Global Research

After a wave of protests and job actions that culminated in Quebec’s largest general strike in decades last December, public-sector unions have agreed to a series of contracts with disappointing concessions that raise questions about where the struggle in Quebec will go next. [Ed.: see “Quebec Unions Debate a Settlement.”]

On December 9, more than 400,000 workers shut down government services to defend their wages, benefits and working conditions. Liberal Party Premier Philippe Couillard provoked the strike by demanding massive concessions. Unions formed a bargaining alliance, the Common Front, to negotiate with the government. The nurses in the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ) and teachers in the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE) held separate talks.

In the wake of the general strike, the Common Front reached a tentative agreement on December 17. The FIQ settled a similar deal. The union officials claimed it was a triumph for the workers, but Robert Green, a teacher in Montreal, argues that, at best, it maintained the status quo and therefore deemed it “a hollow victory,” in an article for the Ricochet website.

One of the largest unions in the Common Front, the Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (FSSS), which represents healthcare workers, rejected the agreement. So did the FAE. They hoped to continue negotiations for a better settlement, but in the end agreed to a deal that was little better than that reached by the Common Front.

Benoit Renaud, a teacher and activist in the left-wing party Québec Solidaire, observed:

“If you view the strike as a boxing match between the government and the unions, you could say that it was a split decision, with two judges declaring the government the winner and one the workers the winner. The government was going for a knockout, and it certainly didn’t get one. The unions made it a fight, blocked the government’s worst shots and managed to land some of their own. But in the end, they didn’t win the fight.”

Now that union members have ratified all of these agreements, this phase of class struggle against neoliberal austerity in Quebec has come to a close, and activists are drawing lessons for the next one.

Setting the Stage: From 2008 to the Present

The struggle was set in motion by the 2008 economic crisis. Just like other provinces in Canada, Quebec’s government led by Liberal Party Premier Jean Charest bailed out capital, driving up the deficit and debt, but mainly for the benefit of big business. The Liberals then launched a campaign of austerity to balance the budget on the backs of the working class. They planned to raise tuition in higher education, slash welfare programs and impose wage freezes, pension cuts and productivity increases on public-sector workers.

Quebec’s working class refused to take these attacks sitting down. Radicals helped pull together an alliance – the Red Hand Coalition – that united student unions, community organizations and unions to combat the Charest program of austerity. Quebec’s left-wing party, Quebec Solidaire (QS), used its members of the national assembly to voice solidarity with the emerging resistance.

Students led the charge against the government. Their radical union, the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), organized the biggest student strike in the province’s history to stop tuition hikes and fight for free higher education. Braving repressive legislation banning unpermitted pickets and marches, hundreds of thousands of students shut down the education system for months in 2012. Their protest – famously dubbed the Printemps érable (Maple Spring) – forced Charest to call an election, which the Liberals lost in one of their worst defeats in decades. The student strike had toppled the government.

The nationalist party, the Parti Québécois (PQ), won the election in 2012 and formed a minority government. While it did roll back the Liberals’ tuition hike and repealed the repressive legislation, the PQ soon abandoned its left-wing posturing and implemented austerity policies of its own. The party tried to stave off waning popularity by various means, including an Islamophobic “Charter of Values” that tried to ban Muslims from wearing the hijab in public-sector jobs. This bigoted campaign backfired. With its voting base alienated, the PQ lost power in the 2014 election to the Liberals, who opposed the Charter on a platform of individual liberty. With a solid majority under new premier, Philippe Couillard, the Liberals quickly declared all-out war on the welfare state, announcing $3.7-billion in proposed cuts.

All-Out Austerity

Premier Couillard singled out public-sector unions whose contracts expired last April. He wanted to impose wage freezes on all these unions for the first two years of a five-year contract, followed by a meager increase of 1 per cent for the final three years of the contract.

In education, Couillard wanted to increase class sizes; count children with special needs as one child, instead of three, as has been the norm; and increase the work week from 32 to 40 hours. In healthcare, the government aimed to raise the number of patients for each nurse, increase forced overtime and deny any increase in bonuses for working night shifts.

The unions’ proposals in negotiations were the polar opposite of Couillard’s. They wanted raises of 13.5 per cent over the life of a three-year contract, increased investment in public services, and improvements of their working conditions.

After some preparatory battles in the spring and summer, the conflict erupted into an all-out confrontation in the fall of last year.

The Red Hand Coalition helped community organizations stage several strikes, most of them for the first time ever. ASSÉ prepared a series of one-day strikes and rallies. And the Common Front unions as well as the FAE organized a sequence of rotating regional strikes.

Parents of children in public education got involved as well. On the first weekday of every month, thousands of parents, organized in the group Protect Our Public Schools, set up human chains in front of their kid’s schools to protest cuts in the education budget.

This broad anti-austerity struggle won majority support from Quebec’s people, especially in the working class. One poll found that 51 per cent backed the unions while only 28 per cent supported Couillard in the contract battle.

Militancy on the Rise

All the stars were seemingly aligned for workers, students and community organizations to unite in three-day general strike planned for early December. But union militants recognized that the officials would pursue a conservative strategy.

As Philippe de Grosbois, a teacher and member of his local union executive, stated:

“Our leadership has spent decades waging defensive fights, trying to maintain what we have, and now that our social model is being brutally attacked, workers are ready to be more offensive, but the officials are reluctant to embrace this new militancy.”

Union radicals therefore formed a new rank-and-file formation, Lutte Commune, to press for democratic organizing of the struggle and the militant strategies and tactics needed to win against the government. They organized forums that cut across the sectoral divisions between the unions. And they reached out to build solidarity with the other forces in the anti-austerity movement.

But the network wasn’t influential enough to shift the approach of the union officialdom. Labour leaders tightly controlled the planning for any action, and while they adopted the anti-austerity discourse of the broader movement, they led their contract campaign with little coordination with other forces in the battle against the government.

Thus, despite widespread preparation for the general strike by students, community groups and public-sector workers, the union officials called it off. They vainly hoped that a show of good faith in bargaining would convince Couillard to reach a settlement. This profoundly disunited and disoriented the anti-austerity movement.

Of course, the government refused to budge from its hard-line stance. And under pressure from union activists agitating for action, the Common Front finally called a one-day general strike on December 9. While over 400,000 workers shut the province down, the union officials had no plan to up the ante after the strike with further, longer job actions – and the emergent rank-and-file organizations were not yet strong enough to push them into more struggle.

Reaching a Settlement

In the aftermath of the strike, the union leadership rushed to cut a deal. The FIQ settled first, winning some demands for nurses on workplace conditions. But the Common Front’s negotiations set the pattern for wages and benefits. At best, its deal maintains the status quo. Claims of a decisive victory are misleading.

The agreement does fend off the worst attacks from the government on working conditions, but the Common Front compromised on retirement age, agreeing to let it rise to 61 in 2019. And the claim of a wage increase of 10.25 per cent over the life of the five-year deal is deceptive. As Robert Green shows, public-sector workers in fact “will have suffered a 2.35 per cent reduction to their purchasing power by the end of the contract.”

The wage agreement was so disappointing that the FSSS, which represents 100,000 workers, many of them in poorly paid sectors of healthcare, rejected the Common Front’s settlement. The union’s President Jeff Begley stated,

“For most workers in the FSSS, this agreement does not increase wages enough to cover losses over the previous years and certainly doesn’t bring up to the levels of workers in the rest of the public sector.”

The FAE, which represents some 34,000 teachers, rejected a similar offer in separate negotiations. The FSSS and FAE hoped that union locals in the Common Front would vote down the settlement and join them in further struggle. Lutte Commune, as well as a new caucus of rank-and-file union members in QS, Comité Intersyndical de Quebec Solidaire, agitated for their fellow members to reject the contract in local meetings. The militants argued that the unions were in a position to win a better deal with more strikes and protests. They convinced a significant minority to vote against the agreement in many locals, and won a majority in some locals. But the union officials managed to get the vast majority of locals to ratify the agreement.

Isolated and without much solidarity from the other unions, the FAE and FSSS were not able to win a better settlement. The government refused to budge from the terms it had struck with the Common Front. And the FSSS and FAE did not risk further strike actions on their own out of fear that the government would force them back to work and impose a contract.

FSSS and FAE won some improvements in working conditions for their members, but agreed to the same terms on wages and benefits as the Common Front. But unlike the leadership of the Common Front, the union officials of FSSS and FAE did not dress up the contract as a victory. A majority of members ratified the contracts, but large minorities did vote against it, and in FAE, three locals voted it down.

Taking Stock

After the last contract was ratified by the FAE membership at the end of March, union militants have begun drawing lessons for future struggles.

Many view this last fight as a transitional one. The union officials remain trapped in conservative and defensive strategies, while the rank and file is ready for more militancy, but not yet independently organized to push for it. As a result, the union movement managed to stop the worst attacks, but still conceded ground to the government’s austerity agenda.

The unions made it enough of a fight that Couillard realized that he had to temporarily back off his most severe attacks. He has since tried to give his government a facelift to revive its popularity. He reassigned his hit man in the contract negotiations, Martin Coiteux, from president of the Treasury Board to minister of Public Safety and Municipalities. But it would be wrong to think the government has abandoned austerity.

The PQ, which has a powerful majority in government, is in turmoil under the leadership of billionaire Pierre Péladeau, and the QS is not yet in a position to challenge the Liberals, with only three members of the National Assembly. Moreover, with the likelihood of another recession in the coming years, the Quebec state will continue attacks on the welfare state, public-sector workers and the working class in general.

Even union officials recognize this. Thus, Louise Chabot, president of the labour federation Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), told the press after Common Front’s settlement, “We know that the government continues to want to cut back significantly in childcare, health and education.” She promised that the unions would fight to stop these in the next budget fight, declaring, “If we do not stop it, it will cause considerable damage to our society.” But, as their conservative strategy in the contract fight proves, the union officials are unlikely to mobilize their forces in a broader struggle let alone a social strike against austerity.

Therefore, the new radical formations that led the wave of struggle since Great Recession will be vital to building a new round of struggle. The Red Hand Coalition will have to deepen the newfound militancy among community organizations. ASSÉ must find a way to overcome the divisions left over from last year. Perhaps most importantly, rank-and-file formations like Lutte Commune will need to consolidate themselves, deepen and broaden their networks, and prepare to push the leaderships for more militant action.

Quebec’s organized working class, especially in the large public sector, has the power to reverse the attacks if prepared to deploy that power with more militant strategies and tactics than the labour officials are predisposed to use. That fight will also take on a political character with the approach of a new election in 2018. The movement against austerity has learned bitter lessons from the PQ’s betrayal of its left electioneering rhetoric. It has proved it is no alternative to the Liberals.

The question will be whether QS is able to overcome the pull of ‘lesser evilism’ – which leads workers to vote for the PQ to get the Liberals out – and galvanize workers behind a principled program for reversing neoliberal austerity. While QS has three members [Françoise David,Amir Khadir, Manon Massé] of the National Assembly and its vote total has doubled since 2007 to 7.63 per cent in 2014, the left-wing party has a long way to go to contend with, let alone defeat, the Liberals and the PQ.

One important element in the next round of struggle will be the revolutionary left. Amid the working class ferment, new socialist organizations have emerged, like the Front d’Action Socialiste and Réseau Écosocialiste inside QS. These will be important for providing a theoretical, strategic and tactical leadership inside the broader formations leading working class struggle.

All these discussions and debate will hopefully be on full display at the World Social Forum, which is scheduled from August 9-14 in Montreal. Activists from all over the world, and especially from North America outside Quebec, will be able to learn from the province’s explosive struggles over the last few years. And in turn, veterans of struggles throughout the world will also share lessons to aid the next phase of class struggle in order to win a more just and equitable social order in Quebec. •

Ashley Smith writes for the Socialist Worker where this article first appeared.

A report issued Thursday by the British charity Oxfam found that the 50 largest US corporations are hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in overseas accounts to avoid US income taxes, much of it in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

The biggest tax dodger is technology giant Apple, with $181 billion held offshore. General Electric had the second-largest stash, at $119 billion, enough to repay four times over the $28 billion GE received in federal guarantees during the 2008 Wall Street crash. Microsoft had $108 billion in overseas accounts, with companies like Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, IBM, Cisco Systems, Google, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson rounding out the top ten.

Overseas tax havens have been the focus of recent revelations about tax scams by wealthy individuals, based on the leak of the “Panama Papers,” documents from a single Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, involving 214,000 offshore shell companies. The firm’s clients included 29 billionaires and 140 top politicians worldwide, among them a dozen heads of government.

But the sums involved in corporate tax scams dwarf those hidden away by individuals. According to the Oxfam report, the offshore manipulations by the 50 largest US corporations cost the US taxpayer $111 billion each year, while robbing another $100 billion annually from countries overseas, many of them desperately poor.

The $111 billion a year in US taxes evaded would be sufficient to eliminate 90 percent of child poverty in America, effectively wiping out that social scourge. It is more than the annual cost of the food stamp program, or unemployment benefits, or the total budget of the Department of Education.

Oxfam timed the release of its report for the April 15 income tax deadline in the United States (actually Monday, April 18 this year), when tens of millions of working people must file their income tax returns or face federal penalties. Working people could face additional tax penalties of up to 2 percent of household income, to a maximum of $975, under the Obamacare “individual mandate,” if they have not purchased private health insurance.

There is a stark contrast between the IRS hounding of working people for relatively small amounts of money—but difficult or impossible to pay for those on low incomes—and the green light given to corporate tax cheats who evade taxation on trillions in income.

Image: Federal Tax Paid vs Federal Loans, Bailouts, Loan Guarantees Received by 50 largest US companies 2008-2014

“As Americans rush to finalize tax returns, multinational corporations that benefit from trillions in taxpayer-funded support are dodging billions in taxes,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America.

“The vast sums large companies stash in tax havens should be fighting poverty and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, not hidden offshore in Panama, Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands.”

The Oxfam report, titled “Broken at the Top,” expresses concern that “tax dodging by multinational corporations…contributes to dangerous inequality that is undermining our social fabric and hindering economic growth.”

It continues:

“This inequality is fueled by an economic and political system that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest, causing the gains of economic growth over the last several decades to go disproportionately to the already wealthy. Among the most damning examples of this rigged system is the way large, profitable companies use offshore tax havens, and other aggressive and secretive methods, to dramatically lower their corporate tax rates in the United States and developing countries alike.”

Oxfam collected figures available from the 10-K reports and other financial documents issued by the 50 largest US companies, covering the period since the Wall Street crash, 2008 through 2014, and presented them in an interactivetable. The figures included total profits, federal taxes paid, total US taxes paid (including state and local), lobbying expenses, tax breaks, money held in offshore accounts, and benefits received from the federal government, including loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.

Among the most important findings:

* The top 50 companies made nearly $4 trillion in profits globally, but paid only $412 billion in federal income tax, for an effective tax rate of barely 10 percent, compared to the statutory rate of 35 percent.

* The 50 companies spent $2.6 billion to influence the federal government, while reaping nearly $11.2 trillion in federal support, for an effective return of 400,000 percent on their lobbying expenses.

* The overseas cash stashed by the 50 companies, nearly $1.4 trillion, is larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Russia, Mexico, Spain or South Korea.

* US multinationals reported 43 percent of their foreign earnings from five tax havens, countries that accounted for only 4 percent of their foreign workforce and 7 percent of foreign investment. All told, US companies shifted between $500 billion and $700 billion in profits from countries where economic activity actually took place to countries where tax rates were low.

* In the year 2012 alone, US firms reported $80 billion in profits in Bermuda, more than their combined reported profits in the four largest economies (after the US itself): China, Japan, Germany and France. This figure was nearly 20 times the total GDP of the tiny island country.

The Oxfam report also pointed to an estimated $100 billion in taxes evaded in foreign countries, many of them rich in natural resources extracted by such global giants as Exxon, Chevron and Dow Chemical. According to the report,

“Taxes paid, or unpaid, by multinational companies in poor countries can be the difference between life and death, poverty or opportunity. $100 billion is four times what the 47 least developed countries in the world spend on education for their 932 million citizens. $100 billion is equivalent to what it would cost to provide basic life-saving health services or safe water and sanitation to more than 2.2 billion people.”

The report cited former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s assessment that “Africa loses more money each year to tax dodging than it receives in international development assistance.”

Oxfam offered no solution to the growth of inequality and the systematic looting by big corporations that its report documents, except to urge governments around the world to close tax loopholes. The group also pleads with the corporate bosses themselves not to be quite so greedy. Neither capitalist governments nor the CEOs will pay the slightest attention. But the working class should take note of these figures, which provide ample evidence of the bankrupt and reactionary nature of capitalism, and the urgent necessity of building a mass movement, on a global scale, to put an end to the profit system.

In a rare move by Washington, the 2016 U.S. report on human rights said Israel unlawfully killed over 70 Palestinians and tries minors in military courts.

The United States accused Israeli Defense Forces of “excessive use of force” in the Palestinian territories, and “arbitrary arrest and associated torture and abuse, often with impunity,” as part of the U.S. State Department annual report.

The report, released Wednesday, said of 149 Palestinians killed in 2015 by Israeli security forces in the West Bank only 77 were in the course of attacking Israelis.

“There were numerous reports of the ISF (Israel security forces) killing Palestinians during riots, demonstrations, at checkpoints, and during routine operations; in some cases they did not pose a threat to life,”

the report read.

The new report is a rarely seen before criticism from the U.S. administration against Israel, Washington’s key and most important ally in the Middle East. Israeli media downplayed the report and attempted to counter it with known Israeli figures, which tend to be biased.

As of Nov. 15, there were 6,828 were Palestinian prisoners or detainees from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza in Israeli facilities including 264 Palestinian minors, the U.S. State Department said.

It added that most of those Palestinians imprisoned in Israel face discrimination, harsh conditions and torture.

“These prisoners often faced harsher conditions than those of the general prison population, including increased incidence of administrative detention, restricted family visits, ineligibility for temporary furloughs, and solitary confinement.”

The report also touched on the fact that “in August the (Israeli) Knesset passed a law authorizing force-feeding of hunger-striking prisoners”.

The report highlighted how Israeli authorities prosecute Palestinian minors under the Israeli military law “which denies many of the rights Israeli law would grant them.”

Meanwhile, the report also slammed Tel Aviv over the government’s systematic discrimination against Arab citizens.

The most significant human rights problems were

“institutional and societal discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel, many of whom self-identify as Palestinian, including the Bedouin, in particular in access to equal education and employment opportunities; institutional and societal discrimination against Ethiopian Israelis and women; and the treatment of refugees, asylum seekers, and irregular migrants,”

the report said.

It also included alleged terror attacks against Israeli civilians by Palestinians as significant human rights problems in Israel and the Palestinian-occupied lands.

Killing of Palestinian Children

The U.S. report coincided with the release of another report by the Swiss-based NGO Defense For Children International – Palestine, which exposed Israeli unlawful treatment of Palestinian children, including killings, detention and unfair trials.

The report, called “No Way to Treat a Child,” was published Thursday and is based on testimonies from 429 children who were detained at some point by Israeli forces between January 2012 and December 2015.

“Interrogators used position abuse, threats, and isolation to coerce confessions from some of these children,” the organization said in its report.

“DCIP documented 66 children held in solitary confinement, for an average period of 13 days, during the reporting period … More than 90 percent of children held in solitary confinement provided a confession.”

The news comes at a time of heightened tension between Israel and Palestinians as clashes continue in the West Bank, East Jerusalem. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 160 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds others injured since unrest broke out on Oct.1.

The clashes were sparked by successive incursions by hard-line Israeli groups into Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam.

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Last month, Bassem al-Tamimi and 35 other Palestinians and Palestinian Americans sought legal services to take a range of charities, firms and tycoons in the US to court in what will be a $34.5bn law suit.  Their argument is personal, charging such figures as Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and philanthropist Irving Moskowitz for complicity in financing a particularly murderous, and dispossessing war machine.

Five counts of conspiracy, war crimes, aggravated trespass, pillage and racketeering are being made, encased in the legal miracle that is organised crime.  Central to this is the overall legal justification (or non-justification) for the Israeli settlements themselves, with a specific focus on development in Judea and Samaria.  Some of the plaintiffs have also lost relatives to the predations of the IDF, including Hiba Barghouti, whose Palestinian American brother Abdelrahman Barghouti was slain in the West Bank during an incursion.

File photo of illegal Israeli settlements

Figures like Adelson have well minted form.  The casino billionaire tends to reek of his money and political projects. He can count himself a firm figure behind the fortunes of Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Republican Party.

That he has not always been scrupulous is also a lingering claim.  Former executive Steven Jacobs should know, having lost his job in 2010 for attempting to end what he suggested were Adelson’s endorsement of illegal payments to Chinese officials and ties to Chinese organized crime.  Adelson’s own response was predictable enough: Jacobs simply did not cut the mustard.[1]

The suit also has Haim Saban, another donor, in its sights.  Saban’s curriculum vitae involves the donation of millions of dollars to that less than sterling character, Hillary Clinton.

John Hagee, a televangelist who has made a name on the Israel train of blood and glory, has also been named in the suit. In November last year, it was reported that 23 Israeli charities had received something in the order of $3.2 from John Hagee Ministries.

The website, Breaking Israel News, noted how the organisation had given “over 95 million in donations towards humanitarian efforts in Israel, cementing the strong bond between Christians and Jews.”[2]  Each “Night to Honour Israel” event is replete with Hagee’s feverish dedication to feeding the accounts of the Israeli “humanitarian” machine.  Much of this is dressed up in the form of donations to hospitals.

Martin McMahon, a lawyer representing the complainants, told Al Jazeera his clients were less in the business for the actual remuneration than hitting companies where it hurt most: their wallets.  “We’re not in this for the money, but we’ll probably pick the pockets of some very wealthy corporations.”

McMahon is something of a specialist in this area.  On December 21 last year, he busied the federal court in Washington, D.C. with a similar against the US Treasury.

The premise there was similar to that alleged for his Palestinian clients: that non-profit groups were sending wads of tax-exempt cash “to fund the forcible expulsion of non-Jews” and expand the settlement base in the occupied territories.  The legal suit, were it to succeed, would involve compelling the Treasury to investigate alleged criminal activities, thereby making grounds for revoking the tax-exempt status of the organisations in question.[3]

US government policy is therefore at odds here, having declared as early as 1980 that the settlements are illegal under international law.  The charitable drive, however, has provided a rich pool of assistance that effectively ignores the classification.  For pro-Israel donors, reality is relative.  “For 30 years at least, the US taxpayer has been funding and/or subsidizing criminal activity overseas, i.e., murder, arson, malicious property destruction, assault and battery and ethnic cleansing.”

This is where the murkiness of charity, and supposed good works, becomes profound.  Israel has always been marketed as a beleaguered land of crisis, in need of more than spiritual salvation.  The entire charitable industrial complex around its existence has meant that guns and butter often get mixed up, both deemed as necessaries in the broader cause.

This point is amply illustrated by the US charity Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.  “Their job,” goes that body’s advertising line, “is to look after Israel.  Ours is to look after them.”  In its section of “FIDF Events,” sponsorship programs for IDF soldiers are encouraged, enabling visits of a foreign military power to US soil “to participate in special events and programs, such as IDF Musical Ensemble performances, parlor meetings, lectures at synagogues an schools, regional gala dinners, and meetings with FIDF supporters.”[4]

In one month, this tax-exempt entity receives as much as $60 million, money which goes to funding various Israeli settler projects, including the creation of “sniper schools”.

All this, despite the conventional idea that charity should involve the amelioration of poverty, the advancement of scientific, religious and education projects, while “eliminating prejudice and discrimination” and “defending human and civil rights secured by law”. The law, however, is truly an ass of some proportion, and any resolution of these suits will have to wait for years.  At most, they will be legal nuisances rather than genuine acts of harassment and redress.

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

Notes

As explosions from detonated mines continued in the background a Syrian general confirmed in some detail an ugly truth: Washington and its close allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel backed the ISIS takeover and destruction of Palmyra.

Most of the weapons ISIS used were from the US , with some ammunition from Israel . ISIS had US Hummers, spinning explosive projectiles and military rations from the US , Turkey and Saudi Arabia .

That should not have been a surprise. US officials admitted in 2014 that their allies Turkey , the Saudis and Qatar were backing every single armed group in Syria , in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian Government led by President Bashar al Assad.

Our group of 30 journalists visited liberated Palmyra on 14 April, 18 days after the Syrian Army freed the historic city from a ten month reign of terror. Syrian bulldozers were cleaning debris while Russian sappers continued exploding mines. Three thousand had been cleared and another 30 exploded in the two hours we were there.

We saw the damaged buildings, bomb and mine craters along the roads, and the bizarre steel and wire structure where ‘infidels’ and pro-government people were publicly crucified and beheaded, their bodies drained of blood into what had been a pleasant fountain next to the entrance to the historic sites. We saw the extensive vandalism to the museum, with all human or animal statues beheaded or damaged.

More than 1,600 ISIS terrorists – many from Chechnya , Saudi Arabia , Tunisia and other countries, as well as some Syrians – had converged on Palmyra in May 2015, just as Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria ) led an invasion of NATO-backed Islamists from Turkey into Northern Syria . The ISIS groups invading Palmyra came from the east: from Raqqa, Deir eZorr and Abu Kamal, but also a group from the west.

The US, which since 2014 claimed to be conducting a war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and which had air power and sophisticated surveillance of the region, did nothing to stop the huge ISIS advance on Palmyra.

Again, this should have been unsurprising. Eight months earlier General Martin Dempsey, head of the US military, admitted that his ‘major Arab allies’ were funding ISIS . In response, Senator Lindsay Graham, chair of the US Armed Forces Committee, defended the sponsors of ISIS , saying ‘they fund them because the Free Syrian Army couldn’t fight Assad, they were trying to beat Assad’.

The following month, in October 2014, US Vice President Joe Biden explained that Turkey , Qatar , the UAE and Saudi Arabia ‘were so determined to take down Assad … they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad … [including] al Nusra and al Qaeda and … this outfit called ISIL’. Biden pretended that Washington was not responsible for the terrorism of his subordinate allies.

US support for terrorist groups forming an ‘Islamic State’ was not an afterthought. It was they key idea from the beginning.

In August 2012, before ISIS came across to Syria from Iraq, US intelligence (DIA) reported that ‘The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq, later ISI and then ISIS] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria … there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality [an ‘Islamic State’] in eastern Syria … and this is exactly what the supporting powers [the US, other western countries, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey] to the [Syrian] opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.’

More than 200 Syrian soldiers died defending Palmyra in May 2015, and another 150 died retaking that historic and strategic city, in March 2016.  They lost their lives defending their country.

The water supply in Palmyra was destroyed, historic sites and treasures damaged, and soldiers and many other innocents were slaughtered, all by US-backed terrorists.

Whatever else people may or may not understand about the Syrian conflict, they should be clear that the US ‘war on terrorism’ in Syria and Iraq is a fraud. Directly or indirectly, Washington remains the key supporter of ISIS, al Nusra and the rest.

According to Counterpunch (2007) editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair:

“The desire for secrecy is one of Mrs. Clinton’s enduring and damaging traits…Befitting a Midwestern Methodist with a bullying father, repression has always been one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent characteristics. Her’s has been the instinct to conceal, to deny, to refuse to admit any mistake.

… Since Vietnam, there’s never been a war that Mrs. Clinton didn’t like. She argued passionately in the White House for the NATO bombing of Belgrade. Five days after September 11, 2001, she was calling for a broad war on terror…

“I’ll stand behind [George W.] Bush for a long time to come”, Senator Clinton promised, and she was as good as her word, voting for the Patriot Act and the wide-ranging authorization to use military force against Afghanistan…

Of course she supported without reservation the attack on Afghanistan and, as the propaganda buildup toward the onslaught on Iraq got underway, she didn’t even bother to walk down the hall to read the national intelligence estimate on Iraq before the war.”

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton instigated and legitimized the overthrow of the Honduran government in 2009 not all that unlike the 1954 Guatemala Coup engineered primarily by CIA Director Allen Dulles, supported by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (image below, 1948) and with the glowing approval of President Dwight Eisenhower.  

In a March 2016 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Greg Grandin, a professor of Latin American history at New York University, discussed the fallout from the 2009 Honduran Coup.

“I mean, hundreds of peasant activists and indigenous activists have been killed. Scores of gay rights activists have been killed. I mean, it’s just—it’s just a nightmare in Honduras. I mean, there’s ways in which the coup regime basically threw up Honduras to transnational pillage. And Berta Cáceres [a prominent Honduran activist assassinated in 2016], in that interview, says what was installed after the coup was something like a permanent counterinsurgency on behalf of transnational capital. And that was—that wouldn’t have been possible if it were not for Hillary Clinton’s normalization of that election, or legitimacy.”

In an April interview with Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on Democracy Now, Frank indicated that President Obama had basically turned over Central and South America to Hillary Clinton. Frank then said this:

“I think it’s really about the U.S. pushback against the democratically elected governments of the left and the center-left that came to power in Latin America in the ’90s and in the 2000s—Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, El Salvador, all these countries. And Zelaya was the weakest link in that chain. He, himself, did not come out of a big social movement base at the time of his election, certainly since the coup. And I think they were—the U.S. was looking for a way to push back against that. There’s a very important military base, U.S. military base, Soto Cano Air Force Base, in Honduras. And Honduras has always been the most captive nation of the United States in Latin America. So, I think they were testing what they could get away with. And they got away with it. It was the first domino pushing back against democracy in Latin America and reasserting U.S. power, in service to a transnational corporate agenda.”

It’s Not Your Country or Life

The 1954 coup that ousted Guatemalan President Jacob Arbenz from the presidency had the same rationale as Hillary Clinton’s 21^st Century Honduran effort. David Talbot, writing in the must-read book The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, noted that Arbenz’s mistake was antagonizing the United Fruit Company by attempting to

“expropriate acreage from the United Fruit Company’s large holding that were not under cultivation, and [Arbenz] had offered the multinational corporation fair compensation for the seized land.”

But United Fruit had powerful connections in the Eisenhower Administration. John Foster Dulles had long been a legal advisor to United Fruit for many years. Both brothers held shares of stock in the company. Robert Cutler, head of Eisenhower’s National Security Council, was the former chair of United Fruit.  Walter “Beetle” Smith, former CIA director and close friend of Eisenhower, would end up on the United Fruit Board of Directors after the coup. Even Eisenhower’s personal secretary, Ann Whitman, was affiliated with United Fruit: her husband was its publicity director. Other violent overthrows of foreign governments and the destruction of their societies for crass business and career interests would be coated by Allen Dulles in layers of red paint; that is, Communist red paint. Murder, extortion, coups, wars, torture, oppression, censorship, lies, theft, profits, racism, threat exaggeration and evil leadership would be legitimized under the guise of national security during the Cold War.  Just so.

According to Talbot,

“By the time the bloodletting had run its course [in Guatemala], four decades later, over 250,000 people had been killed in a nation whose total population was less than four million when the reign of terror began.”

For many years, the Dulles brothers were ensured the support of the gatekeepers in banking, finance, media, the military and the US Congress through relationships made and sealed during World War I, the interwar years, and World War II. The Nazi’s would serve the Dulles brothers well in their private and public roles. Allen would direct the merger of the CIA with some of the worst elements of the defeated Third Reich. John Foster—who while at Sullivan and Cromwell pushed back against closing its satellite office in Nazi Germany– often advocated that nuclear weapons should be viewed as conventional weapons. In some sense, the two brothers seemed to possess the same zealousness and cruelty of the Third Reich.

Near WWII’s end, Allen protected Nazi intelligence chief for the Eastern Front, Major General Reinhard Gehlen, from war crimes trials and would later merge Gehlen’s operatives and network into the CIA’s operation. Gehlen would become the first chief of West German intelligence (BND) and hold the position until 1968.  Allen also cut clandestine deals with other Nazi’s—government officials, bankers, scientists, researchers, et al–through various operations like PAPERCLIP and SUNRISE. Nazi expertise was used in experimental brain/cognitive modification via ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA. Talbot speculates, chillingly, that Allen was connected with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and not only via his critical role on the Warren Commission. Talbot documents the frenetic activity at the ex-CIA director’s residence in Georgetown, Washington, DC, prior to 22 November 1963. He also notes Allen’s encampment at “The Farm”—a clandestine training center on the CIA campus—from 22 to 24 November 1963.

It’s a Good Day for Someone Else to Die Hard

According to Consortium News, when Hillary Clinton was asked about the death of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s deposed ruler, at the hands of a mob, she said,

“We came, we saw, he died.”

That’s a comment Allen Dulles–or a psychopath–might have made. That’s worrisome in a world in which President Hillary Clinton may become a reality. Her penchant for war, secrecy and cover-up, Yale pedigree and alumni network, corporate connections from Wall Street to London, fealty to Israel, shapeshifting Republican/Democrat persona, and the use of the Clinton Foundation as a sort of non-profit, quasi-government, global intelligence/networking agency makes comparing her with the Dulles brothers—and their public/private lives, not as crazy as it first seems. The Clinton Foundation has initiatives in dozens of countries throughout the world. Its connections in international corporate board rooms and the principals of foreign national and local governance give it access to information/intelligence. It is also involved in US domestic political campaigns indirectly through its donors.

For example, one of the Clinton Foundation’s board members is Frank Guistra. According to a 2013 Huffington Post article,

“Clinton was borrowing [Giustra’s private jet] to begin a four-day speaking tour of Latin America that would pay him $800,000…Frank Giustra was forming a friendship that would make him part of the former president’s inner circle and gain him introductions to presidents of Kazakhstan and Colombia… Giustra’s self-serving philanthropy also took him and Clinton to Kazakhstan in September 2007, as documented in a January 2008 New York Times investigation…

Within two days [of the beginning of the trip], corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company [UrAsia Energy Ltd.] signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom,”…

The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company [UrAsia] into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra….Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra… Within a year and a half, Giustra sold off his stake in the Kazatomprom joint venture for $3.1 billion, which he had originally purchased for $450 million.”

In a 2015 Washington Post piece, pertaining to the governor of the Virginia, Terry McAuliffe:

“More than 175 contributors to the Clinton Foundation and to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign have dug deep into their wallets for McAuliffe (Democrat), often giving prolifically despite little or no connection to Virginia…

Among them is an Omaha database executive who lavished so much corporate jet travel on himself and the Clinton family that shareholders forced him out. A Hollywood media mogul with a singular interest in Israel. And an Argentine-born energy tycoon who recalled visiting Richmond just once — flying in and out years ago with Bill Clinton, his Georgetown classmate. Of the $60 million McAuliffe has raised for his two gubernatorial bids, inauguration, political action committee and the Democratic Party of Virginia, nearly $18 million has come from contributors to the Clinton Foundation or to Hillary Clinton’s current campaign.”

