their own people like Ghadafi in Libya, Abdulla Saleh ousted in Yemen and Saddam Hussein hanged in Iraq. The Arab coalition leaders have no sense of time and history how the US will destroy the Arab culture and civilization by using false pretext of the war.

Truth is One, Not Many But Political Leaders will Deny it

We are witnessing an historic event and epic of empire-building. Leaders claiming to be democratically elected, think and behave like absolute dictators. President Obama is engaged in time-killing exercises at the end of his presidency. He was not an intellectual and proactive person leading to peaceful future-making. Mankind needs morally and intellectually responsible leadership to pursue a sustainable future. All absolute rulers and leaders tried to run down the mankind as if it was just a number – a digit – and conscious-less entity of technological imagination. But all of them have caused immense losses and liabilities to their own nations and empires. American political history was enriched with intellectual foresights and democratic values to safeguard the rest of the mankind. But its contemporary leaders and major institutions seem to defy the logic of peaceful co-existing with the global community.

The continuous wars have incapacitated the Arab states and rulers as some are complacent in providing logistical support to the US-British aggressions in Iraq and Afghanistan.The Western masses are against the wars but the US-Russian strategic plans increasingly pursuing more seen-unseen wars against the Arabs-Muslims, not just to occupy their natural resources but to go beyond Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya and occupy the lands and people.  This is a call for a decadent Islamic culture to be destroyed within as the political developments are shaping up beginning with Palestine, Iraq, Syria onward to other Arabian Peninsula – collapse of the Muslim people to be taken over by the 21st century Crusaders. One wonders, if the oil enriched Arab elite occupying dusty palaces could come out to have the freedom to think on their own of a Navigational Change to avert the self-geared human catastrophes?

Chris Hedges (writes a regular column for Truthdig.com  and was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, and author of many books including his most recent book: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle) contributes a realist observation (“The Ghoulish Face of Empire.” Truthdig.com), to make the US policy makers understand the untold and challenging facts of global politics:

The black-clad fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, sweeping a collapsing army and terrified Iraqis before them as they advance toward Baghdad, reflect back to us the ghoulish face of American empire. They are the specters of the hundreds of thousands of people we murdered in our deluded quest to remake the Middle East…… The language of violence engenders violence. The language of hate engenders hate. “I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn,” W.H. Auden wrote. “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.” It is as old as the Bible.

There is no fight left in us. The war is over. We destroyed Iraq as a unified country. It will never be put back together. ….We are not, as we thought when we entered Iraq…. We are something else. Fools and murderers. Blinded by hubris. Faded relics of the Cold War. And now, in the final act of the play, we are crawling away. Our empire is dying……. The disintegration of Iraq is irreversible. At best, the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunnis will carve out antagonistic enclaves. At worst, there will be a protracted civil war. This is what we have bequeathed to Iraq. The spread of our military through the region has inflamed jihadists across the Arab world. The resulting conflicts will continue until we end our occupation of the Middle East. The callous slaughter we deliver is no different from the callous slaughter we receive. Our jihadists—George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Thomas Friedman and Tommy Franks—who assured us that swift and overwhelming force in Iraq would transform the Middle East into an American outpost of progress, are no less demented than the jihadists approaching Baghdad. These two groups of killers mirror each other. This is what we have spawned. And this is what we deserve.

The Earth and Space are wired with secrecy, new and unthinkable weapons of mass destruction, and global warming is a clicking time bomb for the future. The most hated and feared leaders do not have the intellectual and political capacity to solve nay problems which they have engineered for their own interest and greed of power. The humanity looks to proactive scholars, visionary and intelligent people of new ideas and leaders of change to rebuild a systematic and institutionalized sustainable future for the humanity and to articulate a culture of freedom and human dignity to co-exist without the fear of wars and in complete harmony with the Nature of things – more so, to imagine man (human being), humanity and the Universe to co-exist without animosity of the few vengeful mindsets. Man being the most intelligent creation on planet Earth and being the nucleus of Humanity must think of his originality of Creation and coherent role-play within the Laws of God governing Man’s life and the Universe.

The Man, the Humanity and the Universe must be seen as interrelated to envisage global peace and harmony on One Plant. Life, the Universe and the laws of governance of the planet are not the outcomes of politicians and staged actors. Is there a new culture of rethinking and emotions to bring the mankind back to its originality of rational unity and peaceful co-existence to save the humanity and civilizations? Lessons of history are ignored – most feared and most hated leaders, who drove the mankind to the insanity of the Two World Wars and current war agenda in the Middle East, likewise are actively engaged to undermine the future prospects of harmony between people of diversity and varied cultures.

With failed international institutions, incompetent and corrupt global leadership affiliated to the Washington-based Military-Industrial complex continues to enforce militarization of the globe- and insane perversion against the logic of peace and co-existence amongst the mankind. The humanity looks to men of intellect, scholars of integrity for solutions, certainly not to the warmongers destroying life and habitats throughout the globe.

Rationality asserts that the future belongs to the global citizenry not to the few sadistic warlords, and that an informed and politically mature and active global citizenry must have the opportunity to exercise its rights, choice and freedom to develop the futuristic global institutions and governance by integrating the moral and spiritual values of man, humanity and the living Universe as the rational forces of global conscience for a sustainable future.

Being one Humanity on One Planet and One World, People of the world to which the Universe belongs, have never allowed any abstract institutions or governments or egomaniac leaders to act on their behalf? The message and its spirit are clear that the mankind as ONE rational force must act to safeguard the future.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, May 2012).

How can it be that in virtually all of the Presidential-candidate head-to-head Democratic versus Republican polling that was done of both Democratic and Republican candidates during the primaries, the preferred Democratic candidate against any one of the Republican candidates was Bernie Sanders, but he almost certainly won’t be that Party’s nominee (and there’s more on that here); and the preferred Republican candidate against either one of the Democratic candidates was John Kasich, but he certainly won’t be the Republican nominee?

Sanders and Kasich also scored the highest in his respective Party for net favorability rating, but almost certainly neither candidate will even be on the ballot for voters on November 8th. What kind of ‘democracy’ is this?

How can it be that in the UK, the ‘Labour’ Prime Minister Tony Blair served as George W Bush’s lap-dog on the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to eliminate «Saddam’s WMD» (which didn’t even exist) – it wasn’t a Conservative Prime Minister who did that extremely conservative (i.e., aggressive, invasion, especially on the basis of lies) thing? What kind of ‘democracy’ is that?

And how can it be that throughout the EU, the public are against GMOs, toxic chemicals such as Roundup or glyphosate, and toxic ‘trade’ treaties such as TTIP, but the political leaders are pushing as hard as they can for all of those things? That’s the way to stay in public office? Not in a democracy.

A dictatorship is a national government that rules the public, instead of being ruled by the public. There are various types of this, such as communist (‘workers’ dictatorship), fascist (corporate dictatorship), etc., but those are merely terminological fine points on basically the same terrible beast, and all variants of the beast have two classes of people: the aristocracy, who rule, and the public, who are ruled.

No dictatorship has equality-of-rights before the law, because any type of dictatorship treats the aristocracy as being above the law, and legally unaccountable to the public when violating the law, and it treats the public as being arbitrarily (depending upon whether cooperative with the aristocrats, or not) fully accountable to the government (the aristocracy), for any violation of the law. (E.g., the homeless go to jail, while banksters get bailed out.)

The rulers are unseen in many dictatorships; those rulers are behind-the-scenes, unofficial, but the nominal rulers then are representatives of the aristocracy, they’re not actually representing the public. Unseen rulers (actually mainly the personal representatives of unseen rulers) meet in international conclaves like the Bilderberg conferences, and Trilateralist conferences, instead of in national legislatures. Unseen rulers tend to be very discreet, the opposite of ostentatious – hardly the «political» type – not braggarts at all. They don’t need to impress anybody. They want only to be obeyed.

On May 17th, the British Member of Parliament (MP) Craig Murray, who is that rare thing a fully committed democrat who also happens to be a member of his country’s national legislature, headlined at his terrific blog, «The Conservatives Will Be Protected From Their Election Fraud», and he documented that there is «blatant state propaganda manipulation» and that «in this country, electoral law is not enforced against those in power». Power-holders in the UK can violate the law with impunity, even where the violation is clearly documented – he showed that.

In the United States, the only scientific study of whether the US is a democracy found it’s not. It examined 1,779 separate pieces of proposed national legislation since the year 1980, and found that only the concerns of rich people («oligarchs») affected a bill’s fate; the concerns of the public (as had been reflected in public-opinion polls regarding the given matter) did not.

Consequently, though the democratic nations (plus, importantly, the communist dictatorship, the USSR) defeated fascism in 1945, the democratic nations are no longer democracies; they’re all «oligarchies» ruled by some sort of aristocracy or another.

The capstone to this development would be the passage-into-law of US President Barack Obama’s proposed international ‘trade’ treaties, TTIP, TPP, and/or TISA, to transfer national sovereignty (regardless of whether or not of a democratic kind) to an international corporate dictatorship, which will prohibit increases in regulations of food-safety, product-safety, workers’ rights, and of global warming and other environmental matters, and will transfer the power over those to the top stockholders in international corporations.

The question at the present time is whether democracies have already been so severely compromised, so that treaties such as these that Obama is pushing, can be approved by ‘democratic’ governments. If the answer to that question is yes, then we’re already in the Brave New World of fascist international victory – though it’s post-WWII, the fascists will finally have won, not just maybe, but clearly, and decisively, throughout all of the foreseeable future – perhaps even permanently, because international treaties, especially ones that entail many nations, are virtually impossible to end. (A good example of that permanency is NATO: its very raison d’etre terminated when the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance ended in 1991; but, yet, it continues even today, and threatens now to bring about WWIII, which would be its culmination.)

If the idea that we live in a dictatorship seems far-fetched because we’re surrounded by propaganda to the contrary, then there is still the inspiration of the central character Winston Smith in the allegorical novel about fascism, 1984 – he soured on the propaganda that he was editing, but finally switched back, and saw the light: Big Brother was his savior, after all. The former US Senator Gary Hart wrote recently from the standpoint of the earlier, disillusioned, Winston Smith, but, perhaps, even people such like him will also see the light, and stop saying such things as, «Measured against the standards established for republics from ancient times, the American Republic is massively corrupt». Perhaps everyone has his price, and, once it’s paid, he’ll see the light, too. But, even if he won’t, he has provided there a remarkably accurate description of the reality that Orwell’s book had merely allegorized – way back in 1948. Winston Smith would have been shocked at such a kindred spirit, writing not in 1984 but 2015.

Orwell, in his own time, struggled over what year his novel should be set in. Likely, we’re still not quite there yet. After all, it was set after the nuclear war. The international agreements – the alliances – seem to have been already in place, for some time. Maybe Orwell’s novel should have been instead called something like «2025». Just a few more years; we can hardly wait (if we’ll be among the survivors).

Such are the ways of the international aristocracy. If we’ll tolerate them. But if we won’t, what then? Nothing is more powerful than they are. But is that the end of the story? Are they a terminal plague? Can NATO be ended without it culminating? Or, is there some other way?

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.

China and Thailand launched the Blue Sky 2016 joint military exercise on Saturday. The opening ceremony for the drill was held at the Sattahip Naval Base in Chon Buri, Thailand. It was presided over by Royal Thai Navy Fleet Commander Naris Prathumsuwan and Wang Hai, deputy commander of Chinese Navy. The Blue Sky 2016 exercise was launched against the backdrop of the development of closer bilateral relations and a cohort of domestic, regional and geopolitical challenges.

The Blue Sky 2016 exercise involves joint training at sea and on land, evacuation of people from conflict-affected areas, disaster-stricken areas, as well as counter-terrorism operations with focus on relief for the population.

Deputy commander of Chinese Navy, Wang Hai said the drill manifests the perseverance and ability of marine corps from both countries in counter-terrorism and maintaining peace in the region.

Royal Thai Navy Fleet Commander Naris Prathumsuwan for his part, said the Blue Skye 2016 exercise would help boost the long-standing relationship between Thailand and China and the exercise was aimed at increasing cooperation between the two forces by sharing practical knowledge and experiences.

Blue Sky 2016 is the third of its kind, following the Blue Strike 2010 and the Blue Strike 2012 joint exercises. The Sattahip Naval Base, where the headquarters of Royal Thai Marine corps is located, is the biggest naval base in Thailand.

Thailand Reorients Itself After 2014 Military Takeover – Need for Constitutional Reform Remains

Image: The New York Times

Bilateral relations between China and Thailand have been expanded and consolidated since 2014, after the Thai military intervened and took power after months of protests against the government of Yingluck Shinawatra by protesters who demanded that the Pheu Thai party government abides by the constitution. In late 2013 protesters from the popular PDRC movement began a wave of protests demanding reform before elections.

Early 2014 the movement also gained the support from many of Thailand’s rice farmers. Protests were about to bring the country to a stand-still. The Shinawatra regime and armed militant “Red Shirts” and Black Shirts” linked to the Pheu Thai party, on the other hand, carried out a wave of terrorist attacks against protesters before the military intervened to prevent that the country spirals out of control.

The ousted PM Yingluck Shinawatra and the Pheu Thai party overtly admitted that Yingluck governed the country as a proxy for her fugitive brother Thaksin Shinawatra who maintains close ties to U.S. and British think tanks and high-finance. Thaksin is wanted on several charges, including corruption and involvement in crackdowns that led to several deaths. He openly admitted to the New York Times that power in Thailand comes via Skype.

Click on image to enlarge.

Thailand has been through several circles of “Democracy” and military takeovers. Constitutional reform advocates stress that Thailand’s constitution invariably leads to the concentration of power in the hands of small financial and party elites, regardless of which party it is that is in power. The problem is in other words “systemic”.

Professor Dr. Amorn Chandarasomboon, a former Secretary-General of Thailand’s State Council, outlined the systemic problems, stating a truly democratic system means:

• There must be elections.
• Elected representatives must have the ability to perform their duties independently according to their conscience, free of external control.
• Thailand’s Constitution allows capitalist autocracy operating under a parliamentary system because of these three provisions.
• 1) A Member of Parliament (MP) must be a member of a political party.
• 2) A political party can expel a member for disobeying a party resolution.
• 3) The Prime Minister must be a Member of Parliament.

Amorn stressed that such a political system allows those with money to obtain absolute power to run the country like a privately owned business and leads to corruption. The administration of General Prayuth Chan-ocha and Thailand as a nation still have to address this need for constitutional reform.

Many analysts believe that the question whether or not the above mentioned constitutional and systemic problems will be addressed will determine whether or not Thailand escapes its circle of democracy, corruption and nepotism, protests and military interventions. Especially the U.S. and British governments have touted the military intervention as a coup while western media generally describe the government as a “military junta”.

Polls do, however, suggest that the majority of Thai citizens regard the military as an important, independent national institution that functions as an important stabilizing factor. The 2014 military intervention was welcomed by the PDRC and other pro-reform advocates, by the Royal household, by the majority of Thailand’s population, by the important Thai Chamber of Commerce , the Board of Trade, as well as by both Thai Buddhist and Roman Catholic dignitaries. Polls also suggest that the majority of the population prefers a longer period of transition to consolidate the country rather than a rushed return to a dysfunctional democratic system.

With western governments being increasingly hostile towards Thailand, Bangkok has encouraged its business community and finance sector to make use of the opportunities that have been opened up by the opening of China’s economy. Thailand is, however, maintaining a balanced position, making the best of its ties to China and ASEAN.

Bangkok has also initiated projects that aim at closer cooperation with Russia, Belarus and the relatively newly founded Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The Thai strategy aims at balance, friendly relations with all who are genuinely interested, and in maintaining national sovereignty. Earlier this year, for example, Bangkok turned down the Chinese – Thai High-Speed Rail project and went solo with building parts of the planned railway infrastructure. Bangkok stressed that it could not agree with Chinese demands about exclusive land-development rights along the railway.

Common Denominators With Regard to Terrorism

Aftermath of the bombing at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok

China and Thailand are facing similar and in part overlapping security challenges with regard to terrorism. Even though there were not made any official, explicit  comments by  Royal Thai Navy Fleet Commander Naris Prathumsuwan and Wang Hai, deputy commander of Chinese Navy it is safe to assume that the Blue Sky 2016 exercise is in part addressing these challenges.

More specifically: China is struggling with armed Turkmen – Uighur insurgents in its Xingjian province. In 2015 Thailand expelled some 100 Uighur for alleged involvement in human trafficking. Uighur networks have also been implicated in the 2015 bombing at the Erawan Shrine that killed 20 and injured another 120 appeared in court in Thailand’s capital Bangkok.

Uighur militants in China’s Xinjiang province are known for ties to Turkish “Grey Wolves”, as well as Turkish and NATO intelligence services. Uighur NGOs in China are also supported by well-known CIA fronts including The National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Thailand has traditionally been very tolerant of other than Therevada Buddhist religions and religious communities. Thailand is, however, plagued by Islamist terrorism in regions with a high percentage of Muslims along the West and East Coasts of the Peninsula across Trang, Krabi, Phuket, Ranong, Nakkon Si Thammarat, and Surat Thani.

Chinese and Thai security analysts and security services, including the military, must be acutely aware of the threat that is being posed by the increased involvement of Islamists in Xinjiang, China and in southwestern Thailand. That is, “Islamists” not to be confused with “Muslims”. Especially precarious links are those between Islamists with ties to Turkish “Grey Wolves”, and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated networks.

Likewise, the increased involvement of fundamentalist, Saudi Arabia supported Wahhabi and networks to remnants of Al-Qaeda networks have the potential of posing threats to Thailand, Myanmar, as well as to China.

It is worth noting that displaced Rohingya from Bangladesh and Rohingya refugee camps in Myanmarhave been infiltrated by the Bangladeshi Al-Qaeda Franchise Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islam (HuJI). Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islam, for its part, is known for being infiltrated by, and in part run by intelligence services of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other’s  who used the Al-Qaeda “Mujahedeen” in the fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Finally, the joint Chinese – Thai Blue Sky 2016 military exercise must also be viewed within the context of growing tensions over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. While it is unlikely that open warfare would erupt between China and the USA, or between China and one of the United States’ Asian – Pacific  allies, the risk of 4th generation, asymmetric warfare by terrorist proxy is very real and potentially implicates Thailand and Thailand’s neighbors, including Malaysia, Philippines as well as Indonesia.

Along with his self-congratulatory bombast, Donald Trump has offered a rare critique of Official Washington’s “group think” about foreign policy, including the wisdom of NATO expansion and the value of endless war, notes John V. Walsh.

“Only Donald Trump (among the Presidential candidates) has said anything meaningful and critical of U.S. foreign policy.” No, that is not Reince Priebus, chair of the RNC, speaking up in favor of the presumptive Republican nominee. It is Stephen F. Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, a contributing editor for The Nation, that most liberal of political journals.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in an MSNBC interview.

Cohen tells us here that: “Trump’s questions are fundamental and urgent, but instead of engaging them, his opponents (including President Obama) and the media dismiss the issues he raises about foreign policy as ignorant and dangerous. Some even charge that his statements are like ‘Christmas in the Kremlin’ and that he is ‘the Kremlin’s Candidate’ — thereby, further shutting off the debate we so urgently need.” (Cohen’s comment about the lack of a meaningful critique of U.S. foreign policy also covers the statements of Sen. Bernie Sanders.)

Cohen first enunciated Trump’s five questions during one of his weekly discussions on relations between Russia and the West on The John Batchelor Show, on WABC-AM (also on podcasts).

On the April 6 broadcast, Cohen said:

Let me just rattle off the five questions he [Trump] has asked. [First] why must the United States lead the world everywhere on the globe and play the role of the world’s policeman, now for example, he says, in Ukraine? It’s a question. It’s worth a discussion.

Secondly, [Trump] said, NATO was founded 67 years ago to deter the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union ended 25 years ago. What is NATO’s mission? Is it obsolete? Is it fighting terrorism?  No, to the last question, it’s not. Should we discuss NATO’s mission?

Thirdly, [Trump] asks, why does the United States always pursue regime changes? Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and now it wants a regime change in Syria, Damascus. When the result is, to use Donald Trump’s favorite word, the result is always “disaster.” But it’s a reasonable question.

Fourthly, why do we treat Russia and Putin as an enemy when he should be a partner?

Russia scholar Stephen Cohen.

Fifth, Trump asks, about nuclear weapons – and this is interesting. You remember he was asked, would he rule out using nuclear weapons – an existential question. He thought for a while and then he said, ‘No, I take nothing off the table.’ And everybody said he wants to use nuclear weapons! In fact, it is the official American nuclear doctrine policy that we do not take first use off the table. We do not have a no first use of nuclear weapons doctrine. So all Trump did was state in his own way what has been official American nuclear policy for, I guess, 40 or 50 years. …

It seems to me that these five questions, which are not being discussed by the other presidential candidates, are essential.

Batchelor then turned the discussion to the question of NATO. Cohen replied: “When we say NATO, what are we talking about? We are not talking only about the weapons and soldiers on land and sea. We’re talking about a vast political bureaucracy with hundreds of thousands of employees and appointees, that is located in Brussels. It’s a political empire. It’s an institution. It’s almost on a par with our Department of Defense, though it gets its money from the Department of Defense, mainly, as Trump points out …

But it has many propaganda organs. If you look at the bylines of people who write op-ed pieces in many American papers, they are listed as working for the public relations department of NATO or they formerly did so. No, I would say along with the Kremlin and Washington, NATO is probably the third largest propagator of information, in this information war, in the world.

U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan who is credited with devising the strategy of deterrence against the Soviet Union after World War II.

But look, here’s the reality. And Trump came to this late. When they were discussing expanding NATO in the 1990s in the Clinton administration, it was George Kennan, who was then the most venerable American diplomat scholar on relations with Russia, who said: Don’t do it; it will be a disaster; it will lead to a new Cold War.

Since George spoke his words – and I knew him well when I taught at Princeton where he lived – we have taken in virtually all of the countries between Berlin and Russia. NATO now has 28 membership states. But if you sit in the Kremlin and you see NATO coming at you over 20 years, country by country like PAC-man, gobbling up countries that used to be your allies, who appears to be the aggressor?

So – the expansion of NATO has been a catastrophe. And that has been, in some ways, apart from fighting the war in Afghanistan – from which I believe it has now withdrawn, it is now solely American (I may be wrong about that) – and in addition taking on the American project of missile defense, expanding toward Russia has been NATO’s only mission since the end of the Soviet Union.

So people can ask themselves, if they ask calmly and apart from the information war, … do we have less security risks, less conflict, today after this expansion to Russia’s borders, bearing in mind that the Ukrainian crisis is a direct result of trying to bring Ukraine into NATO as was the Georgian war, the proxy war with Russia in 2008. Are we, as [President] Reagan would say, are we better off today? We are not! So easily at a minimum, we have to rethink what it is NATO is doing.

So get thee to the website for the American Committee on East West Accord and listen to the weekly Batchelor-Cohen podcasts. They are an ideal antidote to the avalanche of Russia-bashing and Putin-demonizing that we must endure. While you are at it, check out the other leading members of ACEWA, a superb and badly needed organization – and make a contribution.

John V. Walsh is a frequent contributor to CounterPunch.com, Antiwar.com, LewRockwell.com and DissidentVoice.org. He is a founding member of “Come Home America.” Until recently he was Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He can be reached at [email protected].

In a surprise move, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week forced out his long-serving defence minister, Moshe Yaalon. As he stepped down, Mr Yaalon warned: “Extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel.”

He was referring partly to his expected successor: Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose trademark outbursts have included demands to bomb Egypt and behead disloyal Palestinian citizens.

But Mr Yaalon was also condemning extremism closer to home, in Mr Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Mr Yaalon is to take a break from politics. With fitting irony, his slot is to be filled on Likud’s backbenches by Yehuda Glick, a settler whose goal to destroy Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple has the potential to set the Middle East on fire.

Israeli commentators pointed out that, with Mr Lieberman’s inclusion, the government will be the most extreme in Israel’s history – again.

French prime minister Manuel Valls, who began a visit to the region on Saturday, is likely to face an impregnable wall of government hostility as he tries to drum up interest in a French peace plan.

Less noticed has been the gradual and parallel takeover of Israel’s security institutions by those espousing the ideology of the settlers – known in Israel as the national-religious camp.

None of this is accidental. For two decades the settlers have been targeting Israel’s key institutions. Under Mr Netanyahu’s seven-year watch as prime minister, the process has accelerated.

Naftali Bennett, leader of the settler party Jewish Home and education minister, recently boasted that the national-religious camp, though only a tenth of the population, held “leadership positions in all realms in Israel”.

One such success for Mr Bennett is Roni Alsheikh, who was appointed police chief late last year. He was a long-time resident of Kiryat Arba, one of the most violent settlements in the occupied territories.

The force’s most recent campaign, “Believing in the police”, is designed to recruit more religious hardliners. Behind the programme are settler-politicians who have called Palestinians “subhuman” and expressed sympathy for those who burnt to death a Palestinian family, including a baby, last summer.

The other security agencies are also being transformed. Religious nationalists now hold many of the top posts in the Shin Bet intelligence service and the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.

In the army, too, the settlers are today heavily over-represented in the officers corps and combat units. For more than a decade their rabbis have dominated the army’s education corps.

But, despite this rising tide, Israel’s traditional secular elite – mostly of European extraction – have desperately clung on to the top rungs of the army command.

Mr Netanyahu bitterly resents their continuing control. They stood in his way at two momentous occasions, as he tried to overturn the Oslo accords in the late 1990s and to bomb Iran five years ago.

In a bid to curb their influence, Mr Netanyahu tried to promote the religious Yair Naveh as military chief last year, but was blocked by the top brass.

Mr Lieberman’s arrival as defence minister, however, may mark a turning point.

In some ways, less is at stake than Mr Yaalon’s hyperbolic warning suggests. For decades the secular generals have been in charge of an occupation that has crushed the rights of Palestinians and caged them into ever-smaller holding pens. These generals have been just as cruel as the religious officers replacing them.

Nonetheless, the reverberations of this quiet revolution should not be ignored.

The old elites have lived off the fat of the land in the kibbutz, Israel’s spacious farming communities built on the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages ethnically cleansed in 1948.

After the 1967 war, the kibbutz-generals happily exported the same model of industrial-scale theft of Palestinian land to the occupied territories.

But their security obsessions were ultimately rooted in Israel, where they fear having to account for the crimes of 1948 from which they profited. Their abiding nightmare is a right of return to Israel of the lands’ original owners – Palestinian refugees today numbering in the millions.

The religious camp’s priorities are different. The lands they defend most passionately are not in Israel but in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That is where many live and where the holy places that sanctify their territorial greed are located.

The spread of this zealotry into the army has made its more liberal elements deeply uncomfortable. In recent years, small numbers of whistleblowers have emerged, from military intelligence unit 8200 through to a group called Breaking the Silence.

The recent video of an execution of a badly wounded Palestinian by army medic Elor Azaria – and the outpouring of public support in Israel for him – has only intensified these tensions. This month the army’s deputy head, Yair Golan, compared Israel to Nazi Germany. Mr Lieberman, meanwhile, is Azaria’s most vocal supporter.

The goal of the religious nationalists is undisguised: to remove the last restraints on the occupation, and build a glorious, divinely ordained Greater Israel over an obliterated Palestinian society.

That means no hope of a peaceful resolution of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians – unless it is preceded by a tumultuous civil war between Israel’s secular and religious Jews.

By now, anyone paying the least attention knows that the dishonest Democratic establishment and dishonest mainstream media have created a false narrative of bad behavior by Bernie Sanders supporters at the Nevada State Democratic State Convention on May 14. The evidence-free claims about “thrown chairs” (none) and “death threats” (tasteless insults) have been widely rebutted, but they have served their purpose all the same: taking attention away from the arrogant, autocratic management of the Nevada convention by establishment Democrats working on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

It’s a measure of Democratic Party panic that party leaders feel the need to run a despotic convention, autocratically ramming their preferred results through when there were only two national delegates at stake.

Their fear of Bernie Sanders must run deep for them to follow this authoritarian performance with a smear campaign based on lies about the Sanders campaign. Establishment Democrats should be afraid, since almost half the voters allowed to vote in Democratic primaries reject establishment Democratic “values.” But their shamelessness, pusillanimity, and obtuse arrogance march on toward a possibly disastrous November that is wholly self-engineered.

Here’s what arrogant denial of reality sounded like on CNN May 19, inside the establishment Democrat echo-chamber: reporter Chris Cuomo tries a reality based question and Hillary Clinton meets it with almost absolute denial:

Cuomo (CNN): So you get into the general election, if you’re the nominee for your party, and —

Clinton: I will be the nominee for my party, Chris. That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.

Cuomo: There’s a Senator from Vermont who has a different take on that —

Clinton: Well —

Cuomo: He says he’s going to fight to the end —

Clinton: Yeah, it’s strange.

Sanders still could pull a rabbit out of the hat for a “miracle ending”

First, let’s stipulate that the possibility of Bernie Sanders becoming the Democratic nominee for President is small. But it’s also real. Should he be able to get 85% of the California vote, he’d get ALL the California delegates. No wonder establishment Democrats want to pretend the game is already over. It’s close to over, to be sure. By analogy, it’s the fourth quarter and the Patriots are down by two touchdowns, but Tom Brady and his team have the ball at midfield with all their timeouts remaining. Let’s wait and see what the score really is when the game is really over. (In 2008, Clinton played out the game, losing 15 of the last 23 contests; this year, Sanders is winning down the stretch.)

Cuomo’s first question is precisely right, despite the “conventional wisdom,” which is a somewhat desperate attempt at self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s what Clinton counters with, the self-fulfilling prophecy gambit, and yet even she can’t escape that shred of uncertainty when she says, “in effect.” “In effect” is not a done deal, and wishing won’t make it so.

On CNN, Clinton deflects whatever Cuomo was originally intending to ask. He takes the Sanders bait and, in mealy-mouthed fashion, says Sanders is going to fight to the end. Clinton cuts him off and calls that “strange.” The candidate’s talking point has silenced the reporter, but it hasn’t changed reality: Clinton’s nomination, however likely it may seem, also hangs by a thread. That’s a much more interesting story than most of the mainstream garble. Why would Clinton think her arrogance will help her? Why do Democrats think running a Potemkin convention in Nevada is necessary to secure two delegates? Why are Democrats resorting to blatant smears of the Sanders campaign if the nomination is already secure? If establishment Democrats actually believe that party unity is important, why have they ramped up their divisiveness?

On CNN, his reality-based question, Cuomo switches to the false narrative of Nevada that goes unexamined: “his supporters have become more aggressive…. We saw what happened in Nevada…. Did you feel that Sanders responded in the right way?” That is profoundly dishonest and unprofessional: Cuomo assumes a false reality, while ignoring the reality of the rigged convention, and then tosses Clinton a softball question. She affirms the false narrative (“what we saw there was disturbing”) and slides past the question (“I have every confidence we’re going to be unified”) and speaks falsely about 2008 (“I won 9 out of the last 12 contests”). Clinton goes on and on with a false analogy about 2008, talking about how she and Obama worked for unity AFTER all the primaries were over. Cuomo just smiles and nods, as if he believes Clinton’s nonsense is relevant, when it’s obviously not.

