Turkish Journalist Faces Imprisonment for Posting Videos of MİT Trucks Hearings, regarding Alleged Smuggling of Weapons to Terrorists in Syria

May 18th, 2016 by Turkish Minute

A Mersin court has sentenced journalist Arzu Yıldız to 20 months’ imprisonment and deprived her of parental rights over posting videos on social media that show prosecutors — who currently face trial for ordering search of trucks belonging to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in January, 2014 — defend themselves in court.

The footages Yıldız posted on her YouTube account show prosecutors Süleyman Bağrıyanık, Özcan Şişman and Aziz Takçı defend themselves during hearings of the MİT trucks case held by Tarsus 2nd High Criminal Court in the southern province of Mersin.

The Tarsus 5th Criminal Court of First Instance sentenced Yıldız to a year and 8 months in prison, while imposing TL 12.600 suspended fine on news portal Grihat.com for featuring the videos released by Yıldız.

During a previous hearing of the journalist Yıldız’s case, she stated there are many videos on YouTube that insult prosecutors who gave orders to stop and search MİT trucks on Jan. 19, 2014. She then asked why the people who release those videos do not also face trial.

A Penal Court of Peace blocked access to the videos Yıldız posted on her YouTube account, although no investigations have been opened for the videos insulting the prosecutors.

“I thank everyone for their messages and support. I have no worries. I don’t care about whatever punishment they give me. I’m just doing my job,” Yıldız posted on her Twitter account over the court’s decision.

In January 2014, a number of trucks, which were found to belong to the MİT, were stopped by gendarmes in two separate incidents in the southern provinces of Hatay and Adana, after prosecutors received tipoffs that they were carrying arms to Syria.

Although the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government has claimed that the trucks were transporting humanitarian aid to the Turkmen community in Syria, opposition voices have continued to question why, if the operation was within the law, the government intervened to prevent the trucks from being searched.

Four former prosecutors and a former gendarme officer were imprisoned after a court ordered their arrest due to their role in the search of trucks allegedly carrying weapons to opposition groups in Syria, a move that came shortly after government figures, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, accused the officials of “treason and espionage.”

A case was filed against those involved in the investigation and an indictment, which was approved by the Tarsus High Criminal Court in July 2015, seeks a life sentence for Adana Chief Public Prosecutor Süleyman Bağrıyanık, former Adana Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Ahmet Karaca and Adana prosecutors Aziz Takçı and Özcan Şişman, as well as Gendarmerie Commander Col. Özkan Çokay, who were involved in the investigation.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Turkish Journalist Faces Imprisonment for Posting Videos of MİT Trucks Hearings, regarding Alleged Smuggling of Weapons to Terrorists in Syria

Obama Ratchets-Up to Invade Russia

May 18th, 2016 by Eric Zuesse

An article published May 7th by Andrei Akulov brings together mainly Western news sources, all solid, to make the case that U.S. President Barack Obama is pushing even highly reluctant European populations to join America’s increasingly overt hostile military stance targeting Russia as the world’s chief source of alleged “aggression” that must be stopped.

One of those sources is a Reuters article that states:

“Only 22 percent of Finns support joining NATO, while 55 percent are opposed, a recent poll by public broadcaster YLE showed. Finnish membership of NATO would double the length of the border between the alliance and Russia and increase the NATO presence in the Baltic Sea.”

Yet, still, according to that Reuters article, Finland will probably join NATO, regardless of what the Finnish population want. This is supposedly how ‘democracy’ functions nowadays.

America is installing in Europe a new system that’s designed to block Russia’s ability to retaliate against a nuclear attack, but Obama sold it to European nations saying it will protect them against a nuclear attack from Iran. Now that Obama’s own agreement with Iran will assure that, for at least a decade, there won’t be any nuclear weapons in Iran, he continues this deception as if the public are mere fools — and he’s not being called to task for it (except by Russia’s President).

In U.S. President Obama’s definitive statement on U.S. military policy, his National Security Strategy 2015, he cited Russia on 17 of the 18 occasions where he used the term “aggression” or its equivalents. He even played upon the old Cold-War-era anti-communist, and sometimes even anti-Semitic, charges that the Soviet Union characteristically lied, when Obama strung together there a statement about Russia that sounded just the same as such “red-scare” literature, except only using this time the term “Russia,” where American far-rightists back in the 1950s had referred to the USSR or Soviet Union. He said:

“And we will continue to impose significant costs on Russia through sanctions and other means while countering Moscow’s deceptive propaganda with the unvarnished truth. We will deter Russian aggression, remain alert to its strategic capabilities, and help our allies and partners resist Russian coercion over the long term, if necessary.”

If that’s not multiply hostile, then what is? It’s certainly not the type of thing one would allege if one is attempting to negotiate with a competitor, instead of to coerce an enemy — which is by now the second-term Obama Administration’s clear position regarding Russia. He had simply deceived the American public when he claimed during his re-election campaign to disagree with Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s statement about Russia, “This is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe.” His alleged disagreement with Romney about that was one of the reasons Americans re-elected Obama. But then, Obama promptly turned to planning the coup against Ukraine, which started to be activated on 1 March 2013 and wasn’t completed until 27 February 2014. (And the top officials at the EU were then shocked to learn that it had been a coup. But nonetheless, they participate in the sanctions against Russia, for, essentially, defending itself against them, and against the U.S.)

In the lying-department, Obama — despite his claiming that he’s “countering Moscow’s deceptive propaganda with the unvarnished truth” — vastly beats-out Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin there. As I had previously documented, “The Entire Case for Sanctions Against Russia Is Pure Lies”. What that article documents is: before Russia ‘seized’ Crimea (which until 1954 had been part of Russia, and which had had Russia’s main naval base since 1783, and where the population were overwhelmingly opposed to having been transferred to Ukraine in 1954 by the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev), Obama had violently overthrown the democratically elected President of Ukraine, for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted, and then Obama’s goons started directly attacking Crimeans, virtually terrorizing them to flee from the newly installed Kiev government. But as you’ll see in that article exposing the entire case for sanctions against Russia, Obama’s lies about Crimea are even broader than that, and he needs these lies as his ‘justification’ for what he’s now doing along Russia’s borders: installing U.S. nuclear weapons against Russia.

Obama now is going beyond mere “sanctions,” to real military preparation for an invasion of Russia. And that’s what Akulov’s frightening, but well-documented, article reports about.

On May 12th, Stuart Hooper at 21st Century Wire headlined, “New Arms Race Begins: US Launches European Missile Shield in Romania”. So: not only is the U.S. placing nuclear missiles on Russia’s borders, but it’s also placing there anti-missile missiles, to destroy outgoing Russian missiles that could be flying in retaliation against America’s attack.

And, then, when Russian President Vladimir Putin responds to that type of aggressive move, by his moving Russian forces to Russia’s own borders to deter NATO’s aggression, Obama and his propagandists blame Putin for threatening ‘aggression against a NATO member’.

This bizarreness extends even beyond that, however, to NATO’s mocking Putin for being concerned at all about America’s antimissile system, which is also called “Ballistic Missile Defense” or BMD. A NATO Web-posting in October 2015 was headlined, “How Putin uses missile defence in Europe to distract Russian voters”, and it said:

The logic behind one of Russia’s classic grievances against the West – the deployment of ballistic missile defence (BMD) in Europe – has remained largely unexplained. …

Since the United States officially announced the deployment of BMD in Europe in 2004, Russia has persistently referred to the project, run by NATO, as a demonstration of anti-Russian intent. …

Moscow’s confrontational position on missile defence has proven politically expedient for a Russian government that has built its legitimacy on the necessity to defend Russia from external enemies. Now, when Russia is entering[due to Obama’s economic sanctions etc.] a full-fledged economic crisis that could affect the political allegiances of the Russian population [oh, sure: perhaps turn those ‘allegiances’ toward America instead?], the Kremlin needs to revive the issue of BMD – a welcome enemy that contributes to the justification for government survival. …

The justification that Russia has to protect itself from the external threat strengthens the need to maintain a strong, centralised government.

To extend this fantasyland even farther into the bizarre, that presentation went on to allege that the Russian population were simply being deceived by Putin into thinking that America’s anti-missile system would endanger their security:

The strategy to portray BMD as a threat to the Russian population seems effective. A survey conducted by the Russian polling organisation Levada centre in 2007 and again in 2010 revealed that the majority of the Russian constituency believed that the US construction of BMD in Europe presents a larger threat to Russia than the acquisition of offensive military capabilities by Iran or North Korea.

The 2010 Levada poll showed that 55 per cent of the respondents believed that the number one threat to Russian security was the deployment of US BMD in neighbouring states. Only 13 per cent of the respondents stated that Iran’s nuclear programme represented the main threat to Russia and 13 per cent indicated that the main threat was North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons.

The 2010 Levada survey could be analysed together with another 2010 Levada poll that confirmed the deeply engrained perception of America’s hostile intentions among Russians. Some 73 per cent of the polled Russians indicated that the United States was an aggressor that sought to establish control over all states. …

Reconstructing the image of the United States as a Cold War type aggressor facilitated this perception and justified running again on the basis of the need to protect the Russian people from external enemies.

Hence, castigating the United States and NATO again became an effective strategy to win votes. …

BMD has become a political, rather than military, tool for distraction that helps to convince the Russian population of the need to focus on protecting the Russian state, rather than their economic livelihoods.

Then, the U.S. National Public Radio network, NPR — the most trusted news-source by the American public — served up, on its Morning Edition program, 13 May 2016, a segment, “To Defend NATO, U.S. Sets Up Missile Defense Systems In Eastern Europe”, which pushed the line that, “The U.S. is trying to reassure the Russians that the defense systems are not a threat” (so as to fool the U.S. public into thinking that the U.S. government really cares about what the Russian people think, and would be reluctant to turn Russians into nuclear char if it ‘has to’ do so). This segment closed with NPR’s Moscow correspondent saying,

“You know, most of people I’ve talked to so far say they’re not worried about it, and some … say that it’s because they trust that President Putin will take whatever steps are needed to make sure that Russia’s safe. A few of the younger people I spoke with though said that they don’t feel any particular danger from NATO and that they don’t believe that NATO is out to start a war.”

No mention was made there of the polling, by Levada and others, which showed that the attitudes that NPR’s Moscow propagandist says “they’re not worried about it,” run overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. But, after all, isn’t this inevitable: for example, how did the American people feel about Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev’s plan to place Soviet missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from America’s border, in 1962? And what Obama-NATO are doing here to Russians is vastly bigger and vastly worse than that. But NPR miraculously reports that Russians are “not worried about it.” Americans are being fed lies like this all the time — it’s like “Saddam’s WMD” were in 2002; it’s the lying by government and media, that has become routine in America.

It’s a 1984-type world, where aggression by one’s own nation doesn’t exist, and where defense by the ultimately targeted nation, against that aggression, is itself called ‘aggression’ (or even attacked as being promoted in order to “strengthen the need to maintain a strong centralised government”: i.e, as some shading of that deceased ideological ogre, communism) — and European nations go along with this cockeyed reasoning, in order to participate not only in economic sanctions against that ultimately-targeted nation, but to participate in NATO’s Operation Atlantic Resolve, joining in this rabidly lying aggression against Russia, after having alreadyparticipated in the lying economic sanctions against that same target.

What does this say about today’s United States government? And what does it say about Europe?

It says a lot. That’s for sure.

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Obama Ratchets-Up to Invade Russia

Buy Our Product: Fluoride, Asbestos, Contaminated Blood, Thalidomide, GM Seeds, Herbicides, and Make Us Rich!

May 18th, 2016 by Political Concern

The current British government has long advocated the growing of GM crops.

America’s National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a private advisory body, has now issued a report reviewing research to date which confirms that there have been no studies into the long-term human health impact of GM food consumption. Despite this they assert that genetically modified food is safe for human consumption.

Weasel words are frequently used; there is:

  • no substantiated evidence of a difference in risks to human health,
  • no conclusive cause-and-effect evidence of environmental problems from the GE crops,
  • which have produced “generally favourable economic outcomes” for farmers

The Times reports that the review, published yesterday, will strengthen calls to ease the restrictions on commercial planting of GM crops in the European Union but many countries hold aloof:

Lt. Gen. Mi Zhenyu won’t give his troops GM food

Our database notes that in January, the Wall Street Journal reported on an English translation of an essay in a Chinese government weekly by Lt. Gen. Mi Zhenyu, the former deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Military Science, published by Chen Yiwen, a senior official with the China Association for Disaster Prevention, on Chen’s verified blog. According to the translated version, Mi said that GM soybean residues crushed to manufacture soy oil has been to be causing birth defects, depression, infertility and ‘additional afflictions’ in Chinese citizens. Mi asserts that the fault lies with China’s largest supplier of oilseed – the USA. More detail here.

chines army foodPublished: advisor Chen I-wan comments: “The army has established excellent model for people of the whole nation: No GMO staple food and GMO food oil should enter army food supply!” Above: inspection visit.

The American report concluded that GM technology had helped farmers to increase yields by protecting crops against pests and weeds

But another entry by agricultural scientist and analyst, Dr Devinder Sharma, notes that the annual increase in sales of foods free of synthetic chemicals and GM ingredients in the US indicate a rising preference for organically produced foods and that in the White House Michelle Obama grows only organic food in the sprawling gardens and is known to serve organic food to guests. He continues: GM crops:

  • have, in most cases, led to the doubling in the application of chemical herbicides like glyphosate; use has increased to over 283.5 million pounds in 2012;
  • have led to the emergence of superweeds in some 60 million acres of crop land
  • and, to date, have shown no increase in crop productivity – or as the US report admits: “there was no evidence in US agriculture records that GM crops had substantially increased yields”.

GM seeds ‘defenceless against pests and weather change’

95% of India’s cotton is grown from genetically modified hybrid seeds, which have proved defenceless against pests and weather change, leading to devastating losses, according toMay’s Hindu Business Line.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland want a total ban, as do 19 EU states including Germany and France but the current British government has indicated it is willing to consider allowing the growing of GM crops – on their merits or because of profits accruing to the already wealthy?

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Buy Our Product: Fluoride, Asbestos, Contaminated Blood, Thalidomide, GM Seeds, Herbicides, and Make Us Rich!

Michel Temer’s All-Male Cabinet Enrages Brazilian Feminists

May 18th, 2016 by Al Arabiya

In his first speech as acting president, Michel Temer asked for the Brazilian population’s trust and said that the government’s new motto is “Order and Progress” – the words that illustrate the Brazilian flag.

However, many believe his new cabinet appears to contradict the idea of progress – at least for women and racial minorities.

Temer was appointed Brazil’s interim president last week after Dilma Rouseff was suspended due to a Senate decision to move forward with her impeachment process.

He is the first president to appoint an all-male cabinet since 1979, a time in which Brazil was under a military dictatorship.

Brazil has long been known as a country of racial and cultural diversity, with 43.1% of its population consisting of people of mixed race according to 2010 statistics.

However, with a series of predominantly white, all-male ministers, questions are being raised as to how the Temer government will be able to represent Brazil’s various minorities.

Photo Caption: Women shout slogans during a protest against Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer and in support of suspended President Dilma Rousseff at Paulista Avenue in Sao Paulo. (Reuters)

he criticism was only aggravated by Temer’s decision to merge the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality, Youth and Human Rights and the Ministry of Justice, creating a new ministry called Justice and Citizenship.

“No one in their right mind can deny that not having women in high ranking government offices is a regression,” Brazilian lawyer Geraldo Affonso told Al Arabiya English.

“This goes against the global trend that women are gaining more space in all production, economic, cultural and governing sectors,” he added.

Minority report

Women represent 51% of the Brazilian population according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, however they are still seen as a minority in need of protection.

Research done by the Secretariat of Politics for Women of the Presidency of the Republic show that in the first ten months of 2015 alone there were 63,090 official complaints of violence against women. That’s one complaint every seven minutes.

The absence of women in Temer’s cabinet seems ironic, especially as he was the one who created the first police station for Women’s Defense in Sao Paulo 30 years ago when he was the Secretary of Public Defense.

“Brazil has an extremely high rate of crimes against women and one of the biggest issues is that these women do not want to speak up about it,” Anna Maria de Araujo, retired Deputy for Brasilia’s Women’s Defense Police Station, told Al Arabiya English on Tuesday.

“Having a woman in power who can speak up about these issues and empower women to speak up can be very positive, not even only in politics but also in the media,” she added. “Women need to be reminded that they don’t come before or after men, they should stand side by side.”

On social media, Brazilian users expressed outrage over the lack of women in cabinet to represent the struggling section of population.

 

 

This is not the first time the Temer name has made feminists cringe. In April, a profile of Temer’s wife, Marcela Temer, headlined “Beautiful, Prim and Homely” made women all over the country enraged. The feature written by Veja, a Brazilian magazine that is vastly known for its opposition to Dilma’s government, praised the 33-year-old’s class and poise.

The portrayal of the former pageant competitor, who is 42 years younger than her husband, was criticized on social media and gave space to a hashtag where women made fun of Marcela’s elegant demeanor. The criticism towards the new cabinet has even made international headlines, with international news channels such as The Guardian, The New York Times and Le Monde commenting on the inexplicable lack of women. Even a wing of one of the parties that integrates Temer’s government criticized the President. The National Women Secretariat for PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) posted an open letter online saying, “We can’t understand, Mr. President, the lack of women in Your Excellency’s cabinet, which can only be understood as a step back.” Suspended President Dilma also spoke out on the case. “Black people and women are fundamental if you truly want to construct an inclusive country,” she said on Friday, according to the BBC Brasil.

Justification? The government’s chief of staff, Eliseu Padilha, tried to justify Temer’s decision:

“We tried to seek women but for reasons that we don’t need to bring up here, we discussed it and it was not possible,” he said. But many are still unhappy.

“It is clearly necessary to think and give value to gender and race, especially in a society like ours, where opportunities and history are devious and even unfair,” Christina Guaraldo, Brazilian retired psychology PUC Campinas professor told Al Arabiya English. “On the other hand, is this really the central issue at this time?” Guaraldo added, asking whether Brazil should focus on the gender of ministers or their capacity to lead the country forward. In her opinion, social change should first come from every individual and the cabinet doesn’t have the “magical powers” that people have attributed to it. On Monday, Temer appointed Maria Silva Bastos Marques as president of BNDES (National Bank of Economic and Social Development).

According to Brazilian news channel G1, Minister of Planning Romero Juca denies that Temer’s choice reflects that he’s worried about having a woman in a high ranking government office after public outcry.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Michel Temer’s All-Male Cabinet Enrages Brazilian Feminists

Manufactured Antisemitism Crisis in Britain’s Labour Party

May 18th, 2016 by Jonathan Cook

The manufactured “anti-semitism crisis” in the British Labour party rumbles on into new realms of ideological insanity. The witch-hunt against commentary critical of Israel or Zionism has been in full flow, and now an internal party inquiry led by Jan Royall has reached its conclusions.

Note that in this report by the Guardian newspaper, it appears to be a given both by Royall and the Guardian that Ken Livingstone and the others suspended from the party are guilty of anti-semitism rather than anti-Zionism. I have challenged that assumption in previous posts, such as here and here. I am therefore going to put quotation marks around the word “anti-semitism”, at least as used by Royall, because it is far from clear to me that most of those under investigation have said things that are anti-semitic.

Royall’s first conclusion is that there should be no “statute of limitations” on “anti-semitism”. That’s a green light for every right-winger and Blairite to go trawling through Labour party members’ back catalogue of social media posts in search of anti-Zionist or anti-Israel utterances. Here’s a simple piece of advice to John Mann and the Blairite brigade: if you want to simplify your task, examine postings from winter 2008 and summer 2014, when Israel was killing hundreds of children in Gaza. I suspect you’ll find the “anti-semitism” you’re looking for in those periods.

Royal also suggests that there may be a need for “more rigorous vetting procedures for national and local government candidates”. So the Blairites will be further encouraged to trawl through candidates’ social media postings on Israel in the knowledge that they can thereby ensure only people like themselves get to stand for election.

Another of Royall’s conclusions is that a membership ban for “anti-semitism” should not be for life if there is “demonstrable” change by the offender. Re-education camps, anyone?

So members may be allowed back into the Labour party if they can show that over a sustained period of time they have disavowed their criticisms of Israel. Presumably, to reassure the party that they are not likely to slip back into their former bad ways of thinking, they will need to enthusiastically embrace Zionism and support an ethnic Jewish state that oppresses Palestinians in the occupied territories and systematically discriminates against the fifth of its citizens who are Palestinian.

In other words, these measures will have the practical effect of ensuring that the party is reserved for those of a Blairite persuasion.

There are other disturbing conclusions reached by Royall. She is apparently recommending that an imminent external inquiry she will also sit on consider whether members should qualify for investigation simply because “the victim or any other person” has “perceived” a comment to be anti-semitic. In short, every Netanyahu-loving Zionist may soon be guaranteed the chance to force the suspension of any Labour member who offends them by criticising Israel.

Royall suggests that the coming inquiry consider “swifter action to deal with antisemitism”, which is surprising given that the current suspensions have all been implemented summarily.

And she prefers “a review of how online debate is conducted to make it welcoming and productive”. In other words, Labour members will be expected not to criticise Israel or Zionism in case it puts off hardcore Israel supporters.

It is not hard to see where all this is leading, and was designed to lead by the Blairite faction trying to engineer a coup against leader Jeremy Corbyn. Polls show that Corbyn’s support has actually grown over the past year among ordinary members, despite the endless character assassination against him.

So the Blairites who dominate the Labour parliamentary caucus are simply re-engineering the party more to their liking: terrify into submission a new generation of candidates who have been inspired by Corbyn to enter politics, and through a war of attrition demoralise the hundreds of thousands of new members who joined the party, in the hope they will leave.

This is self-sabotage on a vast scale. The Blairites (and their cheerleaders in liberal media like the Guardian) would prefer to destroy the party than help Corbyn and his supporters mount a credible challenge to the Conservative government. And that insight tells you all you need to know about the true ideological sympathies of the Blairites, who were so ready to cosy up to the corporations and the Murdoch media.

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Manufactured Antisemitism Crisis in Britain’s Labour Party

US Forces in Combat in Somalia as AFRICOM Plans for War across Continent

May 18th, 2016 by Thomas Gaist

American military forces launched combat actions in the East African country of Somalia on Tuesday, destroying at least three military vehicles manned by fighters with the militia group al-Shabab.

US personnel provided “defensive fire,” including salvos of helicopter-based missiles, during fighting near an African Union (AU) checkpoint manned by Ugandan troops.

The US troops, who are deployed to Somalia as “advisors” to the African Union AMISOM force, engaged in other combat operations earlier this week, carrying out a raid against the Somali village of Toratorow. They have been operating from their headquarters inside the fortress-like international airport in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, where they have organized a special proxy unit known as the “Lightning.”

The announcement that there are American “boots on the ground” in Somalia, comes within days of revelations that the US has been waging secret “small wars” in Libya and Yemen. The White House is now considering options drawn up by the Pentagon for expanded attacks against Libya.

Washington is preparing to launch or deepen an array of similar interventions throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) is currently examining a dozen locations for new bases. More than 6,000 American Special Operations soldiers are active in at least 26 separate locations throughout the continent. AFRICOM plans to relocate its central command, originally based in Germany in an effort to dampen accusations of neocolonialism, to an undisclosed site on the continent, with Morocco rumored as the leading choice.

In the countries bordering the Lake Chad Basin, recently described as “ground zero for Islamic State in Africa” by AFRICOM’s top special forces officer, the Pentagon is opening an entire new regional war theater, deploying hundreds of ground troops and commando teams to Cameroon and Nigeria and establishing a new drone base in Niger.

Since coming to power with backing from the White House, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has imposed military rule in the northern provinces and carried out brutal atrocities against the civilian population, including the massacre of hundreds of Shia minorities by regular army units early this year.

Buhari has sought to place the Nigerian government fully in line with the US “war on terror,” purging the state of officials and military officers from the previous administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, which fell afoul of Washington due to the growth of Chinese influence in the Nigerian economy.

“Buhari made clear from the get-go that his number one priority was reforming the military to defeat Boko Haram,” a US official told Reuters Tuesday.

“He sees us as part of that solution,” he said.

The US plans to train two Nigerian infantry battalions by the end of the year. The Obama administration authorized deployment of a fleet of F-16 fighters to Nigeria, the largest oil producer in Africa, earlier this month.

The F-16 jets, as the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center director J. Peter Pham noted, are only used against “mass forces in a conventional war.”

Such remarks must be taken as grave warnings to the African and international working class. Throughout Africa, as in Eastern Europe and Asia, major land battles and set-piece warfare of the type that laid waste to much of the planet during the 20th century are once again being prepared.

Just as in Iraq and Syria, the Pentagon’s intervention in Nigeria, justified in the name of combating a Boko Haram militia that, as Pham admits, “does not even control any towns or villages,” is presented as an “advise and assist” operation, but is being used to employ military force to assert US hegemony.

The US Army is preparing to intervene throughout Africa. AFRICOM plans to deploy troops against “ISIS in the north, Al Shabab in the east and Boko Haram and A.Q.I.M. in the center and the west,” US General Darryl Williams said Monday.

“We’re building these relationships so that if called in, we can respond,” Williams said.

Forty leading US and African generals are meeting for the African Land Forces Summit. The summit, hosted by Tanzanian Land Force Commander, General James Aloisi Mwakibolwa, saw Botswana’s military receive special praise for its close collaboration with US ground units through the National Guard State Partnership Program during remarks by US General Gregory Lusk.

Not only in Africa but in Europe and Asia, the US Army is preparing “to fight higher-end, great-power conflicts,” as the New York Times reported Monday. Speaking to the Times in Tanzania, General Mark Milley warned that training for US National Guard troops would have to be stepped up because, “I do not think we will have the luxury of four or five months lead time” to deploy them for battle.

Under the false pretext of fighting terrorism, US imperialism is striving to secure its hegemony over Africa, launching ever more wars of aggression in an effort to exclude the European colonial powers from their former spheres of influence.

That the new scramble for Africa will contribute to the increasingly explosive divisions within the NATO alliance was underscored earlier this month with the recent signing of a US-Senegal pact that authorizes deployment of more US forces to the former French dominion.

In an effort to seize hold of the lion’s share of the continent’s wealth and deny access to its strategic resources to its main competitors on the world stage, American imperialism is preparing new and unprecedented crimes against the poorest continent on Earth.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US Forces in Combat in Somalia as AFRICOM Plans for War across Continent

AJC’s Transatlantic Institute: An EU Pro­-Israel Lobby AKA an ‘International Advocacy Group’

May 18th, 2016 by Anthony Bellchambers

The Transatlantic Institute is an office of the AJC, based within the EU. A global advocacy organization founded in February 2004 that claims to strengthen ties between Europe and the United States. It is affiliated to AIPAC the American Zionist lobby in Washington.

According to its mission statement, the Institute works to promote “transatlantic cooperation for global security, Middle East Peace and human rights.” It is part of the AJC’s network of 20 regional offices throughout the US, including NY, LA, SF and Chicago, plus 9 overseas offices including those in Brussels, Berlin and Paris that operate to influence EU foreign policy.

Transatlantic’s International Advisory Council is chaired by former Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio and includes former Democratic US Congressman Robert Wexler, former US Deputy Secretary of State, British-born, John Negroponte and German­-Jewish journalist Josef Joffe.

It is assumed that the EU­-Israel Association Agreement, which gives Israel free access to the European single market, was implemented as a result of the efforts of the AJC. It also assumed that the billions of Euros recently granted to Israel by the EU, for research, was extensively supported by the AJC advocacy group.

The problem is that this US-­headquartered, Israel lobby is backed by a powerful pressure group in Washington that has close ties to Congress and consequently able to influence US foreign policy as well as American arms shipments to the Israeli state. The entire set­up, from a democratic point of view, is less than satisfactory because the decisions of the EU Parliament are susceptible to being skewed by lobbyists in favour of a non­-member state that is over 3000 km distant from Brussels, in the eastern Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, both Tel Aviv and Washington are worried that BREXIT (a British exit from the EU) would mean a break­up of the existing established lobbying networks that currently influence so many aspects of EU foreign policy. The status quo may be advantageous to the Israeli state but is, arguably, dangerously detrimental to both regional and global peace.

A political separation of the United Kingdom from the European Union would be estimated to be of political and economic advantage to Britain.  However, as for the military balance of power: this would be difficult to quantify in view of the second strike capability of the German-built and recently supplied, submarine fleet of the Israeli navy now reported to have been modified to be nuclear-armed with cruise missiles and patrolling the Mediterranean.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on AJC’s Transatlantic Institute: An EU Pro­-Israel Lobby AKA an ‘International Advocacy Group’

Michael Ratner: Missionary of Human Rights

May 18th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“Michael showed all of us vividly how law can and must be used to constrain power – regardless of whether you succeed in a particular case.”

Sarah Cleveland, US Rep. UN Human Rights Committee 

Michael Ratner, who made the defence of human rights his bread and butter mission, is probably defending some unfortunate before a constituted tribunal in the sky. When living, he enchanted those he defended and irritated authorities with his skills of advocacy.  Much of this was done spearheading the Center for Constitutional Rights, a body he transformed into one of the world’s foremost civil liberty outfits.

Ratner proved an incessant warrior against the unspeakable in US foreign policy. His criticism was informed by an educational diet nourished by a major in medieval history studies at Brandeis and the political push of Herbert Marcuse.

For Ratner, the great nightmare on the hill of constitutionalism, one that transformed the beacon of hope to one of doom, was the US treatment of inmates at Guantánamo.  Under the Bush administration, 779 were brought to the sinister surrounds of the camp, denied legal representation in a juridical limbo, and subject to state-sanctioned torture.

In an observation of some understatement from the Center for Constitutional Rights, challenging polices of indefinite detention of terrorist suspects “was not a popular position” when Ratner took the plunge.[1]

Yet Ratner had seen this before, albeit in milder form.  During the Clinton administration, the naval base became the dubious residence of HIV-positive Haitian refugees.  This provided a foretaste of legal purgatory for non-persons, an idea that Clinton was floating in an effort to make sure that such individuals would not find protection on US soil.

The argument being tested there was one that would be used again during the misnamed and brutal “War on Terror”.  Such figures, being foreigners and technically off US soil, could not demand constitutional protection.  Ratner, along with his colleague Harold Koh, seized the day.  They enlisted over a hundred Yale law students.

In 2004, he did what many thought impossible: convince those heads of the US Supreme Court that foreign detainees (2 Australians and 12 Kuwaitis) held at Guantánamo were entitled to habeas corpus.  The Court inRasul v Bush, reversing the District court finding, decided in unprecedented fashion that “enemy combatants” could have their petitions for habeas corpus heard by US courts.

“Application of the habeas statute to persons detained at the base is consistent with the historical reach of the writ of habeas corpus,” noted Justice Stevens in delivering the opinion of the court.[2]  To this day, that decision reads as a hammer of law fashioned by history, noting the deep links to English legal traditions as fashioned by US jurisprudence.

Rasul set a train of some judicial significance in motion, forming one of four cases between 2004 and 2008 that placed a brake on the Bush administration’s view of executive power without restraint.  At least one facet of enthusiastic tyranny was contained.

As Ratner himself explained, “If you can throw away those rights and simply grab someone by the scruff of the neck and throw them into some offshore penal colony because they are non-citizen Muslims, those deprivations of rights will be employed against all.”  Importantly, such a species of abuse was typical, not of a democracy but “the power of the police state”.[3]

The logic of advocating and encouraging such programs was high-level criminal responsibility, hence Ratner’s insistence that those behind the torture program be held to account. If only he had lived to see those presidential figures in the dock.

Over time, the less vicious aspects of the camp have been ameliorated.  The numbers shrank, commencing under the Bush administration, and continuing under President Barack Obama.  As colleague David Cole surmises on this point, “The real credit lies with neither president, but with the hundreds of lawyers and thousands of activists who have stepped forward to advocate for Guantánamo inmates” (NYRDaily, May 15).

Other areas he pursued which featured a study of the abuses of power came in a range of works covering US policy in Cuba and Latin America. He found what others had suspected: the paw prints of the Central Intelligence Agency in such actions as the assassination of Che Guevara.

In Who Killed Che?, forty-four classified documents released under the Freedom of Information Act showed, among other things, the insistent monitoring of Che from 1954, and a 1962 attempt to poison him in 1962 with the assistance of famed Chicago mobster Johnny Rosselli.  His ultimate slaying by Bolivian forces was the consequence of an operation by the 2nd Ranger Battalion-Bolivian Army, trained by sixteen Green Berets.

In recent years, Ratner’s burgeoning civil rights portfolio expanded to include defending Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in the United States.  What WikiLeaks, along with Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden did was “their civic duty by disclosing information on government overreaching.”[4]

The whistleblower’s fate which haunted Ratner most was that of Aaron Swartz, whose death by suicide at the age of 26 on realising he would face 35 years in prison for hacking a digital library proved as devastating as it was numbing.

Ratner’s unconditional advocacy helped nurture a diligent army, and forged a relentless generation of vigilant human rights scrutineers.  The Guantánamo Bay Bar Association alone boasts over 500 attorneys providing pro-bono advice.  They did not spread, let alone conserve freedom, through invasions, missiles and interventions. Instead, the legal brief, the judicial declaration, and the power of persuasion have proven to be their greatest weapons.

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

Notes:

[1] http://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/ccr-mourns-passing-michael-ratner

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-334.ZO.html

[3] http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/17/michael-ratners-death-loss-freedom-peace-and-justice

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/11/michael-ratner-wikileaks-julian-assange-attorney-dies

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Michael Ratner: Missionary of Human Rights

US and Its Allies Threaten Escalation of Syrian War

May 18th, 2016 by Bill Van Auken

Foreign ministers of the major powers, including both Washington and Moscow, ended a meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in Vienna with no proposal for a date to resume peace talks between the Syrian government and the collection of Western-backed Islamist militias that constitute the “armed opposition.”

The so-called rebels walked out of the last round of talks in Geneva, accusing government forces of continuing to attack their positions in violation of a February 27 cessation of hostilities brokered by the US and Russia.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad and its allies, Russia and Iran, have insisted that continued operations were being carried out against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Al Nusra Front, Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, both of which are designated by the United Nations Security Council as terrorist groups and remain excluded from the shaky cease-fire.

In a communiqué issued at the close of the Vienna meeting, the ISSG member states warned that the consequences of a failure to fully implement the cessation of hostilities “could include the return of full-scale war.”

While the communiqué warned of consequences for any party violating the agreement, including “the exclusion of such parties from the arrangements of the cessation and the protection it affords them,” it gave no indications of what concrete actions would ensue.

What is painfully obvious, however, is that alleged violations by forces loyal to the government of Assad could provoke retaliation from the US, whose warplanes are already engaged in strikes on ISIS targets in Syria. At least 250 Special Operations troops have also been deployed on the ground, without the permission of Damascus and in violation of international law.

A US air strike against the city of al-Bukamal in Dayr al-Zawr province near Syria’s border with Iraq reportedly killed three children and one woman on Monday.

Violations by the so-called rebels, meanwhile, are ignored by their Western sponsors, and would be punished only by the government and its ally, Russia.

This is clearly a formula for an intensification of a conflict that has already claimed over a quarter of a million lives, while driving some 11 million Syrians from their homes. It also creates the conditions for the Syrian conflict to spill over into a wider war pitting the US against Russia.

Washington only entered into the Syrian “peace process” as a means of buying time under conditions in which Russia’s intervention on the side of the Assad government had reversed the tide of battle against the Western-backed Islamist militias and thrown the US-orchestrated war for regime change into disarray.

From the outset, the Obama administration has threatened to resort to a “Plan B” if the negotiations in Vienna and Geneva fail to achieve Washington’s original aim in stoking the bloody war in Syria: the toppling of the Assad government and the imposition of a more pliant Western puppet regime. Last month, unnamed senior US officials let it be known that “Plan B” would include the provision of more sophisticated weaponry to the “rebels,” including MANPADS, portable shoulder-fired missiles that could bring down Russian planes.

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to the media alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and UN special envoy Steffan de Mistura at the close of the Vienna conference, issued a direct threat to Syria’s Assad, stating, “He should never make a miscalculation about President Obama’s determination to do what is right at any given moment of time where he believes he has to make that decision.”

For his part, Lavrov charged that Washington’s key regional allies, including Turkey, are pouring more arms into Syria to fuel the conflict. Lately, he said, this has included the provision of tanks to the “rebels.”

The “main supply conduit for extremists,” the Russian foreign minister said, is a 90 kilometer stretch of the Turkish-Syrian border controlled on one side by the Turkish military and, on the other, by ISIS. He charged that there existed “a large, widely-spread network created by Turkey on its side of the border to continue and cover up these supplies.”

Kerry spent the weekend preceding the Vienna talks in Riyadh, meeting behind closed doors with representatives of the Saudi monarchy, a principal US regional ally and main supporter of the Islamist forces in Syria. The Saudi regime was the organizer of the so-called High Negotiations Committee, which was formed to represent these Salafist jihadi militias in talks with the Syrian government.

Speaking at the conference in Vienna, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir advocated a speedy escalation of the war for regime change in Syria.

“We believe we should have moved to a ‘Plan B’ a long time ago,” Adel al-Jubeir told reporters. “The choice about moving to an alternative plan, the choice about intensifying the military support [to the opposition] is entirely with the Bashar regime … He will be removed, either through a political process or through military force.”

Meanwhile, Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally and also a key backer of the “rebels,” threatened Tuesday to carry out a unilateral military intervention in Syria.

President Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting in Istanbul that the Turkish military would act alone, supposedly to deal with ISIS missile attacks coming across the Syrian border and striking the town of Kilis.

“We will solve that issue ourselves if we don’t receive help to prevent those rockets from hitting Kilis,” he said. “We knocked on all doors for a safe zone at our southern border. But no one wants to take that step.”

Erdogan’s statement echoed that made by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu earlier this month: “If necessary, Turkey may launch a ground military operation in Syria by itself.”

Erdogan’s remarks made clear that his concern is not ISIS, which Ankara has armed and supplied, but rather the growing strength of Syrian Kurdish forces near the Turkish border. In a thinly veiled criticism of US backing for these forces, he declared: “States which exercise control over the world’s arms industry give their weapons to terrorists. I challenge them to deny this.”

The Turkish government is committed to the war for regime change in Syria and has demonstrated, with its shoot-down of a Russian jet last November, its willingness to push this conflict into an armed confrontation with Moscow.

There is little doubt that the Saudi and Turkish regimes are openly advocating a policy that is being supported within powerful sections of the US ruling establishment and military and intelligence apparatus.

An escalation of the Syrian bloodbath also has the backing of the leading candidates in both the Democratic and Republican parties, but its initiation is almost certain to be postponed until after November in order to prevent the subject of war becoming an issue in the US presidential election.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US and Its Allies Threaten Escalation of Syrian War

«Cuba tendrá el rostro que desee darle su pueblo»

May 18th, 2016 by Salim Lamrani

Contra todo pronóstico, Barack Obama sorprendió a toda la clase político-mediática al anunciar que viajaría a Cuba. Es así el primer presidente estadounidense en el poder en aterrizar en el aeropuerto de La Habana desde la revolución de 1959. Los lazos entre ambos países se rompieron desde que John F. Kennedy impuso el embargo sobre la isla en 1962. ¿Cómo explicar este acercamiento? ¿Por qué Obama cambió su política exterior hacia el régimen castrista? Para responder, intercambiamos con Salim Lamrani, Doctor en Estudios ibéricos y latinoamericanos de la Universidad de La Sorbona de París, especialista de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos.

¿Cómo explica usted el cambio de la política exterior de Barack Obama hacia el régimen castrista?

Salim Lamrani: El Presidente Obama ha hecho una constatación lúcida: la política de Estados Unidos hacia Cuba es un fracaso total. En vez de aislar a La Habana en la escena internacional, la política de sanciones económicas ha aislado a Washington. En octubre de 2015, por vigesimocuarta vez consecutiva, 191 países de 193, incluso los principales aliados de Estados Unidos, condenaron el estado de sitio económico impuesto a la población cubana desde 1960. Durante la Cumbre de las Américas de 2013 en Cartagena, Colombia, el pesidente Juan Manuel Santos, el más fiel apoyo de Washington en el continente latinoamericano, declaró que otra cumbre sin la presencia de Cuba no tendría ningún sentido. La mayoría de las naciones amenazaron con boicotear la Cumbre de Panamá de abril de 2015 si no se invitaba a Cuba. Obama decidió entonces restablecer el diálogo con Cuba en diciembre de 2014.

Washington también tuvo en cuenta la dimensión del rechazo de las sanciones contra Cuba en la opinión pública de EE.UU., cuyo 70% se muestra favorable a una normalización de las relaciones con La Habana. Los estadounidenses no comprenden todavía por qué pueden viajar a China, Vietnam o Corea del Norte, pero no a Cuba.

El mundo de los negocios también se opone a la política agresiva de Estados Unidos pues ve un mercado natural de 11 millones de habitantes, a 150 kilómetros de las costas estadunidenses, que bebeficiará a los inversionistas internacionales.

¿Acaso puede decirse que este acercamiento de Estados Unidos con La Habana es una victoria para la diplomacia cubana?

SL: Cuba siempre ha expresado su deseo de mantener relaciones cordiales y pacíficas con Estados Unidos siempre que se respeten los principios del derecho internacional –que considera sagrados– a saber, la igualdad soberana, la reciprocidad y la no injerencia en los asuntos internos.

Conviene recordar que el conflicto entre ambos países es asimétrico. Es Washington el que impone una política hostil contra un país del Tercer Mundo que jamás agredió a Estados Unidos en toda su historia.

Cuba no ha renunciado ni a su sistema político, ni a su modelo social, ni a su política exterior, que son competencias exclusivas del pueblo cubano. Así, el acercamiento entre las dos naciones constituye un reconocimiento del fracaso de una política cruel y una victoria para el pueblo cubano que siempre ha extendido una mano fraterna a su vecino, recordando siempre que era el único dueño del destino de su país.

¿Cómo percibe esta normalización la comunidad cubana exilada en Miami, conocida por su anticastrismo?

SL: Desde hace mucho tiempo la mayoría de la comunidad cubana de Estados Unidos se muestra favorable a la normalización de las relaciones entre los dos países, pues casi todos los cubanos emigrados tienen familia en la isla. Todos saben que las sanciones económicas afectan a sus padres, primos y otros familiares que viven allí.

Sólo una minoría de cubanos, herederos del antiguo régimen, pero que dispone de cierta influencia política y económica, se opone a la normalización de las relaciones y desea mantener una política hostil contra Cuba. Pero pronto será borrada por la historia.

Estamos en plena campaña electoral para las presidenciales del próximo 8 de noviembre en Estados Unidos. ¿Puede este proceso de normalización ser revertido con la llegada de Hillary Clinton o de Donald Trump a la Casa Blanca?

SL: Desde un punto de vista legal, el próximo presidente dispone de todas las prerrogativas necesarias para poner término a la política de diálogo de Barack Obama. En cambio, desde un punto de vista político, será mucho más difícil dar marcha atrás pues ello suscitaría la hostilidad de la opinión pública estadounidense, del mundo de los negocios y de la comunidad internacional.

Es posible que un presidente republicano detenga el proceso de normalización de las relaciones, pero dudo de que anule las medidas constructivas que tomó Obama.

¿Qué rostro tendrá Cuba en el futuro?

