Global Research

The coup has been consummated. Brazil now joins Honduras and Paraguay in the list of countries that Imperialism used as a giant laboratory to test, with undoubtable success, their technique to destitute neo-developmentalist governments.

This recipe is labeled as “moderate” by some analysts that are not experiencing its results in their own flesh, and for those who compare it with the inhuman dictatorships that these countries suffered a few decades ago. In fact, they are brutal, like capitalism is in essence.

In Argentina, for example, in just a few months, 120,000 workers were laid off, as inflation increased dramatically, crushing hopes for a better future. This onslaught in Latin America has to be analyzed in a broader context: it’s part of the same strategy that the heads of Washington DC implemented in the Middle East, destroying one country after the other, until they found out they could attain the same results with more ease in Latin America.

What these coups have in common is that they were propelled by a reaction against the most basic reforms in favor of the people. Each and every one of the heads of state that the coups destituted was targeted only because they began to design some social policies for the sectors that the neoliberalism of the 90s had, plain and simply, thrown into exclusion. Their measures weren’t even revolutionary, such as nationalizing foreign commerce, or making the agrarian reform. On the contrary, the case of Brazil pathetically shows that it didn’t matter to them that Dilma did all types of concessions and made alliances with their side that derived in austerity policies that were clearly in line with the neoliberal project. The bourgeoisie kept attacking from every flank and eroding, day after day, the Workers’ Party (PT).

Unlike the Argentine right-wing and media, which managed to get Mauricio Macri democratically elected, their Brazilian peers forcefully clawed their way into the Presidential house by using the institutions as weapons. Their candidate, Michel Temer, has enough criminal records to enter the Itai Prison instead of the Planalto Palace. But the increasingly discredited bourgeois democracy will allow him to attempt a plan for adjustment that has been plotted by the think-tanks of the opposition.

In fact, it’s announced that the infamous people that were in power with former neoliberal  president Fernando Henrique Cardoso will return, and that officers and allies of the IMF and the World Bank will arrive in the country hand in hand with local right-wing leader Aécio Neves. Of all these comebacks, the most disturbing one is that of Henrique Meirelles, who was in charge of the Central Bank under Lula’s Presidencies, between 2003 and 2011, when the economy was peaking unlike these days. Meirelles, a neoliberal whose tendencies were muzzled under Lula’s administration, currently is an executive for big transnational companies and trusted by members of the US Republican Party, will promote in the Ministry of Finance a policy of austerity and indebtment, following the steps that his colleague Joaquim Levy began under Dilma’s administration.

Encouraged by their “victory”, in the next six months without Dilma in power, the Brazilian right is going to try to avoid her comeback (which at this point seems unlikely), and also avoid that Lula da Silva, the only charismatic leader of the working class, holds any chance to win future elections.

However, although the right thinks their dreams of privatizations, layoffs and devaluation are going to soon come true, there’s a factor that they must take into consideration: it’s the enormous popular resistance that for several months has taken over the streets of Brazil. Those workers and peasants that stood up with determination against the austerity policies of former Minister Levy and the pro-agribusiness policies of former Minister Katia Abreu —both of them members of Dilma’s government.

They block roads, they man the barricades, they light up when they hear their peers chanting slogans for “land, housing, work!”, they march for kilometers to denounce that the people of Brazil has been waiting for years for unfulfilled promises. They are workers that chose against occupying seats and defend the class autonomy, precisely to not drown the revolutionary ideas they possess in the sewers of bureaucracy and politicking. That’s the real Brazil, with its Landless and its Homeless, with its metal workers from the ABC union or the combative Mercedes Benz workers, who cried out loud that “there will be no coup”. They are the grassroots from which the resistance will emerge from today on, against this tragic May 12, and will try to counteract Temer’s and his partners’ will to govern the country.

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 to be a refugee without a country.

On this 68th commemoration of the Nakba (or catastrophe), I wanted to show what it meant to one Palestinian refugee.

On May 15, 1948, Zionist Jews danced and firecrackers burst over the streets of New York celebrating the founding of Israel. About the same time, and on the other side of the world, Zionist terrorists’ mortar exploded in the middle of Jebal Al Luz (mountains of almonds) burning homes and forcing civilians to flee their village.

In the middle of the night, Abu Musa carried his physically disabled blind mother on his shoulders. His wife, Um Musa picked up their infant baby Musa and joined a throng of refugees escaping for their lives. Abu Musa’s family hid in a ditch on the outskirts of their village. The morning sun exposed the scattered refugees hiding in nearby bushes and under trees.

Sorties after sorties, Zionist planes strafed the area pushing the villagers further north towards Lebanon. Under heavy gun fire, panicking civilians ran in all directions. Abu Musa picked up his newborn son and ran for his life. Um Musa followed in his footsteps. Panting for air an hour later, Abu Musa realised he had left his blind mother behind.

Zionist forces continued to bomb from air and ground. Abu Musa attempted to go back, but all was in vain. The next day and during a lull in the Zionist terrorist bombardment, Abu Musa went looking for his mother. But she was nowhere to be found. He came across local villagers who returned to check on their properties. They told him they had just buried the remains of what had appeared to be an elderly woman. Her body ripped apart by animals.

“Was my mother eaten alive by wild animals? Or had she been murdered by Zionists?” Those questions haunted Abu Musa all his life. The loss of his country and mother were just the start of his lugubrious life until his death in the mid-1990s.

Abu Musa ended up settling in the same camp as my parents. In addition to baby Musa, he had three more children in the camp, two boys and a girl.

Musa, who had left Palestine as an infant, joined the revolution in the early 1970s and returned to Palestine. He was murdered by the Israeli army and was buried in an unmarked grave. Abu Musa, who did not see his mother’s corpse, was unable to see or bury his eldest son either.

A short time after losing Musa, Abu Musa became disabled. I made it a point to call on him whenever I visited the camp. It broke my heart during the last visit before his death as I watched him crawling out of the bathroom like a little baby. I knelt down and kissed him; he kissed me back and then asked, “Who are you, my son?”

Calamity was a continuum to this one refugee. In the early 1990s, his youngest son Kamal was murdered while he was on his way to school in Tripoli, Lebanon. He was butchered in the year he would have graduated from high school.

For Israel, Abu Musa and the other Palestinian refugees like my parents were dispensable nuisances. In a 1948 foreign ministry study, Israel predicted the refugees “… will waste away. Some will die but most will turn into human debris and social outcasts … in the Arab countries.”

To Israel’s chagrin, the grandchildren from Abu Musa’s surviving son and daughter did not turn to “human debris.” Sixty-eight years later, Abu Musa’s progenies are more determined to find and bury their great-grandmother’s remains, in their original village.

Mr Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper.

The anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba is ushered in with a continuation of structured violence committed against Palestinians by the state of Israel

I have been engaged in a constant writing project that intends to highlight Palestinian narratives since 1948 up to the present.

A narrative of dispossession touches every Palestinian family, including my own. During the 1948 Nakba and the war period, two family members on my father’s side, Jawdat Ali Rida Muhammad Bazian and Imran Ali Rida Muhammad Bazian, were martyred while another relative, Rida Ali Muhammad Bazian, was tortured by the British and released to the family bleeding and unconscious in a coma. He died at home a few days later, in 1946. The Bazian’s narrative is but a small part of a large picture that includes Faouzi As’ad Bazian and 14-year-old Khalid Bazian who were martyred in 1967 and 2000, respectively. The Bazian family narrative includes the dean of prisoners, ‘Alaa Bazian, a blind man endowed with a piercing vision for freedom and resistance and a towering figure in the prisoners’ movement. On my mother’s side of the family, my uncle Yusuf went missing during the war and until this day no one knows what happened to him.

Every Palestinian family has had one or more of its members killed, wounded, imprisoned or expelled either first by the British and or by the Zionists during the 1947-48 Nakba.

Illustration by Necmettin Asma

On a daily basis, I receive hundreds of requests via email, Facebook and Twitter to highlight a cause, an important issue or a silenced narrative that can benefit by adding one more badly needed voice. Being a Palestinian in the diaspora and an academic that works on Palestine and its painful history adds a personal dimension to requests coming from people living under occupation. How can someone narrate the stories of so many victims past and present? How can the past be recorded when the present Israeli death machine is currently adding more bodies and countless victims daily?

Unrecorded Palestinians

Narrating Palestinian means to write back into history the names, faces and stories of all those who were killed, maimed, wounded and dispossessed to bring Israel into existence. The names of the Palestinians killed are not recorded; they are mere numbers mentioned in passing as though without families, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins or neighbors who recall their joys and sorrows. Palestinian bodies have been piling up since the beginning of the 20th century with Europe’s plan to solve its “Jewish question” by creating a Palestinian-Arab one.

Palestinians have been facing structured, multi-layered and systematic erasure at local, regional and global levels. Locally, they suffer under direct and brutal Israeli occupation with daily attempts at dispossession and never-ending violence. The visible scars are etched into people’s faces speaking of trans-generational sufferings. Young Palestinians are made old by the suffocation of occupation, dispossession of land, checkpoints and fascist settlers stomping over everything that has meaning including the human itself. The Nakba continues in the form of the Apartheid Wall that separates families and villages, and pollutes the senses with a most profound ugliness that has no contemporary parallel on earth.

Yet more painful for Palestinians is the never-ending disfigurement of the land since 1948 and erasure of the past to be replaced with an architecture of violence, destruction of meaning and a “spirituality” rooted the worship of power as the new modern deity. Adding insult to injury on the anniversary of the Nakba is a Palestinian Authority that acts as the face and hands of the occupation, protecting the settlers while punishing again its own population. How to narrate the multiple stories of betrayal and the acquisition of VIP privileges for the few, gained by selling the rights of others?

Western press is silent for Palestinians

The anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba is again ushered in with a continuation of structured violence committed against the Palestinians by the Israeli State. In Western press, the custom is to look at events in Palestine through the Israeli lens. On the one hand, the press erases past and present Palestinian narratives while on the other, humanizes and rationalizes Zionist violence. A Palestinian is either murdered or violently attacked daily but the Western press rarely finds the time or space to narrate their story and give a name, face and complete picture to who they are as a person. Palestinian deaths and suffering is narrated in numbers while their victimizers are introduced as people with feelings, families and histories that matter.

At a regional level, the Nakba for Palestinians has transformed them into refugees and tools for settling accounts between various Arab states and leaders. Consequently, whenever two Arab countries had a conflict, the Palestinians became the bargaining chip to exert pressure or gain the upper hand in whichever distorted sense of nationalism was being introduced. Also, the Nakba transformed Palestinians into stateless people and subjects of states that have accepted their dispossession as a pre-condition to gaining their own post-colonial banana republics. Palestinians post Nakba became a regional toy to raise, abase and bundle in all types of Cold War machinations, monarchies versus nationalist goals, Sunni-Shia rivalry, oil market manipulations and war on terror obfuscation. How to narrate the violence of regional intrigues that makes Palestinian refugees an instrument of state craft?

On the global level, the Nakba has meant that the Palestinians have become wards of the international community. Importantly, the international community as a group celebrates Zionism and the founding of Israel as atonement for their own historical anti-Semitism and the death visited upon European Jewry during WWII. The Nakba meant that Palestinians have become a fixture at United Nation meetings and a never-ending spectacle for obtuse foreign policy “experts” to offer ideas on how to solve the unsolvable. How to solve the Palestinian dilemma in an institution and among member states that consent to Palestine’s dispossession, provide economic and military aid to Israel, cooperate in targeting Palestinians around the world and cast a veto to prevent any change from taking place?

Zionism’s trans-historical bullet

Narrating Palestine is the order of the day and it has to be undertaken under the cruelest of circumstances. How to narrate the Nakba when Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Myanmar, Yemen and Somalia are all ablaze and facing various levels of death and destruction? Arguably, the Nakba could be seen as a minor issue in the face of the destruction currently under way in Syria and Iraq, which is of biblical proportions. However, the level of destruction should not obscure the nature of the Zionist settler colonial project and its connection and investment in the on-going regional conflicts.

The alliance between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt takes place within the framework of a regional containment strategy that made Syria and Iraq the acceptable terrain to settle strategic accounts. Palestine and Palestinians are once again the bargaining chip to be offered to safeguard seats of power in various capitals and Israel is in the driver seat to secure its land robberies.

The Nakba is not a single event that unfolded in the past from which Palestinians have had a long period of time to recover from. The Nakba for Palestinians is a never-ending epic that continues to shape their daily lives. The stories of dispossession are continuous and trans-generational in nature since the losses and destruction inflicted upon Palestinians in 1948 has for them been followed by constant dislocation, targeting and movement as refugees in near and distant places. Israel was built upon Palestinian graves and a wholesale robbery of Palestine’s cities, villages and orchards. What started in the 1948 Nakba continues today in land confiscations, settlement building and the suffocating occupation that has no end in sight.

A narrative of every Palestinian family is intertwined with the 1948 Nakba, 1967 Nakhsa, 1970 expulsion from Jordan; the 1976-80s multiple wars in Lebanon and a new exile in Tunisia, the first and second Intifadah, the 1991-92 removal from Kuwait, ejection from Iraq and wards of U.S. occupation forces; the siege in Yarmouk and camps in Syria, the sadistic assaults on Gaza. The Nakba rears its ugly head every time a Palestinian is stopped at a border and in airports to be incessantly asked about violence, terrorism and why are they traveling in the first place, as if it is a crime. How does it feel to be asked to justify your existence and innocence to the criminal enterprise that committed the crime in the first place?

The Nakba is Zionism’s trans-historical bullet that is lodged deeply into Palestinian bodies and minds, continues to torment daily and works to negate Palestinian peoplehood, history, their connection to the land and the ability to narrate itself. Narrating the Nakba is writing Palestine and its people back into history while asserting their centrality to the past, present and future.

The Nakba continues in the daily humiliation suffered by Palestinians inside and outside of Palestine and the building of the Apartheid Wall that separate families and villages, and pollutes the senses with a most profound ugliness that has no contemporary parallel on earth. Lastly, narrating Palestine is not complete without the thousands of Palestinians who languish in Israeli, Arab and world prisons for no other reason than demanding freedom and dignity. Certainly, a prison may lock-up the body but it never can capture the mind of a free people.

On May 9, an electoral unity agreement between United Left [IU] and Podemos for the country’s June 26 general election was announced. Members of both organisations will have a chance to vote on it during this week in a referendum.

The agreement will also include the joint lists which already existed for the December 20 election in Catalonia (En Comú Podem – Together We Can), Galicia (En Marea – Riding the Tide) and Valencia. Already at that time the Marxists of Lucha de Clases argued for a Spain-wide agreement, which was only prevented by the narrow interests of some in the apparatuses of both organisations.

The agreement has been received with enthusiasm by thousands of activists and potentially changes the whole scenario of the June 26 election. This election has been called after there was no agreement to form a government coming out of the December 20 elections. Most of the government formation talks centered around the question of whether the social-democratic PSOE would prefer a coalition with the right wing “reformist” Ciudadanos or forces to its left, including Podemos and IU.

In fact, Podemos skilfully put the PSOE leaders in the dilemma of forming a government of the Left or a government of the Right. This is interesting since the leaders of Podemos had always insisted that Left and Right were outdated categories which were no longer useful and had explained that now it was a question of “those from below, against those from above”.

Those within Podemos and United Left who for different reasons opposed any unity agreement have been defeated.

A mere repetition of the December election was not likely to produce any major changes in the composition of Parliament, which would result in a new dead lock. However, the announced electoral agreement has upset the board. Opinion polls currently show that the adding up of votes of Podemos and IU will allow them to beat PSOE in number of votes and probably even in number of seats. The Spanish electoral system, based on province-wide constituencies, penalized Podemos during the last election: in many smaller provinces represented by 3 or 4 MPs, they were slightly short of the necessary votes to get anyone elected. The addition of IU votes could mean a gain of 15 to 20 seats.

It is even possible that the multiplying impact of such a joint list will be able to dispute first place with the ruling Popular Party. The agreement provides for a joint platform but allows both organisations plenty of autonomy to defend other points and to organise their own campaigns independently. However, it is likely that there will be mass joint meetings with Alberto Garzón and Pablo Iglesias and other well known leading figures which will create an electrifying effect throughout the country.

A recent CIS opinion poll conducted in April showed that the addition of IU and Podemos’ direct voting intentions plus “liking” would put them ahead of PP (19.8% for IU+Podemos, 19.2% PP, 18.0 PSOE). Of course it’s still early days (the campaign proper doesn’t start until June 10) and there’s still a lot to be done, but the perspective of defeating the hated austerity government of the PP can enthuse a layer of youth which abstained in December, and win over a section of PSOE voters angry at their party’s refusal to make a deal with Podemos. Significantly, the same poll shows Podemos plus United Left topping the votes in the age groups of those between 18 and 55.

Even if the electoral alliance of Podemos – IU comes second, that will only put the PSOE in an even more impossible position: they will have to choose between allowing a PP government (and losing even more of their electorate as a result) or entering as a junior partner in a coalition with Podemos, something the ruling class is very afraid of.

We will now see the most vicious campaign of attacks, slanders and lies against the joint list on the part of the whole of the capitalist mass media. They will bring bourgeois politicians and statesmen back from the dead (González comes to mind) to criticise Podemos and IU, as well as warn about the “dangers” for the country if they are elected. An “opinion writer” in the right wing ABC has already described the IU – Podemos agreement as that of “old age Stalinism and juvenile fascism”!!

The Socialist Party leader Sanchez has characterised the agreement as one of the “far left”, while Rajoy has branded it a “coalition of extremists and radicals”. The PP parliamentary spokesperson Rafael Hernando described it as the “alliance between Cuban and Venezuelan communism” and compared it to “the marxist-leninist regimes of North Korea, China, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba”. All of that will backfire. We have seen it before.

The program of the United Left – Podemos lists is based on the program both organisations presented in the December elections (which was basically the same): a broad program of reforms, against austerity, the repeal of the worst laws of the PP government (including the Wert education law, the Gagging Law against democratic rights, the last two counter-reforms of the labour law, etc), measures against evictions, slower pace of deficit reduction, more state spending, …

The enthusiasm amongst thousands of activists and layers of the masses for the Podemos – IU agreement represents the desire for fundamental change, the deep seated opposition to the failed economic system and rotten political regime. The problem is that the program defended by the leaders of both organisations does not answer the key question of where will the money come from to fund such a reversal of austerity cuts.

Spanish capitalism is in crisis. European capitalism is in crisis. The world capitalist system is moving towards a new recession. The EU is already demanding from any new government in Spain a package of 10-12bn euro cuts as the right wing PP government missed the deficit reduction target by nearly one percentage point in 2015. The leaders of Podemos-IU, if and when they reach power, will have to deal with the same question Syriza and Tsipras already confronted: within the limits of capitalism in crisis, no reforms are really possible.

The task of Marxists is to accompany the mass of workers and youth in this process of learning through their own experience, and a necessary stage in that process is the defeat of the PP and the coming to power of Podemos in one form or another. We participate in their struggles, electoral and otherwise, while at the same time patiently explain that what they want can only be truly achieved with the overthrow of the whole rotten edifice of capitalism.

Foto de Susana Malcorra, en la época en que fungió como Jefa del Despacho del Secretario General de Naciones Unidas, extraída de artículo  de prensa.

Diversos medios de prensa en Argentina han hecho público desde varios días la posible postulación por parte del Ejecutivo de la actual Ministra de Relaciones Exteriores de Argentina, Susana Malcorra, para ocupar la silla de Secretario General de Naciones Unidas (ver  nota  de Clarín, del 4/05/2016, así como  nota  de prensa y artículo  publicado en La Nación sobre la intensa agenda desplegada por la canciller de Argentina en las últimas semanas). Una reciente nota del mismo Clarín indica que la carta de nominación ya estaría redactada por parte del Presidente Macri, y que su envío oficial a Naciones Unidas sería una cuestión de días (ver nota del 12/05/2016).

Las gestiones diplomáticas en curso

La postulación como tal no ha sido aún oficializada por parte de Argentina, ya que su diplomacia está aún valorando las posibilidades de éxito de esta eventual candidatura. En esta  nota  de prensa se lee que: “The nomination must be presented by the president of the country of the candidate, but it is normally not done unless there is a strong support from the international community to ensure there is a very good chance“. Cabe recordar que antes de asumir su puesto como jefa de la diplomacia argentina en el gobierno del Presidente Macri, en diciembre del 2015, Susana Malcorra se desempeñó como Jefa de Gabinete del actual Secretario General de Naciones Unidas, cargo al que accedió en abril del 2012.

En los últimos días, el Presidente de la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas hizo ver que aún quedan tres posibles postulantes no oficializados por sus respectivos Estados, los cuales podrían serlo muy pronto (ver  nota  de EconomicTimes y esta  nota  de PressTV).

Las postulaciones oficializadas

La última candidatura oficializada se dio el pasado 16 de abril, con la designación del ex canciller de Serbia, Vuc Jeremic. Anterior a esta, el 5 de abril del 2016, Nueva Zelanda anunció la postulación oficial de la actual Directora neozelandesa del Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD), Helen Clark (ver  nota  de The Guardian). A ella, hay que sumar a las candidatas provenientes de Europa del Este cuyas candidaturas se oficializaron con anterioridad por parte de sus respectivos Estados: se trata la actual directora de la UNESCO, Irina Bokova (Bulgaria), las ex cancilleres de Moldavia, Natalia Gherman y de Croacia, Vesna Pusic.

Anterior a Nueva Zelanda, el pasado 29 de febrero del 2016, Portugal anunció la candidatura oficial de Antonio Guterres, ex Primer Ministro de Portugal y ex Alto Comisionado para los Refugiados a cargo de la agencia del ACNUR (ver  nota  oficial). Con la candidatura de Nueva Zelanda, y la de Portugal, suman nueve los candidatos oficialmente postulados.

Con relación a Europa del Este, cabe señalar que sus Estados parecieran querer garantizarse todas las posibilidades de tener a uno de sus nacionales ostentando el máximo rango dentro de las Naciones Unidas.  De manera a permitir saldar una deuda histórica de Naciones Unidas con esta precisa región del mundo,  a las tres candidatas mujeres antes citadas de Bulgaria, Moldavia y de Croacia, debemos añadir los candidatos masculinos de Eslovenia, Danilo Turk (Ex Presidente), y los ex cancilleres de Montenegro, Igor Luksic, de la ex República Yugoeslava de Macedonia, Sergiam Kerim, así como la última postulación formalizada el pasado 16 de abril de ex canciller de Serbia, Vuc Jeremic.

De los nueve postulantes actualmente oficializados ante Naciones Unidas (ver  nota  en el sitio oficial de Naciones Unidas), siete son nacionales de Europa del Este, y entre estos últimos, cinco provienen de los nuevos Estados que resultaron de la disolución de Yugoslavia como entidad estatal en los años noventa.

Las reglas imperantes en materia de designación del Secretario General

El (o la) futuro (a) Secretario(a) General de Naciones Unidas se convertirá en el noveno (a) Secretario (a) General de Naciones Unidas desde la creación de esta organización internacional en 1945. Según las reglas vigentes, el Secretario General es designado por la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas a recomendación del Consejo de Seguridad. El artículo 97 de la Carta de Naciones Unidas se lee como sigue: “Artículo 97. La Secretaría se compondrá de un Secretario General y del personal que requiera la Organización. El Secretario General será nombrado por la Asamblea General a recomendación del Consejo de Seguridad. El Secretario General sera el más alto funcionario administrativo de la Organización“.

En abril del 2015, Canadá circuló un “non paper” (ver  texto ) sobre la imperiosa necesidad de establecer algunas reglas en aras de lograr una mayor participación y una mayor transparencia del proceso de elección; el texto propone además algunos criterios objetivos que permitan garantizar la idoneidad de los candidatos propuestos por los Estados para ocupar la Secretaría General de Naciones Unidas.  Las motivaciones de Canadá se expresan en los siguientes términos que nos permitimos reproducir textualmente : “À l’heure où les États membres envisagent de réformer et de renouveler de nombreux aspects de l’ONU, il semble tout indiqué d’examiner dans une perspective critique le processus en vigueur pour la sélection de son dirigeant. Ce document renferme des propositions initiales visant à accroître la transparence du processus de sélection et à le rendre plus englobant, de façon à ce que les personnes dont la candidature est soumise pour examen à l’Assemblée générale, possèdent la personnalité, les compétences et le jugement nécessaires. De même, pour rendre le processus de sélection plus transparent et rigoureux, il est possible de s’inspirer de mécanismes en vigueur à l’OCDE et à l’OMC. En effet, ces deux instances ont mis en place des mécanismes de sélection fondés sur la consultation, la transparence et le mérite des candidats, et cela, pour permettre la nomination de la personne la mieux qualifiée et la plus compétente. Dans les deux cas, un appel de candidatures est publié, des consultations se tiennent entre les États membres, les résultats sont rendus publics et servent ensuite à dresser une liste des meilleurs candidats ».

Como bien se sabe, en Naciones Unidas, las normas (que se mantienen incólumes desde 1945) permiten que uno de los cinco Miembros Permanentes del Consejo de Seguridad (China, Francia, Estados Unidos, Reino Unido y Rusia) pueda recurrir a su derecho a veto para frenar las aspiraciones de los candidatos que no cuenten con su apoyo. El mandato de un Secretario General es de cinco años, y puede ser reconducido por cinco años más. Con la notable excepción de Boutros Boutros Gali, de Egipto, con un único mandato (Enero 1992 / Diciembre 1996), todos los demás titulares fueron siempre reelectos para un segundo mandato consecutivo. La no reelección de Boutros Boutros Gali se debió al único voto en contra por parte de Estados Unidos en el seno del Consejo de Seguridad, compuesto por 15 Estados miembros (ver  nota  de finales de 1996). La sesión de aquella fría noche del 13 de diciembre de 1996 fue descrita por quién fungió como su Jefe de Gabinete como sigue: “13 Décembre 1996: Mme Madeleine Albright, Représentant permanent des Etats Unis à  l´ONU, sort la première de la Séance officielle privée du Conseil de Sécurité (3725ème séance). Il est 20h 30. Elle passe, sans un mot, devant la presse diplomatique regroupée devant la longue tapisserie de Picasso représentant le massacre de Guernica. Quelques journalistes peuvent entendre un membre de sa délégation leur souffler « We did it » »(Nota 1). Menos de una semana después, Kofi Annan era electo Secretario General, el 19 de diciembre.

En esta  nota   de prensa publicada en  Libération (Francia) sobre la dureza de la diplomacia norteamericana durante la administración del Presidente Clinton, se lee que Estados Unidos llegó a proponerle a Boutros Gali una reconducción por un único año: “Les Etats-Unis, reconnaît un diplomate américain, avaient espéré éviter de se retrouver seuls contre tous. Au mois de mai, le secrétaire d’Etat Warren Christopher avait proposé en privé à Boutros-Ghali de reconduire son mandat d’un an seulement, avant de rendre publique l’opposition de Clinton à sa candidature ». En este otro  artículo del profesor Albert Bourgi, se precisa, con relación a Estados Unidos, que : « En écartant sans ménagement Boutros Boutros Ghali, candidat à un second mandat, en décembre 1996, ils ont amplement mesuré les risques que pouvaient avoir pour leur diplomatie, surtout pour leur influence dans l’institution, la réélection de l’Egyptien qui, par de nombreux actes, ne faisait pas mystère de sa volonté de «démocratiser les relations internationales» et avait fini par s’attirer les foudres d’une partie de l’opinion publique américaine. A l’inverse, leur soutien à Kofi Annan, envers et contre les quatorze autres membres du Conseil de sécurité, était principalement commandé par la conviction que l’ancien Secrétaire général adjoint, chargé des opérations de maintien de la paix, ne dérogerait pas à son profil d’«administrateur» façonné par une longue carrière au sein des Nations Unies et s’attellerait en priorité à la réforme de l’Organisation » (Nota 2).

Posterior a Boutros Boutros Gali, se procedió a la reelección de sus dos sucesores al cargo, a saber:
– Kofi Anan, de Ghana, quién asumió su puesto en Enero 1997 hasta Diciembre del 2001 y fue reconducido (Enero 2002 / Diciembre 2006);
– Ban ki Moon, de Corea del Sur (Enero 2007 / Diciembre 2011 y Enero 2012 /Diciembre 2016).

Anterior a Boutros Gali, la renovación del mandato fue también la tónica para Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, de Perú (Enero 1982 / Diciembre 1986 y Enero 1987 / Diciembre 1991), Kurt Waldheim, de Austria (1972-1981), U Thant, de Birmania (1961-1971), Dag Hammarskjöld, de Suecia (1953-1961) y Trygve Lie, de Noruega (1946-1952), primer Secretario General en la historia de Naciones Unidas.

Las Naciones, la organización, el Secretario

La representación masculina para el puesto de mayor jerarquía dentro del organigrama de Naciones Unidas es la que ha imperado de manera continua desde 1945. Para esta nueva contienda, el tema del equilibrio de género ha ido cobrando mucha mayor relevancia para una gran cantidad de Estados. Por ejemplo, en su alocución durante la Asamblea General reunida en Nueva York en setiembre del 2015, el Presidente de Costa Rica indicó que: ““Ha llegado la hora para que la Secretaría General sea ocupada por una mujer. Reconozcamos la gran capacidad, competencia y compromiso de las mujeres en todos los ámbitos” (ver nota de prensa oficial de Naciones Unidas).

Hace unas semanas, medios de prensa insinuaron que la actual jefa del Gobierno de Alemania, Angela Merkel, podría también sumar su candidatura (ver nota de Le Temps), sin que ello se haya oficializado.
Rotación en la representación geográfica

Si bien algunos Estados y algunos grupos regionales en las Naciones Unidas exigen algún tipo de rotación con respecto a la nacionalidad del Secretario General, con la finalidad de asegurar una adecuada representación de cada región del mundo, resulta difícil apreciar cuáles son las reglas imperantes en la materia: desde 1945, los secretarios generales de Naciones Unidas designados fueron nacionales (por orden cronológico) de Noruega, Suecia, Birmania, Austria, Perú, Egipto, Ghana y Corea del Sur. Notemos que al momento de buscar una alternativa ante la imposibilidad de lograr un segundo mandato para Boutros Boutros Gali, se hizo ver en algunos círculos diplomáticos de Naciones Unidas que necesariamente el nuevo Secretario debía provenir de África.

En realidad, más allá del delicado equilibrio geopolítico para lograr que un candidato cuente con una recomendación del Consejo de Seguridad para posteriormente obtener un voto a favor en el seno de la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas, existen otros aspectos a ser considerados por parte de cada cancillería a la hora de postular a uno (o una) de sus nacionales e iniciar una campaña a su favor.

A modo de conclusión: consultas intensas en perspectiva

Es muy probable que la diplomacia de Argentina esté valorando en estos días los apoyos que pueda recibir una postulación como la de Susana Malcorra por parte de los cinco Miembros Permanentes del Consejo de Seguridad. Precisamente en esta semana, se consideró que un viaje al Reino Unido de la misma Susana Malcorra (ver  nota  de prensa) podría resultar decisivo para sus aspiraciones, si se considera la delicada relación que mantiene Argentina con Reino Unido,  desde la guerra de las Malvinas acaecida en 1982. En este  artículo  del York Press se acota que se trató del primer encuentro desde el 2002 entre los jefes de la diplomacia de ambos Estados. Como era previsible, la prensa ha reportado los temas tratados entre Malcorra y Hammond el pasado 12 de mayo en Londres, sin mencionar detalle alguno relacionado con la posición de Reino Unido ante la posible candidatura argentina a la Secretaría General de Naciones Unidas (ver por ejemplo esta  nota de La Vanguardia). 

Es muy posible que consultas diplomáticas se estén realizando con los demás cuatro Miembros Permanentes del Consejo de Seguridad por parte de los delegados de Argentina. Paralelamente, es de prever que Argentina busque algún tipo de acercamiento con relación a varios Estados de América Latina: en el caso de la elección de Venezuela como miembro no permanente al Consejo de Seguridad en octubre del 2014, la Comunidad de Estados de América Latina y del Caribe (CELAC) había optado por designar a Venezuela como única candidata de la región (Nota 3).

Este apoyo regional hubiese probablemente sido mucho más fácil de obtener para una candidata postulada por Argentina antes del cambio operado en Buenos Aires el pasado 10 de diciembre del 2015: se convierte ahora en un verdadero desafío, facilitado no obstante por el hecho que ningún otro Estado de la región (a la fecha en que se redactan estas breves líneas) ha optado por postular formalmente candidato alguno para sustituir a Ban ki Moon en Nueva York.

Nicolas Boeglin 

Nota 1: Véase CASSAN H., “La vie quotidienne à l´ONU au temps de Boutros Boutros-Ghali (extraits)», Mélanges offerts à Hubert Thierry. L´évolution  du droit international, Paris, Pedone, 1998, pp.73-92, p.73.

Nota 2: Véase BOURGI A., “L´election du  nouveau Sécrétaire Général de l´ONU », 2007, AFRI (Annuaire Français de Relations Internationales), Volume VIII, pp.832-843, p.835. Artículo en texto completo disponible aquí .

Nota 3: Véase nuestra breve nota, BOEGLIN N. « Venezuela y España al Consejo de Seguridad: breve puesta en perspectiva”, DIPúblico, Edición del 20/10/2014. Texto disponible aquí.

Nicolas Boeglin : Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR)

Ousted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Thursday called on Brazilians to defend their country’s democracy and mobilize against the coup that saw her suspended from office.

IN DEPTH:
The Coup Plot That Seeks to Oust Brazil’s President

“I call for the people to remain mobilized, together, in peace … It is a fight we are going to win, it depends on all of us, let’s show the world the millions of people who defend democracy in our country,” said Rousseff in her first comments from the presidential palace since the country’s Senate voted to proceed with impeachment proceedings.

Rousseff, who as a young activist was arrested and tortured for her efforts to organize against the military dictatorship that previously ruled Brazil, said she “never thought I would have to fight against another coup in our country.”

The ousted president walked out of the presidential palace to a crowd of thousands of anti-coup and pro-democracy demonstrators.

“I am ready to resist through all legal means,” Rousseff told the crowd who answered with chants pledging to resist as well.

“Over the course of my life, like all women, I confronted many challenges, now what hurts most is this situation that I’m living now, the pain of injustice,” said Rousseff.

Suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff addresses supporters after the Brazilian Senate voted to impeach her. | Photo: Reuters

teleSUR’s correspondent said the Brazilian president dissolved her government after the Senate voted to put her on trial.

When US President Barack Obama perpetrated his coup d’état in Ukraine in February 2014, and even had his agent Victoria Nuland select the person who was to rule Ukraine after the coup, it was with the expectation that the new government would renegotiate, and soon end, the Russian lease of the naval base at Sebastopol in Crimea, which wasn’t due to expire until 2042. (Up until 1954, that base had been in Russian territory because Crimea was part of Russia; but, after the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954 arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine, and then the Soviet Union itself broke up in 1991, Russia was keeping its navy there by paying a lease on it from Ukraine.)

However, instead of the US winning control of Crimea as had been planned, the racist-fascist anti-Russian «Right Sector» forces, which Obama’s people had hired to carry out the coup in Kiev under the cover of ‘democratic’ demonstrations against the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych (who had received over 75% of Crimeans’ votes in the Presidential election, prior to being overthrown), terrorized Crimeans during the coup, and this terrorizing of them, simply added insult to their injury. On February 20th, Right Sector forces massacred Crimeans who were escaping from Ukraine’s capital, fleeing the rabid sentiments in Kiev against supporters of Yanukovych. Right Sector caught up with them at the town of Korsun, burned some of their buses, and murdered some of the escaping Crimeans, though most survived — some of them severely injured.

Also, early in March of 2014, shortly prior to Crimea’s referendum on whether to remain within Ukraine, a Crimean who had served in Kiev as a prosecutor in the democratically elected Ukrainian national government that had just been overthrown, and who had likewise escaped from Kiev, was now safely back home in Crimea, and did a Crimean TV interview.

This former prosecutor, Natalya Poklonskaya, took questions from the live TV audience. The interview was posted to YouTube on 12 April 2014, and, as I described it, linking to the YouTube, she proceeded there to «inform her fellow Crimeans what she had seen happen during the overthrow, and why she couldn’t, in good conscience, remain as a Ukrainian official in Kiev, and swear loyalty to the new Ukrainian Government.

She had heard the chants of the Maidan protesters and smelled their piles of burning tires, and seen their marches in Kiev with Nazi symbols and salutes, and she didn’t want to become any part of that. So, she quit and was now unemployed back home in Crimea at the time of this interview».

The Obama Administration, in planning for the coup, had polling done throughout Ukraine, and supplemented the sample in Crimea because, naturally, taking control of the Sebastopol naval base was of particular concern to Obama.

USAID and the International Republican Institute of the Republican Party (not the National Democratic Institute, because funding from them might have suggested the White House’s backing) polled 500 Crimeans, during 16-30 May 2013. As I have reported elsewhere, the first stage of preparation for the upcoming coup was already active inside the US Embassy in Kiev on 1 March 2013; and so, this was a very coordinated Obama Administration operation. (Most Washington-based accounts of the overthrow allege that it was ‘democratic’ and started after Yanukovych rejected the EU’s offer on 21 November 2013.)

On 27 December 2014, I compared the results of that Crimean poll versus the results of a poll covering all areas of the former Ukraine, which was taken, also, for the US government, but, to Obama’s inevitable disappointment, neither poll found a US-friendly, Ukraine-friendly, Russia-hostile, Crimea.

Gallup polled 500 Crimeans during May 16-30 in 2013, and found that only 15% considered themselves «Ukrainian». 24% considered themselves «Crimean». But 40% considered themselves «Russian». Even before Obama’s February 2014 coup which overthrew the Ukrainian President whom [nearly] 80% of Crimeans had voted for, the Crimean people overwhelmingly wanted to secede from Ukraine — and, especially now they did, right after the President for whom they had overwhelmingly voted, Viktor Yanukovych, had been overthrown in this extremely bloody coup. Furthermore, in April 2014, Gallup again polled Crimea, and they found that 71.3% of Crimeans viewed as «Mostly positive» the role of Russia there, and 4.0% viewed it as «Mostly negative»; by contrast, only 2.8% viewed the role of the United States there as «Mostly positive,» and a whopping 76.2% viewed it as «Mostly negative».

During the intervening year, Crimeans’ favorability toward America had plunged down to 2.8%, from its year-earlier 6%. Clearly, what Obama had done in Ukraine (his violent coup in Kiev) had antagonized the Crimeans. And, as if that weren’t enough, the 2014 poll provided yet more evidence: «The 500 people that were sampled in Crimea were asked [and this is crucial] ‘Please tell me if you agree or disagree: The results of the referendum on Crimea’s status [whether to rejoin Russia] reflect the views of most people here.’ 82.8% said ‘Agree.’ 6.7% said ‘Disagree.’»

In the hearts of the local residents, Crimea was still Russian territory, after an involuntary hiatus of 60 years; and so the Russian Government accepted them back again, into Russia – this was not as Corey Flintoff droned, «Russia’s seizure of Crimea». It was Russia’s protection of them from the invasion of Ukraine by the United States in a bloody coup.

On 20 March 2015, even Kenneth Rapoza at the anti-Russian magazine Forbes, headlined, «One Year After Russia Annexed Crimea, Locals Prefer Moscow To Kiev», and he concluded that, «Despite huge efforts on the part of Kiev, Brussels, Washington and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the bulk of humanity living on the Black Sea peninsula believe the referendum to secede from Ukraine was legit. At some point, the West will have to recognize Crimea’s right to self-rule».

However, Barack Obama refuses to accept this. After all, if he were to accept it, then he would have to terminate the anti-Russia economic sanctions he initiated on the basis of Russia’s ‘seizure’ of Crimea, and he would have to acknowledge that the massive US-led military buildup of NATO forces on Russia’s borders in order to protect against ‘Russia’s aggression’ needs to stop and, indeed, be withdrawn. But Obama doesn’t accept any of this; to do that would negate the whole purpose of his coup, and even his anti-Russian policy, including, perhaps, his refusal to cooperate with Russian forces that are trying to stamp out jihadist groups in Syria.

On 6 February 2016, I headlined «US Now Overtly at War Against Russia» and reported that both US ‘Defense’ Secretary Ashton Carter and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had announced the US was initiating a quadrupling of US troops and weaponry on Russia’s northwestern borders.

On 4 May 2016, Dmitriy Sedov headlined at Strategic Culture, «NATO to Form Allied Fleet in the Black Sea: Plans Fraught with Great Risks» and he opened: «Finally, it has become clear what the world has been set to expect from the NATO summit to be held in Warsaw on July 8-9. Summing things up, it is clear that the Alliance is moving to the east. It plans to create a Black Sea «allied fleet». It should be done quickly – the standing force should be formed by July».

Sedov closed by saying that Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko «is impatiently waiting for the July NATO summit. The event can ultimately do away with whatever is left of ‘détente’, ‘reset’ etc. and bring the world back to the days of uncompromised mutual assured destruction».

There is a backstory to that, and, naturally, it goes back to Barack Obama:

As I have previously explained, US Secretary of State John Kerry had told Poroshenko, on 12 May 2015, to stop saying that Ukraine would restart its war against the separatist Donbass region and would invade Crimea and retake that too; but, Kerry’s subordinate, Hillary Clinton’s friend Victoria Nuland, told Poroshenko to ignore her boss on that, and then US President Obama sided with Nuland and sidelined Kerry on Ukraine policy by making clear that he thought Poroshenko was right to insist upon retaking Crimea and re-invading Donbass.

In other words, the Minsk peace process for Ukraine, that had been initiated by Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, was grudgingly accepted by Obama but he really had no intention of its being anything more than a pause in the war, after which NATO itself would become engaged in facing-down Russia over its ‘aggressive invasion’ and ‘seizure’ of Crimea.

Game’s on for World War III, is Obama’s message to Russian President Vladimir Putin. At some point, either the American side or the Russian-NATO-EU side will have to back down on the Crimea matter, or else the bombs will be release against the other. Kerry has been trying negotiation, but his real enemy is his own boss.

There is every indication that, if Hillary Clinton, a super-hawk against Russia, becomes the next US President, then the policies that Obama has been implementing will be carried out. 2016 could thus turn out to be a very fateful election in the US, and not only for the US but for the entire world.

Below is a 2013 RT report pertaining to Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi emails which were allegedly obtained by a hacker named Gucifer and forwarded to RT. (M. Ch. GR Editor)

On the back of widespread public interest RT has decided to publish in their entirety a series of memos which were allegedly sent from a one-time White House aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This is a special statistical bulletin by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) on the 68thAnniversary of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948.