John Stanton can be reached at [email protected]

The Donetsk People’s Republic Security Service declared the detention of the colonel of Ukraine’s Security Service, in the past one of the commanders of “Alpha” unit.

According to DPR officials, the suspect stated he was the acting representative of the UN mission in Donetsk. At the same time, he wasn’t registered as the employee of the mission and came to the territory of the republic without the corresponding notice. On the same day, the representative office of the United Nations in Ukraine declared that the employee of the UN had been detained in the territory of Donbass currently not under the control of Kiev.

On April 12, the Lugansk People’s Republic militia shot down two UAVs of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. According to the LPR People’s Militia Major Andrey Marochko, the Kiev side intensified the activity of sniper groups and intelligence with use of UAVs along the contact line.

The representatives of OSCE SMM to Ukraine registered the mining of the Kiev-controlled territories near Zolotoye. The mines have been likely set by Kiev’s forces.

During the revision of the constant places of the Armed Forces of Ukraine military equipment storage, OSCE representatives registered the absence of 6 anti-tank guns ‘Rapier’, 20 mortars ‘Cornflower’ and ‘Sledge’, 16 T-72 and T-64 battle tanks. It’s obvious that the absent equipment is deployed at the contact line.

The Ukrainian military has been shelling the Donetsk-Gorlovka road in order to cut the communications between these cities. Especially heavy artillery fire was observed near Yasinovataya.

Meanwhile, Kiev-sponsored media report that DPR and LPR militias increased shellings at the contact line. According to reports, the militia forces shelled positions of the Ukrainian military 87 times only on April 13. 8 Ukrainian servicemen were wounded. Separately, a Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicle was blown up by a landmine.

The aerobatics skills of Russian pilots over the US destroyer Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea left the Pentagon and other US official running for cover in Washington over “aggressive close interactions” with Russian fighter jets.

Image: This file photo shows Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) militants in an undisclosed location in South Kordofan State, Sudan.

Israeli firms have teamed up with militants in Sudan, operating gold and uranium mines in the South Kordofan state and smuggling the reserves to the occupied Palestinian lands, a report says.  

Hassan Abdallah Dudu, a local chief, said the Israelis are tapping mineral reserves in the areas controlled by Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), the Sudanese Media Center (SMC) reported on Thursday.

They are smuggling them, which also include other minerals, across the border into South Sudan to be transported to Israel, he said.

The report said Israeli companies are also conducting drilling operations in the strategic Umm Sardaba district in the South Kordofan state.

In December 2014, SMC reported that SPLM-N militants were smuggling gold and using the proceeds to finance their militancy and attacks on the Sudanese government.

The news agency published pictures purportedly showing senior SPLM-N commanders trading large quantities of gold with officials of the Sudanese opposition Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Bank of South Sudan in Juba.

Since 2011, the SPLM-N has been fighting against the Sudanese government in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states which they claim are politically and economically marginalized.

Khartoum accuses neighboring South Sudan, which seceded from the Republic of Sudan in 2011, of supporting anti-government militants.

Flying into Bentiu, a town in northern South Sudan, is unnerving. The front of a broken plane, cockpit windows smashed, sits close to the dusty airstrip; long green grass sprouts around the cracked fuselage. Soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a former guerrilla movement and now the country’s official army, live in tin sheds around the rocky runway. The young men, some in uniform and many not, are armed with AK-47s. They loiter, looking bored. Gunfire can be heard in the background. The sky is heavy with grey clouds.

Bentiu occupies a grimly unique position within recent South Sudanese history. In 2014, the town was the sight of a massacre, one of the worst atrocities of the civil war. Rebel forces killed hundreds of civilians and used public radio broadcasts to encourage the rape of women of different ethnicities, later releasing a statement that boasted of ‘mopping and cleaning-up operations’.

It’s July 2015, just a month before the signing of the peace agreement. I have been living in Juba, South Sudan’s capital, for most of the year, working as a freelance journalist; my partner is employed by an international NGO. Juba is a challenging place to be based; our existence was defined by security concerns, a collapsing economy, nightly curfews and growing crime. Temperatures in summer are regularly over forty-five degrees and water shortages are common.

South Sudan is land-locked, sharing borders with Uganda, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. Like its neighbours, the country continues to endure the after effects of colonisation, having been occupied in the twentieth century by British interests. Much of the land is swamp or tropical forest, and the country hosts one of the largest wildlife migrations in the world.

I travelled to Bentiu by a slow-moving Russian UN helicopter. From the air, burnt-out buildings dot the swampy land. Tens of thousands of cattle are scattered among them, guarded by locals. Cattle-raiding is endemic in South Sudan, a brutal tactic used by government forces and militias to starve various groups of people. Cattle are the heart of the nation – cattle is not only used for food, but also for cultural practices, such as marriage (as bride price) and compensation after disputes – but years of war have left many without this precious commodity.

The trip from Juba took three hours and I was accompanied by Indian and Rwandan peacekeepers. There are over 12,500 uniformed UN peacekeepers in South Sudan – from a range of countries, including Cambodia, Australia, Zimbabwe and Yemen – making it one of the largest UN missions in the world.

A single muddy road littered with abandoned trucks and cars leads from the airport to Bentiu town and onto the sprawling UN base for internally displaced persons. The number of people seeking protection at the camp has swelled over the last two and a bit years of fighting; now, around 120,000 civilians live in a site originally built to house less than half that number. Almost every imaginable UN agency, international NGO and humanitarian group is involved in feeding, housing, rehabilitating and providing medical care.

The UN camp was established in December 2013, soon after violence erupted in Juba between President Salva Kiir’s faction, drawn primarily from the Dinka ethnic group, and those loyal to Riek Machar, Kiir’s former deputy, mainly from the Nuer ethnic group. At independence in 2011, both sides had been publicly committed to the new nation. But it didn’t last: tensions escalated, with both Kiir and Machar wanting more power. South Sudan is suffering today because these military men – both of whom spent decades fighting for independence – are unable to transition from combatants to democrats. Since it began in late 2013, the conflict has engulfed vast swathes of the state, destroying any hope that was felt locally and internationally in the first years of independence.

Indeed, the world’s newest nation has collapsed. ‘There has been so much killing, abuse and destruction of property here. It’s immense,’ an anonymous senior UN official at the refugee camp tells me (few UN authorities in Bentiu are authorised to speak openly to the media). Tens of thousands have been killed, and millions have been displaced internally and externally. Of the around twelve million people who live in South Sudan, 70 per cent face severe hunger. The economy is in freefall, with government forces and rebels fighting regularly over desperately needed oil reserves. Education and healthcare facilities have been unable to cope under the strain of the conflict. In 2014, the government hired former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and his new firm, Frontier Services Group, to help boost oil output, but there is little evidence it’s working.

Bentiu heaves with broken humanity. The camp looks similar to those that have sprung up in response to other African conflicts, from Central African Republic to Congo. But things were supposed to be different in this new nation. South Sudan was born nearly five years ago amid so much hope – something much of Africa can’t claim. Yet the country has disintegrated. Many of the refugees in Bentiu are exhausted and confused, unsure how their country is again unsafe for them and their children. They can’t plan more than a few days ahead, and their hopes of a better future have been extinguished by fighting and ethnic strife. But this time things are different: the tensions, I am told, aren’t historical or cultural, but rather fuelled by leaders with grim agendas.

The Bentiu camp stretches as far as the eye can see. Flimsy houses made of bamboo and plastic sheets are positioned near little stalls selling flip-flops, baby formula, dresses, broken mobile phones, bags of sugar and glucose biscuits. During the rainy season, April to November, vast parts of the camp overflow with mud and debris. In the camps early days, flooding was common; some residents lived in water up their waists, and children drowned in their own homes. The UN was unprepared for the sheer numbers of arrivals: one official says the situation was ‘unforeseen’ because few expected the war to escalate so quickly. The UN has also been accused by Canadian Megan Nobert of ignoring her rape and not taking responsibility for the attack at their Bentiu base in 2015. The alleged attacker was subcontracted by the UN, but agencies failed to properly investigate.

I have looked at photos of the early days of the camp and can see that much has changed. The UN and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours on improving conditions. There is clear evidence of raised land, water channels and new wooden structures that are incomparably less dirty and cluttered than the old ones.

In one of the homes I meet Julia John, a 25-year-old woman who shares the space with her husband and three young children, as well as with her sister, her sister’s children and her mother. Their tidy space has just two single beds, a small table and rug, plastic chairs and dresses hung as wall decoration. Julia tells me of her desire to return home, but also of her fear of living alongside her ‘enemies’. She fled the fighting in January 2014 and has been in the camp ever since. ‘I hope for peace, but am not hopeful,’ she says.

Julia’s old property is only a few kilometres from the camp, but to her it feels so much further away. Every day when she leaves the UN base to search for firewood, she faces the threat of rape; soldiers routinely abduct, assault and disappear women. Julia has asked the UN and NGOs to provide firewood inside the camp to avoid the treacherous journey – so far they have not complied.

As a result of ongoing fighting in the region, around 200 new arrivals flow into the Bentiu camp each day. I hear testimony from survivors of horrific acts of violence committed against the Nuer by government soldiers and its militias. There are stories of boys being castrated and of women and girls being publicly gang raped. Nyaduop Machar Puot, a mother of five, explains that she recently witnessed ‘women and kids [being] burned alive in their tukuls [traditional South Sudanese huts]’ in her area of Koch county. She had to flee with her family because her own house was burned down and her cattle stolen.

In July last year, Human Rights Watch released a report that featured interviews with more than 170 victims and witnesses of government and militia enforced violence in Unity (one of South Sudan’s twenty-eight states). The report concludes that the mass rape, beating, killing and dislocation were the result of ‘decades of impunity’ in the region and a lack of accountability, trials or proper investigation. It predicts that this legacy will continue to fuel further crimes in South Sudan.

Back in Juba, the crowds gather for South Sudan’s fourth anniversary celebration. Locals sing and dance in colourful dresses and formal suits that glisten in the sun. Some listen as Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the only major international dignitary to attend, ominously warns of ‘outsiders’ meddling in South Sudan’s affairs. He blames former colonial powers, such as Britain, France and Portugal, for African woes and argues that ‘tribalism [and] sectarianism are wrong ideas’ that should be dismissed.

Uganda has provided thousands of troops to back the South Sudanese government since the 2013 conflict erupted. Most of these were withdrawn in 2015, though a handful remain. Israel and China also arm and back government forces, while Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir assists the opposition. South Sudan has become a proxy war. Sudan continues to destabilise a nation it never wanted to be independent (much of the valuable oil sits within South Sudanese borders), Israel has a long history of supporting African dictatorships and China wants access to South Sudan’s resources. Everybody has dirty, meddling hands. This is the modern face of imperialism. Foreign troops don’t need to occupy a nation for it to be controlled by outside forces.

Museveni’s speech is followed by President Kiir thanking his ‘fellow citizens’ for their years of struggle. He offers few practical solutions to the problems now facing the nation.

The mood at the event is muted – there is little to celebrate. People look forlorn, perhaps unsure why they have come, apart from loyalty to the independence cause. Not even the marching band can rouse the masses. I am looked at with suspicion; zealous security guards in sunglasses ask foreigners wearing sunglasses to remove them. Entrepreneurial women sell nuts and national flags, many of which wilt in the sun. Thousands of discarded, plastic water bottles litter the dusty ground.

South Sudan’s current crisis is entirely man made and yet the nation’s international backers chose to ignore the warning signs. There was a gaping democratic deficit at the heart of the liberation movement; its leaders’ known corruption was overlooked for geopolitical reasons.

Sovereignty wasn’t simply given to the South Sudanese by benign powers. The South Sudanese spent decades fighting for independence against an oppressive northern neighbour, and did so with international backing. I haven’t met any South Sudanese who don’t support separation from Khartoum. Decades of blood and pain were spent gaining freedom and this is why so many South Sudanese are today despairing at their country’s disintegration. ‘Everybody’s a loser in war,’ one man tells me when I visit Bor, in Jonglei state. ‘We’re all losers. We want peace.’

Sudan gained independence from Britain in 1956, but subsequent decades saw Khartoum’s leadership apply a similar mindset to its southern section as its former colonial rulers. In his classic 1966 novel on colonialism Season of Migration to the North, Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih eloquently encapsulates this attitude: ‘They have left behind them people who think as they do.’

There were decades of civil war between Khartoum and its southern population over land, oil, dignity and prestige. Between 1983, when then President Jaafar Nimeiri introduced Sharia law, and 2005, when a peace agreement was finally signed, two million people died and four million were displaced. Both the SPLA and the Sudanese forces committed widespread abuses. Human Rights Watch released a report in 1994 that was eerily prescient in its predictions, warning that ‘the leaders of the SPLA factions must address their own human rights problems and correct their own abuses, or risk a continuation of the war on tribal or political grounds in the future, even if they win autonomy or separation.’ The SPLA and its backers never undertook this necessary accounting.

Today, due to the war, some South Sudanese survive on a diet of roots, water lilies, grass and leaves. Whole families have been forced to hide in dirty marshes, sometime for days, to escape violence. While in Bentiu, a number of women recount to me the brutality of militias, describing how babies were killed before their eyes. These women don’t expect justice or compensation, though they want both. I ask whether they dream of soldiers facing trial for war crimes when the country eventually finds peace – the idea is dismissed as fanciful.

Last August’s peace agreement includes provisions for a hybrid court staffed with South Sudanese and African nationals. It’s a bold initiative that shuns the more traditional route of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a body treated with suspicion across Africa because it rarely investigates crimes by Western nations. But there is little political will to establish this court for South Sudan because the organisation tasked to deliver it, the African Union, is made of leaders who are themselves facing warrants for arrest. This includes Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is charged with alleged genocide in Darfur.

In a tragic historical irony, South Sudan’s leaders are now mimicking its northern neighbour’s fraught relationship with the UN, the West and humanitarian groups. Government forces are stealing food from civilians, blocking the delivery of aid and studiously responding to allegations of abuse by claiming a Western and African conspiracy against their sovereignty. It’s an absurd suggestion, not least because the nation is only independent on paper; without foreign aid, the country and its population would not survive.

It’s an uneasy time for free speech in South Sudan. At least seven reporters were murdered in the country last year. None of the culprits have been found. In 2015, President Kiir threatened journalists critical of his leadership with death. Francis, a Juba-based reporter, tells me that he has to self-censor his work or he would not have a job. He doesn’t fear for his life, but knows his ability to be a critical journalist is severely curtailed.

As a state, South Sudan struggles to function in any capacity. Habib Dafalla Awonga, Director General for Programme Coordination at South Sudan’s HIV/AIDS Commission, explains to me how the war has hampered his ability to get reliable data on infection rates. He estimates that around 2.7 per cent of the population are HIV-positive, but has no way of sourcing definite numbers. It’s probably way higher, especially among soldiers sleeping with sex workers. Despite these concerns, Awonga accuses the West of ‘pushing a gay agenda’ because international HIV/AIDS bodies demanded protections for men who have sex with men (MSM) and sex workers.

This view that Western films, music and popular culture lead people towards sins such as homosexuality and sex work is commonly held across the continent. There are no publicly known gay groups in South Sudan, and being openly gay is impossible. Edward Emest Jubara, Acting Director General for Culture and Heritage in the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, told a local newspaper in July that ‘a relationship between a man and a man is unacceptable in our society’. He was responding to comments made by President Obama during his July visit to Africa, when he urged the continent to abandon anti-gay discrimination. These attitudes are why American evangelical churches view South Sudan, as they do neighbouring Uganda, as prime territory for spreading their anti-gay and anti-abortion agenda. Though exact numbers are unknown, a growing number of American evangelical groups are operating in South Sudan, and they’re finding a receptive audience to their message.

South Sudan’s issues manifest in a range of other hurdles, too. Only 2 per cent of the nation’s roads are paved, making it near impossible to access remote communities in the rainy season (aid groups are forced to rely on expensive UN flights). This year the UN is trying to raise US$1.3 billion from governments for humanitarian efforts. It’s a tough call when there are so many other pressing crises. Because Africa is largely ignored in the international media unless there is an Ebola outbreak or genocide – Black lives don’t matter here – South Sudan can’t compete with a sectarian, proxy war in Syria or post-US invasion chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan. Africa is still easily framed as the dark continent: uncivilised, violent, savage. Yet South Sudan joins a long list of dysfunctional African states, from Burundi to Guinea-Bissau, that are crying out for peace.

Being based in South Sudan has forced me to examine the uniqueness of the country’s crisis and how it compares to other, equally horrific situations in nearby countries. The most media-savvy citizens in Juba know that their nation is mostly ignored by the international media, that the conflict is not deemed important enough to warrant serious attention – the victims are non-people, nameless and disposable. But they have learnt that the ‘international community’ – a generic term that usually means what Washington and its allies want – has been unable and unwilling to pressure the warring factions. They also know that President Obama’s focus has been on the various conflicts in the Middle East. And while no South Sudanese express a desire for American military intervention, many wish for Washington to be more assertive in resolving the current conflict.

There is no doubt that the level of brutality in South Sudan is worse than almost any other conflict I’ve reported; depraved attacks against Palestinians and Afghans are not uncommon, but the scale and intensity in South Sudan is particularly harrowing. The remoteness of the conflict and the lack of accountability for war crimes has exacerbated extremism against civilians. I hear again and again vivid descriptions of rape and murder that shock me to my core.

South Sudanese leaders and military chiefs understand little about governance and that has led to endemic corruption. Between the 2005 peace agreement with Sudan and independence in 2011, Juba obtained over US$13 billion in oil revenues; a significant amount of this went to security expenditure and salaries. Development was largely forgotten.

But what is often ignored in the just-ified criticisms of state officials is the complicity of self-interested outsiders. For example, the China National Petroleum Corporation was keen to establish firm ties with Juba both before and after independence, in order to become a major political player in East Africa. But flowing oil has done little for the local population.

In 2015, to protect its economic interests, China deployed 1051 combat-ready troops to bolster the UN mission in South Sudan. The other, less publicly discussed agenda was to protect its financial posit-ion in an unstable nation. This signals a significant shift in Beijing’s thinking towards Africa. There are now at least 3000 Chinese soldiers, sailors, engineers and medical staff stationed across the continent.

According to Eric Olander, chief editor of the China Africa Project, China’s long-held ideology of non-interference is being tested in South Sudan. ‘At what point,’ he asks,

‘does a peace process where China is actively immersed in Juba’s domestic politics along with Beijing’s first deployment of combat-ready troops in Africa cross the line from peacekeeping to intervening in another country’s internal affairs?’

These geo-strategic manoeuvrings have no relevance for the millions of South Sudanese civilians suffering due to the conflict. In Wai, for instance, around 25,000 people live under trees and in a few mud shelters. There are no tents. Women and children sit on the ground almost motionless, mosquitoes buzzing around them, waiting for basic medical care and food handouts of oil and sorghum. It reminds me of the infamous images from Ethiopia in the 1980s. There are tens of thousands of others like this across South Sudan: communities left to fend for themselves because they cannot be accessed by aid groups. Nobody knows how many have died in the last few years due to starvation. No-one is counting the numbers.

These gruesome realities are at least condemned by the Obama administration, though it’s mostly lip-service. During Obama’s visit to Kenya and Ethiopia in July, he accused Kiir and Machar of dragging their nation into the ‘despair of violence’. But the Obama years have seen significant – largely ignored – expansions of the US’ military footprint across Africa, including deepening relationships with some of the continent’s most brutal dictators. This has contributed to instability and abuses in Libya, Mali, the Gulf of Guinea and elsewhere.

In his book Tomorrow’s Battlefield: US Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, Nick Turse notes that at least forty-nine of Africa’s fifty-four countries have had some US military presence or involvement in the last decade. It’s arguably one of the greatest colonisation projects of the twenty-first century and virtually nobody knows about it. South Sudan was supposed to be central to this plan: a reliable client state in the heart of Africa, a base from which the US could challenge China’s growing military and political power on the continent. Its strategic importance for Washington, after years of losing influence to Chinese infrastructure and funding projects, has withered since the outbreak of the civil war. The failure of the US to assist in building infrastructure or to respond to human rights violations and state corruption has been critical in South Sudan’s ongoing instability.

But almost as soon as conflict erupted in 2013, Washington was distracted by the civil war in Syria, the disintegration of Iraq and the rise of ISIS. Uncritical praise for the South Sudanese regime soon became more circumspect, despite the billions of dollars being spent on propping up the government. One unnamed US official was recently reported as saying that ‘the parties have shown themselves to be utterly indifferent to their country and their people, and that is a hard thing to rectify’.

Accountability for this catastrophe is difficult to find, especially from the high-profile American backers who spent years pushing for South Sudan’s independence. Few questions were asked on the suitability of South Sudanese leaders, their human rights record or their ability to manage a new state. This is hardly unsurprising: Beijing and Washington traditionally prefer partnering with reliable autocrats.

In the mid 1990s, a small group of American activists and officials began a campaign to push for South Sudanese independence. The three key individuals were Susan Rice (then assistant secretary of state for Africa, now Obama’s national security advisor), Gayle Smith (then at the National Security Council and now administrator of USAID) and John Prendergast (then at the National Security Council, soon the State Department and now co-founder of the Enough Project). Actor George Clooney later became active over Sudan’s abuses in Darfur. Arguably, South Sudan became a cause célèbre because helping build a new state seemed romantic and justified in a post-September 11 world.

Very few of these individuals looked too closely into who they were backing in South Sudan. Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and a leading Sudan expert, tells me that

‘South Sudan’s leaders believed that they had the backing of the US administration, with celebrity activists as their enforcers, to defy the rules of that club. The SPLA was permitted to get away with murder because they had a chorus of supporters who would unfailingly chant that the other side was worse.’

Thankfully, some have recognised the need for change. Last year the Enough Project launched ‘the Sentry’, a project targeting the financial enablers of violence in South Sudan, Somalia and elsewhere across Africa.

Meanwhile, in the southern town of Yei, near the borders with Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo, there is an illusion of tranquillity. Many refugees fleeing Darfur and the Nuba Mountains reside here, and the dusty streets feel relatively peaceful. American and Australian evangelicals operate His House of Hope – Bet Eman Hospital for Women and Children and the Reconcile Peace Institute. Both organisations do important work, but nowhere is safe for long because of the sporadic outbreaks of violence. Civilians are scared, not trusting the words of politicians.

In South Sudan more generally, the hope that went with independence has largely evaporated. There is currently no indication that a comprehensive and sustainable peace deal will completely stop the violence and allow the country to develop its infrastructure and resources. A UN report from earlier this year concludes that both Kiir and Machar should face sanctions for their roles in the war. Without concerted international pressure to cease the violence and to establish accountable trials and a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission, South Sudan is destined to remain mired in conflict. Its determined people deserve far better from the major global powers that, just a few years ago, promised them the world.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and Guardian columnist. His latest book is Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe (Verso, 2015).

The seesawing battle between Iraq’s government forces, allied militias and Islamic state militants is wrecking havoc in Fallujah. City residents are likely to be massacred if they flee, and from governments air strikes there is nowhere to hide. The daily propagation of violence by all sides involved has made it impossible for aid to reach Fallujah’s hunger-stricken inhabitants. Death is only one symptom of the crisis; the war is detrimentally affecting sanitary arrangements, water supplies, public health services, and other amenities. Yet the scramble for ministerial posts in the capital, Baghdad, continues to eclipse the reality of recurrent infant deaths, suicide, and abject poverty in occupied Fallujah.

Deputy Director for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch, Joe Stork, called for a cessation of violence to ensure that “aid reaches the civilian population”. Food reserves, as activists told The Diagonal, are fast shrinking, and civilians are reverting to consuming ‘soups’ made of grass. Remaining rations are near impossible for locals to purchase, sold at inflated rates. A sack of 50 kilograms of flour sold for $15 in the capital is sold for $750 in Fallujah, according to HRW. The greatest risk faces infants in the form of malnutrition – and amenorrhea for women – if the food security situation remains unchanged.

The unfolding scenario is not isolated incident. Lisa Grande, head of the United Nations Mission for Iraq, told Al Jazeera that conditions have gone from bad to worse in the past three months. In a report published by the rights group last week, the number of hunger-related deaths was placed at 140 – a tale yet to be widely told. In a press conference held by the Anbar provincial council last week, tribal elders made demands for the siege to be lifted and the army to restore stability to the area.

Silence may well be attributable to the impossibility of gaining access, but that is not the only cause. There appears to be an upward trend seeing powerful figures, such as Qais Khazali, undermining the gravity of the situation. The reality, however, speaks for itself.

Comments from HRW come one week after an online campaign under the title ‘Fallujah is Dying of Starvation’ was launched by Iraqi journalist Mohammad Arab. Outraged by the government’s silence, activists have mobilised to humanise those caught in the conflict, and pressurise the international community to call for an end to the ‘political besiegement’ of the city. The hashtag, images and related content of human suffering are all helping the cause to gain traction worldwide.

Image: ‘Fallujah is dying of starvation‘ campaign material © Mohammad Arab

The Qatar Red Cross Society last Monday launched a three-month campaign with the objective of raising $2,000,000 for displaced families from the wider Anbar province. The stories these families have recounted communicate unspeakable human suffering, for which Iraq’s blinkered politicians have arguably absolved themselves of any responsibility. Utter disregard for human life, as Stark describes, has also been exhibited by IS – using civilians as shields of war to expedite their conquest of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

Anbar governor Suhaib Al Rawi last month avowed that three exit routes had been opened for civilians to flee, but there has been no evidence to corroborate his claims. Locals have long reported that death is guaranteed for anyone who attempts an escape and is caught by IS terrorists.

Parallels have been drawn between the situation inside Fallujah and that of the Syrian city of Madaya, encircled by Bashar-loyal forces. News of the famine spread like wildfire after distressing images of dying babies broke the net, but the issue of access to Fallujah is still not resolved.

As the world sits back, ordinary people are confronted either by acute malnutrition or outright starvation – with demoralising outcomes for the entire nation. It should not matter that these people are living in lands illegally seized by IS. Lest we forget, the occupiers themselves are treating them as prisoners inside their hometowns. Inattention to their misery serves to render them invisible and inaudible, dimming any enduring hope. They are either starved into submission or killed, while the government overturns its responsibility to protect its people.

Winning the war, as the actions of warring parties depicts, is more favourable than saving lives. Any victory however will take well over a year to secure – and by then the threat of famine will have ravaged the entire city.

Nazli Tarzi is a London based writer, videographer and translator of Iraqi-Turkoman origin. Her work dedicates special focus to Iraq, its contemporary politics, lost civilisations and mosaic population. She holds a Master’s degree in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Follow her on Twitter @nazlitarzi

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President Killary. Would The World Survive President Hillary?

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This is an English translation of an article that I wrote for the German magazine, Compact. I was encouraged by the high level of intelligent discourse that Compact brings to its readers. If only the US had more people capable…

It’s as if, say, during the Republican Administration of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, the person who had negotiated international trade deals for the prior President, the Republican Ronald Reagan, came out publicly against a mega-‘trade’ deal that his fellow-Party-member, President Bush, was ardently trying to get approved. That is extremely  breaking ranks, and it happened recently in the UK.

Britain’s former Secretary of State for Trade & Industry (1990-92, under Margaret Thatcher and John Major), and current Conservative MP (Member of Parliament), Peter Liley, did it when he blogged on April 3rd at the Conservative Party’s website “Conservative Home”:

I believe in free trade. Always have, always will. As the only serving MP to have negotiated a successful free trade deal (the Uruguay Round – as Trade and Industry Secretary during the 1990s), I automatically supported the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal currently being negotiated between the USA and EU, assuming it was a free trade agreement.

The more closely I look at it, the more parts of it worry me. Conservatives who believe in free trade should be very wary about endorsing TTIP. And both the Leave and Remain campaigns should look very carefully at its implications for our EU membership.

Let me explain why.

TTIP is not primarily about removing tariffs and quotas. The average tariff levied by the US on goods from Europe is just 2.5 per cent. Getting rid of them would be worthwhile – but no big deal.

It is mainly about harmonising product specifications and creating a special regime for investment. There is no objection to those things in principle. Insofar as product harmonisation means removing rules introduced as hidden protection of a domestic producer, that is fine. But we should not sign away Parliament’s right to protect our citizens from harmful additives, and so forth.

The very core of both Obama’s ‘trade’ deal with Europe, TTIP, and his ‘trade’ deal with Asia, TPP, is precisely that: to sign away legislators’ power to protect the electorate from harmful additives, toxic water and foods and air, unsafe cars, and a sustainable environment for themselves and future generations — and more (Lilley is especially concerned because it would abolish Britain’s vaunted public health service. Imagine: a British Conservative is determined to protect that enormously successful socialist program in his country! Flabbergasting, but true.)

The very core of it is to transfer national sovereignty to a worldwide dictatorship of international corporations (three-person corporate-accountable panels of ‘arbitrators’, whose rulings are non-appealable and aren’t required to adhere to any nation’s laws — it’s shocking, but true).

And, for any conservative — whether in Britain or any other country — to oppose that is a very big deal, especially when it’s a former Secretary of State for Trade & Industry.

He goes on to say:

My three main concerns relate to the Investor-State Dispute Settlement System (ISDS). This creates a system of tribunals – special courts – in which large foreign companies can sue governments (but not vice-versa) for pursuing policies which harm their investments.

• US companies could sue the UK government should it want to take back into the public sector privately provided services in the NHS, education, and so forth – or open fewer services to private provision. The EU and UK government have denied that this is possible. But a cogent Counsel’s Opinion argues that because these tribunals can award unlimited fines they could exert “a chilling effect” on government decision making. The Left have been particularly irate about this but Conservatives too should be worried. I and other local MPs – all Tories – lobbied successfully to reincorporate into the NHS a disastrously run private Surgicentre (set up by Tony Blair’s Government) serving our constituencies. Under TTIP, a foreign operator could have sued for massive compensation at the expense of our local NHS. Conservatives have rightly been cautious and pragmatic about the extent of private provision particularly in health. It would be electorally disastrous if we back a system which turns out to bring in privatisation by the back door.

• These tribunals give foreign multinationals their own privileged legal system, too costly for smaller foreign companies (since the average case costs $8 million), and from which UK companies are excluded. Moreover, the ‘judges’ are commercial lawyers who, when not serving on a Tribunal, work for, and are therefore sympathetic to, big companies. Cases are heard largely in secret.

• The “Stabilisation Clause” protects all investments made under the treaty for at least 20 years. Arecent legal treatise explains how this undermines parliamentary democracy by binding future parliaments. Of course, the UK enters into other long term treaties and contracts – but our government can always renegotiate or, in the last resort, resile from them. Exceptional circumstances may make that necessary: I had to nationalise without compensation all Iraqi-owned companies when Saddam Husain invaded Kuwait. A future parliament might object to letting foreign multinationals have their own courts – especially if those courts expand their remit beyond that originally envisaged. The UK might decide the protection of our common law courts is sufficient. But if we are still in the EU when TTIP and CETA are ratified, we will be bound ‘jointly and severally’. We could not renegotiate these treaties without the consent of every EU state and the Commission – even if we subsequently left the EU. So we would still be bound by the Stabilisation Clause for 20 years.

The EU and UK government respond to these criticisms by saying: the UK is party to a large number of treaties with similar tribunals; only twice have cases been brought against the UK, neither succeeded; if the tribunals did not exist, UK courts would impose similar verdicts and fines; arbitrators cannot rule on companies for whom they work; TTIP negotiators now propose a permanent judicial panel instead of using ad hoc arbitrators; also, the proceedings may in future be made public. In particular, they deny that the tribunals could affect the NHS at all – let alone force it to put out services to contract or prevent it taking back private services into the public sector.

In short, the Government argues (not entirely convincingly) that TTIP tribunals will probably do no harm. No one claims that they will actually do any good – i.e. attract more US investment to the UK or vice versa. The idea that any American companies are afraid to invest here because they do not trust the British legal system or fear expropriation is not credible. Businesses from across the globe choose to make their contracts subject to British law precisely because it is the most trusted. If, as the Government claims, these ISDS tribunals will give the same outcome as British courts they are completely unnecessary. …

In or out of the EU, we should question whether ISDS tribunals are necessary, reject the 20-year stabilisation clause and insist on excluding the NHS from the treaty (as France has excluded movies). That would be less difficult if Britain leaves the EU and negotiates a parallel treaty – though the simplest thing would be to negotiate a pure free trade agreement restricted to abolishing remaining tariffs.

He comes to this late, after millions of Europeans have already made clear in marches and in numerous public opinion polls that the only way the TTIP can become law in the EU will be if the EU is already a dictatorship — not at all by truly democratic means. But, better late than never.

Unlike Hillary Clinton in the U.S., who has always worked behind the scenes to pass trade deals that have ISDS in them, and who told Democrats in Congress to follow the lead of Nancy Pelosi, who spoke publicly against Obama’s ‘trade’ deals but was actually whipping in the U.S. House to help the President win Fast Track so they can become passed into law, Lilley doesn’t have the reputation of someone who says one thing in public and does the opposite, behind the scenes, in actual policymaking.

His statement is real — not mere slogans and words. And it will sway policymakers, and not merely the voters of his own Party (in order to win that Party’s primary election).

If Obama gets his ‘trade’ deals passed into law, he will be by far the biggest-impact U.S. President since FDR, who introduced Social Security and many other existing programs (and also the Glass-Steagall Act, which FDR’s fellow — but only fake — ‘Democrat’, Bill Clinton annihilated), and who joined with Churchill and the formerly Hitler-allied Stalin, to defeat global fascism. Obama’s impact will then be perhaps even more evil than FDR’s was good. However, if he fails to pass any of his ‘trade’ deals, then he’ll only be as bad, or nearly as bad, as George W. Bush was, even if he turns out to have been lucky enough to postpone the coming super-crash (toward which his policies are building) till the next person becomes President. Obama is the most conservative Democratic President since James Buchanan — and that’s pretty bad, even if Obama manages to hold off the crash that he has been postponing, until his successor comes in.

In contrast, the Conservative Peter Lilley is a flaming progressive, by comparison, because he certainly is that on the biggest public-policy issue since World War II, which is whether to end or instead expand ISDS. If it’s expanded, then, for example, the recent Paris accord against global warming will be effectively dead. That’s how big a deal this is: not only democracy, but even the continuation of a livable planet, are all on the line now. Obama says one thing, but what he does can be very different.

