Global Research

Local sources in Syria’s Southern Quneitra province revealed that terrorist organizations had been distributing Israeli-made foodstuffs to the locals in the areas under their control.

This has been happening almost monthly, according to the sources which indicated that Israeli-made food items have flooded the areas controlled by terrorists in Quneitra countryside.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the food aid from Israel proves the level of coordination between Israel and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist organization in the southern region.

Observers see that the proliferation of Israeli goods in the areas where terrorists are present envisages a future that terrorist organizations want for Syria.

Al-Nusra terrorists in the southern region and Israel seem to be bound by longstanding relations. As a sign of staunch support, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described terrorists in Syria as “heroes” when he visited some of them while they were receiving medical treatment in Israeli hospitals.

Counter-Revolution in Brazil and United States Imperialism

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 09 2016

President Dilma Rousseff of the Brazil Worker’s Party (PT) was suspended from office on May 12, 2016 amid an impeachment proceeding in the national parliament. Rousseff is the first woman president of this vast and heavily populated South American country…

Saudi Arabia Killing Children: United Nations Complicit in Crimes against Humanity

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 10 2016

“It appears that political power and diplomatic clout have been allowed to trump the UN’s duty to expose those responsible for the killing and maiming of more than 1,000 of Yemen’s children.”  Sajjad Mohammad Sajid, Oxfam Director in Yemen, Jun…

Bernie Sanders’ Position Concerning the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, June 09 2016

Following the 2016 US presidential elections, the next administration must adopt a new and realistically balanced policy toward Israel and the Palestinians to bring an end to their conflict in the context of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace based on the…

Syrian Women Denounce USAID Funded ‘White Helmets’ in Syria

By Prof. Tim Anderson, June 09 2016

A range of Syrian women have denounced the US-UK funded group the ‘White Helmets’, led by a former British soldier and recently revealed to be financed by USAID. They come from all the country’s communities (e.g. Sunni, Alawi, Druze, Christian)…

War Party Leader Obama Endorses War Goddess Clinton

By Stephen Lendman, June 10 2016

Obama, Clinton and bipartisan neocons infesting Washington explain the deplorable state of America today – a democracy in name only, enriching the privileged few at the expense of most others, waging endless wars on humanity, leaving its fate up for…

Canada’s Pro-Israel Lobby Attempts to Shut Down “Peaceful Pressure” against Israel’s Systematic Violations of International Law

By Prof Michael Keefer, June 10 2016

The latest attempt of the Zionist lobby in Canada to shut down attempts to organize peaceful pressure against the state of Israel’s systematic violations of international law came at what must have seemed an opportune moment. On May 17, the…

Thursday, June 9 proved to be a trying day for combat ground forces around Aleppo. Syrian Arab Army (SAA) units and anti-government forces, including the Faylaq Al-Sham, or the so-called ‘Sham Legion’ engaged each other in multiple fronts in villages around Aleppo.

In northern Aleppo, pro-government Tiger Forces, National Defense Forces and Liwa al-Quds were reported to have stormed Mallah Farms in an attempt to wrest control from the anti-government Sham Legion. The assault ultimately failed, and there have been a reported 15 deaths on the pro-government side.

The Sham Legion reported a number of victories with video evidence, including TOW missile attacks in Khalasah, southern Aleppo, which destroyed SAA armor and anti-aircraft units. The SAA also suffered the loss of a missile team of their own when the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) forces attacked a 9M113 Konkurs team with a TOW missile.

A combined terrorist assault force comprised of the Sham Legion, FSA and Jabhat al-Nusra engaged pro-government forces in al-Humayra, southern Aleppo. An FSA TOW missile team destroyed what appears to be an SAA or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tank, while Sham Legion drone footage appears to show IRCG forces retreating from the same village.

Jaysh al-Fatah briefly reported the capture of Zaytan, a village in southern Aleppo. However, pro-militant pages have admitted that Jaysh al-Fatah had to retreat from Zaytan.

The “Syrian Democratic Forces”, supported by US-led coalition warplanes, cut off the least major ISIS supply line to in the area of Manbij: the Al-Bab-Manbij highway. Meanwhile, the QareQowzaq bridge has been repaired . Now it allows to send more reinforcements and suppliies to SDF units, battling for Manbij.

A little noticed 2008 email from former Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, raises serious questions about his official narrative on the collapse of Lehman Brothers. We’ll get to the email in detail, but first some necessary background. 

A lot of eyes rolled on Wall Street last October when Ben Bernanke, who chaired the Federal Reserve in the lead up to and during the financial collapse in 2008, released his memoir of the financial crisis with the title: “The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and its Aftermath.” Many Wall Street observers felt the title would have more correctly captured the facts on the ground had it read: “The Lack of Fed Courage to Supervise Mega Banks Led to an Epic Collapse.” (In the leadup to the crisis, the Fed allowed Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill and JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, to sit on the Board of its Federal Reserve Bank of New York, among numerous other conflicts of interest.)

Throughout his memoir, including Chapter 12 titled “Lehman: The Dam Breaks,” Bernanke goes to great pains to paint a portrait of the Fed and himself as being intensely on top of the situation at Lehman Brothers from March 2008 forward, following the Bear Stearns collapse and its absorption by JPMorgan Chase.

For example, Bernanke reveals that the Fed had placed bank examiners at Lehman Brothers, writing as follows:

After JPMorgan Chase bought Bear, the New York Fed staff conferred frequently with the SEC and Lehman – up to three times per day. We would eventually send a small number of bank supervisors to Lehman and the other remaining investment banks.

We also know that Bernanke was briefed in great detail on the Lehman situation by Fed economist Patrick M. Parkinson on July 20, 2008, almost two months before the Lehman bankruptcy, because Parkinson’s email was included among the thousands of pages of text and exhibits of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report, the official analysis of the crisis. In that email, Parkinson wrote:

…Focusing for the moment on LB’s [Lehman Brothers] vulnerable tri-party borrowings, as of July 14 it was financing $200 billion of collateral. Of that amount, all but $12.8 billion was PDCF-eligible [PDCF was an emergency loan program set up by the Fed]. Of the non-PDCF-eligible, $8.7 billion was equities. JPMC [JPMorgan Chase], LB’s clearing bank, is likely to be the first to realize that the money funds and other investors that provide tri-party financing to LB are pulling back significantly. If some morning it fears that the investors are unlikely to roll their repos, it may threaten not to unwind LB’s previous night’s repos. If it did that, LB would be done because the tri-party investors would control its securities inventory. The investors presumably would promptly liquidate the $200 billion of collateral and there is a good chance that investors would lose confidence in the tri-party mechanism and pull back from funding other dealers. Fear of those consequences is, of course, why we facilitated Bear’s acquisition by JPMC. We could try to dissuade JPMC from refusing to unwind by pointing out that if the investors don’t roll the repos LB can borrow from us through the PDCF. Even if we did so, for two reasons JPMC might still balk. The first is the non-PDCF collateral. We could address that concern by making the equities and other non-PDCF collateral eligible. Or we could try to get LB to wire $12.8 billion of cash into JPMC to cover the rollover risk. The other reason is a fear that LB could be placed in bankruptcy intra-day, before the next day’s tri-party repos and any PDCF loans are settled, in which case JPMC would be stuck with $200 billion in secured loans to LB. I’m not sure that this is at all likely, but JPMC and BNYM [Bank of New York Mellon] are sufficiently concerned that they have arranged a meeting Monday afternoon with SIPC [Securities Investor Protection Corporation that insures brokerage accounts]. (LB’s PD [Primary Dealer] is a SIPC member (as are some but not all of the other PDs) and its bankruptcy would be administered by SIPC.) Board staff plan to sit in on this meeting. But even if we are willing to extend as much as $200 billion of financing to LB, absent an acquirer our action would not ensure LB’s survival… [Information in [ ] brackets has been inserted by Wall Street On Parade.]

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The story of Muhammad Ali’s trip to “rescue American hostages” is back in the media since the June 3 death of this unique individual: boxing’s greatest fighter, and perhaps one of the most beloved and inspiring figures of the 20th century.

President Obama’s comments on the Iraq trip were republished in a USA Today article that ran immediately following the news of the champ’s death: “We admire the man who has never stopped using his celebrity for good — the man who helped secure the release of 14 [sic] American hostages from Iraq in 1990,” wrote President Obama.

Gone but a week and Ali’s courage in the face of government opposition is quickly being re-written by the same forces that he stood up against. His legacy and courage demand that history be recounted truthfully.

I was the central organizer of Muhammad Ali’s peace delegation that traveled to Iraq in 1990, the delegation to which Saddam Hussein released 15 American hostages.

The delegation arrives in the Amman, Jordan airport with the hostages. The bombing of Iraq started shortly afterwards.

The idea for the delegation came from former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who asked me to be the organizer of the trip on his behalf. Other anti-war activists joined us.

Unfortunately the current telling of this story largely misses or obscures the main point of Ali’s trip to Iraq, what happened there and why.

Ali’s trip to Iraq was in fact vehemently opposed by the George H.W. Bush administration. The mass media castigated and ridiculed him at the time. He went to Iraq in defiance of the U.S. government and not on its behalf.

Our delegation arrived in Baghdad on November 23, 1990, and left for Jordan on the way back to the United States, with the 15-released hostages, on December 2, 1990.

The delegation Ali led to Baghdad was organized by the U.S. anti-war movement that was at that time bringing thousands, and eventually hundreds of thousands, of people into the streets in an ever-growing mass street protest movement throughout the United States in 1990 and 1991.

I was one of the organizers for those protests. The Coalition to Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East (our admittedly unwieldy name) was made up of hundreds of grassroots peace and community organizations. Ramsey Clark had allowed his downtown Manhattan law office to be used rent-free as the headquarters and mobilization center of these anti-war organizers and volunteers who over-ran that small office from August 1990 during the entire carnage known as the first Gulf War that finally ended on February 28, 1991.

It was from these offices and under Ramsey Clark’s leadership that the Muhammad Ali peace delegation was conceived and initiated. Ramsey and Muhammad were good friends. That too was a story that contained an element of irony since Ramsey was the U.S. attorney general in 1967 when Ali was indicted on federal charges for his refusal to be drafted into the U.S. military. But later Ramsey worked in assisting on the successful Supreme Court legal appeal that overturned Ali’s conviction in 1971.

Ali’s delegation arrived in Baghdad and met with Saddam Hussein at about the same time George H.W. Bush arrived in Saudi Arabia to take Thanksgiving pictures and make patriotic speeches to the U.S. troops that were about to be sent into combat. In fact, that was why we went to Iraq at that particular moment: We were hoping to have contrasting images of Ali “talking” with Iraq while Bush was insisting on war with that country.

It took guts for Muhammad Ali to go to Iraq in 1990. He wanted to help prevent a war with Iraq but he was worried because we were going against the tide.

Our trip to Iraq was filled with unexpected surprises, some of which were truly bizarre. Much of what happened could not have been anticipated, at least by me.

When we first arrived in Baghdad on November 23, 1990, we were taken to Iraq’s most famous hotel, the Al-Rashid. It was early evening and we went straight to the dining area.

Al- Rashid’s 5-star dinner hall was packed with people feasting on the finest food. Most were not Arabs. They looked like they were from western countries. I remember remarking to someone at the buffet table that I didn’t expect so many western media people to be there, to which the person replied, “Most of these people are not media, they are hostages.”

What? We had been reading and watching lurid stories about the immense suffering of western hostages who Saddam Hussein wouldn’t let leave the country in an effort to hold off air strikes.

I couldn’t believe it. These were hostages? I went up to one table of 30-somethings who looked European. “Are you hostages?” They all laughed and told me they were indeed hostages. They were nurses from Ireland who were working in an Irish-run medical facility in Baghdad. They asked me if I wanted to join them for drinks at a bar following dinner.

It was surreal. We all went drinking and they told me their story. Iraq had confiscated their passports so they couldn’t leave the country, but they didn’t want to leave anyway. They were making very good salaries, better money than in Ireland and really enjoying themselves. I asked them if they were scared about being caught up in a war. They were completely dismissive. “There is no way there will be a war,” they told me. They were certain that all the war talk was just a prelude to a negotiated exit of Iraq from Kuwait and a resolution of outstanding issues between Iraq and Kuwait. I told them that the U.S. government doesn’t send hundreds of thousands of troops halfway around the world to negotiate. I think that our conversation was the very first that they held with someone who was convinced that war was really coming to Iraq.

Ali came to the bar too. He didn’t drink of course but he entertained the European hostages and the bar staff by doing magic tricks, including one that he had really mastered where he appeared to levitate at least two inches off the floor.

Magic tricks and jokes aside, Ali was deeply concerned.

As he told me numerous times during the trip, he was concerned not about what would happen to us in Iraq, but rather about retribution when we got home from the media and especially the U.S. government that had demonized him and sentenced him to prison for refusing to go to Vietnam.

He was especially concerned that unless he returned with American hostages that he would be figuratively crucified by the media for cavorting with the enemy at a time when the patriotic drums of war were being beaten at an increasingly feverish pitch. He was right to be worried.

Unlike the European “hostages” who were eating at 5-star hotels and going to bars, the American hostages were facing a much more unpleasant reality. The Iraqi government placed them in government houses and compounds located at strategic military sites. They were placed there as deterrents against the expected U.S. attack. Saddam thought that the United States would not be able to start bombing because these men, who were both workers and business subcontractors doing business in either Iraq or Kuwait, would be right in the line of fire.

While Saddam calculated, or miscalculated — as he regularly did when it came to military questions — that holding westerners in Iraq would serve as a deterrent to a U.S. bombing campaign, the truth is that the Washington “we-need-to-go-to-war again” lobby was thrilled that Saddam took hostages. It played fully into their demonization campaign and war preparations.

Anyone who opposed a war with Iraq was labeled as either an apologist for the hostage-taking Saddam or as a half-wit. Ali was treated as both by the government and the media.

Ali is cited now as a hero for having rescued the U.S. hostages but he and our delegation were treated with scorn and contempt at the time.

Huffington Post writer Andy Campbell succinctly captured the actual attitude towards our trip in his June 4, 2016, post-mortem piece “5 Stories You Didn’t Know About Muhammad Ali”:

Ali was instantly criticized, taking flak from the likes of then-President George H.W. Bush and The New York Times, both of whom expressed concerns that he was fueling a propaganda machine. Speaking about Ali’s Parkinson’s disease, the Times wrote:

Surely the strangest hostage-release campaign of recent days has been the ‘goodwill’ tour of Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight boxing champion . . . he has attended meeting after meeting in Baghdad despite his frequent inability to speak clearly.

When we left from Iraq on December 2 with the American hostages, our delegation was greeted in Amman, Jordan, by State Department representatives. This was no happy greeting or celebration of freedom. Instead, the mood was grim. The U.S. government was infuriated that Ali had demonstrated that “talking” worked and moreso that it was the anti-war movement that had led the way in defiance of the government.

U.S. government representatives huddled with the hostages and tried to convince them that they leave Ali’s delegation and return on a plane provided by the State Department. One of the men told me they felt pressure from the U.S. government to abandon Ali even though they were immensely grateful for his effort.

In the end, I believe that six of the 15 stayed with us to JFK airport, where we had scheduled a press conference to speak about our trip. We insisted that Ali’s trip proved that “talks and negotiations” were clearly available as a means to prevent war. Of course, the George H.W. Bush administration wanted none of that. They did not want peace.

Muhammad Ali’s delegation to Iraq was considered a threat, and not an asset, by the Bush administration and the media, which was marching in lock-step with the Pentagon, just as it could be relied upon to do 12 years later in the lead up to the second Bush administration’s shock-and-awe invasion. The actual historical context is necessary to understand the “threat” posed by such a delegation in 1990.

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, bombers and cruise missiles were being put into place in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf for a war against Iraq. The atmosphere was very tense. We were not from the government but from the anti-war movement. By the time Ali met with Saddam on November 29, 1990 – in fact, on that very day –  the U.S. government browbeat the UN Security Council into authorizing a war against Iraq. This was to be the first time in history that the United States was planning to launch a war and send U.S. troops into real military action in the Arab World. The stakes could not have been higher.

The biggest problem facing the U.S. war lobby (don’t forget Dick Cheney was then Secretary of Defense) was not Iraq’s military. Iraq was small and the Pentagon knew Iraq’s military weaknesses inside and out because it embedded U.S. officers and assets inside Iraqi units during the Iran-Iraq war that had only ended two years before.

The real problem facing policymakers was huge uncertainty about U.S. public opinion. The so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” was the consequence of the last major U.S. war that ended with its troops being driven from the battlefield in Southeast Asia while U.S. cities, high schools and college campuses became centers of intense social and political protest. This, not Iraq’s military, was what the Bush administration was worried about as it was readying the population for war.

To overcome the problem of still-deep anti-war feelings at home, the Bush government relied on a new tactic: a highly personalized demonization campaign in the mainstream media of the leader of the targeted country. Saddam Hussein was an easy target. “The greatest tyrant since Hitler” was the mantra. The media whipped up sensationalized anti-Saddam stories 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This was the real context of Muhammad Ali’s trip to Iraq. It explains the animus he felt from the media and government. Ali went to meet directly with Saddam Hussein (aka the demon) in a trip that was not authorized by the U.S. government. It was organized by the very people who were organizing mass street protests at home aimed at arousing public opinion in a desperate bid to constrain the government from initiating the first-ever U.S. war in the Arab World – before it started.

Aside for the 15 very-grateful men who were released, Ali received practically no kudos or shout outs for saving the American hostages. This trip was considered subversive by policymakers who were wholly committed to the war drive and actually cared very little about the release of the hostages who had been caught in the middle.

A few weeks after we left Baghdad, Iraq agreed to allow all the other westerners to leave the country.

On January 16, 1991, the war that Muhammad Ali and millions of Americans wanted to stop began with a massive aerial destruction of the country. The U.S.-led air campaign dropped 88,500 tons of explosives on Iraq. Today, 26 years later, U.S. planes are still bombing Iraq. This is the fourth successive U.S. administration to drop bombs on Iraqi cities and towns.

The era of endless U.S. conflict in the Middle East, with all of its attendant human suffering in the Muslim world and beyond, began in 1991 despite Muhammad Ali’s courageous actions to do what he could to hold back the dogs of war. As the politicians eulogize Muhammad Ali, while artfully stripping his legacy of many of the courageous political positions that made him the target of the government when he was alive, we should remember what he really stood for.

Brian Becker is the National Coordinator of the anti-war ANSWER Coalition and the host of the daily news show “Loud & Clear” on Radio Sputnik.

[ALSO: Listen to a special one-hour show of Loud & Clear with Brian Becker about the legacy of Muhammad Ali. He is joined for the full hour by scholar and historian Dr. Anthony Monteiro, Askia Muhammad, Final Call journalist and news director of Pacifica Radio’s WPFW station in Washington, DC., and by activist and author Eugene Puryear.]

Robert Parry says in his latest piece that while the Democrats have been “a reluctant war party” since 1968, by nominating Hillary Clinton, they have once again become an “aggressive war party”.

Noam Chomsky notes that indeed, Hillary Clinton would be more “adventurous”, ie aggressive, than Trump or Sanders in terms of foreign policy, but he and other analysts, like John Pilger, disagree with Parry that the Democrats were, during the period Parry suggests, and perhaps any other, what a rational person would call “reluctant” to kill.

Looking back briefly at a couple of examples of Democratic initiatives, as well as who formed the Democratic party, we see that when it comes to butchering people, the Democrats have never been shy.

John Pilger points out in a recent article that “most of America’s wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.”

Kennedy began the US genocide against the people of Vietnam, demanding bombings and attacks with chemical weapons like napalm, and began a terrorist campaign against Cuba that continues to date.

Johnson, who viewed the Vietnamese people as “barbaric yellow dwarves”, continued the genocide in Vietnam and Indochina.

Carter supported numerous genocides and terrorist campaigns.

Bill Clinton, among many horrific acts, committed a major genocide against the people of Iraq, and helped lay the foundation for today’s nuclear war tension by expanding NATO to Russia’s borders.

One of Hillary Clinton’s many crimes was to continue this expansion by supporting a US-backed, neo-Nazi and neo-con integrated coup in Ukraine while referring to the president of Russia as “Hitler” – by far the most aggressive stance towards Russia of any US candidate.

See Pilger’s article for some of Obama’s crimes, which in several ways are uniquely extreme.

Truman defied his military advisers and many others and carried out mass nuclear executions of civilians as a way to influence the government of Japan (and likely the Soviet Union), then followed his nuclear attacks by further targeting Japanese civilians with the biggest TNT-based mass-execution of civilians in human history up to that point. Executing civilians was a prominent part of his ‘Democratic’ philosophy. He publicly stated that “the German people are beginning to atone for the crimes of the gangsters whom they placed in power and whom they wholeheartedly approved and obediently followed.” His logic, an example of the standard definition of “terrorism”, would suggest that Israelis, who support almost entirely their state’s illegal annexation and massacres of Palestine, should be targeted and killed until they “atone” for what their government is doing, and that US civilians who supported the sanctions against or invasion of Iraq (etc.) should likewise be punished until they “atone”. This is also the principle behind the 9/11 attacks, though US citizens who support terrorism committed by their own state are quick to engage in the “wrong agent” –genetic– fallacy when this is pointed out.

Looking back further than Truman, we find the Democrats comprised the bulk of the pro-chattel-slavery bloc. As noted at Pbs.org, “after the Civil War, most white Southerners opposed Radical Reconstruction and the Republican Party’s support of black civil and political rights. The Democratic Party identified itself as the “white man’s party” and demonized the Republican Party as being “Negro dominated,” even though whites were in control. Determined to re-capture the South, Southern Democrats “redeemed” state after state — sometimes peacefully, other times by fraud and violence. By 1877, when Reconstruction was officially over, the Democratic Party controlled every Southern state. The South remained a one-party region until the Civil Rights movement began in the 1960s. Northern Democrats, most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards blacks, offered no challenge to the discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats.”

Backing up again, we see that in fact the Democratic party was founded by supporters of the sadistic genocidaire Andrew Jackson, who enjoyed making clothing from the skin of people who were exterminated in service of expanding the un-free world.

Are Republicans therefore a superior ogranization? Of course not. The two parties check and balance each other to maintain and expand the world’s leading terrorist state.

As we can see, it is nothing new or different for the Democrats to be a party of expansionist gangsters. What is remarkable of Clinton, then, is that even against this gory and tyrannical backdrop, she stands out as especially evil, corrupt, and extremist in her US religio-national supremacism. As Professor Johan Galtung notes, two countries today (and occasionally their proxies) continue to wage aggressive war, thanks to their belief that they have been anointed by their gods: the US and Israel. And Hillary Clinton is as fundamentalist as they come.

As Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky, among others, have recently noted, US elections are “a carnival… a way of making people passive, submissive objects”. Rather than petering out and cowering to the Democratic party, Chomsky says, Sanders supporters should “sustain the ongoing movement, which [should] pay attention to the elections for 10 minutes but meanwhile do other things.” However, at the moment, “it’s the other way around. It’s all focused on the election. It’s just part of the ideology. The way you keep people out of activism is get them all excited about the carnival that goes on every four years and then go home, which has happened over and over.”

Robert Barsocchini is an internationally published author who focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. Updates on Twitter. Author’s pamphlet ‘The Agility of Tyranny: Historical Roots of Black Lives Matter’.

The ongoing criminal probe surrounding Hillary’s email server has been marked by opacity and lack of virtually any disclosure, not to mention a major turf war between the FBI and the DOJ, which is why many were surprised when overnight the WSJ revealed that at the center of the probe over Hillary’s handling of classified information are a series of emails between American diplomats in Islamabad and their superiors in Washington about whether to oppose specific drone strikes in Pakistan.

As the WSJ writes, the 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the “low side’’—government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters—as part of a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a Central Intelligence Agency drone strike went ahead, “according to congressional and law-enforcement officials briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe.” Note the last and recall that two months ago we noted that according to Chuck Grassley, an FBI “source” may leak what the FBI has uncovered so far, to wit:

 Is there going to be political interference? If there’s enough evidence to prosecute, will there be political interference?” Grassley wondered aloud on Friday. “And if there’s political interference, then I assume that somebody in the FBI is going to leak these reports and it’s either going to have an effect politically or it’s going to lead to prosecution if there’s enough evidence.

It appears that this is precisely what may have happened, and the “source” used the WSJ as the distribution platform.  And now that we (don’t) know the “who”, here is the “what.”

The CIA drone campaign in Pakistan, though widely reported in Pakistan, is treated as secret by the U.S. government. Under strict U.S. classification rules, U.S. officials have been barred from discussing strikes publicly and even privately outside of secure communications systems. The State Department said in January that 22 emails on Clinton’s personal server at her home have been judged to contain top-secret information and aren’t being publicly released.Many of them dealt with whether diplomats concurred or not with the CIA drone strikes, congressional and law-enforcement officials said.

As the WSJ adds, some of the [drone-related] emails were then forwarded by Clinton’s aides to her personal email account, which routed them to a server she kept at her home in suburban New York when she was secretary of state, the officials said. Investigators have raised concerns that Clinton’s personal server was less secure than State Department systems.

 The vaguely worded messages didn’t mention the “CIA,” “drones” or details about the militant targets, officials said. The still-secret emails are a key part of the FBI investigation that has long dogged Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, these officials said. They were written within the often-narrow time frame in which State Department officials had to decide whether or not to object to drone strikes before the CIA pulled the trigger, the officials said.

This is an issue, and potentially a criminal one, because “law-enforcement and intelligence officials said State Department deliberations about the covert CIA drone program should have been conducted over a more secure government computer system designed to handle classified information. State Department officials told FBI investigators they communicated via the less-secure system on a few instances, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials. It happened when decisions about imminent strikes had to be relayed fast and the U.S. diplomats in Pakistan or Washington didn’t have ready access to a more-secure system, either because it was night or they were traveling.”

There is also the question whether leaked emails may have tipped off drone strike targets about an imminent CIA assassination attempt.

The WSJ adds that emails sent over the low side sometimes were informal discussions that occurred in addition to more-formal notifications through secure communications, the officials said.

One such exchange came just before Christmas in 2011, when the U.S. ambassador sent a short, cryptic note to his boss indicating a drone strike was planned. That sparked a back-and-forth among Clinton’s senior advisers over the next few days, in which it was clear they were having the discussions in part because people were away from their offices for the holiday and didn’t have access to a classified computer, officials said.

Another interesting tangent: the turf war between the CIA and the State Department at the time. WSJ has more:

In 2011, Pakistani officials began to push back in private against the drone program, raising questions for the U.S. over the extent to which the program still had their consent. U.S. diplomats warned the CIA and White House they risked losing access to Pakistan’s airspace unless more discretion was shown, said current and former officials. Within the administration, State Department and military officials argued that the CIA needed to be more “judicious” about when strikes were launched. They weren’t challenging the spy agency’s specific choice of targets, but mainly the timing of strikes.

The CIA initially chafed at the idea of giving the State Department more of a voice in the process. Under a compromise reached around the year 2011, CIA officers would notify their embassy counterparts in Islamabad when a strike in Pakistan was planned, so then-U.S. ambassador Cameron Munter or another senior diplomat could decide whether to “concur” or “non-concur.” Mr. Munter declined to comment. Diplomats in Islamabad would communicate the decision to their superiors in Washington. A main purpose was to give then-Secretary of State Clinton and her top aides a chance to consider whether she wanted to weigh in with the CIA director about a planned strike.

With the compromise, State Department-CIA tensions began to subside. Only once or twice during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at State did U.S. diplomats object to a planned CIA strike, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials familiar with the emails. U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and Washington usually relayed and discussed their concur or non-concur decisions via the State Department’s more-secure messaging system. But about a half-dozen times, when they were away from more-secure equipment, they improvised by sending emails on their smartphones about whether they backed an impending strike or not, the officials said.

The time available to the State Department to weigh in on a planned strike varied widely, from several days to as little as 20 or 30 minutes. “If a strike was imminent, it was futile to use the high side, which no one would see for seven hours,” said one official.

Adding to those communications hurdles, U.S. intelligence officials privately objected to the State Department even using its high-side system. They wanted diplomats to use a still-more-secure system called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Community Systems, or JWICs. State Department officials don’t have ready access to that system, even in Washington. If drone-strike decisions were needed quickly, it wouldn’t be an option, officials said.

The big question, of course, is whether any of these emails were intercepted, and leaked, tipping off locals about upcoming air strikes:  “U.S. officials said there is no evidence Pakistani intelligence officials intercepted any of the low-side State Department emails or used them to protect militants.” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the agency “is not going to speak to the content of documents, nor would we speak to any ongoing review.’’

In other words, a potential leak could have come at just the worst possible time, and potentially tipped off the target of CIA strikes.

As is widely known, the email issue has dogged Clinton for more than a year. Despite her success in nailing down the Democratic presidential nomination, polls show many voters continue to doubt her truthfulness and integrity. Her campaign manager has acknowledged the email matter has hurt her. Republican rival Donald Trump has attacked Clinton repeatedly on the issue, calling her “Crooked Hillary,’’ saying what she did was a crime and suggesting the Justice Department would let her off because it is run by Democrats.

So is this a criminal offense? According to the WSJ, several law-enforcement officials said they don’t expect any criminal charges to be filed as a result of the investigation, although a final review of the evidence will be made only after an expected FBI interview with Clinton this summer. One reason is that government workers at several agencies, including the departments of Defense, Justice and State, have occasionally resorted to the low-side system to give each other notice about sensitive but fast-moving events, according to one law-enforcement official.

When Clinton has been asked about the possibility of being criminally charged over the email issue, she has repeatedly said “that is not going to happen.’’ She has said it was a mistake to use a personal server for email but it was a decision she made as a matter of convenience.

But what may be the punchline, is that as the WSJ writes, beyond the campaign implications, the investigation exposes the latest chapter in a power struggle that pits the enforcers of strict secrecy, including the FBI and CIA, against some officials at the State Department and other agencies who want a greater voice in the use of covert lethal force around the globe, because of the impact it has on broader U.S. policy goals.

While Hillary’s fate is yet to be determined, this episode reveals something else about the future of US usage of drone strikes:

Under pressure to address critics abroad, Mr. Obama pledged to increase the transparency of drone operations by shifting, as much as possible, control of drone programs around the world to the U.S. military instead of the CIA. An exception was made for Pakistan. But even in Pakistan, Mr. Obama recently signaled a shift. The drone strike that killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last month was conducted by the military, not the CIA, and the outcome was disclosed.  While the CIA still controls drones over the tribal areas of Pakistan near Afghanistan, the pace of strikes has declined dramatically in recent years. U.S. officials say there are fewer al Qaeda targets there now that the CIA can find.

And now we eagerly look forward to whatever the next batch of emails the “law-enforcement officials briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe” reveal in the coming weeks.

US intelligence agencies have ramped up their operations intended to remove Bolivian President Evo Morales from office. All options are on the table, including assassination. Barack Obama, who sees the weakening of Latin America’s “hostile bloc of populist states” as one of his administration’s foreign-policy victories, intends to buoy this success before stepping down. 

Washington also feels under the gun in Bolivia because of China’s successful expansion in the country. Morales is steadily strengthening his financial, economic, trade, and military relationship with Beijing. Chinese businesses in La Paz are thriving – making investments and loans and taking part in projects to secure a key position for Bolivia in the modernization of the continent’s transportation industry. In the next 10 years, thanks to Bolivia’s plentiful gas reserves, that country will become the energy hub of South America. Evo Morales sees his country’s development as his top priority, and the Chinese, unlike the Americans, have always viewed Bolivia as an ally and partner in a relationship that eschews double standards.

The US embassy in La Paz has been without an ambassador since 2008. He was declared persona non grata because of his subversive activities. The interim chargé d’affaires is currently Peter Brennan, and pointed questions have been raised about what agency he truly works for. He was previously stationed in Pakistan, where “difficult decisions” had to be made about assassinations, but most of his career has been spent handling Latin American countries. In particular, Brennan was responsible for introducing the ZunZuneo service into Cuba (an illegal program dubbed the “Cuban Twitter”). USAID fronted this CIA program, under the innocent pretext of helping to inform Cubans about cultural and sporting events and other international news. Once ZunZuneo was in place, there were plans to use this program to mobilize the population in preparation for a “Cuban Spring”. When reading about Brennan one often encounters the phrase – “dark horse”. He is used to getting what he wants, at any cost, and his tight deadline in Bolivia (before the end of Obama’s presidency) is forcing Brennan to take great risks.

Previously, Brennan (right) had “distinguished himself” during the run-up to the referendum on allowing President Evo Morales to run for reelection in 2019, as well as during the vote itself. To encourage “no” votes, the US embassy mobilized its entire propaganda machine, roused to action the NGOs under its control, and allocated considerable additional funds for the staging of protests. It is telling that many of those culminated in the burning of photographs of Morales wearing his presidential sash. A record-setting volley of dirt was fired at the president. Accusations of corruption were the most common, although Morales has always been open about his personal finances. It would have been hard to pin ownership of “$43 billion in offshore accounts” on him, as was done to Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro.

Brennan also has agreements in place with Washington about other operations to compromise the Bolivian president. An attack was launched by the CIA agent Carlos Valverde Bravo, a well-known TV journalist and former agent with Bolivia’s security services. In his Feb. 3 program he accused Morales’s former companion, Gabriela Zapata, the commercial manager of the Chinese company CAMC Engineering Co, of orchestrating shady business deals worth $500 million. Insinuations simultaneously began circulating on the Internet about the Bolivian president’s involvement in those, although Morales completely broke ties with Zapata back in 2007 and has spared no individual, regardless of name and rank, in his battle against corruption.

The “exposés” staged by the US embassy continued until the day of the referendum itself on Feb. 21, 2016. The “no” votes prevailed, despite the favorable trend that had been indicated in the voter polls. Morales accepted defeat with his Indian equanimity, but in his statements after the referendum he was clear that the US embassy had waged a hostile campaign.