Revolution is hard, non-violent revolution is much harder

Bernie Sanders is fighting for a political revolution. He is doing it with nonviolence, working within the two-party system. The Democratic Party is not a revolutionary party, and hasn’t even been close since the Johnson years in the sixties. Establishment Democrats like the Clintons are fundamentally counter-revolutionary, which is a problem for a party with ten million voters favoring the political revolution candidate. The Republican party is so intellectually corrupt that it fell apart facing the Trump challenge, and is now falling in line with it. Democrats still have enough party discipline (or top-down undemocratic hierarchy) that they can muster the ugly pushback that featured a convention with no meaningful participation followed by a vicious attack on the victims who have had the temerity to challenge authority.

Two days after having had their way with their rigged convention, Nevada State Democratsformally complained to the National Democratic Committee that Sanders supporters had tried to disrupt and change the pre-ordained decisions the state committee had made in closed session and imposed on the convention. Writing for the state party, general counsel Bradley S. Schrager dropped the poison pill that has distorted the Nevada narrative ever since. Schrager’s May 16 letter reeks of fearmongering and falsehood. Shrager’s central charge is an Orwellian fabrication that would seem hilarious if it hadn’t been taken seriously by so many credulous, agenda-driven people in the party and the media. Schrager was widely misquoted as saying the Sanders campaign has “a penchant for violence.” What Schrager actually wrote to the Rules Committee was much nastier and more hysterical, apparently designed to inflame enough fear in the party hierarchy to panic it into adopting draconian rules to stifle dissent at the convention (thereby mimicking the Nevada convention):

“We believe, unfortunately, that the tactics and behavior on display here in Nevada are harbingers of things to come as Democrats gather in Philadelphia in July for our National Convention. We write to alert you to what we perceive as the Sander Campaign’s penchant for extra-parliamentary behavior – indeed, actual violence – in place of democratic conduct in a convention setting, and furthermore what we can only describe as their encouragement of, and complicity in, a very dangerous atmosphere that ended in chaos and physical threats to fellow Democrats.”

Polarizing Democrat lawyer blames the silenced as divisive – seriously

Lawyer Schrager complains of “extra-parliamentary behavior” at a convention that allowed no meaningful parliamentary behavior. The slippery lawyer speaks of “actual violence,” attributed to no one and for which there is not one specific example in his three-page single-spaced letter full of ranting accusations (“threats to her life,” “obviously criminal in nature,” “sparking a street-fight,” “an atmosphere of impending eruption,” “screams from bullhorns,” “profiting from the chaos,” “shock troops,” “inciting disruption,” “incendiary, inaccurate, and wholly unauthorized,” “inflammatory charge,” “irrational minority,” “lack of conscience,” or “the glee with which they engaged in such destructive behavior.”) This is not a carefully argued legal brief, with specificity and context – it is essentially a hate letter, apparently intended to provoke further hatred and repression of free speech within the Democratic Party. Most media ran with Schrager’s version of events, unquestioned (as in The New York Times May 17, with this provocatively false lede: “Thrown chairs. Leaked cellphone numbers. Death threats spewed across the Internet.”). Schrager’s demonization is not an argument, but it is an ad hominem emotional appeal that other Democrats (and pundits) have already reacted to without reasoning. Schrager’s letter is also in apparent clear violation of the state party’s Anti-Bullying Policy.

All this has about it some of the stench of 1968, although the parallel is inexact. But then, as now, a large part of the electorate was incensed at the party hierarchy – then over the party’s obdurate support of the Viet-Nam war, now over the party’s adamant resistance to social change desired by most of the country. Then as now, the Democratic Party was unresponsive to its anti-establishment dissenters, then preferring a police riot to silence dissent over any rational effort at accommodation, now choosing a rigged convention (with the hint of worse to come). Then as now, the party hierarchy was rigid and intellectually corrupt. Then the Democratic hierarchy managed to get Richard Nixon elected. Now … well, we’ll see.

Besides the generalized victimization of a raucous convention, the only actual victim was also one of the victimizers. Convention chair Roberta Lange, the enforcer for the state committee’s secret decisions, held the first vote on the rules before all the delegates had arrived. The state committee had secretly given her absolute control over the convention and sole authority to rule on challenges to her own rulings. Given the brewing controversy over Nevada delegates since February, Lange’s dictatorial running of the convention was clearly disruptive of the democratic process, as well as a catalyst for further disruption in response. Lange is not known to have addressed her exercise of authoritarian style, but she has widely complained of being a victim of electronic hate mail and hostile phone calls. She has claimed death threats, but one alleged threat that was published had a callback number and an offer to discuss what went down at the convention. She plays the pity card: “I feel threatened everywhere I go.” Of course Lange should not be harassed, but many of the communications to her are actually political criticism of her actions as a public official. She may be a victim, but she is in no way an innocent victim.

Bernie Sanders made a cogent response, largely ignored

In a May 18 statement, Sanders first reminded the ostrich-like Democratic hierarchy of a real world condition they continue to try to deny:

“… that the political world is changing and that millions of Americans are outraged at establishment politics and establishment economics. The people of this country want a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent, super PACs and wealthy campaign contributors.”

He suggested that the Democratic Party faces an existential choice between opening its door to people fighting for “real economic and social change,” or it can choose to maintain its closed-door, corporate, big-money, service-the-rich current posture. (That’s what the state party in Nevada chose.) Next, Sanders addressed the traducing letter from lawyer Schrager:

“Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim that the Sanders campaign has a ‘penchant for violence.’ That is nonsense. Our campaign has held giant rallies all across this country, including in high-crime areas, and there have been zero reports of violence. Our campaign of course believes in non-violent change and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals.” [emphasis added]

Sanders then mentioned actual violence against his campaign in Nevada – a victimless shooting and a break-in/ransacking of staff quarters – that have not made news. For the remainder of the brief statement, Sanders addressed behavior of the Democratic Party, especially at the state level, with a detailed, brief critique of the Nevada convention.

Pundit nonsense is exemplified by the usually cogent Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, whose May 19 column began: “Bernie Sanders is playing a dangerous game. If he and his campaign continue their scorched-earth attacks against the Democratic Party, they will succeed in only one thing: electing Donald Trump as president.” Wait, who’s scorching whose earth? Which Debbie Wasserman Schultz of the Democratic National Committee has scorched as much of Sanders’ earth as she could, while also spending her time supporting the payday lenders who shamelessly exploit the poor and contribute to her campaign? (Bill Moyers sees Wasserman Schultz as a primary source of Democratic divisiveness.) What planet has Eugene Robinson moved to? He concludes that Sanders “and his campaign must stop attacking the Democratic Party in a way that might discourage voters in the fall.” He would be more persuasive and in touch with reality if he warned the Democratic Party to stop attacking Sanders in a way that will alienate his ten million primary voters. But the party may achieve that alienation anyway, just by sticking too closely to the status quo. And surely Robinson knows that.

Another pundit atrocity comes, apparently unintentionally, from Joan Walsh who describes a number of media Sanders-backers who have backed off after uncritically accepting the false narrative of Nevada. Then Walsh goes into conspiracy mode, hinting that the false narrative was not only a true narrative, but that the Sanders people staged the events (that didn’t happen) with a nefarious purpose: “that the point wasn’t the actual delegates—he trails her by about 280 at this point—but creating the appearance of a rigged system.” Besides rejecting the reality of numerous elections irregularities (to put it nicely) in this primary season, Walsh goes on to explain her bias against “male entitlement”: “ I don’t accept the presumption of moral and ideological superiority from a coalition that is dominated by white men, trying to overturn the will of black, brown, and female voters or somehow deem it fraudulent.”

Top Democrats reacted without bothering to fact check

Nevada senator Harry Reid, the Democratic minority leader, had already taken Sanders to task on May 17, based on the false reports of the Nevada convention – “The violence and all the other bad things that has happened there,” Reid falsely told reporters. The New York Times reported that Reid said that Sanders faced “a test of leadership” over the behavior of his supporters, and that Reid said he urged Sanders to “do the right thing.” Neither the Times nor Reid, apparently, explained what “the right thing” was, nor did they mention the draconian nature of the convention itself. (The “test of leadership” meme was picked up with equal parrot-like vacuity by Politico, the Washington Post, The Hill, the LA Times, Daily Kos, the Chicago Tribune, and the Drudge Report. The media nadir was reached by the Times with such baldly biased front page headlines as “Sanders Is Urged to Quell Threats by His Backers – Chairs Fly in Nevada” (May 18) and “Bernie Sanders, Eyeing Convention, Willing to Harm Hillary Clinton in Homestretch” (May 19) – since it was actually Clinton’s Nevada supporters who were harming Clinton with their thuggish takeover of the convention.)

What does Harry Reid know about tests of leadership? He can’t even lead his 43 fellow Democrats in an effective effort to make the full Senate vote on the current Supreme Court nominee. Harry Reid has called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “incompetent,” but during the Viet-Nam war, which he did not oppose, Harry Reid led from behind as a capitol cop guarding the House and Senate. Under Harry Reid’s leadership, the Democrats’ Senate majority became a minority. Harry Reid called the Iraq War “the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country,” but he voted for it. Bernie Sanders has characterized Iraq the same way, but he voted against it. The only significant test of leadership that comes to mind with Harry Reid is that he managed to keep nuclear waste from being buried in his Nevada backyard at Yucca Mountain. But he’s done nothing to keep anyone else safe and nothing to stem the production of nuclear waste. Harry Reid is the Democratic establishment personified, and you can count on him for pretty much nothing.

Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin of Illinois chimed in based on the false narrative, as did Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. Coons shot his foot into his mouth, lecturing Sanders on “the importance of respecting the process,” numb to the notion that in Nevada the process was the problem. Senator Barbara Boxer of California was at the convention to give a keynote speech for Hillary Clinton, but when she lit into the Sanders disrupters she was booed and attacked the crowd, making the booing worse. Boxer claimed she feared for her safety. By contrast, Democrat Nina Turner, an Ohio State Senator who was supposed to speak before Boxer but was bumped to later, used her speaking time to calm the audience: “we got to be calm but committed.” Turner, who was at the convention for almost eight hours, attests that there was no violence (“nobody tried to do anything violent whatsoever”) and that reports that she was booed were false, even when she said Bernie Sanders was going all the way to the convention “to make the impossible possible.” Rather tepidly, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California semi-praised Sanders as “a positive force in the Democratic Party.” She said she was glad to see the energy of Sanders supporters, but warned that “there are rules that exist.” She didn’t mention the way Nevada treated rules as a variable, but she did reject comparisons between 2016 and 1968 as “ridiculous.”

Another, excellent witness report of the convention, at variance from the false narrative of the party and the media, came from Dan Rolle, Democratic candidate for Congress in Nevada. Acknowledging that there was a lot of chaos, Rolle talks for ten minutes about why it happened: the state committee’s decision to take autocratic control of the convention and Chair Lange’s autocratic exercise of her authority.

By Friday, May 21, there were reports that Sanders was calling his fellow senators and assuring them of what he’d said all along: that he would support the nominee of the party, once there was a nominee as determined by the convention. There’s no report that anyone in the Democratic establishment is assuring him of similar support in the event, however remote, that he is the nominee. That would be a real test of leadership for Harry Reid and his ilk in the face of a popular political revolution to change this country in ways establishment Democrats fear because it threatens their cozy nests of inert but lucrative legalized corruption. Embracing real change for the rest of the country is a test of leadership Clinton Democrats act like they’re determined to fail by any means necessary, the consequences be damned.

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

As readers know, I have seen some optimism in voters support for Trump and Sanders as neither are members of the corrupt Republican and Democratic political establishments. Members of both political establishments enrich themselves by betraying the American people and serving only the interest of the One Percent. The American people are being driven into the ground purely for the sake of more mega-billions for a handful of super-rich people.

Neither political party is capable of doing anything whatsoever about it, and neither will.

The optimism that I see is that the public’s support of outsiders is an indication that the insouciant public is waking up. But Americans will have to do more than wake up, as they cannot rescue themselves via the voting booth. In my opinion, the American people will remain serfs until they wake up to Revolution.

Today Americans exist as a conquered people.  They have lost the Bill of Rights, the amendments to the Constitution that protect their liberty.  Anyone, other than the One Percent and their political and legal servants, can be picked up without charges and detained indefinitely as during the Dark Ages, when government was unaccountable and no one had any rights.

Only those with power were safe. In America today anyone not politically protected can be declared “associated with terrorism” and taken out by a Hellfire missile from a drone on the basis of a list of human targets drawn up by the president’s advisers.  Due process, guaranteed by the US Constitution, no longer exists in the United States of America.  Neither does the constitutional prohibition against the government spying on citizens without just cause and a court warrant.  The First Amendment itself, whose importance was emphasized by our Founding Fathers by making it the First Amendment, is no longer protected by the corrupt Supreme Court.  The Nine who comprise the Supreme Court, like the rest of the bought-and-paid-for-government, serve only the One Percent. Truth-tellers have become “an enemy of the state.”  Whisteblowers are imprisoned despite their legal protection in US law.

The United States government has unaccountable power.  Its power is not accountable to US statutory law, to international law, to the Congress, to the judiciary, to the American people, or to moral conscience. In the 21st century the war criminal US government has murdered, maimed, and dislocated millions of people based on lies and propaganda. Washington has destroyed seven countries in whole or part in order to enrich the American elite and comply with the neoconservative drive for US world hegemony.

Americans live in a propaganda-fabricated world in which a brutal police state is cloaked in nice words like “freedom and democracy.”  “Freedom and democracy” is what Washington’s war machine brings with sanctions, bombs, no-fly zones, troops, and drones to countries that dare to cling to their independence from Washington’s hegemony.

Only two countries armed with strong military capability and nuclear weapons—Russia and China—stand between Washington and  Washington’s goal of hegemony over the entire world.

If Russia or China falter, the evil ensconced in Washington will rule the world.  America will be the Anti-Christ. The predictions of the Christian Evangelicals preaching “end times” will take on new meaning.

Russia is vulnerable to becoming a vassal state of Washington. Despite a legion of betrayals by Washington, the Russian government has just proposed a joint US/Russia cooperation against terrorists.

One wonders if the Russian government will ever learn from experience. Has Washington cooperated with the agreement concerning Ukraine?  Of course not. Has Washington cooperated in the investigation of MH-17?  Of course not.  Has Washington ceased its propaganda about a Russian invasion of Crimera and Ukraine?  Of course not.  Has Washington kept any agreement previous US governments made with Russia?  Of course not.

So why does the Russian government think Washington would keep any agreement about a joint effort against terrorism?

The Russian government and the Russian people are so unaware of the danger that they face from Washington that they let foreigners control 20 percent of their media!  Is Russia unaware that Washington has Russia slated for vassalage or destruction?

China is even more absurd.  According to the Chinese government itself, China has 7,000 foreign-financed NGOs operating in China!  Foreign financed NGOs are what Washington used to destabilize Ukraine and overthrow the elected government.

What does the Chinese government think these NGOs are doing other than destabilizing China?

Both Russia and China are infected with Western worship that creates a vulnerability that Washington can exploit. Delusions can result in inadequate response to threat.

All of Europe, both western, eastern and southern, the British Pacific such as Australia and New Zealand, Japan and other parts of Asia are vassal states of Washington’s Empire.  None of these allegedly “sovereign” countries have an independent voice or an independent foreign or economic policy.  All of Latin America is subject to Washington’s control.  No reformist government in Latin America has ever survived Washington’s disapproval of putting the interests of the domestic populations ahead of American corporate and financial profits.  Already this year

Washington has overthrown the female presidents of Argentina and Brazil.  Washington is currently in the process of overthrowing the government in Venezuela, with Ecuador and Bolivia waiting in the wings.  In 2009 Killary Clinton and Obama overthrew the government of Honduras, an old Washington habit.

As Washington pays the UN’s bills, the UN is compliant.  No hand is ever raised against Washington.  So why does anyone on the face of the earth think that an American election can change anything or mean anything?

We know that Killary is a liar, a crook, an agent for the One Percent, and a warmonger.  Let’s now look at Trump.

Are there grounds for optimism about Trump?  In the West “news reporting” is propaganda, so it is difficult to know.  Moreover, we do know that, at least initially, the response of the Republican Establishment to Trump is to demonize him, so we do not know the veracity of the news reports about Trump.

Without belaboring the issue, two news reports struck me.  One is the Washington Post report that the Zionist multi-billionaire US casino owner Sheldon Adelson has endorsed Donald Trump for President.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sheldon-adelson-i-endorse-donald-trump-for-president/2016/05/12/ea89d7f0-17a0-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html

Other reports say that Adelson has mentioned as much as $100 million as his political campaign contribution to Trump.

Anyone who gives a political capaign $100 million dollars expect something in exchange, and the recipient is obligated to provide whatever is desired.

So are we witnessing the purchase of Donald Trump?

The initial Republican response to Trump, encouraged by the crazed neoconservatives, was to abandon the Republican candidate and to vote for Killary.

Is Adelson’s endorsement a signal that Trump can be bought and brought into the establishment?

Additional evidence that Trump has sold out his naive supporters is his latest statement that Wall Street should be deregulated: https://ourfuture.org/20160519/populist-trump-wants-to-deregulate-wall-street

It is extraordinary that Trump’s advisers have not told him that Wall Street was deregulated back in the 20th century during the Clinton regime.  The repeal of Glass-Steagall deregulated Wall Street. One source of the 2008 financial crisis is the deregulated  derivative maket. When Brooksly Born attempted to fulfill the responsibiity of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and regulate over-the-counter derivatives, she was blocked by the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury, the SEC, and the US Congress.

Nothing has been done to correct the massive mistake of financial deregulation. The Dodd-Frank legislation did not correct the massive financial concentration that produced banks too big to fail, and the legislation did not stop Wall Street’s  reckless casino gambling with the US economy.  Yet Trump says he will dismantle even the weak Dodd-Frank restrictions.

The American print and TV media are so corrupt that these reports could be false stories, the purpose of which is to demoralize Trump’s supporters.  On the other hand, should we be surprised if a billionaire aligns with the One Percent?

Elections are an unlikely means of restoring government that is accountable to the people rather than to the One Percent.  Even if Trump is legitimate, he does not have the experience in foreign and economic affairs to know who to appoint to his government in order to implement change.  Moreover, even if he knew, unless Trump candidates also replace the Senate, Trump could not get his choices confirmed by a Senate accountable only to the One Percent.

Americans are a conquered people.  We see this in the appeal from RootsAction to the rest of the world to come to the aid of the American people. Unable to stop the lawlessness of their own “democratic” government, Americans plea for help from abroad:

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12247

The plea from RootsAction indicates that committed activists now acknowledge that change in America cannot be produced by elections or be achieved internally through peaceful means.

(image) Uri Avnery

“Please don’t write about Ya’ir Golan!” a friend begged me, “Anything a leftist like you writes will only harm him!”

So I abstained for some weeks. But I can’t keep quiet any longer.

General Ya’ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, made a speech on Holocaust Memorial Day. Wearing his uniform, he read a prepared, well-considered text that triggered an uproar which has not yet died down.

Dozens of articles have been published in its wake, some condemning him, some lauding him. Seems that nobody could stay indifferent.

The main sentence was:

“If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016.”

All hell broke loose. What!!! Traces of Nazism in Israel? A resemblance between what the Nazis did to us with what we are doing to the Palestinians?

90 years ago was 1926, one of the last years of the German republic. 80 years ago was 1936, three years after the Nazis came to power. 70 years ago was 1946, on the morrow of Hitler’s suicide and the end of the Nazi Reich.

I feel compelled to write about the general’s speech after all, because I was there.

As a child I was an eyewitness to the last years of the Weimar Republic (so called because its constitution was shaped in Weimar, the town of Goethe and Schiller). As a politically alert boy I witnessed the Nazi Machtergreifung (“taking power”) and the first half a year of Nazi rule.

I know what Golan was speaking about. Though we belong to two different generations, we share the same background. Both our families come from small towns in Western Germany. His father and I must have had a lot in common.

There is a strict moral commandment in Israel: nothing can be compared to the Holocaust. The Holocaust is unique. It happened to us, the Jews, because we are unique. (Religious Jews would add: “Because God has chosen us”.)

I have broken this commandment. Just before Golan was born, I published (in Hebrew) a book called “The Swastika”, in which I recounted my childhood memories and tried to draw conclusions from them. It was on the eve of the Eichmann trial, and I was shocked by the lack of knowledge about the Nazi era among young Israelis then.

My book did not deal with the Holocaust, which took place when I was already living in Palestine, but with a question which troubled me throughout the years, and even today: how could it happen that Germany, perhaps the most cultured nation on earth at the time, the homeland of Goethe, Beethoven and Kant, could democratically elect a raving psychopath like Adolf Hitler as its leader?

The last chapter of the book was entitled “It Can Happen Here!” The title was drawn from a book by the American novelist Sinclair Lewis, called ironically “It Can’t Happen Here”, in which he described a Nazi takeover of the United States.

In this chapter I discussed the possibility of a Jewish Nazi-like party coming to power in Israel. My conclusion was that a Nazi party can come to power in any country on earth, if the conditions are right. Yes, in Israel, too.

The book was largely ignored by the Israeli public, which at the time was overwhelmed by the storm of emotions evoked by the terrible disclosures of the Eichmann trial.

Now comes General Golan, an esteemed professional soldier, and says the same thing.

And not as an improvised remark, but on an official occasion, wearing his general’s uniform, reading from a prepared, well thought-out text.

The storm broke out, and has not passed yet.

Israelis have a self-protective habit: when confronted with inconvenient truths, they evade its essence and deal with a secondary, unimportant aspect. Of all the dozens and dozens of reactions in the written press, on TV and on political platforms, almost none confronted the general’s painful contention.

No, the furious debate that broke out concerns the questions: Is a high-ranking army officer allowed to voice an opinion about matters that concern the civilian establishment? And do so in army uniform? On an official occasion?

Should an army officer keep quiet about his political convictions? Or voice them only in closed sessions – “in relevant forums”, as a furious Binyamin Netanyahu phrased it?

General Golan enjoys a very high degree of respect in the army. As Deputy Chief of Staff he was until now almost certainly a candidate for Chief of Staff, when the incumbent leaves the office after the customary four years.

The fulfillment of this dream shared by every General Staff officer is now very remote. In practice, Golan has sacrificed his further advancement in order to utter his warning and giving it the widest possible resonance.

One can only respect such courage. I have never met General Golan, I believe, and I don’t know his political views. But I admire his act.

(Somehow I recall an article published by the British magazine Punch before World War I, when a group of junior army officers issued a statement opposing the government’s policy in Ireland. The magazine said that while disapproving the opinion expressed by the mutinous officers, it took pride in the fact that such youthful officers were ready to sacrifice their careers for their convictions.)

The Nazi march to power started in 1929, when a terrible worldwide economic crisis hit Germany. A tiny, ridiculous far-right party suddenly became a political force to be reckoned with. From there it took them four years to become the largest party in the country and to take over power (though it still needed a coalition).

I was there when it happened, a boy in a family in which politics became the main topic at the dinner table. I saw how the republic broke down, gradually, slowly, step by step. I saw our family friends hoisting the swastika flag. I saw my high-school teacher raising his arm when entering the class and saying “Heil Hitler” for the first time (and then reassuring me in private that nothing had changed.)

I was the only Jew in the entire gymnasium (high school.) When the hundreds of boys – all taller than I – raised their arms to sing the Nazi anthem, and I did not, they threatened to break my bones if it happened again. A few days later we left Germany for good.

General Golan was accused of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Nothing of the sort. A careful reading of his text shows that he compared developments in Israel to the events that led to the disintegration of the Weimar Republic. And that is a valid comparison.

Things happening in Israel, especially since the last election, bear a frightening similarity to those events. True, the process is quite different. German fascism arose from the humiliation of surrender in World War I, the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium from 1923-25, the terrible economic crisis of 1929, the misery of millions of unemployed. Israel is victorious in its frequent military actions, we live comfortable lives. The dangers threatening us are of a quite different nature. They stem from our victories, not from our defeats.

Indeed, the differences between Israel today and Germany then are far greater than the similarities. But those similarities do exist, and the general was right to point them out.

The discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany. (The oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories resembles more the treatment of the Czechs in the “protectorate” after the Munich betrayal.)

The rain of racist bills in the Knesset, those already adopted and those in the works, strongly resembles the laws adopted by the Reichstag in the early days of the Nazi regime. Some rabbis call for a boycott of Arab shops. Like then. The call “Death to the Arabs” (“Judah verrecke”?) is regularly heard at soccer matches. A member of parliament has called for the separation between Jewish and Arab newborns in hospital. A Chief Rabbi has declared that Goyim (non-Jews) were created by God to serve the Jews. Our Ministers of Education and Culture are busy subduing the schools, theater and arts to the extreme rightist line, something known in German as Gleichschaltung. The Supreme Court, the pride of Israel, is being relentlessly attacked by the Minister of Justice. The Gaza Strip is a huge ghetto.

Of course, no one in their right mind would even remotely compare Netanyahu to the Fuehrer, but there are political parties here which do emit a strong fascist smell. The political riffraff peopling the present Netanyahu government could easily have found their place in the first Nazi government.

One of the main slogans of our present government is to replace the “old elite”, considered too liberal, with a new one. One of the main Nazi slogans was to replace “das System”.

By the way, when the Nazis came to power, almost all high-ranking officers of the German army were staunch anti-Nazis. They were even considering a putsch against Hitler . Their political leader was summarily executed a year later, when Hitler liquidated his opponents in his own party. We are told that General Golan is now protected by a personal bodyguard, something that has never happened to a general in the annals of Israel.

The general did not mention the occupation and the settlements, which are under army rule. But he did mention the episode which occurred shortly before he gave this speech, and which is still shaking Israel now: in occupied Hebron, under army rule, a soldier saw a seriously wounded Palestinian lying helplessly on the ground, approached him and killed him with a shot to the head. The victim had tried to attack some soldiers with a knife, but did not constitute a threat to anyone any more. This was a clear contravention of army standing orders, and the soldier has been hauled before a court martial.

A cry went up around the country: the soldier is a hero! He should be decorated! Netanyahu called his father to assure him of his support. Avigdor Lieberman entered the crowded courtroom in order to express his solidarity with the soldier. A few days later Netanyahu appointed Lieberman as Minister of Defense, the second most important office in Israel.

Before that, General Golan received robust support both from the Minister of Defense, Moshe Ya’alon, and the Chief of Staff, Gadi Eisenkot. Probably this was the immediate reason for the kicking out of Ya’alon and the appointment of Lieberman in his place. It resembled a putsch.

It seems that Golan is not only a courageous officer, but a prophet, too. The inclusion of Lieberman’s party in the government coalition confirms Golan’s blackest fears. This is another fatal blow to the Israeli democracy.

Am I condemned to witness the same process for the second time in my life?

Uri Avnery is a peace activist, journalist, writer, and former member of the Israeli Knesset. Read other articles by Uri, or visit Uri’s website.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is taking a bold step against biotech giant Monsanto and genetically modified seeds at large. In a new address to the Russian Parliament Thursday, Putin proudly outlined his plan to make Russia the world’s ‘leading exporter’ of non-GMO foods that are based on ‘ecologically clean’ production.

Perhaps even more importantly, Putin also went on to harshly criticize food production in the United States, declaring that Western food producers are no longer offering high quality, healthy, and ecologically clean food.

“We are not only able to feed ourselves taking into account our lands, water resources – Russia is able to become the largest world supplier of healthy, ecologically clean and high-quality food which the Western producers have long lost, especially given the fact that demand for such products in the world market is steadily growing,”

Putin said in his address to the Russian Parliament.

And this announcement comes just months after the Kremlin decided to put a stop to the production of GMO-containing foods, which was seen as a huge step forward in the international fight to fight back against companies like Monsanto. Using the decision as a launch platform, it’s clear that Russia is now positioning itself as a dominant force in the realm of organic farming.

It even seems that Putin may use the country’s affinity for organic and sustainable farming as a centerpiece in his economic strategy.

“Ten years ago, we imported almost half of the food from abroad, and were dependent on imports. Now Russia is among the exporters. Last year, Russian exports of agricultural products amounted to almost $20 billion – a quarter more than the revenue from the sale of arms, or one-third the revenue coming from gas exports,” he added.

Poroshenko admits to Ukraine’s military leadership that Ukraine cannot reconquer the Donbass.

Though it has received almost no international attention, Ukraine’s President Poroshenko finally admitted on Friday 21st May 2016 a truth many Ukrainians still cannot face: Ukraine cannot regain control of the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics by military means.

Poroshenko’s admission was made at a meeting of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council – in effect to Ukraine’s military leadership.  That means that what Poroshenko said was not a slip or a pose but a genuine admission made to the commanders of the Ukrainian military who have been fighting its war.

This admission comes two years after Ukraine launched its so-called “Anti-Terrorist Operation” to crush opposition in the Donbass.

It also comes just short of two years after Ukraine launched a military offensive to regain the Donbass on 30th June 2014.

Poroshenko was elected President shortly before that military offensive was launched.  It was he who gave the order to launch the offensive, ignoring warnings not to do so from the Russians and from Germany’s Foreign Minister Steinmeier (who however did nothing to restrain him thereafter).

Poroshenko as President was also party to the Ukrainian decision to resume the offensive in January 2015.

The offensives Ukraine launched in June 2014 and in January 2015 ended in disastrous defeats.

Tens of thousands of people were killed, cities in the Donbass like Lugansk were bombed, shelled, placed under siege and devastated, millions of people were forced to flee from their homes to escape the fighting,  the economy of Ukraine was dealt a possibly mortal blow, and the Donbass – Ukraine’s richest region and its industrial powerhouse – has experienced a humanitarian catastrophe.  Last but not least, the Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down with heavy loss of life after the Ukrainian authorities allowed it to fly over the conflict zone.

Poroshenko now admits this was all for nothing.  The military strategy for which he as Ukraine’s President bears prime responsibility has been a total failure.  As he now says himself, Ukraine’s military is unable to do what he repeatedly ordered it to do: regain control of the Donbass by military means for Ukraine.

It is not as if Poroshenko and the Ukrainian government had no other choice.

On 17th April 2014 the Ukrainian government signed up to a Statement in Geneva which called for negotiations between the Ukrainian authorities and the representatives of Ukraine’s regions – including obviously of the Donbass – to find a settlement to the conflict. Those negotiations never happened because the Ukrainian authorities chose to launch their misnamed “Anti-Terrorist Operation” instead.