 SL: Cuba tendrá el rostro que desee darle su pueblo, que dispone de la inteligencia y de la experiencia necesarias para adoptar la vía que le parezca mejor. Enfrentará inevitablemente los cantos de sirenas alabando las virtudes de la abundancia material y del individualismo. ¿Acaso estará dispuesto a renunciar a la edificación de una sociedad en que la ley primera de la República sea “el culto a la plena dignidad del hombre”, cosa que siempre ha sido la razón de ser de toda la nación desde José Martí? No lo creo.

 

 

Doctor en Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos de la Universidad Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV, SalimLamrani es profesor titular de la Universidad de La Reunión y periodista, especialista de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. Su último libro se titula Cuba, the Media, and theChallenge of Impartiality, New York, MonthlyReviewPress, 2014, con un prólogo de Eduardo Galeano. http://monthlyreview.org/books/pb4710/Contacto: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Página Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SalimLamraniOfficiel

  • Posted in Español
  • Comments Off on «Cuba tendrá el rostro que desee darle su pueblo»

Time for Counter-Coups in Latin America? – and Europe?

May 18th, 2016 by Peter Koenig

What Happens when the accuser of terrorism are themselves the terrorists? – Namely the supra-national corporations and financial oligarchs acting in their own profit-driven interest, but under the direction of Washington and the protection of the US – NATO killer armies? Fear and confusion happens. Fear is the weapon of choice of the real terrorists, those who make us believe they are spreading and defending democracy. With fear they are subjugating the world to lick their feet – and worse. – But the people are waking up. All over the world. The linear Anglo-Zionist plans, like the PNAC – Plan for a New American Century – are imploding and their rubbles are becoming a dynamic, unpredictable mass-movement against this neoliberal, globalized One-World or New World Order tyranny.

Protesters – in the tens of millions – are in the streets all over the so-called Western World, the western population, oppressed and enslaved by their own elite, the descendants of the past and present odiously nefarious colonialists.

Latin America

In Brazilian cities millions are in the streets protesting against the illegal takeover of the Presidency in defiance of 54 million voters, by a corrupted parliament, and even worse, by vice-President, Michel Temer, who himself is accused of corruption and who would be ineligible to stand for election for any public office in Brazil during at least the next 8 years; and still worse, Michel Temer, who, as just release by WikiLeaks, has been for years a CIA informant. Under any measure of ethics and crime, he is a traitor of his own country. The process of suspending Dilma was driven by another corrupt member of Parliament, then President of the Lower House, Eduardo Cunha, accused of being engaged in a corruption scheme involving Petrobras and at least US$ 40 million in bribes. He has since been removed from his parliamentary position.

Temer is ready to sell Brazil to the money vultures, Wall Street, FED, IMF, World Bank and he has ‘promised’ to privatize vital social and public services, so that the oligarchs get richer and the Brazilians have to fight again for their survival. He has already appointed Mr. Goldfajn as the new President of the Central Bank of Brazil. Goldfajn was chief economist of Brazil’s largest private bank, Itaú; he was a former Vice-Governor of the Bank do Brazil, the largest bank of Latin America, a private bank, though majority controlled by the Government. He also worked for the IMF and the World Bank. He is a good indication of the monetary politics Brazil is going to play during the next 180 days.

This dirty and criminal maneuver to oust the democratically elected Dilma Rousseff has been prepared for years, way before Dilma Rousseff’s overwhelming first election win in 2010, by Brazil’s financial and corporative oligarchs, commanded by the long and bloody fingers of Washington, as has been the case for Latin America during most of the last century – time and again, the installation of right wing military dictators who killed ruthlessly any resistance – resistance to the merciless looting of the riches of Latin America, – the Open Veins of Latin America, as so aptly described in late Eduardo Galeano’s master piece. After a brief interruption of about 30 years, when South America became a vanguard of democracy for the world, the political power game in Washington’s “backyard” seems to regain momentum. Let’s just look at Argentina, Venezuela, Honduras, and Peru, with similar political interference going on also in Ecuador and Bolivia.

Protesters are in the streets of Argentina; hundreds of thousands are demonstrating against their neo-fascist president Mauricio Macri’s neoliberal assault on the population. Not even six months in office, put there by the same foreign handlers responsible for the coup in Brazil, Macri has managed to roll back Argentina’s economy to the levels of 2004 / 2005, with poverty at 35% by April 2016, up from about 12% last November.

Unemployment and inflation are exploding, after Macri terminated contracts of more than 125,000 state employees, giving an example to private industry to do likewise. He increased the price of gas by more than 500% and doubled the tariffs for public transportation. He also vowed more was to come. On the day of his inauguration, 10 December 2015, he set the peso afloat, triggering a devaluation of close to 60% from an exchange rate of 9.4 pesos to the US dollar in November 2015. It has since recovered slightly, hovering presently at around 14 pesos to the dollar, a reduction in value of about 30% since last November. The ensuing inflation is enormous, sinking a vast segment of Argentinians into poverty. And this is only the beginning.

In Peru, just a few weeks before the first round of Presidential and Congressional elections on 10 April 2016, the five-member Electoral Board disqualified the two presidential candidates, centrist economist Julio Guzman and wealthy former Governor, Cesar Acuña, who were distant second and third after Keiko Fujimori (the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, currently jailed for massive corruption and crimes on humanity). They were dismissed for minor reasons, the former for alleged non-compliance with electoral procedures, the latter for a relatively small case of favor-buying. Both pretexts for disqualification are ridiculous when compared with the enormous corruption the Fujimori family, including Keiko, is known for.

The direct beneficiaries were the fourth and fifth placed candidates, Veronica Mendoza, a 35-year old leftist Congresswomen from Cusco and the 77-year old big-business favorite, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, also known as PPK, who has a US passport, and served as Minister of Energy and Prime Minister in previous governments. He has an abysmal record of corruption, involving bribes of US$ 140 million from the US Hunt Oil corporation. After the dismissal of Guzman and Acuña, Ms. Mendoza ascended rapidly to second place in the polls before the first 10 April ballot, leaving Kuczynski behind. This was intolerable for the Peruvian elite and – of course – for Washington.

With a massive campaign of slander against Veronica and her denigration as a ‘communist’, all funded by Peru’s wealthy families who control the country and by Washington, PPK came in second, narrowly beating Veronica in the first election round. The narrow defeat is highly disputed not only by the Peruvian left. This leaves, for now, Keiko and PPK for the run-off on 5 June 2016. The Peruvian elite and Washington are safe with two business- and Washington friendly candidates in the run-off. So it would seem. But there is a massive discontent brewing among people from all political strata who are realizing that this first ballot-run on 10 April was fraught with extreme fraud like no other election before in the last 40 years. People are organizing, taking to the streets by the tens of thousands – demanding that the entire election process be canceled, with an interim President until new elections must be called within a year. Some even fear a military coup.

In Venezuela, the right wing, directed and funded by Washington, knows no scruples in destroying the country, its solid social fabric and well reputed medical system. Everything is falling apart and ‘failing’: food and water shortages, electricity blackouts – lack of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. As a result, hospitals are collapsing, new-born babies are dying, and countless patients are waiting for medical attention. Inflation is soaring.

This social break-down is a classical. It is a US-directed and local right-wing executed boycott and interruption of supply chains for food and basic services. It is a rehash of how the CIA prompted the 1973 military coup in Chile that brought 17 years of horror and assassinations to Chileans. The Venezuelan kind is just so much more sophisticated, as Washington has gained invaluable experience from ’regime changes’ fabricated around the world in the last 40 years. Venezuelans taking to the streets in masses – mostly unreported by the bought mainstream media – protesting against foreign influenced violence.

President Maduro is struggling. There is no halting the onslaught of the North, except by banning foreign media that are spreading lies and slander and – by a military clamp down. This is not propagating military violence, but right wing foreign funded violence has to be stopped. If the only way to save the Bolivarian Revolution is by declaring Martial Law, with tanks controlling the streets and a clamp-down on western lies and violence spreading propaganda – so be it.

In Honduras, President Juan Orlando Hernández came to power through a Washington instigated and supported coup in 2009 (now even admitted by Killery) against left-leaning President Zelaya, who was the clear front-runner for the upcoming elections. Under Orlando Hernandez’s tyranny, always protected by Washington, the crime and murder rate, already the highest in Central America, is increasing drastically. Oppression of free speech and political expression is rampant. The environment, natural resources, like forests (illegal logging) and water (privatization), gold and other minerals, is rabidly raped. Environmental protesters are being chased and gunned down. Last March, the horrendous murder of environmental and indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres has sparked violent clashes in Honduras. Here, repression went one step too far. People’s protests will not relent.

In Ecuador and Bolivia, destabilizing CIA directed Washington trained groups and ‘NGOs’ are at work, buying support among indigenous people. In Bolivia they are recruiting (‘buying’) ‘street kids’ to form anti-government protest groups to be infiltrated into the heartland of the pluri-national state of Bolivia, comprising some 36 cultures based on the number of indigenous languages.

In the case of Ecuador, the very people made unhappy by Rafael Correa’s concession to oil giants, concessions he had to make under US pressure, are now being ‘destabilized’, mobilized against the government by the CIA and its local handlers. President Correa’s hands were tied. Not yielding to the pressure may have meant death – death for himself and / or for his family. It happened to Jaime Roldos, one of his predecessor, who was killed in 1981 in an air plane ‘accident’ – which, as officially revealed by declassified documents, was not an accident, but part of the CIA directed Operation Condor against leftist South American leaders. Likewise, the Washington instigated attempted police and military coup of 30 September 2010 against President Correa, was a clear signal that assassination is not off the table – if he doesn’t behave according to Washington’s dictate. Of course, this is not enough, regime change in both Ecuador and Bolivia are on the hegemon’s final agenda. It looks very much like Latin America is going through a new ‘Operation Condor’. 

Interestingly, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergeí Tyabkov, warned Washington not to interfere in Latin America’s internal affairs. He pointed out Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela as the most obvious cases.

——

Europe

In Europe, the real terrorists, the Unites States of war Crimes and its vassal, the European Union with its non-transparent sub-layers of corrupt institutions, the so-called, but miss-named European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC – a non-elected dishonest and secretive sub-layer of the EU), the IMF – have wreaked economic and humanitarian havoc in the southern fringe states which they call humiliatingly “PIGS” – Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Massive anti-imperial demonstrations take place on a daily basis. France may be a surprise follower of radical protests.

The people of France, since long no friends of their President, François Hollande, whose popularity dropped last March to 17% and may have shrunk to below 10% after his forcing through a new highly controversial labor law by decree, anti-democratically avoiding a parliamentary debate. After the fact, he is now pushing it through parliament. He wowed to stay firm and not to repeal it no matter what.

People are taking to the streets all over France by the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Syndicates have announced an open-ended general strike, as long as it takes to reverse this labor rights-destroying law – which gives corporations the right to hire and fire as they please, abrogating almost all social labor protection. These neoliberal anti-labor measures are to please industrial and financial euro-oligarchs. They are already inciting strong anti-EU sentiments which, combined with EU-euro discontent of the people of other EU members, may bring about a collapse of this inhumane, un-solidary corrupt so-called European Union.

In Greece people are succumbing to famine, lacking health care and are suffering extreme and seemingly unstoppable plunder of public assets and social services – plunder of Life Capital. People die by the thousands from mal-nutrition, lack of medical attention, and outright famine, all induced by endless and merciless austerity programs imposed by – and seemingly uncontested by the ruling so-called leftwing Syriza party – the inhuman, criminal troika (EC, ECB, IMF) – all driven by the Anglo-Zionist-owned and directed FED and Wall Street. It is amazing how the rest of Europe of this rotten European Union, corrupt to the bones, is just on-looking, hapless and spineless as they are, dreaming that it will never happen to them. The EU vassals are but an ignorant bunch of ego-centrists and political boot-lickers.

But the Greek are awakening from their shock. After the 5 July 2015 anti-bailout referendum was overwhelmingly accepted by 61%, the government – the same government that called for the referendum – turned around taking exactly measures to the contrary, accepting all the austerity conditions and worse, presented to Syriza by the troika before the referendum. The shock was indescribable. – As of this day, people cannot understand what happened.

Very likely there was (and still is) foul play involved, possibly including death threats, similar to the ones that may have prompted then Prime Minister George Papandreou, when after an emergency meeting in November 2011 in Cannes with Mme. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy, he returned in a hurry to Athens, canceling the anti-bailout (anti-EU) referendum – and immediately resigning as PM. Now Greece is beset by strikes, paralyzing and destroying the little that’s left of the economy – eventually and hopefully leading to GREXIT – the only light at the end of the tunnel.

In Spain, the Movement 15 (M15 – a consolidated movement of the ‘indignados’, the ‘outraged’, that started in Madrid on 15 May 2011) celebrated its 5th Anniversary, prompting millions of outraged people to march on 500 cities throughout the world, in a coordinated and solidary effort to fight the neoliberal assault on humanity – an onslaught that uses three types of weapons: tanks and bombs; media lie-propaganda and slander; and financial strangulation and subordination through debt.

Spain is also preparing for a second round of elections on 26 June, called by King Felipe VI, because the left, led by the Socialist Party (PSOE- Spanish acronym), was unable to form a government. The newly founded left coalition of Podemos (‘We Can’) – and the United Left – “United-Podemos” – may have good chances to challenge the second largest party, the PSOE, at the upcoming ballot. But there is still the right wing PP (Partido Popular) with the neoliberal Mariano Rajoy to beat, not an easy feat, especially with the notorious foreign (Washington-EU) influenced propaganda, as well as voter and ballot manipulation.

In fact, the latest polls indicate PP ahead with 28.2%; followed by “United-Podemos” 26.2%; the Socialists (PSOE), 18.9%; and finally 13.2% for Ciudadanos, the new center-right party.

If the next elections will again be indecisive, which looks very possible judging from this early poll (it’s the principle: divide to reign), King Felipe will most likely give this time the PP, Rajoy, the opportunity to form a government. Another right-wing Rajoy-type government may however bring Spain, especially through the M15 movement, to the edge of a revolution.

The UK – is in a class by itself – with a strong people’s movement towards BREXIT. It reflects the popular discontent with the EU and with PM David Cameron’s submission to the non-transparent rules of the EU and its unelected European Commission. This video http://subterrnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/brexit-movie-full-film.html illustrates fairly well what the EU has promised but is actually doing to the UK; not much different from what the EU technocracy is doing to the rest of Europe.

If the Brits succeed against the will of the Masters in Washington and Brussels to vote for exiting the EU – and if the vote is actually accepted – then dynamics of European discontent may well bring about a collapse of the European Union and its fake, unbacked and unsustainable currency, the euro. That in itself would be an enormous blow to the US empire – a blow it may not survive. The consequences might be tremendous, including a disintegration of NATO which could and might and hopefully would be a death knell for the US hegemon.

—–

Middle East, North Africa and the Rest of the World

This criminal universal onslaught of the US-NATO forces is also engulfing the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe with foreign-bread wars and armed proxy conflicts, causing millions and millions of refugees in the region – refugees that are eventually seeking a new life, of all places, in the countries of their hangmen – Europe. And Europe – still the colonialists of hither-day – rejects them miserably, prevents their entry with walls, yes walls – remember the Berlin Wall? – and barbed wires, chasing them away with tear gas and rubber bullets, mothers with babies and small kids. Some are hurt, some are even killed. The media of course does not report on them. Once they become refugees they are forgotten souls.

What an abject shame Europe is! About 1.3 million refugees have entered Europe since the beginning of 2015, a territory comprising 28 members plus two non-members (Norway and Switzerland), of about 4.5 million square kilometers and a population of 500 million. The standard of ethics of the Europeans is so low that – destroying the homes and homelands of the refugees yes, but taking them in and giving them shelter – no. By comparison, Lebanon with a surface of 10,500 km2 and a population of about 4.5 million, is giving shelter to 1.5 million refugees from the Middle East and North African Region. Such a Europe, such a European Union is not worthy of survival. Inhumanity on such a scale is unsustainable – thanks god!

NATO, armed to the teeth, despite all the promises to the contrary after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is rapidly expanding eastward, encircling Russia, including occupying Ukraine. Ukraine has been for hundreds of years an integral part of Russia, but it is a crucially strategic and economic piece of land for the West to dominate on its journey towards world hegemony. Therefore, US-NATO instigated a bloody coup in February 2014, installed a Nazi-Government in Kiev, committing heinous war crimes in the eastern Donbass Region of Ukraine – a civil war massacre for which the ruthless west is blaming Russia. Naturally, with accusations fabricated by the bought presstitute media. – But slowly, people start seeing through the increasingly flagrant fog of lies.

The onslaught doesn’t stop here. The Empire of Chaos and Killing has been and is steadfastly continuing ‘pivoting’ to the East, to China, where Washington is already displaying close to 60% of its Navy fleet in the South China Sea. The US air force is also simultaneously and provocatively over-flying Russian and Chinese sea- and land space, and US war ships are patrolling the Baltic Sea close to and often infringing on Russian territorial waters – then accusing Russia of threatening them with their fighter jets. Yet, the chess geniuses, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, are mastering the geopolitical chessboard not only to protect their countries’ frontiers, but also to save humanity from a WWIII bloodbath and possibly from extinction.

To a distant observer this looks like the end game; hopefully not the end game for the world as we know it, but for the western tyrant. It is like a ferocious beast, lashing out and around with deadly force before its total demise, attempting to destroy and devour as much as possible on its way to oblivion. All, We the People, who have been pillaged for the last century by this predatory force, have to do is avoiding a nuclear war – which could well mean the end of humanity. That’s ‘All’ – that’s A Lot.

We have few options. One of them, perhaps the most viable and bloodless one, is defeating globalization, the One or New World Order by breaking down the hypocritical and fraudulent EU, going back – or rather fast-forwarding – to the concept of local production for local markets with local currencies and public banks that actually work for the people and the peoples’ economies.  This would help conquering the monster’s fraudulent economy with its worthless, debt-driven dollar-based monetary system. For the new sovereign countries’ international trade, a Russia-China emanating totally dollar / euro delinked alternative and international transfer system may not be far off. Its roll-out to the world as a viable option is essential.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Time for Counter-Coups in Latin America? – and Europe?

The West’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ in Syria

May 18th, 2016 by Gearóid Ó Colmáin

On the 12th of May a massacre was committed in the town of al-Zara in the southern contryside of Hama, Syria. Woman and children were slaughtered by Takfiri death squads branded by the Western media as ‘moderate rebels’. There was no mention of the massacre in the Western press. There was no need to mention it because it was of no use to them. Often, the Western-backed terrorists film their massacres or post pictures of the dead children on social media. These pictures are then displayed across all the front pages of corporate newspapers and flashed across television screens. People’s emotions are aroused.

Western governments rant and rave about the necessity of military intervention to ‘stop the massacres.’ This time there was silence. There is no benefit to the perpetrators of neocolonial warfare and genocide in admitting that the terrorist is NATO – that it is actually the Syrian Arab Army that is fighting terrorism and not the Western military alliance. If the masses knew this, there would be a revolution and the perpetrators of war would become its casualties.

The fact that no moderate rebels exist in Syria has been admitted by the U.S. Government on several occasions. Vice-president Joe Biden has admitted it, the Pentagon’s General Dempsey has admitted it, Tulsi Gabbard of the US Armed Services Committee has admitted it, and the Defense Intelligence Agency has admitted it. Western corporate media agencies have themselves admitted that the West is supporting al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria in an attempt to overthrow President Assad, yet, perversely, the same media systematically re-brand barbaric head-choppers and child murderers as ‘moderate rebels’, when their heinous crimes are propitious to Western foreign policy objectives.

Nicolas_Poussin_-_Le_massacre_des_Innocents_-_Google_Art_Project

Due to mass media saturation in the West most people believe they are well-informed about what is happening in the world. They regularly see news stories about other governments committing atrocities against their own people and hear sober press conference condemnations from Western leaders and government officials.

Massacres allegedly committed by the enemies of the West regularly make front page headlines which arouse an outpouring of sympathy and indignation that such atrocities could be committed while the ‘ international community’ stands watching. The obsequiousness and docility of the Western public enables those who own the means of production, education and communication, that is to say the Power Elite, to use war as a means of furthering their interests. They re-brand the supreme crime as ‘humanitarian intervention’ and well-intentioned citizens of the West not only accept it but often demand that the humanitarian war is carried out- such is the power of the tableau limned by corporate media professionals for general consumption.

Educational and mass media indoctrination about the benevolence of Euro-Atlantic global governance renders many incapable of perceiving the world in any other way; it is a form of instituted intellectual myopia deeply resistant to correction.

Western ‘civilisation’ has become so decadent, the masses so dumbed down, so passive and apathetic, so hopelessly addicted to simplistic sound bites and spectacles that it possible for those who keep them in such torpor to occasionally reveal the truth about Western complicity in crimes against humanity, then simply resume the tragic-comical narrative of Western benevolence. Repetition of falsity always triumphs over elucidation of truth. The society of the spectacle only sees what it is told to see. Our crimes are transposed and boldly displayed in a virtual gallery as the crimes of others.

In his painting ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’ (1625) French painter Nicolas Poussin depicts the slaughter of infants by the soldiers of the Jewish King Herod – a famous biblical episode. Herod was attempting to kill the infant Christ who, he had been told, would unseat him as ‘king of the Jews’. The mass media representation of the invasion and destruction of Syria by NATO mercenaries could be imagined as a mediocre post-modern rendition of Poussin’s tableau. In this case, the Syrian Arab Army play the role of Herod’s soldiers massacring the innocent. But the reality of this war is entirely the reverse: thousands of Assad’s soldiers have given their lives to protect the nation’s children, not harm them.

The real Herod in this war is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For this is and always has been a war waged by the Jewish state against the final bastion of anti-Zionist resistance in the Middle East. It is being carried out in accordance with the Yinon Plan, which advocates the destruction of all states hostile to Israeli regional and global hegemony.

Poussin’s painting dramatises the cruelty of imperial despotism, of an era replete with evil. The French painter lived through a period, in many respects, similar to our own. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) had completely devastated Europe. Pablo Picasso used Poussin’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ for his famous painting Guernica, which depicts the brutality of the German bombing of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Few painters today, with the notable exception of Caoimhghin O Croidheain, have anything to say about the crimes of the ruling elite. The massacre of al-Zara will not be transformed into great art.

In 1648 France was about to erupt in civil war – a situation not entirely unlike the present. In a letter Poussin described the moral turpitude of his time. His words eerily epitomise our current condition:

I fear the malignancy of the century. Virtue, conscience, religion are banished from all men. Only vice, deceit and self-interest reign. All is lost – I despair of goodness – all is overcome by unhappiness. The current remedies are not strong enough to remove the evil. If we do not get rid of the cause, we are wasting our time.

Gearóid Ó Colmáin is an Irish journalist and political analyst based in Paris. His work focuses on globalisation, geopolitics and class struggle.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The West’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ in Syria

Film Review: ‘Occupation of the American Mind’ Unravels Israel’s Propaganda War in US

May 18th, 2016 by Roqayah Chamseddine

“The Occupation Of The American Mind,” directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, is a stunning documentary examining Israel’s public relations war in the United States. It premiered last month.

The film, which begins with a heart-stopping shot of an apartment complex in Gaza as it is bombed during the 2014 war, pulls no punches. The sounds and images are riveting. You’re able to see the fire and thick smoke pouring into the air, but there are no voices that break the quiet aftermath. Only the sharp clinking of debris.

Roger Waters, Pink Floyd co-founder and BDS advocate, narrates the film, sending viewers back into that bloody summer in 2014—one which now seems to much of the world as though it was a lifetime ago.

Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu on CNN. Still from "The Occupation Of The American Mind" (http://occupationmovie.com/)

Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu on CNN. Still from “The Occupation Of The American Mind” (http://occupationmovie.com/)

While rage was building against Israel during that summertime bloodbath, in the United States the story was far different. The American people, Waters says, held firm in their support for the bombing of Gaza. The much beloved talking point that “Israel has a right to defend itself,” one that became a kind of religious mantra during that war and those before it, is explored from the very start of the film.

Still from "The Occupation Of The American Mind" (http://occupationmovie.com/)

Still from “The Occupation Of The American Mind” (http://occupationmovie.com/)

With help from Peter Hart, of Fair Media Watch, Yousef Munayyer, executive director of The U.S. Campaign to End The Israeli Occupation, and others, the film deconstructs the establishment media’s propaganda efforts. Yousef Munayyer argues that when we examine the formula that mainstream media outlets follow we find Israeli spokespeople are over-represented when compared to Palestinian spokespeople by a margin of 3 to 1. So when Israel is discussed, we are inundated with commentary from officials, who propagate in support of Israel’s use of violence.

American elected officials also join the chorus in order to reinforce Israel’s “right to defend itself,” and this translates into news anchors echoing the same talking points, thereby directly influencing the public’s perception of the conflict.

The Occupation Of The American Mind” also takes viewers back in time to the moment in history referred to in Arabic as al Nakba, or The Catastrophe, when countless Palestinians were forced out of their homes in order to make way for unfettered colonization in a newly formed Israel.

Waters tells the story of how more than 700,000 of Palestine’s native population were expelled, while a chilling video of thousands of Palestinians, forced to march away from their homeland, plays on screen. Viewers see the toll that this uprooting took on the faces of Palestinian men, women, and children, in black and white photographs.

Years later, the state of Israel not only worked tirelessly to dehumanize and massacre the Palestinians inside Palestine, but elsewhere. In Lebanon, the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which was televised for the entire world to see, became what Phyllis Bennis, author and fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, describes as “a watershed moment for Israel.” The massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese civilians in 1982 by the Phalangists, a fascist Lebanese militia, was overseen by Israel. It marked the first time the colonial settler state went on the offensive, defending itself from bad publicity.

The 1982 war in Lebanon was a game changer for Israel. Out of the blood-soaked ashes of south Lebanon and West Beirut, Israel’s public relations strategy was born.

As the film explores U.S. public opinion, it unravels the dominant narrative concerning the occupation: that Israel, the brave David, is facing the Palestinian Goliath.

Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky gives the final blow before the film ends: “The U.S. government will support [the occupation] as long as the U.S. population tolerates it.

This is a masterful and riveting film that not only dispels the myth of Israel’s victimhood, but brings the past and present together in order to unearth realities of the occupation, which rightfully humanize the Palestinians. It is moving in a way that goes beyond images and a retelling of a painful history. It challenges not only the establishment media, but the American public as well.

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Film Review: ‘Occupation of the American Mind’ Unravels Israel’s Propaganda War in US

Clinton and Trump: Nuclearized or Lobotomized? The Road to Nuclear War?

May 18th, 2016 by Prof. James Petras

Over half the US electorate views the two leading candidates for the 2016 Presidential elections with horror and disdain.

In contrast, the entire corporate mass media, here and abroad, repeat outrageous virtuous claims on behalf of Hillary Clinton and visceral denunciations of Donald Trump.

Media pundits, financial, academic and corporate elites describe the prospects of her presidency as one of responsibility, national security, business prosperity and political normalcy.

In contrast, they paint billionaire Republican candidate, Donald Trump as a grave threat, likely to destroy the global economic and military order, polarize US society and destined to lead an isolated and protectionist US into deep recession.

The super-charged rhetoric, flaunting the virtues of one candidate and vices of the other, ignores the momentous consequences of the election of either candidate. There is a strong chance that the election of ultra-militarist Hillary Clinton will drive the world into catastrophic global nuclear war.

On the other hand, Trump’s ascent to the US Presidency will likely provoke unprecedented global economic opposition from the corporate establishment, which will drive the US economy into a profound depression.

These are not idle claims: The destructive consequences of either candidate’s presidency can best be understood through a systematic analysis of Mme. Clinton’s past and present foreign policies and Trump’s belief that he his the ability to transform the US from an empire to a republic.

Clinton on the Road to Nuclear War

Over the past quarter century, Hillary Clinton has promoted the most savage and destructive wars of our times. Moreover, the more directly she has been engaged in imperial policymaking, the greater her responsibility in implementing foreign policy, the closer we have come to nuclear war.

To identify Hillary Clinton’s path to global war it is necessary to identify three crucial moments. Hillary’s bloody history can be dated initially to her de facto ‘joint Presidency’ with husband Bill Clinton (1993 – 2001).

Stage One: The Conjugal Militarist Presidency (1993 – 2001)

During Hilary Clinton’s joint presidency with William Clinton (the Billary Regime) the First Lady actively promoted an aggressive militarized takeover of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and Eastern Africa – often under her favorite messianic doctrine of ‘humanitarian intervention and regime change’.

This justified the relentless bombing of Iraq, destroying its infrastructure and blockading its population into starvation while preparing to carve its territory into ethnic and religious divisions. Over 500,000 Iraqi children were murdered as proudly justified by then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright (1997 – 2001) and lauded by the Clintons.

In the same manner, Yugoslavia was bombed by the US humanitarian coalition air forces and cruise missiles over 1,000 times from March 24 to June 11, 2009 in the course of sub-dividing the country into five backward ‘ethnically cleansed’ mini-states. Thousands of factories, public buildings, bridges, passenger trains, radio stations, embassies, apartment complexes and hospitals were devastated; over a million victims became refugees while hundreds of thousands were wounded or killed.

The Conjugal Presidency successfully carried out the bloodiest war of aggression in Europe since the Nazi invasion during WWII, in order to subdivide an ethnically diverse and industrially advanced federation whose independent foreign policies had angered the Western corporate empire.

The Clintons launched the military invasion of Somalia (in East Africa) to impose a vassal regime, leading to the death of many thousands and a regional imperial war. Faced with desperate popular resistance from the Somalis, the Clintons were forced to withdraw US troops and bring in thousands of Sub-Saharan African and Ethiopian mercenaries – whose death would pass unnoticed among the US electorate.

From 1992 through 2001 the Clinton war machine helped set up the Yeltsin kleptocratic vassal state in Russia facilitating the greatest peace-time pillage of state resources in world history.

In the post-Soviet breakup era, over 1 trillion dollars of former public assets were seized especially by US and British-allied Zionist gangsters, Clinton-affiliated officials and ‘academics’ and Wall Street bankers. Under Clinton’s vassalage the entire Soviet public health system was eliminated and Yeltsin’s Russia experienced a population decline of 4.3 million citizens, mostly due to diseases, alcohol and drug toxicity, suicide, malnutrition, unemployment and loss of wages, pensions and and an unprecedented epidemic of tuberculosis and infectious diseases once thought wiped out, like syphilis and diphtheria.

Senator Hillary Clinton: War Crimes by Association- January 3, 2001 to January 21, 2009

During the George W. Bush dynastic regime, Mme. Senator Clinton supported the US war machine ‘sowing death and destruction to the four corners of the earth’ (to quote Bush Jr.), millions in Iraq and Afghanistan died or fled in terror. Bush had only deepened and expanded the mayhem that the Clinton Conjugal Presidency had begun a decade earlier.

Mme. Senator Clinton promoted the US direct and unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. Mme. Senator Clinton embraced crippling economic sanctions against Iran and she blessed Israel’s military assault against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli massacres in Lebanon.

Mme. Senator Clinton supported President Junior Bush’s aborted coup against Venezuelan President-elect Hugo Chavez (2002), a prelude to the coup attempts in Latin America that she directed later as US Secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton’s Senatorial term served as a transition linking her initial joint presidential period of wars of conquest onto the next period. As US Secretary of State under President Obama she aggressively promoted global military supremacy.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Naked Militarism Unleashed (2009 – 2014)

Whatever restraints Mme. Clinton faced as Senator dissolved as she ran amok during her term as Secretary of State. Across Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, Hillary Clinton bombed, massacred and dispossessed millions of families, shredding entire societies and dismantling the institutions of organized civil life for scores of millions. She never balked at the prospect of ethnocide and even joked that NATO might become ‘Al Queda’s Air Force’ as she pushed for a ‘no-fly zone’ over Syria.

A wild-eyed cackle echoed down the marbled corridors as the Foggy Bottom turned into a psycho- ward.

Mme. Secretary promoted the terror mercenary brigades invading Syria in a bid to ‘regime change’ the secular government of Al Assad, driving several million Syrian refugees into flight. Entire ancient Syrian Christian communities were wiped out under her reign of ‘regime change’.

Mme. Secretary Clinton directed US air force bombers and missiles to buttress the despotic Saudi monarch’s drive to obliterate Yemen.

Clinton unleashed the most savage bombing against Libya destroying the country and leading to the ethnic cleansing of a million and a half of Sub-Sahara workers and Black Libyans of sub-Saharan descent.

Under the aegis of murderous jihadi warlords and tribal chiefs, Mme. Clinton joked over the torture death of the wounded captive President Gadhafi, whose nauseating, almost pornographic murder by anal impalement was documented as a kind of ‘regime-change’ snuff film. Less known is the earlier, almost Old Testament-type slaughter of several of Gadhafi’s non-political children and five small grandchildren by a deliberate US missile strike aimed at ‘teaching the dictator’ that even his smallest grandchild cannot be hidden.

Mme. Clinton, who bragged that her Biblical role-model is the ethnocidal Queen Ester, has declared unconditional support for Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and among the diaspora. Hillary endorsed and defended Israeli torture and prison camps for children, the elderly and the homeless.

Mme. Secretary sent her criminal sub-secretary Victoria Nuland (an unreconstructed Neo-Con holdover from the Bush Administration) to orchestrate the violent putsch in the Ukraine. Millions from Ukraine’s huge ethnic Russian population were dispossessed from the Donbas region. Mme. Clinton had sought to convert Russian strategic military assets in Crimea to US-NATO bases aimed at Moscow, causing the residents of Crimea to overwhelmingly reject the coup and vote to re-join Russia.

The forceful intervention by Russian President Vladimir Putin prevented Mme. Clinton’s ethnic cleansing power grab in Crimea and the Donbas. The US retaliated by pushing for massive European Union economic sanctions against Russia.

Consistent with her pitiless Biblical role model, Mme. Clinton openly threatened to obliterate Iran with a nuclear war and incinerate 76 million Iranians to please her Uncle Netanyahu – a demented process that would poison a hundred million Arabs and perhaps a few million Israelis. Even the insane Israeli ‘Samson option’ was never dreamt of being ordered from Washington, DC!

During her tenure as Secretary of State, Mme. Clinton actively obstructed any diplomatic moves to achieve a US-Iran agreement on nuclear technology, parroting the Israeli militarist solution against regional rivals!

Mme. Clinton has remained an unrepentant enemy to the emerging independent Latin American governments. In search of vassal states, Clinton promoted successful military coups in Honduras and Paraguay, but was defeated in Venezuela. She proudly touts the death squad regime in Honduras among her foreign policy successes.

Mme. Hillary backed the death squad and narco-regimes in Colombia and Mexico, which killed over a hundred thousand civilians.

On the path to global war, Mme. Militarist has prepared to encircle Russia, stationing nuclear weapons in the Balkans and Poland. She promised that missiles would be placed in south central Europe and Ukraine.

Clinton raised the nuclear ante by hysterically claiming that the elected Russian President Vladimir Putin was ‘worse than ISIS’… ‘worse’ than Hitler.

Repeatedly threatening global war and actually making aggressive regional war should clearly have marked Mme. Hillary Clinton as unfit for the Presidency of the United States. She is politically, intellectually and emotionally unable to deal realistically with an independent Russia and any other independent power, including China and Iran. Her monomania is a course of violent ‘regime changes’, unable to evaluate any of the catastrophes her policymaking has in fact already produced.

Hillary Clinton was the proud author and director of the so-called US ‘pivot to Asia’. Clinton’s ‘pivot’ has led to a massive buildup of the US air and naval forces surrounding China’s maritime routes to its global markets and access to essential raw materials.

Clinton’s hyper-militarism expanded US war zones to cover Australia, Japan and the Philippines, greatly heightening tensions and increasing the possibility of a military provocation leading to nuclear war with China.

No US presidential contender, past or present, has engaged in more offensive wars, in a shorter time, uttering greater nuclear threats than Mme. Hillary Clinton. That she has not yet set off the nuclear holocaust is probably a result of the Administrative constraints imposed on the Mme. Secretary of State by the less blood-thirsty President Obama. These limitations will end if and when Mme. Hillary Clinton is ‘elected’ President of the United States in a process that the electorate increasingly knows is ‘rigged’ toward that outcome.

Donald Trump: the Peaceful Road to Recession

In sharp contrast to the militarist Mme. Clinton, Donald Trump, ‘the Businessman’, has adopted a relatively peaceful approach to international politics for an American presidential candidate in the current era.

‘Businessman’ Trump envisions productive negotiations with Russian President Putin. Employing his loudly trumpeteddeal-making genius to benefit the United States, Trump predicts economic and diplomatic successes with Russia, China and other major powers.

Angered at US military allies enjoying decades of US Treasury largesse, a President Trump promises to withdraw US military bases from Asia and Europe and demanding that overseas allies ‘pony-up’ for their own defense.

What the war mongers in the mass media, academia and Washington bureaucracy, dismiss as ‘Trump’s isolationism’, The Businessman describes as rebuilding America by converting overseas military spending into domestic infrastructure projects and ‘real’ jobs in America.

Trump’s ‘America First’ policy, under his ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan, does not envision wars of conquest against Muslim countries, especially since they have already led to massive floods of Muslim refugees, threatening trade and stability, and Trump opposition to the entry of more Muslim refugees into the US. Trump’s foreign policy of limited military goals and warfare is diametrically opposed to Clinton’s total war strategy. Trump, ridiculed by his rivals for ‘his small hands’, does not appear to have Hillary’s itchy trigger finger on the nuclear button!

Trump mouths contradictory economic statements, especially his proposals to “rebuild America”, while operating in the framework of an imperial system. As President of the United States, his protectionist policies will come into direct confrontation with US and global ‘finance and monopoly capitalism’ and will likely lead to systematic disinvestment and a disastrous economic collapse or, more likely, theBusinessman-President’s capitulation to the status quo.

The problem is not Trump’s pledges to tax the rich (as he occasionally promises) , or expand Social Security (as he claims), but his failure to admit that these policies would lead to massive flight by the capitalist elite to avoid taxes. The major threat is that, if Trump follows-up on his America-First policies, there will be massive capital resistance and a Congressional revolt by both finance-dominated political parties, which will paralyze any hope for his economic agenda.

Without political independence to implement his domestic economic agenda, Trump will have to face a massive investment and lending revolt from capitalists and bankers who would be very willing to drive the fragile economy into a major recession – threatening a kind of ‘domestic economic sabotage’.

Trump’s Republican Party (and certainly the Democrats) will never support a program which will force multi-national capital to sacrifice its reliance on cheap overseas labor and double digit profits in order to create American jobs and employ American workers at living wages.

A President Trump would not even secure a handful of Congressional votes to increase taxes on plutocrats to fund his proposed large-scale public works, infrastructure and job creation projects.

The Businessman President would face the full fury of the powerful military-industrial-high tech complex if and when he attempted to retire US global military forces from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The non-politician Trump’s historic rise to national political prominence has its roots in the ideas and values of the majority of working people who have been marginalized to the fringes by the media moguls and Wall Street riff-raff. Today Trump’s themes and ideas resonate with the mainstream of voters.

Several dominant ideas circulate in his speeches and interviews.

First, Trump rejects ‘globalization’ (the watered-down PR term for imperialism) and ‘free trade’ (a euphemism for the transfer of profits extracted from US workers to business investment abroad).

Trump’s narrative resonates with the recent anti-Wall Street ‘Occupy’ movements opposing the power of 0.1% super rich against the vast majority.

Secondly, Trump embraces economic nationalism in his slogan “Make American Great Again”. Too many American workers and their families resent having been exploited, maimed and slaughtered to serve multiple wars in the Middle East, Asia and Europe for the interests of US warlords, bankers, Zionists and other imperial royalties. Trump argues that the entire inflated security and corporate welfare system has led to an untenable debt payments spiral.

The third theme that draws millions is Trump’s notion that the US should reject the policy of serial ‘regime change’. We should not initiate and engage in perpetual overseas wars against Muslim countries as a way to avoid domestic attacks by individual terrorists. During an early foreign policy debate, Trump shocked the political establishment when he accused the Bush Administration of deliberately lying the country into the disastrous invasion of Iraq. This ‘truth-telling’ elicited wild applause from the mass Republican electorate.

Trump’s goal is to strengthen American civilization and avoid provoking more ‘clashes of civilizations’…

The fourth, and probably most attractive, message to most Americans is Trump’s powerful assault on Washington and Wall Street elites and their academic and media apologists.

Millions of Americans have been disgusted with the Bushes, Clintons and Obamas, as well as the Morgans, Goldman Sachs and Paulsons, whose policies have exacerbated class inequalities through multiple banking swindles and financial crashes, all ‘bailed out’ by the American tax payers.

Fifth, Trump’s loud, brash exposure of the mass media’s lies and propaganda has resonated with the same deep distrust felt by the American public. His talent for talking directly and bluntly to the public and on the internet has led to his enormous appeal. He does not engage in ‘conspiracy’ but acknowledges that the Edward Snowden revelations have unmasked the government’s deceptions and its program of espionage against the people, destroying the foundations for democratic discourse.

Trump might win the election based on his ‘five truths’ and his pledge to ‘make America great again’, but more likely he will lose because he has insulted the traditional establishment, the Latinos, Afro-Americans, feminists, trade union bureaucrats and their followers from both parties. Even if he succeeds at the ballot box, his political agenda with relying on Republican elites in Washington and Wall Street, the Pentagon and the ‘international security system’ will lead to a major economic crisis. For the elite, if blocking Trump’s domestic economic agenda requires a financial crash to defend ‘globalization’, serial wars and the 0.1%, then tighten your belts!

This November, the country will face the disagreeable choice between a proven nuclear warmonger and a captive of Wall Street. I will try to keep warm, roast chestnuts and avoid thinking about Mme. President’s Looming Mushroom Cloud.

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Clinton and Trump: Nuclearized or Lobotomized? The Road to Nuclear War?

Monsanto and the Poisoning of Europe

May 18th, 2016 by Colin Todhunter

This week, a Standing Committee of plant scientists from 28 member states in Europe is likely to endorse the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) findings so that the European Commission (under pressure from Monsanto, Glyphosate Task Force and others) can re-authorise glyphosate for another nine years. This is despite the WHO classifying glyphosate as being “probably carcinogenic” to humans.

An open letter from campaigner Rosemary Mason to Dirk Detken, Chief Attorney to the EFSA, follows the brief background article you are about to read. In the letter, Mason highlights the regulatory delinquency concerning the oversight of glyphosate in the EU. The evidence provided by Mason might lead many to agree that processes surrounding glyphosate ‘regulation’ in Europe amount to little more than a “cesspool of corruption.”

There are around 500 million people in the EU. They want EU officials to uphold the public interest and to be independent from commercial influence. They do not want them to serve and profit from commercial interests at cost to the public’s health and safety. However, what they too often get are massive conflicts of interest: see here about the ‘revolving door’ problem within official EU bodies, here about ‘the European Food and Safety Authority’s independence problem’ and here about ‘chemical conflicts’ in the EC’s scientific committees for consumer issues.

And they get governing bodies that are beholden to massive corporate lobbying: see here about ‘the fire power of the financial lobby’ and here about ‘who lobbies most’ for TTIP, with agribusiness being the biggest lobby group behing this secretive and corrupt trade deal that is attempting drive a policy agenda above the heads of the European people and contrary to their wishes (see this on TTIP as well).

Regulators turn a blind eye to the deleterious effects of products that pose a serious systemic risk to the public: see here about ‘the glyphosate toxicity studies you’re not allowed to see’ and here ‘case closed by EFSA on Roundup, despite new evidence’.

And they also give the nod to products based not on independent research but on a company’s statements or secretive studies taken at face value and then deliberately keep the public in the dark: for example, see here about ‘Roundup and birth defects’.

