Global Research

An Israeli energy company has announced that an oil field they have been surveying north of the Dead Sea is estimated to hold millions of oil barrels, worth 1.2 billion shekels ($321 million).

The reservoir, known as Hatrurim, is estimated to contain seven million barrels of oil, while the high estimate is 11 million barrels, according to the company “Israel Opportunity.”

Other partners in the Hatrurim project include Zerah Oil and Gas, Gulliver Energy, Ashtrom Group and Cyprus Opportunity.

A previous company (Delek Group Ltd) had carried out an initial drilling at the same spot and discovered oil in 1995, but determined the field was not worth developing due to low oil prices.

The Israeli oil project in this area is expected to face opposition from the Palestinian government because the site is part of the Palestinian territory in the West Bank, which is classified as Area C under the Oslo accords. However, Israel prevents the Palestinians from drilling for oil and gas in the West Bank.

John Rosenthal has been known as a critic of Western intervention in both Libya and Syria since the beginning of both of those crises. Yet, having made a successful career of writing for the Western mainstream press and outlets such as the National Review, the Wall Street Journal Europe, and World Affairs, work has become slower and slower as his views on Anglo-American imperialism become more apparent.

Indeed, Rosenthal has found that mainstream outlets are much less likely to accept material criticizing imperialist measures and that they are virtually united in refusing to print material that does not paint the targets of Western imperialism in an unfairly bad light. While hesitancy to publish material critical of the governments for whom these outlets often speak has surely been a hallmark of the mainstream corporate press for some time, the noose of censorship and the tightening of the grip on information has become even stronger in recent years. Indeed, it is something that Rosenthal himself has been candid about in regard to his own career which he claims has been a victim of such censorship, a trend that he sees as growing with each crisis.

Rosenthal sat down for an interview with the BRICS Post recently and discussed a number of different topics, one of them being the state of the media and Western media coverage of the crises in Syria and Libya. What he revealed was that, at least from a mainstream journalist’s point of view, the journalistic culture in 2016 and the policies of mainstream outlets is more wedded to the idea of pushing agendas and suppressing facts when it comes to geopolitics, international crises, and Anglo-American war aims than even during the period leading up to the Iraq war in 2003.

For instance, BRICS Post asked Rosenthal the question:

There has been much criticism in the past few years of how Western press have covered the Syrian civil war.

As a journalist who has written about the conflict, is this criticism warranted?

To which Rosenthal responded at length. He stated:

Absolutely. In fact, even though my writing is 99 per cent just factual, I was less and less able to write about the conflict, because the media did not want to publish the facts in question.

One of the publications to which I had been a regular contributor – National Review Online, the website of the American conservative weekly National Review – went so far as to “bar” me from publishing.

In other words, they blacklisted me. At least this is what the journalist Michael Weiss claims, and I think Weiss is right.

The editors at National Review did not tell me I was “barred,” but they never again accepted a submission from me and eventually ceased responding altogether.

Weiss, incidentally, is one of the main American proponents of the “Assad-as-root-of-all-evil” view of the Syrian conflict, and he clearly believes that my barring was well deserved.

The reason for my barring was an article I published in June 2012 on the Houla massacre. The massacre represented a major turning point in the Syrian conflict.

Responsibility was almost instantaneously attributed to regime forces and/or affiliated militias, and Western governments responded by cutting off diplomatic relations with Damascus.

Two weeks later, however, Germany’s paper-of-record, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published a report suggesting that these initial attributions were mistaken and that the perpetrators of the massacre were in fact rebel forces.

I am a specialist in European languages and politics, and it struck me as normal, under the circumstances, to try to make the gist of this report accessible to the English-speaking public.

But very quickly I heard from a contact at National Review that my sources were suspected of being “beholden to Assad”.

The notion that the leading paper of Europe’s richest and most powerful nation is somehow “beholden to Assad” is downright laughable.

But it is a measure of the parochialism of some of America’s would-be “opinion-makers” that it appears to have been taken seriously by the editors at National Review.

Such insinuations – and, I suppose, the fact that I had the temerity to defend the credibility of the report against irrelevant smears – was enough to get me barred.

Another example: As you know, in April 2014 the Dutch priest Father Frans van der Lugt was killed in a rebel-controlled Christian neighborhood of Homs.

Father Frans’s death made headlines around the world and he was widely eulogized for his good works in Syria. Examining Father Frans’s publications in Dutch, however, I discovered that his own first-hand observations of the beginnings of the anti-Assad rebellion contrasted sharply with the standard view in the Western media.

Undoubtedly most significantly, Father Frans insisted that the protests that sparked the rebellion in 2011 were not strictly peaceful, as they have been almost universally presented to the Western public, but rather contained an armed and violent element from the start. He also accused rebel forces of committing atrocities and then blaming them on the regime.

By this time, needless to say, I could not even have dreamed of pitching an article on Father Frans’s observations to National Review. But I could not place one in any other Stateside outlet either, including venues with which I had an established relationship.

Despite their obvious relevance and newsworthiness – or rather: precisely because of the latter – Father Frans’s views were taboo.

If he had still been alive and his observations had become known, he would surely have been attacked as an Assad “propagandist” – as other Syria-based Christian clergy who made similar observations in fact have been.

I could give numerous other examples.

Once Washington and its European allies had established the terms of the politically “correct” narrative of the Syrian crisis, facts that failed to jibe with that narrative were unwanted and anyone who tried to report them was inevitably attacked as “pro-Assad”.

When asked how media coverage of the Syrian crisis compares with the coverage of the Iraq war in 2003, Rosenthal added:

At least as concerns the US media, the situation today is incomparably worse. There was a long debate in the run-up to the war, and in the aftermath no one had any problems questioning the grounds for intervention or even indeed outright accusing the Bush administration of having lied.

This became entirely commonplace. The stifling of debate and the homogenization of the media as regards hot-button foreign policy issues really began under the Obama administration: most notably, in the context of the Libyan war.

But at the time, it was at least still possible to bring up conflicting information in “new” media and indeed in some conservative media.

I published numerous articles on the Islamist roots of the Libyan rebellion and the presence in it of Al-Qaeda-linked militants precisely at National Review Online.

In the aftermath of the war – i.e. when it no longer mattered to policy – even the mainstream US media would to some extent acknowledge this presence; and then, of course, the US experienced its own sort of “chickens-coming-home-to-roost” moment in the form of the September 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi.

I suppose it is because the Syrian “playbook”, so to speak, so closely resembled the Libyan one that the screws had to be turned even tighter.

Rosenthal’s closing comments are important. When these specific propaganda and fearmongering techniques were relatively new (in terms of recent deployment) in 2003, some limited amount of criticism (albeit tepid and toothless) was allowed in the pages and websites of mainstream outlets. But when those methods of driving a population into support for foreign adventures was used so many times as to make itself evident to even the majorities who typically fall for every scam rolled out by war seeking governments, even tepid criticism was blacklisted.

Rosenthal’s comments highlight even more the importance of reliable alternative media outlets in disseminating the truth surrounding the West’s foreign adventures before an elite caught in the grips of a permanent war psychosis and a public rendered utterly useless by the gluttony of entertainment lead us all directly into the abyss of a major military confrontation.

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

Even as May Day protests were expected in cities across the world on Sunday, as economic crises and a rise in unemployment have fuelled anti-government sentiment, Brazil saw some radically different scenes.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Brazil’s main cities on International Workers’ Day in a show of support for the embattled President Dilma Rousseff.

Protests were seen in 16 of the country’s 27 states, called by Central Union of Workers (CUT) and numerous other labor and left-wing organizations.

The support for the embattled leftist leader Rousseff in Brazil was in sharp contrast to France which was on high alert after protests against planned labour changes this week sparked a frenzy, with cars set on fire and dozens of police officers being injured in Paris in clashes with protesters.

On Sunday, the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo saw the largest march with around 100,000 people, according to organizers, in three separate marches.

Photo caption: Thousands rally in major cities across Brazil on International Workers Day on 1 May 2016 [Image Courtesy: PT, Brasil]

Rousseff appeared at the CUT march in Sao Paulo, alongside the mayor of Sao Paulo, Fernando Haddad, and the president of the Workers’ Party, Rui Falcao.

During a speech to the crowd, Rousseff announced a new policy measure, according to Brazilian daily O Globo, saying that her flagship social welfare program Bolsa Familiawould be increased by 9 per cent.

Bolsa Familia is an ambitious cash-transfer scheme that has helped elevate millions of Brazilians out of poverty. Funds are channelled through the mothers of poor and working-class families.

The scheme was launched nationwide by President Lula’s administration in 2003 and its exemplary success has cemented support for Rousseff’s Workers Party among the poorest in Brazil.

On Sunday, Rousseff also announced that 25,000 new houses would be built within the Mi Casa, Mi Vida (My Home, My Life) program, the renewal of the contracts of foreign doctors in the Más Médicos (More Doctors) program, an increase in paternity leave for public officials and an adjustment to the rental tax to benefit workers.

In other cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Joao Pessoa, Recife and Salvador, Rousseff supporters marched, saying they would not allow her impeachment.

The Brazilian Senate is currently considering whether to open an impeachment trial against Rousseff, over alleged fiscal irregularities in 2014 and 2015.

In commemoration of the International Worker’s Day, all five Worker’s Centrals converged outside the Ministry of Labour in Buenos Aires City after marching from different points of the city. More than 150,000 workers,  laid of workers protested against Macri’s economic policies which have resulted in layoffs and an increasing inflation in basic goods. Social and political movements also joined the protests. Both left-wing and Kirchnerist organizations were present to support the claims and reject, once again, the political and economic project that Macrismo intends to deepen.

Protesters also marched in favor of the “Anti-layoffs Law” that has already obtained preliminary approval in the Senate and to reject Macri’s sayings: he affirmed that if the law passes, he would veto it.  The Anti-Layoffs Law project seeks to put a limit on layoffs in both the public and private sector and it would be retroactive from March 1, 2016, which would apply to all workers that are fired from that date on. Any worker dismissed without proper cause during that period, would be entitled to double the amount of a regular severance, meaning that employers wouldn’t be so inclined to lay workers off.

The increasing job instability, plus the significant raise in basic service rates, are putting a dent on Macri’s good image and on the support of sectors that had backed him in the election. The government has not been able to revert this tendency, as Macri and his cabinet had intended with the few social measures they announced:an insufficient increase in Child Allowance and the VAT refund, for items under 300 pesos (21 dollars).

The State Worker’s Association (ATE) also participated in the mobilization. This sector has been severely hit by the policy of reduction of the state that Macri’s government has taken up: 70,000 state workers have been dismissed, including workers who are part of the most important healthcare programs, such as programs for the prevention of Dengue and Zika and delivery of medicines. ATE has already held a National Strike earlier this year and organized several marches to both the Modernization Ministry and the Labour Ministry.

University teachers also joined the protest. Currently, they are carrying out a national strike due to the impossibility of achieving a decent wage increase: in the negotiations, the government offered a 15% raise by the end of this year. This was not enough for the unions, given that the expected inflation for 2016 exceeds 40%. University teachers started the strike on Monday, after another unsuccessful meeting with the authorities. As if that wasn’t enough, the authorities of the public university approved next year’s budget with an increase of 0% (zero percent), which, added to the huge increase in basic services, left many faculties struggling to pay for their electricity bills, let alone to pay their teachers and workers. It looks like the education is not a priority for this government.

In a joint statement called “Unity for Social Justice”, the five workers’ organizations expressed their demands, which were divided into six items.

The first item rings the alarm on the “job loss” and calls to support the voting of the law of “labour emergency”, which was already pass by the Senate and will be discussed in the Deputy Chamber next week.

The second item criticizes President Mauricio Macri’s “failure to meet campaign promises” on “the tax on work” (which is how they call the income tax that weighs upon those that aren’t exactly rich) and highlights that “salary is not profit”. The third item calls for “the universalization of family allowances” and the fourth claims for the full enforcement of a pension that is adjustable to inflation and for an integral solution for the pension system”, which is currently in crisis.

The fifth point demands the government to comply “the respect of full right to strike with no Security Protocol”, as the one created by the ministry headed by Patricia Bullrich, which allows the police to take action in social protests.

The last point of the document ask for “no meddling of any external organism in Unions’ lives”. The text is a “warning to political forces so that they acknowledge these problems”, and also, “to the government, that should be announcing concrete measures to find a way out of the crisis”, and stressed the “unity between Unions, due to the seriousness of the situation”.

Video:

Photo caption: “Total roadblock by demonstrations”, reads the sign

Photo Caption: National strike against the adjustment

Photo caption: “This House is Peronist and of the UPCN Union” (Union of Civil Workers of the State), reads the banner on the left. The one on the right reads “Organization Defeats Time”.

Photo caption: Truck drivers of the province of Neuquen. The Truck Driver Union is one of the most powerful ones in Argentina, because of their high level of organization and their potential ability to stop the economy of the country if they make a stoppage.

Photo caption: Cartoneros and recyclers behind a sculpture of the Virgin of Lujan, a popular religious image

Photo caption: “NO to hunger wages in the City Government of Buenos Aires”, “No to threats of layoffs”, “Culture Workers of the City Government”

Hundreds of Iraqi demonstrators flooded out of Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone Sunday, ending dramatic protests that saw crowds storm the central government compound, destroying property, assaulting an Iraqi lawmaker and prompting the imposition of a state of emergency throughout the capital by Iraq’s military.

The demonstrators, whose storming of the militarized compound on the previous day had, as even the New York Times acknowledged, “hinted at revolution,” maintained silence and ceased the attacks against government property they had carried out on the previous day as they left the Green Zone, doing so under orders from Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

In a speech to supporters Saturday, Sadr issued populist denunciations of the country’s political elite, declaring: “The main political blocs in this country want a partisan government of sectarian quotas so they can keep their gains and keep stealing.”

Sadr said that the cessation of protests was only temporary and that another round of demonstrations is scheduled to begin Friday. He vowed that his own sizable parliamentary faction would cease participation in legislative proceedings indefinitely.

The Sadrists had earned popular sympathy through their armed struggle against the US occupation forces. In 2004, the Shia movement was drawn into the anti-American insurgency after being outlawed by US proconsul Paul Bremer for delivering aid to residents during the blood-soaked siege of Fallujah by US Marines.

The opposition of the Sadrist party to US imperialism is, however, ultimately a tactic aimed at bolstering the movement’s sectarian interests within Iraq. Sadr, the representative of a powerful Shia clerical and political family, is firmly bound to sections of Iraq’s political establishment. Reports indicate that he is engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions with Abadi.

The New York Times reported that Sadr hopes “to nudge politicians who have opposed Mr. Abadi’s efforts” and is seeking “to reinsert himself into Iraq’s political mix.”

“This isn’t necessarily al-Sadr positioning himself against Abadi, they are both looking for the same sort of process,” Baghdad-based investment analyst Stephen Royle told Bloomberg.

“It works in favor of Abadi to use Moqtada al-Sadr and public support to push through with these reforms,” Royle said.

Though quickly reined in, the demonstrations are an acute manifestation of the fact that the US-backed government stands completely discredited and hated in the eyes of the Iraqi population. Eleven years after being installed in power through elections held as hundreds of thousands of American soldiers still patrolled Iraqi streets and towns, and under a transitional administrative law authorized by US bureaucrats employed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraq’s government stands on the verge of collapse.

The crisis of the Iraqi state has only intensified since the official US withdrawal in 2011, as Iranian influence in the country has grown, and sectarian conflict has intensified.

In the summer of 2014, large portions of the country, including its second most populous city, have fallen under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Al Qaeda-linked militia that emerged out of the insurgency against the Syrian government organized by Washington and its Gulf allies. ISIS subsequently consolidated control over portions of northern and western Iraq, including the cities of Mosul, Hit and Ramadi. In the past week, a wave of terror bombings claimed by ISIS rocked cities in southern and central Iraq, killing dozens of civilians.

Faced with a steep decline in economic growth, which fell to only 2.4 percent in 2015, down from 12.7 percent on average between 2000 and 2012, Abadi’s government is seeking to stabilize its rule under conditions in which the fall in world oil prices has placed massive strain on its revenues. In recent weeks, demands by Washington for an escalation of military operations, fought by Iraqi troops accompanied by US “advisors,” have intensified the diversion of resources away from civilian functions and forced a virtual shutdown of government operations.

The deliberate stoking of Sunni-Shia divisions under the US occupation as a divide-and-rule strategy has insured that central areas of Iraq remain contested by the government troops, backed by US “advisors,” and various militant groups. Armed violence continues to rage throughout Iraq on a daily basis, with at least 800 Iraqi civilians killed last month alone, on top of 1,100 killed in March, according to UN figures.

At least 55,047 Iraqi civilians were killed between 2014-2016, the UN found, with 3.2 million displaced during the same period, including more than 1 million school children.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon announced new deployments of US ground forces, Apache helicopter gunships, and artillery to combat bases in northern Iraq, where US forces are preparing a brutal assault against Mosul. In a desperate effort to prop up its ailing puppet regime, Washington is preparing to meet any opposition to the American-backed order with, as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter put it in remarks last week, “the full might of the US military.”

Class and geopolitical tensions are mounting throughout the region. The emergence of strike movements among Kuwaiti oil workers, the revival of protests in Egypt and the accelerating buildup of US combat forces on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border underscore the fact that the entire Middle Eastern political order is becoming unstuck, under the impact of a developing revolutionary crisis and wars that are increasingly coalescing into a region-wide conflagration.

Aristotle thought notions of humanity as a supreme species atopos – absurd.  In contrast, the Romans had a very defined term that distinguished humans as humans, impressive relative to other species: humanitas.  Hannah Arendt, in considering these contrasts in “Man’s Conquest of Space”, a piece penned for the American Scholar (Autumn, 1963), turned her mind to those questions that remain, more broadly speaking, the staple of inquiring minds: “Has man’s conquest of space increased or diminished his stature?”

A difficult question indeed, especially for a species distinctly obsessed by anthropomorphic elements.  While scientists like Max Planck urged that these elements be excised from the human imagination, the political and legal imagination was always going to be even less worthy.  The scientific mind is naturally inquiring and expansive, the political-legal often opportunistic and calculating.

Not only were humans to be worshipped as the new navigators of the extra-terrestrial world after Yuri Gagarin’s April 12, 1961 flight into space; they would also be politicised, the daring heroes of races and countries keen on getting points up on each other.

The feat was engendered both terror and delight – science, appropriated for suitable political ends, had been brought into space like a boisterous statement of Soviet prowess and intent. Those in Freedom’s Land were concerned that the dark Soviet machine had advanced with unstoppable menace.  This was not what a supposedly primitive culture was supposed to do.

Even before Gagarin became the first human to make it into outer space (Russian conspiracy sites on this differ, claiming several unacknowledged cosmonauts), the ground, or in this case, celestial space, was already going to be the challenge.  The Soviet Union had launched SPUTNIK 1 in October 1957.  With inexorable logic, humans would follow.  On February 25, 1960, twenty air force pilots between 25 to 35 were selected.

The return of those selected was hardly promising. Of the first 20, only 12 would fly.  Eight never made it to space.  Two engaged in a drink-fuelled brawl that led to their dismissal.  Another was injured on being exposed to 8G in a centrifuge test.  One also committed suicide.

With such blotted paper, the Chief Designer of the Soviet space program was relieved to hit upon Gagarin, deemed reliable and capable.  On an adapted and refitted ICBM R-7 rocket, the young Soviet cosmonaut made a journey of Columbus-styled dimensions, even if his journey remained a puppeteer-directed effort on the part of ground control.

Cold War envy and fears did not make the announcement a pleasant one in the United States.  First SPUTNIK, now this.  “Just tell me how to catch up,” pleaded US President John F. Kennedy.  “Let’s find somebody.  Anybody. I don’t care if the janitor over there has the answer, if he knows how.”  Knowledge moves in baffling ways indeed.

In May 1961, Alan Shepard became the retaliatory instrument of the US space effort, one that became known as the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission. Rather less impressively, he made it to 187 km above the Florida coast in an unspectacular 15 minute journey that involved no orbit.

Notwithstanding this, both men had been the guinea pigs of the broader scientific and political experiment on how far humanity could make it into space.  It was true that strides were made in space biomedicine and linked sciences, but lurking in the background was the miasma of political motivation.

Legal squirreling and speculating was also taking place at the time. Having put humans into space, jurisprudence was called in to make claims and contentions about the next frontier of legal briefs and battles, the next ground of disagreement and rivalry.

“In certain quarters,” claimed a smug Jacek Machowski, counsellor to the Polish Mission to the United Nations, “there still prevails an erroneous opinion that the conquest of outer space by man constitutes an exclusive domain of science and technology” (Proceedings of the American Society of International Law at Its Annual Meeting, Apr 27-29, 1961).

Gagarin’s orbit did not merely open the heavens to human intrusion. It also opened them up to human contest requiring, according to Machowski, “cooperation of experts in different fields, including law and politics.” He would conclude with the now accepted notion that actions in space “taken by a state in outer space against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states” would be violations of the UN Charter “and a serious breach of international law.”

The observation provided Leon Lipson of Yale Law School in the same proceedings a chance to ponder whether reconnaissance space satellites were legal or otherwise.  Scientific space inquiry for its own sake was the least of his concern.

Should Gagarin, he posed, be considered an enterprising celestial pushing Charles Lindberg, or more along the lines of Francis Gary Powers, a US pilot shot down in his CIA U-2 spy plane over Soviet airspace the previous year? “Both Powers and Gagarin flew over territory not within the jurisdiction of the government that sent them on their missions.”  And so the reductionist arguments continue.

In the 55^th year after Gagarin’s outer space journey in a Vostok 3KA-3 spacecraft, the Russian Space Agency proclaimed it “The Year of Yuri Gagarin”. Russian Roscomos released a statement as an open call to human curiosity.  “We invite all those who are interested in space, dream of distant planets and those for whom Russia’s space activities are a part of life to join us.”[1]

Reverting to type, however, the declaration of the year of Gagarin does come with its inescapable political import. Space is prowess, and challenging the heavens continues to be good for morale, and prestige on the ground.

On April 28, the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket was launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far Eastern Amur Region.  The reason?  To wean off Russia’s dependency on the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan, a venue that is being leased until 2050.  Going into the cosmos was, and remains political.

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

Note

The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest famous for his anti-war and anti-capitalism protests, died Saturday in New York at the age of 94.

Together with his younger brother, Philip, who was also a Catholic priest at the time, Berrigan was a leader of the radical anti-war movement in the 1960s, and continued protesting against war for several decades.

Father Berrigan emerged as a radical Catholic voice against the Vietnam war in the 1960s and sprang into the spotlight in 1968 when he and several other activists seized 600 draft cards of troops about to be deployed in Vietnam and burned the files in rubbish bins with homemade napalm.

The group of protesters, known as the “Catonsville Nine,” issued a declaration denouncing the Catholic Church and other religious bodies for their “cowardice” before America’s “crimes.”

We confront the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country’s crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor.

The Berrigan brothers were subsequently convicted of destroying government property, and sent to prison. Daniel ended up serving eighteen months in a federal penitentiary, during which time he and Philip appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

Other protests followed, leading to more arrests and prosecutions. From 1970 to 1995, Berrigan spent a total of nearly seven years in prison.

In 1980, the Berrigans and six others broke into a General Electric nuclear missile site in Pennsylvania, sabotaging warhead nose cones and pouring blood onto documents and files.

Berrigan also protested against the 1991 Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the U.S invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the prison in Guantánamo Bay.

While focused against war and nuclear arms, Berrigan’s protests went beyond pacifism to embrace other causes as well. He believed that “racism and poverty, militarism and capitalist greed were interconnected pieces of the same big problem,” and he took part in protests against capitalism such as the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York’s Zuccotti Park.

“The evils of capitalism,” Berrigan said, “are as real as the evils of militarism and the evils of racism.”

Parting ways with many of his friends on the left, however, Berrigan also protested abortion and was a vocal advocate of the pro-life cause. “I have always made it clear,” hesaid, “that I am against everything from war to abortion to euthanasia. I have avoided being a single-issue person.”

In a glowing write-up in the Jesuit magazine America, Berrigan is remembered as a “peacemaker” and a “prophet.”

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter   @tdwilliamsrome

Presently, three supposed ‘trade’ deals are being proposed by US President Barack Obama, to be signed by major trading nations (except Russia, China, and the other BRICS nations): TPP with Asia, TTIP with Europe, and also (but only for financial and other services) TISA with Europe. The promised benefits in all three cases are said to be economic.

Three independent economic studies have been done, two of Obama’s TTIP treaty with Europe, and one of his TPP treaty with Asia, and all three independent economic analyses find that the public in each participating country will suffer, and that the owners of international corporations (especially in the US) will benefit, it the proposed ‘trade’ deal goes into effect.

The latest such study to become available to the public was made public due to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the UK, which forced the British Government to release that independently produced study. It was actually the first of the three to have been done, dated three years back, in April 2013. It was titled, «Costs and benefits of an EU-USA Investment Protection Treaty».

Its bottom line was:

«we conclude that an EU-US investment treaty that does contain ISDS [Investor State Dispute Resolution, ending national sovereignty] is likely to have few or no benefits to the UK, while having meaningful economic and political costs. Removing ISDS from the treaty would be unlikely to have an appreciable impact on the (already negligible) benefits of a treaty with ISDS, while largely removing the costs of the treaty to the UK. While we have not conducted a full cost-benefit assessment of an EU-US investment treaty [that] does not contain ISDS, such a treaty would likely be a less costly policy option from the perspective of the UK». 

This study explained, better than any other, that the template for all of Obama’s ‘trade’ deals is demanded rather insistently by Obama and is unlikely to be able to be changed much by anything that America’s negotiating partners might attempt to do to modify them – and that this template strongly favors US-based international corporations over international corporations that are based in other countries.

The first of the three studies to be published was actually the second of the three to have been completed; it was dated October 2014, and titled: «The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: European Disintegration, Unemployment and Instability». It found that,

«any gains in Trans-Atlantic trade would happen at the expense of intra-EU trade reversing the process of European economic integration… We project that TTIP will lead to a contraction of GDP, personal incomes and employment. We also project an increase in financial instability and a continuing downward trend in the labor share of GDP».

In other words: investors in international corporations would be gaining at the expense of employees (workers, their wages) in the signatory countries.

Both of those studies concerned the TTIP treaty with Europe. In addition, one independent economic study was done of the proposed TPP treaty with Asia, and it was dated 16 April 2015. Its title was «The Trans-Pacific Partnership is unlikely to be a good deal for American workers». This study concluded that the earlier, industry-sponsored, studies of TPP had been based on clearly bogus assumptions, which possessed no empirical foundation. It further concluded:

 «As regards wages and inequality, if the TPP leads to a reshuffling of domestic production toward exportable sectors that are capital-intensive and away from importable sectors that are labor-intensive, then it will exacerbate inequality. If it does not lead to such a reshuffling, then wage effects will be modest, but this begs the question of why would we bother to sign a trade agreement that did not lead to such a reshuffling of production? That is, after all, the entire point of trying to expand trade opportunities, and is the source of estimated net national gains from trade. Assurances that the TPP will be all gain, no pain are deeply disingenuous».

In short, the conclusion of all of the independent economic analyses of Obama’s proposed mega ‘trade’ deals is: Obama’s proposed treaties are all lies, as regards their promised benefits to the public.

That’s in addition to their violating the US Constitution. Apparently, Obama (like all Presidents since Bill Clinton) doesn’t care about that. These deals adhere to a higher law: rule by the chief stockholders in international corporations.

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

U.S. Secretary of State is in Geneva today to renegotiate a cessation of hostilities between the Syrian government forces and the foreign supported “rebels” in Syria. But there is something very curious going on with these negotiations. Kerry will neither talk with the Syrian government nor with the Russians. The Russian Foreign Minister is not even expected to come.

No, Kerry is negotiating  with the U.S. allies Jordan and Saudi Arabia who support the same “rebels” that are opposed to the Syrian government that the U.S. itself supported all along. He now asks them to separate their proxy forces in Syria from the terrorist organization al-Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusra.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday he hoped to make progress in talks in Geneva over the next two days toward renewing a cessation of hostilities agreement throughout Syria and resuming peace talks to end the fighting.”The hope is we can make some progress,” Kerry said at the start of a meeting with Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh shortly after arriving in Geneva.
…
The Syrian army announced on Friday a “regime of calm”, or lull in fighting, which applied to Damascus and some of its outskirts, and parts of northwestern coastal province Latakia. But it excluded Aleppo.

Kerry made clear that a ceasefire was needed throughout Syria and he hoped to be able to reaffirm the cessation of hostilities after talks in Geneva. He is due to meet Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and De Mistura on Monday.

According to military spokesperson of the U.S. alliance against the Islamic State, Colonel Warren, the “rebel” occupied parts of Aleppo city are under control of al-Qaeda:

[I]t’s primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo, and of course, al-Nusra is not part of the cessation of hostilities. So it’s complicated.

Two UN Security Council Resolution calls on all UN members to “eradicate” al-Qaeda/al-Nusra. ALL UNSC members agreed to Resolution 2254 which:

Reiterates its call in resolution 2249 (2015) for Member States to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), Al-Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL […] and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Syria, and notes that the aforementioned ceasefire will not apply to offensive or defensive actions against these individuals, groups, undertakings and entities,…

There is simply no basis for Kerry to beg for a ceasefire for “rebel” held areas of Aleppo city when his own military says that these are in the hands of al-Qaeda which the UNSC calls to eradicate. The Russian’s have said that much.

So here is what Kerry is left to do: Beg the U.S. allies to move away their “Free Syrian Army” proxy groups from al-Qaeda so al-Qaeda can be eradicated by the Syrian Army and its allies.

But al-Qaeda is by now an integrated part of those Saudi/Qatar/U.S. paid proxy forces and well accepted by those groups. It gets its weapons and ammunition from the very proxy groups the U.S. now wants to separate from it. Even if the Saudis and Jordanians assert their influence over these groups it is unlikely that the fighters on the ground will follow their directives.

The Russian air force is ready to renew its bombing campaign against all opposition forces in Syria that do not agree to a cessation of hostilities.

No U.S. propaganda campaign can wave away al-Qaeda’s presence in Syria nor the UNSC resolutions the U.S. itself agreed to. Either Kerry manages to pressure Saudi Arabia and Jordan to move their proxies away from al-Qaeda or there will be again an all out Russian campaign to eradicate them. It is unlikely that any of those proxies would survive such a campaign.

Kerry is now left to negotiate with U.S allies against al-Qaeda. He now has to argue from the same perspective as the Syrian and Russian government. This is a mess of his own making. How will he escape from it?

Wars of regime-change and the domination of international finance capital will continue to strangle the continent

There has been no substantial discussion within the context of primary debates and capitalist party platforms related to Washington’s foreign policy towards Africa.

Although people of African descent in the United States constitute the largest voting bloc among national minorities, issues related to them in both domestic and foreign policy is given almost no consideration.

There are references to the draconian legislation which accelerated the incarceration rates of African Americans under the former administration of President Bill Clinton nevertheless these factors constitute only a fraction of social elements within a broader political framework which clearly illustrates a concerted system of national oppression.

Not only is it outrageous that the Clinton administration endorsed new laws that intensified disparate treatment in the criminal justice system along racial lines, moreover both Bill and Hillary have been involved in foreign policy operations on behalf of the U.S. government and private capital, such as in Haiti and Libya, which proved disastrous for the people of these states.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the public face of the Pentagon and NATO-led bombing campaign against Libya during 2011 resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the dislocation of millions, impoverishing this North African state once the most prosperous on the continent, therefore fostering instability and terrorism throughout the region.

Today Libya is in ruins while the United Nations attempts to install and prop-up a so-called “Government of National Accord” (GNA) which has no legitimacy even among the two rival factions installed by imperialism in the aftermath of the war of regime-change that brutally assassinated former leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi, the former chairperson of the African Union (AU). Oil revenues, which under Gaddafi were essential in providing Libya with resources to develop this former colony of Italy, are a source of conflict in the competition for control over the country.

The situation in Libya is a product of both Washington and Wall Street in their ongoing drive to dominate Africa and its resources. The all-out attacks leveled against various independent and anti-imperialist governments and movements throughout Africa and the Middle East is part and parcel of western objectives to extend their economic and political stranglehold over former subject nations and emerging states.

Imperialist Militarism Escalates in Africa

Over the last decade militarism has increased in Africa with the interventions in Somalia, Libya and other states. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) was established under the George W. Bush, Jr. administration and enhanced by the current President Barack Obama.

AFRICOM’s role has fostered greater instability and dislocation within AU member-states. In Mali during 2012, a military coup was carried out by an official of the armed forces who was trained at various defense schools in the U.S.

The Horn of Africa nations of Somalia, Djibouti and Ethiopia serve as staging grounds for imperialist military operations on the continent and in the Middle East. Djibouti houses the largest known Pentagon base at Camp Lemonier where thousands of U.S. and French troops are stationed.

Drone stations and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) field offices exist throughout the East Africa region where the Pentagon often carries out bombing raids against the al-Shabaab Islamist group in Somalia. There are flotillas of warships from NATO countries patrolling the waters in the Gulf of Aden one of the most lucrative trading routes in the world.

Across the continent in West Africa, the Pentagon often engages in naval maneuvers with regional states under the guise of fighting terrorism and piracy. Nonetheless, the country most affected by terrorism, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Africa’s largest populated nation and leading economy, has had difficulties in securing modern weapons and intelligence data from the Pentagon and the CIA in their fight against Boko Haram, an armed group which has killed thousands in the northeast of the country and displaced millions.

Congressional Black Caucus Remains Silent on African Affairs

This apparent listless attitude within the political arena has not always been there. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) took stands in support of national liberation movement struggles against colonialism and apartheid.

In 1987, the first Anti-Apartheid Act was passed by the U.S. Congress over the veto of Republican President Ronald Reagan. This bill was shepherded through the House by former Congressman Ron Dellums from the Bay Area in California.