Later, when the Ukrainian authorities launched their military offensive on 30th June 2014, a ceasefire was in place and negotiations were underway.  Poroshenko broke off the negotiations, unilaterally ended the ceasefire, and chose war instead.

Lastly, at the time of Ukraine’s second offensive launched in January 2015 Ukraine had committed itself to a peace process which the Russians had brokered in Minsk in September 2014.  That envisaged negotiations with the leaders of the Donbass which again never took place as Poroshenko and the Ukrainians resolved to launch their second offensive instead.

Throughout these events the Russians repeatedly made known their strong desire for a negotiated solution to the conflict and repeatedly put pressure on the militias in the Donbass to enter into such negotiations.

If negotiations – as envisaged by the agreements agreed in Geneva in April 2014 and in Minsk in September 2014 – did not taken place, it was not the fault of the militia or of the Russians, who have always pressed for such negotiations.  It was the fault of Poroshenko and of the Ukrainian leadership..

Similarly, if negotiations have still not taken place despite the defeat of Ukraine’s second offensive in February 2015 and despite Ukraine’s further commitment to enter into such negotiations made at the summit in Minsk in February 2015, it is again because the Ukrainians refuse to engage in them.

The responsibility for the war Ukraine chose to fight – and which Poroshenko now admits Ukraine has lost – therefore rests entirely with Poroshenko, the other members of the Ukrainian leadership who colluded with him to take the decision to go to war, and with the Western politicians who egged them on.

One thing can however be predicted with confidence.  Though Poroshenko has now effectively  admitted that Ukraine has been defeated, he will never accept responsibility for that defeat.  Nor will the other Ukrainian leaders or the Western politicians who were involved in the decision to go to war with him.

Needless to say, there is no possibility of Poroshenko doing what any political leader with any sense of responsibility would do in this situation – which is resign and make way for someone else.

Nor is there the slightest possibility that Poroshenko or the rest of the Ukrainian leadership will draw the obvious conclusion from their defeat, which is that Ukraine’s only way forward is to do what Ukraine has repeatedly committed itself to do but has always failed to do, which is talk to the leaders of the Donbass, who have defeated Ukraine in battle.

On the contrary the report of Poroshenko’s comments to Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council shows that far from drawing this conclusion Poroshenko is instead still looking for ways to achieve by diplomatic means what he failed to achieve on the battlefield: the reconquest of the Donbass without concessions to its people.  It is merely his tactics which have changed.  Having been defeated in battle he wants the West to bully the Russians into handing him the victory he could not achieve on the battlefield.

That the Russians have proved entirely resistant to such bullying and that this approach anyway fails to address Ukraine’s real problem – the complete alienation of the people of the Donbass from the regime in Kiev – is something Poroshenko refuses to consider.

Instead, where he previously led Ukraine twice to defeat in battle, Poroshenko now seems intent to lead it up a blind alley, doubtless chalking up trivia like Ukraine’s Eurovision win as “great victories” along the way.

The world’s most famous whistleblower, Edward Snowden, took Twitter by storm when he created an account last year. Since, he has criticized everyone from the FBI to Google, so his latest post on the CIA should come as no surprise.

Commenting on revelations the CIA “inadvertently” destroyed a copy of the 6,700-page torture report, Snowden questioned the agency’s official story.

“I worked @CIA. I wrote the Emergency Destruction Plan for Geneva. When CIA destroys something, it’s never a mistake,” he tweeted Wednesday, openly challenging the CIA’s claim. He also shared an article detailing the news.

I worked @CIA. I wrote the Emergency Destruction Plan for Geneva. When CIA destroys something, it’s never a mistake. https://t.co/S1VULfE4NY

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 18, 2016

Snowden previously worked for the CIA and as an NSA contractor before leaking documents revealing the U.S. government’s extensive mass surveillance programs and subsequently fleeing the country. He has been an outspoken voice against government overreach and privacy issues ever since.

On Monday, Yahoo News reported on the CIA’s apparent fumble that inspired Snowden’s Wednesday tweet:

“The CIA inspector general’s office — the spy agency’s internal watchdog — has acknowledged it ‘mistakenly’ destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee was reportedly informed of the ‘mistake’ last summer, but it was never disclosed to the public, nor to the federal judge presiding over a Freedom of Information Act case seeking access to the lengthy document.

Douglas Cox, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law, who specializes in “tracking the preservation of federal records,” commented on the CIA’s self-described mistake. “It’s breathtaking that this could have happened, especially in the inspector general’s office — they’re the ones that are supposed to be providing accountability within the agency itself,” he said.“It makes you wonder what was going on over there.”

The clandestine organization came under fire for its use of torture after 9/11 (and before, though it’s lesser-known), as exposed by a Senate investigation in December 2014. Following embarrassing reports of everything from sexual assault and forced rectal feeding to beatings, sleep deprivation, and other degrading practices, the CIA has since tried to clean up its image. Amid presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s calls to implement waterboarding and more torture, in general, CIA Director John Brennan disavowed the agency’s infamous practice. “I will not agree to have any CIA officer carry out waterboarding again,” he said in April.

But the CIA has a track record of deception, and has had at least one issue with destroyed documents before — that time concerning records on the agency’s coup in Iran in 1953.

The 2014 Senate report “relied on the CIA’s own records to document a pattern of an agency consistently understating the brutality of the techniques used on detainees and overstating the value of the information they produced,”the Associated Press reported in 2014.

“This is a tremendous amount of CIA misrepresentation. It is difficult to read these pages and wonder whether a system of accountability can work,” Mother Jones observed, in a thorough article examining the many ways the CIA deceived lawmakers and multiple federal agencies about its torture program.

As Democratic Senator Mark Udall flatly said, “The CIA lied.”

No doubt, according to Snowden, the CIA continues to lie — and his tweet highlights growing mistrust of establishment narratives as Americans increasingly lose faith in government and other institutions.

Read Snowden’s recent article on political resistance here.

It was my honour and privilege to be a part of the annual March against Monsanto on 21 May 2016.

Joining the global community who are speaking out against multimillion dollar, chemical companies who are slowly working their way to owning the monopoly of our precious seeds and drenching our beautiful planet in their toxic herbicides.

Africa is a playground for the biotech industry and especially my precious South Africa.  Our government are so occupied with the current corruption and chaos within our political parties that they have forgotten to look after their people. They are so concerned with trying to be modern and first world that they haven’t noticed the catastrophic side effects of the GMO crisis.

Our people are getting sick, our soil is under attack, our farmers are trapped, our water systems polluted. Ecogenocide and a Crime against Humanity before our eyes AND NO ONE IS SAYING ANYTHING. The stores and suppliers who stock the stuff blame the Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture say that big daddy FDA said its fine so it should be ok. The government say, ask the Department of Agriculture. Eish !!

And to top it all off !! Toxic glyphosate is being sprayed on to homes and families in the name of the war on drugs – Horrendous that the departments allowing this to carry on haven’t been locked up for attempted murder!

This past year has been a wild and wonderful journey, joining a crew of hardcore, fierce, environment and people loving EARTH WARRIORS, to make our voices heard in as many cities as we could reach in South Africa.

The organizers for each event are all volunteers with full time jobs and some with kids to manage during the process, yet they do it because some people are just born that way and caring is what they do. I am grateful and honoured to know them and South Africa should be so proud that they have people of this quality fighting for them.

At our particular march – I remember looking into the eyes of the beautiful humans who took the time out of their busy day to stand up and be counted, to make a noise and expose themselves to gawkers and cameras and strange looks, to swim upstream and walk against the brainwashed majority.

I remember thinking that it feels so good to connect with others who have woken up to the fact that our planet needs looking after and people outside of our immediate family circles need care and protection. For many it is not an easy thing to do, protesting is totally out of many peoples natural comfort zone.

To me, every city that took part in South Africa has a different feel unique to their people and personality.

Johannesburg is raw and real

Cape Town is chilled out, positive and earthy.

Nelspruit Two Brave Warriors

Pilgrims Rest – farmers territory, serious and consistent

Mtubatuba – heart of South Africa – local farmers

Durban is artistic, creative, adventurous, caring and wholesome

Port Elizabeth is hardcore yet colourful, deep and family- Photo credit Astin Sampson

All of these people walk the talk in their daily lives and really are a part of the change that they want to see. Remembering, that protesting is only a small (but very necessary) part of creating awareness and making change.

For me I need to remember that sometimes when fighting FOR something, getting angry is ok as long as it can be channelled in the right direction. The pain and suffering caused by these corporations is not something that can be taken lightly. The brainwashing of our youth in their classes and universities is shameful. Showing them the fantastic science behind manipulating genes without going into the consequences of putting it into practice in the real world is crime in itself. The trickery and propaganda used on our precious farmers is so deceitful and manipulative.

This isn’t an article about that so I will stop with the devastating effects of  Monsanto, Bayer the 1% and the likes of who serve a God of money and blood, own and are attempting to destroy our seeds and poison Africa and our Earth. To them I have this to say – We will fight until we are free.

Those corrupt corporations know that their worst nightmare is an informed public and they know that as soon as everyone realises, they lose all of their power. This in itself scares the daylights out of them…………. and it should.

It is not an easy job being an activist. It is draining, time and all consuming and sometimes depressing knowing the truth BUT Seeing people becoming aware, making change and keeping the ripple going makes it all worth it.

“Never underestimate the power of a small group of caring people”. To all of these worthy few, I have this to say – You are one of the minority fighting for the majority whose eyes haven’t opened yet. For that I thank you for standing with me and the rest of the world who truly care.

An awesome poem by our performer… thankyou Weza Awethu Sonamzi for this meaningful poem !

“Jailer.
You deal in life and freedom
Master of trade
You’ve gone and given away our heritage

With love

Rushka Johnson

Thirty three relatives of the MH17 tragedy from Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia, have taken to legal avenues against Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin. The claim was filed by Sydney-based LHD Lawyers in the European Court of Human Rights, seeking $A10 million per passenger.  The application, running into 3,500 pages, is awaiting acceptance. 

The legal steward behind the action is Jerry Skinner, who has some form in this rather niche field of aviation law.  He managed to successfully seek compensation for families of victims over the Pan Am 103 flight bombing over Lockerbie that killed 270 people, though this also required a series of political moves to take place.  “Our clients,” explained Skinner, “want them to accept responsibility and be accountable in some measure that will be satisfying to the individuals.”

Skinner does not necessarily do his clients much of a service in then describing their motivation and state of mind.  It is one of grief and confusion followed by dollar signs of reassurance. “What it takes for an individual to be satisfied after the loss of a loved one and a big political essentially act of war, is something that can only be determined later as time passes and as people’s feelings change, people’s feeling solidify” (ABC News, May 22).  The desire for monetary compensation is one such solidified feeling, presumably.

The circumstances behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines MH17 were politicised from the moment the aircraft was destroyed by what was said to be a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile in July 2014.  Having been submerged in an intense information war, questions loomed over who, in the chaos of conflict, pulled the trigger that fateful day. 

The main Dutch-led investigation into the incident by the Safety Board (OVV) did not conclude who fired the weapon, though the battle of responsibility was long decided by other parties. Russia contends that the missile came from Ukrainian forces; those from the West and the Ukrainian sources argue that it was Russian-backed rebels on Ukrainian soil.

The legal suit here asserts that the Russian Federation failed to conduct an internal investigation or participate with other parties in attempting to reconstruct the cockpit.  Another even more serious allegations is that the Russian cyber warfare unit, known as “Pawn Storm”, hacked the Dutch Safety Board investigative website.

A not unconnected fact is the finding by the Glebe Coroner’s Court in New South Wales last week which decided to wade into a field of assumption.  The coroner, Michael Barnes, momentarily forgot his station and began to speculate.   “Coroners do not make findings of criminal guilt, but it would be pointless sophistry not to acknowledge that these deaths were part of a gross mass murder.”[1]

Ignoring the war zone conditions, the political context and the escalation of the conflict at the time the passenger flight was shot down, Barnes saw motive and wicked minds at play. “The fatal injuries were inflicted as a result of a person or persons, who has or have not been identified, deliberately firing a missile, equipped with an exploding warhead, at the jetliner in which the deceased persons were passengers, causing it to disintegrate at high altitude.”

Bryan Clancy, who lost his brother Michael and sister-in-law Carol, was not quite so politically oblivious to the circumstances of what had happened.  The Australian prime minister, he argued, had to be saddled with some responsibility for his ventilating against Putin. “I believe the comments made by Tony Abbott and the Foreign Minister delayed the recovery and remains of Mick and Carol.”

With the crash site still warm, the prosecuting perspective was assumed.  Australian Prime Minister Abbott had no compunction finding Putin responsible, as did Australia’s opposition leader, Bill Shorten.  Professor Payam Akhavan of McGill University considered that a possible basis for legal action might be criminal negligence or recklessness. Putin, in retort, suggested that “the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy.”[2]

The mere act of supplying any such weapons used would not, in themselves, amount to responsibility. That state of affairs poses ethical problems, but hardly the line of liability that could hold up in a court. If that had been the case, numerous international legal suits would be mounted against states for the sale of weapons in a nefarious international arms trade.  Think Saudi Arabia and its links to Western arms suppliers.

Even the International Court of Justice in 1986 found that the US could not be held responsible for the supply of weapons to the Contra Rebel forces battling the Nicaraguan government. Admitting that US collaboration and supply had taken place did not lead to the finding that Washington had given “direct combat support”.  There was insufficient evidence “to demonstrate the total dependence of the contras on United States aid.”[3]

Criminal suits might be pursued in the International Criminal Court, but incident took place outside the time frame of the Ukraine’s lodging of a declaration with the ICC accepting its jurisdiction.[4] Besides, the term “terrorism” is notoriously opaque, and does not form part of ICC jurisdiction.

There are possible domestic actions, though Skinner poured scorn on the idea of suing in Russia “because it’s absolute nonsense to think we could have a realistic chance of success.”[5] There is some precedent, albeit an unsuccessful one, to sue Ukraine over the destruction of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 in 2001 over its territory.  In that case, the families of four Israeli victims instigated civil proceedings, with the Ukrainian Court of First Instance, and the Kiev Appeals Court dismissing the claims in January and August 2007 respectively.

From the moment MH17 perished, legal matters became political avenues by other means.  Compensation for wrongful loss of life, and grounds for the violation of civil aviation rules are valid grounds to make claims.  Political will, however, is quite something else.

A white paper published by the Public International Law & Policy Group and the VU University of Amsterdam canvasses the options extensively, reminding us about the range of possible options regarding civil and criminal remedies in such aviation calamities.[6]  Selecting Russia and Putin in this ignores other agents of responsibility, be it in the realm of civil or criminal liability.  There are simply too many actors – Ukraine, the aircraft operators themselves, to name some obvious ones – to ignore.

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

 Notes:

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-17/nsw-mh17-families-of-victims-describe-their-loss-to-court/7420794

[2] http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/putin-ukraine-malaysian-plane-crash

[3] http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/?sum=367&p1=3&p2=3&case=70&p3=5

[4] https://theconversation.com/explainer-international-law-and-flight-mh17-29416

[5] http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/10m-sought-for-each-mh17-passenger/news-story/e78e08440480deff167182885ccc15cb

[6] http://www.vu.nl/nl/Images/Legal_Remedies_for_Downing_Flight_MH17_tcm289-747125.pdf

Israel has never fully abolished the death penalty, but it has remained unused since the 1960s.

A new law to execute “terrorists” in Israel will effectively apply only to non-Jews, according to a source in the Likud party.

Incoming Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman has made the restoration of the death penalty for terror attacks a sticking point for his far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party to join the government.

However, according to a Likud source quoted by Haaretz, the new law would apply only to people tried in military courts.

As Palestinians are prosecuted in military courts while Jews accused of similar crimes are prosecuted in civil courts, the death penalty would in practice apply only to Palestinians.

The move to restore the death penalty, which has never been officially abolished but has not been used since 1962, has proved highly controversial in Israel.

Former attorney general Yehuda Weinstein on Thursday called on his successor, Avichai Mendelblit, to oppose the proposals.

“There’s nothing like it in the world,” he told Haaretz. “There are no countries that added the death penalty to the book of law, only ones that took it off.

“It’s not practical in terms of deterrence, since these are criminals who anyhow act out of an ideological motive and aren’t afraid of death. It’s also not moral.”

However, other right-wing politicians in Israel have backed calls for the death penalty to be used again.

Photo Caption: Palestinian supporters of the Islamist Hamas movement burn placards bearing pictures of Avigdor Lieberman (C), who is set to become Israel’s minister of defence, and Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gadi Eisenkot (3rdL) during a rally on 20 May, 2016 in Gaza City (AFP) 

Ayelet Shaked, Israeli justice minister and member of the far-right Jewish Home party, said last July that she “found out that there’s a death penalty for terrorists and that it was last handed out in 1994. Since then the military prosecution has not requested a death penalty, but it can be requested, and the military court can give it according to the law.

“Unfortunately, the sentence of the terrorist prosecuted in 1994 was commuted to a life sentence, and he was released in the Shalit deal, but the penalty exists and can be carried out,” she added, according to Haaretz. Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was part of a prisoner-exchange deal In 2011 after being held captive by Hamas for five years.

Five years after a US-NATO war shattered Libya, Washington is preparing to send troops into the oil-rich North African nation for a “long-term mission,” the Pentagon’s top uniformed commander said Thursday.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters returning aboard his plane from a meeting of NATO commanders in Brussels that the new military deployment, which could involve thousands of US troops, could happen “any day.” It awaited only a formal agreement with the new government that the Western powers and the UN are attempting to set up in Tripoli, he indicated.

General Dunford told reporters that there had been “intense dialogue” and “activities under the surface” aimed at bringing about the Libya intervention. This apparently referred to efforts by the US ambassador to Libya, Peter Bodde, and the State Department’s special envoy for Libya, Jonathan Winer, to wrest a formal request for military intervention from Fayez al-Sarraj, the unelected head of the Western-backed Libyan Presidential Council.

Under UN and US tutelage, Sarraj and his allies established this council in exile in Tunisia, returning to the Libyan capital, Tripoli, at the end of March. It is obvious that this new puppet regime has been created for the sole purpose of providing a veneer of legality to another US-NATO military intervention in the devastated country.

Sarraj’s legitimacy, however, is by no means clear. His is now one of three competing regimes, including the Islamist-dominated General National Congress (GNC) in Tripoli and the House of Representatives (HoR) based in the eastern city of Tobruk, which was previously recognized by the West as the legitimate government of Libya. Neither the GNC nor the HoR have recognized the authority of Sarraj’s presidential council.

Nor is it clear what fighting force Sarraj can rely upon and the US and its allies can arm and train. It was revealed earlier this month that US Special Operations troops have been on the ground in Libya since last year attempting to contact and assess various rival militias to see which one could be employed in the service of Washington’s interests in the country.

Ostensibly, the US and its allies are intervening to counter the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) inside the country. ISIS fighters, reported to number at least 5,000, have taken control of a stretch of the Libyan Mediterranean coast. It is no accident that the center of this territory is the city of Sirte, formerly the hometown of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The city was reduced to rubble by US-NATO attacks in the days leading up to the October 2011 torture and murder of Gaddafi at the hands of US-backed Islamist militiamen.

As in Iraq and Syria, Washington is justifying this new intervention in the name of combating a force that it itself spawned. Libya’s ISIS fighters came from the Islamist militias that the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies supported and armed in the bid to oust Gaddafi in 2011. Many of them were then sent into Syria, along with large stockpiles of Libyan weapons that were shipped to that country as part of an operation run out of the secret CIA station in Benghazi. That station and a separate US consulate were overrun by Libyan Islamist militiamen in September 2011, leading to the deaths of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Discussions on the coming Libya intervention took place at a meeting of foreign ministers from the US, Europe and the Middle East on Monday in Vienna. Among the decisions taken was to seek exemption from an arms embargo imposed by the UN after the fall of Gaddafi so that weapons can be funneled in to forces loyal to the puppet Sarraj, though it is, as of yet, unclear who those forces are. US Secretary of State John Kerry allowed that a “delicate balance” had to be found to prevent the arms from falling into the hands of Al Qaeda-linked and ISIS elements that Washington is ostensibly fighting.

The real objective in Libya today, as in 2011, is the assertion of undisputed US-NATO hegemony over the country and its massive oil reserves, the largest on the African continent. Having turned Libya into the model of a so-called “failed state” with its first intervention, Washington appears to want to impose some kind of neocolonial regime with its pending second incursion.

The centrality of oil is manifest in the operations of the two major armed militias that are being considered for the role of Western puppet forces. The first is the so-called Libyan National Army formed under the command of Khalifa Hafter, a former Libyan army officer who became an “asset” of the CIA in the 1980s, set up near the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia and then airlifted by the Americans back into Benghazi during the 2011 war for regime change.

Hafter’s forces have been moving slowly west from Benghazi toward the ISIS center of Sirte, expending most of their energies on seizing control of some 14 oil fields along the way. The fields were taken largely from the Petroleum Facilities’ Guards (PFG), whose commander, Ibrahim Jadhran, had sworn allegiance to the US-backed regime of Sarraj after previously seeking autonomy for the east and attempting to sell oil independently of the government in Tripoli.

Meanwhile, a rival militia based in the city of Misurata in northwestern Libya has been approaching Sirte from the opposite direction with similar intentions. It is widely anticipated that these two forces, apparently the principal candidates for serving as the foundation of a Western puppet force in the country, may end up battling each other rather than ISIS.

While General Dunford predicted a US-NATO intervention was imminent, he was less forthcoming about its composition.

It had been reported initially that Italy, which exercised brutal colonial rule over Libya under the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, would lead the mission, providing upwards of 5,000 troops. Among Rome’s principal concerns—aside from reasserting its old colonial ambitions—is securing the Libyan coast, which is expected to be the major route for refugees seeking to reach Italy, now that the EU has sealed off the so-called Balkan route.

On Monday, however, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that Italy would not send troops into Libya. “While under pressure to intervene in Libya, we have chosen a different approach,” Renzi said in a statement.

For its part, Germany has reportedly rejected placing any of its troops in Libya, saying that it would only train Libyan forces in neighboring Tunisia.

The apparent disarray within NATO’s ranks reflects the competing interests of the US and the various European powers as the Libyan intervention escalates what is emerging as a new imperialist scramble for Africa.

As Washington prepares to launch another military intervention into a nation that it previously decimated through a war of aggression, its ongoing campaign in Iraq appears in growing danger. Baghdad was placed under military curfew Friday night after Iraqi security forces used tear gas and live fire to drive back thousands of antigovernment demonstrators who stormed the heavily fortified Green Zone, reaching the office of Iraq’s US-backed prime minister, Haider al-Abadi.

Initial reports indicated at least one civilian, and perhaps several, killed by security forces, and dozens wounded.

Protesters, including supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had stormed into the blast wall-enclosed Green Zone on April 30 to protest government corruption and failure to provide basic services and security. Anger has only deepened in the intervening weeks as the result of a series of terrorist bombings claimed by ISIS that have killed more than 150 people in Baghdad this month.

In the wake of the bloodshed in the Green Zone, there is a growing threat that an armed confrontation between government forces and armed Shia militias in the Iraqi capital could eclipse the so-called war against ISIS.

Hundreds of thousands of anti-GMO activists took the streets in hundreds of cities around the world calling for bans on genetically modified food.

This is the fourth year that simultaneous events are being organized around the world as the movement continues to try to raise awareness about what they say are major health threats posed by the corporation’s genetically modified seeds and chemical herbicides

Sputnik is in New York following the action where hundreds of protesters have gathered to rally against the mega-company. Catch live video below.

Earlier video coverage here:

Kicking off the global day of action, demonstrators in Sydney held banners with anti-genetically modified food slogans saying they wanted to promote clean food.

The worldwide protests’ coordinator, the March Against Monsanto (MAM) group, claimed on its website that 500 cities are holding peaceful demonstrations today.

The movement seeks to shed light on the dangers surrounding Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds and herbicides linked to cancer, particularly Roundup. The $20-billion company employs 22,000 people across 61 countries and is the world’s leading producer of genetically engineered seeds and chemical herbicides.

The movement leaders also object to Monsanto’s close ties to the US government which they say often ties foreign aid to various countries — such as El Salvador, Ukraine, and Haiti — to agricultural reforms that require farmers to plant Monsanto seeds.

Monsanto has also been battling the government of Argentina for years over Argentina’s fight against their efforts to collect royalties from farmers who replant soybean seeds from previous GMO crops.

Monsanto defended it’s practices in a statement sent to Sputnik.

“The 22,000 people of Monsanto are committed to having an open dialogue about food and agriculture – we’re proud of the work we do, and we’re eager for people to know more about us,” the statement reads. “We’re also proud of our collaboration with farmers and partnering organizations that help make a more balanced meal accessible for everyone. Our goal is to help farmers do this in a more sustainable way using fewer resources and having a smaller impact on the environment. We know people have different points of view on these topics, and it’s important that they’re able to express and share them.”

What looked to be a new window of detente between the US and Iran, following the signing of  the Joint Comprehensive plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program has quickly turned opaque.

A US decree was issued to seize $2 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), holding Iran financially responsible for the 1983 bombing that killed 241 Marines at their barracks in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The funds in question have been blocked since the civilian trial in the bombing began in 2011, but awaited the final legal touch to bless the blatant theft. This came when the US Supreme Court recently upheld the Congress bill, with the approval of President Barack Obama.

This is truly alarming. It clearly is part of a tactic of goading Iran, pushing it in an attempt to bring Iran to heel. Either that or to undermine the deal. Perhaps Obama has had second thoughts about the deal.

Timeline long and tortuous

* In 2002, Judge Royce Lamberth entered default against the defendant (Iran) in a civil suit lodged by victims. In 2003, he ruled that Iran was legally responsible for providing Hezbollah with financial and logistical support that helped the suicide bombers carry out the attack, and thus was guilty. Lamberth concluded that the court had personal jurisdiction over the defendants under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, that Hezbollah was formed under the auspices of the Iranian government and was completely reliant on Iran in 1983, and that Hezbollah carried out the attack in conjunction with Iran’s Ministry of Information and Security agents. Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria have continued to deny any involvement in any of the bombings. An obscure group calling itself “Islamic Jihad” claimed responsibility, and that the bombings were aimed to get the multinational forces out of Lebanon.

* In 2007, Lamberth awarded $2.65 billion to the plaintiffs, an amount he wrote at the time “may be the largest ever entered by a court of the United States against a foreign nation.” The judgment was divided up among the victims; the largest award was $12 million to Larry Gerlach, who became a quadriplegic as a result of a broken neck he suffered in the attack.

* In 2008, the $2 billion was secretly ordered frozen.

* In 2010, victims of the Beirut attack sued the Luxembourg-based clearing house and bank Clearstream for allegedly assisting Iran to move $250 million in frozen assets out of the United States, prompting the open seizure of all Iranian assets at Citibank.

* In 2012, Lambeth ordered Iran to pay an additional $813m in damages and interest. US Congress buttressed this decision with a special law that specifically directed the American bank to turn over its Iranian assets to victims’ families.

* In 2014, Bank Markazi challenged the ruling.

* Now, in 2016 Judge Lamberth got the final word: the US Supreme Court ruled that Congress did not usurp the authority of American courts by passing the 2012 law concerning the 2007 ruling.

The situation is clear: the US ‘justice’ system is not objective. The results of the long process show it serves US political interests over any concern for justice.

Who dun ‘Beirut 1983’?

The case revolves around Iran’s supposed guilt by association with Hezbullah, and Hezbullah’s supposed perpetration of the 1983 bombing. Since the bombing was never solved, there is no case here. It is the US that is guilty in falling short in its security precautions.

Shortly after the 1983 bombing, President Ronald Reagan appointed a military fact-finding committee. The commission’s report found senior US military officials responsible for security lapses and blamed the military chain of command for the disaster. It suggested that there might have been many fewer deaths if the barracks guards had carried loaded weapons and a barrier more substantial than the barbed wire the bomber drove over easily. The commission also noted that the “prevalent view” among U.S. commanders was that there was a direct link between the navy shelling of the Muslims at Suq-al-Garb and the truck bomb attack.

When you are so universally loathed and occupying another country, you should be very, very careful. Israel knows that well. Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, in his 1990 book By Way of Deception, has accused the Mossad of knowing the specific time and location of the 1983 bombing, but only gave general information to the Americans of the attack, information which was worthless. According to Ostrovsky, then Mossad head Nahum Admoni decided against giving the specific details to the Americans on the grounds that the Mossad’s responsibility was to protect Israel’s interests, not Americans. Ostrovsky further claimed that among the high level officers of the Mossad there was a view that if the Americans “wanted to stick their nose into this Lebanon thing, let them pay the price.”

The perpetrators of the bombing are still unknown, but the US insists it must be Hezbollah and thus, indirectly, Iran. Both have denied responsibility. Seizing the funds, given the inconclusive evidence and the security lapses of the occupiers, can only be described as theft. President Rouhani referred to the US Supreme Court ruling on seizure of Iran’s blocked assets as “a blatant robbery and a major legal scandal for the US”, saying the move is indicative of Washington’s continued hostilities toward the Iranian nation. “They (the Americans) should be aware that the rights of the Iranian people cannot be violated and plundered,” he said, adding, “No thief can take pride in his theft and think what he has stolen belongs to him.”

Canadian advice to Rouhani

President Hassan Rouhani says Iran will soon lodge a complaint against Washington with The Hague over a US court ruling that paves the way for the use of billions of Tehran’s frozen assets. “The government will never allow for the money that belongs to the Iranian nation be easily gobbled up by the Americans.”

Rouhani should ponder Canada’s experience. Canadians know only too well about US creative accounting. Our irritant is the billions the US has charged as a tariff duty on Canadian softwood lumber, a problem which started in 1982 and remains unresolved, despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s predecessor, Stephen Harper, making a deal with his friend George Bush back in 2006.

Almost as if on principle, the US refuses to take any responsibility for its actions, let alone apologize, but, at least in this case, Uncle Sam gave back most of its ill-gotten gains. That is unfortunately the relevant precedent here for Iran. Let the theft stand, or try to get a European country to propose some kind of mediation, or try to get the US to settle the matter in the International Court of Justice, as President Rouhani is now doing, though the US, unlike Iran, is not party to the international court.

Iran’s Airline 655 experience

This is how Iran settled the US downing in 1988 of Iran Air Flight 655, shot down by the US Navy (illegally) in Iranian waters, killing all 290 civilians on board. The perpetrator was clearly the US in 1988, though it did not formally apologize to Iran. In 1996, the US and Iran reached a settlement at the International Court of Justice which included the statement “the United States recognized the aerial incident of 3 July 1988 as a terrible human tragedy and expressed deep regret over the loss of lives caused by the incident.”

As part of the settlement, the US did not admit legal liability but agreed to pay $61.8 million, amounting to roughly $200,000 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims. Even if there was a shed of truth to the US claim concerning Iran and the Beirut bombing–there isn’t–$2 billion divided 241 equals $11 million. Simple math means Iranian lives are ‘worth’ $200,000, but US and French marines $11 million.