What people get are public institutions that serve a corporate agenda: see here about ‘the black book on the corporate agenda of the EC’.

Last year, Arthur Nelson noted that as many as 31 pesticides with a value running into billions of pounds could have been banned in the EU because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon.

A study by Sebastian Stehle and Ralph Schultz found that 44.7 % of the 1,566 cases of measured insecticide concentrations (MICs) in EU surface waters exceeded their respective regulatory acceptable concentrations. The meta-analysis challenges the efficacy of the regulatory environmental risk assessment conducted for pesticide authorisation in the EU.

Our food and agriculture system is in big trouble. It’s in big trouble because the global agritech/agribusiness sector is poisoning it, us and the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other chemical inputs. This is made possible because of the agro-chemical industry’s lavish funds, massive lobbying, slick PR, compliant politicians and scientists and its undermining and capture of regulatory and policy decision-making bodies that supposedly serve the public interest.

The situation in the US is possibly even worse and with TTIP on the horizon, Europeans could be in line for exposure to even more chemicals. Some 34,000 pesticides are currently registered for use in the US. Drinking water is often contaminated by pesticides, and more babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure. Chemicals show up in breast milk of mothers. Illnesses are on the rise too, including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and several types of cancer. The link with pesticide exposure is becoming increasingly evident.

Elected politicians and ‘public servants’ are allowing this to happen. In 2014, the authors of the report ‘The record of a Captive Commission’ concluded that the outgoing Barraso II EC’s trade and investment policy revealed a bunch of unelected technocrats who cared little about what ordinary people want and negotiate on behalf of big business.

The report state that the European Commission had a one-sided relationship with agribusiness on GMOs and pesticides. Far from shifting Europe to a more sustainable food and agriculture system, the opposite had happened, as agribusiness and its lobbyists continued to dominate the Brussels scene. The report noted that the industry had been exerting strong pressure to prevent action by the EU on endocrine disruptors and pesticides.

Failure to expose and challenge the corruption, lobbying, back-room ‘free trade’ deals and revolving door that exists between agribusiness and decision-making/regulatory bodies will result in these corporations continuing to prosper at everyone else’s expense.

Open Letter from Rosemary Mason to Dirk Detken, Chief Attorney to the European Food Safety Authority

(For the sake of convenience, this is an edited version of the original letter and has been reformatted in places)

Dear Dirk Detken,

Humans and the environment are being poisoned by thousands of chemicals of that have never been tested by regulators in the combinations in which farmers use them today. Regulation of pesticides is controlled by the agrochemical industry. It has a financial interest in advising farmers to use as much and as many pesticides as possible. This week a Standing Committee of plant scientists from 28 member states in Europe is likely to endorse EFSA’s findings so that the European Commission (under pressure from Monsanto, Glyphosate Task Force and Crop Protection Organisations) can re-authorise glyphosate for another nine years.

1)  Glyphosate is toxic to humans

Pesticide regulators and Monsanto maintain that glyphosate only affects plants, fungi and bacteria, not humans. Regulators claim it is non-toxic to humans because of the enzyme that glyphosate affects is only present in plants, fungi and bacteria and not in animals and humans. This is scientific nonsense. Pesticide scientists and plant scientists have based their assessment of herbicides on complete ignorance of human gut physiology. Humans and animals have exactly the same pathway as in plants; mammals can only absorb nutrients via the bacteria in their gut; the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome is the collective genome of organisms (i.e. bacteria) inhabiting our body (see this).

2)  Environmentalists launch legal case against Monsanto and EU regulators over glyphosate assessment April 26 2016

Viennese lawyer Dr Josef Unterweger says:

“If there has been deliberate manipulation of the new licensing procedure for glyphosate with the intention of approving a carcinogenic substance, then this would be defrauding 508 million EU citizens.”

For this reason Dr Unterweger is pressing charges on behalf of Munich Environmental Institute and the six environmental organisations: Global 2000, Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, PAN Germany, PAN UK, Générations Futures (France), WeMove Europe, and Nature & Progrès Belgique.

A report will also be submitted to OLAF, the European anti-fraud office.

Have EFSA and the EU Commission received a copy of the lawsuit?

3)  Ignoring evidence about glyphosate in South America

I probably don’t need to remind you of the email I wrote to you on 22/10/2012 about EFSA and the Seralini paper on rat tumours (see this)

I said:

“As Senior Attorney to EFSA, I presume that your CEO Ms Catherine Geslain-Lanuélle must, on occasions, take your advice. Perhaps you would like to point out to her the trail of disasters to human health and the environment that has followed the planting of GM maize and Roundup Ready® crops in both Latin America and the US since they were first grown in 1996. These statistics are real, not theoretical laboratory ones. Are these the disasters that she would want to see repeated in Europe?”

I had no reply.

I noted that the German Rapporteur Member State (BfR)/Glyphosate Task Force had excluded all papers from Argentina/Paraguay reporting cancers, birth defects, reproductive problems and DNA changes in their Renewal Assessment Report.

4)  Conflicts of interest

The German RMS (BfR) has members of industry serving on it. Le Monde revealed that one third of the Members of the BFR Commission on Pesticides and their Residues are directly employed by the chemical industry; others came from the ‘dubious’ bee institutes. The satirical comment from Le Monde was, that in Germany: “people from the pesticide industry give expert safety advice on their own products.”

Walter Haefeker President of the European Professional Beekeepers’ Association (EPBA) confirmed this:

“Federal authority for Consumer Protection and Food Safety: BVL (Bundesamt für Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit), during a presentation in 2015, in Berlin, at the world’ s largest agricultural products fair, ‘Die Grüne Woche’, the Director of the Department for the Admission of Plant Protection (Pesticide Regulation Authority), Dr. Karsten Hogardt, stated that the BVL sees itself as: ‘a service for its clients, the plant protection industry’. In this role it is ‘advised’ by an expert group of ‘risk managers’ including many from the pesticide industry. It is shocking and disgraceful, that no independent scientists are allowed in the regulation, or licensing, of pesticides in Germany.”

They were correct. The BfR Committee for Pesticides and its residues had two members from Bayer and two members from BASF. Bayer manufactures Super Strength Glyphosate and BASF supplies a chemical component of glyphosate.

The WHO/JMPR (WHO Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues held jointly with the FAO Panel of Experts on the Use of Pesticides in Agriculture) met to make the final decision about the registration of glyphosate in September 2015 based on IARC’s full report; at least three had conflicts of interest

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wrote to the World Health Organization (WHO)  with the list of eight members of this Committee. They complained that three members had conflicts of interest. Angelo Morettiresigned in 2011 from EFSA after he had failed to declare conflicts of interest because he had shares in a company that helped companies needing to comply with EU Regulations. Prof Alan Boobis is Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Europe, Vice Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of ILSI Europe and a Member of the Board of Trustees. He had served as a WHO expert on Pesticides Residues on the WHO/JMPR Committee when glyphosate was granted approval in 2002.

Dr Roland Solecki, Head of the BfR, was one of the eight experts on the WHO/JMPR even though BfR had said: “In BfR’s opinion, it would be inexpedient if BfR as the composer of the assessment report on glyphosate would comment on the IARC monograph.”

5)  Members of the Office of the European Ombudsman appear to be protecting industry

On 06/03/2016, I sent a letter to the EU Ombudsman Janet O’Reilly: ‘Maladministration and criminal collusion with the agrochemical involved in the renewal of glyphosate registration’. I received a reply on 13/05/2016, five days before the vote on the re-registration of glyphosate:

Complaint 378/2016/JVH “After a careful examination of your complaint, it seems that this condition is not met, because you do not appear to have made any administrative approaches either to the European Food Safety Authority or to the European Commission, in relation to your complaint. I regret to have to inform you, therefore, that I am not entitled to deal with your complaint.”

On 12/10/2015, I wrote an Open Letter to the European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority.

On 07/12/2015, I sent the Health Commissioner an Open Letter to the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed asking for a copy be sent to the Committee.

On 16/02/2016, I sent letter to Bernhard Url: Glyphosate causes cancer and birth defects.

6)  Glyphosate, which Monsanto claimed isn’t metabolized, was found in MEPs urine (see this)

The recent Green Party’s MEPs test was inspired by a German study ‘Urinale 2015’, which sampled glyposate concentrations in urine from more than 2,000 participants.

“The study found that the scale of the glyphosate problem is enormous, with detected concentrations in urine between five and 42 times over the maximum value of residues for drinking water in Europe,” the Green Party pointed out. “No less than 99.6 percent of all citizens who took part in this survey had higher residue levels. This means that virtually all citizens are contaminated with glyphosate.”

A number of other studies have detected glyphosate—the “most widely applied pesticideworldwide”—in feminine hygiene products, everyday food items and, yes, human bodies.

As veteran reporter Carey Gillam says in the article: What Killed Jack McCall? A Farmer Dies; A Case Against Monsanto Takes Root:

“Monsanto has deliberately concealed or suppressed information about the dangers of its product,” said environmental and chemical pollution attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is assisting in litigating glyphosate cases. “This is big. It’s on every farm in the world.”

There are now hundreds of court cases against glyphosate (and PCBs) for causing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and since Anthony Samsel obtained the secret sealed files from the US EPA under Freedom of Information about Monsanto’s knowledge in the 1970s that glyphosate caused cancer and cataracts in animals, he is in great demand as a witness.

[In her letter, Mason then goes on to outline the track record of Monsanto in relation to PCBs and its own internal memos that proved it knew about the toxicity of PCBs as far back as 1970 but continued production. She also notes US EPA’s close links with Monsanto and the failure to protect the public interest.]

I look forward to hearing that the Standing Committee for Plants, Animals, Food and Feed has rejected EFSA’s Report on glyphosate and that the European Commission heeds the Appeal by the International Society of Doctors for the Environment to immediately and permanently ban, with no exceptions, the production, trade and use in all the EU territories of glyphosate-based herbicides and the four insecticides as assessed by IARC (see here).

Yours sincerely,

Rosemary Mason

16/05/2016

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Monsanto and the Poisoning of Europe

Imperial Designs? Current US Ambassador to Brazil Served in Paraguay Prior to 2012 Coup

May 18th, 2016 by Telesur

The U.S. ambassador to Brazil previously served in Paraguay in the lead-up to the 2012 coup against Lugo, who was ousted in a manner similar to Rousseff.

The possible role of the United States government in the ouster of the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff is being scrutinized after it emerged that present U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Liliana Ayalde previously served as ambassador to Paraguay in the lead up to the 2012 coup against President Fernando Lugo.

In a case very similar to the current political crisis unfolding in Brazil, Lugo was ousted by the country’s congress in June 2012 in what was widely labeled a parliamentary coup.

The left-leaning Lugo took office in August 2008 and his election marked the end of 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party.

His political opponents, like Rousseff’s, began conspiring against him almost immediately and Lugo faced threats of impeachment barely a year into his term.

In a 2009 diplomatic cable released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks, then U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, Liliana Ayalde warned a colleague that rumors of an impeachment were growing.

“We have been careful to express public support for Paraguay’s democratic institutions — not for Lugo personally — and to make sure Lugo understands the benefits of a close relationship with the United States,” wrote Ayalde in a Dec. 7, 2009 cable.

Carlos Eduardo Martins, a sociology professor at the University of Sao Paulo, told teleSUR that Ayalde is using similar language to defend the parliamentary coup against Rousseff.

“That ambassador acted with great force during the coup that happened in Paraguay and she is in Brazil, using the same discourse, arguing that there is a situation that will be resolved by Brazilian institutions,” Martins said.

Meanwhile, Argentine political analyst Atilo Boron called Ayalde an “expert in promoting ‘soft coups.’”

U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Liliana Ayalde waves at the Brasilia International airport, upon her arrival, Sept. 16, 2013. | Photo: Agencia Brasil

U.S. Department of State spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau also used similar phrasing when referring to the parliamentary coup in Brazil.

“We are confident Brazil will work through its political challenges democratically in accordance with its constitutional principles,” Trudeau told the press gallery on Thursday.

Ayalde left her position as ambassador to Paraguay in August 2011 and went on to serve as Senior Assistant Administrator for the Latin American and Caribbean Bureau for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) before being promoted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department.

Ayalde became ambassador to Brazil in 2013. She arrived to that post shortly after it was revealed that the U.S. government was spying on Brazil, going so far as to intercept personal communications of Rousseff.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Imperial Designs? Current US Ambassador to Brazil Served in Paraguay Prior to 2012 Coup

This US Government Is The Most Corrupt In History

May 18th, 2016 by Washington's Blog

“There Has Never Been A Time, However, When The Government Of The United States Was So Perversely And Systematically Dedicated To Special Interests, Earmarks, Side Deals, Log-Rolling, Vote-Trading, And Sweetheart Deals”

Government corruption has become rampant:

  • Senior SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day surfing porn sites instead of cracking down on financial crimes
  • NSA spies pass around homemade sexual videos and pictures they’ve collected from spying on the American people
  • Investigators from the Treasury’s Office of the Inspector General found that some of the regulator’s employees surfed erotic websites, hired prostitutes and accepted gifts from bank executives … instead of actually working to help the economy
  • The Minerals Management Service – the regulator charged with overseeing BP and other oil companies to ensure that oil spills don’t occur – was riddled with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity”, which included “sex with industry contacts”
  • Agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency had dozens of sex parties with prostitutes hired by the drug cartels they were supposed to stop (they also received money, gifts and weapons from drug cartel members)
  • The government-sponsored rating agencies committed massive fraud (and see this)
  • The former chief accountant for the SEC says that Bernanke and Paulson broke the law and should be prosecuted
  • The government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing. See this and this. For example, the Federal Reserve turned its cheek and allowed massive fraud, and the SEC has repeatedly ignored accounting fraud (a whistleblower also “gift-wrapped and delivered” the Madoff scandal to the SEC, but they refused to take action). Indeed, Alan Greenspan took the position that fraud could never happen
  • Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy when they were not. The Treasury Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely
  • The American government’s top official in charge of the bank bailouts wrote, “Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again.”
  • Congress has exempted itself from the healthcare rules it insists everyone else follow
  • Law enforcement also grabs massive amounts of people’s cash, cars and property … even when people aren’t CHARGED with – let alone convicted of – any crime
  • Private prisons are huge profit-making centers for giant companies, and private prison corporations obtain quotas from the government, where the government guarantees a certain number of prisoners at any given time
  • The government covered up the health risks to New Orleans residents associated with polluted water from hurricane Katrina, and FEMA covered up the cancer risk from the toxic trailers which it provided to refugees of the hurricane. The Centers for Disease Control – the lead agency tasked with addressing disease in America – covered up lead poisoning in children in the Washington, D.C. area (the Centers for Disease Control has also been outed as receiving industry funding)
  • In response to new studies showing the substantial dangers of genetically modified foods, the government passed legislation more or less PUSHING IT onto our plates
  • Government scientists originally pushed fluoridation of water as “safe and effective” because fluoride is a major byproduct of making nuclear weapons … and the government ordered them to downplay the risks of fluoride exposure in order to prevent massive lawsuits by those suffering injury from poisoning
  • The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers, bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war
  • The FBI smeared top scientists who pointed out the numerous holes in its anthrax case. Indeed, the head of the FBI’s investigation agrees that corruption was rampant
  • Warmongers in the U.S. government knowingly and intentionally lied us into a war of aggression in Iraq. The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest ranking military officer in the United States – said that the Iraq war was “based on a series of lies”. The same is true in Libya, Syria and other wars. Indeed, the U.S. has often launched or proposed launching wars based upon FALSE PREMISES
  • Conservatives like the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan (Lt. General William Odom) and liberals like Noam Chomsky all say that the American government is the WORLD’S LARGEST purveyor of terrorism
  • On the other hand, the government has completely rigged the trials of those accused of conducting terrorism. And the military judge and prosecutor of alleged surviving 9/11 co-conspirators secretly destroyed relevant evidence, without telling defense lawyers
  • When the American government got caught assassinating innocent civilians, it changed its definition of “enemy combatants” to include all young men – between the ages of say 15 and 35 – who happen to be in battle zones. When it got busted killing kids with drones, it changed the definition again to include kids as “enemy combatants”
  • The government treats journalists who report on government corruption as CRIMINALS OR TERRORISTS. And it goes to great lengths to smear them. For example, when USA Today reporters busted the Pentagon for illegally targeting Americans with propaganda, the Pentagon launched a SMEAR CAMPAIGN against the reporters
  • The government has destroyed most of the freedoms and liberties that officials are sworn to protect. The high-level NSA official who designed the NSA’s global surveillance program told Washington’s Blog:  “Our government use to be more careful and secretive in their violations of the constitution; but, now, they are more blatant an arrogant in their violation as if to dare anyone to try and stop them“

The biggest companies own the D.C. politicians.  Indeed, the head of the economics department at George Mason University has pointed out that it is unfair to call politicians “prostitutes”.  He says they are in fact pimps … selling out the American people for a price.

A former U.S.  Senator writes:

Measured against the standards established for republics from ancient times, the American Republic is massively corrupt.***Can anyone seriously doubt that our republic, our government, is corrupt? There have been Teapot Domes and financial scandals of one kind or another throughout our nation’s history. There has never been a time, however, when the government of the United States was so perversely and systematically dedicated to special interests, earmarks, side deals, log-rolling, vote-trading, and sweetheart deals of one kind or another.***How can public service be promoted as an ideal to young people when this sewer corrupts our Republic? At this point in early twenty-first-century America, the greatest service our nation’s young people could provide is to lead an army of outraged young Americans armed with brooms on a crusade to sweep out the rascals and rid our capital of the money changers, rent seekers, revolving door dancers, and special interest deal makers and power brokers and send them back home to make an honest living, that is, if they still remember how to do so.

A U.S. Congressman says:

  • Washington is a “sinkhole of leeches”
  • Money “corrupts” and House members are “puppets” to lobbyists who bankroll their campaigns.  “Business organizations and unions fork over more than $3 billion a year to those who lobby the federal government. Does that tell you something? We’re operating a f–king casino”
  • ‘America’s on an irreversible decline and no one in Washington seems to care . . . God help us.’
  • “We spend money we don’t have and blithely mortgage the future with a wink and a nod. Screw the next generation. It’s about getting credit now, lookin’ good for the upcoming election.”  “Like most of my colleagues, I promise my constituents a lot of stuff I can never deliver.”  “But what the hell? It makes them happy hearing it . . . My main job is to keep my job”

He also says:

  • “Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that’s lavished upon them”
  • “My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything”
  • “Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on. Like many of my colleagues, I don’t know how the legislation will be implemented, or what it’ll cost”

Government regulators have become so corrupted and “captured” by those they regulate that Americans know that the cop is on the take. Institutional corruption is killing people’s trust in our government and our institutions.

Neither the Democratic or Republican parties represent the interests of the American people. Elections have become nothing but scripted beauty contests, with both parties ignoring the desires of their own bases.

Indeed, America is no longer a democracy or republic … it’s officially an oligarchy. And the allowance of unlimited campaign spending allows the oligarchs to purchase politicians more directly than ever.

No wonder polls show that the American people say that the system is so thoroughly corrupt that government corruption is now Americans’ number one fear. And see this.

And politicians from both sides of the aisle say that corruption has destroyed America.

Moreover, there are two systems of justice in America … one for the big banks and other fatcats … and one for everyone else. Indeed, Americans have less access to justice than Botswanans … and are more abused by police than Kazakhstanis.

Big Corporations Are Also Thoroughly Corrupt

But the private sector is no better … for example, the big banks have literally turned into criminal syndicates engaged in systemic fraud.

Wall Street and giant corporations are literally manipulating every single market.

And the big corporations are cutting corners to make an extra penny … wreaking havoc with their carelessness. For example:

  • U.S. military contractors have pocketed huge sums of money earmarked for humanitarian and reconstruction aid. And see this (whistleblowers alerted the government about the looting of Iraq reconstruction funds, but nothing was done)
  • There is systemic corruption among drug companies, scientific journals, university medical departments, and medical groups which set the criteria for diagnosis and treatment

(Further examples here, here, here, here and here.)

We’ve Forgotten the Lessons of History

The real problem is that we need to learn a little history:

  • We’ve known for thousands of years that – when criminals are not punished – crime spreads
  • We’ve known for centuries that powerful people – unless held to account – will get together and steal from everyone else

Beyond Partisan Politics

Liberals and conservatives tend to blame our country’s problems on different factors … but they are all connected.

The real problem is the malignant, symbiotic relationship between big corporations and big government.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on This US Government Is The Most Corrupt In History

The US Navy’s Drones Launched from Submarines

May 18th, 2016 by Nick Lavars

The following announcement was made by the US Navy pointing to the development of a new generation of drones, with unmanned “small drones that can be launched into the air from submarines and other underwater vehicles.”

The Blackwing drones are launched from a three-inch canister aboard submarines or unmanned underwater vehicles, as part of already installed systems used for acoustic countermeasures. They could be daisy-chained to boost communications and potentially even weaponized as a self-defense option.

Drones weaponised as a self defense option?

The drones ewill largely be used for surveillance:

This program was completed in 2015 with a strong recommendation that the drones be incorporated into the Navy’s submarine fleet, and it has now requested funds in the upcoming fiscal budget to do exactly that. The aircraft comes with electro-optical and infrared sensors, GPS modules, digital and encrypted communications capabilities and can fly for more than one hour at a time.

“So there’s 150 small unmanned aerial systems coming in on submarines, so we’re now buying them,” Rear Admiral Richard told US Naval Institute News. “It’s not something that you would [just] see on a PowerPoint presentation. These are fully integrated they’ll go in talk back to the ship, talk to the combat control system and additionally we’ll have 12 of a 21-inch torpedo tube launched vehicles with much longer launched duration.” (Gizmag, (See also AeroVironment)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The US Navy’s Drones Launched from Submarines

Selected Articles: America’s Imperial Empire

May 17th, 2016 by Global Research News

Amerique_latine-Empire-USAmerica’s Imperial Empire: The Sun Never Sets but the Mote remains in the Emperor’s Eye

By Prof. James Petras, May 16 2016

Western imperialism is a complex pyramidal structure where the dominant United States interacts through a five-tier system. There is a vertical and horizontal configuration of leader and follower states

President_Obama_delivers_the_State_of_the_Union_address_Jan._20,_2015

Who Is the More Vicious Liar: Trump, or Obama?

By Eric Zuesse, May 17 2016

There was a drastic refocus by U.S. President Barack Obama away from being anti-jihadist and toward being anti-Russian, after his first Presidential term ended and as soon as his second Presidential term began; but the signs that Obama presented during…

int-au

Africa Liberation Day at 53: Pentagon and CIA Continue to Destabilize Continent

By Abayomi Azikiwe, May 17 2016

Today the African Union faces formidable development and security challenges  May 25, 2016 marks the 53rd anniversary of the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union (AU) since 2002. The holiday commonly known…

4062637-300x193

Russia-ASEAN Summit: Posturing or Power Play?

By Tony Cartalucci, May 17 2016

Earlier this year, despite immense fanfare, the US-ASEAN Summit held in Sunnylands, California ended in a fizzle rather than a bang. Little of substance emerged from and admittedly “symbolic” summit, and the US even went as far as criticizing guests…

panama-papers

Panama Papers Hub in Miami: Citigroup’s [Very] Private Bank

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, May 17 2016

The Citigroup Private Bank at 201 South Biscayne Blvd. in Miami is located in a 34-story building in downtown Miami with breathtaking views of Biscayne Bay. It’s also the address for dozens of offshore companies whose agent is Mossack Fonseca,…

hiroshima

If Obama Visits Hiroshima

By Richard Falk, May 17 2016

There are mounting hopes that Barack Obama will use the occasion of the Group of 7 meeting in Japan in May to visit Hiroshima, and become the first American president to do so. It is remarkable that it required a…

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: America’s Imperial Empire

The Global War on Terrorism: The Fight for Truth Continues

May 17th, 2016 by Global Research

The events of 9/11 played a pivotal role in launching the Global War on Terrorism, which has for the last 15 years brought about mass militarization on an unprecedented scale, by turns ravaging sovereign nations, creating further instability and breeding fear and hatred.

As Michel Chossudovsky wrote in 2013:

“A major transition in US counter-terrorism doctrine is unfolding. While Barack Obama, following in the footsteps of George W. Bush, remains firmly committed to waging a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), his administration is now openly supporting selected rebel units in Syria which are part of the Al Qaeda network.” (See: “Fighting Al Qaeda by Supporting Al Qaeda in Syria: The Obama Administration is a “State Sponsor of Terrorism””)

From the attacks of September 11, 2001 to the war on Syria — how did we get to this point? Global Research offers you several important resources and encourages you to get the facts and share them with others.

 America’s “War on Terrorism”

by Michel Chossudovsky
$17.00 | ISBN 9780973714715 | 365 pages with complete index | Click to Purchase

According to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, the “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalization is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military industrial complex. (Also available in PDF format)

 The Toronto Hearings on 9/11: Uncovering Ten Years of Deception

by Press for Truth
$22.95 | Runtime: Over 5 hours | Year: 2012 | Click to Purchase

In 2011, experts and scientists from around the world gathered in Toronto, Canada to present new and established evidence that questions the official story of 9/11. This evidence was presented to a distinguished panel of experts over a 4 day period. Through their analysis and scientific investigations, they hope to spark a new investigation into the attacks of September 11, 2001. (Watch Trailer)

Also, don’t forget to consult the 9/11 Archives on Global Research and 9/11 Videos on GRTV – browse our articles and videos, get the background and spread the information far and wide.

It’s never too late for the truth.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Global War on Terrorism: The Fight for Truth Continues

The Coming Democratic Crackup

May 17th, 2016 by Robert Parry

If the Democratic Party presses ahead and nominates hawkish Hillary Clinton for President, it could recreate the conditions that caused the party to splinter in the late 1960s and early 1970s when anti-war and pro-war Democrats turned on one another and opened a path for decades of Republican dominance of the White House.

This new Democratic crackup could come as early as this fall if anti-war progressives refuse to rally behind Clinton because of her neoconservative foreign policy – thus infuriating Clinton’s backers – or it could happen in four years if Clinton wins the White House and implements her militaristic agenda, including expanding the U.S. war in Syria while continuing other wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – and challenging Russia on its borders.

Clinton’s neocon policies in a prospective first term could generate a “peace” challenge similar to the youth-driven uprising against President Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War in 1968.

Indeed, in 2020, anti-war elements of the Democratic Party might see little choice but to seek a candidate willing to challenge an incumbent President Clinton much as Sen. Eugene McCarthy took on President Johnson, leading eventually to the chaotic and bloody Chicago convention, which in turn contributed to Richard Nixon’s narrow victory that fall.

Image: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at NATO conference in Munich, Germany, Feb. 4, 2012. (Official Defense Department photo)

A difference between Johnson and Clinton, however, is that in 1964, LBJ ran as the “peace candidate” against the hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater (who incidentally was supported by a young Hillary Clinton), whereas in 2016, Clinton has made clear her warlike plans (albeit framing them in “humanitarian” terms).

After winning a landslide victory against Goldwater, Johnson reversed himself and plunged into the Vietnam War, fearing he otherwise might be blamed for “losing” Indochina. With Clinton, there’s no reason to expect a reversal since she’s made no secret about her plans for invading Syria under the guise of creating a “safe zone” and for confronting nuclear-armed Russia along its western borders, from Ukraine through the Baltic States. In her belligerent rhetoric, she has compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler.

Courting Bibi

Clinton also has vowed to take the U.S.-Israeli relationship to “the next level” by embracing right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who expects to convince President Hillary Clinton to end any détente with Iran and put the prospect of bombing Iran back on the table. Clinton would seem to be an easy sell.

Another feature of the LBJ-Hillary comparison is that the Democratic Party’s turn against the Vietnam War in the 1968 and 1972 campaigns prompted a collection of pro-war intellectuals to bolt the Democratic Party and align themselves with the Republicans, especially around Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on March 3, 2015. (Screen shot from CNN broadcast)

Those Democratic hawks became known as the neoconservatives and remained attached to the Republican Party for the next 35 years, eventually emerging as Official Washington’s foreign policy establishment. However, in some prominent cases (such as Robert Kagan), neocons are now switching over to Clinton because of the rise of Donald Trump, who rejects the neocon passion for interventionism.

In other words, just as Johnson’s Vietnam War escalation — and the resulting fierce opposition from anti-war Democrats — set in motion the neocons’ defection from the Democrats to the Republicans, Clinton’s enthusiasm for the Iraq War, her support for escalation of the Afghan War, and her scheming for “regime change” wars in Libya and Syria are bringing some neocon hawks back to their first nesting place in the Democratic Party.

But a President Clinton’s transformation of the Democratic Party into “an aggressive war party,” whereas under President Barack Obama it has been “a reluctant war party,” would force principled anti-war Democrats to stop making excuses and to start trying to expel Clinton’s neocon pro-war attitudes from the party.

Such an internecine battle over the party’s soul could deeply divide the Democrats between those supporting Clinton – as “the first woman president” and because of her liberal attitudes on gay rights and other social issues – and those opposing Clinton because of her desire to continue and expand America’s “perpetual wars.”

The Sanders Resistance

Some of that hostility is already playing out as Clinton backers express their anger at progressives who balk at lining up for Clinton’s long-delayed coronation parade. The stubborn support for Sen. Bernie Sanders, even after Clinton has seemingly locked up the Democratic nomination, is a forewarning of the nasty fight ahead.

Image: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

The prospects are that the animosities will get worse if Clinton loses in November – with many anti-war Democrats defecting or staying home thus infuriating the Hillary Democrats – or if Clinton were to win and begin implementing her neocon foreign policy agenda which will involve further demonizing “enemies” to justify “regime changes.”

If anti-war Democrats begin to resist, they can expect the Clinton-45 administration to stigmatize them as (fill-in-the-blank) “apologists” and “stooges” of “enemy” powers, much as happened to protesters against the Vietnam War and, more recently, to Americans who objected to such U.S. interventions as the Iraq War in 2003 and the Ukraine coup in 2014.

Yet, few Democratic strategists seem to be aware of this looming chasm between anti-war and pro-war Democrats. Many of these insiders seem to believe that the anti-war Democrats will simply fall in line behind Hillary Clinton out of fear and loathing for Donald Trump. That may be the case for many, but my conversations with anti-war activists suggest that a significant number will vote for a third party or might even go for Trump.

Meanwhile, most mainstream media commentators are focused on the divisions between the pro-Trump and anti-Trump Republicans, giving extensive TV coverage to various stop-Trump scenarios, even as many establishment Republicans begin to accommodate to Trump’s populist conquest of the party.

But it’s clear that some prominent Republicans, especially from the neocon camp, are unalterably opposed to Trump’s election in November, fearing that he will turn the GOP away from them and toward an “America First” perspective that would repudiate “regime change” interventions favored by Israel.

Thus, for many neocon Republicans, a Trump defeat is preferable to a Trump victory because his defeat would let them reclaim command of the party’s foreign policy infrastructure. They also could encourage President Clinton to pursue their neocon agenda – and watch as pro- and anti-war stresses rip apart the Democratic Party.

So, the establishment Democrats – with their grim determination to resuscitate Hillary Clinton’s nearly lifeless campaign – may be engaging in the political equivalent of whistling past the graveyard, as the ghosts of the party’s Vietnam War crackup hover over Election 2016.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons and Neolibs: How ‘Dead’ Ideas Kill”; “Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon”; and “Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?”]

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).

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Coming Democratic Crackup

Mísseis dos EUA na Romênia – a Europa no front nuclear

May 17th, 2016 by Manlio Dinucci

No encontro com os governantes da Suécia, Dinamarca, Finlândia, Islândia e Noruega, em 13 de maio, em Washington, o presidente Obama denunciou “a presença crescente e a postura militar agressiva da Rússia na região báltica/nórdica”, reafirmando o engajamento dos Estados Unidos paraa “defesa coletiva da Europa”.

Engajamento demonstrado pelos fatos justamente na véspera, quando na base aérea de Deveselu na Romênia foi inaugurada a “Aegis Ashore”, instalação terrestre do sistema de mísseis Aegis dos Estados Unidos.

O secretário geral da Otan Jens Stlotenberg -presente na cerimônia com o vice-secretário da Defesa Robert Work e o primeiro-ministro romeno Dacian Ciolos – agradeceu aos Estados Unidos porque com uma tal instalação, “a primeira desse gênero com uma base em terra”, aumentam notavelmente a capacidade de “defender os aliados europeus contra mísseis balísticos do exterior à área euro-atlântica”. Em seguida, ele anunciou o começo dos trabalhos para realizar na Polônia uma outra “Aegis Ashore”, semelhante à que acaba de entrar em funcionamento na Romênia. As duas instalações terrestres se somam a quatro navios lança-mísseis do sistema Aegis que, deslocado pela US Navy à base espanhola de Rota, cruzam o Mediterrâneo, o Mar Negro e o Mar Báltico; bem como um poderoso radar Aegis instalado na Turquia e num centro de comando na Alemanha.

Afirmando que “nosso programa de defesa de mísseis representa um investimento a longo prazo”, o secretário geral da Otan assegura que “o local na Romênia, como o da Polônia, não é dirigido contra a Rússia”. Em seguida, ele deu uma explicação técnica: a base na Romênia, que “utiliza uma tecnologia quase idêntica à utilizada nos navios Aegis da US Navy”, está instalada “muito perto da Rússia para poder interceptar os mísseis balísticos intercontinentais russos”.

Qual é a tecnologia à qual se refere Stoltenberg? Tanto os navios como as instalações terrestres são dotados de lançadores verticais MK41 da Lockheed Martin, isto é tubos verticais (no corpo do navio ou num bunker subterrâneo) de onde são lançados os mísseis interceptadores SM-3. É o que se chama de “escudo”, cuja função é na realidade ofensiva. Se os EUA conseguissem criar um sistema confiável, capaz de interceptar os mísseis balísticos, poderiam ter a Rússia sob a ameaça de um primeiro ataque nuclear, fiando-se na capacidade do “escudo” de neutralizar os efeitos de represálias. Na realidade, isto é impossível no estádio atual, por que a Rússia e mesmo a China estão adotando uma série de contramedidas, que tornam impossível interceptar todas as ogivas nucleares de um ataque com mísseis. Então, a que serve o sistema Aegis baseado na Europa, que os EUA estão potencializando?

É a própria empresa Lockheed Martin que nos explica. Utilizando as características técnicas do sistema de lançamento vertical MK 41 – o que está instalado nos navios lança-mísseis Aegis e agora também na base de Deveselu – ela sublinha que está em condições de lançar “mísseis para todas as missões: anti-aéreas, anti-navios, anti-submarinos e de ataque contra objetivos terrestres”. Cada tubo de lançamento é adaptável a qualquer que seja o míssil, incluindo “os maiores para a defesa contra os mísseis balísticos e aqueles para o ataque de longo alcance”. Mesmo os tipos são especificados: “o Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) e o míssil de cruzeiro Tomahawk”.

À luz dessa esplicaçáo técnica, a precisão feita por Stoltenberg, a saber, que a instalação de mísseis de Deveselu foi feita “muito perto da Rússia para poder interceptar os mísseis balísticos intercontinentais russos”, é nada tranquilizadora. Ninguém pode, com efeito, saber quais mísseis realmente existem nos lançadores verticais da base de Deveselu e naqueles que estão a bordo dos navios que cruzam até o limite das águas territoriais russas. Não podendo controlar, Moscou tem certeza de que há ali também mísseis de ataque nuclear.

A inauguração da instalação de mísseis estadunidenses em Deveselu pode sinalizar o fim do Tratado sobre forças nucleares intermediárias que, assinado pelos Estados Unidos e a URSS em 1987, permite eliminar os mísseis de bases em terra e de alcance entre 500 e 5.500 quilômetros: os SS-20 baseados na URSS, os Pershing 2 e os Tomahawk estadunidenses baseados na Alemanha e na Itália.

A Europa retorna, assim, a um clima de guerra fria, com toda a vantagem para os Estados Unidos que podem também aumentar sua influência sobre os aliados europeus. Não é casual se no encontro em Washington, Obama pôs em evidência o consenso europeu para a manutenção das sanções contra a Rússia, fazendo lisonjas notadamente à “Dinamarca, Finlândia e Suécia que, como membros da União Europeia, apoiam fortemente o TTIP (Parceria Transatlântica de Comércio e Investimento, na sigla em inglês), tratado que eu reafirmo querer concluir antes do final do ano”.

Nos lançadores verticais da Lokheed há também o míssil TTIP.

Manlio Dinucci

Fonte: Il em italiano :  il Manifesto

Tradução de José Reinaldo Carvalho para Resistência

  • Posted in Português
  • Comments Off on Mísseis dos EUA na Romênia – a Europa no front nuclear

NATO Build-up in Romania and Moldova Directed against Russia

May 17th, 2016 by Andrei Tudora

The drive by the US and EU imperialism to militarily encircle and ultimately dismantle Russia and China is pushing the world closer to a devastating conflagration. The rapid and reckless militarization of Eastern Europe that occurred after the overthrow in 2014 of the Russian-backed government in Kiev, highlights the enormous dangers confronting the population of the region and of the entire world.

The recent activation at the Deveselu airbase in Romania of the first land-based element of the NATO missile defense system has provoked a harsh reaction from Moscow. Notwithstanding the declarations of various NATO officials about countering North Korean or Iranian missiles, the Russians justifiably see it as an attempt to break the nuclear deterrence status quo.

Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov, chairman of the State Duma’s defense committee, called the missile system “a direct threat to us”, and added “They are moving to the firing line […] this is not about Iran, but about Russia with its nuclear capabilities.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, quoted by news agencies, said, “This is not a defense system. This is part of a US nuclear strategic potential brought on to a periphery. In this case, Eastern Europe is such a periphery.” He then threatened, “Those people taking such decisions must know that until now they have lived calm, fairly well-off and in safety. Now, as these elements of ballistic missile defense are deployed, we are forced to think how to neutralize the emerging threats to the Russian Federation.”

The extremely volatile and dangerous nature of the developing situation is exemplified by an article that appeared in the online edition of the New York Times on the day the new missile system was inaugurated. The article quoted Russian commentator Konstantin Bogdanov, who said, “The antimissile sites in Eastern Europe might even accelerate the slippery slope to nuclear war in a crisis. They would inevitably become priority targets in the event of nuclear war, possibly even targets for preventive strikes.

“Countries like Romania that host American antimissile systems might be the only casualties,” he wrote, “whereas the United States would then reconcile with Russia ‘over the smoking ruins of the East European elements of the missile defense system.’”

Over the past two years, Romania, Poland and the Baltic states have been the scene of almost continuous rounds of military drills by the NATO armed forces. NATO strategists view these countries as a future battleground, and American troops, part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, are arduously feeling out the local terrain and infrastructure in preparation for war.

In addition to the concentration of military hardware and troops that is set to increase in the coming period, Romania is also agitating for the creation of a permanent NATO flotilla to counter Russia in the Black Sea, to be manned mainly by the Black Sea countries of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. On his visit to Bucharest on the April 21, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced his intention to join the Romanian initiative.

In a major escalation of the militarization of Eastern Europe, US and Romanian forces are involved in exercises with Moldovan troops taking place between May 2 and May 20 on the Moldavian side of the border. The exercise, dubbed Dragoon Pioneer, involves around 200 US soldiers and marks the first time in the former Soviet Republic’s history that NATO troops have entered the country, in flagrant violation of the Moldovan constitution, which stipulates its neutrality.

Moldova is engaged in an ongoing territorial conflict with the breakaway Republic of Transnistria, with which it, supported by Romania, fought a brief war in the 1990s. Transnistria enjoys the backing of Russia, which maintains a peacekeeping force of around 1,500 troops on its territory. Russian forces stationed there reacted by staging their own exercises to coincide with the American presence in Moldova. Russian units also took part for the first time in the May 9 Victory Day parade organized by the authorities in Tiraspol, a gesture condemned by Moldova as “harming bilateral relations.”

The presence of the American troops was accompanied by a propaganda campaign aimed at revising the historical role of the Soviet Red Army in the liberation of Europe from the Third Reich. American hardware was displayed in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau on both May 8 and 9, with both Moldovan President Nicolae Timofti and Party of Communists leader Vladimir Voronin stressing the “massive contribution” of the US in defeating Nazi Germany. After the end of the operations in Moldova, the US troops will reenter Romania to join Romanian, British and Moldovan soldiers in the Sarmis 16 military exercises.

The militarization of Romania and the war preparations are carried out by the imperialist powers in collusion with the local elites entirely behind the backs of the population. Nothing resembling a public debate or any mention of the immense dangers posed by these policies has taken place.

Romania was one of the first NATO countries to increase its defense budget to 2 percent of GDP, a measure demanded by the US and adopted last year in a “National Pact” overseen by the country’s president, Klaus Iohannis, and supported by all the bourgeois parties. To support the bloated military spending and comply with EU spending demands, the technocratic Government headed by Dacian Ciolos is supervising further attacks on the livelihoods of workers, including major privatization drives in mining, energy and healthcare.

The drive towards war and the endless austerity measures are growing increasingly incompatible with the thin veneer of parliamentary democracy that was established by the new ruling classes in Eastern Europe after the restoration of capitalism in the 1990s. The admission last year by former Social Democratic President Ion Iliescu that his administration participated in the CIA torture program, and that it was done without blinking an eye in order to secure the country’s admission to NATO, should serve as a stark warning to the working class as to the criminal character of these ruling oligarchies. A return to the naked dictatorial forms of rule that prevailed before the Second World War is more than a theoretical possibility.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on NATO Build-up in Romania and Moldova Directed against Russia

Brazil: 2012 Interview with MST Leader João Pedro Stédile on Dilma Government’s Agrarian Reform Program

May 17th, 2016 by João Pedro Stedile

Founder and coordinator of the MST estimates that the moment [2012] is the ebb of the popular movement.

For more than 30 years in the struggle of landless rural workers, João Pedro Stédile, a gaucho of Italian descent, became known for the direct way he manifested his political opinions. In this exclusive interview with ABCD MAIOR, the coordinator of the MST (Movement of Landless Rural Workers) estimates that Brazil is going through an ebb in the popular movement. Stédile gives a grade of eight to President Dilma Rousseff and five for the entire government, which brings together sectors of the bourgeoisie and workers.

[Update: The MST despite its critique of the Rousseff government has issued a powerful statement condemning the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff]

There is very little left formulation on the national situation. You fall into the management of the PT within the model of neo-developmentalism? Why?

The formulation that social movements made, including the MST, Via Campesina, is that the governments of Lula and Dilma are the result of a political front of classes of Brazilian society. Society participates from the big bourgeoisie to the poorest. And this gives stability and popularity to the government, but it keeps the government as a composition of classes with heterogeneous decisions and, sometimes, even contradictory, now benefiting the bourgeoisie, now the workers, now the poorest. On the economic front, the government itself is self-defined as neo-developmentalist. It is an important alternative to the toucan project [nickname for the PSDB – Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (Brazilian Social Democracy Party)], and imperialism, neoliberalism. The neo-developmentalism seeks to develop policies that generate economic growth and income distribution. This is important, but insufficient. For the serious problems of Brazilian society, such as full employment, land for all landless, universal education, decent housing for all and access to culture, can only be solved with structural reforms. What are these reforms? Tax reforms, agrarian reform, educational reform, stopping the allocation of R$ 200 billion of budget for the payment of interest on domestic debt and prioritize education, health and national technology. These reforms will only be viable in Brazilian society, with the resumption of mass mobilization and if we have, within the government, a balance of power of parties more committed to the workers.

Was there an alternative for the Brazilian people, or is another model of development possible, considering the national and international conjuncture at the beginning of this century?