However, in 2015 when Republican members of the House held a hearing to question Hillary Clinton on the deaths of four U.S. diplomatic personnel and CIA operatives in Benghazi, no defense of the people of Libya was made by the CBC. In fact Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who is a leading Democrat, defended Clinton from any criticism over her role in the deaths of these four intelligence officials operating under state department cover.

Consequently there is no political incentive for either Clinton or Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to address the African situation. This is taking place despite the crisis of migration across the Mediterranean from Libya into Southern, Central and Eastern Europe impacting millions of Africans every year.

Africans who migrate to various regions of Europe are often subjected to national discrimination and racial violence. Many live in segregated housing complexes and are limited to menial work without adequate resources for education and economic opportunities.

On the continent itself there are various struggles being waged by working class organizations, women’s associations, and youth groups around jobs, the non-payment of salaries, environmental degradation and gender equality. States such as Zimbabwe and South Africa have been targets for regime-change strategies by the Obama administration and other imperialist governments.

Economic Relations Between the U.S. and Africa

Objectively the actual volume of trade between the U.S. and Africa has declined significantly during the Obama administration.

A report published earlier this year by the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development says that: “Total trade between the United States and countries supported under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) showed another decrease in 2015, according to data published by the AGOA.info website. Combined trade, which came to US$ 50b in 2015, only reached US$ 36b last year. Trade between the United States and AGOA countries has now been declining for four years in a row.”(February 22)

In addition, the international debt crisis is reemerging in Africa due to the fall in oil, natural gas, strategic minerals and other commodity prices. The U.S. under Obama has increased its extraction of oil and natural gas domestically therefore creating a crisis of overproduction impacting not only Africa but several energy-producing states such as Russia, Venezuela, Brazil, South Africa and Nigeria, among others.

Consequently, there is a role for anti-imperialists to play by raising these issues on a national level. The destruction of Libya and Somalia along with the military occupation of Djibouti and the Gulf of Aden has not translated into genuine economic growth and development.

Pentagon, State Department and CIA interventions in Africa has done more to destabilize the continent rather than create the condition for full independence and sovereignty. Continuing dependence upon the capitalist mode of production and social relations in an atmosphere of global dominance by imperialism can only be addressed through the re-emergence of movements for radical transformation and socialist construction.

The Free Syrian Army militant group has refused to recognize partial ceasefires and stated that if the UN-backed truce is not implemented in full, the militant group can claim a right to withdraw from the Geneva talks and respond to attacks. The shaky coalition of militant groups, united under the US-backed umbrella organization dubbed the FSA, issued an official statement on May.1.

The FSA also rejected the US and Russia-brokered “regime of silence” which is currently in place in parts of the provinces of Damascus and Latakia since the midnight on Friday. The regime of silence was expected to last for 72 hours. FSA militants accused Damascus of violating the ceasefire in Syria and said they “appreciate the position of the High Negotiations Committee on suspension of the Geneva-3 talks and support it.”

We remember, the Geneva-3 talks were, de-facto, sabotaged by representatives of the HNC, which promote interests of the Turkish-Saudi block. The Salafi militants of Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar ash-Sham, which represented on the talks, played a crucial role in this sabotage, making attempts to advance in the Latakia province and shelling residential areas of Aleppo City and Damascus.

The so-called Syrian opposition, mainly a diverse range of rebranded Islamist militants, is dissatisfied that Al Nusra, the main striking force of the Salafists in Syria, was recognized as a terrorist group and excluded from the negotiations.

Meanwhile, Al Nusra remains in alliance with the internationally recognized oppositioneers as Ahrar ash-Sham, via the joint operational room, called Jaish al-Fatah. In turn, Ahrar ash-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and the FSA set a joint operational room, called Rad al-Mazalem, in order to coordinate military actions in Aleppo. Indeed, it’s hardly possible to divide the so-called “opposition” from the terrorists in Northern and Central Syria.

Countering military provocations of terrorists, the Syrian government is pushed to conduct counter-terrorism operations. The HNC argue these operations violate the ceasefire. For example, on May 1, Syria’s forces continued operations in the areas near the Syrian capital, Damascus. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies took control of the village of al-Rukabiyah following a day of clashes with the Islamists. Hezbollah fighters reportedly supported the SAA units in this operation. The al-Rukabiyah village had been under the control of Al Nusra and Jaish al-Islam. Some units of these groups are still operating in the nearby areas. Thus, the close cooperation of different armed opposition groups with the terrorist undermines the idea of the peaceful solution of the conflict.

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Image: Distinguished author Ellen Brown

Despite North Dakota’s collapsing oil market, its state-owned bank continues to report record profits.

This article looks at what California, with fifty times North Dakota’s population, could do following that state’s lead.

In November 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bank of North Dakota (BND), the nation’s only state-owned depository bank, was more profitable even than J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The author attributed this remarkable performance to the state’s oil boom; but the boom has now become an oil bust, yet the BND’s profits continue to climb. Its 2015 Annual Report, published on April 20th, boasted its most profitable year ever.

The BND has had record profits for the last 12 years, each year outperforming the last. In 2015 it reported $130.7 million in earnings, total assets of $7.4 billion, capital of $749 million, and a return on investment of a whopping 18.1 percent. Its lending portfolio grew by $486 million, a 12.7 percent increase, with growth in all four of its areas of concentration: agriculture, business, residential, and student loans.

By increasing its lending into a collapsing economy, the BND has helped prop the economy up. In 2015, it introduced new infrastructure programs to improve access to medical facilities, remodel or construct new schools, and build new road and water infrastructure. The Farm Financial Stability Loan was introduced to assist farmers affected by low commodity prices or below-average crop production. The BND also helped fund 300 new businesses.

Those numbers are particularly impressive considering that North Dakota has a population of only about 750,000, just half the size of Phoenix or Philadelphia. Compare that to California, the largest state by population, which has more than fifty times as many people as North Dakota.

What could California do with its own bank, following North Dakota’s lead? Here are some possibilities, including costs, risks and potential profits.

Getting Started: Forming a Bank Without Cost to the Taxpayers

A bank can be started in California with an initial capitalization of about $20 million. But let’s say the state wants to do something substantial and begins with a capitalization of $1 billion.

Where to get this money? One option would be the state’s own pension funds, which are always seeking good investments. Today state pension funds are looking for a return of about 7% per year (although in practice they are getting less). One billion dollars could be raised more cheaply with a bond issue, but tapping into the state’s own funds would avoid increasing state debt levels.

At a 10% capital requirement, $1 billion in capitalization is sufficient to back $10 billion in new loans, assuming the bank has an equivalent sum in deposits to provide liquidity.

Where to get the deposits? One possibility would be the California Pooled Money Investment Account (PMIA), which contained $67.7 billion earning a modest 0.47% as of the quarter ending March 31, 2016. This huge pool of rainy day, slush and investment funds is invested 47.01% in US Treasuries, 16.33% in certificates of deposit and bank notes, 8.35% in time deposits, and 8.91% in loans, along with some other smaller investments. A portion of this money could be transferred to the state-owned bank as its deposit base, on which 0.5% could be paid in interest, generating the same average return that the PMIA is getting now.

For our hypothetical purposes, let’s say $11.1 billion is transferred from the PMIA and deposited in the state-owned bank. With a 10% reserve requirement, $1.1 billion would need to be held as reserves. The other $10 billion could be lent or invested. What could be done with this $10 billion? Here are some possibilities.

Slashing the Cost of Infrastructure

One option would be to fund critical infrastructure needs. Today California and other states deposit their revenues in Wall Street banks at minimal interest, then finance infrastructure construction and repair by borrowing from the Wall Street bond market at much higher interest. A general rule for government bonds is that they double the costof projects, once interest is paid. California and other states could save these costs simply by being their own bankers and borrowing from themselves; and with their own chartered banks, they could do it while getting the same safeguards they are getting today with their Wall Street deposits and investments. The money might actually be safer in their own banks, which would not be subject to the bail-in provisions now imposed by the G-20’s Financial Stability Board on giant “systemically risky” banking institutions.

To envision the possibilities, let’s say California decided to fund its new bullet train through its state-owned bank. In 2008, Californians approved a bond issue of $10 billion as the initial outlay for this train, which was to run from Los Angeles to San Francisco. At then-existing interest rates, estimates were that by the time the bonds were paid off, California taxpayers would have paid an additional $9.5 billion in interest.

So let’s assume the $10 billion in available assets from the state-owned bank were used to repurchase these bonds. The state would have saved $9.5 billion, less the cost of funds.

It is not clear from the above-cited source what the length of the bond issue was, but assume it was for 20 years, making the interest rate about 3.5%. The cost of one billion dollars in capital for 20 years at 7% would be $2.87 billion, and the cost of $11.1 billion in deposits at 0.5% would be $1.164 billion. So the total cost of funds would be $4.034 billion. Deducted from $9.5 billion, that leaves about $5.5 billion in savings or profit over 20 years. That’s $5.5 billion generated with money the state already has sitting idle, requiring no additional borrowing or taxpayer funds.

What about risk? What if one of the cities or state agencies whose money is held in the investment pool wants to pull that money out? Since it is held in the bank as deposits, it would be immediately liquid and available, as all deposits are. And if the bank then lacked sufficient liquidity to back its assets (in this case the repurchase of its own bonds), it could in the short term do as all banks do – borrow from other banks at the Fed funds rate of about 0.35%, or from the Federal Reserve Discount Window at about 0.75%. Better yet, it could simply liquidate some of the $56 billion remaining in the PMIA and deposit that money into its state bank, where the funds would continue to earn 0.5% interest as they are doing now.

Assume that from its $5.5 billion in profits, the bank then repaid the pension funds their $1 billion initial capital investment. That would leave $4.5 billion in profit, free and clear – a tidy sum potentially generated by one man sitting in an office shuffling computer entries, without new buildings, tellers, loan officers or other overhead. That capital base would be sufficient to capitalize about $40 billion in new loans, all generated without cost to the taxpayers.

A California New Deal

The bullet train example is a simple way to illustrate the potential of a state-owned bank, but there are many other possibilities for using its available assets. As the BND did after building up its capital base, the bank could advance loans at reasonable rates for local businesses, homeowners, students, school districts, and municipalities seeking funds for infrastructure.

These loans would be somewhat riskier than buying back the state’s own bonds, and they would involve variable time frames. Like all banks, the state bank could run into liquidity problems from borrowing short to lend long, should the depositors unexpectedly come for their money. But again, that problem could be fixed simply by liquidating some portion of the money remaining in the PMIA and depositing it in the state-owned bank, where it would earn the same 0.5% interest it is earning now.

Here is another intriguing possibility for avoiding liquidity problems. The bank could serve simply as intermediator, generating loans which would then be sold to investors. That is what banks do today when they securitize mortgages and sell them off. Risk of loss is imposed on the investors, who also get the payment stream; but the bank profits as well, by receiving fees for its intermediating functions.

The federally-owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) did something similar when it funded a major portion of the New Deal and World War II by selling bonds. This money was then used for loans to build infrastructure of every sort and to finance the war. According to a US Treasury report titled Final Report of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (Government Printing Office, 1959), the RFC loaned or invested more than $40 billion from 1932 to 1957 (the years of its operation). By some estimates, the sum was about $50 billion. A small part of this came from its initial capitalization. The rest was borrowed – $51.3 billion from the US Treasury and $3.1 billion from the public. The RFC financed roads, bridges, dams, post offices, universities, electrical power, mortgages, farms, and much more, while at the same time making money for the government. On its normal lending functions (omitting such things as extraordinary grants for wartime), it wound up earning a total net income of $690 million.

North Dakota has led the way in demonstrating how a state can jump-start a flagging economy by keeping its revenues in its own state-owned bank, using them to generate credit for the state and its citizens, bypassing the tourniquet on the free flow of credit imposed by private out-of-state banks. California and other states could do the same. They could create jobs, restore home ownership, rebuild infrastructure and generally stimulate their economies, while generating hefty dividends for the state, without increasing debt levels or risking public funds – and without costing taxpayers a dime.

Ellen Brown is an attorney 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.

While concentrations of poverty persists and teachers stage wildcat strikes, billionaires continue the theft of public resources 

Billionaire Dan Gilbert announced on April 27 that he and other capitalist investors have created a plan to construct a soccer stadium in downtown Deroit.

Gilbert, the owner of Rock Ventures LLC, the Cleveland Cavilers and other enterprises, who is a major player in the bank-led re-structuring of Detroit, along with Pistons executive Arn Tellem, held a press conference to declare their plans for a $1-billion project at Wayne County’s failed jail site. News reports from 2014 when the construction was stalled said that $150 million were lost on the proposed new jail due to cost overruns and corruption.

Several people were indicted in the fiasco although former Wayne

County Executive Robert Ficano has not so far faced any charges. The site of the skeletal jail remains a reminder of the resources needed to warehouse thousands of mainly young African Americans who have been racially-profiled into the criminal justice system.

During 2015 Gilbert made his opposition to constructing the jail in the downtown area well known through statements to the media. Instead the banker and venture capitalist envisions  a 25,000-seat Major League Soccer stadium and other businesses, including restaurants, hotel rooms, and a commercial office tower.

In a April 27 article published by the Detroit Free Press, it says “The soccer stadium plan calls for relocating the current Wayne County Jail, Frank Murphy Hall of Justice and the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Facility to Mound Road (far away from downtown). Gilbert has been trying to buy the unfinished jail site from the county, recently offering $50 million. The county, which has already sunk $150 million into the snake-bitten and stalled project, did not accept the bid.”

Gilbert and other capitalists do not want the jail to be in the downtown area because it interferes with their “utopian” vision of the city which is being designed as a playground for suburbanites and tourists.

Education Crisis Escalates Amid “Development” Plans

On Monday May 2, thousands of Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) members called in sick closing down the school system citywide. These actions represent a continuation of previous “sick outs” where teachers have sought to attract attention to the deplorable conditions existing within the school district which has been under some form of direct and indirect state-control since 1999.

When the State of Michigan seized control of the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) in 1999, the district had a $93 million surplus with at least another $1.5 billion in bond funding approved by voters to improve school buildings and other infrastructure. At present reports indicate that the DPS is $3.5 billion in debt with substantial portions owed to the banks and bondholders while the district has lost 150,000 students since 1999.

The corporate-imposed education crisis is reflected in the lack of school supplies, deteriorating buildings with leaking roofs, mole and mushrooms, etc. Many schools lack proper ventilation where buildings are either too hot or too cold.

Moreover, the decline in DPS enrollment , in part a by-product of the foreclose and eviction epidemic over the last decade which has driven over 200,000 people out of the city, has resulted in the closure of over 200 school buildings. Many of these abandoned schools have been vandalized and stripped for copper, iron, brick, electrical equipment and other materials becoming stains on neighborhoods and facilitating further underdevelopment and blight within communities across Detroit.

Highlighting the ongoing catastrophe, thousands of teachers and other education workers surrounded the DPS headquarters in the New Center area beginning at 10:00am on May 2. They chanted slogans of “No pay, No Work!”, “What happened to the money?”, and No Pay, Shut it down!”

Amid the current crisis within the DPS the state legislature dominated by right-wing Republicans during April passed an emergency funding bill that ostensibly would provide over $40 million to keep schools open for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Nonetheless, tenured teachers receive pay during the summer months after the regular school year has ended. The announcement of the effective lay-offs of most employees after June 30 has prompted uncertainty and outrage.

Since 2009, teachers have been subjected to lay-offs, pay and benefit cuts. At the same time, millions are paid to contractors and vendors for school curriculums, modules and consultants whose materials have been either unusable or non-deliverable.

Priorities in Detroit are not set by the people who live and work there. With thousands of education workers facing eminent lay-offs and students receiving a sub-standard education, what real “revitalization” is taking place in the city?

Federal housing funds purportedly aimed at maintaining stability in the neighborhoods by assisting residents with paying off mortgages, over-assessed property taxes and inflated water bills, are being utilized to tear down homes and vacant businesses. Even the federal government is investigating the irregularities in the expenditures for demolitions coordinated by the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA).

A Detroit Blight Removal Task Force which identifies homes and other structures for seizure and demolition is chaired by Dan Gilbert, representing a clear conflict of interests. Gilbert is currently being sued by the Department of Justice for the misuse of hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal Housing Administration (FHA) funds through his real estate financing operations.

Will These “Development” Plans Really Work?

It is important to recognize that previous schemes such as the building of baseball and football stadiums in downtown and three casino hotels in the late 1990s did not save the Detroit from decline, emergency management and bankruptcy. Sports venues do not foster long term growth particularly for the workers and impoverished.

Although people in the city were lead to believe that these previous “prestige projects” would provide the necessary tax revenue and job opportunities to foster economic growth, what has actually transpired is quite to the contrary.

In order to rapidly exit the forced bankruptcy of 2013-2014 retired federal Judge Steven Rhodes, now the so-called “transition manager” for DPS, awarded real estate and taxpayer money to various corporate interests. One of these firms, Syncora, which captured millions in tax revenue from the casino hotels, could benefit even more through the Gilbert soccer stadium project.

According to Crain’s Detroit Business, “It may have lost millions in its bankruptcy settlement with Detroit, but Syncora Guarantee Inc.’s bet on greater downtown real estate appears to be paying off. At least one of the properties the bond insurer now has development rights to on the east riverfront and near Greektown would play a key role in Dan Gilbert’s and Tom Gores’ ambitious $1 billion plan announced last week to bring a Major League Soccer team and a new stadium and mixed-use development downtown.” (May 2)

However, it was the City of Detroit retirees who took the largest hit in the bankruptcy process where $6.5 billion in pension and healthcare obligations were written off by the federal court.

Members of the newly-formed Detroit Active and Retired Employees Association (DAREA) is continuing to fight through the courts appealing Rhodes decisions to cut state-constitutionally guaranteed pensions along with healthcare benefits agreed upon through contract negotiations over decades.

Concentrations of poverty in Detroit continue to grow and jails are designed as warehouses for the oppressed further reinforcing their dis-empowerment. A study published in April by the Brookings Institution says that metro Detroit has the highest rate of concentrated poverty among the top 25 municipalities in the U.S. by population.

Building jails or stadiums and eviscerating public education is no solution to the crisis. The school-to-prison pipeline remains a reality for millions of African Americans across the United States.

By now it is old news that there is a coup afoot in Brazil and that the right-wing is using extraordinary political measures to overthrow of Dilma Rousseff.

What is little discussed amid all the talk of impeachment and corruption in Brazil is the larger context:  how international finance capital is working with Hillary Clinton and other U.S. political elites to reassert the Washington Consensus in Latin America; how the right wing throughout the region is collaborating in this project; and how this is manifesting in the targeted countries. Though the pieces of this puzzle may be partially concealed, it is time to put them all together to see the big picture.

Brazil and Argentina: Case Studies in Wall Street Meddling

As the world waits for the next episode of the unfolding Brazilian drama, it is critical to note why the spectacle that is this “impeachment” process is happening. Having been elected, and re-elected, four times in the last four elections, Dilma Rousseff and the Workers’ Party are undeniably the single-most popular political formation in Brazil, a country known for its deep divide between a wealthy right-wing elite, and the masses of workers and poor people who predominantly support the left, including the Workers’ Party in recent years.

With this dynamic it is unsurprising to find that the government is being ousted by a coalition of right-wing extremists, from those who unabashedly support the U.S.-installed Brazilian military dictatorship, to those who simply want to see Brazil follow a more neoliberal model of economic development. However, what might be surprising to some is the key role that powerful financial interests have, and will continue to have, over this process, and any future Brazilian government.

In mid-April, just as the impeachment vote was set to take place, Reuters revealedthat Brazil’s right-wing Vice President Michel Temer was already preparing the shortlist of his presumptive cabinet once Dilma and the Workers’ Party is removed. Temer tabbed Paulo Leme to serve as either finance minister or head of the Central Bank. Leme is the Chairman of Goldman Sachs’s operations in Brazil, making him perhaps the pre-eminent representative of Wall Street in the country.

Related:
Brazil’s Hollow Men Hope to Return the Country to a Neoliberal Post

Of course, one cannot discount the significant influence companies like Goldman Sachs have beyond just their actual holdings in the country.  For instance, Wall Street finance capital is very well connected to Brazil’s richest man, Jorge Paulo Lemann, a multi-billionaire who owns Heinz Ketchup, Burger King, is the majority stockholder of Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser, and is a close associate of Warren Buffett. With his pedigree in finance capital, it is no surprise that Lemann, and the interests he represents, has been financially backinggroups involved in the street protests calling for impeachment, including the highly visible VemPraRua (Come to the Streets).

It should be equally unsurprising that other key protest groups have been funded directly by other Wall Street interests, in particular the infamous Koch Brothers.Charles and David Koch are key moneymen behind the Free Brazil Movement (MBL) and Students for Liberty (EPL) via the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and Atlas Leadership Academy, both of which spawned some of the key protest leaders.

For these reasons, it should come as no surprise then that key players in the impeachment push in Brazil seem to be taking their orders directly from, or at the very least collaborating with, officials in the United States. In fact, the day after the impeachment vote was taken, Senator Aloysio Nunes was in Washington for high level meetings with Republican Senator Bob Corker, who is the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, a key supporter of Hillary Clinton. Nunes was also scheduled to meet with Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon, the third highest ranking State Department official, and the lead on Latin American affairs, as well as representatives of the lobbyist organization Albright Stonebridge Group, headed by Clinton-backer Madeline Albright.

In effect, these meetings indicate a desire on the part of the coup plotters to collaborate with all sides of the Washington Consensus – Republicans and Democrats, private capital and government agencies – to execute a smooth, U.S.-backed transition in Brazil.  In fact, one could be forgiven for thinking that they were watching a re-run of the 2009 coup in Honduras, presided over and sanctioned byHillary Clinton and her Beltway lobbyist and insider friends.

Related:
Hillary Clinton is the ‘Queen of Chaos’ on Foreign Policy

Indeed, it seems that all those lucrative speechesClinton made to Goldman Sachs weren’t simply to impress the Wall Street giant with promises of how financier-friendly her administration would be at home, but also to demonstrate just what commendable customer service she could provide to her patrons in foreign policy too.  To see just how those two work hand-in-glove, one needs to simply look South from Brazil at the shining example of Argentina.

In November 2015, Mauricio Macri edged out his rival to win the presidency of Argentina. But while the victory was a clear win for the right wing in Argentina, it was, in effect, the political equivalent of a hostile takeover by Wall Street. Within days of the electoral triumph, Macri had already unveiled his key economic team which was loaded Wall Street insiders and representatives of Big Oil, among other industries.

Under Macri, the economy of Argentina is now firmly in the hands of Alfonso Prat-Gay (finance minister), a longtime Wall Street banker, neoliberal ideologue, and former president of Argentina’s Central Bank.  Francisco Cabrera (formerly of banking giant HSBC and other financier outfits) takes over as industry minister, while another neoliberal ideologue Federico Sturznegger now serves as president of the Central Bank.  Additionally, the new energy minister Juan Jose Aranguren is the former president of the Argentine division of the oil giant Shell.

Essentially, Macri has made no pretense about his administration being a proxy of finance capital and big business, as his economic team obviously demonstrates. And Macri himself made this readily apparent with his capitulation to the demands of billionaire vulture capitalist Paul Singer in February, with Argentina agreeing to pay nearly $5 billion (75 percent of the claim) to Singer’s group which had been holding out against the steadfast refusal of the Cristina Fernandez government to submit to the will of Wall Street billionaires. With this single act, Macri demonstrated for the world, and especially for the financiers in New York and London, that Argentina is open for business.

Hillary Clinton and The Neoliberal Agenda in Latin America

There is no doubt that one of the targets in Latin America remains raw materials and commodities: both Brazil and Argentina are recognized as major sources for energy and other commodities, while Venezuela remains one of the world’s leading oil producers. So from that perspective alone, these countries are obviously highly prized by the Wall Street jackals.  But it goes much deeper than that as Latin America is now seen as a focal point of the broader drive to extend U.S.-Wall Street-London hegemony both economically and politically.

Perhaps the centerpieces of this push are the much-discussed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would create a corporate supranational trade infrastructure that would essentially subordinate individual nations to the hegemony of corporations and capital. Naturally, the left-progressive forces in Latin America, and their allies, have been the major stumbling block to implementing the TPP and TTIP.  But that is now set to change.

Macri has signaled his desire to use Mercosur as a vehicle for entering into TTIP, the massive free trade agreement that would open up participants to European and U.S. capital. He has equally indicated his desire to move closer to the Pacific Alliance countries, three of which (Chile, Peru, and Mexico) are already on board with the TPP. Such moves are made possible by two important factors.

Related:
Is US-Funded Destabilization in Latin America Now Paying Off?

First is the removal of the Rousseff government which, though willing to engage in dialogue on TTIP, has been unwilling to subordinate itself to the interests of Washington and London capital.

Second is the looming election of Hillary Clinton, who remains the principal representative of Wall Street in the U.S. presidential race. Though herlong-standing ties to Goldman-Sachs and other powerful banks are well documented, her reverence for free trade in the service of U.S. policy, despite her vacuous campaign rhetoric, is equally well known.

Clinton unabashedly lied during Democratic national debates on the issue of the TPP, saying that she now opposes it, despite having been in favor of it as late as 2012 while Secretary of State when Clinton said the TPP “sets the gold standard in trade agreements.” While she now masquerades as a protectionist opposing a deal that would be bad for working people, she has demonstrated her unflagging support for this type of so called free trade in the past.

Conversely Donald Trump has actually indicated his opposition to the TPP, though it should be noted that his argument that it would benefit China is laughable. Still, Trump is not enamored with this sort of free trade agreement, and is less than reliable when it comes to being able to bring the necessary parties together in order to achieve it. Hence, Hillary Clinton once again emerges as the Wall Street choice.

Perhaps this is why Charles Koch, of the infamous Koch Brothers right wing billionaire tag team, recently admitted that he might support Hillary Clinton in the face of a Donald Trump nomination. Indeed, this is now the stated position of a number of highly influential right wing neocon thinkers and strategists including Max Boot, who described Clinton as “vastly preferable,” Robert Kagan who sees Hillary as “saving the country,” and Eliot Cohen who described Clinton as “the lesser evil by a large margin.”

And why are these right wing neocons, coupled with the neoliberal ideologues of the liberal wing of American politics, all lining up behind Hillary Clinton? There’s one simple answer: Clinton will deliver the goods. And when it comes to Latin America, the biggest prize of all is political change in the service of economic exploitation and control.

Since the rise of Hugo Chavez, Latin America has gone its own way, democratizing and moving away from its former status as a “America’s backyard.” With Hillary Clinton and Wall Street working hand in hand with their right wing proxies in Latin America, Washington looks to reassert its control. And it is the people of the region who will pay the price.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. He is the editor of StopImperialism.org and host of CounterPunch Radio. You can reach him at [email protected].

On April 28, the New York Times was blasting “Clampdown in China Restricts 7,000 Foreign Organizations”. A perfect reason for demonizing China for infringing on the liberties of foreign NGOs – NGO’s that try to help and do good in China. The ‘doing good’ is a concerted effort by foreign agents, including international and national organizations and NGOs that receive foreign training and funding to influence public opinion and eventually to cause civil unrest. Imagine, foreign agents teaching and influencing students at Chinese universities with western interests of, for example, privatizing China’s public and social services; or directly interfering in sovereign state affairs, by for instance attempting to rig the Shanghai stock exchange.

Let’s put this Chinese ‘clampdown’ in perspective. What would Washington say and do, if thousands of Chinese and Russian ‘NGO’s were to infiltrate US territory under all sorts of philanthropic pretexts, but in reality to subvert the US population against their government? – Well, there is no need to speculate with the answer. It’s very clear, they would simply be banned. So, this is not even a game on equal footing. It’s as usual – Washington pretends making the rules.

When China announced in March 2015 a planned reduction in GDP growth from 12%-14% of the past years to 6%-7% for at least 2016 and possibly beyond, it was a well-calculated move by the Chinese Central Bank. The past more than 10% growth was not sustainable – not for Chinese internal equality and stability, nor for the stagnant western export markets.

The stock market plunge was made to look like a reaction to a ‘faltering’ Chinese economy. It peaked at a drop of about 30% in mid-July 2015. The decline had nothing to do with the ‘Chinese economy failing’, as western pundits wanted the general public to believe. Something even Forbes journalists argued, the “stock market crash does not indicate a blowout of the Chinese physical economy”, but it may indicate a “shift from a focus on manufacturing to service industries.” After all, a 6% to 7% growth rate is more than any western country can claim.

The Shanghai stock crash had much to do with foreign ‘agents’, in this case Wall Street banks, some of which have been accredited to the partially liberated Shanghai bourse. A bust in the Chinese stock market meant the Chinese economy is faltering – negative propaganda, so much needed these days by Washington and its minions, to boost their own empty glory. The western media were immediately lambasting the Chinese economic model as failure. In order for foreign banks to intervene so drastically, foreign trained and funded local counterparts are necessary. To exacerbate the propaganda message, such prominent financial institutions, as Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Bank of America warned that China’s market was a “bubble”.

On 29 June 2015, the market regulator, China Security Regulatory Commission (CSRC) called out on their Sino Weibo site, “There have been people calling out the Chinese economy in an attempt to destabilize faith in the stock market and to disrupt the order of the market. The CSRC wishes investors to act independently of such rumors, not to fall for such claims, and not to follow them blindly.”

Western Interference

No wonder under these circumstances, and merely observing what is going on around the globe with western interference in national elections, organizing ‘regime change’ by all possible illegal means, ‘Color Revolutions’, parliamentary ‘coups’, proxy wars and conflicts, it is but common sense for President Xi Jinping, as reported by the New York Times, to take “a major step on Thursday, imposing greater control and limit Western influences on Chinese society, as [the government] passed a new law restricting the work of foreign organizations and their local partners, mainly through police supervision.”

This affects some ‘good-hearted’ 7,000-plus NGOs working in the fields of environment, philanthropy, cultural exchanges, and maybe even in business promotion. What a shame. The authoritarian Chinese Government clamps down on those foreign agencies, which attempt to destabilize China by influencing people via the media, universities, industries and by associating with local civil society. Most of these foreign and dissident local ‘groups’ and individuals are trained and funded by the ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ – NED, a Washington based, fully State Department sponsored and funded agency, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars for precisely the purse of training and financing local dissidents and ‘NGOs’.  There are others in the US doing similar work. They are very strong and determined. They set an objective and won’t let go.

Again, ask yourself – what would Washington do, if similar Chinese and Russian trolls were to intrude the US of A with the same objective – mobilizing the American public against their government?

Fragmented and Twisted News

This piece of fragmented and twisted China news reported by the NYT was copied and blasted into the airwaves every hour on the hour by every European mainstream radio and TV station for every European to once more getting the message, China is an oppressive police state.

Most of these 7,000 NGOs, if not all, are foreign agents with one purpose – destabilizing ‘unaligned’, sovereign and autonomous China. Russia is facing the same phenomenon, especially now, shortly before parliamentary elections. Heeding the lessons from the various ‘NGO’ initiated coup attempts and demonstrations before the 2012 elections, and in foresight of this year’s elections, Mr. Putin has already put similar laws in place, especially the so-called ‘undesirable’ organization legislation which he introduced soon after his re-election in 2012. It requires those agencies or NGOs receiving foreign funding to register as ‘foreign agents’, who may be surveilled by police and whose finances are subject to government control.

In March 2015, Mr. Putin called NGOs a threat to national security. “Western special services continue their attempts at using public, non-governmental and politicized organizations to pursue their own objectives, primarily to discredit the authorities and destabilize the internal situation in Russia. They are already planning their actions for the upcoming election campaigns of 2016-18.”

A similar law limits foreign ownership in Russian media to 20%. Of course, the western media in which neither Russia or China would be allowed to own a single percent, lambasted Russia for censuring freedom of press and freedom of expression. Vladimir Putin was personally accused of stifling dissent. As you know by now, this has nothing to do with censuring freedom of expression. It is just a means of limiting the public damage caused by propaganda-lies propagated by the western media throughout any territory they have access to and want to conquer. Curtailing foreign media influence is what all of sovereign South America should have done long ago, especially Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. Now it’s (almost) too late. The Washington ‘backyard’ is nearly cooked, ready for usurping and atrocious consumption.

Foreign Funded and Trained NGOs

Foreign-funded and trained NGOs and other politicized ‘groups’ can be extremely dangerous, as many of them are so well camouflaged and integrated into society that they become almost invisible. They may be in a country for several years before they act, pulling the ‘trigger’ when the right time arrives to launch an act of unrest and destabilization, almost always with the goal of ‘regime change’. The new puppet chief of state is usually groomed by Washington, ready to take over at command.

The various ‘Arab Springs’, were the brainchild of the CIA, prepared during several years and executed by foreign groups and nationals, trained for subversion and funded abroad. The Arab Spring, launched in Tunisia in December 2010, also known as the Tunisian Revolution, spread subsequently and conveniently throughout the Arab League countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – and is ongoing, always guided by foreign trained, funded and armed locals; and supported by the secret services of Washington and its allies. It was successful in creating sufficient chaos to justify foreign military intervention – US-CIA, NATO, Mossad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf States, applying the old principle: divide to conquer – a doctrine still valid after hundreds of years – and counting.

This Washington sponsored, State Department funded around-the-globe destabilization program has been a success story in most cases. One of the most glaring examples in recent history was breaking the tenacity of the Soviet Union, where they, the Masters of the Universe, used heavier artillery than just NGOs – with the final financial blow coming from the Washington Consensus – FED, IMF, World Bank. The Washington Consensus moved in quickly after the Soviet Unions manufactured collapse, ‘restructuring’ the new Russia with billions of dollars in loans, as well as privatization of almost the entire state apparatus, leaving behind a country in shambles; a country that was not prepared with legislation to deal with the private ‘market place’ western-style. The ensuing chaos, corruption and mafia-type crimes have since become legendary. Only with President Putin after 2000 order and control with the appropriate legal framework was re-instated.