The investigation into Gabriela Zapata revealed that she had capitalized on her previous relationship with Morales to further her career. She was offered a position with the Chinese company CAMC and took possession of a luxury home in an upscale neighborhood in La Paz, making a big show of her “closeness” to the Bolivian leader, although he played no role in any of this. This was the same reason she tried to initiate a business and personal relationship with the president’s chief of staff, Juan Ramón Quintana. He has categorically denied having ever met Zapata.

Gradually, all the CIA’s fabricated evidence disintegrated. Zapata is now testifying, and her lawyer has holed up abroad because his contacts with the Americans have been exposed. The American agent Valverde Bravo has fled to Argentina. Accusations against Morales are being hurled from there with renewed vigor. The attack continues. It’s all quite logical: a continually repeated lie is an effective weapon in this newest generation of information warfare. The latest example was the ouster of Dilma Rousseff, who was accused of corruption by officials whom her government had identified as corrupt!

The US military has been increasing its presence in Bolivia in recent months. For example, Colonel Felando Pierre Thigpen visited the department of Santa Cruz, where there are strong separatist leanings. Thigpen is known to be involved in a joint program between the Pentagon and CIA to recruit and train potential personnel for American intelligence. In commentary by Bolivian bloggers and in publications about Thigpen, it is noted that the colonel was dispatched to the country on the eve of events related to “the impending replacement of a government that has exhausted its potential, as well as the need to recruit alternative young personalities into the new leadership structure.” Some comments have indicated that Thigpen is overseeing the work of diplomats Peter Brennan and Erik Foronda, a media and press advisor at the US embassy.

The embassy responded by stating that Thigpen had arrived in Bolivia “at his own initiative”, but it is no secret that he was invited to “work with youth” by NGOs that coordinate their activities with the Americans: the Foundation for Leadership and Integral Development (FULIDEI), the Global Transformation Network (RTG), the Bolivian School of Heroes (EHB), and others. So Thigpen’s work is not being improvised, but is rather a direct challenge to Morales’s government. Domestically, the far-right party Christian Democratic Party provides him with political cover.

The US plans to destabilize Bolivia – which were provided to Evo Morales’s government by an unnamed friendly country – include a step-by-step chronogram of the actions plotted by the Americans. For example: “To spark hunger strikes and mass mobilizations and to stir up conflicts within universities, civil organizations, indigenous communities, and varied social circles, as well as within government institutions. To strike up acquaintances with both active-duty and retired military officers, with the goal of undercutting the government’s credibility within the armed forces. It is absolutely essential to train the military for a crisis scenario, so that in an atmosphere of growing social conflict they will lead an uprising against the regime and support the protests in order to ensure a peaceful transition to democracy.”

The program’s first fruits have been the emergence of social protests (recent marches by disabled citizens were staged at the suggestion of the American embassy), although Evo Morales’s administration has evinced more concern for the interests of Bolivians on a limited income than any other government in the history of Bolivia.

The scope of the operation to oust President Morales – financed and directed by US intelligence agencies – continues to expand. The Americans’ biggest adversary in Latin America has been sentenced to a fate of “neutralization”. Speaking out against Evo Morales, the radical opposition has openly alluded to the fact that it has been a long time since the region has seen a really newsworthy air crash involving a politician who was hostile to Washington…

A United States Treasury official on Thursday said donors located in the Gulf remain an important source of revenue for Al Qaeda.

“Donors located in the Gulf have traditionally been an important source of revenue for AQ. This remains the case, but we are making strides in cutting off their financial networks,” Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the US Department of Treasury, said at a hearing. 

He said the Gulf countries have taken a wide range of actions, and called Saudi Arabia a “regional leader” in combating terrorist financing, amid suspicions in Congress the kingdom is not doing enough to choke off support for terrorists.

“All Gulf countries have now passed counter-terrorism laws that criminalize terrorist financing, and have enhanced financial controls across the charitable sector to ensure that funds intended for humanitarian objectives do not benefit terrorist activity,” he said.

“In particular, Saudi Arabia has emerged as a regional leader within the Gulf and has joined us in a targeted designations,” he said.

Still, Glaser said despite progress, there is “more work to be done” to ensure the entire Gulf financial system is a hostile environment to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, particularly to Nusrah Front — Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria.

Criticism of Saudi Arabia has mounted in recent weeks on Capitol Hill, after one of the authors of a congressionally-commissioned report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks called for the declassification of 28 pages he says show that the kingdom was involved.

Here we go again. Earlier this year, some were surprised to see Project For The New American Century (PNAC) co-founder and longtime DC fixture Robert Kagan endorse former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president.

They shouldn’t have been. As is now clear from a policy paper [PDF] published last month, the neoconservatives are going all-in on Hillary Clinton being the best vessel for American power in the years ahead.

The paper, titled “Expanding American Power,” was published by the Center for a New American Security, a Democratic Party-friendly think tank co-founded and led by former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy. Flournoy served in the Obama Administration under Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and is widely considered to be the frontrunner for the next secretary of defense, should Hillary Clinton become president.

The introduction to Expanding American Power is written by the aforementioned Robert Kagan and former Clinton Administration State Department official James Rubin. The paper itself was prepared in consultation with various defense and national security intellectuals over the course of six dinners. Among the officials includes those who signed on to PNAC letters calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, such as Elliot Abrams, Robert Zoellick, Craig Kennedy, Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, and Flournoy herself, who signed on to a PNAC letter in 2005 calling for more ground troops in Iraq.

The substance of the document is about what one would expect from an iteration of PNAC. The paper cites a highly revisionist history of post-World War II American policymaking, complete with a celebration of America’s selfless motives for every action. Left out is any mention of overthrowing democratically elected and popular governments for US business, or the subsequent blowback for such actions in Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere.

For the neocons and liberal interventionists at the Center for a New American Security, the United States has always acted for the benefit of all.

The paper primarily focuses on the economy and defense budget, and American security interests in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Supporting the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are considered the highest priority, as they will bind the main drivers of the US-led “liberal world order”—the US and Europe—closer together.

According to the paper, “Even in a world of shifting economic and political power, the transatlantic community remains both the foundation and the core of the liberal world order.” In other words, the West must maintain control of the planet, for the good of all, of course.

Part of the European concerns are a rise in nationalist sentiment in eastern Europe and the United Kingdom, for which the paper blames Russia, even bizarrely claiming that Russian funding is the cause of the disunity within the European Union—a claim without foundation, especially in the UK’s case.

The revisionist history continues, as the paper makes an astonishingly absurd claim on the US role in Asia, stating, “U.S. leadership has been indispensable in ensuring a stable balance of power in Asia the past 70 years.” No mention of the calamitous US war in Vietnam or its reciprocal effects in the killing fields of Cambodia. Nor is the US role in the genocide in East Timor dispensed with anywhere.

Then we come to the Middle East, where things really get slippery. The paper breezes past the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a sorry, not sorry statement: “Despite recent American misjudgments and failures in the Middle East, for which all recent administrations, including the present one, bear some responsibility, and despite the apparent intractability of many of the problems in the region, the United States has no choice but to engage itself fully in a determined, multi-year effort to find an acceptable resolution to the many crises tearing the region apart.”

And with that, the paper demands regime change in Syria and that “Any such political solution must include the departure of Bashar al-Assad (but not necessarily all members of the ruling regime), since it is Assad’s brutal repression of Syria’s majority Sunni population that has created both the massive exodus and the increase in support for jihadist groups like ISIS.” Left out is the US role in destabilizing Iraq and arming jihadist rebels in Syria.

The paper goes on to regurgitate alarmingly facile claims about regional tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia that could have been written by the government of Saudi Arabia itself, such as, “We also reject Iran’s attempt to blame others for regional tensions it is aggravating, as well as its public campaign to demonize the government of Saudi Arabia.” It also states that “the United States must adopt as a matter of policy the goal of defeating Iran’s determined effort to dominate the Greater Middle East.”

If that appears like a commitment to more reckless regime change in the Middle East, that’s because it is.

But the overriding concern of the entire paper, with all its declarations about bipartisanship and universal altruism, is a concern with the American people being increasingly apprehensive towards the empire, and that concern leading to further defense budget cuts and unwillingness to support adventurism abroad.

The authors of the paper hope an improved economy can help change the current situation. “Ensuring that the domestic economy is lifting up the average American is still the best way to ensure support for global engagement and also contribute to a stronger, more influential America,” they write, though they see no end in sight, regardless of public support, claiming, “the task of preserving a world order is both difficult and never-ending.”

That this is what a think tank closely associated with Hillary Clinton is openly claiming should be concerning to all. While such analysis and declarations no doubt please the Center for a New American Security’s defense contractor donors, the American people are less-than-enthused with perpetual war for perpetual peace.

Former Secretary Clinton already affirmed her belief in regime change during the campaign, but now it looks like those waiting in the wings to staff her government are anxious to wet their bayonets.

The European Parliament has had a great week, writes Molly Scott Cato MEP – for those who oppose GMOs in food and farming. MEPs voted on five occasions to say no to GMOs, and gave their support to agroecology as the only sustainable way to feed the world.

This week’s European Parliament plenary saw five different votes on GMOs. Altogether, they give a good idea of the Parliament’s opinion on GMOs – a resounding NO.

With corporations playing an increasing role in our food systems, Greens argue that GMOs are simply a means to profit from our plates, detrimental to smaller-scale farmers and thoroughly damaging to biodiversity.

Recently proposed mergers of big agrochemical multinationals give further cause for concern – Dow with Du Pont, Syngenta with ChemChina, perhaps even Bayer with Monsanto.

As a member of both the Agriculture and Economics Committees in the European Parliament, I am concerned about the corporate capture of our food production; endorsing monocultures, putting patents on life – and packaging it with a pesticide.

The problems of industrial agriculture will not be solved through GMOs or fancy technological tools, but by converting to agro-ecological approaches to farming. The EU should fund research on classical plant breeding adapted to these systems, rather thanpouring 67% of its agriculture research budget into biotechnology.

‘Old’ GMOs out of the door, but ‘new’ GMOs knocking?

A pro-agribusiness report on ‘technological solutions for sustainable agriculture’, initiated by Conservative MEP Anthea McIntyre, was heavily amended by MEPs who refused to open the door to untested, unlabelled GMOs in the EU.

As Green spokesperson for this report, I remain critical of its misguided ‘solutions,’ which push us further into input-intensive, industrial agriculture. Another report by MEP Jan Huitema on ‘innovation in farming’ faced similar rebuttals.

Over the last three years, the agroindustry has been arguing that their new biotechnologies (which they call ‘new breeding techniques‘) don’t need to be controlled under the current GMO regulation. But the products of these techniques clearly meet the definition of ‘genetically modified organisms’, and carry similar and additional risks to those posed by current GMOs (transgenesis).

Fortunately, keeping agriculture and not agribusiness in mind, MEPs intend to call a spade a spade – and voted against the attempts to sneak new GMOs past the regulators. This also sends the Commission a strong warning over its decision in April to bow to US pressure on the issue in the TTIP negotiations.

No to GMO imports! No GMOs in Africa!

Two objections to the authorisation for import of a GM carnation and a GM maize (Maize Bt11 × MIR162 × MIR604 × GA21) were voted through on Wednesday. These were the 5th and 6th objections submitted to the plenary since December 2015, all initiated by the Greens/EFA.

Clearly, MEPs don’t want GMOs imported into the EU – so it is only logical that they oppose their promotion elsewhere. Hence their vote criticizing the so-called ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa’ (NAFSN).

This public-private partnership claims to leverage private investment in agriculture, to improve food security and nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa. But NGOs have repeatedly attacked this misconceived scheme for fostering land grabbing, stopping farmers from saving and reproducing their own seeds, and also for forcing GMOs on African farmers.

An overwhelming number of MEPs voted in favour of a Green report critiquing this initiative this week, which included opposition to any promotion of GMOs in Africa with European taxpayers’ money.

The draft report had prompted accusations of neo-colonialism from Monsanto – ironic, given that the industry has been exploiting the New Alliance in order to change African legal frameworks on land ownership, seeds and GMOs for their own benefit – facilitating the privatisation of land, water and seeds, and stripping African farmers of the right to save, sell, buy, exchange, plant and breed the seeds they have developed over millennia.

Which prompts the question: who are the real neo-colonialists?

Molly Scott Cato is Green MEP for the South West of England, elected in May 2014. She sits on the Economics and Monetary Affairs Committee and Agriculture and Rural Development Committee in the European Parliament. She is Green Party speaker on economy and finance and has published widely, particularly on issues related to green economics. Molly is formerly Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at the University of Roehampton.

For more than three years we have watched the COMEX very closely. The initial clue to begin watching were the waterfall events where the amounts of paper gold and silver sold simply dwarfed what was being mined. I have said many times after the smackdowns, “first, no one has this much (gold or silver), second, no trader would ever sell in this fashion and destroy the price he will receive for the sale. Clearly the sales were done to affect price downward”. Each time I have written on this topic and suggested it would ultimately end with a delivery default I have been trolled. It looks very much like we will soon find out a default of delivery is not only possible but highly probable.

Starting with gold, last month (May) saw 221,000 ounces stand for delivery.

This amount actually grew during the month which is highly unusual as the amount standing has ALWAYS dropped during delivery periods, this is the first time to my knowledge that the amount standing actually increased. For comparison, May 2015 delivered only 2,500 ounces. Looking back at June of 2015, the amount standing on first notice day was 509,000 ounces. The final amount delivered was 295,000. As I have written and questioned before, who would fully fund their account 100% to take delivery …and then “go away”? The answer of course is someone willing to accept a “premium” as a bribe to not take delivery.

This June as you know does look to be quite interesting. The initial amount standing was 49.119 tons or over 1.5 million ounces. The amount dropped on day two by about 4 tons but has since gained back nearly all of it to stand at 49.11 tons. (If I am not mistaken, this month is the largest month of gold contracts ever standing for delivery.) Over 40 tons have already been served so we know these longs could not be persuaded to “go away”. We have seen no evidence of delivery for March, April or May. If we add these together with June, we have 65.813 tons standing with only 51.12 tons of registered gold.

My point is this, someone very real and very big is standing for gold. This “someone” would not be bribed to go away last month and does not look like they will go way this month!

Who is this long who all of a sudden cannot be bribed to stand down? As you know, I have speculated the Chinese (and Russia) have been positioning themselves to abandon the dollar as the reserve currency. I theorized nearly two years ago it was the Chinese who held the long month after month and rolled them …until they won’t and then demand delivery. I still believe this is the case as the open interest in silver has stayed so high, only pockets as deep as a sovereign could have sustained the losses. It also needs to be said again, no market has ever seen open interest expand to all time record highs …while the price was plumbing multi year lows. A reconciliation will come at some point, either open interest needs to be washed out or price skyrockets, one or the other.

Looking specifically at silver, we have a true potential atomic bomb in the works for July. COMEX claims to have 22,482,000 ounces registered and available for delivery. This number is an ALL TIME low for “registered” ounces. To put this number in perspective, it is less than $400 million dollars and only about 10 days of global production. Also in perspective, customers have already withdrawn 12,244,000 ounces of silver in just the first 8 days of June! Finally, the real shocker is the July contract. First, the open interest for July of over 107,000 contracts is more than 50% of the entire open interest.

This represents over 536 MILLION OUNCES! Do you realize this amounts to over 60% of total global production on just one bourse and in just one single month? Obviously there will not still be 536 million ounces standing for delivery by July 1st, but as it stands now there are contracts open to deliver 24 ounces for every 1 ounce registered for delivery.

So, is a delivery default here and now in June or July? I am sure I will hear “they will never default, they will cash settle”. “Cash settlement” IS default, please do not delude yourself into thinking it isn’t. If you believe cash settlement is OK, what will you think AFTERWARDS when your cash will not buy metal? There is no way to tell if it is here and now but it certainly looks possible. Something has definitely changed. The longs of the past who would stand on first notice day only to mysteriously disappear during the delivery period seem to have changed or …are now different entities. It is clear by looking at past deliveries and current inventories that COMEX is not meant to be a major delivery hub. It has been “used” to “price” gold even though very little real metal changed hands.

I believe this is about to change as actual gold being traded will become the pricing mechanism. The about face in the price action over the last six months and now the amounts standing tell you something very big is afoot. We already know that physical metal has been moving from West to East for years. I believe we are about to find out the pricing mechanism itself is being moved from West to East.

Stay tuned!

Though President Barack Obama and his State Department nixed the northern leg of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in November, the Canadian pipeline company giant has continued the fight in a federal lawsuit in Houston, claiming the Obama Administration has violated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

As the NAFTA lawsuit works its way through pre-trial hearings and motions — and as Keystone XL has become a campaign talking point for Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump — TransCanada has quietly consolidated an ambitious North America-wide fracked gas-carrying pipeline network over the past half year.

Since Keystone XL North got the boot, TransCanada has either won permits or announced business moves in Canada, the United States and Mexico which will vastly expand its pipeline footprint and ability to move gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to market.

Oh Canada

North of the U.S. border, TransCanada landed the last permits it needed from the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission on May 5 to build its proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline project. Coastal GasLink aims to carry gas obtained via fracking from the Montney Shale westward to LNG Canada’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Kitimat, B.C.

“This is a significant regulatory milestone for our project, which is a key component of TransCanada’s growth plan that includes more than $13 billion in proposed natural gas pipeline projects which support the emerging liquefied natural gas industry on the British Columbia Coast,” Russ Girling, TransCanada’s CEO said in a press release.

Coastal GasLink awaits a final investment decision from LNG Canada by the end of the year. If it gets the green light, pipeline construction of the 416-mile line will begin in early 2017.

Build Them or Buy Them?

In the U.S., while TransCanada’s NAFTA lawsuit drags on, the corporation also announced a major $13 billion buy-out acquisition of pipeline behemoth Columbia Pipeline Group on March 17.

Columbia maintains a gargantuan 15,000-mile network of gas pipelines running across the U.S., with a crucial hub ofcrisscrossing pipelines based in the prolific Marcellus Shale basin, an epicenter for fracking in the northeast, particularly Pennsylvania. In a press statement announcing the deal, Girling pointed out just how big his company’s gas-carrying pipeline capacity has become in the U.S. and its nascent potential ability to carry that gas to U.S.-based LNGexport terminals.

“The acquisition represents a rare opportunity to invest in an extensive, competitively-positioned, growing network of regulated natural gas pipeline and storage assets in the Marcellus and Utica shale gas regions,” Girling said in the company’s press release announcing the Columbia deal. “The assets complement our existing North American footprint which together will create a 91,000-kilometre (57,000-mile) natural gas pipeline system connecting the most prolific supply basins to premium markets across the continent. At the same time, we will be well positioned to transport North America’s abundant natural gas supply to liquefied natural gas terminals for export to international markets.”

The deal has yet to be sealed, however, awaiting both a final shareholder vote on June 22 and antitrust approval by the U.S.Federal Trade Commission. Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs acted as the financial adviser for the sale.

Kevin Allison, global resources columnist at Reuters Breakingviews, pointed to the acquisition of Columbia by TransCanada as an example of its shifting business strategy post-Keystone XL (even though the lawsuit, most certainly, is also part of the company’s business strategy). Rather than focusing on building new lines, he says TransCanada increasingly sees profit margin opportunities in buying ones already permitted and pumping oil and gas, like those owned by Columbia.

TransMexico

As a general rule, oil and gas related developments in Mexico — helped along by the privatization of the country’s energy and electricity sectors, itself spearheaded by the U.S. Department of State under Hillary Clinton — have flown under the radar as compared to its neighbors to the north in North America. TransCanada’s pipeline moves south of the U.S. border,documented here on DeSmog days after Obama’s November Keystone XL announcement, also have garnered far less attention than Keystone XL.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation took note of these dynamics in a recent article.

“The regulatory oversight and environmental opposition is a fraction of what it is in Canada and the United States for a company looking to construct new pipelines,” wrote the CBC. “Mexico is proving to be a low-risk, high-reward business venture at a time when the pipeline company is struggling to construct new projects elsewhere in North America.”

Since November, when the company announced its victory in a bid from Mexico’s government to build the 155-mile Tuxpan-Tula pipeline set to carry fracked gas from the U.S. to supply Mexico’s electricity grid, TransCanada has announced other key maneuvers in Mexico. All of them, it turns out, connect to Tuxpan-Tula.

For example, on April 11, the Mexican government chose TransCanada to build, own and operate the 261-mile long Tula-Villa de Reyes pipeline in Mexico. Tula-Villa is slated to connect to the existing 81-mile long Tamazunchale Pipeline.

Further, on May 20, Infraestructura Marina del Golfo (IMG) — a joint venture between the Sempra Energy subsidiary company IEnova and TransCanada — submitted a bid to operate the Sur de Texas-Tuxpan gas pipeline, which would connect to the Tuxpan-Tula pipeline (and to which the Tula-Villa de Reyes pipeline would connect). The 500-mile Sur de Texas-Tuxpan would carry gas initially obtained via fracking from Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale basin underwater through the Gulf of Mexico, into the other Mexico-based TransCanada pipelines and then flood Mexico’s energy grid with fracked gas.

BNAmericas has reported that the Mexican government will announce the winner of that bid later this month.

The U.S. Commercial Service, an arm housed within the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, promoted both Tuxpan-Tula and Tula-Villa de Reyes as potential business opportunities for U.S. corporations on its website.

Image Credit: U.S. Commercial Service

Girling, TransCanada’s CEO, sees Mexico as the land of business opportunity for his company moving forward. And understandably so, given all of the company’s recent gas pipeline bid victories there, totaling 916 miles in length.

“Mexico has been a very good place for us to do business,” he told CBC. “I have a very positive long-term view of the growth of Mexico and its position in North America. We foresee there will be more opportunities on the horizon in Mexico.”

The 916 miles of fracked gas pipeline TransCanada has carved out for itself in Canada amounts to just 250 miles shy of the length of the originally slated Keystone XL pipeline and longer by nearly an order of two than the 485-mile operational southern leg of Keystone XL (now called the Gulf Coast Pipeline).

And that’s not even counting the mileage obtained from the Columbia purchase or British Columbia’s Coastal GasLink pipeline. That aside, it’s safe to say that TransCanada is quickly morphing into “TransMexico” and more broadly into a North American fracked gas pipeline empire.

Israel is concealing vital records to prevent darkest periods in its history from coming to light, academics say 

Israel is locking away millions of official documents to prevent the darkest episodes in its history from coming to light, civil rights activists and academics have warned as the country’s state archives move online.

They claim government officials are concealing vital records needed for historical research, often in violation of Israeli law, in an effort to avoid damaging Israel’s image.

The Israeli army has long claimed to be the “most moral” in the world.

Accusations of increased secrecy come as Israel marks this week the 49th anniversary of the 1967 war, when it seized and occupied Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights.

Many of the records to which access is being denied refer to that war and the first years of Israel’s military rule over Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Menachem Klein, a politics professor at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, said researchers needed such documents to gain a clearer picture of events half a century ago, the goals of policymakers, and human rights abuses. “We have gradually been able to expose some of what happened in 1948 [the war that established Israel], but there is still very little available to help us understand the 1967 war,” he told Al-Jazeera.

As part of its commemorations this week, the state archives published testimony by military commanders from 1967. However, local media noted that whole pages had been censored on “security grounds”.

Nonetheless, some of the declassified material was revealing. Uzi Narkiss, who headed the army’s central command at the time, suggested that he and other commanders hoped to ethnically cleanse most of the territories under cover of fighting. He told fellow officers: “Within 72 hours we’ll drive out all the Arabs from the West Bank.”

The campaign to open up Israel’s archives is being led by the Akevot Institute, a group of Israeli human rights activists, lawyers and researchers trying to document the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a new report, Point of Access, they note that only 1 percent of 400 million pages of documents have been made public.

Most of the files should have been accessible after 15 years, with the most top-secret documents locked away for up to 70 years. In many cases, Akevot says, the classified status of documents has expired, but they have still not been made public. Reasons for denial of access are rarely given.

In other instances, documents that were already declassified – some of them decades ago – have been re-sealed and are now unavailable.

Despite the mounting secrecy, historic war crimes are still coming to light.

In March the largest known massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli army during the 1948 war that founded Israel – what Palestinians call al-Nakba – was exposed, in spite of official efforts to keep the atrocity under wraps for nearly seven decades.

The gag was effectively ended with the publication of a soldier’s letter in the Haaretz newspaper, detailing the execution of hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children at the village of Dawaymeh, near Hebron.

“The entire history of Israeli society and its conflict with the Palestinians is to be found in those archives,” Lior Yavne, co-author of the report, told Al-Jazeera. “It is impossible to understand and write about that history without access.” He added: “In practice, most of Israel’s archives are permanently closed.”

According to Akevot, Israel has exploited a new programme to digitally copy existing paper files to increase secrecy.

Archivists are currently scanning and uploading documents to create a comprehensive database – a project that is likely to take more than 25 years. The archive’s website went live in April.

However, the public nature of the database means hundreds of thousands of national security files have been submitted for the first time to an official body known as the military censor. Until now its powers had been largely restricted to oversight of the Israeli media, said Yavne.

The censor is reported to be refusing to release many of the documents, redacting others and reclassifying as secret many records that were previously available to researchers.

A growing backlog of tens of thousands of files that need to be reviewed has also blocked access to researchers, according to Akevot.

Requests to see documents can be denied if they damage national security or foreign relations, or violated privacy.

Yavne said access to records after the time restriction had expired was regularly refused without legal authority. Files appeared to be withheld if officials feared they might “highlight human rights violations or shed light on sordid affairs”.

The report notes that the records of government decision-making belong to the public but are treated as “a secret to be kept from it”.

The current emphasis on concealment contrasts with the late 1980s, when parts of the archives from the 1948 war were opened.

A handful of Israeli historians, most notably Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim, revealed that much of Israel’s official history of the state’s founding was based on misinformation.

These “new historians” unearthed evidence of wide-scale massacres of Palestinians, rapes and forced expulsions. They also showed that common assumptions about the war – such as that Palestinians had been ordered to flee by their leaders – were later inventions by Israel to minimise international criticism.

One Israeli academic, Shay Hazkani, has estimated that up to a third of records relating to the 1948 war that were declassified have been put under lock again. Given the large number of documents, many had yet to be examined by researchers.

Nur Masalha, a UK-based Palestinian historian who exposed evidence in Israel’s archives of expulsion, or “transfer”, policies against Palestinians between 1948 and 1967, told Al Jazeera the clampdown on access to documents was part of wider internal repression in Israel.

It reflected, he said, Israel’s mounting concern at the connections being made between Israel’s past and present atrocities. “Israel has faced growing international condemnation for its war crimes in Gaza, and at the same time Palestinians, including those inside Israel, have become more determined to focus attention on the Nakba.”

Some of the most highly classified records – which have been under lock for 70 years – are due to be made public in less than two years’ time. That would turn the spotlight on the most contentious events from Israel’s founding.

However, according to Akevot, no preparations have been made by Israel’s most secretive security agencies, the Shin Bet intelligence service and the Mossad spy agency, to release their archives.

The report says access “is expected to be denied” for the foreseeable future. Yavne said the Shin Bet had already ignored a commitment to make available sections of its archives after 50 years.

Those documents would shed light on Shin Bet policies in the state’s early years, when a fifth of Israel’s population belonging to the Palestinian minority were placed under a military government.

Details of this period would be embarrassing both because of the harsh treatment of Palestinians during military rule and because the template of the military government was later exported into the occupied territories, said Klein.

Archive documents might expose the Shin Bet’s detention and torture practices, its use of blackmail and entrapment to recruit informants, and its harassment of Palestinian leaders. “The Shin Bet has always operated beyond the law,” he said.

The Israeli prime minister’s office, which oversees both the archives and the Shin Bet, declined to comment.

Yavne said Akevot, which was established 18 months ago, was assisting academics and researchers, most of whom were afraid to speak out against the mounting restrictions. “They are worried that if they are seen to be criticising the archive policy, they may face even more restricted access,” he said.

He added that Akevot was creating an alternative database of documents to help researchers to understand the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Among the top-secret documents recently unearthed by the group is one revealing a government order immediately after the 1967 war to remove the Green Line, marking Israel’s internationally recognised borders, from all maps used in Israeli schools.

Klein said the aim was to “root into Israelis’ minds the idea that the occupied Palestinian territories are part of Israel” to make returning them more difficult.

Other classified documents from the period show that Israel’s chief adviser on international law, Theodor Meron, warned that the Geneva Conventions applied to Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories. Israel has publicly always denied that it is bound by the conventions.

There has been a similar spate of revelations about the 1948 war.

In January Haaretz reported that the archives were still refusing access to a transcript of a cabinet meeting in 1949 in which ministers discussed the widespread desecration of churches the previous year.

The discussion, however, could be reconstructed from other sources.

The Foreign Minister of the time, Moshe Sharett, is recorded as saying the Israeli soldiers had behaved in ways “fit for savages”- a reference to their defecating in churches and looting icons. Sharett suggested paying the Vatican large compensation to “buy their silence”.

Israeli military correspondent Amir Oren recently wrote that archival evidence showed that the current spate of Israeli soldiers executing Palestinians was not a new phenomenon.

The 1948 war, Oren wrote, had “launched the catalogue of murder, rape, looting, contempt for human life” by the Israeli army.

(Toronto/Ottawa) Today, during OceanaGold’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Toronto, company shareholders were asked to scrutinize company claims regarding supposed benefits for affected communities in El Salvador and the Philippines.

“It just doesn’t add up. OceanaGold is not acting in the interest of communities in El Salvador when it sues the country for USD $250 million over a mine permit that it has never met the regulatory requirements to obtain,” remarked Rachel Small from the Council of Canadians in Toronto.

A decision is expected shortly over this suit from the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The case, which has dragged on for seven years, has already cost El Salvador over USD $12 million in legal costs; enough for a year’s worth of adult literacy classes for roughly 330,000 people.

“OceanaGold’s claims don’t compute. The company insists that mining is good for the country, but Salvadorans have been remarkably clear that this is not their desired option for future generations in their densely populated and already water-stressed country,” said Jim Hodgson from the United Church of Canada.

Since 2008, three successive Salvadoran presidents have committed not to issue new mining permits. A 2015 opinion poll found that opposition to metal mining is nearly 79.5% nationwide and 83.9% in municipalities affected by OceanaGold’s El Doradoproject.

“The activities of the company’s El Dorado Foundation in El Salvador do not compensate for the bullying of the last seven years. Worse, this sort of so-called corporate philanthropy could compound social divisions and contribute to further violence against local community activists, as has already taken place,” said Jen Moore of MiningWatch Canada, co-author of a recent report about the activities of the El Dorado Foundation in El Salvador.

Between 2009 and 2011, four environmental activists were murdered in Cabañas, El Salvador. More recently, several local organizations have received threats. These crimes have never been fully investigated.

“It is particularly shameful that OceanaGold is using its experience at the Didipio mine in the Philippines to try to pitch this project to Salvadorans when, based on what we have seen on the ground in Nueva Vizcaya, this project’s legacy is one of community displacement, broken promises, and environmental degradation,” said Connie Sorio for KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives.”

A statement from the Filipino coalition Alyansa Tigil Mina prepared in time for OceanaGold’s AGM stated the demand from local organizations in Nueva Vizcaya that are calling for OceanaGold’s operations to stop and for their lands to be rehabilitated, given impacts on water supplies and farmlands. The Incoming Governor of Nueva Vizcaya, Carlos M. Padilla, also issued an open letter reiterating the call for OceanaGold to pull out, emphasizing how the costs of the company’s open-pit mine far outweigh scarce benefits.

Contacts:

• ·Jim Hodgson, United Church of Canada, [email protected], 416-231-5931 x4013
• ·Jen Moore, MiningWatch Canada, [email protected], 613-569-3439
• ·Rachel Small, Council of Canadians, [email protected],647-769-2472
• ·Connie Sorio, KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, [email protected], 416-463-5312 x24

This week marked the 49th anniversary of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. So here are 49 facts about a military regime that has lasted almost half a century.