Only the relatives of the Beirut bombing victims and US pride are assuaged. Israel and Saudi Arabia are eager for continued strife between the US and Iran and putting the nuclear deal at jeopardy. In the meantime, Iran can only continue to work to renew its position in world affairs, proving its anti-terrorist credentials in its actions.

What should happen

120 member states of the Non-Aligned Movement denounced the US ruling, calling it a violation of Washington’s international and treaty obligations concerning “the sovereign immunity of states,” echoing Iranian President Rouhani’s words.

The Iranian president, under increasing criticism for foolishly trusting the US fired back with the backing of parliament. The Iranian parliament passed a bill last week calling for compensation for past US actions against Iran, including

* US involvement in the 1953 coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstalled Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as king of Iran;

* a coup attempt known as the Nojeh coup in 1980 shortly after the Islamic Republic was established;

* US support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, including the 223,000 victims and 600,000 injured during that war;

* the deaths of 17,000 Iranian citizens at the hands of US-backed terror groups; spying against Iran; confiscating Iranian assets; and US support for Israel.

While there is little hope of the US government coughing up, the bill highlights to anyone interested in US-Iranian relations why the road to smoother relations will not be easy.

Eric Walberg is a Canadian writer specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. He is a graduate of Cambridge University and has lived in both the Soviet Union and Russia, and then Uzbekistan, as a UN adviser, writer, translator and lecturer. He has been writing on East-West relations since the 1980s, presently for Al-Ahram Weekly and is a regular contributor to several globally-recognized websites, and a commentator on Voice of the Cape radio. His articles appear in Russian, German, Spanish and Arabic and are available at his website http://ericwalberg.com.

It is election time in Australia, and the electioneering took a remarkable turn Thursday night with announcements that the Australian Federal Police had raided the offices of the opposition Australian Labor Party, including that of a senior frontbencher and former communications minister, Senator Stephen Conroy. The moment news of the event started hitting air and radio waves, Australians were waking up to unusual scenes. Police had been effectively deployed to target the main opposition party in the country. The reasons given centred on claims made, dating back to December, about media leaks on the highly flawed National Broadband Network. The referral had stemmed from the company behind the bungled project, NBN Co.

NBN Co, in turn, agreed “under duress” to destroy photographs, numbering in the order of 34 or 35, taken by one of its employees during the police raids, under parliamentary privilege grounds cited by the ALP.

The company has been busy attempting to manufacture an image of soundness in its management over an area of expertise it has demonstrated little in.  When things are bad, any slight improvement is bound to look good.  “NBN,” came a company statement, “has a proven track record and has, over the last two years, met or exceeded its key targets as set by the board.”

What the raids started looking like in the second week of an election campaign was an affront to whistleblowers and, more broadly, the idea of holding a corrupt scheme to account.  Australian internet speed remains hideously slow relative to other countries. A good share of developing countries trump antipodean performances in that regard.  In January 2015, the State of the Internet Report from Akamai, a cloud service provider, ranked Australia 44^th among countries for its average internet speed.[1]

The report also took note that Australia’s performance in that regard had actually worsened, a decision occasioned by a switch from fibre-to-the-home forms to a mixed fibre/copper network.  Using a copper-based access network was always going to be a problem.

In December, The Australian reported on the miserable state of the copper network purchased from Telstra, while Fairfax Media reported about the impoverished nature of broadband infrastructure purchased by the NBN Co from Optus.  Both reports had issued from leaked sources, with one internal report going into some depth about spiralling costs and increasing delays.

This brings us back to the issue of disclosing the state of mismanagement within the NBN program.  The timing seems smelly – not only during an election, but in the dead of the night.  Australia finds itself in an electoral campaign; the opposition is doing rather well in the polls, and the government has been all too enthusiastic with denying interference.  Reading between the poorly scripted lines, and we find ourselves with a federal police force co-opted into dirty tasks.

The AFP Commissioner, Andrew Colvin, has dismissed ideas of political influence from the start. The timing was purely coincidental, with the search warrant executed purely as a matter of how far the investigation into the leaks had gone.

The ALP, having initially thumbed its finger at the potentially compromised nature of the police operation, has decided to focus on government tactics.  This angle ignores the substance about the leaks and, instead, focuses on other factors: government agenda, motivation and so forth.  Citing parliamentary privilege has its own tactical value, limiting scrutiny of the documents by placing them under seal until the election is concluded.  The upshot here is that neither side of politics is interested in seeing the dirty laundry.

The broader subject here remains how the very act of leaking is treated.  Australia is not merely a land with poor internet speed; it is a country where cases of leaking will be investigated with a degree of unhealthy enthusiasm.  Between 2005 and 2011, 48 investigations into political leaks were conducted. Of those, a good bulk of them, 32, came from an overly anxious, and vulnerable Rudd government.

What such leaks reveal, even in the broader public interest, is less relevant than the fact of its taking place.  On that score, both the opposition Labor party, and conservative agree, while the current Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, merely sees them as ceremonial efforts that “reveal little”.

“When the opposition and the media work together to publicly reveal infrastructure mismanagement,” argued Julian Assange in a statement released soon after the raids, “they are doing their jobs and doing it well.  When police conduct raids on the opposition during an election to hunt down media sources they are not only not doing their job – they’re stopping all the rest of us from doing ours.”[2]

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

Notes

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1452782-akamais-state-of-the-internet-report.html

[2] http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1somvki

It is election time in Australia, and the electioneering took a remarkable turn Thursday night with announcements that the Australian Federal Police had raided the offices of the opposition Australian Labor Party, including that of a senior frontbencher and former communications minister, Senator Stephen Conroy. The moment news of the event started hitting air and radio waves, Australians were waking up to unusual scenes. Police had been effectively deployed to target the main opposition party in the country. The reasons given centred on claims made, dating back to December, about media leaks on the highly flawed National Broadband Network. The referral had stemmed from the company behind the bungled project, NBN Co.

NBN Co, in turn, agreed “under duress” to destroy photographs, numbering in the order of 34 or 35, taken by one of its employees during the police raids, under parliamentary privilege grounds cited by the ALP.

The company has been busy attempting to manufacture an image of soundness in its management over an area of expertise it has demonstrated little in.  When things are bad, any slight improvement is bound to look good.  “NBN,” came a company statement, “has a proven track record and has, over the last two years, met or exceeded its key targets as set by the board.”

What the raids started looking like in the second week of an election campaign was an affront to whistleblowers and, more broadly, the idea of holding a corrupt scheme to account.  Australian internet speed remains hideously slow relative to other countries. A good share of developing countries trump antipodean performances in that regard.  In January 2015, the State of the Internet Report from Akamai, a cloud service provider, ranked Australia 44^th among countries for its average internet speed.[1]

The report also took note that Australia’s performance in that regard had actually worsened, a decision occasioned by a switch from fibre-to-the-home forms to a mixed fibre/copper network.  Using a copper-based access network was always going to be a problem.

In December, The Australian reported on the miserable state of the copper network purchased from Telstra, while Fairfax Media reported about the impoverished nature of broadband infrastructure purchased by the NBN Co from Optus.  Both reports had issued from leaked sources, with one internal report going into some depth about spiralling costs and increasing delays.

This brings us back to the issue of disclosing the state of mismanagement within the NBN program.  The timing seems smelly – not only during an election, but in the dead of the night.  Australia finds itself in an electoral campaign; the opposition is doing rather well in the polls, and the government has been all too enthusiastic with denying interference.  Reading between the poorly scripted lines, and we find ourselves with a federal police force co-opted into dirty tasks.

The AFP Commissioner, Andrew Colvin, has dismissed ideas of political influence from the start. The timing was purely coincidental, with the search warrant executed purely as a matter of how far the investigation into the leaks had gone.

The ALP, having initially thumbed its finger at the potentially compromised nature of the police operation, has decided to focus on government tactics.  This angle ignores the substance about the leaks and, instead, focuses on other factors: government agenda, motivation and so forth.  Citing parliamentary privilege has its own tactical value, limiting scrutiny of the documents by placing them under seal until the election is concluded.  The upshot here is that neither side of politics is interested in seeing the dirty laundry.

The broader subject here remains how the very act of leaking is treated.  Australia is not merely a land with poor internet speed; it is a country where cases of leaking will be investigated with a degree of unhealthy enthusiasm.  Between 2005 and 2011, 48 investigations into political leaks were conducted. Of those, a good bulk of them, 32, came from an overly anxious, and vulnerable Rudd government.

What such leaks reveal, even in the broader public interest, is less relevant than the fact of its taking place.  On that score, both the opposition Labor party, and conservative agree, while the current Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, merely sees them as ceremonial efforts that “reveal little”.

“When the opposition and the media work together to publicly reveal infrastructure mismanagement,” argued Julian Assange in a statement released soon after the raids, “they are doing their jobs and doing it well.  When police conduct raids on the opposition during an election to hunt down media sources they are not only not doing their job – they’re stopping all the rest of us from doing ours.”[2]

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

Notes

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1452782-akamais-state-of-the-internet-report.html

[2] http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1somvki

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States of America has systematically violated the prohibition against the threat or use of force contained in the UN Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact. It has carved out a regime of impunity for its crimes based on its UN Security Council veto, non-recognition of international courts and sophisticated “information warfare” that undermines the rule of law with political justifications for otherwise illegal threats and uses of force.

This will be sent to all the world’s national governments. You can sign as an individual on this page. To sign as an organization click here.

It is not only American generals who are irresponsible and declare on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that “Russia is an existential threat to the United States” and also to the Baltic states, Poland, Georgia, Ukraine, and all of Europe. British generals. also participate in the warmongering.  UK retired general and former NATO commander Sir Richard Shirreff, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe until 2014, has just declared that nuclear war with Russia is “entirely possible” within the year.

My loyal readers know that I, myself, have been warning for some time about the likelihood of nuclear war.  However, there is a vast difference between me and the Western generals.  I see the war as the consequence of the neoconservative drive for US world hegemony.

The neoconservative drive for world hegemony is acknowledged by the neoconservatives themselves in their public position papers, and it has a 15 year record of being implemented in America’s many and ongoing wars in the Middle East and Africa.  Although the Presstitute media does its best to keep our focus away from the known facts, the facts remain known.

The position of the Western generals is that “Russian aggression” is driving an innocent America/NATO to nuclear war.

Here is General Shirreff’s list of “Russian aggressions”:

“He [Putin] has invaded Georgia, he has invaded the Crimea, he has invaded Ukraine. He has used force and got away with it.  In a period of tension, an attack on the Baltic states… is entirely plausible.”

Shirreff is talking about make-believe happenings that even if real would be taking place inside what were until recently Russia’s long-standing national boundaries.

General Shirreff strikes me as either uninformed or a dissembler. It is the United States and Israel who use force and get away with it. The Russian invasion of the former Russian province, Georgia, was a response to the American puppet government’s invasion of South Ossetia in which the American and israeli trained and equipped Georgia troops killed Russian peace-keeping troops and a large number of South Ossetian civilians while the Russian government was at the Beijing olympics.

It only took a small fraction of the Russian Army a few hours to roll up the American and Israeli trained Georgian Army.  Putin had the former Russian province in his hand. He could have hung the American puppet president and reincorporated Georgia back into Russia, where it probably belongs, having spent all of modern history in that location.

But Putin did not see Georgia as a prize, and having made his point, let the Americans have their puppet state back.  The president at the time, a scummy scoundrel, was thrown out of the country by Georgians and now serves the American puppet state of Ukraine, like so many others who are not Ukrainian. Apparently, Washington can’t find enough Ukrainians who will sell out their country for Washington and has to bring in foreigners to help Washington rule Ukraine.

There has been, alas, no Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Putin would not even accept the pleas of the Russian majority populations in the breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk to be reincorporated back into Russia where they belong. If Putin actually wanted Ukraine, he doesn’t need to send in an army.  He can take back the eastern and southern parts just by accepting the pleas of the people to again be a part of Russia.

The only plea that Putin accepted was that of the Crimeans, who with an extremely high turnout never experienced in “western democracies” voted 97.6 percent to rejoin Russia, where Crimea resided for longer than the US has existed, until Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic when both were provinces of the Soviet Union.

Little doubt that Putin accepted Crimea’s plea because Russia’s only warm water port and entrance into the Mediterranean Sea is Russia’s naval base in Crimea, and little doubt that Putin refused Donetsk and Luhansk in order to deflect Washington’s propagandistic charges, such of those of former general Shirreff. Putin reasoned, mistakenly in my view, that his refusal to accept Donetsk and Luhansk would reassure Washington’s NATO puppet states and lessen Washington’s influence over Europe.  For the corrupt Europeans, facts are of no consequence. Washington’s money prevails.

Putin doesn’t understand the power of Washington’s money.  In the entire West only money counts.  There is no such thing as Washington’s word, government integrity, truth, or even empirical facts.  There are only well- propagated lies.  The entire West is a lie. The West exists for one reason only–corporate profits.

The retired general Shirreff claims, without any evidence, which is typical, that Putin “used force and got away with it.”

What force is the general talking about?  Can he identify the force?  The independent international observers of the Crimean voting report that it was completely fair, that there was no intimidation, no troops or any Russian intimidation present.

The former NATO general Shirreff believes that a Russian attack “on the Baltic states is entirely possible.”  For what reason?  The Baltic states, former provinces of the Soviet Union, comprise no threat whatsoever to Russia.  The Russians have no reason whatsoever to attack the Baltic states. It was Russia that gave the Baltic states their independence.  Just as it was Russia that gave Ukraine and Georgia their independence.

Imperial Washington is leveraging the reasonableness of the Russian government to put Russia in a propagandistic light. The Russian government has permitted itself to be put on the defensive and has given the attack to Washington.

Russia has not attacked anyone except the terrorist group ISIS. Allegedly, Washington is opposed to terrorism, but Washington has been using ISIS in an effort to overthrow the Syrian government with terrorism.  Russia has put a halt to that. The question before us is whether the Russian government so desires to be accepted by the West that Putin sells out Syria to Washington/Israeli dismemberment in order to show that Russia is a good partner for the West.

My understanding is that Russia has been resurrected as a Christian, morally principally country, perhaps the only one on earth.  The question that the Russian people and their Russian government need, desperately, to ask themselves is: Do we want to be associated with the War Criminal West that disobeys not only its own laws, but also international laws?

The vast majority of the evil in the world resides in the West. It is the west with its lies and greed that has devastated millions of people in 7 countries during the new 21st century.  This is the most threatening beginning of a new millennium in modern times.

Unsatisfied with its looting of the Third World, South America, Greece, Portugal, Latvia, Argentina, and now Brazil and Ukraine, the Western Capitalists have their sights set on Russia, China, India, and South Africa.

What a prize it would be to get Russia with all that vast expanse of Siberia that can be environmentally brutalized and destroyed for capitalist profits.

The Russian government’s offering of free land in Siberia had better be limited to Russian citizens  Otherwise, the land is likely to be bought up by the West, which will use its ownership of Russia to destroy the country.

The Russians and the Chinese are blinded by the fact that they lived for decades under oppressive and failed regimes.  They look to the West as success. Their misreading of the West endangers their independence.

Neither Russia nor China seek conflict. It is a gratuitous and reckless act for Washington to send the message to Russia and China that they must choose vassalage or war.

It has taken only nine months for the third memorandum between the near-bankrupt Greek state and its creditors — the “Quartet” of the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Stability Mechanism (ESM) — to lurch to the brink of crisis.

That deal, which the Syriza-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras felt forced to swallow despite the Greek people rejecting an earlier version by over 60% in a referendum last July, will provide the country with €86 billion. About 90% of this will go to paying off debt.

In turn, the tightly policed Greek government must continue to implement a package of strict austerity “reforms”. These cover pension cuts, tax rises, privatisations and labour market deregulation.

On April 22, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, said that an in-principle agreement had been reached. This involves the Greek government committing to implement a “contingent” €3 billion bundle of extra cuts if the country fell behind on its debt reduction targets.

Differences over debt

The supposed compensation for Greece was a statement that the Eurogroup was “ready to begin discussions on possible options for granting Greece some debt relief”.

At the same time, the persistent differences between the Eurogroup and IMF over how best to extract “good behaviour” from Greece were resolved.

The majority Eurogroup stance, imposed by the German government, was that Greece under a Syriza-led government would always be a repeat offender. It would grasp at any debt relief to lapse back into “bad habits” of public sector waste, excessive wages and social welfare dependence and chronic tax evasion.

By contrast, the position of IMF economists was that it was impossible for Greece to meet its debt and deficit reduction targets without some debt relief.

However, on April 22, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde in effect moved across to the Eurogroup position when she said that Greece’s debt load could be made sustainable without any reduction in its total, but through measures like extending maturities and having grace periods on repayments.

Her shift effectively puts the IMF in breach of its own statutes, which forbid it from lending to countries that it judges cannot meet debt repayment targets—which depressed Greece cannot. The IMF also supported the Eurogroup’s “contingent” €3 billion penalty proposal.

Dissent in Syriza

Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos made it clear on April 25 that the proposal to hang another axe over Greece’s neck would not pass the Greek parliament — especially given that it had already agreed to a €5.4 billion package of tax hikes and pension cuts.

On April 27, Tsipras asked Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council of EU heads of state, to convene a European Council meeting to discuss the Eurogroup proposal. Tusk refused, saying: “I am convinced that there is still work to be done by the ministers of finance who have to avoid a situation of renewed uncertainty for Greece.”

This hitch set off alarm bells in Greek debt and stock markets: 10-year bonds jumped 50 basis points to 9.14% while the Athens stock market index fell 4.3%.

The Syriza-led administration now finds itself in its tightest corner to date. The ruling coalition won the September 20 elections with the message that the memorandum agreement, though very bad, was the best that could be achieved.

Moreover, Syriza said it alone could be trusted to implement a “parallel program” to defend Greece’s most vulnerable citizens against the impact of the memorandum — and continue the fight against Greece’s corrupt political and media establishment.

Only six months later, and despite the best efforts of the Tsipras government, this message is wearing thin even as Greeks remain divided over how to respond to the country’s creditors. Within Syriza, voices expressing concern at growing alienation with the government are being heard more frequently.

This is not surprising. Since its re-election, the Syriza-led government has sold off ports and airports at knock-down prices, increased taxes and cut pensions. It has also been forced to convert Greece into a holding pen for tens of thousands of refugees.

It has faced strikes and protests from public servants, farmers and truck drivers, who all stand to receive pensions even more miserable than those on which pensioners try to survive today.

The government has introduced a series of measures to alleviate the pain of the worst affected, but has been hamstrung by the ongoing shrinking of budget income due to austerity. In this context, even measures that would otherwise have been popular, like introducing Greece’s first ever system of TV licensing to break the conservative media oligarchy, have had diminished impact.

On April 15, the Macropolis website said the “movement of 53”, the most left-leaning of the groupings within Syriza with 11 MPs including Tsakalotos, issued a critical statement. It warned that, while Syriza had been able to plausibly argue at the September poll that it had been forced into signing the third bailout, the memorandum was now increasingly seen as the left coalition’s own program, rather than one imposed by Greece’s creditors.

The group also criticised the government’s slow progress in implementing the parallel program. The statement stressed that much more was needed to maintain the belief of Syriza’s supporters.

Most tellingly, it said it disagreed with the opinion of the Tsipras leadership that Syriza should try to stay in government at all costs. It said the government should “fall heroically resisting the internal or external troika rather than humiliatingly at the hands of [Greek] society itself”.

Negative mood

The latest Kapa poll, carried out in mid-April for the daily To Vima, provides a snapshot of the present mood in Greece.

On the one hand, 70.6% of those interviewed have a negative or very negative view of the way the government is conducting negotiations with Greece’s creditors. Almost 78% disapprove of its overall work and 55% are opposed to further austerity measures and would vote them down if a referendum were held.

However, no clear majority exists for an alternative policy to the one being followed by the Tsipras administration.

For example, 38.5% would support breaking off negotiations with the Troika, 29% think they should be concluded however possible, and 27% think they should be dragged out to get the best possible result.

Only 34.3% want any final agreement put to a referendum, while 46.3% want it voted on by parliament. A narrow majority (46.3% to 38.4%) want the parliamentary opposition to support any such deal.

Support for staying in the eurozone remains at 60% despite the last six years of brutal austerity. But 44.5% believe Greece should consider leaving the euro over the next five years.

Seventy per cent of those interviewed think a government better than the present one is possible, but more oppose early elections (48%) than support them (40%).

Traditional right-wing party New Democracy now leads Syriza in most polls. Tsipras is no longer unambiguously preferred as prime minister and the number of undecided voters has jumped, even while there has been no noticeable swing to any of the smaller parties (left, centre or right).

Quartet aims for knock-out

In this context, the Quartet has been looking for ways to deliver some knock-out blows to a government which, though increasingly groggy, is still on its feet. The creditors’ main weapon is what it has always been — the country’s debt obligations, the next of which is a €3.5 billion payment due in July.

The Quartet’s strategy, implemented through the unaccountable Eurogroup, is to increase the pain the Tsipras government has to inflict on its support base as a price for getting desperately needed funds. The aim is to open the way for the corrupt, discredited New Democracy to defeat it in the next elections and discredit the very idea of a radical left alternative — not just in Greece but across Europe.

This strategy is borne out by the Eurogroup’s rejection of Tsakalotos’s alternative proposal to “contingent” cuts — a commitment to meet deficit targets in case of shortfall, but with the measures to be decided by the Greek government itself.

Further evidence comes in the increasingly bewildered commentaries of economic commentators, who scratch their heads as to why the Quartet continues pushing policies that are bound to keep Greece in recession.

Writing in Forbes, financial journalist Frances Coppola could only find an adequate comparison to the Quartet’s treatment of Greece in the pillaging of Germany by the victor nations after World War I.

She said: “[T]he 3.5% [budget surplus] target has nothing to do with reality … It exists solely to preserve the fiction that Greece’s debt is sustainable, and therefore avoid European creditors having to sell to their electorates the unpleasant truth that Greece will never be able to pay this money back. It inflicts pain on the Greek people to no purpose, purely to placate creditors.

“No doubt many of you are wondering now how the IMF can possibly participate in this ‘Carthaginian peace’. But the IMF is a creditor too. It wants its money back.

“Neither the European creditors nor the IMF are fundamentally interested in restoring Greece. What they disagree over is how much sustenance Greece needs to stay alive enough to pay them back. They are all vampires.”

In February, Tsipras told Dutch Socialist Party leader Emile Roemer that “if we don’t succeed within a few months in showing that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, it will all have been for nothing. Then the middle class and the farmers will rebel and our country will fall prey to chaos”.

If that is so, will the Syriza-led government just succumb to the aggression of its creditors?

Dick Nichols is Green Left Weekly‘s European correspondent, based in Barcelona. A longer version of this article will soon be available at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Nichols will be speaking at the Socialist for the 21st Century conference, held in Sydney over May 13-15, on the struggle against austerity in Europe.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has based his candidacy on being an outsider who will “make America great again”.

Trump is perceived as going against the political establishment, particularly because he is not a career politician who is owned by lobbyists. Trump has delved into various issues, such as tax and trade reform; however, his presidential run has predominantly focused on the issue of illegal immigration, in particularly the infamous wall. It is his position on the issue of immigration, more than any other, where the Trump agenda is clearly revealed.

Trump has claimed that the answer to the immigration crisis in America is to build a wall, have mass deportations, and “defend the laws and constitution of the United States”. [1]

In regards to a wall along the US/Mexico border, former Congressman Ron Paul, stated “ I think this fence business is designed and may well be used against us and keep us in. In economic turmoil, the people want to leave with their capital and there’s capital controls and there’s people control. Every time you think about the fence, think about the fences being used against us, keeping us in”. [2] This proposed wall is to be built between the US and Mexico border, but not Canada’s border. This is despite the fact that visa overstays from Canada are twice as many than from Mexico.[3] It is also in spite of the fact that 51% of “illegal immigrants” are from a country other than Mexico.[4]

Trump’s plan to build a wall on America’s southern border is dependent on Mexico paying $5-10 billion for it. In order to coerce Mexico into paying for the wall, he proposes a statist solution of magnifying the Federal government’s power of monitoring monetary transactions between individuals. His plan would force privately-owned financial institutions, such as Western Union, to act as bureaucrats who would impede on an individual’s liberty to freely conduct business. This regulation would apply to every individual who uses these services in the US. Such a regulation is a hallmark of a police-state in which every individual’s privacy is subject to government surveillance. Trump’s plan for breaking up the family unit through deportations, known as the sequel to Operation: Wetback, can only be accomplished through a police-state. [5] It is plausible that martial law would be enacted to facilitate these mass deportations.

Trump expands section 326 of the Patriot Act as a means to create this nationwide regulation which would further impose government intervention into the private sector. [6] Trump’s draconian Big Government regulation would virtually freeze remittances from the US to Mexico. This is essentially a capital control which would confiscate a person’s property (money).

According to Ron Paul, this plan “sounds like theft […] and I think it sounds like something illegal. I think it sounds like it’s immoral”. [7] Under a Trump administration, an individual’s liberty to disburse their own money would be prohibited based on belonging to a certain class. Such a measure is founded on a collectivist notion. Undocumented immigrants within the US would in effect, become economic slaves to a greater extent. Employers who hire undocumented workers are exempt from any new punitive measures under a Trump administration. This is not surprising considering the fact that Trump hired undocumented immigrants to build Trump tower and even called them “good hard workers”. [8]

In addition to building a wall, Trump wants to “triple the number of ICE officers”, make E-Verify mandatory nationwide, and “end birthright citizenship”. [9] The expansion of Immigration and Custom Enforcement serves to increase the size of Department of Homeland Security as a whole; thereby adding to the US’ every increasing police-state apparatus. It would undoubtedly increase the power of the prison-industrial complex as well.

Trump’s E-Verify mandate once again brings government into the private sector. According to a policy analysis by the Cato Institute, “a national E-Verify mandate would not turn off the jobs magnet, but it would spur more unlawful immigrants to engage in identity theft and work under the table”. [10] It is logical that a business owner, who wants to keep expenses down, would bypass such a government mandate.

Trump’s plan to curb so-called “anchor babies” is in direct violation of the US Constitution. The 14^th Amendment states “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”. [11] The 14^th Amendment’s basis of jus solis, not jus sanguinis, makes it clear that this includes the children of undocumented persons within the US.

Trump’s position on immigration reform makes it evident that his administration would: make government bigger, add regulations that would burden private-sector businesses, enlarge the police-state grid, and tread heavily on the US Constitution. The Trump agenda is undeniably: Fascism.

Why would people support these fascist policies? Firstly, the claim that he is an outsider who is not owned by lobbyists is blatantly false. Trump himself is a lobbyist, as observed by the numerous donations he has made to politicians. Notably, he has made numerous donations to Hillary Clinton throughout the years. [12] Trump is a component of the Wall Street establishment. His new finance chairman is Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin has worked for Goldman Sachs for 17 years and for bilionaire George Soros’ Soros Fund Management LLC. [13] Billionaire Trump is easily revealed as an establishment insider.

Trump supporters will ignore his vast amount of wealth made under this corrupt political system simply because he has made politically incorrect speeches. His political incorrectness and wealth are psychologically appealing to his supporter base. Trump supporters believe he is an alpha male who means what he says and won’t sellout unlike those RINOs in Congress. Supporters view Trump as a person who has “made it” in this immoral political system and is “great” enough to restore America. Trump being “great” while his opponents are “weak”, is a Social-Darwinist belief that his supporters apparently believe in.

Trump supporters claim that he will make America great again, but his policies on immigration alone prove why his presidency would be dictatorial in nature. It appears that Trump supporters do not want a limited government. In actuality, Trump supporters want a totalitarian form of government run ideologically under Fascism. Trump’s claim to being a nationalist and making America “great again” are incorrect. Instead, they are euphemisms for a return to a traditional America that excludes the various cultures he has attacked during his campaign. This fascist state is where Trump supporters have hope that a “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” heritage can thrive once again.

His inferences to a WASP ethos is evident by  the use of a divide and conquer strategy where he is pitting Americans of different backgrounds against each other, e.g. a Muslim ban.

The demographic shift in America, where people of color will constitute the majority in 2042, is precisely why the immigration issue is his central position. [14] Due to the proximity of the Mexican border, undocumented immigrants are not assimilating to so-called traditional American values. Simultaneously, the standard of living has declined and  has given rise to a climate of scapegoating.

Thus, the Trump campaign is a hope for a return to a WASP-centric country, even if it has to be done under Fascism. Such an illusion ignores the historical consequences of land acquisition through an illegal war (Mexican-American War), broken treaties (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), subsequent occupation, and the fundamental contradictions within the US political-economy. This has created a boondoggle all in the name of cheap labor, high profits, and greed. It is imperative that people of goodwill stop Trump and his faction from entering the Executive Branch of the United States; thereby obstructing his chance to unleash Nazi rule in America.

Andrew J. Santos holds a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Riverside

Notes:

[1] Donald J. Trump, “Immigration Reform That Will Make America Great Again” May 20, 2016 https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

[2] Fox News, “Ron Paul, Border Fence Will Be Used To ’Keep Us In’” September 7, 2011 http://nation.foxnews.com/ron-paul/2011/09/07/ron-paul-border-fence-will-be-used-keep-us

[3] Cedar Attanasio, “Canadian Immigrants Lead World In Illegal U.S. Visa Overstays, According To First- Ever DHS Estimates” Feb 4, 2016 http://www.latintimes.com/canadian-immigrants-lead-world-illegal-us-visa-overstays-according-first-ever-dhs-367906

[4] Jens Manuel Krogstad and Jeffrey S. Passel, “5 facts about illegal immigration in the U.S.” Nov 19,2015  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/19/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/

[5] Julia Peterson, Alan Rapperport, and Matt Richtel, “What Would It Take for Donald Trump to Deport 11 Million and Build a Wall?” May 19, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/us/politics/donald-trump-immigration.html?_r=0

[6] Donald J. Trump, “Compelling Mexico To Pay For The Wall” May 20,2016 https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/pay-for-the-wall

[7] Mark Hensch, “Ron Paul: Trump’s Mexico wall ‘sounds like theft’” April 6, 2016 http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/275431-ron-paul-trumps-mexico-wall-sounds-like-theft

[8] Ian Tuttle, “Donald Trump Thinks American Workers Aren’t Good Enough for the Trump Organization” Feb 25, 2016 http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431933/donald-trump-foreign-workers-american-workers-arent-good-enough

[9] Donald J. Trump, “Immigration Reform That Will Make America Great Again” May 20, 2016  https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

[10] Alex Nowrasteh and Jim Harper, “Checking E-Verify: The Costs and Consequences of a National Worker Screening Mandate” July 7, 2015 http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/checking-e-verify-costs-consequences-national-worker-screening-mandate

[11] Cornell University Law School, “U.S. Constitution 14^th Amendment” May 20, 2016 https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv

[12] Nick Gass, “Trump has spent years courting Hillary and other Dems” June 16, 2015

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/donald-trump-donations-democrats-hillary-clinton-119071

[13] Carrie Levine, “Donald Trump’s new finance guru: once a Clinton donor Soros employee” May 5, 2016 https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/05/19634/donald-trumps-new-finance-guru-once-clinton-donor-soros-employee

[14] Ed Pilkington, “US set for dramatic change as white America becomes minority by 2042” August 14, 2008 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/aug/15/population.race

Russia has not seen such a major military buildup close to its borders since 1941 when the Third Reich sent the Wehrmacht to conquer the Soviet Union, Professor Stephen F. Cohen said in his recent interview on The John Batchelor Show, referring to NATO’s increasingly assertive strategy in Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

“We have been watching for nearly a month a steady buildup of American and NATO forces along near Russia’s borders – on land, on sea and in the air,” he said. “There has been nothing like this on Russia’s borders, such an amassing of hostile military force, since the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.”