The destabilization effort continued almost seamlessly to the former Soviet Republics which became the CIS countries (Commonwealth of Independent States). Internal subversion by foreign sponsored groups early on in their new found identity as ‘free’ states was necessary for the west, lest these new republics may stay in the Russian orbit, and not allow expansion of NATO closer to Moscow. The German-US promise to never expand NATO eastwards was a farce.

Here is what the Spiegel-Online of 26 November 2009 says about the promise: On Feb. 10, 1990, between 4 and 6:30 p.m., Genscher spoke with Shevardnadze [Soviet Foreign Minister]. According to the German record of the conversation, which was only recently declassified, Genscher said: “We are aware that NATO membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.” And because the conversion revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher added explicitly: “As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general.” Shevardnadze replied that he believed “everything the minister (Genscher) said.”

So much for trusting the West. NATO was expanded in 1999 to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, followed in 2004 by the Central and East-European countries Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. In 2009 Albania and Croatia joined. Under debate is now NATO membership of Sweden, Finland and Serbia. At its creation in 1949 NATO had 12 members. At present it has 28members; all in an expansion towards the east, encroaching Russia.

Al this goes to say that without the infamous ‘NGOs’ or foreign trained and funded political ‘inserts’ into the former Soviet Republics, countries the west needed to convince that NATO was good for their protection, NATO expansion may not have been possible. The ‘convincing’ was done with massive anti-Russia propaganda, the danger to be absorbed again by expansionist Russia, leading to the so-called ‘Color Revolutions’, a western invention, promoting western friendly parties in the country targeted for ‘regime change’, with massive displays of brightly colored flags.

Secretary of State, John Kerry’s sidekick, Victoria Nuland is famous for boasting in a recorded telephone call with US Ambassador Pyatt in Kiev with such infamous words, fuck the EU; we have spent 5 billion dollars for regime change [in Ukraine] and won’t let others interfere. She and US Ambassador Pyatt, with the help of CIA and NATO intelligence, instigated the bloody coup in Maidan Square in February 2014. Ukraine, for hundreds of years was part of old and new Russia; today it is a shambles, a bloodbath; corrupted to the bones by a US-NATO installed and maintained pro-western Nazi Government.

Color Revolutions in Latin America

A Latin formula of ‘Color Revolutions’ was also conceived to destabilize Washington’s backyard – Central and South America – also ongoing. Already under US control are Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, and since December 2015 Argentina. Currently thousands of foreign (US) trained destabilizing local ‘politicos’ are working hard on a parliamentary coup in Brazil. After having turned the Venezuelan Parliament from the left to the extreme right last December, they – Washington’s Secret Services, be sure, always with the help of Mossad – using their local patsies, have now initiated a referendum with the objective to overthrow President Maduro.(left)

There is apparently no way of halting them. And there is no decisive move by affected governments in peril, aka Brazil and Venezuela, to use constitutional legislative forces to stop these illegal coups. Have the leaders of these countries and their families been threatened with their lives? – John Perkins’ Economic Hit Man, the old and the new versions, tell plenty of such stories. This website, albeit incomplete https://wikispooks.com/wiki/US/Foreign_Assassinations_since_1945 may also give insight.

Concluding Remarks  

In this western instigated moves to subdue ‘non-obedient’ governments, NGOs and other foreign trained, funded and often also armed groups and individuals, merely prepare the ground. They make sure the time is right and are in constant communication with CIA and other secret services under the Empire of Chaos. Before Washington’s actual move to check-mate, they – Washington and its stooges – put the appropriately bought local puppets into key positions, using to the extent possible constitutional procedures – no matter whether the executioners are crooks, corrupt or even murderers. The empire has no scruples. Why should they? They get away with murder all the time.

China has first-hand experience with the student uprising in Hong Kong, the so-called Umbrella Revolution that lasted from 24 September to 15 December 2014, protesting against what they called the Beijing influenced Hong Kong Congress electoral process. After all, Hong Kong is part of China. Although it was clear to most observers that this show of force was foreign funded, instigated and supported throughout, nobody in the western media reported the truth. Every Anglo-Saxon MSM bashed China for using dictatorial means in imposing electoral rules in Hong Kong. The Umbrella Movement failed miserably.

Mind you, those swell-sounding NGOs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Green Peace and more of the sort, they are all majority US-western funded and know very well who is their master. For example, you probably have never seen any Amnesty International Report accusing the United States of America of human rights abuses. Yet, by all accounts the US and its minions are arguably by far the most atrocious human rights abusers on this globe, being responsible for the death of at least ten to twelve million people over the past 60 years by wars and conflicts carried out directly by US-NATO forces, or indirectly by Washington instigated and paid proxy wars and conflicts. Obama boasts about being involved in 7 wars around the globe, let alone the thousands and thousands of drone killings carried out under his personal command.

No wonder President Xi and President Putin put measures in place to stop these Washington directed, paid and often armed aggressive and violent separatist groupings, camouflaged as NGOs. The lies, uncomplete and biased reporting have turned the New York Times and similar – once-upon-a-time – prominent and credible media outlets into a ridiculous farce.

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

On April 28, the New York Times was blasting “Clampdown in China Restricts 7,000 Foreign Organizations”. A perfect reason for demonizing China for infringing on the liberties of foreign NGOs – NGO’s that try to help and do good in China. The ‘doing good’ is a concerted effort by foreign agents, including international and national organizations and NGOs that receive foreign training and funding to influence public opinion and eventually to cause civil unrest. Imagine, foreign agents teaching and influencing students at Chinese universities with western interests of, for example, privatizing China’s public and social services; or directly interfering in sovereign state affairs, by for instance attempting to rig the Shanghai stock exchange.

Let’s put this Chinese ‘clampdown’ in perspective. What would Washington say and do, if thousands of Chinese and Russian ‘NGO’s were to infiltrate US territory under all sorts of philanthropic pretexts, but in reality to subvert the US population against their government? – Well, there is no need to speculate with the answer. It’s very clear, they would simply be banned. So, this is not even a game on equal footing. It’s as usual – Washington pretends making the rules.

When China announced in March 2015 a planned reduction in GDP growth from 12%-14% of the past years to 6%-7% for at least 2016 and possibly beyond, it was a well-calculated move by the Chinese Central Bank. The past more than 10% growth was not sustainable – not for Chinese internal equality and stability, nor for the stagnant western export markets.

The stock market plunge was made to look like a reaction to a ‘faltering’ Chinese economy. It peaked at a drop of about 30% in mid-July 2015. The decline had nothing to do with the ‘Chinese economy failing’, as western pundits wanted the general public to believe. Something even Forbes journalists argued, the “stock market crash does not indicate a blowout of the Chinese physical economy”, but it may indicate a “shift from a focus on manufacturing to service industries.” After all, a 6% to 7% growth rate is more than any western country can claim.

The Shanghai stock crash had much to do with foreign ‘agents’, in this case Wall Street banks, some of which have been accredited to the partially liberated Shanghai bourse. A bust in the Chinese stock market meant the Chinese economy is faltering – negative propaganda, so much needed these days by Washington and its minions, to boost their own empty glory. The western media were immediately lambasting the Chinese economic model as failure. In order for foreign banks to intervene so drastically, foreign trained and funded local counterparts are necessary. To exacerbate the propaganda message, such prominent financial institutions, as Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Bank of America warned that China’s market was a “bubble”.

On 29 June 2015, the market regulator, China Security Regulatory Commission (CSRC) called out on their Sino Weibo site, “There have been people calling out the Chinese economy in an attempt to destabilize faith in the stock market and to disrupt the order of the market. The CSRC wishes investors to act independently of such rumors, not to fall for such claims, and not to follow them blindly.”

Western Interference

No wonder under these circumstances, and merely observing what is going on around the globe with western interference in national elections, organizing ‘regime change’ by all possible illegal means, ‘Color Revolutions’, parliamentary ‘coups’, proxy wars and conflicts, it is but common sense for President Xi Jinping, as reported by the New York Times, to take “a major step on Thursday, imposing greater control and limit Western influences on Chinese society, as [the government] passed a new law restricting the work of foreign organizations and their local partners, mainly through police supervision.”

This affects some ‘good-hearted’ 7,000-plus NGOs working in the fields of environment, philanthropy, cultural exchanges, and maybe even in business promotion. What a shame. The authoritarian Chinese Government clamps down on those foreign agencies, which attempt to destabilize China by influencing people via the media, universities, industries and by associating with local civil society. Most of these foreign and dissident local ‘groups’ and individuals are trained and funded by the ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ – NED, a Washington based, fully State Department sponsored and funded agency, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars for precisely the purse of training and financing local dissidents and ‘NGOs’.  There are others in the US doing similar work. They are very strong and determined. They set an objective and won’t let go.

Again, ask yourself – what would Washington do, if similar Chinese and Russian trolls were to intrude the US of A with the same objective – mobilizing the American public against their government?

Fragmented and Twisted News

This piece of fragmented and twisted China news reported by the NYT was copied and blasted into the airwaves every hour on the hour by every European mainstream radio and TV station for every European to once more getting the message, China is an oppressive police state.

Most of these 7,000 NGOs, if not all, are foreign agents with one purpose – destabilizing ‘unaligned’, sovereign and autonomous China. Russia is facing the same phenomenon, especially now, shortly before parliamentary elections. Heeding the lessons from the various ‘NGO’ initiated coup attempts and demonstrations before the 2012 elections, and in foresight of this year’s elections, Mr. Putin has already put similar laws in place, especially the so-called ‘undesirable’ organization legislation which he introduced soon after his re-election in 2012. It requires those agencies or NGOs receiving foreign funding to register as ‘foreign agents’, who may be surveilled by police and whose finances are subject to government control.

In March 2015, Mr. Putin called NGOs a threat to national security. “Western special services continue their attempts at using public, non-governmental and politicized organizations to pursue their own objectives, primarily to discredit the authorities and destabilize the internal situation in Russia. They are already planning their actions for the upcoming election campaigns of 2016-18.”

A similar law limits foreign ownership in Russian media to 20%. Of course, the western media in which neither Russia or China would be allowed to own a single percent, lambasted Russia for censuring freedom of press and freedom of expression. Vladimir Putin was personally accused of stifling dissent. As you know by now, this has nothing to do with censuring freedom of expression. It is just a means of limiting the public damage caused by propaganda-lies propagated by the western media throughout any territory they have access to and want to conquer. Curtailing foreign media influence is what all of sovereign South America should have done long ago, especially Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. Now it’s (almost) too late. The Washington ‘backyard’ is nearly cooked, ready for usurping and atrocious consumption.

Foreign Funded and Trained NGOs

Foreign-funded and trained NGOs and other politicized ‘groups’ can be extremely dangerous, as many of them are so well camouflaged and integrated into society that they become almost invisible. They may be in a country for several years before they act, pulling the ‘trigger’ when the right time arrives to launch an act of unrest and destabilization, almost always with the goal of ‘regime change’. The new puppet chief of state is usually groomed by Washington, ready to take over at command.

The various ‘Arab Springs’, were the brainchild of the CIA, prepared during several years and executed by foreign groups and nationals, trained for subversion and funded abroad. The Arab Spring, launched in Tunisia in December 2010, also known as the Tunisian Revolution, spread subsequently and conveniently throughout the Arab League countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – and is ongoing, always guided by foreign trained, funded and armed locals; and supported by the secret services of Washington and its allies. It was successful in creating sufficient chaos to justify foreign military intervention – US-CIA, NATO, Mossad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf States, applying the old principle: divide to conquer – a doctrine still valid after hundreds of years – and counting.

This Washington sponsored, State Department funded around-the-globe destabilization program has been a success story in most cases. One of the most glaring examples in recent history was breaking the tenacity of the Soviet Union, where they, the Masters of the Universe, used heavier artillery than just NGOs – with the final financial blow coming from the Washington Consensus – FED, IMF, World Bank. The Washington Consensus moved in quickly after the Soviet Unions manufactured collapse, ‘restructuring’ the new Russia with billions of dollars in loans, as well as privatization of almost the entire state apparatus, leaving behind a country in shambles; a country that was not prepared with legislation to deal with the private ‘market place’ western-style. The ensuing chaos, corruption and mafia-type crimes have since become legendary. Only with President Putin after 2000 order and control with the appropriate legal framework was re-instated.

The destabilization effort continued almost seamlessly to the former Soviet Republics which became the CIS countries (Commonwealth of Independent States). Internal subversion by foreign sponsored groups early on in their new found identity as ‘free’ states was necessary for the west, lest these new republics may stay in the Russian orbit, and not allow expansion of NATO closer to Moscow. The German-US promise to never expand NATO eastwards was a farce.

Here is what the Spiegel-Online of 26 November 2009 says about the promise: On Feb. 10, 1990, between 4 and 6:30 p.m., Genscher spoke with Shevardnadze [Soviet Foreign Minister]. According to the German record of the conversation, which was only recently declassified, Genscher said: “We are aware that NATO membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.” And because the conversion revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher added explicitly: “As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general.” Shevardnadze replied that he believed “everything the minister (Genscher) said.”

So much for trusting the West. NATO was expanded in 1999 to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, followed in 2004 by the Central and East-European countries Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. In 2009 Albania and Croatia joined. Under debate is now NATO membership of Sweden, Finland and Serbia. At its creation in 1949 NATO had 12 members. At present it has 28members; all in an expansion towards the east, encroaching Russia.

Al this goes to say that without the infamous ‘NGOs’ or foreign trained and funded political ‘inserts’ into the former Soviet Republics, countries the west needed to convince that NATO was good for their protection, NATO expansion may not have been possible. The ‘convincing’ was done with massive anti-Russia propaganda, the danger to be absorbed again by expansionist Russia, leading to the so-called ‘Color Revolutions’, a western invention, promoting western friendly parties in the country targeted for ‘regime change’, with massive displays of brightly colored flags.

Secretary of State, John Kerry’s sidekick, Victoria Nuland is famous for boasting in a recorded telephone call with US Ambassador Pyatt in Kiev with such infamous words, fuck the EU; we have spent 5 billion dollars for regime change [in Ukraine] and won’t let others interfere. She and US Ambassador Pyatt, with the help of CIA and NATO intelligence, instigated the bloody coup in Maidan Square in February 2014. Ukraine, for hundreds of years was part of old and new Russia; today it is a shambles, a bloodbath; corrupted to the bones by a US-NATO installed and maintained pro-western Nazi Government.

Color Revolutions in Latin America

A Latin formula of ‘Color Revolutions’ was also conceived to destabilize Washington’s backyard – Central and South America – also ongoing. Already under US control are Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, and since December 2015 Argentina. Currently thousands of foreign (US) trained destabilizing local ‘politicos’ are working hard on a parliamentary coup in Brazil. After having turned the Venezuelan Parliament from the left to the extreme right last December, they – Washington’s Secret Services, be sure, always with the help of Mossad – using their local patsies, have now initiated a referendum with the objective to overthrow President Maduro.(left)

There is apparently no way of halting them. And there is no decisive move by affected governments in peril, aka Brazil and Venezuela, to use constitutional legislative forces to stop these illegal coups. Have the leaders of these countries and their families been threatened with their lives? – John Perkins’ Economic Hit Man, the old and the new versions, tell plenty of such stories. This website, albeit incomplete https://wikispooks.com/wiki/US/Foreign_Assassinations_since_1945 may also give insight.

Concluding Remarks  

In this western instigated moves to subdue ‘non-obedient’ governments, NGOs and other foreign trained, funded and often also armed groups and individuals, merely prepare the ground. They make sure the time is right and are in constant communication with CIA and other secret services under the Empire of Chaos. Before Washington’s actual move to check-mate, they – Washington and its stooges – put the appropriately bought local puppets into key positions, using to the extent possible constitutional procedures – no matter whether the executioners are crooks, corrupt or even murderers. The empire has no scruples. Why should they? They get away with murder all the time.

China has first-hand experience with the student uprising in Hong Kong, the so-called Umbrella Revolution that lasted from 24 September to 15 December 2014, protesting against what they called the Beijing influenced Hong Kong Congress electoral process. After all, Hong Kong is part of China. Although it was clear to most observers that this show of force was foreign funded, instigated and supported throughout, nobody in the western media reported the truth. Every Anglo-Saxon MSM bashed China for using dictatorial means in imposing electoral rules in Hong Kong. The Umbrella Movement failed miserably.

Mind you, those swell-sounding NGOs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Green Peace and more of the sort, they are all majority US-western funded and know very well who is their master. For example, you probably have never seen any Amnesty International Report accusing the United States of America of human rights abuses. Yet, by all accounts the US and its minions are arguably by far the most atrocious human rights abusers on this globe, being responsible for the death of at least ten to twelve million people over the past 60 years by wars and conflicts carried out directly by US-NATO forces, or indirectly by Washington instigated and paid proxy wars and conflicts. Obama boasts about being involved in 7 wars around the globe, let alone the thousands and thousands of drone killings carried out under his personal command.

No wonder President Xi and President Putin put measures in place to stop these Washington directed, paid and often armed aggressive and violent separatist groupings, camouflaged as NGOs. The lies, uncomplete and biased reporting have turned the New York Times and similar – once-upon-a-time – prominent and credible media outlets into a ridiculous farce.

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

“Many of the 96 died within feet of me. I survived, but, unable to move any part of my body from the neck down in the crush, I could do no more for these people than watch them die.”  These words of helpless sorrow were penned by Adrian Tempany, describing the demise of people in the crush of the Hillsborough football disaster on April 15, 1989.[1]

Tempany’s description for The Guardian is filled with morbid and moving accounts about an event which took place 27 years ago at the neutral venue of Sheffield Wednesday, featuring an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.  The Leppings Lane stand, accessible only via one of seven turnstiles, became a death trap for Liverpool fans.

Last week’s proceedings at Warrington, the offspring of the Hillsborough Independent Panel of 2012 which found that Liverpool fans were in no way responsible for the carnage, were witnessed by some 200 people, numbered among the survivors, the grieving, and activists.

They witnessed coronial proceedings that found that spectators at the match had died of compression asphyxia, a situation compounded by a catastrophically inadequate response from the South Yorkshire metropolitan ambulance service and police personnel.

The most vital of the questions to be submitted to the jury involved whether members were satisfied “that those who died in the disaster were unlawfully killed”. The answer was an affirming Yes.

The seventh question was also vital to proceedings.  “Was there any behaviour on the part of football supporters which caused or contributed to the dangerous situation at the Leppings Lane turnstiles?”  The answer to the coroner: No.

This was not the end of it.  “Was there any behaviour on the part of supporters that may have caused or contributed to the dangerous situation at the Leppings Lane turnstiles?,” directed the coroner to the jury. “Is your answer No?”  With some dread, supporters and activists waited.  Then came the reassuring answer: “It is.”

The question was significant given suggestions, made at stages after the lethal event, that the deaths had been the consequence of the fans themselves, self-inflicted acts of suicidal, mob-directed horror.  European football, and certainly English football, had developed a deep reputation for savage mob violence. It became the central point of reference for shoddy reaction on the part of authorities, an apologia for miscalculation, ineptitude and near criminal negligence.

Those who had made complaints to the unsympathetic police in the aftermath of the disaster were treated with varying degrees of contempt.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for one, always felt there were enough police on duty.

The papers waged a concerted campaign in describing the event as one inflicted by villains and sporting brigands who had stemmed from a doomed second class city. (Eight years prior, chancellor Geoffrey Howe had suggested to the PM on financing Liverpool that “the option of managed decline is one we should not forget altogether.  We must not expend our limited resources in trying to make water flow uphill.”)[2]

Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun was, as was to be expected, the most colourful.  The editor at the time, Kelvin MacKenzie, made it his personal mission to smear and condemn the supporters, claiming that hooligan Liverpudlians had urinated in glee on brave police, pilfered from the dead and obstructed those keen to resuscitate the dying.

With the bodies still warm, he juggled two options of headline: “You Scum” or “The Truth.”  Eventually, he went for the latter, despite warnings within the paper about the potential inaccuracy of the message.  “Drunken Liverpool fans,” went the story, “viciously attacked rescue workers as they tried to revive victims of the Hillsborough soccer disaster, it was revealed last night.”  To this day, some shops boycott that intemperate rag.

The authorities also chipped in.  A “pale and inarticulate” Chief Constable Peter Wright, to use a description of then home secretary Douglas Hurd, dug into the treasure trove of primordial themes – the fans at Hillsborough had been “animalistic” in their behaviour.

Sir Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s Press Secretary, went for the more conventional line in a 1996 letter to Liverpool fan Graham Skinner that “there would have been no Hillsborough disaster if tanked up yobs had not turned up in large numbers to force their way in the ground.”[3]

This manifest loathing of the yob of Liverpool, the primitive Scouse, persisted eight years later with the current mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who decided to weigh in with a few clumsy swipes when editor of the Spectator.  “They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it.”

On Hillsborough, Johnson could not resist noting that the deaths of 1989, while “a greater tragedy than any single death” did not “excuse Liverpool’s failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon.”  Rubbishing the Liverpudlian remained de rigeur.

This was class and attitude: the dead and the survivors were thugs who got what they deserved, and were irresponsibly shirking reality.  Not even Johnson’s penitential journey to Liverpool, urged on by then Tory leader Michael Howard, could dispel that reality.

The inquest, however, found otherwise. It had taken years, a vale of tears, and the incessant presence of trauma, but the findings were indisputable. The next step, if it is to be taken, will occur in the criminal realm.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/may/01/hillsborough-inquest-survivor-adrian-tempany

[2] http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/hillsborough-inquest-verdict-liverpool-s-finest-hour-1.2629631

[3] http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/bernard-ingham-who-called-liverpool-fans-tanked-up-yobs-still-refuses-to-apologise-to-hillsborough-families-despite-inquest-findings-34661783.html

Putin regards Medvedev as “too soft with Barack Obama and the European leaders,” writes Panorama’s Moscow correspondent Cristina Giuliano. She quotes, among others, Russian political scientists Alena Ledeneva of University College London: “Medvedev might even resign, maybe not immediately, but as soon as the economic situation will stabilize a little”.

Medvedev originally fell out of favor with the Siloviki—Kremlin’s strong men, whom The Saker refers to as “Eurasian sovereignists”—during the 2011 Libya crisis, when Western intervention led to the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi.

A Russian documentary film on the Libya crisis openly accused him of “treason” for his compliant, pro-Western handling of the crisis, and supine acceptance of its outcome.

Among the first Siloviki to point the finger at Medvedev were Evgeny Primakov, former prime minister and head of Russia’s foreign secret services, and Vladimir Chamov, Russian ambassador to Libya at the time of the crisis, removed for objecting to the very toppling of Gaddafi.

Retired general Leonid Ivashov said during the Libya documentary: “Unfortunately Russian presidents cannot be prosecuted for treason”.

Putin’s comeback as President was especially cheered by the Siloviki during the 2013 Syria crisis. Had Medvedev been there, another area under Russian influence would have been “sold out” to the West.

How the US reacted to Russia stop playing balls with an ever-expanding West we learned last year: by organizing a coup next to Russian borders, and turning Ukraine into a neo-Nazi killing ground.

And, as we have recently reported, there are signs that Russia has stopped believing in the essential goodwill of the West. The offensive carried out by the rebels in Mariupol on Sunday was followed by Putin describing the Ukraine army as a “NATO legion aimed at restraining Russia.”

In this rapidly deteriorating climate, a pro-Western prime minister is simply not the right man for the job. With the likely demise of Medvedev, the West has again done its cause yet another disservice.

Is a possible rebel takeover of the whole of Donbass what a tough Russian prime minister would like to force upon the West? If so, exciting times lie ahead

Panorama also mentions “a series of scandals with the Medvedev government: from bed time affairs and corruption that have ensnared former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdjukov, as well as Education Minister Dmitry Livanov’s troubles. His dismissal has been requested even by the staid Academy of Sciences.

Who will take over? Rumors abound.

A much-talked about candidate is Alexei Kudrin, a semi-liberal, and former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.

Other rumors point to Dmitry Rogozin, the current Deputy Prime Minister, and a hardliner.

Or maybe Andrej Vorobiov, born 1970, current governor of the rich Moscow region. TIMErecently described him as the rising star in Putin’s United Russia party.

Medvedev’s eventual resignation could follow what Panorama’s source calls: “a sortie à la Yeltsin, because in Moscow we don’t wash our dirty laundry in public”.

Located in the center of Okinawa Island, Kadena Air Base is the largest United States Air Force installation in Asia. Equipped with two 3.7 kilometer runways and thousands of hangars, homes and workshops, the base and its adjoining arsenal at Chibana sprawl across 46 square kilometers of Okinawa’s main island. Approximately 20,000 American service members, contractors and their families live or work here alongside 3,000 Japanese employees. More than 16,000 Okinawans own the land upon which the installation sits.¹

Kadena Air Base hosts the biggest combat wing in the USAF – the 18th Wing – and, during the past seven decades, the installation has served as an important launch pad for wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. Given the long history of Kadena Air Base and its city-sized scale, it is easy to understand why the USAF calls it “The Keystone of the Pacific.”

But until now, no one has realized the damage the base has inflicted on the environment and those who live in its vicinity. Documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act reveal how years of accidents and neglect have polluted local land and water with hazardous chemicals including arsenic, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos and dioxin. Military authorities have often hidden this contamination, putting at risk the health of U.S. service members, Okinawan base employees, and the 184,000 Okinawan civilians living in neighboring communities.

Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and the environment

Japan hosts 130 U.S. bases – 32 of which are located on Okinawa – but the Americans who serve upon them and local residents know nothing of the dangers these installations pose to human health or the environment.²

Farmer’s fields near Kadena Air Base

At the root of the problem lies the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which makes no allowances for Japanese officials to conduct pollution checks within U.S. bases. Nor does it hold the military responsible for cleaning up land returned to civilian usage.

In 2015, Washington and Tokyo tagged a supplementary agreement onto SOFA giving local authorities the right to request a base inspection following a spill. However so far, the Pentagon has failed to green light any such requests.³

Since SOFA absolves the U.S. of all financial responsibility to clean up contaminated land, the costs are borne by Japanese taxpayers. The financial burden of military contamination is particularly heavy on Okinawa, Japan’s poorest prefecture, where U.S. bases take up roughly 20% of Okinawa’s main island but contribute only 5% to the prefecture’s economy.⁴

In Chatan Town in 2002, for instance, the cost to clean up 187 barrels of unknown chemicals dumped by the U.S. military amounted to approximately 20 million yen.⁵ Elsewhere redevelopment of land returned from Camp Kuwae, has been delayed for more than 12 years due to contamination from arsenic, lead and oil.⁶

With both SOFA and the new agreement failing to protect Japan’s environment, it comes down to Japan Environmental Governing Standards. The guidelines set out when U.S. forces need to report spills to the Japanese government, for example, after they surpass a certain volume or contain a substance listed as hazardous. However, they do not assign punishments to bases breeching environmental policies or hold the military responsible for cleaning up contamination inside or outside its bases.⁷

This combination of flawed regulations and lack of transparency creates obstacles for researchers trying to ascertain pollution within U.S. bases in Japan. Scientists can only check land already returned to civilian usage – by which time it is too late to prevent contamination – or conduct tests on wildlife captured near active bases to determine whether their tissues contain traces of toxins. Given these constraints, perhaps the most effective way to lift the lid on what goes on behind the fences of U.S. bases in Japan is the Freedom of Information Act.

8725 pages released under FOIA

In January, the USAF released 8725 pages of accident reports, environmental investigations and emails related to contamination at Kadena Air Base. Dated from the mid-1990s to August 2015, the documents are believed to be the first time such recent information detailing pollution on an active U.S. base in Japan has been made public.

The documents catalogue approximately 415 environmental incidents between 1998 and 2015; 245 of these occurred since 2010. Incidents range from small leaks, which stayed within the base, to large spills discharging tens of thousands of liters of fuel and raw sewage into local rivers.

Leaks of jet fuel – such as this small one in 2008 – totaled more than 40,000 liters since 1998

During the 1998-2015 period, leaks totaled almost 40,000 liters of jet fuel, 13,000 liters of diesel and 480,000 liters of sewage. Of the 206 incidents noted between 2010 and 2014, 51 were blamed on accidents or human error; only 23 were reported to the Japanese authorities.

The year 2014 saw the highest number of accidents: 59 – only two of which were reported to Tokyo.

Because large parts of the documents have been redacted and there are no reports for the 2004-2007 period, the actual statistics are likely much higher.

The impact on local water

Due to its location in densely populated southern Okinawa, Kadena Air Base plays an integral role in the supply of the island’s drinking water. Within the installation, there are 23 wells, some of which contribute to on- and off-base drinking water. More than 300,000 meters of drains carry the installation’s storm water into local rivers – including the Hija River, which supplies drinking water for six municipalities and Okinawa’s capital, Naha.

U.S. documents suggest that mistakes and negligence on the base have repeatedly endangered this water supply.

For example, in August 2011, 760 liters of diesel spilled into the Hija River when an operator abandoned a generator tank prior to the arrival of a typhoon. In December 2011, 1,400 liters of diesel leaked from USAF housing on Camp McTureous due to officials ignoring a warning light; the fuel contaminated the Tengan River.

Other reports suggest that miscommunication exacerbated spill incidents. In June 2012, it took an engineer 1 hour 20 minutes to respond to a 190-liter fuel spill because he was at the food court and could not hear his telephone ringing. More recently, in February 2015, environmental teams failed to respond to two incidents – the first involving 170 liters of fuel and the second 23 liters of hydraulic fluid – despite being alerted by emergency crews.

As well as fuel leaks, the base mistakenly released at least 23,000 liters of fire suppressant foam between 2001 and 2015. In August 2012, a Japanese firefighter set off a fire system in an accident that leaked 1,140 liters. Then in May 2015, a drunk U.S. Marine, released 1,510 liters in an act of vandalism.⁸

Such foams can contain carcinogens, chemicals known to cause reproductive and neurological disorders, and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS). PFOS, categorized by the EPA as an emerging contaminant, has recently become the focus of concerns both on Okinawa and in the U.S.

In August 2011, a failure to empty a generator prior to the arrival of a typhoon caused the leak of 760 liters of diesel into a local river

In January, Okinawa Prefecture announced that waterways around Kadena Air Base were currently contaminated with PFOS; in 2008, levels in an on-base well measured as high as 1870 ng/L.⁹ The EPA’s provisional health advisory limit for drinking water is 200 ng/L. In March, the USAF promised to conduct tests for PFOS contamination on 664 bases in the U.S.¹⁰

Ikeda Komichi, adviser at the Environmental Research Institute Inc., Tokyo, emphasized the potential dangers of PFOS. “Current research suggests it may cause cancer, reproductive disorders and damage the next generation. Pregnant women and young children ought to be especially careful to avoid consuming water contaminated with PFOS.”

Since 2008, Kadena Air Base has also spilled at least 1,670 liters of hydraulic fluid – a known source of PFOS; meanwhile drains from the base’s fire-training area, where foams are routinely sprayed, feed into local waterways.

Another threat to Okinawa’s drinking water comes from leaks of raw sewage, which the base apparently only started recording in 2010. In November 2010, a 57,000-litre spill contaminated the Shirahi River and the sea with sewage measuring 36,000 fecal coliform colonies/100ml – 90 times the EPA’s maximum limit for swimming waters.

More recently, in June 2013, an overflowing manhole leaked 208,000 liters of sewage into the Hija River. The base took 27 hours to notify local authorities, but its subsequent press release stated, “The health and safety of our service members and our friends in local community is our top priority.” Follow-up emails exchanged among USAF officials include the comment, “We received little media coverage. So that’s good news.”

Meanwhile, in November 2009, service members dumped 17 liters of liquid fog solution into storm drains despite manufacturers’ instructions not to release the substance into sewer systems. Likewise, in July 2014, service members dumped hundreds of liters of medical waste – described as “expired shelf-life injectable fluids” – into on-base drains. “It’s very unlikely that anything will be seen or reported but if the milky solution reached the Hija river we will have a very upset public,” stated the report. Neither the 2009 nor the 2014 incident was reported to the Japanese government.

Photo caption: An unknown substance claimed to be sea dye leaks from a tank on Kadena Air Base in an undated photo. No records exist for the spill suggesting it was unreported even within the military.

Furthermore, the documents highlight the dangers of operating a busy airport in the midst of civilian communities. Numerous in-flight emergencies (IFE) cause pilots to abort their missions – two occurring in a one-week period in January 2015. Also, in August 2011, an IFE caused an F-15 to dump 150 liters of fuel from low altitude. The summary concluded, “There was no impact to the local community.”

Lead and asbestos

Back on the ground, the FOIA-released documents point to the exposure of U.S. and Japanese nationals to dangerous levels of lead and asbestos.

For many decades, a furnace within the installation burnt ammunition and “other exotic pyrotechnics” without any emission controls. In 1993, investigators discovered this incineration had contaminated nearby land with lead at 13,813 mg/kg and more distant jungle with 6000 mg/kg. There were “small farms and vegetable plots” in the area and the site was near a waterway.

Another burn pit, cited in an April 1994 report, was blamed for lead concentrations in soil exceeding 500 mg/kg with fields again apparently in the close vicinity.

The Japanese government’s clean-up standard for lead contamination in soil is 150 mg/kg. Japan has no standard for agricultural land but in Germany the maximum level permitted is 100 mg/kg.

Environmental expert, Ikeda Komichi, at her Tokyo office.

“People working in the area need to worry about intellectual disabilities and damage to their nervous systems. Also if they inhaled this lead and other substances over a long period it may have caused reproductive damage and harmed organs such as the blood and kidneys. Because the levels are so high, there is the very strong chance that the land remains contaminated today,” said Ikeda.

She also criticized the reports for their lack of data on other heavy metals likely discharged during the incineration of ammunition, including depleted uranium, which the USAF used widely in the 1990s.

Moreover, surveys from 2000 to 2001 revealed serious contamination from asbestos in many buildings such as dormitories, mess halls and boiler rooms. Inspectors found large chunks of deteriorating asbestos materials scattered onto nearby lawns.

One of the locations was an abandoned hospital which, prior to 2000, had been used for “readiness training”. Investigators noted how military personnel had used axes and chainsaws to breech asbestos-packed doors – resulting in the spread of “friable” (easy to crumble) material across a 460 m² area.