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.

The US NAVY has complained that:

“Russian attack jets flew “dangerously close” to a U.S. Navy destroyer numerous times in the Baltic Sea this week, according to U.S. officials, continuing a pattern of behavior in the region that the Defense Department has previously decried.

The incidents occurred Monday and Tuesday, with the planes making multiple passes by the USS Donald Cook, a destroyer, while it was traveling in international waters, U.S. European Command officials said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. The organization released videos that show the jets roaring by at a high rate of speed, seemingly no more than a few hundred feet away.” (WP, April 13, 2016)

The US destroyer was stationed at the Polish port of  Gdynia, within about 100 km of  Russia’s Kalingrad enclave according to news reports.

Nina Kouprianovo on her Facebook page says:

“There has been lot of complaining today about a Russian plane flying “dangerously close” to a US ship. So I’ve made a helpful diagram just for you.”

The USS Donald Cook, while navigating within international waters has the unspoken mandate to “police” those waters within proximity of Kalingrad, which is an enclave of the Russian Federation. Kalingrad is home to Russia’s Baltic Fleet.

US-NATO routinely conduct war games in the Baltic Sea off the Kalingrad  coastline.

Michel Chossudovsky contributed to this report

Imagen: Daniel Estulin recibió en marzo pasado el Premio Internacional de Periodismo del Club de Periodistas de México en la categoría de Mejor Investigación Geopolítica y Geoestratégica por su libro “Fuera de control” publicado por la editorial Planeta en octubre de 2015.

Es indudable, la economía mundial está en proceso de transformación. Para Daniel Estulin, ex agente de la KGB, la élite está destruyendo poco a poco las viejas estructuras de la economía mundial al tiempo que construye los cimientos de una economía radicalmente diferente, una nueva economía sustentada en el espacio exterior.

El Centro de Investigación sobre la Globalización, Global Research, tiene el agrado de compartir con sus lectores la entrevista que Ariel Noyola Rodríguez realizó en exclusiva a Daniel Estulin durante su más reciente visita a la Ciudad de México.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: La tasa de expansión de la economía mundial se ha desacelerado dramáticamente en los últimos tres meses. Los países industrializados registran tasas de crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) inferiores a 3% y están muy amenazados por la deflación (caída de precios). Los países emergentes por su parte, corren el riesgo de sumergirse en una grave recesión, ahora mismo países como Argentina, Brasil y Venezuela están muy golpeados por la ralentización económica de China y el desplome de los precios de las materias primas (‘commodities’).

Todo parece indicar que la calma en los mercados financieros era una ficción, pues en las semanas recientes las acciones de los grandes bancos de inversiones de Estados Unidos y Europa han sufrido fuertes caídas. A tu juicio, ¿Cómo se encuentra la salud de la economía mundial en estos momentos? ¿Estamos a punto de presenciar el estallido de otra gran crisis?

Daniel Estulin: Bueno, creo que de hecho ya estamos dentro de una crisis económica mundial, no solamente nos encontramos a las puertas. Michel Chossudovsky ha abordado esto muchísimo, es un hombre de gran visión geopolítica, coincidimos en muchas cosas. Quiero apuntar que este desplome de la economía mundial tiene que ver con el plan de la élite de cambiar el paradigma económico.

Por ejemplo, la élite quiere reducir la población mundial, no es que haya muchas personas, sino que somos muchos para ellos. En cuanto a la escasez de los recursos naturales, nos estamos quedando sin agua, sin comida. La élite lo entendió hace mucho tiempo: para aquellos sobrevivan nosotros tenemos que morir.

En la década de 1990 los inversionistas vaciaron las arcas de los países del Grupo de los 7 (G-7, integrado por Alemania, Canadá, Estados Unidos, Francia, Italia, Japón y Reino Unido) para después invertir esos mismos recursos en las economías emergentes. Hoy, veinte años más tarde hay burbujas especulativas de todo tipo, de derivados financieros, materias primas (‘commodities’), etc. El mundo de las finanzas está a punto de explotar.

Toda esta desindustrialización, las tasas de crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) cercanas a cero, la destrucción de la demanda que estamos viendo en escala mundial forma parte de este gran plan de la élite. Para mucha gente todo esto no es más que una teoría de la conspiración.

Pero mira, en Estados Unidos hay un ejemplo muy claro: Detroit. Una ciudad que durante medio siglo fue el pulmón de la economía norteamericana, hoy se parece más a una cosa que vemos en la película Soy Leyenda protagonizada por Will Smith, le hacen falta los zombies, pero todos los demás elementos están presentes.

La élite quiere que todo el planeta Tierra se convierta en Detroit. Muchas partes del mundo ya son como Detroit: Europa del Sur, países del Mediterráneo, etc. Entonces sí, no solamente estamos a las puertas, sino muy metidos en una gran crisis económica mundial. Si esto no cambia de alguna forma, la élite usará la crisis para cambiar el paradigma de la sociedad.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: Los planes de política económica de las grandes potencias son divergentes. Mientras que el Sistema de la Reserva Federal (FED) de Estados Unidos elevó la tasa de interés de referencia en diciembre de 2015, el Banco Central Europeo (BCE) y el Banco de Japón la disminuyeron semanas después. En cuanto a la cuestión fiscal, en la Zona Euro se llevan a cabo fuertes recortes de gasto público mientras que el Gobierno chino ha optado por incrementar el monto de los estímulos fiscales para evitar una mayor desaceleración de su economía.

Bajo esta misma perspectiva, en la última cumbre de finanzas del Grupo de los 20 (G-20, foro conformado por los ministros de finanzas y los gobernadores de los bancos centrales de 19 países más la Unión Europea) por ejemplo, si bien los líderes mundiales se comprometieron en un primer momento a no incentivar la depreciación de las monedas para favorecer el comercio exterior, la realidad luego fue muy diferente, en la actualidad existe una guerra de divisas ¿Piensas que esta creciente rivalidad revela una fractura entre los miembros de la élite?

Daniel Estulin: No, yo no veo esa fractura. La gente que lleva gobernando miles de años no comete este tipo de errores, todos esos elementos que tú mencionas son algo meramente sintético, de fachada. Lo cierto es que el modelo económico actual está totalmente muerto. Desde 2008 hasta ahora los bancos centrales han bajado las tasas de interés unas 637 veces, no han conseguido una recuperación económica sostenida.

Pero mientras desmantela el sistema económico mundial, la élite está creando un sistema completamente nuevo. Este nuevo sistema está basado en los negocios del espacio exterior, lo que en inglés se denomina space-based economy. Podemos hablar de infraestructura, satélites, comunicación inteligente, sistemas de posicionamiento global (GPS, por sus siglas en inglés), drones, el nuevo paradigma económico del mundo apunta al espacio exterior.

El paradigma del mundo está cambiando, hay un cambio radical del modelo económico. Y los que controlen eso, controlarán el mundo. Mientras tanto, van ir desmantelando poco a poco las viejas estructuras de la economía mundial.

Daniel Estulin afirma que la economía del futuro será espacial. Por eso la élite está utilizando el excedente económico para financiar esta gran transformación. La magnitud del cambio será colosal, una economía totalmente nueva, nunca antes imaginada, las personas que no consigan adaptarse, morirán

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: En el contexto de esta nueva economía que está en construcción, promovida por los intereses de la élite mundial ¿Qué papel desempeñan los líderes de los países emergentes? ¿Rusia, India y China, consideras que forman parte de la implementación de este gran proyecto o más bien su papel es marginal en todo este proceso, y es sólo la cúpula occidental la que determina las pautas?

Daniel Estulin: Es un cambio del mundo en general. Mira, antes de la caída de la Unión Soviética (URSS) había un mundo bipolar, luego de la caída del Muro fuimos a un mundo unipolar liderado por Estados Unidos. Y ahora mismo, en el siglo XXI, estamos en un mundo multipolar. Hoy existen los BRICS (acrónimo de Brasil, Rusia India, China y Sudáfrica), la Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC), la Alianza Bolivariana de los Pueblos de Nuestra América (ALBA), la Unión de Naciones Sudamericanas (UNASUR), etc.

También sobresalen los países que han decidido unirse al Banco Asiático de Inversiones en Infraestructura (AIIB, por sus siglas en inglés) bajo el liderazgo de China. Pero sabes, no existen naciones totalmente independientes, China no es completamente independiente, tampoco Rusia. Estos países no pueden llegar y decir “no me gusta este mundo, entonces me voy a la Luna”. Todos forman parte de este mundo globalizado. Ningún país es libre en realidad.

El objetivo no cambia: construir un mundo sustentado en la economía espacial, algo que no hemos vivido nunca. Todo el excedente económico lo está utilizando la élite para financiar este gran proyecto. Para crear infraestructura necesitas muchísimo dinero. La infraestructura espacial requiere de inversiones de billones de dólares. De aquí a una década seremos testigos de la conquista de la Luna, del planeta Marte, etc.

La élite está desmantelando el mundo actual. Por ejemplo, utilizando el petróleo como un arma para hundir a potencias como Rusia, Arabia Saudita, incluso a las empresas de Estados Unidos. Los países productores de hidrocarburos se han visto muy dañados, como Venezuela.

Es un mundo que aglutina muchos grupos. Y la élite, para llevar adelante el proyecto de la nueva economía espacial necesitar meter a todos los países dentro de una misma camisa de fuerza. Pero sí, es cierto que también en alguna medida se van construyendo sistemas de gobernanza alternativos. Por eso vemos cómo los rusos por ejemplo, han trabajado en la puesta en marcha de un sistema de pagos alternativo a la Sociedad para las Comunicaciones Interbancarias y Financieras Mundiales (SWIFT, por sus siglas en inglés). Los rusos, los indios y los chinos buscan crear sus propios sistemas. Todo lo que sacó a la luz Edward Snowden es prueba de eso, no es ninguna coincidencia.

Las observaciones que tú me haces son muy astutas, pero la verdad es que ningún país es libre por completo, todo está unido en este mundo. Lo que estamos viendo no son sino los movimientos de la geopolítica profunda de gente muy capacitada y hábil.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: Desde las bases, desde la resistencia de los movimientos populares frente al capital, ¿Qué estrategias pueden llevarse a cabo para construir plataformas de comunicación alternativas? ¿Qué podemos hacer para no caer en las trampas de la manipulación mediática de las grandes corporaciones?

Daniel Estulin: Bueno, los grandes medios de comunicación, los de alcance mundial, son propiedad de la élite. Pero a través de la tecnología nueva, como los teléfonos smartphone, podemos tener un nivel de flexibilidad que nunca antes habíamos alcanzado. Por eso esta entrevista que ahora tú y yo mantenemos luego puede ser colgada en el sitio web de Global Research y estar a disposición del mundo entero.

Además hay que destacar que en el mundo contemporáneo existen dos generaciones diferentes. La de nosotros, los viejos, que somos analógicos, y la de ustedes, los jóvenes, que son digitales. Los analógicos tienen más de 50 años, crecieron en un mundo unipolar, pero ahora el mundo cambió. Les está costando mucho trabajar asimilar las nuevas tecnologías.

Sobre el futuro, sobre el rumbo que tomará América Latina y el Caribe, México por ejemplo. Es evidente que la élite necesita un flujo de sangre nueva, México la tiene, y también todo el continente latinoamericano. En México la mitad de la población está compuesta por jóvenes de hasta 25 años, mientras que en Europa la población es vieja, también en Estados Unidos.

Esto es una ventaja enorme porque, esta generación digital, que no mantiene alianzas con partidos políticos, que no es presa de pensamientos rancios, puede contribuir a mejorar la vida de la humanidad. El empuje de la juventud contra el orden establecido, usando todas las nuevas tecnologías que están cambiando el mundo para siempre es un elemento decisivo, que la élite, afortunadamente para nosotros, aún no consigue controlar.

Desde hace siglos, los poderosos han buscado imponer a toda costa su proyecto de dominación mundial. Sin embargo, ya en pleno siglo XXI, las nuevas tecnologías y los medios alternativos de comunicación, como Global Research, pueden salvar a la humanidad del desastre

Gran parte de los 2,000 millones de teléfonos móviles que hay en el mundo están localizados en países como Bangladesh, China, India, Irán, Pakistán, incluso en lugares donde no hay agua caliente ni sistema sanitario, pero en donde la gente está tecnológicamente muy avanzada. Es ahí donde la élite no consigue lavar el cerebro porque no estás enchufado a los medios de comunicación tradicionales. Y esto es un valor agregado increíble para salvar el mundo.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez : Economista egresado de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

It is one of the most tragically comedic aspects of the War on Drugs that marijuana is classed in the same category as heroin and LSD by the U.S. Federal Government. Such a ridiculous classification would truly be worth laughing at if it did not bring along with it mass incarcerations, militaristic policing, untold millions of wasted money and a general police state.

The utterly useless Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) currently lists marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, a list reserved for “the most dangerous drugs” that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” If one did not suspect that the U.S. Government’s War on Drugs was actually a cover for enslaving its citizenry, then he would be justified in wondering where the DEA has intellectually been since it was created.

Just to clarify – according to the DEA, marijuana is significantly more dangerous than cocaine. (Yes, you read that right.) That classification, however, might potentially change over the next few months. That is because the DEA has announced plans to decide “in the first half of 2016” whether or not the agency will reschedule marijuana. If the DEA should indeed reclassify the plant down to either Schedule 2 or Schedule 3, the decision would most likely open the door much wider when it comes to greater research regarding marijuana’s medicinal value.

The legal marijuana industry also stands to gain from any reclassification. But before anyone gets too excited, the DEA and the Federal Government are not suggesting that marijuana become legal at the federal level – it is only suggesting the reclassification of the plant. In other words, the U.S. Government is itself attempting to reclassify its policy on marijuana from incurable insanity to crippling and severe mental health issues.

Despite the fact that virtually everything the DEA says and does in its policy toward marijuana is inaccurate and counterproductive, we encourage the agency to take a step in the right direction and delist marijuana from the classification of Schedule 1 substances.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies,Five Sense SolutionsandDispatches 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 600 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

Just over a year ago, a black swan landed in the middle of Europe, when in what was then dubbed a “Spectacular Development” In Austria, the “bad bank” of failed Hypo Alpe Adria – the Heta Asset Resolution AG – itself went from good to bad, with its creditors forced into an involuntary “bail-in” following the “discovery” of a $8.5 billion capital hole in its balance sheet primarily related to ongoing deterioration in central and eastern European economies.

Austria had previously nationalized Heta’s predecessor Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International six years ago after it nearly collapsed under the bad loans it ran up when it grew rapidly in the former Yugoslavia. Having burnt through €5.5 euros of taxpayers’ money to prop up Hypo Alpe, Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling ended support in March 2015, triggering the FMA’s takeover.

This was the first official proposed “Bail-In” of creditors, one that took place before similar ad hoc balance sheet restructuring would take place in Greece and Portugal in the coming months. Or rather, it wasn’t a fully executed “Bail-In” for the reason that creditors fought it tooth and nail.

And then today, following a decision by the Austrian Banking Regulator, the Finanzmarktaufsicht or Financial Market Authority, Austria officially became the first European country to use a new law under the framework imposed by Bank the European Recovery and Resolution Directive to share losses of a failed bank with senior creditors as it slashed the value of debt owed by Heta Asset Resolution AG.

Today, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) in its function as the resolution authority pursuant to the Bank Recovery and Resolution Act (BaSAG – Bundesgesetz über die Sanierung und Abwicklung von Banken) has issued the key features for the further steps for the resolution of HETA ASSET RESOLUTION AG. The most significant measures are:

• a 100% bail-in for all subordinated liabilities, 
• a 53.98% bail-in, resulting in a 46.02% quota, for all eligible preferential liabilities, 
• the cancellation of all interest payments from 01.03.2015, when HETA was placed into resolution pursuant to BaSAG, 
• as well as a harmonisation of the maturities of all eligible liabilities to 31.12.2023.

According to the current resolution plan for HETA, the wind-down process should be concluded by 2020, although the repayment of all claims as well as the legally binding conclusion of all currently outstanding legal disputes will realistically only be concluded by the end of 2023. Only at that point will it be possible to finally distribute the assets and to liquidate the company.

As part of the announcement, Austria has cut Heta’s senior liabilities by 54 percent and extended the maturities of all eligible debt to Dec. 31, 2023 to help cover an 8 billion-euro ($9.1 billion) hole in Heta’s balance sheet. It also wiped out any residual equity and the junior liabilities as well as any supplementary capital. The Finanzmarktaufsicht took control of Heta last year in the first application of European Union rules designed to end taxpayer-funded bank rescues.

“While the application of the new European recovery and resolution framework for banks is uncharted territory in both legal and practical terms, we are on target with the resolution of Heta,” the FMA’s co-chiefs, Helmut Ettl and Klaus Kumpfmueller, said in the statement. “Orderly resolution is more advantageous than insolvency proceedings.”

As Bloomberg writes, dealing with failing banks remains a thorny issue in the EU more than seven years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Rescues in Portugal, Greece and Italy carried out before new rules came into force in those countries prompted protests over unequal or arbitrary creditor treatment. The EU’s untested Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive, now in force across the 28-nation bloc, provides rules and tools, including the so-called bail in, to make sure creditors share the burden.

Creditors were not happy, and Heta became a battleground of what the first BRRD implementation would look like. “At the heart of the issue is 11 billion euros of Heta’s debt that’s guaranteed by the province of Carinthia, which owned Heta’s predecessor until 2007. Those guarantees blunt the intent of the new rules because they mean the losses imposed on bondholders become a claim on Carinthia, which says it can’t pay them. Sunday’s haircut means the province faces claims of about 6.4 billion euros, the FMA said.”

Carinthia’s attempt to neutralize the guarantees by buying up the bonds at a discount was rejected by bondholders led by Commerzbank AG and Pacific Investment Management Co. last month. The creditors, who say that Austria should pay up if Carinthia can’t, also sued in a German court, arguing the BRRD’s rules don’t apply to Heta.

The announcement ushers in the next, and even more contentuous phase of creditor negotiations: after initially ruling out a second offer, Austrian officials this week smoothed the way for new negotiations to avoid years of litigation. Gaby Schaunig, Carinthia’s finance secretary, said she will review a recent creditor proposal and that “any out-of-court solution is better than the legal route.”

According to Bloomberg, some of the creditors are planning to make an offer to Austria that would result in a payout of 92 cents on the euro, a person familiar with the bid said Saturday. It’s unclear how many creditors support the offer. On Tuesday, representatives for both sides will also meet in London for talks, according to a report in Der Standard. Many creditors have rejected any haircut as an option over concerns how such an example could impact their investments in comparably impaired financial companies. Others are more willing to negotiate.

Some creditors had already challenged the FMA’s decision to apply European bank resolution rules to Heta. Answering the objections, the FMA said the wind-down remains “fully binding,” adding that creditors are now free to appeal to Austria’s federal administrative court:

Challenges may be submitted to the FMA against the emergency administrative decision of 10.4.2016, which sets out the significant resolution actions under BaSAG, within three months. If applicable, the FMA will initiate ordinary administrative proceedings, will recognise and examine the submitted challenges and will then issue an administrative decision in relation to the challenge procedure.

Changes, if any, to today’s decision will likely take years to pass through the Austrian court system. In the meantime, the precedent has been set and we expect many more banks to follow suit in “bailing in” their senior debt creditors, and ultimately – if there is not enough value to satisfy claims – depositors.

La humanidad  enfrenta serios problemas en su diario vivir; los pueblos tienen que  acarrear  lastres  que en su mayoría no han creado, desastres del medio ambiente,  sufrimiento y miedo a la guerra, la represión, el crimen  y el abuso por sus semejantes,  la carencia de un trabajo estable y digno, la pobreza y la miseria y la falta de servicios básicos de higiene y de salud que afecta a más de un tercio de los habitantes del mundo.  Pero además las mayorías en casi todas las sociedades del planeta tienen que acarrear, casi como si les llevara en brazos, a los ricos del mundo. Los ricos son una especie de animal grande y peligroso, parasitarios y dañinos y hombres en su mayoría, aun cuando hay mujeres ricas también, que aunque nacidos en cualquier extracto social ocupan las elites del poder y del dinero, verdaderos barones del poder, y hoy han acumulado dinero como nunca antes en la historia moderna, que manipulan todo lo que les interese manipular y que persiguiendo sus intereses pueden ser criminales pero no pagan por ello.

Hoy, los ricos  ya no son simples  millonarios como hace algún tiempo atrás, hoy las fortunas son de miles de millones  de dólares, si usamos  la moneda  estadounidenses; forman élites muy reducidas en números si los comparamos al resto de los privilegiados, no son el uno por ciento de la población total como tanto se dice en medios oficiales y no oficiales, sino mucho menos, pero si cuentan con una plataforma de apoyo de entre el uno y el cinco por ciento de los mas acomodados, que le sirven a la elite dominante de escolta y sustento o base social, además del apoyo casi incondicional de las clases medias, estas representan el lado “presentable” de un sistema de acumulación totalmente injusto cuando se lo examina. La elite dominante cuenta con la escolta de otros ricos inferiores, que forman una especie de pirámide de acomodados, a quienes se suman altos administradores y políticos que ayudan a la elite dominante a manejar el aparato político mundial, cuenta la elite además con no pocos adulones profesionales y aspirantes a millonarios que incluyen incluso a hampones que trafican drogas, personas y servicios.

Estados Unidos, desde hace más de 200 años, ha sido un país favorable a la especie parasitaria de los más ricos, y por eso allí se ha multiplicado con particular facilidad, no tiene tanto que ver con condiciones biológicas particulares sino con un ambiente ideológico que desde el siglo 19 viene justificando la acumulación de riqueza a cualquier costo y como fundamental razón de ser, algo que observó el entonces cientista político francés Alexis de Tocqueville cuando escribió su libro, un clásico,  “Democracia en América.” Durante su estadía en Estados Unidos entre 1830-31, Tocqueville  observó el marcado individualismo y la aceptación sin cuestionamiento de una forma de entender la realidad que simplemente se sobreentiende. En su libro dice que “los americanos no  tienen escuela de filosofía propia poco les importan las escuelas  de filosofía en que Europa está dividida…Y sin embargo es fácil percibir que casi todos los habitantes de los Estados Unidos conducen su entendimiento de forma similar y lo gobiernan por las mismas reglas, vale decir, sin tomarse nunca el trabajo de definir las reglas, tienen un método filosófico común a todo el pueblo.”  Y agrega: “Pero si voy más lejos, y busco entre las características la principal…descubro que cada americano apela solo al esfuerzo individual de su propio entendimiento…” algo que Tocqueville entiende tiene limitaciones. De ese individualismo dominante con foco en el ahora se llega fácilmente a la sobre valoración de los logros personales, al vivir sin historia y a la admiración a los ricos cuando la sociedad tiene un foco totalmente material. El desarrollo norteamericano fue material y los ricos siguen siendo admirados, ejemplo de triunfo personal, un triunfo sea como sea y pese a quien pese.

La revista Forbes, Fortune y Bloomber Businessweek, demuestran esa admiración continuamente, los ricos son vacas sagradas y la carrera es una escalera infinita hacia la mayor riqueza. Los ricos, expuestos como celebridades y disfrazados de generosos aparecen allí con nombre y apellido, pero allí solamente se hacen carne, sin explicación, sin exploración de lazos de poder o historia, allí son genios salidos de la nada y al hacerse carne de esta forma se los transforma en intocables, se hace impensable criticarlos en otros medios de prensa.  De los más ricos, los “billionaires”, que no pasan de 2000 en todo en el mundo, con fortunas personales de más de mil millones de dólares, más de un cuarto de ellos son ciudadanos de Estados Unidos, pero no faltan representantes de Alemania, India o Brasil. Lo irónico hoy es la existencia de “billionaires” chinos y rusos, algo que nadie podría haberse imaginado hace apenas treinta años. La historia está llena de sorpresas, y los nuevos muy ricos en China, que pasan de 200, hicieron sus fortunas de la forma clásica: explotando simplemente a los trabajadores de su país y especulando luego con las fortunas logradas. Los magnates rusos, que no alcanzan a 100, son un caso único en la historia: formaron sus fortunas violentamente, de la noche a la mañana saqueando y robando directamente los bienes del estado posterior al derrumbe de la Unión Soviética, muchos los llaman por eso “lumpen burguesía” recordándoles sus raíces antisociales directas.

Sería injusto, sin embargo, dividir a los ricos en más y menos meritorios, pues en esto de hacerse de fortuna, y aunque todos  los grandes ricos han usado métodos diferentes en la acumulación de su riqueza, algunas veces a través de un producto o creándose un proyecto, otras veces aprovechándose de explotar a otros, extorsionando o engañando, o robando directamente o en negocios ilícitos, no puede haber excepción en el uso de métodos antisociales: nadie se enriquece sin ejercer un nivel de criminalidad.  Detrás  de toda empresa, sea un banco, una compañia de seguros, una administradora o colocadora de fondos de pensión, un gran supermercado, una fábrica, una mina, una procesadora de alimentos u otros, lo que no pertenece al estado o no está en manos de una cooperativa, es de seguro una pirámide donde las decisiones las toman los más ricos aún cuando figuren como accionistas y cuenten con un servil bien remunerado y a veces hasta famoso que le pone cara pública a la empresa. Y, serán siempre los accionistas menores quienes absorban las pérdidas cuando las haya, que los más ricos muy bien entendidos de lo que sucede abandonaran la empresa a tiempo llevándose todas las ganancias.

Pero los ricos saben que mantener una imagen es fundamental, ninguno de ellos quiere llegar a viejo con gran fortuna pero con fama de ladrón y de asesino, es por ello que se encargan con dedicación a asegurarse de tapar lo mejor posible todos las conductas antisociales que les aseguraron su fortuna y usan la publicidad y la manipulación para crearse una imagen de benefactores y generosos -ahora que tienen todo lo que quieren pueden invertir lo necesario en verse bien. La primera generación de toda fortuna tiene siempre mucho que ocultar, de allí que su preocupación no sea sólo con hacer más y más dinero sino con incrementar su nivel de influencia social y política, incrementar influencia ayuda a los ricos a aumentar su riqueza también, pero además corrompe la administración de los bienes comunes y del estado y a los servidores públicos a todos los niveles, y con ello los ricos se aseguran total impunidad, la justicia y las responsabilidades civiles no les aplica como al resto y la corrupción aumenta y facilita el parasitismo de los ricos que viven literalmente de los demás manipulando el o los estados a su gusto.  La segunda generación tiene más fácil tarea porque el proceso mismo genera la impresión de que al haber heredado la riqueza no se los puede responsabilizar de cómo se generó. La segunda generación se ve a sí misma y los demás la ven como más saneada.  Los logros de la primera generación facilitan el continuo proceso de enriquecimiento de la segunda: la preocupación por alcanzar niveles de influencia en la sociedad les ha otorgado poder que usan para continuar corrompiendo a la administración del estado y enriqueciendo ahora de forma más parasitaria. El estado en sus diferentes niveles les otorga todas las facilidades y los protege incluso del pago de impuestos y royalties, a veces tan bajos que son ridículos. El estado les asegura subsidios para sus empresas, contratos con soborno (lo  que en Estados Unidos es un ejercicio legal), el uso de la infraestructura y servicios públicos gratis. Además, el estado en los últimos 35 años les ha asegurado la adquisición de empresas estatales a precios de ganga, y gracias a la desregulación de todo les garantiza creciente espacio para que saqueen. El robo más obsceno  quizás de la historia es el  de la última crisis del 2008 con el rescate financiero a grandes bancos con dineros públicos y a cambio de papeles especulativos sin valor real.

El mundo occidental sufre una continua pérdida de trabajos en la industria manufacturera; hasta los  empresarios más pequeños con alguna posibilidad de ganancias en la actividad de algún producto o servicio, ya sea en áreas rurales o en centros urbanos, también están en  continuo peligro de desaparecer.  Muchas empresas pequeñas y-o medianas han sucumbido o han sido absorbidas por otras más grandes que simplemente las comprar para cerrarlas por lo que los pequeños empresarios tienen que conformarse con empresas que apenas se solventan. Este proceso de monopolización y acumulación sin fronteras, llamado globalización, destruye las economías locales gracias a la firma de tratados que no son de “libre comercio” sino documentos legales para los más ricos y sus empresas que crecen en su monopolio, acumulan crecientes derechos sin responsabilidades, aseguran la libre circulación de mercancías y servicios (incluso financieros) mientras ponen en jaque incluso a los estados mismos –estos, últimos garantes de sus aventuras de enriquecimiento y paganinis de toda especulación fallada. Lo irónico: la diatriba repetitiva de los políticos representantes de los ricos (casi todos ellos) en su aparente continua preocupación por la existencia misma, y prosperidad, del llamado “pequeño negocio o empresa” –una preocupación tan irreal como hipócrita que se entiende más bien como una burla surrealista.

La producción industrial y la agricultura, en Europa y en Norteamérica, tuvieron desde 1870 al 1900 un desarrollo en gran escala, en parte debido a las innovaciones tecnológicas en factorías, en minas y en el campo, lo que resultó en más acumulación de dinero para los ricos. En Estados Unidos esta fue la llamada “época dorada” (Gilden Age en inglés) durante la cual los ricos disfrutaron en forma casi obscena de una libertad plena de explotar a sus trabajadores y especular con la complicidad de autoridades políticas y administrativas. Pero, para fin del siglo 19 emergían esperanzas de cambio gracias a grandes luchas de parte de la clase trabajadora, lucha que aumentó con el logro del sufragio universal, el aumento de la participación política y la creciente organización sindical. De esta forma se consiguieron básicos derechos laborales y sociales y se constató una vez más que es la resistencia a la opresión y la lucha por los derechos lo que detiene el avance del poder de los ricos al subirle el precio a su abuso, y no un simple proceso civilizatorio.  Durante el siglo 20 los enfrentamientos continuaron por lo que algunos magnates tuvieron que reconocer la necesidad de lidiar de otra manera con los oprimidos e incluso aplicar algunas reformas recomendadas por los social liberales de entonces. No faltaban los ricos que no querían negociar derechos pues estaban convencidos de que la gente de trabajo no se merecía nada. En ese tiempo el odio de clases era muy visible: la mayoría de la gente del pueblo odiaba a los ricos y su institucionalidad liberal, y los ricos odiaban a la gente del pueblo. Pero con la llegada de la Primera Guerra Mundial en 1914, el conflicto de clases disminuyó, reemplazado por un nacionalismo aparatoso, oportunidad que los ricos usaron para extorsionar a los trabajadores a que peleen y mueran en sus guerras de dominio.

La Primera  Guerra Mundial fue planeada por un puñado de ricos en una mesa para lidiar con las competencias por mercados entre los países imperialistas mismos; enviaron a millones de soldados a la carnicería más grande hasta ese entonces, una tragedia para hombres, mujeres y niños de Europa y el mundo colonizado. Los ricos responsables de esa tragedia comenzaban de nuevo a florecer unos años después y el resultado fue la Segunda Guerra Mundial y el fascismo, de nuevo el mundo sufre una gran destrucción de vidas y bienes, pero terminada esta guerra los ricos y sus empresas ocupaban lugares de importancia incluso en Alemania, Italia y Japón los países derrotados –olvidado quedaba nuevamente el sufrimiento y la muerte de millones de seres humanos que por supuesto no eran parte de las élites acaudaladas.

Y aunque el resultado de ambas guerras no fue exactamente el esperado por las élites, pues los fascistas no terminaron con la “amenaza comunista,” y tuvieron que crear y luego ampliar el Estado de Bienestar Social  en los países de Europa Occidental,  Norteamérica y algunos otros, el argumento en contra de los pueblos no cejo y algunos ricos continuaban predicando contra el peligro de “malacostumbrar” a los pobres –o sea a la mayoría de los ciudadanos. En estos tiempos la carta a jugar para los ricos fue la propaganda, Alex Carey (científico australiano) lo explica muy bien en “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy” (Quitándole el riesgo a la Democracia).  La propaganda fue usada como arma de persuasión en la Primera Guerra Mundial por el gobierno de Woodrow Wilson, Estados Unidos. Tuvo resultados asombrosos, tanto que las empresas se apropiaron de la estrategia bajo el nombre de “relaciones públicas.”  Hitler mismo, y su partido Nazi, fue un gran admirador del sistema de propaganda aplicado en Estados Unidos, idea de la que se apropió e integró en su máquina de terror y de guerra.

El sistema propagandístico se fue desarrollando durante todo el siglo 20, aumentando en sutileza y detalle e incluyendo entre sus herramientas la nueva idea de las “fundaciones” –organizaciones que los ricos crean para mostrar su filantropía y generosidad con la sociedad al tiempo que persiguen sus propias agendas y se niegan firmemente a la justicia de salarios más equitativos y continuados proyectos de justicia social. Parte del esfuerzo propagandístico de los más ricos es mandar a escribir sus biografías sesgadas para demostrarse como auténticos. La amenaza  del comunismo o del socialismo como alternativas estaba ya casi desaparecida para el año 1990 año en que los centros de propaganda se extienden aún más, con colaboradores llegados desde la izquierda e incluso de sectores radicales, han sido de gran utilidad en afirmar la legitimidad de la acumulación de riqueza en manos de unos pocos y la desesperanza en cuanto a hacer cambios liberadores.

Cuando los seres humanos eran cazadores y recolectores dependían unos de los otros, un pequeño grupo homogéneo que no podía tolerar la existencia de individuos con conductas antisociales pues ponían en peligro la existencia misma del grupo todo. Entonces a los antisociales se los abandonaba o eliminaba, simplemente, los esquimales por ejemplo empujaban al insistente antisocial al agua helada, otros grupos los eliminaban de otras formas, todos entendían que los antisociales no eran buenos pero además entendían que no eran funcionales.  Los antisociales de nuestros días no sufren esta suerte, al contrario, dominan al resto, son tan dañinos para la supervivencia de la especie como cuando éramos cazadores y recolectores pero no son tan diestramente condenados.  Han creado su mundo, en el reinan, controlan, deciden para detrimento de la especie entera. Cargan los dados continuamente a su favor, reciben los premios y honores, destruyen naciones, favorecen crímenes, implementan robos, especulan para acumular más y más riqueza que es poder, escapan de toda responsabilidad porque la responsabilidad es colectiva aunque el daño sea de un pequeño grupo, juegan el juego de ganarlo todo sin invertir nada, tienen al mundo del cuello con un revolver apuntado a la cien pero son admirados. Lo peor es que son un terrible ejemplo de ser humano pero los admiran y emulan. Durante una buena parte del siglo 20 muchos ricos eran más cautelosos, pero la impunidad ha aumentado y se vive una gran Jauja. Dominan los medios de comunicación, la mayor parte de la producción y comercialización de alimentos, semillas, medicamentos, fondos de pensión, instituciones financieras, la cultura: una plutocracia nos tiene de rehén y faltan las alternativas.