Politics is the art of seeking the impossible. Where should you look to put together forces leading to changes in favor of workers? Initially, the heterogeneous alliance was important to defeat the neoliberal bourgeoisie and subordinate to the interests of foreign capital. But over these past ten years, we have taken steps that could move society, to democratize the media and mobilize the people to a new development program. And our criticism, as a social movement, is that the federal government settled for popularity ratings, with the stability that the alliance with the conservatives has generated. And it did not have the courage to stimulate a debate in society on structural reforms.

What are the limits of the development project proposed by Lula and now Dilma Rousseff?

The structural limit is that you can have policies that create economic growth, and to distribute the income, but do not build a more egalitarian and just society. Instead, the capitalists continue gaining more and more. And it is the nature of capital, the ongoing process, independent of the government, of accumulation and concentration of wealth. The second limit, at the same time, is that current policies do not change the Brazilian economy’s dependence on international capital,  the market, investors and technology.  So we can grow, distribute income and the economy remains increasingly dependent on international capitalism, which is a danger to our sovereignty and the future of our people. We need a project geared to the domestic market, for the development of our people and investing heavily in technology nationwide. The third limit of the neo-developmentalism: 30% of all taxes are meant to pay interest and amortization of internal debt to the bankers and their shareholders. According to Márcio Pochmann [Brazilian economist], this account for only 20 thousand families. This is a powerful instrument of income concentration and waste of public money. We need to get this R$ 200 billion and put it into productive investments, education, health and technology. Fourth, are the external attacks that come with the crisis, the de-industrialization of the economy, denationalization of our natural resources and currency speculation by the market. Then the crisis of capitalism that will come out, can compel the Government to bring to society a new development project.

Regarding land reform, what are the advances and retreats during these ten years?

Over the past decade, there has been progress in terms of land reform. Land reform is a public policy that will lead to the democratization of land ownership, as well, to the largest possible number of citizens. In the last ten years, the concentration of land ownership has increased. And even worse, concentrated in the hands of businesses outside of agriculture and of foreign capital. Dilma’s government could not even solve the social problem of 150,000 families encamped, some for more than five years, along Brazilian roads. Therefore, the Dilma government abandoned agrarian reform, deluded by the success of agribusiness that produces, makes money, but concentrates wealth and land and increases poverty in the countryside.

Regarding the Dilma government, how do you assess the ideological point of view: from one to ten, what grade?

President Dilma has a good personal and ideological performance, give her an eight. The composition of her government, formed by the political forces that have control of the ministries, is far worse than under Lula. They are arrogant and unaware of the priorities of the people. They are still navigating with the social policies of the Lula government. Give them a five.

In your opinion, does the class struggle still exist? Does the unity of rural and urban workers remains a cause and a necessity?

Capitalism is a mode of production that generates social classes, not only different, between owners of capital goods, sellers of labor, peasants, as antagonistic classes. So if there is capitalism, there is class struggle. And to solve the problems of the rural and urban working classes it is necessary to build the unity of interests. This unity consolidates in proposed programs, in common collective actions, in political parties that give them ideological unity, and especially in mass mobilizations. This must be the constant effort of all leaders and organizations of the working class. Seek unity in many different ways, in order to have enough strength to face powerful enemies. The alliance of the working class sectors with sectors of the bourgeoisie, can even result in votes and stable governments. But they do not solve the structural problems of society and, sooner or later, they will explode. Just study a little history of our people.

Progressive municipal administrations, as São Bernardo [a city near São Paulo], can help strengthen organizations like the MST who defend family farming and economic solidarity?

We are devotees of Saint Antonio Gramsci[1], most interesting of the Italian saints, especially because he was wise and committed to the  workers. And he said that the class struggle occurs in all areas of modern society. Be it in electoral disputes, be it in many spaces of small powers, which he called the “extended state.” Therefore, all spaces, a newspaper, a radio, a community television, a union, a city, a state government … all are spaces that can accumulate forces for the  working class project or can accumulate forces for capitalists and exploiters. We believe and advocate that local governments can and should be spaces critical to develop public policies in favor of the needs of the people, democratic popular participation in municipal decisions, etc. In the specific case of peasants, local governments can do much, either in universal education, in guaranteeing the purchase of food products for schools, school lunches and other public demands of the municipality. At least pressure these governments in applying laws, for example, limiting the use of pesticides, which poison the population, environmental control laws, etc.

Are there vanguard parties and organizations concerned with this construction? What movements do you see as political actors in the immediate future and the medium-term?

Unfortunately, in the generic sense and including all rural and urban classes, we have had a period of ebb of the mass movement. And this political force withdrew from the class acting in disputes of the society. However, these periods are limited, at some point there will come a new process of ascent. Nobody knows when or how. And during times of reascension it is possible to rearticulate organizational forms and political-ideological forces. So we are now living an apathy, in terms of political organization, which leads only to contested elections. These are necessary, but insufficient for the working class project. So, in difficult times like this, we must invest in the training of militants, in stimulating social struggle, and the construction of alternative media … until the tide changes..

The MST has long denounced the control of politics by the judiciary in Brazil. This offensive of the right around the political exploitation of the monthly allowance[2] as a tool to combat the PT [Worker’s Party], is this part of the same process of subordinating justice to political rights?

Sure. The Brazilian ruling class is very smart and experienced. Not for nothing that they have given the orders for 500 years. The ruling class knows it does not have hegemony in the federal government. Participates, but not able to mandate. So, to counteract the forces of the working class in the last ten years, the priority of the bourgeoisie, besides making money in the economy, has been using up the judiciary and the media to combat the ideas and programs of the working class. And the recent episode of the STF [Supremo Tribunal Federal – Federal Supreme Court] is just one chapter of this offensive and hegemonic control that the bourgeoisie has on the judiciary and use it against those who are clearly committed to the working class.

The MST has planned initiatives to denounce this kind of legalization of politics?

We are talking with other social movements and popular forces of the working class, with the CUT [Central Única dos Trabalhadores – Unified Workers’ Central], unions etc. … and immediately we are proposing that, in every state and region of the country, there will be plenaries, with the largest number of social activists, so that, at base, to discuss what to do to counter this offensive. And we will discuss all sorts of possible actions, the response in the media where we have control, in mass actions, and even in the legislatures. We cannot sit still and be quiet. Because the judiciary attempts to criminalize those who struggle, or that advocate structural changes.

What weight do you assign to the regulation of the media in building a democratic and socially just country? How can an independent media, able to confront mass information by the big media networks, be created?

The ruling class has the hegemonic control of the media, one of its main weapons to maintain control of the population, to trick it and make the class struggle against the people and workers. Therefore, it is essential we work in two directions:

a) fight for the democratization of the media. It is absurd that the control that O Globo[3]exercises over Brazilian society, and still funded with public money, for example.

b) build our own popular media, to make this contest of ideas in a democratic way, but with the same conditions.

Notes:

[1] Ed. Note: Stedile is joking by labeling Gramsci a “saint.”  Gramsci was an Italian Marxist, founder of the Italian Communist Party and imprisoned for his opposition to Benito Mussolini and fascism.

[2] The “monthly allowance” scandal involved payments to various Worker’s Party deputies and senators.
[3] O Globo is the massive Brazilian media company that owns newspaper, journals and radio and television networks.

 
  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Brazil: 2012 Interview with MST Leader João Pedro Stédile on Dilma Government’s Agrarian Reform Program

Maduro Government Imposes State of Emergency in Venezuela

May 17th, 2016 by Bill Van Auken

Venezuela was placed under a nationwide “State of Exception and Economic Emergency” Monday as its government continued to face both social unrest created by the country’s economic meltdown and a drive by the political right to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

While the Venezuelan president said that the decree was necessary to confront “international and national threats against our fatherland,” including both military intervention from abroad and a coup at home, the most pressing challenge to his government is coming from Venezuelan workers and poor who are unable to live under conditions of massive poverty, soaring prices and growing unemployment.

The country’s economy has plummeted in tandem with the price of oil, which is now selling for roughly one third of what it cost in 2014 and accounts for 95 percent of export earnings.

Recent weeks have seen a growing wave of looting by people frustrated with their inability to either find or afford basic foods and other necessities of life. Crowds have stormed supermarkets, shopping centers and government food dispensaries across the country.

With the value of the country’s minimum wage now reaching only $40 a month, large sections of the population are reduced to eating two or fewer meals a day, with meat, chicken, fish and other sources of protein well beyond their reach.

“We are officially declaring May as the month that [widespread] hunger began in Venezuela,” said Oscar Meza, Director of the Documentation Center for Social Analysis of the Venezuelan Federation of Teachers.

Meanwhile the state-run health care system is in a state of collapse. Venezuelan government figures cited by the New York Times show that the mortality rate among infants under a month old has increased by more than a hundredfold since 2012, while there are five times as many deaths of mothers giving birth in hospitals. These death rates reflect a lack of basic medicines and supplies as well as the effects of continuous daily blackouts that shut down incubators and other equipment.

Workers throughout the country have suffered devastating cuts in real wages, with inflation pegged at 700 percent this year and projected to rise as high as 1,642 percent next year.

While the only sector to have received wage increases commensurate with the soaring inflation rate is the military, the government has sought to freeze existing contracts and resisted negotiating new ones.

There are increasing signs of working class militancy amid these catastrophic conditions. Workers at the Central University of Venezuela have continued job actions, blocking all of the main entrances to the facility on Monday with picket lines and burning tires. Meanwhile, the country’s electrical workers announced plans to launch a nationwide general strike by next week after five years in which the government has refused to negotiate a new contract.

The conditions are developing for a social explosion on the scale of theCaracazo of 1989, the mass uprising against IMF-dictated austerity measures—imposed during a previous fall in oil prices—that the government attempted to drown in blood.

In announcing the state of emergency last Friday, President Maduro warned that “Washington is activating measures at the request of Venezuela’s fascist right, who are emboldened by the coup in Brazil.”

The right-wing opposition, organized in the MUD (Democratic Unity Roundtable) electoral coalition is attempting to organize a recall vote that would force new elections. The MUD, which won a super-majority in the federal legislature last December, has reportedly collected nearly two million signatures supporting a recall, but leading government officials have accused it of fraud and warned that the vote will not take place.

The collaboration between the MUD and US government agencies is undeniable, with the American embassy openly supporting its activities and outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy funneling money to the political right.

Support for ousting the Maduro government, however, has spread far beyond the MUD’s well-heeled upper middle class constituency, with polls showing the president’s popularity rate plummeting to anywhere between 15 and 25 percent.

Justifications given for the state of emergency were less than convincing. Maduro and his supporters cited statements made by Alvaro Uribe, the former right-wing president of Colombia, at a conference in Miami last week rhetorically calling for foreign military intervention in Venezuela to aid the opposition. It also pointed to a background briefing given by two US intelligence agents who speculated that Maduro could be brought down, including by a coup from within his own party or the military.

It is entirely possible that the Maduro government will use the state of emergency to suspend the constitutional right to seek a recall vote and thereby derail the right’s campaign. This, however, will do nothing to dampen the anger of millions of Venezuelans over their inability to secure food and health care for their families.

In addition to the state of emergency, Maduro has announced plans to hold military exercises next weekend “to prepare ourselves for any scenario.”

The scenario of mass social upheavals is far more likely than that of a foreign invasion, and there are growing signs that the government is resorting to repression against the working class to sustain itself in power.

The turn to the military comes on the heels of “Operation Liberation of the People” launched last year, which has seen police and military collaborating in mass arbitrary arrests and extra-judicial executions in the name of a war on crime waged in poor and working class neighborhoods. Last Tuesday, a crackdown resulted in the arrest of 1,130 people and killing of at least nine.

Under the severe impact of the global capitalist crisis on Venezuela’s economy, the economic and political setup introduced in Venezuela 17 years ago with the coming to power of the former army officer Hugo Chavez has reached an impasse.

The right-wing corporate media internationally has gloated over the deepening crisis of the Maduro government and the growing hunger and misery of the Venezuelan masses, proclaiming both a manifestation of the “failure of socialism.”

This is a lie. While the late Chavez and his successor Maduro proclaimed their policy to be that of “Bolivarian socialism” or “Twenty-first century socialism,” they have led a capitalist government that has defended private property in an economy in which a greater share of production was in the hands of the private sector than before Chavez became president.

The limited social assistance programs initiated under Chavez served, as he himself boasted, to protect the rich by reducing the immense class tensions in what historically has been one of the continent’s most unequal nations.

Meanwhile, on the strength of rising oil prices, the financial sector reaped record profits, while a layer known as the boliburguesia, composed of government officials and businessmen with ties to the government, enriched themselves off of corruption, smuggling and currency manipulation schemes that siphoned hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy.

As the present crisis demonstrates, the government failed to either develop vital infrastructure or diversify the national economy to reduce its dependence upon oil exports, 40 percent of which went to the US market.

With the collapse in oil prices, the ability to maintain social programs and subsidized imports has evaporated, and the full weight of the crisis is being imposed upon the backs of the working class.

Reduced revenues that could go to buy desperately needed food and medicine are instead being directed by the Maduro government to meet interest and service charges on Venezuela’s debt to the international banks. It has rigorously denied reports that it will default on some $10.5 billion in debt servicing costs that come due this year.

The White House Monday declared itself to be “quite concerned about the wellbeing of the people of Venezuela” and called for all “interested parties” to “work together peacefully to try to find solutions.”

This is so much eye wash. Washington views the intense crisis in Venezuela, Brazil and elsewhere on the continent as an opportunity to reassert US hegemony in Latin America, counter the growing influence of China and inflict blows against the working class.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Maduro Government Imposes State of Emergency in Venezuela

The True State of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident: Internal Exposure Concealed

May 17th, 2016 by Yagasaki Katsuma

Yagasaki Katsuma, emeritus professor of Ryukyu University, has been constantly sounding the alarm about the problem of internal exposure related to nuclear weapons testing and nuclear electricity generation. Since the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP), he has drawn on his expertise to conduct field research, and to support those who evacuated to Okinawa. We asked him to reflect on the five years since the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, and to lay out the issues that lie ahead.

Heading to the blast site 12 days post-explosion

On March 17, 2011, a friend who lived in Fukushima City contacted me. “They’re reporting an onslaught of radioactivity, but we have no idea about any of that”, he said. “We need dosimeters, but there’s no way to get our hands on them.”

I ended up making my way to Fukushima along with several dosimeters for measuring radioactivity. I set up the dosimeters. Fukushima was under a petrol provision restriction, and I could not travel freely. I needed to make arrangements for an “emergency vehicle” to use. I had left Okinawa on March 24, traveled via Osaka by plane to Fukushima Airport, and entered Fukushima City by a bus that went through Kōriyama. The Japan Railways (JR) trains had stopped running. It had been 12 days since the first explosion, which had occurred at reactor No. 1 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). It snowed the next morning, and I saw that a torrent of radioactivity – 12 microsieverts/hour – was relentlessly falling on the living spaces of Fukushima’s citizens.

From March 25 to 31, I went to eight areas to measure radiation doses in the air, farmland and water: Fukushima City, Iwaki City, Aizu-Wakamatsu City, Kitakata City, Minami-Sōma City, Kōriyama City, Iitate Village, and Kita-Shiobara Village. I engaged in discussions with farmers and other locals about what steps they should take.

At the time, the dose readings from farmland went down by half when just the top layer of weeds and straw litter were removed; digging 3 cm deep reduced the readings by 80%. So I suggested that if people did not plant crops this year, and removed 5 cm of topsoil from their land, they could prevent future batches of crops from radioactive contamination. It was a situation in which both national and local governments were at a loss about what to do; they could not even come up with countermeasures, and were practically without policies. In the end, apart from a few enterprising farmers who followed my recommendations, most farm-owners felt compelled to plant crops, and ended up ploughing the soil to spread radiation up to 20 cm deep.

Of the 2 dosimeters I had brought with me to conduct my survey, I lent one to a farmers’ union for one year, thus doing what I could for them in terms of temporary assistance.

No Measures to Protect Residents

One of the things which stunned me was the absoluteness of the safety myth (anzen shinwa). Even though radioactive dust was falling, no one knew anything about how to protect their bodies. The local governments had not a single dosimeter among them. The evacuation manual for NPP accidents used in Fukushima City’s elementary schools was exactly the same as the evacuation manual for earthquakes.

Furthermore, all attempts to talk about demonstrations of the danger of NPPs were categorically suppressed. Herein lies the root of why no countermeasures were taken to protect residents from radioactivity. No stable iodine tablets were distributed; no SPEEDI (System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information) data was announced, and so on.

Before the accident, I had published a book called Concealed Radiation Exposure in 2009 with Shin Nihon Shuppansha, which expounded my view that internal exposure was a hidden kind of exposure more dangerous than external exposure.

The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) and the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) have suppressed information about those sacrificed in the atomic bombings. The International Commission for Radiation Protection (ICRP) has concealed the issue of internal exposure in the context of their commitment to the cause of the United States’ nuclear strategy.1 The Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident, through multiple explosions, has scattered between one hundred and several thousand more radioactive materials than the Hiroshima bomb into the environment, resulting in health damage caused by internal exposure. This would ineluctably lead the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the ICRP to cover up internal exposure and exposure casualties. In other words, I believed that they would do everything they could to cast off health damage to Fukushima residents, and support the Japanese government’s policies to abandon its own citizens. This is what drove me to rush down to Fukushima.

The Accident on Televised Programmes

For two years in 2011 and 2012, I delivered more than 120 lectures each year, and held interviews with the mass media. The mass media did courageously report on the reality and danger of internal exposure, but a distressing incident occurred in the process. This happened during my appearance, on July 2, 2011, as a guest on NHK Television’s Weekly News Insights.

I had asked them to make a flipboard for me which showed data on how the rate of child cancer deaths in Japan had jumped five years after the atomic bombings of 1945 to three times their original rate (see graph). It was data which clearly demonstrated that these children were the world’s first casualties of internal exposure. The night before the show, I was handed a script and sat in a meeting discussing the show until past 10 PM. However, the next morning, when I headed to NHK, the director told me that due to time constraints, we could not follow the script we had discussed the previous night. On entering the studio, the flipboard which I had expected to be at my feet was nowhere to be seen. When I asked a nearby staff member to please bring it for me, quickly, the reply was that they could not do that. With 30 seconds to go before showtime, I had no choice but to appear on the show bereft of my data.

The following day, when I requested a written explanation of these events, NHK did not oblige me. Faced against my will with such a situation, I feel strongly that I am responsible for not being able to properly deal with it.

The Society for Connecting Lives

My deceased wife, Okimoto Yaemi, established a society called “Connecting Lives – The Society to Connect Okinawa with Disaster Sites” together with Itō Michiko, an evacuee from Fukushima, and others. They demanded that the Tokyo Electric Power Company explain compensation claims to the victims of the disaster, and even made them come to Okinawa to explain this in person to the evacuees here. It was the first time TEPCO had travelled outside of Fukushima Prefecture to hold an information session. In Okinawa, a group of plaintiffs for a lawsuit to “return our livelihoods, return our region” also came together. 3

In the midst of all her work, Okimoto always came to send me off and to pick me up from Naha Airport. Now that she is gone, I have taken up her role as the representative for the “Connecting Lives” society.

After the accident, the melted-down reactor core was too radioactive to be properly disposed of. It is clear as day from this fact alone that nuclear power generation should not be permitted. In these 5 years, there has been a regime brimming with pollution: it is manifest in things like the lack of intelligence and care on the part of the Japanese government, the utilitarianism that places profits and power above human rights, and the political concealment of the worst environmental radiation disaster in history.

It is now 5 years since the Fukushima Daiichi accident, and we are in an abnormal state of affairs in which TEPCO and the national government are forcing people to silently accept their victimization.

Under the Atomic Energy Basic Law, the maximum annual exposure limit for the public is set at 1 millisievert. But people are being forced to accept a revised threshold that is 20 times larger, that of 20 millisieverts per year.

In Fukushima Prefecture, the cessation of compensation payments and the lifting of the evacuation order in highly contaminated regions has forced people to return, at the same time that housing support for the evacuees is also being ended. Of course, there are no measures at all in place to deal with radioactivity outside Fukushima Prefecture.

The Chernobyl NPP accident of 1986 led Ukraine (also Belarus and Russia) to establish laws that protected human rights, which stands in great contrast with the human rights situation surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident.4

Claiming Radiation Effects as Psychological

The media reports on the occasion of 3.11’s 5th anniversary contain references to the “fūhyō higai” (damage caused by rumors of radiation) that they claim is hampering the reconstruction process. Why do they not call this as it is, “radioactivity damage”? “Fūhyō higai”is a term that they use in order to replace radiation effects as psychological problems.

Under appointment of the IAEA, Shigematsu Itsuzō (now deceased), the former chairman of RERF(formerly ABCC), carried out a health survey of Chernobyl residents. He remarked in a report he made in 1990 that “there are virtually no diseases that are caused by radiation, but attention must be paid to the psychological stress that is caused by wondering whether or not one has been exposed to radiation”. The theory that “psychological stress causes illness” is a method used to conceal the radiation victimization of the nuclear age.

In Chernobyl, uncontaminated food was distributed to residents of contaminated areas. Respite trips for children are also ensured by the state. And yet, in Fukushima, there is a huge push to “support by consumption” (tabete ouen) and the administration has implemented a policy of “locally-grown and locally-consumed” in providing children’s school lunches. Japan is not attempting to avoid internal exposure as Chernobyl-affected states did; it is doing the exact opposite.

What is at the bottom of this response? Whether it is protecting residents from radiation exposure, or decommissioning of the melted reactor core, or indeed dealing with the contamination of underground water, there are numerous things that need to be addressed even by diverting the budgets of the forthcoming Tokyo Olympics. However, the Japanese government is trying to overcome all these issues with cheaper costs at the expense of people’s suffering. Underlying this is their utilitarianism – an ideology which prioritizes economics over human rights and human lives – as well as their philosophy of abandoning the people.

Following what the government is saying, one is left speechless. “If it’s under 100 becquerels, then sell it [produce]”; “If you don’t sell it you won’t be able to support yourself”; “If you talk about radioactivity you won’t be able to sell [your produce]”; “Don’t talk about radioactivity”. Media reports are controlled by the government, and people can only remain silent.

Providing safe food is the mission of agriculture. Surely there is no more cruel infraction of human rights than to force producers, against their will, to make food that might adversely affect human health by radioactive contamination. There is no solution to this injustice other than to get rid of this system that has been imposed by fiat. Although farmers’ labors have lowered the amount of radioactive contamination in their produce, tragedies will continue as long as they keep the allowable radioactivity in food up to 100 becquerels/kilogram.

Such standard stems from the thinking that economic profits comes before health. Radioactivity even in small amounts can cause harm. International Commission on Radiological Protection has it that carcinogenesis starts with DNA mutation of a single cell. Human susceptibility to radioactivity depends on individuals, and more vulnerable ones, particularly fetuses are affected first. The natural miscarriage rate of the four prefectures including Fukushima since 311 has risen by 13%.5

Consumption of one becquerel of C-137 (with biological half-life of approximately 80 days) every day will result in an internal accumulation of 140 becquerels within about 2 years. If we have to inevitably set any standard for allowable radioactivity in food, we should use the guidelines set forth in the recommendation by German Society for Radiation Protection, which is “no food with a concentration of more than 4 becquerel of the leading radionuclide Cesium-137 per kilogram shall be given to infants, children and adolescents. Grown-ups are recommended to eat no food over 8 becquerel per kilogram of the leading nuclide Cesium-137.”6

Deceitful Dosimetry

The Japanese government’s philosophy of abandoning its people starts with its refusal to trust them, in other words it views them as unintelligent citizens. Fearing that a panic would result, it did not announce SPEEDI data, nor did it distribute solid iodine tablets. It prioritized “emotional stability” over protecting residents from radiation danger. Moreover, it implemented thorough control of information.

It is not simply that residents are seen as ignorant. The government has even actively betrayed their trust. A classic example of such actions by the state is the presentation of data on the radioactive contamination levels in the environment. The government set up monitoring posts (MP) in Fukushima Prefecture and neighboring prefectures and made the readings from them into official data. Along with Yoshida Kunihiro and others from the “Safety and Reassurance Project”, in the autumn of 2011, I checked the dose measurements of the MP. We found clear evidence that the publicly available data of the MP only showed 54% of the actual level of contamination in our readings.

Image caption: Readings from the Monitoring Posts and Actual Doses

X-axis: amount of radiation (microsieverts/hour

Y-axis: actual doses for residents and measurements at monitoring posts

Black dot-dash line: Actual absorbed dose received by residents

Dotted red line: Measurements at monitoring posts without decontamination

Red line: Measurements at monitoring posts with decontamination

[When laid alongside a graph of the actual recorded radiation doses taken by the authors at the monitoring posts (black line; the absorbed dose to residents), the same displayed readings taken from the same monitoring posts were 58% of that value in the case of non-decontaminated areas and 51% for decontaminated areas.]

[2011 autumn, taken with a certified scintillator counter, model HITACHI-ALOKA YCS172B]

On top of that, there was also a deliberate downplaying in government processing of the numerical data. The level of soil contamination is directly related to the amount of radiation in the air, and an objective measurement of this thus should be obtained from the air dose. However, on the assumption that there is a uniform exposure dose to the whole body, this reading was converted to 60% of its full amount based on the projected dose, an amount called the “effective dose”, a number that divides the exposure dose among the body’s various organs. Furthermore, they made a hypothetical estimate of the time people spent inside and outside their homes, and created a “substantive dose” reading that was another 60% lower. In the background to these machinations lies the will of the international nuclear energy industry.

The health survey being conducted by the Fukushima Prefecture Health Survey Evaluation Committee continues to progress, and the sad news is that it has already located 163 cases of cancer. From a scientific point of view, it is clear that these cases are undeniably caused by radioactivity. I also found, from the ratio of male to female patients, that about 75% of cancers in each sex were induced by radiation. Despite this, the Evaluation Committee continues to assert that there is no proof that these cancers are linked to the NPP accident.

Just as the committee insists that the numerous stark cases of thyroid cancer are not linked to radioactivity, so they will attempt to bury all other adverse health impacts in the sand.

Environmental pollution by radiation in Japan is ongoing, and, following the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident, it is the worst it has ever been. This is true whether we look at the amount of radioactivity being released via the long-term meltdown of the reactor core, which is spewing uncontrollably, while the government and mass media collaborate in the cover-up. From the standpoints of society, economics and preventative medicine, a terrible state of affairs will result if we do not provide public protection to the people affected by the accidents and clarify the nature and extent of environmental damage.

“Cheaper” Countermeasures

The Japanese government has deemed the amount of radioactivity released from the Fukushima accident as one sixth of that which was released from Chernobyl. However, the subsequent revelations suggest that Fukushima’s radioactivity is actually anywhere from 2 to 4 times as high as Chernobyl’s.7 Compared to the explosion of just one reactor at Chernobyl, which had a 1,000,000 kilowatt capacity, the explosion at Fukushima Daiichi involved 4 reactors with a combined output of 2,810,000 kilowatts.

The post-accident maintenance of nuclear reactors between Fukushima and Chernobyl also differs. Seven months after Chernobyl, a steel and cement sarcophagus was built to cover the reactor, thus stopping the further release of radioactive materials. Japan, even after 5 years, continues to let radioactive substances spew out into the air and water, thus worsening the world’s environment.

Without using the necessary basic procedures, they are simply trying to implement “cheaper” countermeasures. The fact that the stricken reactor cannot be managed alone can demonstrate that nuclear power lacks practicality and there is no choice but to abolish it.

As mentioned before, Japan is not honestly disclosing the degree of contamination and is using various measures to underestimate it. They have not published dose readings for radioactive nuclides such as uranium, plutonium, and strontium-90. The monitoring posts, which are supposed to provide public data of radioactivity, give readings that are only around half of the actual doses.

Pediatric thyroid cancer cases in Fukushima have risen to 163. It has been proven scientifically that these are due to radiation. (Tsuda Toshihide et al. have demonstrated this via statistics8; Takamatsu Isamu has examined the relationship between exposure dose and cancer onset rate9; Matsuzaki Michiyuki10 and Yagasaki Katsuma11have studied the relationship of radiation with the sex-differentiated ratio of cancer).

In response to this research, the Fukushima Prefectural Health Evaluation Committee has continued to insist that there is no clear link between cancer and the NPP accident. They are trying to bury all the injuries to health by this denial of a link between radioactivity and the many recorded cases of thyroid cancer. By expunging the record of health damages caused by radiation, they hope to heighten the false impression that NPPs are “safe”. In Japan, excessive utilitarianism goes unmentioned; companies’ profits and the state’s convenience take priority over human life.

The Systemization of Dispersal

The countries surrounding Chernobyl created a “Chernobyl Law” to protect their residents 5 years after the accident. Under this law, the government designated areas that received more than 0.5 millisieverts of radiation each year as “dangerous”, and areas that received between 1 and 5 millisieverts of radiation each year as “areas with relocation rights”, while areas receiving more than 5 millisieverts each year could not be used as residential or agricultural sites. Health checkups and respite trips for children have been covered in a massive budgetary investment by the state in order to protect its residents.

What about Japan? The legal exposure limit for the public is 1 millisievert per year. As previously mentioned, the government has raised the upper threshold to 20 millisieverts per year in their drive to push Fukushima residents to return. The Chernobyl law forbids residence and agriculture in areas where more than 5 millisieverts (per year) of irradiation is expected; in Japan, approximately 1,000,000 people live in such areas.

Under the Basic Law on Atomic Energy, which governs nuclear reactors and related phenomena, the standard for radioactive waste management (the level considered for safe recycling use) is 100 becquerels per kilogram. Notwithstanding this rule, the special law for measures to handle contamination by radioactive substances permits up to 8000 becquerels per kilogram. Contamination dispersal is thus becoming systematized.

A law to support child victims was established, but no maps of radioactive contamination were made, and the areas specified to receive assistance under this law’s “Basic Policy” are limited to Fukushima Prefecture. With this law they have thus made all areas outside Fukushima Prefecture ineligible to receive radioactivity countermeasures.

When looking at the measurements taken by the Nuclear Regulation Authority of the contamination levels in all prefectures, we see that contamination exists everywhere in the country, Okinawa being no exception.

In particular, eastern Japan shows high levels of contamination. 10 prefectures show contamination of more than 1,000 becquerels of Iodine-131 per square meter of land –Tochigi, Ibaraki, Tokyo, Yamagata, Saitama, Chiba, Gunma, Kanagawa, Nagano, and Shizuoka (Readings for Fukushima and Miyagi were not available for a period of time because the measurement equipment were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami, but other sources confirm high I-131 dispersion in Fukushima). 11 prefectures show more than 1,000 becquerels of Cesium-137, and Cesium-134 – Fukushima, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Tokyo, Yamagata, Saitama, Chiba, Gunma, Kanagawa, Iwate, and Nagano.

These readings are taken from a fixed point, which means that if a radioactive plume does not pass over these points, it will not be measured, and is liable to produce an under-estimation gap by 1 to 2 digits.

Although the Ministry of Education has implemented airborne monitoring, cities with a density of buildings higher than 3 stories present obstacles to this technology, making it unable to record their levels of contamination. Severe contamination is concealed in the Tokyo metropolitan area and other places in the region.

Legal Protection of Citizens

The above facts demonstrate an intentional ignoring of the serious level of radiation pollution. Japanese citizens should recognize radioactivity pollution as a de facto state of affairs.

In order to protect Japanese citizens from radioactivity pollution, the government and administration should take responsibility for protecting victims via a swift application of the regulations exactly as they are laid out under the Basic Law on Atomic Energy. Here we raise some suggestions for administrative policies to enact not only towards evacuees, but all residents. 1. The state should recognize and guarantee citizens’ right to evacuate and relocate. It should also bear responsibility in enacting measures to protect vulnerable victims, especially children.

  1. Health damages that emerge from NPP accidents should be studied on a nation-wide scale, and a study of the conditions of evacuees should be quickly implemented.
  2. Those most vulnerable to radiation should be protected by measures based on a sincere commitment to preventive medicine.
  3. With regard to the numerous early-onset cases of child thyroid cancer that have far exceed such early cases caused by Chernobyl, medical care and compensation should be provided; children and all residents should be protected. Thyroid screening should also be carried out for the entire country.
  4. Measures to prevent the entrance and exit of radioactive substances in all regions should be enacted.
  5. TEPCO’s social responsibility as a victimizer corporation in radioactivity pollution should be clarified.

This is a translation of a modified version of Yagasaki’s three-part article series “Kakusareru naibu hibaku – Fukushima genpatsu jiko no shinso” that appeared in Ryukyu Shimpo on March 16, 17, and 18, 2016.

Notes

1Internal radiation refers to ingestion of radiation through inhaling radioactive dust or consumption of radioactive food and water.
2Graph comes from Ralph Graeub: The Petkau Effect, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York (1994), p.70. Original data is from: M. Segi and M. Kurihara: Cancer Mortality for Selected Sites in 24 Countries, Japan Cancer Society, Tohoku University, Japan, Nov., 1972.
3As of February 1 of 2016, the number of evacuees to Okinawa was 707. (This number does not include the evacuees from outside of Fukushima Prefecture. See here.)
5Scherb, Fukumoto, Voigt, Kusmierz, フクシマの影響 日本における死産と乳児死亡, which is a translation of an extended version of the article “Folgen von Fukushima, Totgeburten und Säuglingssterblichkeit in Japan” that appeared in the February 6, 2014 edition of Strahlentelex, a German journal specializing on radiological protection. More information about ongoing health effects of Fukushima.
6“Recommendations to Minimize Radiation Risk by Internal Exposure in Japan,” German Society for Radiation Protection, March 20, 2011.
7The Chernobyl accident only involved aerial radioactive dispersion, but Fukushima in addition includes water and ocean contamination. A calculation with these into consideration renders such ratios. Watanabe Etsushi, Endo Junko, Yamada Kosaku, Hoshasen hibaku no soten, Ryokufu Shuppan, 2016, p. 170 –
8Tsuda et al. Epidemiology 2015 Oct. 5：Tsuda T, Tokinobu A, Yamamoto E, et al. Thyroid Cancer Detection by Ultrasound Among Residents Ages 18 Years and Younger in Fukushima, Japan: 2011 to 2014. Epidemiology 2015 Oct 5.
9Takamatsu Isamu, “Kojosen gan to kenko higai,” UPLAN, November 7, 2014.
10Matsuzaki Michiyuki, “Report on the Seikatsu Kurabu Thyroid Examination,” July 19, 2015 at Hibiya Convention Hall, Tokyo (Slides 73-101)
  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The True State of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident: Internal Exposure Concealed

Who Is the More Vicious Liar: Trump, or Obama?

May 17th, 2016 by Eric Zuesse

There was a drastic refocus by U.S. President Barack Obama away from being anti-jihadist and toward being anti-Russian, after his first Presidential term ended and as soon as his second Presidential term began; but the signs that Obama presented during his re-election campaign in 2012 were in exactly the opposite direction — that he was going to reduce, not increase, American armaments against Russia.

A major reason why the American people re-elected U.S. President Barack Obama, instead of elected a new President Mitt Romney, was Romney’s having said of Russia, on 26 March 2012,

“Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They — they fight every cause for the world’s worst actors. … Russia is the — the geopolitical foe.”

Not just “a” geopolitical foe, but “the” geopolitical foe.” (Wow! In a world with growing jihadist movements, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS?)

Obama responded to that at the re-election campaign’s end, by springing this upon Romney during a debate, on 22 October 2012:

Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia. In the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

Obama’s campaign had very successfully presented himself as having killed Osama bin Laden and many other Al Qaeda leaders; and, though no polling has been done on whether the American public considered jihadists (fundamentalist-extremist Islamists who seek a global “Caliphate”) to be “our number one geopolitical foe,” or Russia to be that instead, the poor polling that has been done relating to that matter, suggests the majority of Americans would have selected “jihadists,” not “Russia,” as being “our number one geopolitical foe”; and, in the final analysis, the 2012 Presidential contest exit polls did show Obama (who was publicly less hostile toward Russia than Romney and the Republicans were) with a 42% to 36% advantage over Romney on the national-security question: “Who Do You Trust To Handle International Crisis?” The exit polls showed Obama winning the total vote by around 50% to 48%; so, “International Crisis” went for Obama, and against Romney, considerably more than did the overall exit-polled Presidential vote, and this at least suggests that Obama not Romney gained from this public disagreement over “our number one geopolitical foe.”

Regarding the incident on 26 March 2012, when Obama spoke with Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev at the South Korean “Nuclear Security Summit”, Politifact reported:

In March 2012, at a summit in South Korea, Obama was caught in a “hot mic” incident. Without realizing he could be overheard, Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more ability to negotiate with the Russians about missile defense after the November election.

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [the incoming President Putin] to give me space,” Obama was heard telling Medvedev, apparently referring to incoming Russian president Vladi­mir Putin.

“Yeah, I understand,” Medvedev replied.

Obama interjected, saying, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

So: Obama was telling Putin there, through Medvedev, that his next Administration would soften its stand on America’s installing in eastern Europe, near and even on Russia’s borders, missiles that are designed to disable Russia’s ability to retaliate against a U.S. nuclear first-strike — the U.S. ABM or anti-ballistic-missile system.

Obama wasn’t lying only to America’s voters; he was shown there privately lying to Putin, by indicating to Medvedev that instead of becoming more aggressive (by his planned ABMs) against Russia in a second term, he’d become less aggressive (by negotiating with Putin about the matter — as you can see there, the nub of it was George Herbert Walker Bush’s lie to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990).

The missile system to disable Russia’s retaliatory force is extremely aggressive (the termination of the nuclear balance — called “Mutually Assured Destruction,” or MAD — replacing that by nuclear weapons as instruments ofconquest), and Putin had been constantly making clear that he wouldn’t accept it without hiking Russia’s armaments so as to counter it, if Obama goes forward with it.

Obama’s double-lie there — both to Americans in public, and to Putin in private — was as vicious as can possibly be imagined, because it could produce a nuclear war, which is something that neither the American people want, nor the Russian people want, nor Vladimir Putin wants, even if Barack Obama might (and he’s certainly playing a bold game of poker over it, which is the most vicious part of this entire affair).

But actually, Obama’s lie was even worse than this, because, from the very moment when he entered the White House in 2009, he already was hoping to invade Syria so as to eliminate Russia’s ally there, Bashar al-Assad. And, furthermore, Obama at the very start of his second term began preparations to overthrow another key Russian ally, the democratically elected President of Russia’s next-door neighbor Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. The coup in Ukraine started being implemented on 1 March 2013, which was well before the excuse for it (Yanukovych’s 20 November 2013 turn-down of Ukrainian membership in the EU) had even occurred; so, the lie that Obama’s anti-Russian sanctions are because Russia accepted Crimea’s return to Russia, after Obama actually stole Ukraine from its former Russian alliance, after Yanukovych rejected the EU’s offer to sell, to Ukraine, EU membership for a cost of $160 billion to be borne solely by Ukrainians, after Obama had set all of that up almost immediately after his second term began, is actually a string of lies by Obama about what he was doing and about what Putin was doing, and about what it all meant — and means.

And then, when Obama did spring his coup, in February 2014, which was an extremely violent coup, it was very reasonably seen to be a dangerous threat to the regions of Ukraine (Crimea and Donbass) that had voted over 75% for the man whom Obama had just overthrown, and they seceded in Crimea and in Donbass, because not only of the very real threat (and the Obama-regime’s ethnic-cleansing campaign against Donbass), but because they saw no legitimacy in their being ruled by their enemies, who are fake proponents of ‘democracy’, but actually aspiring global dictators.

Does there exist any lying by Donald Trump which trumps that? I have never been a Republican, but I certainly won’t vote for Hillary Clinton, who, in all details, has been similar to Obama on each of these matters, only even more reckless about her aggression than Obama has been — she was the Administration’s “super-hawk”.

On 9 January 2012, the geostrategist F. William Engdahl presented relevant immediate background for Obama’s lie asserting his alleged disagreement with Romney about Russia, when Engdahl headlined “Why Washington Wants ‘Finito’ with Putin”, and he opened (and he was one of the first Westerners to have read correctly the tea leaves on this):

Washington clearly wants ‘finito’ with Russia’s Putin as in basta! or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya — enough!.  Hillary Clinton and friends have apparently decided Russia’s prospective next president, Vladimir Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans. Few however understand why.

Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower [to clarify: dominated by U.S.-based international corporations].

On December 8 several days after election results for Russia’s parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, “The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.”

Obama’s hostility against Russia, and his reasons for it, were known to his targets, but in America’s ‘democracy’, were not only kept secret from the electorate, but Obama blatantly lied to them about the matter, and he won re-election on the basis of lies such as this — lies such as his calling Romney on ugly designs that Obama too (though secretly) held.

It’s not enough for America’s voracious aristocracy to control their own country; they’re determined to control all others, regardless of how much bloodshed and misery (all otherwise entirely unnecessary, including in Libya — which, likewise, under Gaddafi, had been friendly toward Russia) they’re creating in the process. And that’s what the most vicious lying is really all about: to hide their psychopathic intent, and their fundamental ugliness, as they go about their dirty-work.

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Who Is the More Vicious Liar: Trump, or Obama?

If Obama Visits Hiroshima

May 17th, 2016 by Prof. Richard Falk

There are mounting hopes that Barack Obama will use the occasion of the Group of 7 meeting in Japan in May to visit Hiroshima, and become the first American president to do so. It is remarkable that it required a wait of over 60 years until John Kerry became the first high American official to make such a visit, which he termed ‘gut-wrenching,’ while at the same time purposely refraining from offering any kind of apology to the Japanese people for one of the worse acts of state terror against a defenseless population in all of human history.

Let’s hope that Obama goes, and displays more remorse than Kerry who at least deserves some credit for paving the way. The contrast between the many pilgrimages of homage by Western leaders, including those of Germany, to Auschwitz and other notorious death camps, and the absence of comparable pilgrimages to Hiroshima and Nagasaki underscores the difference between winning and losing a major war. This contrast cannot be properly accounted for by insisting on a hierarchy of evils that the Holocaust dominates.

John Kerry and Kishida Fumio at Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, 11 April

The United States, in particular, has a more generalized aversion to revisiting its darker hours, although recent events have illuminated some of the shadows cast by the racist legacies of slavery. The decimation of native Americans has yet to be properly addressed at official levels, and recent reports of soaring suicide rates suggests that the native American narrative continues to unfold tragically.

The New York Times in an unsigned editorial on April 12 urged President Obama to make this symbolic visit to Hiroshima, and in their words “to make it count “by doing more than making a ritual appearance. Recalling accurately that Obama “won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 largely because of his nuclear agenda ” the editorial persuasively criticized Obama for failing to follow through on his Prague vision of working toward a world free of nuclear weapons. A visit to Hiroshima is, in effect, a second chance, perhaps a last chance, to satisfy the expectation created early in his presidency.

When it came to specifics as to what Obama might do, the Times offered a typical arms control set of recommendations of what it called “small but doable advances”: canceling the new air-launched, nuclear-armed cruise missile and ensuring greater compliance with the prohibition on nuclear testing by its endorsement coupled with a recommendation that future compliance be monitored by the UN Security Council. The Times leaves readers with the widely shared false impression that such measures can be considered incremental steps that will lead the world over time to a nuclear-free world. Such a view is unconvincing, and diversionary. I believe rather that these moves serve to stabilize the nuclear status quo and have a negative effect on disarmament prospects. By making existing realities somewhat less prone to accidents and irresponsibly provocative weapons innovations, the posture of living with nuclear weapons gains credibility and the arguments for nuclear disarmament are weakened even to the extent of becoming irrelevant. I believe that it is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that arms control measures, even if beneficial in themselves, can be thought of as moving the world closer to nuclear disarmament.