The number of Palestinians worldwide has multiplied about nine-fold — Israel Controls More than 85% of the Land of Historical Palestine

The Nakba: Ethnic cleansing and displacement of the population

Nakba in literary terms means a natural catastrophe such as an earthquake, volcano, or hurricane. However, the Nakba in Palestine describes a process of ethnic cleansing in which an unarmed nation was destroyed and its population displaced to be replaced systematically by another nation.

Unlike a natural catastrophe, the Palestinian Nakba was the result of a man-made military plan with the consent of other states, leading to a major tragedy for the Palestinian people. The subsequent occupation of the remaining land of Palestine in 1967 resulted in an additional tragedy.

In 1948, 1.4 million Palestinians lived in 1,300 Palestinian towns and villages all over historical Palestine. More than 800,000 of the population were driven out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries, and other countries of the world.

Thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes but stayed within the Israeli-controlled 1948 territory. According to documentary evidence, the Israelis controlled 774 towns and villages and destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages during the Nakba. The atrocities of Zionist forces also included more than 70 massacres in which more than 15 thousand Palestinians were killed.

The Demographic Reality: Palestinian population has increased 9-fold since the Nakba

The Palestinian world population totaled 12.4 million by the end of 2015. This indicates that the number of Palestinians worldwide has multiplied about nine-fold in the 68 years since the Nakba.

According to statistics, the total number of Palestinians living in historic Palestine (between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean) by the end of 2015 was 6.2 million and this number is expected to rise to 7.1 million by the end of 2020 based on current growth rates.

Statistical data also show that refugees constitute 42.8% of the total Palestinian population in Palestine. UNRWA records showed that there were 5.59 million Palestinian refugees registered at the beginning of 2015.   Around 28.7% of Palestinian registered refugees live in 58 refugee camps, of which 10 are in Jordan, 9 in Syria, 12 in Lebanon, 19 in the West Bank, and 8 in the Gaza Strip.

These estimates represent the minimum number of Palestinian refugees, given the presence of non- registered refugees. These estimates also do not include Palestinians who were displaced between 1949 and the 1967 war, according to the UNRWA definition, and do not include the non-refugees who left or were forced to leave as a result of the 1967 war.

The number of Palestinians who remained in their homeland in the 1948 territory after the Nakba was estimated at 154 thousand persons, but estimates for 2015 show that it has grown to 1.5 million on the 68th anniversary of the Nakba.

In the 1948 territories, the sex ratio is 102.2 males per 100 females, while 34.8% of the population are below 15 years of age and 4.2% are aged 65 years and over, based on available statistics relating to Palestinians living in Israel in 2014.

This illustrates that the composition of the Palestinian population in the 1948 territory is young, as it is in Palestinian society as a whole.

The number of Palestinians in Palestine was estimated at 4.8 million at the end of 2015: 2.9 million in the West Bank and 1.9 million in Gaza Strip. The number of Palestinians in Jerusalem Governorate at the end of 2015 was around 423 thousand, of whom 62.1% live in the areas of Jerusalem forcibly annexed by Israel in 1967 (J1).

The fertility rate in Palestine is high compared to other countries. The total fertility rate in the period 2011-2013 was 4.1 births (3.7 births per woman in the West Bank and 4.5 births per woman in Gaza Strip).

Population Density: Gaza Strip the most crowded place in the world

The population density in Palestine at the end of 2015 was 789 individuals per square kilometer (km2): 513 individuals/km2 in the West Bank and 5,070 individuals/km2 in Gaza Strip. In Israel, the population density of Arabs and Jews in 2015 was about 391 individuals/km2.

 Settlements: Most settlers in Jerusalem as part of Israeli campaign of Judaization 

There were 413 illegal Israeli constructions in the West Bank (including 150 settlements and 119 outposts) by the end of 2014. Furthermore, during 2015, the Israeli occupation authorities approved the building of over 4,500 housing units in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank in addition to the units approved in Jerusalem.

Still, these same authorities deny the Palestinians the right to build and lay obstacles, which undermine any potential urban expansion especially for the Palestinians in Jerusalem and Area “C” which is under full Israeli control.

It should be noted that Area “C” represents over 60% of the West Bank area. Israel also erected its Expansion and Annexation Wall, which isolates behind it more than 12% of the West Bank land.  Data indicated that the total number of settlers in the West Bank was 599,901 at the end of 2014, 286,997 of whom in the Jerusalem Governorate (they represent 48% of all settlers in the occupied West Bank).

Moreover, 210,420 of these illegal settlers live in Jerusalem J1 (that part of Jerusalem, which was forcefully annexed by Israel following its occupation of the West Bank in 1967).

In demographic terms, the proportion of settlers to the Palestinian population in the West Bank is around 21 settlers per 100 Palestinians compared with 69 settlers per 100 Palestinians in Jerusalem governorate.

Historical Palestine: Israel controls more than 85% of its land

The area of the historical land of Palestine totals about 27,000 km2. Israeli Jews utilize more than 85% of the total area of land. The Palestinians comprise 48% of the total population and utilize less than 15% of the land.

Water: Israel controls more than 85% of Palestinian Water

Palestine suffers from scarcity of water and resources. The situation is further complicated by the prolonged Israeli occupation, which controls most of the existing water sources (85%) and prevents the Palestinians from their right to access their water sources or any alternative sources.

Consequently, the Palestinians are compelled to buy water from the Israeli Water Company (Mekorot), purchasing around 63.5 million m3 in 2014.

The Israeli occupation controls the majority of renewable water resources totaling 750 MCM, while Palestinians receive only about 110 MCM.

The Palestinian share from the three ground water aquifers should be 118 MCM according to Oslo Agreement. This share was supposed to increase to 200 MCM by the year 2000 had the Interim Agreement been fully implemented.

The daily allocation per capita from consumed water for domestic purposes is 79.1 letter/capita/day (l/c/d) in the West Bank in 2014.  Where it is 79.7 l/c/d in Gaza Strip in 2014 compared to 91.3 l/c/d in 2013, this shortfall is due to reduced pumping from ground water wells in Gaza Strip because of Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip.

However, 97% of drinking water in the Gaza Strip does not meet the World Health Organization (WHO) standards and is also less than the minimum quantities recommended by WHO (100 l/c/d) .

Martyrs: Continuous efforts to build a state

The number of martyrs killed in the al Aqsa Intifada between September 29th, 2000 and December 31st, 2015 was 10,243.  The bloodiest year was 2014 with 2,240 Palestinian martyrs, 2,181 of them from Gaza Strip, followed by 2009 with 1,219 martyrs. In addition, 306 martyrs, were killed during 2012, 15 of them from the West Bank, and 291 from Gaza Strip; 189 of them were killed during the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in November 2012, and 181 martyrs, were killed during 2015, 155 of them from the West Bank, and 26 from Gaza Strip.

Detainees

Data from the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-detainees show that Israel has arrested about a million Palestinians since 1967: more than 95 thousand were arrested since the Al-Aqsa Intifada. There are around 7,000 Palestinians in detention.

Of these, 68 are female, more than 400 are children. More than 750 Palestinians are held under administrative detention (without trial) and 500 detainees are serving life sentences. Israel arrested 6,830 detainees during 2015: 225 detainees are female and 2,179 are children. Israel has arrested nearly two thousand detainees since the beginning of the current year.

Jerusalem 2015; Intensive Judaizing

While the Israeli occupation authorities keep demolishing Palestinian houses and denying Palestinians the right to build any new houses, they grant permits to build thousands of housing units in the Israeli settlements in and around Jerusalem. Only in 2015, they authorized the building of over 12,600 housing units in the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, in addition to 2,500 hotel rooms.

Moreover, the Israeli occupation authorities ratified regulations to replace the original Arabic names of the streets in the old town of Jerusalem by Hebrew ones.

Health

Statistics for 2014 showed that the number of physicians per 1,000 population registered in the Physicians’ Union in the West Bank was 1.3 and 2.2 in the Gaza Strip. In addition, there were 2.1 nurses per 1,000 population in the West Bank and 4.1 nurses per 1000 population in Gaza Strip. There were 80 hospitals in Palestine in 2014: 50 hospitals in the West Bank and 30 in Gaza Strip.

These include 26 governmental hospitals, 34 non-governmental, 16 private, 3 hospitals run by military institutions, and one run by UNRWA. There were 5,939 hospital beds: 1.3 beds per 1,000 population and allocated as 3,502 beds in the West Bank and 2,437 in Gaza Strip. There were 604 primary health care centers in the West Bank in 2014 and 163 centers in Gaza Strip.

This inscribes in Israel’s ongoing policy of Occupation of Jerusalem and falsification of its history and geography not to mention the imposition of new demographic facts on the ground.

The Israeli occupation authorities demolished about 152 Palestinian buildings (houses and establishments) and sent hundreds of demolition orders to owners of other buildings; moreover, the Israeli occupation authorities confiscated 546 Dunams of the Palestinian land in the Issawiya locality and Shu’fat camp to establish a national park and dumping site for wastes from illegal Jewish settlements.

Buildings: Demolish of Housing Unit and Establishment

On the fortieth remembrance of the Land Day, the Israeli occupation violations against the Palestinians continue, in terms of land confiscation, demolition of buildings (housing units and establishments) and forcible displacement of residents. Israeli occupation authorities usurped 6,386 Dunams of Palestinian land in the various governorates of the West Bank in 2015.

Furthermore, they demolished 645 building (houses and establishments), forcibly displacing 2,180 person in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 1,108 of whom are children.

They also threatened to demolish 780 building, at a time when the needs of housing units for Palestinian increase. In figures, about 61% of households in Palestine need to build new housing units over the next decade according to the reported data survey of housing conditions in 2015 (one residential unit or more).

Environment: Continuing Degradation

Israeli settlements cause direct damage to the Palestinian environment. They actually discharge 40 million cubic meters (mcm) of wastewater annually into Palestinian valleys and agricultural land.

Only 10% of such water is treated. If compared to the wastewater produced by Palestinians in the West Bank, which stands at 34 mcm per year, the Israeli settler produce five times the Palestinian.  Moreover, the Israeli authorities prevent Palestinians from building their own wastewater treatment plants.

On another level, they allocated part of the Palestinian land in Jordan Valley to an Israeli dumpsite of industrial waste. Consequently, Palestinian agricultural land endured enormous damage not to mention impact on health animals and biodiversity, in addition to the Israeli authorities bulldozed and burned more than 15,300 trees of Palestinian farmers during the year 2015.

Tourism: Israeli Monopoly

The Israeli narrative is based on falsification of the culture, civilization and history of Palestine. Therefore, the occupation authorities alter Palestinian national treasures and monuments of ancient times. In figures, 53% of the archeological sites in Palestine are in Area “C”, which is under full Israeli control.

The Israel occupation prevents any excavating or restoration of these sites for the building of recreational and tourist attractions.

They also create obstacles to prevent Palestinian tourism agencies from organizing proper visits of the Holy Land. With these restrictions, they give a competitive edge to the Israeli companies that market the Nativity Church in Bethlehem and Deir Quruntol in Jericho, for instance, as part of tourism in Israel.

By granting more facilities to Israeli companies, tourists are ‘advised’ to stay in Israeli hotels as Palestinian areas are ‘denounced as unsafe’. With these measures, Palestinians are deprived of over 75% of potential touristic services revenues.

Labor Market 2015

The labor force participation rate in Palestine in 2015 was 45.8%: 46.1% among refugees and 45.6% among non-refugees. The participation rate in the West Bank was 46.1% (46.8% among refugees and 45.8% among non-refugees) compared with 45.3% in Gaza Strip (45.5% among refugees and 45.0% among non-refugees).

The unemployment rate in Palestine was 25.9% (32.3% among refugees and 21.4% among non-refugees). The unemployment rate in the West Bank was 17.3% (18.7% among refugees and 16.8% among non-refugees) compared with 41.0% in Gaza Strip (41.8% among refugees and 39.4% among non-refugees).

Education

According to the results of the Education data for the 2015/2016 scholastic year, there were 2,897 schools in Palestine: 2,193 in the West Bank and 704 in Gaza Strip. These were distributed in terms of their supervisory authority as follows: 2,135 governmental schools, 353 UNRWA schools and 409 private schools.

The total number of students in these schools exceeded 1.2 million, of whom 596 thousand were male and 604 thousand female. There were 788 thousand students enrolled in governmental schools, 299 thousand enrolled in UNRWA schools, and 113 thousand enrolled in private schools.

The illiteracy rate among Palestinians aged 15 years and above was 3.3% in 2015, distributed as 1.5% of males and 5.1% of females. It was 2.9% among refugees and 3.6% among non-refugees.

In the field of higher education, there are 14 universities: five universities in the Gaza Strip and nine universities in the West Bank, in addition to 18 colleges that grant bachelor’s degrees: 6 in Gaza Strip, and 12 in the West Bank. There are 20 community colleges: 13 in the West Bank and 7 in Gaza Strip.

Consumer Price Index during 2015

The Palestinian Consumer Price Index increased by 1.43% in 2015 compared to 2014: by 1.29% in the West Bank, 0.33% in Jerusalem (J1), and by 1.77% in the Gaza Strip. In comparison with the base year of 2010, the Consumer Price Index in Palestine increased by 10.99%: by 13.89% in the West Bank, 14.02% in Jerusalem (J1), and 4.97% in Gaza Strip.

Trade: Limited Palestinian exports

Both imports and exports of goods increased in 2014 over 2013. In 2014, the value of imported goods totaled USD 5.68 billion, an increase of 10.1% compared to 2013.

The total value of exports was USD 943.7 million, and increased by 4.8% compared with 2013. As a result, the net trade balance in goods recorded a deficit of about USD 4.74 billion in 2014, an increase of 11.2% compared to 2013.

The results indicate that 87.3% of exports were destined to Israel, while only 12.7% of total exports were exported to other countries excluding Israel. The limited value of exports to other countries was due to Israeli restrictions on Palestinian exports, especially from the Gaza Strip.

RT acknowledges receiving the Clinton emails in 2013 from a Romanian computer hacker Marcel Lazăr Lehel (aka Guccifer)

A limited number of emails to RT TV were published in an article in March 2013, titled Hillary Clinton’s ‘hacked’ Benghazi emails: FULL RELEASE.

An oil spill from Royal Dutch Shell’s offshore Brutus platform has released 2,100 barrels of crude into the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

The leak—roughly 88,200 gallons—created a visible 2 mile by 13 mile oil slick in the sea about 97 miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

Officials said that the accident occurred near Shell’s Glider field, an underwater pipe system that connects four subsea oil wells to the Brutus platform, which floats on top of the water with a depth of 2,900 feet.

Shell spokeswoman Kimberly Windon said in a statement that the likely cause of the spill was a release of oil from the subsea infrastructure.

The Coast Guard said that the source of the discharge is reportedly secured. A cleanup crew has been dispatched.

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said in a statement that a company helicopter observed the sheen yesterday, and that the wells were under control after it isolated the leak and shut in production.

“There are no drilling activities at Brutus, and this is not a well control incident,” the company said.

“Shell is determining the exact cause of the release by inspecting the subsea equipment and flowlines in the Glider field. The company has made all appropriate regulatory notifications and mobilized response vessels, including aircraft, in the event the discharge is recoverable. There are no injuries.”

Citing industry trade publications, Reuters reported that the Brutus platform started operations 15 years ago and was designed with top capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil and 150 million cubic feet (4.25 million cubic meters) of gas per day. Shell said that “no release is acceptable, and safety remains our priority as we respond to this incident.”

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has tightened regulations for offshore operators ever since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that claimed the lives of 11 men and caused the largest man-made oil spill in history after dumping 3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. Still, environmental advocates have criticized Big Oil’s insistence that offshore drilling can be done safely and have urged for the practice to stop. “The last thing the Gulf of Mexico needs is another oil spill,” Vicky Wyatt, a Greenpeace campaigner, told EcoWatch.

“The oil and gas industry’s business-as-usual mentality devastates communities, the environment, and our climate. Make no mistake, the more fossil fuel infrastructure we have, the more spills and leaks we’ll see. This terrible situation must come to an end. President Obama can put these leaks, spills, and climate disasters behind us by stopping new leases in the Gulf and Arctic. It’s past time to keep it in the ground for good.”

“This latest offshore oil disaster once again demonstrates the inherent dangers of fossil fuels, and the irresponsibility of allowing new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico even as these spills continue to happen,” Marc Yaggi, executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance, said. 

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade noted in a press release this morning that the federal National Response Center clocks “thousands” of oil industry accidents in the Gulf of Mexico every year. “What we usually see in oil industry accidents like this is a gross understatement of the amount release and an immediate assurance that everything is under control, even if it’s not,” Anne Rolfes, Louisiana Bucket Brigade founding director, said. “This spill shows why there is a new and vibrant movement in the Gulf of Mexico for no new drilling.”

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which aims to end petrochemical pollution in the Pelican State and a transition to renewable energy, said that on the same day as Shell’s accident, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) held a hearing focused on the environmental impact of oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. During the hearing, Gulf residents brought in tar balls found just last month at Elmer’s Island in Grand Isle, Louisiana as evidence that BOEM’s environmental impact assessment is inadequate, the group said. Gulf residents opposed to drilling are calling on President Obama not to open additional leases in the next Five Year Plan for the Gulf of Mexico.

“This latest offshore oil disaster once again demonstrates the inherent dangers of fossil fuels, and the irresponsibility of allowing new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico even as these spills continue to happen,” Marc Yaggi, executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance, said.

“We have a decade-long, ongoing oil spill that the government won’t force Taylor Energy to fix and the Gulf is struggling from the impacts of Deepwater Horizon. The Gulf must no longer be treated as a sacrificial zone. It is time that the federal government recognized that for the health of our ocean, coasts and climate, there must be no further offshore oil leasing.”

The 60-day state of emergency will be used against threats of intervention by the United States and Colombia, among others, in light of the political assaults on Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared a 60-day state of emergency on Friday due to what he called plots from within the OPEC country and the United States to topple his leftist government.

Maduro did not provide details of the measure, but he said that it includes the ability to face outside threats, such as Colombia’s former president Alvaro Uribe’s demand for intervention in Venezuela by foreign troops. He added that the previous state of exception included decrees “to protect the people and the socioeconomic stability of the country.”

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a meeting with ministers at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. | Photo: Reuters

Earlier on Friday, U.S. intelligence officials told reporters they were increasingly worried about the potential for an economic and political meltdown in Venezuela and predicted Maduro was not likely to complete his term.

Venezuela’s opposition is seeking to recall the leader amid a worsening crisis that includes food and medicine shortages, frequent power cuts, sporadic looting and galloping inflation.

Watch video here.

But the former union leader and bus driver has vowed to stick out his term and accuses the United States of fomenting an undercover coup against him. He pointed to this week’s vote against fellow leftist Dilma Rousseff in Brazil — followed by the U.S.’s “complicit silence” — as a sign that he is next.

“Washington is activating measures at the request of Venezuela’s fascist right, who are emboldened by the coup in Brazil,” Maduro said during a Friday night broadcast on state television. He said that a “coup virus” could return to Latin America.

Washington has had an acrimonious relationship with Caracas for years, especially following U.S. support for a short-lived 2002 coup against late leader Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela’s ruling Socialist Party has long been a strong ally of Rousseff’s Workers Party, however, and her departure adds to Maduro’s isolation in Latin America.

He also extended a state of economic emergency over what he has called aneconomic war led by the United States and opposition.

by Intellectuals and Artists against the Coup on Dilma in Brazil

The undersigned, intellectuals, artists, writers and researchers from all over the world denounce the coup underway in Brazil and stand in solidarity with President Dilma Rousseff who was elected by 54 million Brazilians only one year and a half ago. 

Temer envisions himself to be the “new Macri” of Brasil, using the new government of Argentina as his model and advancing toward the dismantling of the state rarely seen in Argentina. It is not surprising then that the Foreign Ministry of that neighboring country has shamelessly supported the coup in Brazil under the guise of supporting its institutions. For everything that the coup makers have expressed and with their links to big business we consider the coup of the President de facto Michael Temer illegitimate and illegal. He has long ago proven that he is a corrupt politician who takes his orders from the darkest parts of the predatory oligarchy of that country.

We are appealing to UNASUR to apply the established Protocol stating a Commitment to Democracy adopted by all the countries of the organization that could put the brakes on the breakdown of the democratic thread in Brazil.

We also demand that the presidents and governments of the world do not recognize Temer and to demand the return of the legitimately elected President Dilma Rousseff. They should also end the political crisis by calling for an immediate presidential election – made by the President herself – so that the Brazilian people can once again express themselves by democratic means and not by an imposed coup d’état by a questionable and corrupt Congress.

Myanmar’s “de facto leader” Aung San Suu Kyi recently warned the United States to not refer to the Rohingya ethnic minority as “Rohingya,” in an attempt to deny them the dignity and human rights she and her party posed as renowned defenders of.

For those critically examining and long-following political developments in Myanmar and their wider geopolitical implications for Southeast Asia, Asia, and the world, Aung San Suu Kyi and her “National League for Democracy” (NLD) political front, along with a vast array of Western-funded NGOs’ turning against Myanmar’s Rohingya population after predicating their ascent into power upon “human rights” and “democracy” is no surprise.

For those receiving their news from establishment media networks in the US and Europe, Suu Kyi refusing to recognize the Rohingya, many of whom have lived in Myanmar for generations, may seem puzzling, even disappointing, or more disturbingly, an opportunity for excuses.

However, it was warned before recent elections – hailed by the Western media as “historic” – that not only would Suu Kyi fail to deliver on the utopian promises her party represented, and not only would her coming to power begin a process of recolonization by the British Empire’s successors in London and on Wall Street, but that it would also herald increasing persecution, violence, and eventually genocide against the Rohingya minority already long-targeted by Suu Kyi’s staunchest supporters.

As early as March 2015 in a previous article titled, “Myanmar: Meet Aung San Suu Kyi’s Saffron Mobs,”  the true nature of Suu Kyi’s support base was revealed with the “saffron” robed monks often the centerpiece of Suu Kyi and the NLD’s street demonstrations exposed as ultra-violent, genocidal, and very much Western-backed.

Not only did this backing including funding and organizational support, but it also included substantial public relations efforts across the Western media to cover up the true nature of their actions and motivations.

More recently, as Suu Kyi assumed power by proxy through a hand-picked “president” Suu Kyi openly pledged to “rule above,” it was warned that the stalwart support of Suu Kyi’s “saffron” mobs would be rewarded by giving them an increasingly free hand to target and eliminate Myanmar’s Rohingya people.

In the article titled, “Myanmar’s New Dictator: Aung San Suu Kyi,” it was explicitly stated that:

With the diminished role of the military in government and Suu Kyi’s self-serving and selective adherence to the rule of law, her supporters likely anticipate a free hand in actualizing their genocidal ambitions versus not only the Rohingya, but all of their political and sociocultural enemies. 

Not only is the prospect of wider violence a concern for the people of Myanmar, but the rise of political order in Myanmar unwilling or incapable of stemming genocide spells chaos for its neighbors, particularly Thailand.

Suu Kyi Warns Against Recognizing Rohingya

Considering this, it should hardly come as a surprise then, when the New York Times reported recently in their article, “Aung San Suu Kyi Asks U.S. Not to Refer to ‘Rohingya’,” that:

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s first democratically elected government since 1962, embraced that view last week when she advised the United States ambassador against using the term “Rohingya” to describe the persecuted Muslim population that has lived in Myanmar for generations. 

Her government, like the previous military-led one, will not call the Rohingya people by that name because it does not recognize them as citizens, said her spokesman, U Kyaw Zay Ya, a Foreign Ministry official.

New York Times’ screed, however, is predictably inaccurate. The “previous military-led one,” had in fact, attempted to grant the Rohingya additional rights, including the right to vote, and only backed down as a matter of concession when confronted by Suu Kyi’s violent street mobs.

Australia’s ABC News would report in a February 2015 article titled, “Myanmar scraps temporary ID cards amid protests targeting ethnic minorities without citizenship,” that (emphasis added):

Myanmar’s government says identity cards for people without full citizenship, including Muslim Rohingya, will expire within weeks.

The scrapping of ID cards snatches away voting rights handed to them just a day earlier (Tuesday), after Myanmar nationalists protested against the move.

The Rohingya, along with hundreds of thousands of people in mainly ethnic minority border areas, who hold the documents ostensibly as part of a process of applying for citizenship, will see their ID cards expire at the end of March, according to a statement from the office of president Thein Sein.

Those “nationalists” who protested the move to grant the Rohingya voting rights were Suu Kyi’s “saffron” street front as revealed in another early 2015 ABC News article titled, “Myanmar monk who called UN envoy a whore ‘could hurt Buddhism’.” It reported that:

A Myanmar Buddhist monk who called a UN human rights envoy a “whore” has violated his monastic code and could damage his religion, another prominent monk says, but he is unlikely to face censure.

Ashin Wirathu denounced Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, in a speech in Yangon on Friday, after she questioned draft laws that critics said discriminate against women and non-Buddhists.

Wirathu, also known as the “Buddhist Bin Laden,” led Aung San Suu Kyi’s “Saffron Revolution” in 2007 and his followers regularly fill the ranks of street mobs organized in support of her NLD party to this day.

The US is Coddling a Racist Dictator 

 As the US condemns the government in Damascus for using armed force against torrents of foreign-backed terrorists spilling over its borders – essentially an invasion – it is silent, even apologetic in regards to Suu Kyi’s serial and increasingly egregious offenses against ethnic minorities in Myanmar. The US is also silent in regards to Suu Kyi’s illegal seizure of power, having openly declared herself “above” the nation’s president, and with the New York Times itself describing her as “the country’s de facto leader.”The explanation for this is well-documented and straight forward. Suu Kyi, her political front, and the numerous NGOs helping to underpin both, are the financial, political, and geostrategic creations and perpetuations of the US and British governments, a decades-long project of undermining and overthrowing Myanmar’s political order, and replacing it with a client regime more “friendly” to special interests in London and on Wall Street.Notions of “democracy” and “human rights” are now clearly facades this agenda was couched behind,  cynically used against the previous military-led government to protect the rise of the West’s proxies, and then conveniently discarded once those proxies came to power.

Documentation and reporting on violations of human rights by Suu Kyi’s political front and its various supporters across the country will continue, quietly, and only be sensationalized if and when Suu Kyi and the NLD misstep regarding Western interests in the Southeast Asian state.

Currently, anti-Chinese protests are erupting at a mine operated in cooperation with Chinese business interests. Suu Kyi’s failure to close down the mine and give the US-funded protests the final word in the dispute, for example, would be cause to “leak” information regarding the true nature of Suu Kyi’s rise to power and the genocidal aspirations of her political front.

The predicted disillusionment of Suu Kyi’s supporters worldwide will continue – those who genuinely uphold the principles of defending human rights and representative governance cannot reconcile the fact that Suu Kyi and her NLD clearly represent neither.

For Myanmar’s neighbors, preparations for wider persecution of the Ronhingya should be made. As the violence and injustice escalate, refugees will increase, placing a burden on neighboring states, particularly Thailand. It is important for these states to focus on the cause rather than the consequences of this predictable tragedy, and focus on the foreign-funded, hypocritical nature of the NLD regime. Failure to confront and confound Western aspirations in Myanmar will invite similar scenarios to unfold elsewhere across Southeast Asia.

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

Socialist Party (PS) Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ decision to try to impose Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri’s labour law reform in the National Assembly without a vote marks a profound crisis of French democracy.

For two months, millions of workers and youth have protested the law, which three-quarters of the population opposes. And for a second time, the PS is trying to impose its social diktat without a vote in the Assembly. The same mechanism, Article 49-3 of the constitution, was used last year to impose the Macron Law on economic liberalisation.

This article allows a government to impose a law on the Assembly if the Assembly does not bring down the government in the ensuing 48 hours. This is an admission by Valls that the relentless drive to austerity and deeper exploitation carried out by the PS and the ruling classes of all the EU countries is no longer compatible with the traditional mechanisms of parliamentary democracy.

Amid loud booing from the deputies, Valls criticised “rebel” PS deputies who refuse to vote for the El Khomri law and who, since the installation of the second Valls government in the fall of 2014, have criticised it. Valls was angry that

“some, in the government’s parliamentary majority, refuse to look for a compromise. The coming together of all these oppositions could block the law. … As the country must advance, the council of ministers has authorized me to engage the responsibility of the government.”

Right-wing deputies presented a censure motion, as well as Left Front deputies, but this would need the support of around 60 deputies from the PS and its allies in order to pass—that is, a sizable number of “rebel” deputies would have to vote for it. Christian Paul, the leader of the “frondeurs,” eluded the question of whether he would support a censure motion against his own party. He said, “We refuse to abandon any constitutional possibilities. It is a collective decision that we will probably make tomorrow.”

In fact, the “rebel” opposition to the law is only a third-rate factor in the PS’ crisis. Despite their reservations, the “rebel” chiefs have always indicated that they wanted to reform France with austerity. Their general spinelessness has allowed them both to vote confidence in the second Valls government in 2014, and to refuse to vote for a censure motion against it after it imposed Article 49-3 to force through the Macron law. Indeed, had they brought down Valls, triggering new elections, the “rebels” would have risked losing their own seats.

What is driving the crisis inside the PS is a profound, ongoing international political reorientation of the masses, which is provoking a growing mobilisation of workers and youth across Europe and the world. After eight years of unprecedented capitalist crisis since 2008, working people are turning against the parties that for decades have passed for “left” or even the “extreme left,” but that are the instruments of a financial aristocracy that is ready for any policy against the working class to defend its exorbitant privileges.

In the United States, millions of young voters showed their deep disillusionment with Obama and the Democratic Party by voting for a candidate, Bernie Sanders, that claimed to be socialist. At the beginning of this week, Greek workers massively followed a strike call against the Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) government, which is trampling its electoral promises in order to impose the policy demanded by the EU.

In France, President François Hollande’s policy of austerity, war, and the state of emergency has provoked deep and growing disillusionment with the PS and the petty-bourgeois groups in the PS’ orbit, like the Left Front and the New Anti-capitalist Party. Tens of millions of angry workers know that these organisations offer no alternative to the existing social order. For four years, moreover, these organisations and the trade union bureaucracies mobilised no opposition to Hollande, whom they endorsed in the 2012 presidential elections.

For two months, something of 1968 was in the air; France was on the verge of a revolutionary explosion. However, the spark was absent: no formally-constituted party fought to mobilise the working class in a revolutionary struggle against the PS. The unions and petty-bourgeois groups that organised the #UpAllNight occupations of city squares in various cities in order to intervene among the youth blocked the mobilisation of the working class. As social anger grew, they did everything they could to dissipate the movement and allow security forces to attack young protesters.

A leading figure in #UpAllNight, economist Frédéric Lordon, even declared about the El Khomri Law that “we in no way demand that it be modified or rewritten, we do not demand rights, we do not demand anything at all, in fact.”

Having long put off the presentation of the El Khomri law to the Assembly, the PS has finally concluded that the youth mobilisations had been sufficiently isolated and repressed that the PS could try to impose them at the Assembly.

The only way to stop attacks on basic social rights is to renew the mobilisations and to launch a struggle against the PS government and its trade union and political allies. This would be possible only through building organs of class struggle independent of the trade unions, on the perspective of mounting a revolutionary struggle to bring down the PS government and appeal to broader popular opposition to austerity across France, to extend the movement beyond the borders of France.

It would be a fatal political error for the youth and workers to put their faith in the Assembly, which is dominated by the PS and explicitly right-wing, pro-austerity parties, to block the El Khomri law, as the trade unions have proposed. Like last year, when they allowed Hollande to pass the Macron law, the “rebels” do not intend to seek an end to austerity, but to preserve as long as possible the illusion that there is opposition to austerity inside the PS itself. They are hostile to youth and workers who are mobilising against PS austerity measures.

If they are now putting forward their reservations as to the law, it is to prevent the total discrediting of the PS in the long term and its collapse in the 2017 presidential elections, and a social explosion that could force the retraction of the El Khomri law and bring down the Valls government.

If the fate of the law is left in their hands, the unpopular policies of austerity and war will continue, either by the “rebels” capitulating to Valls’ 49-3 as last year, or by more complex negotiations between the French parliamentary parties and the various EU institutions.

Global Research Editor’s Note

This article from our archives was first published in October 2002, six months prior to the March 2003 US led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

As we recall, the justification to wage war on Iraq was the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (WMD). At the time, the US and its indefectible British ally were calling for regime change in Iraq. 

The author of this article is calling for an entirely different course of action which consists in implementing regime change in the US and the establishment of a sanctions regime against the US.

This text written in 2002 predicts with foresight what is happening today: the contours of a global military agenda which seeks to enforce US hegemony Worldwide.

While the proposal contained in this article may sound total unrealistic under present circumstances, it should nonetheless be addressed  by those committed to reversing the tide of global warfare, destruction and economic destabilization.  

It is of particular relevance in relation to the CIA covert support of terrorists in the Middle East, the soft coup in Brazil against president Dilma Rousseff, also supported by US intelligence, not to mention the installation of a Ne0-Nazi regime in Ukraine.

The author proposes sanctions against Washington rather than sanctions against Washington’s target countries.

The World is at a dangerous crossroads. The real “Axis of Evil” is the US-NATO war machine, which must be dismantled.

Michel Chossudovsky, GR Editor, May 15, 2016. 

*       *      *

What the United Nations Must Do

Rather than adopting the suggested regime change in Iraq through military force, the United Nations must instead consider an entirely different course of action. This new course is based upon the facts alone, rather than political pressure. A regime change is indeed necessary, but not in Iraq. The primary regime which needs to be changed, is the one found in Washington DC.

The greatest tyrant and true threat to world peace who needs to be ousted, is George W. Bush. The facts which clearly show the need for such a resolution against the U.S. are self evident…they demonstrate a “clear and present danger” to the world community. America is clearly a nation which aspires to global domination, through the use of the most expensive and high tech military the world has ever known. 

In demonstration of the above assertions, let us be very clear about America’s” 300+ billion dollar a year expense, for weapons of mass destruction. These include;

1) Atomic and hydrogen bombs.

2) The “Star Wars” weaponry of space satellites, and laser devices.

3) A host of biological weapons including anthrax, which it has used on its own citizenry and manufactured in its own laboratories.

4) Guided missile cruisers, Stealth bombers and aircraft carriers conveying the most advanced air-based offensives, ever to be used in the history of mankind.

5) Depleted uranium munitions, used repeatedly upon countries such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, causing birth defects and lingering mutilation of civilian populations.

6) The use of spies, covert CIA operatives and other agents, as well as a barrage of propaganda, which seeks to weaken, overthrow and exploit the sovereign nations of the world, primarily for the sake of installing pro-U.S.-corporate puppets who will do Washington’s bidding. (The fact that it has staged countless internal rebellions and coups within dozens of countries in the last five decades, is well documented and known. The U.S. constantly interferes with, and attempts to coerce, the mandates of foreign governments for the sake of its own special interests, and in the name of “democracy”. The real reason for this behavior is, of course, unfair economic advantage and bottomless greed.)

7) Nerve gas, tear gas, blistering agents, neurotoxins and poisonous compounds of all kinds.

8) “Smart” bombs”, “Bunker Buster” bombs, “Daisy Cutter” bombs, mines and laser or satellite guided munitions.

9) Teams of special forces troops, whose missions are designed for assassination, covert mass-murder and maximized destruction.

The United States possesses, and has openly discussed using, such weapons of mass destruction upon a great number of  countries. Among these nations are those in George Bush’s so-called “axis of evil” list, as well as many others which it says, “harbor terrorists”.

The so-called “War on Terror” [as formulated in 2001] targets Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Colombia, Nicaragua and many others. Upon these nations,  the U.S. has repeatedly issued a series of very aggressive and threatening statements to the effect of; “You are either with us or against us”, implying dire consequences of economic, diplomatic and military measures in the case of non-compliance.

The US has openly discussed the possibility of a “first strike” use of conventional nuclear warheads, and “tactical nukes” on the battlefield. Washington’s  military agenda consists in “winning  no matter what the cost of truth or human lives”, as a surrogate for sane foreign relations, has earned the wrath of the world.

U.S. belligerency has been a major contributor to international hostilities, instability, war and the creation of reactionary terrorist groups, as well as the oppression of peoples worldwide. Its irrational posture threatens to catapult the world into another, and probably final, world war.

The United States has repeatedly shown its willingness to target civilian populations with weapons of mass destruction, especially via the carpet-bombing of cities and infrastructures. It is the only nation to have ever used nuclear devices in war, and upon civilian targets.

Among the structures bombed have been desalinization plants, water treatment facilities, police stations, electrical substations and generators, radar and communications stations, hospitals, highway, railway and other transportation facilities, factories for the manufacture of metal, plastic and wood products, and numerous other civilian centers.

Countless examples of this behavior have been witnessed in both Iraq [since the 1991 Gulf War under the US-UK no-fly zone] and Afghanistan. The result has been millions of Iraqi and Afghan children dying of unnecessary diseases and malnutrition, due to a severe lack of food and safe drinking water. U.S. allies such as Israel, (whose military it literally makes possible) have also exhibited such behavior, as has Great Britain, through constant urging toward mindless, mutually accomplished war frenzies.

A primary export of the United States is weaponry of mass destruction, including so-called “conventional” weapons such as guided missile cruisers, bombers, small arms, mortars, rockets, tactical advisors, self guided missiles, attack helicopters, high tech surveilance and imaging systems, tanks, explosives and various other tools desigen primarily for the sake of destroying human life.

Added to this list of exports are multi-lingual propaganda, biological agents, tear and nerve gas, atomic weapons and their constituents, as well as technical advice regarding their construction, maintenance and use. The U.S. has frequently urged countries to use these weapons against each other so long as it benefitted its political interests, while simultaneously criticizing those who use them without American sanction.

Permanent State of War

The U.S. has repeatedly told its own citizenry to expect involvement in what amounts to a  Permanent State of War, due to the “War on Terror”. A large and increasing number of foreign nationals are being held in American prisons unlawfully, often without charges, legal due process or access to legal counsel. These persons are often subjected to psychological and physical torture due to their nationality or religious beliefs. Its’ Afghan prisoners of war in Cuba are treated without dignity, in violation of the Geneva Convention. At the same time, the U.S. has insisted that its military personnel must be held exempt from war crimes charges by the international community, regardless of their actions.

The United States repeatedly defies the resolutions and authority of the United Nations, making it clear that it views this body as merely a tool which can be occasionally used to achieve its special interests, rather than those of humanity in general.

America has also made it quite clear that if its demands are not met by the international community/United Nations, that it will act on its own regardless of their wishes, and in whatever manner it sees fit. This includes pre-emptive military invasion of any country which dares to oppose its policies, and for whatever flimsy, baseless justification it gives to the world as an excuse for such actions.

The international community must seriously ask itself, “Who’s next?” in this series of American invasions of sovereign lands. “Who will die next…by the thousands, tens of thousands or millions…” at the bloody hands of American imperialism?

For these reasons and others, it is hereby proposed that:

A United Nations resolution be created for the purpose of disarming and otherwise rendering harmless, the major threat to world peace which the United States has become. Toward this end the necessity of ousting its current dictator, George W. Bush, and the legislative bodies of that government which currently parrot him without serious debate, is self evident.

The functional means necessary to achieve this goal are hereby suggested. They include;

1) Economic sanctions and trade tarriffs, aimed at undermining the U.S. economy, thereby depriving its monstrous military apparatus of the necessary life blood to function.

2) The insistence of a complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from wherever they may be stationed around the world. This includes U.S. occupation forces already in conquered countries, (such as Afghanistan).

3) The elimination of world petroleum exports to the United States, as well as the necessary raw materials which make it’s industrial-military apparatus possible.

4) The withdrawal of foreign investment in U.S. companies, and their various enterprises. This includes the canceling of existing contracts with U.S. companies, especially those involved with the extraction of petroleum, the mining of precious metals, deforestation, sweat shop industries of clothing, plastics, electronics and other manufacture, as well as other vital resources from lands not within their territorial domain.

5) That U.S. military and civil leaders, especially George W. Bush and his entire cabinet, be brought to justice for their heinous participations in war crimes and crimes against humanity the world over, by the international courts. World leaders must understand that no one country can both make the rules and break them, when it comes to international justice.

6) The use of joint military force if necessary, to curb, restrict and otherwise prevent the American advance toward world domination. America must be deprived of what it most desires, which are the resources of others to fuel an extravagant lifestyle, and the support of bribed or bullied foreign leaders to accomplish a singularly selfish, unilateral agenda.

In effect, the United States must feel the full pressure of the  “community of nations”,  as it expresses its refusal of US imperialism around the globe.

The United States must also understand that its anti-humanitarian, corporate-minded, industrial-military schemes for global dominance are nothing short of those employed by Hitler, and other fascist dictators and governments, throughout the course of history. [Constantly declaring war and occupying one country after the next demonstrates this.]

The international community, and indeed the peoples of the entire world, find this attitude and behavior of the US administration unacceptable. They will no longer be coerced or made to feel insecure in their own places of residence and worship, at the behest of Washington’s whims.

Never in modern political history has it been so easy to “abolish the people” and simply erase 54 million votes cast in a free and fair presidential election.

Forget about hanging chads, as in Florida 2000. This is a day that will live in infamy all across the Global South – when what was one of its most dynamic democracies veered into a plutocratic regime, under a flimsy parliamentary/judicial veneer, with legal and constitutional guarantees now at the mercy of lowly comprador elites.

After the proverbial marathon, the Brazilian Senate voted 55-22 to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial for “crimes of responsibility” – related to alleged window dressing of the government’s budget.

This is the culmination of a drawn-out process that started even before Rousseff won re-election in late 2014 with over 54 million votes. I have described the bunch of perpetrators of what Brazilian creativity has termed‘golpeachment’ (a mix of coup – “golpe” in Portuguese – and impeachment) as Hybrid War hyenas.

Sophisticated golpeachment – supported by what amounts to an Electoral Inquisition College – has propelled Hybrid War to whole new levels.

Hybrid war hyenas tearing Brazil apart – Pepe Escobar

Hybrid War as applied to Brazil exhibited classic elements of a color revolution. Of course there was no need for no-fly zones or humanitarian imperialism to “protect human rights” – not to mention provoking a civil war. But considering the high resistance level of the victim state, where civil society is very dynamic, Hybrid War designers in this case bet on a mix of capitulation – and betrayal – of local elites, mixed with “peaceful protests” and a relentless mainstream media campaign. Call it ‘Civil War Light.’

That carried with it a fabulous cost-benefit ratio. Now the (immensely corrupt) Brazilian political system and the current executive/legislative/judiciary/mainstream media alignment can be used by the usual suspects for their geopolitical agenda.