Mario R. Fernández y Nora Fernández

Las recientes observaciones del Comité de Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas a Costa Rica en materia de derechos humanos constituyen una nueva advertencia sobre la imperiosa necesidad de remediar álgidos temas de derechos humanos que se han venido postergando desde varios años. Tratándose de un Estado que durante más de dos años se mantuvo en una situación incómoda al desacatar un fallo de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, estas y otras advertencias anteriores hechas desde Naciones Unidas ameritan ser objeto de especial atención por parte de las autoridades. Adicionalmente, merecen ser conocidas y divulgadas en su integralidad por las organizaciones sociales que denuncian, desde muchos años, la peligrosa deriva que exhibe el aparato estatal costarricense en la materia.

En días recientes, algunos medios de prensa (en particular digitales) en Costa Rica han informado sobre las observaciones hechas al informe presentado por Costa Rica en materia de derechos humanos por parte del Comité de Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas (Nota 1).  Como bien se sabe, este órgano es uno de los diez denominados “órganos de tratados de Naciones Unidas” encargados de velar por el fiel cumplimiento de las obligaciones contraídas por los Estados Partes en diez distintos instrumentos internacionales (ver listado oficial ).

Al Comité de Derechos Humanos le corresponde monitorear únicamente el cumplimiento de las disposiciones contenidas en el Pacto Internacional sobre Derechos Civiles y Políticos (PIDCP) de 1966, el cual ha sido ratificado por Costa Rica en 1968. Notemos que, en el caso de Costa Rica, al resistirse a ratificar (e incluso a firmar…) la Convención Internacional de 1990 sobre la Protección de los Derechos de todos los Trabajadores Migratorios y de sus Familiares (ver  estado de ratificación  oficial de este instrumento) son nueve órganos de tratados los llamados a evaluar regularmente a Costa Rica y no diez.  De manera a ser completo, habría que añadir a estos mecanismos convencionales, los mecanismos no convencionales de Naciones Unidas: los cuales en la actualidad cuentan con 39 mandatos temáticos en materia de derechos humanos (ver listado oficial  que distingue a los “expertos independientes” de los “relatores especiales” y “grupos de trabajo”, según la terminología oficial), así como por 14 mandatos por país (ver listado oficial). En los últimos cinco años, Costa Rica recibió la visita de tres de ellos, como lo veremos a continuación.

La audiencia celebrada en Ginebra en marzo del 2016

Si bien varios de los órganos de tratados pueden examinar y recibir comunicaciones individuales, y emitir una resolución al respecto, su labor principal se centra en analizar y comentar los informes periódicos sobre cumplimiento de cada tratado que envía cada cierto tiempo el Estado Parte.

Las observaciones finales del Comité de Derechos Humanos al sexto informe presentado por Costa Rica fueron precedidas por una comparecencia de una delegación oficial de Costa Rica en la sede ginebrina de Naciones Unidas, realizada a mediados del mes de marzo del 2016. La delegación que se presentó ante los integrantes del Comité de Derechos Humanos fue encabezada por el Vice Canciller de Costa Rica.

En el comunicado oficial del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del 17 de marzo del 2016, Costa Rica había indicado su satisfacción con relación a este debate  y se leyó además en su comunicado que: “El Comité agradeció a Costa Rica por el espíritu constructivo con el que abordó el diálogo y por el envío de una delegación de alto nivel, representativa de diferentes poderes del Estado y por la paridad de género. En sus palabras finales, el Presidente del Comité, el argentino Fabián Salvioli recordó que los juristas latinoamericanos de su generación se formaron estudiando la jurisprudencia histórica de la sala constitucional de Costa Rica y otras de sus instituciones” (Nota 2).

Cabe señalar que la delegación oficial de Costa Rica incluyó a una congresista (ver  nota  de prensa). Llama la atención que un órgano del mismo Estado costarricense presentara un informe independiente (ver  texto completo ) al Comité, como complemento al informe oficial presentado por el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Costa Rica: se lee en esta  nota  del 16/03/2016 de Elpais.cr titulada “Costa Rica asegura cumplir obligaciones internacionales en DDHH” la siguiente frase: “La Defensoría presentó un informe independiente al Comité y fue recibida en audiencia privada ante el Comité“. Al revisar la titulación del informe de la Defensoría, se lee que se trata de un “informe alternativo independiente”. Si bien los informes de entidades nacionales de derechos humanos pueden en algunos casos completar la información oficial brindada al Comité,  tradicionalmente, los términos “informes independientes”, o “informes alternativos” son reservados a informes elaborados por comunidades afectadas, organizaciones de víctimas y más generalmente, por organizaciones de la sociedad civil.

Las observaciones finales del Comité

Desde la semana pasada están disponibles en este  este  enlace oficial  del Alto Comisionado para los Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas, las observaciones finales del Comité de Derechos Humanos. Este informe de Costa Rica se relaciona con las obligaciones jurídicas que derivan del Pacto Internacional sobre Derechos Civiles y Políticos (PIDCP). Salvo error de nuestra parte, estas recomendaciones han sido reproducidas de manera integral en Costa Rica únicamente en el sitio jurídico especializado de Derechoaldia.com (ver  enlace ).

De manera que nuestros estimados lectores tengan una perspectiva más integral, nos permitimos remitirlos a las observaciones finales realizadas en el 2007 por este mismo Comité al quinto informe presentado por Costa Rica (ver  enlace ). La comparación entre ambos documentos se impone, tanto en cuanto a su extensión como a su contenido (y al hecho que en el 2007, dichas observaciones finales del Comité de Derechos Humanos no dejaron rastro alguno en los medios de prensa de Costa Rica, como tampoco en la red).

Observaciones del 2007

En el 2007, la sección sobre “Principales motivos de preocupación y recomendaciones” del Comité de Derechos Humanos se reducía a 7 puntos (puntos 7 a 13 de sus observaciones finales). Antes de detallarlas, dicho Comité lamentó “… no obstante, que ningún experto  en los temas cubiertos por el Pacto, con responsabilidades relevantes en el país, haya  asistido a  la presentación del informe, lo que dificultó el diálogo entre el Comité y el Estado parte” (punto 2).

Entre algunos de los señalamientos hechos en el 2007, podemos citar el relacionado con la actuación de las autoridades de Costa Rica con los solicitantes de asilo provenientes de Colombia. En el punto 7, el Comité señaló que: “7. El Comité observa con preocupación que la información sobre los nombres de cerca de  9000 refugiados colombianos fue indebidamente compartida por las autoridades de Costa Rica con las autoridades Colombianas. (Artículos 2 y 13). El Estado  parte  debería tomar medidas  para  respetar plenamente  el principio  de  confidencialidad  de  los expedientes personales de  los solicitantes de  asilo  y  refugiados”.

Indica además, en el punto 13, con relación a los migrantes colombianos, otro hecho que le llamó la atención: “13. El Comité  observa  con preocupación las declaraciones efectuadas a través de  la  prensa por autoridades del Estado parte, estigmatizando a los colombianos en general, y a los refugiados colombianos en particular, al relacionarlos con el aumento  de delincuencia  en Costa Rica (Artículos 2, 20 y 26). El Estado  parte  debería  velar por que  los funcionarios públicos se  abstengan  de  formular declaraciones públicas de  índole  xenofóbico, que  estigmaticen  o  estereotipen a los extranjeros”.

Otros señalamientos como los relacionados al recurso abusivo a la prisión preventiva (punto 8), las deplorables condiciones de detención (punto 9), la debilidad de las políticas para luchar contra la trata de mujeres y niños (punto 12), evidencian que, a casi 10 años de haberse dadas a conocer, estas recomendaciones internacionales no han dado lugar a mayor esfuerzo por parte de aparato estatal costarricense para remediar de manera efectiva los problemas detectados.

Observaciones del 2016

En las observaciones finales del 2016 presentadas al sexto informe de Costa Rica, el Comité de Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas se muestra mucho más amplio. Su valoración crítica sobre la realidad de Costa Rica en materia de derechos humanos tiende a expandirse: la sección “Principales motivos de preocupación o recomendaciones” ya no se limita a 7 puntos como en el 2007, sino que se extiende del punto 5 al punto 43, cubriendo muy diversos y variados ámbitos en los que Costa Rica, pese a algunos esfuerzos, incumple de manera notoria sus obligaciones internacionales en materia de derechos humanos. En algunos casos (prisión preventiva, condiciones de detención), los integrantes del Comité reiteran algunas de sus observaciones anteriores ante la poca efectividad de la acción estatal. La misma preocupación en estas materias (prisión preventiva, condiciones de detención, abusos de autoridad, malos tratos) habían sido objeto de señalamientos en el 2008 por parte de otro órgano de tratados de Naciones Unidas, el Comité contra la Tortura (CAT) con relación a Costa Rica (ver   observaciones finales , en particular puntos 5 y 11-18): una reciente visita de la Relatoría de Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos de la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) sobre derecho de las personas privadas de libertad (ver  nota  con acceso a informe dado a conocer el 11 de marzo del 2016 sobre la situación encontrada en Costa Rica) evidencia que lejos de solucionarse, los problemas detectados en el 2008 por el CAT, han tendido a agravarse significativamente.

La lectura de la extensa sección “Principales motivos de preocupación o recomendaciones” contenida en las observaciones finales hechas por el Comité a Costa Rica en el 2016 confirma que, en varios campos, Costa Rica mantiene una deuda cada vez más pesada con varios sectores de su población en cuanto al ejercicio de los derechos consagrados jurídicamente en el PIDCP: mujeres, niños trabajadores, poblaciones afro descendientes, parejas del mismo sexo, familias deseosas de procrear artificialmente, portadores del VIH Sida, trabajadores migrantes, poblaciones indígenas, privados de libertad, entre muchos otros sectores. De manera que el lector se haga él mismo una idea del alcance de cada una de las observaciones realizadas, lo remitimos al  enlace oficial  antes indicado de Naciones Unidas que las contiene en su integralidad, y que, tal y como se puede observar, incluye muchos ámbitos, además del tema del aborto (que parece haber sido el único en acaparar la atención en estos primeros días del mes de abril del 2016 en Costa Rica) (Nota 3).

Entre algunos de los puntos álgidos, que no parecieran ameritar interés alguno por parte de los decisores políticos, podemos citar los puntos  41 y 42 sobre los derechos de los pueblos indígenas: “41. Preocupa al Comité que el proyecto de ley de desarrollo autónomo de los pueblos indígenas aún no ha sido aprobado y que aún no se haya adoptado un mecanismo legal que garantice la consulta previa de los pueblos indígenas en relación a la toma de decisiones que pudieran afectar al ejercicio de sus derechos. A pesar del reconocimiento legal del derecho que tienen los pueblos indígenas a las tierras y territorios que tradicionalmente han poseído u ocupado, preocupa al Comité la limitada protección al ejercicio de estos derechos en la práctica y que algunos pueblos indígenas hayan sido víctimas de ataques por conflictos de tierra (arts. 27)”.

Esta mención cobra mayor relevancia si recordamos que James Anaya, Relator Especial de Naciones Unidas sobre Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas, emitió un informe en el 2011 luego de su visita a Costa Rica (ver  texto completo  de su informe presentado en mayo del 2011, en particular la sección “Cuestiones de fondo más allá del proyecto hidroeléctrico”, puntos 41-48). De igual forma, posteriormente a su visita en julio-agosto del 2013, John Knox,  Experto Independiente de las Naciones Unidas sobre la Cuestión de las Obligaciones de Derechos Humanos relacionadas con el Disfrute de un Medio Ambiente, publicó un  informe  (documento A/HRC/25/53/Add.1 del 8/04/2014 y poco divulgado en medios de prensa así como por parte de las autoridades salientes de Costa Rica del 2014), en el que el experto recordaba a Costa Rica algunas de las obligaciones internacionales con respecto a las poblaciones indígenas, objeto de varios desarrollos (puntos 47 a 51 de su informe) y de una recomendación (punto 65) que se lee de la siguiente manera: “en lo que se refiere al proyecto hidroeléctrico El Diquís, el experto independiente recomienda al Estado que siga celebrando consultas con los pueblos indígenas que puedan resultar afectados, aprovechando la labor de facilitación del equipo de las Naciones Unidas en el país y teniendo en cuenta que las consultas deben tener por objeto conseguir el consentimiento libre, previo e informado de los pueblos indígenas afectados“.

De una manera similar, podemos citar las recomendaciones – algunas de carácter urgente – contenidas al final del informe presentado en junio del 2009 luego de visitar Costa Rica por Catarina Albuquerque, Experta Independiente de las Naciones Unidas sobre Agua, Saneamiento y Derechos Humanos (ver informe A/HRC/12/24/Add.1, en particular el punto 70 con relación a las poblaciones indígenas, disponible en este  enlace  que reúne varios documentos: buscar en esta página o la siguiente “Informe de la Experta independiente sobre la cuestión de las obligaciones de derechos humanos relacionadas con el acceso al agua potable y el saneamiento, Catarina de Alburquerque – Adición – Misión a Costa Rica –“ disponible en los seis idiomas oficiales de Naciones Unidas). Los puntos 74-88 de este informe del 2009 constituyen recomendaciones de carácter urgente, a la fecha pocamente atendidas por el Estado (lo cual puede explicar – al menos en parte – la crítica situación del recurso hídrico que enfrentan varias comunidades en distintas partes de Costa Rica).

En materia de derechos de las comunidades indígenas, cabe mencionar que en sus observaciones finales del año 2007 al informe presentado por Costa Rica (ver  texto  de dichas observaciones), otro órgano de tratados de Naciones Unidas, el Comité para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial (CERD) hizo referencia a su solicitud hecha desde el 2002 a Costa Rica y “exhorta /ba/ una vez más al Estado Parte a que elimine cuanto antes los obstáculos legislativos que impiden la aprobación del proyecto de Ley de desarrollo autónomo de los pueblos indígenas” (punto 9). Pese a la exhortación hecha a Costa Rica del 2002, reiterada en el 2007 por parte de los miembros del CERD, el Proyecto de Ley de Desarrollo Autónomo de los Pueblos Indígenas (Expediente no. 14352) se mantiene como proyecto en los archivos de la Asamblea Legislativa, y muchas de las poblaciones indígenas costarricenses, en situación de indefensión.

A ese respecto, recordemos que en el 2015, Costa Rica recibió una solicitud de medidas cautelares ante la dramática situación vivida por las poblaciones indígenas en Salitre (Nota 4).

Otro punto de las observaciones hechas en el 2016 por el Comité de Derechos Humanos que, en nuestro modesto parecer, amerita una mención es el punto 10 en el que leemos que: “10. El Estado parte debe redoblar sus esfuerzos por erradicar los estereotipos y la discriminación contra los miembros de pueblos indígenas, personas afrodescendientes, migrantes, solicitantes de asilo y refugiados, y las personas con discapacidad, entre otras cosas poniendo en marcha campañas de concientización a fin de promover la tolerancia y el respeto de la diversidad. El Estado parte debe acelerar la adopción de una Ley para Prevenir y Sancionar todas las Formas de Discriminación, asegurándose que incluya una prohibición general de la discriminación por todos los motivos que figuran en el Pacto e incorpore disposiciones que permitan obtener reparación en casos de discriminación, racismo o xenofobia, mediante recursos judiciales eficaces y adecuados”.  En esta materia, pese a innumerables casos de humillaciones y vejámenes sufridos por los integrantes de las poblaciones señaladas por el Comité, el Estado costarricense no ha desarrollado mayormente su legislación, incluyendo la penal, con lo cual actos que podrían calificar en otros Estados como crimen de odio, instigación al odio, a la discriminación o a la xenofobia no encuentran eco alguno en materia represiva. En el caso específico de la población nicaragüense, la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en su decisión (ver  texto completo ) sobre el caso de Natividad Canda Mairena (nicaragüense, destrozado por dos perros Rottweiler, en noviembre del 2005, en la Lima de Cartago, ante la mirada de bomberos, transeúntes, camarógrafos y personeros de fuerzas policiales) había advertido en el 2007 que: “Los Estados que, como Costa Rica, tienen bajo su jurisdicción a una elevada cantidad de inmigrantes no pueden dejar de tomar en consideración que éstos se encuentran en una situación de vulnerabilidad como sujetos de derechos humanos.  Esta vulnerabilidad es aún mayor cuando un Estado acoge en su territorio a un alto número de ciudadanos de otro Estado, pues a menudo se genera en la población del Estado receptor una predisposición negativa hacia la población inmigrante. Esa predisposición negativa frecuentemente está acompañada de estigmatización social y, aunque manifestaciones de xenofobia o discriminación pueden estar latentes en toda sociedad, la población migrante es especialmente vulnerable a estas manifestaciones” (párrafo 293). En esta decisión del 2007, la Comisión rechazó la solicitud de Nicaragua al no haberse agotado los recursos internos en Costa Rica. Luego de varios años de procedimientos, en octubre del 2012, fueron absueltos todos los integrantes de las fuerzas de seguridad por los tribunales costarricenses (ver nota de La Nación).

Finalmente, entre muchos de los señalamientos realizados, quisiéramos incluir en estas muy breves referencias lo que se lee en el punto 25 por parte del Comité de Derechos Humanos, y que ameritaría una explicación detallada por parte de las autoridades: “25. Preocupa al Comité que el Estado parte no haya proporcionado información sobre investigaciones y sanciones por violaciones de derechos humanos cometidos por agentes del orden en centros de detención y por miembros de la Policía, especialmente relacionadas con tortura y  malos tratos (art. 7 y 10) ”.

Conclusión

Dejamos a cada uno de nuestros estimables lectores apreciar el tono de las advertencias y de los señalamientos que, desde varios años, vienen indicándole a Costa Rica la situación en la que se encuentran sus habitantes con relación al ejercicio efectivo de sus derechos. En nuestra modesta opinión, las recomendaciones hechas en el 2007 por el Comité de Derechos Humanos, por los expertos independientes precitados que procedieron a una visita in situ a Costa Rica en el 2009, 2011 y 2013, así como las recomendaciones del 2016 del Comité de Derechos Humanos, constituyen una útil herramienta que debiera ser objeto de especial atención por parte de las autoridades. Notemos que con posterioridad a la publicación del informe de Catarina Albuquerque en el 2009, Costa Rica circuló una airada nota (ver  texto integral  de la nota verbal circulada por la Misión de Costa Rica en Ginebra, A/HRC/12/G/3 del 07/09/2009) en la que detallaba las presuntas carencias del informe. Por ejemplo, con relación al tema de la piña y de la contaminación de los cuerpos de agua, el punto 4 precisaba que “sería importante conocer cuáles son las opciones que se les podrían brindar a los productores de piña en lugar de bromacil y diurón”: una crítica frontal a la experta de Naciones Unidas, entendible si proviniese del sector productivo, sorprendente al provenir del mismo Estado (Nota 5).

A los pocos días de la publicación de estas observaciones finales del Comité de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas del 2016, el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores optó por titular su comunicado oficial de la siguiente forma: “País cumple con sus obligaciones ante el Comité de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas”. Más allá de este esfuerzo en materia de comunicación tendiente a ser un tanto reductor, dicho comunicado finaliza indicando que el Estado costarricense  “apoya fuertemente el trabajo de los órganos de tratados de las Naciones Unidas, considera que el diálogo constructivo con los expertos de los Comités es una fuente fundamental para identificar las falencias en la implementación de nuestras obligaciones y alimentar la elaboración de políticas públicas inclusivas y respetuosas de los Derechos Humanos” (Nota 6).

No cabe duda que estas observaciones del 2016, así como las advertencias anteriores del 2007 y las demás brevemente mencionadas, constituyen en sí un desafío, en aras de rectificar paulatinamente la peligrosa deriva a la que se asiste en materia de derechos humanos en Costa Rica desde varios años.

Nicolas Boeglin

Nota 1: Ver al respecto las notas de Elpais.cr, de Elmundo.cr y deCRHoy  publicadas en los últimos días de marzo.  El 1ero de abril se publicó una nota en otro medio digital, Informa-tico. En la prensa escrita, se encontró esta modesta nota en DiarioExtra. Otro medio de prensa escrita como La Nación optó por informar a sus lectores de un solo señalamiento hecho a Costa Rica: el relacionado al aborto (ver nota de prensa del 31/3/2016).  En el ámbito radial, en este enlace se puede escuchar una nota de Monumental, que se centra sobre el tema del aborto, pese a titularse “ONU señala deudas de Costa Rica en derechos humanos”.

Nota 2: En un comunicado oficial con fecha del 17 de marzo del 2016, día en que finalizaron las audiencias en Ginebra, se pudo leer por parte del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Costa Rica el siguiente texto, que a continuación nos permitimos reproducir en su integralidad: 

“Concluye diálogo de Costa Rica con el Comité de Derechos Humanos – 17/03/2016 03:38 PM  – 17/03/2016 03:47 PM. El diálogo de Costa Rica con el Comité de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas continuó este jueves 17 de marzo en Ginebra, en el Palacio Wilson, sede de la Oficina del Alto Comisionado para los Derechos Humanos. El diálogo de Costa Rica con el Comité de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas continuó este jueves 17 de marzo en Ginebra, en el Palacio Wilson, sede de la Oficina del Alto Comisionado para los Derechos Humanos.

El Comité emitirá y hará públicas sus recomendaciones en el plazo de dos semanas“.  

Nota 3: La discusión, un tanto enardecida, sobre el tema del aborto con el que ha iniciado el mes de abril del 2016 se origina en el  artículo  precitado  publicado en La Nación el 31/03/2016 sobre las observaciones finales del Comité de Derechos Humanos, titulado “ONU insta a Costa Rica a legalizar aborto en caso de violación”.

Nota 4: Remitimos al lector a nuestra modesta nota: BOEGLIN N., “Pueblos indígenas en Salitre: las medidas cautelares solicitadas a Costa Rica por la CIDH”, Observatoire Politique de l’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes (OPALC), Sciences-Po, Paris, 24/04/2015. Texto disponible  aquí .

Nota 5: Sobre estas y muchas otras extrañezas del Estado costarricense con relación a los cuestionamientos ante los efectos negativos de la producción de piña de exportación (“Sweet Gold” o MD2), remitimos a nuestro breve estudio con ocasión de una audiencia celebrada ante los órganos regionales de derechos humanos en el 2015:  BOEGLIN N., “La piña de Costa Rica ante la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos”, Global Research, 31/03/2015, disponible  aquí .

Nota 6: En su comunicado oficial con fecha del 1ero de abril del 2016, se lee lo siguiente por parte del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Costa Rica: ”País cumple con sus obligaciones ante el Comité de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas – 01/04/2016 09:57 AM – Costa Rica celebra que el Comité de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas acogiera con satisfacción la presentación del sexto informe del país, conforme las obligaciones establecidas en el Pacto de Derechos Civiles y Políticos. Después de haber presentado el informe escrito, el país participó en el examen oral  con una delegación de alto nivel, presidida por el Vicecanciller Alejandro Solano, los días 16 y 17 de marzo pasado, en Ginebra.

El día de ayer, fue publicado un avance de las observaciones finales del Comité. El Estado costarricense y la Comisión Interinstitucional para el Seguimiento e Implementación de las Obligaciones Internacionales de Derechos Humanos, reunida esta mañana en la sede de la Defensoría de los Habitantes, dieron la bienvenida a las recomendaciones del Comité que serán una importante guía para continuar con los esfuerzos nacionales para promover, proteger y respetar los Derechos Humanos. 

El Comité celebró varios aspectos positivos del desempeño nacional, entre ellos, la modificación del artículo primero de la Constitución Política que reconoce el carácter multiétnico y pluricultural del Estado, la ley contra la Trata de Personas y la Política Nacional  para una Sociedad Libre de Racismo, Discriminación Racial y Xenofobia y su Plan de acción.  Además, acogió favorablemente la reciente ratificación de importantes instrumentos internacionales. 

El procedimiento de presentación de informes previsto en el Pacto de Derechos Civiles y Políticos es de naturaleza informativa, no contenciosa. No obstante, como es la práctica en ese tipo de mecanismos de Derechos Humanos, el Comité también expresó sus preocupaciones y brindó una serie de recomendaciones al país.

Algunas de las preocupaciones se refirieron a la persistencia de la discriminación estructural contra miembros de pueblos indígenas y personas afrodescendientes, a pesar de los esfuerzos realizados por el Estado que fueron reconocidos por el Comité; así como la falta de una política integral sobre la discriminación por motivos de orientación sexual o identidad de género, a pesar de las diversas medidas adoptadas por el país en la materia. Igualmente, el Comité indicó que, a pesar de las medidas adoptadas, le preocupaba la significativa brecha salarial existente entre hombres y mujeres y la ausencia de protocolos sobre el aborto en los casos permitidos por la ley (aborto terapéutico). Además, los expertos manifestaron preocupación por la persistencia de hacinamiento en los lugares de detención, a pesar de los esfuerzos realizados por el Estado.

Entre las principales recomendaciones, se solicitó al Estado Parte garantizar que la Comisión Interinstitucional cuente con los medios adecuados para el eficaz desempeño de sus funciones, acelerar la adopción de una Ley para Prevenir y Sancionar todas las Formas de Discriminación que incluya una prohibición general de la discriminación, asegurar que todos los servicios de salud sexual y reproductiva sean accesibles para todas las mujeres y adolescentes y adoptar medidas eficaces para mejorar las condiciones  de los centros penitenciarios y reducir el hacinamiento, incluyendo el uso de medidas alternativas a la privación de libertad. 

El estado costarricense apoya fuertemente el trabajo de los órganos de tratados de las Naciones Unidas, considera que el diálogo constructivo con los expertos de los Comités es una fuente fundamental para identificar las falencias en la implementación de nuestras obligaciones y alimentar la elaboración de políticas públicas inclusivas y respetuosas de los Derechos Humanos”.

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

The CIA, working in conjunction with Washington’s principal allies in the Middle East, including the governments in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, is preparing a so-called “Plan B” involving a dramatic escalation in the arming of Western-backed “rebels” fighting the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Citing senior US officials, the Wall Street Journal reported that the plan was directed at “providing vetted rebel units with weapons systems that would help them in directing attacks against Syrian regime aircraft and artillery positions.”

Clearly, the same weapons could be used to shoot down Russian aircraft, which have proven decisive in providing air support for Syrian government forces in taking back territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Al Nusra Front and other Western-backed Islamist militias.

The plan being hatched by the White House and the CIA dramatically escalates the threat of a military confrontation between the US and Russia, the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

“Plan B” is supposed to go into effect once Washington reaches the conclusion that its “Plan A” has failed. “Plan A” being the current effort to secure the collaboration of the United Nations, Russia, Iran and elements within the Assad government itself to achieve by means of a negotiated settlement what it has proven unable to secure on the battlefield over the last five years: regime change in Damascus.

“If the cease-fire collapses, if the negotiations don’t go anywhere, and we’re back to full throttle civil war, all bets will be off,” an Obama administration official told the Journal. “The outside patrons will double and triple down, throwing everything they can into Syria, including much more lethal weaponry.”

The leaking of the CIA plan, which had all the earmarks of a deliberate trial balloon for a US military escalation, came as US officials charged that the Assad government is threatening to disrupt peace talks set to resume in Geneva this week by pursuing a fresh military offensive around the Syrian city of Aleppo.

A cessation of hostilities agreement that went into effect at the end of February does not cover either ISIS or the Nusra Front, which are both defined by both Washington and the UN as terrorist organizations.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power led the administration’s charge on this issue. Referring to reports of a planned Syrian army offensive, she stated,

“That would be devastating, for the people of Aleppo of course, but also to this intricate process where the cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access and political negotiations are all related to one another.”

Power and other administration officials are essentially indicting the Syrian government for going after the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, on the grounds that it works in close proximity, and close collaboration, with other Islamist militias that the US and its allies have armed and supported.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Monday that the problem was that the groups backed by Washington are “not far apart and they’re not clearly delineated” from the Nusra Front forces in Aleppo and elsewhere. The reality is that these forces operate in alliance with the Syrian Al Qaeda branch, which, together with ISIS, constitutes the main armed forces fighting the Syrian government. Washington is determined to maintain these forces as a proxy army in its bid for regime change.

Russia has responded by blaming the uptick in fighting on a buildup by the Islamist militias aimed at encircling and blockading Aleppo. This operation has been facilitated by the flow of thousands of foreign fighters and large amounts of weaponry across the border from Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally.

The message sent by the leaked report on the CIA preparations for “Plan B” is clear. If the Islamist militias are able to sufficiently disrupt the cessation of hostilities and upend the negotiations in Geneva, they will be rewarded with powerful new weaponry from the US and its allies.

According to the Journal report, the Obama White House is still deliberating on a “list of specific Plan B weapons systems.”

Saudi Arabia and Turkey have reportedly both pressed for the provision of Manpads, man-portable air-defense systems. These weapons, such as US Stinger shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, can be used to bring down low flying warplanes and helicopters.

They can just as easily be turned against civilian passenger planes as military aircraft, and, given the so-called “overlap” between the Syrian Al Qaeda forces and the Islamist militias backed by Washington and its allies, this is a strong probability. In the past, weapons funneled to so-called CIA-vetted “moderates” have quickly fallen into the hands of the Al Nusra Front.

The CIA is supposedly looking at the possibility of providing less mobile anti-aircraft weapons, the Journal reports.

The provision of such weapons to the Islamist “rebels” would be a flagrant violation of international law. It will likewise serve to prolong and intensify the bloodbath inflicted upon the Syrian people as a result of the US-backed regime change operation, which has already claimed well over a quarter of a million lives and driven roughly half the population from their homes.

The criminal US policy being elaborated under the guise of Plan B poses the direct threat of a far more dangerous military clash between the US and Russia.

The Obama administration’s willingness to risk such a confrontation was already demonstrated last November with Turkey’s deliberate ambush of a Russian SU-24 fighter bomber near the Syrian-Turkish border.

US imperialism is not prepared to accept Russia’s military intervention in Syria consolidating a pro-Moscow regime in Damascus, with or without Assad. US geopolitical and military strategy is aimed at preventing Russia from posing a challenge to Washington’s drive to impose American hegemony in the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. To that end, it is preparing an escalation of the Syrian conflict that could ignite a third world war between nuclear-armed powers.

The EU Parliament has responded to the health concerns of millions by calling on the Commission to severely restrict permitted uses of the toxic herbicide glyphosate, including an effective ban on pre-harvest dessication of crops.

The European Parliament today adopted a resolution strongly opposing the Commission’s proposal to reapprove the controversial weedkiller glyphosate for use in Europe for 15 years.

The resolution flags significant concerns with the Commission’s proposal, notably calling for significantly restricting the uses for which glyphosate – best known in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ formulation – could be approved.

The Parliament’s vote precedes a decision by EU government representatives on whether or not to support the Commission proposal to approve glyphosate for use in the EU. This may take place at the next EU pesticides committee meeting on 18-19 May.

While the 374 to 225 vote is non-binding on the Commission and EU governments, it will nonetheless carry strong moral weight since it comes from the EU’s only elected body directly representing EU citizens and will force a discussion of the issues raised.

The resolution calls for no approval of glyphosate – recently determined to be “probably carcinogenic” by the WHO’s cancer watchdog, the IARC – for many uses now considered acceptable, including:

• non-professional uses;
• in or close to public parks, playgrounds and gardens;
• where integrated pest management systems are sufficient for necessary weed control.

It also calls for the renewal to be limited to just seven years instead of the 15 proposed by the Commission.

Pre-havest ‘dessication’ strictly limited

The resolution additionally demands strict limits on ‘pre-harvest’ applications on crops, with a strong recital calling such uses “unacceptable”. This refers to the practice of spraying crops up to two weeks before harvest to ‘dessicate’ the plants and make havesting easier.

Pre-harvest application of glyphosate is a clear route for human exposure to glyphosate via the harvested crop. Currently glyphosate formulations are licenced for a wide range of crops including wheat, barley, oats, oilseed rape (canola), linseed, field beans and peas.

This use of glyphosate is believed to be the main source of the herbicide and its residuesin bread and NGOs including the UK’s Soil Association are campaiging to stop this use.

The resolution further calls for:

• An independent review of overall toxicity of glyphosate;
• A call on the Commission and EFSA to immediately disclose all scientific evidence for the positive classification of glyphosate, given the overriding public interest in disclosure;
• A call on the Commission to test and monitor glyphosate residues in foods and drinks produced in the Union as well as in imported produce;
• Strong criticism of the Commission for accepting an incomplete dossier with regard to endocrine disruption;
• strong criticism of the problem of resistances of weed created by glyphosate, and the toxic spiral by agro-biotech companies adding further resistances to plants.

‘The Commission and EU governments must take note’

After the vote, Green food safety and public health spokesperson Bart Staes said:

“The European Parliament has today highlighted serious concerns with the proposal to re-approve glyphosate for use in Europe and the Commission and EU governments must take note.

“We would have preferred if MEPs had followed the recommendation of the Parliament’s environment committee in clearly calling for an outright rejection of the re-approval of glyphosate. However, this resolution opposes approval of glyphosate for most of its uses, and takes aim at the excessive length of the approval proposed by the Commission.

“This is a shot across the bow of the Commission and it must now work with EU governments to address these concerns, rather than pushing ahead with its proposed reapproval.”

Although falling short of the full ban demanded by the Greens and campaigners, the passage of the resolution represents a huge victory for all those who have opposed the Commission’s proposal to re-licence for all existing uses for 15 years and heavily lobbied their MEPs. Over 1.4 million people have signed an Avaaz petition opposing the relicencing of glyphosate.

The passing of the resolution also represents some skilful political footwork by the Greens in the EU Parliament. While they wanted a complete ban on glyphosate, they worked with other political groups to impose restrictions that would secure a majority of votes from other parties – even though the Greens opposed the final resolution as falling short of a complete ban.

“There is growing opposition among EU governments to reapproving glyphosate for use in the EU and we hope today’s vote, combined with major public opposition, will convince more governments to change their minds on glyphosate”, Staes continued.