Instead, what such measures do, and have been doing for decades, is to reinforce nuclear complacency by making nuclear disarmament either seem unnecessary or utopian, and to some extent even undesirably destabilizing. In other words, contrary to conventional wisdom, moving down the arms control path is a sure way to make certain that disarmament will never occur!

As mentioned, many arms control moves are inherently worthwhile. It is only natural to favor initiatives that cancel the development of provocative weapons systems, disallow weapons testing, and cut costs. Without such measures there would occur a dangerous erosion of the de facto taboo that has prevented (so far) any use of nuclear weaponry since 1945. At the same time it is vital to understand that the taboo and the arms control regime of managing the nuclear weapons environment does not lead to the realization of disarmament and the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. 

Let me put it this way. If arms control is affirmed for its own sake or as the best way to put the world on a path of incremental steps that will lead over time to disarmament, then such an approach is nurturing the false consciousness that has unfortunately prevailed in public discourse ever since the Nonproliferation Treaty came into force in 1970. The point can be expressed in more folksy language: we have been acting for decades as if the horse of disarmament is being pulled by the cart of arms control. In fact, it is the horse of disarmament that should be pulling the cart of arms control, which would make arms control measures welcome as place holders while the primary quest for nuclear disarmament was being pursued by stages as the nuclear weapons states emptied their arsenals as verified by international monitoring procedures. There is no reason to delay putting the horse in front of the cart, and Obama’s failure to do so at Prague was a central flaw of his otherwise justly applauded speech.

Where Obama went off the tracks in my view was when he consigned nuclear disarmament to the remote future, and proposed in the interim reliance on the deterrent capability of the nuclear weapons arsenal and this alleged forward momentum of incremental arms control steps. What is worse, Obama’s actual record is, at best, neutral when it comes to addressing the nuclear challenge. During his presidency, Obama supported a $1 trillion modernization program for nuclear weapons to be completed in 2030, and includes appropriations for a variety of technical innovations that make it militarily more tempting to use nuclear weapons in certain conflict situations. As well, Obama continued with the militarization of space and has been an enthusiastic advocate of nuclear power.

Further undermining the Prague initiative, Obama uncritically endorsed the nonproliferation treaty regime, lamenting only that it is being weakened by breakout countries, especially North Korea, and this partly explains why he felt it necessary back in 2009 to consider nuclear disarmament as a practical alternative to a continued reliance on nonproliferation, although disarmament was posited more as a goal beyond reach and not as a serious present political option. He expressed this futuristic outlook in these words: “I am not naïve. This goal will not be reached quickly-perhaps not in my lifetime. “He has never clarified why such a goal is not attainable within the term of his presidency, in particular, why it should not be explicitly pursued.

In this regard, and with respect to Obama’s legacy, the visit to Hiroshima provides an overdue opportunity to disentangle nuclear disarmament from arms control. In Prague, Obama significantly noted that, “…as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has amoral responsibility to act. “[emphasis added] In the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, the judges unanimously concluded that there was alegal responsibility to seek nuclear disarmament with due diligence. The language of the 14-0 ICJ finding is authoritative: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all aspects under strict and effective international control.”

In other words, there is a legal as well as a moral responsibility to eliminate nuclear weapons, and this could have made the Prague call for a world without nuclear weapons more relevant to present governmental behavior. The Prague speech, while lauding the NPT, never affirmed the existence of a legal responsibility to pursue nuclear disarmament, which was a key element in striking a bargain between the nuclear weapons states and those states without nuclear weapons. The other key element was the commitment to share peaceful nuclear technology with the non-weapons states, thus encouraging and legitimating the development of nuclear capabilities that could be at any point configured to produce nuclear weapons, as well as creating dangerous risks of reactor disasters of the sort that occurred in Fukushima. In effect, the NPT while inducing states to forego the weapons option creates conditions that facilitate the development of a nuclear weapons capability should the political will of a government shift in that direction. Additionally, there are the distinct problems arising from the presence of nuclear reactors vulnerable to earthquakes, terrorism, wartime targeting, and a variety of accidents.

In this respect an official visit to Hiroshima offers Obama a final opportunity to reinvigorate his vision of a world without nuclear weapons by bringing it down to earth, and in the process leave an anti-nuclear legacy that overcomes the ambivalence of his record while president, that is, seeming to favor nuclear disarmament while maintaining the nuclearist agenda that has guided American policy ever since the bombs were dropped in 1945. In this regard, it would be more effective if Obama were to visit Hiroshima on August 6th, and include Nagasaki in his itinerary, rather than take advantage of the G-7 meeting to make a convenient side trip. Choosing to visit Hiroshima on the anniversary of the attacks, especially if during the visit Obama spoke words of apology and acknowledged that the Prague speech fell short by not mentioning the coupling of an authoritative legal responsibility reinforcing the moral responsibility that was admitted. Such assertions would capture the world imagination, and give the quest for nuclear disarmament a political plausibility that it has lacked for decades.

Why is this? By acknowledging the legal obligation, as embedded in Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty, as reinforcing the moral responsibility, there arises a clear imperative to move toward implementation. There is no excuse for delay or need for preconditions. The United States Government could at this time convene a multinational commission to plan a global conference on nuclear disarmament somewhat resembling the Paris conference that recently produced the much heralded climate change agreement. The goal of the nuclear disarmament conference could be the vetting of proposals for a nuclear disarmament process with the view toward establishing a three year deadline for the development of an agreed treaty text whose preparation was entrusted to a high level working group operating under the auspices of the United Nations, with a mandate to report to the Secretary General. After that the states of the world could gather to negotiate an agreed treaty text that would set forth a disarming process and its monitoring and compliance procedures.

The United States, along with other nuclear weapons states, opposed in the 1990s recourse to the ICJ by the General Assembly to seek a legal interpretation on issues of legality, and then disregarded the results of its legal findings. It would be a great contribution to a more sustainable and humane world order if President Obama were to take the occasion of his historic visit to Hiroshima to call respectful attention to this ICJ Advisory Opinion and go on to accept the attendant legal responsibility on behalf of the United States. This could be declared to be a partial fulfillment of the moral responsibility that was accepted at Prague. It could even be presented as the completion of the vision of Prague, and would be consistent with Obama’s frequent appeals to the governments of the world to show respect for international law, and his insistence that during his presidency U.S. foreign policy was so configured.

Above all, there is every reason for all governments to seek nuclear disarmament without further delay. There now exists no geopolitical climate of intense rivalry, and the common endeavor of freeing the world from the dangers posed by nuclear weapons would work against the current hawkish drift in the U.S. and parts of Europe toward a second cold war and overcome the despair that has for so long paralyzed efforts to protect the human interest. As the present state of nuclear weapons possession, climate change, and neoliberal globalization should make clear, we are not likely to survive as a species very much longer if we continue to base world order on a blend of state-centric national interests and dominant actor geopolitics and political economy. Obama has this rare opportunity to choose the road not often traveled upon, and there is no better place to start such a voyage than at Hiroshima. We in civil society could then with conviction promote his nuclear legacy as ‘From Prague to Hiroshima,’ and feel comfortable that this president has finally earned the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize prematurely bestowed.

There is one final consideration. Some have noted, most influentially, Mikhail Gorbachev, that nuclear disarmament cannot be properly undertaken in isolation from the overall military setting. Especially when far along in a nuclear disarming process, political anxieties would likely shift to the dangers of making the world safe for conventional weaponry, and especially give rise to concerns around the world about the effects of American military dominance in a post-nuclear global setting. Such concerns seem only natural given the American global pattern of force projection consisting of hundreds of overseas military bases, navies in every ocean, and the militarization of space. In this regard, as confidence grows that nuclear disarmament will be achieved, attention would likely turn to demilitarization and war prevention. Given the militarization of the planet, and the destructiveness of non-nuclear warfare, it would be beneficial to think of nuclear disarmament as a crucial and urgent step on the road to general and complete disarmament, which is without doubt a necessary dimension of sustainable peace for the peoples of the world. In effect, the ethically imperative vision that transcends Obama’s Prague vision is that of a world without war, which itself is no more utopian than leaders of the world want it to remain. What may be more utopian is to suppose that the human species can long coexist with the war system.

This article is a modified version of a post that appeared on Richard Falk’s blog and will be reprinted in a forthcoming issue of the journal Peace Review.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on If Obama Visits Hiroshima

VIDEO – Siria denuncia EE.UU. continúa financiando armas y mercenarios

May 17th, 2016 by Telesur

Estados Unidos asegura trabajar en conjunto con Rusia para mantener el cese de operaciones en Siria. Sin embargo, junto a sus aliados regionales no deja de introducir ilegalmente armas y mercenarios, lo que ha alentado a los terroristas a violar en más de 500 ocasiones la tregua establecida desde el pasado 27 de febrero. teleSUR http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/v/sir…

  • Posted in Español
  • Comments Off on VIDEO – Siria denuncia EE.UU. continúa financiando armas y mercenarios

Africa Liberation Day at 53: Pentagon and CIA Continue to Destabilize Continent

May 17th, 2016 by Abayomi Azikiwe

Today the African Union faces formidable development and security challenges 

May 25, 2016 marks the 53rd anniversary of the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union (AU) since 2002.

The holiday commonly known as Africa Day or Africa Liberation Day, comes during a period of increasing interference from the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

At a summit in 1963 held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at least 32 African heads-of-state gathered to form the OAU in efforts to foster the rapid decolonization of the continent and to move towards greater cooperation among the various governments. From the onset the OAU encompassed diverse and conflicting views on how Africa should move towards unity.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the-then president of the Republic of Ghana and founder of the ruling Convention People’s Party (CPP), called for the immediate formation of a continental government with integrated military, economic and social systems. Nkrumah believed that if Africa did not unite imperialists would reverse the minimal gains made by the national liberation movements and political parties.

Other more moderate and conservative states represented in the so-called Monrovia and Brazzaville Groups advocated a more gradualist approach. Others even within the progressive forces did not embody the militant commitment to unification and socialism as Nkrumah and Guinean leader President Ahmed Sekou Toure, who along with Modibo Kieta of Mali had formed the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union in 1960.

Nkrumah stressed at the founding OAU Summit that “On this continent, it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.” (May 24, 1963)

He went on saying “From the start we have been threatened with frustration where rapid change is imperative and with instability where sustained effort and ordered rule are indispensable. No sporadic act or pious resolution can resolve our present problems. Nothing will be of avail, except the united act of a united Africa. We have already reached the stage where we must unite or sink into that condition which has made Latin America the unwilling and distressed prey of imperialism after one-and-a-half centuries of political independence.”

Nkrumah was overthrown three years later at the aegis of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S. State Department and other imperialist entities. His ideas nonetheless are still relevant today in light of the growing militaristic and intelligence penetration of the African continent.

Some Examples of Imperialist Militarism Today: The DRC and Mercenary Interests

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a leading opposition figure was exposed for having hired mercenaries from the U.S. to provide security for his campaign.

Moise Katumbi, a former governor of Katanga Province, who is now a presidential candidate has faced allegations that he hired mercenaries to assist him in the bid to become leader of the mineral-rich state in Central Africa. On May 9, Katumbi was questioned by the authorities in DRC when he denied the accusations.

Reuters press agency said “The enquiry could lead to charges that carry a prison term and could also tie Katumbi in legal knots that could derail his campaign to succeed President Joseph Kabila at elections scheduled November. Many Congolese people say Katumbi is the strongest opposition candidate to succeed Kabila, given his personal wealth and popularity as the former governor of Congo’s main copper-producing region. He also owns a soccer team.”

Senegal Signs Defense Pact With Pentagon

The Senegalese government in West Africa has signed a military agreement with the Pentagon giving Washington full access to the country.

Dakar participated in the Flintlock military exercises that are conducted annually by the Pentagon working in conjunction with other African and European states. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) coordinates these military maneuvers along with similar operations in various regions of the continent.

Relations between Senegal and neighboring Gambia have been strained for years. The U.S. escalation of military cooperation and economic assistance to Senegal are only fueling tensions in the region.

An article in Reuters reported “The Defense Cooperation agreement ‘will facilitate the continued presence of the U.S. military in Senegal,’ said Senegal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mankeur Ndiaye. The agreement ‘will also help to enhance security cooperation and further strengthen defense relations to face common security challenges in the region.’” (May 2)

War Threatened in Western Sahara

In the Western Sahara, Africa last colony, there are threats of war from Morocco, a close ally of the U.S. Morocco occupies Western Sahara in contravention of the official policy of both the AU and the United Nations. (AllAfrica.com, April 29)

Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony where Morocco took administrative control in the 1970s. A resistance movement known as the Polasario Front grew out of the demand for full national independence.

After years of fighting a ceasefire agreement between Morocco and Polasario prompted the establishment of MINURSO in 1991, formally recognized as a United Nations mission. The UN will vote once again on whether to extend the mandate of MINURSO. The UN mandate provided for an internationally-monitored referendum in which the people of Western Sahara could choose whether to pursue independence from or integration with Morocco. This promised referendum has not been held.

The AU maintains official recognition of the Western Sahara people which caused the Kingdom of Morocco to withdraw from the regional organization. Western Sahara has phosphates and other minerals making it a source of potential wealth in northwest Africa.

CIA Trains Children as Spies in Somalia

The imperialist-backed government in Somalia, where the CIA has a field station, the agency is providing training to children as spies who target members of Al-Shabaab in the ongoing counter-insurgency campaigns in the Horn of Africa. These training programs are carried out through the Somalia National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) which works closely with the CIA.

Western imperialist states such as the U.S. and those within the European Union (EU) fund and train the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) deploying 22,000 troops that work alongside the Somalia National Army.

Sputnik News reported on April 7 that, “In an interview with The Washington Post, the boys said that the country’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) had been using them as ‘finger-pointers’. They would be sent to dangerous neighborhoods where al-Shabaab insurgents were hiding and told to point out their former comrades. On many occasions their faces were not covered, although the agents concealed their own. It’s scary because you know everyone can see you working with them. The children were used on other missions to collect intelligence and sometimes told to wear NISA uniforms. According to the boys, they were threatened if they refused to cooperate, and their parents didn’t know where they were.”

Africa Must Unite Against Imperialism

Only an upsurge from the left and anti-imperialist forces can fulfill the visions of a true united Africa in line with the work of Nkrumah, Gaddafi and other revolutionary leaders. The worsening economic crisis due to the decline in commodity prices and western sponsored destabilization is reversing the advances made in regard to growth and development over the last decade.

Africa Liberation Day remains a vehicle to propagate the genuine liberation and unification of the continent under a socialist system. ALD demonstrations have been held annually in various cities across the North America since 1972.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Africa Liberation Day at 53: Pentagon and CIA Continue to Destabilize Continent

ISIS Terrorists Confront Government Forces Near Palmyra

May 17th, 2016 by South Front

ISIS has seized two hilltops inside the Jabal Mohammad area, near the city of Palmyra. The reports came on May 16 while heavy clashes were also ongoing near the village of Huwaysis and the T4 airport. The main goal of ISIS’ operations in the Homs province is to cut communications to the city of Palmyra, to surround and destroy Syrian Arab Army units located there and to retake the city. If this is done, it will be a devastating blow on the Syrian government’s anti-terror efforts.

On May 15, the loyalist forces seized the Tall Sawwan farms in Damscus’ Eastern Ghouta. Now, the SAA and its allies are advancing towards the village of Tall Sawwan.

Pro-government sources reported on Sunday some 400 militants – 300 members of Nouriddeen al-Zinki movement and 100 of Jeish al-Mujahedeen – arrived in Northern Aleppo to join the fight against the government forces in the area. The militants entered Syria through Bab al-Salama border crossing.

Amnesty International said on May 13 that Syrian opposition armed groups have committed war crimes in their heavy bombardment of Kurdish and government controlled areas of the Aleppo city. According to Amnesty at least 83 civilians including 30 children had been killed in these areas between February and April.

The Kurdish security police, Asayish, called civilians to avoid public places after militants shelled the city of Afrin with Grad rockets. The Asayish blamed al Nusra and Ahrar as-Sham for the attacks. Kurds also blamed al Nusra for preventing the exchange of bodies between Azaz’s garrison and the so-called “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), a quasi-umbrella organization that has been created by the US in order to re-brand the Kurdish YPG in Northern Syria.

Reports have been circulating since May 14 that Mohammed Alloush, a leader of the Jaysh al-Islam militant group, is negotiating in order to set a new joint operation room in Northern Syria that will include all Jihadi and moderate armed groups operating there. The plan is aimed to hide the terroristic essence of a major part of the anti-government forces, finally. Such rebranding could also allow to grant access to the negotiations on the Syrian crisis for such notorious oppositioneers as Al Nusra members and others.

Bomb attacks by ISIS in and around the Iraqi capital Baghdad left at least 15 people killed last Sunday. Meanwhile, 11 people were killed and 21 others wounded when an explosive-laden car went off at the entrance of the gas facility in the town of Taji.

On May 14, ISIS used chemical weapons in the attack on Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq, wounding at least 14 Kurdish fighters. The report came from the Kurdish media network Rudaw that had cited Peshmerga Commander Gwer-Makhmour Sirwan Barzani. Earlier, on May 9, Kurdish sources said USUS used mortar rounds containing chlorine gas at the village of Bashir in Kirkuk Province.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on ISIS Terrorists Confront Government Forces Near Palmyra

Michael Ratner’s Death Is a Loss for Freedom, Peace and Justice

May 17th, 2016 by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

Legendary human rights lawyer Michael Ratner died Wednesday. His pathbreaking legal and political work on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the world is unmatched. His death is an incalculable loss for the cause of freedom, peace and justice.

The last time I saw Michael was shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. We were in New York for the annual dinner of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Both of us had served as NLG presidents, he during the Reagan years, I during the George W. Bush administration. When we met in New York, Michael had just returned from Cuba, where he had a wonderful visit with Gerardo Hernández, one of the Cuban Five. I was about to leave for Cuba, where I would meet with René González and Antonio Guerrero, two other members of the Cuban Five.

The Five had traveled to Miami to gather intelligence about terrorist plots against Cuba. When they turned over their data to the FBI, they were rewarded with arrests, convictions and incarceration. In Cuba, the Five (“Los Cinco”) are considered national heroes. One of the conditions for the historic détente between Barack Obama and Raul Castro in December 2014 was the United States’ release of the members of the Cuban Five who still remained in custody.

Michael Ratner. (Jamie-Andrea Yanak / AP)

Michael Ratner. (Jamie-Andrea Yanak / AP)

Michael raved about his Cuba trip. A longtime friend and ally of the Cuban Revolution, Michael had first traveled to Cuba in the 1970s. He later co-authored the book, “Who Killed Che?”, in which he and Michael Smith concluded, based on U.S. government documents, that the CIA was behind the assassination. When Cuba opened its embassy in Washington, D.C., last July, Michael was there. He told “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman that “other than the birth of my children, this is perhaps one of the most exciting days of my life. … This is a major, major victory for the Cuban people, and that should be understood. We are standing at a moment that I never expected to see in our history.”

Indeed, Michael will probably be best remembered for his victory in gaining the right to habeas corpus for U.S. detainees held in Cuba at Guantanamo. Michael was lead counsel in the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush, in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of those detained as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo to have their petitions for habeas corpus heard by U.S. courts. The Bush administration had argued that since the detainees were being held on Cuban soil, they had no right of access to U.S. federal courts to challenge their confinement. But the court held that the United States exercises complete jurisdiction and control over the Guantanamo Bay base. As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, “Aliens held at the base, no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts’ authority” under the federal habeas corpus statute.

“We went into court with a very straightforward proposition—that habeas corpus meant every single person detained has a right to go into court and say to the government: ‘Tell me why you are detaining me and give me the legal justification,’ ” Michael wrote in his chapter published in my book, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse.”

Michael also wrote that “[p]reventive detention is a line that should never be crossed. A central aspect of human liberty that has taken centuries to win is that no person shall be imprisoned unless he or she is charged and tried.” Michael added, “If you can take away those rights and simply grab someone by the scruff of the neck and throw them into some offshore penal colony because they are non-citizen Muslims, those deprivations of rights will be employed against all. … This is the power of a police state and not a democracy.”

In his chapter, Michael advocated “accountability by means of criminal prosecutions” of Bush, Dick Cheney, George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld for their torture program. “Until this occurs,” Michael wrote, “a future president can, with the stroke of a pen, put the United States back in the torture business.”

Michael sued Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Rumsfeld, the FBI and the Pentagon for their violations of law. He challenged U.S. policy in Cuba, Iraq, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Israel/Palestine. He was lead counsel for whistleblower Julian Assange. As David Cole wrote in The Nation, Michael “knew that when you sue the powerful, you will often lose. But he also understood that such suits could prompt political action, and that advocacy inspired by a lawsuit was often more important in achieving justice than the litigation itself.”

Jules Lobel, who followed Michael as president of the Center for Constitutional Rights(CCR), said on “Democracy Now!” that Michael “never backed down from a fight against oppression, against injustice, no matter how difficult the odds, no matter how hopeless the case seemed to be.” Lobel added, “Michael was brilliant in combining legal advocacy and political advocacy. … He loved people all around the globe. He represented them, met with them, shared their misery, shared their suffering.”

As NLG president in the early 1980s, Michael initiated the guild’s challenges to Reaganism, including U.S. interventions in Central America and the Caribbean. When he was president of CCR, he choreographed litigation that essentially ended New York City’s draconian stop-and-frisk policing policy.

Fellow past NLG president Barbara Dudley noted, “Michael leavened his brilliant mind and his creative legal skills with love and humor and an abundant energy. His work, his laugh, his irony and his enduring belief in the revolutionary spirit will live on.”

Vince Warren, CCR’s executive director, called Michael “one of the great justice warriors of our time,” noting that family members said Michael was born with the “empathy gene.”

In 2002, Michael presciently told The New York Times, “A permanent war abroad means permanent anger against the United States by those countries and people that will be devastated by U.S. military actions. Hate will increase, not lessen; and the terrible consequences of that hate will be used, in turn, as justification for more restrictions on civil liberties in the United States.”

We will not see the likes of him again.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Michael Ratner’s Death Is a Loss for Freedom, Peace and Justice

Panama Papers Hub in Miami: Citigroup’s [Very] Private Bank

May 17th, 2016 by Pam Martens

 The Citigroup Private Bank at 201 South Biscayne Blvd. in Miami is located in a 34-story building in downtown Miami with breathtaking views of Biscayne Bay. It’s also the address for dozens of offshore companies whose agent is Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal. The graph below shows just some of those companies, a number of which were incorporated as recently as 2013 through 2015. (Some companies indicate they are no longer active.)

This new information comes from a search of the public database made available by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which received more than 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which ICIJ calls “one of the world’s top creators of hard-to-trace companies, trusts and foundations.” The full cache of records has yet to be made public and is being investigated by journalists around the world.

To fully appreciate Citigroup’s links to the Panama Papers scandal, a bit of history is in order. Citigroup was publicly thrashed by Senators Susan Collins and Carl Levin, Chair and Ranking Member, respectively, of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations following an in-depth investigation in 1999 of its facilitation of moving hundreds of millions of dollars of looted wealth by heads of state or their relatives from struggling countries to secret accounts in offshore havens. Senator Levin explained how private banks work at the November 9, 1999 hearing:

Once a person becomes a client of a private bank, the bank’s primary goal generally has been to service that client, and servicing a private bank client almost always means using services that are also the tools of money laundering: secret trusts, offshore accounts, secret name accounts, and shell companies called private investment corporations. These private investment corporations, or PICs, are designed for the purpose of holding and hiding a person’s assets. The assets could be real property, money, stock, art, or other valuables. The nominal officers, trustees, and shareholders of these shell corporations are often themselves shell corporations controlled by the private bank. The PIC then becomes the holder of the various bank and investment accounts, and the ownership of the private bank’s client is buried in the records of so-called secrecy jurisdictions, such as the Cayman Islands.

Private banks keep prepackaged PICs on the shelf, awaiting activation when a private bank client wants one. Shell companies in secrecy jurisdictions managed by shell corporations which serve as directors, officers, and shareholders—shells within shells within shells, like Russian Matryoshka dolls, which in the end can become impenetrable to legal process. Private bankers specialize in secrecy. Even if a client doesn’t ask for secrecy, a private banker often encourages it.

In the brochure for Citibank’s Private Bank on their international trust services, in the table of contents, it lists the attractiveness of secrecy jurisdictions this way: ‘The Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Jersey, and Switzerland, the best of all worlds.’ This brochure also advertises the advantages of using a PIC. One advantage it lists is this one: ‘PIC assets are registered in the name of the PIC, and your ownership of the PIC need not appear in any public registry.’ Secrecy is such a priority that private bankers have at times been told by their superiors not to keep any record in the United States disclosing who owns the offshore PIC established by the private bank.

The second thing you need to know about Citigroup is that it is currently under investigation by the Justice Department for questionable money-laundering controls at its Banamex USA unit.

The final thing you need to know is that instead of yanking the bank charter from this serially malfeasant corporation, the U.S. government provided Citigroup with the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of modern finance after it collapsed under the weight of its own hubris in 2008.

Read complete article on Wall Street on Parade

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Panama Papers Hub in Miami: Citigroup’s [Very] Private Bank

Russia-ASEAN Summit: Posturing or Power Play?

May 17th, 2016 by Tony Cartalucci

Earlier this year, despite immense fanfare, the US-ASEAN Summit held in Sunnylands, California ended in a fizzle rather than a bang. Little of substance emerged from and admittedly “symbolic” summit, and the US even went as far as criticizing guests as they departed – lecturing them regarding “democracy” and “human rights.”

Coupled with this send-off designed to humiliate, was the US State Department’s various funded media fronts operating in each respective ASEAN state, mocking and denigrating ASEAN leaders who have fallen from Washington’s favor.

Far from another step toward fostering better relations between Washington and Asia as prescribed by the US “pivot to Asia,” it was instead a transparent attempt to empty out the resources of the region via compromising and coercive free trade agreements – more specifically, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – and line up an unwilling Southeast Asia as an adversarial proxy against Beijing – a notion none save for Washington attending the summit found appealing.

In reality, a summit can only bear equitable outcomes for all involved when a balance of power and leverage exists between all parties in attendance, thus making concessions possible, even desirable and above all beneficial to all.

Washington represents special interests with an enormous, lopsided amount of power and influence, backed in turn, by networks set up in each respective ASEAN member by US special interests to undermine and coerce each government to capitulate to US demands. Entire political fronts underwritten by Washington through the US State Department and an extensive network of faux-nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) exist to pressure and eventually overrun each state, creating for all intents and purposes a region of client regimes representing Washington, not the people they actually rule over.

Under such conditions, events like the US-ASEAN Summit represents a bully lining up his victims in an uncomfortable public display designed to make coercion look like cooperation.

Could a Russia-ASEAN Summit Provide an Alternative?

Later this month Russia is to host its own version of a joint ASEAN summit. In addition to the Russia-ASEAN Summit, there will be various bilateral meetings between Russian leaders and respective ASEAN states, including Thailand.

Russia, unlike the US, does not possess extensive extraterritorial networks of NGOs dedicated to subverting and coercing foreign governments. It has no historical or current presence in Asia militarily, unlike the US who is permanently occupying Japan, building bases in the Philippines, and regularly provokes security crises in the South China Sea. Russia spends a fraction of what the US does on its military overall, and cultivates a multipolar, non-interventionist worldview in direct contrast to America’s “intentional order” it places itself atop.

In reality, Russia represents for ASEAN a much more equitable partner to deal with, not only directly for mutual economic and political benefit, but also as a means of balancing stronger relations and alternative economic opportunities against uncompromising hegemony imposed by Washington.

Stronger ties with Russia could offer ASEAN the ability to leverage more from the US, if not offer an exit to inequitable impositions altogether.

What ASEAN Could Benefit From 

In many ways, Russia represents a nation emerging out from under the shadow of Western special interests, after struggling for years to stand back up after the collapse of the Soviet Union and an age of exploitation and malaise that followed as Western interests stripped off former Soviet territories, subverted Russia internally, and flooded the nation with marauding financial criminals.

Today, Russia is capable of defending itself from the full-spectrum of Western coercion, whether it is economic sanctions, military might, sociopolitical subversion, or even amid the global information war. These are all areas currently ASEAN states struggle with immensely and could benefit equally as much in by partnering with Russia.

For Russia and its vision of a multipolar future, standing up ASEAN just as it itself has against unipolar hegemony, is essential in realizing this multipolar future.

Cooperation in security, media, and economics, based on the success Russia has already had in establishing itself in the face of Western hegemony could be what makes the Russia-ASEAN Summit a success where the US-ASEAN Summit was a failure.

What Could Emerge from the Russia-ASEAN Summit 

Among just the Thai-Russian bilateral meetings planned just ahead of the summit later this month, economic trade proposed by Thailand as well as defense acquisitions of Russian hardware are planned. Should Thailand agree on procuring Russian T-90 main battle tanks or Russia agree on importing Thai agricultural products, the entire summit will have yielded more of substance than Washington’s “symbolic” summit earlier this year.

It would be important for both Russia and nations like Thailand, to prove that real progress can be made when nations cooperate constructively as planned for the upcoming summit in Russia, rather than act coercively as the US did in Sunnylands, California.

Details regarding “consultations” between ASEAN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) are likely to emerge after the meetings and could add further to substantive gains from the summit.

What is essential for Russia and its multipolar vision of the future, as well as for ASEAN’s sovereignty versus Washington’s recent hegemonic inroads into the region, is to develop a comprehensive plan to strengthen each state not only in relation to regional and international partners, but also strengthen them from within.

Paramount to Russia’s ability to weather Western hegemony is its internal military, technological, economic, and media strength. The emergence of alternative media networks originating in Russia aimed at countering Western domination over the flow of information internationally could be further augmented by standing up similar capabilities across ASEAN. This would help ASEAN find more leverage against the West directly, and help further dilute Western domination of the information space globally – which would mutually benefit both Russia and ASEAN.

Fostering greater military and economic independence from Western interests across ASEAN could likewise dilute Western domination over geopolitics.

What could emerge from a Russia-ASEAN Summit? Perhaps another piece of the multipolar world Russia is championing for alongside the rest of BRICS.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Russia-ASEAN Summit: Posturing or Power Play?

Gallup: Americans Want Socialized Healthcare

May 17th, 2016 by Eric Zuesse

Most Americans want Obamacare to be replaced by what Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposes and what both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump oppose: “Replacing the ACA [Affordable Care Act — Obamacare] with a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.” That’s 58% of Americans in the survey. Only 37% were opposed. 5% had “No opinion.”

Clinton proposes to build upon Obama’s ACA, but 51% in this Gallup survey say they want it repealed; only 45% want it to continue in any form (other than, presumably, socialized medicine, which, as was just noted, 58% of Americans want). Consequently, one of the, if not the, main, reason(s), why Americans want ACA repealed, is in order to obtain socialized healthcare (a possibility that candidate Obama had promised as a possibility in his ‘public option’, which he never even tried to include in his actual healthcare law, the ACA).

Donald Trump proposes to repeal ACA and simply go back to the old system, but in a form which requires all insurers to provide plans in all states.

On 19 August 2008, shortly after Obama had won the Democratic Presidential nomination, the Wall Street Journal bannered “Obama Touts Single-Payer System for Health Care,” and reported: “‘If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system,’ Obama told some 1,800 people at a town-hall style meeting on the economy,” which was held as a campaign-event in Albuquerque. This statement by Obama was bold; he was at that time appealing for votes not just in a Democratic primary, but now in the general Presidential race, where he had to appeal not merely to liberals, but to a broader cross-section of voters. But he also promised there a ‘public option’ to be included in his plan, and yet even that promise was abandoned by him the very moment he entered the White House — he never pushed for it, and he selected Max Baucus in the Senate to draft his plan: Baucus was firmly opposed to including any “public option”; that’s one of the reasons why Obama picked him.

Britain’s Independent offered the scientific evidence about this policy-issue, when it bannered, on 15 August 2009, “The Brutal Truth About America’s Healthcare,” and presented actual statistics from WHO and OECD in 2009:

Health spending as share of GDP: US 16%; UK 8.4%

Public spending on healthcare (% of total spending on healthcare): US 45%; UK 82%.

Per-capita healthcare spending [including both public & private]: US $7,290; UK $2,992.

Practising physicians per 1,000 people: US: 2.4; UK 2.5.

Nurses per 1,000 people: US 10.6; UK 10.0.

Acute care hospital beds per 1,000 people: US 2.7; UK 2.6.

Life expectancy: US 78; UK 80.

Infant mortality per 1,000 live births: US 6.7; UK 4.8.

On 26 October 2009, Reuters headlined “Healthcare System Wastes Up To $800 Billion a Year,” and reported: “The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies,” such as “fraud,” “duplicate tests,” and “redundant paperwork.” Moreover, “The average U.S. hospital spends one-quarter of its budget on billing and administration, nearly twice the average in Canada [which has comprehensive socialized health insurance].” And yet Republicans were accusing the new Democratic President of threatening to bankrupt the country by pressing to change the U.S. system of health insurance; and opinion polls showed that lots of Americans were terrified of such change.

Just a week later, The New York Times bannered on November 5th, “Costs Surge for Medical Devices, but Benefits Are Opaque,” and Barry Meier reported how the major medical device manufacturers had blocked an attempt by the Federal Government to measure the effectiveness of stents, artificial hips, and other medical devices; and how these manufacturers managed to achieve phenomenal profit margins, ranging from a low of 23% to a high of 30%: the combination of kickbacks to doctors, plus a lack of objective measures of effectiveness, was the “invisible hand” at work — Adam Smith’s economics in the real world, where the top pickpockets are actually the aristocracy. (Smith’s patronhappened to be the Duke of Buccleuch — Henry Scott.)

Reuters headlined on 14 March 2012, “Factbox: Healthcare by the Numbers,” and reported the latest “Health at a Glance 2011 – OECD Indicators.” The U.S was “1st in Spending … 17.9 percent of U.S. annual gross domestic product, or $8,402” per person. Though we had the highest medical costs, the U.S. was at or near the bottom in terms of healthcare delivered: 25th in Preventing Death from Heart Disease, 27th in Life Expectancy, 29th in Number of Practicing Doctors (per 1,000 population), 29th in Doctor Consultations, 30th in Hospital Beds, 30th in Medical Graduates, 31st in Health Coverage (insurance), 31st in Infant Mortality, and 31st in Preventing Premature Death.

In other words: The U.S. paid the most, but got the least. And it’s true even now, three years after the ACA went into effect.

A CBS/NYT poll taken 4-7 December 2014 asked “Would you favor or oppose a single-payer health care system, in which all Americans would get their health insurance from one government plan that is financed by taxes?” 50% opposed it; only 43% favored it then.

But, a year later, on 1-7 December 2015, the Kaiser Family Foundation poll asked “Now, please tell me if you favor or oppose having a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance through an expanded, universal form of Medicare-for-all.” And 58% favored that; only 34% opposed it.

The wording of such polls is important, because many Americans, especially older ones, have been taught and deeply ingrained to think that the word “socialist” means “communist,” and even some who know that many countries in Europe are democratic socialist nations and aren’t at allcommunist, retain that trained negative mental association, which was promulgated by the U.S. aristocracy during the Cold War but was never true: democratic socialists were just as opposed to communism as were democratic capitalists. The distinction isn’t between communism versus capitalism but between democracy versus dictatorship (rule by an aristocracy). It was always American propaganda. The Kaiser poll avoided that propaganda-indoctrination, by using the phrase “Medicare-for-all.”

In fact, the same CBS/NYT poll taken 4-7 December 2014 had also asked “Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan — something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get — that would compete with private health insurance plans?” And, 59% said yes, only 34% said no. Moreover, this question had a history in that poll: the question had actually been asked nine times in 2009 (while Obamacare was being drafted), and the percentages favoring that option ranged between 60% at the low end to 72% at the high end, who wanted it; so, the only reason why President Obama assigned his Obamacare to be drawn up by Max Baucus (instead of to Ted Kennedy who wanted to draft it in his committee and who strongly favored the public option, which Baucus strongly opposed) is that Obama had been lying throughout his 2008 campaign, when he said he would include a public option in his plan. Hillary Clinton now is likewise promising to include a public option, so as to gain votes.

It’s not because the U.S. is a democracy that the U.S. is the only developed country that lacks healthcare as a right, not merely as a privilege for those who are healthy or otherwise can pay for the healthcare they need in order to be productive citizens. It’s instead because the U.S. isn’t a democracy, that only the U.S. builds its healthcare system upon the private-profit and private-charity model. Like the study that’s linked-to there shows (based upon a detailed analysis of 1,779 public-policy issues since 1980), “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” The study found that the only influence the public has is when parts of what a public majority want, get taken up by this or that wing of the oligarchy, which then hires lobbyists and politicians, to get it passed into law, because they’ve figured out some way they can personally profit from it. At least on healthcare, it’s extremely inefficient, from the standpoint of providing maximum benefit to the public at a minimum cost to the public.

This is not opinion, it is fact; it is news-reporting not news-commentary: Basically, the privatized system rips off the public for the benefit of the elite, at least on healthcare, if not perhaps also on education and other products and services that are essential in order to be able to have a maximally productive economy.

On 9 February 2016, CNN headlined, “Why Americans Don’t Live as Long as Europeans”, and reported, “‘it seems staggering that we get two fewer years of life just for living here,” said Andrew Fenelon, a senior service fellow at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics and senior author of the study, which was published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.”

Because the U.S. is falling behind in those types of products and services, the U.S. is declining. “Nationwide, the median income of U.S. households in 2014 stood at 8% less than in 1999, a reminder that the economy has yet to fully recover from the effects of the Great Recession of 2007-09. The decline was pervasive, with median incomes falling in 190 of 229 metropolitan areas examined.” That’s from a study released by the Pew Research Center, on 11 May 2016, which was titled, “America’s Shrinking Middle Class: A Close Look at Changes Within Metropolitan Areas.” The sub-title was “The middle class lost ground in nearly nine-in-ten U.S. metropolitan areas examined.”

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.

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Gallup: Americans Want Socialized Healthcare

Hybrid War Hyenas Tearing Brazil Apart

May 17th, 2016 by Pepe Escobar

The gloomy and repulsive night when the female president of the 7th largest economy in the world was the prey of choice fed to a lynch mob of hyenas in a drab, provincial Circus Maximus will forever live in infamy.

By 367 votes for and 137 against, the impeachment/coup/regime change-light drive against Dilma Rousseff cleared the Brazilian Congressional circus and will now go to the Senate, where a “special commission” will be set up. If approved, Rousseff will then be sidelined for 180 days and a low-rent tropical Brutus, Vice-President Michel Temer, will ascend to power until the Senate’s final verdict.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff. © Ueslei Marcelino

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. © Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters

This lowly farce should serve as a wake-up call not only to the BRICS but to the whole Global South. Who needs NATO, R2P (“responsibility to protect”) or “moderate rebels” when you can get your regime change just by tweaking a nation’s political/judicial system?

The Brazilian Supreme Court has not analyzed the merit of the matter – at least not yet. There’s no solid evidence anywhere Rousseff committed a “crime of responsibility”; she did what every American President since Reagan has done – not to mention leaders all across the world: along with her vice-president, the lowly Brutus, Rousseff got slightly creative with the federal budget’s numbers.

Read more
© Kacper Pempel

The coup has been sponsored by a certified crook, president of the lower house Eduardo Cunha; reportedly the holder of several illegal accounts in Switzerland, listed in the Panama Papers and under investigation by the Supreme Court. Instead of lording over near-illiterate hyenas in a racist, largely crypto-fascist circus, he should be behind bars. It beggars belief that the Supreme Court has not launched legal action against Cunha. The secret of his power over the circus is a gigantic corruption scheme lasting many years, featuring corporations contributing to his and others’ campaign financing.

And that’s the beauty of a regime change-light/color revolution of Hybrid War when staged in such a dynamically creative nation such as Brazil. The hall of mirrors yields a political simulacrum that would have driven deconstructionists Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco, if alive, green with envy; a Congress crammed with fools/patsies/traitors/crooks, some of whom are already being investigated for corruption, has conspired to depose a president who is not under any formal corruption investigation – and has not committed any“crime of responsibility”.

The neoliberal restoration

Still, without a popular vote, the massively rejected tropical Brutus twins, Temer and Cunha, will find it impossible to govern, even though they would perfectly incarnate the project of the immensely arrogant and ignorant Brazilian elites; a neoliberal triumph, with Brazilian “democracy” trampled down six feet under.

It’s impossible to understand what happened at the Circus Maximus this Sunday without knowing there’s a gaggle of Brazilian political parties that are seriously threatened by the non-stop overspill of the Car Wash corruption investigation. To ensure their survival, Car Wash must be “suspended”; and it will, under the bogus“national unity” proposed by lowly Brutus Temer.

But first, Car Wash must produce a high-profile scalp. And that has to be Lula in jail – compared to which the crucifixion of Rousseff is an Aesop fable. Corporate media, led by the noxious Globo empire, would hail it as the ultimate victory, and nobody would care about Car Wash’s enforced retirement.

Read more

This U.S. Navy handout image shows Baker, the second of the two atomic bomb tests, in which a 63-kiloton warhead was exploded 90 feet under water as part of Operation Crossroads, conducted at Bikini Atoll in July 1946 to measure nuclear weapon effects on warships. © U.S. Navy

A world war has begun. Break the silence – John Pilger

The 54 million-plus who voted for Rousseff’s reelection in 2014 voted wrong. The overall “project” is a government without vote and without people; a Brazilian-style parliamentary system, without bothering with pesky “elections” and crucially, including very “generous” campaign financing flexibility not bound to incriminate powerful companies/corporations.

In a nutshell, the ultimate aim is to perfectly “align” the Brazilian Executive, Legislative, Judiciary and corporate media interests. Democracy is for suckers. Brazilian elites remote controlling the hyenas know very well that if Lula runs again in 2018, he will win. And Lula has already warned; he won’t buy any “national unity”crap; he’ll be back in the streets fighting whatever illegitimate government pops up.

We’re now open for plundering

As it stands, Rousseff runs the risk of becoming the first major casualty of the NSA-originated, two-year-long Car Wash investigation. The President, admittedly an incompetent economic manager and lacking the right stuff of a master politician, believed that Car Wash – which practically prevented her from governing – would not reach her because she is personally honest. Yet Car Wash’s not so hidden agenda was always regime change. Who cares if in the process the nation is left on the verge of being controlled exactly by many of those indicted by the anti-corruption drive?

Lowly Brutus Temer – a vanity case version of Argentina’s Macri – is the perfect conduit for the implementation of regime change. He represents the powerful banking lobby, the powerful agribusiness lobby and the powerful federation of industries in Brazil’s economic leader, the state of Sao Paulo.

Read more
© Paulo Whitaker

The neo-developmentalist project for Latin America – uniting at least some of the local elites, invested in developing internal markets, in association with the working classes – is now dead, because what may be defined as sub-hegemonic, or peripheral, capitalism is mired in crisis after the 2008 Wall Street-provoked debacle. What’s left is just neoliberal restoration. TINA (“there is no alternative”). This implies, in the Brazilian case, the savage reversion of Lula’s legacy; social policies, technological policies, the drive to globally expand large, competitive Brazilian companies, more public universities, better salaries.

In a message to the nation, Brutus Temer admitted as much;“hope” after impeachment will be absolutely swell for “foreign investment”, as in let them plunder the colony at will; back to the trademark history of Brazil since 1500.