1. The West Bank – including East Jerusalem – and the Gaza Strip together constitute the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), which have been under Israeli military occupation since June 1967.
2. Prior to Israeli occupation, the West Bank was controlled by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip by Egypt.
3. Before the State of Israel was established in 1948, the West Bank and Gaza Strip were simply parts of Mandate Palestine; their ‘borders’ are the result of Israeli expansion and armistice lines.
4. 300,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip became refugees during Israel’s conquest in June 1967; the vast majority were unable to return.
5. In 1967, Israeli forces ethnically cleansed and destroyed a number of Palestinian villages in the OPT,including Imwas, Beit Nuba, and others.
6. By an odd coincidence of history, Israel’s military occupation of the OPT began not long after the military regime over Palestinian citizens of Israel had formally ended in December 1966.
7. Therefore, the State of Israel has subjected Palestinians citizens and Palestinian non-citizens to military rule for all but six months of its 68-year existence.
8. One of the first acts of Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem was to demolish the Mughrabi Quarter, expelling 600 residents and destroying 135 homes.
9. In place of the 800-year old Mughrabi Quarter, Israel created the Western Wall Plaza.
10. The first West Bank settlement was established in September 1967, supported by the then Labor-led government.
11. All Israeli settlements in the OPT are illegal under international law, constituting a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
12. In a secret memo in 1967, a legal adviser to the Israeli government affirmed the illegality of civilian settlements in the OPT.
13. By 1972, there were some 10,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements in the OPT.
14. In 1974/75, Israel established Ma’ale Adumim, located in the West Bank to the east of Jerusalem. It is now the largest Israeli settlement in terms of area.
15. There are now 125 government-sanctioned settlements in the OPT, plus another 100 or so unauthorised settler ‘outposts’.
16. There are around 400,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements the Occupied West Bank.
17. This excludes residents of colonies established in East Jerusalem – a further 200,000.
18. Israelis have voted in 14 national elections since June 1967. Unlike settlers, Palestinians in the OPT have been unable to vote in any of those 14 elections.
19. According to the UN, there have been 2,598 acts of violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the last ten years.
20. One of the methods adopted by Israeli authorities over the decades to colonise West Bank land has been Ottoman-era land legislation dating back to 1858.
21. By the mid-1980s, Palestinian cultivated land in the West Bank had dropped by 40 percent.
22. In 1991, Israel began requiring a Palestinian seeking to enter Israel from the OPT to obtain an individual permit.
23. More than 500 physical obstacles, including checkpoints and earth mounds, restrict Palestinian freedom of movement in the West Bank.
24. In 2003, Israel began work on the Separation Wall in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Around 85 percent of the total length of the Wall’s projected route lies inside the OPT.
25. In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion that the construction of the Wall in the OPT is “contrary to international law”.
26. Some 82,000 settlers live outside the Separation Wall; add Ariel, a major settlement-city in the middle of the northern West Bank, and the total is around 100,000 settlers.
27. The Gaza Strip is home to around 1.8 million Palestinians, some 70 percent of whom are United Nations (UN)-registered refugees, expelled from their homes by Israel in 1948.
28. For decades, Israel maintained a permanent armed presence in Gaza, expropriated land, and built colonies for a settler population that rose to more than 8,000.
29. In 2005, Israel removed these settlers, and redeployed its forces to Gaza’s perimeter fence.
30. The Gaza Strip is still under Israeli occupation: along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it forms part of a single territorial entity (OPT).
31. This was affirmed in UN Security Council Resolution 1860 in 2009, and also affirmed in November 2014 by the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
32. In 1967, Israel expanded Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries to include newly-occupied territory; this act of annexation has never been recognised by the international community.
33. A third of the annexed territory was expropriated; by 2001, some 47,000 settlement housing units had been built on this expropriated land.
34. The vast majority of Palestinians in Jerusalem are permanent residents, not citizens. In 2014, the residency status of 107 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem was revoked.
35. Palestinians suffer from a discriminatory water policy maintained by Israeli authorities.
36. Israel enforces a dual legal system in the OPT: civil courts for the 600,000 settlers, and military courts for 4.5 million Palestinians. The latter has a 99.74 percent conviction rate.
37. The Israeli military detains Palestinians from the OPT without charge or trial, for renewable six-month periods. There are currently 715 such prisoners, from a total of 7,000 jailed Palestinians.

    Saker Jaabis sits in rubble of his home in Jabel Mukaber in Jerusalem, demolished by Israeli authorities

38. Since 1967, Israeli authorities have demolished hundreds of Palestinian homes as an act of collective punishment.
39. Many Palestinian structures are demolished by Israeli forces for lacking the right permit; yet more than 95 percent of Palestinian permit applications are rejected.
40. In 2016 to date (June 6), Israeli military authorities have demolished 625 Palestinian structures.
41. During the First Intifada (1987–93), Israeli forces killed over 1,000 Palestinians, one in five of them children.
42. In the first few days of the Second Intifada, the Israeli army fired 1.3 million bullets.
43. In six military offensives from 2006-2014, Israel killed 1,097 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.
44. Israeli occupation forces killed 137 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2015, and 56 in 2014. Over the same two-year period, Israeli forces also injured 19,950 Palestinians in the West Bank.
45. The Oslo Accords, signed in the mid-1990s, saw the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs some aspects of life for Palestinians, in some of the OPT.
46. The Accords divided up the OPT into Areas A, B, and C. The territory of Areas A and B is not contiguous, and consists of 227 separate areas under varying degrees of PA control.
47. Some 60 percent of the West Bank remains under full Israeli military and civil control. However, even in the rest of the West Bank, the Israeli military conducts raids at will.
48. According to Human Rights Watch: “Palestinians face systematic discrimination merely because of their race, ethnicity, and national origin.” Amnesty International agrees.
49. In 2012, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said Israeli policies in the OPT violate the prohibition of “racial segregation and apartheid.”

On June 8, ISIS militants withdrew from a number villages in Northern Syria, passing them to the so-called “rebel groups.” The withdrawal has started in the villages of Kafrkalbin, Kaljibreen and Sandaf. Without any significant resistance, ISIS passed the vital area between the cities of Azaz and Mare to other armed groups, proving one more time the tactical cooperation between ISIS and Turkish- Saudi- backed militants.

The Russian Aerospace Forces detected and destroyed an ISIS oil tanker convoy on in the southwestern part of the Raqqa province. Several oil tankers were destroyed and a number of militants killed by air strikes.

Russian warplanes also intensified air raids in the area in and near the city of Aleppo. The most intense air raids were observed in the area of Khan Tuman where Al Nusra and allies had seized few villages from the pro-government forces. Russian warplanes were also observed near Anadan, Haritan and Kafr Hamra. Trucks with weapons and munitions, escorted by some 160 Al-Nusra militants, have been seen crossing over from Turkey into Syria in the north of Idlib province, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported. The militants were heading to Aleppo.

Syrian Arab Army troops continued repelling attacks of al-Nusra in northeastern, northwestern and southwestern suburbs of the Aleppo city. Military equipment of militants has been registered moving to Tell Nsibin region from Haretan. Terrorists failed to break through defensive of the government troops.

The SAA, supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces, continued the advance in the province of Raqqa, seizing the Rasafeh Crossroad in western Raqqa. Late June 8, units of the SAA’s 555th Regiment of the 4th Mechanized Division and Desert Hawks were within 30 km of the Tabaqa Military Airport. No more significant gains were reported while heavy clashes were ongoing in the area.

he Syrian Democratic Forces, backed and managed by the US military, are finishing the encirclement of the ISIS-controlled city of Manbij. By now, the only logistical line, controlled by ISIS in the area, is the Manbij-Al Bab road.

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President Bashar al-Assad said that the Syrian people surprised the world with their unprecedented participation in the People’s Assembly elections, sending a clear message to the world that the greater the pressure gets, the more the Syrians commit to their sovereignty.

In a speech addressing the People’s Assembly of the 2nd legislative term on Tuesday, the President started with congratulating the Syrian people on the advent of the holy month of Ramadan, hoping that in next Ramadan Syria will have recovered.

His Excellency said that while this is not the first time he stands at the Assembly after a new parliament was elected, but this time is greatly different from the previous ones as these elections came amid great international and regional and political events and amid harsh internal circumstances that led some to expect the elections to fail or not be accomplished, or if accomplished, they would be boycotted completely by the citizens, or at best they would be met with indifference.

“But what happened was the opposite, as the Syrian people surprised the world once again with their wide participation in one of the important national and constitutional events,” President al-Assad said, adding “the unprecedented level of participation by voters to elect their representatives at the People’s Assembly was a clear message to the world that the greater the pressure gets, the stronger the Syrian people’s commitment to their independence becomes, and that the further others attempt to interfere in their affairs, the more they prove to be committed to the constitution as the defender of independence and the pillar of stability.

This national stance was not represented by the level of participation only, but also by the unprecedented number of candidates, who also showed a high sense of patriotism and awareness.

All of that is a big and important message to you, the representatives of this people, as this unprecedented participation, despite all the circumstances, challenges and dangers, places on you an extraordinary responsibility towards the citizens who entrusted their hopes in your hands to maintain and preserve them through hard, sincere, and honest work that should rise up to the gravity of the challenges imposed on Syria and up to this turnout and this trust the people gave you.

President al-Assad noted that just as these elections were not ordinary and the level of participation was unprecedented, this Assembly also came different from the previous ones, as the voters who are used to electing representatives showed much responsibility and awareness and a high level of understanding of the changes in the situation and the value of sacrifices.

He pointed out that in addition to the people electing representatives of their social groups, they chose and voted for candidates who lived the suffering and are willing to give, adding “your Assembly this time, and for the first time, includes the injured who sacrificed a piece of their body so that the homeland can be complete, the martyr’s mother or father or sister whose children sacrificed their lives in order for Syria to persist, the doctor who kept the sublime character of the profession and was considerate of the people and their economic and living conditions and so treated the citizens for free, the artist who carried a gun and defended his land and honor.”

His Excellency noted that this time, the number of women, youths, and holders of higher university degrees is much greater than before.

President al-Assad said that the world is currently witnessing unusual conditions with the West seeking to preserve its grip on the world at any cost, resulting in international clashes that in turn created regional clashes between states that seek to preserve their sovereignty and independence and states that do others’ bidding, and this reflected on the region in general and on Syria in particular.

He elaborated by saying that these conflicts reflect on the political process in Geneva, with international, regional, and local sides, along with some who have Syrian nationalities but chose to become puppets of either the most backward states in the world or states that dream of returning to the days of colonialism, adding

“but facing those traitors are another group of patriotic Syrians that are entrusted with the sacrifices of the martyrs and the wounded, and who are endeavoring through political work to preserve their land, country, and its independent decision.”

The President said

“It is no longer secret that the essence of the political process for the regional and international countries supporting terrorism has been, since the beginning and throughout the various initiatives, aimed at undermining the presence of any concept of the homeland through hitting its core, which is the constitution, and through continuous pressure to consider it null and stop it and freeze it under different names and terms, mainly the so-called transitional stage.

And of course, through hitting the constitution, two main pillars of any state get hit: the first is the institutions, on top being the institution of the army that is the defender of the state and the guarantor of the people’s security, as they started focusing on that greatly since the start and during any talk about Syria’s future and institutions. The other pillar is the diverse national, pan-Arab and religious identity of Syria, which they started to focus on when they realized that it was the underpinning of the homeland’s steadfastness at the beginning of the events.

They believed that the core of their political scheme, after their plot of terrorism failed, was to hit the constitution… the scheme was for terrorism to come and fully take over and be given the quality of moderation and later be given the legitimate cover, of course from the outside and not the inside. Their scheme was to undermine the constitution, and consequently create absolute chaos from which the only exit would be a sectarian, ethnic constitution that turns us from people committed to their homeland into conflicting groups that cling to their sects and seek help from strangers against their own.

The President stressed that the sectarian experiences prove that sectarian regimes turn the people of one homeland into adversaries, and when there are enemies and adversaries anywhere, then in that case each party looks for allies, and the allies in such cases wouldn’t be inside Syria, or inside the homeland, and since relationships would be based on doubt, grudge, and hatred in the sectarian model, then the ally would be found in the outside.

“Here is when the imperialist states come and put themselves forward as protectors of those groups, and their interference in the affairs of that homeland becomes justified and legitimate, and then they move at some point to partitioning when the partitioning scheme is ready. Therefore, and in order to consolidate their scheme, we all notice that the sectarian terms occupy a significant space in the political discourse of the terrorism-sponsoring countries, the regional and the international ones,” he added, stressing that all this seeks to consecrate this concept and make it seem unquestionable or even indispensable, at which point pressure would begin on Syria to accept this logic.

His Excellency explained that just like unity starts with the unity of the people and not with geography, division also begins in the same way by dividing the people, adding “since we never have and never will allow them to take Syria down that way into the abyss, we proposed at the start of Geneva 3 a paper of principles that form the basis for talks with other sides.”

President al-Assad said that after reaching agreement over the principles proposed by Syria, then it’s possible to discuss other issues like the national unity government which would draft a new constitution via a specialized committee then put it to referendum, with parliamentary elections coming after that.

He said that everyone today asks repeatedly “what is your vision for the solution,” explaining that the solution has two aspects: the political side and fighting terrorism.

Returning to the issue of principles, the President said principles are necessary in negotiations or talks because they need reference points, and in the case of Syria they try to say that the reference point is decision 2254, but decisions contradict themselves, like the 2012 Geneva statement that speaks of Syria’s sovereignty and at the same time tries to impose a transitional body on the Syrian people.

He said that when one sets principles, they prevent sides from proposing whatever they want and define limits, and any proposition outside these principles would be considered obstruction and lack of seriousness.

“I will quickly mention the basic principles proposed in the paper: Syria’s sovereignty and unity, rejection of foreign interference, rejection of terrorism, supporting reconciliations, preserving establishments, lifting the siege, reconstruction, and controlling borders. There are also other points that are mentioned in the current constitution and other constitutions like cultural diversity, citizens’ liberties, and independence of the judiciary, and other principles. We didn’t agree to any proposition outside these principles, quite simply, and this is why they refused. We didn’t hear anyone saying no but there was evasion,” President al-Assad said.

He noted that these principles would form basis for the success of talks if there was credibility and seriousness, in addition to showing a clear vision of the mechanism of political work that would lead to a Syrian-Syrian solution, adding

“but actual talks, up to this moment, haven’t started; rather we were holding dialogue during the rounds with the international facilitator, which as I said isn’t a side to negotiate with. They didn’t respond to the paper of principles. Our delegation would ask about other sides’ reactions, and we never got an answer, which shows that those sides are reliant on their masters and it became clear that they came unwillingly and submissively to Geneva, with them beginning since the first day with making preconditions. And when they failed, they declared clearly in the last round their support of terrorism and of undermining the cessation of hostilities.”

His Excellency said that the principles paper was ignored by the other sides, and instead there was a suggestion from international sides to engage in indirect talks in different rooms with the facilitator playing the mediator, which also didn’t happen, adding that what was proposed was merely a number of questions under the tagline of “common denominators” when in fact all these questions were traps that contained terms that would harm Syria’s sovereignty, safety, its establishments, or its society.

President al-Assad said that the states involved in this issue won’t let the mediators or envoys work in an honest and independent manner, with officials from these states working behind the states and drafting the aforementioned questions under the assumption that the Syrian Arab Republic’s team of negotiators isn’t well-versed in politics, but in fact the Syrian team’s answers were decisive and they couldn’t let any of those suspicious terms slip past them, adding “in truth, for us, whoever came up with these questions, whether they were from the facilitator’s team or from those states, are either amateurs or novices in the world of politics.”

He went on to reiterate that the “other side” came to Geneva against their will after their masters forced them to go, and they came yelling and went and sulked in their hotels, and once in a while their masters would instruct them to make a certain statement, and apart from all of that there were no negotiations or agenda, as the only agenda approved for them by Riyadh is the agenda of when to wake up, sleep, and eat.

“Of course, when they failed to achieve what they wanted in the first time, they wanted to withdraw and hold Syria responsible, but they couldn’t do that in the second time. In the last time, their response was a public declaration of supporting terrorism and stopping the truce or withdrawing from the truce or what was called the cessation of hostilities,” stressing that the aftermath of that was the brutal shelling of Aleppo and the targeting of hospitals, civilians, and children by terrorists.

“Although most Syrian provinces, villages, and towns have suffered and still suffer from terrorism, and they resisted it and still do, Erdogan’s fascist regime has always focused on Aleppo because for him it’s the only hope for its Muslim Brotherhood project after he failed in Syria and after his criminal and extremist nature was exposed to the world, and also because Aleppo’s people refused to be a pawn and a tool in the hand of strangers and they resisted and persevered and remained in Aleppo, defending it and defending the homeland,” adding that Aleppo will be the graveyard where the dreams and hopes of the butcher Erodgan will be buried.

The President went on to note that in addition to what happened in Aleppo, terrorism continued to strike, with massacres in al-Zara and barbaric bombings in Tartous and Jableh, with terrorists trying in vain to incite strife in Syria, because all Syrians are brothers in life and in martyrdom who cling to life, steadfastness, and victory.

“In this context, the issue that was proposed constantly during the past few months was the issue of truce. Many of us hold the truce responsible for all that is happening. Let’s talk objectively here; nothing in this world is absolute except divine ability, and for us humans everything is relative. The truce, like anything else, if is positive then it has negative points, and if it’s negative it has positive points. In all cases, this truce doesn’t cover all areas in Syria in order for us to burden it with the negativities,” he said, adding that the truce resulted in many reconciliations that prevented a lot of bloodshed of Syrian civilians and armed forces, in addition to having benefits on the international levels that won’t be discussed now.

“On the military level, it allowed for concentrating military efforts in specific directions and realize achievements, and the first proof is liberating Palmyra shortly after the beginning of this truce and after it al-Qaryatain, and in the Ghouta of Damascus several areas were liberated of course,” the President said, adding that some of those areas were liberated in these months in much less than it would have taken to liberate them otherwise.

He explained that the problem with the truce is that it was reached with international consensus and with the agreement of the State, but there was no commitment by the US side in particular to the terms of this truce, and the US turned a blind eye to the actions of its Saudi and Turkish agents in the region.

President al-Assad noted that the Saudis openly declared their support for terrorism more than once, and Turkey openly sends terrorists across the borders to the northern areas in Syria, all while the Americans turn a blind eye to these practices, stressing that Erdogan, who caused chaos by sending forces into Iraq, blackmailed the Europeans with the refugees issue, and sent thousands of terrorists to Aleppo recently, has been reduced to a political bully or hoodlum.

“They weren’t content with the terrorism of explosives and shells; they also backed it with economic terrorism through sanctions against Syria and through pressuring the Syrian Pound with the goal of economic collapse and bringing the people to their knees,” the President said, noting that despite all difficulties the Syrian economy is still withstanding, with recent monetary steps proving the possibility of standing up to pressure and reducing the damage its caused and stabilizing the Syrian Pound.

His Excellency said that this will probably be a priority for the Assembly and for the new government that will be formed as per the constitution, explaining that the issue of the Syrian Pound is linked to the effect of terrorism in terms of its attacks on infrastructure and economic facilities, cutting off roads between cities, scaring off capitals, and the people’s reaction in general to terrorism.

President al-Assad pointed out that addressing with the Syrian Pound is a short-term issue, while the long-term issue is economy which was affected by the crisis in various ways, with some investors suspending their projects at the beginning in hopes of things returning to normal, while others continued with their work.

He stressed that what is needed for the sustainability of support the Syrian Pound and the economy is for investors to carry out projects regardless of their scales and for the government to look into laws and legislations to strengthen the economy, noting that after five years of the crisis, Syrians now have experience in how to deal with the current situation and don’t have to start from the beginning.

The terrorism of economy and the terrorism of explosives and massacres and shells are one and the same, so I assure you that our war against terrorism continues, not because we like wars, because they imposed war on us, but the bloodshed won’t end until terrorism is uprooted no matter where it is and regardless of the masks it wears.

For 32 years I have called Venezuela home. Its mountains have given me beauty, its barrios have given me music, its struggles have given me purpose, and its people have given me love.

Its Bolivarian Revolution gave me hope.  How could I not feel hope when most of my neighbors –ages 2 to 70, were studying, right in our little potato-growing town in the mountains of western Venezuela. How could I not be hopeful when 18 neighbor families received new homes to replace their unhealthy, crowded living spaces?

How could I not be grateful when my partner received life-saving emergency surgery? Or when my blind friend Chuy had his sight restored. Both for free.

But today, this is what I see from my porch:  neighbors digging frantically in barren, already-harvested potato fields, hoping to find a few overlooked little spuds. Rastreando they call it. It is an act of desperation to find any food source to keep the kids from crying, because for months, the shelves of the stores have been bare.

How did this happen?  That is the question that I bolt awake to every morning.  As I watch Juan Carlos claw the fields for potatoes; as I embrace a tearful Chichila – up and waiting in line since 2 am, searching, unsuccessfully, to buy food for her large family; as I see the pounds shed before my eyes from 10-year-old Fabiola. I am glad that my mangos are ripening now. They take some of the empty glare from Fabi’s eyes.

It is often in the deep of the night that I am kept awake by the burning question: When and how will all this end?  Followed by:  And what should I be doing?

When I keep thinking it can’t get any worse, it does.  When friends from the US write to ask if they should believe the scary articles about Venezuela’s crisis in the press, I want to say no. Because I know that global vultures are circling my adopted nation, waiting for us to fall.   Venezuela is, after all, home to the planet’s largest reserves of oil.

Lisa Sullivan

Much of their suspicion of the barrage of articles about Venezuela’s crisis is the fact that almost every article begins and ends with the same mantra: Socialism = Hunger.  A good example is a recent article in Town Hall entitled: Venezuelan Socialism Fails at Feeding the Children.  The article goes on to elaborate that between 12 and 26 percent of Venezuelans kids are food insecure (depending on their geography), which would average 19.3% childhood hunger in the country.

Just for a comparison, I looked up child undernourishment in the US and found that most sites use the figure one in five. Or 20%. So, in the world’s most prosperous nation 20% of children face undernourishment, while in Venezuela the number is 19.3%.  Since these statistics are so close, I suggest that Town Hall publish a more accurate and equally urgent article entitled: US Capitalism Fails at Feeding the Children, and Venezuelan Socialism Does only Slightly Better.

But most of our caution with these stories comes because we smell danger.  How many times have we seen  the first step on that well-traveled road to US intervention paved by these heart wrenching  stories rammed 24/7 by the media. They lay the groundwork, help to justify almost anything.

However, in spite of awareness of why we are being bombarded with stories of Venezuela’s crisis,  out of respect for friends, neighbors and family in Venezuela, I must acknowledge that this crisis is real and is brutal.  It is a crisis of critical shortages of food and medicine. Its reasons are extremely complex and fall on many shoulders.  And it threatens the health, well-being and future of too many Venezuelans today, especially the poorest ones, such as my neighbors.

How did the nation with the world’s largest reserves come to this, a nation of hungry and desperate people?   Well, that depends on who you ask.  The opposition blames Maduro.  Maduro blames the US. The press blames socialism. The ruling party blames capitalism. Economists blame price controls. Businesses blame bureaucracy. Everyone blames corruption.

Most would agree, however, that the underlying culprit is a three letter word.  OIL – the source of 95% of Venezuela’s exports. OIL – the cash cow that funds easy, cheap imports. OIL- the export giant that deters domestic production.

Living in a rural community that actually does produce food, and having also traveled extensively in this lush and fertile country, it is sometimes hard to believe that Venezuela imports more than 70% of its food.  But I shouldn’t be surprised. Quite simply, for decades, it has been much cheaper to import food than to produce it.

At least that was the case when oil prices were up. And they were for a long time.   As recently as two years ago, the price of oil was about $115 per barrel.  This February, Venezuelan crude plummeted to barely $23 a barrel. That is only $3 more than the approximately $20 cost of extracting it.

So, when the profit per barrel of oil goes from $95 to $3, it’s like your salary going from something like $50,000 a year to $1,600. Could you feed your household?

Well, if you were wise, you would have saved for a rainy day, or not put all your eggs in one basket, or at least grown some food in your back yard in case you couldn’t get to the supermarket.  Indeed, President Chavez talked a lot about this. And he even took some steps to set this in motion.

But somehow, economic diversification never happened.  Oil became a larger share of the economy under the Bolivarian revolution. Imports grew. Some say this was because Chavez was too preoccupied with the task of providing healthcare, education and shelter to a previously-abandoned household before launching on major home repairs.

Some say because chavismo made it very hard for businesses to produce (although in reality, most large businesses in Venezuela don’t actually produce, they just import things already produced. And, then – to boot – they actually purchase them with dollars provided almost for free by the government.)  That puts a little perspective on their rants.

With oil prices crashing to the basement this winter, Venezuela  could no longer afford to import food. And to make matters worse, most of the imported trickles of food and medicine that do reach Venezuela these days, never actually reach the average person. Especially the average poor person.  A good chunk of this food and this medicine ends up in the greedy hands of corrupt businesses, bureaucrats, military, ruling party members, and black-marketers.

Scarcity almost always leads to hoarding and scalping products. But add to that mix the fact that most basic food and medicines are price-controlled by the government.  A kilo of corn flour costs about 2 cents at the regulated price, and can easily fetch at $2 – or much much more – on the black market. Who wouldn’t want to get their hand in this business of hoarding and reselling? Especially considering that the salary of even an engineer hovers around $30 – $40 a month.

And I haven’t even talked about the dysfunctional currency system that contributes to the diminishing power of salaries. There is only too much bad economic stuff to stomach.

No matter what the reason, the result that matters now is this: Venezuela depends almost totally on imports  for most items of basic necessity, and it has almost run out of money to buy these imports, which these days mostly end up in the wrong hands anyway.

Obviously, getting the motors of domestic agriculture and production up and running is the long-term solution. But while all this will take years – perhaps decades – Fabi is hungry.

So, is it true that Venezuela is about to go over the edge?  Well, it may, even before I finish this article.  My partner just texted to say that roads to our town are blocked with hunger protests and he is returning to the city.

But to me, the extraordinary thing is that Venezuela has not exploded until now. This crisis is now several years old really, depending on how you measure it.

The fact that the upper echelons of Venezuelan have not exploded is because many have given up on their country and left: two million, mostly young professionals. They are the ones who can qualify for the visas and afford the plane tickets. Some with fewer resources have also left, like those who paddling to neighboring islands in handmade rafts, including a few whose lifeless bodies drifted to the shores of Aruba.

The fact that those at the lower economic rung have not yet exploded (until now) has different reasons. Venezuelans are an extremely generous people, with a natural sense of solidarity.  Whenever those few small spuds are culled from neighboring fields by Rafa, he places a bag of them at my doorstep.   I pass bananas to Jenny over my fence. She passes pinto beans to Erica over hers. Erica passes yucca next door to Chichila, Fabi brings me fish that she caught when skipping school, I provide the oil in which to fry it.

This solidarity and natural bartering system that has unfolded in our Venezuela-in-crisis is beautiful, and it is what has allowed us to survive until now.   These good-news stories can’t complete with the bad news that the press loves, you have to come and see with your own eyes.

The second reason for delayed explosion is this:  Most Venezuelans know that chavismo has (or had) their back, and are very reluctant to give it up.  President Chavez very concretely and very pro-actively cared about them. He reduced poverty dramatically and created the most economically equal society in the Americas.

In contrast, the opposition is widely perceived as caring only about themselves.  Probably this is because their only agenda item over the years was to topple the government. Small wonder they rarely won the many national elections over the past 17 years.

The opposition did, however win December’s parliamentary elections. Decisively so.  But many see this as less a vote of confidence for opposition, than one of punishment against the Maduro administration,   perceived as tone-deaf to their suffering.   Although many share Maduro’s  belief that the crisis is caused by the right-wing-led economic war , they wonder why he hasn’t done more to combat it.

But this is my sense of the moment:  The majority of Venezuelans today are not fans of the opposition. Nor are they fans of the current administration.  However (to the chagrin of the State Department) this doesn’t mean that the majority of Venezuelans are not fans of chavismo).

So, what is to be done?  The solutions to the crisis are as conflicting as the causes. The three major players (Venezuelan government, opposition, and the US) spend endless amounts of time and resources pointing fingers of blame to one another, while doing a poor job of hiding their real political and economic interests. Meanwhile, the losers are the people of Venezuela, who grow hungrier and hungrier.

Somewhat better solutions are coming from Latin America itself. The region has become far more integrated and vastly more independent from the US than previously (and many believe this to be Hugo Chavez’s greatest legacy). This was clear when OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro tried to set into motion Venezuela’s removal from the organization. He received  resounding no from its members, including those of the new emerging right.  Instead, the OAS member states opted to give support to an ongoing process of dialogue between the government and the opposition.

The idea of government-opposition dialogue is not a bad idea. It’s just not enough.

The long-term solution to Venezuela’s problems must come from all sectors of Venezuela. Not just from two polar opposites who have driven Venezuelans to hunger in their pursuit of political and economic power.

Many, but not all, of those excluded identify with chavismo.  But there is no political space for them in the tightly controlled hierarchical ruling party structure, nor room for them on the ballot (the largest political party that identifies with chavismo was excluded from elections because the electoral board did not like their name.)  Some identify more with the opposition, especially certain pragmatic administrators willing to listen to and accommodate ideas from across the aisle.

Most of these in-between sectors, that I believe make up Venezuela’s majority, want to see less political rhetoric and more economic action. The currency system must undergo radical change.  The poor must be guaranteed access to food, but not by subsidizing the product (which ends up in the hands of the corrupt and not the mouths of the poor), but subsidizing their families.

And finally, there is a treasure trove of creative grassroots initiatives and productive solutions that this crisis has unleashed and that merit attention.   While Maduro prays for higher oil prices and markets his nation’s pristine lands to Canadian mining companies in a desperate lunge for dollars; and while the US and the Venezuelan opposition push for social explosion and/or military uprising; the people of Venezuela are busy.

They are busy planting food in their backyards and patios, using alternative medicine, sharing with one another, developing a barter system, and creating hundreds, or maybe thousands of products from recycled or locally-sourced renewable sources .  These may not totally solve the immediate food crisis but, in the long run, they may actually be opening the door to the kind of society in which we can all survive and thrive.

And back to that 3 am question of what can I do. I guess just more of the same, writing down my thoughts and ripping up more of my lawns to plant food with my neighboring children. Two more hours and I”ll be up with the dawn, awaiting Fabi and friends with shovel and hoe in hand.

Andrew Bacevich has written a series of books on the topic of U.S. imperialism and U.S. military power.   His latest work, America’s War for the Greater Middle East [the GME War] is the latest in this series and as with the previous works is clearly written and logically presented.  It covers more narrowly than the previous works the military aspects of U.S. military endeavours in the Middle East (greater – as in including East Africa and Afghanistan et al).  Generally he succeeds well and this work is a good ‘primer’ for anyone interested in a quick historical overview of U.S. military actions in the region. 

However it is not one of his better works, and perhaps that is because of the narrowness of focus and the resulting tie ins that could have been made and that without do not provide a perspective of this war amongst all the other wars instigated by the U.S.  I had to keep reminding myself that this is a “military” history, focussed on the Middle East, which kept reminding myself about the missing links.

In general, his overall thesis is well presented. His relating of the sequence of events is strong and the critical analysis is good, until he arrives at the most recent events.

Early beginnings

He starts off saying the GME War “was a war to preserve the American way of life, rooted in a specific understanding of freedom and requiring an abundance of cheap energy” noting also that “oil as a prerequisite for freedom,” a rather telling prerequisite.   Describing his own youthful times he recognizes “The American way of life may have been shallow and materialistic, its foundation a bland conformity.”  Yes it had “pleasures and satisfactions” which “tended to be transitory” but disguised as to “how precarious such expectations might be.”

An interesting start to a military history.  In the prologue he dates the start of the GME War with Operation Eagle Claw from April 24-25, 1980.  In the opening chapter he pushes it back to the 1973 oil embargo as a consequence of the Yom Kippur War in Israel.  One of the political philosophies of the time recognized that

“Middle East oil properly belonged to those who had discovered, developed, and actually needed it.  By all rights, therefore it was “ours”, a perspective that resonated with many ordinary Americans.  All that was required to affirm those rights was the vigorous use of U.S. military power.”

Having started that way philosophically creates in my mind the longer view back as far as World War I and its outcomes concerning the fallen Ottoman empire.  This saw the Sykes-Picot agreement dividing the spoils of empire and the Balfour letter envisioning the creation of a Jewish state.  The former entangled religions, tribes, and ethnic groups;  the latter, in part and in particular to this history, Israel was viewed as an ‘outpost’ of western/European control of the region – for transportations via the Suez canal, but more importantly for the newly discovered oil resources.

However, from where it does start the work progresses quickly and probably for many, very thought provokingly through the Nixon/Carter years and on through the various military enterprises of the GME War.

The Carter years involved the apparent involvement with the Iranian revolution; fortunately Bacevich recognizes that the real involvement began with the 1953 CIA/MI6 overthrow of the democratic Mossadegh Iranian government.  The book continues through the years, including the shift from Carter’s “Unreasoned anticommunism had made Americans stupid and distorted U.S. policy; ” through the “end of history” according to Fukuyama “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as final form of human democracy;” and closing out with the current ‘long war’ or ‘global war on terror’, now just mostly generalized globally as anti-terrorism.

Never endings

I read the book on Kindle using pink highlights for subject ‘titles’ and blue for the actual commentary pertaining to that person or idea.  Eventually I ended up using yellow to indicate passages where Bacevich’s analysis or perspective appeared to be much less clear.  Given how well the majority of his writing is well founded and documented it could be that the proximity in time to some of the more recent events has not allowed the filter of time to fulfill informational bias and/or create a fuller context for viewing these incidents.  These moments occurred only in the last two chapters, mainly the latter part of the Obama years, concerning:  Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, discussion of Obama’s policies, the renewed anti-Putin, anti-Russian scenarios, a supposed ambivalence towards al-Qaeda cured by 9-11 (yet part of the moderates in Syria?).

Most currently Bacevich describes ISIS in part as having “neither allies nor patrons” a rather disconcerting statement in consideration of recent documentation of support from Turkey (a NATO ally) and Saudi Arabia (an oil/US$ ally) and other non-democratic Middle East supporters.

One of my final highlights was, “The root of the problem was obvious:  “perhaps there is no strategy to contain the destabilization of the Middle East.”  I noted – and this is quite important in a larger context – perhaps that is the strategy – chaos.  Chaos serves Israel very well as they can then operate internally ‘under the radar’ while the world is entertained by U.S. double dealings and Russian military successes within the GME War.

For a book that begins with a biblical quote (Numbers 32: 13: “The Lord’s anger burned against Israel….”) there is very little said about Israel throughout.  Considering how important AIPAC is to the U.S. election/legislative procedures, and how militarized Israel is, this is a significant omission.

Another significant omission, and this is surprising considering how the first chapter started with a description of the importance of oil to the American way of life, is how since those same Nixon/Carter years the US$ has been the global fiat currency backed mainly by its use as the reserve currency for all global oil transactions – now a fading proposition, another reason to create chaos.   It is implied at the outset, but is never discussed as the GME War continues its depredations in the region and its blowback consequences within the United States (yes, I remind myself, this is a military history but….).

Finally, but not over

Bacevich’s closing positions are clearly stated and supported by what he has presented beforehand.  He almost disqualifies himself with a ‘yellow‘ note stating the creations of “a permanent footing large-scale, heavily armed forces designed for global power projection” serves as “the principal functions of these forces was not to wage war but to avert it.”

This is not a minor misstatement as the history and writings of all those concerned within the neocon cabal and the PNAC group considered ‘full spectrum dominance’ to be their end goal, with the inclusion of first strike capabilities for the use of nuclear weapons.   Okay in a very sick sense they were trying to avert war by saying we will bludgeon and kill anyone who stands in our way of the “American way” of freedom.  I just don’t buy into its pacifist intentions.