Russia has been concerned with NATO’s overall strategy and its recent moves particularly. Last week the US completed its first land-based component of the Aegis missile shield at an air base near Deveselu, Romania. A day later, the alliance held a groundbreaking ceremony in Poland. The Aegis Ashore base is scheduled to be deployed in Redzikowo by 2018.Moscow has warned that the system could be detrimental for global peace and stability. NATO officials have tried to alleviate Russian concerns by saying that the Aegis system is purely defensive, but Cohen warned that it the complex could be used for other purposes.

“Somebody said that the only defensive weapon in military history is a foxhole; everything else could be used for offensive purposes. [NATO’s missile defense system] could be used for offensive purposes. They can launch cruise missiles,” he observed.

© FLICKR/ US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS EUROPE DISTRICT

‘It’s Amazing’ That No NATO Member Opposes US Missile Shield in Europe

Russian officials and experts have also questioned whether it was reasonable to build a shield that is supposed to protect the West against Iran’s ballistic missiles considering that Tehran does not pose any threat to its neighbors and beyond.

The Islamic Republic is not the real target. “The majority of our missile defense installations … are directed at Russia. They are not directed at Iran, that’s a fairytale. The government puts it out, but nobody believes it,” the analyst noted.

U.S servicemen drive their armored vehicles at the opening ceremony of U.S, British and Georgian troops joint military exercises at the Vaziani military base outside Tbilisi, Georgia, Wednesday, May 11, 2016. © AP Photo/ Shakh Aivazov

Professor Cohen has long warned that Washington’s policies towards Russia have been the key reason for the recent cold spell in relations between the two global powers. This trend appears to be getting more dangerous.

“Are we sleepwalking towards an actual war with Russia or is this a plan to provoke a war with Russia?” he asked. “If we are sleepwalking, we all need to yell, ‘Wake up!’ If they actually now would not mind a war with Russia, then they are crazy. Because there is no way if there is war with Russia on Russia’s borders that eventually some kind of nuclear weapons will not come into play.”

“A senior figure from a Syrian rebel group with links to al Qaida was allowed into the United States for a brief visit, raising questions about how much the Obama administration will compromise in the search for partners in the conflict.”  McClatchy, May 21, 2016

Labib al Nahhas is known as the foreign affairs director for the Islamist fighting group Ahrar al Sham. He visited Washington in December. The leader of a terrorist entity linked to Al Qaeda was granted entry by US immigration:

That suggests that authorities granted him entry at a time when U.S. immigration authorities face political pressure to block visitors with even tenuous ties to extremist groups. Four months after Nahhas entered the United States on a European passport, U.S. authorities denied entry to a well-known Syrian humanitarian leader who had been approved to visit Washington to receive an award from international aid groups. McClatchy 

While the purpose of his visit was not disclosed, the report nonetheless intimates that he was in Washington for talks with US government officials. “His previously undisclosed visit is a delicate matter for both sides – the conservative Salafist insurgents risk their credibility with even perceived ties to the United States, and the U.S. government risks looking soft on screenings by allowing entry to a member of an Islamist paramilitary force.”

Moreover,  shortly prior to his visit to Washington, Nahhas together with other rebel leaders met with Michael Ratney (image right), U.S. State Department special envoy for Syria, in Istanbul on December 5, 2015.

Was this Istanbul meeting intended to establish the groundwork for further consultations with the jihadist leader in Washington DC?

The report suggested that the Ahrar al Sham “moderate” terrorist leader (who appears to have the profile of a US “intelligence asset”)  would be meeting with “third parties” in Washington DC  “who might influence policymakers” –e.g. D.C. think tanks, research institutes, media, US intelligence, etc. as well as  “lobbyists and Middle East researchers”.

In this image posted on the Twitter page of Ahrar al-Sham on May 6, 2016, an Ahrar al Sham fighter guards the front lines of Breidige village in northwest Syria. Unlike the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham is not on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

National security analysts say U.S. authorities likely knew of Nahhas’ arrival – intelligence agencies for years have watched his group’s interactions with al Qaida’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front.

“They could make, quickly, the decision that he’s persona non grata in the United States and yet they haven’t.” Faysal Itani, a Syria specialist with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East

Links to al Qaeda

Nahhas denies his affiliation to al Qaeda:

“We have been falsely accused of having organizational links to Al-Qaeda and of espousing Al-Qaeda’s ideology. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

According to Charles Lister (Brookings):

These are bold words [above] from such a senior Ahrar al-Sham official, … , this author still finds it nearly impossible to get any group, including those already successfully “vetted” by the United States, to commit to condemning Jabhat al-Nusra in front of others, Syrian or foreign.

So was Nahhas’ omission of Jabhat al-Nusra merely an extension of this broader reality? Thus far, it would seem so. By explicitly singling out al-Qaida, Nahhas was distinguishing its Syrian affiliate, or at least much of the 60 to 70 percent Syrian portion of it, as still being a potential partner [al Nusra] in a broader and more medium-term Syrian project. Brookings, July 14, 2015

In this regard, the McClatchy report confirms that

The group’s ultimate vision is Islamist rule for Syria and its old links to al Qaida are no secret: One of the group’s founders, Abu Khalid al Suri, was memorialized by al Qaida leader Ayman al Zawahiri after his death in a bombing.

By all accounts, Ahrar al Sham is much more ideologically diverse than al Qaida, encompassing members ranging from followers of a more moderate, Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamism to Salafist jihadists whose beliefs are virtually identical to al Qaida’s.

“They’re not al Qaida but they are Salafi jihadists – they’re just not transnational ones,” Itani said of Ahrar al Sham. (McClatchy, op cit)

Al Qaeda goes to Washington! This should come as no surprise. It’s part of a routine. US officials have been working hand in glove with Al Qaeda since the onslaught of the war on Afghanistan in 1979.

President Reagan meets with Mujahideen leaders, 1980s

 

Além de altamente rico em reservas minerais e em gás natural (http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-war-is-worth-waging-afghanistan-s-vast-reserves-of-minerals-and-natural-gas/19769) o Afeganistão é rico em ópio, do qual se produz a heroína: o narcotráfico traçado a partir de solo afegão pela CIA tem financiado o imperialismo norte-americano a nível global, que fornece dólares e até armas a setores opositores a governos que não se submetem aos ditames de Washington. Tal fato é comprovado historicamente também na América Latina, região mais rica em biodiversidade do planeta, através de golpes militares, e hoje especificamente em países como Brasil, Venezuela (maior reserva petrolífera do mundo), Bolívia e Equador.

Sobre o narcotráfico a partir de solo afegão, vale notar (conforme aponta gráfico abaixo), que durante o primeiro período que correspondeu à ocupação dos Estados Unidos no país centro-asiático, a produção de ópio atingiu números alarmantes. Porém, a produção de ópio chegou a quase zero em 2001, menos de cinco anos após o Taliban ter assumido o poder que marcou certo distanciamento dos Estados Unidos no Afeganistão, dada a oposição do regime afegão ao imperialismo estadunidense na região, o que não significa que, na prática, a cúpula taliban seguisse sendo apoiada e financiada secretamente pela Casa Branca.

Quando, enfim, a criatura que se havia voltado contra o criador fora derrubada do poder para dar lugar aos senhores da guerra da Aliança do Norte, apoiada por Washington, eis que a produção de ópio voltou a subir vertiginosamente, registrando índices ainda maiores que os dos anos de 1980 e 1990. Fato este que persiste até hoje,  cujo combate não está na ordem imperialista do dia.

O Afeganistão se configura em região estratégica para o regime norte-americano também por estar no coração da Ásia. Antes da invasão de George Bush em outubro de 2001, havia projetos (http://worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipelines.htm) da indústria petrolífera norte-americana para que oleodutos e gasodutos, que ligassem países vizinhos à Rússia ao Oriente Médio, passassem pelo subsolo afegão, negados pelo Taliban então no poder.

Quando governador do Texas, George Bush e aquele que viria a ser seu vice-presidente um ano mais tarde, Dick Cheney, receberam uma delegação do Taliban a fim de discutir a passagem de dutos pelo Afeganistão a serem construídos e explorados pela empresa norte-americana Unocal, sem chegar a um acordo. Daquele encontro, o empresário Cheney conseguiu, para sua empresa petrolífera Hulliburton, contrato para exploração de petróleo em solo afegão, e a BBC de Londres foi o único veículo de comunicação em todo o mundo a divulgar o encontro.

Em maio de 2001, poucas semanas após visita de líder taliban à Casa Branca a fim de melhorar a imagem dos donos do poder afegão perante o Departamento de Defesa dos EUA, a CNN noticia que o governo de seu país continua financiando os mujahidin: o secretário de Estado de Bush anunciou, então, milionária “ajuda humanitária” ao governo taliban que, há 5 anos, aterrorizava a sociedade afegã com extremismo religioso. O jornalista Robert Sheer escreveu dura matéria sobre o caso no diário Los Angeles Times, mas o caso perdeu-se no vazio.

Uma vez derrubado do poder afegão pelos ex-aliados norte-americanos, o presidente-fantoche de Tio Sam, Hamid Karzai que viria a ser chamado pelos afegãos em todo o país de “prefeito de Cabul” pela falta de comando nacional, autorizou a construção dos tais dutos anos antes projetados pelos tomadores de decisão de Washington. Entre os maiores beneficiários de tais tratados estavam exatamente Cheney, e o próprio  Karzai, ex-funcionário de outra indústria petrolífera norte-americana, a Unocal.

Outro fator relevante é que, conforme aponta o professor Michel Chossudovski (http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-war-is-worth-waging-afghanistan-s-vast-reserves-of-minerals-and-natural-gas/19769), o Afeganistão faz fronteira com China e Irã. Portanto, a instalação de bases militares ali é fundamental para a perpetuação da hegemonia norte-americana especialmente contra a temida China.

As declarações do ex-funcionário da ONU, evidenciando uma vez mais o mundo ao inverso promovido pelas grandes potências e apresentado passivamente pela mídia de desinformação em massa, vêm de encontro às evidências envolvendo cada um desses países, inclusive a Síria onde o Estado Islamita, sim, tem atacado com bombas químicas fornecidas pelos Estados Unidos e seus aliados na região, especialmente Turquia e Arábia Saudita.

Diante disso tudo, não surpreende que o senador John Mc Cain, exatamente o político norte-americano mais financiado pela indústria armamentista, tenha posado fraternalmente para fotos com terroristas em solo sírio.

Contudo, as denúncias de Coloane, como era de se esperar, estão passando “desapercebidas” pela grande mídia corporativa sustentada exatamente pelas transnacionais, estendendo o debate de surdos sobre causas e “possibilidades” de se vencer o terror global, que tem levado nada a lugar nenhum enquanto o mundo assiste ao crescimento do terrorismo, da retirada de liberdades civis e da aplicação de golpes de Estado por parte dos tomadores de decisão das grandes potências, recheadas da mais profunda hipocrisia – com a velha pitada de petróleo.

O terror global apenas deixará de ser crescente realidade para ser realmente erradicado, e sem grandes esforços, quando o regime unilateral de Washington se tornar uma democracia livre da ditadura bipartidista e do tão legalizado quanto maléfico lobby da indústria armamentista, petrolífera e dos sionistas, seus maiores financiadores, o que é altamente improvável que ocorra no seio da melhor democracia que o dinheiro pode comprar, alimentada por um poderoso setor midiático de propaganda, igualmente canalha.

Ou, mais provavelmente, o terrorismo será vencido quando nações hoje emergentes atinjam nível econômico e político suficientes para equilibrar a correlação de forças em um novo mundo, efetivamente multipolar, desta maneira diminuindo a sanha imperialista ilimitada.

Edu Montesanti

Syrian President Bashar al Assad would seem like a natural ally to the United States and the European Union. He heads a secular government and presides over a secular nation. It is a nation where extremist political factions like the Muslim Brotherhood are outlawed and armed terrorist groups hunted down and eliminated. There was even a point in history before the 2011 war began within and along Syria’s borders that Washington even feigned such an alliance with Damascus.

The London Telegraph in its article, “John Kerry and Bashar al-Assad dined in Damascus,” reported:

Mr Kerry visited Damascus in February 2009, when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He said in a press conference during the visit: “President Barack Obama’s administration considers Syria a key player in Washington’s efforts to revive the stalled Middle East peace process.

“Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region.”

Mr Kerry met with Mr Assad at least six times, and on one occasion – seen in the photographs – dining with the two men’s wives at the Naranj restaurant in central Damascus.

Though the US considered at the time Syria to be a “state sponsor of terrorism,” that was only because of its support of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, not Al Qaeda and its affiliates who the US Army’s own reports indicate the government was working against even during the US occupation of Iraq when Syria was used as an entry point into the country along its southern borders. Ironically, the US Army’s reports would indicate that many of the networks now considered “rebels,” were involved in facilitating Al Qaeda’s transit through Syrian territory into Iraq to kill Americans using Saudi cash.

The Enemy of My Enemy is Me, Myself and I… 

Today’s headlines are surreal to anyone who remembers the aftermath and hysteria in Washington in the wake of September 11, 2001. Today, the terms “rebels” and “Al Nusra” (Al Qaeda in Syria) are used interchangeably by the US and European press in an attempt to obscure the obvious fact that the very “rebels” the US and its European and Persian Gulf allies are funding, training and arming in Syria are quite literally the terrorist factions these same governments have claimed to be fighting for the past 15 years.

Reuters in a recent article attempting to rhetorically undermine Iran, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, in one breath mentions the setbacks Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra franchise is dealing to Iranian-backed troops in Syria, and in the next breath points out how Israel is also picking apart Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah forces.

Titled, “For Iran and Hezbollah, a costly week in Syria,” the article claims:

Reports put the death toll among the Iranian, Afghani and Lebanese militiamen as high as 80 in the attack spearheaded by the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Then claims:

Israel has not missed the chance to pick off top Iranian and Hezbollah commanders in Syria over the past year or more.

Reuters perhaps hopes readers don’t understand the implications of the actual events unfolding on the ground in Syria versus the empty rhetoric repeated from behind podiums in Jerusalem, Washington, Riyadh, Brussels and London. Indeed, the US and its allies, including Israel, are fighting side-by-side with Al Qaeda in Syria against precisely the same opponents. In fact, Al Qaeda could not sustain its military operations without significant state-sponsorship, state-sponsorship a look at any map will tell someone is coming from Turkey, Israel, Jordan and by implication Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the US and EU.

Perhaps Reuters expects its readers to believe that despite the September 11, 2001 attacks and the many other atrocities attributed to Al Qaeda over the last 15 years are trivial compared to the threat now allegedly posed by Syria, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

The phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” often implies that the friendship is cynically strategic and temporary and with little else beyond a common foe holding the alliance together. In the case of Al Qaeda, it is not an alliance of convenience, Al Qaeda itself is an extension of US-European-Persian Gulf geopolitical ambition. It has been since it was admittedly created in a joint US-Saudi ploy to evict Soviet troops from Afghanistan in a proxy war.

It is no coincidence that Al Qaeda was created to fight proxy wars in the 1980s, and today we find Al Qaeda in its various forms in Syria once again fighting a proxy war.

Reuters and other news services across the US and Europe are celebrating what they call setbacks in Syria for Damascus and its allies, setbacks incurred by Al Qaeda and setbacks anyone with a conscience could not consider cause for celebration. This blatant double game of pretending to fight terrorism while all along propping it up, had until now served the US and its allies well. Today, with the alternative media continuing to expand and challenge such flawed narratives, continuing on with them has cost the US credibility it may never reclaim.

With pressure continuing to mount on the West’s narrative, one can only hope the impetus to act in Syria’s defense among those nations willing and able to send resources to assist will outweigh the impetus the US and its allies have at home and abroad to double down on this bankrupted strategy and the unraveling unsustainable narrative that underpins it.

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

Foto : El presidente de El Salvador, Salvador Sánchez Cerén

A raíz de los eventos suscitados en Brasil, que culminaron el pasado 12 de mayo con la suspensión de la Presidenta Dilma Rousseff y con el anuncio de las primeras medidas por parte del nuevo gabinete brasileño, las autoridades de El Salvador han decidido no reconocer a las actuales autoridades en Brasil  y retirar a su representante en la capital brasileña (ver nota de prensa de Elpais.cr).

En años recientes, posiciones similares fueron adoptadas por parte de algunos Estados de América Latina con relación al repentino cambio de autoridades en Honduras acaecido en junio del 2009, las cuales fueron confortadas por el mismo Consejo Permanente de la OEA en la  resolución  CP/RES. 953 (1700/09) del 29 de junio del 2009. En este texto, los Estados miembros de la OEA acordaron:

“1. Condenar enérgicamente el golpe de estado llevado a cabo en la mañana de hoy en contra del Gobierno constitucional de Honduras y la detención arbitraria y expulsión del país del Presidente Constitucional José Manuel Zelaya Rosales que produjo una alteración inconstitucional del orden democrático.

2. Exigir el inmediato, seguro e incondicional retorno del Presidente José Manuel Zelaya Rosales a sus funciones constitucionales.

3. Declarar que no se reconocerá ningún gobierno que surja de esta ruptura inconstitucional”.

El cambio de autoridades ocurrido en Paraguay en junio del 2012 llevo, entre otras acciones, al retiro de algunos embajadores latinoamericanos en Asunción y a la suspensión de Paraguay como miembro del MERCORUR por parte de los integrantes de esta organización subregional. El 3 de julio del 2012, en el marco de la Cumbre de Mendoza, se adoptó una “decisión sobre la suspensión del Paraguay en el MERCOSUR en aplicación del protocolo de Ushuaia sobre compromiso democrático” (ver  texto integral ), en la que los Estados miembros del MERCOSUR decidieron:

“1.- Suspender a la República del Paraguay del derecho a participar en los órganos del MERCOSUR y de las deliberaciones, en los términos del artículo 5° del Protocolo de Ushuaia.

2.- Mientras dure la suspensión, lo previsto en el inciso iii) del artículo 40 del Protocolo de Ouro Preto se producirá con la incorporación que realicen Argentina, Brasil y Uruguay, en los términos del inciso ii) de dicho artículo,

3.- La suspensión cesará cuando, de acuerdo a lo establecido en el artículo 7° del Protocolo de Ushuaia, se verifique el pleno restablecimiento del orden democrático en la parte afectada. Los Cancilleres mantendrán consultas regulares al respecto”.

Como se puede apreciar, estas crisis políticas internas recientes del 2009 y del 2012, que algunos analistas denominaron  “golpes de Estado constitucionales” (ver por ejemplo este  artículo  que refiere a esta expresión en su mismo título), han ocupado la agenda diplomática en el hemisferio. Al igual que lo hicieran los golpes de Estado (por definición “anticonstitucionales” en la medida en que se dan en el marco de una ruptura del orden constitucional) que sacudieron a América Latina en décadas anteriores.

Los comunicados oficiales previos al de El Salvador

El comunicado oficial de El Salvador es el penúltimo comunicado oficial registrado sobre la situación en Brasil, antecedido por los de otros Estados, que nos ha parecido oportuno  mencionar y uno posterior de Costa Rica. Nos limitaremos únicamente a reproducir el contenido de estos comunicados oficiales, así como las respuestas (igualmente oficiales) dadas por Brasil, de manera que el lector pueda hacerse una idea de cómo cada Estado aprecia la situación interna en Brasil y busca la manera de expresar su preocupación y algún tipo de solidaridad.

Distinguiremos a los Estados que son vecinos de Brasil de los demás, en la medida en que la cercanía geográfica, las relaciones comerciales, las vías de comunicación, la existencia de proyectos conjuntos y algunos otros aspectos que una contigüidad territorial conlleva pueden (a veces) resultar relevantes a la hora de elaborar un comunicado de esta naturaleza. 

Estados vecinos de Brasil

El pasado 12 de mayo, Argentina (cuyo actual Presidente se reunió con la Presidenta Dilma Rousseff a pocos días de asumir sus funciones),  se había expresado mediante un comunicado oficial de su cancillería de manera escueta (y un tanto prudente) en los siguientes términos que reproducimos textualmente: “Jueves 12 de Mayo de 2016. Sobre la situación en Brasil.  Información para la Prensa N°: 135/16. Ante los sucesos registrados en Brasil el Gobierno Argentino manifiesta que respeta el proceso institucional que se está desarrollando y confía en que el desenlace de la situación consolide la solidez de la democracia brasileña. En tal sentido el Gobierno Argentino continuará dialogando con las autoridades constituidas a fin de seguir avanzando con el proceso de integración bilateral y regional“.

El mismo 12 de mayo, Paraguay, emitió un comunicado aún más corto (y más cauto): “Comunicado de Prensa. El Gobierno de la República del Paraguay ha respetado en todo momento el proceso institucional que se está desarrollando en la República Federativa del Brasil, confiado en la plena vigencia del Estado de Derecho y el normal funcionamiento de las instituciones democráticas. En tal sentido, expresa que proseguirá normalmente el relacionamiento con la hermana República Federativa del Brasil, como socio estratégico, en el proceso de integración bilateral, regional y multilateral”.

A diferencia de Paraguay, el viernes 13 de mayo, la misma Argentina circuló un segundo comunicado en el que remitió a declaraciones de su Ministra de Relaciones Exteriores (ver texto integral reproducido al final de esta nota – Documento 2) en las que la jerarca de la diplomacia argentina expresaba que: “Si bien se puede argumentar que la legalidad está cumplida, hay muchos que tienen una seria cuestión respecto de la legitimidad del proceso. Entonces, cuando uno empieza a debatirse entre  la legalidad y la legitimidad, se pone en una situación muy compleja. Lo que nosotros esperamos es que esto concluya, para que no se acentúen las necesidades y las ansiedades del pueblo brasileño”.

Por su parte, otro vecino de Brasil, Bolivia se expresó en un comunicado del 12 de mayo en los siguientes términos:

”El Gobierno del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, luego de conocer la decisión del Senado Brasilero que aprobó el inicio de un juicio político en contra de la Presidenta Dilma Rousseff, en base a una “farsa jurídica y política”, expresa su profundo rechazo a estas acciones que pretenden desestabilizar los procesos democráticos y desconocer la voluntad de los pueblos expresadas en el voto popular.

Este proceso de destitución presidencial, calificado por la presidenta Rousseff como un “Golpe de Estado”, se basa en la “criminalización de acciones administrativas” que no ameritan responsabilidad alguna, según las propias leyes brasileras. Esto demuestra una intención de dañar la democracia en un país hermano como el Brasil y desconocer los 54 millones de votos que llevaron a Dilma Rousseff a la presidencia.

El gobierno boliviano hace un llamado a todos los Estados de nuestra región para dialogar sobre esta situación, teniendo en cuenta el peligro que significa la debilitación de la institucionalidad de la democracia, provocada por una oposición incapaz de lograr los votos necesarios para formar un gobierno.

Consideramos necesario defender la plena vigencia y preservación de la institucionalidad democrática y los valores que la sustentan, el respeto irrestricto de los derechos humanos y las libertades fundamentales, la construcción de la paz como patrimonio que hemos consagrado y defendido en la región”.

Colombia se manifestó en los siguientes términos el pasado 12 de mayo, en un comunicado oficial de su Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores titulado “Comunicado de prensa del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Colombia sobre la situación en Brasil”. El texto se lee de la siguiente manera:

“Vista la relevancia política y económica de Brasil en la región, y por los lazos de amistad y cooperación que nos unen, y el trabajo constructivo que hemos tenido durante estos años con el Gobierno de la Presidenta Dilma Rousseff, Colombia ha seguido de cerca el transcurso de los hechos ocurridos en las últimas semanas en ese país.

El estado de derecho y las instituciones democráticas han sido los fundamentos de la construcción de nuestros Estados y han promovido los derechos constitucionales de nuestros ciudadanos.

En la actual coyuntura, Colombia confía en la preservación de la institucionalidad democrática y la estabilidad, fundamentos indispensables del estado de derecho. La estabilidad de Brasil es muy importante para toda la región por su influencia y liderazgo”.

Otro Estado que comparte su frontera con Brasil, Venezuela, fue más enfático al manifestarse de la siguiente manera en un comunicado oficial del 12 de mayo del 2016, titulado “Comunicado de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela en rechazo al intento de Golpe de Estado en la República Federativa del Brasil”, y que se lee así:

” La República Bolivariana de Venezuela rechaza categóricamente el Golpe de Estado parlamentario en curso en Brasil que, mediante farsas jurídicas de las cúpulas oligárquicas y fuerzas imperiales, pretenden el derrocamiento de la presidenta, Dilma Rousseff, para sustituir la soberanía popular, poniendo en riesgo la constitución y la democracia. La presidenta legítima, Dilma Rousseff, primera mujer electa como Jefa de Estado en Brasil, enfrenta una arremetida motivada por la venganza de aquellos factores que perdieron las elecciones y que son incapaces de llegar al poder político por otra vía que la fuerza.

La República Bolivariana de Venezuela reconoce el acervo moral, la dignidad y la histórica capacidad de lucha de la presidenta Dilma Rousseff, quien ha demostrado, con su ejemplo y vocación humanista, ser una garantía para la democracia, las conquistas sociales del pueblo brasilero y la unidad nuestroamericana.

La República Bolivariana de Venezuela considera que el Golpe de Estado en desarrollo ha sido fraguado desde el momento mismo de la elección de la presidenta Dilma Rousseff, mediante la aplicación de acciones vinculadas al golpe suave, como el sabotaje, la desinformación, y la mentira, llegando al extremo de pretender impedir la realización en Brasil de eventos deportivos de gran trascendencia mundial, con el propósito de desprestigiar al gobierno y sus autoridades. La República Bolivariana de Venezuela no tiene dudas que todas estas acciones forman parte de la embestida oligárquica e imperial contra los procesos populares progresistas y de izquierda con el único fin de reimponer los modelos neoliberales de exclusión social y expoliación de nuestras riquezas naturales que trajeron consigo pobreza y atraso para nuestros pueblos y acabar así con los modelos democratizadores.

El proceso de Golpe de Estado en Brasil pretende sustituir la soberanía popular y desconocer la voluntad legítima de su pueblo. En razón de lo cual, hacemos un llamado a los pueblos del mundo a mantenernos alertas y listos para la defensa de la democracia, de la presidenta Dilma Rousseff y de los procesos de unidad e integración entre nuestros países“.

Dos Estados que son vecinos geográficos de Brasil, a saber Perú y Uruguay, a la hora de redactar estas breves líneas (20 de mayo), han optado por no externar criterio alguno con relación a lo que ocurre en Brasil. De la misma manera, el sitio de la Secretaría General de la OEA se mantiene mudo con relación a lo ocurrido en Brasil en las últimas semanas.

Estados no vecinos de Brasil

En cambio, otros Estados que no comparten cercanía geográfica con Brasil sí han considerado oportuno manifestarse sobre los acontecimientos vividos en Brasil.

Por ejemplo, Chile expresó su posición en un comunicado oficial del 12 de mayo  titulado “Comunicado de prensa por sucesos políticos en Brasil” de la siguiente manera:

” Chile ha seguido con atención los recientes sucesos políticos en Brasil, país de histórica relevancia económica, diplomática y cultural para Chile, incluyendo durante el periodo de la administración de la amiga Presidenta Dilma Rousseff, con la cual hemos mantenido excelentes relaciones.

El Gobierno de Chile expresa su preocupación por los acontecimientos de los últimos tiempos en esa nación hermana, los que han generado incertidumbre a nivel internacional, considerando la gravitación de Brasil en el ámbito regional.

Sabemos que la democracia brasileña es sólida y que los propios brasileños sabrán resolver sus desafíos internos. En el intertanto, Chile reafirma su decidido respaldo al Estado de Derecho, los procesos constitucionales y las instituciones democráticas en Brasil y en cada uno de los países de América del Sur, elementos indispensables para resguardar nuestras democracias, fortalecer nuestra integración regional y nuestra inserción global”.

En el caso de Costa Rica, su Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores fue el último en externar algún tipo de comunicado, el pasado 18 de mayo con el siguiente comunicado, titulado, “Costa Rica atenta y respetuosa de proceso constitucional de Brasil”, el cual se lee de la siguiente manera:

“El Gobierno de la República de Costa Rica se mantiene atento a los hechos que acontecen en la República Federativa del Brasil y, respetuoso de sus asuntos internos, se suma, no obstante, a la preocupación internacional por el respeto al Estado de Derecho y la salida democrática de la dificultosa situación política que enfrenta.

Costa Rica considera que Brasil – pese a la complejidad del debate sobre legalidad y legitimidad democrática que enfrenta – tiene una oportunidad muy apropiada para fortalecer la capacidad democrática de sus instituciones.

El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto expresa una vez más su anhelo que Brasil – país con el que Costa Rica mantiene una histórica y fraterna relación – retorne a la calma y la estabilidad política, con la certeza de que resolverá sus retos internos con prontitud y estricto apego a las prácticas de la democracia representativa”.

En el caso de Cuba, la declaración de su Gobierno con fecha del 12 de mayo del 2016 se lee de la siguiente manera:

“El Gobierno Revolucionario de la República de Cuba ha denunciado de manera reiterada el golpe de estado parlamentario-judicial, disfrazado de legalidad, que se gesta desde hace meses en Brasil. Hoy  se consumó un paso fundamental para los objetivos golpistas. La mayoría de los senadores brasileños decidió continuar el proceso de juicio político contra la presidenta legítimamente electa de Brasil, Dilma Rousseff, y con ello, separarla “provisionalmente” de su cargo por un período de hasta 180 días, en que el Senado debe decidir, mediante el voto de dos tercios de sus integrantes, la destitución definitiva.

Se trata, en realidad, de un artificio armado por sectores de la oligarquía en ese país, apoyados por la gran prensa reaccionaria y el imperialismo, con el propósito de revertir el proyecto político del Partido de los Trabajadores, derrocar al gobierno legítimo y usurpar el poder que no han podido ganar con el voto electoral.