Welcome to regime change light – politics, in a nutshell – as war by other means on the BRICS. A new software, a new operating system. Carrying a pathetic corollary; if the US is the Empire of Chaos, Brazil has now gloriously reached the status of Sub-Empire of Scoundrels.

Scoundrels galore

Rousseff may be accused of serious economic mismanagement, and of being incapable of political articulation among the shark pool that is (immensely corrupt) Brazilian politics. But she is not corrupt. She made a serious mistake in fighting inflation, allowing interest rates to rise to an unsustainable level; so demand in Brazil dramatically dropped, and recession became the norm. She is the (convenient) scapegoat for Brazil’s recession.

She certainly may be blamed for not having a Plan B to fight the global recession. Brazil essentially works on two pillars; commodity exports and local companies relying on the teats of the state. Infrastructure in general is dismal – adding to what is described as the “Brazilian cost” of doing business. With the commodity slump, state funds dwindled and everything was paralyzed – credit, investment, consumption.

The pretext for Rousseff’s impeachment – allegedly transferring loans from public banks to the Treasury in order to disguise the size of Brazil’s fiscal deficit – is flimsy at best. Every administration in the West does it – and that includes Clinton’s, Bush’s and Obama’s.

The Operation Car Wash investigation, dragging on for two years now, was supposed to uncover corruption in the Brazilian political system – as in the collusion of oil giant Petrobras executives, Brazilian construction companies, and political campaign financing. Car Wash has nothing to do with the golpeachment drive. Yet these have been two parallel highways converging to one destination: the criminalization of the Workers’ Party, and the definitive – if possible – political assassination of Rousseff and her mentor, former President Lula.

The golpeachment gang gets really incensed when they are identified as coup plotters. Still, they could not give a damn about the OAS, Mercosur, Unasur – all of them condemned the coup – not to mention the Holy Grail: the BRICS. Under Brutus 1, the Foreign Ministry, to be led by a sore loser senator, is bound to sink Brazil’s key role in BRICS cooperation, to the benefit of Exceptionalistan.

All one needs to know is that neither Nobel Peace Prize-winner Barack “kill list” Obama nor Queen of Chaos Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton condemned the ongoing regime change light/golpeachment. That’s predictable, considering Exceptionalistan’s NSA spied on Petrobras and Dilma Rousseff personally – the genesis of what would develop as the Car Wash investigation.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest limited himself to the proverbial platitudes: “challenging moment”; “trust in Brazilian democratic institutions”; or even “mature democracy.” Yet he added, significantly, that Brazil is “under scrutiny.”

Of course, the current stage of a very sophisticated Hybrid War strategy has been accomplished. But there are countless cliffhangers ahead. The Car Wash investigation – currently in slow motion – will pick up speed as a rash of dodgy plea bargains is already in store to create the conditions to criminalize for good not only Dilma Rousseff but the key piece in the chessboard: Lula.

Game over? Not so fast. The anti-golpeachment front does have a strategy: to imprint especially in “deep Brazil,” the vast masses of the working poor, the notion of illegality; to rebuild Rousseff’s image as the victim of a profound injustice; to re-energize the progressive political front; to make sure the Brutus 1 government will fail; and to create the conditions for the man who will come in from the cold to win the 2018 presidential elections.

Brazilian House of Cards? Bets could be made this may even end up as Anaconda, with Lula immobilizing the Hybrid War hyenas in a cobra clutch.

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.

This article was first published in in March 2015 under the title Are the Koch Brothers Behind Brazil’s Anti-Dilma March?

Oil barons, media moguls and politicians are leading the efforts to impeach recently re-elected President Dilma Rousseff.

“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 still work today.

“Reckless,” “alarming,” “disastrous,” “swashbuckling,” “playing with fire,” “crazy talk,” “lost in a forest of nonsense”: these are a few of the labels applied by media commentators to Donald Trump’s latest proposal for dealing with the federal debt. On Monday, May 9th, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate said on CNN, “You print the money.”

The remark was in response to a firestorm created the previous week, when Trump was asked if the US should pay its debt in full or possibly negotiate partial repayment. He replied, “I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.” Commentators took this to mean a default. On May 9, Trump countered that he was misquoted:

People said I want to go and buy debt and default on debt – these people are crazy. This is the United States government. First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, okay? So there’s never a default.

That remark wasn’t exactly crazy. It echoed one by former Federal Reserve ChairmanAlan Greenspan, who said in 2011:

The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.

Paying the government’s debts by just issuing the money is as American as apple pie – if you go back far enough. Benjamin Franklin attributed the remarkable growth of the American colonies to this innovative funding solution. Abraham Lincoln revived the colonial system of government-issued money when he endorsed the printing of $450 million in US Notes or “greenbacks” during the Civil War. The greenbacks not only helped the Union win the war but triggered a period of robust national growth and saved the taxpayers about $14 billion in interest payments.

But back to Trump. He went on to explain:

I said if we can buy back government debt at a discount – in other words, if interest rates go up and we can buy bonds back at a discount – if we are liquid enough as a country we should do that.

Apparently he was referring to the fact that when interest rates go up, long-term bonds at the lower rate become available on the secondary market at a discount. Anyone who holds the bonds to maturity still gets full value, but many investors want to cash out early and are willing to take less. As explained on MorningStar.com:

If a bond with a 5% coupon and a ten-year maturity is sold on the secondary market today while newly issued ten-year bonds have a 6% coupon, then the 5% bond will sell for $92.56 (par value $100).

But critics still were not satisfied. In an article titled “Why Donald Trump’s Debt Proposal Is Reckless,” CNNMoney said:

[T]he federal government doesn’t have any money to buy debt back with. The U.S. already has $19 trillion in debt. Trump’s plan would require the U.S. Treasury to issue new debt to buy old debt.

Trump, however, was not talking about borrowing the money. He was talking about printing the money. CNNMoney’s response was:

That can cause inflation (or even hyperinflation), and send prices of everything from food to rent skyrocketing.

The Hyperinflation that Wasn’t

CNN was not alone in calling the notion of printing our way out of debt recklessly inflationary. But would it be? The Federal Reserve has already bought $4.5 trillion in assets, $2.7 trillion of which were federal securities, simply by “printing the money.”

When the Fed’s QE program was initiated, critics called it recklessly hyperinflationary. But it did not even create the modest 2% inflation the Fed was aiming for. QE was combined with ZIRP – zero interest rates for banks – encouraging borrowing for speculation, driving up the stock market and real estate. But the Consumer Price Index, productivity and jobs barely budged.

While the Fed has stopped its QE program for the time being, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have jumped in, buying back massive amounts of their own governments’ debts by simply issuing the money. There too, the inflation needle has barely budged. As noted on CNBC in February:

Central banks have been pumping money into the global economy without a whole lot to show for it other than sharply higher stock prices, and even that has been on the downturn for the past year.

Growth remains anemic, and worries are escalating that the U.S. and the rest of the world are on the brink of a recession, despite bargain-basement interest rates and trillions in liquidity.

Helicopter Money Goes Mainstream

European economists and central bankers are wringing their hands over what to do about a flagging economy despite radical austerity measures and increasingly unrepayable debt. One suggestion gaining traction is “helicopter money” – just issue money and drop it directly into the economy in some way. In QE as done today, the newly issued money makes it no further than the balance sheets of banks. It does not get into the producing economy or the pockets of consumers, where it would need to go in order to create the demand necessary to stimulate productivity. Helicopter money would create that demand. Proposed alternatives include a universal national dividend; zero or low interest loans to local governments; and “people’s QE” for infrastructure, job creation, student debt relief, etc.

Simply buying back federal securities with money issued by the central bank (or the U.S. Treasury) would also get money into the real economy, if Congress were allowed to increase its budget in tandem. As observed in The Economist on May 1, 2016:

Advocates of helicopter money do not really intend to throw money out of aircraft. Broadly speaking, they argue for fiscal stimulus—in the form of government spending, tax cuts or direct payments to citizens—financed with newly printed money rather than through borrowing or taxation. Quantitative easing (QE) qualifies, so long as the central bank buying the government bonds promises to hold them to maturity, with interest payments and principal remitted back to the government like most central-bank profits.

As Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, wrote in response to the debt ceiling crisis in November 2010:

There is no reason that the Fed can’t just buy this debt (as it is largely doing) and hold it indefinitely. If the Fed holds the debt, there is no interest burden for future taxpayers. The Fed refunds its interest earnings to the Treasury every year. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion in interest to the Treasury, nearly 40 percent of the country’s net interest burden. And the Fed has other tools to ensure that the expansion of the monetary base required to purchase the debt does not lead to inflation.

An even cleaner solution would be to simply void out the debt held by the Fed. That was the 2011 proposal of then-presidential candidate Ron Paul for dealing with the debt ceiling crisis. As his proposal was explained in Time Magazine, today the Treasury pays interest on its securities to the Fed, which returns 90% of these payments to the Treasury. Despite this shell game of payments, the $1.7 trillion in US bonds owned by the Fed is still counted toward the debt ceiling. Paul’s plan:

Get the Fed and the Treasury to rip up that debt. It’s fake debt anyway. And the Fed is legally allowed to return the debt to the Treasury to be destroyed.

Congressman Alan Grayson, a Democrat, also endorsed this proposal.

Financial author Richard Duncan makes a strong case for going further than just monetizing existing debt. He argues that under current market conditions, the US could actually rebuild its collapsing infrastructure by just printing the money, without causing price inflation. Prices go up when demand (money) exceeds supply (goods and services); and with automation and the availability of cheap labor in vast global markets today, supply can keep up with demand for decades to come. Duncan observes:

The combination of fiat money and Globalization creates a unique moment in history where the governments of the developed economies can print money on an aggressive scale without causing inflation. They should take advantage of this once-in-history opportunity . . . .

Returning the Power to Create Money to the People

The right of government to issue its own money was one of the principles for which the American Revolution was fought. Americans are increasingly waking up to the fact that the vast majority of the money supply is no longer issued by the government but is created by private banks when they make loans; and that with that power goes enormous power over the economy itself.

The issue that should be debated is one that dominated political discussion in the 19^thcentury but that few candidates are even aware of today: should creation and control of the money supply be public or private? Donald Trump’s willingness to transgress the conservative taboo against public money creation is a welcome step in opening that debate.

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

This incisive article first published by Nation of Change and Global Research in February 2014 is of particular relevance in assessing Washington’s objective to topple reformist government in the Middle East and Latin America.

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Serbia’s Srdja Popovic is known by many as a leading architect of regime changes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere since the late-1990s, and as one of the co-founders of Otpor!, the U.S.-funded Serbian activist group which overthrew Slobodan Milošević in 2000.

Lesser known, an exclusive Occupy.com investigation reveals that Popovic and the Otpor! offshoot CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) have also maintained close ties with a Goldman Sachs executive and the private intelligence firm Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.), as well as the U.S. government. Popovic’s wife also worked at Stratfor for a year.

These revelations come in the aftermath of thousands of new emails released by Wikileaks’ “Global Intelligence Files.” The emails reveal Popovic worked closely with Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based private firm that gathers intelligence on geopolitical events and activists for clients ranging from the American Petroleum Institute and Archer Daniels Midland to Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Northrop Grumman, Intel and Coca-Cola.

Referred to in emails under the moniker “SR501,” Popovic was first approached by Stratfor in 2007 to give a lecture in the firm’s office about events transpiring in Eastern Europe, according to a Stratfor source who asked to remain confidential for this story.

In one of the emails, Popovic forwarded information about activists harmed or killed by the U.S.-armed Bahraini government, obtained from the Bahrain Center for Human Rights during the regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in fall 2011. Popovic also penned a blueprint for Stratfor on how to unseat the now-deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in September 2010.

Stratfor’s Global Activist Connector

Using his celebrated activist status, Popovic opened many doors for Stratfor to meet with activists globally. In turn, the information Stratfor intended to gain from Popovic’s contacts would serve as “actionable intelligence”—the firm billed itself as a “Shadow CIA”—for its corporate clients.

Popovic passed information to Stratfor about on-the-ground activist events in countries around the world, ranging from the Philippines, Libya,  Tunisia,  Vietnam,  Iran,  Azerbaijan,  Egypt,  Tibet,  Zimbabwe, Poland and Belarus, Georgia, Bahrain, Venezuela and Malaysia. Often, the emails reveal, Popovic passed on the information to Stratfor without the consent of the activists and likely without the activists ever knowing that their emails were being shuttled to the private security firm.

In the U.S., this investigation’s co-author, Carl Gibson (representing US Uncut), and the Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum had a meeting with Popovic shortly after their two respective groups used a media hoax to play a prank on General Electric, ridiculing the company over itsnon-payment of U.S. taxes.

The pair gave Popovic information about both groups’ plans for the coming year and news later came out that Stratfor closely monitored the Yes Men’s activities. (The blow photograph taken by Bichlbaum in April 2011 shows Popovic (L) and US Uncut’s Carl Gibson.)

During the Arab Spring, in Egypt in January 2011, Popovic received an interview invitation for an appearance on CNN. The first people he turned to for talking points were Stratfor employees, who provided him with five talking points to lead with.

Stratfor said Popovic’s main use for the firm was his vast array of grassroots activist contacts around the world.

“A little reminder that the main utility in this contact is his ability to connect us to the troublemakers around the world that he is in touch with. His own ability to discern situation on the ground may be limited, he mainly has initial contact with an asset and then lets them do their own thing,” reads a May 2010 email written by former Stratfor Eurasia Analyst Marko Papic. “He does himself have information that may be useful from time to time. But, the idea is to gather a network of contacts through CANVAS, contacts that we can then contact independently.”

Popovic was so well-received by Stratfor that he even got his wife, Marijah, a job there. She worked for a year from March 2010 through March 2011 as the weekend open source intelligence analyst at Stratfor. The other candidate for the job, Jelena Tancic, also worked for CANVAS.

“The Canvas guy [Popovic] is a friend/source [for Stratfor], and recommended her to us,” Stratfor’s Vice President of Analysis Scott Stewart said in a March 2010 email, leaving out that the two were dating at the time.

Popovic and his wife grew so close to Stratfor, in fact, that Popovic invited numerous members of the Stratfor staff to their wedding in Belgrade, Serbia.

Helping Stratfor Manufacture Revolutions

Stratfor saw Popovic’s main value not only as a source for intelligence on global revolutionary and activist movements, but also as someone who, if needed, could help overthrow leaders of countries hostile to U.S. geopolitical and financial interests. So useful was Popovic to Stratfor that the firm gave him a free subscription, dubbed “legit sources we use all the time as a company” by Papic.

In a June 2011 email, Papic referred to Popovic as a “great friend” of his and described him as a “Serb activist who travels the world fomenting revolution.”

“They…basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like ;),” Papic says in one email. Replying to a follow up to that email, he states, “They just go and set up shop in a country and try to bring the government down. When used properly, more powerful than an aircraft carrier battle group.”

In response to the “aircraft battle group” email, Stratfor Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton sardonically said that perhaps they could be sent into Iran. Emails also reveal Popovic served as an information source intermediary for on-the-ground activists in Iran, also informing Stratfor of the funding struggle for “democracy programs” there, as the U.S. government pushed a “soft power” agenda.

Another March 2010 email from Stewart to Burton said that CANVAS was “trying to get rid of Chavez,” referring to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In 2007, CANVAS trained activists to overthrow Chavez.

“If I remember correctly, we use hushmail communication to contact him regarding Venezuela due to the sensitivity of using a revolutionary NGO as a source considering we have clients who operate in country,” Papic said in a January 2011 email of Popovic.

Stratfor grew so enamored of CANVAS’s ability to foment regime change abroad that it invited Popovic to its Austin headquarters in 2010 to give seminars on the subject, and paid for his trip there.

CANVAS’s Goldman Sachs Cash

One of CANVAS’s major funders is Muneer Satter, a former Goldman Sachs executive who stepped down from that position in June 2012and now owns Satter Investment Management LLC. Stratfor CEO Shea Morenz worked for ten years at Goldman Sachs as well, where he served as Managing Director in the Investment Management Division and Region Head for Private Wealth Management for the Southwest Region.

Satter is meanwhile a major funder of the Republican Party, giving over $300,000 to Karl Rove’s Super PAC Crossroads GPS before the 2012 election, and another $100,000 to the Republican Governors Association in the first half of 2013 prior to the 2014 mid-term elections.

Living in a massive, $9.5 million mansion in Chicago’s North Shore suburb of Lake Michigan, Muneer also gave $50,000 toward President Obama’s inaugural fund in 2009.

When it came time to connect Muneer with the global intelligence firm, Popovic served as the middle man introducing Satter to Stratfor Chairman George Friedman.

“Whenever I want to understand the details behind world events, I turn to Stratfor,” reads an endorsement from Satter on Stratfor’s website. “They have the most detailed and insightful analysis of world affairs and are miles ahead of mainstream media.”

Otpor!: A Counter-History

To understand how Popovic came to aide Stratfor in its intelligence-gathering efforts, it’s crucial to examine Otpor! and CANVAS critically. A close examination demonstrates that Popovic was a natural choice to be a Stratfor informant and close advisor.

Often valorized by grassroots activists and Western media, there was far more to the “Bulldozer Revolution” that led to the overthrow of Milošević and subsequent Eastern European regimes than meets the eye.

“In principle, [Serbia] was an overt operation, funded by congressional appropriations of around $10 million for fiscal 1999 and $31 million for 2000. Some Americans involved in the anti-Milosevic effort said they were aware of CIA activity at the fringes of the campaign, but had trouble finding out what the agency was up to,” explained a 2000 investigative piece appearing in The Washington Post.

“The lead role was taken by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government’s foreign assistance agency, which channeled the funds through commercial contractors and nonprofit groups such as NDI and its Republican counterpart, the International Republican Institute (IRI).”

“In fact between 1997 and 2000 the National Endowment for Democracy and US government may have accomplished what NATO’s 37,000 bombing sorties had been unable to do: oust Milosevic, replace him with their favoured candidate Vojislav Kostunica and promote a neoliberal vision for Serbia,” independent scholar Michael Barker wrote for Z Magazine. “In much the same way as corporate front groups and astroturf groups recruit genuinely committed supporters, strategically useful social movements can potentially dominate civil society when provided with the right resources (massive financial and professional backing).”

Otpor! was so successful that it was ushered into Ukraine to help manufacture regime change there in 2004, using the template applied originally in Serbia with $65 million in cash from the U.S. government.

“We trained them in how to set up an organization, how to open local chapters, how to create a ‘brand,’ how to create a logo, symbols, and key messages,” an Otpor! activist told U.S.-funded media outlet Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. “We trained them in how to identify the key weaknesses in society and what people’s most pressing problems were—what might be a motivating factor for people, and above all young people, to go to the ballot box and in this way shape their own destiny.”

The overthrow of Milošević was accompanied by U.S.-funding for the creation of a robust media apparatus in Serbia, and Popovic’s wife worked at one of the U.S.-funded radio and TV outlets as a journalist and anchor B92 from 2004-2009.

“By helping Radio B92 and linking it with a network of radio stations (ANEM), international assistance undermined the regime’s direct and indirect control over news and information,” a January 2004 policy paper released by USAID explained. “In Serbia, independent media supported by USAID and other international donors facilitated the regime change.”

Critics point out that what happened in Eastern Europe was regime change, not revolution in any real sense of the term.

“[They] were not revolutions at all; actually, they were little more than intra-elite power transfers,’” Portland State University Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Gerald Sussman, explained in his book, “Branded Democracy: U.S. Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe.”

“Modern tactics of electioneering were employed to cast regime change as populist, which took advantage of the unstable and vulnerable situations in those regions following the breakup of the Soviet Union,” he wrote.

Given Otpor!’s ties to powerful factions in the U.S. government, perhaps it’s unsurprising that Popovic felt comfortable giving a lecture to the Air Force Academy in May 2010, and attending a National Security Council meeting in December 2009.

A powerful individual who lobbied the U.S. government to give money to CANVAS early on was Michael McFaul, the current U.S. Ambassador to Russia for the State Department and someone who “worked closely with” Popovic while serving as a Senior Fellow at theright-wing Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Critics Chime In, Popovic Responds

Maryam Alkhawaja, director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said she had known Popovic for several years as an activist and had no knowledge of his outside relationships before the Wikileaks release of Stratfor emails.

“Srdja is someone I’ve met more than once. He was very supportive of the Bahrain revolution, supportive of the human rights fight,” Alkhawaja said in a phone interview. “When he gave me their information, that’s what surprised me the most.”

Alkhawaja said that at the time she wasn’t aware of what kind of firm Stratfor was, but she became immediately suspicious after reading Stratfor’s questions to her. She never corresponded with Stratfor due to what she felt was the suspicious nature of the emails coming from the firm.

“It was a series of really weird intelligence agency-like questions, given that they knew I was working in a human rights group. They were asking questions like, who’s funding the party coalition, how many members do they have, questions that even I didn’t know the answers to,” she said. “The fact that they asked questions like that, made me question the motive behind the email I received. That’s why I never responded.”

“Whenever we get emails like that or were contacted by people who seemed very interested in asking intelligence agency-like questions, we usually block them, because we know they probably work for the government,” Alkhawaja continued. “Journalists know the kind of work we do so they wouldn’t ask those questions in the first place. I just found the email very weird and thats why I actually never responded.”

In a Skype interview, one of Otpor!’s co-founders, who left the movement and asked to maintain his confidentiality, said his primary concern from the Wikileaks emails was that Popovic was giving out activists’ information to a third party without their prior consent.

An interview with Popovic sang a different tune about CANVAS. He stated, “We definitely wouldn’t jeopardize any of our activists’ safety, so we always follow their lead and never expose them to anybody without their consent.”

Popovic also said CANVAS would speak to anyone and everyone—without any discrimination—about nonviolent direct action.

“CANVAS will present anywhere — to those committed to activism and nonviolent struggle, but also to those who still live in the Cold War era and think that tanks and planes and nukes shape the world, not the common people leading popular movements,” he said.

“If we can persuade any decision maker in the world, in Washington, Kremlin, Tel Aviv or Damascus that it is nonviolent struggle that they should embrace and respect – not foreign military intervention, or oppression over own population – we would do that.”

Yet, given Popovic’s track-record—and specifically, who buttered his bread during the long professional career he pursued in activism—critics say Popovic fit like a glove at Stratfor.

“A group of Serbs cannot lead a protest movement anywhere outside Serbia, but his techniques are nonetheless instrumental in helping achieve certain political aims,” Professor Sussman said in an interview. “He also serves as an intelligence gatherer in the process—of use to private and state intelligence agencies. That’s what Stratfor saw as his use.”

In relation to recent developments in Brazil and Venezuela, it should be understood that Washington seeks regime change in all Latin American countries which do not conform to US demands. This article by Timothy Guzman originally published in September 2015 focusses on Washington’s resolve to implement regime change in Ecuador. 

“The United States does not lack institutions that continue to conspire, and that’s why I am using this gathering to announce that we have decided to expel USAID from Bolivia” Bolivian President Evo Morales

Washington wants Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa removed from power. Washington says it is concerned about the freedom of the press in Ecuador because their non-government organization ‘Fundamedios’ funded and supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Freedom House among others is in the process of being shut down by the Correa government. According to Telesur’s report on September 10th “Fundamedios engaged “partisan political activities” by sharing material on its social media accounts, publishing articles unrelated to its stated mission and inserting itself into political debates in the country”which according to the National Secretariat of Communication or ‘Secom’ is prohibited under Ecuadorian law. The White House released a press statement on the same day:

We are very concerned about the increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of association in Ecuador, particularly the Ecuadorian government’s September 8 decision to initiate legal steps intended to dissolve Fundamedios, a non-governmental organization that monitors and defends press freedom.

An active civil society and tolerance of dissenting views are vital components of any democracy. We share international concern over the Ecuadorian government’s efforts to silence critical voices and deny its citizens access to a diversity of information and ideas. Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, among others, have all spoken out in opposition to the government’s latest action against Fundamedios.

According to TeleSur ‘Fundamedios’ is funded by the NED and USAID:

The work of the organization mostly consists of issuing “alerts” regarding alleged attacks against journalists in Ecuador.  The organization is funded in part through a US$84,000 grant from the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy. U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Adam Namm told El Telegrafo that Fundamedios received US$300,000 in 2012 from USAID, which is receives its funds from the U.S. government

USAID and NED are in the business of “Democracy Promotion” which uses public money (from U.S. taxpayers) for secretive operations with the intention to support pro-U.S. governments with the help of political and social movements abroad. The goal is regime change.

Why Washington wants Correa Removed from Power

Since 2009, the world has seen what the Obama administration has done to sovereign nations in the name of democracy. Libya, Honduras and the Ukraine are some of the recent examples of U.S. foreign policy that has only proved to be disastrous on many levels. Ecuador would be added to Obama’s list of countries ripe for regime change.

First, Correa is a staunch ally of Latin America’s leftist governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Argentina and Brazil who are critical of U.S. Foreign policy. What makes matters worse for Washington was the closure of the Manta Air Force Base in 2009, a promise made by Correa in a 2006 campaign.

Washington wants a new government in Ecuador to reopen the Manta Air Force Base for surveillance and the so-called “War on Drugs”. In 2008, the New York Times reported that President Correa fired high ranking military officials who were loyal subjects of Washington:

Mr. Correa — who this month dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence and commanders of the army, air force and joint chiefs — said that Ecuador’s intelligence systems were “totally infiltrated and subjugated to the C.I.A.” He accused senior military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration’s top ally in Latin America

The New York Times admitted that Correa’s administration is a challenge for U.S. policy makers regarding the “War on Drugs” and its presence in Latin America:

The gambit also poses a clear challenge to the United States. For nearly a decade, the base here in Manta has been the most prominent American military outpost in South America and an important facet of the United States’ drug-fighting efforts. Some 100 antinarcotics flights leave here each month to survey the Pacific in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game with drug traffickers bound for the United States.

But many Ecuadoreans have chafed at the American presence and the perceived challenge to the country’s sovereignty, and Mr. Correa promised during his campaign in 2006 to close the outpost

Reuters’ also reported in 2007 what Correa had said about the possibility of renewing the lease to the U.S. military“We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorean base,” Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy. “If there’s no problem having foreign soldiers on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.” Correa did make a good point.

Another reason Correa is on Washington’s “hit list” involves Wikileaks. Its founder Julian Assange was granted political asylum in an Ecuadorian embassy in London because he feared that if he ended up in U.S. custody over the secret files he released from Chelsea Manning to the world, could have him face an unfair trial in a U.S. courtroom. Ecuador granted Assange political asylum status where he still remains to this day. Neoconservative and former Presidential contender Sarah Palin said that Assange is an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands…Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” Palin was saying that Julian Assange is in the same league as Al Qaeda so killing him is justified. Ecuador did take a stand to protect the life and liberty of Julian Assange, something Washington does not take lightly.

Ecuador’s Lawsuit against Big Oil

Litigation and various lawsuits against Chevron-Texaco has been going on for more than two decades which oil drilling operations which occurred between 1972 and 1990 in the Amazon as RT News reported in 2013:

Ecuador’s foreign ministry announced on Friday that the US has seemingly denied visas to a delegation that was set to travel to the UN General Assembly in New York to present their case regarding an ongoing dispute against Chevron-Texaco. According to the ministry’s official announcement, the visas for the five Ecuadorian nationals were returned by the US Embassy in Quito “without any explanation.”

That group was to present testimony during a special event at the UN regarding the ecological impact caused by Chevron-Texaco’s oil operations in the Amazon rainforest region of Ecuador – which contaminated two million hectares, according to the country’s government. At stake is a US$19 billion judgment awarded by an Ecuadorean court against Chevron for cleanup and ecological damage, which is currently being fought at The Hague.

Correa in Washington’s Crosshairs

From alliances with anti-Washington governments to the closure of the Manta Air Force Base, to protecting Julian Assange and a lawsuit against Chevron-Texaco for environmental damages to the Amazon, Correa is a target for regime change. Just remember back in history when the CIA orchestrated a coup against Ecuadorian President Carlos Julio Arosemena simply because he criticized the U.S. government and supported the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro. Correa has done a lot more to diminish U.S. power in Latin America than any other president in its current history.

Correa has accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) earlier this year of “being increasingly involved in the political opposition with the avowed aim of dragging the country into chaos” and weaken the Ecuadorian government by “a series of coordinated nationwide protests.” Something Correa should be familiar with, after all the CIA attempted a coup in 2010 under Obama’s watch. One of the key reasons of the attempted coup by the Ecuadorian police was the Public Service Organic Law signed in 2010. It was designed to place regulations on public service workers namely the police and military and create a standard base of compensation instead of receiving their bonuses from foreign sources (the U.S. government) under Ecuadorian law. The main problem before the law was passed was that the police of Ecuador was receiving bonuses from the US embassy to spy on Ecuadorian politicians and others who were considered opponents of Washington.

Interestingly, Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was in Ecuador in June of that year to convince Correa to join the“Dark Side” but ultimately failed. U.S. Ambassador at the time was Heather Hodges who was assigned to disrupt and weaken the Correa government through USAID which contributed $40 million. The Ecuadorian police, military officials, USAID, NED, the CIA and a former president and a puppet of Washington during the Bush years, Lucio Gutiérrez who was ousted by the Ecuadorian people who demanded his resignation were all behind the coup plot.

Obama has 16 Months Left in Office

Will the Obama administration authorize another coup between now and 2016? It is Obama’s last 16 months in office since the first coup attempt. Correa knows he is on Washington’s “hit list” following his actions on Fundamedios who claim the freedom of speech is threatened as Washington threatens Julian Assange for exposing their crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq by killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they tried to keep secret. Washington is consistent when it ignores the sovereignty of nations and bypasses international law on a regular basis.

Recently, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie) and various trade unions called for a nationwide strike against the government, but many indigenous organizations opposed it. Telesur reported that WikiLeaks published diplomatic cables from the U.S. embassy in Ecuador from 2005 and 2006 that suggest members of CONAIE were interested in talking to U. S. Representatives within their own ranks including Vice President Santiago de la Cruz and Congressman Jorge Guaman who according to one cable “expressed interest in open dialogue.”Members of CONAIE also “asked the U.S. government to intervene with the president to get Conaie representatives back in these government institutions.” De La Cruz is described as “very interested in the possibility of visiting the U.S. on an exchange program,” and that he “appeared eager to engage in dialogue” with the U.S.  Wikileaks also released documents on Auki Tituana, a member of Pachakutik who also seemed interested.

Although representatives in both organizations have shown an interest in meeting with U.S. officials, other members are not so keen on the idea including Luis Macas, head of CONAIE. This is a positive sign that members within these indigenous organizations do not want to meet with U.S. diplomats.  Macas “has advised his organization to avoid dialogue with the U.S. government.” According to the cables “There appears to be division within the ranks of Pachakutik and (Conaie) on the level of interaction they should have with the Embassy”.

In 2007, Correa was an anti-neoliberal advocate was voted into power and has brought Ecuador political and economic stability. One other issue Washington is concerned about is what Correa said about the “Dollarization” of the Ecuadorian economy; he said it was a “technical error” after pro-US president Jamil Mahuad adopted the U.S. dollar in 2000. Correa did acknowledge that it is a difficult process to move out of the U.S. dollar at this time, however, he does support a regional South American currency that would allow Ecuador to move out of the dollar which is something U.S. officials’ do not like to hear especially when the dollar is about to lose its reserve currency status.

What is the CIA planning before Ecuador’s elections in 2017?

It is important to note that if a presidential recall vote were to take place in Ecuador today at least 60% of the people would vote for Correa according to the main-stream media’s ‘CNN Spanish’ poll this past June. Correa proposed constitutional reforms including two bills that would increase inheritance and capital gains taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Anti-government protests followed, which later turned violent. That is something Washington wants to see more of right before Ecuador’s 2017 presidential elections.

This article was first published in March 2016.

At every turn of Brazil’s political crisis — today it’s ex-president Lula’s struggle to take a spot in President Dilma Rousseff’s cabinet — there is a group of protagonists looking familiar who are neither politicians nor anti-corruption investigators.

They are young, organized right-wing demonstrators, and they may be a scale-tipping force in the question of whether Brazil’s Congress votes to impeach the current president.

Engineering student Pedro Souto, 22, rode atop one of the soundcars with a Brazilian flag draped around his shoulders like a Superman cape during Rio’s Sunday protest. More than 200,000 people turned out. The soundcar had a banner announcing the Free Brazil Movement, or Movimento Brasil Livre, one of the main groups that organized nationwide protests on March 13 and that continues to call members to the streets with each new development in Brazil’s political drama (which now come daily).

protesters Free Brazil Movement Rio de Janeiro, Credit:Catherine Osborn

The Free Brazil Movement was founded by members and alums of another group that’s been spreading fast in this country: Estudantes Pela Liberdade, “Students for Liberty.” By liberty, they mean libertarian: they favor cutting government spending, privatizing state companies and reducing regulation.

These policies are far from how Brazil is set up right now. Like many Latin American countries, Brazil is a social welfare state with universal healthcare and many companies that are partly government-owned.

But for the last few decades, pro-market, anti-regulation think tanks have been growing in the region. Economist Bernardo Santoro is part of that movement in Brazil. He recalls attending an event in Rio de Janeiro state in 2012 that was organized in part by a group called Atlas Network.

There, attendees talked about the future of libertarianism in Brazil, brainstorming “ideas for how the movement in Brazil would grow up, and bringing Estudantes Pela Liberdade — Students for Liberty — to Brazil was one of those ideas.”

Both Atlas and Students for Liberty are based in the US, and both have received tens of thousands of dollars in funding in the last five years from American sources like the John Templeton Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation, the billionaire-backed group known for supporting far-right causes.

Details of John Templeton Foundation in screenshot below

Students for Liberty’s Brazil chapter got its start with grants from American donors, but now the group is mostly funded from inside Brazil, according to director Juliano Torres. And it’s big, with more than a thousand members.

Now, roughly half of all Students for Liberty members worldwide — who get training materials on how to plan events, raise money, and speak in public — are Brazilians. A handful have traveled to the US for trainings, and many discuss economic policy using references such as the Cato Institute and US Senator Rand Paul.

Protesters in Rio de Janeiro. Credit C. Osborn

Torres said the student libertarian movement grew so much in Brazil because “we took advantage of the unpopularity of the president and the Worker’s Party.” In 2014, the Brazilian economy slowed and began to contract dramatically, and headlines featured the Worker’s Party’s involvement in the Petrobras bribery scheme.

“Students for Liberty is not a political organization,” says Torres, “but we encourage that our members are politically active.” In 2014, members and alums of Students for Liberty founded the Free Brazil Movement and helped found the Vem Pra Rua movement in order to protest against Rousseff. Rousseff has not been charged in the Petrobras anti-corruption probe, but since last March, the Free Brazil Movement has tried to build pressure to get her impeached in favor of a more pro-business president.

In December, Brazil’s house speaker Eduardo Cunha of the PMDB party filed impeachment charges, alleging illegal use of money in her 2014 budget.

Students for Liberty proudly featured Brazil’s antigovernment protests in its fall 2015 quarterly report.

“What’s going on in Brazil right now, we want to learn from and we want to figure out how to take their best practices to implement in other places,” says DC-based Students for Liberty coordinator Sam Teixeira. Teixeira says in political situations where the government is unpopular, it is easier to advocate for opening markets as a solution.

“At the end of the day,” says Teixeira, “we want to see people doing well, people happy, people prosperous. Being able to live the life that they choose and have autonomy. Those are things that don’t exist in Brazil or most parts of the world. We really hope and believe that the libertarian philosophy can bring prosperity and happiness to the world.”

Political scientist Celso Barros, who is a columnist for Folha de São Paulo newspaper, says “the majority of Brazilians would never vote for libertarian policies. All you need to do is walk into the nearest favela to have someone explain to you that we’re a long way from meritocracy in Brazil.”

Barros says some economic reforms are necessary in order to make it easier to do business in Brazil. But he adds that the increasing likelihood that President Rousseff won’t finish her term — be it because of impeachment or a ruling about her 2014 campaign finances — means that in the short run, Brazilians are likely to see economic policies that are harsher than voters would accept through the normal election process.

The PMDB party would assume Brazil’s presidency in the case of impeachment, a party which Barros says “is not well-known for having efficient managers. It’s well-known for having corrupt politicians.”

The PMDB has quietly released an economic platform that is farther to the right than their historic party line. About concrete changes we’re likely to see, “the right would like to have less labor regulations,” says Barros. “They would love for unions to be less powerful.”

Bernardo Santoro says regardless of who next assumes the presidency, the Free Brazil Movement will continue to push for reducing the size of government.

For Barros, what’s most concerning is the precedent set for future stability in Brazil if Rousseff is impeached on what he describes as “weak charges.” He, too, sees an echo of American politics in young groups leading the impeachment charge: “These guys are clearly inspired by the Tea Party and the recent radicalization of the Republican Party.”

Barros says what’s ahead for Brazil is unknown.

 A Chaldean priest who oversees hundreds of Iraqi Christian refugees displaced by the Islamic State says Iraqi Christians blame the United States government for not protecting them and their ancient communities from being conquered by the barbaric terrorist group.

Father Douglas al-Bazi, who runs the Mar Elias Church and displacement center in Ainkawa, is in the U.S. this week to raise awareness about the plight facing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians who are forced to live as refugees after IS [also known as ISIS or ISIL] overtook their homes and villages in the Nineveh plains of Iraq in 2014.

Bazi, who is originally from Baghdad and was kidnapped from his church and tortured for days by Islamic militants in 2006, shared his story with a group of reporters and writers in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday and discussed the Iraqi Christian community’s aggravation with the U.S. government.

Iraqi Christians pray as they attend a Good Friday mass at a church in Baghdad, Iraq, March 25, 2016.

As IS conquered Christian and Yazidi towns in Northern Iraq, many Yazidis and Christians were forced flee their homelands or risk being killed for their faith. It wasn’t until IS began making its way toward the Kurdish town of Erbil later that year that the U.S.-led coalition finally started its airstrike campaign against the militant organization.

Bazi explained that the timing of the airstrike campaign has left many religious minority refugees wondering why the U.S. did not act sooner to save their own villages.

“When the Islamic State attacked, no one took action until the Islamic State arrived to Erbil. [It wasn’t until then] when the Americans started bombing the Islamic State,” Bazi said in broken English. “So the Yazidis and Christians, they ask why America just helped those people and they forget about us? Also another group called Shabak, they had the same feeling.”

As it emerged in September 2015 that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had discovered water on Mars, many around the world celebrated the discovery. However, that discovery left suffering Iraqi Christians families who are living in 10-by-15-foot iron containers in the Mar Elias displacement center with a sour taste, Bazi said.

“My people, they [ask why] NASA can find water on Mars but they were not able to find the Islamic State [when] they were just in the middle of desert by hundreds, [with] Toyota cars everywhere,” Bazi explained. [They were] just in the middle of the desert and [the U.S.] was not able to find them by satellite. This is a disappointment.”

Although the U.S. State Department designated IS’ treatment of Christians and others in Iraq and Syria as a genocide in March, the U.S. has done very little since then to provide help for the suffering Christian refugee communities in Erbil, Bazi said.

“My people blame America for what has happened. [The] genocide [designation] was the first time the Americans said, ‘We care,'” Bazi stated. “But caring means more than words. It means taking action for my people.”

A humanitarian source close to the situation in Iraq said that although millions of dollars in foreign government aid is being sent, very little to none of that money is going to help Christians and other religious minorities because the money is being funneled through the Iraqi government and not given directly to the agencies and organizations providing for the refugees.

The source added that most of the funds used to help support the Christian refugees are being funneled through churches and dioceses who are working with them directly.

Additionally, Christians in Iraq and Syria are largely overlooked for resettlement in the U.S. The U.S. relies heavily on resettling refugees who register with United Nations refugee camps. However, most Christians avoid registering with U.N. camps due to fear of being persecuted by Muslims.

Bazi added that once IS is defeated, he doesn’t believe many Christians will want to go back to their homes and villages, knowing what has happened in those places.

In order to give the Christians and other religious minorities confidence that things will be different in a post-IS Iraq, Bazi stresses that the Constitution that was passed in 2005 during the U.S. occupation must be changed.

“Our constitution actually it is Part 2 of Quran,” Bazi argued. “The Western country when they looked at our Constitution, they read just the first part, that it is based on democracy. They say, ‘Oh yea, that’s good,'” Bazi explained. “But they ignore the other point [that states] you cannot have any law against Shariah and Quran. That makes me forget about the first part [about democracy].”

The Iraqi constitution does in fact state in Section 1, Article 2: “No law may be enacted that contradicts the established provisions of Islam.”

Teams of United States Special Operations commandos have been active in Libya since last year, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing statements from unnamed US military officers.

The American soldiers are operating from secret bases that were established last year, without any public disclosure, in eastern and western Libya, near Benghazi and Misurata. The US troops are scouting targets and recruiting proxy forces as part of “contact teams,” according to the Post.

Members of the American military “began making visits to Libya last spring and established twin outposts six months later,” military sources told the Post, and US personnel have been “cultivating relationships among forces that are mobilizing for a possible assault against the Islamic State in its Sirte stronghold.”

On Monday, Italy’s foreign ministry announced that Rome will lead talks, scheduled to begin in Vienna on Monday, aimed at shoring up commitments from a coalition of governments for a much larger NATO intervention in Libya, to include thousands of Italian ground forces.

A list of attendees for the Libyan summit has not been forthcoming, but Tunisia’s foreign minister assured media that “regional foreign ministers and other important figures will be there.”

The war preparations are being justified behind the lying slogans of “support for the unity government” and their “war against the Islamic State.”

In reality, the imperialist powers are seeking a fig leaf of legality for predatory operations aimed at securing various neocolonial interests and ambitions within the shattered country, which has descended into chaos and fratricidal violence since being utterly destroyed by the 2011 NATO war to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

The claims of the US and European governments to be intervening for the purpose of combating ARE is especially cynical. The 2011 smashing of Libya was carried out with the support of the same Islamist extremist militias who are now identified as the mortal enemy. These elements were mobilized first on behalf of the war first against Gaddafi, and then against the Assad regime in Syria, where US-backed proxy forces were massed and equipped as part of covert operations overseen from the US CIA station in Benghazi.

The revelation that US forces have been engaged in Libya for months comes just days after reports surfaced that American ground forces were secretly deployed to southern Yemen two weeks ago. Both operations have been launched without even a facade of public discussion or democratic process, and acknowledged only after the fact, through anonymous leaks to the media.

Behind a thick curtain of secrecy, the Obama administration and Pentagon leadership are carrying out a quantitative deepening of global US militarism and war-making, encompassing ever greater areas of Africa and Eurasia.

President Obama, having played up his African heritage during his 2008 presidential campaign, has presided over an explosive growth of US neocolonial garrisons and outposts stretching from Libya to the Congo and from Somalia to Senegal, bound together by a “hippo trench” of logistics hubs, bases and infrastructure that snakes through no less than 12 nominally sovereign African territories.