“Given the serious health and environmental concerns and conflicting scientific advice regarding glyphosate, it is scandalous that the EU Commission proposed to continue to allow its use for 15 more years, without any restrictions on its use.

“With the WHO assessment having concluded the substance is probably carcinogenic, EU governments must heed these concerns and reject the Commission’s proposal.”

Rural residents still left at risk

However pesticides campaigner Georgina Downs points out that even if the Parliament’s position was adopted by EU Governments, millions of rural residents would still be at risk from agricultural use of glyphosate:

“The European Parliament vote has seemingly recognised the risk to the health of transient bystanders and non-professional users of pesticides but left at risk from exposure and adverse impacts the group with one of the highest levels of exposure which is rural residents living in the locality of sprayed crop fields …

“There are many millions of rural residents across the EU (including babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly, people already ill and/or disabled) who have no protection at all from exposure to this (or indeed any other) pesticide that is often sprayed in the locality of their homes and gardens.”

In a statement, Avaaz gave the vote a cautious welcome, pointing out that “with mounting public concern the vote in the European Parliament could be a major influencing factor for the decision of the Commission on a new license.”

Pascal Vollenweider, Avaaz Campaign Director, added:

“This vote shows European politicians are beginning to listen to the citizens they represent and independent science, but we will still be glyphosate lab rats for 7 more years. Two-thirds of Europeans want to suspend glyphosate until it is proven safe and it’s now up to the Commission to put public health before corporate profits.”

On March 23 General Breedlove, Chief of Staff of the American European Command gave an address to the Ministry of Defence of Georgia, announcing new American-British-Georgian military exercises to be conducted in May this year under the code-name Noble Partner 2016.

In that address he set out the real intention of the American elite; war with Russia. He stated the following, to his Georgian puppets, apparently with a straight face;

“Now, to my visit here. The security situation across Europe continues to evolve and become more and more complex. We continue to face security direct challenges from two directions. To the East, we face a resurgent, aggressive Russia, which has voluntarily chosen to be an adversary and poses an aggressive and long-term threat to the United States and our European allies and partners.

On 13 April, the EU Parliament called on the European Commission to restrict certain permitted uses of the toxic herbicide glyphosate, best known in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ formulation.

Glyphosate was last year determined to be “probably carcinogenic” by the WHO, and the resolution calls for no approval for many uses now considered acceptable, including use in or close to public parks, playgrounds and gardens and use where integrated pest management systems are sufficient for necessary weed control. The resolution falls short of an outright ban called for by many and also calls for the renewal of the licence for glyphosate to be limited to just seven years instead of the 15 proposed by the Commission.

Nearly 700 MEPs voted on the seven-year licensing of glyphosate and the vote was passed by 374 votes in favor to 225 votes against.

The resolution also demands strict limits on ‘pre-harvest’ applications on crops, which refers to the practice of spraying crops up to two weeks before harvest to dessicate the plants and make harvesting easier. This use of glyphosate is believed to be a main source of residue exposure to humans, especially those found in bread

Among other things, the resolution calls for the Commission and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to immediately disclose all scientific evidence for its recent positive classification of glyphosate and the Commission to test and monitor glyphosate residues in foods and drinks produced in the EU as well as in imported produce.

Moreover, it strongly criticised the Commission for accepting an incomplete dossier with regard to endocrine disruption and the toxic spiral by agro-biotech companies adding further resistances to plants.

This European Parliament vote to re-approve glyphosate for 7 years as opposed to the usual 15 years is non-binding on the Commission and EU member states. The EU member states will take the final vote in May.

Czech MEP Kateřina Konečná, GUE/NGL coordinator on the Parliament’s Committee on the Environment and Public Health, said:

“I am really disappointed by the outcome of today’s vote on our objection to the re-authorisation of the glyphosate herbicide. Our objection has been distorted. Some really bad amendments were tabled by right-wing groups in order to weaken a ban on glyphosate in the resolution and, unfortunately, they were approved.”

(For a more detailed review of the developments described above, see this piece in The Ecologist.)

Limited ‘victory’

What transpired on 13 April represents a very limited ‘victory’. To understand why this is the case, readers are urged to consult the attached fully-referenced document at the end of this article. Campaigner Rosemary Mason put together the 18-page document in question, which was produced to accompany an open letter sent by Mason to British Medical Journal Editor-in-Chief Fiona Godlee.

The document shows that poisoning the public and the environment with a cocktail of pesticides, not least glyphosate, on a massive scale is nothing short of criminal. Powerful commercial interests have colluded with governments, regulatory bodies and decision makers to ensure this has continued for decades (see this list of reports on the Corporate Europe Observatory website that highlight how in Europe public institutions have been compromised over the regulation of chemicals, not least pesticides, due to serious and persistent conflicts of interest; also see this report on how the previous Commission served a corporate agenda).

Mason implies that the public are being hoodwinked by messages about health and that these messages serve agritech interests. In her letter to the BMJ, she notes a major conflict of interest was unaddressed.

A piece, ‘People lack awareness of link between alcohol and cancer’, was published in the BMJ by Anne Gulland reporting about a survey commissioned by Cancer Research UK (CRUK),

Dr Penny Buykx, a senior research fellow at The University of Sheffield and lead author of the report, is quoted as saying:

 “We’ve shown that public awareness of the increased cancer risk from drinking alcohol remains worryingly low. People link drinking and liver cancer, but most still don’t realise that cancers including breast cancer, mouth and throat cancers and bowel cancer are also linked with alcohol, and that risks for some cancers go up even by drinking a small amount.”

Mason argues that the way health-related research is reported serves the interests of pesticide manufacturers because something other than pesticides can be blamed for the epidemic of cancers. Messages about lifestyle behaviour and individual responsibility for health are constantly being reinforced by politicians, the media and research studies.

According to Mason, since November 2010 Michael Pragnell has been the Chairman of Cancer Research UK (CRUK). She notes Pragnell was the founder of Syngenta and CEO of Syngenta AG based in Switzerland (from its public listing in 2000 to the end of 2007). He was also Chairman of CropLife International from 2002 to 2005.

Numerous studies and data sources are cited by Mason to highlight the deleterious health and environmental impacts of glyphosate. She implies that it is very convenient to lay the blame for poor health and disease elsewhere or at the door of things like alcohol consumption or individual behaviour.

Implying that poor health is the outcome of individual choice and lifestyle behaviour serves to divert the focus of attention away from commercial interests that profit from institutionalised health-damaging practices that affect the public. This dovetails with ‘free-market’ ideology whereby free will and choice prevail and illness, unemployment, poverty, etc, are the fault of the victim, rather than the consequences of a system structured (politically and economically) to serve the needs of powerful commercial interests and which, as in the case of exposure to glyphosate, the public has no control over.

Instead of holding these interests to account, we are left with messages that say follow a low carb diet, it’s OK to drink sugary drinks because it a lack of exercise that causes obesity or drink a glass of red wine a day to keep the doctor away.

The Chief Medical Officer (England) and Cancer Research UK blame liver failure and liver cancers in the public on ‘lifestyle choices’ i.e. the consumption of alcohol. However, as Mason argues, Séralini’s rats in France and dairy cows in Denmark also had liver pathologies. They cannot be blamed on ‘lifestyle choices’ but on glyphosate residues in food.

Mason states that since 2013 the Department of Health, Public Health England and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs have been made aware that independent scientists have shown that glyphosate is linked to most of the diseases and conditions associated with those in a Western diet, including: gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, celiac sprue and gluten intolerance. Celiac disease is a multifactorial disease associated with numerous nutritional deficiencies as well as reproductive issues and increased risk to thyroid disease, kidney failure and cancer.

In addition, problems with low manganese levels (shown in cows fed GM soya and maize) are associated with gut dysbiosis as well as neuropathologies such as autism, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, anxiety syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, and prion diseases.

Mason argues that Monsanto knew that glyphosate caused cancer in animals but manipulated the data. US Scientist Anthony Samsel is the first independent researcher to examine Monsanto’s secret toxicology studies on glyphosate obtained under Freedom of Information from the US EPA. They reported a variety of cancers in animals.

If the EU Commission and the EFSA manage to renew the licence for glyphosate, the public’s health will continue to deteriorate, while the agritech industry and drug companies will continue to profit.

Rosemary Mason’s paper on glyphosate can be read here

A group of Palestinians affected by Israel’s activities have filed a $34.5 billion lawsuit against US and Israeli entities supporting West Bank settlements.  The lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court of Columbia in the United States.

Ayman Nejm, media spokesman for Martin McMahon and Associates, the law firm that filed the law suit, told Safa news agency on Monday that the case is the first of its kind where Palestinian and Palestinian-American plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against wealthy US citizens and tax-exempt entities that have provided massive financial assistance to settlements across the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

According to the statement, the lawsuit has been filed against construction companies, security firms, real estate agencies and private banks involved in supporting the growth of Israeli settlements.

The case will also include Palestinians subjected to Israeli attacks which resulted in the loss of life, property and agricultural land in Palestinian Authority controlled areas.

File photo of illegal Israeli settlements

The statement said the plaintiffs include Susan Abulhawa, a prominent Palestinian writer, and activist Bassim Tamimi who has been incarcerated and tortured numerous times for staging peaceful weekly protests.

The statement read:

“Plaintiff Doaa Abu-Amar lost fourteen family members when the Israeli army bombed a day-care centre they had taken shelter in during the 2009 Gaza invasion. Plaintiff Ahmed al-Zeer is permanently disabled today because he was severely beaten by settlers who attacked him on his own property outside the settlement of Ofra.”

It added:

“Many of the plaintiffs have had loved ones murdered, children assaulted and murdered on their way home from school, businesses destroyed, land stolen, water wells and livestock poisoned, olive groves destroyed and suffered various physical injuries, including the loss of eyesight, legs amputated and various permanent physical injuries.”

The defendants include prominent pro-settlement billionaires such as Sheldon Adelson, Irving Moskowitz, and John Hagee, and American tax-exempt entities like Christian Friends of Israeli Communities and Friends of the Israeli Army.

“The defendants have committed war crimes because they have collaborated with violent settlers, G4S personnel, and Israeli soldiers in maiming and murdering thousands of Palestinian civilians, hoping such activity would hasten their departure from the OPT. The defendants have also committed money laundering because they purposely sent funds overseas to promote criminal activities like ethnic cleansing, arms trafficking, and wholesale violence”

it added.

The U.S. corporations named in the suit, along with Israeli banks Bank Leumi and Bank Hapoalim, international construction companies Africa Israel Investments, Veolia, and Volvo, and the British security protection services firm G4S, have all engaged in war crimes and money laundering.

THE HAGUE – Around 4,000 Europeans have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join extremist groups as foreign fighters, most from just four EU countries, a new study released Friday said.

Of the estimated 3,922 to 4,294 foreign fighters from EU member states, some 2,838 came from Belgium, Britain, France and Germany, said the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague.

Using data supplied by 26 EU countries, the independent think-tank found that while around 30 percent have since returned home, about 14 percent were killed on the battlefield.

The centre also found that there was “no clear-cut profile” of a foreign fighter. Some 17 percent of the group were women, and up to 23 percent were converts to Islam.

‘No clear-cut profile’ of a foreign fighter

More than 90 percent come from large metropolitan areas, some from the same neighbourhoods suggesting the “radicalisation process” is short and “often involves circles of friends radicalising as a group and deciding to leave jointly for Syria and Iraq.”

The report — complied before the March 22 attacks in Brussels — reiterated that Belgium has the highest number of foreign fighters per capita in the European Union.

Between September 2014 and September 2015 there were reportedly some 30,000 foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria from around 104 countries.

“Experts and government officials have increasingly warned of the potential security threat this phenomenon might also pose to Europe and beyond,” the report said.

It found that while European countries have tightened national security and border controls, only nine have made it a criminal offence to become a foreign fighter.

Few countries also have any kind of reintegration programme for those returning from the conflict areas.

And the changing pattern of foreign fighters, including the radicalisation of women as well as the very young, as well as those with possible mental health issues “are not (yet) reflected in more targeted policies.”

The centre recommended that the EU should set up an internal reporting system, saying there was “a clear need for an effective (and centralised) monitoring and evaluation framework” to analyse the impact of existing policies.

The United Arab Emirates is a member of the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen. In May 2015, the UAE military deployed 3 Light Attack Aircraft, AT-802U, on the al-Anad air base in Yemen in order to train the Hadi government’s pilots.

It’s should be noted that the Houthi alliance have attacked this air base repeatedly. This is why the Saudi-led coalition is pushed to keep a significant ground force in the area. In other case, the government’s ground operations will have a lack of an aerial support.

According to reports, the UAE Air Force has 24 AT-802U modified to the Block 1/2 Border Patrol Aircraft configuration. 6 of them have been handed over to Jordan for air patrols at the border. Considering the tense situation in the region, the UAE decided in 2015 to purchase 24 more AT-802U modified to the Block 3 configuration.

The AT-802U’s characteristics allows aircraft to operate successfully at low and ultralow altitudes. Experts also emphasize the reliability of aircraft structure, a high fuel capacity and a medium fuel efficiency. Unarmed aircraft’s cruise speed is 356 km per hour and the range is 2414 km. The aircraft could be armed with GAU-19/A three-barrel Gatling guns (.50 cal), DAGR laser guided rockets , AGM-114 Hellfire missiles , 250 lb laser-guided bombs, MK82 bombs, GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs and GBU-39 Small Diameter bombs.

In comparison with other US aircraft, AT-802U has low operating costs which draw attention of customers from around the world. Another important fact is AT-802Us, which operate in Yemen, don’t use expensive service ammunition such as GBU-12 or DAGR because the Houthi alliance doesn’t have enough heavily-protected objects of infrastructure.

The Qatar Emiri Air Force participates in the Yemeni intervention using 2 types of UAVs: German, Luna X 2000, and Chinese, CH-4. Luna X-2000 is intended for close reconnaissance transmitting live video data or taking higher resolution still images, but it can also perform other tasks such as ESM/Electronic countermeasures (radio/radar jamming), depending on its payload. CH-4 is a mixed attack and reconnaissance system capable of a 3500–5000 km range and a 30-40 hour endurance with a payload of up to 345 kg. It could be armed with AKD-10 or AR-1 anti-tank missiles. Experts believe that the Saudi-led coalition has decided to use Chinese UAVs in the conflict relying on a successful experience of Iraq and Pakistan. However, it looks that a moderate cost of this systems has played a much more important role.

Considering these facts, it could be concluded that the Saudi-led coalition has started to use a wide range of different low-cost systems in the Yemeni conflict in order to avoid loses of high-cost systems such F-16 or AH-64 as result of the Houthi alliance’s anti-air measures. This is a real reason of the UAE training program for Yemeni pilots. Furthermore, low-cost systems have obvious advances in long-running low intensity conflicts as the war in Yemen.

Much of the blame for Haiti’s chaotic political scene can be pinned on Hillary Clinton’s State Department, whose handpicked president has only made things worse.

Last week Haiti’s Electoral Council postponed the nation’s current presidential election indefinitely. The present chaos is a fitting coda to the recent presidency of Michel Martelly, a novice politician who governed accordingly.

Remarks prepared for event in Washington, D.C., on April 11, 2016.

Let’s look at 10 revealing moments in the history of lying about wars to see what they tell us, and then I’ll be glad to try to answer any questions I can. These remarks will be published at teleSUR.

I’ll say the most about the first items on this list, and less as I move toward #10.

1. On January 31, 2003, President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met in the White House prior to a joint press conference. Bush proposed to Blair that one good way to get a war on Iraq started would be to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colors, in hopes that Iraq would fire on them. This was one of a number of possible ways to get a war started that Bush proposed to Blair. Following the meeting, the two of them walked out to do a joint press conference, of which you can still watch the video.

Image: EFE

At the press conference, the two of them said they wanted to keep the peace – Bush used the word “peace” at least three times – and that if Iraq would simply disarm of the weapons that in fact it did not have and which much of the world did not believe it had, there would be no need for war. Bush also claimed Iraq had ties to al-Qaida, though declining to claim any “direct” ties to al-Qaida. Asked what they thought of Iraq having just invited U.N. inspectors back to Iraq, Bush and Blair said it was a trick and a deception. Asked whether he hadn’t always wanted a war on Iraq and whether he wasn’t just going through a charade of diplomacy, Bush claimed to be denying the charge but in fact spoke mainly of his view of how high the stakes were and seemed to be defending his drive toward war.

This event came six months after the meeting in London recorded in the Downing Street Minutes at which the head of British so-called intelligence reported on his meeting with the head of U.S. so-called intelligence, to the effect that the United States was decided on war and would lie as needed. In fact, by the time of this meeting and press conference, the United States was already deploying troops to the Middle East to attack Iraq.

In addition, by this point, the Iraqi government had approached the CIA’s Vincent Cannistrato to offer to let U.S. troops search the entire country. The Iraqi government had offered to hold internationally monitored elections within two years – something I’d love to see the United States do. The Iraqi government had offered Bush official Richard Perle to open the whole country to inspections, to turn over a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to help fight terrorism, and to favor U.S. oil companies. And the Iraqi president had offered, in the account that the president of Spain was given by the U.S. president, to simply leave Iraq if he could keep US$1 billion.

The pretense that war was the last resort requires ignoring all of these other options, plus millions more. One can always think of another resort prior to the last resort. To use war as a last resort would mean to never use it. But even if we imagine the impossible, that literally everything else had been tried, we could not explain away Bush’s brainstorming schemes to get the war started, as he did with Blair on January 31, 2003.

Nor should we ignore the fact that the same reasons given for any war have failed to generate a war on numerous other occasions. When the Soviet Union actually shot down a U2 plane, the United States did not choose war. That incident may have been created by the CIA to sabotage President Eisenhower’s diplomacy, but Eisenhower did not choose to use it as grounds for war, as Bush seemed to think, in a similar situation, he could. Numerous nations other than Iraq in 2003 actually had weapons of mass destruction, yet in no case other than Iraq’s was that seen as a basis for war.

The U.S. war on Iraq in 1990-1991 was also, like every war of the past several decades, depicted as a last resort, but the Iraqi government had been willing to negotiate withdrawal from Kuwait without war and ultimately offered to simply withdraw from Kuwait within three weeks without conditions. The King of Jordan, the Pope, the President of France, the President of the Soviet Union, and many others urged such a peaceful settlement, but the White House insisted upon its so-called last resort. In 2001 the Taliban repeatedly offered to turn Osama bin Laden over to a third country to stand trial, al Qaeda has had no significant presence in Afghanistan for most of the duration of the current war, and withdrawal has been an option at any time. Go back through U.S. history. Mexico was willing to negotiate the sale of its northern half, but the United States wanted to take it through an act of mass killing. Spain wanted the matter of the U.S.S. Maine to go to international arbitration, but the U.S. wanted war and empire. The Soviet Union proposed peace negotiations before the Korean War. The United States sabotaged peace proposals for Vietnam from the Vietnamese, the Soviets, and the French, relentlessly insisting on its so-called “last resort” over any other option, from the day the Gulf of Tonkin incident mandated war despite never having occurred. Osama bin Laden was even killed as a “last resort” despite being unarmed.

2. On June 4, 1939, a ship carrying over 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, many of them children, anchored close enough to Miami, Florida, to see the lights. Passengers cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking to be allowed into the United States. The U.S. secretary of state and secretary of the Treasury had just discussed the matter and sought unsuccessfully to persuade Cuba to accept the Jewish refugees. The U.S. Coast Guard was sent out to chase the ship, the MS St. Louis, away from the Land of the Free. Canada also refused to allow the ship entry, and it returned to Europe, where over 250 of the passengers were murdered by the Germans. How is it possible both that such an incident occurred and that World War II was a noble war fought to save the Jews? In fact, it isn’t possible. The incident occurred, but the lies used to support World War II at the time were lies of defense and last resort. FDR claimed to have a map of Nazi plans for taking over the Americas. It was forged. He claimed to have a Nazi plan for eliminating religion. He didn’t. He claimed that U.S. ships were innocently attacked. They were assisting British war planes. He provoked Japan in hopes of getting into the war in Europe, and drafted a declaration of war on both Japan and Germany the night of Pearl Harbor. He was talked into holding off on Germany.

Image: Wikimedia commons

The lies about World War II being defensive have been overtaken in U.S. mythology by lies about a war fought for the Jews (and presumably also the millions of other victims of the Nazi camps). But let me quote a few lines from my book:

“(Y)ou won’t find any recruitment posters of Uncle Sam saying, ‘I Want You…to Save the Jews.’ When a resolution was introduced in the U.S. Senate in 1934 expressing “surprise and pain” at Germany’s actions, and asking that Germany restore rights to Jews, the State Department ’caused it to be buried in committee.’ By 1937 Poland had developed a plan to send Jews to Madagascar, and the Dominican Republic had a plan to accept them as well. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain came up with a plan to send Germany’s Jews to Tanganyika in East Africa. Representatives of the United States, Britain, and South American nations met at Lake Geneva in July 1938 and all agreed that none of them would accept the Jews. On November 15, 1938, reporters asked President Franklin Roosevelt what could be done. He replied that he would refuse to consider allowing more immigrants than the standard quota system allowed. Bills were introduced in Congress to allow 20,000 Jews under the age of 14 to enter the United States. Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY) said, ‘Thousands of American families have already expressed their willingness to take refugee children into their homes.’ First lady Eleanor Roosevelt set aside her anti-Semitism to support the legislation, but her husband successfully blocked it for years. In July, 1940, Adolf Eichman, ‘architect of the holocaust,’ intended to send all Jews to Madagascar, which now belonged to Germany, France having been occupied. The ships would need to wait only until the British, which now meant Winston Churchill, ended their blockade. That day never came. On November 25, 1940, the French ambassador asked the U.S. secretary of state to consider accepting German Jewish refugees then in France. On the 21st of December, the secretary of state declined. By July 1941, the Nazis had determined that a final solution for the Jews could consist of genocide rather than expulsion.”

It’s worth adding to that quote that U.S. officials were obeying majority U.S. opinion. Most people in the United States did not want to allow Jewish immigrants from Germany to enter the country. While the news had been reported from Germany of growing brutality toward Jews and others, the U.S. media, including famously the New York Times, had downplayed it, as had U.S. politicians – both out of anti-Semitism and out of a desire to maintain good relations with the German government. In fact, following the disastrous treaty of Versailles that ended World War I in a manner predicted at the time to create World War II, the United States invested heavily in Nazi Germany as a preferable alternative to communists. Our peace movement hero Smedley Butler was locked up in Quantico when he publicly said something disfavorable about Benito Mussolini.

The myth of the evil Nazis is not a myth because they were not evil, but because the U.S. government fundamentally did not give a damn, engaged in eugenics and human experimentation before, during, and after the war, ran an Apartheid state for African Americans, locked Japanese Americans in camps, pursued global empire, and pointlessly slaughtered during the war many more civilians than died in Nazi camps – something that can be said of most parties to that war, a war that killed 50 to 70 million people, while the German camps killed some 9 million.

By 1942 word was leaking out about the Nazis’ plans. Peace activists like Jessie Wallace Hughan argued that,

“It seems that the only way to save thousands and perhaps millions of European Jews from destruction would be for our government to broadcast the promise [of an] armistice on condition that the European minorities are not molested any further … It would be very terrible if six months from now we should find that this threat has literally come to pass without our making even a gesture to prevent it.”

In 1942 peace activist Abraham Kaufman argued that the United States needed to negotiate with Hitler. To those who argued that you couldn’t negotiate with Hitler, he explained that the Allies were already negotiating with Hitler over prisoners of war and the sending of food to Greece. In 1943 Hughan wrote to the New York Times and the U.S. State Department that “two million (Jews) have already died (and) 2 million more will be killed by the end of the war.” She urged a negotiated peace.

The end of the war liberated prisoners, but no military or diplomatic effort had been made to liberate them prior. The war did not become a war about saving them until after it was over. This is why we should keep a close eye on the U.S. government’s ongoing rehabilitation of World War I and the Korean and Vietnamese and Iraqi wars. Imagine years from now what those wars will turn out to have been fought for.

Now, of course, you can switch back to the idea that World War II was defensive, or create some other argument for it, but you’ll still have to make a difficult case that it’s somehow relevant to 2016 and beyond – apart from U.S. officials calling various foreign leaders “Hitler” – before I’ll be persuaded that we should dump our future down the drain of military spending.

3. In October 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the best secretary of state we’ve had according to Henry Kissinger, had a good laugh. During an interview with CBS News just after the president of Libya was publicly sodomized with a knife and eventually murdered, Clinton proclaimed, in a rip-off of Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, “We came, we saw, he died!” Giggle. Giggle.

Image: EFE

Libya was a model humanitarian war, a perfect use of the Responsibility to Protect, a practical engagement of the entire U.S. academic genocide studies industry which imagines war as a tool for preventing something worse and bitterly laments Rwanda as a missed opportunity for a war, rather than the result of war-making and a step toward even more horrific war making. The war on Libya was launched without Congress and without the U.S. public. But it was launched with the pretense of United Nations backing.

The White House claimed that Ghadafi had threatened to massacre the people of Benghazi with “no mercy,” but the New York Times reported that Ghadafi’s threat was directed at rebel fighters, not civilians, and that Ghadafi, consistent with past behavior, had promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.” Ghadafi also offered to allow rebel fighters to escape to Egypt if they preferred not to fight to the death. Yet President Obama warned of imminent genocide, as did some prominent and generally antiwar U.S. leftists, while others screamed for bloody revenge for newly remembered grievances.

In March 2011, the African Union had a plan for peace in Libya but was prevented by NATO, through the creation of a “no fly zone” and the initiation of bombing, to travel to Libya to discuss it. In April, the African Union was able to discuss its plan with Ghadafi, and he expressed his agreement. NATO, which had obtained U.N. authorization to protect Libyans alleged to be in danger but no authorization to continue bombing the country or to overthrow the government, continued bombing the country and overthrowing the government. Libya was destroyed, weapons proliferated to Syria and around the region, anti-Western terrorist groups energized, and such a gloomy shadow cast over humanitarian wars that Samantha Power later saw the need to urge on people the duty not to look too closely at Libya in order to be properly willing to bomb Syria.

Well, every well-meaning humanitarian makes mistakes, right?

Wrong. Clinton’s once private, now partially public, emails focused much more on oil and business concerns than on human rights in the lead up to the overthrow of the Libyan government — and overthrow was the goal from the start, with her adviser Sidney Blumenthal going so far as to recommend “shock and awe.” And when the war was underway, Blumenthal focused his attention on concocting arguments to keep the war going in order to “win” it (or to conquer in the usual translation of Julius Caesar’s phrase), under the belief that doing so would be good for Obama in opinion polls. Blumenthal recommended dropping any more talk of the supposed rescue of people in Benghazi. He proposed no new humanitarian arguments, only geopolitical, balance of power stuff. He also pointed out that the overthrow could likely result in a “jihadist resurgence” and growth for al-Qaida. And he expressed awareness of summary executions by the rebels the U.S. was backing, but neither he nor Clinton expressed any concern about those atrocities. Also not mentioned, as far as I know, in any emails, though generally included in most public arguments for wars, was any mention of the need to fight in Libya in order to “support the troops.”

We don’t actually need private emails in order to debunk the lies of humanitarian war making. A survey of behavior makes it clear. And often the truth is openly stated in a manner that is intended to go unremarked upon. A few weeks ago, as the U.N. was trying in vain to drop food anywhere near starving people in Syria, a U.S. Air Force expert told a reporter about a system that allowed more precise drops from high altitude in high wind. It cost US$60,000, he said, and therefore, “You wouldn’t use it for a purely humanitarian drop.” The missiles that the United States tosses at foreign countries like confetti cost over US$1 million each.

4. On May 23, 2013, President Barack Obama packed a baker’s dozen of lies into a few sentences about his drone murders when he said,

“America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists; our preference is always to detain, interrogate, and prosecute. America cannot take strikes wherever we choose; our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty. America does not take strikes to punish individuals; we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.”

Image: EFE

Obama has in fact shifted U.S. policy from lawless imprisonment to murder. We know in detail of numerous cases in which the victim of a drone murder could certainly have been apprehended, but the option of killing was preferred. We know of no cases in which it has been established that a victim could not have been arrested. Obama tossed on the word “prosecute” to suggest that by murdering people and anyone too close to them – and mostly, by the way, people never identified by name or background – he is acting as a global policeman. In fact, we know of no cases where his victims have been charged or indicted, their extradition sought, or a legal case brought against them in absentia. There is no evidence of any desire to prosecute them for anything. Obama adds the condition that “no other governments (be) capable of effectively addressing the threat,” yet we know of cases in which the local governments of the territories attacked, such as in Yemen, have inquired after the fact, “Why weren’t we simply asked to arrest the person?”

Obama’s supposed respect for state sovereignty relies on the idea that vicious and antidemocratic governments and exiled dictators can grant him the legal right to blow up men, women, and children in certain parts of the globe. This is actually to engage in a conspiracy to violate state sovereignty, a concept he of course has no use for in certain states, like Libya or Syria. “Consultations with partners” has never been a valid criminal defense.

Obama’s “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured” is a disgusting insult to the hundreds and thousands of people he kills, most of whom he has not identified, many of whom he has labeled “combatants” because they are male, and many of whom are civilian by any definition, including numerous children and grandparents and attendees of weddings and rescuers of the wounded and those seeking to bury the dead.

There is no such thing as a “continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” A threat is either imminent or continuing, but let’s assume it can be both, that it is imminent and just goes on and on being imminent. There is in fact not a single example of a U.S. drone murder in which the victim has been shown to have constituted an imminent threat to the people of the United States. In the drone propaganda film “Eye in the Sky” a fantasy is invented in which the victims actually are an imminent threat to others. But even then, in a scenario that has never happened and will almost certainly never happen, they are not a threat to the United States or even to its imperial forces.

The lie of the drone is a lie of progressivism. The truth is barbarism.

5. In 1931, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Republican from Idaho, Senator William Borah remarked:

“Much has been said, and will continue to be said, for the doctrine of force dies hard, about implementing the peace pact. It is said that we must put teeth into it – an apt word revealing again that theory of peace which is based upon tearing, maiming, destroying, murdering. Many have inquired of me: What is meant by implementing the peace pact? I will seek to make it plain. What they mean is to change the peace pact into a military pact. They would transform it into another peace scheme based upon force, and force is another name for war. By putting teeth into it, they mean an agreement to employ armies and navies wherever the fertile mind of some ambitious schemer can find an aggressor … I have no language to express my horror of this proposal to build peace treaties, or peace schemes, upon the doctrine of force.”

Image: Wikimedia commons

Borah wanted peace through peace, which in the United States today is generally deemed naive and foolish. President Obama and the Pentagon claim to want peace through war, which in today’s United States is generally deemed wise and reasonable. Borah referred to the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928 which banned all war. Why exactly did it fail? Well, why exactly did the first steps taken to abolish slavery fail until additional steps were taken that advanced that cause to its current far from perfect position? Why did the first guy to propose ending dueling as a ridiculous institution probably take a bullet to the head? Why have so many international treaties banning so many weapons and cruelties not achieved the support of every nation yet? Because change takes time and must press against resisting inclinations.

While nations signed the peace pact, they engaged in an arms race, funded fascism, and thought in the same patterns as before. But the peace movement thought very differently from how it does today, and it banned all war with a vision of war abolition that many today don’t dare contemplate. At least one-sided justice punished World War II makers, and the wealthy nations haven’t gone to war with each other since; they’ve just waged war on poor nations of the world. We need disarmament. We need courts. We need aid. We need generosity. We need diplomacy. But we have to start with the unacceptability of war and stop insisting that drone murders be transparent and wars follow Geneva Conventions. Imagine requiring transparency in cruelty to animals or Geneva Conventions for proper child abuse. We have to stop accepting war and stop demanding that everything have teeth put into it.

6. In December 2015, in a CNN presidential debate, one of the moderators asked this:

“We’re talking about ruthless things tonight. Carpet bombing, toughness, war, and people wonder, could you do that? Could you order airstrikes that would kill innocent children, not scores but hundreds and thousands. Could you wage war as a commander in chief?”

There is, as far as I know, only one nation on earth where something like this could happen. Other nations wage war, but not as a matter of routine, not as the primary duty of a publicly elected official whose willingness to slaughter children by the thousands is required by a representative of a massive communications corporation hoping to air the footage with, of course, tasteful discretion in showing any of the bugsplat. This incident wasn’t a lie but a truth telling about how Washington, D.C., views war. The lies are the 90% of public statements on war that pretend it’s not a one-sided slaughter of innocents.

7. A couple of weeks ago a U.S. State Department spokesperson was asked if the United States favored Syria reclaiming the city of Palmyra from the Islamic State group or favored the Islamic State group holding onto it. He found this a very difficult question to answer and made clear he did not want to see the Islamic State group weakened if it meant any sort of gain for Syria. If any ordinary war supporter were shown this video, they might find it confusing. The U.S. government has prioritized one enemy, whom it has utterly failed to scare the U.S. public with, while the U.S. government has made a distant second priority of attacking another enemy that most people in the United States are so terrified of they can hardly think straight. President Obama and Secretary Kerry did what they could in 2013 to persuade us to want war with the Syrian government, but they failed. ISIS videos in 2014 succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of ISIS, the Obama administration, and the weapons makers. But the U.S. government jumped into the war in 2014 with the same priority it had had in 2013 and had been developing for years, and which had even helped motivate the 2003 attack on Iraq, namely the goal of overthrowing Syria, a goal for which it has been arming the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria for years now. This example should help people recognize that public and government motivations for a war are not always the same.

8. Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Michael Scheuer says the more the U.S. fights terrorism the more it creates terrorism. U.S. Lt. General Michael Flynn, who quit as head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, says blowing people up with missiles is generating more blowback, not less. The CIA’s own report says drone killing is counterproductive. Admiral Dennis Blair, the former director of National Intelligence, says the same. Gen. James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says drone strikes could be undermining long-term efforts: “We’re seeing that blowback. If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.” Dozens of just retired top officials agree. There is little question that the war on terrorism is not ending terrorism. There should be little question that ending terrorism is not the goal of the wagers of this series of wars, and not even the goal of many of its ordinary supporters.