Lo que ocurre en Brasil es parte de la contraofensiva reaccionaria del imperialismo y la oligarquía contra los gobiernos revolucionarios y progresistas de América Latina y el Caribe, que amenaza la paz y la estabilidad de las naciones, contraviniendo el espíritu y la letra de la Proclama de América Latina y el Caribe como Zona de Paz, firmada en la II Cumbre de la CELAC en enero de 2014 en La Habana por los jefes de estado y de gobierno de la región.

Como expresara el Presidente de los Consejos de Estado y de Ministros de la República de Cuba, General de Ejército Raúl Castro Ruz, en la clausura del VI Período Ordinario de Sesiones de la Asamblea Nacional de Poder Popular el pasado 29 de diciembre: “La historia demuestra que cuando la derecha llega al gobierno no duda en desmontar las políticas sociales, beneficiar a los ricos, restablecer el neoliberalismo y aplicar crueles terapias de choque contra los trabajadores, las mujeres y los jóvenes”.

El pueblo brasileño, las fuerzas políticas de izquierda y los combativos movimientos sociales de esa nación rechazan el golpe y se opondrán a cualquier intento de desmantelar los importantes programas sociales desarrollados por los gobiernos del Partido de los Trabajadores, con Lula y Dilma al frente, como “Bolsa Familia”, “Más Médicos”, “Mi Casa-Mi Vida” y “Hambre Cero”, que cambiaron la vida de decenas de millones de personas en ese país.

Dilma, Lula, el Partido de los Trabajadores y el pueblo de Brasil cuentan y contarán siempre con toda la solidaridad de Cuba”.

En el caso de Ecuador, que tampoco comparte frontera con Brasil, su comunicado oficial del 12 de mayo  titulado  “Comunicado Oficial del Gobierno del Ecuador ante la situación política en Brasil” se lee de la siguiente forma:

“El Gobierno de Ecuador expresa su profunda preocupación por los acontecimientos políticos acaecidos en la República Federativa de Brasil, que en las últimas horas han resultado en el apartamiento temporal de sus funciones de la Presidenta Constitucional, Dilma Rousseff.

Asimismo, reitera su decidido respaldo al pueblo de Brasil y al Gobierno constitucional de la Presidenta Rousseff, legítima depositaria del mandato popular expresado en las últimas elecciones democráticas, y contra la que no pesa, hasta el momento, una sola imputación que la vincule con la comisión de un delito común.

El Gobierno de Ecuador expresa su voluntad de que las actuales circunstancias sean pronta y plenamente superadas, en el marco del Estado de Derecho y el estricto respeto a la institucionalidad democrática de Brasil.

Ante la amenaza de una grave alteración del orden constitucional, de profundas consecuencias para el conjunto de la región, el Ecuador apela a la plena vigencia y preservación de las instituciones democráticas y los valores que la sustentan, así como a los principios reflejados en el Tratado Constitutivo de la Unasur, como elementos indispensables para la consecución de la paz, la justicia y la integración de los pueblos de América Latina”.

Salvo error de nuestra parte, no se registran comunicados oficiales emitidos sobre la situación política en Brasil por parte de Guatemala, de México, de Nicaragua, y de Panamá a la fecha de redactar estas breves líneas.  En el caso de Nicaragua, aparece mencionado en una respuesta dada por Brasil a un comunicado circulado por los integrantes del ALBA, sin que haya circulado un documento oficial de Nicaragua. Es posible que declaraciones dadas por la vocera oficial del Ejecutivo de Nicaragua hayan sido consignadas por Brasil como tal.

En el caso de Costa Rica, resulta oportuno recordar que su comunicado oficial sobre la situación en Venezuela había dado lugar a una dura respuesta por parte de las autoridades de Caracas, a los pocos días de iniciar el año 2016 (ver al respecto nuestra modesta  nota  publicada en el medio digital de Elpais.cr, así como la misma   nota  ampliada a aspectos jurídicos, publicada en el sitio jurídico de Ius360).

Las reacciones de Brasil

Las declaraciones del Ex Presidente de Colombia, Ernesto Samper, hoy Secretario General de la UNASUR causaron la molestia de Brasil, quién el pasado 13 de mayo, circuló el siguiente  comunicado oficial  desde el Itamaraty:

“Nota 177. El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores rechaza las declaraciones del Secretario General de UNASUR, Ernesto Samper, sobre la coyuntura política en Brasil, que califican de manera equivocada el funcionamiento de las instituciones democráticas del Estado brasileño.

Los argumentos presentados, además de erróneos, dejan trasparecer juicios de valor infundados y prejuicios contra el Estado brasileño y sus poderes constituidos e interpretan falsamente la Constitución y las leyes brasileñas. Además, transmiten la interpretación absurda de que las libertades democráticas, el sistema representativo, los derechos humanos y sociales y las conquistas de la sociedad brasileña estarían en peligro. La realidad es opuesta.

Tales juicios e interpretaciones del Secretario General son incompatibles con las funciones que ejerce y con el mandato que recibió del conjunto de países sudamericanos en los términos del Tratado Constitutivo y del Reglamento General de UNASUR”.

Anterior a ello, Brasil respondió en estos términos, el mismo día 13 de mayo, a un comunicado circulado por los Estados miembros del ALBA, a saber Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador y Nicaragua. Su  comunicado  se lee como sigue:

“Nota 176.  El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores rechaza enfáticamente las manifestaciones de los gobiernos de Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador y Nicaragua, así como de la Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América/Tratado de Comércio de los Pueblos (ALBA/TCP), que se permiten opinar y propagar falsedades sobre el proceso político interno en Brasil. Este proceso se desarrolla en el marco de respeto absoluto a las instituciones democráticas y a la Constitución Federal.

Como cualquier observador neutral puede constatar, el proceso de impedimento es una previsión constitucional; el rito establecido en la Constitución y en la Ley fue seguido rigurosamente, con el aval y la determinación del Supremo Tribunal Federal; y el Vicepresidente asumió la presidencia según lo determinado por la Constitución Federal, en los términos por ella previstos”.

El comunicado de El Salvador y la respuesta brasileña

A diferencia de lo leído en los comunicados oficiales provenientes de los Estados precitados a partir del 12 de mayo pasado, el comunicado oficial del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de El Salvador con fecha del 14/05/2016  (ver texto al final reproducido de manera completa. Documento 1) es particularmente incisivo. Se indica, entre otros, que: “El Gobierno de El Salvador, en seguimiento a los lamentables acontecimientos que se desarrollan en la República Federativa del Brasil, rechaza la actitud asumida y las medidas anunciadas por el llamado gobierno provisional, pues son acciones que se proyectan en el largo plazo y que indican un quiebre drástico en las políticas públicas que se han venido implementando”.

En la parte final del comunicado salvadoreño, sus autoridades anuncian que no reconocerán, de ahora en adelante, lo que denominan ellas mismas “llamado gobierno provisional” brasileño. Lo hacen de la siguiente manera que nos permitimos reproducir de forma textual: “Ante este contexto, no se puede dar reconocimiento a un llamado gobierno provisional y que se está asumiendo ya como definitivo, sin haber culminado un proceso que ya de por sí tiene claras señales de manipulación política. Por tal razón, el Gobierno de El Salvador no reconoce al llamado gobierno provisional del Brasil y ha girado instrucciones a su embajadora para que no tenga participación alguna en las actividades organizadas y convocadas por éste“.

Al iniciar la semana siguiente a la del 12 de mayo, Brasil emitió con fecha del Lunes 16 el siguiente  comunicado  titulado “Declaraciones del gobierno de El Salvador con respecto a la situación interna en Brasil” que sugiere que El Salvador tenga a bien reconsiderar su posición, al indicar que: “Por todo eso el gobierno brasileño espera que el gobierno de El Salvador reconsidere su posición, con base en una evaluación objetiva y fáctica de la realidad”. En el texto completo del comunicado brasileño, que a continuación se reproduce, se hace mención al hecho que El Salvador es el Estado en América Central que mayor cooperación técnica recibe por parte de Brasil: una referencia que algunos podrían considerar como una velada amenaza.

El texto completo se lee de la siguiente forma:

“Nota 179. 16 de mayo del 2016 – 15:30. El Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores tomó conocimiento de las manifestaciones del gobierno de El Salvador sobre el proceso político brasileño y de su decisión de suspender los contactos oficiales con Brasil, las cuales revelan amplio y profundo desconocimiento sobre la Constitución y legislación brasileñas, sobre el rito aplicable en procesos de impedimento y sobre el pleno funcionamiento de las normas e instituciones democráticas en el país.

Tantos equívocos causan particular extrañeza, una vez que El Salvador mantiene intensas relaciones económicas con Brasil y es el mayor beneficiario de la cooperación técnica brasileña en toda América Central.

Por todo eso el gobierno brasileño espera que el gobierno de El Salvador reconsidere su posición, con base en una evaluación objetiva y fáctica de la realidad, y con respeto a las instituciones brasileñas y a los principios que rigen las relaciones entre los dos países”.

Perspectivas para las actuales autoridades en Brasil

No cabe duda que la situación en Brasil ha sido y seguirá  siendo objeto de cuidadosas valoraciones en América Latina y en el resto del mundo en los próximos días, ya sea mediante comunicados oficiales de Estados como los aquí brevemente reseñados. Ya sea mediante posiciones colectivas  de varios Estados, a consensuar en este caso en el marco de foros subregionales tales como la UNASUR, el MERCOSUR, e inclusive el SICA, entre muchos otros, o en el seno de la misma CELAC.  En algunos casos, la delegación brasileña presente pondrá a prueba a su experimentada diplomacia para frenar toda iniciativa o buscar influir en la escogencia de los términos más acordes a sus intereses.

La próxima Asamblea General de la OEA (a celebrarse  en el mes de junio en República Dominicana), también podría dar lugar a algunos episodios de interés, en la medida en que los delegados de Brasil representan en estos momentos, para algunos Estados miembros de la OEA, a un gobierno golpista;  mientras que para muchos otros no.

Es posible que el primer grupo de Estados busque la manera de obtener una declaratoria de la Asamblea General o del mismo Consejo Permanente de la OEA, sumándose un nuevo ejercicio a los delicados ejercicios diplomáticos que se originen en los demás foros precitados.

Para una parte de la población brasileña y sus autoridades hasta el pasado 12 de mayo, la posición oficial externada por El Salvador constituye sin lugar a dudas un importante gesto diplomático de solidaridad;  mientras que, para las nuevas autoridades brasileñas y algunos sectores que las respaldan, se trata de una actitud desafiante (un tanto inesperada) ante la cual hay que saber reaccionar.

Dependiendo del tipo de respuesta que dé Brasil y del tono que usen sus autoridades,  se puede lograr contener el acto de El Salvador, y mantenerlo como un acto aislado en América Latina; o bien, por el contrario, este podría amenazar con encontrar algún eco en el concierto internacional.

—

Documento 1. Texto completo del comunicado de prensa del 14/05/2016 de El Salvador:

El Salvador rechaza manipulación política de proceso contra presidenta constitucional de Brasil

El gobierno salvadoreño permanecerá dando seguimiento a los acontecimientos y continuará, conforme su evolución, actualizando sus medidas sobre la situación en Brasil, incluyendo el llamado a consultas a su embajadora. 

Documento 2. Texto completo del comunicado de prensa del 13/05/2016 de Argentina:

Malcorra afirmó que la Argentina tiene una profunda preocupación por Brasil. Viernes 13 de Mayo de 2016. Información para la Prensa N°: 138/2016

La Canciller argentina, Susana Malcorra, sostuvo desde Londres, donde participó en la Cumbre Anticorrupción convocada por el Primer Ministro Cameron, que tiene una “mirada de profunda preocupación” sobre la crisis política por la que atraviesa Brasil. “No solamente es el gran vecino, el gran socio que tenemos, sino también es un jugador que condiciona y define nuestra capacidad de hacer cosas. Nos une la tradición, la amistad, la historia y por eso esta crisis nos afecta, nos impacta y nos duele”, agregó.

“Hemos estado siguiendo esta cuestión de cerca, en permanente contacto con la Cancillería brasileña y con sectores de la vida política de Brasil. Es evidente que se han cumplido las pautas establecidas dentro de la legalidad del proceso”, aseguró Malcorra, y aclaró: “Si bien se puede argumentar que la legalidad está cumplida, hay muchos que tienen una seria cuestión respecto de la legitimidad del proceso. Entonces, cuando uno empieza a debatirse entre  la legalidad y la legitimidad, se pone en una situación muy compleja. Lo que nosotros esperamos es que esto concluya, para que no se acentúen las necesidades y las ansiedades del pueblo brasileño”.

En declaraciones a Todo Noticias, Malcorra subrayó que cuando el Presidente Macri fue electo, inmediatamente fue a visitar a la Presidente Rousseff “para dar una señal de cercanía y de prioridad”. “Recuerdo esa conversación que fue muy interesante porque ambos presidentes hablaron de cosas concretas respecto del futuro y a partir de allí construyeron una relación que fue evolucionando. A mí me produce, con total franqueza, un profundo dolor institucional y un profundo dolor personal. La Presidenta Rousseff debe estar pasando por un momento muy duro. Estuve con ella hace poco en Nueva York y conversamos. A veces me pregunto si el tema de género no es un elemento de consideración de estos procesos tan duros”, enfatizó la Canciller Argentina.

“El hecho de que el mismo día en que se comienzan a dar pasos firmes en el intercambio de ofertas entre la MERCOSUR y UE se de, en simultáneo, esta crisis es una horrible coincidencia. Incluso la UE tuvo algunas consideraciones para posponer el intercambio de ofertas, pero hemos sido muy monolíticos en el MERCOSUR: esto está acordado, es institucional, no hay excusa para postergar el intercambio y así lo entendió nuestra contraparte europea”, explicó Malcorra. “Creo que hay otra lectura que se le puede dar a esto y es que aún dentro de estas crisis que se producen hemos sido capaces de defender el intercambio como un  tema que va más allá de las circunstancias y que tiene un compromiso profundo en todos los miembros del MERCOSUR”, añadió.

Respecto de la Argentina y su inserción en el mundo, Malcorra manifestó: “Nuestro país está siendo visto de manera muy positiva. La reacción tanto de gobiernos como del sector privado, que tiene siempre una participación muy intensa en las diferentes visitas que hacemos, es que la Argentina ha decidido insertarse en el mundo con una posición madura. Tenemos que seguir generando esta confianza pero nada de esto es automático ni se produce de un día para otro. La ansiedad es entendible, y por eso estamos haciendo este cambio estructural que tendrá sustentabilidad de largo plazo”.

Nicolas Boeglin

Nicolas Boeglin : Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR)

First published by Global Research in August 2015

The Chinese are in the process of displacing the monopoly of the US dollar. They are dropping their US Treasury bonds, stockpiling gold reserves, and opening regional distribution banks for their own national currency. This will give them easier access to capital markets and insulate them from financial manipulation by Washington and Wall Street.

Fearing the eclipsing of the US dollar and the Bretton Woods system by a rival financial architecture the US response has been an attempt to damage the Chinese markets and increase the value of China’s currency. China has responded through regulations in the market and then quantitative easing of its currency to maintain the low prices of Chinese manufactured goods and exports.

Beijing’s quantitative easing is a reaction or response to the financial manipulation of Washington and Wall Street. Additionally, Washington never thought that the Chinese would respond by dumping US Treasury bonds. Instead of the hysteria about the Chinese economy, «the impending collapse of the US dollar should be getting all of the attention of investors», one US economist (Peter Schiff) has warned. Schiff’s voice is one of many analysts saying that the talk about the Chinese economy faltering is exaggerated and bad spirited.

Financial War against China, Russia: America’s War against the «Community of Destiny»

As the financial architecture of the world is being altered by China and  Russia, the US dollar is gradually being neutralized as one of Washington’s weapon of choice. Even the monopoly of Washington’s Bretton Woods system formed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank is being directly challenged. Although they do not constitute alternatives to neoliberal economics, the BRICS News Development Bank (NDB) and Beijing’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) are challenging the Bretton Woods system through a rival financial structure.

The US Empire has been cognizant of the moves to establish a rival financial order. Policymakers in the Washington Beltway, the Pentagon, and Wall Street all watched the dual summits of the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the Russian city of Ufa with concern. Up to that point, they had been waging an information/propaganda, energy, financial market, currency war, and general economic war against the Russian Federation. Post-Ufa, they extended the financial market and economic war to China.

Banks and governments in the European Union had been considering and examining the use of China’s national currency, renminbi/yuan, as a reserve currency. This was because of the attractiveness of the stability of the renminbi as a currency. This had Washington and Wall Street worried and was one of the factors that resulted in the expansion of the currency and financial war on Russia to China.

Using speculation as a psychological weapon and market manipulation, the US launched a financial strike against the Chinese. This was done through an attempt to sink or crash the Chinese stock market and hurt investor confidence in the Chinese economy and its stocks. Beijing, however, reacted quickly by imposing controls on investment withdrawals. This prevented the snowballing of stock selloffs and defused the US financial bomb.

As the value of the renminbi began to rise Beijing began quantitative easing to devalue its national currency as a means of continuing export trade. The US Congress and White House began to loudly object. They accused the Chinese of financial manipulation and demanded that Beijing do nothing to readjust the value of the renminbi. What the folks in the Washington Beltway wanted was for the Chinese to let the value of the renminbi rise as a means of disrupting China’s economy and market.

The Chinese Dragon Strikes Back: Beijing Liquidates its US Bonds

Push China and it will push back. The buck (or, more properly, renminbi/yuan) did not stop with the introduction of regulations by Beijing. China took steps that shocked Wall Street and put Washington on notice.

As US financial institutions began trying to hurt investor confidence in China through psychological tactics claiming that the Chinese economy was slowing down and that the Chinese market was in freefall, Beijing announced that it had bought 600 tons of gold in the span of a month and the People’s Bank of China had got rid of over 17 billion US dollars from its foreign exchange reserves. China’s foreign exchange reserves — excluding the foreign reserves of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Macau Special Administrative Region — were 3.71 trillion (37,111,430 million) US dollars in May 2015. They had dropped to 3.69 trillion (36,938,380 million) US dollars by June 2015.

The financial market webpage Zero Hedge, which had been following this development, explained what it had discovered was taking place: «We then put China’s change in FX reserves alongside the total Treasury holdings of China and its ‘anonymous’ offshore Treasury dealer Euroclear (aka ‘Belgium’) as released by TIC, and found that the dramatic relationship which we first discovered back in May, has persisted — namely virtually the entire delta in Chinese FX reserves come via China’s US Treasury holdings».

The main point here was that China’s US Treasury bonds «are being aggressively sold, to the tune of $107 billion in Treasury sales so far in 2015». By following China’s financial transactions in Belgium, Zero Hedge had actually calculated that Beijing had dropped 143 billion US dollars in three months. A few months later, in August, the Chinese dropped 100 billion US dollars worth of US Treasury bonds in the span of two weeks.

A day later, on August 27, Bloomberg corroborated what Zero Hedge had identified. A Bloomberg report explained the following: «The People’s Bank of China has been offloading dollars and buying yuan to support the exchange rate, a policy that’s contributed to a $315 billion drop in its foreign-exchange reserves over the last 12 months. The $3.65 trillion stockpile will fall by some $40 billion a month in the remainder of 2015 because of the intervention, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey».

While the Bloomberg report emphasized that the Chinese were using US dollars to buy their own national currency, it casually mentioned, «Strategically, it probably has been China’s intention to find the right time to lighten up its excessive accumulation of U.S. Treasuries», citing an economist at Reorient Financial Markets Limited in Hong Kong.

The Eclipsing of the US Dollar by the Chinese Renminbi

Wall Street should be worried about the economic problems at home in the US instead of trying to undermine China. The talk about the slowing down of the Chinese economy in part is distraction. It diverts attention from the decline of the US and is meant to enforce the efforts of Washington and Wall Street to rein in Beijing. The Chinese, however, continue to move forward undeterred.

Beijing selected Qatar as its first renminbi clearing house in the Middle East and North Africa for regional exchange markets there in April 2015. The name of this clearing house is the Qatar Renminbi Centre. It will circumvent US financial structures and give greater access to oil and natural gas from the Middle East and North Africa to the People’s Republic of China.

Despite the wishes of Wall Street and Washington, the Silk World Order is moving forward.

This article was originally published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on August 30, 2015.

First published by Global Research in August 2015

The Chinese are in the process of displacing the monopoly of the US dollar. They are dropping their US Treasury bonds, stockpiling gold reserves, and opening regional distribution banks for their own national currency. This will give them easier access to capital markets and insulate them from financial manipulation by Washington and Wall Street.

Fearing the eclipsing of the US dollar and the Bretton Woods system by a rival financial architecture the US response has been an attempt to damage the Chinese markets and increase the value of China’s currency. China has responded through regulations in the market and then quantitative easing of its currency to maintain the low prices of Chinese manufactured goods and exports.

Beijing’s quantitative easing is a reaction or response to the financial manipulation of Washington and Wall Street. Additionally, Washington never thought that the Chinese would respond by dumping US Treasury bonds. Instead of the hysteria about the Chinese economy, «the impending collapse of the US dollar should be getting all of the attention of investors», one US economist (Peter Schiff) has warned. Schiff’s voice is one of many analysts saying that the talk about the Chinese economy faltering is exaggerated and bad spirited.

Financial War against China, Russia: America’s War against the «Community of Destiny»

As the financial architecture of the world is being altered by China and  Russia, the US dollar is gradually being neutralized as one of Washington’s weapon of choice. Even the monopoly of Washington’s Bretton Woods system formed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank is being directly challenged. Although they do not constitute alternatives to neoliberal economics, the BRICS News Development Bank (NDB) and Beijing’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) are challenging the Bretton Woods system through a rival financial structure.

The US Empire has been cognizant of the moves to establish a rival financial order. Policymakers in the Washington Beltway, the Pentagon, and Wall Street all watched the dual summits of the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the Russian city of Ufa with concern. Up to that point, they had been waging an information/propaganda, energy, financial market, currency war, and general economic war against the Russian Federation. Post-Ufa, they extended the financial market and economic war to China.

Banks and governments in the European Union had been considering and examining the use of China’s national currency, renminbi/yuan, as a reserve currency. This was because of the attractiveness of the stability of the renminbi as a currency. This had Washington and Wall Street worried and was one of the factors that resulted in the expansion of the currency and financial war on Russia to China.

Using speculation as a psychological weapon and market manipulation, the US launched a financial strike against the Chinese. This was done through an attempt to sink or crash the Chinese stock market and hurt investor confidence in the Chinese economy and its stocks. Beijing, however, reacted quickly by imposing controls on investment withdrawals. This prevented the snowballing of stock selloffs and defused the US financial bomb.

As the value of the renminbi began to rise Beijing began quantitative easing to devalue its national currency as a means of continuing export trade. The US Congress and White House began to loudly object. They accused the Chinese of financial manipulation and demanded that Beijing do nothing to readjust the value of the renminbi. What the folks in the Washington Beltway wanted was for the Chinese to let the value of the renminbi rise as a means of disrupting China’s economy and market.

The Chinese Dragon Strikes Back: Beijing Liquidates its US Bonds

Push China and it will push back. The buck (or, more properly, renminbi/yuan) did not stop with the introduction of regulations by Beijing. China took steps that shocked Wall Street and put Washington on notice.

As US financial institutions began trying to hurt investor confidence in China through psychological tactics claiming that the Chinese economy was slowing down and that the Chinese market was in freefall, Beijing announced that it had bought 600 tons of gold in the span of a month and the People’s Bank of China had got rid of over 17 billion US dollars from its foreign exchange reserves. China’s foreign exchange reserves — excluding the foreign reserves of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Macau Special Administrative Region — were 3.71 trillion (37,111,430 million) US dollars in May 2015. They had dropped to 3.69 trillion (36,938,380 million) US dollars by June 2015.

The financial market webpage Zero Hedge, which had been following this development, explained what it had discovered was taking place: «We then put China’s change in FX reserves alongside the total Treasury holdings of China and its ‘anonymous’ offshore Treasury dealer Euroclear (aka ‘Belgium’) as released by TIC, and found that the dramatic relationship which we first discovered back in May, has persisted — namely virtually the entire delta in Chinese FX reserves come via China’s US Treasury holdings».

The main point here was that China’s US Treasury bonds «are being aggressively sold, to the tune of $107 billion in Treasury sales so far in 2015». By following China’s financial transactions in Belgium, Zero Hedge had actually calculated that Beijing had dropped 143 billion US dollars in three months. A few months later, in August, the Chinese dropped 100 billion US dollars worth of US Treasury bonds in the span of two weeks.

A day later, on August 27, Bloomberg corroborated what Zero Hedge had identified. A Bloomberg report explained the following: «The People’s Bank of China has been offloading dollars and buying yuan to support the exchange rate, a policy that’s contributed to a $315 billion drop in its foreign-exchange reserves over the last 12 months. The $3.65 trillion stockpile will fall by some $40 billion a month in the remainder of 2015 because of the intervention, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey».

While the Bloomberg report emphasized that the Chinese were using US dollars to buy their own national currency, it casually mentioned, «Strategically, it probably has been China’s intention to find the right time to lighten up its excessive accumulation of U.S. Treasuries», citing an economist at Reorient Financial Markets Limited in Hong Kong.

The Eclipsing of the US Dollar by the Chinese Renminbi

Wall Street should be worried about the economic problems at home in the US instead of trying to undermine China. The talk about the slowing down of the Chinese economy in part is distraction. It diverts attention from the decline of the US and is meant to enforce the efforts of Washington and Wall Street to rein in Beijing. The Chinese, however, continue to move forward undeterred.

Beijing selected Qatar as its first renminbi clearing house in the Middle East and North Africa for regional exchange markets there in April 2015. The name of this clearing house is the Qatar Renminbi Centre. It will circumvent US financial structures and give greater access to oil and natural gas from the Middle East and North Africa to the People’s Republic of China.

Despite the wishes of Wall Street and Washington, the Silk World Order is moving forward.

This article was originally published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on August 30, 2015.

“To my great regret extremist and dangerous elements have overrun Israel and the Likud party”

Mr Ya’Alon is being replaced by former nightclub bouncer, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the hard-­Right, Yisrael Beitenu party to create the most extremist Right-­wing government in Israel’s chequered history.

Mr Ya’alon said that extremism, violence and racism were threatening Israeli society and had entered the IDF. He urged IDF generals to voice their opinions, even if they contradict government policy, while warning of militant views creeping into mainstream discourse.

Both the Conservative and Labour Friends of Israel in our own Parliament, including the Prime Minister, would do well to reconsider their allegiance to the alleged extremist government of Binyamin Netanyahu lest they be ‘tarred with same brush’.

Furthermore, those who support, fund and arm the extremist government of the undeclared nuclear-­armed, State of Israel, are on the wrong side of history and, as a consequence, probably on the losing side of any future nuclear war emanating from the Middle East.

“Dark forces are rising in the Israeli society,” So warns Israeli General Ya’ir Golan.

Forget Damascus and forget President Bashar al-Assad’s seat of power – the real battle for Syria is being played out in the northern city of Aleppo, where Turkey dared dream it would revive its empire of old. Ankara here, is in for a rude awakening!

So rude in fact that Turkish President Recep Erdogan is contemplating a military incursion into Syria – a move fraught with dangers, as it could potentially send Turkey in a collision course with not just Damascus, but two military superpowers; Iran and Russia. Needless to say that while both Moscow and Tehran have exercised restraint and measure when dealing with Ankara’s political folly, for the sake of regional stability; a direct military move against Syria would likely send ripples across the region that no amount of diplomacy will quiet.

Turkey of course argues that its position is legitimate and true … how could it not, when Turkey has proven such a true NATO ally, such a

bulwark against terror? President Erdogan’s main line of defense – or rather, attack is that he needs to absolutely protect Turkey’s national sovereignty against dangerous radical militants. Turkey’s right to self-defence is so imperious in fact that its expression justifies its trampling over the territorial integrity of another sovereign nation: Syria.

In this exceptional narrative Syria has been relegated to a military theatre where nation-states have come to play war, and empire-building. Syria, Mr Erdogan has implied, stands but a dwarf before Turkey’s political and military needs … who cares for international law when one towers a strategic chokepoint in between the EU and a flood of migrants?

Who will speak against Turkey now that its will has been left unchecked, and has stood unchallenged … may I dare say rogue … for such a long time. What I’m really asking is how do you put THAT genie back in its bottle? From the looks of it, President Erdogan has no intention on slowing down his neo-imperial horses. If anything he’s quite determined to see his ambitions through … to the bitter end if needs be, atop a ravaged nation most likely.

But if Turkey is acting a rogue state at a time when even Washington is waking up to Russia’s logic in Syria, President Erdogan is not without a tuned up rationale. “Tens of thousands of lives have been saved and a million people have received aid, thanks to Syria ceasefire established with Russia’s help,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said this May in what can only described as a political volte face.

Ever the keen strategist, Erdogan is holding a mirror to America’s exceptionalism, playing the world’s public to the same counter-terrorism tune, and identical military beat – a grand neocon after his own masters.

“Turkey is prepared to take unilateral actions against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria to protect its southern border town Kilis from IS attacks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” Xinhua news agency reported him as saying on May 12. “We are making necessary preparations in order to clear the other side of the border,” he said.

To which he added: “Turkey will not wait… while we have martyrs every day …I’d like to say that we will not hesitate to take unilateral steps on this issue …The issue of Kilis would be “litmus paper” for revealing the sincerity of coalition partners in the fight against the IS group.

If you missed it, there is more than just a veiled threat hiding in President Erdogan’s comments – minus of course the sheer hypocrisy of his sudden concern for human life. Ankara shed little tears when it negotiated the lives … and deaths of war refugees with European capitals. Ankara then cared little for innocent lives … civilian lives. Life for Mr Erdogan only matters when it can be held a weapon in his enemies’ face.

The “Sultan” is really sending a warning to the NATO, and his European neighbours – stand down as I lay waste Syria’s resistance or face to the migration flood I will unleash onto your cities. Of course there is always the possibility that ISIL elements could permeate through Europe’s intelligence armour … and then what? Considering that Ankara has acted a patron, and a profiteer of terror to assert its geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East, Turkey is well positioned to act a grand threat against the Old Continent. The fact that most EU governments have failed to understand such reality is rather concerning.

Turkey long abandoned its political neutrality to the clamour of wars … how much time will elapse before Turkey becomes a global threat?

Erdogan complained that the US-led anti-ISIL coalition has not provided Turkey with the desired support, reported Xinhua news agency. Support against what exactly no one seems quite sure since Ankara’s only woes have been against those factions which have actively sought to destroy terror: i.e. the Kurds.