However, the overall conclusion is perfectly valid,

Time and again, from the 1980s to the present, U.S. military power, unleashed rather than held in abeyance, has met outright failure, produced results other than those intended,  [note: see chaos, above] or proved to be largely irrelevant.  The Greater Middle East remains defiantly resistant to shaping.

When discussing why the U.S. cannot “get out” Bacevich identifies “several assumptions that promote in Washington a deeply pernicious collective naiveté.”  They could be summarized as ignorance (wilful or otherwise), hubris, arrogance, and stereotyped thought processes (i.e. a lack of the ability to critically analyse anything).

The concluding section continues along the parameters of the GME War’s permanence, which including the above, also includes the militarized meme of supporting the troops, the benefits that accrue to certain individuals, and most importantly to Bacevich is that “Americans themselves appear oblivious to what is occurring” without stating the obvious about the control of the media and the message by corporate-political America.

He concludes, finally and ultimately, that until Americans awaken to the reality that they need to reshape themselves first, “Then and only then will the war end.”

Or perhaps they will, one day, never wake up – period.

The Democratic Party has moved from being what you might call a reluctant war party to an aggressive war party with its selection of Hillary Clinton as its presumptive presidential nominee. With minimal debate, this historic change brings full circle the arc of the party’s anti-war attitudes that began in 1968 and have now ended in 2016.

Since the Vietnam War, the Democrats have been viewed as the more peaceful of the two major parties, with the Republicans often attacking Democratic candidates as “soft” regarding use of military force.

But former Secretary of State Clinton has made it clear that she is eager to use military force to achieve “regime change” in countries that get in the way of U.S. desires. She abides by neoconservative strategies of violent interventions especially in the Middle East and she strikes a belligerent posture as well toward nuclear-armed Russia and, to a lesser extent, China.

Amid the celebrations about picking the first woman as a major party’s presumptive nominee, Democrats appear to have given little thought to the fact that they have abandoned a near half-century standing as the party more skeptical about the use of military force. Clinton is an unabashed war hawk who has shown no inclination to rethink her pro-war attitudes. 

As a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton voted for and avidly supported the Iraq War, only cooling her enthusiasm in 2006 when it became clear that the Democratic base had turned decisively against the war and her hawkish position endangered her chances for the 2008 presidential nomination, which she lost to Barack Obama, an Iraq War opponent.

Photo Caption: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC conference in Washington D.C. on March 21, 2016. (Photo credit: AIPAC)

However, to ease tensions with the Clinton wing of the party, Obama selected Clinton to be his Secretary of State, one of the first and most fateful decisions of his presidency. He also kept on George W. Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates and neocon members of the military high command, such as Gen. David Petraeus.

This “Team of Rivals” – named after Abraham Lincoln’s initial Civil War cabinet – ensured a powerful bloc of pro-war sentiment, which pushed Obama toward more militaristic solutions than he otherwise favored, notably the wasteful counterinsurgency “surge” in Afghanistan in 2009 which did little beyond get another 1,000 U.S. soldiers killed and many more Afghans.

Clinton was a strong supporter of that “surge” – and Gates reported in his memoir that she acknowledged only opposing the Iraq War “surge” in 2007 for political reasons. Inside Obama’s foreign policy councils, Clinton routinely took the most neoconservative positions, such as defending a 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted a progressive president.

Clinton also sabotaged early efforts to work out an agreement in which Iran surrendered much of its low-enriched uranium, including an initiative in 2010 organized at Obama’s request by the leaders of Brazil and Turkey. Clinton sank that deal and escalated tensions with Iran along the lines favored by Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Clinton favorite.

Pumping for War in Libya

In 2011, Clinton successfully lobbied Obama to go to war against Libya to achieve another “regime change,” albeit cloaked in the more modest goal of establishing only a “no-fly zone” to “protect civilians.”

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had claimed he was battling jihadists and terrorists who were building strongholds around Benghazi, but Clinton and her State Department underlings accused him of slaughtering civilians and (in one of the more colorful lies used to justify the war) distributing Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women.

Despite resistance from Russia and China, the United Nations Security Council fell for the deception about protecting civilians. Russia and China agreed to abstain from the vote, giving Clinton her “no-fly zone.” Once that was secured, however, the Obama administration and several European allies unveiled their real plan, to destroy the Libyan army and pave the way for the violent overthrow of Gaddafi.

Privately, Clinton’s senior aides viewed the Libyan “regime change” as a chance to establish what they called the “Clinton Doctrine” on using “smart power” with plans for Clinton to rush to the fore and claim credit once Gaddafi was ousted. But that scheme failed when President Obama grabbed the limelight after Gaddafi’s government collapsed.

Photo Caption: Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.

But Clinton would not be denied her second opportunity to claim the glory when jihadist rebels captured Gaddafi on Oct. 20, 2011, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him. Hearing of Gaddafi’s demise, Clinton went into a network interview and declared, “we came, we saw, he died” and clapped her hands in glee.

Clinton’s glee was short-lived, however. Libya soon descended into chaos with Islamic extremists gaining control of large swaths of the country. On Sept. 11, 2012, jihadists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American personnel. It turned out Gaddafi had been right about the nature of his enemies.

Undaunted by the mess in Libya, Clinton made similar plans for Syria where again she marched in lock-step with the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” sidekicks in support of another violent “regime change,” ousting the Assad dynasty, a top neocon/Israeli goal since the 1990s.

Clinton pressed Obama to escalate weapons shipments and training for anti-government rebels who were deemed “moderate” but in reality collaborated closely with radical Islamic forces, including Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise) and some even more extreme jihadists (who coalesced into the Islamic State).

Again, Clinton’s war plans were cloaked in humanitarian language, such as the need to create a “safe zone” inside Syria to save civilians. But her plans would have required a major U.S. invasion of a sovereign country, the destruction of its air force and much of its military, and the creation of conditions for another “regime change.”

In the case of Syria, however, Obama resisted the pressure from Clinton and other hawks inside his own administration. The President did approve some covert assistance to the rebels and allowed Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf states to do much more, but he did not agree to an outright U.S.-led invasion to Clinton’s disappointment.

Parting Ways

Clinton finally left the Obama administration at the start of his second term in 2013, some say voluntarily and others say in line with Obama’s desire to finally move ahead with serious negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and to apply more pressure on Israel to reach a long-delayed peace settlement with the Palestinians. Secretary of State John Kerry was willing to do some of the politically risky work that Clinton was not.

Many on the Left deride Obama as “Obomber” and mock his hypocritical acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. And there is no doubt that Obama has waged war his entire presidency, bombing at least seven countries by his own count. But the truth is that he has generally been among the most dovish members of his administration, advocating a “realistic” (or restrained) application of American power. By contrast, Clinton was among the most hawkish senior officials.

Photo caption: President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton honor the four victims of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, at the Transfer of Remains Ceremony held at Andrews Air Force Base, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Sept. 14, 2012. [State Department photo)

A major testing moment for Obama came in August 2013 after a sarin gas attack outside Damascus, Syria, that killed hundreds of Syrians and that the State Department and the mainstream U.S. media immediately blamed on the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

There was almost universal pressure inside Official Washington to militarily enforce Obama’s “red line” against Assad using chemical weapons. Amid this intense momentum toward war, it was widely assumed that Obama would order a harsh retaliatory strike against the Syrian military. But U.S. intelligence and key figures in the U.S. military smelled a rat, a provocation carried out by Islamic extremists to draw the United States into the Syrian war on their side.

At the last minute and at great political cost to himself, Obama listened to the doubts of his intelligence advisers and called off the attack, referring the issue to the U.S. Congress and then accepting a Russian-brokered deal in which Assad surrendered all his chemical weapons though continuing to deny a role in the sarin attack.

Eventually, the sarin case against Assad would collapse. Only one rocket was found to have carried sarin and it had a very limited range placing its firing position likely within rebel-controlled territory. But Official Washington’s conventional wisdom never budged. To this day, politicians and pundits denounce Obama for not enforcing his “red line.”

There’s little doubt, however, what Hillary Clinton would have done. She has been eager for a much more aggressive U.S. military role in Syria since the civil war began in 2011. Much as she used propaganda and deception to achieve “regime change” in Libya, she surely would have done the same in Syria, embracing the pretext of the sarin attack – “killing innocent children” – to destroy the Syrian military even if the rebels were the guilty parties.

Still Lusting for War

Indeed, during the 2016 campaign – in those few moments that have touched on foreign policy – Clinton declared that as President she would order the U.S. military to invade Syria. “Yes, I do still support a no-fly zone,” she said during the April 14 debate. She also wants a “safe zone” that would require seizing territory inside Syria.

Photo caption: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on March 3, 2015, in opposition to President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. (Screen shot from CNN broadcast)

But no one should be gullible enough to believe that Clinton’s invasion of Syria would stop at a “safe zone.” As with Libya, once the camel’s nose was into the tent, pretty soon the animal would be filling up the whole tent.

Perhaps even scarier is what a President Clinton would do regarding Iran and Ukraine, two countries where belligerent U.S. behavior could start much bigger wars.

For instance, would President Hillary Clinton push the Iranians so hard – in line with what Netanyahu favors – that they would renounce the nuclear deal and give Clinton an excuse to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran?

In Ukraine, would Clinton escalate U.S. military support for the post-coup anti-Russian Ukrainian government, encouraging its forces to annihilate the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and to “liberate” the people of Crimea from “Russian aggression” (though they voted by 96 percent to leave the failed Ukrainian state and rejoin Russia)?

Would President Clinton expect the Russians to stand down and accept these massacres? Would she take matters to the next level to demonstrate how tough she can be against Russian President Vladimir Putin whom she has compared to Hitler? Might she buy into the latest neocon dream of achieving “regime change” in Moscow? Would she be wise enough to recognize how dangerous such instability could be?

Of course, one would expect that all of Clinton’s actions would be clothed in the crocodile tears of “humanitarian” warfare, starting wars to “save the children” or to stop the evil enemy from “raping defenseless girls.” The truth of such emotional allegations would be left for the post-war historians to try to sort out. In the meantime, President Clinton would have her wars.

Having covered Washington for nearly four decades, I always marvel at how selective concerns for human rights can be. When “friendly” civilians are dying, we are told that we have a “responsibility to protect,” but when pro-U.S. forces are slaughtering civilians of an adversary country or movement, reports of those atrocities are dismissed as “enemy propaganda” or ignored altogether. Clinton is among the most cynical in this regard.

Trading Places

But the larger picture for the Democrats is that they have just adopted an extraordinary historical reversal whether they understand it or not. They have replaced the Republicans as the party of aggressive war, though clearly many Republicans still dance to the neocon drummer just as Clinton and “liberal interventionists” do. Still, Donald Trump, for all his faults, has adopted a relatively peaceful point of view, especially in the Mideast and with Russia.

While today many Democrats are congratulating themselves for becoming the first major party to make a woman the presumptive nominee, they may soon have to decide whether that distinction justifies putting an aggressive war hawk in the White House. In a way, the issue is an old one for Democrats, whether “identity politics” or anti-war policies are more important.

At least since 1968 and the chaotic Democratic convention in Chicago, the party has advanced, sometimes haltingly, those two agendas, pushing for broader rights for all and seeking to restrain the nation’s militaristic impulses.

In the 1970s, Democrats largely repudiated the Vietnam War while the Republicans waved the flag and equated anti-war positions with treason. By the 1980s and early 1990s, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were making war fun again – Grenada, Afghanistan, Panama and the Persian Gulf, all relatively low-cost conflicts with victorious conclusions.

Photo caption: Ronald Reagan and his 1980 vice-presidential running mate George H.W. Bush.

By the 1990s, Bill Clinton (along with Hillary Clinton) saw militarism as just another issue to be triangulated. With the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Clinton-42 administration saw the opportunity for more low-cost tough-guy/gal-ism – continuing a harsh embargo and periodic air strikes against Iraq (causing the deaths of a U.N.-estimated half million children); blasting Serbia into submission over Kosovo; and expanding NATO to the east toward Russia’s borders.

But Bill Clinton did balk at the more extreme neocon ideas, such as the one from the Project for the New American Century for a militarily enforced “regime change” in Iraq. That had to wait for George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. As a New York senator, Hillary Clinton made sure she was onboard for war on Iraq just as she sided with Israel’s pummeling of Lebanon and the Palestinians in Gaza.

Hillary Clinton was taking triangulation to an even more acute angle as she sided with virtually every position of the Netanyahu government in Israel and moved in tandem with the neocons as they cemented their control of Washington’s foreign policy establishment. Her only brief flirtation with an anti-war position came in 2006 when her political advisers informed her that her continued support for Bush’s Iraq War would doom her in the Democratic presidential race.

But she let her hawkish plumage show again as Obama’s Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 – and once she felt she had the 2016 Democratic race in hand (after her success in the southern primaries) she pivoted back to her hard-line positions in full support of Israel and in a full-throated defense of her war on Libya, which she still won’t view as a failure.

The smarter neocons are already lining up to endorse Clinton, especially given Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party and his disdain for neocon strategies that he views as simply spreading chaos around the globe. As The New York Times has reported, Clinton is “the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes.”

Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neocon Project for the new American Century, has endorsed Clinton, saying “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon.”]

So, by selecting Clinton, the Democrats have made a full 360-degree swing back to the pre-1968 days of the Vietnam War. After nearly a half century of favoring a more peaceful foreign policy – and somewhat less weapons spending – than the Republicans, the Democrats are America’s new aggressive war party.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?’]

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

Never has US intentions in Asia been so obvious. Attempts to portray America’s role in the region as constructive or necessary have been ongoing since the end of World War II, however, recently, with Asia able to begin determining its own destiny for itself, the tone from Washington has become increasingly curt and direct.

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s remarks during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore were all but a proclamation of US hegemony over Asia – a region of the planet quite literally an ocean away from Washington.

In Reuters’ article, “U.S. flexes muscles as Asia worries about South China Sea row,” Secretary Carter is quoted as saying:

The United States will remain the most powerful military and main underwriter of security in the [Asian] region for decades to come – and there should be no doubt about that.

The US, besides implied exceptionalism, never fully explains why it believes underwriting security for an entire region of the planet beyond its own borders is somehow justified.

Reuters would also report (emphasis added):

Any action by China to reclaim land in the Scarborough Shoal, an outcrop in the disputed sea, would have consequences, Carter said.

“I hope that this development doesn’t occur, because it will result in actions being taken by the both United States and … by others in the region which would have the effect of not only increasing tensions but isolating China,” Carter told the Shangri-La Dialogue, a regional security forum in Singapore.

The term, “isolation” is key – and has defined US foreign policy toward rising powers in Asia since before even World War II.

US Policymakers Make No Secret of Aspirations of Primacy in Asia 

Robert Blackwill, a former US ambassador, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), a lobbyist, and US National Security Council Deputy for Iraq during the US invasion and occupation in 2003, penned last year a paper for the CFR titled, “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China” (.pdf), in which no secret was made about US designs toward Asia Pacific.

The paper states explicitly that (emphasis added):

Because the American effort to “integrate” China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to U.S. primacy in Asia—and could eventually result in a consequential challenge to American power globally—Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy.

The paper elaborates by enumerating precisely how this will be done (emphasis added):

…preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century. Sustaining this status in the face of rising Chinese power requires, among other things, revitalizing the U.S. economy to nurture those disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States asymmetric economic advantages over others; creating new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China; recreating a technology-control regime involving U.S. allies that prevents China from acquiring military and strategic capabilities enabling it to inflict “high-leverage strategic harm” on the United States and its partners; concertedly building up the power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China’s periphery; and improving the capability of U.S. military forces to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition—all while continuing to work with China in the diverse ways that befit its importance to U.S. national interests.

It should be noted that in particular, the point regarding “concertedly building up the power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China’s periphery” is not as innocuous as it sounds. Blackwill himself in his capacity as a lobbyist represented one of those “friends and allies on China’s periphery,” the client regime of Thaksin Shinawatra in Southeast Asia’s nation of Thailand.

Shinawtra while in power, would send Thai troops to aid in America’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, hosted the CIA’s abhorrent rendition program within Thai territory, and attempted to ramrod through a US-Thai free trade agreement – all at the expense of Thailand’s best interests. Shinawatra’s attempts to turn Thailand into a client state of Wall Street and Washington interests eventually unraveled into a bloody political conflict that continues even today.

The Israeli government deployed 600 additional combat troops to the West Bank Thursday, seizing on a shooting attack against the trendy Sarona market in Tel Aviv on the previous night to escalate its militarization drive and impose a package of police-state measures both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories.

Hundreds of additional Israeli security forces will patrol Jerusalem beginning today. The government has revoked temporary internal passports for 83,000 Palestinians who sought to cross into Israeli sections of the city to visit relatives, including more than 200 relatives and associates of the suspected gunmen. On Thursday, Israeli courts imposed media bans on further coverage of the attack and its consequences.

In Yatta, the village of the alleged perpetrators of the Sarona attack, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has imposed a general blockade, preventing anyone from entering or leaving, and conducted house-to-house searches. The IDF is now preparing to demolish the family homes of the assailants.

“Life in the Yatta village won’t carry on as usual. A village that has terrorists leaving from its midst will pay the price,” Assistant Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan told media.

Responsibility for the bloodshed in Tel Aviv lies not with the villagers of Yatta, now facing harsh reprisals at the hands of the IDF, but with the Israeli state itself, which is responding to the immense crisis of Israeli society by escalating its decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people, and preparing for mass repression against the Israeli working class.

The shooting is the latest in a wave of violence provoked by the decision, handed down by then Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon in December, not to prosecute or even detain the perpetrators of a firebombing attack against a sleeping Palestinian family in the village of Kafr Duma, despite clear evidence of involvement by the extreme nationalist Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

The attacks launched by Palestinians angered over the government’s response have been seized upon by the Netanyahu regime to implement a brutal crackdown and advance its longstanding agenda of collapsing the Palestinian authority and imposing direct military rule by the IDF over the West Bank.

Ominously, the Sarona attacks are being characterized in US and Israeli media as a “major test” for newly appointed Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a fascistic demagogue with well known links to Israel’s ultra-nationalist milieu.

There can be little doubt that Lieberman, who assured media that he is “not going to settle for just talking,” aims to use the Sarona attacks to implement new and far-reaching repressions against the Palestinian and Israeli working class.

His rise to the highest civilian office within the US-funded Israeli military apparatus is a sharp expression of the ever more fascistic trajectory of Israeli politics, and was calculated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intimidate opposition throughout Israeli and Palestinian society.

In Israel, as in so many countries worldwide, extreme right figures are increasingly being welcomed onto the heights of power. The presidential candidacy of Donald Trump in the United States, the rise of the National Front in France and the ascension of Rodrigo Duterte to the Philippine presidency all give expressed to the same process.

The bourgeois establishment, faced with the growth of social inequality to levels not seen since the early 20th century, sees no other way of defending its privileges than the employment of the most vicious and degenerate social elements.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted in a July 2014 perspective, “The toxic crisis of Israeli society,” written on the occasion of the burning to death of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad Khdeir in East Jerusalem, by a gang of Israeli ultra-nationalists:

“There is a close connection between the violence being carried out by the Israeli government against the defenseless population in Gaza and the emergence of fascistic elements within Israel capable of such bestial crimes. These events are symptomatic of an immense social and political crisis within Israel itself. The unending and escalating repression of the Palestinian people requires the mobilization of the most reactionary forces.”

The pathological tendencies incubating within Israeli capitalism are so repugnant that they are openly commented upon by the more “liberal” figures within the Israeli establishment. Israeli Defense Force General Yair Golan remarked in May that present day Israel increasingly resembles Germany during the years immediately prior to the Holocaust. Former Prime Minister and IDF Chief of Staff Ehud Barak described Lieberman’s appointment as “a red light for all of us regarding what’s going on in the government,” and warned that Netanyahu’s government is “infected by the seeds of fascism.”

These warning are accurate, but those making them have no solution to offer to the cancerous growth of fascistic forces in Israel and throughout world society. The drive toward openly dictatorial forms of rule and the mobilization of the far-right is the necessary outcome of the domination of society by capitalist oligarchies, a reality that is painfully evident in Israel, where a handful of billionaires rule by means of machine-gun checkpoints and endless miles of razor wire, as in every other country worldwide. Only through a unified movement of the Israeli, Palestinian and international working class, fighting for socialism on a world scale, can the return of fascism and the descent of society into barbarism be averted.

Yet another confirmation has arrived regarding what informed observers have known since the very beginning of the Syrian crisis but what, up until this point, authorities have tried to deny – that French Special Forces are active on the ground in Syria.

According to reports by French news agency, AFP, the Special Forces troops are working alongside terrorists in northern Syria in an effort to guide the operation to retake Manbij. The French soldiers are also working alongside the SDF, a loose coalition of terrorists, YPG, Kurds, Arabs, and other groups, supported by the U.S. and NATO.

A French Defense Ministry official told AFP that “The offensive at Manbij is clearly being backed by a certain number of states including France. It’s the usual support – it’s advisory.” Up until this point, France has only publicly acknowledged the presence of 150 Special Forces fighters operating in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, French Defense Minister, told a French television channel on Friday that France was not only providing air support and arms to “rebels” but also offering tactical advice. However, at the time, he did not mention the deployment of the Special Forces.

“We never go into details about anything to do with special forces, which are by their nature special. You won’t get any details to protect these men’s activities,” French Army Spokesman Col. Gilles Jaron stated.

This is not the first time the presence of French military soldiers in Syria was revealed. It was reported early on in the Syrian destabilization effort that 13 French military officers acting as mercenaries/death squad participants were captured by the Syrian government, all the while the mainstream Western media reported the events as “peaceful protest” and a grassroots level organic Syrian uprising against an oppressive regime.

Around the same time, hacked emails obtained by Anonymous in December 2011 and released by WikiLeaks in steady drips ever since February 27, 2012, revealed that NATO troops, including those from the US, UK, and France, were likely already operating inside Syria. The emails were obtained from the private U.S. intelligence firm, Stratfor, and were apparently sent by Stratfor’s Director of Analysis, Reva Bhalla ([email protected]) and contain discussion of a December confidential Pentagon meeting which was attended “by senior analysts from the US Air Force, and representatives from its chief allies, France and the United Kingdom. Tellingly, the email’s author stated that US officials “said without saying that SOF [special operation forces] teams (presumably from the US, UK, France, Jordan and Turkey) are already on the ground, focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces.” Later in the email, it was stated that “the idea ‘hypothetically’ is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within.”

This should come as no surprise since Western troops and intelligence agents maintained a heavy presence inside Libya during the destruction of that nation, increasing their presence as the destabilization and subsequent invasion succeeded.

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

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Washington this week marked a watershed in the transformation of India into a frontline state in US imperialism’s military-strategic offensive against China.

This offensive—known in Washington parlance as the “pivot to Asia,” or “rebalance”—has already seen the US redeploy the bulk of its naval and air power to the Indo-Pacific region, strengthen military ties with traditional regional allies, elaborate plans for a massive aerial and sea bombardment of China (Air-Sea Battle), incite various Southeast Asian states to press their territorial claims against China in the South China Sea, and stage armed “overflight” and “freedom of navigation” exercises to challenge Chinese sovereignty over South China Sea islets.

The joint statement issued Tuesday by Modi and President Barack Obama following their talks outlined plans to increase Indo-US military cooperation across the Indian Ocean and Asian Pacific regions and in all “domains… land, maritime, air, space and cyber (space).”

India is to give the US military routine access to its ports and military bases for resupply, repairs and rest. Washington, for its part, has recognized India as a “Major Defense Partner,” meaning it can now buy the advanced US weaponry made available only to the Pentagon’s closest allies.

The Obama administration also pledged to press for India’s speedy inclusion in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), although India has not fulfilled a key condition of membership—ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Inclusion in the NSG will give India improved access to advanced civilian nuclear technology, allowing it concentrate its indigenous nuclear program on weapons development.

Formally, India remains a “non-treaty ally” of the US and continues to stand outside the alliance system that US imperialism created in the aftermath of World War II to underpin its global hegemony. But this distinction is now little more than pretense.

In tandem with its burgeoning military ties with the US, India, under the two-year-old Modi-led BJP government, has dramatically increased bilateral and trilateral strategic ties, including military exercises, with Washington’s key allies in the Asia Pacific—Japan and Australia.

In the “US-India Joint Vision Statement for the Asia Pacific” issued by Obama and Modi in January 2015, India effectively announced a partnership with the US in East Asia, with Washington’s anti-China “rebalance” and India’s “Act East” policy proclaimed to be mutually reinforcing. Since then, New Delhi has faithfully parroted the US line on the ever more explosive South China Sea dispute and aggressively asserted a strategic interest in the South China Sea. In mid-May, four Indian warships sailed into the South China Sea on the first leg of a two-and-a-half-month tour of the Eastern Pacific, which will include a joint exercise with the American and Japanese navies near islets (Diaouyu or Senkou) held by Japan but claimed by China.

To emphasize the bipartisan support in the US for the Indo-American alliance, Modi, who until two years ago was barred from the US due to his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat pogrom, was invited to address a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday. He used his 45-minute address to avow the Indian bourgeoisie’s readiness to serve as a satrap for US imperialism. Not surprisingly, he was greeted with repeated standing ovations.

Proclaiming America to be India’s “indispensable partner,” Modi said “a strong India-US partnership” can “anchor” US strategic interests “from Asia to Africa and from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific.”

He lauded the “sacrifices” made by the US military, the mailed fist through which US imperialism has fought social revolution and maintained its global domination, in the “service of mankind,” and painted Washington as the defender of peace and democracy against those who do not accept “international rules and norms” (one of a number of pointed anti-China references).

Modi combined kowtowing with a plea for India’s own great power ambitions to be accommodated through changes to “international institutions framed with the mindset of the 20th Century.”

The alliance between the venal Indian bourgeoisie and US imperialism represents a sea change in world geopolitics, with explosive implications for inter-state relations across Asia and the world.

Because newly independent India balked at US demands that it subordinate its foreign policy to Washington’s Cold War machinations against the Soviet Union, the United States treated New Delhi as an adversary until the 1990s. For decades, it built up India’s archrival Pakistan as its principal regional partner, encouraging Pakistan to pursue its military-strategic rivalry with India.

Now the US boasts of its plans to support India, with Obama arguing that the Indo-US alliance has the potential to be Washington’s “defining partnership” in the 21st century.

India is a desperately poor country. Hundreds of millions of Indians live in absolute poverty and three-quarters of the population ekes out an existence on less than $2 per day. But successive US administrations have coveted it as a major strategic prize.

In population, India is second only to China. It has a large and rapidly expanding military (at over $50 billion, India’s military budget is commensurate with that of France or Russia), equipped with nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers. It geographically dominates the Indian Ocean, the world’s most important commercial waterway and the vital lifeline for China’s economy.

In aligning with the US, India is tightening the strategic encirclement of China and bolstering the US threat to destroy the Chinese economy by denying Beijing access to the Indian Ocean in the event of a war or war-crisis. The Indian bourgeoisie is thus boosting and encouraging Washington in its reckless drive to compel China to accept US hegemony—a drive whose logic, as the Pentagon’s own plans attest, is all-out war between nuclear-armed powers. America’s imperialist offensive has already raised tensions in the South China Sea to the boiling point.

Buoyed by US support, India is aggressively asserting its claim to be the hegemon in South Asia, demanding that its smaller rivals acknowledge its predominance and pushing back against the growth of China’s economic influence. Recently, New Delhi bullied the Maldives into declaring that it would pursue “an India-first foreign policy,” and, although this proved less successful, it imposed an economic blockade on landlocked Nepal for five months in an attempt to force it to make changes to its new constitution to give India greater leverage over Katmandu.

The US pivot to Asia and promotion of India as its junior partner is inflaming a series of inter-state conflicts involving the states of South Asia, entangling them in the US-China confrontation and adding to each regional conflict an explosive new dimension.

An obvious case in point is relations between India and China, whose common border remains in dispute. But especially fraught are relations between India and Pakistan, the rival state created as a result of the communal partition of the Indian subcontinent. The two nations, both nuclear-armed, have fought three declared and numerous undeclared wars over the past seven decades.

Islamabad has issued increasingly shrill warnings that the Indo-US strategic partnership has overturned the balance of power in South Asia. But Washington, anxious to cement its anti-China alliance with New Delhi, has cavalierly ignored these warnings.

Pakistan’s response has been two-fold. It has expanded its nuclear arsenal, including developing tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons, and it has sought to strengthen its longstanding military-security ties with China—ties the US strongly supported when Beijing was allied with Washington in the last decades of the Cold War.

Beijing long sought to encourage Pakistan to seek a rapprochement with India as part of its own efforts to improve relations with New Delhi and thereby counter US efforts to make India the western pillar of its anti-China alliance. But with the Modi government spurning China’s offers for India to participate in the building of infrastructure to connect Eurasia (the New Silk Road) and instead integrating itself ever more completely into Washington’s strategic agenda, Beijing last year announced a $46 billion investment in Pakistan to build a China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The CPEC would provide rail, road and pipeline links from Pakistan’s Arabian Sea post of Gwadar to western China, circumventing, at least to a considerable degree, US plans to blockade China by seizing the Malacca Straits and other Indian Ocean and South China Sea chokepoints.

The Pakistani military remains a significant ally and asset of Washington. But the US, frustrated by the strength of the Afghan insurgency, angered by the CPEC, and eager to woo India, is ratcheting up pressure on Pakistan.

Last month, the US violated a longstanding Pakistani “red line” when it summarily executed via a drone strike on Pakistani territory the political leader of the Taliban, blowing up Pakistan’s efforts to draw the Taliban into peace talks. With the likely aim of bullying Pakistan into assuming still more of the burden of the AfPak war, Washington is encouraging India to expand its presence in Afghanistan, long an arena of Indo-Pakistani strategic competition.

The Indian elite has long resented Washington’s refusal to give it a free hand with Pakistan and it continues to test how far Washington will allow it to go. Last year saw months of border clashes, and last weekend, India’s defence minister claimed that the window is rapidly closing on Modi’s highly conditional offer of peace talks with Pakistan.

Meanwhile, there are voices in US military-security circles arguing that strained US-Pakistan ties are to be welcomed as they facilitate the strengthening of the Indo-US alliance against China.

Desperate to offset the consequences of its economic decline and maintain its global dominance, US imperialism is pursuing aggression and war and in the process setting interstate relations in region after region aflame.

Global Research Editor’s Note:

In 2008 (reposted in 2015), Global Research published a short article entitled The Irish Slave Trade: The Forgotten “White Slave”. This article which skimmed the surface of a complex historical process has been the object of critical debate, controversy and confusion. Several factual errors in the article have been identified.

In order to promote further discussion concerning the Irish Slave Trade, Global Research will be publishing several articles on the subject, largely with a view to  providing a broader historical background.  

The article below by Liam Hogan is published in response to The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves By John Martin, March 17, 2015. Minor edits by Global Research. 

Author’s Note: The numbers game is a depressing one and every life is significant and of equal importance. Unfortunately the “Irish slaves” meme exaggerates and fabricates to such an egregious extent that a basic corrective is necessary.

(This is part four of my series debunking/contextualising the meme. See Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Five)“The Irish Slave Trade” Globalresearch.ca article claims that

“From 1641 to 1652 [the] English [sold] 300,000 [Irish people] as slaves.”

To put this into context, the total migration from Ireland to the West Indies for the entire 17th century is estimated to have been around 50,000 people and the total migration from Ireland to British North America and the West Indies is estimated to have been circa 165,000 between 1630 and 1775. (See Bielenberg, The Irish Diaspora, p. 216)

If this is the case, where on earth is the meme getting the unequivocal and impossible 300,000 forced deportations from Ireland over a ten year period? This number being nearly double the estimated total migration from Ireland to the Americas over 145 years?

Cromwellian era forced deportations from Ireland to the British West Indies did not begin in earnest until May 1653 and the total number forcibly deported during the Cromwellian era is roughly estimated by scholars (Corish, Watson, Akenson, et al) to have been around 10-12,000 people.

The paucity of records ensures that we will never know the exact number. Kerby Miller (Emigrants and Exiles, 143), Robin Blackburn (The Making of New World Slavery, 247) and Matthew C. Reilly (“Poor Whites” of Barbados, 6) estimate that “several thousand” were banished. These estimates are educated guesses based on contemporary population figures for the islands, allowing for a high mortality rate, pre-existing Irish populations and concurrent voluntary emigration.The “300,000 Irish slaves” claim is a spectacular exaggeration.

There is no scholarship or even logic behind this number. It appears that the meme has taken the guesstimate on the blurb on the back cover of White Cargo (by Jordan and Walsh) and applied it to the Cromwellian era forced transportations from Ireland. Keep in mind that this appropriated guesstimate refers to all the indentured servants and convicts who were transplanted to the British American colonies from Britain and Ireland over a 200 year period.

 

N.B. The White Cargo guess range actually swings from 100,000 to 300,000.

 

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England.

Another massively exaggerated claim which does harm to the historical record of the officially sanctioned transportations and illicit kidnapping that did occur. The most infamous case involved David Selleck, a prominent tobacco merchant from Boston, New England. On the 6 September 1653 a warrant was awarded to Selleck (after he had petitioned for it) to transport 400 Irish children into New England and Virginia. The transport ships were listed as the Goodfellow and the Providence.

These children were presumably earmarked by the Puritans as either orphans or from destitute families who (thanks in no small part to the brutal military tactics of the invading force) had no means to provide for themselves, as on the 11 October 1653 Alderman Tichborne was ordered by the council to draft an Act for transportation of poor Irish children to England and the plantations. What occurred was very different to this initial plan. Profit appears to have been the primary motive; concealed in this instance beneath the veneer of “public service.” The two ships were anchored in Kinsale and despite the initial warrant to transport children they instead sought out adolescents and adults.