According to former US Defense Department Special Operations Senior Officer William Wechsler, the US operations in Libya, which were revealed publicly for the first time Thursday, are only one example of a growing number of undeclared US interventions and wars in countries referred to in the internal jargon of the Obama administration as “areas outside of active hostilities.”

In Libya and through growing areas of West, Central and Northern Africa, US military and intelligence units are “mapping local networks both friendly and unfriendly,” Wechsler said.

US military leaders speak openly in leading journals about a looming expansion of US-led commando wars throughout West Africa and the Lake Chad Basin.

US General Bolduc recently described the countries surrounding Lake Chad as “ground zero for the Islamic State in Africa.”

In April, US military officials warned that ISIS is deepening its relations with Boko Haram, the northeastern Nigeria-based Islamist faction which has served as the central pretext for the Pentagon’s buildup of US forces in and around Nigeria, now the continent’s leading oil producer and an economic powerhouse.

In the past year, Washington has orchestrated a proxy invasion of Nigeria, led by the Chadian and Cameroonian militaries. These forces are backed by US advisors and increasingly armed with high-tech US weapons. This is part of a steadily increasing US buildup that includes hundreds of US and NATO troops, some $200 million funds to train security forces in a handful of Central African states and $50 million for the construction of a drone base in Agadez, Niger.

American soldiers and intelligence personnel are active in every single country in Africa, and military contingents have been deployed to a laundry list of countries, including Somalia, Uganda, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Mali and Burkina Faso.

The US military presence is complemented by deepening collaboration with the most reactionary dictatorships on the continent. The Obama administration has provided political leadership for the escalation, working to install the pro-imperialist former dictator Muhammadu Buhari in power in Nigeria and deepening ties with Chadian dictator President Idriss Deby, who received a personal visit from leading White House power-broker Samantha Powers last month.

The new carve-up of Africa is part of a general process of world reaction, through which the former colonial countries are being restored to conditions of direct rule by imperialist militaries, in league with far-right, openly pro-imperialist military dictatorships and satraps at the local level.

The original US-NATO war against Libya was planned as a means to “kick in the door” for the new imperialist redivision of Africa, and opening the way for a huge expansion of Western military operations stretching into the southern reaches of the continent. In the aftermath of the 2011 war, the Sahara and Sub-Saharan regions have been flooded with mercenaries and weaponry, closely followed by imperialist armies, which invaded Mali in a French-led intervention less than two years after the start of the Libyan war.

Thousands of French troops have subsequently established a permanent presence in the Sahel region.

There can be little doubt that the plans being hatched in Vienna next week will involve further bloody depredations against Libya and the entire continent, to be carried out by the US and European militaries and intelligence services.

The American FBI has a secret cache of documents, more than 80,000 pages in all, concerning possible ties between the 9/11 hijackers and an upper-class Saudi family who lived in Florida and fled the United States two weeks before the suicide hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people.

A federal judge in Tampa, Florida has been reviewing the documents for more than two years as a consequence of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a trio of online reporters—Anthony Summers, Robbyn Swan and Dan Christensen. The review process has been extremely slow because of restrictive FBI rules on how many pages Judge William Zloch may access at any one time.

The existence of the document trove was revealed Friday in a front-page article in the US-based web publication the Daily Beast. The article identified the Saudi family as Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud, who was the daughter of Esam Ghazzawi, an adviser to a nephew of Saudi King Fahd. Ghazzawi owned the home in which they were staying in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida. The home was raided by the FBI after 9/11 but the residents had all departed in evident haste on August 30, 2001.

Visitor logs in the community, known as Prestancia, showed that the alleged ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammad Atta, had visited al-Hijji, along with two other 9/11 hijackers, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan Al-Shehhi.

Former Senator Robert Graham, co-chair of the joint congressional committee that investigated the 9/11 attacks, told the Daily Beast that he had never known of the FBI documents on the Sarasota home until they were uncovered by the investigative journalists. He later viewed a portion of these records and confirmed that they identified the three 9/11 hijackers as visitors.

Throughout this period, the FBI had denied that the al-Hijji family had any connection to the 9/11 attackers. The agency changed its story only when Graham said he would testify under oath about what he had read in the file of documents. At this point the FBI conceded the existence of 35 pages of documents.

When Judge Zloch ordered a further search for records, the Tampa office of the FBI came back with 80,226 pages of files marked PENTTBOM, which stands for “Pentagon/Twin-Towers Bombing” in FBI jargon. Judge Zloch has been reviewing these since May 1, 2014 and has given no date by which he expects to finish.

The al-Hijji family exited its Sarasota home, leaving behind three cars, an open safe and disarray that suggested a hasty departure. The security guards at the gated community noted their departure, but did not consider it suspicious until the 9/11 attacks two weeks later.

The FBI initially made only a perfunctory response and did not open a formal investigation until eight months later, in April 2002, “based upon repeated citizen calls” about the conduct of the family during their stay in the United States. One of the few documents released said that this investigation “revealed many connections” between a member of the family “and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks.”

The Daily Beast report adds to recent revelations of evidence of Saudi regime ties to the 9/11 hijackers that has been covered up by the US government under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Graham has actively campaigned for the release of 28 pages of material on the Saudi-9/11 connection comprising an entire chapter of the joint congressional committee report on the 9/11 attacks in which he participated. This material has been withheld for more than 13 years. On April 10, Graham was the main witness interviewed by the CBS program “60 Minutes” in a segment on the continuing cover-up of Saudi-9/11 connections.

In an op-ed column this week in the Washington Post, Graham reiterated his demand for release of the 28 pages, noting that President Obama had promised a decision on declassifying the material by next month. Graham denounced CIA Director John Brennan, who responded to the “60 Minutes” program by publicly opposing any release of the 28 pages.

Also Friday, the Guardian newspaper published an interview with a former member of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission appointed by President George W. Bush, who flatly declared that there was extensive Saudi involvement in supporting the hijackers. Of the 19 perpetrators, 15 were Saudi citizens, most of them having recently arrived in the United States when they seized control of four jetliners on September 11, 2001.

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a Republican, told the newspaper: “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government.” While only one Saudi consular official in Los Angeles, Fahad al-Thumairy, was implicated in supporting the hijackers, according to the official account, Lehman believes that at least five officials were involved.

Al-Thumairy was linked to the two hijackers who lived in San Diego before the 9/11 attacks, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, but he was deported rather than charged with a crime. The other five, whom Lehman did not name, “may not have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated. There was an awful lot of circumstantial evidence.”

Another former 9/11 commissioner, who spoke to the Guardian without direct attribution, recounted what the newspaper called “a mostly unknown chapter of the history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of the panel’s staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented in the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi officials—especially at lower levels of the government—were part of an al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after they arrived in the US.”

The 9/11 Commission director, Philip Zelikow, who later served in the Bush administration as senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, fired one staffer who protested over the suppression of the Saudi ties to 9/11 after she obtained a copy of the suppressed 28 pages of the joint congressional committee report. Zelikow and the commission members overruled staff protests on the soft-pedaling of the Saudi connection.

These press reports confirm what the World Socialist Web Site has long maintained: the official 9/11 investigations were a series of whitewashes aimed at concealing the role of the Saudi government and US intelligence agencies during the period leading up to the terrorist attacks.

There has long been evidence that sections of the US government were aware of the plot to hijack and suicide-crash airliners, but turned a blind eye because such an atrocity could be used to stampede American public opinion and provide a pretext for escalating US military interventions throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.

Venezuela e Brasil: exemplos da reedição do bombardeio made in USA à democracia na região. Venezuela é exemplo à sociedade brasileira, que parece sofrer da amnésia mencionada por Eduardo Galeano, ao seguir a mídia e clamar por saídas inconstitucionais ao país

Dois assassinatos de líderes bolivarianos, em Caracas e em Trujillo, de mais dois policiais da Guarda Bolivariana chamados para conter manifestações violentas da ultradireita em Táchira, e a de um ativista pelos direitos humanos pró-governo em Caracas, tudo isso em menos de uma semana: silêncio absoluto por parte da ditadura da informação da grande mídia, das principais organizações por direitos humanos, das elites internacionais e do regime de Washington.

Enquanto isso no Brasil, encontra-se no perfil do Movimento Endireita Brasil no Fez-Se Buque do Mark Zückerberg (“laranja” da CIA), um dos agrupamentos que lideram as manifestações massivas no gigante sul-americano estes “comentários” (apenas para citar os mais “moderados”, já que outros tantos não poderiam ser citados aqui por respeito á família, à moral, à religião, aos bons costumes e à democracia), estas seguintes mensagens publicadas nos dias 3 e 4 de abril:

Fabiana Collistet : “Vim ver os comentários pra entender essa postagem e Vejo um monte de comentários esquerdistas”

Movimento Endireita Brasil: “Estamos limpando.”

Ubiratan Carlos Barcellos: “Bolsonaro vem ai 2018!!!!” [O deputado Jair Messias Bolsonaro, PP-RJ, é militar da reserva e defende retorno à ditadura. Algumas frases de Bolsonaro: “O erro da ditadura foi torturar e não matar”; “Pinochet devia ter matado mais gente”; “Mulher deve ganhar salário menor porque engravida”; “Parlamentar não deve andar de ônibus”]

George Sousa Lima: “Esses filho de uma p+++ não treina nada não sabe dar nem um soco e fica ameaçando! Eu com minha faixa branca de jiu jitsu dou conta de uns 20 desses velhos buxudos aí! Pode vim PTralhas!”

André Fabiano: “Eu só queria uma guerra civil! Iria caça-los sem misericórdia! Fora Dilma! Fora PT.”

Marcos Vinicius Brito: “O povo tem que entender que o PT ta matando! E oque vc faz com quem quer te matar?”

Oscar Mendes Filho: “Bora oprimir o lixo petralha.”

Dave Johanson: “bando de pão com mortadela com medo de perder a mamata kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk”

Este abaixo, esbanjando o velho espetáculo da despolitização coletiva, imperante também no Brasil de hoje principalmente entre os setores reacionários:

Yjd Rch: “Eu não sabia o que era socialismo/ comunismo, só ouvia o meu avo, que já é falecido, dizer, que se o Lula e PT ganhar, o Brasil ia falir, porque o PT é comunista, eu ouvia ele falar isso quando eu ainda era criança, no entanto eu não entendia, porque ele falava isso, eu não tinha idéia do que era isso; até estudei sobre isso no Colégio, só que os professores nunca explicavam, de fato, o que era o socialismo / comunismo, eles sempre diziam que o socialismo / comunismo era bom, e muitos acreditavam no que os professores falavam, porém eu, apesar de não saber, realmente, o que era socialismo / comunismo, sabia que não era bom, por isso, nunca votei em partidos socialistas / comunistas”

Detalhe: em uma das postagens, o movimento em questão alegava: “Não tá fácil pra ninguém! Em tempos de crise, devemos nos contentar… [imagem de um pote de iogurte de plástico]”. Outro detalhe: o Movimento Endireita Brasil, cujos líderes e seguidores são de classe média e alta, é o mesmo que, dia 1º, fez as vezes de Silvio Santos e ofereceu mil reais a qualquer cidadão não por mera benevolência nem muito menos com fins assistenciais escolares/familiares, mas para que algum desses brucutus de classe média/alta agredisse o ex-ministro Ciro Gomes que jantava em São Paulo, e fosse capaz não apenas de gerar reação deste mas também de filmar o entrevero.

Tais palavras são apenas uma pequena mostra da truculência e do revanchismo que se traduzem em violência nas ruas, tudo isso subproduto do ódio de classe e de cor fortemente enraizados na elitista sociedade brasileira, motores da agitação social que toma conta do país nestes tempos. País sem lei para coibir este tipo de ameaça e ofensa, onde não há justiça (por mais que as aparências enganem) com um governo esperadamente de joelhos diante deste tenebroso cenário.

Enquanto a reação política anda de mãos dadas com a ignorância (cuja figura internacionalmente emblemática é o ex-senador norte-americano, Joseph McCarthy, podendo muito bem ser sua versão brasileira o pastor Marco Feliciano), essa onda de ódio e terrorismo é promovida pelo monopólio midiático, e para quem ainda tem alguma dúvida, pergunte-se: e se a situação fosse invertida, qual seria a abordagem midiática predominante?

E mais: qual seria a posição aberta do regime de Barack Obama e dos alegados defensores internacionais dos direitos humanos?

Contudo, a principal pergunta que se coloca especialmente dado que existe perfeita conexão internacional entre os fatos, não apenas entre Brasil e Venezuela mas em toda a região inclusive por parte de personagem e de instituições manipulando esses acontecimentos, é: o que ocorre, e para onde se quer levar a América Latina?

Guerra contra o Povo na Venezuela

Logo no início das violentas manifestações oposicionistas no país com as maiores reservas petrolíferas do mundo, exatamente a Venezuela, em fevereiro de 2014 (agitações comprovadamente financiadas e treinadas por Washington como em outros países que, de alguma maneira, contrariam aos interesses de Tio Sam), na contra-mão da abordagem midiática predominante este autor, sem nenhuma aptidão para ser profeta, afirmou convictamente no Observatório da Imprensa, Brasil (não sem ter sido ridicularizado e ofendido), exatamente em 24 de fevereiro daquele ano:

“Essa nova ofensiva fascista deve fracassar na Venezuela. Os mais recentes acontecimentos e a estrutura sócio-política venezuelana apontam que a democracia vencerá uma vez mais, a vontade popular cingirá novamente o país vizinho com a cor de vinho ancestral em nome da continuidade da Revolução Bolivariana. Tão apaixonada quanto lógica por excelência.”

Quando o caos estava instalado em microfocos no país caribenho (contrariamente ao que vendia a mídia, que as manifestações estavam espalhadas por todo o país) e tudo parecia perdido diante da opinião pública mundial em relação ao governo bolivariano, com direito à comemoração recheada de chacotas por parte dos “comentaristas” do oligopólio midiático, eis que a situação havia se revertido pró-governo: desmascarada diante de toda a nação e do mundo bem informado, a oposição acabou sem saída, completamente desmoralizada, e por conseguinte, os violentos manifestantes que, de estudantes, não tinham nada.

Quase um mês depois, vitória tão democrática quanto pacífica da demonizada República Bolivariana da Venezuela: para que isso ocorresse, a sociedade civil desempenhara papel fundamental com senso cidadão e ativismo exemplar, em peso nas ruas das principais cidades do país após dias do espetáculo do horror da ultradireita que parecia dominar determinados pontos do país. Diminuiu os espaços dos agressivos cidadãos de classe média e alta, “profissionais” na arte de aplicar golpe (que já havia ocorrido em 2002 contra Hugo Chávez, igualmente sem sucesso).

A democracia havia vencido novamente na Venezuela. O silêncio midiático, por sua vez, era internacionalmente ensurdecedor.

Desconsiderava-se durante aquelas semanas efervescentes que o presidente Nicolás Maduro, há menos de um ano eleito, atingia popularidade em alta segundo pesquisas independentes, e pouco depois seria pontuado o líder mais popular da América Latina. Outra óbvia questão desconsiderada: como e por que um líder com altos índices de aprovação, seria tão raivosamente contestado por uma minoria, ecoada fortemente pela mídia que, então, a transformava em maioria?

Porém, a guerra civil – bem diferente da noticiada pelo mesmo setor midiático promotor dos golpes militares no Brasil e em toda a América Latina – continua: “A Venezuela está se tornando um lugar difícil para esquerdistas”, escreveu Ryan Mallett-Outtrimem em Venezuelanalysis.com neste dia 4.

Versão caçoada pela mídia predominante, em parte ecoada por seus macacos-de-auditório de plantão, a realidade é que se busca por parte da elitizada oposição local, em comprovada parceria com Washington (assim como no golpe de 48 horas contra Hugo Chávez em abril de 2002), aplicar golpe contra o presidente Maduro: o que não se tem conseguido nas urnas e nem através de escândalos diretos de corrupção, tenta-se obter por meios ilegais nem que se valha de toda a sorte de agressão, inclusive da força física excessiva.

 Ódio Étnico, Regional e de Classe no Brasil

No caso particular do Brasil, o governo pela metade do Partido dos Trabalhadores (pela metade para se dizer cheio de boa-vontade, desconsiderando aquilo que não fez) recusou-se a promover a reforma política, aliou-se ao que existe de pior deixando como “alternativa” uma figura como Michel Temer, e nem se dispôs a enfrentar a batalha (árdua, é verdade) em direção à regulação da mídia e ao combate à corrupção.

Deixou de se aliar ao povo quando gozava de ampla popularidade, especialmente de tomar vantagem das massivas manifestações de junho-julho de 2013 quando os clamores populares apontavam na direção das medidas acima mencionadas.

Imaginando que se servindo das benesses do poder receberia em retorno a cumplicidade de seus velhos inimigos, hoje prova do seu letal veneno enquanto depende desesperada e fundamentalmente dos que outrora, em tempos bem recentes, menosprezava e agressivamente acusava de pertencer a uma “esquerda radical”.

Mesmo diante disso tudo, seria no mínimo muito ingênuo imaginar que os setores oposicionistas ao governo hoje travam uma luta contra a corrupção: basta uma simples verificação da estatura intelectual e moral desses próprios setores.

Na realidade, a elite brasileira e mesmo amplos setores da classe média sempre mantiveram profunda nostalgia do regime militar; a histeria se acentuou com a ascensão de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ex-líder sindical nordestino, de origem pobre (cresceu na roça), quem até os 10 anos de idade não sabia sequer ler. O próprio PT e seu maior líder são muitos vistos pela elite branca dos Estados Unidos, especialmente a da classe política.

Toda essa histeria, já forte marca das classes dominantes que se soma a uma peculiar ignorância, atingiu as últimas consequências com as políticas sociais dos governos de Lula de Dilma Rousseff os quais, a que pesem todas as limitações e equívocos em áreas primordiais, têm retirado milhões de brasileiros da pobreza extrema e, de certa forma, os colocado lado a lado com a intolerante classe média local.

É bem verdade que, por exemplo, enquanto implantou a política de cotas em favor de negros, pardos e índios nas universidades, o governo federal do PT não proporcionou condições a essas mesmas etnias de terem acesso à educação básica de qualidade, a fim de em um futuro (que já deveria ter chegado) não necessitarem mais das cotas.

Somado ao fato de que nunca os bancos lucraram tanto e nunca houve tanta fuga de divisas na história brasileira, quanto nestes 14 anos de PT no Palácio do Planalto, colocam em xeque a alegada “revolução social” petista.

Mas isso tudo é outra discussão, até porque mesmo essas políticas “pela metade” do PT, como construção de milhões de moradias populares sem melhorar em absolutamente nada saneamento básico e acesso à saúde, já é o suficiente para alarmar as classes mais favorecidas no Brasil. Uma coisa é certa, se é que pode servir de consolo ao PT e a seus apoiantes (e incrivelmente, tem servido de tão indiferente quanto longínquo consolo): os outros, aqueles que hoje pedem sua cabeça, certamente fariam pior.

América Latina: De Novo Quintal Traseiro de Tio Sam?

Venezuela e Brasil são apenas dois exemplos do bombardeio made in USA contra a democracia na América Latina nos últimos anos. Bolívia, Equador, Nicarágua, Argentina sob Cristina Kirchner, Paraguai sob Fernando Lugo, Honduras sob Manuel Zelaya são ou foram outros governos mais voltados às causas sociais que, de alguma ou de várias maneiras, contrariaram interesses dos Estados Unidos e estão sendo ou foram vítimas de sabotagens, tentativas de magnicídios, agitações sociais artificiais e de guerra econômica.

O que fez este autor prever, no meio do olho do furacão venezuelano diante de um mundo alarmado, como terminariam aqueles artificiais protestos de elite na Venezuela não foram altas fontes venezuelanas, e nem muito menos um inexistente dote de “capacidades especiais”.

Recorrer à história leva o cidadão a compreender o passado, e ter condições de projetar seu futuro, de ser protagonista da própria história. Ou esta se repetirá, trágica e inevitavelmente. Certa vez, em 23 de julho de 2013 o jornalista e escritor uruguaio, Eduardo Galeano, em entrevista ao jornal britânico de The Guardian, muito bem disse: “Meu grande medo é que todos nós estejamos sofrendo de amnésia. Escrevi para recuperar a memória do arco-íris humano, que corre perigo de ser mutilado”.

Bem ao contrário da desastradamente “equivocada” (para usar eufemismo) postura do então Lula quando, em 2004, disse sobre a revogação da Lei da Anistia, que absolve crimes políticos à época ditatorial: “Passado é passado”. Ou seja: esqueçamos os crimes de lesa-humanidade cometidos pelos militares durante os 21 anos de ditadura, contrariando inclusive condenações internacionais por tal omissão. Já dizia Nicolás Avellaneda (jurista argentino): “Povo que esquece seu passado, está condenado a vivê-lo novamente”. Será?

A sociedade precisa de memória agora: memória para se dar conta, de uma vez por todas, que o caráter manipulatório e golpista da mídia predominante não mudou em nada, pelo contrário: pode-se dizer que até tem piorado dada a crise dos meios de comunicação, tanto de credibilidade quanto econômica (esta, em parte devido àquela). E para isso, não se requer sequer razoável conhecimento histórico dos fatos.

Memória nestes difíceis tempos para perceber que as mesmas forças que romperam o Estado de direito há 52 anos no Brasil, em 1º de abril de 1064, são as que atuam e manipulam hoje. A essência da Marcha da Família com Deus, pela Liberdade, impulsora do golpe militar que prometia uma “revolução democrática”, era a mesma de hoje: o conteúdo é fiel em seus mínimos detalhes, inclusive na colaboração “intelectual” e financeira de Washington, que além de dinheiro tem a seu dispor o único exército capaz de invadir completamente uma nação: a mídia. E assim, manipular sociedades praticamente inteiras.

É necessário também realismo, natural consequência do uso da memória: realismo, não pessimismo e nem otimismo, mas realismo a fim de reconhecer que se vive uma reedição da Guerra Fria de péssima memória em toda a região mais rica em biodiversidade do planeta, e a mais rica em petróleo depois do Oriente Médio: exatamente a América Latina. Faz-se necessária a consciência de que os porões do poder estão polarizando sociedades, jogando uns contra outros ferozmente (milenar tática), e que o final disso não será nada animador. Ao menos não, se as coisas continuarem como estão.

Na Venezuela, ao longo destes 16 anos de Revolução Bolivariana a sociedade tem sabido fazer bem a leitura da história, unir-se em torno de um governo efetivamente voltado às classes menos favorecidas e à soberania nacional, mantendo assim a revolução em curso de pé aos também 16 anos de ataques diários por parte da ultradireita local (tão raivosa quanto a brasileira), e do regime norte-americano.

No Brasil, a solução é reivindicar mais democracia, unir-se em torno da defesa da Constituição sem apoiar o governo de Dilma por mais que se tente estabelecer esta polarização, inclusive por parte dos petistas e de seus meios dito “alternativos” que não admitem críticas (se não estão ao nosso lado, estão ao lado da direita): o Brasil carece de reformas urgentes as quais o PT, ao menos sua atual cúpula enlameada em casos de corrupção e no sujo jogo do poder baseado no toma-lá-dá-cá, já deixou claro não ter interesse em providenciar.

A guerra da ultradireita latino-americana está abertamente declarada, e se não se deseja retrocessos às épocas mais sombrias de nossa história, é necessário sair do “eles fariam pior que nós” do Partido dos Trabalhadores, para o “ataque”: não o ataque da ultradireita, mas o das políticas que rompam definitivamente com as malditas oligarquias deste país.

Como ao menos a curto-prazo parece tarefa praticamente impossível conscientizar a classe média do atual período histórico enfrentado pelo Brasil (para nem se dizer a classe alta), embora valha e seja necessária a tentativa, a esperança da democracia no Brasil está em no maior pilar de sustentação do nada democrático sistema capitalista: nas massas de trabalhadores. Ainda pode haver tempo, embora o PT tenha se esquecido desgraçadamente disso – transformou pobres em consumidores, não em cidadãos.

A despolitização decorrente da ausência de investimentos em educação está, previsivelmente, cobrando um alto preço no Brasil. O mesmo filme, de novo? De falta de advertência, ninguém no (já não tão doce) poder hoje pode reclamar…

Edu Montesanti

To mark so-called ‘Independence Day’, Palestinian citizens forced to study the book that paints them as inferior to Jews

Ramallah: An Israeli civics textbook under the theme of ‘Being a Citizen in Israel’, launched to mark the regime’s commemoration of the 68th anniversary of its establishment, has been slammed for its negative and dismissive attitude towards the native Palestinian citizens.

The Empire of Chaos(The US) has won a major victory in Brazil destroying a democracy in order to bring Brazil back under control. Dilma Rousseff has been impeached on trumped up charges ignoring the wishes of the 54 Million Brazilians who voted for her and replacing her with the traitor Michel Temer.

Temer gives a whole new meaning to the idea of rule by the 1% because Temer has a 1% approval rating. Rousseff has been suspended from office for 180 days while the impeachment process continues. Brazil has joined the list of successful recent coups in Honduras, and Paraguay. Like the people of Argentina the people of Brazil are about to be reminded of what it means to be ruled by neo-liberal Hyenas.

For the people of Brazil the battle has only begun. The 1964 coup in Brazil installed a brutal military dictatorship and was only the first of many coups that would leave the entire region under the fascist rule of Operation Condors network of military juntas. The people of Brazil and of all of Latin America are in deadly danger. By this act the US has signaled that even minor reforms like those carried out by Brazil’s workers party are unacceptable. Nothing must be allowed to impede the looting and impoverishment of the planet at the hands of the multi-national corporations.

Yet the loss of Brazil has even worse consequences for the globe. It is a major strategic victory in the empire of Chaos attempt to reconquer Latin America. It is also a major victory in the effort to destroy the BRICS countries. It marks a major defeat in the effort to build a multi-polar world. Worse still Soft coups are also making gains in Venezuela and in South Africa. In Venezuela a recall referendum obtained the necessary signatures to remove Nicolas Maduro from office. In South Africa a court ruled that Jacob Zuma must again face hundreds of charges that were dismissed years ago. Both Venezuela and South Africa have been the victims of a covert war campaign. In Venezuela a wave of assassinations continues to murder those loyal to the Bolivarian Revolution. In South Africa a wave of arson attacks have been carried out that the government has blamed on the US embassy (ie the CIA). As if plunging large parts of the globe into unending warfare is not enough the empire of chaos is determined to destroy every independent country on the planet.

Flashback: The 1964 Coup

Before I discuss the latest coup in Brazil I will give a brief description of the 1964 coup in Brazil that would go on to have such disastrous consequences for all of Latin America. My account is based on William Blum’s Invaluable book “Killing Hope” Brazil is Chapter 27 out of 56 each recording coups or covert wars the US has carried out since 1945. Jose Goulart had become president after Janio da Silva Quadros had been forced to resign or face a military coup. Goulart the Vice President barely made it into office Right-Wing military officers tried to bar him but Loyalist military officers had interceded forcing the fascists to back down. Quadros had been quite conservative but had sought to ally Brazil with the nonaligned movement and to trade with the USSR. Goulart was also only a mild reformer but even before the moment he came into office the CIA, the Pentagon, the State department began plotting his downfall. CIA officer Vernon Walters (operating under cover as a military attache ) who would go on to play a vital role in setting up operation Condor was a major player in the coup. He helped organize the coup plotters in the Military. Goulart was first targeted with economic warfare, political destabilization and media war. Globo Media which played a major role in the current anti-Rousseff coup played the same role in the 1964 coup.

The CIA financed mass demonstrations, bribed political opposition and helped fund their campaigns. It created it’s own labor movement the AIFLD to destroy the left wing labor movement and to stage strikes and even armed attacks. The tactics of color revolution/Hybrid War are far older then the terms themselves obviously. As mentioned the US had begun plotting against him even before he ever assumed office and in fact had engineered him being fired as minister of Labor back in the 50’s. Once he became president his offenses in the eyes of the empire were refusing to fire ministers the US labeled “Communist. He sought to trade with the eastern block. He instituted mild economic reforms including a very limited land redistribution program. He passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinational corporations could take out of the country and he nationalized a subsidiary of ITT.

For this he was accused of seeking to install a “Totalitarian” Dictatorship by the State department. When they had stirred up enough chaos with their economic war and destabilization campaign when they had succeeded in vilifying Goulart in the media they launched the coup. The military who had been indoctrinated by the US in fanatical anti-communism and trained to see their own people as the enemy were given the go ahead for the coup. On March 31st the CIA backed fascist divisions moved to occupy the capital city Rio.

However the CIA had only gained control of a faction of the military other loyal divisions were willing to resist. The US sent in a huge Naval detachment including Aircraft carriers and destroyers to signal their backing for the coup. Goulart decided to flee rather then risk a civil war. By April 1st he had fled and the Fascist General Castelo Branco seized power arresting thousands of opponents and shooting protestors. And of course the dirty war came anyways tens of thousands would be tortured and killed over the next decades.

Although Latin America’s endless dirty war began long before the Brazil coup (Unending war and oppression began in1492) the 1964 coup would play a decisive role in helping to spread it throughout the continent. Brazil would play a vital role in the coups in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and in training the death squads and torturers of the continent. Dilma Rousseff herself was among the hundreds of thousands tortured. Meanwhile members of the Condor Network are still powerful in many Latin American militaries and the CIA and Pentagon influence continues. For more on Operation Condor check out my October 2015 article “Operation Condor”. For the continuing dirty war in Latin America see my March 2016 “War on Latin America.” In light of this history it is clear why we must resist this latest coup which threatens to reignite Brazil’s dirty war.

The 2016 Soft Coup

Pepe Escobar has written the definitive account of the coup in Brazil. Thus for a detailed account track down the numerous articles he has written on the subject. Frankly I feel more like screaming or crying than writing about this tragic moment in Brazil’s history. The only real difference between the April 64 coup and the May 2016 coup is that the military were not called in to overthrow the government. Hence people are referring to it as a soft coup. However the manufactured opposition, the media war, the economic war and doubtless the CIA bribes flying left and right are all the same. In fact just like Castelo Branco Brazil’s new president Temer is a CIA asset.

Brazil’s coup has a lot in common with the recent coups in Honduras and Paraguay. Thus even though Brazil’s coup was accomplished with legalistic means does not mean that the tortures and disappearances may not soon re-appear in Brazil not that they ever really ended given Brazil’s unending “low intensity” drug war and privatized death squads that masquerade as security agencies.

These agencies of course were a major factor in the coup part of what Pepe Escobar calls Brazil’s “BBC.” “BBC” stands for in this case not the notorious British propaganda outfit but for the three main economic interests manipulating Brazil’s senate to vote for impeachment. BBC stands for the Bullet, The Bible, and the Cattle. The bullet is weapons and private security. The Bible is pastors and “Evangelical Fanatics.” While Cattle is the powerful Agribusiness lobby. Pepe also lists some illuminating statistics on the senate they are 80% White although Brazil is largely a brown and Black country. 60 percent of the Senate are from political dynasties 58% of them are under criminal investigation and 13% of them were not elected at all worming their way in as “alternates.” These are the oligarchs who had the final say in destroying Brazil’s democracy. They have ignored the wishes of the 54 Million Brazilians who voted for Dilma Rousseff and have replaced her with the traitor Michel Temer with his 1% approval rating.

The main front men for this CIA coup were first Judge Sergio Moro who with his completely one sided car wash investigation set the coup in motion. By ignoring the crimes of the right and focusing only on crimes by the left he turned a corruption investigation into a coup. Next there was then house speaker Eduardo Cunha notorious as one of the most corrupt politicians in Brazil with millions in swiss bank accounts. He lead the impeachment drive in Brazil’s lower house fast tracking the impeachment process. However he lost his job as speaker so that the coup would not be a complete laughing stock. After all Dilma Rousseff is not even charged with having been corrupt and is innocent yet her impeachment campaign was lead by the Cunha “the Shark” one of the most corrupt. Lastly there is Michel Temer or Brutus as Escobar calls him. He openly admitted that the impeachment lacked all legitimacy before switching sides in a twisted power grab. These criminals have earned by their actions the hatred not just of Brazil but of Latin America and indeed of everyone who opposes the empire. Of course they were merely the tools of the Brazil’s Oligarchs, the CIA, and Wall Street but by their treachery they have set Brazil back decades.

The loss of Brazil will help sabotage BRICS. It will be a major blow to attempts to resist the empire of Chaos throughout the continent in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the other countries that have so far avoided soft coups. For the people of Brazil who had only slowly begun to climb out of poverty thanks to the reforms of Brazil’s workers party which despite it’s flaws did create a major rise in the standard of living the Coup means they will be Ruthlessly thrust back into poverty. Brazil’s massive oil wealth will go not to improving the lives of it’s citizens but to enriching the billionaires on Wall Street.

Far worse may await them as the new coup government will eventually begin to wage war on the angry majority of Brazil to insure that they remain in power. The people must begin to prepare themselves for resistance and in my opinion for revolution. Democracy has failed in Brazil mild reforms have failed in Brazil. The people of Brazil must begin to organize to seize back the power. And should they ever prove successful they must make radical changes to their society that will make impossible this sort of “Soft coup”.

How long will Latin America’s Oligarchs be allowed to wage their campaigns of mass murder before the people wise up and give them a taste of revolutionary justice? Goulart thought he could spare his country a war if he resigned and was proven tragically wrong.

Rousseff appears to have made the same mistake and we can only hope that her failure to destroy these dangerous traitors does not lead to a repeat of Brazil’s horrifying Dirty War.

Recent experience in Honduras or Ukraine do not give us much reason to believe that things will go differently for Brazil. However there are two factors that give reason for hope that this coup may be reversed. First Brazil has powerful social movements, the landless workers movement, the landless peasants, and many thousands of smaller groups. Second if Lula can survive the attempts to destroy him as part of the Car Wash Scandal he may run again in 2018 seizing Brazil back for the people. I hope his security is on full alert sadly his potential to run again and restore democracy in Brazil means his life is in great danger.

If only the idea of Lula being assassinated either violently or via cancer or heart attack were paranoid as some of you are doubtless thinking. But ask Fidel Castro who has survived dozens of assassination attempts. One can no longer ask the great Hugo Chavez but the details of his murder continue to emerge thanks to the work of journalist Eva Golinger. She has uncovered even more evidence of his assassination in particular in a recent interview she discussed some of the many attempts to kill him which failed. One included a Colombian death Squad camped out at a Venezuelan Oligarchs place thankfully they were arrested in time. Another involved a sniper caught staking out someplace Chavez was about to speak at.

Undoubtedly the most memorable involved the attempt to assassinate him with a radioactive chair at an “Prestigious” University in New York where Chavez was giving a speech. She also revealed the names of several traitors who defected to the united states shortly after his death. One of these traitors former Major General Herbert Garcia Plaza is now coordinating the destabilization of Venezuela from the safety of the US. I highly recommend you read the interview with her yourselves to learn even more shocking information.

Venezuela

Unfortunately I must turn my attention to the ongoing “soft coup” in Venezuela. There was some good news the opposition plot to privatize Venezuela’s public housing was struck down by Venezuela’s supreme court as unconstitutional since it interfered with Venezuela’s constitutional commitment to provide housing education healthcare and other social programs. Chavez’s radical reforms have born fruit and Venezuela’s Supreme Court is firmly committed to defending Bolivarian Socialism. However the opposition appropriately named MUD continues it’s campaign to destroy Venezuela on the orders of their CIA/NED controllers. They launched a recall petition and easily achieved the 1% of signatures needed.

Next they only need 20% of voters to agree to a recall referendum and then a Referendum forcing Maduro to resign can eventually be voted on. Maduro is determined to resist this scheme and hopes to fulfill his term which doesn’t end until 2018. Obviously this is a dangerous new development. In addition a wave of assassinations continue to murder loyal government officials and Bolivarian politicians. The CIA is waging a dirty war on Venezuela using drug dealing Colombian death squads and right wing Venezuelan terrorists to wage an operation condor style Phase III assassination campaign aimed at weakening the government by killing it’s most promising leaders. However even more destabilizing has been the economic war and Venezuela’s Oligarchs continue to sabotage the economy eroding public support for the Bolivarian Revolution. The Venezuelan Revolution a source of hope and an inspiration for the entire world remains under deadly threat.

South Africa

In South Africa a soft coup threatens another BRICS member. South Africa is another victim of the economic war which has sent commodities prices plummeting. This has served to destabilize South Africa just as it has Venezuela, and Brazil. But of course the US isn’t content with destabilizing South Africa it wants to overthrow the ANC who have ruled South Africa since the fall or Apartheid. The ANC is far from perfect in a secret deal before coming to power they had to renounce their longstanding platform of nationalizing South Africa’s resources and building a socialist society. However given it was 1994 and the Soviet Union had just collapsed the constant criticism they have suffered since from the left while valid is slightly unfair. Andre Vltchek points out that the ANC has made far more progress then people have given them credit for.

They have also been plagued by corruption scandals but only a fool would believe that if the ANC are overthrown in a soft coup that corruption will suddenly disappear. Instead whoever replaces them would open the country to be looted by western corporations reversing whatever gains people have made since the fall of apartheid. You don’t fight corruption with coups because coups are by their nature corrupting they involve people accepting bribes from the CIA and other intelligence agencies to betray their country. Obviously those willing to sell out their country are unlikely to resist bribes for lesser crimes. Just ask the Ukrainians.

The destabilization campaign against Zuma began innocently enough with students demanding lower fees. However soon instead of chanting the “Fees must Fall” they were shouting “Zuma must Fall.” Now EFF head Julius Melema is calling for Zuma’s downfall even threatening to use force. And if that wasn’t bad enough the US embassy (CIA) have been caught organizing opposition movements and even hiring organized crime to burn down 19 schools in the Limpopo province. Worse now the supreme court has ruled that Zuma must face 783 charges against him that were dismissed back in 2007. They date from when Zuma was deputy president under Thabo Mbeki. Zuma was dismissed as deputy president but this lead to a power struggle within the ANC in which he emerged victorious. He was later elected president despite this scandal so it is ridiculous to try to overthrow him based on a 10 year old scandal. Zuma like Maduro, and Rousseff is facing a soft coup attempt. Whatever petty crimes Zuma may have committed whatever the flaws of the ANC we must oppose this soft coup attempt. The goal has nothing to do with reducing corruption in South Africa or reducing inequality as the EFF deceptively claim. Anyone who thinks a CIA coup will reduce inequality in South Africa needs to read Blum’s “Killing Hope” since every CIA coup has been undertaken to preserve or worsen inequality. Instead the goal is clearly to destroy the BRICS the main hope for a multipolar world. The goal is to break up the economic partnership between China and South Africa damaging China the economic engine of the multipolar world and further isolating Russia the military backbone of BRICS.

We must oppose the coups in Brazil, Venezuela and South Africa. We must support the people as they resist the return of fascism in South America. We must support South Africa as it struggles to maintain it’s independence. The Empire of Chaos thinks it can preserve itself by destroying all the alternatives. It is far to late for that Capitalism itself is in crisis and people are already dreaming of a better world. Remember the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 inspired the revolutionary career of Che Guevara. In fact to carry out their economic war on the BRICS the Oligarchs are putting the whole stability of their global capitalist system at risk a dangerous gamble. Although 2016 has been a year of victory for the forces of counter-revolution beneath the surface all over the world people can sense revolution in the air. Thus even in the face of defeat and danger instead of despairing we must only redouble our efforts. The time of revolutions is approaching.

Sources

1. I highly recommend William Blum’s “Killing Hope: US military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” sadly more relevant then ever this year with coups and covert wars ravaging the globe. For more on Operation Condor read “Predatory States: Operation Condor Covert War in Latin America” By J.P. McSherry

2. Dilma Rousseff’s defiant speech in the face of the impeachment campaign against her

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/remarks-by-president-dilma-rousseff-to-news-media-after-the-vote-approving-the-impeachment-process/

3. An Interview with Dilma Rousseff

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/president-dilma-rousseffs-interview-with-telesur/

4. Pepe Escobar on the Coup in Brazil

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/342821-brazil-dilma-rousseff-impeachment/#.VzW4Ti_LM8M.facebook

5. The Landless Workers Movement on the Crisis in Brazil

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/brazils-landless-workers-movement-the-real-way-out-of-the-crisis/

6. Mike Whitney Interviews Eva Golinger on the Assassination of Hugo Chavez

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2016/05/03/the-strange-death-of-hugo-chavez-an-interview-with-eva-golinger/

7. My Article on Operation Condor

http://anti-imperialist-u.blogspot.com/2015/10/operation-condor.html

8. My Article War on Latin America

http://anti-imperialist-u.blogspot.com/2016/03/war-on-latin-america.html

9. Nil Nikandov on the coming showdown in Venezuela

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/president-dilma-rousseffs-interview-with-telesur/

10. Abayomi Azikwe on the destabilization of South Africa

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/tensions-escalate-ahead-of-local-government-elections-in-south-africa/

11. Eric Draitser on the US coups in Latin America part of a great series of interviews by Don Debar of PRN that have covered the war on the BRICS week to week subscribe to his youtube channel

http://youtu.be/YP6Q01PYct4

12. And Eric Draitser on South Africa part of his series of Articles on the War on The BRICS

http://www.mintpressnews.com/brics-attack-empires-destabilizing-hand-reaches-south-africa/215126/

La próxima semana, la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua, UNAN-Managua otorgará el Doctorado Honoris Causa al profesor emérito de nacionalidad canadiense Michel Chossudovsky, mundialmente reconocido por sus libros sobre el imperialismo y la globalización.

Chossudovsky, profesor Emérito en Economía de la Universidad de Ottawa considerado hoy entre los mejores geopolitólogos del mundo, recibirá el Doctorado Honoris Causa en Humanidades en un acto solemne que tendrá lugar el próximo martes, 17 de mayo a las 3:00 PM en el auditorio Fernando Gordillo Cervantes de la UNAN-Managua. En su lección magistral, el profesor canadiense expondrá la historia del neoliberalismo en América Latina, partiendo de su propia experiencia en la región.

Asimismo, Chossudovsky, visita el país para el lanzamiento de la primera edición en español de su último libro titulado “La globalización de la guerra: La ‘guerra larga’ de Estados Unidos contra la humanidad”, que se llevará a cabo con un panel interactivo en la misma universidad el jueves, 19 de mayo a las 3:00 pm.

Michel Chossudovsky (Canadá, 1946), profesor Emérito de Economía de la Universidad de Ottawa, es fundador y director del Centro de Investigación sobre la Globalización (CRG) en Montreal y editor de la página web globalresearch.ca.