9. If you watch an advertisement for the U.S. National Guard, it appears to be eight parts helping people during natural disasters, one part doing something vague in distant lands to somehow protect the best nation on earth from all those other nations, and one part summer camp. If you watch a video of a comedian in one of those other countries opposing U.S. wars you find it hard to imagine they’re talking about the same enterprise. Here’s Frankie Boyle explaining the advantages of Scottish independence:

“Scotland would no longer have to invade places like Afghanistan for American interests … I don’t support America’s wars. I don’t even think they are wars. They’re one-way traffic, mass-murder. There’s never been a time when a shepherd has beaten a helicopter. You never switch on the news to see ‘A shock result in Afghanistan today when a missile was destroyed by a wedding.’ Because not only will America go into your country and kill all your people. But what’s worse I think is they’ll come back twenty years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad. Oh boo hoo hoo. Americans making a movie about what Vietnam did to the soldiers is like a serial killer telling you what stopping suddenly for hitchhikers did to his clutch.”

Of course the sadness is very real. Of course many more U.S. soldiers kill themselves after a war than died in it. But look at the world’s perspective. One-sided slaughters of civilians cannot be all about the sadness of the soldiers. There has to be more to the story. Yet, the chief thing the U.S. military does, slaughtering people, could never be included in an advertisement for the U.S. military. And when polls find that people around the globe consider the United States the biggest threat to peace on earth, people in the United States could be forgiven for concluding that the world is simply crazy and ungrateful.

10. In 2013, public pressure was key in preventing a massive bombing campaign on Syria, and that public pressure rested on a decade of protest of the war on Iraq. Last year, public pressure was key in upholding a nuclear agreement with Iran. Nobody announces these events as victories, and when they can be they are hidden entirely. Lawrence Wittner’s book, Working for Peace and Justice, describes his first political demonstration in 1961. The USSR was withdrawing from a moratorium on nuclear testing.

A protest at the White House urged President Kennedy not to follow suit:

“Picking up what I considered a very clever sign (‘Kennedy, Don’t Mimic the Russians!’), I joined the others (supplemented by a second busload of students from a Quaker college in the Midwest) circling around a couple of trees outside the White House. Mike and I – as new and zealous recruits – circled all day without taking a lunch or a dinner break. For decades I looked back on this venture as a trifle ridiculous. After all, we and other small bands of protesters couldn’t have had any impact on U.S. policy, could we? Then in the mid-1990s, while doing research at the Kennedy Library on the history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, I stumbled onto an oral history interview with Adrian Fisher, deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

He was explaining why Kennedy delayed resuming atmospheric nuclear tests until April 1962. Kennedy personally wanted to resume such tests, Fisher recalled, ‘but he also recognized that there were a lot of people that were going to be deeply offended by the United States resuming atmospheric testing. We had people picketing the White House, and there was a lot of excitement about it – just because the Russians do it, why do we have to do it?'”

Yes, Kennedy delayed a horrible action. He didn’t, at that time, block it permanently. But if the picketers in 1961 had had the slightest notion that Kennedy was being influenced by them, their numbers would have multiplied 10-fold, as would the delay have correspondingly lengthened. Yes, our government was more responsive to public opinion in the 1960s than now, but part of the reason is that more people were active then. And another reason is that government officials are doing a better job now of hiding any responsiveness to public sentiment, which helps convince the public it has no impact, which reduces activism further. The biggest lie is that nonviolent public pressure doesn’t work. We could expose that lie by trying it.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include “War Is A Lie.” He is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

When I submitted on April 9th to virtually all U.S. news-media a news-report headlined “Two Ways Hillary’s Private Email Operation Was Obviously Criminal”, and provided there the U.S. statutes that Hillary Clinton had clearly violated by her privatized email operation when she was serving as the U.S. Secretary of State, it was news-enough to qualify for publication by all of the major newspapers and TV networks and the other major and minor U.S. national news-media — but they all rejected it, declined to publish it, even though I don’t charge for my news-reports; and the only reason why they wouldn’t publish it had to be that they don’t want the public to know that she had violated at least two specific U.S. criminal statutes.

18 U.S. Code § 2071 – Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally

(a)Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

(b)Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

That’s not as high a penalty (“fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both”) as the two statutes I had cited earlier (one of which was 20 years’ imprisonment, the other of which was 10), but it certainly is yet a third criminal statute that she certainly did violate, and yet she is being voted for by more of my (former) fellow Democrats to represent us as our (their) Presidential nominee, than is her competitor, Senator Sanders (who has no such “experience”); and how could this possibly be the case but for the U.S. ‘news’ media’s hiding from the voters that Ms. Clinton definitely and incontestably did violate at least three U.S. criminal laws, there?

Are the ‘news’ media — that is, the persons who own the major blocs of stock in each and every one of them — wanting the Republican nominee (whomever he turns out to be) to be running against a person who should be facing prosecution under those three (and perhaps other) U.S. criminal laws — wanting, in other words, to hand the White House to whomever wins the Republican nomination? Is the U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, and is her boss the current President Barack Obama, not going to be bringing Hillary’s clear crimes in this matter before a grand jury to consider for indictment? Or, are the millions of Democratic voters in those primaries simply fools who don’t care that they’re voting for a clear-cut (regardless of whether the U.S. President and his Administration are refusing to prosecute her) crook?

It can’t be only the voters that are to blame, because (also very clearly here) they’re simply not being informed by the U.S. national ’news’ media what the laws are that she has, so very blatantly, violated. How can the voters be blamed for not knowing what it is that the ’news’ media are hiding from them?

As regards the possibility that the President and his Attorney General are to blame: we don’t know, and we have no way of knowing, whether Clinton’s case in this matter is being seriously investigated by the FBI for possible bringing of federal criminal charges against her for what she so incontestably did do in regards to her State Department email. Quite possibly, the FBI are interviewing and getting plea-bargains from her subordinates in this criminal activity, as a prerequisite to obtaining her own under-oath testimony; quite possibly, they’re doing their duty.

What is not in question is that the U.S. national ’news’ media are hiding from the American public the statutes, the criminal laws, that the currently leading candidate for the U.S. Presidency has so clearly, on the basis of the emails that were able to be reconstructed from her wiped-clean private email server, did violate.

Whereas Ms. Clinton obviously is a crook (in this matter if not for any other), what can we say about the U.S. national ‘news’ organizations? They are not violating any criminal law by hiding this crucial information from the public. But what they are doing is even more heinous than what she did. With a ‘news’ media such as this, we can only continue to be deceived into electing and even re-electing people such as George W. Bush who during 2002 and 2003 lied this country into the disastrous and unwarranted and illegal invasion of Iraq. And, if that’s not a heinous national ’news’ media, then what is? This is, before so many primary elections for the U.S. Presidency. Not allowing the public to know the truth. It’s as bad now as it was in 2002 and 2003. It’s a dictatorship. That’s what we have, with a press like this.

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.

This is an English translation of an article that I wrote for the German magazine, Compact.

I was encouraged by the high level of intelligent discourse that Compact brings to its readers. If only the US had more people capable of reaching beyond entertainment to comprehending the forces that affect them, there might be some hope for America. 

Compact brings hope to Germany. The German people are beginning to understand that their country is not sovereign but a vassal of Washington and that their chancellor serves Washington’s hegemony and American financial interests, and not the German people.

Hillary Clinton is proving to be the “teflon candidate.” In her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, she has escaped damage from major scandals, any one of which would destroy a politician. Hillary has accepted massive bribes in the form of speaking fees from financial organizations and corporations. She is under investigation for misuse of classified data, an offense for which a number of whistleblowers are in prison. Hillary has survived the bombing of Libya, her creation of a failed Libyan state that is today a major source of terrorist jihadists, and the Benghazi controversy. She has survived charges that as Secretary of State she arranged favors for foreign interests in exchange for donations to the Clintons’ foundation. And, of course, there is a long list of previous scandals: Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate. Diana Johnstone’s book, Queen of Chaos, describes Hillary Clinton as “the top salesperson for the ruling oligarchy.”

Hillary Clinton is a bought-and-paid-for representative of the big banks, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby. She will represent these interests, not those of the American people or America’s European allies.

The Clintons’ purchase by interest groups is public knowledge. For example, CNN reports that between February 2001 and May 2015 Bill and Hillary Clinton were paid $153 million in speaking fees for 729 speeches, an average price of $210,000.

As it became evident that Hillary Clinton would emerge as the likely Democratic presidential candidate, she was paid more. Deutsche Bank paid her $485,000 for one speech, and Goldman Sachs paid her $675,000 for three speeches. Bank of American Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Fidelity Investments each paid $225,000.

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/08/hillary-clinton-earned-more-from-12-speeches-to-big-banks-than-most-americans-earn-in-their-lifetime/ 

Despite Hillary’s blatent willingness to be bribed in public, her opponent, Bernie Sanders, has not succeeded in making an issue of Hillary’s shamelessness. Both of the main establishment newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times have come to Hillary’s defense.

Hillary is a war-monger. She pushed the Obama regime into the destruction of a stable and largely cooperative government in Libya where the “Arab Spring” was a CIA-backed group of jihadists who were used to dislodge China from its oil investments in eastern Libya. She urged her husband to bomb Yugoslavia. She pushed for “regime change” in Syria. She oversaw the coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of Honduras. She brought neoconservative Victoria Nuland, who arranged the coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of Ukraine, into the State Department. Hillary has called President Vladimir Putin of Russia the “new Hitler.” Hillary as president guarantees war and more war.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/02/hillary-clintons-six-foreign-policy-catastrophes.html 

In the United States government has been privatized. Office holders use their positions in order to make themselves wealthy, not in order to serve the public interest. Bill and Hillary Clinton epitomize the use of public office in behalf of the office holder’s interest. For the Clintons government means using public office to be rewarded for doing favors for private interests. The Wall Street Journal reported that “at least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during her [Hillary Clinton’s] tenure as Secretary of State donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation.”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/hillary-clinton-exposed-part-1-aggressively-lobbied-mega-corporations-secretary-state.html 

According to washingtonsblog.com, “All told, the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates have collected donations and pledges from all souces of more than $1.6 billion, accoring to their tax returns.”

According to rootsactionteam.com, multi-million dollar donars to the Clinton Foundation include Saudi Arabia, Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, Kuwait, ExxonMobil, Friends of Saudi Arabia, James Murdoch, Qatar, Boeing, Dow, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, and the United Arab Emirates.

According to the International Business Times, “Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments had given millions to the Clinton Foundation.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187 

Hillary Clinton has escaped unharmed from so many crimes and scandals that she would likely be the most reckless president in American history. With the arms race renewed, with Russia declared “an existential threat to the United States,” and with Hillary’s declaration of President Putin as the new Hitler, Hillary’s arrogant self-confidence is likely to result in over-reach that ends in conflict between NATO and Russia. Considering the extraordinary destructive force of nuclear weapons, Hillary as president could mean the end of life on earth.

Yemen, A War for Profit, Saudi Genocide Backed by Obama

By Phil Butler, April 12 2016

The Wall Street Journal is the perfect example of a state and corporate controlled counter-information service. A report recently attempts to characterize the Saudi war on the Yemeni people as having little to do with oil. Nothing my friends, nothing…

Crimes against Humanity in Yemen: U.S. and Saudis Causing Hundreds of Thousands of Children to Starve to Death

By Washington’s Blog, April 12 2016

The United States is a major backer and supporter of the Saudi-led war against Yemen.  The U.S. supplies the weapons, and provides most of the targeting and military tactics.

Saudi Arabia: Britain’s Hand in the Making of a “Terror State”

By Johnny Gaunt, April 13 2016

King Salman of Saudi Arabia (left) The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has managed to nose itself into a unique global position. Despite the persistent reports of human rights abuses from within the kingdom, it continues to stand as an ally…

The “Hiroshima Nuclear Doctrine”: US Nuclear Weapons Deployed against Russia and the Middle East

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 12 2016

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky (image left) Foreign ministers of the G7 group of industrial countries have called for a world without nuclear weapons. In their final declaration at Hiroshima meeting in Japan, the top diplomats cited deteriorating security conditions in Syria,…

Does the Prospect of “Nuclear Terrorism” in London, Paris or New York, Frighten You?

By Anthony Bellchambers, April 13 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama calls nuclear terrorism “the single most important national security threat that we face”. In his first speech to the U.N. Security Council, President Obama said that “Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city — be…

The West’s Terrorist “Catch and Release” Program

By Tony Cartalucci, April 13 2016

Virtually every suspect involved in recent Brussels bombing had been tracked, arrested, in custody – either by European security agencies or the agencies of their allies – but inexplicably released and allowed to carry out both the Brussels attack as…

Al Nusra and FSA militants repelled the pro-government forces’ offensive on the strategic town of Al-Eis and the al Eis hilltop in the Aleppo province on April 12.

According to ground reports, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah units supported the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in this operation. Pro-militant sources report that from 50 to 70 pro-government soldiers were killed in the clashes. However, these numbers haven’t been confirmed by photos or videos. In turn, the Syrian government forces have reportedly killed over 250 al Nusra militants in Southwestern Aleppo during the past week. The loyalist forces will make another attempt to liberate Al-Eis today.

The SAA and the NDF repelled an attack of al-Nusra and its allies on a strategic highway linking Damascus to Quneitra in Southern Syria. Al-Nusra militants advanced on the al-Salam highway from four directions: Filat al-Azm, al-Khalil Farm, Marmala and al-Mansha al-Sanayeh. However, their attempts failed.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prepares to supply Syrian rebels [Al Nusrah, ISIS, et al] with more lethal weapons should the fledgling cessation of hostilities in the Arab republic collapse, US media reported, citing officials.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia (left)

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has managed to nose itself into a unique global position. Despite the persistent reports of human rights abuses from within the kingdom, it continues to stand as an ally and ‘friend’ to both the UK and the US. Public beheadings in Chop Chop Square are commonplace, which along with stoniang, flogging and cross amputation (usually one hand and one foot on the opposite side), make up some of the state punishments for such appalling crimes as witchcraft and sorcery. 

But it is not only within the Kingdom that extreme human rights abuses are taking place. Since the Saudi-led air campaign over Yemen began in March 2015, there has been consistent accusations of human rights abuses from NGOs and other humanitarian groups on the ground. This was confirmed in January this year, when a leaked report from a UN panel of experts disclosed “widespread and systematic” attacks on Yemeni civilians, a gross violation of international law.

Yemen was an impoverished country before this devastating conflict, where “some 6,400 people have been killed in the past year, half of them civilians, and more than 30,000 are injured, with 2.5 million people displaced”[1] according to the UN.

Meanwhile, the long history of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been been going through the roof since 2010. David Cameron’s government has licensed almost £7billion of arms to the Kingdom, with nearly £3bn coming since the Saudi bombing campaign over Yemen began. This completely flies in the face of UK, EU and international law.

In a recent television interview for ITN news, Malcolm Rifkind, the former chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee for Parliament, said:

“Over the years Saudi Arabia has been a strong ally of the United Kingdom, of the West. Apart from Yemen, Saudi Arabia has not had a reputation of using its military in other countries.”[2]

The reason Rifkind can get away with such a plainly false statement is because the Saudi’s internal reputation has for a long time overshadowed its (overt) external operations. However, the last 20 years have seen the regime increase its military muscle in the region. At present, Saudi Arabia is simultaneously bombarding Yemen in the south, whilst adding to the high levels of military build up around Syria, and taking part in huge military exercises in the north of the peninsula.

The kind of relationship which exists between the UK and Saudi Arabia was highlighted last September. The two nations conspired prior to a UN ballot, by secretly making arrangements to exchange votes and promote their positions within the UN Human Rights Council. Along with an obvious display of contempt towards the UN and democratic processes as a whole, this also carries with it a sick irony in that Saudi Arabia now chairs an influential UN panel to discuss human rights abuses, while simultaneously committing so many of its own.

So in light of all of this, why does the UK have such a cosy arrangement with an infamously brutal regime? Yes, the obvious lure of oil is a major factor, but if you really want to understand how this friendship developed, you’ll need to know a little bit about its history.

The Origins of Wahhabism

In the 1740s, the geographical area now known as Saudi Arabia was more or less a plateau for warring Bedouin tribes. Ibn Saud, ancestor of the modern Saudi family, was just one of many desert leaders, raiding other tribes and vying for supremacy. But an encounter with exiled cleric Adl al-Wahhab (right), forged a partnership that would alter the fate of the whole Middle East.

Adl al-Wahhab was just another in a very long line of religious fanatics, but Ibn Saud saw something more in his extreme preaching. He realised al-Wahhab could lend him an edge over his tribal enemies and potentially offer him the opportunity to seize the peninsula.

Wahhab saw Islam’s religious development from around 950-1000 AD as a false path that needed to be reversed and its doctrines abolished. His interpretation warned that anyone resisting his teachings, or who failed to follow them precisely, would be seen as ‘non-Muslim’. This logic formed a simple choice for people: abide by Wahhabism or be slaughtered as a heretic.

The traditional raids of neighbouring tribal villages was, until the partnership of Wahhabism and the House of Saud, done for wealth and conquest. But now, with Wahhabism embedded into Saudi thought, the raids became Islamic crusades, leading to thousands of violent executions in neighbouring territory.

Word of the bloody raids soon spread and before long Ibn Saud and al-Wahhab’s brutal reputation was striking fear into villages and cities throughout Arabia. They soon acquired much of the peninsula. Reports of the massacres of thousands, such as at Karbala in 1801, instilled yet more fear into surrounding settlements, including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, both of which capitulated under the panic and fear created by Ibn Saud, with little or no resistance.

These were the salad days of Wahhabism. The glory days that are taught as such in Saudi primary schools today.

They didn’t last long. The first quarter of the 19th century saw the Saud-Wahhab forces annihilated; first by the Egyptians, and then again by the Turks. Their people, however, held out together in the desert, and importantly, so did their Wahhabi culture.

Britain Authenticates Extremism

For the next 100 years the Ottoman Empire hung over the peninsula, whilst the Sauds fought battle after battle with neighbouring tribes, once again vying for dominance. The years of persistent battle eventually caught up with them, when in 1891 they were finally defeated, with the Saud family escaping to exile in Kuwait.

A decade or so later, Abd-al Aziz, the then Saud leader, returned from exile determined to reclaim the family’s former power. In doing so he used much the same tactics as his ancestor, Ibn Saud, namely emplying fear under the banner of jihad. But there were two other important aspects to Aziz’s strategy that can’t be overlooked: the Ikhwan project, and the support from the British.

A major part of Abd-al Aziz’s strategy for reclaiming the peninsula was to extend Wahhabism through radical teaching into the surrounding Bedouin tribes. The traditional tribesmen were considered theological ‘blank slates’ by the House of Saud. Primitive and unenlightened, the Jahiliyyah were opened up to Wahhabi conversion by Saudi clerics with great enthusiasm.

The British Government began courting Abd-al Aziz when it became clear he would emerge as ruler of a vast portion of Arabia. The British rulers had much Empire to protect in the region, with the Sykes-Picot Agreement being discussed at the same time. Aziz knew he needed the British in order to authenticate the nation, and therefore to embed Wahhabism into the Kingdom.

In 1915, with the eyes of the world on the Dardanelles, France and Belgium, Ibn Saud signed the Darin Treaty, where he agreed to become part of the British Protectorate.

From Protection to Oil Addiction

One of the main problems with having a huge army of religious fanatics, is they can be hard to bring to heel.

It had been positively encouraged to raid any non-Wahhabi settlements prior to the Darin Treaty. But now with the British involvement, any attacks on other nations (especially those also under British protectorate) were outlawed. Even before the treaty was signed, a movement within the Ikwhan had formed, deeply unhappy with Abd-al Aziz due to his personal neglect of Wahhabi customs. They were angered by his sudden affiliation with foreign imperialists. The signing of the Darin Treaty and Abd-al Aziz’s growing acceptance of Western modernity (cars, telephones and machine guns were being introduced) was felt to be in direct conflict with the Wahhabi doctrine, which rejected non-traditional ways of life as incompatible with its teachings.

By the late 1920s, and after gaining both Hejaz and Nedj, Abd-al Aziz was finding the rift within the Ikwhan a concern that could no longer be ignored. The splinter movement had grown far beyond a splinter, and had intensified their jihadi attacks on Transjordan, Iraq and Kuwait. The self proclaimed King of Hejaz and Nedj knew that something had to be done.

The Battle of Sabilla in 1930 allowed Abd-al Aziz to seize his opportunity. The Ikwhan rejected modern weapons, and were helplessly decimated by the machine gun fire (supplied by the British) of Abd-al Aziz’ loyalist army.

What remained of the Ikwhan was reabsorbed into the army, soon to become The Royal Saudi Landforce. In 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born, and just six years later prospectors struck major reserves of oil within the kingdom.

The Rise of the Islamic State

The contempary incarnation of the Ikwhan needs no introduction. IS (or ISIS) are extremists whose clever use of social media, cold-blooded brutality and military proficiency has catapulted them into the centre of global affairs.

The conditions created by the West’s war-sanctions-war policy in Iraq since 1991, left the country utterly broken, and a fertile breeding ground for extremism. John Pilger recently wrote, “like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, ISIS are the mutations of a western state terror dispensed by a venal imperial elite undeterred by the consequences of actions taken at great remove in distance and culture.” [3] I’d like to add another aspect to distance and culture: time.

The British were well aware of the Wahhabi culture within Saudi Arabia throughout their early relationship. Indeed, one of their officials even converted. Yet, seemingly, at no time did it ever occur to anyone to be concerned about supporting the oppressive and violent culture of Wahhabism. Even a rudimentary sociological examination would have shown the self-destructive seed lying at the heart of the new Saudi society. But instead it has been allowed to grow unchecked by international concern, in favour of protecting part of an empire which has since become the private property of Western oil corporations.

Unintelligent Intelligence

In an interview last year, David Cameron was pressed into giving his opinion on why the UK is so willing to maintain a friendly relationship with one of the worst regimes on the planet:

http://www.channel4.com/news/david-cameron-challenged-over-saudi-arabian-teenager

The Saudi Intelligence argument, used here by Cameron to hard-brake an interview he was rapidly losing control of, is echoed time and again by other politicians intent on keeping the relationship unchanged. Later, in the same ITN report as quoted earlier, Rifkin uses it too:

“The intelligence relationship is crucial, and that’s not just a general statement. I can make one hard example which is in the public domain. There are a lot of other examples I couldn’t give. But the hard one is the intelligence the Saudis gave to the United Kingdom, which led to a terrorist attempt to blow up a transatlantic air liner going to the United States. That failed.”[4]

But the reality is not so straightforward. It isn’t the pleasant back and forth of information you might be led to think. Unlike Rifkin’s claim, the intelligence was actually given to the US/CIA, not to the United Kingdom. Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz “personally made the call to the [then] White House counter-terrorism chief, John Brennan, to warn him about the Yemeni bombs.”[5]

A leading Saudi political opponent also told me that UK intelligence is permanently barraged with information, but the vast majority of it is aimed at opponents of the regime living in Britain, in an attempt to undermine and hurt their credibility, making it difficult to filter for genuine threats. Other Middle Eastern commentators have described the “Saudi intelligence structure [as] sloppy, unsophisticated, and badly trained.”[6]

If we add all this to the Serious Fraud Office being forced to drop the case of major corruption and slush funds surrounding BAE and Saudi arms deals, we begin to see the fickle nature of our intelligence sharing relationship. The SFO were told to retract because “the Saudis threatened to stop sharing intelligence with the UK.”[7]

Conclusion

History has seen a covert British hand forever present in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is a hand that rarely restricts, but often encourages Saudi ambition. But the British presence has become more apparent in recent years, as tensions in the Middle East have intensified after US military involvement from the 1990s onwards.

Despite corrupt arms deals, allegations of sponsoring terrorism, the murderous war in Yemen where internationally outlawed cluster munitions are being used, and their own incredibly bad human rights record, Saudi Arabia now sees itself as unaccountable to international law; much like the UK and the US, allies it once followed but now stands shoulder to shoulder with.

Is it finally time for the British public to reconsider the real value of such a relationship? And, to weigh that value against the bloody violence that inevitably comes with it?

Johnny Gaunt lives in Wales, where he is an active member of Stop the War Coalition. His other articles can be found on antenna.org, his website.

Notes:

[1] “‘Terrible Year’ in war-torn Yemen leaves majority of country’s people in need of aid – UN,” UN News Centre, 22 March, 2016, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53519#.VwqxsD9fut8

[2] “Yemen’s Forgotten War,” ITN News, 30 March, 2016, http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-03-30/why-yemens-civil-war-puts-uk-in-tricky-position/

[3] “From Pol Pot to ISIS: “Anything that flies on everything that moves”,” johnpilger.com, 8 October, 2014, http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-that-flies-on-everything-that-moves

[4] “Yemen’s Forgotten War.”

[5] “Cargo plane bomb plot: Saudi double agent ‘gave crucial alert’,” The Guardian, 1 November,2010, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/01/cargo-plane-plot-saudi-agent-gave-alert

[6] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, “The Ridiculous Nature of Saudi Intelligence: What the Saudi Cables Released by WikiLeaks Say and Don’t Say,” Global Research, 32 June 2015, http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-the-saudi-cables-released-by-wikleaks-say-and-dont-say/5457713

[7] Richard Norton-Taylor, “The Saudi tip-off and the cargo bomb plot,” The Guardian, 1 November, 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/01/saudi-tip-off-bomb-plot

If I hadn’t seen for myself that this article “exposing” Jeremy Corbyn was published on the Daily Telegraph’s website, I would have assumed it was a spoof from The Onion – an even more preposterous one than normal.

Barack Obama’s last nine months in office will provide plenty of opportunity for him to spoon feed his scribes in the corporate media. Under the pretense of writing history they will serve as one collective pro-Obama mouthpiece between now and January 20, 2017. The process is a delicate one however. The president will also have to explain those policies that did not produce the outcomes he wanted. Such is the case with any discussion of his role in destroying Libya.

It seems strange that he would want to remind people of the disaster of his own making but there is a twisted logic. He is not only defending himself but trying to give Hillary Clinton cover in her presidential campaign. Hillary haters ought to be Obama haters too but most Democrats won’t tear themselves away from their idol. The openly and gracelessly evil Hillary takes the fall for a plot hatched by both of them. It is just one of the reasons she is damaged goods to millions of Democrats who have chosen to support Bernie Sanders instead.

The United States, NATO and Gulf monarchy actions against Libya in 2011 were a war crime by any definition of the term. An unknown number of people died, the aggression instigated a massacre against dark skinned Libyans and immigrants from African countries. Entire cities like Tawergha were turned to rubble by America’s jihadists allies who are otherwise known as terrorists. President Muammar Gaddafi was murdered by a mob who were only able to carry out the deed with western financial and military support.

The attack by the United States and its allies resulted in a devastated nation that to this day is racked by political and sectarian violence. Libya has no functioning government and became a haven for ISIS. ISIS is strongest in Iraq, Libya and Syria, all of which were targets of regime change.

Thanks to Barack and Hillary, Libya is also a route for desperate people whose plight was created by U.S. interventions. Refugees from Syria, another country devastated by America, take circuitous paths to Libya in hopes of getting to Europe. It is also a point of embarkation for Africans. Some of those falsely claim to be from Eritrea, a country under American attack by sanctions and other non-military means. America makes Eritrea unlivable and forces its citizens to immigrate. They and others then get a place at the head of the refugee line that wouldn’t exist if the United States would stop waging wars.

American and European terror was a gift that kept on giving. The weapons seized from the Libyan army were used by al Qaeda affiliates in Mali and in Nigeria. Boko Haram’s strength and ability to terrorize Nigerians is the direct result of the Libyan crime.

Hillary Clinton is quite rightly taking heat for being the U.S. mastermind of this atrocity. As secretary of state she made the case for the American nightmare. She was quite proud of this evil achievement and infamously said, “We came, we saw, he died.” Of course these machinations were the cause of blowback in 2012 when jihadists killed the American ambassador at Benghazi.

All of this criminality is sent straight down the memory hole with the help of the corporate media. As part of his never ending marketing and propaganda drive Obama graces the cover of the April 2016 issue of The Atlantic magazine with an article entitled, “The Obama Doctrine.” Presidents don’t give access without an expectation of looking good. The interviews with the president and current and past administration officials doesn’t deviate from this rule.

The article reveals that the president refers to Libya as “the s**tstorm,” as if the devastation happened by some strange osmosis unconnected with his administration. He even throws allies like the UK and France under the bus saying, “When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong, there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.”

In a Fox news interview he was asked about his worst mistake and repeated his mea culpa. “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.”

Most Americans still believe in Manifest Destiny, the belief that their country has a right to do what it wants in the world. They don’t really care about invasions and interventions as long as they can be considered successful. That means no dead Americans and countries that are controlled by chosen puppets who seem to keep their nations under control and out of the news.

Hillary Clinton is the villain in the story because of her cackling celebration of Gaddafi’s murder and because Libya continues in a state of crisis. There has been very little questioning of the idea that the United States has a right to decide who runs that country or any other. Imperialism is still acceptable if it is carried out seamlessly. It is only the mess that makes Americans uncomfortable, and Democrats are no different from Republicans in this regard.

If there was any justice in the world Barack and Hillary would fear being on trial. Instead he leaves office looking like a model on magazine covers and they work together to make sure that she sits in the oval office after him. But there isn’t enough justice in the world and they will work hand in hand like the political twins they have always been.

Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

U.S. President Barack Obama calls nuclear terrorism “the single most important national security threat that we face”.

In his first speech to the U.N. Security Council, President Obama said that “Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city — be it New York or Moscow, Tokyo or Beijing, London or Paris — could kill hundreds of thousands of people”.

It would “destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life”. 

The Top Three Nuclear Arsenals of WMD are held in:

·       Russia (8000); U.S. (7000) and Israel (400)

The 2^nd Tier Nuclear Arsenals of WMD are held in:

·       France (300); U.K. (200+) and China (250)

The 3^rd Tier Nuclear Arsenals of WMD are held in:

·       Pakistan (100+); India (100+) and N Korea (5+)

The Major Non-Nuclear Weapon States are:

Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, Iran plus Saudi Arabia and 150+ other UN members.

From the six 1^st and 2^nd Tier Nuclear Weapon States only one, Israel, has an undeclared nuclear arsenal and has refused to ratify the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In addition, its weapons of mass destruction are not subject to the report and inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, as are those of the other major nuclear powers.  This also applies to the three 3^rd Tier Nuclear states.

And that is an untenable position for Europe to accept, as the first priority for the government of any independent nation state must always be its survival i.e. the security of its people and its borders.

By tacitly accepting the status quo in regard to nuclear WMD, the EUROPEAN UNION abdicates its prime responsibility to ensure the security and maintenance of its borders and those of its 500m inhabitants in 28 member states.

The longer that this situation is allowed to continue, the more profound will be the eventual threat and the greater will be the cost to counter it.

The only answer is to apply economic pressure to ensure compliance with strict deadlines to those nuclear weapon states that currently enjoy unfettered access to the European Single Market but which refuse to abide by international agreements and conventions that have been enacted to prevent war and ensure peace.

NB Numbers of WMD quoted for each nuclear weapon state are an approximation of the maximum estimated from reliable scientific sources

The International Monetary Fund’s “World Economic Outlook” (WEO), released Tuesday in advance of this week’s semiannual meetings in Washington of the IMF and World Bank, gives a gloomy and fraught estimate of the state of the world economy, nearly eight years after the 2008 financial meltdown.

The IMF has again downwardly revised its projection for global growth, the fourth straight cut in a year. The WEO estimates that the world economy will grow by only 3.2 percent in 2016, a reduction of 0.2 percentage points from the projection the IMF made only three months ago. The new projection is 0.6 percentage points below the organization’s July 2015 estimate.

It is only a hair above last year’s 3.1 percent global growth rate and only marginally higher than the 3.0 rate the IMF once considered indicative of a global recession. The organization also downgraded its world growth estimate for 2017 from 3.6 percent to 3.5 percent.

Even this pessimistic prediction is ringed with warnings and caveats that strongly suggest the so-called “recovery” from the 2008 crash is teetering on the edge of a new financial crisis and slump. The WEO executive summary states that “uncertainty has increased, and risks of weaker growth scenarios are becoming more tangible.” It adds, “The fragile conjuncture increases the urgency of a broad-based policy response to raise growth and manage vulnerabilities.”

The summary goes on to speak of “still weak external demand,” a “threat of synchronized slowdown,” an “increase in the already significant downside risks,” and a “critical stage of the global recovery.”

The press release on the IMF web site is headlined “Global Economy Faltering from Too Slow Growth for Too Long.” The statement highlights as major trends: “Financial risks prominent, together with geopolitical shocks, political discord.”

At a press conference to introduce the “World Economic Outlook,” IMF Chief Economist Maurice Obstfeld said, “Global growth continues, but at an increasingly disappointing pace that leaves the world economy more exposed to negative risks.” He continued:

“Consecutive downgrades of future economic prospects carry the risk of a world economy that reaches stalling speed and falls into widespread secular stagnation… We definitely face the risk of going into doldrums that could be politically perilous.”

The WEO cites as factors in the continuing economic stagnation the slowdown in China, the sharp fall in oil and other commodity prices, and the decline in growth rates for trade, productivity and investment. It notes that these trends have wreaked havoc on emerging market and developing economies, particularly those that rely on exports of commodities. It cites, in particular, the deep recessions in Brazil and Russia, both of whose 2016 growth rates it downgrades from the previous IMF estimate. However, it also notes the worsening financial position of major oil exporters, including Saudi Arabia, whose economy it projects to grow by only 1.2 percent this year.

The report warns of mounting financial problems, as oil-linked loans and other assets risk steep losses and credit conditions tighten, despite massive monetary stimulus from central banks in Europe and Japan that have driven interest rates into negative territory.

The IMF has downgraded its projections for every major advanced economy, including the US and Canada, the euro area, the UK and Japan. Growth in the advanced economies as a whole is projected to remain at the anemic pace of 1.9 percent this year and 2.0 percent in 2017. The IMF estimates US growth this year at 2.4 percent, a downgrade of 0.2 percentage points. It projects that the euro area will grow by only 1.5 percent, Japan by a mere 0.5 percent, followed by a contraction of minus 0.1 percent in 2017. Canada is estimated at 1.5 percent for 2016.

China is projected to grow by 6.5 percent, a sharp reduction from the double-digit rates of previous years but 0.2 percentage points higher than the IMF’s January projection. India is seen as a “bright spot,” with projected growth of 7.5 percent both this year and next.

The IMF predicts that impoverished sub-Saharan Africa will grow by only 3.0 percent this year, a full percentage point slower than the organization’s forecast three months ago.