WHO estimates that asbestos is responsible for one third of occupational cancer fatalities worldwide.¹² In recent years, Japanese base employees have struggled to win compensation from Tokyo for illnesses attributed to their work in asbestos-contaminated environments. Many were ordered to work without proper safety equipment. In 2014, the Japanese government finally agreed to pay compensation to 28 victims, but survivor support groups and base worker unions estimate the number of sick is likely much higher.¹³

Former base worker, Tamura Susumu, witnessed firsthand the dangers of asbestos. Employed on U.S. bases for 43 years until the 1990s, his testimony helped to win compensation for the family of a colleague killed by asbestos-related lung disease.

In a recent interview, Tamura recalled the dilemma faced by many Okinawans employed by the U.S. military: “Even if we thought what we were ordered to do was wrong, we didn’t refuse. We were worried we’d be fired.”

During his time on the bases, Tamura regularly witnessed lax environmental standards – including the illicit dumping of waste and shoddy clean-up work.

“Nowadays, safety conditions may have improved, but in the past, the only way to describe them wasyaritai hodai – the U.S. military did whatever they wanted.”

Photo caption: Former base worker, Susumu Tamura, holds his commendation for 40 years of work on U.S. installations; many Okinawan base workers were not so lucky.

Past negligence returns to haunt current service members

Before Okinawa’s reversion to Japanese rule in 1972, Kadena Air Base and the adjacent ammunition depot at Chibana stored one of the largest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction on the planet: 800 nuclear warheads, a stockpile of herbicides suspected to be Agent Orange and thousands of tons of mustard, VX, and sarin gas. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, two leaks of chemical weapons hospitalized 27 Americans while so much jet fuel seeped into local water wells that they actually caught fire.¹⁴

During the 1970s, the disposal of surplus chemicals from the Vietnam War also contaminated Camp Kinser (then known as Machinato Service Area) with PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides and Agent Orange dioxin.¹⁵

The current U.S. custodians of Okinawa’s bases know very little of their hazardous history – particularly when it comes to the disposal of toxic substances.

At Kadena Air Base, documents dating from the 1990s to 2015 repeatedly record service members stumbling upon pollution caused, but not reported, by their predecessors. Underground discoveries include POL (petroleum/oil/lubricant) contamination, white phosphorous and abandoned storage tanks, one of which leaked approximately 450 liters of diesel, endangering nearby farmland in March 2012. In July 2014, the discovery of a buried barrel of chemicals within the installation sparked emails urging responders to keep a “low profile please. Don’t want this release (sic) to press.”

Photo caption: An abandoned storage tank endangered farmers’ fields when it leaked 450 liters of fuel in March 2012

PCBs

This struggle to control information about past contamination is highlighted by the base’s ongoing troubles with PCBs¹⁶ Throughout much of the 20th century, PCBs were a common component of electrical transformers but they were banned by the US in 1979 when linked to cancers and problems with the nervous, reproductive and immune systems.¹⁷

During the 1970s, service members at Kadena Air Base stored PCB-contaminated oil in a 21-meter wide outdoor pool from where it was “subsequently sold for disposal off base or mixed with fuel and burned on base.”

The pool was located on a hilltop near Kadena Marina, a popular recreation spot, and past tests revealing PCBs in the sea suggest contamination had spread from the base via groundwater or storm drains. The existence of the pool only came to light in 1998 when it was reported by a whistleblower, sparking an official investigation.

Environmental adviser Ikeda has criticized such disposal techniques. Burning contaminated oil, she explained, can lead to the inhalation of toxins and the resulting ash can pollute the soil. Ikeda also expressed concern for local waterways. “PCBs can build up in river bottoms and then enter shellfish, crustaceans, fish and the entire ecosystem of the seashore. Because PCBs are persistent and bio-accumulate, if people consume the fish over a long period of time, the levels increase in their bodies.”

In the 1990s, Kadena Air Base collected PCB-contaminated oil from “various locations on island” and leaks gave rise to a number of hot spots within the installation. Inside one mechanical room, contamination levels spiked at 17,000 mg/100cm². The EPA’s decontamination requirement for indoor areas – even those where access is restricted – stands at 10 mg/100cm².

In 1993, investigators were concerned that PCB contamination may have spread so they recommended sampling the Hija River, which supplies drinking water to the base and the surrounding communities. It appears no such tests were ever conducted.

As of 1999, the base only checked its drinking water for contamination from “PCBs and other constituents” once a year from a single tap. Water leaving the installation was only monitored four times a year. Today, the installation claims to test its water supply twice a year for PCBs and at specific intervals for other substances, for instance quarterly for arsenic and annually for lead. However the 2014 discovery of high levels of lead in water fountains in an education building and recent failures to warn on-base personnel of elevated PFOS levels have called into question the reliability of such tests.¹⁸

Photo caption: Tests for PCB contamination discovered levels 1700 times safe standards but the base only tested its drinking water once a year from a single tap.

Reports from the 1990s claimed PCB hot-spots on the base had been cleaned up – but these assurances appear false. In 2011, internal investigators slammed the base’s policies regarding PCBs as a “major deficiency”. They underlined the absence of a safe storage area for contaminated transformers and failures to label equipment deemed hazardous. According to the same report, in 2012, the installation had approximately 500 transformers but checks for PCBs had been conducted on less than half of them.

Recent reports reveal instances of transformers leaking and exploding. One email from August 2014 showed emergency teams’ frustrations after dealing with the third transformer leak within a two-week period.

108 barrels of toxic waste and the soccer pitch in Okinawa City

One of Okinawa’s most serious environmental incidents in recent memory is the discovery of 108 barrels of toxic waste between 2013 and 2015 on land that was once part of Kadena Air Base.¹⁹ The FOIA-released documents shed new light on the military’s role in the incident and USAF attempts to downplay its severity to parents whose children attend the adjacent Bob Hope Primary School and Amelia Earhart Intermediate School.

Piecing together a timeline of the incident from the reports, it appears that around 1964, the military dumped barrels containing mixed hazardous waste into ravines on the outskirts of Kadena Air Base. Around 1980, the two schools were built in the vicinity and then in 1987, some nearby land was returned to civilian control. In 1996, local authorities constructed a soccer pitch on the site.

In June 2013, workers renovating the pitch unearthed dozens of the buried barrels, some of which contained high levels of dioxin. Although the discovery was within meters of the school playing fields, USAF officials did not inform teachers or parents. No dust control screens were erected to prevent the possible spread of contamination and, as excavation work went on nearby, American students were allowed to continue playing outdoors.

When military families finally learned about the toxic waste six months later, they were furious. In response, base officials conducted their first checks of the school grounds on December 31, 2013. However they only tested surface soil and did not conduct magnetic tests to ascertain whether any barrels lay buried beneath the school fields. In February 2014, USAF officials declared the school grounds safe but the laboratory test results – totaling 107 pages – have been entirely redacted from the FOIA documents.

Exacerbating suspicions of a cover-up was another announcement in February assuring service members that dioxin only caused the skin disease, chloracne, but “No other human health effects have been proven.” This contradicts EPA data that dioxin “can cause cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, damage to the immune system, and can interfere with hormones.”

In the following months, more barrels were unearthed on the returned land, reaching a total of 108. As well as dioxin, some of the barrels contained the herbicides 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, arsenic and PCBs.

Photo caption: Crime scene photos: Some of the 108 barrels of toxic waste unearthed from former Kadena Air Base land.

In nearby water, dioxin levels peaked at 21,000 times safe levels. Due to the detection of the two herbicides, independent experts concluded Vietnam War era defoliants had been among the waste dumped there.

On July 8 2015, base officials sent out a one page memo concluding “appropriate measures will be taken” if they “become aware of any substantial impacts to the health or safety.” The contamination findings were attached – but it seems unlikely many parents read them.

Three days later, heavy rains flooded the dumpsite and the muddy water was pumped by Japanese construction crews into nearby waterways without any checks for contamination.²⁰ Flow maps suggest this water entered the base but, once again, the USAF decided not to inform its service members.

Contamination at Kadena Air Base: The human impact

Okinawa’s pollution shares many similarities with contamination discovered on military bases in the U.S. In 2014, the EPA listed 141 Pentagon installations as Superfund sites in need of remediation and last year the Department of Defense reportedly ranked third among the worst polluters of U.S. waterways.^{21 22}

In one of the most publicized cases of contamination, tens of thousands of service members and their families were exposed to contaminated drinking water for decades at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

The basic problem is that nobody yet knows the full impact of military contamination on people living on or near the 130 U.S. bases in Japan. The Pentagon has repeatedly attempted to downplay the risks to service members and the Department of Veterans Affairs has not conducted any surveys.²³ Likewise Japan lacks a centralized disease control system which could identify spikes in certain illnesses among civilians living close to military installations.

However, some Americans are convinced that pollution from Kadena Air Base has destroyed their families’ health.

“Kadena officials have knownabout this contamination the entire time but they will do whatever they can to keep it all hush-hush,” said Telisha Simmons.

Simmons and her family were stationed at Kadena Air Base between 2011 and 2012. Before arriving on Okinawa, none of them had experienced any serious medical problems but during their time on the island, one of her sons developed a brain cyst and her daughter bone tumors; Simmons herself was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor and other serious illnesses which resulted in a hysterectomy at the age of 35. Her children attended Bob Hope Primary School and played regularly on its fields. “Kadena has not reached out to me at all concerning this problem,” said Simmons.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared for the careers of family members currently serving with the USAF, more than a dozen parents described severe illnesses among children who attended the two schools or played on their fields between 1999 and 2013. Illnesses include cancers, auto-immune, respiratory and neurological problems.

USAF officials have never investigated whether these illnesses are linked to pollution on the installation.

According to contamination expert Ikeda, children are particularly susceptible to toxic chemicals.

“An adult and a child can drink the same glass of water – but they can be affected differently because of their lower body weight. All of these substances found on Kadena Air Base – PCBs, lead, dioxin, PFOS – accumulate in children’s organs, damaging their bodies in a variety of ways.”

Due to inadequate checks of on-base drinking water supplies, the numbers of those exposed potentially stretch back for many years.

Paula Davidson and her family lived on Kadena Air Base in the 1980s. During this time, her two children developed illnesses that were later diagnosed as cancer. A third child, conceived on Okinawa and born in the U.S., fell sick with cancer of the brain. “I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that being exposed to toxic chemicals on Okinawa caused his illness.”

Two of her children died in their thirties. “Now that they have gone, I guess they have just become another statistic,” said Davidson.

Given the severity of contamination on Kadena Air Base, these cases may be the tip of the iceberg of health effects on both U.S. service members and their families and Okinawans living and working on and near the base. The FOIA-released documents reveal decades of dangerous exposure, including Okinawan farmers tending fields tainted with incinerated munitions, service members and base employees ordered to work among crumbling asbestos, civilians sold PCB-contaminated oil without warnings; and on-base residents and Okinawans drinking water containing PFOS, fuel and raw sewage.

If Kadena Air Base were located in the US, those exposed could demand an investigation from the EPA. But because of current regulations both Okinawans and Americans living in Okinawa are left uninformed, unprotected and with no recourse for justice.

“While supporting my husband in his military career, my children werepoisoned,” said Simmons.”This is not the first time the U.S. government has covered up contamination on a military installation. Now it needs to unveil all the details so we can know exactly what we are dealing with.”

The military response

On April 10, an earlier version of this article in The Japan Times detailed contamination at Kadena Air Base from perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), lead and asbestos.

In response, USFJ provided the following comments.

Asked whether tests for PFOS contamination currently being conducted on 664 military bases in the U.S. would be extended to Japan, USFJ replied, “The service-wide survey… applies only to stateside bases.” They added that tests have “repeatedly determined that PFOS levels in drinking water at Kadena are well below the EPA’s suggested limits.” However, they did not provide comment on sampling which revealed contamination exceeding safe levels in a nearby river between 2014 and 2015, and on an on-base well in 2008.

In response to revelations that an incinerator had contaminated farmers’ fields with dangerous levels of lead, USFJ replied, “We do not keep records of notifications given to local farmers.” They denied depleted uranium munitions had been burned there because the incinerator “was used to dispose of small arms ammunition”. However, USFJ appeared not to have read the original 1994 report which also cited the burning of flares, starter motors and other “exotic pyrotechnics”.

USFJ also appeared not to possess documentation detailing the exposure of service members to asbestos during on-base war games. “We will be happy to examine any documentation you would like to share with us,” they wrote. To facilitate notification of service members exposed to asbestos, the reports have been forwarded to USFJ.²⁴

On April 15, the following questions were emailed to USFJ.

• In 2011, inspectors called PCB-storage at Kadena Air Base a “major deficiency”. What steps has the installation taken since then to improve storage?

• Will USFJ investigate the spike in illnesses among children who attended Bob Hope Primary School and Amelia Earhart Intermediate School?

• Given the 6-month delay to inform on-base families of the discovery of toxic waste adjacent to these schools, has USFJ revised its notification policies?

• What resources are there for USAF service members and their families who believe that contamination (lead, PCBs, PFOS, dioxin, asbestos, arsenic) may have sickened themselves or their families?

• What assurances can you provide local residents that USFJ takes their concerns re: contamination seriously?

As of May 1, the only reply received was the following:

“To date, there has been no evidence that children attending Bob Hope Primary School and Amelia Earhart Intermediate School are at an increased risk of illness.18th Wing has taken a proactive stance to evaluate potential environmental health hazards and protect the health of U.S. Forces personnel, their families and the local community.”

This is a revised and expanded version of two articles which first appeared in The Japan Times on April 10 and 17, 2016.

Notes

Located in the center of Okinawa Island, Kadena Air Base is the largest United States Air Force installation in Asia. Equipped with two 3.7 kilometer runways and thousands of hangars, homes and workshops, the base and its adjoining arsenal at Chibana sprawl across 46 square kilometers of Okinawa’s main island. Approximately 20,000 American service members, contractors and their families live or work here alongside 3,000 Japanese employees. More than 16,000 Okinawans own the land upon which the installation sits.¹

Kadena Air Base hosts the biggest combat wing in the USAF – the 18th Wing – and, during the past seven decades, the installation has served as an important launch pad for wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. Given the long history of Kadena Air Base and its city-sized scale, it is easy to understand why the USAF calls it “The Keystone of the Pacific.”

But until now, no one has realized the damage the base has inflicted on the environment and those who live in its vicinity. Documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act reveal how years of accidents and neglect have polluted local land and water with hazardous chemicals including arsenic, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos and dioxin. Military authorities have often hidden this contamination, putting at risk the health of U.S. service members, Okinawan base employees, and the 184,000 Okinawan civilians living in neighboring communities.

Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and the environment

Japan hosts 130 U.S. bases – 32 of which are located on Okinawa – but the Americans who serve upon them and local residents know nothing of the dangers these installations pose to human health or the environment.²

Farmer’s fields near Kadena Air Base

At the root of the problem lies the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which makes no allowances for Japanese officials to conduct pollution checks within U.S. bases. Nor does it hold the military responsible for cleaning up land returned to civilian usage.

In 2015, Washington and Tokyo tagged a supplementary agreement onto SOFA giving local authorities the right to request a base inspection following a spill. However so far, the Pentagon has failed to green light any such requests.³

Since SOFA absolves the U.S. of all financial responsibility to clean up contaminated land, the costs are borne by Japanese taxpayers. The financial burden of military contamination is particularly heavy on Okinawa, Japan’s poorest prefecture, where U.S. bases take up roughly 20% of Okinawa’s main island but contribute only 5% to the prefecture’s economy.⁴

In Chatan Town in 2002, for instance, the cost to clean up 187 barrels of unknown chemicals dumped by the U.S. military amounted to approximately 20 million yen.⁵ Elsewhere redevelopment of land returned from Camp Kuwae, has been delayed for more than 12 years due to contamination from arsenic, lead and oil.⁶

With both SOFA and the new agreement failing to protect Japan’s environment, it comes down to Japan Environmental Governing Standards. The guidelines set out when U.S. forces need to report spills to the Japanese government, for example, after they surpass a certain volume or contain a substance listed as hazardous. However, they do not assign punishments to bases breeching environmental policies or hold the military responsible for cleaning up contamination inside or outside its bases.⁷

This combination of flawed regulations and lack of transparency creates obstacles for researchers trying to ascertain pollution within U.S. bases in Japan. Scientists can only check land already returned to civilian usage – by which time it is too late to prevent contamination – or conduct tests on wildlife captured near active bases to determine whether their tissues contain traces of toxins. Given these constraints, perhaps the most effective way to lift the lid on what goes on behind the fences of U.S. bases in Japan is the Freedom of Information Act.

8725 pages released under FOIA

In January, the USAF released 8725 pages of accident reports, environmental investigations and emails related to contamination at Kadena Air Base. Dated from the mid-1990s to August 2015, the documents are believed to be the first time such recent information detailing pollution on an active U.S. base in Japan has been made public.

The documents catalogue approximately 415 environmental incidents between 1998 and 2015; 245 of these occurred since 2010. Incidents range from small leaks, which stayed within the base, to large spills discharging tens of thousands of liters of fuel and raw sewage into local rivers.

Leaks of jet fuel – such as this small one in 2008 – totaled more than 40,000 liters since 1998

During the 1998-2015 period, leaks totaled almost 40,000 liters of jet fuel, 13,000 liters of diesel and 480,000 liters of sewage. Of the 206 incidents noted between 2010 and 2014, 51 were blamed on accidents or human error; only 23 were reported to the Japanese authorities.

The year 2014 saw the highest number of accidents: 59 – only two of which were reported to Tokyo.

Because large parts of the documents have been redacted and there are no reports for the 2004-2007 period, the actual statistics are likely much higher.

The impact on local water

Due to its location in densely populated southern Okinawa, Kadena Air Base plays an integral role in the supply of the island’s drinking water. Within the installation, there are 23 wells, some of which contribute to on- and off-base drinking water. More than 300,000 meters of drains carry the installation’s storm water into local rivers – including the Hija River, which supplies drinking water for six municipalities and Okinawa’s capital, Naha.

U.S. documents suggest that mistakes and negligence on the base have repeatedly endangered this water supply.

For example, in August 2011, 760 liters of diesel spilled into the Hija River when an operator abandoned a generator tank prior to the arrival of a typhoon. In December 2011, 1,400 liters of diesel leaked from USAF housing on Camp McTureous due to officials ignoring a warning light; the fuel contaminated the Tengan River.

Other reports suggest that miscommunication exacerbated spill incidents. In June 2012, it took an engineer 1 hour 20 minutes to respond to a 190-liter fuel spill because he was at the food court and could not hear his telephone ringing. More recently, in February 2015, environmental teams failed to respond to two incidents – the first involving 170 liters of fuel and the second 23 liters of hydraulic fluid – despite being alerted by emergency crews.

As well as fuel leaks, the base mistakenly released at least 23,000 liters of fire suppressant foam between 2001 and 2015. In August 2012, a Japanese firefighter set off a fire system in an accident that leaked 1,140 liters. Then in May 2015, a drunk U.S. Marine, released 1,510 liters in an act of vandalism.⁸

Such foams can contain carcinogens, chemicals known to cause reproductive and neurological disorders, and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS). PFOS, categorized by the EPA as an emerging contaminant, has recently become the focus of concerns both on Okinawa and in the U.S.

In August 2011, a failure to empty a generator prior to the arrival of a typhoon caused the leak of 760 liters of diesel into a local river

In January, Okinawa Prefecture announced that waterways around Kadena Air Base were currently contaminated with PFOS; in 2008, levels in an on-base well measured as high as 1870 ng/L.⁹ The EPA’s provisional health advisory limit for drinking water is 200 ng/L. In March, the USAF promised to conduct tests for PFOS contamination on 664 bases in the U.S.¹⁰

Ikeda Komichi, adviser at the Environmental Research Institute Inc., Tokyo, emphasized the potential dangers of PFOS. “Current research suggests it may cause cancer, reproductive disorders and damage the next generation. Pregnant women and young children ought to be especially careful to avoid consuming water contaminated with PFOS.”

Since 2008, Kadena Air Base has also spilled at least 1,670 liters of hydraulic fluid – a known source of PFOS; meanwhile drains from the base’s fire-training area, where foams are routinely sprayed, feed into local waterways.

Another threat to Okinawa’s drinking water comes from leaks of raw sewage, which the base apparently only started recording in 2010. In November 2010, a 57,000-litre spill contaminated the Shirahi River and the sea with sewage measuring 36,000 fecal coliform colonies/100ml – 90 times the EPA’s maximum limit for swimming waters.

More recently, in June 2013, an overflowing manhole leaked 208,000 liters of sewage into the Hija River. The base took 27 hours to notify local authorities, but its subsequent press release stated, “The health and safety of our service members and our friends in local community is our top priority.” Follow-up emails exchanged among USAF officials include the comment, “We received little media coverage. So that’s good news.”

Meanwhile, in November 2009, service members dumped 17 liters of liquid fog solution into storm drains despite manufacturers’ instructions not to release the substance into sewer systems. Likewise, in July 2014, service members dumped hundreds of liters of medical waste – described as “expired shelf-life injectable fluids” – into on-base drains. “It’s very unlikely that anything will be seen or reported but if the milky solution reached the Hija river we will have a very upset public,” stated the report. Neither the 2009 nor the 2014 incident was reported to the Japanese government.

Photo caption: An unknown substance claimed to be sea dye leaks from a tank on Kadena Air Base in an undated photo. No records exist for the spill suggesting it was unreported even within the military.

Furthermore, the documents highlight the dangers of operating a busy airport in the midst of civilian communities. Numerous in-flight emergencies (IFE) cause pilots to abort their missions – two occurring in a one-week period in January 2015. Also, in August 2011, an IFE caused an F-15 to dump 150 liters of fuel from low altitude. The summary concluded, “There was no impact to the local community.”

Lead and asbestos

Back on the ground, the FOIA-released documents point to the exposure of U.S. and Japanese nationals to dangerous levels of lead and asbestos.

For many decades, a furnace within the installation burnt ammunition and “other exotic pyrotechnics” without any emission controls. In 1993, investigators discovered this incineration had contaminated nearby land with lead at 13,813 mg/kg and more distant jungle with 6000 mg/kg. There were “small farms and vegetable plots” in the area and the site was near a waterway.

Another burn pit, cited in an April 1994 report, was blamed for lead concentrations in soil exceeding 500 mg/kg with fields again apparently in the close vicinity.

The Japanese government’s clean-up standard for lead contamination in soil is 150 mg/kg. Japan has no standard for agricultural land but in Germany the maximum level permitted is 100 mg/kg.

Environmental expert, Ikeda Komichi, at her Tokyo office.

“People working in the area need to worry about intellectual disabilities and damage to their nervous systems. Also if they inhaled this lead and other substances over a long period it may have caused reproductive damage and harmed organs such as the blood and kidneys. Because the levels are so high, there is the very strong chance that the land remains contaminated today,” said Ikeda.

She also criticized the reports for their lack of data on other heavy metals likely discharged during the incineration of ammunition, including depleted uranium, which the USAF used widely in the 1990s.

Moreover, surveys from 2000 to 2001 revealed serious contamination from asbestos in many buildings such as dormitories, mess halls and boiler rooms. Inspectors found large chunks of deteriorating asbestos materials scattered onto nearby lawns.

One of the locations was an abandoned hospital which, prior to 2000, had been used for “readiness training”. Investigators noted how military personnel had used axes and chainsaws to breech asbestos-packed doors – resulting in the spread of “friable” (easy to crumble) material across a 460 m² area.

WHO estimates that asbestos is responsible for one third of occupational cancer fatalities worldwide.¹² In recent years, Japanese base employees have struggled to win compensation from Tokyo for illnesses attributed to their work in asbestos-contaminated environments. Many were ordered to work without proper safety equipment. In 2014, the Japanese government finally agreed to pay compensation to 28 victims, but survivor support groups and base worker unions estimate the number of sick is likely much higher.¹³

Former base worker, Tamura Susumu, witnessed firsthand the dangers of asbestos. Employed on U.S. bases for 43 years until the 1990s, his testimony helped to win compensation for the family of a colleague killed by asbestos-related lung disease.

In a recent interview, Tamura recalled the dilemma faced by many Okinawans employed by the U.S. military: “Even if we thought what we were ordered to do was wrong, we didn’t refuse. We were worried we’d be fired.”

During his time on the bases, Tamura regularly witnessed lax environmental standards – including the illicit dumping of waste and shoddy clean-up work.

“Nowadays, safety conditions may have improved, but in the past, the only way to describe them wasyaritai hodai – the U.S. military did whatever they wanted.”

Photo caption: Former base worker, Susumu Tamura, holds his commendation for 40 years of work on U.S. installations; many Okinawan base workers were not so lucky.

Past negligence returns to haunt current service members

Before Okinawa’s reversion to Japanese rule in 1972, Kadena Air Base and the adjacent ammunition depot at Chibana stored one of the largest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction on the planet: 800 nuclear warheads, a stockpile of herbicides suspected to be Agent Orange and thousands of tons of mustard, VX, and sarin gas. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, two leaks of chemical weapons hospitalized 27 Americans while so much jet fuel seeped into local water wells that they actually caught fire.¹⁴

During the 1970s, the disposal of surplus chemicals from the Vietnam War also contaminated Camp Kinser (then known as Machinato Service Area) with PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides and Agent Orange dioxin.¹⁵

The current U.S. custodians of Okinawa’s bases know very little of their hazardous history – particularly when it comes to the disposal of toxic substances.

At Kadena Air Base, documents dating from the 1990s to 2015 repeatedly record service members stumbling upon pollution caused, but not reported, by their predecessors. Underground discoveries include POL (petroleum/oil/lubricant) contamination, white phosphorous and abandoned storage tanks, one of which leaked approximately 450 liters of diesel, endangering nearby farmland in March 2012. In July 2014, the discovery of a buried barrel of chemicals within the installation sparked emails urging responders to keep a “low profile please. Don’t want this release (sic) to press.”

Photo caption: An abandoned storage tank endangered farmers’ fields when it leaked 450 liters of fuel in March 2012

PCBs

This struggle to control information about past contamination is highlighted by the base’s ongoing troubles with PCBs¹⁶ Throughout much of the 20th century, PCBs were a common component of electrical transformers but they were banned by the US in 1979 when linked to cancers and problems with the nervous, reproductive and immune systems.¹⁷

During the 1970s, service members at Kadena Air Base stored PCB-contaminated oil in a 21-meter wide outdoor pool from where it was “subsequently sold for disposal off base or mixed with fuel and burned on base.”

The pool was located on a hilltop near Kadena Marina, a popular recreation spot, and past tests revealing PCBs in the sea suggest contamination had spread from the base via groundwater or storm drains. The existence of the pool only came to light in 1998 when it was reported by a whistleblower, sparking an official investigation.

Environmental adviser Ikeda has criticized such disposal techniques. Burning contaminated oil, she explained, can lead to the inhalation of toxins and the resulting ash can pollute the soil. Ikeda also expressed concern for local waterways. “PCBs can build up in river bottoms and then enter shellfish, crustaceans, fish and the entire ecosystem of the seashore. Because PCBs are persistent and bio-accumulate, if people consume the fish over a long period of time, the levels increase in their bodies.”

In the 1990s, Kadena Air Base collected PCB-contaminated oil from “various locations on island” and leaks gave rise to a number of hot spots within the installation. Inside one mechanical room, contamination levels spiked at 17,000 mg/100cm². The EPA’s decontamination requirement for indoor areas – even those where access is restricted – stands at 10 mg/100cm².

In 1993, investigators were concerned that PCB contamination may have spread so they recommended sampling the Hija River, which supplies drinking water to the base and the surrounding communities. It appears no such tests were ever conducted.

As of 1999, the base only checked its drinking water for contamination from “PCBs and other constituents” once a year from a single tap. Water leaving the installation was only monitored four times a year. Today, the installation claims to test its water supply twice a year for PCBs and at specific intervals for other substances, for instance quarterly for arsenic and annually for lead. However the 2014 discovery of high levels of lead in water fountains in an education building and recent failures to warn on-base personnel of elevated PFOS levels have called into question the reliability of such tests.¹⁸

Photo caption: Tests for PCB contamination discovered levels 1700 times safe standards but the base only tested its drinking water once a year from a single tap.

Reports from the 1990s claimed PCB hot-spots on the base had been cleaned up – but these assurances appear false. In 2011, internal investigators slammed the base’s policies regarding PCBs as a “major deficiency”. They underlined the absence of a safe storage area for contaminated transformers and failures to label equipment deemed hazardous. According to the same report, in 2012, the installation had approximately 500 transformers but checks for PCBs had been conducted on less than half of them.

Recent reports reveal instances of transformers leaking and exploding. One email from August 2014 showed emergency teams’ frustrations after dealing with the third transformer leak within a two-week period.

108 barrels of toxic waste and the soccer pitch in Okinawa City

One of Okinawa’s most serious environmental incidents in recent memory is the discovery of 108 barrels of toxic waste between 2013 and 2015 on land that was once part of Kadena Air Base.¹⁹ The FOIA-released documents shed new light on the military’s role in the incident and USAF attempts to downplay its severity to parents whose children attend the adjacent Bob Hope Primary School and Amelia Earhart Intermediate School.

Piecing together a timeline of the incident from the reports, it appears that around 1964, the military dumped barrels containing mixed hazardous waste into ravines on the outskirts of Kadena Air Base. Around 1980, the two schools were built in the vicinity and then in 1987, some nearby land was returned to civilian control. In 1996, local authorities constructed a soccer pitch on the site.

In June 2013, workers renovating the pitch unearthed dozens of the buried barrels, some of which contained high levels of dioxin. Although the discovery was within meters of the school playing fields, USAF officials did not inform teachers or parents. No dust control screens were erected to prevent the possible spread of contamination and, as excavation work went on nearby, American students were allowed to continue playing outdoors.

When military families finally learned about the toxic waste six months later, they were furious. In response, base officials conducted their first checks of the school grounds on December 31, 2013. However they only tested surface soil and did not conduct magnetic tests to ascertain whether any barrels lay buried beneath the school fields. In February 2014, USAF officials declared the school grounds safe but the laboratory test results – totaling 107 pages – have been entirely redacted from the FOIA documents.

Exacerbating suspicions of a cover-up was another announcement in February assuring service members that dioxin only caused the skin disease, chloracne, but “No other human health effects have been proven.” This contradicts EPA data that dioxin “can cause cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, damage to the immune system, and can interfere with hormones.”

In the following months, more barrels were unearthed on the returned land, reaching a total of 108. As well as dioxin, some of the barrels contained the herbicides 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, arsenic and PCBs.

Photo caption: Crime scene photos: Some of the 108 barrels of toxic waste unearthed from former Kadena Air Base land.

In nearby water, dioxin levels peaked at 21,000 times safe levels. Due to the detection of the two herbicides, independent experts concluded Vietnam War era defoliants had been among the waste dumped there.

On July 8 2015, base officials sent out a one page memo concluding “appropriate measures will be taken” if they “become aware of any substantial impacts to the health or safety.” The contamination findings were attached – but it seems unlikely many parents read them.

Three days later, heavy rains flooded the dumpsite and the muddy water was pumped by Japanese construction crews into nearby waterways without any checks for contamination.²⁰ Flow maps suggest this water entered the base but, once again, the USAF decided not to inform its service members.

Contamination at Kadena Air Base: The human impact

Okinawa’s pollution shares many similarities with contamination discovered on military bases in the U.S. In 2014, the EPA listed 141 Pentagon installations as Superfund sites in need of remediation and last year the Department of Defense reportedly ranked third among the worst polluters of U.S. waterways.^{21 22}

In one of the most publicized cases of contamination, tens of thousands of service members and their families were exposed to contaminated drinking water for decades at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

The basic problem is that nobody yet knows the full impact of military contamination on people living on or near the 130 U.S. bases in Japan. The Pentagon has repeatedly attempted to downplay the risks to service members and the Department of Veterans Affairs has not conducted any surveys.²³ Likewise Japan lacks a centralized disease control system which could identify spikes in certain illnesses among civilians living close to military installations.

However, some Americans are convinced that pollution from Kadena Air Base has destroyed their families’ health.

“Kadena officials have knownabout this contamination the entire time but they will do whatever they can to keep it all hush-hush,” said Telisha Simmons.

Simmons and her family were stationed at Kadena Air Base between 2011 and 2012. Before arriving on Okinawa, none of them had experienced any serious medical problems but during their time on the island, one of her sons developed a brain cyst and her daughter bone tumors; Simmons herself was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor and other serious illnesses which resulted in a hysterectomy at the age of 35. Her children attended Bob Hope Primary School and played regularly on its fields. “Kadena has not reached out to me at all concerning this problem,” said Simmons.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared for the careers of family members currently serving with the USAF, more than a dozen parents described severe illnesses among children who attended the two schools or played on their fields between 1999 and 2013. Illnesses include cancers, auto-immune, respiratory and neurological problems.

USAF officials have never investigated whether these illnesses are linked to pollution on the installation.

According to contamination expert Ikeda, children are particularly susceptible to toxic chemicals.

“An adult and a child can drink the same glass of water – but they can be affected differently because of their lower body weight. All of these substances found on Kadena Air Base – PCBs, lead, dioxin, PFOS – accumulate in children’s organs, damaging their bodies in a variety of ways.”

Due to inadequate checks of on-base drinking water supplies, the numbers of those exposed potentially stretch back for many years.

Paula Davidson and her family lived on Kadena Air Base in the 1980s. During this time, her two children developed illnesses that were later diagnosed as cancer. A third child, conceived on Okinawa and born in the U.S., fell sick with cancer of the brain. “I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that being exposed to toxic chemicals on Okinawa caused his illness.”

Two of her children died in their thirties. “Now that they have gone, I guess they have just become another statistic,” said Davidson.