Es autor de Globalización de la pobreza y nuevo orden mundial (2003),  Guerra y Globalización, primera edición de America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), La miseria en Venezuela (1978), El Perú bajo el dominio del Fondo monetario, (1992) y Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). Sus escritos se han publicado en más de 20 idiomas. Es un activista antiglobalización y antibélico.

Ha sido profesor visitante en organizaciones académicas en Europa del este, América Latina y en el Sudeste asiático, además de asesor económico de gobiernos en países en desarrollo y consultor de organizaciones internacionales como el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD).

Ha sido galardonado al Premio Internacional de Periodismo por el Mejor Portal de Investigación Internacional – Global Research, (Club de periodistas de México, 2008) y la Medalla de Oro de la República de Serbia por sus escritos sobre la guerra de agresión de la OTAN contra Yugoslavia (2014).

In a recent interview Joe Biden said he would have liked to have had Elizabeth Warren as his running mate had he entered the Presidential race.

Why is he talking about this now? Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down. 

“Joe Biden took months to decide he wouldn’t run for president — but he was sold on Elizabeth Warren as his running mate from the start, people familiar with the situation told POLITICO.

And he still thinks the Massachusetts firebrand would be Hillary Clinton’s best choice to replace him as the nation’s No. 2 in January 2017…

Warren, a freshman senator from Massachusetts, who supports breaking up the big banks and re-imposing 1930s-era Wall Street regulations to prevent another global financial crisis, was Biden’s “only real choice,” according to an official he spoke to at the time.

Biden — who told an interviewer on Tuesday that he considered running for president because he believed he was “the best” person for the job — took his hat out of the ring in late October 2015, citing the stresses on his family following the death of his son Beau.”*

“Trying to decide whether I side with the carp or Barnaby Joyce.” Jeff Sparrow, Twitter, May 1, 2016

Infections are the stuff of Australian agricultural policy, the daily business of a scientific establishment that has made killing and artificial guardianship of ecology central. Biosecurity is code for selective extermination and control, and it is a word that does more than just stalk the visitor to the world’s largest island continent.

The Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has never shied away from his enthusiasm about controlling nature’s unruly creatures, by containment or death, even if unwittingly introduced by humans.  He would have given it to Hollywood’s most famous pets, Pistol and Boo, cameras at the ready. Of course, he could never leave it at that, feeling the new-found pangs of directorship in criticising Johnny Depp and wife Amber Heard over their preposterous video of apology.

Apart from that farcical sideshow, the biosecurity business in Australia is serious.  It is also conspicuously genocidal, and would satisfy any species-killing definition.  Some sense of this could be gathered at the announcement earlier this month by the Science Minister Christopher Pyne that $15 million would be set aside for a plan to eradicate European Carp from the Murray Darling Basin using a strain of herpes, cyprinid herpesvirus-3.  According to the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, the fish make up 90 percent of the fish in the basin.

Language here is everything.  The word eradication is repeatedly used regarding various introduced animal species in Australia, giving the impression that one is simply removing them from a specific environment.  In fact, it would more appropriately be termed extermination.  By 2045, Pyne has visions of a river system suitably and successfully cleansed – at least to the astrologically predicted degree of 95 percent.

Scientists such as Susan Lawler, ironically writing for a section of The Conversation named “This Thing Called Life”, wrote earlier in January about her enthusiasm (viral, perhaps?) for eliminating the species using a lethal, population-control virus.  Without qualification, she suggested that, “Everyone wants to give Australian carp the herpes virus.”

With the usual ecological blindness that characterises such discussion, she argued that “research suggests that a viral control agent may be the most effective solution.”[1]  Excited at the consensus, she saw before her eyes the coming together of an “unlikely coalition” spanning “fishers, conservationists, irrigators, scientists and farmers”.

The announcement by Pyne also sent the deputy prime minister into paroxysms on the floor of Parliament.  “We are afflicted with these disgusting mud-sucking creatures, bottom dwelling mud-sucking creatures, for which the only version of control is a version of herpes to try to get rid of these disgusting mud-sucking creatures.”[2]

On Twitter, the member for New England announced with purpose that money had been committed “in an effort to rid our waterways of the [sic] one of the country’s most devastating pests.”  His call to arms is an ominous reminder about how humans can be, not only to themselves, but to other species.  “Carp are the rabbit of our waterways and we’ve now got a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to manage one of the country’s most devastating pests.”

With each seemingly dedicated program to eradicate a pest, the Australian scientific establishment has tended to create vast environmental problems. Programs of death are sold like targeted miracles, specific to a species, and supposedly minimal in environmental impact.  In this case, warnings from carp fishermen that such a virus may well cause a pollution outbreak have not been heeded.

According to Garry Warrick, such animals, numbering in the thousands of tonnes would, if killed off in mass numbers, lead to another environmental catastrophe in its own right.  In his measured words, such mass destruction would mean “there won’t be enough people to clean it up.”[3]  Nor would the Environmental Protection Authority allow the burying of large quantities of deceased carp.

Houseboat operator Robert Hughes fears that the effect of such vast deceased animals would affect the tourist industry.  “I think a river full of dead carp is not going to be fantastic for business.”[4]  Then again, one should never underestimate the morbid fascination of a foreign guest.  Visiting sites of mass death can sell.

The architect of death, Pyne, simply sees it in practical, utilitarian terms.  Turn them into fertiliser, he argues, “or pet food maybe, or dig enormous holes and put them in there.”  Independent Senator Nick Xenophon, barely able to stifle a giggle, also congratulated the minister “on his plan to give herpes to carp.”

Fertiliser companies are certainly looking forward to a jump in profits – murdering whole species, as humans have found amongst themselves, can be lucrative.  “There are a huge amount of logistical and practical issues that have to be dealt with,” suggests Charlie Carp director Harold Clapham, but “we can use dead carp.”

Evidence, scrupulously avoided, suggests that such a plan will not work.  There will, of course, be massive killing.  Biodiversity will take a hammering.  But Israel’s case suggests that the population may well rebound, making this a futile and vicious exercise in genocide.  That, however, is the Australian way with animals, one sponsored by government, enacted by scientists, and cheered on by the populace.

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

Notes

[1] https://theconversation.com/we-could-reduce-pest-carp-in-australian-rivers-using-a-disease-that-came-from-israel-53492

[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3569133/Disgusting-mud-sucking-creatures-Barnaby-Joyce-launches-savage-attack-carp-parliament-prepares-herpes-colleagues-look-embarrassed-there.html

[3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-02/carp-eradication-program-could-cause-pollution-problems/7374658

[4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-02/carp-eradication-program-could-cause-pollution-problems/7374658

These 422 pages of classified documents contain blood-chilling information regarding terrorist activities in Turkey.

These documents classified as ‘secret’ material, contain huge amounts of information regarding the activities of Daesh militants in Kilis and Gaziantep. 

They also show that all the crossings of thousands of terrorists at the Turkish-Syrian border were known to the Turkish authorities, and despite that, they did not take any action.

© FLICKR/ QUAPAN

Free Range Terrorists: Daesh Enjoying Full Immunity in Turkey

Erdem, commenting on this information, said that in Kilis, Gaziantep and across Turkey dangerous processes are taking place to which the government turns a blind eye.

“I am speaking here as a deputy, whose duty is to control what is happening. The documents that I present to you, is a living proof of what kind of dirty games the AKP government is involved in.”

He showed the documents containing the phone records of one of the organizers of the terrorist attacks in Turkey, İlhami Balı, known in the ranks of the jihadists, as Abu Bakr.

These entries recorded comprehensive information such as which hotel the terrorists are going to stay in, where they will wait for their car, which gas station they will use for refueling in a mosque in Kilis, how many people and who exactly would be responsible for the preparation of a terrorist attack.

“Despite the fact that all this information was in the hands of the authorities, the security forces had not carried out any operations to detain terrorists. I ask one very simple question: why were these terrorists not arrested?” Erdem pointed out.

The deputy further spoke about how the Safety Authority tapped and recorded all phone conversations of the terrorists.

“For example, Ilhami Bali asks his interlocutor: ‘How many people have crossed?’ He is wondering how many militants crossed the Turkish-Syrian border. At the other end of the line the man answered ‘175 crossed into Syria.’ He added, ‘No, I mean in the opposite direction.’ The man answers 1,128 people.’”

“Do you understand what these figures mean? 1,128 jihadists crossing the border at the same time in a place known to intelligent agencies, but no one even thought to organize an operation to detain them. Control on the border areas is zero,” the deputy stressed.

© AP PHOTO/ MILITANT WEBSITE VIA AP

US-Turkey Threaten to Give Terrorists Weapons in Bid to Oust Assad

The documents sent to the Municipality of Ankara Provincial Security Department, provide information showing that Ilham Bali is the organizer of terrorist attacks in Ankara and Suruç, and is also responsible for the collection of weapons and ammunition for Daesh.According to Bali these documents contain hundreds of addresses, telephone conversations and other information. They also show that all the Daesh militants are being treated in Turkey; there are details of how much money is spent on maintenance and treatment of these jihadists in district hospitals.

Prosecutors in Turkey have not yet opened a single judicial investigation regarding these hospitals, these doctors. Why are the authorities who arrest civilians for distributing leaflets at Taksim, turning a blind eye to the activities of terrorists and do not initiate operations against them?

“This is not negligence; it is clearly a thought out, deliberate action strategy. You have all the necessary information, but you do not take any action. So, you, for whatever reasons, are covering the activities of a terrorist organization,” Bali stressed.

At the end of the press conference Eren Erdem stressed that he constantly receives death threats, but is not afraid to tell the truth, and intends to continue doing so in the future.

The former president tied to death squads and drug cartels is calling for foreign armed forces to invade Venezuela.

Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said on Friday that any foreign country should conduct a military intervention in Venezuela to overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

RELATED:Colombian Senator Close to Ex-President Uribe in Panama Papers

“The army … the armed forces have to protect the opposition … or let’s think … just think … which country is willing to put their armed forces to protect the (Venezuelan) opposition? Be careful … tyranny does not listen … They (Venezuelan government) have to be confronted with all of our energy,” Uribe said when he was leaving the Concordia Summit at Miami Dade College, in Florida.

Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said on Friday that any foreign country should conduct a military intervention in Venezuela. | Photo: Reuters

Uribe’s government is responsible for the the “false positives” scandal – one of the most tragic and horrific episodes in the 50-year armed conflict in Colombia – when the military executed thousands of Colombians, dressed them in guerrilla garb and reported them as guerrillas killed in combat. They did this in order to receive financial benefits and to inflate the military’s success in the battle against the insurgents.

Uribe also has long-standing ties with death squads in the country. Furthermore, according to a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency document, while a senator in the 1990s uribe was “dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín [drug] cartel at high government levels” and was “close personal friend of Pablo Escobar.”

Meanwhile a dozen right-wing former presidents gathered in Miami and signed a statement denouncing what they called an “economic, social and governance deterioration” in Venezuela.

ANALYSIS:
Who is Alvaro Uribe?

Among the signatories are Uribe and Andres Pastrana from Colombia; Jose Maria Aznar from Spain; Jorge Quiroga from Bolivia; Fernando de la Rua from Argentina and Vicente Fox from Mexico.

The former leaders argue that the government of president Maduro is maintaining “a discourse of institutional conflict” and “developing actions of political persecution against members of the National Assembly and opposition leaders.”

Colombia: AG Asks for Criminal Investigation of Uribe

See video here.

(Please read Part I before this article.

The first part spoke at length about the strategic situation in the Balkans and briefly identified the state of affairs in each country, thus infusing the reader with the valuable background knowledge. Continuing with what has already been learned, the research will now transition into an examination of the two multipolar transnational connective projects that are the reason the region is being targeted for Hybrid Wars.

The Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership Goes To Europe

Structural Fundamentals:

In a conceptually similar framework as what’s going on in Central Asia right now, Russia and China also have a shared strategic vision for the Balkans that involves complementary infrastructure projects paving the way for a regional geopolitical transformation. The primary difference between Central Asia and the Balkans, however, is that the former physically connects both Great Powers while the latter is beyond either of their direct peripheries. This makes the Balkans much more vulnerable to external subterfuge since neither Russia nor China is capable of directly protecting their interests there at this point, and must instead rely on skilled diplomatic maneuvers, visible economic promises, and effective strategic partnerships in order to ensure the viability of their respective projects. The US, and to an extent, certain personal and state actors in the EU, are afraid of Russia and China’s plans because they fret losing influence over this geostrategic territory that could quite literally serve as a multipolar bridgehead into the center of the continent.

Geopolitical Goals:

Herein lies the geopolitical nature of what both Eurasian Great Powers are trying to accomplish, and it’s that they envision their transnational connective projects becoming magnets for the multipolar cause. The idea is that they’ll attract organic regional support among the populace through the positive benefits that they provide to each of the transit states. Parallel with this, the construction of physical infrastructure heading deeper into Europe will forge a common path for Russian and Chinese influence to follow and will wed each logistical extremity together in a shared community of economic interests. Through these means, the multipolar states can deepen their engagement with Europe, which ultimately would serve to challenge the overriding unipolar pressure that the US is presently exerting on them. Conceptually speaking, the more economic interaction that Russia and China have with their European counterparts, the more likely it is that their developing bilateral partnerships could expand into other spheres and eventually take on a strategic-political nature. As this happens, the US will gradually lose its hold over Europe, which is geopolitically unacceptable for it since it depends on its absolute control of the Western Eurasian peninsula in order to manage the affairs of the supercontinent.

Structural American Counter-Responses:

From an American geostrategic perspective, Europe is equally as important to its grand strategy as the Mideast and East Asia are, and with Russia and China currently pushing back in the latter two, respectively, it’s of the highest importance that Europe remains a bastion of uninterrupted unipolar hegemony. Consequently, the US isn’t taking any chances in losing its European stronghold to the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership and is aggressively pushing forward with two structural counter-responses designed to preempt this, both of which are enveloped in the shroud of the New Cold War that Washington purposely provoked.

NATO

The first one is the expansion of NATO all throughout the continent under the false guise of ‘countering Russian aggression’, in promotion of which Secretary of State John Kerry delivered hisinfamous statement in February 2015 when he quipped that “Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, and other countries – Georgia, Moldova, Transnistria, they are on the line of fire” between the US and Russia. That’s not fully true because Russia doesn’t have anyone in “the line of fire”, although the US certainly does and it plainly listed out its geopolitical targets for Hybrid War the coming years. The expansion of NATO infrastructure closer to each of them in the subsequent months is the first step in structurally intimidating these states (not counting Kosovo, which is an occupied Province of Serbia) and strong-arming them away from potentially pragmatic cooperation with Russia. It’s succeeded in some cases like Georgia but failed in others such as Serbia and Macedonia, despite the latter having to contend with the pressure from newly opened NATO command centers in Romania and Bulgaria, respectively.

TTIP

The second means in which the US seeks to preempt the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership from affecting multipolar change in the continent is through the TTIP agreement, a form of post-modern imperialism which would place the EU under American economic control and preclude the formation of any independently negotiated free trade agreement outside of Washington’s approval. There’s also the issue of “economic governance”, whereby the largest transnational corporations would receive political and legal rights not expressly granted to human beings, the effect of which would allow the largest American companies to strategically influence most of the European vassal governments.

How this ties in to the examined Balkan context is simple – if Russia and China’s economic megaprojects there are successfully implemented, then the next logical step would be for their partner states to eventually enter into privileged trading relations with them after some time, a development which would be explicitly precluded if some of them are beholden to the US’ advance approval via their TTIP participation. Even if only some of their transit state partners are tied to the agreement, then this still obstructs the larger continental-wide vision that Russia and China have of deepening their full multipolar engagement with the entire continent, thus giving the US strategic space to breathe and perfect a project-breaking blow against them in the coming future.

The Multipolar Megaprojects

All of the expansive strategic and situational analyses have prepared the reader for fully comprehending the contours of Russia and China’s multipolar megaprojects in the Balkans. They will be discussed in brief at this time and then comprehensively expanded upon afterwards.

Balkan Stream And The Balkan Silk Road:

Keeping in line with the complementary nature of the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership, Russia’s plan is to spearhead the Balkan Stream gas pipeline (the author’s geographically inclusive name for the full scope of the planned Turkish Stream project)  while China’s is to build the Balkan Silk Roadhigh-speed rail corridor through the region. Both projects run along the north-south axis connecting the Central Balkans with Greece, thus explaining the earlier analytical importance given to this specific sub-region. The Balkan Stream is envisioned to travel underneath the Black Sea and make land in Turkey’s Eastern Thrace region, before continuing through Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary. The Balkan Silk Road is planned to proceed along mostly the same coordinates, connecting the Greek port of Piraeus (one of the largest and most important in Europe) with Budapest by way of Skopje and Belgrade. Taken together, Russia’s expected role is to provide an independent source of energy while China’s is to do the same with trade, and they’re both supposed to greatly supplement the independent decision-making capabilities of their transit partners and guide them towards multipolarity.

Blocking Balkan Stream

Two Tries, Two Strikes:

As positive as all of this sounds, it’s far from certain that either project will become a reality, since the US, as was previously explained in Part I, will do everything in its power to prevent them from being built. In the spirit of the New Cold War and following on its success in snuffing out South Stream, the US has prioritized its efforts in obstructing Russia’s Balkan Stream pipeline, and for the most part, they’ve regretfully succeeded for the time being. The first challenge came from the May 2015 Color Revolution attempt in Macedonia, which thankfully was repulsed by the country’s patriotic citizenry.  Next up on the destabilization agenda was the political turmoil that threatened to take hold of Greece in the run-up and aftermath of the austerity referendum, the idea being that if Tsipras were deposed, then Balkan Stream would be replaced with the US-friendly Eastring project. Once more, the Balkans proved resilient and the American plot was defeated, but it was the third and most directly antagonist maneuver that snipped the project in the bud and placed it on indefinite standby.

‘Lucky’ Number Three:

The climactic action happened on 24 November when Turkey shot down a Russian anti-terrorist bomber operating over the Syrian skies, and the nascent project became a victim of the predictable chain reaction of political deterioration between both sides. Given how obvious it was that energy cooperation would be one of the casualties of simmering Russian-Turkish tensions, it stands to reason that the US purposely egged Turkey on in order to provoke this domino reaction and scuttle Balkan Stream. Be that as it may (and it surely looks convincing enough to be the case), it doesn’t mean that the project is truly canceled, as it’s more strategically accurate to describe it as temporarily shelved. Russia understandably doesn’t want to enhance the position of  a state that’s proven itself to be so blatantly aggressive against it, but this feeling extends only towards the present government and in the current context. It’s certainly conceivable that a fundamental shift in Turkey’s position (however unlikely that may appear in the short-term) could lead to a détente of sorts that resurrects the Balkan Stream, but a more probable scenario would be if the disaffected masses and/or distraught military representatives overthrew the government.

Turkish Reversal?:

Both of these possibilities aren’t that improbable when one takes note of the growing resentment to Erdogan’s rule and the precarious position he’s placed the armed forces in. It’s well-known how dissatisfied a significantly growing mass of Turks have become (especially amidst an ever-growing Kurdish Insurgency), but what’s less discussed is the strategically disadvantageous situation facing the military right now. As the author wrote about in October 2015, the Turkish forces are spread thin between their anti-Kurdish operations in the broad southeast, securing the heartland from ISIL and extreme left-wing terrorist attacks, occasional interventions in Northern Iraq, and remaining on alert along the Syrian border. This state of affairs is already almost too much for any military to handle, and one of the last things that its responsible leaders need right now is to balance against an imaginary and completely unnecessary Russian ‘threat’ cooked up by Erdogan. This pressure might prove to be too much for them, and in the interests of national security and properly fulfilling their constitutional role in safeguarding the territorial integrity of the state, they might band together in overthrowing him in spite of the systemic changes he’s enacted in the past decade to defend against such an event.

The Path Forward:

There’s a very real chance that Balkan Stream will be unfrozen and the project allowed to move forward one day, as it’s too strategically important for Russia, and even Turkey, to be kept on the backburner indefinitely. It’s entirely possible that an internal political change will take place in Turkey, be it in the mindset of the current leadership or more likely with the installment of a new revolutionary/coup government, meaning that it’s much too premature for Russia or the US to give up on their respective policies towards Balkan Stream. Therefore, both Great Powers are proceeding forward with a sort of geopolitical insurance strategy, and in each case, it’s centered on China’s Balkan Silk Road. From the American perspective, the US needs to continue unabated with the destabilization of the Balkans, since even if the Russian project is successfully stopped, then it still needs to do the same thing to China’s. So long as the Balkan Silk Road continues to be built, then Russia will retain a multipolar magnet through its premier strategic partner on which it can concentrate the influence that it’s cultivated thus far. In the event that Balkan Stream is unfrozen, then Russia can immediately jump back into the mix as if it never left and rejoin strategic forces with its Chinese ally like it originally planned, and this nightmare scenario is why the US is resorting to Hybrid War in its desperate bid to destroy the Balkan Silk Road.

As has already been similarly mentioned, the Russian approach is to focus more on the economic, military, and political diversifications that were supposed to accompany the energy-based physical infrastructure it was planning to build. Instead of the gas pipeline forming the spine of a New Balkans, it looks as though the Balkan Silk Road high-speed rail will take this role instead, but either way, there’s a multipolar megaproject that acts as a magnet for Russian influence. In the present configuration, Russia has relatively less influence in directly deciding the course of the infrastructure’s construction, but at the same time, it becomes indispensable to China. Beijing has close to no preexisting ties with the Balkans outside of purely economic relations (and even those are relatively new), so Russia’s privileged involvement in supporting the project and investing along the Balkan Silk Road route (which was supposed to run parallel with the Balkan Stream and bring in the said investment anyhow) helps to reinforce regional and local support for it by presenting a friendly and familiar face that decision makers are already accustomed to working with. It’s not to suggest that China can’t build the project on its own or that there isn’t legitimate support in the Balkans for such an initiative, but that Russia’s front-row participation in it reassures the local elite that a civilizationally similar and ultra-influential partner is there alongside them and is also placing visibly high stakes in the process out of a show of confidence in its hopeful success.

Beijing Is The Balkans’ Last Hope

It’s thus far been established that the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership intended to revolutionize the European continent with an infusion of multipolar influence along the Balkan Corridor, which was supposed to support Balkan Stream and the Balkan Silk Road. Regretfully, however, the US has temporarily succeeded in putting the brakes on Balkan Stream, thus meaning that the Balkan Silk Road is the only presently viable multipolar megaproject envisioned to run through the region. On that account, it’s China, not Russia, which is carrying the torch of multipolarity through the Balkans, although Beijing is of course partially depending on Russia’s established influence there to help secure their shared geostrategic objective and assist in making it a reality. At any rate, the Balkan Silk Road is arguably more important than the Balkan Stream for the time being, and as such, it’s worthy to pay extra attention to its strategic details in order to better grasp why it represents the Balkans’ last multipolar hope.

Institutional Foundation:

The concept for the Balkan Silk Road was a couple of years in the making, and it owes its genesis to China’s One Belt One Road (“New Silk Road”) policy of constructing worldwide connective infrastructure. This endeavor was thought up in order to solve the dual problems of creating opportunities for Chinese outbound investment and complementarily assisting geostrategic regions in their liberating quest to achieve multipolarity. Relating to the area under study, the Balkan Silk Road is the regional manifestation of this ideal, and it’s actually part of China’s broader engagement with the Central and Eastern European countries.

The format for their multilateral interaction was formalized in 2012 under the first-ever China and Central and Eastern European Countries (China-CEEC) Summit in Warsaw, and the event two years later in Belgrade produced the idea for a Budapest-Belgrade-Skopje-Athens high-speed rail project (the author’s colloquial description of which is the Balkan Silk Road) aimed at deepening both sides’ economic interconnection. The 2015 Summit in Suzhou produced a medium-term agenda for 2015-2020, which among other things, proposes the creation of a joint financing firm to supply credit and investment funds for this and other projects. It also officially described the Balkan Silk Road as being the “China-Eurasia Land-Sea Express Line” and suggested that it be integrated into the New Eurasian Land Bridge Economic Corridor sometime in the future, implying that Beijing would like to see the countries cooperative more pragmatically with Russia (first and foremost in this case, Poland). Importantly, Xinhua reported that the participants agreed to complete the Budapest-Belgrade stage of the project by 2017.

Strategic Context:

What all of this means is that China has accelerated its diplomatic, economic, and institutional relations with Central and Eastern Europe in the space of only a couple of years, astoundingly becoming a premier player in a region located almost half the world away from it and partially a formal component of the unipolar bloc. This can be explained solely by China’s attractive economic appeal to the CEEC that transcends all sorts of political boundaries, as well as to the complementary ambition that the East Asian supergiant has in deepening its presence worldwide. Together, these two factors combine into a formidable component of China’s grand strategy, which strives to use inescapable economic lures in leading its partners (especially those representing the unipolar world) along the path of tangible geopolitical change over a generational period. To refer back to the Balkan Silk Road, this represents Beijing’s primary vehicle in achieving its long-term strategy, and the geo-economic rationale for how this is anticipated to function will be explained in the below section. Before proceeding however, it’s relevant to recall what was referenced earlier about the US’ hegemonic imperatives, since this explains why the US is so fearful of China’s economic engagement with Europe that it plans to go as far as concocting destructive Hybrid Wars to stop it.

Geo-Economic Underpinnings:

The geo-economic justification for the Balkan Silk Road is evident, and it can be easily explained by examining the larger Central and Eastern European area that it’s envisioned to connect. The Southeastern European peninsula directly segues into each of these two regions, and the Hungarian hub of Budapest is geographically located in the center of this broad space. As it presently stands, there’s no reliable north-south corridor linking Hungary and the markets around it (namely Germany and Poland) to the Greek Mediterranean ports, thus meaning that Chinese maritime trade with these leading economies must physically circumnavigate the breadth of the entire European peninsula. The Balkan Silk Road changes all of that and cuts out days of unnecessary shipping time by bringing Central and Eastern European goods to the Greek port of Piraeus and within convenient reach of Suez-crossing Chinese vessels. This saves on time and money, thus making the route more profitable and efficient for all parties involved.

In the future, the Central and Eastern European economies could ship their goods through Russia en route to China via the Eurasian Land Bridge, but while that might be beneficial from the perspective of producer-to-consumer relations, it’s hardly advantageous for resellers who plan on re-exporting the said goods elsewhere in the world. To take advantage of the dynamic economic developments currently underway in East Africa and South Asia (be it in selling to those markets or in physically building up a presence there), it’s best for either party’s entrepreneurial actors to connect with one another at a maritime node that enables them to efficiently and quickly load or offload their predetermined transshipped goods. Geo-economically speaking, there’s no better place for this than Piraeus, as it’s the closest European mainland port to the Suez Canal which needs to be traversed in order to access the aforementioned destinations, with or without any transshipping involved (i.e. if EU entrepreneurs decide to directly export their goods there and not use a Chinese middleman).

In order to connect to Piraeus, the high-speed rail corridor known as the Balkan Silk Road is an infrastructural prerequisite, and its successful completion would lead to a significant sum of European trade being profitably redirected towards China and other booming non-Western locations like India and Ethiopia. The US fears losing its position as the EU’s top trading partner, knowing that the slippery strategic slope that could soon follow might lead to the rapid unraveling of its hegemonic control. Viewed from the reverse perspective, the Balkan Silk Road is the EU’s last hope for ever having a multipolar future independent of total American control, which is why it’s so geopolitically necessary for Russia and China to see the project completed. The inevitable New Cold War clash that this represents and the extraordinarily high stakes that are involved mean that the Balkans will remain one of the main flashpoints in this dangerous proxy struggle, despite the hierarchical switch of its multipolar protagonists.

New Cold War Battleground: Remixed

Out With The Old…:

The traditional actors competing over the Balkans have always been the German-led states (Austria-Hungary, Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and the contemporary EU), Russia (the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation), and Turkey (the Ottoman Empire, The Turkish Republic, and Erdogan’s Islamist “Democracy”), and this dynamic has consistently been in play for the past two centuries in some iteration or another. Other participants were occasionally involved (e.g. the UK and France in Greece), but they were always more the exception than the rule, and the give-and-take rivalry between these three core powers has been the mainstay of the Balkans’ international relations. Fast-forwarding to the post-Cold War era, this took the form of EU expansionism, the restoration of Russia’s civilizational influence, and Turkey’s promotion of Islamism. To an extent, this was just the modern manifestation of age-old rivalries being expressed in an updated form, and there was a large measure of stability and predictableness in their trilateral interactions.

…And In With The New:

Regretfully, however, the entire regional paradigm was irreversibly transformed by the game-changing involvement of the US, which sought to disrupt the centuries-old pattern by expanding NATO and bombing the Serbs. Prior to this, it helped engineer the structural preconditions for destabilizing Yugoslavia and provoking its dismemberment, and in historical hindsight, American involvement can objectively be said to constitute the most rapidly destabilizing force that the Balkans has ever seen. Never before in such a short period of time has the region gone through such widespread destruction and geopolitical reorganization than it did after 1991, and this is entirely attributable to the US’ grand strategy of strategic state fragmentation (later defined as Brzezinski’s “Eurasian Balkans” concept). The US’ coordinated conventional and asymmetrical invasions of the Balkans (the latter via Color Revolution-conspiring NGOs) set a new standard for the application of unipolar force and were the tactical precedent for what would later follow in the Mideast.

The US’ hyper aggression completely threw Russia off guard, since it was in no position at the time to counter it, and it decisively tilted the regional balance in favor of the EU and Turkey, by then joined together under the US’ unipolar umbrella. The creeping advancement of NATO, the EU, and Islamic extremism played to Russia’s disadvantage, and for over a decade, it looked like Moscow had finally surrendered the civilizational space that it had fought so ardently to free over the past two centuries. All of a sudden, however, the 2007 announcement of South Stream dramatically signaled Russia’s return to the region, indicating that it had actually spent the past decade devising a completely new strategy for Balkan re-engagement. Capitalizing off of its unconventional practice of “energy geopolitics”, Russia aimed to surprise the unipolar world and asymmetrically turn the table on its prior successes. This bold, post-modern move could very well have succeeded had it not been for the US-manufactured New Cold War that purposely created the conditions for it and its Balkan Stream successor’s de-facto indefinite suspension.

It was right around that time that China moved in to the Balkans and began flexing its Great Power weight around, in a development that few could ever have countenanced before it actually occurred. Historically having no ties whatsoever with the region except for some minor ones cultivated with Cold War-era Albania and Romania (the former didn’t last the entire period and the latter began halfway through), China abruptly emerged as the Balkans’, and one may even say, the EU’s last hope for a multipolar future. The December 2014 announcement of the Balkan Silk Road and the recently declared 2017 timeline for its partial completion gave a new impetus to the global multipolar project and showed that the wind hadn’t at all left its geopolitical sails.

The Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership is at the core of this transformational initiative, but at the present moment, China is the driver and Russia is the back-up mechanic. No matter how influential its civilizational sway and all-around soft power may be in the Balkans, Moscow can only achieve so much without the assistance of a tangible infrastructural project like the gas pipeline it wanted to build, and what’s needed to keep the multipolar momentum moving is the economic catalyst that only China can now provide. Symbiotically, China is dependent on the centuries-long goodwill and trust that Russia has nurtured in the Balkans, as this makes it the only reliable actor capable of working with the Central Balkans in helping them defeat the Hybrid Wars that the US is planning against them. Both Moscow and Beijing need the Balkan Silk Road to be built just as much as the US wants it to be obstructed at all costs, and this geopolitical zero-sum game sets the stage for the current confrontation.

The State Of The Game:

Simply speaking, the unipolar and multipolar worlds are clashing in the Balkans over the geopolitical fate of the EU. The US and Turkey represent the most solidly unipolar forces in this battle, while Russia and China are its multipolar counterparts. Despite being occupied by the US, it’s very likely that the EU could be liberated if the Balkan Silk Road is ever completed, hence why one could accurately label the events taking place in the Balkans as “The Battle For Europe”. The US is employing its military, terrorist, and NGO forces in this campaign, while its Turkish ally is spreading the infectious ideology of radical Islam in order to cull a seemingly innumerable amount of violent recruits for the unipolar struggle and pave the way for Neo-Ottomanism’s pivot to the Balkans.

On the other side of matters, Russia is strategically advising its Serbian partners and providing them with weapons to counter-balance the US’ Croatian lackeys, and it also holds open the possibility to expand its strategic partnership with Macedonia beyond the field of democratic security (also known as counter-Color Revolution techniques) if the authorities there so choose. China’s contribution to this fight is the overwhelming economic resources and professionally experienced management that it has to skillfully turn the Balkan Silk Road into a reality as soon as possible, and the dreams of prosperity and multipolar opportunity that are associated with its successful construction produce a strong and loyal attraction to the project among many people in the transit states.

The crux of the competition therefore essentially comes down to being between the ideologies of destructive force (the US and Turkey) and creative development (Russia and China). The unipolar camp and its regional Albanian and Croatian allies won’t hesitate to burn the Balkans in a scorched-earth pyrrhic victory, while the onus of saving it falls on the patriotic citizens of the central sub-region between Republika Srpska, Serbia, Montenegro, and the Republic of Macedonia.  It’s a lot easier to pay off local goons and mislead wayward youth ( be it religiously or in support of a pro-Western cause) than it is to cultivate sincere supporters of a patriotic ideal, but thus far, the playing field appears to be even, with a near-equal amount of unipolar fighters and multipolar defenders. The critical difference, however, is that the Central Balkan citizens who truly support their states won’t ever turn their backs on their countrymen, and they’ll resolutely defend their homeland from attack until their last breath. The same can’t be said for aggressors (be they internal or external) that don’t wholeheartedly believe in what they’re fighting for.

The future of the Balkans, and consequently that of Europe, can go either way at this point, and there’s no telling which side will ultimately come out on top, but the deciding factor will inevitably be whether the US and Turkey can mislead enough people into destroying their home region out of manipulated geopolitical hatred, or whether Russia and China can convince them to take a patriotic stand in defending it in order to see a better and more prosperous future for all.

To be continued…

Serbs protest against government’s plans to deepen relations with NATO, February 2016

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

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Michel Temer, the vice president and former political ally of ousted Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) President Dilma Rousseff, formally took control of Planalto, the presidential offices in Brasilia, Thursday, declaring that his would be a government of “national salvation,” and assembling a cabinet of right-wing politicians and capitalist economists from the banking and financial sector.

With the Brazilian Senate having voted that morning after an all-night session to initiate impeachment proceedings against Rousseff, she was suspended from office for the length of a trial that will likely run into September or October. While only a simple majority vote was required to begin this process, the lopsided result was 55 to 22, more than the two-thirds majority that is ultimately required to permanently remove the PT president from office.

Given that the basis of the impeachment charges—Rousseff’s alleged manipulation of budgetary accounts to cover for temporary shortfalls—was clearly contrived as a pretext, a final conviction appears inevitable.

Brazil is the largest country in Latin America and the seventh largest economy in the world. Rousseff received 54 million votes in 2014 when she was reelected to a second term as president. This election has now been overturned through an anti-democratic political conspiracy at the highest level of the Brazilian ruling elite.

In his first speech to the nation, Temer, surrounded by a coterie of smirking politicians from nearly every party outside of the PT, stressed that his government would work to “improve the environment for investment by the private sector” and carry out “fundamental reforms” designed to shift the burden of the country’s profound economic crisis even more directly onto the backs of the masses of Brazilian workers.

There was more than a whiff of fascism in the new interim president’s remarks. He declared that his goal was to “pacify and unify” Brazil and declared that the watchword of his government would be “Ordeme Progresso,” order and progress, the words that appear on Brazil’s flag.

Taken from the French philosopher Auguste Comte, the slogan was first introduced into Brazil’s political lexicon in the late 19th century by leading figures in the military who were influenced by Comte’s positivism. They became a watchword for national unity and suppression of the class struggle, imposed most effectively under the US-backed military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1964 and 1985.

Temer’s remarks suggested that Brazil needed to return to these old “values.” The slogan on the flag, he declared, “couldn’t be more current than if it were written today.”

Temer told the assembled audience that he had recently driven past a gas station and seen that its owner had put up a sign reading “Don’t talk about the crisis, work.” He added that he wanted to see this slogan spread to “10, 20 million billboards throughout Brazil.” The slogan, he said served to promote “harmony” and “optimism.”

He spoke these words under conditions in which 11 million workers are now unemployed and layoffs have been continuing at the rate of 100,000 a month. The collapse of the commodities boom and the emerging market boom has plunged the country into its deepest economic crisis in a century.

The answer given by Temer to this crisis is clearly one of sharp austerity measures. He bragged that his first actions had been to slash the number of government ministries and indicated that a large-scale elimination of public sector jobs would follow. He also said that his government was committed to “fundamental reforms,” in the first instance in the country’s social security system and its labor laws.

The cabinet assembled by Temer is a collection of reactionaries and pro-business figures. Among the most important figures is Jose Serra, who has been named foreign minister. Serra is a leading figure in the right-wing PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) who served as a senator, mayor of Sao Paulo and twice as the unsuccessful candidate of the PSDB, losing to the PT in both 2002 and 2010. Serra was named in US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks as favoring the privatization of the state-owned energy giant Petrobras and the opening up of the so-called pre-salt underwater oil fields to exploitation by major oil firms based in the US.

The ministry of education was awarded to Mendonça Filho of the extreme right-wing Democrats (DEM) party, the successor to ARENA, the official ruling party of the former military dictatorship. He is the son of a career ARENA official and major landowner in the northern state of Pernambuco.

The ministry of Institutional Security, which includes Brazil’s intelligence agency, has been placed under the control of the former top general in the Brazilian army, Sérgio Westphalen Etchegoyen. When the general’s father was identified by the country’s truth commission as one of the officials responsible for the murders, disappearances and torture under the dictatorship, he protested angrily, declaring the accusations “frivolous.”

For agriculture minister, Temer named Blairo Maggi, a billionaire agribusiness figure known as the “soy king,” who is credited with doing more to destroy the Amazon rain forest than anyone else on the planet.

And the ministry of justice was handed to Alexandre de Moraes, the Sao Paulo state public safety secretary, who is an advocate of police-state repression. A separate human rights ministry was folded into justice and also placed under his leadership. Earlier, the name of a right-wing female deputy known for her opposition to abortion, including in cases of rape, had been put forward for human rights.

A number of those appointed to the new cabinet are facing corruption charges, including in connection with the massive bribery and kickback scandal involving contracts with Petrobras. Even the daily O Estado de S. Paulo, which backed impeachment, was compelled to observe that the new government’s leaders “with the participation of those notably involved in corruption scandals past and present, pretend that they are going to change everything to, in reality, leave everything as it is.”

Perhaps the most significant figure in the new cabinet is Henrique Meirelles, who will take the post of finance minister, directing the austerity drive. Social welfare will reportedly be placed under his remit, indicating the government’s intention to make radical changes. The role of Meirelles underscores the fundamental continuity between the new right-wing government and the PT administration that preceded it.

A former CEO of Bank of Boston, Meirelles was appointed head of Brazil’s central bank when the PT first came into office under the presidency of former metalworkers union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. His appointment was a signal to both Brazilian and foreign capitalists that they had nothing to fear from the socialist rhetoric of the PT. Lula had proposed that Rousseff bring Meirelles into her administration, even as vice president.

In her own speech delivered Thursday morning, Rousseff denounced the impeachment as a “coup” and insisted that she was guilty of no crime. “It’s the most brutal thing that can happen to a human being,” she said, “being condemned for a crime you didn’t commit. No injustice is more devastating.”

She compared the experience to the torture she suffered as a prisoner of the military dictatorship in the late 1960s and her bout with cancer.

While denouncing the attack on herself personally and the threat to democracy posed by the “fraudulent impeachment,” she made no attempt to warn the Brazilian working class of the sharp attacks that are to come, much less call for any concrete action by workers against the “coup.”

This is because, in the end, the PT was prepared to carry out similar attacks, and had sought to win the support of Brazilian and foreign capital with the argument that only it could be seen as a “legitimate” government, and could utilize the collaboration of the CUT union federation to suppress working class resistance.

Moreover, all of those who have carried out the supposed coup were, until recently, the PT’s closest political allies, awarded posts in government, running on common slates and, as emerged in the so-called mensalao scandal, even paid handsome stipends to vote with the government in congress.

Russia asked the UN to blacklist Ahrar al Sham and Jaish al Islam as terrorist groups. The U.S. rejected that. “We continue to have dialogue with them,” said the State Department.

A day later Ahrar al Sham joins al-Qaeda in breaking the ceasefire in Syria and in assaulting and ethnically cleansing a village loyal to the Syrian government. Meanwhile Amnesty International accuses both groups of indiscriminate attacks on civilians, including by use of chemical weapons, and of other war crimes.

May 11 Russia’s bid to blacklist Syrian rebel groups at UN blocked by US, others

The U.S. and other countries at the United Nations Wednesday blocked Russia’s bid to blacklist two rebel groups in Syria saying it would undermine the war-torn country’s halt in fighting.Reuters reported that Britain, the U.S., France and Ukraine blocked the bid to blacklist Jaish al-Islam [(Army of Islam)] and Ahrar al-Sham. Moscow claimed the groups should have been excluded because of their ties to militant groups including ISIS and Al Qaeda.

May 11 – State Department Daily Press Briefing

QUESTION: — on this issue? Both Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam – I mean, they have exactly the same bylaw, almost the same bylaws. They don’t have a constitution. They have what they call internal document. They espouse the same dogma, they believe the same thing, they practice the same practices as Jabhat al-Nusrah and as al-Qaida. Why shouldn’t they be designated as a terrorist organization?MS TRUDEAU: So we constantly review information. We are constantly assessing these groups. At this stage our position is that these groups are members of the cessation of hostilities. We continue to have dialogue with them. If our position changes, we’ll make that assessment then. But we are in constant review of this.

May 12 – Syria’s al-Qaida branch seizes central Alawite village

DAMASCUS, Syria – Syria’s al-Qaida branch and allied fighters from ultraconservative rebel factions on Wednesday seized a village of President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect in central Syria, following fierce clashes with government troops.
…
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group tracking the conflict, said families disappeared from Zaara after the militants overran the village. Along with Syria’s al-Qaida branch known as the Nusra Front, other hard-line factions that took part in the raid on Zaara included Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Rahman.

May 13 – Syria: Armed opposition groups committing war crimes in Aleppo city

Armed groups surrounding the Sheikh Maqsoud district of Aleppo city have repeatedly carried out indiscriminate attacks that have struck civilian homes, streets, markets and mosques, killing and injuring civilians and displaying a shameful disregard for human life, said Amnesty International.
…
Two of the armed groups attacking YPG forces in Sheikh Maqsoud – Ahrar al Sham and Army of Islam – have sent their own representatives to the UN-brokered negotiations over the Syria conflict in Geneva. The other armed groups have approved other delegates to represent them at the talks.“The international community must not turn a blind eye to the mounting evidence of war crimes by armed opposition groups in Syria. […],” said Magdalena Mughrabi [interim Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.]