So Wall Street, US Big Oil and the proverbial “American interests” win this round at the circus – thanks to the, once again proverbial, vassal/comprador elites. Chevron execs are already salivating with the prospect of laying their hands on the pre-salt oil deposits; that was already promised by a trusted vassal in the Brazilian opposition.

The coup goes on. The real hyenas haven’t yet pounced. So it’s far from over.

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. Born in Brazil, he’s been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of “Globalistan” (2007), “Red Zone Blues” (2007), “Obama does Globalistan” (2009) and “Empire of Chaos” (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is “2030”, also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Hybrid War Hyenas Tearing Brazil Apart

America’s Imperial Empire: The Sun Never Sets but the Mote remains in the Emperor’s Eye

May 16th, 2016 by Prof. James Petras

Post-colonial empires are complex organizations.  They are organized on a multi-tiered basis, ranging from relative autonomous national and regional allies to subservient vassal states, with variations in between.

In the contemporary period, the idea of empire does not operate as a stable global structure, though it may aspire and strive for such.  While the US is the major imperial power, it does not dominate some leading global political-economic and military powers, like Russia and China.

Imperial powers, like the US, have well-established regional satellites but have also suffered setbacks and retreats from independent local economic and political challengers.

Empire is not a fixed structure rigidly embedded in military or economic institutions.  It contains sets of competing forces and relations, which can change over time and circumstances.  Moreover, imperial allies and clients do not operate through fixed patterns of submission.  While there is submission to general agreements on ideology, military doctrine and economic policy identified with imperial rulers, there are cases of vassal states pursuing their own links with non-imperial markets, investors and exporters.

If the global world of imperial power is complex and indeterminate to some degree, so is the internal political, economic, administrative and military structure of the imperial state. The imperial political apparatus has become more heavily weighted on the side of security institutions, than diplomatic and representative bodies.  Economic institutions are organized for overseas markets dominated by multi-national corporations against local markets and producers.  ‘Market economy’ is a misnomer.

Military-security institutions and budgets utilize most state functionaries and public resources, subordinating markets and diplomatic institutions to military priorities.

While imperial state operations function through their military and civilian administrative apparatus, there are competitive socio-political-class, ethnic and military configurations to consider.

In analyzing the effective or ‘real power’ of the principle institutions of the imperial state, one must distinguish between goals and results, purpose and actual performance. Often commentators make sweeping statements about ‘imperial power and dominance’, while in fact, some policies may have ended in costly losses and retreats due to specific national, local or regional alignments.

Hence it is crucial to look closely at the imperial interaction between its various tiers of allies and adversaries in order to understand the immediate and long-term structures and direction of imperial state policy.

This essay will first describe the leader-follower imperial relationships in four zones: US-Western Europe-Canada, Asia-Pacific, Middle East-Africa and Latin America and identify the terrain of struggles and conflict.  This will be followed by an examination of the contemporary ‘map of empire’.  We will then contrast the alignment of forces between Western imperial allies and their current adversaries.  In the final section we will look at the sources of fragmentation between the imperial state and economic globalization as well as the fissures and fallout between imperial allies and followers.

Tiers of Imperial Allies in the West

Western imperialism is a complex pyramidal structure where the dominant United States interacts through a five-tier system.  There is a vertical and horizontal configuration of leader and follower states that cannot be understood through simplistic ‘solar system’ metaphors of ‘centers, semi-peripheries and peripheries’.

Western imperial power extends and overlaps from the first tier to the second, that is, from the United States to France, England, Germany, Italy and Canada.  The scope and depth of US military, bureaucratic, political and economic institutions form the framework within which the followers operate.

The second tier of empire ties the top tier to the bottom tiers by providing military support and economic linkages, while securing autonomous levers to enlarge its own geo-political spheres.

The third tier of imperialism in the West comprises Poland, Scandinavia, the Low Countries and Baltic States.  These are geographically and economically within the sphere of Western Europe and militarily dependent on US-NATO military dominance.  The third tier is a heterogeneous group, ranging from highly advanced and sophisticated welfare-states like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium to relatively backward Baltic dependencies like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and Poland.  They exercise few independent power initiatives and depend on protection from the Tier 1 and 2 imperial centers.

‘Tier four’ states include countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania.  These are essentially satellite nations, who follow the leader imperial countries, providing bases, troops and tourist resorts.  In general, they have no independent voice or decision-making presence in regional or global conflicts.  Despite their instability and the occasional outbursts of radical dissent, , the lower tier countries have yet to break with the higher tiers controlled by the EU and NATO hierarchy.

The fifth-tier satellites include recently fabricated mini-states like Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Slovenia and Croatia, which act as military bases, tourist havens and economic dependencies.  They are the outcome of the first-tier and second-tier policies of ‘regime change’ and state dismemberment through NATO-led wars designed to destroy any remnant of the multi-ethnic social welfare states and degrade Russian influence, especially in Yugoslavia.

Mapping the leader-follower structure of the Western empire depends on the distribution of military resources and their location along the Russian border.  The US-EU Empire faces the problem of meeting rising economic demands from the multi-tiered empire, which has exceeded their capacity.  This had led to shifting trade alliances and independent pressure to ‘go beyond’the dictates of the imperial leaders.

Leader imperial states have tightened economic and political control over their followers – especially when the military consequences of empire have disrupted everyday life, security and the economy.  An ongoing example is the flood of millions of desperate refugees entering Europe, as a result of US imperial war policies in the Middle East and North Africa.  This mass influx threatens the political and social stability of Europe.  Following the US putsch in the Ukraine and the inevitable response from Moscow, Washington ordered an economic blockade of Russia.  The economic consequences of US-imposed sanctions against the giant Russian market has severely affected European exports, especially agriculture and heavy industry and caused instability in the energy market which was dominated by the now banned Russian petroleum and gas producers.

The Eastern Imperial Empire

The US imperial design in East Asia is vastly different in structure, allies and adversaries from that in the West.  The leaders and followers are very heterogeneous in the East.  The multi-tier US Empire in Asia is designed to undermine and eventually dominate North Korea and China.

Since the Second World War, the US has been the center of the Pacific empire. It also suffered serious military setbacks in Korea and Indo-China.  With the aid of its multi-tiered auxiliaries, the US has recovered its influence in Indo-China and South Korea.

The US position, as the first-tier imperial power, is sustained by second-tier imperial allies, such as Australia, New Zealand, India and Japan.

These second-tier allies are diverse entities.  For example, the Indian regime is a reticent latecomer to the US Empire and still retains a higher degree of autonomy in dealing with China.  In contrast, while Australia and New Zealand retained their dependent military ties with the US, they are increasingly dependent on Chinese commodity markets and investments.

Japan, a powerful traditional economic ally of the US, remains a weak military satellite of the US-Asian Empire.

Third-tier countries include South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.  South Korea is the US’s most important military dependency, despite which it has moved steadily closer to the Chinese market, as has the populous Indonesian Republic.

Taiwan, while a military dependency of the US, has stronger ethnic and economic links to China than the US.

The Philippines is a backward US military vassal-state and former colony, which retains its legacy as an imperial enclave against China.  Thailand and Malaysia have remained as third-tier imperial auxiliaries, subject to occasional nationalist or democratic popular upsurges.

The fourth-tier countries within US East Asian Empire are the least reliable because they are relatively ‘new associates’.   Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have transformed from independent statist economies to US-Japanese and Chinese-centered markets, financial and military dependencies.

The US Empire has focus on confronting China through its military, controlling its South China trading routes and trying to form regional economic trade agreements, which exclude China.  However, the imperial multi-tiered structure has been mostly limited to various US military harassment and joint ‘war games’ exercises with its clients and ‘allies’.  This has had minimal economic input from even their closest allies.  The US Eastern Empire has lost significant economic counterparts because of its confrontational approach to China.  Its provocative trade-pacts have failed to undermine China’s dynamic economy and trade.

The US Eastern Empire may dominate its multi-tiered allies, vassals and recent converts through its military.  It may succeed in provoking a serious military confrontation with China.  But it has failed to re-establish a dominant structure within Asia to sustain US imperial superiority in the event of a war.

China drives the growth and dynamism of Asia and is the vital market for regional products as well as a crucial supplier of minerals, precious metals, industrial products, high tech and service activity throughout the region.

The US has occasionally turned to its  ‘fifth-tier’ allies among non-state entities in Tibet and Hong Kong and among ethno-Islamist terrorist-separatist groups in Western China, using ‘human rights’ propaganda, but these have had no significant impact in weakening China or undermining its regional influence.

The Eastern Empire can wield none of the economic leverage in China that the Western empire has with Russia.  China has established more effective economic relations in Asia than Russia has with the West.  However, Russia has greater military capability and a more committed political will to push back Western imperial military threats than China. In recent years, Beijing has adopted a policy of strengthening its high tech military and maritime capabilities.  In the wake of the US putsch in the Ukraine and the West’s economic sanctions against Russia, Moscow has been forced to bolster strategic military-economic ties with China.  Joint security exercises between Russia and China , as well as greater trade, pose formidable counter-weights to the multi-tiered alliances linking the US and EU to Japan, Australia and South Korea.

In other words, the diverse geographic multi-tiered US imperial structures in the East do not and cannot, dominate a strategic top-tiered alliance of Russia and China, despite their lack of other strong military allies and client states.

If we look beyond European and Asian spheres of Empire to the Middle East and Latin America, the US imperial presence is subject to rapidly evolving power relations.  We cannot simply add or subtract from the US and Russian and Chinese rivalries, because these do not necessarily add up to a new ‘imperial’ or ‘autonomous’ center of power.

Imperial Power in the Middle East:  The Multi-Tiered Empire in Retreat

The US imperial empire in the Middle East occupies a pivotal point between West and East; between the top and secondary tiers of empire; between Islamic and anti-Islamic alliances.

If we extend the ‘Middle East’ to include South Asia and North Africa we capture the dimensions of the Western imperial quest for supremacy.

The imperial empire in the Middle East reflects US and Western European tiers of power as they interact with local counterparts and satellite states.

The US-EU top tiers link their goals of encircling and undermining Russia and regional adversaries, like Iran, with the regional ambitions of their NATO ally, Turkey.

Imperial powers in the Middle East and North Africa operate through local allies, auxiliaries and satellites as they compete for territorial fragments and power bases following the US ‘wars for regime changes’.

With the US at the top, the European Union, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia comprise the second-tier allies.  Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq and Jordan, which are financial and political dependencies of the empire, rank as third-tier.  The fourth-tier includes the Gulf states, the Kurd war lords, Lebanese and Yemeni local puppets of the Saudi Monarchy and Israel’s client Palestinian Bantustan in the West Bank.

Saudi and Western-funded regional terrorist groups aspire to fourth-tier membership following a successful ‘regime change’ and territorial fragmentation in Syria.

The terrorist enclaves are located in Syria, Iraq and Libya and play a ‘specific and multi-purpose’ role in undermining adversaries in order to restore imperial dominance.

The Middle East Empire is the least stable region and the most susceptible to internal rivalries.

Israel exercises a unique and unrivaled voice in securing US financial and military resources and political support for its brutal colonial control over Palestine and Syrian territories and captive populations.  Saudi Arabia finances and arms autonomous Islamist terrorist groups as part of their policy of advancing the kingdom’s political- territorial designs in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Gulf.  Turkey has its own regional ambitions and terrorist mercenaries. Within this volatile context, the US Empire finds itself competing with its auxiliaries for control over the same Middle East clients.

The Middle East Empire is fraught with powerful adversaries at each point of contention.  The huge, independent nation of Iran stands as a powerful obstacle to the West, Saudis, and Israel and competes for influence among satellites in the Gulf, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.  Hezbollah, a powerful nationalist group within Lebanon, has played a crucial role defending Syria against dismemberment and is linked with Iran against Israeli intervention.     Russia has military and trade relations with Syria and Iran in opposition to the Western imperial alliance.  Meanwhile, the US imperial satellite states in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt are rapidly disintegrating in the face of gross corruption, Islamist resurgence, policy incompetence and economic crises.

To speak formally of a ‘Western imperial empire’ in vast sections of the Middle East and North Africa is a misnomer for several reasons:

In Afghanistan, the Nationalist-Islamist Taliban and its allies control most of the country except for a few garrison cities.

Yemen, Libya and Iraq are battleground states, contested terrain with nothing remotely resembling a functioning imperial domain.  Iraq is under siege from the North by Kurds, the center by ISIS, the South by nationalist Shi’a militias and mass organizations in contention with grossly corrupt US imperial-backed puppets in Baghdad.

The US-EU mercenaries in Syria have been defeated by Syrian-Russian-Hezbollah-Iranian forces aided by independent Kurds.

Israel behaves more like a militarist ‘settler’ predator usurping historical Palestine than a reliable imperial collaborator.

So far, the empire project in the Middle East and North Africa has been the costliest and least successful for Western imperialism.  First and foremost, responsibility for the current Middle East imperial debacle falls directly on the top tier political and military leaders who have pursued policies and strategies (regime change and national dismemberment) incompatible with imperial precepts that normally guide empires.

The top tier of the US imperial-military elite follows Israeli military prerogatives, as dictated by the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) embedded within the US state apparatus.  Their policy has been to destroy Islamic and Arab-nationalist structures and institutions of power – not conquer and reconfigure them to be absorbed into Western imperial institutions . . . as the US was able to do in Asia and Europe.  This parrots the Israeli- settler policy of ‘erasure’ and has made the region totally unstable for imperial trade.  The wanton dismemberment of the whole social-political-security institutional structure of Iraq is a prime example of the Israeli policy of ‘erasure’ promoted by US Zionist advisers on a grand scale.  The same advisers remain within the top tier imperial decision-making apparatus despite 15 years of abject failure.

Western empire’s multi-tier structure, from the US and Western Europe at the top to Kosovo at the bottom, have followed imperial imperatives.  In contrast Israeli imperatives direct US military power into perpetual war in the Middle East through the influential ZPC.

This divergent path and the inability to change course and rectify imperial policy has brought disastrous defeats, which have repercussions throughout the global empire, especially freeing up competitors and rivals in Asia and Latin America.

Tiers of Empire in Latin America

The US imperial empire expanded in Central America and the Caribbean during most of the 19th CENTURY and reigned supreme in the first half of the 20th century.  The exceptions included the nationalist revolutions in Haiti in the early 19th century and Paraguay in the mid-19th century.   After the US Civil War, the British Empire in Latin America was replaced by the US, which established a dominant position in the region, except during the successful Mexican Revolution.

Several major challenges have emerged to US imperial dominations in the middle of the 20th century.

The centerpiece of anti-imperialism was the Cuban Revolution in 1959, which provided political, ideological and material backing to a continent-wide challenge.  Earlier a socialist government emerged in Guyana in 1953 but was overthrown.

In 1965, the Dominican Revolution challenged a brutal US backed-dictator but was defeated by a direct US invasion.

In 1970-73 a democratic socialist government was elected in Chile and overthrown by a bloody CIA coup.

In 1971 a ‘workers and peasants’ coalition backed a nationalist military government in Bolivia only to be ousted by a US-backed military coup.

In Argentina (Peron), Brazil (Goulart) and Peru (Alvarez), nationalist-populist governments, opposed to US imperialism, were elected between the middle 1960’s to the mid 1970’s.  Each were overthrown by US-military coups.  Apart from the Cuban revolution, the US Empire successfully counter-attacked, relying on US and local business elites to back the military juntas in repressing anti-imperialist and nationalist political parties and movements.

The US Empire re-established its hegemony, based on a multi-tiered military and market directorate, headed at the top by the US.  Argentina, Brazil and Chile comprised the second-tier, a group of military dictatorships engaged in large-scale state terror and death squad assassinations and forcing hundreds of thousands into exile and prison.

The third-tier was based on US surrogates, generals and oligarch-families in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The fourth-tier of satellite regimes included Central-America, except Nicaragua, and all of the Caribbean, except Cuba and (briefly) Grenada.

The US Empire ruled through predator allies and satellite oligarchs and successfully imposed a uniform imperial structure based on neo-liberal policies.  US-centered regional trade, investment and military pacts ensured its imperial supremacy, through which they sought to blockade and overthrow the Cuban revolution.  The US imperialist system reached its high point between the mid-1970’s to the late 1990’s – the Golden Age of Plunder.  After the pillage of the 1990’s, the empire faced a massive wave of challenges from popular uprisings, electoral changes and the collapse of the corrupt auxiliary neo-liberal regimes.

The US imperial empire faced powerful challenges from popular-nationalist regimes from 1999 to 2006 in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador.  Dissident liberal-nationalist governments in Uruguay, Honduras and Paraguay posed their own challenges to imperial control.

The US empire was bogged down in multiple imperial wars in the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria) Asia (Afghanistan) and Europe (Ukraine, Georgia, Yugoslavia), which undermined its capacity to intervene militarily in Latin America.

Cuba, the hemispheric center of the anti-imperialist politics, received economic aid from Venezuela and strengthened its diplomatic, trade and security alliances with the anti-interventionist center-left.  This provided an impetus to the formation of independent regional trade organizations, which traded heavily with US imperial rivals, China, Iran and Russia during the ‘commodity boom’.

While the US imperial empire in Latin America was in retreat, it had not suffered a strategic defeat because it maintained its powerful business, political and state auxiliary structures, which were ready to regroup and counter-attack at the ‘right moment’ – the end of the ‘global commodity boom’.

By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the US Empire counter-attacked, with their political-military clients taking power in the weakest links, Honduras and Paraguay.  Since then, neo-liberal extremists have been elected to the presidency in Argentina; a corrupt oligarch-led congress has impeached the President of Brazil; and the ground is being prepared to seize control in Venezuela.

The US Empire re-emerged in Latin America after a decade-long hiatus with a new or re-invigorated multi-tier structure.

At the top-tier is the United States, dependent on enforcement of its control through satellite military and business elites among the second-tier countries, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

At the third-tier are Chile, Peru, Uruguay and the business-political elites in Venezuela, linked to the US and tier-twocountries.

The fourth-tier is dominated by weak submissive regimes in Central America (Panama, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador), the Caribbean (especially Santa Domingo, Haiti and Jamaica) and Paraguay.

The US has re-assembled its imperial structure in Latin American rapidly, creating an assemblage which is extremely fragile, incoherent and subject to disintegration.

The new neo-liberal regime in Argentine, the centerpiece of the empire, immediately faces the triple threat of mass unrest, economic crisis and a weak regime under siege.

Brazil’s new US neo-liberal constellation of characters are all under indictment for corruption and facing trials, while economic recession and social polarization is undermining their ability to consolidate imperial control.

Venezuela’s rightwing auxiliaries lack the economic resources to escape the demise of the oil economy, hyperinflation and the virulent internecine conflicts within the Right.

The US imperial empire in Latin America could best operate through links with the Asian-Pacific trade pact.  However, even with new Asian ties the Latin satellites exhibit none of their Asian counterparts’ stability.  Moreover, China’s dominant economic role in both regions has limited US hegemony over the principal props of the empire.

The Myth of a US Global Empire

The ‘narrative’ of a US global empire is based on several profound misconceptions, which have distorted the capacity of the US to dominate world politics.  The US regional empires operate in contested universes where powerful counter forces limit imperial dominance.

In Europe, Russia is a powerful counterforce, bolstered by its growing alliances in Asia (China), the Middle East (Iran) and, to a limited extent, by the BRIC countries.

Moreover, Washington’s multi-tiered allies in Europe have occasionally followed autonomous policies, which include Germany’s oil-gas independent agreements with Russia, eroding US efforts to undermine Moscow.

While it may appear that the ‘imperial military, banking, multi-national corporate structure’, at a high level of abstraction, operates within a common imperial enterprise, on issues of everyday policy-making, budgeting, war policies, trade agreements, diplomacy, subversion and the capitalist market-place there are multiple countervailing forces.

The empire’s multi-tiered allies have their own demands as well as sacrifices imposed on the US imperial center.

Internal members of the imperial structure define competing priorities via domestic power wielders.

The US Empire has extended its military operations to over 700 bases across the world but each operation has been subject to restraints and reversals.

            US multi-nationals have multi-billion dollar operations but they are forced to adjust to the demands of counter-imperial powers (China).  They evade almost a trillion dollars of US taxes while absorbing massive assets from the US Treasury in the form of subsidies, infrastructure and security arrangements.

            In sum, while the sun may never set on the empire, the emperors have lost their sight.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on America’s Imperial Empire: The Sun Never Sets but the Mote remains in the Emperor’s Eye

Every Belgian Gets Anti-Radiation Pills in Case of Nuclear Emergencies

May 16th, 2016 by WhoWhatWhy

Just a week after denying Germany’s request to shut down two of its oldest nuclear reactors, the Belgian government decided to distribute anti-radiation pills to its entire population. Do the authorities know something about the safety of its aging nuclear plants that it isn’t sharing ?

The two reactors in question are 40 years old, and their pressure vessels have shown signs of metal degradation, raising concerns over their safety. Belgium still gets 50 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Germany, in contrast, has decided to shut down all of its nuclear reactors and to focus on renewable energy.

The decision to distribute the pills, which are also known as iodine pills and protect the thyroid from radioactive poisoning in case of a disaster, shows how worried Belgian officials are — and for good reason. Nuclear safety is an illusion, as two high-profile cases have shown. The Chernobyl reactor explosion 30 years ago and the ensuing radioactive fallout killed thousands and left land the size of Rhode Island unusable.

Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from IAEA Imagebank / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) and Micah Elizabeth Scott / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

More recently, after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan, an increase to 56 percent of radioactive Cesium 137, which can cause cancer in exposed individuals, has been detected in Japanese fish. Cesium 137 has also entered the food chain in the Pacific Ocean, which has affected numerous countries that are dependent on the ocean water for its source of food and economy.

Therefore, Europe has a right to be worried about Belgium’s aging reactors and the government’s decision to distribute the anti-radiation pills does nothing to alleviate those concerns.

Here is a brief video on Belgian’s decision to give iodine pills over nuclear safety.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Every Belgian Gets Anti-Radiation Pills in Case of Nuclear Emergencies

Will the Transatlantic Trade Agreement (TTIP) Harm Your Health?

May 16th, 2016 by Celia Wexler

Image: FDA microbiologist working in a biosafety laboratory Photo credit: US Food and Drug Administration / Wikimedia

This article was first published by Who What Why

In 1960, one courageous Food and Drug Administration official refused to approve a drug that had already been used widely abroad. Frances Kelsey insisted she needed more information before she could be satisfied it was safe. The drug maker accused her of being a petty bureaucrat. But Kelsey was right to be cautious. That drug was thalidomide and pregnant women who took the sedative gave birth to thousands of children with terrible birth defects in Europe, the UK, Canada, and the Middle East. Because of Kelsey’s vigilance, however, America was spared that tragedy.

If the US and EU agree on a new trade deal in the works — the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) — it would be very difficult for one watchdog on either side of the Atlantic to have the same life-saving impact.

Instead, business interests would wield far greater influence on the quality of our food, drugs, cosmetics, and pesticides, and the presence of toxic chemicals in our environment. It would be very difficult for any regulator to resist that corporate influence, or to buck the collective judgment of more compliant regulators in other countries.

How corporations will wield that influence is suggested in the fine print of trade proposals advanced by the US Trade Representative (USTR) and strongly endorsed by the international business community.

The proposed trade deal would affect 820 million consumers, and thousands of the corporations doing business in the 28 EU countries and the United States.

It should come as no surprise  that the agreement has been largely shaped by business interests. As The Washington Post reported in 2014, 85 percent of the individuals serving as trade advisors to the USTR represented either corporations or business trade groups.

Americans may have grown used to trade deals dominated by multinational corporations, such as NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has been in effect since 1994). This deal, however, is focused not on trade barriers like tariffs, but on regulations — rules that health, safety and environmental advocates call “public protections” and that businesses term “trade irritants.”

My experience on the trade deal came through my work as a public-interest lobbyist for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which I left one month ago. UCS did not take a position on trade per se, but actively opposed efforts in Congress to make it much more difficult for government agencies to use science to inform their regulations, without fear of political or corporate influence.

Tom Donohue, Michael Froman

Image: US Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue, and US Trade Representative Michael Froman  Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from House.gov and USTR.gov

The US Chamber of Commerce has made regulatory “coherence” a huge part of its agenda. The Chamber and the USTR both insist that more collaborative rule-making between the US and EU could save companies the costs of complying with two sets of rules, and could make the entire process work more effectively, without harming public health and safety and the environment.

Completing the TTIP trade agreement is a major goal of the Obama Administration and the EU. Negotiations, underway for the past three years, are now ramping up, in an attempt to seal the deal before Obama leaves office.

The USTR does not publicly disclose the proposals it has made to the EU, and negotiated trade texts are kept secret. But Greenpeace Netherlands recently released a leaked copyof some of these proposals, including a chapter on “regulatory cooperation.”

The term sounds benign, but it could have dramatic consequences. If the EU accepts the US proposals, it would mean that regulators will no longer consider the public interest their first priority. Instead, they will have to weigh how much any protective rule will cost business, and whether those costs can be justified by the benefits the rule offers to the public at large.

Regulators will also be asked to consider other alternatives to a proposed rule, including the option  of doing nothing, and to explain why such alternatives are not acceptable. And they will, for the first time, have to evaluate  the potential impact of proposed regulations on trade. This new requirement could greatly complicate the work of developing and implementing new regulations, including safety rules, for both the EU and the US.

Robert Weissman, president of the public-interest group Public Citizen, warned that the leaked documents were evidence that multinationals were out to undermine the public protections that Europeans are accustomed to.

The EU quickly rebutted these concerns. Cecilia Malmström, the European Commissioner for Trade, insisted that the leaked texts are merely proposals that do not represent the final agreement between the trading partners. She also repeated a pledge that the EU would never surrender its high standards of public health and safety in order to do a trade deal.

Business groups and a number of European officials also downplayed any potential harm an agreement could cause, while touting its potential to increase jobs and prosperity.

But consumer, public health and environmental advocates on both sides of the Atlantic believe that TTIP will lead to lowest-common-denominator regulations — with possibly dire consequences.

For the EU, this could mean far less protection from toxic chemicals, pesticides, cosmetics and food that Europe currently does not permit but the US allows, such as chicken rinsed in chlorine. The EU banned chlorine baths in the 1990s, concerned about the procedure’s  possible links to cancer.

For the US, anti-TTIP advocates worry that the trade deal will make it more difficult for regulators to keep potentially dangerous drugs and devices currently approved in Europe out of the US market, risking a repeat of the thalidomide crisis.

There is also concern that the TTIP will keep state governments in the US from imposing stricter regulations when federal agencies fail to act, whether in matters of food safety, labeling of toxic chemicals, or banning dangerous materials.

Demonstration against TTIP and CETA

Image: Demonstration against TTIP and CETA in Berlin  Photo credit: More democracy / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Both US and EU officials deny that standards will be relaxed. But the US experience with regulation seems to belie those assertions. Critics charge that the US regulatory process has helped ensure that crucial public protections often are delayed for years, and are weakened through political interference from the White House Office of Management and Budget, and through corporate lobbying.

Increasingly, rulemaking in the US is subject to cost-benefit analysis. When the focus is on making it cheaper for corporations to comply, safety concerns are downplayed. Consider this recent example. In 2009, a commuter plane crashed into a home in Buffalo, New York, killing 45 passengers, four crew members, and one person on the ground. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that pilot error likely was linked to sleep deprivation.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed rules to ensure that pilots were sufficiently rested before they took the helm of an airplane. Business stakeholders lobbied the White House, seeking to weaken the regulation. They succeeded. When the FAA issued new rules to prevent pilot fatigue, cargo pilots were excluded. The reason? Cost-benefit analysis.

A crash of a passenger plane could result in dozens, if not hundreds of deaths, each one with a dollar cost.  But the crash of a cargo plane likely would kill only the pilot. So the cost of complying with the rule for the cargo companies could be greater than the benefit of saving one pilot’s life.

Up until now, the EU largely makes rules based on the precautionary principle, or, in layman’s terms, “Better safe than sorry.” It is the precautionary principle, for example, that underlies the EU’s strict process for approving chemicals: chemical makers have to prove that a chemical is safe before it can be sold.

In the US, it’s the other way around. The Environmental Protection Agency has to prove that a chemical is dangerous before its use can be restricted. As a consequence, many toxic chemicals that are banned or restricted in Europe remain on the market in this country.

“If we try to export our current regulatory regime to Europe, it could undermine science-based public health, safety, and environmental protections across the Atlantic, and most likely at home too.” said Weissman of Public Citizen. He painted a grim picture of TTIP’s potential  impact:

“This trade deal could expand the current broken system in the US and create even more opportunities for corporate interests to spread misinformation, weaken critical public protections, and challenge important health and safety standards, even at the state level and local level.”

Regulatory lawyer James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Progressive Reform, was even blunter in assessing the leaked trade document. “To see such bad policy written down shocks the conscience,” he said.

Celia Wexler was a public interest lobbyist for twenty years, serving first as vice president for advocacy for the good-government group, Common Cause, and then as Senior Washington Representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists. She now has returned to her first profession, journalism.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Will the Transatlantic Trade Agreement (TTIP) Harm Your Health?

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) Statement on the Suspension of President Dilma Rousseff

May 16th, 2016 by MST - Landless Workers Movement of Brazil

This is an institutional and anti-democratic coup that disrespects the will of 54 million voters.

The Landless Workers Movement (MST) publicly expresses its disgust and dissatisfaction regarding the decision of the Senate, this Thursday (May 12), in admitting the process of impeachment against President Dilma Roussef and temporarily removing her from the post. We are sure, as stated in the text of the case, that the President did not commit any crime with fiscal peddling. If this is to be considered a crime, the vice president, Michel Temer, who now assumes the Presidency, and Senator Anastasia, the rapporteur of the process and former governor of Minas Gerais, should also be accused.

This is an institutional and anti-democratic coup that disrespects the will of 54 million voters and was orchestrated by the most conservative sectors of society, particularly the neoliberal business sector, subservient to the interests of U.S. companies, a coup supported by a permanent campaign of mass media – especially Globo – and by a selective action of the sectors of the judiciary.

Supporters of Pres. Dilma Roussef, outside her office on May 12.

The coup endorsed by the Senate does not only disrespect the views of the public about who should be the head of state, but, as announced by Temer, intends to apply a recessive and neoliberal program, one that left sad memories for the Brazilian people from the times of the Collor-Cardoso governments. It is anti-popular and represents a social backlash that was repeatedly rejected by the majority at the polls. Unable to live with democracy and submit to the popular will, the elites have removed the President without any evidence of crime, just so their project of social cuts, unemployment and privatization is able to take place.

Michel Temer’s “Bridge to the recession” will only lead to the accentuation of social and economic crisis and widen the political instability of the country. The newly announced government, for its history, does not represent a rupture with the corrupt methods, which we all have denounced in the streets. We hope that the Senate will redeem itself when it judges the merit. And if it does not, the democratic party forces opposed to the coup should appeal to the Supreme Court. Brazilian society knows we are facing an economic, political, social and environmental crisis. This crisis will not be overcome with coups. What is needed is a broad debate in society that agglutinates most popular and social forces, to seek to build a new national project to confront the crisis.

Regarding the established political crisis, we defend the idea, alongside other popular movements, that only a deep political reform that returns to the people its right to choose their legitimate representatives, can be a real way out. The current Congress has no condition or political will to do so. Hence the need for the Senate to approve the holding of a plebiscite that gives the people the right to convene a constituent assembly, to move forward a political reform to conduct general elections under democratic conditions.

The MST will remain mobilized in defense of democracy and social rights, together with the Brazil Popular Front and the thousands of workers who will not accept the coup. We will keep our struggle against landlordism and agribusiness, for a popular agrarian reform and for the constitutional right of all rural workers to have land and a dignified life in the rural areas.

No to the coup! Temer out!

MST National Coordination
Brasilia

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) Statement on the Suspension of President Dilma Rousseff

ISIS Covers Terrorist Fighters’ Hefty Medical Bills in Turkish Hospitals, Leaked Phone Tapes Reveal

May 16th, 2016 by RT News

Islamic State terrorists wounded on the Syrian battlefield regularly travel to Turkey for complex and costly medical treatment, according to tapped phone calls apparently ignored by Ankara’s security forces, and handed to the media by opposition MP Erem Erdem.

Transcripts of phone recordings that were obtained by international media conversations with Ilhami Bali, a ‘prominent’ figure within Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terror group, who has a US€1.3 million bounty on his head, shed additional light on the lucrative business of medical treatments apparently offered by Turkish medical facilities to jihadist fighters.

According to the information previously made public by Erdem, IS militants and their families regularly get escorted back and forth through the Syrian-Turkish border with the help of local middlemen and a lack of counter-measures from authorities.

While Ankara staunchly denies offering any safe havens for wounded IS members, or any links with the terror group whatsoever, several phone taps point to the contrary, echoing numerous earlier reports of the terror group’s cozy ties with Turkey.

Some of those who are returning from Syria are often in need of urgent medical assistance, according to intercepted conversations. If everything goes smoothly and the smugglers are not detained by Turkish authorities, the wounded militants get expensive, board and undergo complicated medical procedures which sometimes amounts to thousands of dollars, while the bills are then taken care of by Islamic State.

Medical billing discussions took place between Bali and two men, one of whom is named Savas, who is allegedly responsible for arranging medical care in one of Turkish hospitals, and another unnamed man, who allegedly arranges payment to be made to medical facilities.

In one phone conversation between Bali and Savas it is revealed that a number of IS fighters have successfully made it to Turkey. All of them were operated on, but one man in particular required an expensive surgery following a delayed leg amputation.

“Yes they came. They were operated,” Savas replied to Bali’s question of whether or not more “sick people” made it to the hospital following their previous conversation. Savas then explains that a complex operation for “Muhammad Emine”and his care in the hospital propelled the costs to $32,000, and that a detailed invoice of all the medical procedures was on its way to Bali.

“Brother, it’s one of the best [prosthetic ] components, because they needed to amputate his leg. He’s been here for two to three months because he does not want to amputate his leg,” the man explains to Bali, who is trying to figure out the cost of the treatment for jihadi fighters.

“We made a lot of business together. We sat and ate together. So there is no problem, brother. We made an agreement on $40.000,” Bali replies.

Discussing the numbers further Savas, who appears to be on the Turkish side of the border, offers a more detailed explanation of the invoice.

“So I have made a list of everything after we have talked about it. How they made it what they did, etc. I don’t want a package thing but there are three persons who get medical operation,”

Savas tells Bali. “There is just one person who made problems. It’s Muhammed Emin. Only his medical treatment costs $18,000 and that’s really low-priced. I will make a list of all the things they have done. You can ask all hospitals.”

Bali then apparently called another man to figure out the breakdown of the hospital bill. Going over the invoice, the conversations reveal a further bill, the price of which is also being debated between IS men.

“I made a discount from $48,000 to $35,000 for you. But these are just costs of the hospital. If I include the cost for housing of $11,000 into it, it makes $46,000, brother,” the man tells Bali.

“$11,000 for what?,” wonders Bali, to which he gets an answer that the money had been spent on food, housing, electricity, water costs. “I will make a discount for all this. Only for you,” the man reassures Bali.

“There is a list of the how many times they get food. It’s on the list. There is a list of this,” the man says claiming that each meal at the facility costs $5 and that over the billing cycle amounted to $6,000. “And they used a lot of electricity. They used the air conditioning all the time,” he explains. “I did not put these things into the amount. Made a discount and more discount.”

While Bali seems to agree to the run-up of his fighters’ treatment, the man on the line still wants to do more for his partner and offers more discounts, as long as Bali disposes the cash.“I convinced them to make a discount from the hospital bill… I want you to do me a favor. No matter if you send $43,000 or $42,000, but send something. They will cut our electricity…”

In another phone conversation traced by Ankara’s security services as coming from Sanliurfa to Sakarya in southeast Turkey, Bali tells one of the operatives that he will not be sending the wounded to one particular hospital anymore, because he once helped an Azerbaijani fighter “Mehmet Ali” to get treated there, and apparently there was some confusion about treatment received and money paid.“Brother, I want to ask you something. You have information about this hospital? They say that company has many debts at this hospital. Something about $40-50,000,” the man asks Bali. “We have paid all of this money,” Bali replied.

 

 

While RT continues to comb through the phone conversation intercepts, leaked to the media by an opposition MP from Republican People’s Party (CHP) , Eren Erdem remains under the tight lid of the Turkish government.

Erdem already has an ongoing treason investigation against him, after he alleged in an exclusive interview with RT in December that Islamic State jihadists had delivered deadly sarin gas to Syria through Turkey. The latest leak could land him in more trouble, as the government is leading a crusade against freedom of speech and politicians who are critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or his policies.

Those opposing the government stance on the crackdown of the Kurds in the southeast of the country or journalists who are trying to expose the dark side of alleged Ankara-IS connection, get persecuted and often jailed.

Currently the Turkish parliament is trying to push through a constitutional amendment, which could pave the way for the trial of legislators on terror-related charges. If the law is passed and “terrorist-collaborating” MPs are stripped of their immunity, Erdem could face a lengthy prison term.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on ISIS Covers Terrorist Fighters’ Hefty Medical Bills in Turkish Hospitals, Leaked Phone Tapes Reveal

Military Escalation: NATO-Russia War Tensions Laid Bare at Washington Summit

May 16th, 2016 by Thomas Gaist

In remarks delivered from the US-Nordic Leaders’ Summit Friday in Washington, US President Barack Obama denounced the Russian government in belligerent tones, warning that members of the NATO alliance remain “united in our concern about Russia’s growing aggressive military presence and posture in the Baltic-Nordic region.”

The US President lavished praise on the Scandinavian regimes, expressing his gratitude for their “significant contributions in the fight against ISIS,” including deployment of special forces and logistical aid in support of US-led operations in Iraq.

He expressed special thanks for the fact that “Denmark and Norway will be joining the United States in contributing to an enhanced allied forward presence to bolster our collective defense in Europe.”

The American president vowed to “continue to support Ukraine, and maintain sanctions against Russia.” Obama’s comments were closely echoed by the Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, who declared: “We will not recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea, or accept Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

The US media presented Obama’s sharp remarks as a “response” to warnings issued by Putin earlier in the day, in which the Russian leader attacked the establishment of the new US-NATO Aegis Ashore missile base at Deveselu, in Romania.

US leaders have sought to defend the system by claiming that it is directed against Iran and other “rogue nations.” The real purpose of the missile deployments, part of the preparation for an offensive and nuclear war against Russia, was made clear by US Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, who said the system is geared for “the central and northern arc of NATO,” i.e., Russia’s western and Arctic flanks.

“They aren’t defensive systems, they are part of the US strategic nuclear potential deployed on the periphery, in eastern Europe,” Putin bluntly noted in his own remarks Friday. In an official statement, Russia’s foreign ministry condemned the new base for “gravely undermining the INF Treaty,” referring to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty between Washington and Moscow.

The sharpness of Putin’s response to the NATO escalation is an index of the historic levels of geopolitical tensions building up under the impact of Washington’s relentless war drive.

While deeply anxious over the immense pressures being imposed by the US and NATO, Russia’s capitalist class sees no alternative but to pursue conciliation with the far more powerful American and European imperialists.

Following this usual pattern, Putin moderated his criticisms with appeals for compromise, affirmed that Russia and NATO ultimately share common interests, and pleaded for rationality by Western leaders.

He expressed frustration over the insistence of NATO, which he referred to as “our partners,” on continuing to expand their missile infrastructure, despite the signing of the nuclear deal with Iran. “The threat is gone, but the creation of the missile defense system is continuing,” Putin complained.

While Putin’s overtures are premised on the assumption that more rational Western leaders might choose to de-escalate in order to avoid an all-out war, the entire history of the imperialist epoch has proven that there can be no lasting peace with, or between, the major imperialist powers. Instead, the current standoff between NATO and Russia, coming after decades of intensifying world crisis, has brought geopolitical tensions to their highest pitch since the 1930s.

Russia, a vast and resource-rich territory with the largest land area of any state, once the core of the Soviet Union, represents the choicest of prizes in the eyes of the American and European elites. They see no way out from their own crisis apart from a mad scramble to dismember and subjugate the Russian Federation, along with China and the ex-colonial nations of Africa and Asia.

The predatory designs of the US and NATO powers are stated openly in policy documents. Official NATO doctrines promulgated earlier this year define Russia as a “resurgent and aggressive” power and call for a qualitative escalation of NATO’s military posture towards Moscow, in their jargon, from “assurance to deterrence.”

Recent months have seen NATO match deeds with words, deploying new forces and hardware throughout areas bordering Russia, including new intelligence and command outposts and large amounts of pre-positioned heavy weaponry in every major Baltic and East European country.

Last week, NATO officials quietly informed the media that 4,000 additional NATO forces are being deployed to the Baltic states and Poland, to be reinforced at the start of 2017 by a further 4,200 NATO troops. US military officials told the Wall Street Journal last week that they plan for an “increased rotational presence” in the East, including “more regular exercises and presence in both Romania and Bulgaria.”

The announcements came amid large-scale war drills in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, still ongoing, including more than 1,000 US, British and Georgian soldiers, held provocatively in a geopolitical flashpoint that nearly brought Washington and Moscow to blows in 2008.

The drills, hailed by Georgian officials as “the biggest our country has ever hosted,” with “the biggest number of troops on the ground, and the largest concentration of military equipment,” include a full company of US mechanized combat troops, complete with M1A1 battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

The growing momentum of NATO’s push against Russia is evident from the deepening ties between the Western powers and the fanatically anti-Russia regimes in the Baltic states, Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region, which are enthusiastically embracing the transformation of their territories into armed camps.

At a groundbreaking ceremony for new air force facilities in Poland last week, President Andrzej Duda boasted, “Although we joined NATO years ago, now we are seeing that NATO is truly entering Poland.”

Recent weeks have seen the Ukrainian government and NATO members Romania and Turkey demand NATO escalation in the Black Sea, including formation of a multinational naval force which would patrol the waters surrounding Russia’s only warm-water port, Sevastopol in Crimea, on a permanent basis. NATO officials told the Wall Street Journal last week that plans for such a fleet are already well advanced.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Military Escalation: NATO-Russia War Tensions Laid Bare at Washington Summit

Selected Articles: Israel, An Innocent Victim of Arab Imperialism?

May 16th, 2016 by Global Research News

israel-drapeau

Israel: An Innocent Victim of Arab Imperialism?

By Anthony Bellchambers, May 14 2016

For over 65 years, since the establishment of the State of Israel at the behest of the then American Zionist lobby, its successor has ensured that billions of US dollars in aid, grants, loans, guarantees, tax exemptions and ‘deals’ are…

Palestine drapeau

By Jamal Kanj, May 16 2016

Much had been argued about the creation of Israel and the ensuing 1948 ethnic cleansing of non-Jewish Palestinians. Sadly however, most had become a desensitised academic debate. A lifeless abstract portrayal failing to depict what it really meant for one…

glyphosate

Glyphosate in the EU: Product Promoters Masquerading as Regulators in a “cesspool of corruption”?