Given the severity of contamination on Kadena Air Base, these cases may be the tip of the iceberg of health effects on both U.S. service members and their families and Okinawans living and working on and near the base. The FOIA-released documents reveal decades of dangerous exposure, including Okinawan farmers tending fields tainted with incinerated munitions, service members and base employees ordered to work among crumbling asbestos, civilians sold PCB-contaminated oil without warnings; and on-base residents and Okinawans drinking water containing PFOS, fuel and raw sewage.

If Kadena Air Base were located in the US, those exposed could demand an investigation from the EPA. But because of current regulations both Okinawans and Americans living in Okinawa are left uninformed, unprotected and with no recourse for justice.

“While supporting my husband in his military career, my children werepoisoned,” said Simmons.”This is not the first time the U.S. government has covered up contamination on a military installation. Now it needs to unveil all the details so we can know exactly what we are dealing with.”

The military response

On April 10, an earlier version of this article in The Japan Times detailed contamination at Kadena Air Base from perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), lead and asbestos.

In response, USFJ provided the following comments.

Asked whether tests for PFOS contamination currently being conducted on 664 military bases in the U.S. would be extended to Japan, USFJ replied, “The service-wide survey… applies only to stateside bases.” They added that tests have “repeatedly determined that PFOS levels in drinking water at Kadena are well below the EPA’s suggested limits.” However, they did not provide comment on sampling which revealed contamination exceeding safe levels in a nearby river between 2014 and 2015, and on an on-base well in 2008.

In response to revelations that an incinerator had contaminated farmers’ fields with dangerous levels of lead, USFJ replied, “We do not keep records of notifications given to local farmers.” They denied depleted uranium munitions had been burned there because the incinerator “was used to dispose of small arms ammunition”. However, USFJ appeared not to have read the original 1994 report which also cited the burning of flares, starter motors and other “exotic pyrotechnics”.

USFJ also appeared not to possess documentation detailing the exposure of service members to asbestos during on-base war games. “We will be happy to examine any documentation you would like to share with us,” they wrote. To facilitate notification of service members exposed to asbestos, the reports have been forwarded to USFJ.²⁴

On April 15, the following questions were emailed to USFJ.

• In 2011, inspectors called PCB-storage at Kadena Air Base a “major deficiency”. What steps has the installation taken since then to improve storage?

• Will USFJ investigate the spike in illnesses among children who attended Bob Hope Primary School and Amelia Earhart Intermediate School?

• Given the 6-month delay to inform on-base families of the discovery of toxic waste adjacent to these schools, has USFJ revised its notification policies?

• What resources are there for USAF service members and their families who believe that contamination (lead, PCBs, PFOS, dioxin, asbestos, arsenic) may have sickened themselves or their families?

• What assurances can you provide local residents that USFJ takes their concerns re: contamination seriously?

As of May 1, the only reply received was the following:

“To date, there has been no evidence that children attending Bob Hope Primary School and Amelia Earhart Intermediate School are at an increased risk of illness.18th Wing has taken a proactive stance to evaluate potential environmental health hazards and protect the health of U.S. Forces personnel, their families and the local community.”

This is a revised and expanded version of two articles which first appeared in The Japan Times on April 10 and 17, 2016.

Notes

According to President Obama, the world’s only superpower, the unipower, the exceptional country is threatened by small Venezuela in South America!

In an executive order last year, renewed this year, President Obama declared Venezuela to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”  and declared a “national emergency” to counter the “Venezuelan threat” ¹.

This manufactured “extraordinary threat” serves as the Obama regime’s excuse for overthrowing President Maduro in Venezuela.  It is a Washington tradition to overthrow elected Latin American governments that try to represent the interest of the people, and not the interest of US corporations and banks. I wrote about Washington’s attack on Latin American reformers on April 11 ²  and on April 22³.

Decades ago US Marine General Smedley Butler confessed that he was “a gangster for capitalism,” imposing the will of New York Banks and the United Fruit Company on Latin American countries by force of arms.

In his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins reports the 1981 assassinations of Panama President Omar Torrijos and Ecuador President Jaime Roldos, both of whom got in the way of US corporate interests.

After being duly demonized by the US media, in 2009 Honduras President Manuel Zelaya, who thought that Honduras should be for Hondurans and not for the United Fruit Company, was overthrown in a military coup greenlighted by Obama and Hillary Clinton.  The president chosen by the people was replaced with Roberto Micheletti, a tool of US corporations, chosen by Washington.

Washington has been conducting economic warfare against Venezuela in order to undermine President Maduro’s public support. The media is controlled by the elite and blames Maduro for the economic problems caused by Washington.

Washington has succeeded in having its agents among the elite regain control of Venezuela’s National Assembly. A recall attempt is underway against Maduro. It is possible that confused Venezuelans will cut their own throats by returning to power the elite that has traditionally oppressed them.

Washington tried to destabilize Iran with the Washington-funded “Green Revolution,” but it did not work.  Both Russia and China open themselves to destabilization by hosting Washington-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), participating in Western economic institutions, and permitting foreign investment.

Washington has had success in entangling Russia and China in Western economic institutions and ways of thinking that put the two countries’ independence at risk.

Considering the control freak character of Washington, Russian President Putin should be on his guard against assassination. In the neoconservative drive for US world hegemony, no means are impermissible.

Notes:

1. http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2016/03/03/obama-extends-order-declaring-venezuela-national-security-threat/ 

2. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/11/washington-continues-to-destroy-latin-american-reformers-paul-craig-roberts/

3. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/22/washington-launches-its-attack-against-brics-paul-craig-roberts/

Remember when it was merely another conspiracy theory that “some” traders “trade” (with zero risk) with the benefit of leaked material non-public information? As of moments ago it is merely the latest conspiracy fact, confirmed by none other than the ECB, which earlier today published a research paper which finds substantial “informed” trading before the official release in seven of 21 market-moving U.S. macroeconomic announcements.

The paper has studied trading patterns from Jan. 2008 to March 2014 and finds that “prices begin to move in the ‘correct’ direction about 30 minutes before the release time. The pre-announcement price drift accounts on average for about half of the total price adjustment.”

Translation: chronic insider trading, which until recently was an allegation that the serious outlets would relentless mock as another conspiracy by tinfoil hat fringe websites.

The paper also finds “strong evidence of pre-announcement drift” in ahead of releases such as theConference Board’s consumer confidence index; NAR existing home and pending home sales; preliminary GDP; Federal Reserve’s industrial production (yes, even Fed data has been leaked repeatedly); ISM manufacturing and non- manufacturing indexes, and countless other examples.

While the ECB does not blame the entire “drift” on leaks of insider information, saying instead that “the evidence suggests that the pre-announcement drift likely comes from a combination of information leakage and superior forecasting” it is clear what the real culprit is for outperformance ahead of major data release, and – spoiler alert – it isn’t “superior forecasting.”

The paper also says that according to back-of-the-envelope calculations, since 2008 pre-release trading in S&P E-mini futures market profits amount to about $20 million per year.  Curiously, the ECB did not find evidence of “pre-announcement drift” in non-farm employment data. We doubt that especially since just this website has repeatedly caught BLS data being leaked in advance, an example of which we reported several years ago in “Bureau Of Labor Statistics Caught Red Handed Leaking Confidential Employment Data.”

From the paper’s non-technical summary:

Macroeconomic indicators play an important role in business cycle forecasting and are closely watched by financial markets. Some of these indicators appear to influence financial market prices even ahead of their social release time. This paper examines the prevalence of pre-announcement price drift in U.S. stock and bond markets and looks for possible explanations.

We study the impact of announcements on second-by-second E-mini S&P 500 stock index and 10-year Treasury note futures from January 2008 to March 2014. The study is based on 21 market-moving announcements among a sample of 30 U.S. macroeconomic announcements. Eleven out of these 21 announcements exhibit some pre-announcement price drift in the \correct” direction, i.e., in the direction of the price change consistent with the announcement surprise. For seven of these announcements the drift is substantial. Prices start to move about 30 minutes before the ocial release time, and this pre-announcement price move accounts on average for about a half of the total price adjustment.

These facts are uncovered by an outlier-robust procedure (MM weighted least squares), but are similarly striking in cumulative average return graphs and order  ow imbalances.

The paper shows that these results are robust to controlling for, among others, outliers, data snooping, nearby announcements and the choice of the event window length.

Extending the sample period back to 2003 with minute-by-minute data reveals both a higher announcement impact and a stronger pre-announcement drift since 2008, especially in the S&P E-mini futures market. Based on a back-of-the-envelope calculation, we estimate that since 2008 in the S&P E-mini futures market alone the pro ts associated with trading prior to the social announcement release time have amounted to about 20 million USD per year.

The late start of pre-release price drift, which becomes signi cant only about 30 minutes before the social release time, reveals an interesting property of prevalent trading strategies. Assuming that informed traders possess their informational advantage already more than 30 minutes ahead of the release, the question arises why they wait with trading on their knowledge until shortly before the release time. A possible explanation is that trading close to the release time minimizes the exposure to other risks that are unrelated to macroeconomic announcements.

The difficulty of identifying the causes of pre-announcement drift stems from the relatively small number of announcements that actually move financial markets. Nevertheless, we find that an implementation of strict release procedures makes pre-release drift less likely. This applies in particular to data released under the Principal Federal Economic Indicator (PFEI) guidelines, which impose strict security procedures. There is no evidence that modifying the calculation of market expectations, e.g., a focus on the most recent survey responses, helps in predicting the commonly used announcement surprise.

Public information, such as internet activity data, predicts the surprise in a few cases where the public information closely corresponds to the forecasting target. Analogously, improvements in data processing render privately collecting large amounts of comparable information feasible, which can be used for generating proprietary forecasts ahead of time. This early information -leaked or self-calculated- does not need to be precise in order to a have a large price impact. Under Bayesian learning, even if the information available before the ocial release is noisy, it can have a large price impact because of its timing. For a Bayesian learner, early availability makes up for less precision and a potentially smaller surprise. Thus, the incentives for privately collecting information and for leakage are high.

The main policy implications of this paper are twofold. First, the total impact of macroeconomic news is larger than measured in most event studies, which ignore the pre-release price drift.Therefore, the total impact of macroeconomic news on fi nancial markets is larger, and fi nancial markets are linked more tightly to the real economy than usually found. Second,information of many macroeconomic announcements is known by some market participants in advance. To ensure fairness in fi nancial markets, strict release procedures need to be implemented for all market-moving announcements including announcements originating in the private sector.

Translation: the entire market is rigged.

For those who have been accused for years of being insane in claiming precisely what the ECB just “confirmed”, you can read the full paper here.

Thai academic Thitinana Pongsudhirak of Chulalongkorn University in a Bangkok Post op-ed titled, “Thailand lags as Myanmar gains ground,” attempts to convince readers that Myanmar is an example for Southeast Asia to follow, while Thailand is in reverse.

Thitinan’s analysis is based on the most superficial metrics one can observe. Myanmar had “elections,” so therefore Thitinan concludes functioning and fair “democracy” must exist. The US and Europe hailed the ascension of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to power, therefore it must be “good.” And Myanmar’s military leadership made concessions to allow all of this to take place, therefore “so should Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia.”

Thitinan condemns Thailand for what he calls, “fits and starts from military-authoritarianism to popular rule only to revert to dictatorship, enabled by two military coups in 2006 and 2014.”

He fails to mention the “popular rule” removed from power by “two military coups” was led by Thaksin Shinawatra, a man who literally mass murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people in 2003, another 85 protesters in a single day in 2004, and carried out a systematic campaign of murder, assassinations, kidnappings, and physical and legal intimidation to silence his critics and political opponents all while illegally and very openly consolidating his power.

In the wake of the 2006 coup, twice Shinawatra brought mobs to Bangkok, and in 2010 those mobs included 300 heavily armed terrorists who tipped off street battles that killed nearly 100 protesters, by-standers, soldiers, and police. That was before Shinawatra’s political subordinates openly called for nationwide arson upon protest stages before dutifully and destructively carrying it out.

Thitinan, like many pro-Shinawatra lobbyists impersonating academics, intentionally leaves all of this out, as well as any feasible alternative that could have been used to remove a “popular ruler” from power who was openly trampling both the rule of law, and the lives and livelihoods of the people of Thailand

Thitinan and Impersonators Like Him Represents the West, Not Asia 

Thitinan then touches back on Myanmar, citing Western condemnation and sanctions as one of several causes for Myanmar’s failure to keep up with its Southeast Asian neighbors. He incorrectly cites however, “the force and logic of basic rights and freedoms” as why the military-led government there finally gave in to Suu Kyi’s opposition party.In reality, Suu Kyi’s political party was inhibited by Myanmar’s military-led government – true – but what propelled it was millions upon millions of dollars a year and decades of support from the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office – not “the force of basic rights and freedom.”

 Photo Caption:  The people responsible for doing this to Thailand, never get to run the country again. Period. Not only is Thitinan’s omission of these various episodes of mass murder and mayhem dishonest, it is dishonest p precisely in the same manner known-Shinawatra lobbyists are leading many to suspect this so-called “academic” is himself just another lobbyist. 

This is a technical reality a real academic should not only be aware of, but should explain to readers to foster greater understanding of politics and geopolitics. Thitinan does not.Suu Kyi’s political party itself is dominated by racist, violent, even genocidal forces who have likewise, and for years denied the rights and freedoms of Myanmar’s Rohingya population and all others who oppose Suu Kyi. It is no different than the military-led government it is replacing, except for the fact that the military sustained itself upon the resources of Myanmar which it controls through state enterprises, while Suu Kyi’s political party sustains itself on foreign cash and backing.

Image caption: The people responsible for doing this to Thailand, never get to run the country again. Period. Not only is Thitinan’s omission of these various episodes of mass murder and mayhem dishonest, it is dishonest p precisely in the same manner known-Shinawatra lobbyists are leading many to suspect this so-called “academic” is himself just another lobbyist. 

With Suu Kyi now in power, pledging to “rule above” the elected president she is every bit a dictator as the retreating military-led government was accused of being. Activists and leaders among those opposing her are being rounded up and taking the place in prison of Suu Kyi’s followers she has released from jail cells.Thitinan never mentions any of this – facts reported on even by the Western media he so faithfully follows and repeats. The Bangkok Post, which regularly hosts Thitinan’s op-eds, for example, published a headline titled, “Suu Kyi pledges to ‘rule above’ leader.” Nowhere is Thitinan’s op-ed condemning this very undemocratic proclamation.Thitinan acknowledges some of Shinawatra’s corruption and abuse of power, but appears to believe criminal conduct should be sorted out at the polls, not in courtrooms – courtrooms Shinawatra and his political party have openly declared they will not recognize the authority of – making what Thitinan calls “popular rule” in fiction, even more dictatorial and unchecked in reality. It is yet another example of the selective promotion of “democracy” by the West where the only true deciding factor is whether or not the West wants a particular political force to take power or not.

His concluding “advice” as an “academic” is for Thailand and the rest of Asia to emulate the “compromise” Myanmar’s military-led government made with Suu Kyi’s political party. In reality, it was not a compromise – it was coercion and capitulation enabled by tremendous influence funneled into Myanmar through Suu Kyi’s political front by Myanmar’s former colonial rulers and their partners across the Atlantic in Washington. Caving in to foreign coercion and dominion by compromising with the milieu of foreign-backed terrorists and traitors arrayed against them is not sound advice an academic should be giving Southeast Asia’s people and policymakers.

Thitinan categorically failed to thoroughly analyze and qualify his conclusions with the actual dynamics driving both Thailand and Myanmar’s political crises. By doing so, he finds himself merely repeating Western-generated propaganda, not engaging in sound analysis. Calling him an “academic” undermines real academia, and the Bangkok Post’s constant allowance of column space in their paper to him without any semblance of counterbalance undermines journalism.

It’s Not About “Democracy,” It’s About Neo-Colonialism & Containing China 

Myanmar and Thailand are indeed linked – not through the forces of “basic rights and freedoms” as Thitinan claims, but through the prevailing influence of neo-colonialism wielded by Wall Street, Washington, London, and Brussels, four centers of power disproportionately holding immense global wealth and influence, and seeking to further expand both still – including into Southeast Asia and for the purpose of encircling and containing the rise of China.

Thitinan not only fails to mention US and European influence within Myanmar’s political process – saying nothing of his failure to mention huge Western lobbying efforts arrayed behind Thaksin Shinawatra – he also fails to mention China’s place among this shifting political landscape.He fails to mention the influence China had in Myanmar before this most recent transition and how that influence has been rolled back in favor of Western corporations. He has also failed to mention China’s relationship with Thailand and how Bangkok has shifted away from Western influence by balancing it with a closer relationship to Beijing. Moscow, and others.Thitinan has failed categorically to analyze quantifiable dynamics driving domestic political crises within Southeast Asian states, has failed to examine them in a broader geopolitical context, and has failed categorically to place any of this in a relevant historical context.

Image caption: Thailand was the only Southeast Asian state to avoid colonization. It did indeed make concessions to do so, but more importantly, maintained a balancing act between the influence of opposing hegemons. 

The balancing act Myanmar has failed at, allowing itself to be overwhelmed by proxies controlled directly by the West is not an example for all of Southeast Asia to follow. Conversely, Thailand’s balancing act – slowly removing Shinawatra from power over the course of 2 coups and ongoing reforms, as well as its attempts to balance rather than replace US influence with closer ties to China and others – is a historical balancing act that Thailand has performed that has saved it from the colonialism its neighbors suffered under for centuries.

2http://journal-neo.org/2016/05/02/southeast-asia-must-not-compromise-with-terrorists-and-traitors/

The Unspoken Truth is that America is Supporting Al Qaeda: Heavy Propaganda Rages in the Battle for Aleppo. The Terrorists are Portrayed as “Freedom Fighters”

By Prof. Tim Anderson, May 01 2016

Presentation to the International Conference on Nonviolence and Just Peace – Rome, April 11-13 2016

I come from Northern Ireland and lived throughout the ‘troubles’ in the city of Belfast, in an area deeply immersed in a violent ethnic/political conflict for over 30 years.  The ‘troubles’ started in l969 and in the ensuing thirty years over 3,500 people were killed and thousands injured. 

In 1969, the UK government at the request of nationalist politicians sent in British troops to protect the Catholic population.  The British government also brought in emergency legislation removing many basic civil liberties of the population, carrying out such draconian measures as internment without trial, torture, etc. However, these measures only served to increase the anger in the nationalist community, and were counter-productive in that many young people joined the ‘armed’ groups for many reasons, but often in reaction to how they were humiliated by British troops, when their dignity was ignored and basic human and civil rights were removed.

Living as we did between the violence of illegal paramilitary groups and State repression, many people in the civil community found themselves having to make a choice between violence and nonviolence. One young man, Danny, told me he was in the Irish Republic Army and joined the ‘armed struggle’ because it was a ‘Just War’ struggle, and the Catholic Church he said, “blesses Just Wars”.   This conversation with a teenager arguing for the ‘Just War’ theory had a profound effect on me.

I realized that though I came from a Catholic background, living in a Catholic community,   I had never read the ‘Just War’ theology and had not been taught Jesus’s Nonviolence, much less a clear moral calling to reject violence, and follow the Sermon on the Mount.   Living in the midst of State violence I was forced to ask myself, ‘Can I ever use violence in face of State violence and injustice, is there such a thing as just war, just violence?’  I then read the Just War theory, and decided I agreed with the late American theologian Fr. John L. McKenzie ‘the just war theology is a phony piece of morality’.

Finally, I went to the cross and there I found my answer.  ‘Love your enemy, do not kill.’ And came into my own belief that nonkilling, nonviolence is the way of Jesus, the way of the Cross, and that Jesus’ suffering on the cross calling us to love our enemies is the greatest symbol of nonviolent love in action. I also came to know that my life and every human life are sacred; we have no right to kill each other in armed struggles and wars but must seek alternatives to violence.  It was then that I made the conscious choice to be an active pacifist, and not to kill or support nuclear weapons, militarism and war.   I also made the choice to commit myself to finding nonviolent solutions to the injustices in society, which others took up ‘arms’ to try to change.

Having lived in Northern Ireland, when we witnessed that militarism and paramilitarism did not solve our problems, only deepened the hatred and division. It was only when we began to enter into dialogue and worked on peace, forgiveness and reconciliation that change began to happen in our country.  Peace came to Northern Ireland when people rejected the bomb, the bullet and all the techniques of violence, and came to believe that peace is possible, peace is a human right for all.

I would like to see Pope Francis and the Catholic Church call for the total abolition of militarism (an aberration/dysfunction in human history.)  Also For Pope Francis and the Church to renounce  war and develop a ‘Theology of Nonkilling and Nonviolence’ rejecting  the ‘Just War’ theology, which continues to lead people to an acceptance of militarism and war as alleged legitimate ways of solving conflict.

Since World War II, over 20 million people have died in wars, and hundreds of wars have been fought often in the name of God and country.  Christians have, and continue to participate, in the killing of humans and the destructions of their countries and environment. We are all aware that since 9/11, many countries have been destroyed in wars and proxy wars by allegedly Christian (Western) countries and their armies made up of many Christian men and women. This is truly shameful, and for which we should say ‘sorry’, and acknowledge it is not in the Spirit of Jesus who was so compassionate and loving to all.

I believe we as Christians need to deepen our spirituality of nonviolence and the Church can help by teaching nonviolence as a theology and way of life in the seminaries, in schools, in Church, and at every level of society, encouraging Christians to live the Sermon on the Mount.  In an age of increasing violence and war, how can we Christians choose Jesus’ nonviolence if the Church does not teach nonviolence and offer it as an alternative to violence, militarism and war?

However, rejecting violence as a means of bringing about change or as a means of defence, present us an enormous challenge.  How do we create human security?   We, as the human family, have spent so much of our intellect and our resources on building arms, nuclear weapons and war machinery. We have spent little time on building the architecture of peace and instruments of conflict resolution.  The Churches and all faith traditions can provide great spiritual leadership in encouraging people to change their mindsets, deepen their spirituality, and through imagination and creativity move to a new consciousness of nonviolence and peace building for the sake of humanity’s survival and fulfilment committing to a vision of peace and disarmament.

As we continue to work for peaceful interaction, we need a shared constructive goal of a peaceful demilitarized world for the human family.  Wars start from dysfunctional conditions and relationships and to solve this we need equality through peaceful interaction.  We can build relational equality and for the Catholic Church this will mean justice and equality for women in the Church and rejecting patriarchy, militarism and war.

With fresh thinking, and a new vision, the Church can fulfil its prophetic spiritual leadership role so needed by our human family seeking a world without militarism and war, based on Fraternity amongst people and nations, No Armies, Peace and Love.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available fromwww.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See:www.peacepeople.com.

The press refuses to state the obvious: two US Presidential candidates who couldn’t be more different are on the same page when it comes to Globalist trade treaties.

Trump and Bernie—the gunslinger fast–talking cowboy and the programmatic socialist.

If the press did connect the dots, it would be admitting that millions of Americans from both candidates’ camps recognize the danger of these treaties—and pumping up that revelation would bring a major threat to the Globalist water-boy in the White House.

He is Barack Obama. When a preliminary vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) stalled in Congress last year, Obama and his team jumped on the phones and stayed there night and day trying to drum up support. And now, when the UK is considering an exit from the European Union, thus throwing a large monkey wrench in the US-EU Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Obama flies to London, where, shockingly, he lowers the boom on the British government and the public, warning that an independent UK would have to stand at the back of the line when it comes to formulating a separate trade pact with the US.

Obama, as you might remember, was tutored on foreign policy, after his election in 2008, by Zbiggie Brzezinski, the intellectual water-boy for David Rockefeller, the king of Globalism, Planet Earth.

Brzezinski once wrote (1969):

“The nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

These Globalist trade deals are, indeed, exercises in eliminating nations and turning over the economy of the world to mega-corporations.

For example, as The Independent reported (10/16/15), the TTIP embodies Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), whereby corporations can sue governments when their profits are endangered.

For instance, Monsanto could sue the EU for refusing to accept the import of GMO food crops, thereby enabling a Monsanto end-run around Europe’s tight restrictions on GMOs.

The Independent:

“There are around 500 similar [ISDS] cases of businesses versus nations going on around the world at the moment and they are all taking place before ‘arbitration tribunals’ made up of corporate lawyers appointed on an ad hoc basis, which according to War on Want’s John Hilary, are ‘little more than kangaroo courts’ with ‘a vested interest in ruling in favour of business.’”

A nation has its own court system? How quaint. How outmoded. Let corporations take over.

Here are other agreements embedded in the TTIP Treaty—which by the way, is a super-secret contract very few people are permitted to read as negotiations now wrap up. The Independent cites several leaked points:

Under the TTIP, the provincial European notion of testing chemicals for safety before unleashing them on the population would be bulldozed by the superior American method: drench the people, ignore the consequences, and invent a consensus that the chemicals (e.g., pesticides) are harmless. Good luck with the consequences, Europe.

There would far less monitoring of the clinical trials of new medical drugs. Translation: pharmaceutical companies would be able to conceal trials that reveal devastating harm. More chemical assault against the populations of both Europe and the US.

Food safety and environmental standards would be compromised on both sides of the Atlantic.

“248 pages of leaked Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiating texts” show that the American negotiating position, as Greenpeace put the matter, allows “No place for climate protection in TTIP,” and, though “We have known that the EU position was bad, now we see the US position is even worse.”

Jorgo Riss, Director of Greenpeace EU, said,

“The effects of TTIP would be initially subtle but ultimately devastating. It would lead to European laws being judged … disregarding environmental protection and public health concerns.”

A 70-year-old EU rule, which allows nations to restrict trade in order “to protect human, animal and plant life or health,” or for “the conservation of exhaustible natural resources,” would end, if U.S. President Barack Obama gets what he wants.

Furthermore, the “Precautionary principle is forgotten”: it’s currently enshrined in the EU Treaty, but Obama wants it gone; it is stated in the EU Treaty as allowing

“rapid response in the face of a possible danger to human, animal or plant health, or to protect the environment. In particular, where scientific data do not permit a complete evaluation of the risk, recourse to this principle may, for example, be used to stop distribution or order withdrawal from the market of products likely to be hazardous.”

Obama wants there to be no ability for EU nations to withdraw from the market “products likely to be hazardous.” All products would be assumed safe, unless proven not to be.

Other TTIP developments in recent days:

Britain’s Independent headlined on April 29th, “TTIP could cause an NHS sell-off and UK Parliament would be powerless to stop it, says leading union”,  and reported that a labor union, “Unite,” was determined to block TTIP from going into effect in the UK:

“Gail Cartmail, Unite assistant general secretary, said that it was ‘a scandal’ that MPs [Members of Parliament] may not have the democratic power to stop TTIP, which she said ‘threatens the irreversible sell-off of our NHS [National Health Service]’.”

Privatization of government assets is favorably viewed by Obama.

Tamara Hervey, a professor of EU law at the University of Sheffield, told the Independent,

“The UK government could include a reservation in the agreement to say that it does not include the NHS. As far as I understand, that isn’t on the table, even though several other EU countries have already put such reservations in the negotiating text.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron, like Obama, is strongly in favor of privatization. 

The Independent said,”Obama used a recent visit to the EU to push for the completion of TTIP, promising it would remove ‘regulatory and
bureaucratic irritants and blockages to trade’.” Now, we know that in his mind the EU’s existing regulations concerning environmental protection and product safety belong in that category: “bureaucratic irritants and blockages to trade.”

Britain’s Guardian banners on May 1st, “Leaked TTIP Documents Cast Doubt on EU-US Trade Deal”, and Arthur Nelson in Brussels, reports that, “Because of a European ban on animal testing, ‘the EU and US approaches remain irreconcilable and EU market access problems will therefore remain’,” which is yet further indication of Obama’s free-market convictions: he doesn’t accept any ban on animal-testing of products. Presumably, he wants to allow corporations to determine what the cheapest way to determine a product’s safety or dangerousness is, regardless of whether the animal model that’s used tells anything reliable about the product’s safety on humans. If one nation’s testing procedure is less reliable than another’s, then Obama wants the two to compete as equals, so that the incentive will exist for all corporations to use the cheapest method, regardless of the method’s reliability, or even humaneness. Obama didn’t run for President as a libertarian, but he turns out to be remarkably libertarian in his policies. He’s pushing for a vigorous race to the bottom, in all sorts of regulations.

Polls show Obama to have extremely high approval-ratings in European countries, such as 62% in Germany (far higher than any German national politician). Polls also show TTIP to be extremely unpopular there. The contradiction apparently isn’t noticed by respondents — approval of a politician has no clear correlation with the politician’s policies. Obama is black, and he speaks well; and, perhaps that’s enough. Perhaps Europeans don’t really care very much about such things as global warming, product-safety, or humaneness toward animals. If that’s true, then EU Parliamentarians can likewise ignore such matters and simply vote to approve TTIP, notwithstanding the merely nominal opposition to it amongst the electorate. The percentage of voters who really care about such issues might actually be inconsequential. If that’s the situation, then corruption makes sense, because the money that a politician thereby obtains for his/her campaign will far outbalance the potential loss of voters’ support that results from violating their interests — only words will matter, a politician’s actual record won’t, in terms of the given politician’s support by voters. If that’s true, then the results of democracy might be no better than the results of dictatorship; there might be no real difference.

Certainly, the disabling of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change would have enormous impact; but, if a politician’s rhetoric has a bigger effect on his favorability-rating than his policies do, Obama might be highly regarded even when the planet is burning up as a consequence of his policies.

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

What does a government do when it’s caught in a flagrant lie? If you are the U.S. government, you simply tell another lie — and laugh at anyone who tries to call out your hypocrisy. 

Setting aside his oft-parroted no-boots-on-the-ground imperative, President Obama announced Monday the U.S. would be quintupling the number of special forces troops deployed to Syria to fight Daesh (the so-called Islamic State). In fact, the announcement was made later on the same day Obama claimed to have “ruled out” the deployment of ground troops.

Though this reneging on stated foreign policy has become somewhat par for the course, State Department spokesman John Kirby not only missed the hypocritical move, he flatly and bafflingly denied the Obama administration’s repeated claim there would be “no boots on the ground.”

In fact, instead of taking responsibility for initiating military maneuvers the public might find displeasing, the Obama administration has developed an apparent affinity for nitpicking semantics.

In a press conference, this farcical denial of reality reached stupefying proportions when Kirby was asked by an Associated Press reporter about this stark reversal of policy. All emphasis has been added to highlight the absurdities.

“I’m just curious if this is, like, part of some kind of devious grand strategy to say one thing and then do the complete opposite of it,” the reporter queried.

“I just — I don’t see it that way,” Kirby responded. “There was never this ‘no boots on the ground.’ I don’t know where this keeps coming from.”

Pressing the point, the reporter expounded, “For months and months and months, the mantra — from the President and … everyone else in the Administration — has been ‘no boots on the ground,’ and now —”

“That is not true,” Kirby interrupted.

“What?!” the reporter exclaimed — apparently as baffled as the rest of the press, heard murmuring in similar disbelief around the room.

“It’s just not true,” Kirby persisted, appearing almost smug, leaning on the podium. “It’s just not true.”

Of course, it is true — and Kirby’s semantic gymnastics to justify such a brazen lie added an Orwellian twist to the already Kafkaesque press conference. And that truth is written in black and white — even on the White House website, at least as far back as August 2013, when Obama stated:

“In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground; that would involve a long-term campaign.”

On August 31, 2013, Obama asserted from the Rose Garden:

“After careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets … We would not put boots on the ground.”

Then, on September 10, 2013 — once again, as found in print on the White House site — he reiterated:

“First, many of you have asked, won’t this put us on a slippery slope to another war?

My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.”

On September 3, 2013, he again said:

“[The U.S. involvement in Syria] does not involve boots on the ground.”

The massive leak of secret TTIP negotiating papers due out tomorrow (2 May) will reveal the true extent of the danger posed by the controversial EU-US deal, and early signs are that it will be even worse than already suspected. For the first time, we will be able to see in black and white exactly what the US negotiators are demanding of the EU, and what the European Commission is prepared to sacrifice in order to seal the deal. Here is a sneak preview of just three sections made available this evening – the texts in italics are from the leaked papers:

1. Farewell, European farmers

Any export gains for EU car manufacturers will come at a massive cost to European agriculture, with the European Commission sacrificing the small-scale farmers of Europe in order to force open US markets for major European corporations. Here is the deal:

“The EU proposed a possible package on mechanical devices in Chapter 84 and electrical appliances in Chapter 85 for which both parties share offensive interests. While the US showed an interest, it hastened to point out that it would need to consult with its industry regarding some of the products and that progress on motor vehicle-related parts would only be possible if the EU showed progress in the discussion on agricultural tariffs.”

2. Approval of GM food

TTIP uses the euphemism of ‘modern agricultural technology’ to refer to genetically modified (GM) food, and the US is demanding that all producers of GM food have automatic access to the regulatory procedures of the EU. Not only this, but the European Commission will be required to provide GM producers with full details of what they need to do to get their products approved:

“Where a Party requires a product of modern agricultural technology to be approved or authorized prior to its importation, use or sale in its territory, the Party shall allow any person to submit an application for approval at any time.

Where a Party requires a product of modern agricultural technology to be approved or authorized prior to its importation or sale in its territory, each Party shall make publicly available:

(a) a description of the processes it applies to accept, consider, and decide applications for approval or authorization;

(b) the competent authorities responsible for receiving and deciding applications for approval or authorization.”

3. Business chill on future regulation

One of the key aims of TTIP is to prevent the introduction of any new social, public health or environmental regulations that might represent a burden on business. The leaked documents confirm that TTIP threatens the ‘precautionary principle’ that stands at the centre of all EU regulation. More than this, the US is now demanding that corporations receive prior warning of any new rules or standards to be introduced, and the EU will have to justify its decision to introduce any new rules in future:

“When developing a regulation, a regulatory authority of a Party shall evaluate any information provided in comments by the other Party or a person of the other Party regarding the potential trade effects of the regulation that it receives during the comment period and… provide its views on substantive issues raised.”