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, nonsense 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

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S 2012 platform pledged to “curb the influence of lobbyists and special interests.” But the 2016 convention in Philadelphia will be officially hosted by lobbyists and corporate executives, a number of whom are actively working to undermine progressive policies achieved by President Barack Obama, including health care reform and net neutrality.

Some of the members of the 2016 Democratic National Convention Host Committee, whose job is to organize the logistics and events for the convention, are hardly even Democratic Party stalwarts, given that many have donated and raised thousands of dollars for Republican presidential and congressional candidates this cycle.

The composition of the 15-member Host Committee may appear out of sync with the rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but the reality is that the party, in the form of the Democratic National Committee, has moved decisively to embrace the lobbying industry. In October 2015, DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., reportedly huddled with dozens of lobbyists to plan the convention in Philadelphia, and provided the influence peddlers involved with a menu of offerings in exchange for donations. In February, news reports revealed that the DNC had quietly lifted the Obama-era ban on federal lobbyist donations to the party and convention committee.

Anna Adams-Sarthou, the communications director for the Philadelphia 2016 Host Committee, wrote in an email to The Intercept that she has “no concerns” about lobbyists participating in the effort, because “the Host Committee is a nonprofit entity that does not lobby.”

The Host Committee, however, is deeply involved in planning events for the delegates, fundraising, and handling media relations, among other responsibilities.

“Our Host Committee is made up a diverse group of civic leaders that have led efforts like this in the past, many of whom were integrally involved in the bid for Philadelphia to host the convention,” Adams-Sarthou wrote.

The Host Committee’s finance chair is Daniel Hilferty. In his day job, Hilferty is CEO of Independence Blue Cross, a health insurance giant that covers nine million people. In December, Hilferty became board chairman of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of America, a trade group that lobbies for the insurance industry, and he serves on the board of directors of America’s Health Insurance Plan’s (AHIP), the insurance industry lobbying group that spearheaded the campaignagainst the Affordable Care Act. Lobby registration documents show the BCBS Association is actively supporting a number of Republican bills to roll back provisions of the ACA.

In an interview conducted late last year, Hilferty said he plans to make “sure to work closely at the congressional level, with the administration, with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to have input” into how the ACA is implemented under the next administration.

Hilferty has also donated heavily to Republicans this cycle, giving $10,000 to Prosperity for Pennsylvania, a Super PAC supporting the reelection of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.; $1,000 to the PAC supporting Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah; $1,000 to Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; $2,700 to Chris Christie’s presidential campaign; $25,300 to the NRCC, a GOP committee designed to re-elect House Republicans; and $2,700 to Jeb Bush. Hilferty also gave $2,700 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Allyson Schwartz, a former Democratic lawmaker, is a co-chair of the Host Committee. She was recently named head of a new advocacy group for the health insurance industry called Better Medicare Alliance. The group, according to the Center for Public Integrity, was set up by APCO, a lobbying firm for health insurance companies, to push to expand Medicare Advantage plans, the privately managed programs that were curtailed with the enactment of the ACA.

David Cohen is the special advisor to the Host Committee, and serves as the executive vice president of Comcast, overseeing the company’s lobbying and regulatory strategy. In addition to being a “Hillblazer” — one of Hillary Clinton’s bundlers who has raised $100,000 or more — Cohen has been a particularly bitter and duplicitous leading opponent of the rules regarding net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic must be treated equally. And despite hosting fundraisers for Clinton at his home last summer, Cohen has spent heavily to help elect a Republican Congress, including recent donations to the NRCC; Sen. Toomey; Sen. Scott; Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.; as well as $33,400 to the NRSC, a committee for helping elect GOP members to the Senate.

The Philadelphia Host Committee chair, former Gov. Ed Rendell, headed for Wall Street as soon as he left office, and has since represented a number of controversial special interests. In 2011, as New York was debating regulations on fracking, Rendell wrote a pro-fracking opinion column in the New York Daily News, while failing to disclose that he was a paid consultant at a private equity firm that had investments in the industry.

That same year, Rendell started providing paid speeches on behalf of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a fringe Iranian exile group that was considered a terrorist organization by the State Department at the time (it was delisted in 2012).

The former governor also joined the group Fix The Debt — an organization backed by private equity billionaire Pete Peterson thatadvocates for cutting Social Security benefits — co-chairing its activitiesalongside Judd Gregg.

Rendell is currently a special counsel at the law and lobbying firm Ballard Spahr; earlier this year, the firm launched a new election law group, advising clients on campaign finance and lobbying strategy.

“The Democratic Party, especially the DNC, have never liked Obama’s policies to disengage lobbyists from campaign fundraising,” says Craig Holman, an expert on ethics and campaign finance with Public Citizen. “The party only went along with the restrictions because Obama was the party leader. As soon as Obama could no longer be viewed as the leader of the party, the DNC quietly repealed the lobbyist restrictions. The public learned about it only weeks later.”

“Party bosses have always preferred a Wild West when it comes to fundraising,” he adds. “If party bosses had their way, we would have no restrictions on campaign contributions to the parties and return to the days of Tammany Hall.”

Remember when coups and assassinations were secretive, when presidents were obliged to go to Congress and tell lies and ask permission for wars, when torture, spying, and lawless imprisonment were illicit, when re-writing laws with signing statements and shutting down legal cases by yelling “state secrets!” was abusive, and when the idea of a president going through a list of men, women, and children on Tuesdays to pick whom to have murdered would have been deemed an outrage?

All such resistance and outrage is in the past by mutual consent of those in power in Washington, D.C. Whoever becomes the next president of the United States could only unfairly and in violation of established bipartisan precedent be denied the powers of unlimited spying, imprisoning, and killing. That this is little known is largely a symptom of partisanship. Most Democrats still haven’t allowed themselves to hear of the kill list. But the widespread ignorance is also a function of media, of what’s reported, what’s editorialized, what’s asked about in campaign debates, and what isn’t.

The new book, Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program, from Jeremy Scahill and the staff of The Intercept, is terrific to see even more for what it represents than for what it actually teaches us. We’ve already learned the details it includes from the website of the Intercept, and they fit with similar details that have trickled out through numerous sources for years. But the fact that a media outlet is reporting on this topic and framing its concerns in a serious way around the dangerous expansion of presidential and governmental power is encouraging.

The United States is now working on putting into action drone ships and ships of drone planes, but has never worked out how in the world it is legal or moral or helpful to blow people up with missiles all over the earth. Drone wars once declared successful and preferable alternatives to ground wars are predictably evolving into small-scale ground wars, with great potential for escalation, and nobody in any place of power has considered what candidate Obama might have called ending the mindset that starts wars, perhaps by using the rule of law, aid, disarmament, and diplomacy.

I recommend starting The Assassination Complex with the afterword by Glenn Greenwald, because he reminds us of some of Senator and candidate Obama’s statements in favor of restoring the rule of law and rejecting President George W. Bush’s abuses. What Obama called unacceptable at Guantanamo, he has continued at Guantanamo and elsewhere, but expanded into a program that focuses on murder without “due process” rather than imprisonment without “due process.”

“Somehow,” writes Greenwald, “it was hideously wrong for George W. Bush to eavesdrop on and imprison suspected terrorists without judicial approval, yet it was perfectly permissible for Obama to assassinate them without due process of any kind.” That is in fact a very generous depiction of the drone murder program, as The Assassination Complex also documents that, at least during one time period examined, “nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.” We should think of drones more as random killing machines than as machines killing particular people who are denied the right to a trail by jury but are suspected of something by somebody.

“It is hard,” writes Greenwald, “to overstate the conflict between Obama’s statements before he became president and his presidential actions.” Yes, I suppose so, but it’s also hard to overstate the conflict between some of his campaign statements and others of his campaign statements. If he was going to give people a fair hearing before abusing their rights, what are we to make of his campaign promises to start a drone war in Pakistan and escalate the war in Afghanistan? Greenwald is assuming that the right not to be murdered ranks somewhere fairly high alongside the right not to be spied on or imprisoned or tortured. But, in fact, a war-supporting society must understand all rights to have particular protection except the right to stay alive.

The advantage that comes from viewing small-scale drone murders as an escalation of small-scale imprisonment — that is, as a violation of rights — really comes when you carry logic one step further and view large-scale killing in war as also a violation of rights, as indeed murder on a larger scale. In fact, among the top areas in which I would add to Greenwald’s summary of Obama’s expansions of Bush powers are: torture, signing statements, and the creation of new wars of various types.

Obama has made torture a question of policy, not a crime to be prosecuted. Frowning on it and outsourcing it and hushing it up does not deny it to the next president in the way that prosecuting it in court would.

Obama campaigned against rewriting laws with signing statements. Then he proceeded to do just as Bush had done. That Obama has used fewer signing statements is largely due, I think, to the fact that fewer laws have been passed, combined with his creation of the silent signing statement. Remember that Obama announced that he would review Bush’s signing statements and decide which to reject and which to keep. That is itself a remarkable power that now passes to the next president, who can keep or reject any of Bush’s or Obama’s signing statements. But as far as I know, Obama never did actually tell us which of Bush’s he was keeping. In fact, Obama announced that he would silently assume any past signing statement to apply to a new and relevant law without restating the signing statement. Obama has also developed the practice of instructing the Office of Legal Counsel to write a memo in place of a law. And he’s developed the additional technique of creating self-imposed restrictions, which have the benefit of not being laws at all when he violates them. A key example of this is his standards for whom to kill with drones.

On the question of starting wars, Obama has radically altered what is acceptable. He began a war on Libya without Congress. He told Congress in his last state of the union speech that he would wage a war in Syria with or without them (which statement they applauded). That power, further normalized by all the drone wars, will pass to the next president.

Lawyers have testified to Congress that drone killing is murder and illegal if not part of a war, but perfectly fine if part of a war, and that whether it’s part of a war or not depends on secret presidential memos the public hasn’t seen. The power to render murder possibly legal, and therefore effectively legal, by declaring the existence of a secret memo, is also a power that passes to the next president.

In reality, there is no way to even remotely begin to legalize drone murders, whether or not part of a war. The seven current U.S. wars that we know of are all illegal under the UN Charter and under the Kellogg-Briand Pact. So, any element of them is also illegal. This is a simple point but a very difficult one for U.S. liberals to grasp, in the context of human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch taking a principled stand against recognizing the illegality of any war.

If, on the other hand, the drone murders are not part of an illegal war, they are still illegal, as murder is illegal everywhere under universal jurisdiction. The defense that a foreign dictator, exiled or otherwise, has granted permission to murder people in his country, so that sovereignty is not violated, misses the basic illegality of murder, not to mention the irony that helping dictators kill their people conflicts rather stunningly with the common U.S. excuse for launching wars of overthrow, namely punishment of a dictator for the ultimate sin of “killing his own people.” Sovereignty is also an idea very selectively respected; just ask Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, or Syria.

Reporter Cora Currier, in The Assassination Complex, looks at Obama’s self-imposed, but never met, restrictions on drone murders. Under these non-legal limitations it is required that drone missiles target only people who are “continuing, imminent threats to the American people,” and who cannot be captured, and only when there is “near certainty” that no civilians will be killed or injured. Currier points out that Obama approves people for murder for months at a time, rendering dubious the already incoherent idea of a “continuing imminent threat.” It’s not clear that “capture” is ever a serious option, and it is clear that in many cases it is not. The “near certainty” about not killing civilians is thrown into doubt by the constant killing of civilians and, as Currier points out, by the White House claiming to have had that “near certainty” in a case in which it killed civilians who happened to be American and European, thus requiring some accountability.

Scahill and Greenwald also document in this book that sometimes what is targeting is a cell phone believed to belong to a particular person. That of course provides no “near certainty” that the targeted person is there or that anyone else isn’t.

What might begin to restrain this madness? Will those who opposed Bush lawlessness but turned a blind eye to its expansion under Obama find themselves opposing it again? That seems highly unlikely under the best of the three remaining big-party presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders. I can’t imagine ever getting a significant number of his supporters to even become aware of his foreign policy, so good is he on domestic issures. With Hillary Clinton the task would be extremely difficult as well, aided only by the likelihood that she would launch truly big-scale wars. With a President Trump, it does seem much more conceivable that millions of people would suddenly find themselves opposing what has been firmly put into place the past 16 years. Whether it would then be too late is a different question.

Here’s why: though Hezbollah usually is quite prompt and forthright when it’s commanders have been assassinated by Israelis in the past, this time is different.  It’s hard to know why.  But I have a few theories:

I’ve been reading the Twitter timeline of Elijah Magnier, who is one of the most astute observers of both Hezbollah and the Syrian conflict.  He believes theassignment of blame to Syrian rebels is deliberate disinformation.  I’m inclined to agree.

Israel has assassinated as much of the top Hezbollah leadership as it can over the years.  It killed Abbas Musawi, the top leader who preceded Hassan Nasrallah.  It assassinated Imad Mugniyeh and later, his son.  It’s also assassinated Syrian generals and IRG commanders in Syria.  That’s why you shouldn’t believe the nonsense the world media offers about Israel’s alleged neutrality in the Syria conflict.

When someone as senior as Mustafa Badreddine is assassinated, it doesn’t happen by coincidence and not via an artillery shell.  It’s a deliberate, targeted assassination–well-planned and executed with sophisticated weaponry.  There is only one power in the region capable of doing this, and with a history of doing it in the past: Israel.

By the way, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights noted that there had been no artillery shelling of the airport for days before the assassination there.

Magnier adds another tantalizing piece of information: that only 30 minutes before his murder, Badreddine met with Iran’s top IRG commander, Qassem Soleimani in the same location where he died.  If so, whoever killed the Hezbollah commander likely knew Soleimani was there and chose not to kill him.  If Israel did it, the reason would be clear: killing Iran’s top military commander would necessitate a huge Iranian response.  It would threaten to destroy the Iran nuclear deal at the heart of Barack Obama’s legacy.  If the U.S. knew about the plans for this attack (and given the NSA’s penetration of foreign intelligence services, including Israel’s, that’s entirely possible), it would warn Israel not to kill Soleimani.  But it would not care about Badreddine, since he and Mugniyeh were instrumental in attacks against U.S. interests in Lebanon in 1982.  In assassinating Osama bin Laden, Obama has shown not just willingness, but eagerness to murder Islamists who’ve killed Americans.  In fact, it’s the worst aspect of the outgoing president’s legacy.

Ronen Bergman wrote in his NY Times Magazine portrait of Mugniyeh’s assassination that the NSA played a key role in intercepting the victim’s communications.  That, in turn led to locating and targeting Mugniyeh, information fed to the Israelis which permitted them to kill him.  I say, if it worked once before why wouldn’t both the CIA-NSA and Israel try it again?

If the U.S. was involved in this attack as well, it would explain why Soleimani wasn’t killed.  Obama would move heaven and earth to prevent Israel from killing a figure as critical as him, given the disruptive consequences to Iran-western relations.

Why would Hezbollah release deliberately false information about the culprits?  Because if they point the finger at Israel immediately, it will ratchet up pressure on them to respond.  If they do not take revenge, their supporters and the world will think them weak and ineffectual.  In the past, Hezbollah has been accused of mounting botched terror attacks in Asia, Africa and the Far East.  It doesn’t want to be rushed when/if it responds.  This cover gives them the time they need to decide how to respond and when.

Sealing the deal of Israeli responsibility is the Cheshire grin on the faces of Israeli intelligence officials when asked if Israel did it.  The canned response is: “I don’t know, but whoever did it did the world a favor. And I won’t shed a tear for his sorry ass.”  Or words to that effect.  Ehud Barak used to do that when he was defense minister.  Yaakov Amidror was the one who said virtually the same words as Barak in the current case.  The other typical obfuscation you’ll hear from intelligence folk in Israel is: “Who did it?  Oh I don’t know, but he sure had a lot of enemies. Any one of them could’ve done it.”  In effect, Hezbollah pre-empted them when it blamed precisely the culprit Israel would blame: the rebels.  All this is almost guaranteed to point to Israel as the culprit.  The pattern of response is so standard that it’s getting boringly predicatable.

America’s Lawyer Mike Papantonio, The Ring of Fire, joins Thom.

As the Intercept has reported – the convention’s official host committee is stacked with lobbyists and corporate donors – some of whom aren’t even Democrats.

Plus….Earlier this month, the EPA posted then retracted a study connecting glyphosate – an ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide – to cancer.

The WHO has already labeled glyphosate a carcinogen. So why did the EPA retract its study?

Thom Hartmann

Those in the comfort zone of the West should not give in to false accusations of anti-Semitism

There comes a time in a movement’s struggle when success is both a rewarding moment but also a very dangerous one. The apartheid regime in South Africa pursued its most vicious and lethal policies shortly before the fall of that regime. If you do not threaten an unjust regime or state and its supporters, it will ignore you and will see no need to confront you. If you hit the nail on the head, the reaction will come.

This is what has happened to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. This movement is the logical extension of the great work done by all the solidarity groups and committees working with Palestine.

It displays unwavering support for the Palestinian people through direct contact with authentic representatives of Palestinian communities inside and outside Palestine. Until recently, Israel deemed the BDS Movement as marginal and ineffective, and even some of Palestine’s friends in the West objected to BDS on the same grounds of its ineffectiveness.

Well, it seems the movement is now more effective than even its founders hoped for. This is not surprising as it represents a new zeitgeist in politics, as was manifested in the young electorate who voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the opposition Labour Party in the UK and for Bernie Sanders, a possible Democratic Party candidate in the forthcoming US presidential elections.

The desire for a cleaner, more moral politics that dares to challenge the neo-liberal set up of the economy and politics in the West brought these young people’s support for, ironically, two old gentlemen representing a purer form of politics.

Among the followers of this purer politics one can find firm support for the Palestinian people. The only way today to show support outside Palestine for the Palestinians is through the BDS Movement. In the UK, this logic is understood by those who voted for Corbyn and by those who are active elsewhere on behalf of causes such as social justice, ecological protection and human and indigenous people’s rights.

Members of the political elites in senior positons are voicing their clear and unashamed support for Palestine. When did you hear such support from the leader of the opposition in Britain and a presidential candidate in the US? Even if the latter’s support is feeble, in the context of American politics any candidate who can afford not to go to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and find that the sky does not fall in is part of a revolution.

This is the background for the current vicious attack on the Labour Party and Corbyn in the UK. What the Zionists in Britain point to as expressions of anti-Semitism (in the main, legitimate criticisms of Israel) have been said before over the last 50 years. The pro-Zionist lobby in Britain under direct guidance from Israel picks them because the clear anti-Zionist stance of the BDS Movement has now reached the upper echelons of power. This lobby is genuinely terrified by this development.

The reaction, one has to admit, has been powerful and vicious. However, succumbing to it by suspending party members, firing student leaders, and unnecessarily apologising for crimes that have not been committed is not the right way to confront it. We are in a struggle for a free and democratic Palestine and Israel, and fear of Zionist intimidation is not the way forward.

The coming period will be very tough, and we need to be patient and go back to the podium, the website, the radio and television network and re-explain what for many of us is obvious: Zionism is not Judaism, and anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

Zionism was not the antidote for Europe’s worst chapter of anti-Semitism during the Holocaust. Zionism was the wrong answer to that atrocity. In fact, when European leaders lent without hesitation their support for Zionism their motives in many cases were anti-Semitic.

How else can one explain a Europe that stood by when the Nazi regime in Germany committed genocide against the Jews and asked for forgiveness by supporting a plan to get rid of the Jews by despatching them to colonise Palestine? No wonder this absurd logic did not kill the anti-Semitic impulse, but rather kept it alive.

However, these things are bygones. Jewish settlers and native Palestinians share the same land and will do so in the future. The best way to fight anti-Semitism today is to turn this land into a free democratic state that is based as much as possible on just and equitable economic, social and political principles. This will be a complex, painful transformation of the present reality on the ground, and it may take decades to implement. But it is urgent to begin talking about it clearly without fear and unnecessary apologetics or false references to realpolitik.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader in the UK, may find it difficult to educate his party of the need to adopt honest and moral language about Palestine, and he has already done so much for the cause that we have to be patient even if some of his and his party’s reactions have been disappointing. However, this is not the issue.

What lies ahead is far more important than the domestic political scene in Britain. What really matters is to recognise that in Britain, as well as in the US, a new stage has begun in the struggle for peace, justice and reconciliation in Palestine. This is not a struggle that replaces the one on the ground, but it is the one that enhances and empowers it.

What we are facing is a cluster of struggles: against legislators who are either intimidated or bribed by Israel; against judges and policemen who are forced to abide by unjust and ridiculous laws that will condemn the BDS Movement as anti-Semitic; against university managements that will cower in the face of intimidation and pressure; and against newspapers and broadcasting companies that will violate their ethical codes and betray their professional commitments in the face of the new attacks.

The struggle on the ground in Palestine is far more difficult and far more dangerous, and it demands heavy sacrifices that none of us is asked to bear in the West. The least we can do is not be intimidated by absurd accusations and feel secure that at this time the struggle against Islamophobia and the evils of neo-liberalism and for the rights of indigenous peoples around the world and for Palestine is the same struggle.

This is not only a campaign of Muslims in Britain, Palestinian exiles in Europe, old leftists in America and anti-Zionists in Israel. It is part of a much larger movement of change that has brought new parties to power in Greece, Spain and Portugal, new values into the UK Labour Party, and different voices into the Democratic Party in America.

We should not be worried by the proposed legislation in the UK, the new police guidelines, or the media hysteria. Even the cowardly behaviour by the Labour Party in its recent purge of local councillors should not detract us from our achievements in the struggle for the public’s heart and mind on the question of Palestine.

Perspective is essential. If Israel believes it can choose Mark Regev as its ambassador to London, the public face of its criminal policy in Gaza, and get away with it, and if the Israeli ambassador in Washington decides to fight against the BDS Movement by sending products from the Occupied West Bank to every senator on Capitol Hill in strict violation of American laws, these are not proofs that Israel is invincible but rather that it has an imbecilic political system that fails to understand where history is taking us.

Like any phobia, Palestinophobia can intimidate and paralyse, but it can also be successfully defeated, especially in this unique period we live in. Those of us who live in the comfort zone of the West should not cower and should not give in to false accusations of anti-Semitism by Anglo-Zionists, timid politicians and cynical journalists. It is time to fight back in the courts, in the squares, in parliament and in the media.

Ilan Pappe is director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK.

Michel Temer actively cooperated with US intelligence

Now it’s official. The impeachment of left-leaning Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff by Brazil’s Congress has likely turned the country from a vital player in the “BRICS” group of nations seeking a multi-polar world to another US client state in Latin America.

Wikileaks cables reveal that the new Acting President Michel Temer is an informant for US intelligence:

Temer provided intelligence on the political situation in Brazil at the US embassy in 2006, according to one cable tweeted by Wikileaks.

During the visit, Temer told the Americans that his political party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) did not have a real national vision but was just an “umbrella organization” for local political bosses:

the PMDB has no real unifying national identity but rather an umbrella organization for regional “caciques” or bosses. Temer noted that the PMDB is not the only divided party.

Temer also informed his interlocutors that he stood behind the US-promoted Free Trade Area of the Americas:

Asked about the party’s program, Temer indicated that the PMDB favors policies to support economic growth. It has no objection to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

With Washington’s man now in Brasilia, Brazil’s cooperation with Russia, China, and the “global South” may soon grind to a halt.

Syrian intelligence forces say that they have captured a haul of medical supplies near Aleppo that came from Turkey and was destined for Daesh terrorists in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

See video here.

Youtube source Press TV

I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit, when I see a line of a hundred policemen with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.1 — Upton Sinclair, Letter to the L.A. Chief of Police, 17 May 1923

A classic proverb holds that “there is honour among thieves”.

For 99% of thieves, this proverb is actually true.

But there is a minority of thieves, alas, who have no honour at all. They are the thieves who create 97% of our money—in the form of debt—through the magic of double-entry accounting.

Thanks to the added magic of compounding interest owed on all the money, the total amount of debt owed worldwide has grown so large, it is now impossible to repay. Although, truth be told, because all of the ‘money’ is actually debt, it has always been impossible to repay, because repaying all the debt would eliminate all the ‘money’.

As two authorities on the matter—one, the High Priest, the other, a mere deacon of the Federal Reserve Bank—intoned way back in the Great Depression:

If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.2

If all the bank loans were paid up, no one would have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of currency or coin in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks for our money. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp upon the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible – but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.3

If you were not previously familiar with the illogical, paradoxical, circular pseudo-realities that arise from double-entry accounting, then Welcome to Numberland, Alice.

Even though this is the objective truth, the irrefutable reality of how the debt-based ‘money’ system works, most of us continue to believe in the impossible.

That is to say, we continue to believe—falsely—that we are bound to honour our debts.

Famed anthropologist and author of Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber explains:

That common-sensical notion not only that it’s moral to pay one’s debt, but also that morality essentially is a matter of paying one’s debts can bring people to justify things that they would never think to justify in any other circumstance.4

Economist and historian Michael Hudson says that the bankers have known about this anthropological discovery since at least the 1980’s:

They found out that the poor are honest. Almost the only people who believe they should repay their debts are the poor people. And in fact, the less money you have, the more you believe the debts should be paid.5

Nearly 2500 years ago, the man widely acknowledged to be the foundational figure for Western science, philosophy, law-making, and mathematics, gave this instruction to lenders and borrowers:

μηδὲ νόμισμα παρακατατίθεσθαι ὅτῳ μή τις πιστεύει, μηδὲ δανείζειν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, ὡς ἐξὸν μὴ ἀποδιδόναι τὸ παράπαν τῷ δανεισαμένῳ μήτε τόκον μήτε κεφάλαιον

No one shall deposit money with anyone he does not trust, nor lend at interest, since it is permissible for the borrower to refuse entirely to pay back either interest or principal.6

It turns out that Plato was right.

It is permissible—legally—for all the world’s borrowers to refuse to honour all their debts to all the world’s banks.

The reason why is because—legally—no bank has lent us any money.

In fact—according to the banks themselves—legally, all the money in the banks was lent by us to them.

(Feeling dizzy Alice?)

According to Black’s, the most widely used law dictionary in the United States7, “money” is legally defined as (emphasis added):

A general, indefinite term for the measure and representative of value; currency; the circulating medium; cash. “Money” is a generic term, and embraces every description of coin or bank-notes recognized by common consent as a representative of value in effecting exchanges of property or payment of debts. Hopson v. Fountain. 5 Humph. (Tenn.) 140. Money is used in a specific and also in a general and more comprehensive sense. In its specific sense, it means what is coined or stamped by public authority, and has its determinate value fixed by governments. In its more comprehensive and general sense, it means wealth.8

Rather than lending us legal money, bankers have misled and deceived us into renting a record of a promise to pay legal money.

They have misled and deceived us into believing that their record of their promise to pay us money, is actually money (legal substance).

They have also misled and deceived us into believing that theirrecord of their promise to pay us money, is actually our money (ownership title).

And here’s the real kicker.

Despite the fact that they claim to have loaned us all this money, thanks to the magical paradox at the heart of double-entry accounting, they also claim, simultaneously, precisely the opposite to be true — that we have actually loaned all that money to them.

(We will return to this later – think “bail-in”).

It really does beg the question, “Does anyone really own money?”

Because the ‘money’ that the bankers have purportedly ‘loaned’ to us—that we have loaned to them—is neither money in true legal substance, nor is it certain just whose ‘money’ it actually is, we can confidently assert that the bankers have

• misrepresented the sign, true substance, and true value of the “consideration” component of the loan agreement,
• engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in the withholding and/or obfuscation of key information pertaining to their capacity to deliver on their promise of performance,
• made false, misleading, and deceptive statements and representations in the inducement of borrowers to enter into an agreement of exchange of mutual performances (the “offer”),
• failed to deliver on their promise of performance (“failure of consideration”),
• engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in obfuscating their failure to deliver on their promise of performance, and
• gained dishonest advantage (“interest”, “yield”, “return”) through these acts of misleading and deceptive conduct.

You may well be feeling—like Alice—rather incredulous about this, and questioning how it is possible. After all, surely the financial accounting standard-setters and our government regulators would prevent such things from happening?

Alas, no.

Just as with double-entry accounting—the magical foundation on which the entire parasite worm-ridden edifice of global banking and finance is built—the truth is exactly the opposite.

Ever since the “financial reporting revolution ushered in by financial economics ascendance in the 1960s”9 and the “increasing hegemony of neo-liberal ideology over issues of public policy and regulation ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher”10, the financial accounting standards bodies and government regulators have aided and abetted the bankers in their misleading and deceptive conduct:

Well documented is the growing dominance of the social sciences and of business education by neoclassical economic ideas (Ferraro, Pfeffer, & Sutton, 2005), which form the intellectual foundation of neo-liberal morality and politics.11

Transforming accounting in the academy into a neoclassical economics sub-discipline (Reiter & Williams, 2002), which the financial reporting revolution accomplished, has impoverished accounting discourse as a moral discourse (Reiter, 1998; Williams, 2000) and led to the understanding of accounting as a practice whose purpose is to cohere with a world made natural by the discourse of neoclassical economics.12

For at least four decades, the private not-for-profit (oh really?) financial accounting standard-setters (FASB, IASB) have continued to actively aid and abet the bankers’ misleading and deceptive conduct, despite frequent accounting-enabled corporate scandals and resultant financial crises, and the often stunning revelations and criticisms presented in the peer-reviewed accounting literature (emphasis added):

The savings and loan failures in the late 1980s and 1990s, the Enron, Global Crossing and Tyco corporate scandals, Andersen’s demise, and the sub-prime mortgage crisis all relate to deception[emphasis in original]. All such scandals involved to varying degrees the telling of accounting untruths…13

Accounting representations are true if they predict, or true if theyabet the privileged group to pursue its objectives, a quite different notion of true than implied by the popular usage…14

[M]any accounting signs no longer refer to real objects and events and accounting no longer functions according to the logic of transparent representation, stewardship or information economics.15

[A]ccounting today no longer refers to any objective reality but instead circulates in a “hyperreality” of self-referential models.16

The accounting sign now precedes (and even creates through its ‘‘sign value’’) the referent that it once purported to represent. It is no longer an abstraction or an appearance of any ‘‘real’’ thing. It is its own pure simulation, making circular references to other models which themselves make circular references to accounting signs.17

Are such disasters [Enron] necessary before accountants begin to realise how indispensable it is to make a distinction between conceptual representation (including accounting representations and misrepresentations) and the reality to be represented?18

As mentioned earlier, around 97% of so-called ‘money’ in ‘circulation’ (hint: it doesn’t actually circulate in the true meaning of the word; it magically disappears in one place, and magically reappears in another) is not actually money (“coined or stamped bypublic authority”)19. It is bank-created ‘credit’.

By legal definition, bank ‘credit’ is not real money.

Bank ‘credit’ is actually just an electronic double-entry accountingrecord of the bank’s promise to pay real money.

However, this objective legal reality has not prevented the FASB/IASB from aiding and abetting the bankers in their false, misleading and deceptive misrepresentation of the mere sign of money as actually being real legal money, and consequently inducing prospective borrowers into forming loan agreements for the purpose of gain for the bankers (“interest”, “yield”, “return”) on the basis of this fundamental misrepresentation.

For example, effective July 1, 2009—that is, in the middle of the global banking liquidity crisis known as the “GFC”—the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) introduced Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) §305 Cash and Cash Equivalents.This new standard effectively sanctioned—and obfuscated—the banks’ misleading and deceptive conduct in renting records of promises to pay under the guise of so-called ‘money’ (emphasis added; duplicitous weasel words underlined):

Cash

Consistent with common usage, cash includes not only currency on hand but demand deposits with banks or other financial institutions. Cash also includes other kinds of accounts that have the general characteristics of demand deposits in that the customer may deposit additional funds at any time and also effectively may withdraw funds at any time without prior notice or penalty. All charges and credits to those accounts are cash receipts or payments to both the entity owning the account and the bank holding it. For example, a bank’s granting of a loan bycrediting the proceeds to a customer’s demand deposit accountis a cash payment by the bank and a cash receipt of the customer when the entry is made.

This codification of the bookkeeping entry record of bank ‘credits’—the record of a promise to pay cash—as actually being (“is“) ‘cash’, is in clear contradiction of the legal definition of money.

An electronic record of a promise to pay cash

• is not “coin or bank-notes”,
• is not “coined or stamped by public authority”,
• is not “currency” or “cash”; that is to say, not in any sense that is or would be “recognized by common consent“ (Black’s) as being actual “currency” or “cash” (i.e., coin or bank-notes; legal tender).

According to the International Institute of Certified Public Accountants (IICPA) in an Open Letter to both the FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in May 2013, this codification of banks’ electronic ‘credits’ as (not representing but) actually being “cash” is also in breach of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS); (emphasis added):

Demand deposits referred to by the public as “cash in bank” is recorded and reported by monetary financial institutions (MFI) in units of account by double-entry bookkeeping in a process which the MFIs call “lending” — but which is effectively a nullity — by debiting loans receivable and crediting demand deposits.

These so created units of account are then denominated at will in dollars, pound sterling, euros, etc., depending on the terms of the documentation or underlying promissory note, or whatever is the legal document giving rise to this type of “lending,” using whatever is the name of the currency in the jurisdiction in which it takes place, but legal tender the “demand deposits” are not.

These so-called “loans receivable” that give rise to these so-called “demand deposits”

• are not assets within the meaning of economic resources,
• do not have the capacity to eventually result in cash inflows (cash being legal tender or central bank money, so called federal funds),
• are created bank-internally and therefore in violation of self-dealing,
• have no cost basis,
• have no market value except by way of assignment against like-kind-nullities to or from other MFIs never settled in legal tender or central bank money.20

If that were not enough, it gets worse.

Astonishingly, the FASB’s ASC §305-10-55-1 Implementation guidance tumbles even further down the rabbit hole of logical and legal unreality—not to mention amorality—in stating what the bank customers’ perspective of so-called “Cash and Cash Equivalents”“shall” be (emphasis added):

Cash on deposit at a financial institution shall be considered by the depositor as cash rather than as an amount owed to the depositor.

This codification by an unelected, private not-for-profit financial accounting standards organisation of how the general public “shall” consider their so-called “cash on deposit”, is in clear contradiction of

• the legal definition of “money”,
• the common understanding of the word “cash” as meaning a government-created tangible entity (i.e., legal tender notes and coins),
• the banks’ own balance sheet records affirming all customer “deposits” as being a Liability (i.e., amounts owed to customers),
• the banks’ perspective regarding ownership title (claim) on this so-called “cash” (a perspective backed, incidentally, by the Financial Stability Board in its G20-wide “resolution regime” in preparation for “bad” bank bail-ins).

The implications of this are disturbing.

The FASB has ex post facto codified that banks may consider bank ‘credits’ (a record of a promise to pay cash) as actually being “cash” for accounting purposes; that the customers’ perspective of bank ‘credits’ “shall” be that those ‘credits’ are (literal physical) “cash”, and, that they are not amounts owed to them by the bank, wholly irrespective of whether or not the banks have actually met (or will actually meet) their legal obligations under contract law.

While the FASB might imagine that it can—without any practical or legal implications—surreptitiously decree how hundreds of millions of “depositors” “shall” view their “deposit”, the truth of the matter is that an immediate contradiction, and critical conflict of interests arises.

Quite simply, the FASB’s ASC §305 Cash and Cash Equivalentscodification does not even comply with the rules of double-entry bookkeeping, much less the common understanding of the true meaning of the word “cash”. It has potentially far-reaching implications for the legal standing of banks’ claims on borrowers for the (re)payment of “consideration” (plus compounding “interest” in addition), in that it serves to highlight the false, misleading, and deceptive statements and representations of banks in the formation of loan contracts.

To illustrate this critical point, the following diagram depicts all of the perspectives (views), concepts, and realities that are inherent in a double-entry bookkeeping-based ‘account’ of the bank Lender – customer Borrower relationship. Keeping in mind that—since the time of the Stoics—it has been considered an “indispensable” fundamental of philosophical and scientific discourse to express clearly the difference and relation between the threefold notions of the sign (sound, written symbol, etc), the conceptual idea (meaning) communicated by the sign, and the real (the actual object or eventbehind the concept)21, all three notions — “Sign”, Concept, (Real) — are clearly marked for each party and each perspective of the two-sided, legally-binding mutual “exchange” of promises-to-pay.

Consider carefully the following:

• Irrespective of whether one adopts the perspective of the Borrower or the Lender, any so-called “cash” or “demand deposit” appears only as a sign (sound, name, symbol, i.e., amis–representation) of the Lender’s IOU,
• The real object or event underlying the purported existence of “cash in bank” (or “demand deposit”), is the Lender’s IOU(promise-to-pay); in other words, the real object or event is the Lender’s promise of performance (“consideration”), and not“coin or bank-notes” “stamped by public authority”,
• The sign (“cash in bank”, “money”, “funds”, “$”, “€”, “£”, etc) that is purported to the Borrower by the Lender to not merelyrepresent but to actually be the underlying reality, is false, misleading, and deceptive,
• As the Borrower has been induced to accept the offer to contract with the Lender on the basis of false, misleading, and deceptive representations, the loan contract is unenforceable,
• The Lender’s IOU is simultaneously an Asset of the Borrower, and a Liability of the Lender (contradicting §305-10-55-1),
• As a loan agreement requires inter alia the exchange of mutual performances, and the Lender’s obligation is defined as necessarily preceding that of the Borrower, the recording and reporting of the Lender’s IOU as a Liability demonstrates that the Lender has failed to deliver on its promise of performance (“consideration”), i.e., to provide the Borrower with money (“coin or bank-notes” “stamped by public authority”); therefore, the loan contract is unenforceable.

There is one final matter to consider.

Since early 2009, the unelected Financial Stability Board (FSB)—perennially chaired by Goldman Sachs alumni—has been working with G20 governments and financial regulatory authorities to implement a global banking “resolution regime”. One of the Key Attributes of this scheme is the passage of legislation granting governments the power to “bail-in” the “deposits” of bank customers in order to save or reestablish a “bad” bank or “systemically-important” financial institution.

Despite the reality that all so-called “customer deposits” have in fact been created ex nihilo by the banks through the act of “lending” tocustomers, and are reported as a Liability of the banks on their balance sheets (i.e., as ‘money’ still owed to the customer), both the banks and the FSB’s global banking resolution regime consider the customer to be a “creditor” of the bank.

In other words, rather than the bank having purportedly loaned (but not yet delivered) ‘money’ to the customer, the bank and the FSB deem that the situation is precisely the reverse – the customer has purportedly loaned his/her ‘money’ to the bank (note the implicit assumption of customer ownership).

Believe it or not, there is an explanation—albeit a perverse, morally abhorrent and unconscionable explanation—for this, and in turn, for how the creeping global preparations to legally steal the “deposit” assets of bank customers (refer above diagram) is able to be “justified” by the banks, the financial and political authorities, and the unelected, BIS-funded, Goldman Sachs alumni-chaired FSB.

At the heart of the matter is the ever-present paradox of perspective inherent in the Babylonian Duality Principle on which double-entry accounting is based.

Banks are able to create new (so-called) ‘money’ ex nihilo through the loan origination process. As this is recorded using double-entry accounting, every new loan results in a new Asset and a new Liability on the banks’ balance sheet records.

However, because banks act both as new loan (thus, new ‘money’) originators and as financial intermediaries, there is no way of disaggregating the Liability side of any bank’s balance sheet in order to clearly distinguish between those “deposits” that have arisen in consequence of that bank’s own lending (so-called), and those “deposits” that have arisen in consequence of that bank’s intermediation (i.e., ‘transfers’ of ‘money’ from one customer account to another customer account at the same bank, or, from the customer accounts of other financial institutions to customers of the bank).

Whether or not any particular unit of any particular “deposit” amount could truthfully be defined as ‘money’ loaned to the bank by a customer, or, loaned by the bank to a customer, is dependent on knowing with complete certainty how and when each and every unit came to be recorded in the customer account. The only customer account for which such certainty is possible, is a customer account created by the bank at the moment of first originating a loan, and, before any new entry for even one single fractional unit of the denominated currency has been either added to, or subtracted from that customer account.

There is one further exception – an account established for one of the bankers’ favourite clients—arms dealers, drug cartels, mafioso, and other criminal organisations such as the CIA—at the first moment of the client handing over real legal tender cash notes at the bank to open the account.

In any event, since even a ‘transfer’ of ‘money’ from one bank to another still has the same ultimate origin—an out-of-nothing creation of an electronic record of a mutual exchange of promises to pay—then from a whole-of-banking-system perspective it really doesn’t matter; all so-called ‘money’ on ‘deposit’ is simultaneouslyowned by the customers, and by the banks.

(Oh yes, by the way, since that ‘money’ is really just a record of a promise, and we all buy and sell mostly by way of ‘transfers’ entered in these electronic records, then, strictly speaking, we are all thieves,because none of us is actually giving real legal money in payment to our fellows in exchange for their goods and services, unless we actually “cash-in” the bank’s “offer” (promise) to pay us real money, in order to pay our fellow in real legal money – government-created legal tender cash notes and coins).

The bankers—aided and abetted by the FASB, FSB et al—resolve this ownership contradiction by choosing to have their cake and eat it too. That is to say, the bankers take advantage of the embedded paradox of perspective in double-entry accounting, and arbitrarily decide who will be deemed the true owner of any and all “deposits” (i.e., who is debtor and who is creditor), depending—of course—on what suits the bankers’ best interests at any given moment in time.

In good times, it’s business as usual — the bankers will consider your “deposit” account to represent ‘money’ owned by and owed to you, and will—if they can—honour their promise to give you real legal cash on demand (but will far more commonly just ‘transfer’ your ‘credits’ to someone else’s account).

In not so good times, the bankers will consider your “deposit” account to represent a loan from you to the bank … and so, as you are now just an “unsecured creditor”, what you thought was your ‘money’ in the bank can (and will) be legally purloined, to “bail-in” the “bad” bankers.

One might well ask why it is that the generally “unsophisticated” (i.e., misled and deceived) customers of banks should be made to suffer any loss or damage arising from a “bad” financial institution’s employees or executives’ malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance, and/or from their failure to use record-keeping systems and methods adequate to the task of clearly distinguishing between bank assets, and customer assets.