I will grant you that ISIL has in fact challenged Turkey in the province of Kilis, and that as such – on paper at least – Ankara could argue the need to defend itself. But then again giving Erdogan’s history with ISIL one could argue the wannabe Sultan is self-harming to better sale his people, and the world, the war he always wanted in Syria.

It could also well be that Erdogan – a modern-day political Prometheus, burnt himself to the fire he unleashed onto Syria. Lost in his Ottomanesque ambitions Erdogan could soon find himself very much alone as he faces the radical hounds he helped train, arm and fund to depose the one man, who now could hold the key to Turkey’s salvation: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Catherine Shakdam is the Associate Director of the Beirut Center for Middle Eastern Studies and a political analyst specializing in radical movements, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

In a world infected with a plethora of immoral multinational corporations, it is hard to think of two corporations which have more nefarious histories than Bayer AG and Monsanto. Considering this, it is a harrowing prospect that the two corporations could potentially strike a deal in the near future.

As Bloomberg reported earlier this month, Bayer AG – the German pharmaceutical and chemical corporation – is reportedly considering a bid for the agrochemical and biotechnology corporation, Monsanto. This comes two months after Monsanto showed some interest in acquiring Bayer Crop Sciences, a branch of Bayer AG.

Founded in 1863, Bayer may be familiar to many readers as the first company to widely sell and trademark Aspirin in the late nineteenth century. But there is a far more sinister history to this company that is often omitted.

The Inception of Chemical Warfare

April 22nd, 1915 is widely considered to be the first successful large-scale use of poison gas in warfare, when the Germany army deployed chlorine gas against the French lines at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres. In January of that year, German forces had released gas against Russian forces, yet the cold conditions inhibited the main agents in the weapon from having the desired impact.

Even as far back as the First World War, Bayer was playing a major role in the development of Germany’s chemical weapons apparatus. Along with other German chemical giants at the time, Bayer was a key player in producing and supplying the German army with chemical weapons during WWI (it should be noted that other powers were developing and deploying chemical weapons during the Great War, not just Germany).

Bayer and the Nazi War Machine

Fast-forward a decade or so, and Bayer was playing an integral part in amalgamating numerous chemical companies into one. The merger resulted in the creation of the most infamous chemical company in modern history – I.G. Farben. As the late Anthony C. Sutton – a former Economics Professor at California State University and Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution – wrote in his book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler:

“The Farben cartel dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six already giant German chemical companies – Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer and Griesheim-Elektron. There companies were merged to become I.G. Farben. Twenty years later the same Hermann Schmitz was put on trial at Nuremburg for war crimes committed by the I.G. cartel. Other I.G. Farben directors were placed on trial but the American affiliates of I.G. Farben and the American directors of I.G. itself were quietly forgotten; the truth was buried in the archives… Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I.G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.”

In more modern times, a division of Bayer was accused of ‘knowingly’ selling HIV-contaminated blood products to haemophiliacs, and has paid millions in damages in legal settlements.

Brothers in Death

During the Vietnam War, Monsanto was contracted to produce and supply the US government with a malevolent chemical for military application. Along with other chemical corporations at the time such as Dow Chemical, Monsanto produced the military herbicide Agent Orange which contained high quantities of the deadly chemical Dioxin. Between 1961 and 1971, the US Army sprayed between 50 and 80 million litres of Agent Orange across Vietnamese jungles, forests and strategically advantageous positions.

It was deployed in order to destroy forests and fertile lands which provided cover and food for the opposing troops. The fallout was devastating, with Vietnam estimating that 400,000 people died or were maimed due to Agent Orange, as well as 500,000 children born with birth defects and up to two million people suffered from cancer and other diseases. Millions of US veterans were also exposed and many have developed similar illnesses. The consequences are still felt today, and will continue to be felt for decades to come; with cancer rates, birth defects and other diseases still causing devastation to the victims and their families.

And today, Monsanto is still involved in producing chemical poison. Last year, the World Health Organisations (WHO) cancer agency – the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – conducted a study on glyphosate, the main ingredient in the most widely used weedkiller in the world, Monsanto’s Roundup – which is heavily sprayed on GMO crops. The IARC study revealed that glyphosate was “classified as probablycarcinogenic to humans”.

Given the history of these corporations and the atrocities they have been complicit in, the last sector they should be involved in is the agricultural industry.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Glyphosate will be banned in France – whether or not the EU decides this week to renew the authorisation of the chemical, the French Minister for Health, Marisol Touraine has said.

Speaking to France Info Radio, she said that the French President Francois Hollande said clearly during the last environmental conference that glyphosate would not be authorised in France.

“Regardless of debates around whether it causes cancer or not, the studies we have show it’s an endocrine disruptor,” she said.

The French Health Minister’s comments come as MEPs from EU Member States vote this week on the continued use of glyphosate in weed killers.

Earlier this week, a UN committee of FAO and WHO experts found that the chemical is unlikely to pose carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet.

R962i trailed sprayer

A joint meeting of representatives from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) was held at WHO Headquarters, Geneva (Switzerland), from May 9 to 13, 2016.

The report comes following an European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) report in November which also found that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.

This was in contrast to an International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in March last year, which found that glyphosate probably has the potential to cause cancer in humans.

Earlier this year, a poll by the international market research firm YouGov found that two-thirds of Europeans want the chemical banned.

According to the survey of more than 7,000 people across the EU’s five biggest states, the banning of glyphosate was supported by 75% of Italians, 70% of Germans, 60% of French and 56% of Britons.

It is Haiti’s good luck and surely the Clintons‘ misfortune, that Charles Ortel, one of the world’s finest financial analysts, has got the Clinton Foundation in his sights. Mr. Ortel is a graduate of the Harvard Business School with decades of Wall Street experience. He is currently a private investor. He began to release on his website and from his Twitter account (@charlesortel), in early May 2016, a series of detailed reports that are damning to the Clintons and their various supposed charitable initiatives. The Clintons are powerful, and they have squirmed their way out of many tight spots before, but what makes this particular case worthy of our utmost attention is that Ortel is not only outstanding at what he does, but also fearless and dogged in his pursuit of perceived financial malfeasance.

If his analysis of General Electric, which is far more complex than the Clinton charities, successfully pegged GE as being overvalued before its stock plummeted in 2008, then we must hear out his case against the Clinton Foundation. I caught up with him earlier this week, and he graciously agreed to an interview.

Dady Chery: Thank you Charles, for granting us this interview. You have been on the warpath against the Clinton Foundation in this presidential election year in the United States. Do you have anything to disclose about your motivations?

Charles Ortel: I am not active in partisan politics. I fit in neither mainstream political party because I am conservative economically, open-minded socially, and passionate in my belief that America is truly an exceptional place, for all of the many faults evident since its founding, starting in 1492.

As a son of a fiercely smart woman, and the parent of another, I do feel that Hillary Clinton has set a deplorable example by her actions and inactions throughout her life, for women and for all persons who seek to prosper and exist in our great country.

My primary interest, now that I have almost completed an in-depth investigation of the Clinton Foundation is to expose what I see as a mammoth fraud and then prod government authorities in most US states and many foreign countries to punish trustees, executives, major donors, and those in position to exercise significant influence without mercy.

The Clinton Foundation is a textbook case in how disaster relief charities should not be allowed to operate internationally, particularly by powerful, educated lawyers who must know better.

DC: Did the earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010 personally affect you or anyone you know?

CO: I have to say that I did not actively follow events in Haiti as they were occurring, and now I feel guilty as it does seem that relief provided under the watch of the Clintons and of George W. Bush’s team likely has compounded vexing problems in an island nation of great promise that seems worse off for all the attention since that dreaded day.

DC: According to your website, the Clinton Foundation’s aim and reach have gone far beyond where they were supposed to go. Please give our readers an overview of this organization.

CO: Originally, on 23 December 1997 when their application for federal tax-exemption was filed with the Internal Revenue Service, the Clinton Foundation was to be a library and research facility based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and to raise an endowment to support these purposes.

When the Clinton Foundation was formed, controversies were escalating that served to crimp the Clintons’ abilities to raise funds to defray massive legal bills, in the many millions of dollars.

Right from the start, the record suggests that fundraising appeals supposedly for the Foundation may have been commingled, inappropriately and illegally, with those for a legal expense trust run by former Senator David Pryor, a close Clinton associate.

By January 2001, Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation started becoming involved in numerous “initiatives” far outside the Foundation’s approved tax-exempt purposes that clearly were supposed to be concentrated within the United States from a base inside Arkansas.

DC: It is somewhat of an octopus, with numerous arms, nationally and internationally. How does this work?

CO: Over time, Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation raised substantial sums and conducted substantial activities abroad as well as inside the US that were never contemplated in the December 1997 application to the IRS that was approved in January 1998.

So far, no verifiable evidence has been produced by the Clinton Foundation demonstrating that approvals were correctly sought from the IRS to alter, so radically, its approved tax-exempt purposes.

Entities as complicated as the Clinton Foundation are, in theory, regulated by authorities within their home state, by other states within the US, where they solicit funds and/or operate, by the IRS, by federal government agencies, and by foreign governments.

One trouble seems to be that no regulatory agency within the US, so far, seems willing to take on a political dynasty that has proven to be vindictive in the past once it attained elective office, while Hillary Clinton remains poised to grasp the Democrat Party nomination and potentially win the presidency in November 2016.

A second set of issues seems to be that foreign government are unwilling to take regulatory actions abroad until they see US government authorities initiating such actions here.

DC: The Clinton Foundation recently revised its taxes for several years as a result of your discoveries.

CO: I did write a piece in March 2015 for Brietbart, so it is possible the Clinton Foundation was, in part, forced to refile because of my actions.

Unfortunately for them and particularly for their trustees, they did not correctly amend their filings back to 1997 at federal level, they submitted false and materially misleading federal filings, and they failed to submit timely state and foreign filings for 2014 and for prior years.

DC: Charles, it is your view that the Foundation might have broken the law.

CO: Absolutely. I believe that the Foundation, its trustees, key executives, and others in position to exercise significant influence have committed millions of counts of solicitation fraud across state and national boundaries while numerous false and materially misleading submissions circulated in the public domain.

One easy set of abuses to understand is their repeated and ongoing failures to get their financial statements audited properly and consistently in compliance with applicable laws and standards.

Here we are talking about a fraud whose declared scope exceeds $2 billion — but when you count related frauds involving the Global Fund, the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, UNITAID, American India Foundation and other such criminal activities, you are talking about a global set of frauds bigger than Madoff’s that likely approaches $100 billion, possibly more.

DC: What will happen if it is found in breach of the law? Is this something that could be brushed off and fixed, like revising the taxes again?

CO: I think the Clinton charity fraud conspiracy challenges the notion in the United States and other nations that revere jurisprudence that no one is above the law. For decades, the Clintons — and others in both US political parties, as well as abroad — have operated as if they were entitled, because of their “government service,” to break laws with impunity, and to prey upon the most vulnerable and gullible members of society.

DC: Both Bill and Hillary Clinton began their careers as Yale-educated lawyers. Surely they have covered themselves with regard to their charities and followed federal and state laws.

CO: One must remember that Bill and Hillary often have lied and/or dissembled under oath and that Bill was forced to give up licenses to practice law in Arkansas and before the US Supreme Court in consequence of such conduct.

Cynics have argued that lawyers are, often, paid to lie. I believe that lying lawyers are exceptions rather than the rule and that, in fact, there are many lawyers who literally love the law, and particularly laws in the United States.

DC: How did they get away with not getting audited? Will any heads roll because of this?

CO: From 2001 through 2013, one key person within the IRS who oversaw tax-exempt charities, including Clinton entities, was Lois Lerner who left government service in disgrace following allegations, still being investigated, that she and other compatriots used the IRS to target conservative and Tea Party groups.

Lois Lerner and her allies likely also have the ability to influence regulators not to target charities with which they are politically allied.

At state level, one imagines that the Clintons have numerous friends scattered in regulatory bureaus in many states, even including those such as Arkansas today, where the Governor and Attorney General are Republicans.

DC: You say that the Clintons began their adventures in disaster fundraising well before Haiti’s earthquake.

CO: Bill Clinton became involved with a man who now is a felon named Rajat Gupta, supposedly raising funds to help those in Gujarat, India after an earthquake struck there on January 26, 2001.

I think that this effort, American India Foundation, that Bill has co-chaired ever since formation is another epic fraud that has never been audited or reported properly in any legal jurisdiction.

Moreover, numerous trustees and significant donors in the Gujarat effort have been accused and/or convicted of a variety of frauds. Though Bill Clinton has played a prominent role with his Foundation and with the AIF ever since January 2001, these material defects have never been disclosed in state, federal, and foreign filings for either organization, as required.

There are other significant problems arising from failures to make proper disclosures concerning Bill Clinton’s work with the Tsunami, Katrina, and Gulf Coast disaster relief charities

DC: The Clintons like to say that a pleasure trip in the 1970s brought them to Haiti for the first time. Their political interest in Haiti probably began in 1994 when Bill Clinton reinstated, under his terms, the deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This interest grew even more after Aristide was removed from office in February 2004 and a UN stabilizing mission was introduced with the help of Brazil in June of the same year. Finally, of course, there was the 2010 earthquake. How do the Foundation’s activities fit into this timeline?

CO: Press accounts suggest that the Clinton Foundation became involved in Haiti by 2003. At that time, the Clinton Foundationcertainly was not authorized or itself equipped to engage in international activities “fighting HIV/AIDS”, yet it did so starting in 2003.

So far, it is not clear what medicines may have been provided under the auspices of the Clinton Foundation to those afflicted with HIV/AIDS in Haiti and in other countries.

It is clear that Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation developed ties to Ranbaxy, an Indian company that supplied genericmedicines. And it subsequently became clear that Ranbaxy sold adulterated medicines to customers in many nations.

DC: Within two months of the earthquake, Clinton got the Haitian parliament to vote an emergency law that allowed his Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) to run the country for 18 months. The IHRC raised at least $9.5 billion from the international community. There were fundraisers in New York and other cities. Haitians have searched through the rubble and demanded to know where this money went, because the IHRC did not reconstruct anything. Some Haitian lawyers think that Clinton, in his role as director of the IHRC should answer to Haiti and not benefit from UN immunity in this matter. What do you think, Charles?

CO: Unless the IHRC has somehow acquired a blanket exemption from US state and federal laws — which, if true, should be memorialized somewhere — like other charities that raise money in most US states, it is required to register in advance of soliciting and to file periodic reports.

In the absence of securing federal and state tax exemptions, a US charity is precluded from suggesting to donors that they may deduct their donations on federal and on state tax returns, as laws may allow.

Moreover, to the extent governments have granted money to the IHRC, I imagine that records must exist in the donating country that explain the process by which each donation came to occur, and that “after-action” reports may be found, issued by the more cautious donating governments that have been burned in other instances and countries.

DC: In your experience, when there is fraud involving a charity, how is it done?

CO: Sadly, international charities are perfect fronts for fraud.

The first step is to get in front of a large incoming flow of money, ideally from millions of small donors.

The next step is to hive off as much money as the fraudsters believe they can steal, likely parking this amount in a tax haven nation where the fraudsters purchase required influence.

Sums declared as inflows can then be steered to connected insiders using false invoices, if records are actually used.

All this is possible when there are no competent accountants involved and when trustees are not independent, but instead, either political allies, co-conspirators, or both.

DC: Is there a connection between the Hillary emails and the Foundation’s dealings?

CO: Certainly.

Starting with Hillary’s first campaign to represent New York in the US Senate, Clinton allies were likely solicited for multiple purposes.

As the internet evolved and as speeds increased, communications involving the Foundation certainly occurred.

By November 2008, when Hillary and the Obama Transition Team negotiated their Memorandum of Understanding — itself a misleading and purposefully non-binding subterfuge — email traffic certainly dealt with incoming and outgoing Foundation financial flows and with the dire financial shape of the Foundation that is so evident looking here in Annual Reports for 2007 and 2008 that are intentionally garbled on the Clinton Foundation website.

It is worth noting that major donors to Clinton Foundation entities likely have retained extensive files that the FBI and other government authorities might obtain to flesh out the known record if all missing emails have, in fact, somehow disappeared.

DC: What is the probability that the Foundation and associated organizations will be dissolved?

CO: I believe that the correct course of action is to revoke authorities for all Clinton Foundation entities to operate from their inception — that said, I doubt the federal government will open with this position.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that multiple US states and foreign nations will ultimately force the hand of federal authorities.

DC: Is it even possible for Haitians to recover these funds? What can Haitian activists and politicians do to synergize their efforts with yours?

CO: I think it should be possible to galvanize world support for an investigation into this horrible abuse of power in Haiti by Bill Clinton and others. Getting money back, net of lawyers’ fees, may prove difficult. On the other hand, mobilizing a real rescue effort, with effective oversight may, in the end, be possible.

Those who care about stamping out charity fraud and about helping Haiti as well as other desperately poor nations should join the call to bring the Clinton family and their associates to justice, using peaceful means, by applying the full force of state, federal, and foreign laws to investigate and then punish malefactors.

DC: Is there anything more you wish to say?

CO: Thank you Dady for your tireless work in service of Haiti and of charity — and thank you for contacting me!

DC: Thank you Charles.

Sources: Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free. Photographs one and fourteen from US Department of State; photograph two by Thierry Ehrmann; three from RIBI Image Library; four, nine and thirteen by Gilbert Mercier; five from US Embassy Canada archive; six from Democracy Chronicles archive; composite seven by Donkey Hotey; photograph eight from United States Mission Genevaarchive; from Fortune Live Media archive; eleven by Colin Crowley; twelve by Marianna S; fifteen and seventeen by Gage Skidmore; and eighteen by Eric Austin.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:13)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

As of 12 May, 2016, Dilma Rousseff, 36th President of Brazil has had her powers and duties suspended.

Michel Temer, her vice-President, has taken over those responsibilities while a 180 day impeachment process plays out in the Brazilian Senate.

Once registering personal approval ratings of over 70%, Rousseff popularity started to decline in early 2015 in the midst of accusations of involvement in a corruption scandal known as Operation Car Wash (Operação Lava Jato in Portuguese). This scandal involved the State-owned oil company Petrobras and a collection of construction companies which were using bribes to secure contracts at inflated rates. Elected officials were allegedly receiving kickbacks as part of this operation. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Brazil to make their displeasure known.

The impeachment, however, was instigated not by Car Wash, but by a finding that her use of loans from the public treasury to make the country’s budget surplus seem larger than it was constituted a “crime of responsibility.”

Rousseff, once considered the third most powerful woman on the planet, Ms. Rousseff now must wait out a process which could see her removed from office for good. Meanwhile, her replacement, Acting President Temer has already sparked controversy by appointing all white and male members to the Cabinet, and beginning ushering in health and education cuts.

Ms Rousseff has accused right wing elements within the halls of power of orchestrating a coup against her. And she is not alone.

Pepe Escobar has been outspoken throughout this drama in his belief that not only was the impeachment of Rousseff a coup, but that the entire affair benefits not just comprador elites within Brazil, but Washington’s imperialist ambitions as well. Escobar is our featured guest in this hour.

Filling out the show, Intercontinental Cry’s John Ahniwanika Schertow returns to give us a breakdown of how indigenous rights and indigenous struggles are being affected in the midst of the Brazil’s political turmoil.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:13)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

Since Palestinian civil society announced the call in 2005 for an international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, similar to the one that helped end apartheid in South Africa, an array of pro-Israel organisations have been established in Brussels to influence European policy on Israel-Palestine. Most of the discussion of the ‘Israel lobby’ centres on its activities in Washington. But are there similar groups active in Brussels? For more than two years we have been researching that question. It turns out that there is indeed a burgeoning Israel lobby in Brussels.

As with corporate lobbyists, the organisations that make up the pro-Israel lobby in Brussels are not very transparent – the EU’s scant disclosure requirements for lobby groups involve a voluntary transparency register and do not require them to publish their list of donors. However, the European Parliament did pass a law in 2014 calling upon the European Commission to make the register mandatory by 2017. Thus far, there are several pro-Israel groups that have still not registered.

Nevertheless, our research, based on an extensive analysis of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax documents, available online, did uncover that many of these organisations are heavily dependent on American donors, mostly right-wing conservatives; top Republican donors who also support Islamophobic causes and – significantly – groups expanding Israel’s settlement project. This second finding is especially relevant considering the immense influence of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Perhaps most strikingly, however, while the pro-Israel lobby in Washington is largely a bipartisan effort, the one operating in Brussels is overwhelmingly Republican.

Before the 2005 BDS call, there were only a small number of pro-Israel groups focused on lobbying EU institutions. These included the European Coalition for Israel, a Christian Zionist group that is opposed to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and the AJC Transatlantic Institute, the Brussels branch of the American Jewish Committee. The more influential of these two organisations is the latter.

According to its financial records, the American Jewish Committee allocated almost $5 million to its Brussels offshoot between 2005 and 2013. The largest known donor of the AJC, by far, is the Klarman Family Foundation, run by American billionaire Seth Klarman. Forbes currently estimates the businessman-turned-philanthropist’s worth to be about $1.35 billion. For its part, Forward describes Klarman as a ‘wealthy American Jewish investor…following in the footsteps of Sheldon Adelson and Ron Lauder [president of the World Jewish Congress and an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] in acting on his belief that coverage of Israel within Israel itself is unbalanced and unjustifiably hostile — and that he can do something about it.’ Forward also reports that Klarman is a Republican donor; indeed, he is ranked as the 30th top Republican spender in this year’s presidential election.

Martin Shultz, president of the European Parliament, meets with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu during his 2014 visit to Israel. (source: Guardian.co.uk)

Between 2010 and 2012, the Klarman Family Foundation donated $125,000 to the Friends of Ir David, and in 2010 it gave $150,000 to the Central Fund of Israel, both pro-settler groups. Nevertheless, Klarman told Forward that he opposes Israeli settlements. ‘We think it was a bad policy from the beginning and continues to be a bad policy,’ he said. Klarman’s foundation also funds the Pennsylvania-based Middle East Forum, which controversially funded anti-Muslim Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ legal defence, in 2010 and 2011, against charges of inciting racial hatred in the Netherlands. The Center for American Progress has argued that both the forum and its founder, Daniel Pipes, are part of a network of ‘misinformation experts’ that ‘peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam’.

Today, there are at least seven more influential pro-Israel organisations in Brussels, several of which are sustained – similar to the AJC Transatlantic Institute – by American donors who support right-wing and Islamophobic causes, as well as Israel’s illegal settlement project. These include the European Foundation for Democracy (EFD), an offshoot of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington. Clifford May, former communications director at the Republican National Committee, is the FDD president, and R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is currently its chairperson. Eli Clifton, of the Salon news website, has called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies ‘Washington’s premiere hawkish think tank,’ reporting that it is heavily funded by Republican donors, including Paul E. Singer and Sheldon Adelson. Our research shows that in 2009, it provided a direct grant of $478,829 to EFD, in addition to a payment to the Brussels-based foundation’s director, Roberta Bonazzi, for ‘networking and research’ activities.

Although the EFD itself does not publish its list of donors, its US-based tax-exempt charity, Friends of the EFD, is required by law to report to the IRS. We found that Singer is also a main contributor, his charities giving a total of $1 million between 2009 and 2013. Singer is currently the third largest political donor in the United States, giving more than $10 million to the Republicans through various super PACs. Another major donor to Friends of the EFD is American billionaire and philanthropist Bernard Marcus, incidentally the 29th largest political donor in this election cycle, also to the Republicans.

Klarman, Singer and Marcus all fund the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), co-founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, and Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-born American political scientist, to provide free English language translations of Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Turkish media reports. The Center for American Progress has called MEMRI ‘the Islamophobia network’s go-to place for selective translations of Islamist rhetoric abroad’. One of its advisors is Steve Emerson, a media ‘terrorism expert’ who in January 2015 falsely told Fox News that Birmingham is a ‘Muslim-only city’ where non-Muslims ‘don’t go’. The subsequent public outcry forcedhim to apologise.

Other US-funded organisations in the pro-Israel lobby in Brussels include the Israel Allies Foundation, a Christian Zionist initiative led by Israeli settler activist Binyamin Elon; leader of the now defunct right-wing Moledet party. Elon lives in Beit El, a settlement in the occupied West Bank. According to Salon, he has a ‘reputation as one of the least tractable and most radically right of Israel’s political leaders’. California-based bingo multimillionaire Irving Moskowitz and his family’s foundations are top donors to the Israel Allies Foundation’s American fundraising arm. Moskowitz has been buying property in occupied east Jerusalem for decades and recently acquired Palestinian farmland in the occupied West Bank for a new settlement, a move condemned by American officials. His foundations have alsodonated millions to Republican causes.

Another member of the pro-Israel Brussels lobby is the European Leadership Network, founded in 2007 by Larry J. Hochberg and Israeli Raanan Eliaz. Hochberg is an American businessman and philanthropist, a former chairperson of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and a national officer for AIPAC, who continues to finance and serve as a board member of StandWithUs. His eponymous Hochberg Family Foundation also funds the American Jewish Committee, Middle East Forum and European Foundation for Democracy, amongst other key Islamophobic causes. It has also given to the pro-settler One Israel Fund.

While Hochberg’s political donations are more bipartisan than those made by the other major donors detailed above, his support for Islamophobia and the settlements is difficult to ignore. The latter especially so at a time when public opinion across Europe is firmly against Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and a number of European governments have officially voiced their intention to recognise an independent Palestinian state.

Our research on the Israel lobby in Brussels suggests the need for much greater transparency in political lobbying at the European Union. We argue that EU institutions must require all lobby groups to disclose where they get their money from, as well as how much they spend; as well as close current loopholes allowing lobby groups to avoid registering their interests and affiliations.

This article is based on a new Public Interest Investigations/Spinwatch report The Israel Lobby and the European Union, published by EuroPal Forum. Download here.

The “Morning Edition” program of the U.S. National Public Radio network — which is America’s most-trusted American source of news as measured by “the ratio of people who trust a news outlet to those who distrust it” included on May 20th a segment,  “Russia’s Involvement In Syria Worsens Migration Crisis, Zannier Says”, in which the interviewer, Renee Montagne, opened her interview of Lamberto Zannier, the Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), by saying:

“There is actually a theory out there to do with the migration crisis in Europe, that Russia may have purposely been bombing Syria with an air campaign in order to send more Syrian migrants into Europe, to destabilize Europe. Now, I’m wondering whether you think that’s far-fetched, but, at the same time, it sort of fits the picture of a Cold War?”

He answered:

“Yeah, certainly Russia dealing in Syria had a number of goals, … but then of course, the impact of the bombings on civilian infrastructure, hospitals etcetera, has created an additional wave of refugees. … It is very difficult to tell whether this was intended or not, but certainly it would fit the picture in a way.”

The wikipedia article “Refugees of the Syrian Civil War” said, right after the Russian bombing had started on 30 September 2015, that as of 15 October 2015 there were shown to be “4,052,011 registered by UNHCR (29 August 2015)[1].” As of today, 20 May 2016, that same site says “4,812,993 refugees (registered, March 2016)[1].” The idea that this 19% increase was one of the reasons or goals which had motivated Russia to start its bombing-campaign in Syria is ludicrous. That’s during around a six-month-long period. But at about six months prior to August of 2015, on 25 March 2015, there were shown to be “3,922,860 registered by UNHCR (18 March 2015)[1].” Not many new refugees were generated during the six-month period prior to Russia’s entry (and that wasn’t a Russian invasion, because the government of Syria had requested this assistance from Russia). But then, many refugees were generated during the first six months after Russia’s entry. This could have reflected Russia’s having enabled many Syrians to escape from ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc., but it also could have reflected damages caused by Russia’s bombing, but even if it had been the latter, this wouldn’t likely have been part of Russia’s motivation for its bombing, such as NPR and OSCE were insinuating. However, on 11 March 2014, a year prior to that 25 March 2015 wiki article, there had been shown to be “2,429,146 registered by UNHCR(February 2014).” That’s around 1.5 million new refugees during about a year’s period. None of that was during Russia’s bombing campaign.

America’s bombing campaign in both Syria and Iraq, called “Operation Inherent Resolve,” celebrated its first anniversary on 27 August 2015, and so, based on the above figures, the question arises as to whether America’s invasion of Syria (it wasn’t friendly; it was hostile toward the Syrian government, not requested by Syria; unlike Russia’s bombing, it was an invasion) might have contributed as much or more to the refugee-numbers than did Russia’s assistance to the Syrian government.

That NATO statement was unusually honest, however, in noting that, “The Defense Intelligence Agency, said that documents conclude that the yearlong campaign has done little to diminish the ranks of IS committed fighters, which has now expanded its reach to North Africa and Central Asia in the past year.” DIA had said this to The New York Times. The statement seemed to be a clear indication that if the American campaign had been about reducing the numbers of ISIS fighters, then it had drastically failed. But maybe that wasn’t necessarily its purpose in Syria, because all of the jihadist groups there were fighting to overthrow Assad, and because that was always the Obama Administration’s stated main goal, in addition to its rhetoric against “terrorists.”

And yet both the U.S. NPR, and the OSCE, are accusing Russia of having intentionally flooded Europe with Syrian refugees, and neither of those is alleging that the U.S. had contributed to that problem, and essentially created the bulk of it, by its invasion of Syria and by its insistence upon overthrowing Assad. Could the reason for the quiescence on that be that both are mouthpieces for the U.S. White House, and for its NATO alliance?

In any case, what NPR and OSCE said there was deception instead of information. This is one of the reasons they didn’t state explicitly “Russia is to blame for Europe’s refugee crisis.” It would have been too easy to nail them on that type of lie; it’s too blatant for professional liars, and therefore innuendo is used by them instead.

Relevant further context here is that “NATO and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) work together to build security and promote stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. They cooperate at both the political and the operational level”, whereas “In Istanbul on 19 November 1999, the OSCE ended a two-day summit by calling for a political settlement in Chechnya and adopting a Charter for European Security. According to then Minister of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov, this summit marked a turning point in Russian perception of the OSCE, from an organization that expressed Europe’s collective will, to an organization that serves as a Western tool.”  For some reason, the U.S. is not charging that the OSCE is a “Russian tool.” Perhaps OSCE officials such as Lamberto Zannier are among the reasons why. After all, NATO is coming out more and more explicitly in favor of war against Russia. Lots of propaganda will need to be part of the buildup toward that. These people (Renee Montagne and Lamberto Zannier) are doing what they are paid to do.

It’s all in service to a broader objective.

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.

On May 21st the ‘March against Monsanto’ takes place around the world including Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico and several countries in Europe and Africa are joining the fight against the GMO giant. There is positive news on the battle against Western corporations that produce and sell Genetically Modified Organisms or “GMO” foods.