By Colin Todhunter, May 16 2016

On 13 April, the EU Parliament called on the European Commission to restrict certain permitted uses of the toxic herbicide glyphosate, best known in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ formulation. Glyphosate was last year determined to be ”probably carcinogenic“ by the WHO. The…

dollars-money-economy-crisis“Print the Money”: Trump’s “Reckless” Proposal Echoes Franklin and Lincoln

By Ellen Brown, May 15 2016

“Print the money” has been called crazy talk, but it may be the only sane solution to a $19 trillion federal debt that has doubled in the last 10 years. The solution of Abraham Lincoln and the American colonists can…

Canada-bombes

Canada Syndrome: Good People Supporting Mass Internment, War, and Genocide

By Michael Welch and Richard Sanders, May 14 2016

“Many Canadians are still captivated by the self-righteous illusion that their blessed “Peaceable Kingdom” is based on the principles of multiculturalism, justice, democracy and human rights. These sacred “Canadian Values” form the basis of a narcissistic fantasy of exceptionalism that…

lula

Brazil’s “Neoliberal Left”: Business Accommodation and Social Debacle

By Prof. James Petras, May 14 2016

In 2004 I wrote Brazil and Lula: Year Zero (Edifurb:  Blumenau, Sao Paolo 2005), in which I presented my analysis of the Lula-Workers Party (PT) regime in Brazil undergoing a Grand Transformation with the first stage represented by the PT’s…

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: Israel, An Innocent Victim of Arab Imperialism?

Brazil’s Acting President Michel Temer Used to Be US Intelligence Informant: WikiLeaks

May 16th, 2016 by RT

Brazil’s new interim president, Michel Temer, was an embassy informant for US intelligence, WikiLeaks has revealed.

According to the whistleblowing website, Temer communicated with the US embassy in Brazil via telegram, and such content would be classified as “sensitive” and “for official use only.” 

Two cables were released, dated January 11, 2006 and June 21, 2006.

One shows a document sent from Sao Paolo, Brazil, to – among other recipients – the US Southern Command in Miami. In it, Temer discusses the political situation in Brazil during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Regarding the 2006 elections, when Lula was re-elected, Temer shared scenarios in which his party (PMDB) would win the elections. He declined to predict the race, however, but said there would be a run-off and that “anything could happen.”  Temer said the PMDB would elect between 10 and 15 governors that year, and that the party would have the most representatives in the Senate and thus the House of Representatives.

This would mean that the elected president would have to report to PMDB rule. “Whoever wins the presidential election will have to come to us to do anything,” Temer reportedly said.

Temer has replaced Dilma Rousseff, who was suspended from office earlier this week, after the Senate approved impeachment against her. Rousseff was suspended from her post for at least 180 days after senators voted 55 to 22 to punish her for manipulating budget data, ahead of her re-election in 2014. The left-wing politician claimed that Brazil was in a strong economic position, but since she convincingly won the vote, the economy has unraveled, putting Brazil in the worst recession for decades.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Brazil’s Acting President Michel Temer Used to Be US Intelligence Informant: WikiLeaks

Abolish Nuclear Weapons

May 16th, 2016 by Ray Acheson

The second week of the open-ended working group on nuclear disarmament (OEWG) is illuminating a clear delineation between those who want to abolish nuclear weapons and those who don’t.

Mexico’s Ambassador Lomonaco challenged Japan and other nuclear-supportive states over their commitment to change, asking whether their so-called progressive approach is really about retrenchment of the status quo. The engagements from those states certainly give the impression they are seeking foremost to preserve a place for nuclear weapons in their political and military arsenals, and in those of their nuclear-armed allies. As negotiations begin on an instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, however, those engagements will likely change.
 
Fear of change

With an increasing sense of desperation, the nuclear-supportive OEWG participants seem more eager to shut down discussions than respond to questions about their commitment to complying with their nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations and pursuing effective measures for nuclear disarmament. As a treaty banning nuclear weapons quickly gains traction as the most feasible, practical, and effective measure under consideration, these states spend the majority of their time opposing it rather than offering credible alternative suggestions. Japan’s delegation even encouraged the Chair to end discussions at the OEWG on the question about elements for legal provisions, as there is “clearly no convergence” on the best way forward.

There is convergence, however. The trouble for Japan’s delegation and its nuclear-supportive colleagues is that the convergence is around a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons. The development of such a treaty probably appears problematic for these states—but only insofar as they insist on supporting nuclear weapons. If they instead choose to align their policies and practices with their legal obligations and stated commitments and values, agreeing to a prohibition on nuclear weapons would not be a problem for them.

The idea that nuclear weapons provide security has already been rejected by most of the world’s governments. Several countries developing or possessing nuclear weapons renounced their arsenals, proving, as Algeria said, that it is possible to do so. Kathleen Lawand of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) emphasised today that weapons that risk catastrophic humanitarian consequences cannot seriously be viewed as protecting civilians or humanity. Those governments asserting a national security benefit from these weapons will likely relinquish this view once ban treaty negotiations are underway, when debates in parliaments, articles in the media, public engagements, and bilateral and multilateral discussions increasingly challenge their support for nuclear weapons. Much like the Dr. Seuss character who resists trying green eggs and ham and then discovers he actually loves them, the nuclear-supportive states may find that their resistance to a prohibition on nuclear weapons can be overcome once they experience its economic, political, and security benefits.

Courage and ambition

But until then, it is up to non-nuclear-armed states to take the initiative to prohibit nuclear weapons. As delegation after delegation has pointed out, there can be no more waiting for leadership from the nuclear-armed or their nuclear-supportive allies. If the nuclear-armed states wanted nuclear disarmament, Brazil noted last week, we would have a nuclear weapon free world already. Similarly, Ireland pointed out that if article VI was being fulfilled, the OEWG would need not have been established. The interventions and working papers of the nuclear-supportive states participating in the OEWG, which Jamaica said seem aimed at obfuscation and maintenance of the status quo, could make us “pessimistic about overcoming the 70 year addition to nuclear weapons.” But as Sokka Gakkai International’s representative said, those who are ready for a nuclear weapon free world are ready to ban nuclear weapons.

A growing majority of states have expressed their readiness for this approach. Multiple working papers supported collectively by the vast majority of states urge negotiations on a legally binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons as at least one necessary and urgent step towards achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons. On Tuesday, committed states continued to discuss potential elements for such an instrument, each urging the development of a comprehensive set of prohibitions and positive obligations that lend to building and solidifying the norm against nuclear weapon possession and use. These discussions and proposals are laying the groundwork for the commencement of negotiations, even in the face of opposition from nuclear-supportive states.

While those states question the effectiveness of a prohibition, New Zealand and Mexico pointed out on Monday that the effectiveness of any particular measure or treaty cannot be proven advance. As Ambassador Higgie of New Zealand pointed out, such a requirement is a recipe for never doing anything—which is what has been happening for the past 20 years with the “progressive approach” agenda.

Prohibition is not premature, argued Ambassador Thomas Hajnoczi of Austria. We have waited 70 years. Looking at other weapons conventions one can see that prohibition precedes elimination and does not destabilise the security environment.

Such arguments are not based on facts but on fear of change. Overcoming this fear is imperative to making progress. “We know some find anything that disturbs the status quo to be too ambitious,” Kenya acknowledged on Tuesday. “But being ambitious is the only way we’ll make a contribution.”

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Abolish Nuclear Weapons

The Clinton Economy Is the Wal-Mart Economy

May 16th, 2016 by Brandon Turbeville

If any corporate donation can accurately predict the direction in which a Hillary Clinton presidency would take the American economy, it would be the sizeable donations made by Wal-Mart executives. 

As early as 2013, Alice Walton, heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune, donated the maximum allowed amount ($25,000) to the Ready For Hillary PAC. [1]

The Clinton Foundation has also received a sizeable amount of direct donations from Wal-Mart. Indeed, the Wal-Mart Foundation has even donated anywhere from $1 to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2013 alone. The Wal-Mart Foundation has also funded and hosted a number of “energy and climate change” awards for the Clinton Global Initiative. [2]

The assistance and promotion has been reciprocal, of course, with the Clinton Global Initiative posting a rave reviewof the Wal-Mart corporation, naming it a company that makes great “efforts to empower girls and women.” It was unclear as to whether it was the slave labor wages, the humiliating work environment, or the abusive labor policies of Wal-mart that were the “empowerment of girls and women.” Such questions generally do go unanswered.[3]

The Clinton’s have also assisted Wal-Mart in the past regarding its effort to appear as more environmentally-friendly. For this reason, Bill Clinton met with past Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott in order to help boost the company’s relationship with environmentalists.[4]

Yet the Clinton connection to Wal-Mart goes much further back than 2013. As Kevin Young and Diana C. Sierra Becerra of Solidarity wrote in their article “Something That Might Be Called A Neo-Con: Hillary Clinton And Corporate Feminism,”

Hillary Clinton’s record on such issues is hardly encouraging. Her decades of service on corporate boards and in major policy roles as First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State give a clear indication of where she stands. One of Clinton’s first high-profile public positions was at Walmart, where she served on the board from 1986 to 1992. [5] She “remained silent” in board meetings as her company “waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers,” as an ABC review of video recordings later noted.[6]

Clinton recounted in her 2003 book that Walmart CEO Sam Walton “taught me a great deal about corporate integrity and success.” Though she later began trying to shed her public identification with the company in order to attract labor support for her Senate and presidential candidacies, Walmart executives have continued to look favorably on her, with Alice Walton donating the maximum amount to the “Ready for Hillary” Super PAC in 2013.[7] Walton’s $25,000 donation was considerably higher than the average annual salary for Walmart’s hourly employees, two-thirdsof whom are women. [8] [9] [10]

In regards to her “remaining silent” on Wal-Mart’s war on labor and labor unions while she served on the Wal-Mart corporate board, it appears that Clinton did much more than merely remain silent. Patrick Caldwell of Mother Jones reports that she was actually involved in these decisions. Caldwell writes,

Clinton was the first woman to serve on the board of the company. As the Village Voice noted in a 2000article denouncing Clinton Walmart past, Clinton’s spot on the board was designed just for her: she wasn’t filling any open vacancies, and the company didn’t replace her seat when she resigned in 1992.[11] Her ties to Walmart weren’t confined to her role on the board, either. Walmart was one of Rose’s clients and, according to a 1994 New York Times article, Hillary served as “director” for the firm’s representation of Walmart.[12] [13]

In 2007 the New York Times reported that during her time on the board, Clinton pushed for greater representation for women in the company’s management and led an advisory group that focused on ways Walmart could improve its environmental practices.[14] During a shareholder meeting the year after she joined the company, Walton said they’d added a “strong-willed young lady on the board now who has already told the board it should do more to ensure the advancement of women.”

But on unionization—the primary liberal complaint against Walmart—Clinton had little to say. A 2008 ABC review of videotapes from Walmart meetings found that “Clinton remained silent as the world’s largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.”[15]

“She was not a dissenter,” one of her fellow board members told the Los Angeles Times in 2007. “She was a part of those decisions.”[16]

Even while Bill Clinton served as Governor of Arkansas, the Clintons, due to Hillary’s position on the board, traveled for free on the Wal-Mart corporate jet 14 times in the time span between 1990 and 1991. Bill was a widespread defender of Wal-Mart during his tenure as Governor. This is, of course, not surprising, since Bill depended on Wal-Mart for funding his campaigns both on the State and Federal level.[17]

It is thus a true pity that union members – we can assume the big union bosses are not unaware of Clinton’s Wal-Mart, anti-union history – find themselves at Clinton rallies, with their hard-earned dues being donated to the Clinton campaign merely to hear empty slogans of how Clinton supports labor, unions, and the right to collectively bargain.[18] All the evidence shows that, when Clinton finally seizes the reins of power, she does her part in crushing union formation, worker’s rights, and reasonable working conditions. In the meantime, however, the empty slogans come flowing out like rushing water.

Brandon Turbeville’s new book, The Difference It Makes: 36 Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President is available in three different formats: Hardcopy (available here), Amazon Kindle for only .99 (available here), and a Free PDF Format (accessible free from his website, BrandonTurbeville.com).

Notes:

[1] Caldwell, Patrick. “Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads To Costco, Skips Walmart On Latest Book Tour.” Mother Jones. June 14, 2014. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/hillary-clinton-costco-walmart Accessed on September 8, 2015. 

[2] Caldwell, Patrick. “Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads To Costco, Skips Walmart On Latest Book Tour.” Mother Jones. June 14, 2014. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/hillary-clinton-costco-walmart Accessed on September 8, 2015. 

[3] Abeywardena, Penny. “How Walmart Is Reimagining Its Investments To Empower Girls And Women.” Clinton Foundation website. April 29, 2014. https://www.clintonfoundation.org/blog/2014/04/29/how-walmart-reimagining-its-investments-empower-girls-and-women Accessed on September 8, 2015. 

[4] Eidelson, Josh. “Wal-mart’s Big Green Con: Environmentalists Blast Megastore, As Worker’s Strike.” Salon. November 13, 2013.http://www.salon.com/2013/11/13/wal_marts_big_green_con_environmentalists_blast_megastore_as_workers_strike/Accessed on September 8, 2015. 

[5] Harkavy, Ward. “Wal-Mart’s First Lady.” Village Voice. May 23, 2000. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/wal-marts-first-lady-6418414 Accessed on September 8, 2015. 

[6] Ross, Brian; Schwartz, Rhonda. “Clinton Remained Silent As Walmart Fought Unions.” ABC News. January 31, 2008. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4218509 Accessed on September 8, 2015. 

[7] Caldwell, Patrick. “Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads To Costco, Skips Walmart On Latest Book Tour.” Mother Jones. June 14, 2014. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/hillary-clinton-costco-walmart Accessed on September 8, 2015. 

[8] “Fact Sheet – Wages.” Making A Change At Walmart website.http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/factsheet/walmart-watch-fact-sheets/fact-sheet-wages/ Accessed on September 9, 2015. 

[9] “Walmart’s Women Workers Take Case To Supreme Court.” Alternet.http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/542766/walmart%27s_women_workers_take_case_to_supreme_courtAccessed on September 9, 2015. 

[10] Young, Kevin; Becerra, Diana C. Sierra. “’Something That Might Be Called A Neocon:’ Hillary Clinton And Corporate Feminism.” Solidarity. March 3, 2015. https://solidarity-us.org/node/4389 Accessed on September 8, 2015. 

[11] Harkavy, Ward. “Wal-Mart’s First Lady.” Village Voice. May 23, 2000. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/wal-marts-first-lady-6418414 Accessed on September 9, 2015. 

[12] Labaton, Stephen. “Rose Law Firm, Arkansas Power, Slips As It Steps Onto A Bigger Stage.” New York Times. February 26, 1994. 

[13] Caldwell, Patrick. “Retail Politics: Hillary Clinton Heads To Costco, Skips Walmart On Her Latest Book Tour.” Mother Jones. June 14, 2014. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/hillary-clinton-costco-walmart Accessed on September 9, 2015. 

[14] Barbaro, Michael. “As A Director, Clinton Moved Wal-Mart Board, but Only So Far.” New York Times. May 20, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/politics/20walmart.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Accessed on September 9, 2015. 

[15] Ross, Brian; Schwartz, Rhonda. “Clinton Remained Silent As Wal-Mart Fought Unions.” ABC News. January 31, 2008. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4218509 Accessed on September 9, 2015. 

[16] Braun, Stephen. “At Wal-Mart, Clinton Didn’t Upset Any Carts.” Los Angeles Times. May 19, 2007.http://www.latimes.com/la-na-clintonwalmart19-2007may19-story.html#page=1 Accessed on September 9, 2015. 

[17] Harkavy, Ward. “Wal-Mart’s First Lady.” Village Voice. May 23, 2000. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/wal-marts-first-lady-6418414 Accessed on September 9, 2015. 

[18] Harkavy, Ward. “Wal-Mart’s First Lady.” Village Voice. May 23, 2000. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/wal-marts-first-lady-6418414 Accessed on September 9, 2015. 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Clinton Economy Is the Wal-Mart Economy

Results of Glyphosate Urine Test: ‘It’s Not Good News’. Glyphosate in Water and Food

May 16th, 2016 by Lorraine Chow

Last month, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) volunteered to take a urine test to see if glyphosate—the cancer-linked weedkiller—is in their system. Forty-eight MEPs from 13 different European Union countries participated in the test, and now the results are in.

According to ELISA test results from the accredited Biocheck Laboratory in Germany: “All participants excreted glyphosate by urine.”

The experiment was spearheaded by the Green Party in the European Parliament, which wants a ban on the controversial herbicide in the European Union.

The group noted in a press release of their so-called “#MEPee” test: On average, the MEPs had 1.7 micrograms/liter of glyphosate in their urine, 17 times higher than the European drinking water norm (0.1 microgram/litre). This means that everyone we tested was way above the limit for residues of pesticides in drinking water. Of the 48 participants, EU-parliament members from Belgium, France and Germany made up more than 80 percent of the whole investigated participants. The test showed that EU-parliament members from Lithuania, Spain and Croatia had the highest concentrations of glyphosate.

The lowest concentrations were in the urines of participants of from Italy, Finland and Ireland. “Nevertheless all investigated EU-parliament members were glyphosate contaminated. This will show glyphosate is also in the food chain of members of the EU-parliament,” the report states. Glyphosate, which the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared a possible carcinogen last March, is the main ingredient in Monsanto’s widely used weedkiller, Roundup. It is also found in herbicides manufactured by Syngenta and Dow. The Greens conducted the test ahead of European Parliament’s April 13 resolution that opposed the European Union’s relicensing of glyphosate.

  Despite fierce opposition from European Parliament, countries such as France, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands, and the 1.4 million people who have signed a petition calling on an EU ban, the European Commission—the executive body of the European Union—reportedly plans to relicense glyphosate for nine years. According to the Green Party, the European Commission’s latest proposal, which will be voted on May 19, will “plough ahead with a full-fledged approval of glyphosate’s license for nine years.”

“It considers only symbolically if at all the European Parliament’s resolution calling for a very limited scope of approval. Responsibility for the protection of operators and for multiple risks is discharged onto Member States in a non-legally binding manner,” the party said. “We are pissed off that our governments want to allow this poison for another nine years! No politician should have this in his or her body, and not a single citizen either!”

Glyphosate approval in the EU expires at the end of June. The chemical has been the subject of incredible controversy in Europe especially after the European Food Safety Authority famously rejectedthe IARC’s classification of glyphosate as a possible carcinogen in November. Agri-business giant Monsanto has also vehemently denied glyphosate’s health and cancer risks and demanded a retraction of the IARC report.

The Green Party’s MEPee test was inspired by a German study “Urinale 2015,” which sampled glyphosate concentrations in urine from more than 2,000 participants.

“The study found that the scale of the glyphosate problem is enormous, with detected concentrations in urine between five and 42 times over the maximum value of residues for drinking water in Europe,” the Green Party pointed out. “No less than 99.6 percent of all citizens who took part in this survey had higher residue levels. This means that virtually all citizens are contaminated with glyphosate.”

A number of other studies have detected glyphosate—the “most widely applied pesticide worldwide”—in feminine hygiene products, everyday food items and, yes, human bodies. A 2013 Friends of the Earth Europe study reported people in 18 European countries have traces of glyphosate in their urine.   

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Results of Glyphosate Urine Test: ‘It’s Not Good News’. Glyphosate in Water and Food

Escalations in a New Cold War. US-NATO Military Deployments on Russia’s Borders

May 16th, 2016 by Jonathan Marshall

The Obama administration poked Russia in the eye again by activating a missile defense site in Romania while building up NATO forces on Russia’s borders, acts that could escalate toward nuclear war, notes Jonathan Marshall.

If the United States ever ends up stumbling into a major conventional or nuclear war with Russia, the culprit will likely be two military boondoggles that refused to die when their primary mission ended with the demise of the Soviet Union: NATO and the U.S. anti-ballistic missile (ABM) program.

The “military-industrial complex” that reaps hundreds of billions of dollars annually from support of those programs got a major boost this week when NATO established its first major missile defense site at an air base in Romania, with plans to build a second installation in Poland by 2018.

President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisior Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Although NATO and Pentagon spokesmen claim the ABM network in Eastern Europe is aimed at Iran, Russia isn’t persuaded for a minute. “This is not a defense system,”said Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

“This is part of U.S. nuclear strategic potential brought [to] . . . Eastern Europe. . . Now, as these elements of ballistic missile defense are deployed, we are forced to think how to neutralize emerging threats to the Russian Federation.”

Photo caption: President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Iran doesn’t yet have missiles capable of striking Europe, nor does it have any interest in targeting Europe. The missiles it does have are notoriously inaccurate. Their inability to hit a target reliably might not matter so much if tipped with nuclear warheads, but Iran is abiding by its stringently verified agreement to dismantle programs and capabilities that could allow it to develop nuclear weapons.

The ABM system currently deployed in Europe is admittedly far too small today to threaten Russia’s nuclear deterrent. In fact, ABM technology is still unreliable, despite America’s investment of more than $100 billion in R&D.

Nonetheless, it’s a threat Russia cannot ignore. No U.S. military strategist would sit still for long if Russia began ringing the United States with such systems. That’s why the United States and Russia limited them by treaty — until President George W. Bush terminated the pactin 2002.

President Reagan’s famous 1983 “Star Wars” ABM initiative was based on a theory developed by advisers Colin Gray and Keith Payne in a 1980 article titled “Victory is Possible”: that a combination of superior nuclear weapons, civil defense programs, and ballistic missile defenses could allow the United States to “prevail” in a prolonged nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Such nuclear superiority, Gray argued, could back up “very large American expeditionary forces” fighting in a future conflict “around the periphery of Asia.” By limiting damage to the U.S. homeland, missile defenses would neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent and help the United States “succeed in the prosecution of local conflict . . . and — if need be — to expand a war.”

Gray published that latter observation in a 1984 volume edited by Ashton Carter, who as President Obama’s Secretary of Defense nowchampions the new missile shield in Europe. So it should come as little wonder that Moscow is going all out these days in a sometimes ugly campaign to remind the world of its nuclear potency, lest NATO take advantage of Russia’s perceived weakness.

Russian Tough Talk

Moscow spokesmen have warned that Romania could become a “smoking ruins” if it continues to host the new anti-missile site; threatened Denmark, Norway and Poland that they too could become targets of attack; and announced development of a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to penetrate the U.S. missile shield.

Secretary Carter responded this month that “Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling raises troubling questions about . . .  whether they respect the profound caution that nuclear-age leaders showed with regard to brandishing nuclear weapons” — even as he announced new details of a $3.4 billion military buildup to support NATO’s combat capabilities.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

Photo caption: U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

U.S. military leaders say they are drawing up even bigger funding requests to send more troops and military hardware to Eastern Europe, and to pay for new “investments in space systems, cyber weapons, and ballistic missile defense designed to check a resurgent Russia.”

Speaking in February at security conference in Munich, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called for an end to such confrontation, noting that “almost every day [NATO leaders] call Russia the main threat for NATO, Europe, the U.S. and other countries. It makes me wonder if we are in 2016 or in 1962.”

But stepped-up conflict comes as a godsend to the Pentagon and its contractors, which only a few years ago faced White House plans for major cutbacks in funding and troop strength in Europe. It allows them to maintain — and increase — military spending levels that today are greater than they were during the height of the Cold War.

U.S. and other NATO leaders justify their buildup by pointing to Russia’s allegedly aggressive behavior — “annexing” Crimea and sending “volunteers” to Eastern Ukraine. They conveniently neglect the blatant coup d’état in Kiev that triggered the Ukraine crisis by driving an elected, Russian-friendly government from power in February 2014. They also neglect the long and provocative record of NATO expansiontoward Russia’s borders after the fall of the Soviet Union, contrary to the pledges of Western leaders in 1990.

That expansion was championed by the aptly named Committee to Expand NATO, a hot-bed of neoconservatives and Hillary Clinton advisers led by Bruce Jackson, then vice president for planning and strategy at Lockheed Martin, the country’s largest military contractor. In 2008, NATO vowed to bring Ukraine — the largest country on Russia’s western border — into the Western military alliance.

Cold War Warnings

George Kennan, the dean of U.S. diplomats during the Cold War, predicted in 1997 that NATO’s reckless expansion could only lead to “a new Cold War, probably ending in a hot one, and the end of the effort to achieve a workable democracy in Russia.”

Last year, former Secretary of Defense William Perry warned that we “are on the brink of a new nuclear arms race,” with all the vast expense — and dangers of a global holocaust — of its Cold War predecessor.

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

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

And just this month, President Obama’s own former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warnedthat NATO’s plans to deploy four battalions to the Baltic States could result “very quickly in another Cold War buildup here, that really makes no sense for either side.”

If “we continue to build up the eastern flank of NATO, with more battalions, more exercises, and more ships and more platforms,” he told an audience at the Atlantic Council, “the Russians will respond. I’m not sure where that takes you.”

Nobody knows where it takes us, and that’s the problem. It could take us all too easily from small provocations to a series of escalations by each side to show they mean business. And given the trip-wire effect of nuclear weapons stored on NATO’s soil, the danger of escalation to nuclear war is entirely real.

As foreign policy expert Jeffrey Taylor commented recently, “The Obama administration is setting the stage for endless confrontation, and possibly even war, with Russia, and with no public debate.”

Returning to the days of the Cold War will buy less security and more danger. As President Obama contemplates what he will say about the lessons of nuclear war in Hiroshima, he should fundamentally reconsider his own policies that threaten many more Hiroshimas.

Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international affairs, including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International Drug Traffic (Stanford University Press, 2012). Some of his previous articles for Consortiumnews were “Risky Blowback from Russian Sanctions”; “Neocons Want Regime Change in Iran”; “Saudi Cash Wins France’s Favor”; “The Saudis’ Hurt Feelings”; “Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Bluster”; “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess”; and “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.” 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Escalations in a New Cold War. US-NATO Military Deployments on Russia’s Borders

La Humanidad Contra El Golpe En Brasil

May 16th, 2016 by REDH-Cuba

Por Red en Defensa de la Humanidad
Los abajo firmantes, intelectuales, artistas, escritores e investigadores del mundo entero, denunciamos el golpe en curso en Brasil y nos solidarizamos con la presidenta Dilma Rousseff, elegida por 54 millones de brasileros hace sólo un año y medio.
No se trata de un “juicio político” tradicional, como pretende presentarlo el grupo Globo. Michel Temer, la cara visible del golpe, ya expresó sus intenciones: hacer ingresar a la banca privada a la esfera pública y “focalizar” la política social al 5% más pobre del país, lo que significaría excluir del Bolsa Familia a 36 millones de personas. Además, Temer se propone avanzar hacia acuerdos con Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea “con o sin el Mercosur”. En definitiva: un gobierno para la élite de su país, alejado de las mayorías, bajo la expectativa de derribar para siempre la experiencia del Partido de los Trabajadores en el gobierno.


Temer pretende ser el “nuevo Macri” de Brasil, tomando como ejemplo al nuevo gobierno argentino, que avanza en un desmantelamiento estatal pocas veces visto en el hermano país. No es de extrañar, entonces, que haya sido la cancillería de este país suramericano la que más haya apoyado la intentona golpista, en un vergonzoso comunicado público que respalda a “las instituciones” de Brasil. Por todo lo expresado, y por sus vínculos con el gran capital, consideramos ilegitimo e ilegal al espurio presidente de facto Michel Temer, corrupto comprobado, quien responde a los más oscuros intereses de la oligarquía rapaz. 

Hacemos un llamado a UNASUR para que se aplique el Protocolo sobre Compromiso con la Democracia aprobado por todos los países de la organización, que podría detener la ruptura del hilo democrático en Brasil. Asimismo, exigimos a los presidentes y gobiernos del mundo no reconocer a Temer, y reclamar la restitución de la presidenta legítimamente electa Dilma Rousseff o la convocatoria inmediata a elecciones presidenciales -como ha reclamado la propia presidenta- para que sea el pueblo brasileño quien se exprese por la vía democrática y no se imponga un golpe de estado por un congreso cuestionado y corrupto. 

Nao vai ter golpe!

Enviar adhesiones a: [email protected]
Secretaría Ejecutiva REDH
Carmen Bohórquez (Coordinadora General de la REDH)
Marilia Guimaraes (REDH Brasil)
Atilio Borón (REDH Argentina)
Juan Manuel Karg (REDH Argentina)
Omar González (REDH Cuba)
Ariana López (REDH Cuba)
Nayar López Castellanos (REDH México)
Alicia Jrapko (REDH EEUU)
Hugo Moldiz (REDH Bolivia)
Katu Arkonada (REDH País Vasco/Bolivia)
Ángel Guerra (REDH Cuba/México)
Fredy Ñañez (REDH Venezuela)
Roger Landa (REDH (REDH Venezuela)
David Comssiong (REDH Barbados) 
Luciano Vasapollo (REDH Italia)
  • Posted in Español
  • Comments Off on La Humanidad Contra El Golpe En Brasil

CIA Tip Led to Mandela’s Fateful 1962 Arrest, Claims US Ex-Diplomat

May 16th, 2016 by Joseph Fitsanakis

The arrest of Nelson Mandela in 1962, which led to his 28-year incarceration, came after a tip from the United States Central Intelligence Agency, according to an American diplomat who was in South Africa at the time. At the time of his arrest, Mandela was the head of uMkhonto we Sizwe(MK), an organization he founded in 1961 to operate as the armed wing of the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC). But the white minority government of South Africa accused Mandela of being a terrorist and an agent of the Soviet Union. The US-Soviet rivalry of that era meant that the ANC and its leader had few supporters in America during the early stages of the Cold War.

Mandela was arrested on August 5, 1962 in the KwaZulu-Natal town of Howick by members of the South African Police. He was pretending to be the chauffeur of Cecil Williams, a white member of the ANC who was riding in the back seat of the car that Mandela was driving that night. The details of what led to Mandela’s arrest have always been mysterious, and the ANC has long suspected that the MK leader was betrayed by informants placed within the organization by the apartheid government. But an article in the London-based Sunday Times has said that it was the CIA that tipped off the South Africans about Mandela’s whereabouts that night. The claim is based on an interview with Donald Rickard, an American diplomat —now dead— who was serving as Washington’s vice-consul in Durban at the time of Mandela’s arrest. Some believe that Rickard was actually a CIA officer posing as a diplomat until his retirement from the service in 1978, and he himself never denied it.

Two weeks before he died, Rickard gave an interview to British filmmaker John Irvin, who was filming for his latest documentary, entitled Mandela’s Gun, about Mandela’s role in the MK. According to The Times, the former US diplomat told Irvin that in the early 1960s Mandela was “the most dangerous communist anywhere outside the USSR”. This is despite Mandela’s repeated denials that he had ever been a member or sympathizer of the South African Communist Party, which at the time was actively supporting the ANC. Rickard allegedly told Irvin: “I found out when [Mandela] was coming down and how he was coming […]. That’s where I was involved and that’s’ where Mandela was caught”. In his interview, Rickard insisted that Mandela was “completely under the control of the Soviet Union [and effectively] a toy for the communists”. Moreover, he said the CIA believed that he was planning to organize the large Indian population of Natal Province and incite them into an uprising led by communists, which, according to Rickard, could have prompted an armed Soviet invasion of South Africa. The former diplomat is quoted as telling Irvin: “We were teetering on the brink here and it had to be stopped, which meant Mandela had to be stopped. And I put a stop to it”.

Following his arrest, Mandela served nearly 30 years in prison on terrorism charges, until his eventual release in 1990. In 1994, he was elected as South Africa’s first black president, a post he held until his retirement in 1999. The US, which officially designated Mandela a terrorist in the 1980s under the administration of US President Ronald Reagan, kept the ANC leader on its terrorism watch list until 2008.

The US government has refused comment on Rickard’s claims.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on CIA Tip Led to Mandela’s Fateful 1962 Arrest, Claims US Ex-Diplomat

We Cry with Palestinians as They Mark the Nakba

May 16th, 2016 by Imraan Buccus

Today, Palestinians observe 68 years of occupation, dispossession and oppression – referred to as the Nakba, writes Imraan Buccus.

Johannesburg – Had we not defeated apartheid, this year would have marked 68 years of oppression in the country. But, with incredible mobilisation and international solidarity, the evil system of racial capitalism was toppled, and in 1994 we had our first democratic election.

The euphoria of liberation was overwhelming. This year, we celebrate our democracy again with a fourth local government election. But, as we celebrate democracy, Israel, a country that continues to brutalise Palestinians marks 68 years of its existence.

And today, Palestinians observe close to seven decades of occupation, dispossession and oppression – referred to as the Nakba or catastrophe – the day of forced removals in Palestine.

This year’s observance is likely to be marked by increased state security violence against demonstrators. In recent years people have been killed and scores wounded in the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Maroun al-Ras in Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as Palestinians marked the Nakba. Particularly heartbreaking during the commemorations are people who show replicas of the keys to their homes that they were forcefully removed from in 1948.

Photo caption: A Palestinian refugee boys play between their families’ houses in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza strip. Palestinians mark the 68th so-called Nakba Day, or Day of the Catastrophe, commemorating the displacement after the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. Picture: Mohammed Saber

Many still remember the Nakba. Palestinian Ali Hamoudi was 8 years old in 1948 and he painfully recalls the day: “I remember I had to hide with my family in a cave near my house for nine days. There were seven of us in the cave, and there was not much room to move around. We could hear the Israelis passing, but they could not see us because the cave was well hidden.”

There was large-scale intimidation and siege, setting fires to Palestinian homes, planting of mines, destroying of 500 villages, and other terrorist activities. Nearly 800 000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and into refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere. They have never returned.

Most Palestinians have a personal narrative of loss – a relative killed, or a branch of the family that fled north while the others fled east, never to be reunited, or homes, offices, orchards and other property seized. That cogent and eloquent defender of the Palestinians, the late intellectual, Edward Said, also recalled how in 1948 his entire family was turned into a scattering of refugees.

“None of the older members of my family ever recovered from the trauma,” he wrote in one of his famous works, The Politics of Dispossession.

And 18 years ago Said commented on the “Israel at 50” celebrations:

“I still find myself astonished at the lengths to which official Israel and its supporters will go to suppress the fact that a half century has gone by without Israeli restitution, recognition or acknowledgement of Palestinian human rights, the Palestinian Nakba is characterised as a semi-fictional event caused by no one in particular.”

One positive development this year will be the opening of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, near Jerusalem, and will be dedicated to preserving and celebrating the culture, society and history of Palestine over the past two centuries. Also positive is the announcement by Reebok that it will cancel a special edition sneaker with “Israel 68” engraved on it. It was designed as a collectors item for today – which Israel marks as its day of independence and what Palestinians mark as the day of a great catastrophe.

In South Africa we know and can understand, perhaps more than others, the plight of the Palestinians. While Israel will be celebrating its 68th anniversarythis year, Palestinians have nothing to celebrate.

Just as pass laws restricted the movement of black South Africans, the movement of Palestinians, especially in the West Bank, continues to be restricted by check points, road blocks and a concrete wall. The apartheid wall means that a journey of 20 minutes takes 7 hours.

It cuts farmers from their land, children from their schools, mothers from medical services for their babies, and grand parents from their grandchildren – even apartheid South Africa’s Bantustans were not surrounded by gates.

In a UN report some years ago, Professor John Dugard said Israel was unwilling to learn from South Africa and observed that the human rights situation in the occupied territories continues to deteriorate.

Dugard made shocking parallels between Palestine and South Africa, saying that the “large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, levelling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa”.

A South African MP recently related these similarities between Israel today and apartheid South Africa.

Addressing Parliament she said:

“Madam Speaker, every time I relate to my own children how it felt to live in apartheid conditions, detention without trial, state of emergency; how we would be woken up at night as kids when police searched our homes; how, as students, we used to throw stones at the police who were shooting at us – like in Palestine today. The response I get from my children is: ‘Mom, why did you allow them?’ This they say without understanding how mighty the army was. I am sure children in Palestine wish to be in a situation where the present conditions they live under could be history.”

Who can forget the attack on Gaza a few years ago? The area remains devastated and is often in darkness because Israel shuts them off. Just as the world remembered us in our dark days, so too should we remember the oppressed peoples of the world. Especially on a day like the Nakba or Catastrophe, when 800 000 Palestinians were forcefully removed from their homes. Their tears are surely our tears. And as a people oppressed for so long, we can perhaps understand the Nakba more than others.

Buccus is senior research associate at ASRI, research fellow in the School of Social Sciences at UKZN and academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

The Sunday Independent

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on We Cry with Palestinians as They Mark the Nakba

Glyphosate in the EU: Product Promoters Masquerading as Regulators in a “cesspool of corruption”?

May 16th, 2016 by Colin Todhunter

On 13 April, the EU Parliament called on the European Commission to restrict certain permitted uses of the toxic herbicide glyphosate, best known in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ formulation. Glyphosate was last year determined to be “probably carcinogenic” by the WHO.

The parliament’s resolution called for no approval for many uses now considered acceptable, including use in or close to public parks, playgrounds and gardens and use where integrated pest management systems are sufficient for necessary weed control.

The resolution, however, fell short of calling for an outright ban. Due to the various political maneuverings, a disappointing compromise was reached that called for the renewal of the licence for glyphosate to be limited to just seven years instead of the 15 proposed by the Commission.

The resolution and the vote to re-approve glyphosate for seven years are non-binding, and, on Wednesday 18 May, the European Food Standard Authority Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed will meet to decide whether glyphosate is to be re-registered for use in the EU.

In addition to the World Health Organisation classifying glyphosate as being probably carcinogenic to humans, various peer-reviewed studies have indicated strong links between its use and a range of serious diseases and deleterious environmental impacts, as presented by Rosemary Mason in the documents that are attached to this article.

Rosemary Mason has been campaigning about the harmful effects of glyphosate for many of years. She has sent various open letters accompanied by in-depth, fully-referenced reports to key figures in both Britain and the EU who are responsible for regulating the use of glyphosate and for setting the official narrative about this substance. In the attached downloads provided at the end of this text, you can access some of the documents she has sent to the EFSA, European Commission and other key bodies/figures since November 2015. They provide detailed descriptions of the impacts of glyphosate along with the ongoing saga of deception and duplicity that result in an ultimate failure to regulate.

It would be an understatement to say that Mason smells a rat: the kind of rat recently discussed on the Corporate European Observatory website, which describes the strategic position the biotech lobby has gained within the heart of policy/decision-making processes in the EU. And the kind of rat that underlies the collusion between this lobby and regulatory/policy bodies in Europe, which has been described many times over the years: for example, see William Engdahl’s recent piece here on the “cesspool of corruption” that underpins relations  between the EU, EFSA and the major pesticide companies; read how scientific evidence was sidelined in the EU here to get the use of gylphosate sanctioned; and, just to highlight the type of companies public officials and bodies are all too willing to jump into bed with, read how Monsanto appears to have hidden evidence of the glyphosate-cancer link for decades.

With reports emerging that the EC plans to relicense glyphosate for nine years, should we be too surprised about this when glyphosate sales account for $5.1 billion of Monsanto’s revenue (2014 figure)? The level of collusion between the biotech lobby and public officials suggest that the line between product promoting and regulating was crossed long ago.

In response to the WHO reclassification of glyphosate as being probably carcinogenic to humans, the EFSA responded with its own review and concluded a cancer link was unlikely. The way the review was manipulated to reach that conclusion has been roundly condemned by dozens of scientists.

Mason notes that there is currently a legal case in process against EU regulators, and. if anyone were to be found to be colluding with the pesticides industry over the licensing of glyphosate, there are likely to be severe penalties. Environmentalists have launched the case against Monsanto and EU regulators over glyphosate assessment. Details about this action are provided on the GMWatch website, where it states:

“If there has been deliberate manipulation of the new licensing procedure for glyphosate with the intention of approving a carcinogenic substance, then this would be defrauding 508 million EU citizens,” states Viennese lawyer Dr Josef Unterweger. For this reason Dr Unterweger is pressing charges on behalf of Munich Environmental Institute and the six environmental organisations: Global 2000, Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, PAN Germany, PAN UK, Générations Futures (France), WeMove Europe, and Nature & Progrès Belgique. A report will also be submitted to OLAF, the European anti-fraud office.

The ongoing scenario surrounding glyphosate begs the question whose interests are ultimately being served? Those of 500 million Europeans or those of Monsanto, a corporation that will be put ‘on trial’ as part of a civil society initiative for crimes against nature and humanity and ecocide in The Hague on World Food Day, October 16, 2016 (see Monsanto’s track record here).

The International Criminal Court in The Hague has determined that prosecuting ecocide as a criminal offence is the only way to guarantee the rights of humans to a healthy environment and the right of nature to be protected.

As for the symbolic trial, on the tribunal’s website, it states:

“According to its critics, Monsanto is able to ignore the human and environmental damage caused by its products and maintain its devastating activities through a strategy of systemic concealment: by lobbying regulatory agencies and governments, by resorting to lying and corruption, by financing fraudulent scientific studies, by pressuring independent scientists, by manipulating the press and media, etc. The history of Monsanto would thereby constitute a text-book case of impunity, benefiting transnational corporations and their executives, whose activities contribute to climate and biosphere crises and threaten the safety of the planet.”

How long do the EC and the EFSA think they can continue to play the European public for fools?

Rosemary Mason’s documents contain a great amount of detail on the glyphosate issue and can be consulted here:

Glyphosate causes cancer and birth defects. Humans and the environment are being silently poisoned by thousands of chemicals

Open Letter to the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed

Open Letter to the European Commission and European Food Safety Authority

British journalists, politicians and farmers are being used as guinea pigs

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Glyphosate in the EU: Product Promoters Masquerading as Regulators in a “cesspool of corruption”?

Payback Time: Iran to Sue US for 63 Years of Sanctions

May 16th, 2016 by Sputnik

The Iranian parliament has given preliminary approval to a bill requiring the government to sue the US for the damage the country suffered as a result of the US’ hostile moves over the past 63 years, IRNA news agency reported.

The bill calls on the government to take legal action against the US government in an international court.

The vote followed the release of newly declassified documents containing details of the CIA-orchestrated ouster of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh 60 years ago.

Iran is also preparing international legal action to recover nearly $2 billion that the US Supreme Court has ordered to be paid as compensation to

American victims of terror attacks, President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday.

“We will soon take the case of the $2 billion to the international court,” Rouhani said in a televised speech.

“We will not allow the United States to swallow this money so easily,” the president said to a crowd of thousands in the southeastern city of Kerman.

Iranian MPs also demanded compensation for the moral and material damage the country suffered during its 1980-1988 war with US-backed Iraq, which claimed the lives of 223,000 Iranian soldiers.

 

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Payback Time: Iran to Sue US for 63 Years of Sanctions

Client Alert: Law Firms Tell Fossil Fuel Companies They Could Be Next in “Exxon Knew” Probe

May 16th, 2016 by Steve Horn

Some of the country’s biggest law firms have recently penned “client alert” memoranda, suggesting to their clients that they closely monitor the ongoing Attorneys General investigations occurring in states nationwide on the potentially fraudulent behavior of ExxonMobil.

DeSmog tracked down alerts written by three different firms: Crowell & Moring, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, as well as King & Spalding. All of them have maintained fossil fuel industry clients as well as tobacco industry clients, a DeSmog review has revealed.

A previous DeSmog investigation pointed out that Exxon has hired Ted Wells, who represented Philip Morris in Big Tobacco’s racketeering lawsuit filed against it by the U.S. Department of Justice, to its legal defense team for the ongoing state AGs’ probe.

The AGs’ investigation centers around what Exxon knew about climate change and its potential impacts over the past several decades. That’s juxtaposed with what the oil giant did about it: funding climate denial to the tune of at least $31 million between 1998-2015.

Two of the alerts came out in recent weeks, published in the aftermath of a press conference in New York City in which many new states announced they would join New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s Exxon investigation, launching the “AGs United for Clean Power” coalition.

All of the attorneys whose names are listed on the client alerts denied requests for on-the-record comment when contacted by DeSmog.

Crowell & Moring

Crowell’s three-page alert came out just five days after Schneiderman’s office subpoenaed ExxonMobil.

The memo, titled “The Widening Circles of the Exxon Mobil Climate Disclosure Investigation and Its Implications for Energy Companies,” took note of both the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News investigations that put “Exxon Knew” as a meme on the map. It pointed to them as evidence that the investigation has already gotten off to a head start, given the breadth and depth of the journalism.