The answer lies (pun intended) in a relatively recent accounting concept advanced by the standard-setters, in consequence of the neoclassical / neo-liberal ideological takeover of economics, accounting, and financial reporting. This wonderfully Orwellian idea is called “decision usefulness” (emphasis added):

For standard-setters the overriding criterion of decision usefulness, which FASB and IASB narrowly define as helping to predict cash flows, has replaced veracity in financial reporting as an end in itself. The ascension of decision usefulness as a public rationale for FASB actions has produced for the profession the situation .. [of] .. simultaneous committing to two, often conflicting ideas of truth…22

Decision usefulness has been and continues to be applied in accounting to justify its activities, a singular emphasis on an accounting discourse which we view as highly problematic and seriously impairing accounting as an ethical practice.23

Truth poses a genuine problem for accounting, one that cannot be so easily finessed by appeals to decision usefulness.24

[A]ccounting standard setters have replaced a responsibility for truth with decision usefulness, which, given the ambiguity of decision usefulness, effectively absolves them of responsibilityfor the consequences of their actions.25

In his recently released book The End of Alchemy, former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King makes a similar observation (emphasis added):

Regulation has become extraordinarily complex, and in ways that do not go to the heart of the problem. … Much of the complexity reflects pressure from financial firms. By encouraging a culture in which compliance with detailed regulation is a defense against a charge of wrongdoing, bankers and regulators have colluded in a self-defeating spiral of complexity.26

Upton Sinclair famously said that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”.

Indeed, there are many who will doubtless object to the argument here presented—that it is legally permissible for all the world’s borrowers to refuse to honour all their debts to all the world’s banks—with a reflexive, ill-considered, tediously shallow and laughably ironic dismissal that “this is all just semantics”.

Quite so.

Semantics (from Ancient Greek: σημαντικός sēmantikós, “significant”) is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relationship between signifiers—like words, phrases, signs, and symbols—and what they stand for, their denotation.27

The entire matter pivots on the question of truth. More specifically, the legal argument pivots on demonstrating that there has been a mis-representation of the truth, by the bankers.

What is the true reality, the real object or event that has been promised to the borrowers by the bankers—that is to say, what is the true object or event as commonly understood by the borrowers—and re-presented to the borrowers by the bankers using the signifiers ‘money’, ‘cash’, ‘funds’, ‘credit’, ‘deposit’, ‘sum’, ‘amount’, ‘$’, ‘€‘, ‘£‘, etc?

Has there, or has there not, been any false, misleading, or deceptive statements or representations made by the bankers to the borrowers, in order to induce the borrowers to agree to accept the offer to contract?

Have the bankers made any false, misleading, or deceptive statements or representations to the borrowers, that obfuscate a failure, potential failure, potential unwillingness, reasonably foreseeable or known incapacity of the bankers to deliver on their promise of performance?

And finally, have the bankers gained any advantage (“interest”, “yield”, “return”) from the borrowers through the use of false, misleading, or deceptive statements or representations?

May God grant the reader wisdom, and a sound conscience, to carefully and prayerfully judge the matter for themselves.

********

Regina: This isn’t your pixie dust is it.
Green: Well when you think about it does anyone really ownpixie dust?
Regina: The fairies are quite proprietary about it. If they found out you stole it they would…
Green: Don’t worry about me. This is about you.

– Once Upon A Time

Notes

[1] Upton Sinclair, Wikiquotes,https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair , 8 May 2016
[2] Mariner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, testimony to the House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 30, 1941, cited by G. Edward Griffin, The Creature From Jekyll Island(Third Edition, 1998), p. 188.
[3] Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, foreword to Irving Fisher 100% Money (New York: Adelphi, 1936) p. xxii, cited by G. Edward Griffin, The Creature From Jekyll Island (Third Edition, 1998), p. 188.
[4] David Graeber, What We Owe to Each Other, interview in Boston Review, February 15, 2012
[5] Michael Hudson, In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts, Media Education Foundation transcript (pdf), 2006
[6] Plato, Laws, Book V; Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
[7] Black’s Law Dictionary, Wikipedia,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black’s_Law_Dictionary, 4 May 2016
[8] What is Money?, Law Dictionary,http://thelawdictionary.org/money/, 4 May 2016
[9] Mohamed E. Bayou, Alan Reinstein, Paul F. Williams, To tell the truth: A discussion of issues concerning truth and ethics in accounting, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Volume 36 (2011), 109-124
[10] ibid.
[11] ibid.
[12] ibid.
[13] ibid.
[14] ibid.
[15] ibid.
[16] Norman B. Macintosh, Teri Shearer, Daniel B. Thornton, Michael Welker, Accounting as simulacrum and hyperreality: perspectives on income and capital; Accounting, Organizations and Society, Volume 25, Issue 1 (2000), 13-50
[17] ibid.
[18] Richard Mattessich, Accounting representation and the onion model of reality: a comparison with Baudrillard’s orders of simulacra and his hyperreality; Accounting, Organizations and Society 28 (2003) 443–470
[19] Positive Money, How Banks Create Money,http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-banks-create-money/, 4 May, 2016
[20] Michael Schemmann (IICPA), Accounting Perversion in Bank Financial Statements — Demand Deposits Do NOT comply with IFRS (GAAP), 1 May 2013
[21] Richard Mattessich, Accounting representation and the onion model of reality: a comparison with Baudrillard’s orders of simulacra and his hyperreality; Accounting, Organizations and Society 28 (2003) p. 450-451, n. 12
[22] Mohamed E. Bayou, Alan Reinstein, Paul F. Williams, To tell the truth: A discussion of issues concerning truth and ethics in accounting, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Volume 36 (2011), 109-124
[23] ibid.
[24] ibid.
[25] ibid.
[26] Mervyn King, The End of Alchemy, quoted in Bloomberg, The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself, 5 May 2016.
[27] Semantics, Wikipedia,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics, 8 May 2016

Can we face it in this election season? America is a weapons factory, the White House a war room, and the president the manager of the neoliberal conspiracy to recolonize the planet. It exports war and mass poverty. On the economic front, usurious neoliberalism; on the military front, illegal wars. These are the trenches of America’s battle for world domination in the 21^st century.

If not stopped, it will be a short century.

Since 1945, America’s Manifest Destiny, posing as the Free World’s Crusade against the Red Menace, has claimed 20 to 30 million lives worldwide and bombed one-third of the earth’s people. In the 19^thcentury, America exterminated another kind of “red menace,” writing and shredding treaties, stealing lands, massacring, and herding Native populations into concentration camps (“Indian reservations”), in the name of civilizing the “savages.” By 1890, with the massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee, the frontier land grab—internal imperialism– was over. There was a world to conquer, and America trained its exceptionally covetous eye on Cuba and the Philippines.

American external imperialism was born.

Then, something utterly dreadful happened in 1917—a successful social revolution in Russia, the second major after the French in 1789, to try to redistribute the wealth of the few to the advantage of the many. The rulers of the world—US, Britain, France and sundry acolytes—put aside their differences and united to stem the awful threat of popular democracy rising and spreading. They invaded Russia, fomented a civil war, funding and arming the counter-revolutionary forces, failed, and tried again in 1939. But Hitler’s war of extermination on the USSR ended in a spectacular victory for Moscow.

For a while, after 1945, the US had to behave as a civilized country, formally. It claimed that the USSR had a barbarian, all-conquering ideology, rooted in terror, disappearances, murder, and torture. By contrast, the US was the shining city on the hill, the beacon of hope for a “the free world.” Its shrine was the United Nations; its holy writ was international law; its first principle was the inviolability of the sovereignty of nations.

All this was rubbish, of course. It was an apartheid society. It nuked Japan not once but twice, deliberately selecting civilian targets. It shielded from justice top Nazi criminals to absorb them as partners in intelligence structures. It conducted virtual “show trials” against dissidents during the hysteria of the McCarthy congressional hearings, seeding the country with a harvest of fear. It waged a genocidal war on Vietnam to prevent independence and unification. It assassinated African independence leaders and bestowed fascist dictators on Latin America. It softly occupied Western Europe, tied it to itself through military “cooperation” in NATO, and it waged psy-op war on its opposition parties. Behind the civilized façade was a ruthless effort to take out the Soviet Union and crush self-determination in the colonial world.

By hook and by crook, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and America went berserk with triumphalism. Now, at last, the conquest of the world, interrupted in 1917, could resume. The global frontier reopened and America’s identity would be regenerated through violence, which had delivered the American West to the European invaders in the 19^th century. The benign mask dropped. Behind it came a rider on a pale horse. According to the ideologically exulted, history had ended, ideologies had died, and the messianic mission of the US to become the steward of God’s property on earth could be fulfilled.

The “civilizing mission” was afoot.

A cabal of neo-conservative policy wonks first sketched what I call the Great Leap Backward into lawlessness as a revival of the myth of the frontier in the 1990s. “The Plan for a New American Century” (PNAC) envisaged the 21^st century as a unilateralist drive to entrench American values globally—what the PNAC ideologues call “freedom and democracy”—through preemptive wars and regime change. This frenzied delirium of US military domination turned into official foreign policy with the Bush Doctrine after 9/11, but it was the Clinton administration’s Doctrine of Humanitarian Warfare before 9/11, that shut the door on the prohibition of aggressive wars by the UN Charter, remaking the map of the world into a borderless American hunting reserve by removing the principle of sovereignty and replacing it with “right to protect” (R2P)—or humanitarian pretext for use of force.

Clinton’s doctrine was an act of supreme, even witty, exploitation of liberal principles and commitment to policies of human rights. It was how the liberal left was induced to embrace war and imperialism as the means of defending human rights. The Carnegie Endowment cooked up the doctrine in 1992. Its report, “Changing Our Ways: America’s Role in the New World,” urged “a new principle of international relations: the destruction or displacement of groups of people within states can justify international intervention.” The report recommended that the US use NATO as the enforcer. It must be noted, too, that the principle of “humanitarian war” has no authority in international law. The Charter of the United Nations sought to outlaw war by making it impossible for unilateral interventions in the business of sovereign states by self-appointed guardians of human rights. The reason behind the proscription was not heartlessness but the consciousness that WW II had been the result of serial violations of sovereignty by Germany, Italy, and Japan—by militarist imperialism, in other words.

The bell tolled for the UN and the old order in the 1999 Kosovo War. The bi-partisan effort to dismantle the architecture of the post war’s legal order played out there. With the Kosovo War, the Clinton administration launched the first humanitarian war and set the precedent for waging war without Security Council clearance of many to follow by both Republican and Democrat administrations. The Clintonites who used NATO to bomb Serbia to protect ethnic Albanians in Kosovo from non-existing Serbian genocide may or may not have appreciated the fact that Hitler had used the pretext of R2P—humanitarian intervention—to launch WW II by claiming to protect German minorities in Poland, but they certainly knew that the monopoly on use of force rested with the UN’s Security Council. This monopoly was secured after WW II precisely to prevent unilateral attacks on sovereign states through bogus claims of altruistic interventions, such as Hitler had championed and pursued. Ironically for critics of the Soviet leader, it was Stalin who insisted at the Yalta Conference that if the USSR were to join the United Nations a veto in the Security Council was a must to insure that any war would be a multilateral consensus and a multilateral action.

As the Clintonites understood, the postwar legal authority for peacekeeping and the prevention of war entrusted to the UN Security Council posed a colossal obstacle to the pursuit of American world domination. For the vision of PNAC and the Carnegie Endowment to become reality, the United Nations, the guarantor of sovereignty, had to go. In the run-up to the Kosovo War, the Clintonites fatally and deliberately destabilized the United Nations, substituting the uncooperative UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali with the subservient NATO shill, Kofi Annan. Annan obligingly opined that in the matter of war and peace, UN Security Council resolutions were not the only way to skin a country– especially one chosen by the US for remaking, partitioning, or regime changing, a cynic might add.

So now we live in a dangerous world. Once again, since the 1930s, the world is being stalked by an expansionist power answering to no law but its own unilateral, humanitarian vigilantism. The Kosovo precedent has spun out of control. Libya smolders in the ashes of NATO bombs, dropped to prevent “genocide”; Syria fights for survival under attack by genocidal terrorist groups, armed, trained and funded by genocide preventers grouped in the NATO alliance and the Gulf partners; Afghanistan languishes in a permanent state of war, present ten thousand American troops which bomb hospitals to promote human rights; in Iraq, the humanitarians are back, after twenty-five years of humanitarian failure. And in Ukraine, Nazi patriots are promoting American democratic and humanitarian values by shelling Donbass daily. I hesitate to mention Africa, where humanitarian Special Forces are watering the fields where terrorists sprout like mushrooms after rain—in Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya.

Then there is Yemen, perhaps the most callous, vicious, and careless humanitarian crime of a litany of crimes against humanity in the Middle East. The US government has recently admitted deploying troops to Yemen. The Pentagon claims that the deployment will assist Saudi Arabia (“the Arab coalition”) to fight al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula. Can a sentient being meet such a grotesque claim with anything but infernal laughter? Help Saudi Arabia to fight its own creature? Are we stupid yet?

$4 trillion dollars later, spent on the War-on-Terror/Humanitarian-R2P, the pattern of military destabilization of sovereign states proceeds apace, one recalcitrant, independent country at a time in the Middle East and North Africa. For the rest of the world, the surrender of sovereignty is sought by means of economic globalization through trade pacts—TTP, TTIP, etc.—that virtually abolish the constitution of states, including our own. Spearheading the economic effort to control the periphery and the entire world is the so-called “Washington Consensus.”

It hugs the market-fundamentalist idea that global neoliberalism and core finance capital’s economic control of the planet by means of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the option to poverty and social chaos.

Neither military nor economic war on the sovereignty of nations has yielded anything close to a stable, prosperous, and peaceful world. It had delivered death, destruction, debt, market crises, tidal waves of refugees and displaced persons, and concentrated masses of wealth in a few but powerful hands. What the poet W.H. Auden called “the international wrong,” which he named “imperialism” in his poem “September 1939,” is the crisis that stares out of the mirror of the past into our faces, and it bodes war, war, and more war, for that is where imperialism drives.

In this scenario, no potential presidential candidate—even establishment-party dissenter—who does not call for both the end of the bi-partisan “Washington Consensus” and the end of bipartisan militarist aggression can reverse the totality of the “international wrong” or stem the domestic descent into social brutalization. If none calls this foreign policy debacle “imperialism,” elections will be a sleepwalker’s exercise. Nothing will change. Except, almost certainly, for the worse.

“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 is so out of touch with reality that it constitutes a national disorder of mythic proportions.” -Richard Sanders (Press For Conversion Issue #68)

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Canada enjoys an international reputation as a “friendly and welcoming” place. This nice guy image is sometimes contrasted with what could be described as America’s “bull in a china shop” approach to international affairs.[1]

This perception is not lost on Canadians themselves who seem to pride themselves on this kinder, gentler image.

Yet, this perception seems to be at odds with a documented history of atrocities against Blacks ( pre-Confederation Canada was once a slave society) oppression and discrimination toward Chinese railway workers in the late eighteenth century, and anti-Semitism in the early twentieth century.

Canada’s “multicultural” heritage also includes the mass internment of peoples of Eastern European descent into slave labour camps during and after the First World War, and of course, Canada’s genocidal policies toward the Indigenous population, which included the reserve system and Indian Residential schools.[2]

What makes this history all the more outrageous is the notion that the Canadian population were quite comfortable with this state of affairs.

Doubly concerning is the way individuals recognized as icons today had a hand in perpetuating violence and discrimination against minorities and the working class.

Take for example the legendary J.S. Woodsworth. The Winnipeg based activist minister,  proponent of the “Social Gospel” and founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (which would become the New Democratic Party) expressed in his time racist attitudes toward Indigenous and Black people, and xenophobic attitudes toward non Anglo-Saxon Europeans. These views are documented in his book Strangers Within Our Gates (1908). In fact, Woodsworth actively campaigned for eugenics policies as Director of the Bureau of Social Research. Notwithstanding his pacifist beliefs, there is no indication he ever objected to let alone spoke out against the mass internment of thousands of Ukrainians in Canada during the War years. [3]

The Orwellian double-think at the time perpetuated the view that the mass internment and enslavement of destitute Eastern Europeans was somehow an act of Anglo-Canadian kind-heartedness because “thousands of these aliens were starving.” Rounding up the Aboriginal population and placing them on reserves and in Indian Residential schools was an act of compassion to “civilize” them.  [4][5]

In the Twentieth-First Century, symptoms of “Canada Syndrome” might include “humanitarian interventions” in places like Yugoslavia(1999), Haiti (2004), and Libya (2011), which coincidentally seem to serve an imperial agenda. This is a level of manipulation that seems to be more pervasive than straight government propaganda.

Richard Sanders, this week’s guest on the Global Research News Hour, argues that these dynamics are enabled by widely disseminated narratives. Over the course of this feature length interview, Sanders elaborates on the notion that these types of narratives are key to inducing a psychosis enabling corporate  and imperial plunder, he explains how some of these dynamics played out during the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, the role of the “Social Gospel” and the importance of confronting these past crimes if we are to prevent a repetition of history.

Richard Sanders is a long-time anti-war activist and organizer based in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada. He is coordinator of the Coalition Opposed to the Arms Trade, and the lead researcher, writer and editor of Press For Conversion magazine. To obtain a copy of the latest issue, visit http://coat.ncf.ca or write to COAT, 191 James St., Ottawa, ON, K1R 5M6

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Length (59:04)

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Notes: 

1) Chris Cobb (March 29, 2015), Ottawa Citizen, “Q&A: Why Canada’s ‘nice guy’ image remains intact”; http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/qa-why-canadas-nice-guy-image-remains-intact

2) Press For Conversion Magazine Issue #68 (March 2016)

3) ibid, pg 24-26

4) ibid, p.11

5) ibid, p.17

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET. 

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT. 

An al-Nusra Front detachment (more than 100 men) has arrived in Khan Tuman amid the rumors that the loyalists are going to launch the operation to liberate the town in the coming days. Artillery duels and firefights are ongoing in the area.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, Al-Nusra militants have deployed chemical weapons near Syria’s city of Aleppo. Several trucks carrying self-made ammunition, armed with chlorine-based toxic agents, have arrived from the Idlib province to the northern outskirts of the Aleppo city.

On May 12, Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar as Sham units seized Jarjisah and Al-Zara in the north part of the Homs province, Syria. In the Alawite village of Al-Zara, they abducted a number of children and women, destroyed some houses and looted the locals’ property.

In the Al-Hasakah province, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized back from ISIS the village of Qashqash. The clashes were observed at Ziyanat as Kurdish units were advancing in the southern direction.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on May 12 that the Turkish armed forces are preparing to “clear” from terrorists the territory on the Syrian side of the border. According to media reports, the official reason of the act will be “difficulties in Kilis.” Erdogan blamed the allies that aren’t helping and noted that Ankara is ready to act by itself.

Washington and their Main-Stream Media (MSM) propaganda machine is now interested in creating an agency to counter foreign “propaganda”. The irony is that Washington and what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts calls the “Presstitute” media is pure propaganda and now they want to fight the so called “propaganda” with propaganda. Now that is funny. According to RT News:

The bill, H.R. 5181, the ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016’ is a companion bill to S.2692 introduced back in March. According to Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) who coauthored the bill alongside Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), H.R. 5181, seeks to incorporate a “whole-of-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions,” which will set up innovative partnerships to combat information warfare with “organizations that have experience in countering foreign propaganda.”

This has been in the works for some time. Congressman Kinzinger (R-IL) wants (now get ready for this) “the free flow of truthful information” is laughable. RT News quoted what Kinzinger said:

As Russia continues to spew its disinformation and false narratives, they undermine the United States and its interests in places like Ukraine, while also breeding further instability in these countries,” Kinzinger said. “At a time when countries like Russia and China are engaging in hybrid warfare campaigns, the United States has a unique opportunity to respond to foreign manipulation by encouraging the free flow of truthful information. This can further prevent conflict and ensure future stability,” the congressman added

According to a March 17th article by the Voice of America (VOA) (a CIA sponsored news organization who is funded by the U.S. government along with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty) “U.S. Senators Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, have introduced a bill aimed at countering propaganda from Russia, China and other countries.” What is interesting is that under the new legislation ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act’ not only counters foreign propaganda but they will “help” local communities in those same countries to protect themselves from their own government’s media manipulation. This means more funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) who already manipulate populations within countries they are trying to destabilize with U.S. propaganda. According to the VOA report:

According to its sponsors, the legislation — called the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” — is aimed at improving the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation, and help local communities in other countries protect themselves from manipulation from abroad.

Speaking during a conference Wednesday at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research institute, Portman said he believes the U.S. is not making sufficient efforts to counter “destabilizing” foreign propaganda and disinformation

Senator Portman is a hypocrite because what the U.S. has done abroad with their NGOs is to destabilize governments they want to remove from power such as to what happened in the Ukraine. Now Ecuador is on the radar for regime change since Venezuela is in an economic crises and the political crisis in Brazil with the possible removal of its democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff. The VOA report mentions RT News and CCTV:

While much of the public discussion of these issues is focused on the urgent need to counter extremist messaging, and I understand that, I think it is equally important to address the extremely sophisticated, comprehensive and long-term efforts by nation states to manipulate and control information in order to achieve their national objectives, often at the expense of U.S. allies; our interests, our values,” Portman said. “These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations.”

According to the Ohio Republican, the scale of spending on the U.S. government’s Voice of America, and that of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the U.S. Congress, is dwarfed by the money spent on RT, a Kremlin-funded satellite TV channel, and the Chinese government’s CCTV

Senator Portman also mentioned the importance of restructuring U.S. counter-propaganda under a single government agency

“Surprisingly,” he said, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.” Senator Murphy (D-Conn) said “The simple suggestion in our bill is to have an umbrella strategy that unites all of the different agencies that are playing roles, so that we can have a coordinated strategy.”

In other words, the MSM will operate under one umbrella run by the U.S. government (although the MSM has followed Washington’s script for a very long time) to produce propaganda. Who would be leading the new agency?

Under the bill, a new Center for Information Analysis and Response would play the coordinating role. This center, Portman said, would be led by the U.S. State Department, but with the “active participation” of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (which oversees VOA and RFE/RL, among others), “the intelligence community and other relevant agencies.”

The bill also would set up an Information Access Fund, which would assist in the training of local journalists, as well as award grants and contracts to non-government and civil society organizations, research centers, private sector companies, media organizations and other experts outside the U.S. government that have experience in identifying and analyzing disinformation methods used by foreign governments

So which organizations and experts would be involved? Of course the NED, USAID as mentioned earlier, but you can add the International Republican Institute (IRI), Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Amnesty International, the Open Society Foundation, the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), National Democratic Institute(NDI), CBS, ABC, PBS, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times and the list goes on. What is laughable is what Senator Murphy said “This fund, said Murphy, would “simply seek to seed good information efforts — telling the truth, telling counter-narratives to the Russian story, to the Chinese propaganda stories all around the world.” Telling the truth? The MSM has lost credibility for the lies they have been pushing on the public. According to the Associated Press (AP):

Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans’ skepticism about what they read on social media. Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions

With Washington’s new agenda, the remaining 6 percent (it’s amazing the MSM stills gets that much!) who still trust the media will be reduced to less than 1 percent. It won’t be long before they also target the alternative media. This is good news because Washington and their MSM presstitutes realize that they lost the information war and that is positive news.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spoke out Wednesday against the efforts to oust Rousseff, pinning the move on “foreign interference.”

America Threatens Russia: US-NATO Forces “Moving from a Training to a War Fighting Stance”

By Christopher Black, May 13 2016

Australia: Terror and the ‘Islamic State’ Arrests

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, May 13 2016

Terror is very much an induced state of mind.  It compresses realities while inflating fantasies.  States and regimes administer such inducements in moderate doses to keep the hounded citizenry on their toes.  Sometimes, they become absurdly generous, usually around the…

Why Sanders Continues Campaigning. Clinton Could be Indicted in Relation to her State Department Emails…

By Eric Zuesse, May 13 2016

There are two realistic scenarios for Bernie Sanders to win the U.S. Presidency. One depends upon his receiving the Democratic Party’s nomination. The other doesn’t, but both are realistic. HE STILL MIGHT WIN THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATIONHe still can win…

Deep History and the Global Drug Connection, Enter Al-Qaeda

By Prof Peter Dale Scott, May 13 2016

Professor Peter Dale Scott sees what the rest of us miss. His decades-long investigation of the connections between the hugely lucrative and unstoppable global drug trade and the national security apparatus is unparalleled. The details are also highly complex and…

Eleven Signs That the U.S. Economy Is Rapidly Deteriorating Even as The Stock Market Soars

By Michael Snyder, May 13 2016

We have seen this story before, and it never ends well.  From mid-March until early May 2008, a vigorous stock market rally convinced many investors that the market turmoil of late 2007 and early 2008 was over and that happy…

White Helmets NGO: A “Rescue and Assist” Operation under Guise of Human Rights

By Brandon Turbeville, May 13 2016

With the recent events surrounding hospital bombings (real and imagined) in Aleppo, growing attention is now being paid to the “human rights NGO” known as the White Helmets, a supposed Syrian organization that focuses on rescuing and providing medical care…

Terror is very much an induced state of mind.  It compresses realities while inflating fantasies.  States and regimes administer such inducements in moderate doses to keep the hounded citizenry on their toes.  Sometimes, they become absurdly generous, usually around the time when elections loom.

Distant, inconsequential as it is, Australia, through such questionable motifs as the “lone wolf” terrorist, has been thrust into the global maelstrom of mass Islamic radicalisation.

A neatly convenient way of selling a message without substance, the security establishment tried to make a case in 2014 that a confused, mentally unhinged man with more identities than sense, was one such terrorist when he held those in a Sydney coffee shop hostage.

Not wanting to be left out of another by product of this, Australian policy makers have also insisted on another, more profoundly sinister form of thought policing: the targeting and punishing of individuals for the mere suggestion that they might visit (no fight!) in designated foreign theatres.

The Tuesday arrests of five Australian men in the northern Queensland tropical city of Cairns suspected of wanting to join the Islamic State campaign in Syria by the Australian Federal Police seemed to be more farce than substance.  It resembled, superficially, a revamped variant of Jerome K. Jerome’s 1889 Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).

In Jerome’s telling, a boat journey unfolds along the River Thames as a form of pleasurable therapy for the participants, a travel account criticised by the high-brows as being far too low brow. In Cairns, we see a modern Australian farce, five men, travelling over land with a boat that would have taken them to Indonesia from Bamaga. (Childish maps have been drafted by the Australian press for gleeful consumption.)  From there, they would supposedly make their way to Syria (bicycle, plane or camel?) where the joy of jihad would consume them.

This should immediately strike the local punditry as ironic.  The Australian government has been engaged in a militarised campaign against refugees and asylum seekers seeking naval routes to Australia in a “turn back boat” policy.  Indonesia has tended to be the first recipient.

In this case, the men were intending to leave Australia by boat to get to Indonesia, a gesture so ludicrously amusing it should have brought smiles to the police forces.  But alas, that would have been heretical.

The police have been scant on detail, though there is enough to go on that cleric Musa Cerantonio, deemed by the local press a “notorious Islamic preacher” (when are they ever not?) is among them (ABC News, May 11).[1]  The men were being held, claimed an AFP spokesman, to assist with inquiries, though charges were also being considered.  “As this activity remains ongoing, further comment will be provided when it is appropriate to do so” (AAP, May 11).

The police and customs authorities have been vested with vast powers in responding to a certain breed of modern foreign fighter.  In truth, the fighter who goes off to wage other people’s wars and causes is an ancient as civilization itself, a product as much of opportunity as ideology.

The previous legislation from 1978 was repealed with foreign incursion and recruitment offences moved to the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth). It is not merely an offence to enter a foreign country with an intention to engage in a hostile activity, but anything deemed preparatory to such incursions is also caught by the legislation.

The legislative regime is supplemented by the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Act 2014, introduced by the Australian Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, with the purpose of addressing “the emerging and unique domestic security threats posed by the return of Australians who have participated in foreign conflicts, trained with extremist groups, or people in Australia who provide support to those who may seek to do us harm.”[2]

That unpleasant bit of statutory wizardry reduces thresholds of proof and the grounds upon which you can be held for seeking to participate in a foreign theatre of conflict.  What it effectively amounts to is a form of thought surveillance, anticipating wickedness before it transpires.

The very idea of travelling to Syria suggests mischief and crime as the Minister for Foreign Affairs has deemed it a “declared area”.  Done with executive abandon, this designation is purely based on the idea that a “listed terrorist organisation is engaging in a hostile activity in that area”.

The onus of proof is not on the authorities to show that going to a prohibited conflict zone (a “declared area”) was undertaken with an illegal purpose. Rather, it is the person travelling to such a prohibited area to show that all is above board, that the person was not “reckless to the fact that the area is a declared area.”  Not doing so may lead to a ten year prison sentence, a true Star Chamber provision.

Absurd if adventurous acts that involved extensive travelling, a tinnie, and an Australian road trip seem to surprise members of the federal police.  AFP Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan has made valiant efforts to squeeze blood from a stone, finding it extraordinary that such men had “gone all the way from Melbourne, all the way to the far north Queensland”.  The followers of Islam can indeed be intrepid.

Victorian Police Deputy Commissioner was similarly attempting to put clothes back onto the emperor of doubt. “We have a requirement to ensure that people can’t get offshore to go and fight in other countries, can’t get offshore to become hardened terrorists and come back here and pose a risk.”[3]

The only material the police have to play with here are scattered thoughts and foolish premises – nothing has actually taken place. Having never eventuated, anything to the contrary is speculative and, in this case, fantastic.  That will not trouble those who believe that carefree thoughts, in addition to substantive acts, deserve institutional punishment.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-11/preacher-among-five-arrested-over-alleged-plan-to-join-is/7403344

[2] http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/australia-foreign-fighters-bill-introduced-in-parliament/

[3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-11/preacher-among-five-arrested-over-alleged-plan-to-join-is/7403344

In a report published in the American journal, National Security News, on May 9th, the day of the celebration of the victory of Soviet and allied forces over the fascist forces in 1945, it was stated that, “in terms of the eastern threat-which is a reference to Russia-EUCOM (the American Forces European Command) will be moving from a training to a war fighting stance.”

The article continues, “this does not mean that the U.S. is planning a war with Russia, merely that it will shift its force structure in a manner aimed at deterring Moscow and defending NATO and European partners should Russian President Vladimir Putin attempt what he has done in Ukraine.”

Of course, the authors do not state what Russia “attempted in Ukraine,” because that phrase is a cover for the American arranged putsch that put in power the US puppet government in Kiev. That regime then attacked the peoples of the eastern Ukraine because they refused to accept the American backed coup against their democratically elected president and the crushing of their culture. And when Americans say that they “are not planning a war”, we know that is exactly what they are planning. What are the wars in Ukraine, in Syria, the destruction of Yugoslavia and Libya, but a part of the war against Russia?

The article then refers to the “deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Russia, and Moscow’s continuing “aggressive, belligerent actions against U.S. warships and aircraft in international spaces.” This, again, is code meaning that “Russia will not let us walk all over them in the Baltic, Ukraine, Syria or anywhere else.”

It confirms that preparations for war continue steadily, as I have related in previous articles, comparing the NATO build up of forces in the east of Europe to the build of German forces prior to the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazis’ surprise attack on the Soviet Union, on June 21, 1941. The similarities mount with each passing month. The Russian government, well aware of what is happening, has responded with close surveillance of American combat ships entering the Baltic which threaten Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg and Russian access to the Atlantic. It has also created three new army divisions; two of which are to be placed on the western front facing NATO forces in Eastern Europe and one on the southern flank.

Just recently, the Americans transferred their top general in Korea, General Scaparotti to the command of American forces in Europe, replacing the bellicose General Breedlove. The change is more than routine or cosmetic since Breedlove was an air force officer. Scaparotti, even more bellicose than Breedlove, is an army combat general with experience in several US attacks on sovereign nations

His replacement in Korea, General Brooks.is also an army combat general who was deputy head of army operations in the attack on Iraq, and also has a record of being involved in American aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the “war on terror” in the middle east, meaning the war on Iraq and Syria. Both these men are fighting generals, not office chair warmers. Their appointments suggest increased aggressive actions by the Americans on the Korean peninsular and on Russia’s borders. In fact on May 4th, the day he assumed command of the NATO forces in Europe, General Scaparotti stated that, “NATO needs to stay agile and ready to fight tonight.” Alarming words.

In an attempt to counter the continued American pressure, President Putin, on Monday, May 9th called for the creation of a non-aligned system of international security to counter “global terror.” What he meant by that is unclear, non-aligned in what sense? What would a non-aligned system look like?

We must not forget that a Non-Aligned Movement still exists. Formed in 1961 in Beograd by India’s Prime Minister Nehru, Indonesia’s President Sukarno, Egypt’s President Nasser, Ghana’s President Nkrumah and Yugoslav President Tito, it advocated a road between the opposing forces in the so called Cold War. Fidel Castro said in a speech in 1979, that the Non-Aligned Movement wants to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries in their struggle against imperialism, colonialism, ne-colonialism and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference ort hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.” These objectives were, it should be noted, completely in line with Soviet policy but totally opposed to everything American imperialism was trying to achieve, domination of the world.

The Russian government has repeatedly stated it supports the objectives expressed in Castro’s speech. The United States has repeatedly stated and proved that it will not tolerate them. Therefore, it would seem that reviving the Non-Aligned Movement, which lost its direction with the end of the Cold War, could be an important step in creating what President Putin has in mind, a non-aligned movement with military power. The Non-Aligned Movement has currently 120 nations. Are they prepared to join Russia to build a common security architecture? Is that what President Putin has in mind? Interesting questions, interesting possibilities. But do the leaders of those nations or any of them, have the desire, the will and the courage to do something before a catastrophe occurs?

Whether President Putin is talking about establishing a common security initiative with those countries, or just the BRIC nations, without a common ideology it is difficult to see how those countries can come together. But then, perhaps, today a common ideology is not necessary, only a common fear. We shall see. President Putin is highly intelligent and perhaps has some concrete ideas in mind to push this forward. We can but hope. For he also knows, as we all know, that when he says in his May 9th speech that “terrorism has become a global threat” he is really stating that the United States has become a global threat.

It is clear that the “terrorists” the world is facing are U.S. proxy forces attempting to destabilise the word for American interests. The battle against “terrorists” in Aleppo is really a battle against U.S. forces in Syria. No one is any longer fooled by the vague term “terrorists.” This has been made abundantly clear by the invasion of Syria by U.S. forces in the past few weeks, setting up advance bases for something bigger. President Putin actually said it in his speech when he said, “double standards and short-sighted indulgence to those who are nurturing new criminal plans, are unacceptable.” The reference could only be to the NATO alliance and the Unites States in particular.

The call for the creation of a “non-aligned security system” can also be interpreted as recognising the total irrelevance of the United Nation’s and its role in international law of securing world peace. Its irrelevance has increased year by year along, with that of international law; the United States and its allies treat both with contempt.

We can expect only worse after the American elections. The two likely contenders for the American presidency are equally intent on “making America great again,” of dominating the world. Since they, on behalf of the ruling elite, offer no rational solutions to the American people for the increasing economic decline and social breakdown that is occurring in the United States, war is their only way out.

It’s time for a new Bandung Conference, the conference that was the precursor to the Non-Aligned Movement, held in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, a conference of African and Asian states, hosted by President Sukarno. The member nations adopted a “declaration on promotion of world peace and cooperation which included Nehru’s five principles: mutual respect to each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in domestic affairs, equality and mutual benefit, peaceful co-existence. These principles need to be renewed and in light of the reality, made concrete by a common system of international security as President Putin suggests.

For as Harold Pinter, the Nobel Laureate for Literature in his acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize said, “The United States quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant.” “How to make them “give a damn,” he once asked me, “before they kill us all?” How indeed? That is the question.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

With the recent events surrounding hospital bombings (real and imagined) in Aleppo, growing attention is now being paid to the “human rights NGO” known as the White Helmets, a supposed Syrian organization that focuses on rescuing and providing medical care to injured civilians in Syria. According to the Western media, the White Helmets are knights in shining armor, willing to risk life and limb to save innocent people from the fangs of the evil Assad.

A more realistic examination of the White Helmets, however, provides us with a much different view of the organization.

Essentially the White Helmets are nothing more than a terrorist rescue organization funded, directed, and promoted by Western governments, intelligence agencies, and Foundations aimed at assisting Western-backed terrorists in the destruction of secular Syria. The organization serves as a clever and opportunistic tool to be used by Western media for the purposes of sourcing false claims as coming from “impartial” “activist” groups on the ground in Syria and giving the source the credibility of a “human rights” organization.

The White Helmets should be considered nothing more than a branch of the Western destabilization apparatus, a wing of Jabhat al-Nusra, and an entirely discredited organization. Clearly, after examining the nature and reality of the organization, whatever claims made by the White Helmets should be immediately dismissed as yet another false statement in a long string of lies easily traced directly back to the United States and the UK.

The History and Formation of White Helmets – The Founders and Directors

White Helmets was founded by James Le Mesurier, an admitted former British army officer and mercenary with the Olive Group, a private contracting organization that is now merged with Blackwater-Academi into Constellis Holdings.[1] Although White Helmets half-heartedly attempts to hide its source of funding, the organization is linked to George Soros through a PR firm named Purpose Inc., a pro-war firm that argues for Western intervention against Assad. The co-founder of Purpose is Jeremy Heimans, who also helped found Avaaz, a “pro-democracy” group connected to Soros’ Open Society Foundation, SEIU, and MoveOn.org.

In her expose of White Helmets, “White Helmets: War By Way Of Deception,” Vanessa Beeley summarizes the history and funding of the organization when she wrote:

The White Helmets were established in March 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey, and is headed by James Le Mesurier, a British “security” specialist and ‘ex’ British military intelligence officer with an impressive track record in some of the most dubious NATO intervention theatres including Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Le Mesurier is a product of Britain’s elite Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and has also been placed in a series of high-profile pasts at the United Nations, European Union, and U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The origins of The White Helmet’s initial $300k seed funding is a little hazy, reports are contradictory but subsequent information leads us to conclude that the UK, US and Syrian opposition [Syrian National Council] are connected. Logistical support has been provided by given by Turkish elite natural disaster response team, AKUT.

A further $13 million was poured into the White Helmet coffers during 2013 and this is where it gets interesting. Early reports suggest that these “donations” came from the US, UK and SNC with the previously explored connections to George Soros in the US.
Soros in Syria: ‘Humanitarian’ NGO Deployed For Regime Change, Not Aid

However, subsequent investigations reveal that USAID has been a major shareholder in the White Helmet organisation.

The website for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) claims that “our work supports long-term and equitable economic growth and advances U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting: economic growth, agriculture and trade; global health; and, democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance.”

In a USAID report update in July 2015 it is clearly stated that they have supplied over $ 16m in assistance to the White Helmets.

In addition to Soros and the $16 million, White Helmets is known to receive approximately $23 million dollars from the U.S. State Department via USAID, a figure that was confirmed more recently by Deputy State Department Spokesman Mark Toner when questioned by reporters at a State Department briefing on April 27, 2016.

It is thus no surprise that White Helmets have been publicly calling for Western intervention in Syria, particularly a No-Fly Zone since their creation. The organization is, after all, a fully funded arm of U.S./Western imperialism. It is, therefore, reasonable to expect the group to publicly call for the same desires as their bosses in the United States and Europe.

Raed Saleh, head of White Helmets (aka Syrian Civil Defense) has publicly called for the implementation of a “No-Fly Zone” over Syria by the United Nations Security Council, an act that is tantamount to direct military warfare, an example of which can be seen in the rubble of Libya. Indeed, such a decision would simply be a repeat of the Libyan tragedy.

Saleh has stated on the White Helmets website:

Barrel bombs – sometimes filled with chlorine – are the biggest killer of civilians in Syria today. Our unarmed and neutral rescue workers have saved more than 40,823 people from the attacks in Syria, but there are many we cannot reach. There are children trapped in rubble we cannot hear. For them, the UN Security Council must follow through on its demand made last year to stop the barrel bombs, by introducing a ‘no-fly zone’ if necessary.”

Saleh himself is an interesting case. Content to shower Saleh and his organization with millions of dollars and flattering public relations material, the United States apparently does not trust Saleh enough to allow free access to American soil. In April, 2016 Saleh was set to receive another typical back-slapping award in Washington, D.C. However, Saleh’s visa was canceled and he was forced to go back to Istanbul. The New York Times reported,

The leader of a Western-backed rescue organization that searches for survivors of bombings in Syriawas denied entry into the United States this week, where he was to receive an award recognizing his contributions to humanitarian relief.

Raed Saleh, the head of the Syria Civil Defense, was to accept the award from InterAction, an alliance of aid agencies, at its gala dinner Tuesday night in Washington. The dinner’s keynote speaker was Gayle Smith, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development.

But when Mr. Saleh, who works in Syria and Turkey, arrived Monday at Washington’s Dulles International Airport on a flight from Istanbul, the authorities said he could not enter the United States. He was told his visa had been canceled.

It was unclear whether Mr. Saleh’s name might have shown up on a database, fed by a variety of intelligence and security agencies and intended to guard against the prospect of terrorism suspects slipping into the country.

The State Department declined to give specifics, but a spokesman, John Kirby, said that “the U.S. government’s system of continual vetting means that traveler records are screened against available information in real time.”

“While we can’t confirm any possible specific actions in this case, we do have the ability to immediately coordinate with our interagency partners when new information becomes available,” he added.

State Department Spokesman Mark Toner was also questioned about the details surrounding Saleh’s visa but Toner found it difficult to answer any questions regarding this incident in a coherent fashion. According to the State Department’s own published transcripts the reporter/spokesman interaction went as follows:

QUESTION: On the last one —

MR TONER: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: — you commend this group, you’re going to continue to support them, and yet you revoked the visa of their leader. I don’t – that makes zero sense to me.

MR TONER: Well —

QUESTION: What – what’s exactly going on?

MR TONER: Well, I mean, this group, and I would precisely make that —

QUESTION: Yeah, but this is the guy who is the leader of this group who the head of USAID lionized in a – and her – that she lauded him —

MR TONER: Sure. Sure.

QUESTION: — in a speech at the event that he was supposed to be accepting —

MR TONER: Sure.

QUESTION: — an award that he couldn’t get here for because the State Department canceled his visa while he was in the middle – while he was in midair, presumably, over the Atlantic so that when he arrived at Dulles, he was promptly thrown on the next plane back to Turkey. And now here you are talking about how wonderful his group is. I just don’t understand how it works.

MR TONER: So a couple responses. One is, unfortunately, we can’t speak to individual visa cases. I think broadly speaking, though, on any visa case we are constantly looking at new information, so-called continually vetting travel or records. And if we do have new information that we believe this – an individual —

QUESTION: But —

MR TONER: — let me finish – would pose a security risk, we’ll certainly act on that. I can’t speak again specifically to this case, but what I can talk about is this group. And this group, as I said, has saved some 40,000 lives, that are first responders, they operate in a combat zone, and the fact that they’re being singled out and hit by the Syrian regime is, frankly, cause for a concern. And we do support this group. We do support their efforts to save lives in what is admittedly a very complex and convoluted battlefield scene.