Particularly striking is the prominence given in the report to the impact of “noneconomic” factors in the deepening economic quagmire. The executive summary notes:

“Shocks of a noneconomic origin—related to geopolitical conflicts, political discord, terrorism, refugee flows, or global epidemics—loom over some countries and regions, and, if left unchecked, could have significant spillovers on global economic activity.”

In his press conference, IMF Chief Economist Obstfeld warned, “Across Europe, the political consensus that once propelled the European project is fraying.” He said that the refugee crisis and recent terrorist attacks, together with economic pressures such as stagnant wages, were leading to a “rising tide of inward-looking nationalism.”

He singled out as a serious danger to the world economy the “real possibility” that the UK would vote in its June 23 referendum to leave the European Union, and pointed to a backlash in the US against globalization that “threatens to halt or even reverse the postwar trend of ever more open trade.”

Here the IMF is referring, somewhat obliquely, to the mounting economic conflicts between the major powers and the explosive growth of militarism and war. It is also alluding, indirectly, to the growth of working-class resistance and the threat of a new period of revolutionary upheaval.

To cope with this increasingly dangerous crisis of the world capitalist system, the IMF calls for urgent action by the major economies to develop a coordinated plan for continuing monetary stimulus to prop up the banks and financial markets, fiscal measures to promote investment, and so-called “structural reforms” to boost competitiveness and demand. Indicative of its concern over the prospect of a new financial crisis and economic downturn, the WEO calls on world policy makers to draft contingency plans for a joint response to revive growth should the global economy stagnate further.

There is virtually no chance of serious international coordination. As recent meetings such as the G20 have demonstrated, there is no agreement among the major imperialist powers over a common economic policy. Instead, what predominate are growing tendencies toward trade and currency warfare, along the lines of the policies that preceded the outbreak of World War II.

As for the class content of the IMF’s call for “structural” economic reform, it is shown by the report’s reference to “narrowing unemployment benefits and easing job protection.”

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter is due to arrive in the Philippines today in the midst of escalating tensions with China over the South China Sea. Arriving from New Delhi where he held high-level discussions to further cement the US strategic partnership with India, Carter’s visit to Manila will set the stage for new military provocations against China in the neighbouring disputed waters.

Previewing the trip, a senior American defence official told CNN that Carter’s visit was “a message to the region about our commitment to peace and stability,” adding that the US regarded “the South China Sea as a core American security interest” and had an “ironclad commitment” to guaranteeing the security of its Philippine ally.

By a commitment to “peace and security,” Washington means ensuring its continued dominance in South East Asia and the Indo-Pacific region as a whole, by all means, including military. As part of its “pivot to Asia” aimed against Beijing, the Obama administration signed a new basing agreement with the Philippines, is providing $40 million in aid to boost its coast guard and backed the Philippine legal challenge to Chinese territorial claims in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

During his visit, Carter will become the first US defence secretary to observe the annual joint Balikatan military exercises that are currently underway involving about 8,000 American, Philippine and Australian military personnel. This year’s war games ominously include joint naval exercises, an amphibious landing and a simulation involving the retaking of an island in the South China Sea seized by an unnamed country.

Carter will also visit two of the five Philippine military bases that the US had gained access to under the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which became operational this year. The five included the country’s largest army base as well as four air force bases. In a particularly provocative gesture, one of the bases on Carter’s itinerary is reportedly directly adjacent to the South China Sea.

Over the past year, Washington has condemned China’s land reclamation activities in the South China Sea in increasingly strident terms, as “expansionist” and demanded a halt to Chinese “militarisation” of the area. In October and again in January, the US Navy sent a destroyer within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit surrounding a Chinese-administered islet under the bogus pretext of ensuring “freedom of navigation.”

Earlier this month, an unnamed US official told Reuters that the Pentagon was planning a third “freedom of navigation” operation in April in the South China Sea. The US already has mustered considerable naval firepower with the aircraft carrier, USS John C Stennis, in the South China Sea along with its strike group of accompanying warships. The Japanese navy also has a strong presence, having last week dispatched the helicopter destroyer JS Ise, which is effectively an aircraft carrier, to take part in joint exercises with the Indonesian navy.

Such “freedom of navigation” operations are not, as is often implied, to ensure the sea lanes are open to international trade. Rather the purpose is the exact opposite. The US military is determined to ensure that its warships have free access to these strategic waters as part of the Pentagon’s plans for war with China. Its AirSea Battle strategy envisages a massive bombardment of the Chinese mainland as well as a naval blockade to prevent Chinese ships from importing vital energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East via the South China Sea.

Washington heightened the pressure on Beijing by securing a statement at the G-7 foreign ministers meeting in Japan on Monday expressing “strong opposition to any intimidating, coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions” and called on all states to refrain from land reclamation and building outposts, including for military purposes. It was the first time that the major European powers—Britain, France, Germany and Italy—had put their names to such a declaration.

While the statement did not name China, the message was obviously directed against Beijing and provoked an angry reaction. Foreign Ministry spokesperson declared that China was “strongly dissatisfied” with the G-7’s move and called on it to “respect the efforts by regional countries” and “stop all irresponsible words and actions.” China has repeatedly opposed the US interventions in the South China Sea and called for territorial disputes to be settled through bilateral negotiations.

The G-7 statement is part of US preparations for an aggressive new diplomatic offensive once the Permanent Court of Arbitration brings down its ruling in the Philippine case. The judgement, which is likely to be in May, is expected to favour the Philippines. China does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction and has not taken part. Washington will undoubtedly seize on the ruling to denounce Chinese activities in the South China Sea as “illegal,” even though the US has never ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that is the basis of the Philippine case.

In the five years since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the US had “a national interest” in the South China Sea, the Obama administration has transformed the strategic waters into a dangerous flashpoint for war with China. Now Obama is under pressure to escalate the confrontation with Beijing even further.

Writing in the British-based Financial Times yesterday, Republican Senator John McCain declared that China was acting “less like a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in the rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific region and more like a bully. Up to now, American policy has failed to adapt to the scale and velocity of the challenge we face.”

McCain called for a dramatic expansion of US military activities in the South China Sea, including the immediate dispatch of “a carrier strike group [to] patrol the waters near Scarborough Shoal in a visible display of US combat power” as part of the Balikatan war games. “If China declares a South China Sea ADIZ [air defence identification zone], the US must be prepared to challenge this claim immediately by flying military aircraft inside the area affected under normal procedures,” he wrote.

The senator continued:

“It is also time for the US to move beyond symbolic gestures and launch a robust ‘freedom of the seas campaign.’ It should increase the pace and scope of the freedom of navigation program to challenge China’s maritime claims, as well as the number of sailing days that US warships spend in the South China Sea. Joint patrols and exercises should be expanded and ocean surveillance patrols to gather intelligence throughout the western Pacific continued.”

What McCain is proposing is a recipe for war with China—a deliberate policy of reckless and escalating confrontations designed to force Beijing’s capitulation to Washington’s demands that will eventually lead to a clash between nuclear-armed powers. He makes clear that the US should prepare accordingly by “enhancing its military posture across the region” in line with a Centre for Strategic and International Studies report to Congress. It recommended an accelerated military build-up in Asia as well as massive investment in new weapons systems to fight a war with China.

McCain, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee and has intimate ties with the Pentagon, represents the most militarist wing of the Republican Party. But what he states explicitly is already implicit in the Obama administration’s “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia, which involves the redeployment of 60 percent of the Pentagon’s air and naval assets to the region, the strengthening of a network of military alliances and the carrying out of increasingly provocative actions.

The current Likud coalition government of the State of Israel, is headed by Binyamin Netanyahu, a Revisionist Zionist whose ideology is rooted in the former paramilitary activities of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (ETZEL) militia of Ze’ev Jabotinsky which was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 and the massacre at Deir Yassin in 1948.

Netanyahu has continued the so-called official policy of ‘Nuclear Ambiguity’ that conveniently enables the Israeli state to have built and maintained the world’s only undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal that is estimated by American scientists to hold up to a maximum of 400 nuclear warheads – sufficient to destroy the whole of the Middle East and most of Europe.

The State of Israel is one of the only UN member states to refuse to ratify the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) to which all 28 members of the EU are signatories in addition to the United States, China and Russia.  Israel is now estimated to be the 3^rd most powerful nuclear state in the world, but the only one that is undeclared and therefore not subject to any report or inspection by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) of the UN.  This raises urgent concerns regarding global security and criticism of its covert nuclear policies that apparently have the support of a lobby-influenced US Congress.

The charge of ‘antisemitism’, raised by the Israeli government and its diplomatic missions, on every available occasion, is an official strategy of obfuscation designed to obtain exemption from international agreements on warfare and civil rights, plus immunity from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, a court that it refuses to recognise.  Another example of Israel’s intransigence is its government’s refusal to ratify the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions to which all EU member states and the US are signatories.   Yet, astonishingly, both the EU and the US continue to be Israel’s primary trading partners apparently oblivious to the danger inherent in allowing the sharing of national security systems with a non-European, foreign state.

·        Surely British national security is more important than bilateral trade with one particular state?

·        Surely criticism of trading with an undeclared nuclear power and its potential for war cannot be termed ‘antiSemitic’?

·        Surely it must be obvious that European/British Jewry have nothing whatsoever to do with violations of the human rights of 5m civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories?

·        Surely it cannot be right to allow lobbyists for a Middle East state with a documented reputation for warmongering and illegal expansion to influence British politics?

 Virtually every suspect involved in recent Brussels bombing had been tracked, arrested, in custody – either by European security agencies or the agencies of their allies – but inexplicably released and allowed to carry out both the Brussels attack as well as the Paris attack that preceded it.

So obvious is this fact, that the Western media itself admits it, but simply dismisses the obvious and deeper implications such facts pose by claiming it is merely systemic incompetence.

The Wall Street Journal would admit that the recently arrested “man in the hat” also known as Mohamed Abrini, was also arrested for suspected terrorist activity – allegedly scoping out potential targets in the UK – but also – like his collaborators – inexplicably released. His brother had been to Syria where he fought and died alongside the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), and Abrini himself too appears to have been in Syria.

 

The Wall Street Journal’s article, “Brussels Suspect Mohamed Abrini: What We Know,” reports that:

After the U.K., Mr. Abrini traveled to Paris and then Brussels, where he was arrested but then released, according to the two people. But Belgian authorities passed the information about his U.K. trip, including images found on his phone, to the British, the sources said.

Abrini’s case of “catch and release” before carrying out a successful string of deadly attacks across Europe, is just the latest.

West’s ISIS Catch & Release Program 

Germany’s largest press agency, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, reported in their article, “Reports: Brothers known to police were among Brussels suicide bombers,” that:

Two Brussels brothers who were known to police are among the suicide bombers who carried out deadly terrorist attacks on the international airport and subway in the Belgian capital, local media reported Wednesday.

And that:

[Khalid El Bakraoui] had been sentenced in early 2011 to five years in prison for carjackings, after having been arrested in possession of Kalashnikov rifles, according to the Belga news agency.

His brother, 30-year-old Brahim, had been sentenced in 2010 to nine years in prison for having shot at police with a Kalashnikov rifle during a hold-up, Belga said.

The New York Times, in their article, “Brussels Attack Lapses Acknowledged by Belgian Officials,” would report regarding another Brussels bombing suspect, Brahim El Bakraoui, and his arrest and deportation from Turkey that:

The Belgian justice and interior ministers acknowledged that their departments should have acted on a Turkish alert about a convicted Belgian criminal briefly arrested in Turkey last year on suspicion of terrorist activity, who turned out to be one of the suicide bombers. And the Belgian prosecutor’s office said that person’s brother — another suicide bomber — had been wanted since December in connection with the Paris attacks.

That makes 4 suspects who were known to European security agencies for violent crimes and/or terrorism, with each and every one of them in custody before the attacks unfolded.

Image: The Brussels bombing suspects… Every single one of these men were in the custody of Western security agencies for violent crimes or terrorism-related charges.

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For fisheries around the world, the concept of “catch and release” allows anglers to enjoy the fishing experience while preserving the numbers and health of fish populations. The concept of “catch and release” for Western security and intelligence agencies appears very similar – to maintain the illusion of counterterrorism operations, while maintaining the numbers and health of terrorist organizations around the world.

Answering “to what end” the West is allowing terrorists to successfully carry out attacks against Western targets, the answer is quite simple. It allows for the expansion of power and control at home while justifying endless and profitable wars abroad.

The creation and perpetuation of terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS by the West and its allies serve another, admitted purpose. In the 1980’s it was admitted that Al Qaeda was created to wage proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In 2011, the US and its NATO and Persian Gulf allies used terrorists linked to Al Qaeda in Libya and Syria in an attempt to overthrow their respective governments.

Today, ISIS serves both as an armed proxy waging full-scale war on the governments of Syria, Iraq, and more indirectly Iran and Russia, as well as a means to threaten and coerce nations around the world.

Image: In the aftermath of ISIS attack in Jakarta, Indonesia.

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Political impasses in Southeast Asia revolving around America’s waning influence in the region have been met with the sudden and otherwise inexplicable appearance of ISIS. In one case, Indonesia signed a large rail deal while pursuing other economic and military partnerships with Beijing, before suffering its fist ISIS attack in its capital, Jakarta.

Thailand was likewise threatened by the US of an imminent ISIS attack, amid attempts by Bangkok to uproot the political networks of US-backed political proxy, Thaksin Shinawatra. Bangkok has also shown hesitation to sign the unpopular US-sponsored Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement.

Bangkok was already hit by terrorism last year after returning suspected terrorists to China to face justice against America’s repeated protests. Just months later, groups tied to NATO terrorist front, the Turkish Grey Wolves, carried out a bombing in the center of Bangkok.

ISIS, its counterparts, and peripheral groups like NATO’s Grey Wolves, serve multiple roles for the West. They are a pretext to invade and occupy foreign nations, a proxy army to wage war against its enemies with, and a means of maintaining fear and obedience at home under the auspices of an increasing police state. It is difficult to believe the West could maintain its current foreign and domestic policy without this menace – it has become an integral part of Western geopolitical strategy.

Would a Signed Confession Convince You? 

Many are quick to dismiss evidence of Western special interests’ use of terrorists and terrorism to project geopolitical power abroad and maintain control at home. This is despite the admitted nature of the West’s role in the creation and utilization of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and signed and dated policy papers like the Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” document which openly advocated using listed-terrorist organization, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), to wage a proxy campaign of violence against the Iranian people and their government.

MEK, it should be noted, is guilty of killing American civilians and military personnel, as well as continuing a campaign of terrorism against civilian and political targets in Iran.  Brookings in fact, admits this while proposing the US’ use of the terrorist organization to carry out US foreign policy objectives. If MEK is a suitable candidate for Western sponsorship, why not ISIS?

Considering this, and the “coincidental” arming and funding of “rebels” in Libya by the US and its allies in 2011 who are now verifiably members of listed terrorist organizations, revelations of US involvement behind the rise of ISIS should come as little surprise.

And beyond mere speculation, a 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report leaked to the public, admits that the US and its allies sought the creation of a “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State) in eastern Syria, precisely where ISIS now resides.

The US DIA admitted:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran). 

The DIA document then explains exactly who this “Salafist principality’s” supporters are (and who its true enemies are):

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

All that’s left is for the Pentagon to perhaps, disclose payslips for ISIS leaders or logistical documents regarding US-NATO resupply operations for ISIS along the Turkish-Syrian border – and perhaps even such a disclosure would still not be enough to convince some in the West that the special interests posing as their leaders are complicit in creating not only ISIS, but organizing and ensuring the chaos they cause unfolding at home and abroad wherever and whenever needed.

The fact that literally ever Brussels and Paris attack suspect was known to and in many cases detained by Western security agencies before the attacks, yet were released before being allowed to carry out their attacks successfully, proves that the West is enjoying the “experience” of maintaining a war on terror, but like good fishery conservationists, is ensuring the populations of their quarry remain healthy and numerous.

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

In reporting on the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the major U.S. newspapers either ignored or distorted Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s infamous intercepted phone call before the 2014 coup in which she declared “Yats is the guy!”

Though Nuland’s phone call introduced many Americans to the previously obscure Yatsenyuk, its timing – a few weeks before the ouster of elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych – was never helpful to Washington’s desired narrative of the Ukrainian people rising up on their own to oust a corrupt leader.

Instead, the conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt sounded like two proconsuls picking which Ukrainian politicians would lead the new government. Nuland also disparaged the less aggressive approach of the European Union with the pithy put-down: “Fuck the E.U.!”

More importantly, the intercepted call, released onto YouTube in early February 2014, represented powerful evidence that these senior U.S. officials were plotting – or at least collaborating in – a coup d’etat against Ukraine’s democratically elected president. So, the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. media have since consigned this revealing discussion to the Great Memory Hole.

Image: Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

On Monday, in reporting on Yatsenyuk’s Sunday speech in which he announced that he is stepping down, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal didn’t mention the Nuland-Pyatt conversation at all.

The New York Times did mention the call but misled its readers regarding its timing, making it appear as if the call followed rather than preceded the coup. That way the call sounded like two American officials routinely appraising Ukraine’s future leaders, not plotting to oust one government and install another.

The Times article by Andrew E. Kramer said:

“Before Mr. Yatsenyuk’s appointment as prime minister in 2014, a leaked recording of a telephone conversation between Victoria J. Nuland, a United States assistant secretary of state, and the American ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, seemed to underscore the West’s support for his candidacy. ‘Yats is the guy,’ Ms. Nuland had said.”

Notice, however, that if you didn’t know that the conversation occurred in late January or early February 2014, you wouldn’t know that it preceded the Feb. 22, 2014 coup. You might have thought that it was just a supportive chat before Yatsenyuk got his new job.

You also wouldn’t know that much of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation focused on how they were going to “glue this thing” or “midwife this thing,” comments sounding like prima facie evidence that the U.S. government was engaged in “regime change” in Ukraine, on Russia’s border.

Image: Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. (Photo credit: Ybilyk)

The ‘No Coup’ Conclusion

But Kramer’s lack of specificity about the timing and substance of the call fits with a long pattern of New York Times’ bias in its coverage of the Ukraine crisis. On Jan. 4, 2015, nearly a year after the U.S.-backed coup, the Times published an “investigation” article declaring that there never had been a coup. It was just a case of President Yanukovych deciding to leave and not coming back.

That article reached its conclusion, in part, by ignoring the evidence of a coup, including the Nuland-Pyatt phone call. The story was co-written by Kramer and so it is interesting to know that he was at least aware of the “Yats is the guy” reference although it was ignored in last year’s long-form article.

Instead, Kramer and his co-author Andrew Higgins took pains to mock anyone who actually looked at the evidence and dared reach the disfavored conclusion about a coup. If you did, you were some rube deluded by Russian propaganda.

“Russia has attributed Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster to what it portrays as a violent, ‘neo-fascist’ coup supported and even choreographed by the West and dressed up as a popular uprising,” Higgins and Kramer wrote. 

“Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin’s line. But almost a year after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, questions remain about how and why it collapsed so quickly and completely.”

The Times’ article concluded that Yanukovych

“was not so much overthrown as cast adrift by his own allies, and that Western officials were just as surprised by the meltdown as anyone else. The allies’ desertion, fueled in large part by fear, was accelerated by the seizing by protesters of a large stock of weapons in the west of the country. But just as important, the review of the final hours shows, was the panic in government ranks created by Mr. Yanukovych’s own efforts to make peace.”

Image: Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Yet, one might wonder what the Times thinks a coup looks like. Indeed, the Ukrainian coup had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954.

The way those coups played out is now historically well known. Secret U.S. government operatives planted nasty propaganda about the targeted leader, stirred up political and economic chaos, conspired with rival political leaders, spread rumors of worse violence to come and then – as political institutions collapsed – watched as the scared but duly elected leader made a hasty departure.

In Iran, the coup reinstalled the autocratic Shah who then ruled with a heavy hand for the next quarter century; in Guatemala, the coup led to more than three decades of brutal military regimes and the killing of some 200,000 Guatemalans.

Coups don’t have to involve army tanks occupying the public squares, although that is an alternative model which follows many of the same initial steps except that the military is brought in at the end. The military coup was a common approach especially in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.

‘Color Revolutions’

But the preferred method in more recent years has been the “color revolution,” which operates behind the façade of a “peaceful” popular uprising and international pressure on the targeted leader to show restraint until it’s too late to stop the coup. Despite the restraint, the leader is still accused of gross human rights violations, all the better to justify his removal.

Later, the ousted leader may get an image makeover; instead of a cruel bully, he is ridiculed for not showing sufficient resolve and letting his base of support melt away, as happened with Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.

But the reality of what happened in Ukraine was never hard to figure out. Nor did you have to be inside “the Russian propaganda bubble” to recognize it. George Friedman, the founder of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, called Yanukovych’s overthrow “the most blatant coup in history.”

Which is what it appears if you consider the evidence. The first step in the process was to create tensions around the issue of pulling Ukraine out of Russia’s economic orbit and capturing it in the European Union’s gravity, a plan defined by influential American neocons in 2013.

On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has been a major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington Post and called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and an important interim step toward toppling Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At the time, Gershman, whose NED is funded by the U.S. Congress to the tune of about $100 million a year, was financing scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists, paying for journalists and organizing business groups.

As for the even bigger prize — Putin — Gershman wrote:

“Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

At that time, in early fall 2013, Ukraine’s President Yanukovych was exploring the idea of reaching out to Europe with an association agreement. But he got cold feet in November 2013 when economic experts in Kiev advised him that the Ukrainian economy would suffer a $160 billion hit if it separated from Russia, its eastern neighbor and major trading partner. There was also the West’s demand that Ukraine accept a harsh austerity plan from the International Monetary Fund.

Yanukovych wanted more time for the E.U. negotiations, but his decision angered many western Ukrainians who saw their future more attached to Europe than Russia. Tens of thousands of protesters began camping out at Maidan Square in Kiev, with Yanukovych ordering the police to show restraint.

Meanwhile, with Yanukovych shifting back toward Russia, which was offering a more generous $15 billion loan and discounted natural gas, he soon became the target of American neocons and the U.S. media, which portrayed Ukraine’s political unrest as a black-and-white case of a brutal and corrupt Yanukovych opposed by a saintly “pro-democracy” movement.

Cheering an Uprising

The Maidan uprising was urged on by American neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Nuland, who passed out cookies at the Maidan and reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.”

Image: A screen shot of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland speaking to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, at an event sponsored by Chevron, with its logo to Nuland’s left.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, also showed up, standing on stage with right-wing extremists from the Svoboda Party and telling the crowd that the United States was with them in their challenge to the Ukrainian government.

As the winter progressed, the protests grew more violent. Neo-Nazi and other extremist elements from Lviv and other western Ukrainian cities began arriving in well-organized brigades or “sotins” of 100 trained street fighters. Police were attacked with firebombs and other weapons as the violent protesters began seizing government buildings and unfurling Nazi banners and even a Confederate flag.

Though Yanukovych continued to order his police to show restraint, he was still depicted in the major U.S. news media as a brutal thug who was callously murdering his own people. The chaos reached a climax on Feb. 20 when mysterious snipers opened fire, killing both police and protesters. As the police retreated, the militants advanced brandishing firearms and other weapons. The confrontation led to significant loss of life, pushing the death toll to around 80 including more than a dozen police.

U.S. diplomats and the mainstream U.S. press immediately blamed Yanukovych for the sniper attack, though the circumstances remain murky to this day and some investigations have suggested that the lethal sniper fire came from buildings controlled by Right Sektor extremists.

To tamp down the worsening violence, a shaken Yanukovych signed a European-brokered deal on Feb. 21, in which he accepted reduced powers and an early election so he could be voted out of office. He also agreed to requests from Vice President Joe Biden to pull back the police.

The precipitous police withdrawal opened the path for the neo-Nazis and other street fighters to seize presidential offices and force Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives. The new coup regime was immediately declared “legitimate” by the U.S. State Department with Yanukovych sought on murder charges. Nuland’s favorite, Yatsenyuk, became the new prime minister.

Throughout the crisis, the mainstream U.S. press hammered home the theme of white-hatted protesters versus a black-hatted president. The police were portrayed as brutal killers who fired on unarmed supporters of “democracy.” The good-guy/bad-guy narrative was all the American people heard from the major media.

The New York Times went so far as to delete the slain policemen from the narrative and simply report that the police had killed all those who died in the Maidan. A typical Times report on March 5, 2014, summed up the storyline: “More than 80 protesters were shot to death by the police as an uprising spiraled out of control in mid-February.”

The mainstream U.S. media also sought to discredit anyone who observed the obvious fact that an unconstitutional coup had just occurred. A new theme emerged that portrayed Yanukovych as simply deciding to abandon his government because of the moral pressure from the noble and peaceful Maidan protests.

Any reference to a “coup” was dismissed as “Russian propaganda.” There was a parallel determination in the U.S. media to discredit or ignore evidence that neo-Nazi militias had played an important role in ousting Yanukovych and in the subsequent suppression of anti-coup resistance in eastern and southern Ukraine. That opposition among ethnic-Russian Ukrainians simply became “Russian aggression.”

Image: Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)

This refusal to notice what was actually a remarkable story – the willful unleashing of Nazi storm troopers on a European population for the first time since World War II – reached absurd levels as The New York Times and The Washington Post buried references to the neo-Nazis at the end of stories, almost as afterthoughts.

The Washington Post went to the extreme of rationalizing Swastikas and other Nazi symbols by quoting one militia commander as calling them “romantic” gestures by impressionable young men. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s ‘Romantic’ Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]

But today – more than two years after what U.S. and Ukrainian officials like to call “the Revolution of Dignity” – the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government is sinking into dysfunction, reliant on handouts from the IMF and Western governments.

And, in a move perhaps now more symbolic than substantive, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is stepping down. Yats is no longer the guy.

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

On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the target of the first nuclear bomb ever used in wartime. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city, killing between 70,000 and 146,000 civilians outright. Three days later, on August 9, the US dropped a second nuclear bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing a further 39,000 to 80,000 civilians.

The Obama administration made clear that Kerry, the highest-ranking US official ever to visit the city, was not coming to apologize for these terrible crimes.

“There is no effort…to seek an apology from the United States, nor is there any interest in reopening the question of blame for the sequence of events that culminated in the use of the atomic bomb,”

the State Department said Monday.

Declaring that “the peaceful, stable international system that we have built in the decades since World War II are not a given,” Kerry said the bombing of Hiroshima “reminds everybody of the extraordinary complexity of choices in war and of what war does to people, to communities, to countries, to the world.” He did not seek to reconcile this hypocritical statement with the fact that he is a representative of the state responsible for the crime.

Kerry’s visit took place against the backdrop of a major escalation of Washington’s belligerent actions against China. Not since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 has the danger of war and the use of nuclear weapons been so acute.

The main purpose of Kerry’s trip was to cement US alliances in East and Southeast Asia for the militarily encirclement of China. The ceremony at the site of the 1945 bombing followed a summit of G7 foreign ministers in Hiroshima, which issued a pointed statement warning China (although not by name) against “intimidating, coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions.”

Last week, the New York Times reported that the United States was preparing a third “freedom of navigation” operation in the South China Sea, in which the US will send a warship within 12 nautical miles of territory claimed by China. Admiral Harry Harris, the head of the US Pacific Fleet, has been agitating behind the scenes for the next such action to include “military” operations, potentially including the firing of weapons.

As Kerry was speaking, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was in the midst of a visit to India, which the US is seeking to integrate into its anti-China alliance. From there, Carter will move on to the Philippines, which is receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for its cooperation in the US war drive. Carter will visit a location less than 100 miles from the disputed Spratly Islands archipelago claimed by China.

Japan, together with Australia, forms the linchpin of Washington’s anti-Chinese alliance. To this end, the US has encouraged the aggressive remilitarization of Japan, promoting the very tendencies that led to the deaths of millions of people and horrendous war crimes during Japan’s invasion of China and other countries in the Pacific in the 1930s.

Earlier this month, a reinterpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution, agreed to in 2014, went into effect, allowing the Japanese military to fight wars abroad in support of its allies, including the United States. Last week, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the country’s constitution did not prohibit it from possessing nuclear weapons.

The deepening US-Japanese anti-China alliance is at the heart of a sweeping remilitarization of the Asia-Pacific region, where military spending increased by six percent last year. The Philippines and Indonesia, key US allies in the gang-up against China, increased their military spending by 25 percent and 16.5 percent, respectively.

Within US military and policy-making circles there is open talk of a “Second Pacific War,” in which, as one expert put it, “painful losses—in ships and aircraft, sailors and aviators—would have to be expected as a matter of course, and they would probably accumulate quickly, on both sides.”

In his remarks, Kerry praised President Barack Obama’s efforts “to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.” In reality, despite Obama’s vow early in his presidency that the US would “not develop new nuclear warheads or pursue new military missions or new capabilities,” the US government is in the midst of a $1 trillion program to upgrade its nuclear stockpile.

In 2011, the latest year for which figures are available, the US spent $61.3 billion on its nuclear weapons program, more then all other countries combined. The amount was nearly 10 times more than China and almost 100 times more than North Korea.

Despite claiming in 2009 that it would “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” the White House made explicit in a 2010 strategy document that the US military maintains the right to use nuclear weapons without being attacked, including against countries that do not possess nuclear weapons themselves.

Behind the scenes, the US military, politicians and think tanks are drawing up plans for a preemptive nuclear strike. A report published last month by a leading policy think tank, entitled “Rethinking Armageddon,” elaborates scenarios in which the United States carries out nuclear first strikes against both North Korea and Russia.

In this context, Kerry’s visit must serve as a warning to the working classes of Asia and the entire world.

The use of nuclear bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, under conditions in which the Japanese government was actively seeking terms of surrender, was not, as the official US narrative claims, a measure to hasten the end of the war. Rather, the nuclear incineration of hundreds of thousands of people was intended to communicate, particularly to the Soviet Union, that the United States would stop at nothing to secure its hegemony in the postwar order.

With Europe and the Pacific all but destroyed by the war and US industry dominant throughout the world, the use of nuclear weapons was a calculated tactical decision. As the American historian Gabriel Jackson wrote in 1999,

“In the specific circumstances of August 1945, the use of the atom bomb showed that a psychologically very normal and democratically elected chief executive could use the weapon just as the Nazi dictator would have used it.”

Today, the United States, wracked by internal maladies and facing the protracted decline of its economic power, has only one trump card to secure its preeminent place in the global capitalist pecking order: the threat to use its enormous military and nuclear arsenal. This makes the danger all the more acute.

Workers and young people across the world must take a warning from these developments, which threaten the very existence of human society. The struggle against war depends on ending the capitalist system, which is its source.

What’s the biggest difference between “socialist-lite” candidate, Bernie Sanders, and a political heavyweight like Huey Long?

For one thing, Long didn’t mind bending the rules. After his scuffle with Standard Oil, (Note: The Louisiana legislature tried to impeach Long after he threatened to raise taxes by $.05 on every barrel of oil refined in the state.), Long threw away the rulebook and decided he’d do whatever-it-takes to defeat his enemies.

“You sometimes have to fight fire with fire,” Long said. “The end justifies the means. I would do it some other way if there was time or if it wasn’t necessary to do it this way.”

And he was right, too. You can’t beat corporate America by playing nice and hoping that truth will prevail. It won’t prevail. The corporations are too powerful and too willing to crush anyone that gets in their way. Long learned that the hard way. His falling-out with Standard Oil turned the media and the wealthy elites against him like a pack of rabid dogs. He was demonized in the papers and accused of all kinds of nefarious things including trying to have a political rival assassinated and attending parties “where half-naked women danced the Hula”. Naturally, these fabrications paved the way for his impeachment.

But Long outfoxed them all. He fired up his base by barnstorming across the countryside denouncing Standard Oil and he enlisted the support of 15 senators who helped him block the impeachment. His critics claimed that the senators were bribed for their support, and they probably were. But the fact is, the experience taught Long how the game was played, how to fight dirty and win. And when he won, the people of Lousiana won, because the money he collected on the oil tax went to roads, bridges, universities and free books for schoolkids.

Can you imagine Sanders doing anything like that? Can you imagine him doing anything even slightly shady or underhanded?

Nope. Then he won’t succeed, because you can’t beat Wall Street and the giant corporations playing by the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Politics is bloodsport,not pattycake. If a person is too squeamish to get his hands dirty or twist a few arms, he should find another line of work. Like Long said, “I used to get things done by saying please. Now I dynamite ’em out of my path.”

What’s not to like about that?

Long was a scrappy streetfighter who liked confrontation and didn’t mind getting his nose bloodied every now and then. He also liked winning, which is precisely what we need right now, someone who knows how to win and doesn’t sweat the details. Leave that to the historians.

“I fought the Standard Oil Company and put those pie-eating members of congress out of office. I used a crowbar to pry some of them out and I’m using a corkscrew to take the rest of them out piece by piece.” (All of this is available in the excellent Huey Long Documentary)

Can you imagine Obama boasting that he just rubbed some corporate honcho’s nose in the dirt?

Heck no. The man has been bowing and scraping ever since he took office in 2000. It’s embarrassing. Name one corporation or financial institution he’s taken to task? Just one?

There aren’t any. The man is a complete lightweight, he couldn’t even get Guantanamo shut-down after 8 years of trying. What kind of lame chief executive is that?

Should we care that Long might have bribed the 15 senators or should we focus on the schools, and bridges, and roads and universities he built? Here’s what he said about the matter:

“They say they don’t like my methods. Well, I don’t like them either. I really don’t like to have to do things the way I do. I’d much rather get up before the legislature and say, ‘Now this is a good law and it’s for the benefit of the people, and I’d like you to vote for it in the interest of the public welfare.’ Only I know that laws ain’t made that way. You’ve got to fight fire with fire.”

Right on. This is exactly what the country needs, a brassy-brawling chest-thumping populist who likes a good slugfest and doesn’t mind stretching the rules a bit when necessary. And if he happens to have some less-than-admirable human frailties, then so be it. Who cares? Elliot Spitzer certainly had his flaws, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have been the best man to run the SEC. He would have been! In fact, If Spitzer had been the top regulator a lot of the scheming cockroaches who blew up the financial system in ’08 would be cooling their heels in a federal hoosegow right now. You can bet on it.

By the way, Long was never convicted of corruption even though FDR– who saw Long as his biggest political rival– put the FBI and the IRS on his tail.

Why? Why would FDR hassle a progressive supporter who helped to get him elected?