In addition to the above three issues, the leaked documents show that the USA has no interest in the EU’s much vaunted ‘investment court system’ – a major blow to the European Commission, which will be unable to ratify TTIP without this element.

John Hilary, Executive Director of War on Want, commented:

“The TTIP negotiations will never survive this leak. The only way that the European Commission has managed to keep the negotiations going so far is through complete secrecy as to the actual details of the deal under negotiation. Now we can see the details for ourselves, and they are truly shocking. This is surely the beginning of the end for this much hated deal.”

Greenpeace Netherlands has released secret TTIP negotiation documents. We have done so to provide much needed transparency and trigger an informed debate on the treaty.

This treaty is threatening to have far reaching implications for the environment and the lives of more than 800 million citizens in the EU and US. Whether you care about environmental issues, animal welfare, labour rights or internet privacy, you should be concerned about what is in these leaked documents. They underline the strong objections civil society and millions of people around the world have voiced:

TTIP is about a huge transfer of power from people to big business.You can download all the documents below, as a whole and per chapter. 

On April 19, the US imposed sanctions on Khalifa al-Ghweil, the leader of a self-declared government in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. On April 1, the similar sanctions was imposed by the EU. Western officials believe that this is an important effort to force Libya’s warring factions to accept the authority of a unity government backed by the United Nations. Ghweil was the only named figure added to the Treasury sanctions list, but Obama’s executive order allows US officials to target all opponents of the peace plan.

Prime Minister of the UN-backed government, Fayez Serraj, landed in Tripoli by boat on March 30 in a bid to set up his new administration. But he has been prevented from occupying critical ministries in the capital because of opposition from Mr. Ghweil, whose administration is backed by a number of Islamist militias and groups from the nearby city of Misurata. Earlier in January, the Ministry of Defense, located in Tripoly and headed by al-Ghweil, called all units to ingore  Serraj’s orders. Then, the forces loyal to Misurata arrested commanders assigned by Serraj and declared a mobilization.

These developments pushed the Western block to put pressure on  al-Ghweil and make attempts to undermine one of the Islamic forces that oppose the unity government.

Special Operations forces units from the United States, Britain and France have been sighted in various parts of Libya in recent months. They are ostensibly there to prepare for a possible military drive against the Islamic State. However, if the situation escalates, the same forces will likely be used to support the so-called “unity government”. This could help to strenthen the Serraj-led government in Tripoly. But even beyond Tripoli, the unity government faces several stiff hurdles in other parts of Libya, where it has almost no support. The country’s internationally recognized parliament, based in the eastern town of Tobruk, failed to take a vote that was meant to recognize the unity government, amid scenes of tumultuous discord among lawmakers. Thus, now, the Western attempts to set a new government in Libya could further divide the war-torn country, easily.

Refusal comes after US defence chief Ash Carter visited the USS Stennis in South China Sea

USS John C. Stennis

Beijing denied a US aircraft carrier permission to make a port call in Hong Kong, a US consulate official says, a rejection that comes amid escalating tensions in the South China Sea.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry told the US on Thursday night the visit by the USS John C. Stennis would not be allowed, said the official, who requested anonymity.

US defence chief Ash Carter visited the Stennis earlier this month.
[The ministry] needs to approve every ship coming into Hong Kong

US CONSULATE OFFICIAL

“[The ministry] needs to approve every ship coming into Hong Kong. [They] said ‘no’ to the carrier,” the official said, adding the reason for the denial was not clear.

In a written reply to the South China Morning Post’s inquiry, the ministry said on Friday night that port calls made by US warships and military aircraft were examined on a “case by case basis in accordance with sovereignty principles and specific circumstances”.

Carter flew to the nuclear-powered carrier for a two-hour visit on April 15, as it sailed about 100km west of the Philippine island of Luzon. Experts said the move likely irritated Beijing as Carter was accompanied by his Philippine counterpart, Voltaire Gazmin.

China to build up atoll in contested South China Sea, source says

Last week, the US Pacific Command revealed they had sent six powerful A-10 Thunderbolt aircrafts near the Scarborough Shoal, which China occupies but Manila also claims.

The Chinese Defence Ministry had expressed concern over the flight.

It’s not the first time China has turned down port calls by US warships. During the Thanksgiving holidays in 2007, Beijing rejected the USS Kitty Hawk’s visit to Hong Kong after Washington announced an advanced missile deal with Taiwan and US President George W. Bush met the Dalai Lama.

However, the Kitty Hawk was allowed to dock in the city five month later in April 2008, as Sino-US military relations returned to normal.

The Stennis carrier strike group is currently operating in the South China Sea, where China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam and other Asian countries.

The consulate said it had originally arranged public tours aboard the Stennis for next Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Cancellation notices had been sent out to invitees, the consulate official said.

Meanwhile, the USS Blue Ridge, the Japan-based flagship of the US Seventh Fleet, is in Hong Kong, where it is a regular visitor.

When the Taliban overran Kunduz last September after a monthlong siege, the northern Afghan city became the first to fall to the insurgency since the war began in 2001. A week earlier, many Kunduz residents had left town to observe Eid al-Adha, the sacrificial feast honoring Abraham’s act of submission to God. The heavy fighting sent the remaining Kunduzis fleeing as dead bodies littered the streets.

On Friday, October 2, the city lay quiet, with just one building lit up against the dark sky. Most other international organizations had evacuated when the fighting began, but the Kunduz Trauma Center run by Médecins Sans Frontières remained open throughout the battle for the city. It was one of the few buildings with a generator. Throughout the week, violence seemed to lap against the walls of the hospital without ever engulfing it. All around the 35,620-square-meter compound, the site of an old cotton factory, fighting ebbed and flowed. Doctors and nurses marked the intensity of battle by the freshly wounded who arrived at the gate. According to MSF, the hospital treated 376 emergency patients between September 28, when the city fell, and October 2.

The last week had seen much bloodshed, but Friday was uncharacteristically calm: no fighting nearby, no gunshots, no explosions. “I remember seeing a child flying a kite,” recalled Dr. Kathleen Thomas, “and thought to myself, today is a calm day.” That evening, while more than 100 MSF employees and caretakers slept in a basement below the hospital, several staff members remained awake, preparing for what the night might bring. There were 105 patients in the hospital, including three or four Afghan government soldiers and about 20 Taliban fighters, two of whom appeared to be of high rank. Hospital staff stepped outside to take in the bracing autumn air, something they’d lately refrained from doing for fear of stray bullets. The night sky was open and clear.

Some 7,000 feet above, an AC-130 gunship was preparing to fire. At 2:08 a.m., on October 3, a missile began its descent, gliding through a cloudless sky.

A young patient waits to be X-rayed with her father at the Kunduz Trauma Center run by Médecins Sans Frontières, May 20, 2015.

About two hours earlier, nurse Mohammad Poya lay down on the concrete floor of the hospital’s administrative office. Poya had a few hours for sleep, but instead dead bodies were on his mind. In the morning he had visited the morgue to find its refrigerators full. Earlier in the week, Poya had asked the orderlies to pack the dead in as tight as possible. When there was no more space, he asked the cleaners to scrub the front porch of the morgue so that the excess corpses could be stacked there. What Poya hated most was carelessness. Many died undignified deaths in Afghanistan; the least the hospital could do was to show the dead the respect that had eluded them in life.

Poya was especially worried about the fighting that had ensnarled the streets around the compound. With all major roads blocked, the hospital was running low on supplies. Corridors overflowed with the wounded, and a decision was made to triage patients earlier than usual to avoid wasting resources on those least likely to survive. The last thought Poya remembers having before finally falling asleep was that they would have to start turning away patients.

Guilhem Molinie during a press conference at the MSF office in Kabul on Oct. 8, 2015.

Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images

Earlier that Friday, at 1 p.m., Guilhem Molinie, the head of MSF in Afghanistan, sat at his desk in Kabul to write an email to a contact in the U.S. 3rd Special Forces Group, which had been deployed to Kunduz after the fall of the city. “Questions in case things go bad,” the subject line read. It wasn’t the first time that week he had taken precautions. On Monday, when a Taliban victory seemed certain, Molinie called an insurgent contact to reaffirm the hospital’s neutral position. He did the same with the other side, sending a letter with GPS coordinates of the hospital to the Afghan National Security Council, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Health, the U.S. Embassy, USAID, and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the agency’s body tasked with responding to complex emergencies. The U.N. forwarded Molinie’s email to Col. Paul Sarat, the deputy commander of NATO’s mission in the north, as well as to Maj. Gen. Abdul Hamid, who headed the 209th Corps of the Afghan National Army, which is responsible for the country’s northern nine provinces. Molinie tried to reach out to Freedom’s Sentinel, the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan, but was not successful; he assumed he had done enough.

Andres Romero, MSF’s head liaison with the U.S. government, forwarded the coordinates to Carter Malkasian, an old Afghan hand and an adviser to top U.S. military officer Joseph Dunford of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Malkasian emailed Romero to inquire whether the hospital had been overrun by the Taliban. Romero told him no, but this information appeared not to have traveled back to the special operations forces on the ground, since on Friday, according to theAssociated Press, a senior officer with the 3rd Special Forces Group wrote in his daily report that the hospital was under Taliban control and that he planned to clear the grounds in the coming days.

Among the units accompanying the 3rd Special Forces Group were Afghan commandos and the 6th Special Operations Kandak, reporting to the Ministry of Defense; 222 and 333 national mission units, reporting to the Ministry of Interior; and a police special unit already based out of Kunduz. The men had not worked together before, and they were now in charge of leading the battle to take back Kunduz city. “They just got thrown up there, into an environment they didn’t know much about,” said a security analyst based in northern Afghanistan, who was formerly an adviser to the U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan. The security analyst asked not to be identified by name, as did many of the dozens of individuals who were interviewed for this article in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Some were not authorized to speak on the record; others, including residents of Kunduz and Afghan security personnel, feared retaliation for doing so.

The picture that emerges from these firsthand accounts, as well as from interviews with several high-ranking Afghan officials, is one of remarkable chaos and uncertainty, even by the standards of war. Those on the ground said it was not clear who was in charge, and those in charge seemed not to have had a clear understanding of what was happening on the ground at any given point before, during, and after the fall of the city.

Afghan special forces prepare to launch an operation to retake the city of Kunduz from Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, Sept. 29, 2015.

Photo: Chine Nouvelle/Sipa/Newscom

At 10 p.m., Molinie returned to his office to speak with Heman Nagarathnam, who was in charge of the hospital in Kunduz. It was a quiet night and Nagarathnam stepped out for a cigarette to take the call. The nightly check-ins had allowed Molinie to keep updated on the goings-on around the hospital. Molinie knew, for instance, that on Tuesday a local Taliban representative visited Nagarathnam to give his reassurance. He knew that the hospital lay in a Taliban-controlled area, but that Afghan soldiers were still crossing the front line to bring in patients. By Wednesday, however, worries of a Taliban takeover had pushed soldiers to the provincial hospital, which was in an area controlled by government forces.

At one point that week, government forces had regained the city’s central square, before losing it again to the Taliban. On Friday night, Nagarathnam relayed his concerns that the hospital was now located in an area vulnerable to counterattack. They discussed the 2,000 sandbags that he had ordered to defend the hospital against stray bullets. A little after 1:30 a.m., he went to bed.

For some time, Molinie told me, something had been bothering him. “It was never clear who was in charge of what,” he said, in reference to the metastasizing 15-year-old conflict. The current war in Afghanistan was being run by two distinct commands: NATO’s Operation Resolute Support (RS) and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan’s Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. Resolute Support was a non-combat mission with a limited mandate to train, advise, and assist Afghan security forces. Freedom’s Sentinel, successor to Operation Enduring Freedom, was the latest version of America’s so-called war on terror. It was meant to hunt down al Qaeda remnants, but without the rigor of public scrutiny, Freedom’s Sentinel seemed to have spiraled beyond its already vague mandate.

President Barack Obama at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, Dec. 15, 2014.

Photo: Mark Makela/Getty Images

Despite President Barack Obama’s 2014 announcement that America’s combat mission in Afghanistan would end in 2015, Molinie had noticed that many military operations seemed to be outside the bounds of both Resolute Support and Freedom’s Sentinel. It was never clear where one mission ended and another began. Long before January 2016, when President Obama expanded the counterterrorism mission of Freedom’s Sentinel to include the fight against the Islamic State, for instance, there were already airstrikes targeting ISIS in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

When I asked Col. Michael Lawhorn, spokesperson for both NATO and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, to explain the differing missions of the two commands, he said: “Think of it as a big box marked RS and inside that you have a small box marked Freedom’s Sentinel but inside that box you have two smaller boxes marked Resolute Support and another one marked counterterrorism.” When I inquired how we might tell all these different boxes apart, Lawhorn conceded, “It’s not always clear under what authority an action is taken.” The same was true, he said, of what happened in Kunduz.

Back at the hospital, Poya had finally fallen asleep when he was suddenly awakened by a terrible sound. Outside his window, the intensive care unit was on fire. He looked up and saw that a plane — called a boongana by locals because of the dull hum the plane emits — was orbiting the hospital. How to describe the barrage that followed? Poya experienced the bombing as an interminable terror, a series of deafening noises interrupted by terrifying silence. Death felt certain, so he called his father to describe where the family might find his remains. He saw a colleague, a 35-year-old pharmacist, shot dead while trying to escape the compound through its south gate.

Belly of an AC-130 gunship.

Photo: Wikipedia

An AC-130 is a plane built around a gun. Its pylon turns allow for the Gatling-style cannon to fire as many as 6,000 rounds per minute. It is the most lethal air weapons platform: It flies longer, carries more weapons, and is deadlier than any other aircraft. The same gunship was responsible for capturing Kunduz from the Taliban and al Qaeda in the early days of the U.S.-led NATO intervention in Afghanistan. Then, as now, up to 14 crew members on the plane would have been assisted by a joint terminal attack coordinator on the ground, who would have walked the crew through training the 105 mm howitzer on the target to aim, then fire.

At 2:09 a.m. Molinie woke up to a phone call. Nagarathnam was on the line telling him the hospital was on fire. Minutes later, another call informed him that the hospital was being attacked from the air. Molinie called his Special Forces contact at the J3 operations department who told him he didn’t know of any airstrikes in the area. Molinie then called the U.N., whose contacts at NATO said that RS was not aware of any operations either. Believing that it had to be an Afghan military operation, Molinie contacted the deputy interior minister and the operational commander with the Defense Ministry. Molinie charted the sequence of events in a logbook. The last item, at 2:53 a.m., reads, “Plane still around. Just bombed again.”

By the time the attack was over, the intensive care unit, the emergency room, and the operating theaters were burned to a husk. The corrugated tin roof had peeled off, and only the walls remained standing, pockmarked with cannon fire. The aircraft had fired 211 shells, killing 42 patients and staff who had trusted in the hospital’s neutral and protected status. Patients had burned in their beds. Six charred bodies awaited forensic investigation to determine their identity; they had been burned beyond recognition.

The AC-130 had destroyed the main building of the MSF hospital, but all other structures remained intact. The trajectory of the damage neatly matched the GPS coordinates that Molinie had sent around just three days earlier. It was evident that the Americans were involved, but in the early days, no one knew in what capacity or to what end.

Gen. John F. Campbell, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, stands beside a map of the city of
Kunduz as he addresses a press conference at Resolute Support headquarters in Kabul on Nov. 25, 2015.

Photo: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images

From the beginning, the U.S. military struggled to keep its story straight. Officials initially denied that U.S. forces had attacked the MSF hospital at all, saying that the building might have sustained collateral damage from an adjacent airstrike. Gen. John F. Campbell, the top American commander in Afghanistan, stated that U.S. forces were taking fire when the airstrike was called in. On October 4, Ash Carter, the secretary of defense, admitted that “there was American air action in that area” and that “there was definitely destruction in those structures and the hospital.” The narrative shifted the next day when Gen. Campbell said Afghan forces had come under fire and called in the airstrike.

MSF called for an independent investigation, denouncing the attack as a war crime. After a six-week investigation, Gen. Campbell held a briefing in Kabul, on the day before Thanksgiving, and presented what was now the official version of the events: The attack was the result of a cascading series of human errors and mechanical failures.

On September 30, 2015, he said, the Afghan forces and their U.S. advisers established themselves at the provincial chief of police compound. The Afghan forces planned a clearing operation and the U.S. forces agreed to have support on standby.

According to Campbell, the aircrew believed they were coming to the rescue of ground forces that were taking fire, a “troops in contact situation.” They rushed to take off, skipping the pre-mission briefing.

Gen. Campbell said that the military had not followed its own rules of engagement during the Kunduz airstrike.

Campbell said the crew was given a new mission after takeoff, an order to bomb a local office of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan government’s primary intelligence agency, that had been taken over by the Taliban. “During the flight,” he said, “the electronic systems onboard the aircraft malfunctioned, preventing the operation of an essential command and control capability and eliminating the ability of aircraft to transmit video, send and receive email, or send and receive electronic messages.” The crew entered GPS coordinates for the NDS facility, but the electronic system brought the plane to an empty field instead. From the empty field, they located the “closest, largest building” that matched the commander’s description. The internal NATO investigation found the aircrew did not observe hostile activity.

Gen. Campbell said that the military had not followed its own rules of engagement during the Kunduz airstrike. The U.S. commander who called in the strike did not have eyes on the target; he was several hundred meters away, in the visual range of neither the NDS nor the MSF hospital. Nor was the strike necessary for force protection.

In contrast to the U.S. military’s narrative, the Afghan government’s response has been more consistent. Immediately following the attack, Afghan authorities came out saying the strike was justified because the hospital was a Taliban stronghold.

Hanif Atmar, then Afghanistan’s interior minister, speaks during a press conference at the Ministry of Interior in Kabul on June 6, 2010.

Photo: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images

Maj. Abdul Kabir, an Afghan air liaison officer who helped coordinate airstrike requests during the fighting in Kunduz, told me that no one had briefed government forces on a mission specific no-strike list. A NATO official who worked on the joint Afghan-NATO investigation said that the previous rules of engagement did not include the no-strike list, but that the item had since been added. Kabir and others said they had noted no difference in the rules of engagement after the Kunduz strike.

Sediq Sediqi, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior, said that 10 to 15 terrorists were hiding in the hospital. National security adviser Hanif Atmar said the government would take full responsibility, as “we are without doubt, 100 percent convinced the place was occupied by Taliban,” according to meeting notes reviewed by the AP. Acting Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai also told AP that the hospital was used as shelter for insurgents.

MSF has repeatedly denied that armed Taliban fighters were present in the hospital, and no one has presented any credible evidence to support accusations to the contrary.

In his November briefing, Gen. Campbell said that the “individuals most closely associated with the incident have been suspended from their duty positions,” pending disciplinary measures. Yet the U.S. has steadfastly refused to countenance an independent investigation, which has led to suspicions of a cover-up. “Had the authorities said it is a terrible mistake from day one, then it would have been easier to believe that it was a mistake,” MSF’s Molinie told me. “But because in the beginning Afghan senior officials said the hospital was bombed because it was a Taliban base, it is difficult for us to swallow the 100 percent mistake scenario.”

Taliban fighters hug each other a day after they overran the strategic northern city of Kunduz, Sept. 29, 2015.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Gen. Campbell had just landed in Washington, D.C., when he heard the news from Kunduz. The fall of the city had apparently come as a surprise to everyone, including the Taliban. One exception was the governor of Kunduz, Omar Safi, who spent most of his short 10-month tenure sounding desperate alarm at the imminent fall of the city.

Safi told me he wrote 35 letters to the U.S. National Security Council, even breaching protocol and emailing Gen. John Campbell directly for air support. Campbell told Safi that the new mandate did not allow for close air support for Afghan forces. Even so, before departing for Washington, in an effort to decentralize command within forces, Campbell had deputized strike authority to a subordinate, a tactical level commander who would make decisions in the pitch of battle.

The city had been on the verge of collapse all through 2015, but had always managed to remain under government control. It nearly fell in April, when the Taliban began another bid for the city. Then came another scare in June, when the northeastern districts fell to the Taliban while the center held. By the fall, said the security analyst based in northern Afghanistan, “It was the third time everyone had seen that movie.”

“I don’t think anyone had any clue about what was going on on the ground,” said the security analyst, who monitored the fall of Kunduz closely. He remembers calling up the political adviser to Gen. Campbell to inform him that the city was about to fall. “I sent him a text saying the U.N. office had been overrun and that it was on fire. He wrote back, ‘We just checked and it’s only a couple of the outlying buildings that are on fire.’ If someone had said that about RS HQ, ‘No, it’s not the HQ. It’s just the PX that’s on fire,’ I don’t think it would have gone over so well.”

Don’t forget intelligence is about information and misinformation.

According to Brig. Gen. Ashraf Khan, Afghan air ops commander for the north, less than 24 hours after Kunduz fell, Gen. Campbell authorized the use of AC-130s by ground commanders.

In a telephone interview, Gen. Campbell said that he would not comment on rules of engagement, but said, “If somebody was under attack and they needed to use the AC-130, why would they have to wait until I landed to ask for permission to do that? You know what I’m saying? You always have the right to self-defense. I’m not talking Kunduz — I’m talking any time.”

If they have to call their boss, who have to call their boss, who have to call their boss, who have to call their boss, who have to call their boss, who has to call me who’s on an airplane, by that time, the guys on the ground are dead.

“There is always going to be somebody in charge,” Campbell said. “When you have changes in leadership, you lay out who has the authority to do what, in all cases.” He said that he had visited the site of a C-130 crash before he left Afghanistan, and then as soon as he landed in Washington, he found out about the Kunduz strike. “The initial reports said we had hit a hospital, and I know we don’t target hospitals so something had to go wrong.”

In an ordinary scenario, an Afghan force on the ground requests an airstrike through its chain of command at the Ministry of Defense, which in turn contacts NATO. A request requires an eight-line form including the grid location, threat level, and other details such as geographical or biographical information submitted via email, and takes two to three days for approval, according to flight coordinators. But in the heat of combat, strikes can be requested via an unencrypted mobile phone and may be approved in less than 20 minutes, according to an RS flight coordinator who spoke to The Intercept.

A former Afghan NDS official said that the initial raw report about insurgents being in the MSF hospital was corroborated with signals intelligence — phone or radio communications that were tracked back to the compound. These two streams of information, he said, along with eyewitness accounts, elevated the information into “finished intel,” indicating that the Taliban were inside the hospital. Yet according to a former Afghan government adviser, the aftermath of the hospital strike was marked by uncertainty. “Don’t forget intelligence is about information and misinformation.”

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani during a press conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Oct. 1, 2015.

Photo: Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

According to the former government adviser, in the days following the hospital strike, the Afghans were under immense pressure from the U.S. military to stay in line. President Ashraf Ghani, who issued a statement expressing his “deep sorrow,” was sympathetic to MSF’s call for an independent fact-finding mission, but when the U.S. refused to participate, the Afghans were “put in a position of saying no.”

“The Americans put their foot down and said that’s not going to happen,” the former adviser said. “[They] made it very clear that that could result in a loss of support.” The threat of possible war crimes charges loomed over the discussion.

In the absence of an independent investigation, a joint Afghan-NATO Combined Civilian Casualty Assessment Team was deployed to Kunduz. President Ghani also assigned an Afghan-led commission overseen by former NDS head Amrullah Saleh, which ended up excluding the hospital strike from its investigation.

The MSF bombing brought to the surface the underlying tensions within the coalition government, led by President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah. Discord between the two men had resulted in a standoff, which their political rivals cited as the reason for the fall of Kunduz. Indeed, the defeat came on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the national unity government, which according to its detractors had achieved nothing. Even amid deteriorating security, due to the persistent animus between the two leaders, Afghanistan did not yet have a permanent defense minister.

More than 20 Afghan government officials and members of security forces interviewed for this article held as an unassailable belief that the Taliban had attacked Afghan forces from inside the hospital. That deeply held conviction remained resolute even in the face of mounting counterevidence.

“[The fall of] Kunduz was a considerable loss of face for the government,” the former government adviser told me. National security adviser Hanif Atmar was “belligerent,” he said, on the issue of Kunduz. “He is a very thoughtful and intelligent person. He wouldn’t jump to conclusions. But in this case, it didn’t seem like he wanted to find the truth.”

“It was a very emotional time for everybody,” the former government adviser said. “It was a huge loss of prestige. Morale was zero.”

In this strategic and emotional nadir, according to Mark Bowden, the United Nations deputy special representative for Afghanistan, there arose a feeling that “things previously not legitimate became more legitimate.” The general sense among the Afghan forces was that the war was going nowhere good. In a losing battle, all becomes fair, including the bombing of a hospital that many had come to believe was harboring insurgents.

 

A police officer stands guard in front of the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital destroyed
by a U.S. airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Oct. 11, 2015.

Photo: Omid/Xinhua/Newscom

On the night of the hospital strike, a unit commander with the Ministry of Defense special forces was at the police headquarters taking fire from the direction of the hospital. “Vehicles were coming out of there, engaging, then retreating,” he told me. When I pointed out that he couldn’t have seen the gate of the hospital from where he was, several hundred meters away, he said that he was sure because he had personally interrogated a cleaner who told him that the hospital was full of “armed men using it as a cover.” The cleaner told the commander that there were Pakistani generals using the hospital as a recollection point and that they had set up a war room there. When I challenged his line of vision again, he responded, “Anyone can claim anything. The truth is different.”

Saleh, the author of the 200-page Afghan commission report on the fall of Kunduz and head of one of the many informal political coalitions opposing the current government, believed that the “hospital sanctity had been violated” and held out as evidence 130 hours of recorded conversations with more than 600 interlocutors. “I spoke with the MSF country director,” Saleh told me recently. “They don’t deny that the hospital was infiltrated by the Taliban.”

MSF has consistently denied that armed fighters were present in the hospital.

Saleh claimed that Afghan forces had been taking fire from the southeastern wall of the hospital, used as a shield by the insurgents. Ismail Masood, chief of staff to the governor of Kunduz, who sat in on meetings with the NDS and other intelligence agencies, said he had also heard that “it was in the parking area to the east where the Taliban were present.”

Neighbors, however, remembered something different. Abdul Wahab, a gatekeeper working across the street from the hospital, told me that the Taliban regularly brought their injured to the trauma center, but that he never saw any armed insurgents enter it, nor did he recall seeing any weapons fire coming from the hospital. Abdul Maroof, whose warehouse shares its north wall with the hospital, said he saw “as many as a hundred” Taliban fighters entering the NDS office across the street, but never the hospital.

MSF, for its part, stated that on the day of the strike, “No fighting was taking place around the hospital, no planes were heard overhead, no gunshots were reported, nor explosions in the vicinity of the hospital.”

“I have all my sympathies with the victims,” Saleh said. “But it doesn’t serve the purpose of the survivor to say, yes, there was fighting. They have to show themselves as victims, which they are anyway.” Saleh said the hospital was “part of the tragedy but not the whole tragedy.” In a war that has seen a box of propaganda leaflets dropped from a plane crush a 5-year-old girl to death, and wedding parties assaulted by aircraft, a hospital bombing did not appear to him to be out of the ordinary.

“Have you tasted fear?” Kabir asked. Before I could answer, he pulled out a pistol. “When I put this pistol to your head, do you feel afraid?”

A former Afghan special forces captain was indignant at what he considered unwarranted media coverage of the hospital strike. “This is going to limit airstrikes,” he told me. “And without airstrikes, we would have lost Kunduz. We need the Americans to stand with us,” he said. “Stories like these are going to hurt innocent people. When Daesh take over Afghanistan, the first person to be raped or killed will be you, the foreigner.”

“Afghans have little consideration for the Geneva Conventions,” a former senior Western official told me. “Their main concern is continuing to have U.S. backing and aerial support. Their biggest fear after the strike was that this would put a chill on their being able to request U.S. air support when shit hits the fan.”

Maj. Abdul Kabir, the air liaison officer, wanted me to understand how difficult war can be. “Will you let your men get killed because of a silly rule? Are you saying fighting is easy?” I said that I had never been in such a situation but could imagine the challenge. “From one side, you have the Taliban attacking you, and from another side, you have your soldiers saying they are just meters away. And then we have these international rules that make it difficult to fight the enemy.”

“Have you tasted fear?” Kabir asked. Before I could answer, he pulled out a pistol. We were sitting in a hotel room in Mazar-e-Sharif, waiting to board a helicopter to Kunduz. “When I put this pistol to your head, do you feel afraid?” I told him that I understood the point he was making. “In war, you don’t feel too kind for your enemy. You don’t show kindness because you want to kill him so that you can save your own life.”

Others who could not fully imagine the American military’s capacity for failure simply subscribed to ex post facto reasoning. “They cannot believe this is a mistake, and so they work backwards,” Molinie said. They clung to “an ideological vision of facts” and “saw things through the prism of their own beliefs.”

Afghan security forces walk past a Taliban fighter’s dead body after retaking Kunduz from the Taliban, Oct. 4, 2015.

Photo: Jawed Dehsabzi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Lt. Abdullah Gard, who heads the Ministry of Interior’s Quick Reaction Force, said he had been unhappy about the hospital ever since the MSF opened a clinic in Chardara district, a Taliban stronghold. MSF had noticed that the patients were experiencing delays that resulted in loss of limb, or life, and so last June, the group opened the stabilization post on the other side of the front line. To Gard and his men, that sealed the fate of the hospital. In the eyes of the besieged Afghan military fighting a losing war, MSF had veered too far to the other side. In the binaries that dictate the conflict, in which only two positions are made possible, being a neutral player was an untenable position. War makes monsters of the other; those who do not stand with us become those who stand against us. “They are seen as belligerents in the fight rather than an impartial group,” the security analyst based in northern Afghanistan told me. “In the government’s eyes, Chardara went too far.”

Gard spoke of MSF with the personal hatred reserved for the truly perfidious. He accused the group of “patching up fighters and sending them back out,” a line I heard repeatedly. Cmdr. Abdul Wahab, head of the unit that guarded the provincial chief of police compound, told me he could not understand why in battle an insurgent could be killed, but the minute he was injured, he would be taken to a hospital and given protective status. Wouldn’t it be easier, he asked, wouldn’t the war be less protracted or bloody if they were allowed to march in and take men when they were most compromised? He had visited the MSF hospital three times to complain. Each time a foreign doctor explained the hospital’s neutral status and its no-weapons policy, which mystified him.

The Kunduz attack was neither the first nor the last attack on a hospital run by an international organization. On February 17, a Swedish-run clinic in Wardak province was raided by the Afghan special forces. The troops barged into the 10-bed clinic as helicopters circled above. Accompanying them were English-speaking mentors who did not participate in the raid but were in the vicinity when the Afghan forces grabbed two patients and a caretaker who appeared to be underage, and dragged them to an abandoned shop. Twenty minutes later, gunshots rang out. Later, all three were found executed. Officials from Resolute Support informed the Swedish Committee that an investigation had been opened.

This was at least the eighth time a medical facility supported by the Swedish Committee had been raided or searched by international forces in four years. Nearly all of the clinics the group operates are in Taliban-controlled or contested territories, where need is greatest. One particular raid in 2009 in a Swedish Committee-run clinic in Wardak came days after a NATO airstrike had killed as many as 125 near Kunduz. In 2009, as in 2016, the airstrike inspired outcry from international observers, but that raid, also a possible violation of international law, did not garner much attention.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, between 2014 and 2015 there was a 50 percent increase in the number of threats or attacks on medical facilities in Afghanistan that were reported to the organization. Unlike the headline-grabbing Kunduz strike, many of these small slights and violations go unnoticed, even as they chip away at something much more integral. “There are clearly strong feelings within government [that] the Taliban are legitimate targets wherever they are,” the U.N.’s Mark Bowden told me.

After the Kunduz strike, Emergency, an international NGO, built a 40-foot bunker beneath its trauma center in Helmand.

A patient — later identified as 43-year-old Baynazar Mohammad Nazar, a husband and father of four — lies dead on an operating table inside the MSF Kunduz Trauma Center, Oct. 10, 2015.

Photo: Andrew Quilty/Oculi

On March 2, Gen. Campbell left his position without a promotion, raising suspicion that his involvement, or at least his culpability, in the Kunduz strike may be much larger than has been publicly revealed. He will retire on May 1. Campbell had been rumored to be next in line to head U.S. Central Command, the “heir apparent.” But the MSF incident appeared to have “played a role in Campbell being put out to pasture,” a former Western official said.

Asked about being passed over for the Central Command position, Gen. Campbell replied, “It’s not that people sit and think, ah shoot, I want to be the next CENTCOM commander. I didn’t do that. We do whatever job we are assigned.” His retirement, however, resulted from being offered a job he didn’t care to take. “I mean, there are all sorts of rumors. I don’t know what goes on there, but the secretary called me up and asked me to take up another command position. I was very honored and thanked him for his trust and confidence, and to the president as well, but for me at this point in time, it is not something I want to do so I respectfully declined. That’s all.”

Campbell reiterated his November statements about the Pentagon’s investigation, which may be released in redacted form tomorrow. About the initial claims of collateral damage, he responded, “I would not authorize anybody to say collateral damage. That’s stupid. All it does is upset people.”

“I don’t think the story changed,” he said. “I think we learned from the investigation more and more. We just couldn’t talk about it until the investigation was finished. Once the investigation was finished, then you have to let all the disciplinary action play out.”

On March 16, U.S. defense officials indicated that more than a dozen ground-level U.S. military personnel had been disciplined for misconduct leading to the strike.

Deliberately targeting a hospital is a war crime, after all, but so is the indiscriminate killing of civilians outside a hospital. And it’s worth noting, according to a Western security analyst who is an expert on Kunduz, that “even if they had struck the NDS headquarters, there still would have been civilian casualties.” The NDS office, which the U.S. military has said was the intended target, stands in a residential neighborhood, as do the private home and the tea factory that were also bombed on the night of the MSF hospital strike. An AC-130, the analyst pointed out, is a disproportionate and indiscriminate weapon, not appropriate for use in civilian areas in the dead of night.