And to speak to your broader – to say that this group’s – which I think is the implication of your question, that they somehow have ties to —

QUESTION: No, I’m not suggesting that at all.

MR TONER: Then – okay.

QUESTION: I’m saying that it just strikes me as a bit odd that you’re saying that this group is wonderful and does such a great job and you’re commending them for their heroism, and yet, this – you’re doing this just 10 days after the leader of this group, who was supposed to be – who got his visa revoked and wasn’t allowed to travel here. I understand there was an attack that killed some of its members, and I know that that’s the immediate cause of it —

MR TONER: Right.

QUESTION: — but it just strikes me as being a bit inconsistent if you say that this group is wonderful, and yet, you also ban its leader from coming to the States to collect an award for which – and you say you’re going to continue to support the group. I mean, if you have reason to revoke his visa, that he could be a security threat or something like that, why would you continue to support —

MR TONER: But again – but again, I’m trying to separate this individual from the group, which we believe is —

QUESTION: All right. So the guy is – you’re saying that basically he is suspect but his group is not?

MR TONER: Well, again, I can’t speak to the specific allegations against him, Matt.

QUESTION: Well, not if I —

MR TONER: No, I’m sorry, I – my hands are tied too but —

QUESTION: All right. The other thing —

MR TONER: — but yes, we’re not condemning the group in any way whatsoever.

QUESTION: Off —

MR TONER: We believe it’s doing good work.

QUESTION: Could I —

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

QUESTION: If he is the leader of the group, how do you support this group and he is not allowed to get into the States? This is the question.

MR TONER: I understand that and all I can say is that —

QUESTION: How can you separate the leader of the group from the group?

MR TONER: Well, he’s one individual in the group.

QUESTION: But the leader of the group.

MR TONER: And any individual – again, I’m broadening my language here for specific reasons, but any individual in any group suspected of ties or relations with extremist groups or that we had believed to be a security threat to the United States, we would act accordingly. But that does not, by extension, mean we condemn or would cut off ties to the group for which that individual works for.

QUESTION: Okay. It just seems a little odd.

QUESTION: Could I just follow up on the group? Which group is —

MR TONER: Sophisticated. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: I mean, they are a civil defense group, right? They are —

QUESTION: The White Helmets?

QUESTION: Who are —

MR TONER: The White Helmets. So this is a group —

QUESTION: White Helmets. Okay, I understand.

MR TONER: So, yeah, this is the Syrian Civil Defense Group. Yeah.

QUESTION: Do you know – I understand about the White Helmets. Do you know who finances them, how they operate, who are they supported by, what kind of organization they have? How do you get your information from them and so on?

MR TONER: Well – well, I can say we provide them with —

QUESTION: We – you do know a little bit.

MR TONER: Well, I can tell you that we provide, through USAID, about $23 million in assistance to them.

Vanessa Beeley also exposes Mosab Obeidat, White Helmets Project Officer and Farouq al-Habib. She writes,

Mosab Obeidat, previous Assistant Chief of Mission with the Qatar Red Crescent, one of whose officials, Khaled Diab was accused of supplying $ 2.2 m to secure arms for the terrorist groups in Syria. Details of this transaction and its exposure can be found in this Al Akhbar article from June 2013. http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/16160

At least three other members of the team were a part of the Syrian “revolution” including Farouq al Habib, one of the 3 most prominent White Helmet leaders who was also a leader of the Homs uprising against the Syrian government and according to his testimony, was tortured by the Syrian “regime” security forces in 2012 for smuggling a journalist into Syria to “cover” the “peaceful protests”. Habib was a founder member of the ‘Homs Revolutionary Council’ (the CIA have been linked to nearly all ‘Revolutionary Councils in Syria) before fleeing to Turkey in 2013 (A more in-depth analysis of his anti-Syrian government testimony will be presented in Part II of this article).

Fraudulent Photos: White Helmets and the Propaganda Machine

In addition to calling for the implementation of a “No-Fly Zone,” the White Helmets have also gone so far as to post fraudulent photos so as to blame the Syrian military for civilian casualties and intentional targeting of civilians when such is not the case. In October, 2015 White Helmets released pictures on its Twitter account purporting to show the aftermath of the Russian bombing campaign against ISIS and assorted terrorists launched on September 30. “Russia strike in Homs today. 33 civilians killed including 3 children and 1 @SyriaCivilDef volunteer” the caption read.

The picture showed a bleeding girl being held by a “Civil Defense” volunteer and claimed that the child was injured along with a number of other civilians.

Unfortunately for the White Helmets, Twitter users immediately exposed the photos as a fraud, since the pictures were actually taken five days prior on September 25, 2015.

Interestingly enough, the White Helmets, in an attempt to assist drumming up opposition to Vladmir Putin and Russia’s attack on jihadists, also managed to tweet about the horror of Russia’s air strikes hours before Russia’s parliament even granted Putin the authority to use the Air Force in Syria, according to Sputnik.

White Helmets: Anti-Assad Propaganda, Support and Rescue Team for Al-Nusra

Despite being routinely cited as a “humanitarian” organization, however, the White Helmets appear to be much more than even a wolf in sheep’s clothing in the NGO world. Not only providing the basis for carefully crafted propaganda opportunities, the organization appears to actually work side by side with terrorist outfits like Jobhat al-Nusra both on the propaganda angle and the battlefield.

For one, it is important to note that the area of operation for the White Helmets is never within territory controlled by the Syrian government. It is without deviation solely located within territory held by “moderate terrorists,” Nusra, or other related Western-backed terrorist groups. Obviously, if White Helmets truly represented the Syrian people, they would be operating in both territories. As Rick Sterling wrote in his article “Highly Effective Manipulators,”

The trainees are said to be ‘nonpartisan’ but only work in rebel-controlled areas of Idlib (now controlled by Nusra/Al Queda) and Aleppo. There are widely divergent claims regarding the number of people trained by the White Helmets and the number of people rescued. The numbers are probably highly exaggerated especially since rebel-controlled territories have few civilians. A doctor who recently served in a rebel-controlled area of Aleppo described it as a ghost town. The White Helmets work primarily with the rebel group Jabat al Nusra (Al Queda in Syria).

White Helmets: ‘Unarmed and Unbiased’

While the White Helmets’ tag line is “unarmed and unbiased,” nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, the organization is incredibly biased and visibly armed. In the second part to her expose of White Helmets, “Part II: Syria’s White Helmets: War By Way Of Deception,” Vanessa Beeley writes,

As part of the myth-building process, White Helmet members are repetitively described as ‘ordinary people’, specifically, “bakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists, painters, carpenters, students”, and are relentlessly depicted as heroes, miracle workers, saints and super-humans scaling the “Mount Everest” of war zones with impartiality and neutrality. “Unarmed and unbiased” is their strapline, as they sacrifice themselves for the “Syrian People”. Indeed, those same Syrian people who have never heard of them. The myth-making continues…

. . . . .

Can a organisation rightly be called an ‘independent relief organisation’ when it is being funded by a foreign government who is directly involved in the military over-throw of Syria’s government? Most intelligent people should have no problem answering that question.

… . . .

This video below reveals a White Helmet operative describing the “throwing of Shabiha bodies in the trash”. Shabiha is a derogatory term for Syrian Government militia or state-employed security forces but is liberally applied by terrorist aka “rebel alliance” factions to any member of the Syrian military, irrespective of whether they are Alawite, Sunni, or Shia. Let’s remind ourselves of White Helmet claims on their websites of how its ‘aid workers’ “have risked sniper fire to rescue SAA bodies to give them a proper burial.”

Watch this shocking video here:

This same neutral White Helmet operative goes on to pledge allegiance to the terrorist forces in the region stating:

“They are our role models, the best of people and we have the honour to serve them”
“SERVE THEM [armed terrorists, Al Nusra/Al Qaeda]”, curious turn of phrase for a neutral, impartial humanitarian “moderate” organisation? Watch here:

He also congratulates the Mujahadeen for liberating Jisr al Shugour from Assad’s forces.

“Glad tidings have reached us in Jisr al Shugour by the hands of our Mujahadeen brothers. May Allah strengthen them and make them steadfast on the correct way and soon, insh’Allah, the strongholds of the Assad regime in Latakia and Damascus will be liberated.”

It should be clear that these alleged “moderates” you are watching here are actually moderate extremists and jihadists, and the western media has been very careful in hiding this fact. Watch:

. . . . .

Moving on to another video, this time revealing White Helmet operatives standing on the discarded dead bodies of SAA [Syrian Arab Army] soldiers and giving the victory sign. This display of support for the Al Nusra extremist terrorists who have just massacred these soldiers once again demonstrates where their true allegiances lie.

Numerous photos and large amounts of video footage is available showing the alleged “unarmed” White Helmets parading about with rifles, virtually indistinguishable in their appearance and actions from the terrorists they are working with except for their actual white helmets. In at least on instance, White Helmets members were videotaped apparently taking part in the execution of a man condemned to death by Nusra/ISIS fighters. In this video, the execution of the man who is shot in the head by the terrorists is clearly shown. Before his body is even fully still, the White Helmets arrive at the scene, within seconds, to collect the body as if they were on standby.

Conclusion

With all of the above information taken together, White Helmets should be considered nothing more than a terrorist rescue operation and propaganda wing for al-Nusra Front. This organization is wholly funded, directed, and promoted by Western governments, intelligence agencies and Foundations for the purposes of assisting Western-backed terrorists in destroying secular Syria and replacing it with a collection of impotent religious/ethnicity-based petty squabbling microstates and mini-states.[2] The organization serves as a clever and opportunistic tool to be used by Western media for the purposes of sourcing false claims from “impartial” “activist” groups on the ground in Syria and giving the claims the source and credibility of a “human rights” organization. Clearly, whatever claims are made by the White Helmets should be immediately dismissed as yet another false statement in a long string of lies easily traced directly back to the United States and the UK.

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

Notes:

[1] Anderson, Tim. The Dirty War On Syria. Pg. 75.
[2] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1st Edition. 1998.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia

Back in January, when the market was watching in shocked silence as oil prices were crashing to decade lows and as concerns emerged that Saudi Arabia may need to commence selling its vast, if unquantified, USD reserves, we wrote a post titled

“Attention Finally Turns To Saudi Arabia’s “Secret” US Treasury Holdings” where we noted something very surprising: whereas we do know that Saudi Arabia is the owner of the world’s third largest USD reserves… their actual composition remains as a secret, because while the US discloses the explicit Treasury holdings of all other nations, Saudi Arabia’s holdings, for some unknown reason, are not officially disclosed.

GR Editor’s Note

The Saudi Arabia alleged role in 9/11 serves to perpetuate the Al Qaeda legend, namely that Islamic terrorist supported by Saudi Arabia were behind the 9/11 attacks.

The report serves to distract attention from solid evidence that the downing of the WTC towers 1, 2, and 7 was the result of controlled demolition.

The NYT article puts forth another issue, namely that Saudi Arabia could take actions which could contribute to weakening the US dollar system, which in turn has implications regarding possible speculative movements on forex markets.  Crash the dollar statements are often promoted by institutional speculators to create the expectation that the dollar is under attack.

M. C. GR. Editor

*       *       *

A bombshell report by the New York Times has revealed that Saudi Arabia, the third largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills in the world behind China and Japan, has warned the Obama administration and Congress that they will begin liquidating their U.S. assets if Congress passes a bill allowing for the Saudi government to be held responsible for their role in the terror attacks of 9/11.

Make no mistake that this is blackmail, as the Saudis are estimated to hold three-quarters of a trillion dollars in T-bills and the sudden divestment would almost certainly crash the dollar as well as global markets along with it.

Perhaps this explains Obama’s unwavering support for the Wahhabi regime, as congressional aides and administration officials have confirmed that the President has been lobbying Congress to block passage of the bill. Administration officials have warned Senators that if the Saudis make good on their threat, there would be extreme economic and diplomatic fallout.

The bill before the Senate is meant to clarify that the immunity enjoyed by foreign nationals should not be applicable to cases where a nation is found responsible for a terrorist attack on American soil. If passed, the bill would effectively clear the way for the role of the Saudi government to be explored in the numerous lawsuits filed regarding 9/11.

Realizing their complicity in the events of 9/11 are on the precipice of being exposed, Saudi Arabia has gone into full panic mode. They are now threatening to liquidate hundreds of billion in U.S. denominated assets, and perhaps as much as $750 billion in U.S. T-bills (the NYT’s estimate of Saudi Treasury holdings).

During last month’s visit to Washington, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir delivered a message from the Saudi King, reportedly “telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts,” according to the NY Times.

The spectacular threat by the Saudis was not expected, as speculation about using divestment of T-bills as a weapon was largely thought of as a potential threat to be wielded by the Chinese in the event of a major geopolitical conflict with the U.S. Surprisingly, it was the Saudis that are the first to threaten to use this potentially devastating economic weapon.

The threat is indicative of a continually deteriorating relationship with the Saudis, as the U.S. and the Kingdom have been at odds over how to deal with Iran. Many experts are skeptical of the threat by the Saudis due to the fact that the move, would in turn, decimate the Saudi Arabian economy, as their currency is pegged to the dollar.

According to the NY Times report:

“Obama has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot”

Families of the 9/11 victims have attempted to utilize the U.S. court system as a means of holding members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks, and charities liable due to alleged Saudi financial support for the attacks. These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts, according to Zero Hedge.

It is this 1976 law that the proposed Senate bill aims to overturn, which now has the Saudis threatening the economic “nuclear” option.

Of course, the administration can’t outright admit that they are attempting to keep the truth buried, thus the government claims that weakening the sovereign immunity provisions would put the American government, along with its citizens and corporations, in legal risk abroad because other nations might retaliate with their own legislation. This was highlighted in February when Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel that the bill would “expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”

In layman terms, if the U.S. fully explores the role of the Saudis in the 9/11 attacks, due to the passing of this bill, then other nations would perhaps follow suit and strip U.S. immunity — in respect to terror attacks on their soil.

Essentially, the U.S. government fears that their own global terrorist misdeeds will then be unmasked if there is a reciprocation by other nations, an almost unthinkable scenario that would decimate U.S. standing across the globe.

“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation.

Families of the 9/11 victims have attempted to utilize the U.S. court system as a means of holding members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks, and charities liable due to alleged Saudi financial support for the attacks. These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts, according to Zero Hedge.

It is this 1976 law that the proposed Senate bill aims to overturn, which now has the Saudis threatening the economic “nuclear” option.

Of course, the administration can’t outright admit that they are attempting to keep the truth buried, thus the government claims that weakening the sovereign immunity provisions would put the American government, along with its citizens and corporations, in legal risk abroad because other nations might retaliate with their own legislation. This was highlighted in February when Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel that the bill would “expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”

In layman terms, if the U.S. fully explores the role of the Saudis in the 9/11 attacks, due to the passing of this bill, then other nations would perhaps follow suit and strip U.S. immunity — in respect to terror attacks on their soil.

Essentially, the U.S. government fears that their own global terrorist misdeeds will then be unmasked if there is a reciprocation by other nations, an almost unthinkable scenario that would decimate U.S. standing across the globe.

Jay Syrmopoulos is a political analyst, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has been published on Ben Swann’s Truth in Media, Truth-Out, Raw Story, MintPress News, as well as many other sites. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.

We live in a time when state-corporate interests are cooperating to produce propaganda blitzes intended to raise public support for the demonisation and destruction of establishment enemies.

Below, we will examine five key components of an effective propaganda campaign of this kind.

1: Dramatic New Evidence

A propaganda blitz is often launched on the back of ‘dramatic new evidence’ signifying that an establishment enemy should be viewed as uniquely despicable and targeted with ‘action’.

The Blair government’s infamous September 2002 dossier on Iraqi WMD contained four mentions of the claim that Iraq was able to deploy WMD against British citizens within 45 minutes of an order being given. But senior intelligence officials revealed that the original 45-minutes claim referred to the length of time it might have taken the Iraqis to fuel and fire a Scud missile or rocket launcher. The original intelligence said nothing about whether Iraq possessed the chemical or biological weapons to use in these weapons. The government had turned a purely hypothetical danger into an immediate and deadly threat.

In 2011, it was claimed that the Libyan government was planning a massacre in Benghazi, exactly the kind of action that Gaddafi knew could trigger Western ‘intervention’. Investigative journalist Gareth Porter commented:

‘When the Obama administration began its effort to overthrow Gaddafi, it did not call publicly for regime change and instead asserted that it was merely seeking to avert mass killings that administration officials had suggested might approach genocidal levels. But the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which had been given the lead role in assessing the situation in Libya, found no evidence to support such fears and concluded that it was based on nothing more than “speculative arguments”.’

In 2013, the Syrian government was said to have launched a chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, Damascus, just as UN chemical weapons experts were visiting the city. It was claimed that Assad had ordered the crossing of Obama’s very clear ‘red line’ for ‘intervention’ – a war that would have destroyed the Syrian government and quite possibly resulted in Assad’s violent death. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on the Ghouta attack:

‘The quick announcement that Bashar al-Assad did it is simply not true.’

Western dissidents are subject to continuous smears but also full-on propaganda blitzes of this kind.

In 2012, after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange requested asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the corporate media rose up as one to denounce him as a vile ‘narcissist’ and buffoon. Always ‘controversial’, journalists now presented Assange as a fully-fledged hate figure.

In 2013, a single comment in an interview caused large numbers of journalists across the ‘spectrum’ toconclude that Russell Brand – then promoting a vocal form of anti-corporate dissent – was a ‘vicious sexist’, ‘narcissist’ and ‘idiot’. The intensity of the attacks on him, which are ongoing, eventually resulted in Brand withdrawing from the public eye.

It is hardly in doubt that Assange, Brand and others are being targeted by state-corporate propagandists because they are challenging state-corporate power. How else can we explain the fact that criticism of the many hundreds of journalists and MPs who have repeatedly agitated and voted for wars that have wrecked whole countries is off the agenda? It is not even that criticism of Assange, Brand and co is disproportionate; there is very often no criticism at all of people who have brought death, injury and displacement to literally millions of human beings. But when Brand joked about his then girlfriend: ‘When I was asked to edit an issue of the New Statesman I said yes because it was a beautiful woman asking me’, these words were viewed as infinitely more deserving of vicious attack right across the media ‘spectrum’ than political actions destroying whole countries.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also, of course, been subject to a relentless, almost surreal, year-long propaganda campaign. As we will see in Part 2, this has most recently taken the form ofaccusations that ‘Labour now seems to be a party that attracts antisemites like flies to a cesspit.’

Propaganda blitzes are fast-moving attacks intended to inflict maximum damage. State-corporate propagandists know that media attention will quickly move on from the claim of ‘dramatic new evidence’, so the durability of the claim is not a key concern. Marginalised media blogs and rare ‘mainstream’ articles may quickly expose the hype, but most corporate media will not notice and will not learn the lesson that similar claims should be received with extreme caution in future. A prime example was the campaign justifying war on Libya in 2011, which faced minimal corporate media scepticism just eight years after the obvious deception on Iraq.

2: Emotional Tone And Intensity

A crucial component of the propaganda blitz is the tone of political and corporate commentary, which is always vehement, even hysterical. High emotion is used to suggest a level of deep conviction fuelling intense moral outrage.

The rationale is clear enough: insanity aside, in ordinary life outrage of this kind is usually a sign that someone has good reason to be angry. People generally do not get extremely angry in the presence of significant doubt. So the message to the public is that there is no doubt. Thus the eruptions of moral outrage demanding that ‘something must be done’ to ‘save’ Libya and Syria from impending massacre(delivered by journalists blithely indifferent to the consequences of their earlier moral outrages, for example in Iraq). Thus the talk of ‘The fascists at the poisoned heart of Labour’ with their ‘chilling’ race hatred.

3: Manufacturing ‘Consensus’

A third component of a propaganda blitz is the appearance of informed consensus. The dramatic claim, delivered with certainty and outrage, is typically repeated right across the political and media ‘spectrum’. This cross-‘spectrum’ ‘consensus’ generates the impression that ‘everyone knows’ that the propaganda claim is rooted in reality. This is why the myth of a media ‘spectrum’ is so vital.

While a demonising propaganda blitz may arise from rightist politics and media, the propaganda coup de grace with the power to end public doubt comes from the ‘left-liberal’ journalists at the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC and Channel 4. Again, the logic is clear: if even celebrity progressive journalists – people famous for their principled stands and colourful socks – join the denunciations, then there must be something to the claims. At this point, it actually becomes difficult to doubt it.

Thus, in 2002, it was declared ‘a given’ by the Guardian that Iraq still retained WMD that might be a threat, despite the fact that both claims were easily refutable.

In 2007, George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian: ‘I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb.’ In October 2011, Monbiot wrote of Nato’s war on Libya: ‘I feel the right thing has been happening for all the wrong reasons.’ At a crucial time in August 2013, Monbiot affirmed: ‘Strong evidence that Assad used CWs [chemical weapons] on civilians.’ He subsequently wrote in the Guardian of the Assad government’s ‘long series of hideous crimes, including the use of chemical weapons’.

News of the killings of Syrian ministers in a bomb explosion were greeted by the Guardian’s Owen Jones with: ‘Adios, Assad (I hope).’ Jones tweeted that ‘this is a popular uprising, not arriving on the back of Western cruise missiles, tanks and bullets’. As was clear then and is indisputable now, Jones was wrong – the West, directly and via regional allies, has played a massive role in the violence. As if reading from the Nato playbook, Jones added:

‘I’m promoting the overthrow of illegitimate and brutal dictatorships by their own people to establish democracies.’

This is why the mythology of the ‘liberal-left’ Guardian and Independent with their handful of noisy, tub-thumping progressives is so important and why we work so hard to challenge it. It is why expressions of progressive support for the Guardian – with occasional articles appearing by Noam Chomsky and others, and with Russell Brand, for example becoming a ‘Guardian partner’ – are so important.

The public is not for one moment fooled by a hard-right consensus. Agreement must appear to have been reached among ‘all right-thinking people’, including the ‘lefties’ at the Guardian.

4: Demonising Dissent

To challenge a propaganda blitz is to risk becoming a target of the blitz. Dissidents can be smeared as ‘useful idiots’, ‘apologists’, ‘genocide deniers’. Anyone who even questioned the campaigns targeting Julian Assange and Russell Brand risked being labelled a ‘sexist’, a ‘misogynist’ and, in the case of Assange, a ‘rape apologist’. Even as this media alert was being written, Oliver Kamm of The Times once again tweeted that Media Lens has ‘long espoused genocide denial, misogyny & xenophobia’.

In fact we have been accused of supporting, or apologising for, everyone from Stalin to Milosevic, from the Iranian Ayatollahs to the North Korean dictatorship, Assad, Gaddafi, Saddam and so on. It seems we are so deranged that we support completely contradictory political and religious movements and beliefs, even enemies who despise each other. This may be a function of our swivel-eyed hatred of the West, or perhaps because we are challenging state-corporate media bias.

When moral outrage is directed at people challenging a propaganda blitz, reputations can be easily and irreparably damaged. The public can be left with a vague sense that the target is ‘dodgy’, almost morally unhygienic. The smear can last for the rest of a person’s career and life.

5: Timing and Strange Coincidences

The ‘dramatic new evidence’ fuelling a propaganda blitz often seems to surface at the worst possible time for the establishment target. On one level, this might seem absurdly coincidental – why, time after time, would the Official Enemy do the one thing most likely to trigger invasion, bombing, electoral disaster, and so on, at exactly the wrong time?

But remember, we are talking about ‘bad guys’ who, as everyone knows, are famously perverse. It is part of the Dr. Evil mind-set to strut provocatively and laugh in the face of disaster. Idiotic, blindly self-destructive behaviour is what being a ‘bad guy’ is all about. So the implausibly perfect timing may actually help persuade the public to think: ‘This guy really is a nutcase. He’s absolutely asking for it!’ Much ‘journalism’ covering Official Enemies is about suggesting they are comically, in fact cartoonishly, foolish in exactly this way.

We have no doubt that, with sufficient resources, media analysts could easily prove that propaganda blitzes consistently arise with impeccable timing just ahead of key votes at the UN, in parliament and in elections.

In November 2002, before the UN vote on Resolution 1441, which ‘set the clock ticking’ for war, the Blair regime began issuing almost daily warnings of imminent terror threats against UK ferries, the Underground, and major public events. In 2003, Blair actually surrounded Heathrow airport with tanks – an action said to be in response to increased terrorist ‘chatter’ warning of a ‘missile threat’, of which nothing more was subsequently heard. Even the Guardian editors expressed scepticism about this sudden flood of ‘threats’:

‘It cannot be ruled out that Mr Blair may have political reasons for talking up the sense of unease, in order to help make the case for a war against Iraq that is only backed by one voter in three.’ (Leading article, ‘Gloom in Guildhall,’ The Guardian, November 12, 2002)

John Pilger cited a former intelligence officer who described the government’s terror warnings as ‘a softening up process’ ahead of the Iraq war and ‘a lying game on a huge scale’. (Pilger, ‘Lies, damned lies and government terror warnings,’ Daily Mirror, December 3, 2002) In fact, Blair was perpetrating a form of psychological terrorism on his own people.

Likewise, atrocity claims from Syria clearly peaked as the US drew closer to war in the summer of 2013. After Obama chose not to bomb, it was extraordinary to see the BBC’s daily front page atrocity claims suddenly dry up.

In 2012, the pro-Assad ‘shabiha’ militia became globally infamous when they were blamed for the May 2012 Houla massacre in Syria. In September 2014, Lexis found that in the preceding three years, the ‘shabiha’ had been mentioned in 933 UK national newspaper articles. But in the twelve months from September 2013 to September 2014 – a time when Western crosshairs shifted away from Assad towards Islamic State – there were just 28 mentions of ‘shabiha’ (Media Lens search, September 15, 2014). In the last year, Nexis finds just 12 articles mentioning the terms ‘Syria’ and ‘shabiha’ in the entire UK national press.

Similarly, in Part 2, we will see how a propaganda blitz targeting Jeremy Corbyn coincided perfectly to damage his chances ahead of local elections in the UK.

In combination, the ‘dramatic new evidence’, moral outrage and apparently wide consensus, generate several important impacts.

Most people have little idea about the status of WMD in Iraq, about Gaddafi’s intentions and actions in Libya, or what Corbyn thinks about anti-semitism. Given this uncertainty, it is hardly surprising that the public is impressed by an explosion of moral outrage from so many political and media ‘experts’.

Expressions of intense hatred targeting ‘bad guys’ and their ‘apologists’ persuade members of the public to keep their heads down. They know that even declaring mild scepticism, even requesting clarification, can cause the giant state-corporate Finger of Blame to be cranked around in their direction. Perhaps they, too, will be declared ‘supporters of tyranny’, ‘apologists for genocide denial’, ‘sexists’ and ‘racists’. The possibility of denunciation is highly intimidating and potentially disastrous for anyone dependent on corporate employment or sponsorship. Corporations, notably advertisers, hate to be linked to any kind of unsavoury ‘controversy’. It is notable how ‘celebrities’ with potentially wide public outreach very often stay silent.

It is easy to imagine that people will often prefer to decide that the issue is not that important to them, that they don’t know that much about it – not enough to risk getting into trouble. And, as discussed, they naturally imagine that professional journalists have access to a wealth of information and expertise – best to just keep quiet. This is the powerful and disastrous chilling effect of a fast-moving propaganda blitz.

Propaganda And Climate Change

The most devastating impact, however, is on the public perception of threats.

A series of propaganda blitzes have taught the public to associate an alarming situation with a unified eruption of concern and outrage right across party politics and media. This is a problem because genuine threats that do not trigger a propaganda blitz naturally appear to be far less urgent and threatening than they really are. And this is exactly what has happened with climate change.

Despite the endlessly and ominously tumbling records for temperature and extreme weather events – see here and here – despite increasingly urgent attempts to warn the public of a very real ‘climate emergency’, scientists are not close to being able to match the kind of alarm generated by a propaganda blitz.

These campaigns are rooted in vast power and resources defending establishment greed. They are motivated by the need to remove obstacles to power and profit, to control natural resources, to justify bloated arms budgets (‘socialism for the rich’). Naturally, then, a propaganda blitz is not triggered by a threat requiring action that will harm these same elite interests.

As the state-corporate response to climate change makes very clear, propaganda blitzes are not really about averting ‘threats’. It is tragicomic indeed to see high state officials and corporate media commentators endlessly emphasising ‘security concerns’ while doing little or nothing to address the truly existential threat of climate change. It is simply the wrong kind of threat requiring the wrong kind of action!

The result is that the climate emergency is felt by the public to be a medium-sized, manageable problem surrounded by uncertainty. A YouGov survey in January found that the ‘British public is far more concerned about the threat posed by population growth than it is about climate change.’ The case for dramatic new evidence has been made, but the emotional intensity, consensus and denunciation of climate denier ‘dissidents’ – for once, all justifiable – are lacking.

This is an awesome price to pay for corporate domination of politics and media. It seems the ultimate victims of propaganda will be the propagandists themselves and the public deceived by them.

In Part 2, we will see how a recent propaganda blitz aimed at Corbyn fits the pattern outlined above.

Anthony Senecal, who worked as Donald Trump’s butler for 17 years before being named the in-house historian at the tycoon’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, has repeatedly published posts on his Facebook page that express profound hatred for President Barack Obama and declare he should be killed.

On Wednesday, Senecal put up a post that read:

To all my friends on FB, just a short note to you on our pus headed “president” !!!! This character who I refer to as zero (0) should have been taken out by our military and shot as an enemy agent in his first term !!!!! Instead he still remains in office doing every thing he can to gut the America we all know and love !!!!! Now comes Donald J Trump to put an end to the corruption in government !!!! The so called elite, who are nothing but common dog turds from your front lawn are shaking in their boots because there is a new Sheriff coming to town, and the end to their corruption of the American people (YOU) is at hand !!!! I cannot believe that a common murder is even allowed to run (killery clinton) OR that a commie like bernie is a also allowed to also run !!!! Come on America put your big boy pants on—this election you have a choice—GET YOUR ASS OUT AND VOTE !!!! Thank you !!!!

Though Senecal’s Facebook page is public, this message could only be read by his Facebook friends. In an interview with Mother Jones, Senecal confirms that those were his words: “I wrote that. I believe that.”

Here’s a screen shot of the missive:

A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign says, “This individual has not worked at Mar-a-Lago for many years.”

“I cannot stand the bastard,” Trump’s longtime butler says of Obama.”I don’t believe he’s an American citizen. I think he’s a fraudulent piece of crap that was brought in by the Democrats.”

Senecal, who is 84, says he has been employed at Mar-a-Lago since about 1959. Trump acquired the property in 1985, and Senecal remained on staff. “As [Trump] says, I came with the furniture,” Senecal remarks. About seven years later, he became the butler for the celebrity mogul who is now the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. In 2009, Senecal informed Trump he wanted to resign as butler, and Trump persuaded him to stay on as the in-house historian at Mar-a-Lago. There is no salary for the job, Senecal says, but he makes money leading tours of the estate.

Senecal regularly posts screeds on his Facebook page from a far-right perspective in which he decries Obama and his wife—along with Hillary Clinton, other Democrats, and Republican leaders. He often refers to Obama as “zero,” and several times he has called for the president’s execution. He confirms that he has written all the posts on the page that have appeared under his name. “It’s all me,” he says.

On April 21, 2015, Senecal railed:

Looks like that sleezey bastard zero (O) is trying to out maneuver Congress again, if the truth be known this prick needs to be hung for treason!!!

On May 23, 2015, he published a post saying:

I feel it is time for the SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION !!!!! The only way we will change this crooked government is to douche it !!!!! This might be the time with this kenyan fraud in power !!!!! …[W]ith the last breath I draw I will help rid this America of the scum infested in its government–and if that means dragging that ball less dick head from the white mosque and hanging his scrawny ass from the portico–count me in !!!!!

On June 6, 2015, one of his Facebook friends wrote a comment on Senecal’s page saying, “We need to send the seals to SOROS and ROTHCHILD and REMOVE them and their cronies–then HANG BO and most of Washington–and we’ll have a CHANCE to get things straightened out.” This person added, “everyone knows they’re CRIMINAL – HANG ALL OF THEM.” Senecal replied, “I love the idea.”

On May 26, 2015, a commenter on the page excoriated Obama and his wife, Michelle (referring to the First Lady as “Sasquatch”): “If he gets hung, then Sasquatch does too.” Senecal responded, “Amen….Two of the most DISGUSTING individuals on the face of God’s Green Earth !!!! Puke !!!!!!”

Here are screen shots of these posts:

Asked why he has posted messages calling for Obama to be killed, Senecal says, “I cannot stand the bastard.” He continues: “I don’t believe he’s an American citizen. I think he’s a fraudulent piece of crap that was brought in by the Democrats.” Trump’s historian is a birther. Senecal notes that he has been suspended in the past on Facebook for publishing material that violated the service’s guidelines.

“Muzzie shits…are invading our country,” Senecal posted on Facebook.

One recurring theme in Senecal’s messages is that Obama is a secret Muslim bent on destroying the United States. On September 18, he wrote, “Our current ‘president’ is a rotten filthy muzzie !!!!! Period !!!!!! He continues his war on Christians !!!!!! …zero is against the people of America !!!!!” Months earlier, he declared of Obama, “look at the number of goat screwing muzzies he is degrading our government with !!!!!” (One of Senecal’s Facebook associates replied, “We need to LYNCH that NIG — NOW!!”) In another post that day, Senecal suggested Obama was preparing to impose martial law on the United States.

On June 6, a commenter on Senecal’s page wrote, “I will gladly fight…to get rid of the commie muzzie and his vp in the white house…[and] we need to get rid of his whole administration and those that support and those muzzies he has put in highly senative positions in our government.” Senecal answered, “Exactly, Ruth !!!!!”

In a June 23 message, Senecal complained, “there are to [sic] many fkn muzzies in America !!!!!” Two days later, he wrote on Facebook, “muzzie shits…are invading our country.”

On August 12, he published a photo of Obama with this caption: “If ALLAH HAD AN ASSHOLE IT WOULD LOOK LIKE THIS.” On June 18, he referred to Obama as an “unfeeling sack of camel feces.”

Senecal’s Facebook timeline is loaded with assorted extremism. A year ago, he derided Clinton: “Stop the LYING BITCH OF BENGHAZI, NOW—killery clinton !!!!!! She should be in prison awaiting hanging !!!!!!!” Last summer, Senecal posted an image comparing Obama to Hitler and Lenin. On September 11, he groused about the Iran nuclear deal and assailed “the treachery of zero, the pig ‘president’ and traitor ketchup kerry.” And Senecal has taken shots at the GOP establishment. In a September 7 post, Senecal denounced then-House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and said both were “FKN CROOKS and should be run out of D.C, on a rail and covered in hot tar.” A few months prior to that, he proclaimed, “revolt and hang all of the a-holes in Congress and the crooked government !!!!! Let’s get ‘er done !!!!!!”

Senecal often has included links to articles about various right-wing conspiracies. On September 14, he cited an article that claimed that Obama “is leading the Muslim Brotherhood.” The day before, he had linked to a story from a conservative site claiming that nearly half of Americans would support a military coup against Obama.

He has regularly published images of the Confederate flag on his Facebook page. And in a May 10, 2015, post, he exclaimed, “Call me biased, racist…call me anything you want–I could care less !!!!!” The following month, he wrote on the page that once Obama leaves office, “only a FEW Negroes and josh earnest will even remember him.”

A lengthy and flattering New York Times profile of Senecal in March noted, “Few people here can anticipate Mr. Trump’s demands and desires better than Mr. Senecal…He understands Mr. Trump’s sleeping patterns and how he likes his steak (‘It would rock on the plate, it was so well done’).” The story reported that in 1990, Senecal “took a sabbatical to become the mayor of a town in West Virginia, where he gained some notoriety for a proposal requiring all panhandlers to carry begging permits.” The article did not mention his Facebook page.

The Times did point out that “Senecal’s admiration for his longtime boss seems to know few limits.” On June 16, Senecal exclaimed on his Facebook page, “Today, my employer and friend Donald J Trump announced he was running for the Office of President of the United States… NO ONE deserves to run for and be elected to this GREAT office, than Mr. Trump. !!!!!”

Here is a roundup of screen shots from Senecal’s Facebook page:

Michel Temer, the vice president and political ally of ousted Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) President Dilma Rousseff, formally took control of Planalto, the presidential offices in Brasilia, Thursday, declaring that his would be a government of “national salvation,” and assembling a cabinet of right-wing politicians and capitalist economists from the banking and financial sector.

With the Brazilian Senate having voted that morning after an all-night session to initiate impeachment proceedings against Rousseff, she was suspended from office for the length of a trial that will likely run into September or October. While only a simple majority vote was required to begin this process, the lopsided result was 55 to 22, more than the two-thirds majority that is ultimately required to permanently remove the PT president from office.

Given that the basis of the impeachment charges—Rousseff’s alleged manipulation of budgetary accounts to cover for temporary shortfalls—was clearly contrived as a pretext, a final conviction appears inevitable.

Brazil is the largest country in Latin America and the seventh largest economy in the world. Rousseff received 54 million votes in 2014 when she was reelected to a second term as president. This election has now been overturned through an anti-democratic political conspiracy at the highest level of the Brazilian ruling elite.

In his first speech to the nation, Temer, surrounded by a coterie of smirking politicians from nearly every party outside of the PT, stressed that his government would work to “improve the environment for investment by the private sector” and carry out “fundamental reforms” designed to shift the burden of the country’s profound economic crisis even more directly onto the backs of the masses of Brazilian workers.

There was more than a whiff of fascism in the new interim president’s remarks. He declared that his goal was to “pacify and unify” Brazil and declared that the watchword of his government would be “Ordeme Progresso,” order and progress, the words that appear on Brazil’s flag.

Taken from the French philosopher Auguste Comte, the slogan was first introduced into Brazil’s political lexicon in the late 19th century by leading figures in the military who were influenced by Comte’s positivism. They became a watchword for national unity and suppression of the class struggle, imposed most effectively under the US-backed military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1964 and 1985.

Temer’s remarks suggested that Brazil needed to return to these old “values.” The slogan on the flag, he declared, “couldn’t be more current than if it were written today.”

Temer told the assembled audience that he had recently driven past a gas station and seen that its owner had put up a sign reading “Don’t talk about the crisis, work.” He added that he wanted to see this slogan spread to “10, 20 million billboards throughout Brazil.” The slogan, he said served to promote “harmony” and “optimism.”

He spoke these words under conditions in which 11 million workers are now unemployed and layoffs have been continuing at the rate of 100,000 a month. The collapse of the commodities boom and the emerging market boom has plunged the country into its deepest economic crisis in a century.

The answer given by Temer to this crisis is clearly one of sharp austerity measures. He bragged that his first actions had been to slash the number of government ministries and indicated that a large-scale elimination of public sector jobs would follow. He also said that his government was committed to “fundamental reforms,” in the first instance in the country’s social security system and its labor laws.

The cabinet assembled by Temer is a collection of reactionaries and pro-business figures. Among the most important figures is Jose Serra, who has been named foreign minister. Serra is a leading figure in the right-wing PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) who served as a senator, mayor of Sao Paulo and twice as the unsuccessful candidate of the PSDB, losing to the PT in both 2002 and 2010. Serra was named in US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks as favoring the privatization of the state-owned energy giant Petrobras and the opening up of the so-called pre-salt underwater oil fields to exploitation by major oil firms based in the US.

The ministry of education was awarded to Mendonça Filho of the extreme right-wing Democrats (DEM) party, the successor to ARENA, the official ruling party of the former military dictatorship. He is the son of a career ARENA official and major landowner in the northern state of Pernambuco.

The ministry of Institutional Security, which includes Brazil’s intelligence agency, has been placed under the control of the former top general in the Brazilian army, Sérgio Westphalen Etchegoyen. When the general’s father was identified by the country’s truth commission as one of the officials responsible for the murders, disappearances and torture under the dictatorship, he protested angrily, declaring the accusations “frivolous.”

For agriculture minister, Temer named Blairo Maggi, a billionaire agribusiness figure known as the “soy king,” who is credited with doing more to destroy the Amazon rain forest than anyone else on the planet.

And the ministry of justice was handed to Alexandre de Moraes, the Sao Paulo state public safety secretary, who is an advocate of police-state repression. A separate human rights ministry was folded into justice and also placed under his leadership. Earlier, the name of a right-wing female deputy known for her opposition to abortion, including in cases of rape, had been put forward for human rights.

A number of those appointed to the new cabinet are facing corruption charges, including in connection with the massive bribery and kickback scandal involving contracts with Petrobras. Even the daily O Estado de S. Paulo, which backed impeachment, was compelled to observe that the new government’s leaders “with the participation of those notably involved in corruption scandals past and present, pretend that they are going to change everything to, in reality, leave everything as it is.”

Perhaps the most significant figure in the new cabinet is Henrique Meirelles, who will take the post of finance minister, directing the austerity drive. Social welfare will reportedly be placed under his remit, indicating the government’s intention to make radical changes. The role of Meirelles underscores the fundamental continuity between the new right-wing government and the PT administration that preceded it.

A former CEO of Bank of Boston, Meirelles was appointed head of Brazil’s central bank when the PT first came into office under the presidency of former metalworkers union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. His appointment was a signal to both Brazilian and foreign capitalists that they had nothing to fear from the socialist rhetoric of the PT. Lula had proposed that Rousseff bring Meirelles into her administration, even as vice president.

In her own speech delivered Thursday morning, Rousseff denounced the impeachment as a “coup” and insisted that she was guilty of no crime. “It’s the most brutal thing that can happen to a human being,” she said, “being condemned for a crime you didn’t commit. No injustice is more devastating.”

She compared the experience to the torture she suffered as a prisoner of the military dictatorship in the late 1960s and her bout with cancer.

While denouncing the attack on herself personally and the threat to democracy posed by the “fraudulent impeachment,” she made no attempt to warn the Brazilian working class of the sharp attacks that are to come, much less call for any concrete action by workers against the “coup.”

This is because, in the end, the PT was prepared to carry out similar attacks, and had sought to win the support of Brazilian and foreign capital with the argument that only it could be seen as a “legitimate” government, and could utilize the collaboration of the CUT union federation to suppress working class resistance.

Moreover, all of those who have carried out the supposed coup were, until recently, the PT’s closest political allies, awarded posts in government, running on common slates and, as emerged in the so-called mensalao scandal, even paid handsome stipends to vote with the government in congress.