“The Exxon Mobil investigation could prove even more complex, and the results more far-reaching, because of the long history of the company’s own research into climate-related issues and its own public disclosures (including SEC filings) on the topic,” reads the alert.

“[I]n addition to the information likely to be yielded by the scope of the [New York AG] subpoenas, the Exxon Mobil public record has already been enhanced by two widely reported independent private investigations by news organizations, including a joint Los Angeles Times/Columbia University School of Journalism study, which describes in detail Exxon’s climate research in the Arctic and the company’s corresponding statements to, and omissions from, the investing public about the perceived business threat from climate change.”

Former Crowell attorney Victor Schwartz — now with Shook, Hardy & Bacon and a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council‘s board of scholars — formerly represented tobacco giant Philip Morris on behalf of the firm. Crowell has maintained Shell, Chevron, Koch Industries subsidiary Georgia-Pacific, Duke Energy, Alpha Natural Resources, Peabody Energy, General Electric, American Petroleum Institute, Arch Coal, Schlumberger and others as legal clients.

A Koch-funded front group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has already received a subpoena from the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands. And the American Petroleum Institute serves as one of the subjects of an InsideClimate News investigative piece, having studied the impacts of industry-created carbon dioxide in the atmosphere beginning back in the late-1970’s only to proceed with funding climate denial in the following decades.

King & Spalding

On April 18, King & Spalding published its four-page client alert.

One of King’s clients is Chevron, which it represented in the still-ongoing pollution case in Ecuador. It also has represented Shell Oil, ConocoPhillips, Georgia-Pacific, Halliburton, General Electric, Anadarko Petroleum, Peabody Energy, Occidental Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Motiva Enterprises, BP and Big Tobacco companies.

King & Spalding opened up the alert by stating that the “growing focus by state AGs on climate change could present significant challenges for energy companies going forward.”

“These new investigations are a striking reminder of the increasingly aggressive role that state AGs play in the government investigations arena,” King went on to write.

“In recent years, state AGs have become increasingly involved in high-profile policy issues like climate change that are part of ongoing national debates. In some situations, these investigations look more like prospective policymaking than retrospective enforcement action.”

In the alert, King & Spalding also touted its “strategic partnership” with former Wisconsin Republican Attorney General J.B.Van Hollen, launched in October 2015, and its past attorney-client relationship with Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company (which has since merged into R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company).

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman

Pilsbury, like the others, told its clients that although Exxon has come first in this investigation, there’s a chance they could fall next in line. Not only that, the firm recommended deferring the legal costs of such an investigation to their insurance companies.

“Although the details of future enforcement activity are not clear, it is reasonable to expect increasing government scrutiny of climate change-related disclosures,” wrote the firm to its clients.

“Our White Collar and Insurance Recovery and Advisory attorneys routinely evaluate CIDs and subpoenas and help clients not only to develop strategies to respond, but to maximize the potential that our clients’ insurance companies pay for that response. In most cases, we are able to review and evaluate specific situations for relatively low cost or fixed fee arrangements, which enable us to assist our clients to proactively improve our clients’ position and minimize their risk.”

The firm’s client list has included the likes of Chevron, British American Tobacco, Schlumberger, as well as Duke Energy.

Contemplating Similar Fate?

A recent report published by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), based on documents put up on the website SmokeAndFumes.org, moved back the time clock of what the fossil fuel industry knew and when it knew it with regards to carbon dioxide pollution and global warming. The report concluded that knowledge dated back at least to the 1950’s, which coincided with the industry proceeding to create a disinformation campaign to confuse the public about the impacts of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

CIEL president Carroll Muffett described DeSmog’s findings as important on a number of levels.

“These notices to clients demonstrate that, even as Exxon and its allies attempt to minimize and dismiss the AGinvestigations in the media, the fossil fuel industry recognizes their significance for individual companies and for the industry as a whole,” Muffett told DeSmog.

“That oil companies are turning to the same firms that represented tobacco is telling: once it began, tobacco litigation continued for decades and ultimately ensnared the entire industry. Fossil fuel producers are now clearly–and legitimately–contemplating a similar fate,” Muffett said.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Client Alert: Law Firms Tell Fossil Fuel Companies They Could Be Next in “Exxon Knew” Probe

Zionism’s Roots Help Us Interpret Israel Today

May 16th, 2016 by Jonathan Cook

It was an assessment no one expected from the deputy head of the Israeli military. In his Holocaust Day speech last week, Yair Golan compared current trends in Israel with Germany in the early 1930s. In today’s Israel, he said, could be recognised “the revolting processes that occurred in Europe … There is nothing easier than hating the stranger, nothing easier than to stir fears and intimidate.”

The furore over Gen Golan’s remarks followed a similar outcry in Britain at statements by former London mayor Ken Livingstone. He observed that Hitler had been “supporting Zionism” in 1933 when the Nazis signed a transfer agreement, allowing some German Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

In their different ways both comments refer back to a heated argument among Jews about whether Zionism was a blessing or a blight. Although largely overlooked today, the dispute throws much light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Those differences came to a head in 1917 when the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, a document promising for the first time to realise the Zionist goal of a “national home” for the Jews in Palestine. Only one minister, Edwin Montagu, dissented. Notably, he was the only Jew in the British cabinet. The two facts were not unconnected. In a memo, he warned that his government’s policy would be a “rallying ground for anti-Semites in every country”.

He was far from alone in that view. Of the 4 million Jews who left Europe between 1880 and 1920, only 100,000 went to Palestine in line with Zionist expectations. As the Israeli novelist A B Yehoshua once noted: “If the Zionist party had run in an election in the early 20th century, it would have received only 6 or 7 per cent of the Jewish people’s vote.”

What Montagu feared was that the creation of a Jewish state in a far-flung territory dovetailed a little too neatly with the aspirations of Europe’s anti-Semites, then much in evidence, including in the British government.

According to the dominant assumptions of Europe’s ethnic nationalisms of the time, the region should be divided into peoples or biological “races”, and each should control a territory in which it could flourish. The Jews were viewed as a “problem” because – in addition to lingering Christian anti-Semitism – they were considered subversive of this national model.

Jews were seen as a race apart, one that could not – or should not – be allowed to assimilate. Better, on this view, to encourage their emigration from Europe. For British elites, the Balfour Declaration was a means to achieve that end.

Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, understood this trenchant anti-Semitism very well. His idea for a Jewish state was inspired in part by the infamous Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish French army officer was framed by his commanders for treason. Herzl was convinced that anti-Semitism would always exclude Jews from true acceptance in Europe.

It is for this reason that Mr Livingstone’s comments – however clumsily expressed – point to an important truth. Herzl and other early Zionists implicitly accepted the ugly framework of European bigotry.

Jews, Herzl concluded, must embrace their otherness and regard themselves as a separate race. Once they found a benefactor to give them a territory – soon Britain would oblige with Palestine – they could emulate the other European peoples from afar.

For a while, some Nazi leaders were sympathetic. Adolf Eichmann, one of the later engineers of the Holocaust, visited Palestine in 1937 to promote the “Zionist emigration” of Jews.

Hannah Arendt, the German Jewish scholar of totalitarianism, argued even in 1944 – long after the Nazis abandoned ideas of emigration and embraced genocide instead – that the ideology underpinning Zionism was “nothing else than the uncritical acceptance of German-inspired nationalism”.

Israel and its supporters would prefer we forget that, before the rise of the Nazis, most Jews deeply opposed a future in which they were consigned to Palestine.

Those who try to remind us of this forgotten history are likely to be denounced, like Livingstone, as anti-Semites. They are accused of making a simplistic comparison between Zionism and Nazism.

But there is good reason to examine this uncomfortable period.

Modern Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, still regularly declare that Jews have only one home – in Israel. After every terror attack in Europe, they urge Jews to hurry to Israel, telling them they can never be safe where they are.

It also alerts us to the fact that even today the Zionist movement cannot help but mirror many of the flaws of those now-discredited European ethnic nationalisms, as Gen Golan appears to appreciate.

Such characteristics – all too apparent in Israel – include: an exclusionary definition of peoplehood; a need to foment fear and hatred of the other as a way to keep the nation tightly bound; an obsession with and hunger for territory; and a highly militarised culture.

Recognising Zionism’s ideological roots, inspired by racial theories of peoplehood that in part fuelled the Second World War, might allow us to understand modern Israel a little better. And why it seems incapable of extending a hand of peace to the Palestinians.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Zionism’s Roots Help Us Interpret Israel Today

Why Bernie Sanders Should Stay in the Race—and How He Can Win

May 16th, 2016 by Kevin Zeese

Make no mistake: Settling for Hillary Clinton means abandoning the political revolution that Bernie Sanders has inspired. It means unconditional surrender after overcoming many obstacles in a rigged primary. That’s why the revolution must continue through November and beyond, and the Vermont senator’s supporters must urge him to keep fighting.

The West Virginia primary on Tuesday illustrates why. After his victory there, Sanders wrote: “There is nothing I would like more than to take on and defeat Donald Trump, someone who must never become president of this country.”

Unfortunately, he is unlikely to get that opportunity from the Democratic Party. If Sanders does not remain in the race until the end, he will very likely be helping the Republican candidate. Why? Because nearly half of his voters in West Virginia said they would switch their vote to Trump in November. In fact, we will explain why the best way to prevent Trump from taking the Oval Office would be for Sanders to run on a ticket with Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate.

Sanders’ current plan is to get some of his policies into the unenforceable Democratic Party platform and then simply endorse Clinton for president. But because that platform is unenforceable, it will have little value and is belied by the reality that the Democrats serve big business.

Clinton has a long history of representing Wall Street, Wal-Mart, weapons makers and insurance companies. She is in many ways the opposite of Bernie Sanders. The CEOs on Wall Street—and even the Koch oil barons—want her as the nation’s chief executive because her vision and political views align so perfectly with their own. The global 1 percent will be relieved if, when the revolution ends, they are still in charge and the oligarchy lives on. We can’t let it end that way.

The Corrupt and Unfair Democratic Primaries

Sanders was an independent for more than three decades until joining the Democratic Party last year, and he knew going into the primaries that he would be fighting establishment Democrats who are closely tied to everything he opposes. No insurgent has won a Democratic primary since the current system of superdelegates was put in place in 1982 to stop them.

This year, that anti-insurgent system also included a plan to have a limited number of debates (and independent and third-party candidates are blocked from participating in them). The number of debates dropped from 25 in 2008 to less than half that numberthis election season—and many were scheduled at times when few voters would be able to watch them. Clinton gave in to pressure for more debates when she thought it was in her interest. Ironically, in each of those face-offs, Sanders at least argued Clinton to a draw, and many saw him as the victor. Thus, the debates did not stop his revolution; in many ways, they grew it.

Another part of the establishment’s anti-insurgent plan is to front-load the primaries and caucuses by having 39 states and territories vote all in the month of March. This strategy usually destroys insurgents because they do not have the money to compete with well-funded, big-business establishment candidates. The Sanders revolt overcame that obstacle by raising millions in small donations.

Closed primaries are also a feature of that anti-insurgent plan, disenfranchising millions of voters who don’t want to join the Democratic or Republican parties. More than 6 million people were deprived of such a vote in New York and Florida alone.

In addition to these anti-democratic tactics, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, was the national co-chair of Clinton’s 2008 campaign. Such an in-the-face conflict of interest shows audacious hubris, and the Democrats clearly thought that they could get away with anything to nominate Clinton. Wasserman Schultz has been consistently biased in Clinton’s favor, as indicated by her action to deny Sanders’ campaign access to the voter database just before the Iowa primary.

In August 2015, Clinton set up an agreement with 33 state Democratic parties for a joint fundraising agreement with the Hillary Victory Fund. This was before the first primary in a contested nomination. Not only was the DNC headed by a Clinton operative, but state parties were tied to Clinton’s fundraising, creating an unbreakable bond between her and the party. This allowed Clinton’s wealthy donors to multiply their donations astronomically. “A single donor, as Margot Kidder wrote at Counterpunch, “by giving $10,000 a year to each signatory state could legally give an extra $330,000 a year for two years to the Hillary Victory Fund.

“For each donor, this raised their individual legal cap on the Presidential campaign to $660,000 if given in both 2015 and 2016,” Kidder said. “And to one million, three hundred and 20 thousand dollars if an equal amount were also donated in their spouse’s name.”

Clinton’s superdelegates are chairs of key standing committees as well.

Sanders has complained to the DNC that the way these funds have been used violates federal election laws. He also wrote a letter to Wasserman Schultz, saying that she is tipping the scales for Clinton’s benefit.

Throughout the primary process, there have been voting irregularities. There are too many to review in this article, but they involved the erasing of voter registrations, an insufficient number of polling places, polls that opened late, and so on. In New York and Arizona where some of the worst problems were reported, investigations are ongoing.

Now, Sanders is heading into a Democratic Convention that is rigged against him, and he has more than enough reason to reconsider his previous plan to endorse Hillary Clinton. The 2016 election is historically unique and presents a perfect storm for an independent candidate. As a third-party candidate, Sanders could win the popular vote as well as the 270 electoral votes necessary to take the presidency—and his campaign would actually hurt, not help, Donald Trump.

Jill Stein of the Green Party has indicated that she is open to discussing how she can work with Sanders. By choosing her as his vice presidential running mate and becoming the Green Party nominee, Sanders could get on enough ballots to pose a solid independent challenge to two of the most unpopular major-party candidates in recent memory. It is a historic opportunity that should not be missed.

A General Election More Favorable to an Independent Than Ever Before

Sanders, the longest-serving independent in U.S. history, is well-positioned for a general election campaign because, for the first time, independents make up the largest group of voters. According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 50 percent of Americans consider themselves independent, and fewer than 30 percent align with either major party. Only 21 percent identified as Republicans and 29 percent as Democrats. A 2015 Gallup poll similarly found that a record high number of Americans—43 percent—consider themselves to be independents.

Since 2008, many more Americans have come to reject the two-party system because voters recognize that both the Democratic and Republican parties represent the interests of big-business donors. Gallup also reports that 60 percent believe a third party is needed “because the Republican and Democratic parties ‘do such a poor job’ of representing the American people.”

In addition, Sanders’ views on the corruption of the American economy and other issues have become the national consensus. A 2015 poll found 83 percent agree and nearly 60 percent “strongly” agree that “the rules of the economy matter and the top 1 percent have used their influence to shape the rules of the economy to their advantage.”

Americans agree that policies enacted since the economic collapse have benefited Wall Street, big corporations and the wealthy—but not the poor and middle class. By a factor of 2-to-1, people in the United States oppose corporate trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and, by a factor of 3-to-1, believe that such deals destroy more jobs than they create.

Three-quarters of Republicans favor a steep rise in the minimum wage. Four out of five voters, including three-quarters of Republicans, want to expand Social Security benefits. On Sanders’ top issues—Wall Street regulation—pollster Celinda Lake reported that 91 percent of those asked agree that financial services and products must be regulated to ensure fairness for consumers. Lake also found that 79 percent agree that financial companies should be held accountable with tougher rules and enforcement for the practices that caused the financial crisis.

The influence of Wall Street on candidates is also near the top of voters’ minds, with 84 percent of likely 2016 voters saying that they are concerned and 64 percent indicating that they are very concerned. Majorities across party lines say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate or member of Congress who received large sums of campaign money from big banks and financial companies, and 72 percent of Democrats, 54 percent of independents and 52 percent of Republicans say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored tough rules on Wall Street to prevent irresponsible practices and abuses.

It is hard to imagine a better political climate for a Sanders-Stein general election campaign.

Sanders Would Be Running Against Unpopular Candidates From Divided Parties

Sanders, if he stays in the race, would be running against the two most disliked major-party nominees in history. Donald Trump is viewed favorably by just 24 percent of the voters and unfavorably by 57 percent, making him by far the least-liked major-party front-runner since CBS began tracking such ratings in 1984. Hillary Clinton is viewed favorably by 31 percent and unfavorably by 52 percent.

Sanders’ results are the opposite: His 48 percent favorability rating is by far the highest ever recorded. In the previous eight presidential cycles, there has never been a poll showing both major-party candidates with negative net-favorability ratings, let alone double-digit ones.

On top of that, Sanders would be running against two divided parties. The last two Republican presidents and the last two Republican presidential nominees have said they will not even attend the Republican National Convention, and House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he is not ready to support Trump. The Hill newspaper has published a list of the top 99 Republican leaders who do not support Trump, and a CNN/ORC poll shows that one-third of Republicans would be dissatisfied or upset if Trump becomes the nominee. Trump recognizes these deep divisions and is telling the media he does not need a united party.

Even the Koch brothers are saying that they prefer Clinton to Trump, and Clinton is embracing this development. The New York Times has reported that “Clinton’s campaign is repositioning itself, after a year of emphasizing liberal positions and focusing largely on minority voters” and is making “a striking turn … hoping to gain the support of Republican voters and party leaders including former elected officials and retired generals disillusioned by their party’s standard-bearer.” If Sanders endorses Clinton, she will have cover to move further to the right.

According to the Times, Clinton is “confident that the young people and liberals backing Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will come around” to support her in November. But the reality is that the primary season has revealed a great divide within the Democratic Party. A McClatchy-Marist poll found that 25 percent of Sanders supporters will not vote for Clinton, and a Wall Street Journal poll found that 33 percent of Sanders supporters will not vote for Clinton. Many Sanders supporters describe her as Sanders’ opposite: He opposes Wall Street, and she is a Wall Street Democrat.

A Trump Victory May Be More Likely Without Sanders

The big fear is that a run by Sanders would result in a Republican victory for Donald Trump. People always hark back to the Gore-Bush-Nader race of 2000, but that is the mistake of fighting the last war and not the current one. (It is also a myth that Nader cost Gore the election.) Things have changed drastically in the 16 years since then. The risk of a Trump victory may actually increase if Sanders does not run.

In the Nader era, independents and the two parties almost equally divided the electorate. Now the two parties are below 30 percent (the Republicans at 21 percent), and independents are over 43 percent. Not only do fewer voters consider themselves Republicans or Democrats, but even many of those who do are not enthusiastic about their party or their likely nominees.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found 7 percent of Sanders voters could see themselves supporting Trump. These Sanders supporters share a strong dislike of Hillary Clinton and see both Trump and Sanders as outsiders who understand their economic hardship.

Trump is now pursuing Sanders voters. According to AlterNet’s Steven Rosenfeld, Trump has “recited Sanders’ critique of trade deals, the Iraq war, Clinton’s Goldman-Sachs speeches, and even slammed Medicare prescription drug price gouging as he paints himself on the side of frustrated Americans.”

“As he said on the eve of Indiana’s primary,” Rosenfeld continued. “ ‘I think a lot of theBernie Sanders young people are going to join my campaign.’ ”

Trump may be right. “Forty-four percent of Sanders supporters surveyed said they would rather back the presumptive GOP nominee in November,” an exit poll after the West Virginia primary found, “with only 23 percent saying they’d support Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.” Moreover, “31 percent … would support neither candidate in the likely general election match-up.”

Without Sanders in the picture, Trump could run to Clinton’s left, broadening his support base and capitalizing on Clinton’s weaknesses. On Wall Street corruption, Trump will be able to say that he did not take funds from Wall Street while Clinton has. Trump hasproposed taxing Wall Street, whereas Clinton protects the investment class. Trump has come out for raising the minimum wage while Clinton has been slow and hesitant to support raising it to $15 an hour. Sanders has already taken these popular positions, making it harder for Trump to benefit from them if Sanders were in the race.

Even on the issue of militarism, where Clinton is weak, Trump has made some sensible statements against wars that contrast with Clinton’s militarist positions. Sanders has run to her left on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Israel, as well as on regime change and military engagement. Jill Stein would bring an even stronger view against intervention and militarism, leaving little room for Trump to take advantage of Hillary’s penchant for war, militarism and intervention.

The dynamic of the race would also be different if Sanders is running. Both Sanders and Clinton would have a common opponent in Trump, and each would echo the other’s criticism of him. Together, they could prevent Trump from growing his base of support.

Sanders-Stein Could Win 270 Electoral Votes

In April, after the New York primary results came in, Sanders described his winning coalition:

“The reason we are doing so much better against Republican candidates is that not only are we winning … Democratic votes, but we are winning independent votes and some Republican votes as well. That is a point I hope the delegates to the Democratic convention fully understand. In a general election, everyone—Democratic, independent and Republican—has the right to vote for president. The elections are not closed primaries.”

Sanders has defeated Trump by more than 14 points in the last 10 polls measuring who would win if they ran against each other. And Sanders and Clinton are neck and neckin national polls. Sanders, the most popular politician in the country, does best among independents and youth and is the strongest general election candidate.

Positive or negative ratings often determine the outcome of the election. Sanders is the only candidate who is generally viewed positively.

“Overall, a clear portrait of Sanders emerges that is different from those of the other candidates,” Gallup reported. “He has a generally positive image, wins on the ‘softer’ dimensions of leadership and is above all else seen as caring, enthusiastic and consistent.” Further, Sanders “does well across all the [leadership] dimensions, with a more even distribution of perceived leadership characteristics than is the case for the other candidates.”

In comparison, The Wall Street Journal found that 56 percent of both Trump and Clinton voters said they would cast their vote simply because they didn’t want the other candidate to win.

Sanders does better among independents, the new plurality that will decide the election, than Clinton or Trump. In the primaries, he beat Clinton among independents by 29 percent. She has done poorly with independent voters in the primaries thus far and has been unable to win the independent vote in any state other than Alabama.

 New voters, especially young ones, are also likely to be a big factor in the outcome of the election, as a Harvard Institute of Politics poll shows. Jill Stein takes strong positions on college debt and tuition, even stronger than Sanders. She is calling for confronting youth tuition debt, not just the current cost of college. The Sanders-Stein team would excite youth because its agenda would positively impact young people’s lives. While more difficult to reach, even the poor who have been disenfranchised by the two Wall Street parties may even see hope and come out to vote. Finally, Sanders-Stein could unite all the parties on the left, including Green, Socialist and Progressive parties.Sanders would also do well enough in polling to ensure the duo’s inclusion in the presidential debates. Standing side-by-side with Clinton and Trump would position Sanders well and reach an audience of 60 million. Everything could change with those debates, and the legitimacy of the Sanders-Stein campaign would be solidified. Once people see their potential to win, their numbers would increase. Sanders has already built an impressive national organization of volunteers and donors, and his campaign as a Green Party candidate would be seen as viable by the media and by voters.The other claim being put forward is that no candidate would get 270 electoral votes and that the Republican-led House of Representatives would then decide the election. History shows this is more fear than reality. As Lawrence Tribe and Thomas Rollins wrote in The Atlantic in 1980—when there was a similar fear that the Reagan-Carter-Anderson race would leave the decision to the House: “[E]xperience teaches that our fears may be more a product of reflex than reflection.”There have been many multi-candidate races in American history, but the last time the House decided the outcome was in 1877—and that was not even because of a multi-candidate race. In fact, the losing candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote. The result got pushed to the House because of fraud. Before that, the House stepped in in 1824, when we had a very different electoral system. Fast-forward to 1992, when Bill Clinton won 40 percent in a three-way race and got 270 electoral votes.

In the unlikely event that nobody received a majority of electoral votes, Clinton and Sanders could negotiate before the Electoral College voted on Dec. 15 and avoid a House decision. Tribe and Rollins wrote that “a candidate might simply persuade the electors chosen to support him on November 4 to cast their ballots for someone else. Indeed, electors could do so on their own, since the Constitution makes them free agents.”

Each candidate could ensure control of how his electors voted by signing a contract with them, as George Wallace did in 1968. Two days before the election, Nixon and Wallace were negotiating on the electors, but then Nixon won the Electoral College and no deal was needed. Imagine what a Sanders-Clinton negotiation could produce.

In the unlikely event that nobody received a majority of electoral votes, Clinton and Sanders could negotiate before the Electoral College voted on Dec. 15 and avoid a House decision. Tribe and Rollins wrote that “a candidate might simply persuade the electors chosen to support him on November 4 to cast their ballots for someone else. Indeed, electors could do so on their own, since the Constitution makes them free agents.”

Each candidate could ensure control of how his electors voted by signing a contract with them, as George Wallace did in 1968. Two days before the election, Nixon and Wallace were negotiating on the electors, but then Nixon won the Electoral College and no deal was needed. Imagine what a Sanders-Clinton negotiation could produce.

Sanders and Stein could be a coalition that could not only win a plurality of popular votes in a three-way race but could also win 270 electoral votes. (Here is one possible map of how Sanders could pull it off.)

Their campaign would also bolster the campaigns of progressives who are running for Congress and share the Sanders-Stein agenda; and it would open space for future independent party challenges to the corporate political duopoly.

The Path to Ballot Access Across the Nation

This late in the game, there is only one path to getting on the ballot across the nation, and it cannot be done by running as an independent. Sanders would need to create an alliance with the Green Party, which is currently on 21 ballots (including some of the largest and most difficult states) and is on a path to being on almost all ballots.

Twelve states have deadlines for ballot access for independent candidates before the Democratic National Convention, which will take place July 25-28. Some important states are in that group, including Florida, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas and Washington. By Aug. 15, 18 more states are due, among them California, Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Thus, it is impossible for Sanders to run an independent campaign after the Democratic National Convention.

But there is an alternative: Jill Stein, the presumptive nominee of the Green Party, wrote to Sanders after the New York primary to discuss “ways they and their campaigns could work together to win a progressive political revolution in the United States.” Stein sought to “have a conversation to explore possible collaboration, in this hour of unprecedented crisis and potential for transformative change.” In an interview with Dennis Trainor Jr., she said she would even be open to running as the vice presidential nominee if Sanders wanted the Green Party presidential nomination.

Sanders should meet with Jill Stein to determine where this could lead. Even if Sanders decides not to do anything further, meeting with Stein would strengthen his hand in negotiating with Clinton. The Democrats would then realize that Sanders has somewhere to go other than the Democratic Party, and the alternative path is consistent with his history as the longest-serving independent in the Congress.

Electing President Sanders

Those who want to see the Sanders campaign continue through Election Day need to urge Sanders to meet with Jill Stein and to not endorse Clinton. Sanders will only change course if he is pushed from the grass roots. In addition to massive petition, email and social media campaigns, people need to plan to come to the Democratic Convention and protest outside and inside, saying: “No Endorsement for Hillary” and “Sanders, Run Green.” If grass-roots activists succeed in doing so, the 2016 electoral revolution could end with President Sanders in the White House.

Patrick Walker, a veteran anti-fracking and Occupy Wall Street activist, is co-founder of Revolt Against Plutocracy and co-creator of the Bernie or Bust pledge, which spawned the nationwide Bernie or Bust movement. This article represents both his personal views and the official standpoint of Revolt Against Plutocracy.

Kevin Zeese has worked on multiple Green and independent campaigns, including as spokesman for Ralph Nader in 2004. Zeese is co-director of Popular Resistance, which grew out of the Occupy movement. This article represents his personal views.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Why Bernie Sanders Should Stay in the Race—and How He Can Win

In the US Congress, Money Doesn’t Just Talk, it Yells! Billions of US Dollars to Israel

May 16th, 2016 by Anthony Bellchambers

For over 65 years, since the establishment of the State of Israel at the behest of the then American Zionist lobby, its successor has ensured that billions of US dollars in aid, grants, loans, guarantees, tax exemptions and ‘deals’ are funnelled to the Israeli Treasury Secretary in order to give the satellite state an unprecedented economic and military advantage over any other country in the Middle East or Europe. All paid for by an unwitting American tax payer.

The total amount is sufficiently mind­-boggling that it is impossible to quantify. The current monies and ‘aid’ that flow openly from the US to its creature state in the Middle East are currently in the region of US$6 billion every twelve months, in the guise of official grants and loan guarantees.

But the huge hidden financial and fiscal benefits that have been approved by Congress are obscured by both secret and open economic privileges that are accorded to no other state in the world. These range from tax exemptions, rebates, military and civil aid and partisan legislation including tariff­-free trade that gives unique advantages to the Israeli government and to its importers and exporters.

The figures involved, on the back of the American tax payer,  are astronomical and have for over half a century ensured that an essentially non­viable, minority UN-created, political entity can present itself as being a hugely successful economic, technical and military, global powerhouse.

The political cost to both the Middle East and the world of establishing, supporting and propping up the Israeli state through the skewed funding of billions of US dollars-worth of military arms and equipment through a lobby­-led Congress, has been instrumental in provoking the current instability throughout the Middle East and, consequent upon it, today’s global threat to peace.

However, even now after 65 years, the average John Doe tax­payer in America is still being brainwashed to believe that Israel ­ far from being the third most powerful nuclear state in the world, funded by the US Congress, is an innocent victim of Arab imperialism ­ or some other equally absurd, nonsensical propaganda.

Consequently, billions of dollars continue to flow from the American pocket to the Israeli one, at the expense of everyone in the world other than, of course the Israel lobby whose members smile broadly at their continued success in manipulating the democratic process to their own political agenda.

Notes

http://www.globalresearch.ca/bilateral­us­israel­free­trade-agreement­delivers­144­billion­deficit­to­us/5524849

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ten­facts­everyone­needs­to-know­about­israel/5503122

http://www.globalresearch.ca/eu­and­iran­demand­a-nuclear­free­middle­east­as­aipac­funded­congress-supports­nuclear­armed­israel­a­global­weapons-supplier/5472408

EUNewsdesk    London   May 2016

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on In the US Congress, Money Doesn’t Just Talk, it Yells! Billions of US Dollars to Israel

The Sykes Picot Legacy, 100 Years On. Secret Deal between France and Britain which Plunged the Middle East into a Century of Bloodshed

May 16th, 2016 by John Hilary

One hundred years ago this week, a secret deal was concluded between Britain and France that plunged the Middle East into a century of bloodshed. Two colonial negotiators, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, agreed to carve up the Middle East between their respective countries in order to secure European control of the failing Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. Promises of self-determination that had been made to the Arab peoples by the British in order to secure their help in defeating the Turkish occupying forces were swiftly brushed aside. Instead of national liberation, there would just be a changing of the imperial guard.

The treachery was brutally simple. France and Britain would divide up the Middle East between them by means of a ‘line in the sand’ drawn on the map between Acre on the Mediterranean coast and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Everything to the north of that line would be controlled by the French, and everything to the south by the British. France would get Syria and Lebanon, while Britain would have Iraq and Transjordan. “Even by the standards of the time,” writes the leading historian of Anglo-French rivalry during the inter-war years, “it was a shamelessly self-interested pact.”

The question of who would rule Palestine remained unresolved in the Sykes-Picot agreement, so the British government turned to another stratagem to ensure that Britain, not France, would secure that mandate at the end of the First World War. Through a series of guarantees to leading figures in the burgeoning Zionist movement, the British government was able to secure international backing for its control of Palestine on the pretext of more than just imperial self-interest. The strategy culminated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which announced British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and ushered in a century of Palestinian dispossession by successive waves of European settlers. As Balfour himself admitted, “The weak point of our position of course is that in the case of Palestine we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination.”

British duplicity was further compounded by the Anglo-French declaration of November 1918 to the Arab peoples, which promised “the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations that shall derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations”. When this unambiguous commitment to national self-determination was published in Jerusalem, the Palestinian response was a mixture of elation and relief. Only later was it revealed that the British government had always intended to exclude Palestine from the declaration, and that the order for its publication in Jerusalem had been issued by mistake.

To Britain’s colonial administrators, Palestine was originally valued as a buffer zone to protect the all-important Suez Canal. By 1927, however, the British high commissioner in Iraq was excitedly reporting the discovery of “immense quantities” of oil in that country, and Palestine offered a crucial outlet for the pipeline that would connect the Iraqi oil fields to the Mediterranean. The Sykes-Picot agreement had left the French in charge of the northern route to the sea ports of Lebanon, effectively granting them permanent control over any oil exports from Iraq. The Palestinian port of Haifa offered the British an alternative route free from French control, and the Palestine mandate thus acquired a new strategic importance in securing Britain’s national energy needs.

The Sykes-Picot agreement cast its shadow over more than just Palestine, as shown by the bloody histories of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon up to the present day. French rule in Syria and Lebanon finally came to an end in 1946, but neither pan-Arab nationalism nor Ba’athism were able to overcome the Sykes-Picot legacy. Tragically, it was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, former head of al-Qaida in Iraq, who was finally able to hail the ‘End of Sykes-Picot’ in a widely circulated video when he proclaimed the founding of Islamic State on territory spanning both sides of the Iraq-Syria border in 2014. Indeed, when ordered by Osama bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahiri to pull back from Syria and concentrate his forces on Iraq alone, al-Baghdadi responded contemptuously that he did not recognise the artificial frontier created by the “infidel” agreement of 1916.

The rise of Islamic State is just the latest and most vivid reminder of the catastrophic consequences of British imperialism in the Middle East. In 2005, as the US-led occupation of Iraq spiralled out of control, the CIA warned that the decision to foment sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shi’a would result in a ‘blowback’ far more deadly than that experienced in the wake of the West’s earlier intervention in Afghanistan. Sure enough, the peoples of Iraq, Syria and the wider region must now face unimaginable levels of violence at home, or risk their lives as refugees in the increasingly desperate search for sanctuary abroad. The jihadist attacks on London, Paris, Madrid and Brussels are a reminder in Europe of the ongoing horrors experienced by those living with the fallout of our imperialist wars in the Middle East itself.

According to George Santayana’s famous dictum, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In truth, those who have been on the receiving end of Britain’s imperialist past need no reminding of their history, as they are condemned to live out its consequences on a daily basis. It is the British people who need reminding of the human cost of our interventions in the Middle East and across the wider world, just as we need reminding of our absolute responsibility to provide refuge to all those fleeing the wars that we have started. The centenary of the Sykes-Picot agreement is a good place to start.

John Hilary, Executive Director, War on Want

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Sykes Picot Legacy, 100 Years On. Secret Deal between France and Britain which Plunged the Middle East into a Century of Bloodshed

Israel e os emires dentro da Otan

May 16th, 2016 by Manlio Dinucci

No próprio dia (4 de maio) em que se instalou na Otan o novo Comandante Supremo Aliado na Europa – o general estadunidense Curtis Scaparrotti, nomeado como os seus 17 antecessores pelo presidente dos Estados Unidos -, o Conselho Norte Atlântico anunciou que no quartel general da Otan em Bruxelas será instituída uma missão oficial israelense, chefiada pelo embaixador de Israel junto à União Europeia (UE).

Por Manlio Dinucci*

Assim, Israel se integra ainda mais na Otan, à qual já é estreitamente ligado através do “Programa de Cooperação Individual”. Ratificado pela Otan em 2 de dezembro de 2008, três semanas antes da operação israelense “Chumbo fundido” em Gaza, esse programa compreende entre outras colaborações os serviços de inteligência e a conexão das forças israelenses, inclusive as nucleares, ao sistema eletrônico da Otan.

Ao lado da Missão oficial israelense junto à Otan, se encontrarão as do reino da Jordânia e dos emirados do Catar e do Kuait, “parceiros muito ativos” que se integrarão ainda mais na Otan pelos méritos adquiridos.

A Jordânia hospeda bases secretas da CIA nas quais – documentam o New York Times e o Der Spiegel – são treinados militantes islâmicos da Al Qaeda e do Isis (sigla em inglês do chamado Estado Islâmico – N do T) para a guerra secreta na Síria e no Iraque.

O Catar participou na guerra da Otan contra a Líbia, infiltrando em 2011 cerca de 5 mil comandos em seu território (como declarou ao The Guardian o próprio chefe do estado maior catarino), depois na guerra contra a Síria: é o que admite em uma entrevista ao Financial Times o ex primeiro-ministro catarino, Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, que fala de operações catarinas e sauditas de “interferência” na Síria, com a aprovação dos Estados Unidos.

O Kuait, através do “Acordo sobre o trânsito”, permite à Otan criar a sua primeira escala aeroportuária no Golfo, não só para o envio de forças materiais militares no Afeganistão, mas também para a “cooperação prática da Otan com o Kuait e outros parceiros, como a Arábia Saudita”. Parceiros apoiados pelos Estados Unidos na guerra que realiza massacres de civis no Iêmen, na qual participa com quinze caças bombardeiros, também o Kuait.

Ao Kuait a Itália fornece agora 28 caças Eurofighter Typhoon de nova geração, construídos pelo consórcio de que faz parte a Finmeccanica juntamente com indústrias do Reino Unido, da Alemanha e da Espanha. Um contrato de 8 bilhões de euros, o maior já assinado pela Finmeccanica, em cujo caixa entrará cerca da metade. Foi assinado em 5 de abril no Kuait pelo ministro da defesa, Khaled al-Sabah, e pelo administrador delegado da Finmeccanica, Mauro Moretti.

A madrinha do evento foi a ministra Roberta Pinotti, eficiente caixeira-viajante de armas (ver a venda a Israel de 30 caças M-346 de treinamento avançado). Os Eurofighter Typhoon, que o Kuait usará para perpetrar massacres no Iêmen e outros lugares, podem ser armados também com bombas nucleares: aquelas que estão na posse da Arábia Saudita (conforme manifesto de 23 de fevereiro). A Aeronáutica italiana provê o treinamento dos equipamentos, reforçando “o fundamental papel de estabilização regional desempenhado pelo Kuait”.

Um successo da ministra Pinotti que, uma semana depois de ter vendido os caças bombardeiros ao Kuait, recebeu na União Católica Stampa Italiana o Prêmio “Napoli Cidade da Paz de 2016”. Encontrava-se na cerimônia o cardeal Crescenzio Sepe que declarou que Pinotti “empenha-se a serviço da política como a forma mais elevada do amor, que sempre põe no centro a tutela e a dignidade da vida humana”, propondo para isso a “mudança do nome do Ministério da Defesa para Ministério da Paz”.

Que pensa sobre isso o Papa Francisco?

Manlio Dinucci

Fonte: il manifesto

http://ilmanifesto.info/israele-ed-emiri-nella-nato/

Tradução de José Reinaldo Carvalho para Resistência

Manlio Dinucci é jornalista e geógrafo

– See more at: http://www.resistencia.cc/manlio-dinucci-israel-e-os-emires-dentro-da-otan/#sthash.66BaebSJ.dpuf

  • Posted in Português
  • Comments Off on Israel e os emires dentro da Otan

Missili Usa in Romania e Polonia: l’Europa sul fronte nucleare

May 16th, 2016 by Manlio Dinucci

Nell’incontro con i governanti di Svezia, Danimarca, Finlandia, Islanda e Norvegia, il 13 maggio a Washington, Obama ha denunciato «la crescente presenza e postura militare aggressiva della Russia nella regione baltico/nordica». Siamo, si badi bene, al confine russo prima protetto dal Patto di Varsavia, ma ora tutti i paesi dell’ex socialismo realizzato sono entrati nella Nato che pericolosamente, come ha dimostrato il disastro della crisi in Ucraina, si allarga ad est intorno alla frontiera russa. Di chi è la postura militare? E Obama ha riaffermato l’impegno americano per la «difesa collettiva dell’Europa». Dimostrato con i fatti il giorno prima, quando alla base aerea di Deveselu in Romania è stata inaugurata la «Aegis Ashore», installazione terrestre del sistema missilistico Aegis degli Stati uniti.

Il segretario della Nato Jens Stoltenberg, alla cerimonia con il vice-segretario Usa alla Difesa Robert Work e al premier rumeno Dacian Ciolos, ha ringraziato gli Stati uniti perché con tale installazione, «la prima del suo genere con base a terra», essi accrescono notevolmente la capacità di «difendere gli alleati europei contro missili balistici dall’esterno dell’area Euro-Atlantica».

Ha annunciato quindi l’inizio dei lavori per realizzare in Polonia un’altra «Aegis Ashore», analoga a quella entrata in funzione in Romania. Le due installazioni terrestri si aggiungono a quattro navi lanciamissili del sistema Aegis che, dislocate dalla U.S. Navy nella base spagnola di Rota, incrociano nel Mediterraneo, Mar Nero e Mar Baltico; a un potente radar Aegis installato in Turchia e a un centro di comando in Germania.

Affermando che «il nostro programma di difesa missilistica rappresenta un investimento a lungo termine contro una minaccia a lungo termine», il segretario della Nato assicura che «questo sito in Romania, come quello in Polonia, non è diretto contro la Russia». Fornisce quindi una spiegazione tecnica: la base in Romania, che «usa una tecnologia quasi identica a quella usata sulle navi Aegis della U.S. Navy», è dislocata «troppo vicino alla Russia per poter intercettare i missili balistici intercontinentali russi».

Qual è la tecnologia a cui si riferisce Stoltenberg? Sia le navi che le installazioni terrestri Aegis sono dotate di lanciatori verticali Mk 41 della Lockheed Martin, ossia tubi verticali (nel corpo della nave o in un bunker sotterraneo) da cui vengono lanciati i missili intercettori SM-3. È il cosiddetto «scudo», la cui funzione è in realtà offensiva. Se gli Usa riuscissero a realizzare un sistema affidabile in grado di intercettare i missili balistici, potrebbero tenere la Russia sotto la minaccia di un first strike nucleare, fidando sulla capacità dello «scudo» di neutralizzare gli effetti della rappresaglia. In realtà la Russia e anche la Cina stanno adottando una serie di contromisure, che rendono impossibile intercettare tutte le testate nucleari di un attacco missilistico. A che serve allora il sistema Aegis schierato in Europa, che gli Usa stanno potenziando?

Ce lo spiega la stessa Lockheed Martin. Illustrando le caratteristiche tecniche del sistema di lancio verticale Mk 41 – quello installato sulle navi lanciamissili Aegis e ora anche nella base di Deveselu – sottolinea che esso è in grado di lanciare «missili per tutte le missioni: anti-aeree, anti-nave, anti-sottomarino e di attacco contro obiettivi terrestri». Ogni tubo di lancio è adattabile a qualsiasi missile, compresi «quelli più grandi per la difesa contro i missili balistici e quelli per l’attacco a lungo raggio». Si specificano anche i tipi: «lo Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) e il missile da crociera Tomahawk».

La precisazione di Stolterberg che l’installazione missilistica di Deveselu è dislocata «troppo vicino alla Russia per poter intercettare i missili balistici intercontinentali russi», è tutt’altro che rassicurante. Nessuno può infatti sapere quali missili vi siano realmente nei lanciatori verticali della base di Deveselu e in quelli a bordo delle navi che incrociano ai limiti delle acque territoriali russe. Non potendo controllare, Mosca dà per scontato che vi siano anche missili da attacco nucleare. L’inaugurazione dell’installazione missilistica Usa a Deveselu può segnare la fine del

Trattato sulle forze nucleari intermedie che, firmato da Usa e Urss nel 1987, permise di eliminare i missili con base a terra e gittata compresa tra 500 e 5500 km: gli SS-20 schierati in Urss, i Pershing 2 e i Tomahawk statunitensi schierati in Germania e Italia.

L’Europa ritorna così a un clima da guerra fredda, a tutto vantaggio degli Stati uniti che possono in tal modo accrescere la loro influenza sugli alleati europei. Non a caso, nell’incontro a Washington, Obama ha evidenziato il consenso europeo a mantenere le sanzioni contro la Russia, lodando in particolare «Danimarca, Finlandia e Svezia che, come membri della Ue, sostengono fortemente il Ttip, trattato che riaffermo di voler concludere prima della fine dell’anno». Nei lanciatori verticali della Lockheed c’è anche il missile Ttip.

Manlio Dinucci

  • Posted in Italiano
  • Comments Off on Missili Usa in Romania e Polonia: l’Europa sul fronte nucleare