A former Afghan special forces commander who was at the command and control center in Kunduz during the fight assured me I would never get to the bottom of the attack. The reason why I couldn’t figure out exactly what had happened, he said, was the fog of war. “Ground truth is impossible to know. Even those who were there wouldn’t be able to tell you what they saw.” Not the MSF internal investigation, not the joint Afghan-NATO inquiry, not the Saleh commission, and certainly not the 5,000-page military investigation by U.S. Central Command would tell us what happened that night, he assured me. “Have you ever been in a fire fight? It passes like a dream.” The final sentence of the Saleh report echoed his sentiment. “Facts are never solid and we cannot feel them and they will remain this way.”

What is solid, however, are the 211 shells that were fired at a hospital in northern Afghanistan one night last October, and that those shells were felt by the 42 men, women, and children who were killed, and that they will remain that way, victims of incompetence or prejudice or both. Ground truth may be elusive, but it exists; someone along the military chain of command gave an order, which directly resulted in the loss of innocent lives.

When the US and NATO war of aggression was launched against Syria,  Dr Nabil Antaki could have abandoned Aleppo to ensure his own safety. Instead he decided to remain and to serve the besieged people of his City, working with various local charities.  Above all, he wanted to bear witness to the destruction caused by Western support for the foreign armed groups who have been systematically destroying Syria and terrorising its people for the last 5 years.

Yesterday Silvia Cattori recorded this report from Dr Antaki on the recent amplification of propaganda surrounding events in Aleppo.  It has been translated from the French by Vanessa Beeley.

Victim of Al Nusra terrorist mortar fire in western Aleppo. Photo: Samer Hussein

“With regards to recent events in Aleppo, I state very clearly that the mainstream media are lying by omission. Since the beginning of the war in Aleppo that began 4 years ago, they have consistently failed to report all the facts.

All of us here in Aleppo are disgusted by their lack of impartiality and objectivity. They only ever talk about the loss of life in the east of Aleppo which is entirely controlled by Al Nusra, a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. These are their “moderate rebels” a title that affords them an unmerited degree of respectability.

Al Nusra terrorist attacks on western Aleppo 28/4/2016

This same media remains silent on the daily losses and suffering endured in the Western areas of Aleppo living under the rain of mortar fire from these terrorist factions.  This media never mentions the terrorist blockade upon our people or the electricity cuts and water shortages inflicted upon us by their “moderate rebels”

Read more on Aleppo’s terrorist blockade, water shortages and starvation here: Syria, from the Sublime to the Shameful.

This media never mention the continuous bombardment and the carnage we have witnessed in western Aleppo where every single sector has been targeted. On a daily basis we see dozens of people murdered.

What makes these omissions even more despicable is that these areas represent 75% of Aleppo and there are 1.5 million people living in them. Compare this to the 300,000 living in the eastern zone which is occupied by terrorist groups.

This twisted narrative engenders the belief that these terrorist groups that are attacking us are actually the victims. Even more abhorrent, these media have distorted our “Save Aleppo” appeal, to make it look as if we are calling for Assad and the Syrian Army to cease hostilities!

This is FALSE. Added to which, they are not “Assad’s forces“, they are the national forces of the regular Syrian army that is defending the Syrian State.

The western and gulf media could at least have had the decency to mention the terrorist massacres of our people. For example, on Friday 30th April, when one of their mortars targeted a mosque at prayer time.

Professor Tim Anderson

The attacks and losses we suffer are reported in a way that leaves the public in the dark about the true perpetrators of these crimes.

For three days now, these media outlets have been accusing the “Assad regime” of bombing an MSF hospital [Medecins sans Frontieres] to the east of Aleppo and of killing the last paediatrician in the city. This demonstrates that, for these media, the only priority is this pocket of the city where terrorists are embedded.

The three quarters of Aleppo under Syrian Government control where numerous paediatricians are practicing is of no consequence for this media. We witnessed the same bias when Al Kindi, the biggest hospital in Aleppo, was targeted by terrorist mortars and then intentionally burnt down about 2 or 3 years ago. The media ignored this criminal act.

Al Kindi hospital Aleppo:Video

We are disheartened and disgusted by this continuous disinformation.”

Nabil Antaki, 30th April 2016

Imagine a company releasing millions of experimental, genetically engineered, biting insects into a populated island environment. Sounds like the plot to a new Jurassic Park, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, this plot is very real, and it will happen unless we stop it.

Our environment should not be a testing ground for experimental genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes. But if approved, millions of genetically engineered mosquitoes could be released into the Florida Keys, for the first time in the U.S.

Why would anyone want to do this? Oxitec—the creator of the GE mosquitoes—claims that their GE mosquitoes might help reduce the spread of diseases like zika and dengue by reducing mosquito populations.Reducing the spread of mosquito-borne diseases is important, but independent scientists have critiqued the GE mosquito as a potentially ineffective and risky attempt to address dengue. There are flaws in Oxitec’s experimental logic; for example, there have been no dengue fever cases in the Florida Keys since 2009¹ and the Center for Disease Control notes that there is not data from any of Oxitec’s other trials that show a reduction in diseases.² Even a great reduction in these mosquitoes still leaves enough mosquitoes in peoples’ homes and backyards to spread disease.

Oxitec, owned by synthetic biology giant Intrexon, which also owns the GE apple and GE salmon, has proposed moving this experiment from the lab into the Florida Keys, without adequate understanding of the impacts. We need to tell FDA that it should not approve this risky experiment.  We need independent environmental and health safety assessments and strong regulations to protect people and the environment before these, and other, GE insects are released into living ecosystems.

Scientists have significant concerns about how GE mosquitoes could impact the health of people and of critical ecosystems. Once released into the environment, this new, living engineered organism cannot be “recalled”; GE mosquitoes could reproduce and cause unintended changes in the ecosystem.

Despite being a brand new type of invention that poses new types of risk, the U.S. has not created new regulations for these genetically engineered insects; the government is using existing regulations meant for “new animal drugs” like cow vaccines.³ The FDA needs to establish strong, updated regulations before any GE mosquitoes swarm our environment.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. If Oxitec is allowed to release its experimental GE mosquitoes without responsible oversight and understanding of impacts on human health and the environment, it will set a dangerous precedent for other GE insects in the pipeline, including moths and flies.

The environment, including our homes, should not be a testing ground for risky new GE technologies. Our government agencies must not rely on companies that would profit from genetically engineered organisms to decide what information the public and regulators should know. We must demand independent, transparent safety assessments, answers to our questions about impacts to the environment and health, and a regulatory system equipped to deal with the novel risks from these experimental mosquitoes before they are released from labs into our environment.

Tell the FDA to not approve this experiment!

References:

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Locally acquired dengue—Key West, Florida, 2009–2010. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2010;59:577.

2. See testimony of CDC’s Dr. Tom Frieden to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF02/20160302/104594/HHRG-114-IF02-Transcript-20160302.pdf   see page 43 where Frieden says: “ The other thing that’s very important to understand is, this mosquito is so tricky that even when we’ve seen very large knockdowns in mosquito populations, we haven’t necessarily seen commensurate reductions in human infections, so it’ll be important to look at both of those factors.”  Even Oxitec does not say that the trial is to reduce disease, but rather to see if they can reduce populations of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

3. See http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AnimalVeterinary/GuidanceComplianceEnforcement/GuidanceforIndustry/UCM113903.pdf  Note that in June 2015, the FDA eliminated from this guidance the requirement for a public hearing before approval of a new GE animal or insect.

As US and NATO propaganda reaches another crescendo in Aleppo, it is important to remind ourselves of a few salient facts.  First and foremost we need to understand that the prevailing force occupying Aleppo and terrorising civilians is US and NATO backed Al Nusra in the city itself and ISIS in Northern and Eastern outlying areas.  

We are re-publishing an article written in 2015 with the testimony of an Aleppo civilian who remains anonymous because of the possible threat to their family and friends if their name were to be made public. The content of the article is still relevant, even now, as The Syria Campaign in familiar fashion twists the truth into the shape of western propaganda.

According to the Syria Campaign, every missile that has targeted civilians in Aleppo has been dropped or fired by the Syrian Government forces.

Please note that their infographic is based upon information supplied by the SNHR another US foundation backed NGO on the ground in Syria.

Notice the sharp contrast with reporting from SANA, the foremost Syrian media outlet with reporters inside Aleppo.

Aleppo, SANA- Sixteen civilians were killed and scores others, most of them children and women, were injured due to terrorist rocket attacks on the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo city by the terrorists of Jabhat al-Nusra and other armed groups affiliated to it on Friday.

A source at Aleppo Police Command told SANA reporter that as worshippers were wrapping up Friday Prayer, terrorist organizations fired dozens of shells on the neighborhoods of Bab al-Faraj, al-Midan, al-Muhafaza, Seif al-Dawla, al-Iza’a, al-Martini and al-Nile Street.

Many citizens were killed, a number of houses were destroyed and fire erupted in two places in al-Nile Street and Bustan al-Zahra neighborhood due to terrorists using explosive shells to cause massive damage in the area.

A medical source at al-Razi Hospital said that 16 dead bodies arrived to the hospital in addition to 32 injured persons, some of them are in critical situation and most of them are children and women.

Nine civilians were injured, including 5 children, in terrorist rocket attacks that targeted the villages of Qastal Jando, Baflouna and Qatma in Efrin area in northwestern countryside of Aleppo province on Friday, local sources told SANA reporter on Friday.

The terrorist attacks caused material damage to the locals’ properties, the sources added.

Syria: Welcome to Hell 

First published at TheWallWillFall.Wordpress.com

HRW, Amnesty International and assorted Humanitarian offshoots are on a ceaseless crusade against the SAA use of barrel bombs.  Today, Ken Roth even compared the use of Barrel bombs to the destruction caused by the nuclear bomb used on Hiroshima whilst failing to mention that the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2014 can very credibly be compared to Hiroshima in its destructiveness and tonnage of explosive dropped on innocent civilians in the besieged & battered enclave.

According to Roth, barrel bombs are also responsible for all refugees…not our Governments imperialist, murderous plundering of sovereign nations. Then  Annie Sparrow [ Roth’s wife] is blaming all destruction in terrorist occupied Idlib on the SAA.

Never a mention of US backed terrorist chemical weapons, hell cannons, mortars, suicide bombers, beheaders, racists and rapists, on their Captagon fuelled murderous invasions of civilian areas.

The barrel bomb itself is a rudimentary missile, cheap to produce [around $ 200 per bomb depending upon level of TNT].  It has design faults in that the fins on the bomb are still not aerodynamically perfect, despite several changes.

The detonation depends upon the bomb falling vertically on to its nose to trigger the detonator.  It actually has a  relatively high failure rate  Its supposed advantage is that it can be launched from helicopters and the accusation is always that only the SAA use helicopters in Syrian airspace.

This has been proven untrue.  It has been well documented that Turkey supplied helicopter cover for terrorist forces.  “In the morning attack on Kassab, Syria on March 21, 2014 it was Turkish military helicopters which began the attack.  That morning 88 unarmed civilians were killed, and 13 of those beheaded.  The Turkish military assisted the FSA, Jibhat al Nusra, and Al Qaeda that morning with heavy canon fire and helicopter missiles shot at the Kassab police station.”

The barrel bombs are a non-issue cooked up to vilify the SAA because other countries are not using them.  I suppose it would be better if they could afford Tomahawk missiles at $1-2M apiece.  We know how surgically precise they are and never touch civilians.  If the SAA were dropping perfume they would probably be accused of chemical weapons.

Direct quote from Khaled Abdel-Majid, the secretary general of the united Palestinian factions that are fighting the extremists in Syria, particularly Yarmouk, alongside the Syrian Arab Army.

Compare this description from a battle hardened fighter tackling the terrorist threat on the ground in Syria to the sensationalist marketing campaign from another Soros propaganda firm, the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

Fundamentally the Barrel bomb is a bomb…and a very crude one that bears no resemblance to the sophisticated missiles being deployed by the US and NATO alliance targeting civilian structures that goes unreported in western and gulf media.

October 2015 Moon of Alabama: Why is the US Silently Bombing Syria’s Electricity Network

A military source told SANA that warplanes of the Washington alliance violated Syrian airspace and attacked civilian infrastructure in Mare’a, Tal Sha’er, and al-Bab in Aleppo countryside on Sunday.

The source added that the warplanes attacked the biggest electric power plant that feeds Aleppo city, which resulted in cutting off power from most neighborhoods in Aleppo city.

Just a week ago U.S. air attacks had attacked another power station and a big distribution transformer al-Radwaniye also east of Aleppo.

NGO Complicity with Terrorism in Syria

It must be remembered that the SAA [Syrian Arab Army] is fighting a war but not against anti government rebels or moderates as depicted in the mainstream media. Rather its a dirty war against a merciless, depraved and bloodthirsty proxy army funded, armed and supported by the Empire interventionist alliance [US, Turkey, KSA, Jordan, NATO, Israel].

It is undeniably documented that Turkey is the main rat run, supplying weapons, supplies, chemical weapon ingredients and manpower often via the pseudo aid convoys.  Serena Shim reported that WHO trucks were running arms and equipment to “rebels” shortly before she was killed in a mysterious car accident, after receiving death threats.

RT: Trucks are crossing Syrian-Turkish border with no restrictions near Reyhanli checkpoint, according to Russian Defense Ministry who released the footage.

“Moderate Rebel” Mortars and Hell Cannon

In war, regrettably, civilian life is lost, it is unavoidable and particularly when terrorists embed themselves into civilian areas, converting civilians into human shields.  Of course this is never mentioned by the Ken Roths and Annie Sparrows.  Neither is it mentioned that the SAA make every feasible effort to evacuate densely populated civilian areas prior to targeting terrorist cells.

Jaish al Islam terrorists hold Alawite women in cages in Damascus suburbs

Another aspect of this warfare that is consummately ignored are the terrorist mortars and hell cannons that cause extensive structural damage and massacre civilians with a range of up to one mile.

How is it that these HRW “witnesses” on the ground [presumably under a barrage of missiles from both SAA and “rebels”] can categorically state what is causing damage and loss of life.  The unreliable barrel bomb or the ground based and mobile hell cannon units that fire upon civilian areas indiscriminately or even the terrorist dug tunnels, packed with explosives and detonated as a diversion before they attack SAA/NDF positions.

Refresh if video does not display or click here for link

Video supplied by Syrian Reporters February 2016. 

A fighter from the Syrian “moderate rebels” Bridge Sultan Murad is bombing the Shekh Maqsod neighborhood in Aleppo city. [Kurdish area]
At the 0:32 he is saying “Throw it on civilians , to the depth , they think we will not target civilians

Read Eva Bartlett’s account of terrorist mortar attacks:  The Terrorism We Support in Syria: A First-hand Account of the Use of Mortars against Civilians

First Hand Account from Aleppo

The people are crying and terrified by the “moderate peaceful opposition”. But we can’t bomb them because the “international community” will blame the Syrian army of using their unprecedented super ultra weapon that is way stronger than a nuclear bomb: Barrel bombs!

The terrorists are using mortars, explosive bullets, cooking-gas cylinders bombs and water-warming long cylinders bombs, filled up with explosives and shrapnel and nails, in what they call “Hell Canon”. (google these weapons or see their YouTube clips. The cooking-gas cylinder is made of steel, and it weighs around 25 kg. Imagine it thrown by a canon to hit civilians? And imagine knowing that it’s full with explosives?

Yet, the media is busy with the legendary weapon of “barrel bombs”! They came to spread “freedom” among Syrians! How dare they say that Syrian army shouldn’t fight them back?

For the first time last night, we smelled gunpowder. The shelling was so extreme to smell gunpowder in the air.

Results were nothing but new innocent victims. I mean, the terrorists failed in gaining new land, or occupying new buildings or quarters. They lost many of their “zombies”, but they don’t count, because they have no families or friends to weep on them like the case with civilians.

I apologize that I’m very upset, mostly not from the attackers and whoever is supporting them in Turkey over here (and Israel and Jordan in the south); but mainly from the liars in that conference in Britain or at the UN , who keep lying and lying, piles and tons of lies, about “freedom” and “barrel bombs” and live in their perfumed and ironed suites and ties, happy with their Ph.D. degrees in stupidity and fooling the world, having no problem in obtaining clean water, electricity, warm food, and the rest of services that we are suffering over here to obtain part of them.

Those people travel in 1st class airlines, and live in 5 stars hotels, and ready to come on TV channels to weep upon the “Syrian people” and blame the “regime” while giving a blind eye upon all the terrorists they are funding and supporting. I wish these people, whether they were Arabs or Westerns, Muslims or Christians, Syrians or others… I wish them Hell! And to taste and suffer the same pain they caused to innocent people.

Syrian army had defended the city, and all the lies on the media claiming the terrorists victories are nothing but rumours and gossip.

The Hell cannon is a “wildly inaccurate” weapon even according to the Empire one man propaganda band, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.  In Aleppo the SAA is marooned in the centre of the Old Citadel and is fired upon by “rebel” positions scattered throughout the city.  These inaccurate weapons are known to have caused massive damage to ancient Aleppo edifices but have also torn into civilian areas and ripped civilian limbs and bodies into shreds.

Hell Cannon Aleppo

Aleppo city has shrunk to a fifth of its original size, and became so crowded with refugees that fled their areas after they fell into terrorist hands. I walk everyday in the city. I see children, young girls without limbs because of a terrorist mortar  or shrapnel  that targets them randomly and causes  terrible wounds and horrific memories that will never leave them.

The girl who lost one leg is standing on her good leg and selling bread, while the little boy who lost one arm is selling chewing gum. Those are the “injured” people who are mentioned fleetingly in the news, just numbers in one line of a report, after each attack from the terrorists. “Injured” doesn’t mean scratched or having a bleeding finger; it means someone lost his eyes or her limbs. ~ The Wall Will Fall Aleppo Files

There is, unequivocally, a need to report upon all mortalities as a result of this devastating US NATO neocolonialist war against Syria. However the glaring bias towards the demonization of the legitimate national fighting force, battling a vicious, brutal and mercenary enemy is an insult to the intelligence & courage of the Syrian people and a deliberate obscurantism of truth and the extent of the duplicity and hypocrisy of our own governments.

***

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

As the Syrian battle front rages in Aleppo, the ‘White Helmets’ are emerging even more strongly as part of the long arm of US and UK propaganda in Syria.  The Manhattan campaign managers at Purpose Inc have sprung into action. Red is the new black on Facebook and “Aleppo is burning” is the new slogan. White Helmets are in every video and photograph being circulated by western and gulf media. 

We will be writing a series of articles to cover rapidly developing events. White Helmet leader, Raed Saleh, recently deported from the US, is top of our list but as usual our research has uncovered more than we bargained for. Watch this space.

Today, however, let us consider the White Helmets and their potential nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016.

Facebook page of Muawiya Hassan Agha: Syrian White Helmet and Al Qaeda fighter.

Yes, you heard that correctly.  The UK and US funded 5th columnists embedded in terrorist held areas across Syria have reached the dizzying heights of Nobel Peace Prize nomination while acting as crisis support team for Al Qaeda operatives, Jabhat Al Nusra.

UK Column Interview with Vanessa Beeley

The following video was made by Steve Ezzedine for Hands Off Syria:

Professor Tim Anderson Infographic

Nobel Peace Prize for Al Qaeda? 

If you vehemently disagree with this nomination please go to the Syria Solidarity Movment petition and sign accordingly.  The petition has deliberately been posted on the same Change.org site and in lock step with the petition raised to promote the Syria White Helmets nomination.

PETITION: DO NOT GIVE 2016 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TO SYRIAN WHITE HELMETS

***

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

An RT Documentary crew filming in northern Syria has seen Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL) documents abandoned by retreating terrorists and found by the Kurds that, along with captured IS recruits, provide a stunning insight into the ISIS oil trade. 

Only ten days after the town of Shaddadi in Syrian Kurdistan was liberated from the ISIS militants, an RT Doc film crew followed Kurdish soldiers around houses that had been abandoned in haste by fleeing jihadists. There, they found documents shedding light on the ISIS oil trade, jihadist passports with Turkish entry stamps, an instruction booklet – printed in Turkey – on how to wage war against the Syrian government, and more.

The areas surrounding Shaddadi has large natural oil reserves, and until recently, ISIS militants profited from it, forcing members of the local population to work in their oil industry. Piles of detailed invoices used by ISIS to calculate daily revenues from selling oil were found on the site. Local residents attested that intermediaries from Raqqa and Aleppo arrived to pick up the oil and often mentioned Turkey, while a captured ISIS recruit admitted on camera that the terrorist group sells oil to Turkey. He and another foreign fighter from Saudi Arabia also revealed that it had been easy to cross the Turkish border.

The documentary contains exclusive footage from towns liberated from ISIS, and features interviews with locals who had worked on ISIS oil refineries as well as testimonies from the ISIS members captured by Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) soldiers. Discover what RT Doc crew found in oil-rich areas that were under ISIS occupation only days ago.

This past week the U.S. government announced the country’s economy rose in the January-March 2016 at a mere 0.5 percent annual growth rate. Since the U.S., unlike other countries, estimates its GDP based on annual rates, that means for the first quarter 2016 the U.S. economy grew by barely 0.1 percent over the previous quarter in late 2015.

Growth this slow indicates the US economy may have “slipped into ‘stall speed’, that is, growth so weak that the economy loses enough momentum and slides into recession”, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase.

Has the U.S. economy therefore come to a halt the past three months? If so, what are the consequences for a global economy already progressively slowing? What will an apparently stagnating US economy mean for Japan, already experiencing its fifth recession since 2008? For Europe, stuck in a long term chronic stagnation? And for emerging market economies, struggling with collapsing commodity prices and currencies, rising unemployment, and long term capital flight trends? Once heralded as the only bright spot in the global economy, the US economy now appears to have joined the slowing global trend.

Some Interesting Trends

Last quarter’s 0.5 percent U.S. GDP may indicate the nation’s economy is even weaker than it appears. The economy of the United States’ recent 0.5 percent growth rate is the latest in a steady declining U.S. GDP growth trend over the past year. In the previous fourth quarter 2015, the US economy grew 1.4 percent, which was down from the preceding quarter’s growth of 2 percent and before that 3.9 percent. So the U.S. economy appears to be slowing rapidly over the past year.

Over an even longer period of more than eight years, since the previous peak growth in late 2007, the U.S. economy has grown by a cumulative total of only 10.1 percent. That’s a paltry annual growth of only 1.2 percent a year on average for the past 8+ years.

But even those figures are overestimated. In 2013, the U.S. redefined the way it estimated GDP, adding categories like R&D expenses and other intangibles that artificially boosted U.S. GDP estimates simply by redefining it. That “economic growth by redefinition” raised GDP by around 0.3 percent annually, and in dollar terms by roughly US$500 billion annually. So the real U.S. GDP may be actually growing by less than 1 percent on average per year since 2007; and during the most recent quarter, January-March 2016, the economy may not have grown at all, but may have stagnated, collapse, and come to a halt.

Behind the Wizard’s Curtain

The media and press like to define recessions as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Actually, U.S. economists tasked with declaring when a recession has begun or has ended don’t rely totally on GDP estimates, which are notoriously inaccurate and have become increasingly so, given U.S. and other governments’ penchant for changing how they define GDP.

Redefining GDP to boost the appearance of growth is not just a problem in the US in recent years. For example, there are few independent research sources that think China is growing at its officially announced 6.8 percent GDP rate. To note but a couple, both Capital Economics and Lombard Street research estimate that China’s GDP is growing at only around 4-4.5 percent based on close examination of other indicators like electricity usage, power generation, local transport volumes, and so forth. In recent years India officially nearly doubled its GDP overnight by redefining it. So did Nigeria. India bank researchers, whom this writer has talked to, say they have a rule of thumb: take the official government GDP rate and half it and that’s probably close to India’s actual GDP. In Europe, a number of economies, including Britain, which have been desperate to raise their GDP in recent years, now include drug smuggling and prostitution services in their estimates of GDP. How they come up with such estimates and the pricing of such services is, of course, interesting.

Not satisfied with the media-press definition of a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP, US economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research, who are tasked with declaring the beginning and end of a recession, look at various economic indicators — like industrial production, retail sales, exports-import trends, and other sources. A recession may occur in just one quarter; or may require more than two.

Looking at these other indicators for this past January-March 2016 period, the US economy appears even more likely headed for a recession and sooner rather than later.

US industrial production (manufacturing, mining and utilities) declined at an annual rate of -2.2 percent this past quarter, after having declined -3.3 percent the preceding quarter. Industrial production has fallen six of the last seven months. US industrial capacity is now at its lowest point since 2010.

Business investment is another trouble spot. Investment in business structures fell by -10.7 percent and investment in new equipment by -8.6 percent, the latter the biggest drop since the 2007-09 recession. Business inventories rose barely, by the smallest amount in two years, continuing a slowing trend of the past nine months.

And what about consumption, which constitutes about two thirds of the total US economy? US consumer spending has been growing at an average monthly rate of only 0.1 percent. Retail sales, the largest element of consumer spending, has fallen every month on average during the quarter. After having sustained retail sales in previous years, auto sales, a large component of retail sales, declined for the second consecutive quarter during the January-March period. The outlook for U.S. consumer spending recovery is also not too bright. A recent Gallup poll reported that 60 percent of those interviewed indicated the U.S. economy was “getting worse.” Reflecting the poor demand for consumer goods, U.S. consumer prices now hover on the brink of deflation, falling at an average monthly rate of -0.1 percent for the quarter.

Exports are declining, residential housing construction recently plummeted. In other words, not many of the economic indicators that comprise GDP show a promising picture. GDP should probably be even lower than the recently reported 0.5 percent annual and 0.1 percent quarter to quarter growth rates. The U.S. economy has obviously “stalled.” But it’s not the first time. In fact, it’s the fifth time it has since the official end of the last recession in June 2009.

What’s a Relapse?

The performance of the US economy this past January-March, a trend that appears is continuing into April, represents what this writer has called an ‘economic relapse’. A relapse is a collapse of economic growth for a single quarter, to near zero or even negative growth.

The U.S. economy has experienced now five such single quarter relapses since the 2007-09 recession was officially declared over. The economy collapsed to 0.1 percent in early 2011, to 0.2 percent in late 2012, declined again by -2.2 percent in 2014 and collapsed to 0.2 percent in 2015.

Relapses are the consequence of “epic” recessions such as occurred in 2007-09, which are typically characterized by short, shallow recoveries that slip repeatedly into periodic bouts of renewed stagnation. They are the result of near total reliance on central bank monetary policies that are designed to boost stock, bond and other financial markets — and thus the incomes of rich investors — but which fail to generate a sustained real economic recovery. Fiscal policies designed to stimulate consumption and good paying jobs are rejected. That almost perfectly describes U.S. economic policy the past eight years.

Politicians Wearing Rose-Colored Glasses

Despite the facts, U.S. government politicians and Federal Reserve bank officials continue to run around declaring that the U.S. economy is performing well. They like to cite the 200,000 jobs allegedly created in recent months. But a closer examination shows the jobs being created are part time, temp, contract, low paid, no benefit service jobs. Jobs that generate no overall wage increase for the economy and no real income gains for working people.

Young workers 30 years old or less are especially hard hit by this “‘well performing US economy.” A recent study by the Center for American Progress, for example, showed that 30 year old workers earn today the same pay, adjusted for inflation, that 30 year olds earned back in 1984.

Despite all that, President Obama continues to tour the country complaining that he doesn’t get enough credit for bringing the US back from the worst recession since the 1930s depression. He should tell that to the millions of millennial young workers, with low paid crappy service jobs, with no medical insurance, having to live at home with relatives because they can’t afford to rent an apartment, loaded with debt and with no prospects for meaningful change on the horizon. No wonder they’re rallying around Bernie Sanders, who continues to capture 85 percent of their votes in the presidential primaries. Obama (and Hillary) will have a hard time convincing them “all is well” — and an even harder time getting them to vote Democrat in the coming election in November.

Jack Rasmus is author of the recent, 2016 book “Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy,” by Clarity Press, soon translated into a Chinese edition, and the forthcoming June 2016 book, “Looting Greece: The Emerging New

The above article was published April 30, 2016, by TelesurTV media. 

Comparing the growth in the number of full time jobs versus the growth in new home sales starkly illustrates both the horrible quality of the new jobs, and how badly ZIRP has served the US economy.

Growth in new home sales has always been dependent on growth in full time jobs. For 38 years until the housing bubble peaked in 2006, home sales and full time jobs always trended together, subject to normal cyclical swings. With the exception of 1981-83 when Paul Volcker pushed rates into the stratosphere, new home sales always fluctuated between 550 and 1,100 sales per million full time workers in the month of March.

That correlation broke in the housing crash of 2008-09 when sales fell to a low

But in the housing crash in 2007-09 sales fell to a low of 276 per million full time workers. Since then the number of full time jobs has recovered to greater than the peak reached in 2007. In spite of that, new home sales per million workers remain at depression levels.

With 30 year mortgage rates now at 3.6% sales are lower today than they were when mortgage rates were above 17% in 1982. Sales have never reached 400 sales per million workers in spite of the recovery in the number of jobs, in spite of ZIRP, in spite of mortgage rates often under 4%.

ZIRP has actually made the problem worse. It has caused raging housing inflation which has caused median monthly mortgage payments for new homes to rise by 20% since 2009. ZIRP has enabled corporate CEOs to game the stock market to massively increase their own pay while encouraging them to cut worker salaries and shift higher paying jobs overseas. That leaves the US economy to create only low skill, low pay jobs that do not pay enough for workers to be able to purchase new homes.

The perverse incentives of ZIRP are why the housing industry languishes at depression levels.

The silent elephant in the room is the fact of the official endorsement of the actions of the Israeli government that flout international law, by our own government’s enthusiastic support for the agenda of the Conservative Friends of Israel lobby (CFI) in the House of Commons.

That agenda includes the lobbying of Parliament to supply British arms and military equipment to the IDF in order that Israeli forces can continue:

1.  The illegal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights,  in contempt of the will of  both the United Nations and the European Union
2. The illegal settlement of nearly 600,000 Israeli citizens in the Occupied Territories in an attempt to prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state for five million indigenous Arabs
3. The now seven year illegal blockade of nearly 2 million civilians in Gaza in a deliberate policy to prevent the supply of electricity and essential goods and services to the population in an abortive attempt to effect regime change
4. The blatant violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions (GCIV).

• This is the agenda of the Israel lobby in the British Parliament.
• This is the elephant in the body politic and our legislature.
• This is the underlying cause of anti-Semitism, not the Labour Party, nor the Liberal Party, nor the Green Party, nor UKIP nor even the Conservative Party.

The British electorate is well aware of the political machinations that damage democracy, human and civil rights and bring the integrity of the United Kingdom into disrepute.

When Britain takes firm and open action to dissociate all of us from Israeli aggression against a civilian population then the increase in anti-Semitism will dissipate as it becomes clear that the United Kingdom will no longer support terrorism whether state­ sponsored or otherwise, in any part of the world.

There is a concerted campaign going on in the UK, in France, in the US and in the entire western world to suppress any form of criticism of Israel – especially the movement to boycott Israel. It takes many forms.A prime example is the current witch hunt in the British Labour Party against “anti-Semites” – a grave charge indeed. But in reality, the people being purged are those expressing support for Palestinian human rights.

In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever that the level of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is even statistically significant, let alone any kind of grave threat.

Reputable polling suggests that the level of anti-Jewish prejudice in the UK runs at seven percent (lower than in other European countries, and far lower than hatred against Muslims in the UK). The number of allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is currently no more than 11 cases.

The number of allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is currently no more than 11 cases. In a party of 380,000 full time members (which may be as many as half a million once you add in registered supporters) that is a statistically insignificant. The level of anti-Semitism in the party is far less than in the general population – something that should be celebrated.

In a party of 380,000 full time members (which may be as many as half a million once you add in registered supporters) that is a statistically insignificant. The level of anti-Semitism in the party is far less than in the general population – something that should be celebrated.

In any case, most of these cases are falsified, as I documented in a major investigative piece this week.

What is really going on right now is a fanatical and desperate campaign, orchestrated by anti-Corbyn die-hards and Zionist hoodlums within the Labour Party to purge any criticism of Israel. They are after Corbyn’s head, as a long term activist for Palestinian rights.

The attempt right now is to declare acceptable boundaries of debate. John Mann MP, the Labour-right thug who played a key part in orchestrating Ken Livingstone’s political assassination Thursday has long been a fanatical apologist for Israel-right-or-wrong.

In 2013, he was a key witness in a court case launched by the Israel lobby suing the University and College Union for “institutional anti-Semitism”. Their crime? Raising the possibility of discussing the academic boycott of Israel. Not even endorsing it, mind you.  Merely discussing it.

The tribunal judge threw the case out on every single count. It was “devoid of any merit” and “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means”.

Of the many in that entirely malicious case against UCU who came in for criticism from the judge, John Mann was essentially dismissed as a blow-hard and a liar. The judge pointed out that Mann claimed “any boycott of Israel or Israeli institutions”  was “itself anti-Semitic”. An obviously false and political charge.

All of this has grave implications for not only the Labour Party but the entire political culture in the UK. The Tory government is also trying to use legal intimidation to prohibit local councils from taking ethical decisions to boycott Israeli goods. Anything in the service of Israeli war crimes, it seems.

In Israel itself, the campaign to crush expressions of support for the Palestinians is of course  escalating. One of the main ways it has been ramping up in recent years is in what Israeli officials call its “war” against BDS, the boycott divestment and sanctions movement.

This has reached the point now that Israeli politicians are permitted by EU officials to stray extremely close to promising to assassinate a founder of the BDS movement – which, remember, is an entirely non-violent attempt by civil society to hold Israel to account for its war crimes and apartheid targeting the Palestinian people.

Amnesty International in April condemned remarks by an Israeli minister threatening  “targeted civil eliminations” of BDS leaders such as Omar Barghouti. In Israeli terminology, “targeted elimination” or “targeted thwarting” (depending on the translation) is the official euphemism for the assassinations of Palestinian activists, political leaders and resistance fighters which Israel habitually carries out as a standard part of its depraved practices.