…250 Irish women, above the age of 12 and under the age of 45, and also 300 men above the age of 12 and under the age of 50 years…

The specific age restrictions indicates that Selleck (and his partner Mr. Leader) wanted a “cargo” which would fetch a good price for them in the colonies. The authorisation granted was essentially the legalised kidnapping of the poor (25 Oct 1653)

 

 

 

They were subsequently sold against their will as indentured servants off theProvidence at Rappahannock, Virginia (for a cargo of tobacco) and off theGoodfellow at New England. Seven years later, some of the victims of these press gangs appeared before the Salem Quarterly Court in Massachusetts (27 June 1661). Samuel Symonds brought a complaint against his servants William Downing and Andrew Welch stating that they refused to work for him any longer.* Symonds had purchased Welsh and Downing from George Dell, then the Master of the Goodfellow, on 10 May 1654.

The agreement between Dell and Symonds was for nine years of service. Welch and Downing were not party to (or consented to) these terms and they were under the impression that seven years was the standard term for English servants in Barbados. Symonds won the case and the court ordered Welch and Downing to work for nearly two more years before they could be free. Their testimonies along with other court depositions are invaluable evidence of the reprehensible methods used to fill some of these transport vessels.

Andrew Welch and William Downing

We were brought out of or owne Country, contrary to our owne wills & minds, & sold here unto Mr Symonds, by ye master of the Ship, Mr Dill, but what Agreement was made betweene Mr Symonds & ye Said master, was neuer Acted by our Consent or knowledge, yet notwithstanding we haue indeauored to do him ye best seruice wee Could these seuen Compleat yeeres.

John King

…Divers others were stollen in Ireland, by some of ye English soldiers, in ye night out of theyr beds & brought to Mr Dills ship, where the boate lay ready to receaue them, & in the way as they went, some others they tooke with them against their Consents, & brought them aboard ye said ship, where there were divers others of their Country men, weeping and Crying, because they were stollen from theyr frends..

John Downing

William Downing and Phillip Welch, with several of their countrymen, were taken up and stolen by the ship master or some one whom he hired. The Ship-master, George Dill, was fain to go away and leave his water and much of his provisions behind for fear the country would have taken them from him…[…]…he knew that he and three or four others of his townsmen were taken up by force; that he did not know the two parties in question, but they said in the ship that they were stolen and brought by force.

Such methods of kidnapping eventually attracted the attention of the Council who enacted a range of measures to inspect ships before they departed from Irish ports. One report (6 July 1655) warned the Commissioners that

…under the colour of some later orders from this Board for transporting rogues and vagrants to Barbados, several Irish and others are surreptitiously apprehended and forcibly put on board a ship in this harbour of Dublin, bound for that island, who are not comprehended as vagrants or idlers.

Cromwell’s policy of transportation of vagrants from Ireland was abandoned on 4 March 1657. It was abolished because it was being abused to such an extent by merchants and their agents. It is also interesting that these kidnappers did not discriminate between Irish or English victims. The cancellation order reads as follows

…having received many complaints of the abuse of some orders granted to several persons to carry away idle and vagabond persons to the West Indies, who… employ persons to delude and deceive poor people by false pretences, either by getting them aboard the ships or in other by-places into their power, and forcing them away, the person so employed having so much a-piece for they so delude, and for the money’s sake have enticed and forced women from their husbands and children from their parents, who maintained them at school, and that they have not only dealt so with the Irish but also with the English [the Council now] do think fit and order that all Orders, granted to any person whatsoever (being now in force) to take up and carry idle and vagabond persons as aforesaid, be henceforth made null and void.

In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia.

Sigh. Where did the other 248,000 go?

This exaggerated figure of around 52,000 has lineage. It can be traced back to Sean O’Callaghan’s To Hell or Barbados. O’Callaghan incorrectly attributes this number to Aubrey Gwynn. But he either misread Gwynn or has deliberately mislead the reader because Gwynn took a guess at 16,000 sent to the West Indies and his total estimate of 50,000 includes the 34,000 that left Ireland for the continent. Despite this basic error the figure of 50,000 has remained on the blurb of this book since its publication over fifteen years ago.

Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder.

A random 30,000 people fabricated to make it seem like the authors know what they are talking about?

In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

The only vaguely accurate statement in the entire article. It was 1655 and it was Henry Cromwell (then Major General of the Parliamentarian army in Ireland) who made the suggestion, not his father Oliver. In the absence of any further evidence, historians are almost certain that this scheme did not proceed. That being said, it should be noted that it was seriously discussed by Cromwell and Secretary Thurloe over a prolonged period. The plan was for 1000 boys and 1000 girls, aged between 12 and 14, to be sent to Jamaica from Kinsale and Galway. Cromwell admitted to Secretary Thurloe that force would have to be used capture the 1000 girls, but that it was “for their own good.”

Did you know that more Irish slaves were sold in the 17th century than black slaves?

This line is from another iteration of the “Irish slaves” meme. It was posted on YourNewsWire.com by Royce Christyn.

The estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Irish indentured servants is not greater than the number of enslaved Africans sold in the European colonies in the 17th century. The Slave Voyages Database estimates that over 1.8 million Africans were enslaved by Europeans in the same time period. See their table below for the breakdown.

Click image to enlarge

“By 1637 a census showed that 69% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.”

I’ve looked into this strange ahistorical statement and I think I’ve located the root of the distortion. In 1995 Robert E. West published an article in the newsletter of the Political Education Committee (PEC) of the American Ireland Education Foundation, a group which is notable for pushing the Great Famine as a Holocaust/Genocide narrative.

West’s article, citing the historian Richard S. Dunn, states that

“…as early as 1637, on Montserrat the Irish heavily outnumbered the English colonists, and 69 percent of Montserrat’s white inhabitants were Irish.”

This is a reasonable statement. So what goes wrong? Jump forward to 2003 and James F. Cavanaugh’s blog post entitled Irish slaves in the Caribbean. Mr.Cavanaugh (a “Clann Chief Herald”) fundamentally altered the sentence above. See if you can spot what’s changed..

“By 1637 a census showed that 69% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves, which records show was a cause of concern to the English planters.”

All of the other rehashed “Irish slaves” blogs appear to have pulled this particular piece of the disinformation from Cavanaugh’s distortion.

For detailed commentary on this see John W. Blake, ‘Irish Transportation to America, 1653–1660’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. III, 267–281 and Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Cromwell’s Policy of Transportation’, An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 19, No. 76 (Dec. 1930), 607–623.*It’s interesting to note how the meme of “Irish slaves” has seeped into academia. Historian John Donoghue, who refers to indentured servants as “bond slaves”, references this case on page 347 of Fire under the Ashes (2013) as follows

But if you check the source you’ll find there is no reference to “Irish slaves” in the records and files of Essex County. Donoghue apparently pulled this reference from a Gilder Lehman webpage and this anachronistic title was evidently added by someone at the Gerry Tobin Irish Language School, Babylon, New York.

On the eve of World War II the United States was still mired in the Great Depression and found itself facing war on two fronts with Japan and Germany. However bleak the outlook, it was nothing compared to the outlook today. 

Has anyone in Washington, the presstitute Western media, the EU, or NATO ever considered the consequences of constant military and propaganda provocations against Russia? Is there anyone in any responsible position anywhere in the Western world who has enough sense to ask: “What if the Russians believe us? What if we convince Russia that we are going to attack her?”

The same can be asked about China.

The recklessness of the White House Fool and the media whores has gone far beyond mere danger. What do the Russians think when they see that the Democratic Party intends to elect Hillary Clinton president of the US?

Hillary is a person so crazed that she declared the president of Russia to be “the new Hitler” and organized through her underling, neocon monster Victoria Nuland, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Nuland installed Washington’s puppet government in a former Russian province that until about 20 years ago was part of Russia for centuries.

I would bet that this tells even the naive pro-western part of the Russian government and population that the United States intends war with Russia.

Ever since Russia stood up to Obama over Syria, the Russians have been experiencing hostile propaganda and military operations on their borders. These provocations are justified by Washington and its NATO vassals as a response to “Russian aggression.” Russian aggression consists of nothing but obviously false assertions that Russia is about to invade the Baltics, Poland, and Romania and recreate the Soviet Empire, the Eastern European part of which, together with the former Russian provinces of Georgia and Ukraine, now belong to the American Empire.

The Russians know that the propaganda about “Russian aggression” is a lie. What is the purpose of the lie other than to prepare the Western peoples for war with Russia?

There is no other explanation.

Even morons such as Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and Cameron should be capable of understanding that it is extremely dangerous to convince a major military power that you are going to attack. To simultaneously also convince China doubles the danger.

Clearly, the West is incapable of producing leadership capable of preserving life on earth.

What can be done when the entire West demonstrates a death wish for Planet Earth?

Until the criminal regimes of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, American presidents from John F. Kennedy forward worked to reduce tensions with the Soviets. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to reduce tensions caused by US missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba. President Nixon negotiated SALT I (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. President Carter negotiated SALT II, which was never ratified by the US Senate but was observed by the executive branch. President Reagan negotiated with Soviet leader Gorbachev the end of the Cold War. President George H.W. Bush in exchange for Gorbachev’s agreement to the reunification of Germany promised that NATO would not move one inch to the East.

All of these achievements were thrown away by the neoconized Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes, each a criminal regime on par with Nazi Germany.

Today life on Planet Earth is far less secure than during the darkest days of the Cold War. Whatever threat global warming poses, it is miniscule compared to the threat of nuclear winter. If the evil that is concentrated in Washington and its vassals perpetrates nuclear war, cockroaches will inherit the earth.

I have been warning about the growing danger of a nuclear war resulting from the arrogance, hubris, ignorance, and evil personified by Washington. Recently, four knowledgable Russian-Americans spelled out the likely consequences of trying to drive Russia to submission with war threats:

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/06/03/41522/ 

See also:

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/05/28/as-our-past-wars-are-glorified-this-memorial-day-weekend-give-some-thought-to-our-prospects-against-the-russians-and-chinese-in-world-war-iii/ 

Don’t expect the brainwashed American population to have the moral conscience and fortitude to prevent nuclear war or even the intelligence to prevent their own vaporization. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino report that 59% of the US population support attacking Iran with nuclear weapons in the event that Iran sank one US Navy ship:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/would-the-u-s-drop-the-bomb-again-1463682867 

Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to approve attacking Iran with nuclear weapons with 81% of Republicans approving nuclear war compared to 47% of Democrats. Yet, the Democrats are behind Hillary who would be the first to use nuclear weapons. After all, a feminized woman has to prove how tough she is, just as Margaret Thatcher was “the Iron Lady.”

Before it it too late for Americans and all of humanity, arrogant Americans need to recall that “those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

The economic picture is equally dismal and unpromising. The latest payroll jobs report was even more awful than reported. Hardly any new jobs were created, but what largely escaped reporting is the fact that the economy actually lost 59,000 full-time jobs.

Increasingly the US economy consists of part-time jobs that cannot support an independent existence. Thus, more Americans age 19-34 live at home with parents than independently with spouses or partners. Fully half of 25-year old Americans live in their childhood rooms in their parents’ homes.

This is the “New Economy” that the filthy lying neoliberal economists promised would be reward for the American work force giving up their manufacturing and professional skill jobs to foreigners. What a monstrous lie the neoliberal economists told so that corporate executives and shareholders could put into their own pockets the living wage of the American work force. These neoliberal economists, and, alas, libertarian “free market” ones, have not been held accountable for their impoverishment of the American work force deeply buried in debt with no future prospects.

Those few Americans who have any awareness are beginning to realize that the One Percent and the western governments that serve them are re-establishing feudalism. The brilliant and learned economist, Michael Hudson, has labeled our era the era of neo-feudalism.

He is correct. The majority of young Americans come out of university heavily indebted, primed for debtor prison. When half of 25-year olds cannot marry and form households, how can anyone believe that housing sales and prices are rising except as a result of speculative investors banking on rental income from a population that cannot even pay its student loans.

The United States is the sickest place on earth. There is no public or political discussion of any important issue or of the multiple crises that confront America or the crises that America brings to the world.

The American people are so stupid and unaware that they are capable of electing a criminal and a warmonger like Hillary president of the United States and be proud of it.

These “tough” Americans are so frightened of hoax dangers, such as “Muslim terrorists” and “Russian aggression” that they willingly sacrificed their depleted pocketbooks, the Constitution of the United States—an act of treason on the part of the American people who utterly failed their responsibility to protect the Constitution—and their own liberty to a universal police state that has all power over them.

It is extraordinary that once-proud, once-great European peoples look for leadership from a county of moronic non-entities who have pissed away the liberty, security, and prosperity that their Founding Fathers gave to them.

Fellow Americans, if you care to avoid vaporization and, assuming we do avoid it, live a life other than serfdom, you must wake up and realize that your most deadly enemy is Washington, not the hoax of “Russian aggression,” not the hoax of “Muslim terrorism,” not the hoax of “domestic extremism,” not the hoax of welfare bankrupting America, not the hoax of democracy voting away your wealth, which Wall Street and the corporations have already stolen and stuck in their pockets.

If you cannot wake up and escape The Matrix, your doom will bring the doom of the planet.

Syria’s war isn’t civil as widely misreported. It’s Obama’s war, naked aggression, launched in March 2011 using ISIS and likeminded groups – supported by US air power and special forces, waging phony war on terrorism. 

Since last September, Russia alone among world powers has been waging real war on its scourge in Syria, wanting it defeated, kept from spreading – regionally and to the Russian Federation’s heartland.

Moscow’s main adversaries aren’t ISIS and other terrorist groups. They’re America, NATO and regional rogue states, backing the scourge they claim to oppose – enlisting death squads, imported from scores of countries, heavily armed and provided with other material support, defying Russia’s righteous mission.

Its diplomatic initiative failed. Ceasefire is farcical. Conflict rages. Peace talks were dead-on-arrival. The only language Washington understands is force.

It’s time for Moscow to abandon diplomatic futility and resume full-scale war on all anti-government armed groups, terrorists, crossing freely into Syria, largely through Turkey’s border, supported by Ankara, Washington and their rogue allies.

The alternative is losing five-and-a-half months of hard won gains. Thousands of US-supported Jabhat al Nusra and allied terrorist groups have been bombarding Aleppo for days, slaughtering civilians, injuring many others.

Russia calls their attacks “indiscriminate…Civilians in local communities are the main victims…”

Militants took full advantage of the phony ceasefire declared in late February to regroup, rearm and replenish their ranks.

So-called “moderates” don’t exist. Claiming otherwise is one of the biggest Big Lies about ongoing conflict.

Days earlier, Sergey Lavrov said Russia will provide active air support for government forces “to prevent territories from being seized by terrorists.”

It hasn’t backed up words with action so far. Why the delay? Spotty strikes aren’t enough. Full-scale aerial operations on all anti-government forces failing to observe ceasefire need to begin now.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is a longtime US-installed imperial tool. On May 31, he issued areport on the threat of ISIS and “United Nations efforts in support of Member States in countering the threat.”

Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin blasted its inaccuracy, crediting Washington and its rogue allies for accomplishments Russia achieved.

“(T)he role of the (so-called) coalition led by the United States is singled out (for praise), while (Russia’s vital contribution along with Syrian forces is) deliberately ignored,” Churkin stressed.

America and its rogue allies support terrorist groups. Russia forthrightly opposes them. Its aerial operations “reverse(d) the situation and undermine(d) the resource base of the terrorists,” Churkin explained.

Russian warplanes “destroyed thousands of control points, warehouses with ammunition, weapons, military equipment, materiel, fuel and explosives, more than 200 oil production, pumping and processing facilities, as well as over 2,000 means of delivery of petroleum products for contraband sales to Turkey.”

Ban’s report ignored Russia’s heroic efforts, its major role in liberating Palmyra, its forthright campaign to defeat terrorism. Churkin called it a wholly inaccurate “one-sided” document.

It praised America and its rogue partners, supporters of terrorism, dismissing Russia’s vital efforts to combat this universal scourge.

Ban is an imperial tool. Moscow has no peace partner in Washington. Relations between both countries remain adversarial. Pretending otherwise ignores reality.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html 

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Is Russia’s Vladimir Putin Enemy Number One of the West or the West’s Last Hope?

By now it is clear: the crisis in which the West is struggling does not resemble anything known. It is a crisis of values, democracy, economic, financial, environmental, an unprecedented political crisis.

All paradigms are collapsing, the US leadership is no longer invincible: clearly it is in serious danger. And when power feels weak, it looks for an enemy to target: somebody to blame, somebody to frighten people with. All is grist for the mill. Instead of an admission of the truth, namely that the crisis is inside the west, is a by-product of the West, instead of an admission that  resources are running out and the system is marching toward collapse, Russia is made the enemy. So it was in the past, so it is today.

The obsession returns in updated form. Russia with its strongman Vladimir Putin is the new “enemy number one”. Reviving Cold War slogans, they (the West, the USA), are reproducing the idea of the Evil Empire, and Putin is a monster to feed the imagination of the masses, systematically depicted as a psychopathic tyrant, responsible for massacres, cynical weaver of imperialistic plots. The war in Ukraine, the economic sanctions, even the denial of the Russian role in the defeat of Nazism: everything is pushing in that direction. But is it really so, or is the “Putinophobia” that is being touted by the bulk of the media just a big mirror in which the West sees its own shortcomings and  troubles reflected?

Things are changing. The resolute intervention of Russia against the Daesh terrorists unmasked ambiguities in Turkish and Saudi Arabian policy The West as a whole was stunned. Russophobic propaganda went into panic mode   Slowly and steadily another truth is coming out and being glimpsed. The winners of the Cold War were already convinced that Russia was defeated and colonized.

They were looking to China as the next enemy to be destroyed or reduced to submission. They have been taken by surprise.  Putin’s Russia, the phoenix reborn from its ashes, is the only superpower that can derail the train that is hurtling towards catastrophe. But it  may be also the last hope for the West too. If, obviously, the West can bring itself to understand that it is not, in any case, going to be able to rule over seven billion people.

Giulietto Chiesa is one of the best known Italian journalists. He was Moscow correspondent for twenty years for “L’Unità” and  “La Stampa”. He worked  with all major Italian television channels, from the TG1 to TG3  and TG5 and is currently political analyst  for major Russian television channels. He is the only Italian journalist to be repeatedly mentioned in the autobiography of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he  has repeatedly interviewed. He writes a blog for “Il Fatto Quotidiano”. His own blog is http://www.megachip.info/. He is founder and director of Pandoratv.it web tv. An expert in international politics and communications scholar, he founded the political-cultural movement “Alternativa”.

In a recent address to the Syrian Parliament, Bashar al-Assad delivered one of his most powerful speeches to date. Tackling the issues of elections, democracy, Turkish ambitions, and the battle against the Western-backed jihadist invasion, Assad’s words have garnered attention from Syrians and, of course, Western governments and their propaganda outlets (more commonly called “news organizations” in the West).

This is because, five years on into a Western-backed invasion of jihadists and terrorists, Assad is standing defiantly in the face of the world’s greatest military power and refusing to back down to imperialist demands and the Anglo-American agenda for his country.

In the speech, Assad touted Syrian democracy by pointing out that an unprecedented number of voters turned out to vote despite the widespread warfare and the dangers of participation due to targeting of voters and polling stations by Western-backed terrorists.

Addressing the Syrian military’s push toward Raqqa, Assad stated that “Just like we liberated Palmyra and many other areas before it, we are going to liberate each and every inch of Syria from their hands because we have no other choice but to win.”

The Syrian president paid tribute to the many Syrian military soldiers who have fought bravely and those who have lost their lives in the battle against the Western proxy invasion. Assad also gave praise to Syria’s allies in the war – Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, and China – for their sacrifices.

Yet Assad’s statement was not all praise. He saved particularly harsh words for those powers that have funded the terrorists currently doing their best to destroy his country. For Recep Erdogan, whose government Assad labeled a “fascist regime,” the Syrian President issued a warning: “Aleppo will be the grave where all the dreams and hopes of that butcher will be buried,” he said.

Assad also addressed the failure of the Geneva peace talks and the recent failure of the ceasefire agreement which ended after “opposition” negotiator and leader of Jaish al-Islam, “Mohammad Alloush,” abandoned the talks. Assad said that, at no point, were the talks ever genuine on the part of the so-called opposition and that, after these groups failed to get what they wanted in Geneva, “their response was an open declaration of supporting terrorism and withdrawing from the cessation of hostilities agreement… this was what we saw of targeting civilians and hospitals in Aleppo.”

Lastly, Assad addressed the domestic issue and the question of corruption, nepotism, and Syrian governance as well as the possibility of reforms. He said,

“If restoring security to Syria, achieving victory over terrorism, bringing back the homeland and reconstructing it is the outcome that stops the martyr’s blood from being spilt in vain, then fighting the harmful phenomena of corruption, nepotism and disregard for the law are the second part of that.”

Notably, the reform process was already taking place in Syria before the 2011 Western-backed destabilization, albeit in a much slower manner than many Syrians had hoped.

Regardless, Assad’s speech represents a defiance of Western aims in Syria and a growing confidence that the terrorists’ days are numbered.

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

In an open letter to the White House published June 3 by The National Interest magazine, 13 retired American generals and diplomats demanded the suspension of all further US troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.

The letter, signed by four former US ambassadors to Kabul and five former US military commanders in Afghanistan, including General Stanley McChrystal and General David Petraeus, makes clear that the proposed “freeze” in US troop withdrawals would serve to defer the issue until after the election.

“Unless emergency conditions require consideration of a modest increase, we would strongly favor a freeze at the level of roughly ten thousand U.S. troops through January 20,” the letter stated. “This approach would also allow your successor to assess the situation for herself or himself and make further adjustments accordingly.”

Given the long history of US wars launched immediately following presidential elections, it is easy enough to guess at the sort of “adjustments” the authors have in mind. The obvious implication of such a statement is that, with the election past, the newly installed administration will have a free hand to order further escalation.

In the event, the authors leave no doubt over their preferred policy. With arrogance befitting the colonial masters of old, the retired US officials wrote: “Afghanistan is a place where we should wish to consolidate and lock down our provisional progress into something of a more lasting asset.”

The demands for an essentially permanent US presence in Afghanistan, issued one and a half years after President Obama proclaimed the war over, have become more insistent amid signs that the Afghan government is likely to lose more and more territory to the Taliban.

Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote, “The range of plausible outcomes in Afghanistan is now very narrow. The Afghan government could lose the war outright, or it can negotiate a compromise settlement with the major insurgent factions. There is no longer any meaningful prospect to defeat the Taliban.”

“What’s needed isn’t a slower timetable for withdrawals – it’s the end of timetables altogether,” he continued.

While framed as “proposals” in the public statements of the foreign policy establishment, preparations for expanded war in Afghanistan and Central Asia are proceeding as if the question were already decided. As early as January, US commanders began proclaiming openly in the US media that the Pentagon plans to station thousands of American troops in Afghanistan for “decades to come.”

From the outset, the Afghanistan “drawdown” was always a tactical maneuver, conceived as part of the Obama administration’s strategy of shifting resources to the Asia-Pacific and Eastern Europe, in preparation for large-scale wars against Russia and China.

This strategy was disrupted by the unexpected seizure of large portions of Iraq by Sunni insurgents, beginning with the seizure of Mosul by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in June 2014, which threatened to bring about the collapse of the US-backed neocolonial government in Baghdad. Under pressure from the Pentagon, the Obama administration has steadily re-inflated the US intervention in Iraq, deploying thousands of ground troops and pounding the already devastated country with more than 6,000 air strikes.

A similar catastrophe now threatens the US position in Afghanistan. Despite 15 years of murderous warfare waged by the United States military in the name of suppressing insurgency and terror but directed, in reality, against all opposition to the Kabul regime, and against the Afghan population as a whole, the US puppet government remains incapable of controlling the cities without help from tens of thousands of Western troops and heavy fire support from the US Air Force.

The Afghan national army, trained at huge expense by the American government, has proven incapable of holding territory without US air and ground support. In the course of 2015, Taliban forces briefly seized the northern city of Kunduz, staged attacks against the Afghan Parliament building in the center of Kabul, and launched offensives in Helmand province that forced Washington to redeploy hundreds of combat forces in support of collapsing Afghan national units.

While the US sought negotiations with the Taliban via the Quadrilateral Coordination Group during the opening months of this year, the assassination of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, carried out by a squadron of US Special Operations drones on May 21, appears to have succeeded in scuttling the talks.

Mansour’s killing, an act characterized bluntly by CFR analyst Biddle as “a major escalation in the US drone campaign,” has brought to power a new Taliban leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, reported to be much more strongly opposed to a negotiated compromise with the US-backed government than his predecessor.

The US push to escalate the killing on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border comes amid geopolitical tensions throughout the region that have been massively inflamed by the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia.”

The shift in US policy, aimed at encircling and preparing for war against China, is compressing and amplifying political tensions throughout Asia, irreversibly dislocating the continent’s political order and impelling all of its major powers toward a general war.

The US-Pakistan alliance, once a pillar of American-dominated South Asia, is breaking down amid mutual denunciations by Washington and Islamabad.

Any expansion of the Afghanistan war will be directed, in part, against elements in Pakistan that are increasingly bucking the US line and turning toward China. In their letter to Obama, General Petraeus and Co. noted,

“Afghanistan is a crucial partner in helping to shape the calculations of Pakistan, which has been an incubator of violent extremism but which might gradually be induced to cooperate in building a regional order conducive to peace and economic progress.”

In its concluding paragraph, the diplomats and generals letter again emphasized the “helpful effects on the strategic assessments of some in Pakistan.”

For their part, Pakistan’s elite, having authorized a decade and a half of continuous US drone warfare against Pakistan’s population, responded to the latest strike on Mansour with denunciations of Washington for violations of international law and demands for an end to all US strikes on Pakistani soil.

Washington has drawn India on board as a full partner in its Eurasian military agenda, signing a series of agreements, including the U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region and the Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship, setting India on a collision course with both China and Pakistan.

India is now poised to assume a direct security and military role in Afghanistan, under conditions where the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan are already involved, according to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in a “secret war.” Five days after Mansour’s killing, Pakistan announced the capture in Quetta of six agents from Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS). The Afghan cadres were interfacing with insurgent groups involved in terrorism and armed struggle against Pakistan, Islamabad claimed.

At the same time, Obama’s “pivot” is fostering a new era of ferocious economic nationalism and propelling a scramble for economic primacy in Central Asia and control over the vast resource and commodity flows linking East Asia and the Indian subcontinent with Africa and the Middle East.

Seeking to circumvent the US encirclement, China is moving to develop the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $46 billion infrastructure project aimed at integrating Pakistan into a Chinese-led Eurasian economic bloc.

The Chinese initiative has only spurred India to intensify its intervention in Afghanistan and deepened the simmering India-Pakistan conflict. Last month, in a move openly intended to undercut the CPEC, India ’s Hindu nationalist-led government signed the Chabahar Pact with Iran and Afghanistan, pledging hundreds of millions for infrastructure projects linking Afghanistan with the Indian coast, which are designed to allow New Delhi access to Central Asia and the Middle East while bypassing Pakistan.

With the June 7th primaries now over, anointed establishment candidate Hillary Clinton has emerged, predictably, as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Unfortunately for Bernie Sanders supporters, it was always going to be like this. Bernie didn’t stand a chance against the ruthless Clinton political machine, which has friends in all the high places.

Hillary has pandered to Israel, Saudi Arabia, the military-industrial complex, big banks, the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), Big Pharma and Big Biotech, and probably every other moneyed special interest you can think of in the American political landscape. MSM (Mainstream Media) newsman Chris Matthews even admitted on air that MSNBC was planning on calling the Californian primary for Clinton before the vote was finished. ZeroHedge wrote that Hillary Clinton and AP (Associated Press) may have colluded to time an announcement just before the California primaries that Hillary had enough delegates to win – despite the fact that the unpledged superdelegates don’t vote until July 25th, 2016.

There is only 1 establishment candidate (not that Trump is great either). Watch as she is guided into position between now and Nov. 8th 2016 to loyally execute the NWO agenda.

Now, with the primaries basically done, establishment candidate Clinton has emerged as the winner, followed by a string of controversial and dodgy victories such as the ones at Iowa, Nevada, Massachusetts (electioneering by Bill Clinton), Arizona and New York. Yet, with the system rigged as it currently is, and the state of consciousness of the public where it currently is, how was this result ever going to be any other way?

How Could It Be Any Other Way?

Hillary Clinton is the establishment candidate par excellence. She is the absolute definition of a corrupted, bought-and-paid political prostitute who will loyally conduct psychopathic business as usual for the New World Order. She laughed when the US and UK invaded the sovereign nation of Libya and killed Gaddafi. She has repeatedly fake-coughed and fake-hacked her way through hearings to avoid answering questions. She has constantly flip-flopped and changed her position to pander to whatever audience she is speaking to. She will say anything to get elected.

Now as we are about to enter a Clinton vs. Trump showdown, watch carefully as the MSM starts to promote Clinton and sideline Trump to ensure their establishment candidate gets elected. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think Trump is a good candidate either, and I don’t trust him with his alleged Mafia and NWO connections.

So Your Vote Counts, Huh?

It’s well past time to wake up to the reality of rigged voting machines and voter fraud in the US. I am not against voting in small, local situations where you can actually directly access the candidates and there is less likely to be fraud because there is less at stake. However, at state, national or international levels, it’s really a waste of time. It’s a waste of your effort, energy, “hope power” and manifestational ability. The left-right divide is a total sham. The game has been tightly controlled at those levels for decades or centuries, with few exceptions, by a variety of means, including controlling both sides, controlling public opinion via the MSM, blackmailing and bribing candidates, and as a last resort “accidental” suicides and assassinations.

For some people, the illusion that we live in a democracy where “your vote counts” can be a hard one to break. However to other people, the truth is so painfully obvious that the voting system is entirely rigged. Consider the following:

– Clinton Eugene Curtis worked for NASA, the Florida DOT and Exxon Mobil. In October 2000, he wrote a prototype computer program that would flip the vote, making it 51-49 for whatever candidate was wanted, and it was undetectable (unless you looked at 100 lines of source code). He says he was asked by Tom Feeney, State Congressman, who was at the time the speaker of House of Florida, and a former lobbyist for a computer company;

– Diebold “Accu-Vote” (inversion) voting machines, especially when there is no paper trail, are incredibly easy to hack;

– Remember the reports in the 2012 elections that Republican candidate Mitt Romney actually bought companies owning the voting machines?

Vote rigging in the US – long a political reality.

Remember Bilderberg Met with Hillary Clinton and Obama in 2008

Remember the reports in 2008 that stated that one of the true ruling groups of the New World Order, the Bilderberg Group, had convened in Chantilly Virginia and had personally summoned both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to meet them? Obama was selected to be US President, and has since bombed and drone-assassinated his way into history as the most warmongering Nobel Peace Prize recipient ever. Now, it’s Clinton’s turn.

It’s sad to say, but unless there is a dramatic shift in awareness, and unless people realize we need a new system and a new consciousness (not a new president), Hillary Clinton will be rolled out as the anointed establishment candidate. Yawn – the agenda is nothing if not very predictable. Expect the MSM to brainwash people enough to make “Hillary 2016” happen between now and November 8th, 2016 despite her long, long criminal past and the Clinton body count that trails her.

“I have travelled coast-to-coast, covering more than 25 states of America.  I realised the real strength of the nation lies in the dreams of its people.” Narendra Modi, Address to US Congress, Jun 8, 2016

He made good in the end – at least from the US perspective.  Showing how political landscapes can transform as regularly as inclement weather, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi impressed his US hosts with promises – and more promises.

The pitch was that of a grand salesman, generously spiced with a range of exotica.  For those in India, explained Modi in his address to a joint meeting of the US Congress, living in harmony with mother earth was “part of our ancient belief”.  Diplomats in New Delhi and Washington are far more prosaic, focusing on three themes in forging a joint document of principles that involve “protecting the commons, securing the frontiers, and increasing people-to-people contact.”

Notwithstanding vague concepts of patriotic and environmental harmony, Modi has also stretched out the various materialist motifs.  “This is the time the world needs a new engine of growth,” Modi explained to those attending the USIBC annual gala. “It would be nice if the new engines are democratic ones.”[1]

Sweet words for the Obama administration, playing on the notion that certain “democratic” powers deserve to be the drivers of economic development, rather than police state, authoritarian aspirants.  As President Barack Obama has previous opined, Modi is the man Washington wants to see prosper.  He “reflects the dynamism and potential of India’s rise” while his “ambitious vision” to turn his country into an “inspiring model for the world” should be lauded.[2]

Then came the prowess of the Indian diaspora, though Indian watchers had noted that this US trip was going to be far more than self-congratulation. As The Indian Express noted, citing an official source, “During earlier visits, he reached out to the large Indian diaspora; this time, he will talk to the American people.”[3]  This did not prevent Modi from telling Congress that such members of the diaspora “are among your best CEOs; academics; scientists; economists; doctors; even spelling bee champions.” If you have a horn, toot it.

The Modi trip is far more than that. As sizeable as it is, economics is but one part of the pie. Knowing exactly what was sought, Modi explained that a deeper security relationship was needed between the countries, something that would be affirmed by the signing of a Logistic Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, permitting each country access to each other’s military bases.  “The fight against terrorism has to be fought on many levels.  And the traditional tools of military, intelligence or diplomacy alone would not be able to win this fight.”

The issue of a closer US-India relationship was always going to be a complicated one.  India was one of the key figures of the Cold War non-alignment movement, and even today stresses the need to maintain relationships with other emerging powers.  Washington saw greater value in its Cold War machinations regarding Moscow to supply and support Pakistan, which became a suitable anti-Soviet proxy.  The results of that troubled and dysfunctional relationship – financed fundamentalists; destabilising regimes and creating a range of terror cells – is felt to this day.

Modi himself is hardly the angelic essence of political purity.  His hand in Hindu nationalism has been a mighty one and his role, incidental or otherwise, in sectarian violence while Chief Minister of Gujarat state was something that plagued his prospects for entering the country.

Such matters have been placed on ice at the ceremonial level, though a few lawmakers from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee have expressed concerns about human rights violations in India.  Last month, a hearing on Capitol Hill featuring, amongst others, a previously vocal Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.).  (Cardin remains concerned by India’s stellar performance in the Global Slavery Index and instances of people traffickers receiving bribes from officials.)