Because Long was further to the left than FDR on every issue. Long was making the case for redistribution of wealth instead of the weak-kneed, watered-down, half-loaf “New Deal” gobbledygook that FDR was dishing up. Here’s what he said:

“When you have a country where one man owns more than 100,000 people, or a million people, and when you have a country where there are four men, as in America that have got more control over things than all the 120 million people together, you know what the trouble is.”

Here’s more:

“We do not propose to say that there shall be no rich men. We do not ask to divide the wealth. We only propose that, when one man gets more than he and his children and children’s children can spend or use in their lifetimes, that then we shall say that such person has his share.”

Who can disagree with that? And check this out:

“We’ve opened up night schools to educate the adult illiterates. We’ve paved the highways. We’ve built free bridges. We have built a new capitol. We’ve taken the insane out of the jail cells and placed them in modern institutions…. And now, the corporate element of this State…who’ve profited by, who ransacked this state for the element of their allies — are being told what they can do and what they can’t do. What they will pay [and] what they can’t keep from paying for the welfare of the people of Louisiana. And we expect to have this State ruled by the people and not by the lords and the interests of high finance.”

Isn’t that the way the system is supposed to work? Aren’t the representatives of the people supposed to have the power to tell the corporations what they “can and can’t do”?

As far as FDR , well, he nabbed enough of Long’s progressive ideas to preserve capitalism and keep the American people on his side, but he balked at doing anything too radical. Roosevelt never really intended to change the system or level the playing field. His real goal was simply ‘damage control’, to stop the bleeding long enough so that the 1 percent parasites could resume their relentless plundering. Which they did.

Long of course has been given the same treatment as Castro and Chavez. Anyone who opposes glorious capitalism and works for the poor, the needy, the uneducated, the underrepresented or the unemployed, has to be discredited, denounced and demonized. And, so he has been. But he was a great leader who put the corporations in their place, helped to lift millions of people out of poverty, and single-handedly dragged Louisiana into the modern era.

Booyah, Kingfish. We could use you now, buddy, that’s for sure.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

Notes:

1–Check out Huey Long’s famous Bar-B-Q Speech–3 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphgHi6FD8k

2–Quotes from: “Huey Long: The Man, his Mission and Legacy”
http://www.hueylong.com/perspectives/huey-long-quotes-in-his-own-words.php#bbq

The United States is a major backer and supporter of the Saudi-led war against Yemen.  The U.S. supplies the weapons, and provides most of the targeting and military tactics.  See this, this, this, this, this and this.  (And see this for background on the Yemen war.)

The Panama Papers’ revelations about the rich and powerful hiding untold billions in ‘offshore’ tax havens may be shocking, but it’s hardly a surprise to anyone who knows the first thing about the way that big business works. We are living through a blitzstorm of allegations and controversy about corruption.

In the few years alone we’ve had:

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist (image)

Big capital has constantly decreased its contribution to the state – creating a gap in the state’s coffers which is then filled by more and varied taxes on ordinary people – ultimately shrinking the very market big capital needs to sell its increased production of goods.

Tariffs and Taxes

“Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed.” Alan Keyes

Free trade areas and free trade agreements have allowed for the growth of multinational corporations but the concomitant reductions in tariffs caused a decline in income for the states involved.

Tariffs are defined as “a tax imposed on the import or export of goods. In general parlance, however, it refers to “import duties” charged at the time goods are imported. Tariffs have three primary functions: to serve as a source of revenue, to protect domestic industries, and to remedy trade distortions (punitive function).”

As tariff income declined income taxes and payroll taxes increased. In many cases workers also objected to reductions in tariffs as cheap imports had deleterious effects on their industries and jobs.

In the USA the changing proportions of government income since 1792 can be seen clearly in this table. The percentage of Federal Government income from tariffs ranged from 25.4% to as high as 95.0% between 1792 and 1910. With the passage of the 16th Amendment income taxes began in 1913 and the percentage of Federal Government income from tariffs quickly declined to 6.1% by 1940. In that year payroll taxes were also introduced and by 1955 the percentage of Federal Government income from tariffs declined to 0.8%. Between 1955 and 2010 the percentage has hovered around 1.3%. Since then it has averaged out to about 1.7%. As income declined from tariffs, the state very quickly filled in the gap, moving the burden of taxation very substantially from industry in general to workers in particular. Also, during the 1930s and 1940s the wealthy paid high taxes:

“And then, in 1945, with the country loaded to the gills with war debts, the top bracket hit an all-time high: 94%. This was assessed on anyone making more than $200,000. The following year, 1946, rates were trimmed a bit. The top rate was reduced to 91%. And taxes stayed pretty much just that way for the next 15 years, until the early 1960s. Importantly, this was one of the most successful eras in US economic history. The middle class boomed, the economy boomed, and the stock market boomed. And all with the top marginal income tax rate over 90%.”

However, by the early 1960s, the high rates for the wealthy in the US began to drop, declining to 70%, then 50% in the 1980s to around 35% now.

When the state is denied or limited sources of income from taxation on production it falls back on taxing people in more and more varied and imaginative ways to counter the shortfall. According to one commentator, “Americans will fork over nearly 30 percent of what they earn to pay their income taxes, but that is only a small part of the story.  As you will see below, there are dozens of other taxes that Americans pay every year.  Of course not everyone pays all of these taxes, but without a doubt we are all being taxed into oblivion.  It is like death by a thousand paper cuts.” The author then lists 97 taxes Americans pay every year.

Free Trade Agreements

The increase in personal taxation went hand in hand with job losses as free trade agreements allowed for cheap imports even by companies that had once formerly been national employers. The long term effects of tariff reductions in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for example, which went into effect on January 1, 1994, are described thus:

“American manufacturing jobs were lost as U.S. firms used NAFTA’s new foreign investor privileges to relocate production to Mexico to take advantage of that country’s lower wages and weaker environmental standards. U.S. job erosion worsened as a new flood of NAFTA imports swamped gains in exports, creating a massive new trade deficit that equated to an estimated net loss of one million U.S. jobs by 2004.”

Similar discussions are currently taking place regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP):

“In concrete terms the EU and the US have made substantial progress on market access for EU and US companies in all three areas meaning: tariffs, services and public procurement. [A] [s]econd tariff offer was exchanged, so both sides now arrived at a comparable level of proposals in terms of tariff line coverage which would facilitate further talks.”

As the list of bilateral and multilateral agreements gets longer and longer, states fall ever deeper into debt and MNCs (multinational corporations) increase their profits exponentially.

The global search for cheaper labour costs and the lowest taxation on corporate profits has made some companies richer than countries. One writer noted that:

“Corporate America has more cash than the economies of Belgium and Sweden combined. S&P 500 companies, excluding financial companies, collectively had $1.43 trillion in cash reserves sitting on the sidelines in the second quarter (April to June) of this year [2015], according to FactSet. That’s the second highest level in 10 years, and just a tad lower than the highest — $1.45 trillion — set in the fourth quarter last year.”

Tax avoidance

Some companies have used corporate inversion, tax havens, transfer pricing, tax avoidance etc. to bump up profits even more.  Citizens for Tax Justice notes the differences between corporations and domestic business and the repercussions this has on society in general:

“U.S.-based multinational corporations are allowed to play by a different set of rules than small and domestic businesses or individuals when it comes to the tax code. Rather than paying their fair share, many multinational corporations use accounting tricks to pretend for tax purposes that a substantial portion of their profits are generated in offshore tax havens, countries with minimal or no taxes where a company’s presence may be as little as a mailbox. Multinational corporations’ use of tax havens allows them to avoid an estimated $90 billion in federal income taxes each year. Congress, by failing to take action to end to this tax avoidance, forces ordinary Americans to make up the difference. Every dollar in taxes that corporations avoid by using tax havens must be balanced by higher taxes on individuals, cuts to public investments and public services, or increased federal debt.”

Once again, tax avoidance by MNCs affects public services and investment in infrastructure. This avoidance extends to the wealthy who own these companies. The recent revelations of the Panama Papers show the extent of tax avoidance by wealthy individuals is having a knock-on effect on states and societies starved of tax income:

“The Panama Papers [a one-year investigation by over 100 reporters worldwide], containing info on thousands of shell companies set up to avoid taxes and hide assets for over four decades from 1977 to 2015, are all about millionaires and billionaires and the politically connected “sticking it to” average citizens of the world by hiding money from fellow countrymen’s taxation policies and/or theft of state funds and laundering money.”

The Social Contract

While corporations can move around the world, states are fixed and the producers of goods live in societies that need to provide education systems, transport systems, communications systems, health systems, social welfare systems, houses, food, traffic lights, etc. that all cost a lot of money.

The legitimacy of authority of the state over the individual derives from general acceptance of the social contract: “Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights.” The lack of social justice apparent in the increasing gap between wealthy elites and ordinary people can break down, and result in disorder, looting and rioting. In a worst case scenario there is the possibility of governmental collapse and the creation of a failed state where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.

At the very least, it has been shown in a book by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, “that austerity is now having a “devastating effect” on public health in Europe and North America. The mass of data they have mined reveals that more than 10,000 additional suicides and up to a million extra cases of depression have been recorded across the two continents since governments started introducing austerity programmes in the aftermath of the crisis.[…] And in the UK, the authors say, 10,000 families have been pushed into homelessness following housing benefit cuts. […] Cuts in HIV-prevention budgets have coincided with a 200% increase in the virus in Greece.”

The impoverishment of the state through squeezed funds affects the poorest most as wealthy individuals can easily purchase privatized versions of state services.

Weakening domestic demand

The imposition of austerity and cutbacks not only adds to the general misery but also at the same time reduces demand. One economic research institute looked at the effects of austerity in Ireland:

“Domestic demand has been hard hit, shrinking by almost a quarter. Though the export sector has not been hit as hard, the lack of investment in public infrastructure reduces the potential of this sector to grow in the years to come. Also a reflection of the weak state of the economy has been price deflation. Between September 2008 and January 2010 prices fell. Though inflation is not of itself a good thing, the fact that it has been so low for so long is a reflection of the weak state of domestic demand. Though there was a brief spell of deflation immediately following the Second World War, one must go back to 1933 to see an instance of deflation as severe as that which has recently occurred in Ireland.”

The effects of cutbacks by the state in the form of job cuts, social welfare cuts and pay reductions is to reduce income for the state (less taxes and VAT) while at the same time creating a drop in demand as people have less money to spend on goods. This can be seen generally around Ireland (with businesses closing down e.g. Cork, Sligo, Galway, Limerick) except in areas where multinational corporations have relocated, accounting for a lot of the much – vaunted Irish ‘recovery’.

According to Eurostat, Ireland now has one of the Eurozone’s poorest living standards:

“The typical German living standard is the highest in Europe while the Irish, Italians and Spanish are among the Eurozone’s poorest, according to data published Wednesday by Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office. […] Eurostat has been highlighting Actual Individual Consumption (AIC) as a measure of living standards and it says that it “consists of goods and services actually consumed by individuals, irrespective of whether these goods and services are purchased and paid for by households, by government, or by non-profit organisations.”

Central Banks wade in

However, the decline in consumption is a global problem and numerous measures have been taken to try and solve it:

“Since 2008, global central banks have cut interest rates 637 times, they have injected 12.3 trillion dollars into the global financial system through various quantitative easing programs, and we have seen an explosion of government debt unlike anything we have ever witnessed before.  But despite these unprecedented measures, the global economy is still deeply struggling.  This is particularly true in Japan, in South America, and in Europe.”

The extraordinary success of big capital (aided by the global spread of neoliberalist policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation and free trade – policies which directly and indirectly reduced incomes to the state) is sucking society dry, while big capital itself is sloshing around with never-before-seen levels of liquidity.

The desperation to get some money back into the economy can be seen in a recent statement where ECB chief Mario Draghi refused to rule out the prospect of ‘helicopter money’ drops, “the process by which central banks can create money to transfer to the public or private sector to stimulate economic activity and spending.”

The role of the state?

New trade agreement proposals such as TTIP and TPP show that big capital still has more cards up its sleeve with more tariff reductions on the horizon. The further liberalization of global trade does not auger well for the future of financing the state. Only by changing the relationship between the state and big capital while at the same time reevaluating the role of the state in society and questioning its sources of funding, can people protect themselves from the worst excesses of neoliberalism.

Otherwise, the deepening implementation of ‘austerity’, with its social and economic ills of job cuts, depression and suicide, will drive a return to a state where life becomes, in the famous words of Hobbes, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist who has exhibited widely around Ireland. His work consists of paintings based on cityscapes of Dublin, Irish history and geopolitical themes (http://gaelart.net/). His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country at http://gaelart.blogspot.ie/.

 Food parcels belonging to the US Pentagon were discovered in Beiji oil refinery in Salahuddin province in Northern Iraq after the refinery and the nearby city were taken back from the Daesh-ISIS terrorist group in mid-October.

The Food parcels were discovered by a group of Iranian documentary filmmakers, including Vahid Farahani and Seyed Hashem Moussavi, who were in Iraq in October to prepare a documentary on the Iraqi army’s military advances against the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group in Salahuddin province, specially in Beiji city North of Baghdad.

The documentary, ‘Conquest of Beiji’, provides a complete account of advances by the Iraqi army and volunteer forces against the ISIL terrorist group in Beiji.

A major part of the ‘Conquest of Beiji’ focuses on the discovery of ammunition and food parcels that all carry Pentagon labels.

Vahid Farahani and his team put on display some of the parcels and emptied their contents at a meeting at Fars News Agency upon their return from Iraq.

The photos of the food parcels will be released on FNA in coming hours.

Beiji lies at a crossroads between several frontlines and control of the area is seen as the key to progress in other regions, including Anbar province where forces were also closing in on ISIL strongholds.

On October 14, the Iraqi army and volunteer forces launched an assault to take back Beiji in Northern Iraq from ISIL terrorists.

Later, they won back full control over Beiji oil refinery after killing ISIL’s top military commander (or Emir) of the region.

The army and volunteer forces launched the Beiji Freedom Operation by approaching the city from three different directions.

Besides the US, similar food parcels, arms and munitions that carry the labels of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and several other Arab Persian Gulf states have been repeatedly found in those positions that have been taken from the terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

Tel Aviv has shown footage of its commandos “risking their lives” to rescue wounded ISIL militants from Syrian warzone. Tel Aviv has save more than 2,000 of their “sworn enemies” since 2013.

The usurper regime has in fact struck a deadly ‘deal with the devil’ – offering support to the multi-national terrorist group which is fighting the Syrian government in the hope of containing its arch enemies Hezbollah and Iran.

Security sources in the Qatari government disclosed that Israel has sent its Coordinator on Syrian Affairs Afif Shavit to a meeting with Qatari officials in London late in May to discuss supply of more arms to the rebel groups fighting the Syrian government.

“The 4-hour meeting was held in a house in Braum House in London belonging to Khalid a-Abeed, a Qatari citizen residing in Britain, on May 20,” the source, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his information and for fear of his life, told FNA.

“During the meeting, It was decided that Israel prepare and supply the weapons needed by the terrorists in Syria and enter negotiations with European arms manufacturing companies on arms purchases and money transfer methods, and the Qatari side cover the funds and needed budget for purchases,” added the source.

The meeting was held at a time when the EU decided to lift the arms embargo on foreign-backed militants in Syria. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on May 28 that European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels have reached an agreement to lift the arms embargo on militants in Syria, while maintaining other sanctions on the country. The EU also decided to allow the European banks to open branches and accounts in Syria for use by the opposition.

On August 19, 2015, media reports said that the Turkish government had sent several trucks packed with weapons and ammunition to the Northern parts of Syria.

A number of trucks had crossed Iskenderun and al-Salib border crossings into Lattakia and Idlib provinces, the Arabic-language Al-Watan newspaper said citing the Turkish opposition media reports.

It wrote that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had also ordered blackouts in the border towns to facilitate the smuggling of the weapons into Syria.

On June 16, 2013, security sources in the Qatari government disclosed that Israel had sent its Coordinator on Syrian Affairs Afif Shavit to a meeting with Qatari officials in London late in May to discuss supply of more arms to the rebel groups fighting the Syrian government.

“The 4-hour meeting was held in a house in Braum House in London belonging to Khalid a-Abeed, a Qatari citizen residing in Britain, on May 20,” the source, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his information and for fear of his life, told FNA.

“During the meeting, It was decided that Israel prepare and supply the weapons needed by the terrorists in Syria and enter negotiations with European arms manufacturing companies on arms purchases and money transfer methods, and the Qatari side cover the funds and needed budget for purchases,” added the source.

The meeting was held at a time when the EU decided to lift the arms embargo on foreign-backed militants in Syria. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on May 28 that European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels have reached an agreement to lift the arms embargo on militants in Syria, while maintaining other sanctions on the country. The EU also decided to allow the European banks to open branches and accounts in Syria for use by the opposition.

In late August 2013, Turkish opposition forces disclosed that Ankara had sent 400 tons of arms supplied by some Persian Gulf states to militants in Syria to bolster their fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Twenty trailers crossed from Turkey and are being distributed to arms depots for several brigades across the North,” said Mohammad Salam, a rebel operative who witnessed the crossing from an undisclosed location in Hatay, agencies reported.

A study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA) provides more evidence that life expectancy in the United States is chiefly determined by economic class. Higher income is the most critical factor in longevity, the study found, with the gap between the richest one percent and poorest one percent of individuals averaging 14.6 years for men and 10.1 years for women.

The study was based on income data derived from 1.4 billion tax records between 1999 and 2014 of individuals aged 40 to 76, and death records obtained from the Social Security Administration. It found that men in the top one percent had an expected age of death of 87.3, compared to 72.7 years for the poorest one percent. The richest women on average lived 88.9 years, while the poorest lived only 78.8 years.

“Men in the bottom 1 percent of the income distribution at the age of 40 years in the United States,” the study noted,” have life expectancies similar to the mean life expectancy of 40-year-old men in Sudan and Pakistan.” US men in the top one percent of income distribution have “higher life expectancies than the mean life expectancy for men in all countries at age 40 years,” the study found.

Writing on the findings, which were obtained by a research team led by Stanford University economics professor Raj Chetty, the Stanford University News commented, “Being richer was associated with living longer at every level of the income distribution. And the gap between the richest 1 percent and the bottom 1 percent in the nation was vast.”

The study is only the latest report highlighting the pervasive impact of social inequality on every aspect of life in America. A study released late last year by two Princeton University economists showed that the mortality rate for white, middle-aged working-class Americans has risen sharply over the past fifteen years, largely due to a dramatic rise in the rate of deaths from suicide, drug abuse and alcoholism.

Another recent study showed that all net full-time job growth in the US between 2005 and 2015 was accounted for by “alternative work arrangements,” i.e., people working as independent contractors, temps, through contract firms or on-call.

These reports provide a glimpse of the grim reality of social life for broad masses of American workers and youth, a reality that is concealed by the media behind complacent and self-satisfied portrayals of an economy rebounding from the financial disaster of 2008. The political establishment is indifferent to the economic and social deprivation facing tens of millions of Americans. President Barack Obama summed up the combination of contemptuousness and cluelessness of the ruling elite when he hailed the jobs report for February with the boast, “America is pretty darn great right now.”

This social crisis is the source of the immense anger and hatred for the political establishment revealed in the 2016 election campaign. The worsening plight of workers—occurring side-by-side with record corporate profits and stock prices—underlies the convulsive character of the presidential contest.

The Republican front-runner, billionaire real estate speculator Donald Trump, has sought to tap into popular anger in order to divert it along the reactionary path of anti-immigrant chauvinism and militarism. But the broader phenomenon, reflected in the widespread support for self-described “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, is the growth of anti-capitalist sentiment. The political radicalization of the working class is taking the initial form of backing for a candidate who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination by presenting himself as an opponent of social inequality and the “billionaire class.”

The Stanford study underscores that the essential division in the United States is not race, but class. In America, how long you live is determined above all by what social class you belong to.

Between 2001 and 2014, life expectancy in the United States increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women in the top five percent of income distribution, but by only a negligible 0.32 years for men and 0.04 years for women in the bottom five percent. The increase in longevity for the richest Americans, the study noted, is equivalent to eliminating all cancer deaths in the US.

The advances in medical science and life-extending technology have largely bypassed large sections of the population. The disparity is worse in areas hit hardest by deindustrialization and rural poverty.

Of the states with the lowest life expectancy in the bottom income quartile (25 percent), eight form a geographic belt from Michigan to Kansas (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas). Nevada, Indiana and Oklahoma had the lowest life expectancies (<77.9 years) when men and women in the bottom income quartile were averaged.

When broken down further into so-called commuting zones—urban areas and surrounding counties that share common economic characteristics—five of the zones with the lowest life expectancies were clustered in the industrial Midwest states. Among the cities where the poorest sections of the population live the shortest lives were: Louisville, Kentucky (77.9); Toledo and Cincinnati, Ohio (77.9); Detroit, Michigan (77.7); Indianapolis, Indiana (77.6), Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (77.6), and Las Vegas, Nevada (77.6).

The worst in the nation is the economically depressed steel town of Gary, Indiana, where the mean life expectancy for both sexes is 77.4 years, and for men, 74.2 years. The gap in life expectancies between the richest and the poorest quintiles is 7.2 years in Gary, where more than 40 percent of the population lives in poverty. The gap in life expectancies is far higher, however, in several other cities, including Madison, Wisconsin (8.1 years), Detroit (8.2 years), Salt Lake City, Utah (8.3 years), and Louisville, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio (8.4 years).

Between 2001 and 2014, average life expectancy in the bottom income quintile fell in several commuting zones. In Florida, this included Cape Coral, Miami, Tampa and Pensacola. Other areas seeing a decline were Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Des Moines, Iowa; Bakersfield, California; and Knoxville, Tennessee.

While the Stanford study does not point to the contributing factors in the growing disparity in life expectancy, there is little question that they include access to good nutrition, decent housing, a healthy environment and lower levels of stress. A study last year by researchers from Harvard Business School and Stanford University found that stressful workplaces, caused by the probability of being laid off, long working hours, work-family conflicts and the lack of employer-paid health care, contributed to lower life expectancy. Researchers concluded that 10–38 percent of the difference in life expectancy across demographic groups can be attributed to disparate job conditions.

The American Psychological Association’s annual stress report issued last month found that more than one-quarter of adults reported feeling stressed about money most or all of the time. Nearly one-third (32 percent) said their finances or lack of money prevented them from having a healthy lifestyle, and one in five said they had either considered skipping or had skipped going to the doctor in the past year when they needed care because of financial concerns.

Dangerous Crossroads: “This is Not a New Cold War …. Nobody Will Win World War III”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 11 2016

Russia insists its relations with NATO will not improve unless the western military alliance adopts a new policy toward it. Russia’s envoy to NATO, Alexander Grushko, says no one should expect a breakthrough in diplomatic relations when representatives from the…

The Nagorno-Karabakh Story the US Does Not Want You to Know

By Joachim Hagopian, April 10 2016

In the early morning hours of April 1-2 Azerbaijan launched a major military offensive into the disputed region Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) that’s been controlled and defended by NK Armenian forces since the Russian brokered truce ended a bloody three year war…

The War on Savings: The Panama Papers, Bail-Ins, and the Push to Go Cashless

By Ellen Brown, April 11 2016

Exposing tax dodgers is a worthy endeavor, but the “limited hangout” of the Panama Papers may have less noble ends, dovetailing with the War on Cash and the imminent threat of massive bail-ins of depositor funds.

Israel Seeks to Divert Attention from Its Execution of Wounded Palestinian Prisoners

By Anthony Bellchambers, April 11 2016

An Israeli soldier has been detained, as a result of a video showing him shooting a severely wounded Palestinian as he lay motionless on the ground. The IDF soldier is seen in the video footage, cocking his weapon and shooting…

US Government Partially Funded the Panama Papers’ Leak

By Telesur, April 11 2016

USAID partially funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the core journalism organizations involved in reporting the Panama Papers. In the wake of damning claims by WikiLeaks that the United States government was behind the Panama Papers…

Syria’s 2016 Congressional Elections. “Enthusiasm to Vote in a War-Torn Country”

By Prof. Tim Anderson, April 10 2016

Author Prof. Tim Anderson, reporting from Damascus Syria approaches its 13 April congress (Majlis al Shaab) elections with over 11,000 candidates and candidate banners and billboards across the country. Elections for law makers in presidential systems are often more subdued…

Israel has launched dozens of strikes in Syria, the regime’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admits for the first time.

Visiting Israeli troops in the occupied Golan Heights on Monday, Netanyahu said Israel carried out the attacks to prevent alleged arms transfers to Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah.

“We act when we need to act, including here across the border, with dozens of strikes meant to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining game-changing weaponry,” he added.

The Israeli premier did not give any time frame for the strikes in Syria. He also did not elaborate on what kind of strikes the Israeli army had carried out.

It was the first time an Israeli official has admitted to launching strikes in Syria, after several media reports that Tel Aviv conducted such attacks.

“We are also working on other fronts, near and far, but we do it intelligently,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel may itself “enter the battlefield.”

 

.

Hezbollah has been aiding Syrian forces in their fight against Takfiri militants across the Arab state over the past few years.

Lebanon has seen acts of terror associated with the militancy in Syria. Daesh and al-Nusra Front terrorists have been active on the outskirts of the Lebanese town of Arsal, located on the border with Syria.

Syria says Israel and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri militant groups operating inside the Arab country.

The Syrian army has repeatedly seized huge quantities of Israeli-made weapons and advanced military equipment from the foreign-backed militants inside Syria. A number of Syria militants received medical treatments in Israel after being injured during clashes with Syrian army troops.

Israel launched two wars on Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. About 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, lost their lives during the 33-day war in the summer of 2006.

On both occasions, Hezbollah fighters gave befitting responses to the Tel Aviv regime’s acts of aggression, forcing the Israeli military to retreat without achieving any of its objectives.

The Tel Aviv regime has resorted to an intelligence and psychological campaign against Hezbollah to compensate for its fiascos in the two wars on Lebanon.

The Gaza Strip is suffering from electricity blackouts of up to 20 hours a day, the UN reported on Monday, after the Palestinian enclave’s only power station was forced to shut down due to a shortage of funds.

The Wall Street Journal is the perfect example of a state and corporate controlled counter-information service. A report recently attempts to characterize the Saudi war on the Yemeni people as having little to do with oil. Nothing my friends, nothing could be further from the truth. The Saudis need untapped reserves Yemen currently controls. Here’s a look at the real reason for the genocide in Yemen.

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky (image left)

Foreign ministers of the G7 group of industrial countries have called for a world without nuclear weapons.

In their final declaration at Hiroshima meeting in Japan, the top diplomats cited deteriorating security conditions in Syria, Ukraine and particularly the Korean Peninsula as key challenges to achieving the goal.

The declaration comes as some of the G7 member states including the US and Britain possess huge nuclear stockpiles. Nuclear weapons states have refused to destroy or reduce their stocks of nuclear weapons despite repeated promises to do so. Some of them are spending billions of dollars to upgrade their deadly weapons.

Interview with Professor Michel Chossudovsky

Thousands of migrants residing in Greece from the Middle East, Africa and Asia are being sent to Turkey in an effort to curtail and reduce the number of people flooding into Europe. 

Uncertainty about the status of those who have reached Greece contributed to the clashes between Macedonian security forces and migrants on April 10 when police used tear gas and rubber bullets to contain crowds which they claimed had attempted to break through the Idomeni border between the two countries. This standoff resulted in the injury of over 300 migrants and 23 security officers.

The Greek government denounced the Macedonian police for their actions saying “[T]he indiscriminate use of chemicals, rubber bullets and stun grenades against vulnerable populations, and particularly without reasons for such force, is a dangerous and deplorable act,” stressed George Kyritsis, a spokesman for Greece’s crisis-response co-ordination committee.

This latest round of unrest occurred just one day after four women and a child drowned off the Greek island of Samos.  These were the first officially reported deaths in the Aegean Sea after the European Union (EU) began rounding up and sending migrants from Greece to Turkey on April 4.

In response, the security forces involved in the attacks on migrants attempted to justify their repressive measures.

Spokesman for the Macedonian police Toni Angelovski said “A large group of refugees attempted to destroy the razor fence and enter Macedonia. They threw stones, metal things and other objects towards police. No single migrant managed to cross on the Macedonian side, but [the situation] is still tense.” The police used “Teargas and all allowable means to protect [themselves] and the border”. (Irish Times, April 10)

At least 11,000 migrants have been camped out at the Idomeni village crossing since mid-February after the Balkan states closed their borders as the major entry points into Central Europe. There are reports that approximately 50,000 migrants are in Greece awaiting their possible deportation to Turkey.

Europe Divided Over Migrant and Refugee Questions

Over the last year more than one million people have entered the continent creating tensions between EU member-states and within their societies. Right-wing led governments and political parties have utilized the migration crisis to build up their electoral bases along with escalating violence against those seeking asylum.

In efforts to normalize relations among European countries and at the same time curb migration, EU leaders reached an agreement mandating that all migrants coming to Greece by way of the Aegean Sea should be sent to Turkey. According to the plan, for every Syrian from the refugee camps in Turkey will be settled for each so-called “irregular migrant” returned to the country. The purported rationale behind this policy is designed to discourage migrants from entering Greece and its islands through passage provided by human traffickers.

However, humanitarian organizations have criticized the plan saying it will create even more problems related to the growing need to provide food, water, shelter and medical treatment for the hundreds of thousands still in need of assistance. Conditions in the Idomeni border camp are rapidly deteriorating prompting dissatisfaction and unrest.

Agencies dealing with migration and displacement issues such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have also pointed out that the EU agreement violates international legal conventions for the processing of migrants and refugees. On April 1 several people were hurt on the island of Chios which reportedly contains 600 more migrants than what the Greek authorities and international organizations have the capacity to handle.

The UNHCR website noted in a post that: “We are very worried about the situation there. Rioting last night left three people with stab injuries.” (April 1)

This same agency’s humanitarian division observed that instability and anxiety was also escalating at the Moria facility on Lesvos. Officially 2,300 migrants are being housed there exceeding the stated capacity of 2,000.

A statement from the UNHCR stressed: “[We are] urging parties to the recent EU-Turkey agreement on refugees and migrants to ensure all safeguards are in place before any returns begin. This is in light of continued serious gaps in both countries. Across Greece, which has been compelled to host people because of closed borders elsewhere in Europe, numerous aspects of the systems for receiving and dealing with people who may need international protection are still either not working or absent.”

Imperialism Caused the Migration Crisis

What is not mentioned in many instances by the corporate and government-controlled western media outlets are the reasons behind the flood of migrants and refugees and the dangers they face on a daily basis having been trafficked through Libya and other countries into the Mediterranean and across to Europe.

At the root of the crisis are the United States and NATO wars of regime-change and occupation along with the collapse of the economies throughout Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific during the recent period.

Washington has led these interventions beginning with the Gulf war in 1991 continuing through the occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq during the first decade of the present century.

Since 2009, new wars of destruction and occupation have been waged against Libya, Syria and Yemen resulting in the dislocation, deaths and injuries of tens of millions creating the worst humanitarian crisis of internal and external displacement since the conclusion of World War II.

In addition the economies of these targeted states and their neighbors have been adversely impacted. These wars of imperialist intrigue and domination are continuing amid the failure of a full economic recovery from the global capitalist crisis of 2008 and subsequent years.

Turkey, a key member of NATO, seeks to become a full member of the EU while serving as a conduit for the deployment of Islamic State operatives in Syria and other states. The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad has been able to survive and drive back the rebel forces through the direct solidarity given by Iran, Hezbollah, Russia and other fraternal states and organizations.

These developments have worsened relations between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and their allies in the Middle East and Africa on the one side against the Syrian government and its supporters on the other. A ceasefire agreement worked out during talks in Geneva between Moscow, Washington and NATO forces appears to have reduced the fighting in Syria but has by no means ended the war.

This has been taking place in conjunction with a growing domestic war against the Kurdish people inside southeast Turkey as well. Turkish political leaders have threatened opposition members of parliament with arrest and prosecution claiming that they are allied with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its supporters. If these actions are taken it would only escalate the current unrest and complicate relations with Europe and the U.S.

A recent article published by rudaw.net said that: “There is almost no doubt that imprisoning Kurdish elected politicians is to further intensify tensions in the mainly Kurdish southeast which has been hit by the worst violence in two decades since a two-year peace process with the PKK collapsed in July last year. In such a political landscape, it is very likely that the tension between Turkish security forces and the PKK might push for a social uprising similar to what we had observed during the Kobane unrest that ended by a call made by PKK’s imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan.” (April 4)

Donald Trump could change American electoral history for the better. Before explaining how, let’s first explore the politics and predicament of the 2016 Republican primary election. 

About six weeks ago, I projected that Trump would win the Republican nomination. That was before the traditional Republican leadership came out of hibernation to spoil Trump’s chances. It was however, a little too late. It’s almost certain now that Trump will end up with the most delegates at the summer convention – although it might not be enough to give him a simple majority to become the outright Republican nominee at the next November election.

The Republican leadership has no one else to blame for the Trumpmania frenzy. The party had cultivated the extreme right wing of the American electorate for more than 30 years. They had pandered to Jerry Farwell’s “Moral Majority,” Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America and Michelle Bachmann’s Tea Party. The Republican leadership was content with the secured right-wing vote for their candidates. They turned unsettled, however, when the extremists’ base posited their own to challenge the traditional leadership.

This is universally true in all cases of breeding self-righteous groups to serve a short-term interest of the more dominant party. Once they garner influence, the self-righteous proponents become attracted to power like sharks are drawn to the smell of blood. Ultimately, their illusionary perception of supremacy inspires them to impose their agenda on others.

To answer my earlier proposition on Trump, traditional Republicans had finally come face to face with the juvenile they reared; and they have come to dislike their creation. At next summer’s convention, party traditionalists are expected to abandon Trump and unite behind the second least hated alternative: Ted Cruz. Or to quote a Republican leader, to choose between “Death by being shot or poisoning”.

It is very plausible that Trump, with an ego larger than the Republican Party, will end up walking out of the convention. Trump has already hinted that he would recant his pledge to support the Republican candidate if he wasn’t on the November ticket.

If and when Trump decides to break away from the Republican Party, it should be an opportunity for Bernie Sanders to do the same at the Democratic side. Riding Trump’s ego is the best hope for Americans to end the 200-year-old Democratic and Republican monopoly over US presidential election. The traditionalist against the independent candidates to end the two-party reign.

Sanders has a better chance in the general election to halt his party’s retrograde and beat the Democratic traditionalist who was rejected by party voters eight years ago. Then continue the march to defeat the “shot or poisoning” death option of the Republican candidates.

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