This was a very deliberate intimidation tactic by Israeli intelligence minister Yisrael Katz. At all costs, they want to crush BDS and any other form of action to hold Israel to account.

“I already feel slightly safer, having received this clear position by Amnesty International,” Barghouti told The Electronic Intifada after hearing about the human rights group’s condemnation of these Israeli threats.

Don’t be fooled by Israel’s propaganda usage of terminology such as “targeting elimination”. The CIA too, used to invoke such double-speak.

Of black leaders such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, COINTELPRO documentsnotoriously threatened that “through counter-intelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential trouble-makers and neutralize them”.

That ended up with government death-squads on the streets of America, gunning down community activists like the Black Panther Party.

Israel’s push to do the same must be resisted.

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London and an associate editor with The Electronic Intifada.

New peace policy instead of NATO aggression

“Chancellor Angela Merkel is committing an irresponsible provocation, when, 75 years after the attack on the Soviet Union, she is sending the Bundeswehr to the Russian border,” said Sahra Wagenknecht, Chairman of DIE LINKE.

Wagenknecht further: “The federal government is playing with fire if they blindly support NATO’s aggressive game. A permanent presence of NATO combat troops on the Russian border is contrary to the existing agreements with Russia.

EU eastward expansion and the NATO troop parades are poison for peace and stability in Europe. The deployment of combat units of the Bundeswehr to the Russian border threatens the vital interests of the German population. The German Bundestag must debate it.”

Translated from German by Tom Winter April 30, 2016. Published in English by Fort Russ

The announcement of a possible deployment of German troops to Lithuania for “containment” of Russia has made quite a stir in the media and the social networks in Germany.

The opinions are often widely divergent. From the perspective of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Berlin faces a dilemma. If Germany would refuse the deployment of troops, that would be a lack of solidarity towards the Baltic States. Should it agree, that would strain relations with Russia. HoweverDeutsche Rundfunk [The German Radio] considers these plans quite sound: NATO must guarantee the “territorial integrity of the countries” that “feel unsafe” near Russia.

But this reason, that the states felt threatened by Russia, the Left-politician Gregor Gysi considers unconvincing. “First, it is not about feelings, but the question of whether a real threat exists. Second, these 250 soldiers would be in case of a real war more than superfluous,” said Gysi on his Facebook page. To make his point even clearer, the politician thinks back on history: “Therefore, it is historically oblivious, and escalating, to send troops now to the Russian border”

“Uschi” (Ursula Von Der Leyen, German Defense Minister), with some German troops

The Member of Parliament Sahra Wagenknecht supported her party comrade: “Chancellor Angela Merkel is committing an irresponsible provocation, when she sends the Bundeswehr to the Russian border 75 years after the Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.” [for her press release, click]

In the comments on the Internet, many readers have aired their displeasure about the plan of the Federal Government.

“The border to Africa / Turkey / Syria is open, but the danger comes from Russia. Right! Just crazy,” wrote one user in comments to the article in Die Welt.

Another reader, J89, pointed out that a NATO battalion constitutes no appreciable risk on the border with Russia: This is “symbolic politics.” Other Internet users are unenthusiastic at the prospect of German soldiers in the direction of Russia. A sample:

Bundeswehr as a deterrent? Are the guns straightened out already?

Does Panzer-Uschi want to go to Stalingrad, or what?
East of the Oder, no German soldier has anything to look for!

So ends the Sputnik story. Here is the full text of Gregor Gysi’s Facebook post:

The German government plans to involve up to 250 Bundeswehr soldiers in the beefing up of NATO’s eastern flank on the border with Russia. I find the reasoning unconvincing that this was a sign for the eastern NATO members who felt threatened by Russia. First, it is not about feelings, but the question of whether a real threat exists. Second, these 250 soldiers would be in case of a real war more than superfluous. The populations of the eastern European countries also know this, so that a feeling of threat would not lessen. Incidentally, in history it’s this way: it’s not Russia invading Germany, but Germany invading Russia. On June 22, we have the 75th anniversary of the last attack by Germany. Therefore, it is history forgotten, and escalating, now to send troops to the Russian border.

Source: Sputnik Germany
Translated from German by Tom Winter Fort Russ

Senior Israeli politicians in the ruling coalition government called for the annexation of the Occupied West Bank, during a Passover event in Hebron on Monday.

According to reports, “tens of thousands” of Israelis, including lawmakers and rabbis, visited Hebron on the third day of the Passover festival.

Those in attendance included Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben Dahan, Deputy Minister of Regional Cooperation Ayoub Kara, and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi David Lau.

Ayelet Shaked

During speeches, deputy minister and Jewish Home parliamentarian Ben-Dahan declared: “We have to impose Israeli law in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].” He added: “We have returned to our land, so that we will never again have to leave it.”

Hebron lies inside the West Bank, under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Over the last 49 years, more than 200 settlements have been established across the territory, in contravention of international law.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked described the issue of the Hebron settlers not as one of “real estate”, but “rather an ideological act driven by love for the Jewish people and their land.”

Likud MK Oren Hazan, meanwhile, reportedly urge Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu to expand the settler population in Hebron. “The time has come to populate Hebron,” he told the crowds, “just as the time has come to populate every hilltop in Judea and Samaria and in all of Israel.”

“Occupy’s failure was constructive because it demonstrated the limitations of contemporary ideas of Protest. I capitalize p to emphasize that the limitation was not in a particular tactic but rather in our concept of Protest, or our theory of social change, which determines the overall script. Occupy revealed that activists need to revolutionize their approach to revolution.” -Micah White, from the book the end of protest: a new playbook for revolution (P.27)

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In a world plagued by ecological chaos, militarism, and social and economic injustice, the impulse to want to change the world should be wide-spread and leading to global movements.

The United States has seen multiple political movements since its inception. From the movement for the emancipation of American slaves to the Women’s Liberation movement, to the labour movement, to the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam War protests, to the anti-nuclear mobilizations of the 80s to the anti-globalization movement, to the February 15, 2003 anti-Iraq War demonstrations, to Occupy Wall Street, to the current day climate rallies and demos.

However, those compelled to change the world for the better find themselves frustrated in their pursuits. Police and securities eventually find ways to infiltrate and disrupt even best planned campaigns. Standard strategies fail to truly confront those in a position of authority. Given failure after failure, it is compelling to ask if protest and conventional activism can make a meaningful difference.

On the eve of International Workers Day, the Global research News Hour hears from twO people who have been active in front-line movements.

Derrick Broze is freelance journalist and community activist based in Houston. He appeared on CFUV 101.9FM in Victoria, BC on the Gorilla Radio program to talk about his involvement with independent journalism and its value,  the concept of Conscious Resistance, the patterns of thinking society enables to keep us imprisoned, and the true meaning of anarchism and where it connects with spirituality.

We devote the final half hour to Occupy Wall street founder and author Micah White. Between an interview with the Global Research News Hour, and an evening talk with Winnipeg-based anti-poverty activist Donald Benham, White expands on his views on all aspects of resistance and struggle, from the success and failure of Occupy, to the enabling of ineffective protest, to where the next revolutionary moments are likely to present themselves.

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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.

Heavy propaganda accompanies the strategic battle in Aleppo between the Syrian Army and its allies (Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and other militia) and the Saudi-Turkey-NATO backed terrorist groups (Jabhat al Nusra, Jaysh al Islam, Ahrar as Sham and ISIS).

Fighting escalated in late April when the armed groups sent hundreds of mortars into Syria’s second city, and the Syrian Army responded with its long awaited offensive.

Western media now claim that Aleppo’s citizens are under threat from the Syrian Army, while Syrian sources show civilians, reeling from constant mortar attacks, demanding that the Army roots out all terrorist groups.

al-Nusra-Front supported by US-NATO-Israel

In an attempt to claim the moral high ground, Washington uses proxy NGOs alongside proxy militia, to maintain the fiction that the Syrian Army does nothing but attack Syrian civilians.

Prominent among these NGOs is ‘The White Helmets’ aka ‘Syrian Civil Defence’, which has become a principal source of claims that Syrian and Russian planes are targeting hospitals.

In fact ‘The White Helmets’, which claims to be independent, is a Wall Street creation, led by former British soldier James le Mesurier, co-funded by the US Government and embedded with the terrorist organisation Jabhat al Nusra, banned by the UN Security Council.

Every attack on al Nusra is thus portrayed as an attack on ‘civilians’ and clinics, or on emergency health workers. Much the same applies to Medicin Sans Frontiers (MSF), which funds al Nusra clinics (mostly without foreign volunteers) in several terrorist held areas.

These links, including participation in sectarian executions, are well spelt out in a recent short documentary ‘The White Helmets – al Qaeda with a Facelift’, by Steve Ezzeddine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aAaReVn2I4

Background on The White Helmets has also been exposed in a series of articles by investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, including ‘’White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists’ (Sept 2015) at 21^st Century Wire:

http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/01/white-helmets-new-breed-of-mercenaries-and-propagandists-disguised-as-humanitarians-in-syria/

The contradiction in US policy and practice was recently highlighted when the Syrian head of TWH, Raed Saleh, travelled to receive a humanitarian award, but was refused permission to enter the US and was sent back to Istanbul. The likely reason was Saleh’s notorious association with Jabhat al Nusra.

Head of the US military General Martin Dempsey and Vice President Joe Biden admitted in 2014 that close US allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar were financing ISIS, along with all the other armed groups, in an attempt to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

ANNEX

Professor Tim Anderson has provided us with an analysis of the propaganda campaign of the Western military alliance which is led by the Western media as well as so-called NGOs supported by corporate foundations.   

Below is the Communique Issued by the Fake Syria Civil Society Network. The latter fails to acknowledge that the opposition militants are largely made up of Al Qaeda affiliated entitities supported by US-NATO-Israel.

Syria government forces with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are involved in a massive counter-terrorism operation against US-NATO supported terrorists.  

Below is the text of their Appeal to the International Community.

Who is the self proclaimed international community?

The US, UK,  France, Germany, not to mention Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have been involved for almost two years in the routine bombing of Syria under a fake humanitarian mandate. 

These NGOs echo US foreign policy, They blame Bashar al Assad for the killings.  They do not represent Syrian civil society. 

[CLICK IMAGE TO ORDER PROF. TIM ANDERSON’S BOOK]

Amply documented, those killings are attributable to: 

1) US-led bombings allegedly against the ISIS, which largely strike civilians and civilian infrastructure, including residential areas; 

2) the atrocities committed by the ISIS and al Qaeda affiliates which are supported, financed and protected by the US-NATO coalition.  Coalition mercenaries operate within the ranks of these terrorist entitiies. More recently, the US has sent special forces to provide “training” for al Qaeda freedom fighters.

SPREAD THE WORD, COUNTER-PROPAGANDA IS A POWERFUL INSTRUMENT TO REVERSE THE TIDE OF WAR 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research Editor, May 1, 2016

To learn the truth about Syria, order Prof. Tim Anderson’s Book directly from Global Research (click image)

*      *      *

Text of the fake NGO Civil Society Group

“We are being left to die as the world watches.”

The people of Aleppo need the international community’s protection.  In the past week, the Assad regime and its allies have escalated their bombings of civilian homes and hospitals across Aleppo, killing more than 200 civilians in the process.  We, as representatives of Syrian civil society and humanitarian groups, strongly condemn the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Syria and demand civilian protection. Without the international community’s protection and concrete action to stop the bombs across Aleppo, where 250,000 people still remain, there is a very real chance that Aleppo will be entirely destroyed and more will die.  

Signatories

The United States objects to adding Ahrar ash-Sham and Jaish al-Islam to the UN sanctions list because they operate as proxy forces inside Syria for key allies like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, experts told Sputnik.

Syria’s forces continue military operations in Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. On April 28, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and allies cut off Al Nusra’s main supply line in Marj al-Sultan. This allowed to cut the militants’ supply road to the villages of Zibdeen and Deir al-Assafir.

Pro-government sources report, if the militants aren’t able to seize Bala al-Qadhima in the nearest future, they will be completely cut off and encircled in this area. Now, the loyalists are in full control of the Harasta al-Qantara-Bezineh road that had been the main communication line between the Northern and Southern parts of the militants’ enclaves.

We remember, Syria’s forces captured the town of al-Qadhima on Wednesday and almost divided the militant-ctonrolled area of the Eastern Ghouta into two separated parts.

A large number of fresh reinforcements arrived in the province of Aleppo on Thursday as different sources argue the army is going to launch massive operations against the remaining 10,000-strong terrorist force in the provincial capital. Earlier this month Syrian and Iranian sources reported that the commanders of the Syrian Ground and Air Forces, Iranian-backed militias and the Russian military advisors set a joint HQ in order to coordinate the last preparations for a large-scale operation in Aleppo.

Meanwhile, according to US experts, Russia reportedly delivered weapons and ammunition to support the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the Afrin Canton of the province in April 2016. This allows to suggest that the loyalists’ forces intend to cooperate with the Syrian Kurds in order to complete the encirclement of Aleppo City from the north. In early February 2016, The Kurds engaged in similar battlefield coordination with Russia in order to sever the primary militants supply route between Aleppo City and Turkey.

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French parliamentarians have approved a non-binding resolution today asking for the lifting of EU sanctions imposed on Russia, allegedly for its role in Ukraine.

The lower house of the French Parliament has voted against the sanctions by 55 to 44. In favor of the resolution have voted parliamentarians from the center-right, the right and the radical left.

The Hollande government has recommended the rejection of the proposal to lift sanbctions. Against the proposal have voted Socialist and Green deputies. Both parties and the mainstream media in France are extremely hostile to Russia, as never before in French history!

France was traditionally a pillar of European independence. It has opposed the Vietnam war and, more recently, the invasion of Iraq and had left the military wing of the Atlantic Alliance. But, after the election of Sarkozy as President and also under Hollande, it not only returned fully to NATO, it became the privileged “actor” of neoconservatives in Europe. Paris has played a critical role in the “humanitarian” interventions which destroyed Syria and Libya and are directly responsible for the flow of millions of refugees to Europe and for the development of the Islamic State.

But now Sarkozy, under the pressure of the rise of Le Pen and trying to reconstruct the once gaulliste French right, tries to make some corrections to his unconditional siding with Washington on international policy.

The vote in France comes only weeks after the Dutch voters have put also into question western policy towards Russia, by rejecting the EU-Ukraine agreement. It comes also at the worse moment for President Hollande who faces strong social opposition in France and, according to most observers, is presiding over his own end – and also the end of an era if not of a regime.

Today French police has clashed with and used tear gas against demostrators prtsesting the new labour law in several cities including Paris, Nantes, Lyon and Rennes.

Exclusive eye witness reports and documents, abandoned by retreating jihadists and found by RT Documentary crew members in a region liberated by Syrian Kurds, point to commercial scale oil smuggling operations and cozy relations between ISIS and Turkey.

Exclusive and unprecedented footage, along with witness accounts, was filmed by the RT Documentary crew only ten days after the town of Shaddadi in Syrian Kurdistan was liberated from Islamic State terrorists. The area surrounding the town is well known for its vast oil reserves and extraction activity that for months was reaped by ISIS command to generate revenue.

WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY HERE

Following Kurdish soldiers around the destroyed and abandoned homes, RT Documentary found documents which showed a direct link between Turkey and Islamic State fighters operating in Syria. The jihadi paperwork included an entire pile of foreign passports with Turkish entry stamps, and booklets encouraging jihad against the the Syrian government, printed in Turkey.

But most importantly, among piles of ISIS documents RT journalists discovered heaps of detailed invoices used by the terrorists to calculate and report their daily revenues from illegal smuggling activity. “Of course, they wouldn’t get any weapons from Turkey if they didn’t ship them oil,” a teenage oil refinery worker told RT. “They…go with the oil and come back with the guns. And so they go, back and forth, back and forth.” In addition, the documentary crew was also able to record exclusive interviews with locals – as well as captured IS recruits – who shed more light into the ISIS oil trade. According to witnesses on the ground, fighters who came from Raqqa and Aleppo to pick up the oil constantly mentioned Turkey as the final destination. “A lot of money passed through here, because they (IS) pumped plenty of oil. It’s safe to say that they were making as much as a million dollars per week. Dealers from Aleppo would come in vehicles, with tanks that could take up to 170-180 barrels. People said they’d take the oil, export it to Turkey and other countries,” one local said. Silav Serkeftin, a commander with the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), said that “we can say with certainty that Turkey actively supports IS. We found Turkish walkie-talkies, Turkish phone numbers.”

One of the captured ISIS fighters admitted that the terrorist group sells oil to Turkey. Others have admitted that crossing the border into the neighboring country proved to be relatively easy. “Crossing the Syrian-Turkish border was also very easy. It was like crossing the street,” ISIS member from Saudi Arabia, Muhammed Ahmed Muhammed told RT. “A man told me that the Islamic State erased the borders. That there were no borders. I’d heard about that, but I couldn’t quite get it until I saw it myself.”

Despite the apparent ties between Turkey and IS, the teenage oil refinery worker expressed optimism that Syria would come out ahead. “Turkey decided to support IS so they could destroy Syria. But Syria will stand up to them,” he said. Ankara has always fiercely denied any involvement in an illegal oil trade with ISIS, and any contacts with the terror group whatsoever. RT has reached out to the Turkish Foreign Ministry for a specific comment on the documentary crew’s findings which Ankara has failed to provide thus far. Besides collecting irrefutable proof of quite cozy relations between ISIS and Turkey, RT managed capture the mood of the populace who have lived and worked under ISIS yoke for months. They shared their untold stories of survival under the jihadists’ rule.

Supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have stormed Baghdad’s highly fortified, US established Green Zone, also home to the US Embassy, uninvited, the biggest in the world.

All staff of the Japanese, French, British, Australian, Jordanian, Emirates and Saudi Arabia Embassies have moved in to into the American Embassy, it is being reported.

Entrances have been reported sealed and tight security imposed to protect the Iraq Central Bank and other government banks, says an unconfirmed report. However, the Guardian contradicts stating that: “A guard at a checkpoint said the protesters had not been searched before entering. About ten members of the armed group loyal to Sadr were checking protesters cursorily while government security forces who usually conduct careful searches with bomb-sniffing dogs stood by the side.” (1)

U.S. Embassy, Baghdad

Moreover: “Rudaw TV showed protesters chanting and taking selfies inside the parliament chamber where moments earlier MPs had been meeting.”

As Al Jazeera explains: “It is the climax of weeks of political turmoil in Iraq that has seen MPs hold a sit-in, brawl in the parliament chamber and seek to sack the speaker, stalling Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s efforts to replace party-affiliated ministers with technocrats.”

The further chaos comes just two days after US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Baghdad in a situation so chaotic for the US’ puppet government that as the New York Times described it (28^th April 2016) “ … the political situation in Iraq has become so fluid that Mr. Biden’s team has sometimes been unsure whether officials he planned to meet with would still be in office when he arrived.”

America’s fortress Green Zone has been breached with thousands of protestors breaking in, with one shouting: “You are not staying here! This is your last day in the Green Zone”, according to Al Jazeera (2) who reported that in Parliament: “ … some rioters rampaged through the building and broke into offices, while other protesters shouted: “peacefully, peacefully” and tried to contain the destruction …”

Barbed wire was pulled across the road leading to the Green Zone exits: “preventing some scared lawmakers from fleeing the chaos.”

The hated US imposed and fortified Zone – which was simply central Baghdad for all to wander under Saddam Hussein has finally been breached after thirteen years. Where another period of chaos will end, who knows, but meanwhile diplomats cower in the US Embassy, as factions Iraqis patience finally runs out over the tragedy and disaster that is the US and UK’s illegally imposed “New Iraq.”

“Iraq’s are very quick to revolt”, former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Tareq Aziz, told me in an interview before the invasion, listing the years and the fate of those the uprisings had been against. The decimation since has delayed a further one, but it seems it’s time has arrived.

As for the outcome, updates follow. As we have wondered before in these columns, Embassy roof time for the residents and guests of the US Ambassador – again? Vietnam’s spectre hovers?

Notes

1.    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/30/moqtada-al-sadr-supporters-enter-baghdad-parliament-building-green-zone

2.    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/protesters-storm-baghdad-green-zone-parliament-160430120004964.html

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Syrian forces had surprised Israel and were fast approaching the edge of the steep Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 war. It seemed as if Syrian armor and infantry would retake Golan, then pour down into Israeli Galilee.

Soviet recon satellites observed Israel moving its nuclear-armed, 500km-range Jericho missiles out of protective caves and onto their launch pads. At the same time, Israel was seen loading nuclear bombs on their US-supplied F-4 fighter-bombers at Tel Nof airbase.

Believing Israel was about to use nuclear weapons against Syria and Egypt, Moscow put huge pressure on both to rein in their advancing forces. Damascus, already in range of Israeli artillery on Golan, ordered its armored forces on Golan to halt, allowing Israel to mount powerful counter-attacks and retake the strategic heights.

In 1981, Israel formally annexed the 580 sq. mile portion of Golan that it occupied. This illegal annexation was condemned by the United Nations, the United States and Europe’ powers. But Israel held on to Golan and implanted 50,000 there in some 41 subsidized settlements.

The world has pretty much forgotten how close it came to nuclear war in 1973 over Golan. The heights became a primary nuclear trigger point along with Kashmir, Germany’s Fulda Gap, and the DMZ, Korea’s inner border.

Golan recently resurfaced in the news when Israel’s rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, that his nation would never return Golan to Syria. In a speech soon after, Netanyahu vowed Israel would hold on to Golan for “all eternity.” He also admitted for the first time that Israel had made “dozens” of cross-border attacks on Syria.

The long basalt plateau is indeed a valuable prize. It extends from snow-capped, 9,200 ft. (2,814 meter Mt. Hermon in the north to the Sea of Galilee and Yarmouk River in the south.  Golan supplies 15% of Israel’s scarce water and may contain gas or petroleum deposits.

Israeli artillery on Golan can hit Syria’s capitol Damascus; Israeli electronic sensors blanket Damascus and cover all Syrian military movement below. Having walked much of the Golan on both Syrian and Israeli-held sides, I can attest to its remarkable military importance and thick defenses.

After the 1967 war, Israel ethnically cleansed Golan, leveling the capital, Kuneitra, with bulldozers and expelled almost all Golan’s 130,000 Druze and Arab inhabitants. Jewish settlers were brought in to replace them. The US shielded Israel from UN action and world-wide protests.

Before 2011, Israel hinted that it would return Golan to Syria as part of a comprehensive peace agreement – provided Damascus ceased supporting Palestinian claims to their lost lands. But once the Syrian civil war conveniently began, there was no more talk of Golan.

In fact, it’s pretty much clear that Israel has been quietly fueling the Syrian conflict by discreet arms and logistics support to so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels and lobbying for the war in Washington and with the US media.  Netanyahu has even said – with a straight face – that Israel cannot return Golan or even negotiate, until calm returns to Syria and Iraq.

Netanyahu is clearly following the grand strategy of the founder of his rightwing Likud Party, Zeev Jabotinsky, a militant Russian Zionist. Jabotinsky asserted that the Arab states were an artificial, fragile mosaic of inimical Arab tribes.

Hit them hard enough, claimed Jabotinsky, and they will shatter into small pieces, leaving Israel master of the Levant (central Arab world). The destruction of Iraq and Syria have confirmed Jabotinsky’s theory.

Accordingly, Israel is delighted to see Syria, a primary foe, lying in ruins as a result of a US, British, French, Turkish and Saudi-instigated civil war. Damascus is in no shape to demand the return of Golan, and the rest of the world does not care.

The destruction of Syria as a unitary state offers the expansionist Likud government many opportunities to extend influence into Syria – as was the case in Lebanon during its bloody 1975-1990 civil war. Or even carve off more Syrian territory “to protect Israel’s security.”

The words of Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, still resonate: the state of Israel is a work in progress and its borders should not be fixed or even defined. Notably the borders with Syria and Jordan.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times, Nation – Pakistan, Hurriyet, – Turkey, Sun Times Malaysia and other news sites in Asia. http://ericmargolis.com/

Why was the CIA’s Plan B leaked?

It was all a funny business, but it is very clear that the Australian relationship with France, at least when it comes to matters of defence, has changed over the years. From being belligerents keen to pursue nuclear testing in the Pacific, to being “cheese eating surrender monkeys” prior to the Coalition of the Confused’s attack on Iraq in 2003, France has stormed into fashion as a military supplier for the Royal Australian Navy.

The French military industrial complex, involving heavy state direction and motivated by Colbert’s principles of dirigisme, has long been one of the most active in terms of economic activity. Even as the French economy sags in tired despair, the selling of arms has proven lucrative. In the business of producing the machines of death, the French do splendidly. In recent times, it has done spectacularly so, with defence contracts with a string of Arab countries, and India.

What of the wicked Frenchman stereotype of the Pacific, flaunting his military hardware? Some Australians would remember the reaction to the 1996 nuclear tests in French Polynesia, when there were boycotts of French goods. (Sales of BeBoeuf Beujolais particularly suffered.) Matters were similarly hostile over the destruction of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in 1985 by French commandos, and the seizure of the Rainbow Warrior II and MV Greenpeace after crossing the French-imposed 12-mile exclusion zone imposed around the Moruroa test site.

Fewer would remember the longevity of the French-Australian defence relationship, stretching back to the defence contracts of the 1960s, when the French Dassault Mirage III replaced US Sabre jet fighters over the problematic Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

In 2014, it seemed that Japan would thunder forth with the offer the then Abbott government wanted: a contract to build 12 or so submarines. But the Japanese group failed to confirm that it would boost local skilled jobs in Australia, even as it was being outmanoeuvred by German and French contenders. Industrial partners in the defence side of things were few and far between, and Japan’s diplomats were caught asleep. The French, in particular, smelt a catch, employing Sean Costello, the CEO of the Australian branch of the French defence contractor DCNS, to dangle the line in front of Canberra.In November 2014, DCNS CEO Herve Guillou convinced French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to visit Australia.  In Albany, French and Australian officials congregated to commemorate the first sailing of Australian soldiers to France in the First World War.

A $50 billion contract dully followed, and will see 12 French-designed submarines from DCNS (of which 62 per cent is owned by the French government) supplied to the RAN. A few French media sources, notably Le Parisien, even went so far as to call it “the contract of the century”, showing how easy it is to catch the bug of comforting militarism.[1] Some good deal of breast-beating followed, suggesting that the genius of French industry was behind the triumph. Forget the Germans, and the Japanese – the French can do just as well.

Timing on such occasions is everything, and French ceremonial acknowledgement should not be understated. This year marks the centennial since Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Corps) troops were first deployed to the Western Front in the murderous trenches of the First World War. The Australian Governor General, who is the putative representative of the Queen as Australia’s head of state, was wined and dined with keen interest.

The French have every reason to cheer about this. President François Hollande can argue that he brought home the bacon for a much needed economic boost. It has been predicted that thousands of jobs will be created in Cherbourg, Nantes and Lorient (all in all 4,000). Dirigisme has worked again. The return to Australia, for seeking out a contract of minimal worth in security, but considerable cost to the budget, will be far poorer. History will record it as one of the most expensive public endeavours in Australian history, and a risky one at that.

Submarine projects have a habit of being bungling in execution and costly in consequence. Spain’s S-80 Isaac Peral Submarine, hailed initially as the most advanced non-nuclear submarine in the world, cost $680 million and was found to be 75 to 100 tons overweight. According to the good engineers at Navantia, the firm responsible for what the Spanish Ministry of Defence called “deviations”, such a difference was critical enough to prevent resurfacing after submergence.[2]

No matter the risks, says Turnbull. This is the traditional bribe needed for his government ahead of an election to shore up votes in South Australia, which is still being promised an indigenous component to the submarine construction. More to the point, it is being sold as a sovereign Australian venture, despite the previous disasters of the Collins submarine program.

In so doing, it also eases matters with the Chinese – if only for the one basic fact that the defence contract did not go to Japan. Tokyo has been making militaristic murmurings for some time, hoping that such an arrangement would boost its defence industry. Hideaki Watanabe, head of the Ministry of Defence’s procurement agency, dejectedly announced that, “We will do a thorough analysis of what impact the result will have on our defence industry.”[3]

Costello is bubbling with enthusiasm. “We set them up in Australia with French technology. We transfer that fully into the company and we require that supporting company in Australia to go on and further develop a bigger business … so that they can in turn come back to support us. So there’s a virtuous cycle that is developed.”

However much a marriage Le Drian deems it, much can change over the course of 50 years.[4] The most important point will be whether the submarines even work. History, on that score, has not smiled favourably on Australian endeavours in that regard.

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

It was all a funny business, but it is very clear that the Australian relationship with France, at least when it comes to matters of defence, has changed over the years. From being belligerents keen to pursue nuclear testing in the Pacific, to being “cheese eating surrender monkeys” prior to the Coalition of the Confused’s attack on Iraq in 2003, France has stormed into fashion as a military supplier for the Royal Australian Navy.

The French military industrial complex, involving heavy state direction and motivated by Colbert’s principles of dirigisme, has long been one of the most active in terms of economic activity. Even as the French economy sags in tired despair, the selling of arms has proven lucrative. In the business of producing the machines of death, the French do splendidly. In recent times, it has done spectacularly so, with defence contracts with a string of Arab countries, and India.

What of the wicked Frenchman stereotype of the Pacific, flaunting his military hardware? Some Australians would remember the reaction to the 1996 nuclear tests in French Polynesia, when there were boycotts of French goods. (Sales of BeBoeuf Beujolais particularly suffered.) Matters were similarly hostile over the destruction of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in 1985 by French commandos, and the seizure of the Rainbow Warrior II and MV Greenpeace after crossing the French-imposed 12-mile exclusion zone imposed around the Moruroa test site.

Fewer would remember the longevity of the French-Australian defence relationship, stretching back to the defence contracts of the 1960s, when the French Dassault Mirage III replaced US Sabre jet fighters over the problematic Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

In 2014, it seemed that Japan would thunder forth with the offer the then Abbott government wanted: a contract to build 12 or so submarines. But the Japanese group failed to confirm that it would boost local skilled jobs in Australia, even as it was being outmanoeuvred by German and French contenders. Industrial partners in the defence side of things were few and far between, and Japan’s diplomats were caught asleep. The French, in particular, smelt a catch, employing Sean Costello, the CEO of the Australian branch of the French defence contractor DCNS, to dangle the line in front of Canberra.In November 2014, DCNS CEO Herve Guillou convinced French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to visit Australia.  In Albany, French and Australian officials congregated to commemorate the first sailing of Australian soldiers to France in the First World War.

A $50 billion contract dully followed, and will see 12 French-designed submarines from DCNS (of which 62 per cent is owned by the French government) supplied to the RAN. A few French media sources, notably Le Parisien, even went so far as to call it “the contract of the century”, showing how easy it is to catch the bug of comforting militarism.[1] Some good deal of breast-beating followed, suggesting that the genius of French industry was behind the triumph. Forget the Germans, and the Japanese – the French can do just as well.

Timing on such occasions is everything, and French ceremonial acknowledgement should not be understated. This year marks the centennial since Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Corps) troops were first deployed to the Western Front in the murderous trenches of the First World War. The Australian Governor General, who is the putative representative of the Queen as Australia’s head of state, was wined and dined with keen interest.

The French have every reason to cheer about this. President François Hollande can argue that he brought home the bacon for a much needed economic boost. It has been predicted that thousands of jobs will be created in Cherbourg, Nantes and Lorient (all in all 4,000). Dirigisme has worked again. The return to Australia, for seeking out a contract of minimal worth in security, but considerable cost to the budget, will be far poorer. History will record it as one of the most expensive public endeavours in Australian history, and a risky one at that.

Submarine projects have a habit of being bungling in execution and costly in consequence. Spain’s S-80 Isaac Peral Submarine, hailed initially as the most advanced non-nuclear submarine in the world, cost $680 million and was found to be 75 to 100 tons overweight. According to the good engineers at Navantia, the firm responsible for what the Spanish Ministry of Defence called “deviations”, such a difference was critical enough to prevent resurfacing after submergence.[2]

No matter the risks, says Turnbull. This is the traditional bribe needed for his government ahead of an election to shore up votes in South Australia, which is still being promised an indigenous component to the submarine construction. More to the point, it is being sold as a sovereign Australian venture, despite the previous disasters of the Collins submarine program.

In so doing, it also eases matters with the Chinese – if only for the one basic fact that the defence contract did not go to Japan. Tokyo has been making militaristic murmurings for some time, hoping that such an arrangement would boost its defence industry. Hideaki Watanabe, head of the Ministry of Defence’s procurement agency, dejectedly announced that, “We will do a thorough analysis of what impact the result will have on our defence industry.”[3]

Costello is bubbling with enthusiasm. “We set them up in Australia with French technology. We transfer that fully into the company and we require that supporting company in Australia to go on and further develop a bigger business … so that they can in turn come back to support us. So there’s a virtuous cycle that is developed.”

However much a marriage Le Drian deems it, much can change over the course of 50 years.[4] The most important point will be whether the submarines even work. History, on that score, has not smiled favourably on Australian endeavours in that regard.

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

The US is planning to provide Israel with the largest military aid package in the history of the two countries, the Times of Israel reported on Monday citing a White House official.

A large majority of US senators have called to increase foreign aid to Israel.

“We are preparing to sign a memorandum of understanding with Israel to provide the largest single package of aid to any country in the history of the United States,” a White House official told Reuters.

As many as 83 out of 100 US Senators signed a letter calling on President Barack Obama to increase foreign aid to Israel and to immediately sign an agreement on a new defence package.

File photo of Israeli military

The letter was drafted by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democrat Senator Chris Cowans and was signed by 51 Republicans and 32 Democrats including Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

The United States currently gives Israel $3.1 billion annually in military aid, but Israel wants to increase it to $5 billion a year.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted that he would wait for Obama’s successor to get what Israel wants.

US Vice President Joe Biden warned Netanyahu during his last visit to Israel last month that the aid package would be “smaller than what Israel seeks”, but stressed that the amount will reflect the security needs of the country.