The members proceeded to grill a State Department official over India’s efforts to restrict foreign funding to Green Peace and the Ford Foundation, a recent decision to prevent investigators from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from entering India, and broader issues of religious intolerance and human trafficking.  Corker’s observation was that the US had been far from “brutally honest” with their Indian counterparts.[4]

Such statements always sound like hectoring cant.  But they barely mask the points of order that states refuse to engage in when noisy money and clamouring security needs intervene.  US foreign policy has tended to occupy an area of moralistic outrage, using human rights as points of order when needed.  At other times, crude realpolitik makes short work of such concern. Empires will remain empires.

Modi understands that point better than most. Any closer move to Washington must be premised on dumping on his neighbours and showing New Delhi to be a truly muscular partner on the global stage. While his address to the joint meeting of the Senate and the House of Representatives did not explicitly name China or Pakistan, heavy hints abounded.  These also form the subject of “protecting the commons or shared spaces”.

Leaving no one in doubt which entity he was referring to, Modi suggested that closer ties between the US and India would be a counter to various militant aspirations in the South China Sea.  “It will also help ensure security of the sea lanes and commerce and freedom of navigation on seas.”  Very much the current Modi: careful, calculating, and superficially reformed.

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

Notes: 

[1] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/india-set-to-become-driver-of-global-economy-modi-2840442/

[2] http://time.com/4359522/india-modi-obama-visit-us/

[3] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/modis-us-visit-less-diaspora-more-diplomacy-as-modi-lands-in-washington-2838389/

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/01/u-s-senators-attack-indias-human-rights-record-before-modis-capitol-hill-address/

A range of Syrian women have denounced the US-UK funded group the ‘White Helmets’, led by a former British soldier and recently revealed to be financed by USAID. They come from all the country’s communities (e.g. Sunni, Alawi, Druze, Christian) but, like most Syrians, prefer to identify simply as Syrian. 

Their comments follow the release of a range of evidence (Beeley 2015; Hands off Syria 2016) which show that the White Helmets – who present as ‘heroes’ rescuing civilians from the destruction of war – are in fact armed, partisan, western government funded and participating with Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda) in sectarian celebrations and executions.

Atalia from Tartus says: ‘the true fact about the white helmets is that they are FAKE and are just propaganda tools used by the US and UK administrations to justify military actions against the Syrian government, they were NOT created by Syrians nor do they serve Syria.’

Rana from Damascus says: ‘they are an armed force [which has] covered themselves under the wing of ‘humanitarian’ organization. In rural Idlib they did so many executions against Syrian civilians that doesn’t support the fake revolution. Their main support and fund comes from US government and UK government.’

A White Helmets (2015) video from Douma (NE Damascus countryside) shows the aftermath of a Syrian Government attack on Jabhat al Nusra and Jaysh al Islam terrorist groups, which had sent rockets and mortars into Damascus almost every day for several years, killing hundreds of people. The young men donning ‘White Helmets’ jackets to rescue their colleagues are indistinguishable from Islamist fighters. Portraying Islamist casualties as civilians is a long tradition in the war on Syria. US journalist Nir Rosen (2012) wrote some years back that ‘dead opposition fighters … [are often] described as innocent civilians killed by security forces’.

Samiah explains that the

‘White Helmets are supported by the US State Department, the same people who have brought to you the Free Syrian Army, who have morphed into Al Qaeda, Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS. They make me feel sick disgusting leeches who live on people’s pain and suffering.’ Mimi adds, the ‘white helmets have been filmed torturing and executing a Syrian soldier, they are not a humanitarian organisation.’

Backed by the Wall Street creation ‘The Syrian Campaign’ (Bartlett 2015) and often wrongly called ‘Syrian Civil Defence’, the White Helmets are the latest of a series of front groups, designed to give a ‘humanitarian’ gloss to Washington’s latest dreadful war of ‘regime change’ in the Middle East. Hind says ‘to us, they are nothing but a bunch of armed sectarian people giving a hand to the other terrorist groups on ground to justify this dirty war on our country.’

Prof. Tim Anderson’s latest book “The Dirty War on Syria” is now available for pre-order from our online store. 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-8-4

Year: 2016

Author: Tim Anderson

Pages: 240

List Price: $23.95

Special Price: $15.00

Notes

Bartlett, Eva (2015) ‘Human Rights” front groups (“Humanitarian Interventionalists”) warring on Syria’, In Gaza, Fall, online:https://ingaza.wordpress.com/syria/human-rights-front-groups-humanitarian-interventionalists-warring-on-syria/

Beeley, Vanessa (2015) ‘Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception’, 21^st century Wire, 23 October, online:http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/10/23/syrias-white-helmets-war-by-way-of-deception-part-1/.

Hands off Syria (2016) ‘The White Helmets – al Qaeda with a facelift’, 29 April, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aAaReVn2I4

Rosen, Nir (2012) ‘Q&A: Nir Rosen on Syria’s armed opposition’, Al Jazeera, 13 Feb, online:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/201221315020166516.html

White Helmets (2015) ‘الشهداء تحترق و الجرحى تملئ شوارع المدينة – مجزرة #دوما 2015.10.30 +18 مؤثر جدا ً

31 October, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyJI_FRA8Hc&index=6&list=PLujxCZ2NjjytaeZe3W5mpAQQILr5hSIDW

In recent weeks, numerous reports have emerged of arbitrary mass disqualifications, tampering with registration data, confusing and arcane voting procedures, and other efforts at voter suppression in the course of the primary elections and in advance of the US general election.

According to preliminary surveys, many voters were prevented from voting because they did not understand voting regulations, particularly early registration deadlines. Others were the subject of deliberate purges of voter rolls, the switching of their party affiliation without their knowledge or consent, their omission from the rolls at their polling places even though they were properly registered, or otherwise being turned away from polling places.

The brazen and provocative character of these voter suppression efforts is linked to the reactionary 2013 Supreme Court ruling gutting the enforcement provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a major reform of the period of civil rights struggles. The Voting Rights Act struck down arbitrary voting restrictions at the state and local level, a pillar of the Jim Crow system of segregation in the South.

Since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling, the Democrats have not introduced a single bill onto the floor of either house of the federal legislature that would mitigate the impact of the decision. Emboldened by this climate, state legislatures have unleashed a barrage of anti-democratic measures, such as “voter ID” laws, which discriminate against working class, poor, elderly and minority voters.

Voter ID laws are already in effect in 33 of 50 states. This year, new restrictions on voting will be operative in 17 states for the first time in a presidential election: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering and other forms of electoral corruption are increasingly accepted as a normal part of the American political system. Both capitalist parties have engaged in redistricting efforts that have twisted America’s election districts into absurd shapes that have no historical or geographical justification.

New anti-democratic provisions are often passed in election years by state legislatures in violation of federal law with the knowledge that by the time a judge can determine that the provisions are illegal, the elections will have already taken place and the desired result obtained.

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Education Fund estimates that new voter ID laws will effectively disenfranchise 875,000 Latino voters this year.

The state of Missouri passed a voter ID law in May that is expected to disenfranchise 220,000 mainly poor and working class voters, although it is not expected to go into effect before this year’s November election. Wisconsin’s new law is expected to disenfranchise 300,000 voters.

Ohio election officials have purged tens of thousands of citizens from poor areas from the voter rolls on the spurious grounds that they have not “voted enough” in the past. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to halt the purges. If voters who have been purged do not re-register by a certain deadline they may turn up at polling stations in November only to discover that they are not able to vote.

“These people are perfectly eligible to vote,” Ohio ACLU Legal Director Freda Levenson told reporters. “They’ve lived in the same house since they’ve been registered, they haven’t moved, they haven’t been convicted of a felony, and they didn’t cancel their registration.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Georgia has also filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent similar purges of the voter rolls. The lawsuit alleges that purges of voters who have not “voted enough” violate the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

On Tuesday, just as the polls were opening in six states, including California, multiple TV and media networks announced that Hillary Clinton had secured the Democratic nomination in a transparent effort to discourage supporters of the self-described “socialist” Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders from voting. The report was purportedly based on a survey of anonymous superdelegates; neither Clinton nor Sanders have secured the 2,383 pledged delegates necessary to secure the nomination without superdelegates.

A lawsuit filed by Election Justice USA, a voter advocacy group, alleges that 125,000 Democratic voters were dropped from the rolls and prevented from voting in the New York primary elections. More than 200 voters have joined the lawsuit. The group has also alleged that voters who requested provisional or affidavit ballots were falsely told that “there was no such thing.”

The attorney general’s office in New York received more than 1,000 complaints from voters, a rise from 150 reports in the 2012 elections. At least one voter reported a forged signature on a voter registration sheet.

In California, the most populous state, reports are emerging of many voters receiving the wrong ballots, with registered Democrats receiving Republican ballots or non-party ballots. Voters who received non-party ballots may have cast them without realizing that doing so would preclude them from voting in the presidential primary for either party. A vote cast with the wrong ballot cannot be corrected.

The “non-party” ballot contains blank pages where the presidential candidates would otherwise be listed, with only an arrow and the words “GO TO NEXT PAGE.” A voter receiving the ballot could read the 23-page document, packed with dense legalese, from beginning to end without seeing the names “Clinton,” “Sanders” or “Trump.”

Under existing California regulations, a person who is designated as a “no party preference” (NPP) voter in California would have had to re-register as a Democrat or Republican by May 23 in order to vote for the presidential candidates of either party. There are approximately 2.2 million such voters in California. This means that a Bernie Sanders supporter who was listed on the rolls as an independent or “NPP” voter, and who did not know about the May 23 deadline, could have been handed a ballot on June 7 that did not have the name of his candidate on it.

Sanders campaigners were compelled to issue emergency instructions such as the following to their supporters:

“California, DO NOT WRITE IN Bernie Sanders on your ballot. If you do not see Bernie Sanders’ name printed on your ballot, then you have the wrong ballot and you need to exchange it for the proper ballot. Do NOT send it back, go exchange it for A Dem party CROSSOVER ballot.”

The Los Angeles Times reported “chaos” at polling places on June 7 in an article headlined “Broken machines, incomplete voter rolls leave some wondering whether their ballots will count.” The article describes many polling places with broken or jammed machines, missing voter rolls, purged lists of party members, and poll workers who themselves did not understand the applicable rules and regulations.

Many voters were immediately handed a pink provisional ballot because the standard voting infrastructure had broken down. Others protested the provisional ballots because they are not counted immediately, take longer to read and fill out, and are frequently rejected as improperly marked–at a rate of about 10 to 15 percent.

Important personalities in alternative news, or the counter-narrative, have spilled a lot of ink recently on the imminent possibility of nuclear war between the US and Russia.

Before considering the issue more closely, it is essential to clarify certain basic principles on which we should all agree as a premise for this analysis.

(a) Russia will never allow any country to make it a victim of such a situation as a world war, condemning its citizens to suffer tens of millions of deaths.

Sanders claiming he intends continuing his nomination quest to the July Democrat convention is meaningless hyperbole. Expect no floor fight. Concession followed by endorsing Clinton could come any time.

The same scenario repeats each electoral cycle. Party faithful rally behind presidential nominees, losing aspirants among them.

Sanders/Clinton rapprochement is virtually certain. His phony rationale will likely be to keep Trump from succeeding Obama. He’ll choose his time and place to make a formal announcement – maybe in days.

Thursday he’ll meet with Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D. NV) in Washington. According to Politico, he’ll “likely (begin) the party’s internal healing process.”

His sole Democrat Senate supporter, Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, said “I do believe that we now have our nominee. Our nominee is (Mrs.) Clinton.”

Don’t expect Sanders to disagree. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D. MI) said “there’s no way in the world he wants to in any way do anything that would help Donald Trump become president.”

The Wall Street Journal highlighted pressure building on Sanders “to rally behind presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton” – unity steps taken “with prominent…Sanders supporters conceding he had lost the race, and saying they would rally behind…Clinton.”

The Washington Post expects “enthusiastic” party unity backing her, Sanders sure to come on board, much like how Clinton conceded to Obama in 2008.

He has no chance to persuade unelected party insider super-delegates to switch allegiance from Clinton to him. He’ll likely be offered and willingly accept a high-level position in her administration, maybe as running mate.

The New York Times cited unnamed Obama aides, saying he “intends to nudge Mr. Sanders toward embracing (Clinton), stressing (he) can further his policy agenda while unifying the party to defeat Mr. Trump in November.”

The president will formally endorse her in days, followed by actively campaigning on her behalf.

Sanders notoriously caves when pushed. Endorsing Clinton will strip the mask off his hollow populist rhetoric, rendering it empty, meaningless.

He’s a longtime Democrat party loyalist, an independent socialist in name only, a phony progressive, a self-serving dirty business as usual politician.

Endorsing Clinton will betray millions of loyal supporters, showing he backs what he campaigned against, making him complicit in her high crimes. World peace hangs in the balance.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” 

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html 

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

O controle sobre a política monetária e a reforma macroeconómica era o objectivo final do Golpe de Estado. As nomeações chave do ponto de vista da Wall Street são o Banco Central, o qual domina a política monetária bem como as transacções de divisas estrangeiras, o Ministério das Finanças e o Banco do Brasil.

Por conta da Wall Street e do “Consenso de Washington”, o “governo” interino pós-golpe de Michel Temer nomeou um antigo presidente-executivo da Wall Street (com cidadania estado-unidense) para a chefia do Ministério das Finanças.

Henrique de Campos Meirelles, antigo presidente do Fleet Boston Financial’s Global Banking (1999-2002) e antigo governador do Banco Central sob a presidência Lula foi nomeado ministro das Finanças em 12 de Maio.

Antecedentes históricos 

A divisa do Brasil sob o Real está fortemente dolarizada. Operações de dívida interna são conducentes à ascensão da dívida externa. A intenção da Wall Street é manter o Brasil num colete de força monetário.

Desde o governo de Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a Wall Street tem exercido controle sobre nomeações económicas chave incluindo o Ministério das Finanças, o Banco do Brasil e o Banco Central. Sob os governo de Fernando Henrique Cardoso e Luís Ignácio da Silva (Lula), as nomeações do governador do Banco Central eram aprovadas pela Wall Street.

Nomeações de Cardoso, Lula e Temer no interesse da Wall Street 

Arminio Fraga: Presidente do Banco Central (4/Março/1999 – 1/Janeiro/2003),
administrador de hedge fund e associado de George Soros, Quantum Fund, Nova York, cidadania dual Brasil-EUA.

Henrique de Campos Meirelles: Presidente do Banco Central (1/Janeiro/2003 – 1/Janeiro/2011). Cidadania dual Brasil-EUA. Presidente e Executivo-Chefe de Operações do Banco de Boston (1996-99) e presidente do FleetBoston Financial’s Global Banking (1999-2004). Em 2004 o FleetBoston fundiu-se com o Bank of America. Antes da fusão com o Bank of America o FleetBoston era o sétimo maior banco dos EUA. O Bank of America é actualmente o segundo maior banco dos EUA.

Depois de ter sido afastado por Dilma em 2010, Meirelles retornou. Ele foi nomeado ministro das Finanças pelo “presidente interino” Michel Temer.

Ilan Goldfajn , economista chefe do Itaú, o maior banco privado brasileiro. Goldfajn [Goldfein] foi nomeado pelo “governo” interino de Michel Temer como governador do Banco Central (16/Maio/2016). Cidadania dual Israel-Brasil.

Goldfajn trabalhara anteriormente no Banco Central sob Armínio Fraga bem como sob Henrique Meirelles. Ele tem laços pessoais estreitos com o Prof. Stanley Fischer, actualmente vice-governador do US Federal Reserve. Não é preciso dizer que a nomeação de Goldfajn foi aprovada pelo FMI, pelo Tesouro dos EUA, pela Wall Street e pela Reserva Federal dos EUA.

Convém notar que Stanley Fischer teve anteriormente o posto de vice-administrador director do FMI e de governador do Banco Central de Israel. Tanto Fischer como Goldfajn são cidadãos israelenses, ligados ao lobby pró Israel.

Nomeado de Dilma Rousseff para o Banco Central, não aprovado pela Wall Street 

Alexandre Antônio Tombini, governador do Banco Central (2011-2016). Carreira oficial no Ministério das Finanças. Cidadania: Brasil

Antecedente histórico 

No princípio de 1999, no seguimento imediato do ataque especulativo contra a divisa nacional do Brasil (Real), o presidente do Banco Central, Professor Francisco Lopes (que fora nomeado na quarta-feira negra de 13/Janeiro/1999) foi demitido imediatamente após e substituído por Armínio Fraga, um cidadão estado-unidense e empregado de George Soros no Quantum Fund em Nova York.

“A raposa foi nomeada como guarda do galinheiro”. 

Mais concretamente, especuladores da Wall Street ficaram responsáveis pela política monetária do Brasil.

Sob o governo Lula, Henrique Campos Meirelles foi nomeado presidente do Banco Central do Brasil. Ele actuara anteriormente como presidente e CEO numa maiores instituições financeiras da Wall Street. O FleeBoston era o segundo maior credor do Brasil, após o Citigroup. Para dizer o mínimo, ele tinha um conflito de interesses. Sua nomeação foi acordada antes do acesso de Lula à presidência.

Henrique Meirelles foi um firme apoiante do controverso Plano Cavallo da Argentina na década de 1990: um “plano de estabilização” da Wall Street que infligiu destruição económica e social. A estrutura essencial do Plano Cavallo da Argentina foi replicada no Brasil sob o Plano Real, nomeadamente a imposição de uma divisa nacional dolarizada convertível (o Real). O que este esquema implica é que a dívida interna é transformada numa dívida externa denominada em dólar.

Com o acesso de Dilma à presidência, em 2011, Meirelles não foi reconduzido à presidência do Banco Central.

Soberania em política monetária 

O ministro das Finanças Meirelles, sob o “governo” interino, apoia a assim chamada “independência do Banco Central”. A aplicação deste falso conceito implica que o governo não deveria intervir em decisões do Banco Central. Mas não há restrições quanto às “Raposas da Wall Street”.

A questão da soberania em política monetária é crucial. O objectivo do golpe de Estado foi negar a soberania do Brasil na formulação da política macroeconómica.

Raposa da Wall Street 

Sob Dilma, a “tradição” de seleccionar uma “raposa da Wall Street” fora abandonada com a designação de Alexandre Antônio Tombini, um funcionário de carreira do governo, que encabeçou o Banco Central do Brasil de 2011 a Maio de 2016.

Com o acesso de Michel Temer a “presidente interino”, Henrique Campos Meirelles foi nomeado ministro das Finanças. Por sua vez, Meirelles nomeou seus próprios comparsas para chefiar o Banco Central e o Banco do Brasil. Meirelles foi descrito pelos media dos EUA como “amigo do mercado”.

Nomeações económicas de Michel Temer: 

Henrique de Campos Meirelles, ministro das Finanças,
Ilan Golfajn, Presidente do Banco Centrl do Brasil, comparsa nomeado por Meirelles
Paulo Caffarelli, Banco do Brasil, comparsa nomeado por Meirelles

Notas conclusivas 

O que está em causa através de vários mecanismos – incluindo operações de inteligência, manipulação financeira, propaganda nos media – é a desestabilização absoluta da estrutura do estado brasileiro e da economia nacional, não mencionando o empobrecimento em massa do povo brasileiro.

Os EUA não querem tratar ou negociar com um governo soberano reformista e nacionalista. O que querem é um submisso estado proxy dos EUA.

Lula foi “aceitável” porque seguia as instruções da Wall Street e do FMI.

Enquanto a agenda política prevaleceu sob Rousseff, uma agenda reformista-populista era também implementada a qual afastava-se dos fundamentos macroeconómicos patrocinados pela Wall Street durante a presidência Lula. Segundo o director administrador do FMI Heirich Koeller (2003) Lula era o “Nosso melhor presidente”:

“Sou entusiasta [da administração Lula]; mas é melhor dizer que estou profundamente impressionado pelo Presidente Lula” ( IMF Press Conference , 2003).

Sob Lula, não havia necessidade de “mudança de regime”. Luís Ignácio da Silva havia endossado o “Consenso de Washington”.

O afastamento temporário de Henrique Campos Meirelles a seguir à eleição de Dilma Rousseff foi crucial. A Wall Stree não aprovou nomeações de Dilma para o Banco Central e o Ministério das Finanças.

Se Dilma houvesse optado por manter Henrique Meirelles, mais provavelmente o golpe de Estado não teria ocorrido. 

Convém notar que o antigo presidente Lula, o qual tem um relacionamento pessoal estreito com Meirelles, havia recomendado à presidente Dilma que nomeasse Meirelles para a posição de ministro das Finanças como um meio de evitar o seu impeachment.

O regime proxy dos EUA em Brasília 

Um antigo presidente de uma das maiores instituições financeiras da América (e cidadão americano) controla as instituições financeiras chave do Brasil e estabelece a agenda macroeconómica e monetária para um país de mais de 200 milhões de habitações.

Isto é chamado um Golpe de Estado… pela Wall Street.

Michel Chossudovsky

O original encontra-se em http://www.globalresearch.ca/wall-street-behind-brazil-coup-d-etat/5526715

Este artigo em português foi traduzido por Resistir .

The UN’s short lived attempt at truth keeping has been brought to an abrupt end by an alleged funding Fatwa levied against them by a furious Saudi Monarchy, outraged at their inclusion in a UN blacklist for their genocidal acts of aggression against the children of Yemen.

On the 3rd June, news broke that the UN, in an unprecedented move of righteous human rights protection, blacklisted the Saudi Coalition for the killing and maiming of thousands of children in Yemen since the start of the war of aggression in March 2015.

The United Nations has blacklisted the Saudi-Arabia led coalition for killing and maiming thousands of children in Yemen.

“Grave violations against children increased dramatically as a result of the escalating conflict,”

Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General, said intensive bombardment had taken a “devastating toll” on the civilian population as a civil war continues to rage between the Yemeni government, Houthi rebels, al-Qaeda and Isis. ~ Independent

However this new found courage and integrity,  an unfamiliar concept for the UN, was shortlived.  Within days, the Sauds had reacted and violently, in the way they do best.  They allegedly issued a “financial fatwa”, threatening to withdraw their considerable funding from various UN agencies and projects.

Echoes of Israeli supreme “victimhood” and the ubiquitous cry of “anti-semitism”, converted to anti-muslimism, were revealed by the Sauds as part of their campaign of extreme pressure upon the insolent UN.

The source said there was also a threat of “clerics in Riyadh meeting to issue a fatwa against the U.N., declaring it anti-Muslim, which would mean no contacts of OIC members, no relations, contributions, support, to any U.N. projects, programs.”  ~ The Daily Star

King Salman. Photo: Webistan

The following report in full from the Daily Star [Reuters] and a flurry of reports in mainstream media demonstrate quite clearly who holds the UN purse strings and is perfectly happy to throttle any dissenters with them if necessary.

“UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Muslim allies of Saudi Arabia piled pressure on U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon over the blacklisting of a Saudi-led coalition for killing children in Yemen, with Riyadh threatening to cut Palestinian aid and funds to other U.N. programs, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

The United Nations announced on Monday it had removed the coalition from a child rights blacklist – released last week – pending a joint review by the world body and the coalition of cases of child deaths and injuries during the war in Yemen.

That removal prompted angry reactions from human rights groups, which accused Ban of caving in to pressure from powerful countries. They said that Ban, currently in the final year of his second term, risked harming his legacy as U.N. secretary-general.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources said Ban’s office was bombarded with calls from Gulf Arab foreign ministers, as well as ministers from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), after the blacklisting was announced last week. One U.N. official spoke of a “full-court press” over the blacklisting.

“Bullying, threats, pressure,” another diplomatic source told Reuters on condition of anonymity about the reaction to the blacklisting, adding that it was “real blackmail.”

The source said there was also a threat of “clerics in Riyadh meeting to issue a fatwa against the U.N., declaring it anti-Muslim, which would mean no contacts of OIC members, no relations, contributions, support, to any U.N. projects, programs.”

A fatwa is a legal opinion used in Islamic Sharia law. In Saudi Arabia fatwas can only be issued by the group of top, government-appointed clerics and are sometimes commissioned by the ruling family to back up its political positions.

Responding to the allegations, Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi said “we don’t use threats or intimidation,” and Riyadh was “very committed to the United Nations.”

Mouallimi denied any threat of a possible fatwa.

“That’s ridiculous, that’s outrageous,” he said, adding that the meeting of Saudi clerics was to approve and issue a statement condemning the blacklisting of the coalition.

On Monday Mouallimi described the annual U.N. report on states and armed groups that violate child rights in war as “wildly exaggerated” and demanded that it be corrected.

The main Saudi complaints were that the U.N. had not based its report on information supplied by the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and accused the world body of not consulting with the coalition. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, however, said on Tuesday that the Saudis had been consulted.

Several diplomatic sources said that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) would be hit especially hard if the blacklisting were upheld. Saudi Arabia was the fourth biggest donor to UNRWA after the United States, European Union and Britain, having supplied it nearly $100 million last year.

Coalition members Kuwait and United Arab Emirates are also key donors for UNRWA, together supplying nearly $50 million in 2015.

In addition to Saudi Arabia, Dujarric said that Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh contacted Ban’s office to protest the listing of the coalition. Diplomats said Egypt, Kuwait and Qatar also complained to Ban’s office.

The Saudi-led coalition includes Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan.

There was no indication that the United States or any other Western Saudi allies encouraged the U.N. to reverse the blacklisting of the coalition.

The U.N. report on children and armed conflict said the coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year, killing 510 and wounding 667.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he was not aware that the United States had contacted the U.N. about the report.

“We take very seriously the protection of children in armed conflict in Yemen … and continue to urge all sides in the conflict in Yemen to protect civilians and comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law,” Toner said.

Dujarric said the removal of the coalition was pending a review of child casualties in Yemen and could be reversed, though Mouallimi said the deletion was “irreversible and unconditional.”

Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Dina Kawar described her country’s complaint to the U.N. chief.

“The report was accusing the coalition and of course we are a part of it,” she said. “So my (foreign) minister did contact the secretary-general and did voice his opinion that the report was biased and that they need to look into it.”

Bangladesh’s mission told Reuters that their foreign minister contacted Ban’s office prior to the reversal while on an official visit to Saudi Arabia.

One diplomatic source familiar with the situation said the Saudi fury was to be expected, adding that “the SG’s (secretary-general’s) reaction to the pushback was disappointing.”

Several diplomats cited the U.N. decision not to blacklist Israel last year over child casualties in the Gaza Strip after the Israeli and U.S. governments lobbied Ban hard, saying that it was clear the current U.N. chief was vulnerable to threats.

Another diplomatic source said the recent spat between the U.N. and Morocco over Ban’s use of the term “occupation” to describe Morocco’s presence in the disputed territory of Western Sahara had set a bad precedent.

He noted that when Morocco demanded the expulsion of dozens of civilian staff in the U.N. peacekeeping mission there earlier this year, the U.N. Security Council failed to rally behind Ban with a strong show of support. That, he added, set a dangerous precedent for the world body’s 193 member states.

“The message was clear,” the diplomatic source said. “If you get tough with the secretary-general, the Security Council isn’t going to come to his aid.”

It is not surprising that some will speculate that the UN’s credibility has reached the end of a long road paved with corruption and Midas gold.

NATO has begun its Anaconda-16 war game, calling for the largest assembly of foreign forces in Poland since World War II.

The U.N. has caved to pressure and removed Saudi Arabia from a blacklist of states and groups that kill children. Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-backed military coalition was recently listed among countries, rebel movements, and terrorist groups responsible for“grave violations” against children during armed conflict.

Originally published on June 2, the annual U.N. report documents the horrific violations committed against children in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen in 2015. The 40-page document claims that in the last year, the Saudi-led coalition has been responsible for 60% of child deaths and injuries in Yemen’s bloody conflict.

That is, until the United Nations abruptly changed its mind.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the U.N. complained to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon about the Gulf state’s inclusion on the list. Enraged Saudi senior diplomats claimed figures were “wildly exaggerated”and threatened Riyadh, the Saudi capital and seat of power, would use its influence to convince other Arab governments and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to sever ties with the United Nations.

Despite the fact that the Saudis’ devastating intervention in Yemen has been well-documented — and includes the targeting of schools andhospitals — the strong-arming was successful. By Monday, Ban Ki-moon had backtracked and stated he would remove the coalition from the list, pending a review by a joint U.N and Saudi panel.

U.N. credibility has been on the line for a while, in part due to the jaw-dropping allegations that peacekeepers were involved in rape and indiscriminate killings in the Central African Republic. More recently, Anders Kompass, director of field operations at the UN human rights office in Geneva — who also blew the whistle on the sexual abuse of children — resigned from the agency, citing the organization’s failure to hold officials to account.

Responding to the backtracking, Oxfam’s Country Director in Yemen, Sajjad Mohamed Sajid, said political power and diplomatic clout have trumped the U.N.’s duty to expose those responsible for killing and maiming Yemen’s children. Claiming the retraction of the findings is a moral failure that goes against everything the U.N is meant to stand for, he added:

“The killing of children in their homes, at schools and in hospitals should not be swept under the carpet. When the U.N. identifies crimes such as these in needs to act, regardless of who the perpetrators are.”

Amnesty International expressed similar outrage and accused the U.N. of blatant pandering:

“This is a stark example of why the U.N. needs to stand up for human rights and its own principles — otherwise it will rapidly become part of the problem rather than the solution.”

Following the 2016 US presidential elections, the next administration must adopt a new and realistically balanced policy toward Israel and the Palestinians to bring an end to their conflict in the context of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace based on the Arab Peace Initiative. Throughout the primary campaign, only Senator Bernie Sanders had a position on this consuming conflict that was fresh, balanced, and welcome, especially given the increased intractability of the conflict and its dangerous implications not only for Israel and the Palestinians, but also for the US’s strategic interests in the Middle East.

The continuation of the conflict also has direct consequences on the security of the EU, precisely because it feeds into the region’s extremism from which the EU suffers greatly. In this regard, France’s initiative to resume Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is timely and should be pursued despite the initial lack of consensus at a recent meeting in Paris between the European, American, and Arab foreign ministers on convening an international conference at the end of the year to address the conflict in earnest.

Throughout the primary campaign, Sanders articulated his position concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stating that:

“I read Secretary Clinton’s speech before AIPAC, I heard virtually no discussion at all about the needs of the Palestinian people… Of course Israel has a right to defend itself, but long term there will never be peace in that region, unless the United States plays… an even-handed role in trying to bring people together and recognizing the serious problems that exist among the Palestinian people … There comes a time when if we pursue justice and peace we are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all of the time.”

What is admirable about his stand is not that it is new, but that it is articulated by a significant presidential candidate. Although he has failed to secure the nomination of the Democratic Party, he has become a major political force and the presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton, must seriously take into account his position on this critical issue.

Many Israeli and American Jews cynically accuse Senator Sanders of being an apologetic, self-hating Jew who is willing to bend backwards only to demonstrate that he is even-handed, when in fact he is undermining, from their perspective, Israel’s national security concerns.

On the contrary, I maintain that Sanders has taken this even-handed position precisely because he is committed to Israel’s security and well-being; he fully understands that time is against Israel, and those who really care about Israel’s future must speak out.

Sanders recognizes that Israel has no future as a Jewish, democratic, and secure state unless it recognizes the Palestinians’ right to a state of their own and “treat[s] the Palestinian people with respect and dignity.”

Many American politicians who support the policy of successive Israeli governments are, in fact, exploiting Israel for their own benefit. They want to draw not so much the votes of the Jewish community and their financial contributions, but the tens of millions of votes of the critically important evangelical constituency, whose support of Israel, for religious reasons, is unwavering.

Due to its traditional one-sided policy, the US has become the enabler of Israel’s addiction to the occupation and settlements by allowing successive Israeli governments to pursue a disastrous policy of expansionism, even though such a policy was and still is to Israel’s detriment.

As a result, the US’s involuntary acquiescence has allowed Israel to defy the international community with impunity, further strengthening Israel’s resolve against making any significant concession and rendering peace ever more elusive. Ironically, instead of protecting Israel’s national security, the US has inadvertently exposed it to constant threats and violence.

The fact that the Palestinians and the international community have failed to compel Israel to change direction does not suggest that the Israelis are winning. Israel is, in fact, only digging itself into an ever deeper hole from which it will be unable to climb unscathed.

This is what both Sanders and the French initiative want to avoid, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be wished away. Direct involvement of the US and the EU continues to be essential to changing the dynamic of the conflict, provided that careful lessons are drawn from past failures.

Given the intense hostility, hatred, and total lack of trust between Israel and the Palestinians, the resumption of direct or indirect negotiations will lead to nowhere as neither side is able to deliver the major concessions that will be required to reach an agreement without full public support.

For these reasons, the French initiative, with the backing of the next US administration, must support a process of reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians that precedes formal negotiations.

Although the June 3 meeting in Paris left the prospect of convening an international conference to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process later this year somewhat ambiguous, the participants have nevertheless agreed on a positive joint communique.

The communique calls for “fully ending the Israeli occupation” which represents an important shift from the US’s prior position, and that “a negotiated two-state solution is the only way to achieve an enduring peace, with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.” It further states that the status quo is unsustainable and “actions on the ground, in particular continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, are dangerously imperiling the prospects for a two-state solution.”

The US, in conjunction with France and the EU, should develop the mechanism that would establish a process of reconciliation to advance the prospect of peace, and to that end create a commission of reconciliation.

This commission should consist of individuals who are apolitical, greatly respected in their community for their integrity, and hold no formal position in their government. These individuals must be unbiased representatives, skilled in their profession, deeply committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians — seeking no reward or compensation — and devoted humanitarians.

As such, the combined talents and creativity of the Commission will be unsurpassed, their power of persuasion will be formidable, and their unbiased perspective will make them a major force in advocating for the reconciliation process. In addition, a fair-minded Israeli and Palestinian, who are fully committed to peace and with a deep knowledge of the internal affairs of their respective communities, would act as general counsel to the commission.