Recent trends suggest that the world is becoming more health conscious when it comes to their food supply. For example, for Coca-Cola “sales fell for the fourth straight quarter as demand for its fizzy drinks declined in Europe” and that “Coke and rival PepsiCo PEP -0.80% Inc have been hurt as consumers increasingly turn health-conscious, cutting back on fizzy drinks and turning to teas, fruit juices and smoothies” according to Reuters last month. The Associated Press (AP) reported in 2015 that McDonalds, an American name brand company that sells pure junk food experienced a 2.6% drop in sales worldwide:

The world’s biggest hamburger chain said Wednesday global sales declined 2.3% at established locations during the first three months of the year. That included a 2.6% drop in the US, where it is facing changing tastes and tougher competition. Already this year, McDonald’s has announced a number of changes in the US including a simplified grilled chicken recipe, curbing the use of antibiotics in chicken, and a pay bump and vacation time for workers at company-owned stores amid ongoing protests over its treatment of workers

Another bright spot in the battle against GMO foods is that fast food consumption by children at least in the U.S. is also in decline. Reuters reported in 2015 that children are eating “less” fast food:

Between 2003 and 2010, the number of U.S. kids eating fast food on any given day went down, and the calories from some types of fast foods have declined as well, according to a new study.

“Most prior studies have focused on menu items, but this (one) actually looked at what children are eating,” said coauthor Colin D. Rehm, formerly of the University of Washington in Seattle and now of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “The take-home message is that changes can be made, whether they are due to consumer preference or due to what the restaurants have done themselves,” Rehm told Reuters Health by phone. “It shows that change is possible”

Attitudes towards fast food chains and unhealthy products such as Coca-Cola and McDonalds have changed significantly. That is a positive change for human consumption but a negative for the McDonald’s Corporation, Coca-Cola, Monsanto and other GMO corporations. Can the trend continue?

Alexia Foods, a ConAgra food brand announced that they too will become Non-GMO project verified and “that all of the brand’s offerings will be non-GMO by the end of 2016” according to their Press Release. Several other food companies are also moving towards Non-GMO products according to www.non-gmoreport.com:

Del Monte Foods, Nestlé, and Dannon recently became the latest major food companies to replace genetically modified ingredients with non-GMO alternatives. Del Monte, one of the nation’s largest producers of branded food products, announced plans for an increase in non-GMO product offerings and conversion to non-BPA packaging. Nestlé Dreyer’s Ice Cream, the largest ice cream maker in the world, announced that it would remove GMO ingredients, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial colors and flavors in its ice cream products, including Dreyer’s, Häagen-Dazs®, Outshine®, Skinny Cow®, Nestlé® Ice Cream and Nestlé® Drumstick®. Dannon, the U.S.’s leading yogurt maker, pledged to using more non-GMO ingredients in its products, transitioning to non-GMO feed for its dairy cows, and labeling products containing GMO ingredients

How far these food companies will go, still remains to be seen. But the discussion on the importance of producing healthy, Non-GMO food by these companies is an important first step.

Russia Aims to Become Largest Non-GMO Exporter

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his intent on Russia becoming the largest exporter of Non-GMO food in the world to the members of the parliament in his December 2015 ‘Russian state of the nation’ speech:

Our agriculture sector is a positive example. Just a decade ago we imported almost half of our food products and critically depended on imports, whereas now Russia has joined the exporters’ club. Last year Russia’s agricultural exports totaled almost $20 billion. This is a quarter more than our proceeds from arms sales or about one third of our profits from gas exports. Our agriculture has made this leap in a short but productive period. Many thanks to our rural residents.

I believe we should set a national goal — fully provide the internal market with domestically produced foods by 2020. We are capable of feeding ourselves from our own land, and importantly, we have the water resources. Russia can become one of the world’s largest suppliers of healthy, ecologically clean quality foods that some Western companies have stopped producing long ago, all the more so since global demand for such products continues to grow

Putin mentioned that the “millions of hectares of arable land” should be used by farmers who are interested in cultivating the land. In other words, make farming an attractive profession that produces healthy food for the Russian population and the world:

It is necessary to put to use millions of hectares of arable land that is now idle. They belong to large land owners, many of whom show little interest in farming. How many years have we been talking about this? Yet things are not moving forward. I suggest withdrawing misused agricultural land from questionable owners and selling it at an auction to those who can and want to cultivate the land

Russia’s move towards the cultivating Non-GMO food is a clear victory against biotech giants such as Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Chemical Company, BASF, Bayer and Syngenta also known as the “Big 6”.

Kenya vs. Monsanto, Hillary Clinton, USAID, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Kenya banned the imports and the planting of GMOs on November 21st, 2012. The Kenyan Ministry of Public Health ordered public health officials to enforce the ban on the importation of GMO products and remove all GMO laced products from store shelves.

However, according to an RT News article earlier this year titled ‘Monsanto, US, & Gates Foundation pressure Kenya to reverse GMO ban‘ highlights Washington’s interest regarding Monsanto’s technology to import and to produce GMO crops in Kenya:

Monsanto’s modified cotton seeds produce insecticides to poison butterflies and moths. Dr Charles Waturu, director of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), claims the Monsanto technology is the only solution, even though a recent Spanish study found Monsanto’s seed MON810 does not increase yields or reduce damage compared to natural maize.

Hillary Clinton, as US Secretary of State, visited KARI’s facilities in 2009. At the time, the activist watchdog group GM Watch highlighted the failure of the US$6 million USAID-Monsanto-KARI GMO sweet potato project

The 2009 article by www.gmwatch.org titled ‘Hillary and Vilsack to Promote GMOs in Africa’ by Jill Richardson mentioned Ben Burkett, president of the National Family Farm Coalition who explains what happened in the 1990’s regarding Monsanto and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Kenya:

In the 1990s, USAID, together with Monsanto, helped spearhead a 14-year, $6 million project through the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) to develop a genetically modified, virus-resistant sweet potato. The project has proven to be a failure. Local varieties outperformed GM varieties in field trials. Researchers in Uganda developed a virus-resistant hybrid through conventional breeding techniques at a tiny fraction of the cost. KARI continues to collaborate with the Monsanto Corporation and USAID researching biotechnological projects, advocating a model of agricultural development that relies upon a top-down approach and unproven, expensive investments.

Ben Burkett, president of the National Family Farm Coalition, a member of the international farmers movement La Via Campesina, cautioned, “As an African American farmer who has visited farmers in Africa many times, I am deeply concerned that much of the Obama Administration’s pledge to spend $1 billion on agriculture research will be wasted on biotech research that benefits Monsanto more than it does small-scale farmers. While I applaud the renewed focus on helping Africa feed itself, our taxpayer money is doomed to be wasted if it continues to fund business as usual. Secretary Clinton and Secretary Vilsack need to learn from previous disastrous biotechnology experiments such as the Kenyan GM sweet potato project. Many Kenyan farmers resent the U.S., Monsanto and the Gates Foundation for continuing to shove unwanted biotechnology down their throats”

According to the RT News report, the push to reintroduce GMO seeds in Kenya is backed by The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) which works with the Kenyan-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF). The AATF has several key partners who work or help finance the GMO project in Kenya including the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), USAID, and the Rockefeller Foundation:

GM seeds can negatively affect soil and often flood markets, making it difficult for small farmers to keep up. Hybrid seeds are more difficult to germinate leading to increased costs for farmers. The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) is “a public/private partnership, led by the Kenyan-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and USAID”.

AATF, “a partnership between USAID, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto, Dupont/Pioneer, Dow Agrosciences, Syngenta, and Aventis” and funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), has lobbied for the use of GMO in Kenya. In 2008, AATF received US$47 million from the Gates Foundation, which has been criticized by global activists for pushing a “big agribusiness” approach to African farming

Russia, Kenya, most EU member states and others around the world have banned or are in the process of banning GMOs are leading the Non-GMO Revolution. With Russia’s announcement that they plan to lead the world in exporting Non-GMO food is an important step. Hopefully more countries around the globe can follow in the same footsteps. The March against Monsanto is one other way to show the “Big 6” the fight will continue.

Here is a video by the Organic Consumers Association:

Without a change in current trends, ‘the state of the world’s environment will continue to decline’

With no region of the Earth untouched by the ravages of environmental destruction, the state of the world’s natural resources is in a rapid downward spiral, a comprehensive assessment by the United Nations has found.

Published Thursday, Global Environmental Outlook from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) involved the expertise of more than 1,200 scientists and over 160 governments, and exposes through reports on each of the world’s six regions that the rate of environmental deterioration is occurring faster than previously thought—and can only be halted with swift action.

“It is essential that we understand the pace of environmental change that is upon us,” stated UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

A little girl searches for recyclable materials in a garbage dump with smelling gas evaporating around her in Mandalay city, Mandalay province, Myanmar. (Photo: Nyaung U/United Nations Development Programme)

One threat many of the world’s inhabitants are facing is that of water scarcity.  For North America (pdf), for example, it “is of increasing concern,” though it’s just one of many “worsening pressures.”

The report points to the recent five-year drought around Texas—a problem exacerbated by climate change. It also notes how the impacts of climate change were vividly felt when Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012.

“The 30 centimeters of sea level rise off New York City since 1900 likely expanded Hurricane Sandy’s flood area by approximately 65 square kilometers, flooding the homes of more than 80 000 additional people in New York and New Jersey alone,” UNEP states, adding: “Climate change is generating impacts across the region, and aggressive hydrocarbon extraction methods bring the possibility of increased emissions, water use and induced seismicity. The coastal and marine environment is under increasing threat from nutrient loads, ocean acidification, ocean warming, sea level rise, and new forms of marine debris.”

And even with successful efforts to rein in carbon emissions, the outlook for the region isn’t bright, the report notes:

A wide range of potentially catastrophic impacts are built in to the near and medium term climate, so that climate change impacts are highly likely to increase regardless of how fast the region reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and how fast it supports global emissions reductions. The consequences for human lives and livelihoods will depend on measures to adapt to climate change and increase resilience that, while showing signs of promise, are not yet sufficient to meet the threats. The region has been surprised by the emergence of major failures in traditional environmental issues, such as drinking water safety, suggesting that past successes are in jeopardy.

Or take the Latin American and Caribbean region (pdf), where greenhouse gas emissions are growing, a problem fueled in part by agriculture. UNEP notes:

• Agriculture has had a strong impact on the emission of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide emissions – from soils, leaching and runoff, direct emissions, and animal manure – increased by about 29 per cent between 2000 and 2010. The abundance of beef and dairy cattle in the region has also increased methane emissions, which grew by 19 per cent between 2000 and 2010.
• Andean glaciers, which provide vital water resources for millions of people, are shrinking and an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are affecting economies.

In Asia and the Pacific, meanwhile,

Increasing unsustainable consumption patterns have led to worsening air pollution, water scarcity and waste generation, threatening human and environmental health. Increased demand for fossil fuels and natural resources – extensive agriculture, palm oil and rubber plantations, aquaculture and the illegal trade in wildlife – are causing environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.

Spreading desertification is a key threat for West Asia, while Africa’s land degradation, due, in part, to deforestation, are among the environmental challenges for those regions.

And, of course, there’s the Arctic region—”a barometer for change in the rest of the world” —with dropping levels of summer sea ice extent and glacier ice loss.

Among the recommendations UNEP calls for are scaling back fossil fuel dependency and increasing sustainable infrastructure investments.

While the UN body said there was still time to address many of the threats, urgent action, it stressed, was key.

“If current trends continue and the world fails to enact solutions that improve current patterns of production and consumption, if we fail to use natural resources sustainably, then the state of the world’s environment will continue to decline,” Steiner said, emphasizing the urgency “to work with nature instead of against it to tackle the array of environmental threats that face us.”

Michael Fallon is British Defence Secretary. He is adept at making the types of statements that epitomise the pro-neoliberal, militaristic rhetoric that people in the UK have become tired of. 

Following Jeremy Corbyn being elected as leader of the Labour Party in Britain, he stated:

Labour are now a serious risk to our nation’s security, our economy’s security and your family’s security. Whether it’s weakening our defences, raising taxes on jobs and earnings, racking up more debt and welfare or driving up the cost of living by printing money – Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party will hurt working people.

Continuing with this theme, speaking on Britain’s Radio 5 Fallon last year argued for the need “to spend less on some things like the welfare system and to spend more on things that really matter to keep our country safe.”

With a £12 billion saving on cuts to the welfare budget, this statement by Fallon was attempting to justify a £12 billion increase to the military budget to help pay for eight BAE warships, nine Boeing maritime patrol crafts, surveillance drones and Lockheed Martin jets.

That’s £12 billion of taxpayer money diverted from helping fellow Brits most in need into the pockets of rich armaments manufacturers.

Fear mongering and swindling are convenient bedfellows in the neoliberal dystopia.

Keeping “our country safe” is part of Fallon’s wider rhetoric about containing ‘Russian aggression’.

Following the US-instigated coup in Ukraine and with no hint of irony intended, Fallon says Putin could repeat the tactics used to destabilise Ukraine and the Baltic states and that NATO must be ready for Russian aggression in “whatever form it takes.” He added that that Russia is a “real and present danger.”

One aim of the coup in Ukraine was to oust Russia from its Black Sea Fleet base at Sevastopol in Crimea. And now NATO is increasing pressure on Russia over its Chernyakhovsk naval airbase in Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian enclave on the Baltic coast sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

Aside from an agreement to use the Cam Ranh air base in Vietnam, Russia’s only military base outside former Soviet Union territory is the naval base at Tartus in Syria. There too, Western backed attempts at ‘regime change’ include dislodging Russian interests. It seems that the US will not tolerate any Russian military bases abroad yet it can have 800 military bases/installments of its own scattered around the world, including the encirclement of Iran,Russia and China.

In recent days, Fallon has been in the news again after three Russian aircraft were seen approaching Baltic airspace. The British RAF responded by sending its Typhoon fighter jets to intercept them. The jets were launched from Amari air base in Estonia. The RAF made the decision to scramble the jets after the Russian crafts apparently did not transmit a recognised identification code.

Fallon called the incident an “act of Russian aggression” and said:

This is another example of just how important the UK’s contribution to the Baltic Air Policing Mission is. We were able to instantly respond to this act of Russian aggression – demonstration of our commitment to NATO’s collective defence.

The NATO Baltic Air Policing Mission is a NATO initiative in which members cooperate to help Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania “guard their air space.”

Fallon continued:

This deployment underlines our commitment to the sovereignty of the democratic nations of Eastern Europe. 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next four months, our RAF Typhoons will be ready to respond instantly to Russian aggression in Baltic airspace.

When discussing whether or not Britain should leave the EU, he continued with his rhetoric to depict Russia as a dangerous enemy standing beneath the standards of decency by stating that leaving the EU would “only bring comfort to our adversaries, whether they are in Raqqa or in Moscow.”

By attempting to link Russia with ISIS in the minds of the public, he conveniently chooses to ignore that in Syria it was Russia which helped drive back ISIS in a matter of months, while the US and its allies have been facilitating it and other terror groups for years in their attempt to topple a sovereign government in Syria that has led an estimated400,000 deaths. And let us not forget the death tolls in Libya and Iraq as a direct result of illegal wars or conflicts that were fuelled and assisted by NATO countries and its allies.

Since when did Russia become an ‘adversary’, we might ask. The answer is when Washington decided to break prior agreements with Moscow and then encircle it with troops and missiles, as described here by Eric Zeusse.

Putin has stated that Russia will react appropriately and proportionately to the approach of NATO’s military infrastructure towards its borders.

But in the warped world of Fallon, not rolling over and accepting Washington’s duplicity and NATO intimidation and aggression makes you an adversary. Zuesse writes:

“The expectation and demand is clearly that Russia must allow itself to be surrounded by NATO, and to do this without complaint, and therefore also without taking military countermeasures, which NATO would call yet more “aggression by Russia.” Any defensive moves by Russia can thus be taken by the West to be unacceptable provocation and justification for a “pre-emptive” attack against Russia by NATO.”

It seems wild claims and fear mongering comes natural to Fallon. He is currently facing legal action after saying, during London mayoral race, that a Muslim cleric supported ISIS. Fallon has apologised to the cleric, Suliman Gani. Gani is suing Fallon.

If Fallon wants to offer soundbites about ‘Russian aggression’, he would do well to contemplate what the situation would be if Russian aircraft, troops and missile systems were stationed close to US borders; if Russia had destabilised Canada and placed a neo-fascist regime in power there; if Russia had slapped sanctions on the US, attacked its currency and had rigged global oil prices to undermine the US economy; if Russia had destroyed Libya with its jets or had trained, bussed in and armed death squads in Syria to invade what is a sovereign state.

According to the twisted logic of Michael Fallon, this would constitute ‘American aggression’. Yet this is the situation in reverse concerning what the US-led West has done.

Fallon and his associates and backers are recklessly plunging the world to the precipice of nuclear confrontation by breaking agreements with Russia, lying to the public and keeping the public in the dark.

To put this Russian aggression into perspective, the US spends more on its military than the next eight countries combined. Also, compare this rather short list of Russian bases abroad with the US military’s colonisation of much of the world.

But regardless of actual facts, the psych-ops about ‘Russian aggression’ being directed at the public is unrelenting and is encapsulated by retired General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander. He says:

I have this awful vision of the Baltic States being seized, NATO unable to respond, Putin then blackmails using nuclear weapons what is called chillingly ‘nuclear de-escalation’ and NATO is unable to do anything about it… The alliance collapses and at a stroke, Putin has destroyed … the organisation perhaps he most fears the most, NATO. America is decoupled from Europe and the world is changed irrevocably.

Referring to events in Crimea, Shirreff said of Putin:

What we’ve seen is an adventurer, an opportunist who’s able to make decisions very quickly to seize opportunities as they’re presented.

Putin could hardly be called an “adventurer” when the US acted to destabilise Russia’s immediate neighbour. Consider the US and its ongoing actions to protect its own ‘national interest’: its unrelenting atrocities across the globe, as outlined by William Blum here and here.

Then there is former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Admiral James Stavridis who deems Russian aggression a greater threat than terrorism. He argues that NATO needs to step up its defence systems if it is to provide enough of a deterrent to Putin who is depicted as an adventurous leader capable of disregarding international law and seizing situations to his advantage.

This from someone who represents the US, a country that has flagrantly abused international law to carry out illegal wars, torture, drone assassinations and mass murder as and when it deems necessary. The hypocrisy and deceit are palpable.

General Breedlove, Chief of Staff of the American European Command, continues the theme with his twisted world view and dangerous, inflammatory propaganda about Russia and Putin, as discussedhere.

Aside from the as yet unofficially declared war against Russia, the US is now increasing pressure on China, another nuclear armed state. If the US does not pull back and accept the reality of a multi-polar world (which it currently does not – and its entire foreign policy is geared to securing global dominance), there will be but one outcome: war with Russia and China that would very likely escalate to involve nuclear weapons.

Here are some thoughts for Michael Fallon to consider.

When your government’s policies have already jeopardized national security by inflicting terror on other countries; when the policies you support have already helped sell the economy to the lowest bidder and have attacked welfare, unions and livelihoods; when the policies you support have allowed massive levels of tax evasion/avoidance; when you and your neoliberal policies have allowed national and personal debt to spiral; when you have driven up the cost of living by handing over public assets to profiteering cartels; when you have flittered away taxpayers money to banks; when you allowed the richest 1,000 people in the UK to increase their wealth by 50% in 2009 alone while you impose ‘austerity’ on everyone else – then what else can you offer but to roll out a good old dose of fear mongering about Corbyn and Russia simply because you have no actual positive argument or policies to offer the public?

People like Fallon talk about protecting Britain and boosting national security by standing shoulder to shoulder with Washington’s bogus ‘war on terror’ and the destruction of sovereign states like Iraq, Syria and Libya. They do of course sell this to the public in terms of humanitarianism, rooting out terror or securing the safety of the nation.

Fallon’s propaganda and sound bites about ‘democracy’ and respect for ‘sovereignty’ only work as long as folk remain ignorant and apathetic; and only as long as people fail to challenge and hold such politicians to account.

Fallon, David Cameron and assorted pro-Washington establishment mouthpieces will continue to try to fool the public about ‘Russian aggression’ because they have signed up to Washington’s plan to undermine and destroy Russia. Britain stands solidly behind US foreign policy aimed at undermining and attacking Russia.

The pro-Washington brigade of senior politicians in Britain are following the US into a dead end as its economy continues to flatline. There is only jobless growth, if there is any growth at all. Stock market bubbles – like real estate bubbles, like creating money out of thin air, like rentier capitalism that produces nothing but only extracts royalties or interest, like treasury bond imperialism that has allowed the US to live beyond its means at the expense of other nations – is ultimately a dead end for US ‘capitalism’. It is unproductive and parasitic.

Militarism is but one arm of a neoliberal agenda that seeks to bend all working people and regions to the will of Western capital. Politicians such as Fallon are merely bidding on behalf of the rich interests they ultimately represent: whether these interests are readily identifiable individuals like Soros andMurdoch or are in more general terms ‘corporate America’ in Africa, for example, or are those that seek to benefit on the back of war and violence in places such as Ukraine and Iraq.

Ultimately, political managers of a system designed to maintain and increase the power and wealth of their backers are conditioned to act in a way that deceives the public; not only that, they must act in a manner that mirrors the scant regard for human life exhibited by the elite they serve.

Notwithstanding all of the other bombings, wars and conflicts over the decades, there are well over amillion dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya as a result of direct military intervention or covert actions by the Western powers and their allies (the death count for Iraq alone between 1990 and 2012 could be 3.3 million as a result of Western economic sanctions and illegal wars). All for geopolitical gain, power and wealth buried beneath the deceit of humanitarianism or a war on terror. And, for those who enrich themselves on the back of violence, all “worth it” no doubt.

It is ordinary working people who ultimately pay the price of a corrupt neoliberalism underpinned by rampant militarism, whether refugees fleeing from conflict, civilian deaths in war zones or those subject to the types of structural violence that ‘austerity’ or other forms of economic plunder bring courtesy of the IMF, World Bank, WTO or trade agreements like NAFTA, TPA and TTIP.

But the ultimate price for everyone – both rich and poor – will be a World War fought with nuclear weapons.

HEBRON (Ma’an) — Israeli authorities delivered four demolition notices on Wednesday ordering several Palestinians to remove water tanks being used for irrigation in the northern and eastern areas of the town of Beit Ummar in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, locals said.

The water tanks are used to irrigate lands in the areas of Beir Zaata, al-Furdeis and Thaghret al-Shabak, with an overall area of more than 30 dunams (7.4 acres) dependent on the tanks for irrigation, according to Muhammad Awad, a spokesperson for a local popular committee.

The tanks were set up earlier in 2016 under a UN-funded water development program, Awad said.

After Israeli authorities deliver a demolition order, the owners of the properties have seven days to remove the structures. If not, Israeli forces demolish the structures at the financial expense of the owners of the property.

Awad told Ma’an that the tanks belonged to Wahdi Hamdi Zamel Abu Maria, Jamil Muhammad Amer Abu Maria, Ghassan Muhammad Abed al-Aziz Brighith, and Khalid Youssef Abed al-Majd Brighith.

It remains unclear what legal pretext Israeli authorities used to issue the demolition orders.

Israel has come under international condemnation over repeated demolitions of EU-funded structures, with some accusing the Israeli government of demolishing Palestinian structures in retaliation for the EU’s decision in November to enforce labeling laws that would indicate if a product was produced in one of Israel’s 196 illegal settlements.

Since the start of 2016, Israeli forces have demolished 586 Palestinian-owned structures, leaving 800 Palestinians homeless in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to OCHA.

According to the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions, Israeli forces have demolished over 48,000 Palestinian homes and structures since the start of the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967.

In 1990, FAIR (Extra!, 3-4/90) noted that in all the coverage of Nelson Mandela’s release from 27 years of prison, virtually no one mentioned the role of the CIA in his capture. In August 1962, according to 1986 reports in the South African press, Mandela was traveling, disguised as a chauffeur, to a top-secret meeting with the US vice consul in Durban—Donald Rickard, a diplomat reputed to be a CIA officer. Rickard  tipped off the South African authorities to the meeting, allowing Mandela to be apprehended.

When Mandela died in 2013 (FAIR Media Advisory, 12/10/13), we asked, “Can the Story Be Told Now?” The answer was still no. When it was mentioned in big media, it was by the sort of folks you don’t often see: Amy Goodman mentioned it on Melissa Harris Perry’s MSNBC show (12/7/13), and Cornel West mentioned it to Jake Tapper at CNN (12/6/13).

When Nelson Mandela died, a New York Times video recalled what Mandela wore to his trial
–but not the US role in bringing him there. (image: New York Times)

Now we have news, from the Sunday Times of London (5/15/16), that shortly before his recent death, Donald Rickard himself admitted it, and proudly. It was righteous because Mandela was believed to be a Communist, Rickard told a British filmmaker. “Mandela had to be stopped. And I put a stop to it.”

So what about now? Can US media now acknowledge the US role in imprisoning for decades a man they would subsequently herald as a world leader of human rights? Could they maybe think about that in terms of present-day US involvement with rights movements around the–oh, forget it, the answer is no.

Former US spy Donald Rickard, quoted in the London Daily Mail (5/15/16)
calling Nelson Mandela “the world’s most dangerous communist outside of the Soviet Union.”

The New York Daily News (5/15/16) referred to Rickard’s “bombshell admission,” but for a bombshell it was pretty quiet. We did get a Washington Post article (5/16/16), not in the paper, just on the blog, that said that Rickard’s statement that he facilitated Mandela’s arrest had “reignited” “speculation” that he had facilitated Mandela’s arrest.

In Mandela’s New York Times obituary (12/6/13), former Times Johannesburg correspondent (and later Times executive editor) Bill Keller explained that he wasn’t convinced of allegations of CIA involvement in his arrest — evidently it wasn’t as compelling as the evidence for Iraq’s WMDs, which did convince him, but the paper ran a letter to the editor from an historian named Stephen Ellis. Ellis noted that Keller had written about Mandela’s membership in the South African Communist Party, which Ellis’s research had found, but that neither the Times nor the US government had acknowledged the CIA role in his capture, which his research also noted.

“It was a long time ago,” Ellis wrote, “but the truth still counts.”

Janine Jackson is FAIR’s program director and the producer and host of CounterSpin.

The recent talk between the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Secretary of State Kerry brought some progress. The U.S. was so far not willing to agree to a real ceasefire in Syria and persisted on a lower level “cessation of hostility” agreement. This now changed. The U.S., for the first time, agreed to proceed towards a full ceasefire between its proxy forces in Syria and the Syrian government and its allies. In the press availability after the Tuesday talks Kerry said:

[T]oday, we believe we moved the ball forward in some ways, and I’ll say specifically.First, we pledged our support for transforming the cessation of hostilities into a comprehensive ceasefire. And we committed to use our influence to use the parties to the cessation in order to ensure compliance.

Second, we agreed that if a party to the cessation of hostilities engages in a pattern of persistent noncompliance, the task force can refer that behavior to the ISSG ministers or those designated by the ministers to determine appropriate action, including the exclusion of such parties from the arrangements of the cessation. Interpreted directly, that means that if they continue to do it and they’re pretending to be part of the cessation and they’re not, they could be subject to no longer being part of the cessation immediately.

Those last sentences are mainly directed at Ahrar al Sham which never signed the cessation agreement but claimed to be part of it while continuing its attack on Syrian government forces and civilians. Kerry is conceding to the Russian standpoint that Ahrar, by its action, is a terrorist group that needs to be fought down.

Fourth, we call on all parties to the cessation of hostilities to disassociate themselves physically and politically from Daesh and al-Nusrah and to endorse the intensified efforts by the United States and Russia to develop shared understandings of the threat posed and the delineation of the territory that is controlled by Daesh and al-Nusrah and to consider ways to deal decisively with terrorist groups.

Kerry had agreed to this position on al-Qaeda ad the Islamic State in earlier talks but later retracted with weak excuses that “intermingling” between al-Qaeda and “moderate rebels” made fighting al-Qaeda nearly impossible. That “intermingling” is no longer an excuse. The U.S. now agreed that Russia and the Syrian government will fight al-Qaeda and that any other groups standing nearby and getting hit have only themselves to blame.

By the way, the New York Times account of the talks and the press conference by chief manipulator David Sanger are waaay off from what was really said.

The “cessation of violence” has held up quite well since the end of February. The south is mostly quite and there are only few hotspots elsewhere where fighting still flares up. Over 100 settlements and their local forces have, with Russian mediation, signed ceasefire agreements with the government.

There is also a new, deeper level of Russian and U.S. cooperation of Syria and on fighting al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. A common rough plan was agreed upon to attack and eliminate both group. As part of this plan Iraqi forces under U.S. control attacked and occupied Rutba in west Iraq. Rutba, part of Anbar province, controls much of the open land and desert in the triangle of the Iraqi, Jordan and Syrian border. This move cuts off the southern route that connected the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The Syrian/Russian part of this move will be the liberation of Deir Ezzor in south-east Syria in the upcoming months. An attack on the Islamic State held Raqqa will only follow later on after a large concentration of force is made possible.

There are a few other active flashpoints in Syria. In East Ghouta, east of Damascus city, the Saudi sponsored Salafists of Jaish al-Islam are fighting groups once supplied by the CIA and now associated with al-Qaeda/Jabhat al Nusra for control of the area. This fight is already part of the disassociation from Nusra that the U.S. agreed upon. But the fighting is bloody with at least 500 losses on both sides during the last weeks. The Syrian army is the laughing third party in this and today took a significant part of the south of the East-Ghouta pocket.

The rebel part of Aleppo city, controlled by al-Qaeda, is now cut off from its only supply line. Improvised rockets from the rebel side are daily hitting civilians in the densely populated government held side. To eliminate the now besieged al-Qaeda in east Aleppo city will be a very bloody and destructive fight that might take months.

In the north Turkish supported “moderate rebels” still try to move towards east along the Turkish-Syrian border to eliminate the Islamic State access there. But each time they announce to have taken this or that town away from IS, a counterattack follows and IS regains its positions. This infighting between hostile forces is again to the advantage of the Syrian government.

Around Palmyra the Islamic State has made some surprise attacks on the Shear oil field and the T-4 military airport on the western road to Palmyra. There was, according to unofficial sources, some significant damage to Syrian and Russia material on the air base but no news about the incident was published. The advances the Islamic State made in area have by now, with significant Russian help, all been reversed. Following a consolidation phase a renewed push from Palmyra eastward to Deir Ezzor is expected.

Hizbullah has pulled back all troops from the Aleppo area where they were replaced by Iranian forces. It is unwilling to commit additional forces just to move some ceasefire lines a few miles back or forth. It continues its engagement around Damascus and in the border region to Lebanon with IS and al-Qaeda being the main targets.

Russia, Iran, Hizbullah and the Syrian government are all aware that the U.S. is “flexible” with its interpretation of agreements and tends to cheat whenever it believes that it can do so to its own advantage. They are fully prepared to respond and escalate again should the U.S. proxy forces divert from the new agreements or should some significant other changes on the battlefield occur.