The process of reconciliation undertaken by the commission should include scores of people-to-people interactions that would begin to mitigate some of the distrust between the two sides and pave the way for substantive negotiations 18 to 24 months down the line.

In this regard, Senator Sanders should insist that the Democratic platform reflect this new approach, and if Hillary Clinton becomes the next President, she must commit herself to pursuing such a course.

Simultaneously, as I mentioned a number of times before, the Arab Peace Initiative should provide an overall umbrella under which an Israeli-Palestinian peace (based on a two-state solution) is negotiated in the context of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, which a majority of Israelis and Palestinians would fully support.

By raising the need for the US to play an even-handed role to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Sanders has introduced a new critically important paradigm that the next administration must adopt, and in conjunction with the French initiative, they can create a much better prospect of ending the debilitating and explosive seven decades-old conflict.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.
[email protected]                             Web:www.alonben-meir.com

Friday last week marked the death of arguably the greatest and most beloved Black athlete in history: Muhammad Ali.

No sport has exploited athletes, particularly Black athletes, quite like boxing. The very first boxers in America were African slaves. White slave owners would amuse themselves by forcing slaves to box to the death while wearing iron collars.

Even after the abolition of slavery, boxing became the first sport to be desegregated so that white boxing promoters could continue to exploit Blacks and make money from the deep racism in American society.

Eugenics was used to justified slavery, and the pseudo science of the time “proved” that Blacks were not only mentally inferior, but also physically inferior to whites.

Ironically, early white fight promoters unwittingly created a space where Black boxers could destroy white supremacist ideas of society and racial hierarchy.

The 1910 victory of Jack Johnson against “The Great White Hope” launched one of the greatest nationwide race riots in U.S. history. Out of that embarrassment, in which a Black man defeated a white man, Congress passed a law outlawing boxing films.

With a brief look at the history of boxing, it is abundantly clear that the races and cultures that have suffered the most at any given time always tend to produce the greatest champions.

Boxing has a tendency to both attract and indeed pray upon talent from underprivileged minority communities. Through boxing, one can read a direct chart of the underprivileged in America. The sport highlights the line of minorities who struggle to make it up the ladder, until they succeed, and then disappear from the boxing scene. Tellingly, the minorities that remain in the ring today are a consequence of still being on the bottom rung of America’s economic ladder.

You had the waves of underprivileged Jewish boxers, then Irish boxers, Italian-American boxers, African American boxers, and now, increasingly Hispanic boxers.

In a society that is so violently racist, the sport of boxing became an escape valve for people’s anger. Boxing symbolized a twisted manifestation of the American dream, where minorities have to, literally, fight their way out of poverty.

The modern image of Muhammad Ali, portrayed by the establishment, is one of a Black man dancing in the ring and shouting, “I am the greatest!” His image is now used to sell everything from luxury cars to soft drinks.

Despite the establishment’s whitewashing and Santaclausification of Ali’s image, history shows that the true Muhammad Ali was a staunch Black Nationalist, who was good friends with Malcolm X, and a member of the Black Power group, The Nation of Islam.

Ali was unquestionably the best boxer in history, not simply because of his achievements in the ring, but because he brought the fight against racism and war into professional sports.

Muhammad Ali grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, as the Black freedom struggle was heating up and beginning to boil over. Born in Louisville as Cassius Clay to a house painter and domestic worker, Ali was immersed in America’s racist nature from birth.

After winning the Olympic gold medal at the age of 18, Ali was so proud of his medal that he said he wore it round his neck almost all the time. Fellow Olympian W. Rudolph remarked, “He slept with it, he went to the cafeteria with it. He never took it off.”

Days after returning from the Olympic games, Ali was eating in a restaurant with the medal swinging around his neck and he was denied service by the white restaurant owners. Ali then threw the gold medal into the Ohio river.

Ali found answers to America’s racism in friend and mentor Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. “X and Ali were one in the same,” journalist J. Tinsley wrote. “Both were young, handsome, intelligent, outspoken African American men who scared the crap out of White America during a time period when racial tension was the norm.”

With the Nation of Islam, Ali rejected the name Clay and explained how, “Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I’m free, that I don’t belong to anyone, that I’m not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.”

At a time when most of the country were in favor of the Vietnam war, Ali asked, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”

The typical sentence for refusing to go to war was 18 months, but an all-white jury convicted Ali and he was sentenced to 60 months, or five years, in prison for standing up to America’s most violent racism at home and abroad. Despite having been invited to the White House later in his life, the white establishment loathed Muhammad Ali and his phone was bugged by the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

Perhaps Ali’s greatest legacy is his voice. Ali’s voice was uncompromising in its Blackness. His voice was just as uncompromising in its rejection of the trappings of wealth and fame, as it was in the rejection of a system that unleashed German shepherds on Black children. Ali’s voice did not seek acceptance. It simply demanded to be heard.

To begin with, the American press viewed Ali’s voice as a refreshing change to professional boxing’s un-poetic violence. His antics and doggerel enhanced newspaper columns. However, that editorial stance suddenly changed in 1964 when Ali, immediately after claiming the heavyweight title, revealed that he had become a Black Muslim. The American press then began to use Ali’s voice to portray him as a racist hothead.

The New York Times continued to print the slave name Cassius Clay for years and called him a “nauseating and childish loudmouth braggart”. White sports writers certainly preferred their Negro athletes tough, quiet and docile.

White America hated his voice, the white press sought to denigrate that voice, and the U.S. government tried to silence his voice completely. White America only embraced the most outspoken Black athlete in history after he was unable to speak anymore because of Parkinson’s disease.

Boxing changed American history. The sport of boxing had more to do with the advancement of the civil rights movement than any other sport, from Jack Johnson to Joe Lewis to Muhammad Ali.

History has never produced an athlete more persecuted by the U.S. government, more vilified by the American media, or more respected globally than Muhammad Ali.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected]

Operation “Anakonda 16” is a dangerous provocation

As I write this, US troops are building a bridge across Poland’s Vistula river, and conducting a nighttime helicopter assault to secure the eastern part of the country against a Russian assault.

Has World War III started? Well, not quite yet, although it’s not for want of trying.

This is Operation “Anakonda 16.” Thirty-one thousand troops, 14,000 of them American, are conducting war games designed to secure an Allied victory in World War III. The exercises involve “100 aircraft, 12 vessels and 3,000 vehicles,” and precede the upcoming NATO summit, which is expected to approve the stationing of yet more troops – mostly Americans – in eastern Europe.

NATO claims this is all strictly “defensive” in nature, designed to deter Russian “aggression” – but who is the real aggressor?

It is the Western powers who, ever since the fall of the USSR, have pushed eastward relentlessly, expanding the “defensive” NATO  alliance to include such useless nonentities as Albania and Montenegro, and even extending “associate” status to distant Georgia. Their policy has been to eliminate the buffer between NATO and Russia, absorbing previously neutral Ukraine into the Western orbit by means of a violent coup d’etat, and launching a propaganda war that targets Russian President Vladimir Putin as the second coming of Stalin.

The Russian reaction has been to reverse Nikita Khrushchev’s 1954 decision to hand Crimea to Ukraine, pull out of a treaty limiting the number of troops in Europe, launch a military build up on their borders, and upgrade their nuclear arsenal to parallel asimilar effort by the US.

With the collapse of international communism, the need for NATO was obviated, and yet – like any and all  government programs – it not only persisted, it expanded. Complementing the idea of “Greater Europe” and the creation of the European Union, the NATO-crats enlarged the original “defensive” vision that was supposedly the rationale for the alliance and embarked on an ambitious program that involved the creation of a permanent military architecture which inevitably sought to absorb real estate in the east. Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states – all eventually joined NATO’s ranks as Moscow looked on in alarm. As the “war on terrorism” commenced, NATO became the instrument of Western military operations in the Middle East, sending its tentacles into the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and insinuating itself into the Caucasus region.

From a cold war policy of containment, US/NATO has since moved into regime change mode: the idea is to encircle Russia militarily, while using “soft power” to undermine pro-Russian regimes in Russia’s periphery and eventually achieve regime change in Russia itself. The Ukrainian operation was an example of the “soft power” approach: utilizing Western-funded “civil society” groups, they succeeded in evicting the democratically elected government from office and installing one handpicked in Washington. With the imposition of sanctions, and the continued encirclement of Russia, the idea is to squeeze the Russian bear until he either gives up or collapses. Which is why “Anakonda” – an iteration of the giant snake that crushes its victims to death and then devours them – is truly an evocative name.

As is usual with the regime-changers in Washington, they approach their task with little or no understanding of their intended victim. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they thought they could destroy the regime, and then create a Middle Eastern version of Kansas. It didn’t work out that way – but our political class is incapable of learning the lessons of experience.

In the case of Russia, they believe that a Russian collapse would have to mean the ascension to power of a figure much like the late Boris Yeltsin, who was too drunk to resist the incursions of Western power most of the time, and went along with the marginalization of his country without too many protests. However, the memory of the Yeltsin era is abhorred by the Russian people, who saw their country plundered by the oligarchs, and their standard of living fall into a veritable abyss, while Russia was pushed around on the international stage like a freshman pledge on fraternity row.

What the NATO-crats want is a “pro-Western” figurehead in power in Russia, but what they don’t get is that Putin is as pro-Western as they come in the current political milieu. His main opponent in the election that brought him to power was the virulently anti-Western Communist Party, which he handily defeated, with the even more anti-Western Russian nationalists coming in third.

Initially, Putin sought to include Russia in “Greater Europe,” and he proposed an agreement with NATO to ensure that Europe would be a “common space.” Yet his initiatives to create an inclusive Europe were met with implacable hostility by the Western powers, who rejected the idea that Russia would be treated as an equal and insisted on the primacy of NATO and the EU. This set up the present standoff, in which the countries of the former Warsaw Pact were forced to choose between Brussels and Moscow.

If and when the West succeeds in collapsing the Russian economy and taking down Putin, it won’t be a Yeltsin-like figure who will inherit the ruins. What comes after Putin, in this context, is something much worse. And in that case, the prospect of war will loom large on the horizon.

If Hillary Clinton gets into the White House, you can be sure the tensions with Russia will reach fever pitch. She has compared Putin to Hitler – always the signal that we are about to embark on yet another crusade – and her neoconservative supporters are eager to restart the cold war. The great danger is that a cold war may very well become a hot one – and that raises the specter that we lived with for half a century, the very real possibility of a nuclear war.

To compare Putin to Stalin, or Hitler, is absurd: Russia has come a long way since the days of the Gulag, when 60 million people were killed and imprisoned. If we want to push Russia back into the darkness, then the policy we are presently pursuing is the way to go: if, however, we want peace, then it’s high time to disband NATO – which is outdated and expensive – give up our dreams of regime change in Russia, and start cooperating with Moscow in solving our mutual problems.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert andDavid Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

As the world is faced with numerous crises requiring cooperation between the US and Russia – Syria, Ukraine, and international terrorism to name just three – Washington just can’t help its Russophobic ways.

Most recently, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul expressed his extreme displeasure (dare I say revulsion) at the idea that the Canadian Government, and specifically its Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion, could possibly make the independent decision to not follow the diktats of Washington in adopting a Canadian version of the Magnitsky Act, a piece of proposed legislation which would have severe repercussions for the Russia-Canada relationship.  McFaul, a staunch anti-Putin crusader whose time as ambassador was marred by countless failures and embarrassing public blunders, went so far as to cast doubt on the commitment to human rights of Mr. Dion and the Canadian Government.

In highly undiplomatic language, McFaul bluntly declared, “Do you stand for human rights or not? If this is an important value [sic] then this is something that should be done.” Leaving aside the condescension oozing from every word of that statement, it is quite clear that the US political establishment is not at all pleased with its usually pliant partners in the Great White North who, it seems, are attempting the unthinkable: conducting a foreign policy that is independent of the United States, at least on this issue.  Indeed, despite the finger-wagging from McFaul, and the ceaseless lobbying and self-promotion of the vulture capitalist and convicted criminal Bill Browder, Canada is unwilling to sacrifice its increasingly friendly relations with Moscow simply to satisfy the anti-Putin obsession of interests based in Washington and London.

Indeed, Browder is undeniably the leading voice of the transnational lobbying effort to internationalize the Magnitsky Act – a US law passed in 2012 that places sanctions and restrictions on key figures in the Russian government ostensibly over alleged participation in the murder of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky – and to try to isolate Russian President Putin and his closest advisers.  Of course, embarrassingly for Browder, he was until a decade ago the leading pro-Putin voice in the western investing community in Russia, lauding Putin up and down as the savior of Russia.

For instance, in 2005 Browder told the New York Times, when speaking about the jailing of the criminal oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, that “Putin cares about foreign investors; he just doesn’t care about them enough to allow one oligarch to use his ill-gotten gains to hijack the state for his own economic purposes.”  However, the warm and fuzzy feelings Browder once had for Putin & Co. seem to have evaporated right around the time he was curtly shown the door out of Russia.  As Pando’s Mark Ames wrote in 2015:

And ever since his KGB pals decided they’d had enough of him and chased him out to London a very rich vulture capitalist, Browder has styled himself as the Mother Theresa of global vulture capitalism—and he’s thrown untold millions into promoting that public relations/lobbying effort, whose goal is to use human rights abuses he once covered for and profited from as a cudgel to force the Kremlin to become investor-friendly to vulture capitalists like Bill Browder again.

So it seems that the Magnitsky Act itself, and Browder’s crusade to make it holy writ around the world, is less a product of concern for human rights, and more the result of a personal vendetta against the Russian Government by a very rich and influential vulture capitalist nested comfortably in the City of London, hatching his various anti-Russian pressure campaigns.

Foreign Affairs Minister Dion has rightly pointed to Canada’s invitation to join the International Syria Support Group in Vienna as an example of the fruit of the Russia-Canada relationship, implicitly arguing that it would be unwise to pass a Magnitsky-style bill solely to placate anti-Russian elements in Washington and London while alienating an important global power with considerable political, economic, and diplomatic influence.

Interestingly, in all the talk of human rights, and the chastising of Dion and the Canadian government for their shameful sale of $15 billion of combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia, it is completely ignored that the US is the principal arms dealer to Saudi Arabia, and countless other autocratic regimes which routinely, and quite systematically, violate the human rights of their own people.  So it would seem that for the US human rights is the convenient club with which to bash allies over the head, but which can be completely ignored when it suits Washington’s political and geopolitical agenda.

Russia = bad. Russia = human rights violator. Russia must be punished.

Saudi Arabia = friend. Saudi Arabia = human rights violator but let’s not talk about. Saudi Arabia must be rewarded with tens of billions of dollars of military equipment.

Got it? Good.

Ultimately, the issue is really about control.  The US would like to be able to control the way in which Canada, and all the countries of the West, carry on their relations with Russia.  Washington would like to cobble together a “united front” of sorts that will isolate Russia and, in the wildest pipe dreams of strategic planners, bring down Putin and his administration.

And the US believes that the combination of sanctions, depressed oil prices, Magnitsky-style legislation, and a number of other political, economic, and diplomatic weapons will bring those pesky old Russians to heel.  How little Washington has learned.

No one ever lost money betting on the Pentagon refraining from exceptionalist rhetoric.

Once again the current Pentagon supremo, certified neocon Ash Carter, did not disappoint at the Shangri-La Dialogue – the annual, must-go regional security forum in Singapore attended by top defense ministers, scholars and business executives from across Asia.

Context is key. The Shangri-La Dialogue is organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which is essentially a pro-Anglo-American think tank. And it takes place in the privileged aircraft carrier of imperial geostrategic interests in South East Asia: Singapore.

Read more

Not afraid of ‘trouble’: China lambasts US & Philippines over S. China Sea, vows to oppose meddling

 

As expressed by neocon Carter, Pentagon rhetoric – faithful to its own estimation of China as the second biggest “existential threat”to the US (Russia is first) – revolves around the same themes; US military might and superiority is bound to last forever; we are the“main underwriter of Asian security” for, well, forever; and China better behave in the South China Sea – or else.

This is all embedded in the much ballyhooed but so far anemic“pivoting to Asia” advanced by the lame duck Obama administration – but bound to go on overdrive in the event Hillary Clinton becomes the next tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Real threats are predictably embedded in the rhetoric. According to Carter, if Beijing reclaims land in the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, “it will result in actions being taken by the both United States and … by others in the region.”

What’s left for China, in Pentagonese, is just to be a member of a hazy “principled security network” for Asia – which will also help protect the East against “Russia’s worrying actions”. Carter mentioned “principled” no less than 37 times in his speech. “Principled” cheerleaders so far include Japan, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and Australia.

So here’s an instant translation: we do a NATO in Asia; we control it; you will answer to us; and then we encircle you – and Russia – for good. If China says no, that’s simple. Carter proclaimed Beijing will erect a “Great Wall of self-isolation” in the South China Sea.

If this is the best Pentagon planners have to counteract the Russia-China strategic partnership, they’d better go back to the classroom. In elementary school.

Navigate in freedom, dear vassals

Predictably, the South China Sea was quite big at Shangri-La. The South China Sea, the throughway of trillions of US dollars in annual trade, doubles as home to a wealth of unexplored oil and gas. Stagnated and increasingly irrelevant Japan, via its Defense Minister Gen. Nakatani, even advanced the Japanese would help Southeast Asian nations build their “security capabilities” to deal with what he called “unilateral” and “coercive” Chinese actions in the South China Sea. Cynics could not help to draw similarities with Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Beijing delegation kept its cool – to a point. Rear Admiral Guan Youfei stressed, “The US action to take sides is not agreed by many countries.” Youfei – the head of the Chinese office of international military cooperation – did not refrain though from condemning a “Cold War mentality” by the usual suspects.

As for Japan, China’s Foreign Ministry detailed that “countries outside the region should stick to their promises and not make thoughtless remarks about issues of territorial sovereignty.” Japan has absolutely nothing to do with the South China Sea.

Beijing’s reclamation work on reefs in the South China Sea naturally put it in direct conflict with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. So US meddling – under the convenient cover of “freedom of navigation” – had to be inevitable. “Freedom of navigation” operations are a silly intimidation game in which a US Navy ship or plane passes by a Chinese-claimed island in the South China Sea.

It was up to Admiral Sun Jianguo, Deputy Chief of the Joint Staff Department of China’s Central Military Commission, to cut to the chase, stressing “the provocation of certain countries” and adding that “selfish interests” have led to the South China Sea issue becoming “overheated”. He slammed the Pentagon for double standards and “irresponsible behavior”. And he slammed the Philippines for taking the conflict to a dubious UN arbitration court after breaching a bilateral agreement with China; “We do not make trouble but we have no fear of trouble.”

U.S. Secretary of Defence Ash Carter meets with South Korea’s Minister of Defence Han Minkoo (R) and
Japan’s Minister of Defence Gen Nakatani for a trilateral at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore June 4, 2016. © Reuters

The Chinese position prefers dialogue and cooperation – and Jianguo re-stressed it, calling for ASEAN to make a move. In fact China has already reached what is called a four-point consensus with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos on the South China Sea two months ago. The Philippines are a much harder nut to crack – as the Pentagon is taking no prisoners to lead Manila “from behind”.

Even Vietnam, via Deputy Defense Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh, made it clear – in the same plenary session as Admiral Jianguo – that Vietnam prefers solutions via the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as well as negotiation between China and ASEAN.

Bend over to our rules – or else

After Shangri-La’s rhetorical excesses, the action moved to Beijing, the site of the 8th China-US Strategic and Development Dialogue. That’s the annual talkfest launched in 2009 by Obama and then Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang painted a rosy picture, stressing the exchange of “candid, in-depth views on important and sensitive issues of shared concern.” Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai once again needed to point out that the relationship is just “too important” to be “hijacked” by the South China Sea. And yet this is exactly the Pentagon’s agenda.

Beijing though won’t be derailed. As State Councilor Yang Jiechi put it, ASEAN-China dialogue is progressing via what Beijing calls the “dual-track” approach, according to which disputes are negotiated between the parties directly involved. That implies no Washington interference.

Read more

US ‘provocations’ may force China to declare air defense zone in S. China Sea – report

 

Beyond what is discussed either at Shangri-La or at the China-US dialogue, the Big Picture is clear. ‘Exceptionalistan’ planners have molded a narrative where China is being forced to make a choice; either you bend over to “our” rules – as in the current unipolar geostrategic game – or else.

Well, Beijing has already made its own choice; and that entails a multipolar world of sovereign nations with no primus inter pares. The Beijing leadership under Xi Jinping clearly sees how the so-called international “order”, actually disorder, is a rigged system set up at the end of WWII.

Wily Chinese diplomacy – and trade – knows how to use the system to advance Chinese national interests. That’s how modern China became the “savior” of global turbo-capitalism. But that does not mean a resurgent China will forever comply with these extraneous “rules” – not to mention the morality lessons. Beijing knows ‘Exceptionalistan’ would not agree even to divide the spoils in a geopolitical spheres-of-influence arrangement. Plan A in Washington is containment – with possibly dangerous ramifications. There is no Plan B.

The bottom line – thinly disguised by the somewhat polite responses to Pentagon threats – is that Beijing simply won’t accept anymore a geopolitical disorder that it did not create. The Chinese could not give a damn to the New World Order (NWO) dreamed up by selected ‘Masters of the Universe’. Beijing is engaged in building a new, multipolar order. No wonder – alongside with strategic partner Russia – they are and will continue to be the Pentagon’s top twin threat.

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

Lowest Interest Rate In 5,000 Years

According to Bank of England economist Andy Haldane, Bank of America Merrill Lynch economistMichael Hartnett and others, we’ve got the lowest interest rates in 5,000 years:

The inventor of quantitative easing – economics professor Richard Werner – says that it’s a myth that interest rates drive the level of economic activity. According to Werner, the data shows that rates lag the economy.

In other words, interest rates respond to what’s already happened in the economy.  So does having the lowest interest rates in 5,000 years imply that we’ve had the worst economy in 5,000 years?

We don’t know, but there are quite a few signs that something is very wrong with the world economy …

Other Depression Indicators

We noted in 2009 that more Americans will be unemployed than during the Great Depression.

We noted in 2010:

The following experts have – at some point during the last 2 years – said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

• Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (and see this)

• Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (and see this and this)

• Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker

• Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin

• The head of the Bank of England Mervyn King

 

• Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

• Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman

• Former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead

• Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O’Rourke (updated here)

• Investment advisor, risk expert and “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Well-known PhD economist Marc Faber

• Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker

• Former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae Edward J. Pinto

• Billionaire investor George Soros

• Senior British minister Ed Balls

We explained in 2011 that many economists agree we’re in a depression … and they only argue about whether we’re facing the “Great” depression of the 1930s or the “Long” depression of the 1870s. We also noted that housing prices fell farther than during the Great Depression.

In 2012, we wrote:

We’ve repeatedly pointed out that there are many indicators which show that the last 5 years have been worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, including:

• The housing slump

• The bank charge off rate

• The collapse in world trade

• The withdrawal of short-term credit

• The level of inequality between rich and poor (too much inequality destroys economies)

• The interconnectedness of financial systems and economies worldwide (interconnectedness leads to financial instability)

• Runaway spending and greed

***

Indeed, the number of Americans relying on government assistance to obtain basic foodmay be higher now that during the Great Depression. The only reason we don’t see “soup lines” like we did in the 30s is because of the massive food stamp program.

We noted in 2013 that the British economy is worse than during the Great Depression, and more Americans are committing suicide than during the Great Depression.

We pointed out in 2014 that Europe is stuck in an economic malaise worse than a depression, and citedcharts showing that Europe’s GDP is recovering much slower than after the Great Depression:

We also noted that Americans fared better after the Great Depression than the 2008 crisis and that U.S. foreclosure rates are comparable to the Great Depression.

Last year, we noted that an important economic indicator – the velocity of money – has crashed far worsethan during the Great Depression, and that the howling winds of deflation are hammering the U.S. just as much as Europe.

We noted that last year was the first pre-election year stock market loss since the Great Depression.

In January, we pointed out that a prominent economist said:

Future economic historians may not call the period that began in 2007 the “Greatest Depression.” But as of now, it is highly and increasingly probable that they will call it the “Longest Depression.”

In March, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis noted that – as with Europe – America’s GDP is recovering much slower than after the Great Depression:

And last month, Pew reported:

More young adults in the U.S. are living with their parents than at any time since around 1940, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of census data.

Across the European Union’s 28 member nations, nearly half (48.1%) of 18- to 34-year-olds were living with their parents in 2014 ….

***

Similar long-term trends have been observed elsewhere. Canada’s most recent census, in 2011, found that 42.3% of adults ages 20 to 29 lived in their parents’ homes, up from 32.1% in 1991 and 26.9% in 1981. In Australia, about 29% of 18- to 34-year-olds were living with one or both of their parents (but without a partner or child) in 2011, up from 21% in 1976. And in Japan, the share of 20- to 34-year-olds living with their parents grew from 29.5% in 1980 to 48.9% in 2012.

“Democracy is Pure Fantasy”: Trump vs. Clinton in November

By Stephen Lendman, June 08 2016

It’s all over but the postmortems. Trump and Clinton are their parties’ presumptive nominees. Choice for voters in November amounts to death by hanging or firing squad.  Democracy is pure fantasy. None whatever exists. Trump was the last GOP aspirant…

Governing Through Lies And Deception

By Mark Taliano, June 08 2016

On September 16, 2005, Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister, Paul Martin, addressed “The High Level Meeting of the Sixtieth Session of the United Nations General Assembly”:  “Clearly, we need expanded guidelines for Security Council action to make clear our responsibility to…

Germany’s Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) to Become Branch of America’s CIA?

By Eric Zuesse, June 08 2016

According to a news report in the June 7th German Economic News (Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or DWN), headlined “Merkel entmachtet BND: USA kontrollieren Spionage in Deutschland” or “Merkel Ousts BND: US to Control German Espionage,” a new law will soon…

Genetically Engineered Golden Rice: Is This the Solution for Disease, Poverty and Malnutrition?

By Colin Todhunter, June 08 2016

The pro-GMO lobby often relies on fraud, regulatory delinquency, opaque practices, smear campaigns, dirty tricks, slick PR and the debasement of science. While choosing to sideline the root causes of poverty, hunger, malnutrition and regional food insecurity (and effective solutions),…

The War on Syria and the Refugee Crisis: Censorship and “Humanitarian Propaganda”, NGOs Support America’s “Moderate Terrorists”

By Rick Sterling, June 07 2016

Syria Solidarity Movement is an international network in solidarity with the Syrian people and their struggle to retain a secular, independent state.  Unfortunately, there is an organization in the UK called “Syria Solidarity UK” (SSUK).  The similarity in names has…

Housing Struggle Continues in Detroit Defying Landlords and Bankers

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 08 2016

Jeanette Shannon of Detroit was evicted from her home on June 3 after a protracted fight against fraudulent real estate interests and the local courts which favor the predatory lenders and the banks. This was a test case for Detroit…

Defining Art: Pranks at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 08 2016

Never underestimate the power of the puncturing prank.  It acts as subversion, and before you know it, that April Fool’s joke becomes the order of the day, the next gospel, the affirmed orthodoxy. Consider, for instance, a pair of glasses…

Pro-government forces, led by the Syrian Arab Army’s 4th Mechanized Division and Desert Hawks and supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces, are advancing deeper into the Raqqa province. By the situation on June 5, the pro-government forces seized the city of Zakia, the nearby Zakia crossroads and the village of Bir Abu al’Allaj. Now, the SAA and its allies need to seize the Tabaqa Military Airport and consolidate the gain in the area, setting the ground for further advances on the ISIS self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa. The Syrian government forces use Russian-made T90C main battle tanks in the area. This confirms the importance of the operation for the Syrian government.

Thus, despite the complicated situation in the province of Aleppo, where the Jaish al-Fatah operation room successfully advances near the city of Khan Tuman, the Syrian government forces have started a competition with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dubbed “Who will seize Raqqa?” Indeed, the situation in the Aleppo City is also complicated for the predominantly Kurdish SDF. On June 4, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that Kurdish units have withdrawn from the Sheikh Maqsoud district of the Aleppo city under the perssure of Al Nusra and Ahram al-Sham. Militants used rocket artillery, mortars and anti-aircraft cannons to attack neighborhoods of the city. About 40 civilians and troops were killed by the shelling and some 100 injured. We remember, in May, the Russian military staff reported that Al Nusra front concentrated a 6,000-strong attack force in the area of Aleppo.

The SDF, supported by the US-led coalition air power and spearheaded by U.S. special operation forces, continued military operations in the areas nearby to the city of Manbij. The approaching SDF units encircle the ISIS-controlled Manbij from northern and southern flanks. Recently, the SDF seized the village of Kabir al-Kabir, located 5 kilometers south of Manbij. However, this operation in Northern Aleppo has withdrawn a significant force of the SDF and its US supporters, halting the attempts to launch a full-scale operation to liberate the city of Raqqa in the nearest future.

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By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. Originally published at at Down With Tyranny. GP article here

I‘ve been writing for weeks that there are two aspects to the Clinton “secret server” issue — the way the server was handled, and the content of the messages it contained. Regarding the way the server was handled, almost everything needed to determine criminal liability is already in the public record and has been for a while.

So here are three data points, just three. They line up perfectly so the main idea is easy to grasp. (Consider this the first in a series, “The Clinton Server Story for Progressives.” If events move too quickly, it will be the last, as everyone from Time to the Washington Post will be telling you what’s what and you won’t need me at all.)

•  The server’s email system was apparently unencrypted for the first two months of usewhen Clinton was Secretary of State.

This means that email going to and from the server was unencrypted during transmission. Messages were sent and received in plain text. This is the Washington Post from last March (my emphasis):

The server was nothing remarkable, the kind of system often used by small businesses, according to people familiar with its configuration at the end of her tenure. It consisted of two off-the-shelf server computers. Both were equipped with antivirus software. They were linked by cable to a local Internet service provider. A firewall was used as protection against hackers.

Few could have known it, but the email system operated in those first two months without the standard encryption generally used on the Internet to protect communication, according to an independent analysis that Venafi Inc., a cybersecurity firm that specializes in the encryption process, took upon itself to publish on its website after the scandal broke.

Not until March 29, 2009 — two months after Clinton began using it — did the server receive a “digital certificate” that protected communication over the Internet through encryption, according to Venafi’s analysis.

It is unknown whether the system had some other way to encrypt the email traffic at the time. Without encryption — a process that scrambles communication for anyone without the correct key — email, attachments and passwords are transmitted in plain text.

“That means that anyone could have accessed it. Anyone,” Kevin Bocek, vice president of threat intelligence at Venafi, told The Post.

The system had other features that made it vulnerable to talented hackers, including a software program that enabled users to log on directly from the World Wide Web.

Four computer-security specialists interviewed by The Post said that such a system could be made reasonably secure but that it would need constant monitoring by people trained to look for irregularities in the server’s logs.

“For data of this sensitivity . . . we would need at a minimum a small team to do monitoring and hardening,” said Jason Fossen, a computer-security specialist at the SANS Institute, which provides cybersecurity training around the world.

The man Clinton has said maintained and monitored her server was Bryan Pagliano, who had worked as the technology chief for her political action committee and her presidential campaign. It is not clear whether he had any help. Pagliano had also provided computer services to the Clinton family. In 2008, he received more than $5,000 for that work, according to financial disclosure statements he filed with the government.

The Post article is much longer and contains a great deal of information. If this subject interests you, I encourage you to click through.

I hope you noticed the name “Bryan Pagliano” above. He’s among the key people the FBI are talking to. In March, Pagliano was granted immunity in exchange for information. Pagliano is also the subject of a Judicial Watch FOIA request, and he’s on the Judicial Watch deposition list. (For more on Pagliano, see below.)

Your first takeaway — Unless there was encryption employed by Clinton’s private email service that no one knows about, email communications to and from it were readable as plain text. Certainly not deliberately so, but a fact nonetheless.

•  The above-mentioned Bryan Pagliano has announced he’s taking the fifth in his Judicial Watch deposition. He’s going to refuse to speak when deposed.

The Hill:

Clinton IT aide to plead Fifth in email case

The man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton’s private email serverwill assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions as part of an open records lawsuit against the State Department.

Bryan Pagliano will decline to answer questions from Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group, during a deposition scheduled for Monday, his lawyers wrote in a court filing on Wednesday afternoon.

The move forecloses the possibility that Pagliano would break his months of silence about the server issue, even as scrutiny has intensified on his role.

Pagliano’s lawyers told Judicial Watch more than a week ago that he would not be answering any questions, they claimed in their filing on Wednesday, and asked that it drop its subpoena. The organization refused.

“Taking the fifth” is an admission of guilt of something (who knows what?), but it’s an absolute protection from prosecution by evidence from his own mouth. (The ability to “take the fifth,” by the way, is important — it’s our protection against evidence produced by torture. Still, it’s damning, not just of Pagliano, but of that whole crew.)

Your second takeaway — Pagliano thinks he can be prosecuted for something if he speaks about the Clinton email server in his FOIA deposition. Check the first story above to review what he can speak about.

There will perhaps be political consequences from this. Will there be legal consequences? Keep reading.

•  One of the laws that may have been broken is 18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information.

Note first that the information listed below doesn’t require a formal “classified” designation to be relevant, and second, that “intent” is not necessary to trigger the law’s penalties. “Gross negligence” is sufficient. Again, my emphasis below:

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information,relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.

Your third takeaway — Unless this law doesn’t apply for some other reason, it seems perfectly applicable for the reasons noted above. All sorts of State Department business and communications could be considered “relating to the national defense,” including simple travel itineraries of top officials, such as President Obama’s.

“Gross negligence” in allowing such documents to be “lost” or “stolen” is, under this law, a criminal act subject to fines, imprisonment, or both. If the server was hacked, broken into, the above law appears to apply.

Was This Law Actually Broken?

Were documents related to the national defense in fact stolen from Clinton’s “home-brew” server through negligence? I think that’s the piece we don’t know. Will we ever find out? That’s the other piece we don’t know. Still, these data points have been on my mind since I discovered them.

(By the way, the list of laws that may have been broken, not to mention State Department practices and guidelines ignored, is proffered to be long, at least according to the Internet. I’ve seen a list, and this is just one item on it. It’s also the one I find least controvertible, since the meaning of “classified” is a mine field, depending on how each law is written, and this law isn’t limited to “classified” material. I don’t envy the FBI in sorting through all this.)

I’m not saying Clinton committed a crime; I’m not a lawyer, just a political observer. But as an observer, I do observe these data points, and suspect that they’re related. And again, this is all from the public record, and every piece but the middle one has been there, out in the open, for a while.

Stay tuned. This may be nothing or not-nothing. But if it turns into something, you’ll at least have heard about it.

“The cold was terrible but the screams were worse,” Sara Mendez told the BBC. “The screams of those who were being tortured were the first thing you heard and they made you shiver. That’s why there was a radio blasting day and night.”

In the 1970s, Mendez was a young Uruguayan teacher with leftist leanings. In 1973, when the military seized power in her country (a few months before General Augusto Pinochet’s more famous coup in Chile), Mendez fled to Argentina. She lived there in safety until that country suffered its own coup in 1976. That July, a joint Uruguayan-Argentine military commando group kidnapped her in Buenos Aires and deposited her at Automotores Orletti, a former auto repair shop that would become infamous as a torture site and paramilitary command center. There she was indeed tortured, and there, too, her torturers stole her 20-day-old baby, Simón, giving him to a policeman’s family to raise.

Mendez was an early victim of Operation Condor, a torture and assassination program focused on the region’s leftists that, from 1975 to 1986, would spread terror across Latin America’s southern cone. On May 27th, an Argentine court convicted 14 military officers of crimes connected with Operation Condor, issuing prison sentences ranging from 13 to 25 years. Among those sentenced was Reynaldo Bignone, Argentina’s last military dictator, now 88. (He held power from 1982 to 1983.)

Those convictions are deeply satisfying to the surviving victims and their families, to the legal teams that worked for more than a decade on the case, and to human rights organizations around the world. And yet, as just as this outcome is, it has left me with questions — questions about the length of time between crime and conviction, and about what kinds of justice can and cannot be achieved through prosecutions alone.

Operation Condor

Operation Condor was launched by the security forces of five military dictatorships: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Brazil soon joined, as did Ecuador and Peru eventually. As a Cold War anti-communist collaboration among the police, military, and intelligence services of those eight governments, Condor offered an enticing set of possibilities. The various services could not only cooperate, but pursue their enemies in tandem across national borders. Indeed, its reach stretched as far as Washington, D.C., where in 1976 its operatives assassinated former Chilean ambassador to the U.S. Orlando Letelier and his young assistant, Ronni Moffitt, both of whom then worked at the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-wing think tank.

How many people suffered grievously or died due to Operation Condor? A definitive number is by now probably beyond recovery, but records from Chile’s secret police suggest that by itself Argentina’s “dirty war” — the name given to the Argentine junta’s reign of terror, “disappearances,” and torture — took the lives of 22,000 people between 1975 and 1978. Thousands more are thought to have died before that country’s dictatorship ended in 1983. It’s generally believed that at least another 3,000 people died under the grimmest of circumstances in Chile, while thousands more were tortured but lived. And although its story is less well known, the similar reign of terror of the Uruguayan dictatorship directly affected the lives of almost every family in the country. As Lawrence Wechsler wrote in a 1989 article in the New Yorker:

“By 1980, one in every fifty Uruguayans had been detained at some point, and detention routinely involved torture; one in every five hundred had received a sentence of six years or longer under conditions of extreme difficulty; and somewhere between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand Uruguayans went into exile. Comparable percentages for the United States would involve the emigration of thirty million people, the detention of five million, and the extended incarceration of five hundred thousand.”

And what was the U.S. role in Operation Condor? Washington did not (for once) plan and organize this transnational program of assassination and torture, but its national security agencies were certainly involved, as declassified Defense Department communications indicate. In his book The Condor Years, Columbia University journalism professor John Dingesreported that the CIA provided training for Chile’s secret police, computers for Condor’s database, telex machines and encoders for its secret communications, and transmitters for its private, continent-wide radio communications network. Chilean Colonel Manuel Contreras, one of Condor’s chief architects (who was then on the CIA payroll), met with CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters four times. And what did the CIA get in return? Among other things, access to the “results” of interrogation under torture, according to Dinges. “Latin American intelligence services,” he added,

“considered U.S. intelligence agencies their allies and provided timely and intimate details of their repressive activities. I have obtained three documents establishing that information obtained under torture, from prisoners who later were executed and disappeared, were provided to the CIA, the FBI and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). There is no question that the U.S. officials were aware of the torture.”

Justice Delayed

Why did it take 40 years to bring the architects of Operation Condor to justice? A key factor: for much of that time, it was illegal in Argentina to put them on trial. In the first years of the new civilian government, the Argentine congress passed two laws that granted these men immunity from prosecution for crimes committed in the dirty war. Only in 2005 did that country’s supreme court rule that those impunity laws were unconstitutional.  Since then, many human rights crimes have been prosecuted. Indeed, Reynaldo Bignone, the former dictator, was already in jail when sentenced in May for his role in Operation Condor. He had been convicted in 2010 of kidnapping, torture, and murder in the years of the dirty war. As of March, Argentina’s Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) had recorded 666 convictions for participation in the crimes of that era.

But there’s a question that can’t help but arise: What’s the point of bringing such old men to trial four decades later? How could justice delayed for that long be anything but justice denied?

One answer is that, late as they are, such trials still establish something that all the books and articles in the world can’t: an official record of the terrible crimes of Operation Condor. This is a crucial step in the process of making its victims, and the nations involved, whole again. As a spokesperson for CELStold the Wall Street Journal, “Forty years after Operation Condor was formally founded, and 16 years after the judicial investigation began, this trial produced valuable contributions to knowledge of the truth about the era of state terrorism and this regional criminal network.”

It took four decades to get those convictions.  Theoretically at least, Americans wouldn’t have to wait that long to bring our own war criminals to account. I’ve spent the last few years of my life arguing that this country must find a way to hold accountable officials responsible for crimes in the so-called war on terror. I don’t want the victims of those crimes, some of whom are still locked up, to wait another 40 years for justice.

Nor do I want the United States to continue its slide into a brave new world, in which any attack on a possible enemy anywhere or any curtailment of our own liberties is permitted as long as it makes us feel “secure.” It’s little wonder that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate feels free to run around promising yet more torture and murder. After all, no one’s been called to account for the last round. And when there is no official acknowledgement of, or accountability for, thewaging of illegal war, international kidnapping operations, the indefinite detention without prospect of trial of prisoners at Guantánamo,and, of course, torture, there is no reason not to do it all over again. Indeed, according to Pew Research Center polls, Americans are nowmore willing to agree that torture is sometimes justified than they were in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks.

Torture and the U.S. Prison System

In a recent piece of mine, I focused on Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner the CIA tortured horribly, falsely claiming he was a top al-Qaeda operative, knew about a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and might even have trained some of the 9/11 pilots. “In another kind of world,” I wrote, Abu Zubaydah “would be exhibit one in the war crimes trials of America’s top leaders and its major intelligence agency.” Although none of the charges against him proved true, he is still held in isolation at Guantánamo.

Then something surprising happened. I received an email message from someone I’d heard of but never met. Joseph Margulies was the lead counsel in Rasul v. Bush, the first (and unsuccessful) attempt to get the Supreme Court to allow prisoners at Guantánamo to challenge their detention in federal courts. He is also one of Abu Zubaydah’s defense attorneys.

He directed me to an article of his, “War Crimes in a Punitive Age,” that mentioned my Abu Zubaydah essay. I’d gotten the facts of the case right, he assured me, but added, “I suspect we are not in complete agreement” on the issue of what justice for his client should look like. As he wrote in his piece,

”There is no question that Zubaydah was the victim of war crimes. The entire CIA black site program [the Agency’s Bush era secret prisons around the world] was a global conspiracy to evade and violate international and domestic law. Yet I am firmly convinced there should be no war crimes prosecutions. The call to prosecute is the Siren Song of the carceral state — the very philosophy we need to dismantle.”

In other words, one of the leading legal opponents of everything the war on terror represents is firmly opposed to the idea of prosecuting officials of the Bush administration for war crimes (though he has not the slightest doubt that they committed them). Margulies agrees that the crimes against Abu Zubaydah were all too real and “grave” indeed, and that “society must make its judgment known.”  He asks, however, “Why do we believe a criminal trial is the only way for society to register its moral voice?”

He doubts that such trials are the best way to do so, fearing that by placing all the blame for the events of those years on a small number of criminal officials, the citizens of an (at least nominally) democratic country could be let off the hook for a responsibility they, too, should share.  After all, it’s unlikely the war on terror could have continued year after year without the support — or at least the lack of interest or opposition — of the citizenry.

Margulies, in other words, raises important questions.  When people talk about bringing someone to justice they usually imagine a trial, a conviction, and perhaps most important, punishment. But he has reminded me of my own longstanding ambivalence about the equation between punishment and justice.

Even as we call for accountability for war criminals, we shouldn’t forget that we live in the country that jails the largest proportion of its own population (except for the Seychelles islands), and that holds the largest number of prisoners in the world. Abuse and torture — including rape, sexual humiliation, beatings, and prolonged exposure to extremes of heat and cold — are routine realities of the U.S. prison system. Solitary confinement — presently being experienced by at least 80,000 people in our prisons and immigrant detention centers — should also be considered a potentially psychosis-inducing form of torture.

Every nation that institutionalizes torture, as the United States has done, selects specific groups of people as legitimate targets for its application. In the days of Operation Condor, Chilean torturers called their victims “humanoids” to distinguish them from actual human beings. Surely, though, the United States hasn’t done that? Surely, there’s no history of the torture of particular groups? Sadly, of course, such a history does exist, and like so many things in this country, it’s all about race.

The practice of torture in the U.S. didn’t start with those post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation techniques,” nor with the Vietnam War’s Phoenix Program, nor even with the nineteenth century U.S. war in the Philippines. It began when European settlers first treated native peoples and enslaved Africans as subhuman savages. As southern farmers started importing captured Africans to augment their supply of indentured English labor, they quickly realized that there was little incentive for those slaves to work — none but the pain of whippings, mutilations, and brandings, and the threat of yet more pain. Torture and slavery, in other words, were fused at the root. From the first arrival of black people on this continent, it has been permissible, even legal, to torture them.

And it didn’t stop with emancipation. After the end of slavery, southern states began the practice of convict leasing — arresting former slaves and then their descendants, often on trumped-up charges, and renting them out as labor to farmers and later coal mine owners who had the power and legal right to whip and abuse them as they chose.

Then there’s lynching. Many people think of it as an extrajudicial death by hanging.  As it was practiced in the Jim Crow South, however, it was a form of public, state-approved torture, often involving the castration or disembowelment of the living victim, sometimes followed by death by fire. Lynching thus continued the practice of treating black minds and bodies as legitimate targets of torture. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that, of the more than two million prisoners in the United States today, 40% are black, while the U.S. population is only 13% black.

Here’s the problem, then. When we say that putting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other top officials in their administration in prison for war crimes would be justice, we endorse a criminal justice system that is more criminal than just, and where torture is a daily occurrence.

Do we want to do to Bush, Cheney, and their accomplices essentially what they did to their victims?  There is, of course, a certain appeal to the idea of someday seeing such powerful white men among the suffering, tortured millions in our prison system, or even — like the supposed “dirty bomber”José Padilla and Abu Zubaydah — in perpetual solitary confinement.

And yet, would this truly provide even a facsimile of justice, given that American prisons are hardly instruments of justice to begin with? Those opposed to the acts at the heart of America’s never-ending war on terror were heartened when President Obama ordered the CIA “black sites” dismantled globally. We continue to demand the closing of Guantánamo (something that looks increasingly unlikely to happen in his presidency). How, then, can we find justice through a prison system that uses similar methods on an everyday basis here in the U.S.?

Forty Years to Go?

And then, of course, there is the question: Whom should justice truly serve?

The first answer is: the victims of the “war on terror,” including those who were tortured, those detained without trial, the civilian “collateral damage” of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the “unintended” victims of drone assassinations. Then there are all those in the rest of the world who have to live with the threat of a nuclear-armed superpower that has in these years regularly refused to recognize the most basic aspects of the rule of law.

Many who work with survivors of organized repression like Operation Condor say that their primary desire is not the punishment of their oppressors but official acknowledgement of what happened to them. In his New Yorkerarticle, Wechsler, for instance, pointed out that, for the victims of torture, accountability may not be identical to punishment at all.

“People don’t necessarily insist that the former torturers go to jail — there has been enough of jail — but they do want to see the truth established… It’s a mysteriously powerful, almost magical notion, because often everybody already knows the truth — everyone knows who the torturers were and what they did, the torturers know that everyone knows, and everyone knows that they know.”

Seeing “the truth established” was the purpose behind South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Torturers and murderers on both sides of the anti-apartheid struggle were offered amnesty for their crimes — but only after they openly acknowledged those crimes. In this way, a public record of the horrors of apartheid was built, and imperfect as the process may have been, the nation was able to confront its history.

That is the kind of reckoning we need in this country. It started with the release of a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program, which brought many brutal details into the light. But that’s just the beginning. We would need a full and public accounting not just of the CIA’s activities, but of the doings of other military and civilian agencies and outfits, including the Joint Special Operations Command. We also would need a full-scale airing of the White House’s drone assassination program, and perhaps most important of all, a full accounting of the illegal, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Justice would also require — to the extent possible — making whole those who had been harmed. In the case of the “war on terror,” this might begin by allowing torture victims to sue their torturers in federal court (as the U.N. Convention against Torture requires). With one exception, the Obama administration has until now blocked all such efforts on national security grounds. In the case of the Iraq War, justice would undoubtedly also require financial reparations to repair the infrastructure of what was once a modern, developed nation.

We’re unlikely to see justice in the “war on terror” until that cruel and self-defeating exercise is well and truly over and the country has officially acknowledged and accounted for its crimes. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 40 years.

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes (Hot Books). Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.

There are several essential messages literally shouting from the screen, whenever one watches ‘The Last Supper’ (La Ultima Cena), a brilliant 1976 film by a Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea.

The utmost one: it is impossible to enslave an entire group or race of people, at least not indefinitely. Longing for freedom, for true liberty, is impossible to break, no matter how brutally and persistently colonialism, imperialism, racism and religious terror try to.

The second, equally important message is that the whites and the Christians (but mostly the white Christians) have been behaving, for centuries and all over the world, like a horde of savage beasts and genocidal maniacs.

At the end of April 2016, on board Cubana de Aviacion jet that was taking me from Paris to Havana, I couldn’t resist opening my computer and watching La Ultima Cena again, for at least the tenth time in my life.

Gutierrez on my screen, Granma Internacional (official Cuban newspaper named after the boat which brought Fidel, “Che” and other revolutionaries to Cuba, triggering the Revolution) and a glass of pure and honest rum on my table, I felt at home, safe and blissfully happy. After several depressing days in Paris, I was finally leaving that gray, increasingly depressing, oppressive and self-righteous Europe behind.

Latin America was waiting for me. It was facing terrible attacks organized by the West. Its future was once again uncertain. “Our governments” were bleeding, some of them collapsing. The appalling extreme right-wing government of Mauricio Macri in Argentina has been busy dismantling the social state. Brazil was suffering from the political coup performed by corrupt right-wing lawmakers. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution was struggling, literally fighting for its survival. Treasonous reactionary forces were confronting both Ecuador and Bolivia.

I was asked to come. I was told: “Latin America needs you. We are fighting a war for survival”. And here I was, on board the Cubana, going ‘home’, to the part of the world that has always been so dear to me, and has shaped me into what I am now, as a man and as a writer.

I was going ‘home’, because I wanted to, but also because it was my duty. And I damn believe in duties!

After all, I’m not an anarchist but a Communist, ‘educated’ and hardened in Latin America.

***

But what does it mean when I say: ‘I’m a Communist?’

Am I a Leninist, a Maoist, or a Trotskyist? Do I subscribe to the Soviet or theChinese model?

Honestly, I have no idea! Frankly, I don’t care much for those nuances.

To me personally, a true Communist is a fighter against imperialism, racism, ‘Western exceptionism’, colonialism and neo-colonialism. He or she is a determined Internationalist, a person who believes in equality and social justice for all people on this Earth.

I’ll leave theoretical discussions to those who have plenty of time on their hands. I never even re-read the entire Das Kapital. It is too long. I read it when I was 16 years old. I think that reading it once is enough… It’s not the only pillar of Communism and it is not some holy scripture that should be constantly quoted.

More than Das Kapital, I was influenced by what I saw in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. I saw the entire world, some 160 countries; I lived on all continents. Wherever I went, I witnessed the horrors of ongoing Western plunder of the Planet.

I saw the Empire forcing countries into bestial civil wars; wars sparked so the multi-national companies could comfortably loot. I saw millions of refugees from once proud and wealthy (or from potentially wealthy) countries that were ruined by the West: Congolese refugees, Somali refugees, Libyan and Syrian refugees, refugees from Afghanistan… I saw inhuman conditions in factories that looked like purgatories; I saw monstrous sweatshops, mines, and fields near feudally run villages. I saw hamlets and townships, where the entire population vanished – dead from hunger, diseases, or both.

I also spent days and days listening to shocking testimonies of victims of torture. I spoke to mothers who lost their children, to wives who lost husbands, to husbands whose wives and daughters were raped in front of their eyes.

And the more I saw, the more I witnessed, the more shocking the stories I heard; the more obliged I felt to take sides, to fight for what I believe could be a much better world.

I wrote two books compiling hundreds of stories of terror committed by the West: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.

It didn’t bother me how derogatorily the Empire has been in depicting peoplewho are still faithful to their ideals; ready to sacrifice everything, or almost everything, for the struggle against injustice.

I’m not afraid of being ridiculed. But I am terrified of wasting my life if I put selfishness on a pedestal, elevating it above the most essential humanistic values.

I believe that a writer cannot be ‘neutral’ or apolitical. If he is, then he is a coward. Or he is a liar.

Naturally, some of the greatest modern writers were or are Communists: Jose Saramago, Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, Mo Yan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to name just a few. Not a bad company, not bad at all!

And I believe that living and struggling for others is much more fulfilling than living only for one’s own selfish interests and pleasures.

***

I admire Cuba for what it has done for humanity, in almost six decades of its revolutionary existence. Cuban Internationalism is what I personally see as ‘my Communism’.

Cuba has heart and it has guts. It knows how to fight, how to embrace, how to sing and dance and how not to betray its ideals.

Is Cuba ideal? Is it perfect? No, of course it is not. But I don’t demand perfection, from countries or from people, or from the Revolutions for that matter. My own life is very far from ‘perfect’. We all make errors and bad decisions: countries, people as well as revolutions.

Perfection actually horrifies me. It is cold, sterile and self-righteous. It is ascetic, puritanical, and therefore inhuman, even perverse. I don’t believe in saints. And I feel embarrassed when someone pretends to be one. Those small errors and ‘imperfections’ are actually making people and countries so warm, so loveable, so human.

The general course of the Cuban Revolution has never been ‘perfect’, but it has always been based on the deepest, most essential roots of humanism. And even when Cuba stood for some short time alone, or almost alone (it was China at the end, as I wrote and as Fidel shortly after confirmed in his “Reflections”, that extended to Cuba its mighty fraternal hand) – it bled, it suffered and shivered from pain brought by countless betrayals, but it did not stir from its path, it did not kneel, it did not beg and it never surrendered!

This is how I think people and countries should live. They should not exchange ideals for trinkets, love for security and advantages, decency for cynical and bloodstained rewards. Patria no se vende, they say in Cuba. Translated loosely: ‘The Fatherland should never be sold’. I also believe that Humanity should never be sold, as well as Love.

And that is why I am a Communist!

***

Betraying what we – human beings – really are, as well as betraying the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable among us is, I believe, more frightening than suicide, than death.

A person, a country or a culture that thrives on the suffering of others, is defunct, thoroughly immoral.

The West had been doing exactly that, for decades and centuries. It has been living from and thriving on the enslavement of others and usurping everything on and under the surface of our Earth. It has corrupted, morally and financially, millions of people in its colonies and client states, turning them into shameless and spineless collaborators. It has ‘educated’, indoctrinated and organized huge armies of traitors, on all continents, in almost all corners of the world.

Betrayal is the most powerful weapon of the Western Empire – betrayal and oblivion.

The West turns human beings into prostitutes and butlers, and those who refuse, into prisoners, slaves and martyrs.

Indoctrination is well planned. Dreams are poisoned and ideals dragged through dirt. Nothing pure is allowed to survive.

People are made to fantasize only about hardware; phones and tablets, cars and television sets. But the messages are empty, full of nihilism, repetitive and shallow. Cars can now drive very fast, but there is nothing really significant waiting at the end of the journey. Phones have thousands of functions and applications, but they are broadcasting increasingly trivial messages. Television sets are regurgitating propaganda and intellectually toxic entertainment.

It all brings profits to big corporations. It guarantees obedience. It strengthens the regime. But in many ways, humanity is getting poorer and poorer, while the Planet is almost entirely ruined.

Beauty is replaced with images full of gore. Knowledge is spat on, substituted by primitive pop. Or it is confused with those official-looking diplomas and stamps of approval issued by the indoctrination centers called universities: “Graduated: ready to serve the Empire!” Poetry is gone, from most of bookstores, and from life.

Love is now shaped on pop culture images, anchored in some ‘retro’, oppressive and outdated Christian dogmas.

It is clear that only Communism has so far been strong enough to confront the essence of the mightiest and the most destructive forces on our Planet: Western colonialism/ imperialism, which is locked in a disgusting and incestuous marriage with its own offspring – cruel feudal, capitalist and religious gangs of ‘local elites’ in conquered and ruined countries all over the world.

Both the Empire and its servants are betraying humanity. They are ruining the Planet, pushing it into the state where it could soon become uninhabitable. Or where life itself could lose all its meaning.

To me, to be a true Communist means this: to be engaged in the constant fight against the incessant rape of human brains, bodies and dignity, against the plunder of resources and nature, against selfishness and consequent intellectual and emotional emptiness.

I don’t care under which flag it is done – red with the hammer and sickle, or red with several yellow stars. I’m fine with either of them, as long as the people holding those banners are honest and concerned with the fate of humanity and our Planet.

And as long as people calling themselves Communists are still able to dream!

***

Western propagandists tell you: “show us one perfect Communist society!”

I answer: “There is no such society. Human beings, as we have determined, are incapable of creating anything perfect. Fortunately!” Only religious fanatics are aiming at ‘perfection’. Humans would die of boredom in a perfect world.

Revolution, a Communist Revolution, is a journey; it is a process. It is a huge, heroic attempt to build a much better world, using human brains, muscles, hearts, poetry and courage! It is a perpetual process, where people give more than they take, and when there is no sacrifice, only a fulfillment of duty towards humankind.

‘Che’ Guevara once said: “Sacrifices made should not be displayed as some identity card. They are nothing less than fulfilled obligations.”

Maybe in the West, it is too late for such concepts to flourish. Selfishness, cynicism, greed and indifference have been successfully injected into thesub-consciousness of the majority of people. Perhaps that is why, despite all those material and social privileges, the inhabitants of Europe and North America (but also of Japan) appear to be so depressed and gloomy. They live only for themselves, at the expense of others. They want more and more material goods and more and more privileges.

They have lost the ability to define their own condition, but probably, deep inside, they feel emptiness, intuitively sensing that something is terribly wrong.

And that’s why they hate Communism. That’s why they stick to self-righteous lies, deceptions and dogmas delivered to them by the regime’s propaganda. If Communists were right, then they would be wrong. And they suspect that they may be wrong. Communism is their bad conscience, and it brings fear that the bubble of lies could one day get exposed.

Most people in the West, even those who claim that they belong to the Left, want Communism to go away. They want to smear it, cover it with filth; bring it ‘to their level’. They want to muzzle it. They are desperately trying to convince themselves that Communism is wrong. Otherwise, theresponsibility for the hundreds of millions of lost lives would haunt them incessantly. Otherwise, they would have to hear and maybe even accept that the privileges of Europeans and North Americans are constructed on dreadful crimes against humanity! Otherwise, they would be forced to, on moral grounds, dismantle those privileges (something truly unthinkable, given the mindset of Western culture).

The recent position of the majority of Europeans towards the refugees coming from countries destabilized by the West, clearly shows how morally defunct the West really is. It is incapable of basic ethical judgments. Its ability to think logically has collapsed.

But the West is still ruling the world. Or more precisely, it is twisting its arm, pushing it towards disaster.

Western imperialist logic is simple: “If we rape and loot, it is because if we don’t, others would! Everybody is the same. It cannot be helped. What we do is essential to human nature.”

It is not. It is rubbish. I have seen people behaving better, much better than that, almost everywhere outside the Western world and its colonies. Even when they manage to slip away from their torturers and jailers – the Empire – for only a few years, they behave much better. But usually they are not allowed to slip away for too long: the Empire hits powerfully against those who dare to dream about freedom. It arranges coups against rebellious governments, destabilizes economies, supports the ‘opposition’, or directly invades.

It is absolutely clear to anyone who is still able and willing to see, that if the criminal Western Empire collapses, human beings would want to, they’d be capable of building great egalitarian and compassionate societies.

I believe that this is not the end. People are waking up from indoctrination, from stupor.

New, powerful anti-imperialist alliances are being forged. The year 2016 is not 1996 when there seemed to be almost no hopes left.

The war is waged, the war for the survival of humankind.

It is not a classical war of bullets and missiles. It is a war of nerves and ideals, dreams and information.

Before passing away, the great Uruguayan writer and revolutionary, Eduardo Galeano, told me: “Soon the time will come, and the world will erect old banners again!”

It is happening now! In Latin America, Africa and Asia, in almost all parts of the former Soviet Union and in China, people are demanding more Communism, not less. They don’t always call Communism by its name, but they are crying for its essence: freedom and solidarity, passion, fervor, courage to change the world, equality, justice and internationalism.

I have no doubt that we will win. But I also suspect that before we do, the Empire will bathe entire continents in blood. Desire of Westerners to rule and to control is pathological. They are ready to murder millions of those who are unwilling to fall on their knees. They already murdered hundreds of millions, throughout the centuries. And they will sacrifice millions more.

But this time, they will be stopped.

I believe it, and shoulder-to-shoulder with others, I am working day and night to make it happen.

Because it is my duty…

Because I’m a Communist!

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The last three or four years have seen a number of books, documentaries and articles on the dangers of Genetically Modified (GM) seeds. The majority has focused on adverse health and environmental impact; almost none on the geo-politics of GM seeds, and particularly seeds as a weapon of mass destruction. Engdahl has addressed this issue but the crop seed is one of the many “Seeds of Destruction” in this book.

Engdahl carefully documents how the intellectual foundations of ‘eugenics,’ mass culling of the sick, coloured, and otherwise disposable races, were actually first established, and even legally approved, in the United States. Eugenics research was financially supported by the Rockefeller and other elite families and first tested on Jews under Nazi Germany.

It is purely by chance that the world’s poorest nations also happen to be best endowed with natural resources. These regions are also the ones with growing population. The fear among European ruling families, increasingly, integrating with economic and military might of the United States, was that if the poor nations became developed, the abundant natural resources, especially oil, gas, and strategic minerals and metals, may become scarcer for the white population. That situation was unacceptable to the white ruling elite.

The central question that dominated the minds of the ruling clique was population reduction in resource rich countries but the question was how to engineer mass culling all over the world without generating powerful backlash as it was bound to happen. When the US oil reserves peaked in 1972 and it became a net oil importer, the situation became alarming and the agenda took the centre stage. Kissinger, one of the key strategists of Nixon, nurtured by the Rockefellers, prepared what is known as National Security Study Memo (NSSM#200), in which he elaborated his plan for population reduction. In this Memo he specifically targets thirteen countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia,  Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey, Thailand, and The Phillipines.

The weapon to be used was food; even if there was a famine food would be used to leverage population reduction. Kissinger is on record for stating, “Control oil, you control nations; control food and you control the people.” How a small group of key people transformed the elitist philosophy, of controlling food to control people, into realistic operational possibility within a short time is the backdrop of Engdahl’s book, the central theme running from the beginning till the end with the Rockefellers and Kissinger, among others, as the key dramatis personae.

He describes how the Rockefellers guided the US agriculture policy, used their powerful tax-free foundations worldwide to train an army of bright young scientists in hitherto unknown field of microbiology. He traces how the field of Eugenics was renamed “genetics” to make it more acceptable and also to hide the real purpose. Through incremental strategic adjustments within a handful of chemical, food and seed corporations, ably supported by the key persons in key departments of the US Government, behemoths were created that could re-write the regulatory framework in nearly every country. And these seeds of destruction of carefully constructed regulatory framework- to protect the environment and human health- were sown back in the 1920s.

Pause to think: a normal healthy person can at the most go without food for perhaps seven days but it takes a full season, say around four months, for a seed to grow into food crop. Just five agri-biz corporations, all US based (Cargill, Bunge, Archer Daniels, et al), control global grain trade, and just five control global trade in seeds. Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, and Dow Chemicals control genetically engineered seeds. While these powerful oligopolies were being knocked into place, anti-trust laws were diluted to exempt these firms. Engdahl writes, “It was not surprising that the Pentagon’s National Defense University, on the eve of the 2003 Iraq  War, issued a paper declaring: ‘Agribiz is to the United States what oil is to the Middle East.’ Agribusiness had become a strategic weapon in the arsenal of the world’s only superpower.” (page 143)

The “Green Revolution” was part of the Rockefeller agenda to destroy seed diversity and push oil and gas based agriculture inputs in which Rockefeller’s had main interest. Destruction of seed diversity and dependence on proprietary hybrids was the first step in food control. (See my notes, Box 1)

It is true that initially Green Revolution technologies led to spurt in farm productivity but at a huge cost of destruction of farmlands, bio-diversity, poisoned aquifers and progressively poor health of the people and was the true agenda of ‘the proponents of Green Revolution.’

The real impetus came with the technological possibility of gene splicing and insertion of specific traits into unrelated species. Life forms could be altered. But until 1979, the US Government had steadfastly refused to grant patent on life form. That was changed [my comment: helped much by a favorable judgment in the US Supreme Court granting patent protection to oil eating bacteria developed by Dr Ananda Chakraborty]. Life forms could now be patented. To ensure that the world surrendered to the patent regime of the seeds corporations, the World Trade Organization was knocked into shape. How it conducted business was nobody’s business, but it forced the world to accept intellectual property right of these corporations. There is opposition but these firms are too determined as Engdahl describes.

“The clear strategy of Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and the Washington Government backing them was to introduce the GMO seeds in every corner of the globe, with priority on defenceless …..African and developing countries,” write Engdahl (page 270). However, Engdahl also describes how US and Canadian farmlands came under GMOs. It was suspected that GMO could pose serious threat to human and animal health and the environment, yet efforts at independent biosafety assessment were discontinued. Scientists carrying out honest studies were vilified. Reputed scientific establishments were silenced or made to toe the line that was supportive of the Rockefeller’s food control and mass culling agenda. The destruction of the credibility of scientific institution is yet another seed of destruction in Engdahl’s book.

Engdahl cites the example of a German farmer Gottfried Glockner’s experience with GM corn. Glockner planted Bt176 event of Syngenta essentially as feed for his cows. Being a scientist, he started with 10% GM feed and gradually increased the proportion, carefully noting milk yield and any side effects. Nothing much happened in the first three years but when he increased the feed to 100% GM feed, his animals “were having gluey-white feaces and violent diarrhea” and “milk contained blood.” Eventually all his seventy cows died. Prof Angelika Hilbeck of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology found from Glockner’s Bt 176 corn samples Bt toxins were present “in active form and extremely stable.” The cows died of high dose of toxins. Not if, but when human food is 100% contaminated should be a sobering thought.

In the US unlabelled GM foods were introduced in 1993 and that 70% of the supermarket foods contain GMOs in varying proportions in what should rightly be called world’s largest biological experiment on humans. While Engdahl has clearly stated that the thrust of US Government and the agi-biz is control over food especially in the third world, he has left it to the readers to deduce that American and European citizens are also target of that grand agenda. And there are more lethal weapons in the arsenal: Terminator seeds, Traitor seeds, and the ability to destroy small independent farmers at will in any part of the world, and these are powerfully presented in the book. Engdahl provides hard evidences for these seeds of final destruction and utter decimation of world civilizations as we have known.

It is a complex but highly readable book. It is divided into five parts, each containing two to four short chapters. The first part deals with the political maneuverings to ensure support to Seed and Agri-biz firms, the second deals with what should be widely known as ‘The Rockefeller Plan’, the third deals with how vertically integrated giants were readied for Washington’s silent wars on planet earth, the fourth part deals with how GM seeds were unleashed on unsuspecting farmers, and the final part deals with how the elites is going on destroying food, farmers that would eventually cause mass culling of population. He does not offer any solution; he can’t because it is up to the rest of the world, including Europeans and Americans, to wake up and take on these criminals head on. An essential read for anyone who eats and thinks.

Seeds of Destruction

The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, 2007 ISBN 978-0-937147-2-2

SPECIAL ONLINE AND MAIL ORDER PRICE  US$18.00 (list price $25.95)

This skillfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO.  Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Engdahl’s carefully argued critique goes far beyond the familiar controversies surrounding the practice of genetic modification as a scientific technique. The book is an eye-opener, a must-read for all those committed to the causes of social justice and World peace.

 F. William Engdahl is a leading analyst of the New World Order, author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Politics and the New World Order,’ His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages. 

What is so frightening about Engdahl’s vision of the world is that it is so real. Although our civilization has been built on humanistic ideals, in this new age of “free markets”, everything– science, commerce, agriculture and even seeds– have become weapons in the hands of a few global corporation barons and their political fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they no longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food production. (Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett Research Institute Institute, Scotland)

If you want to learn about the socio-political agenda –why biotech corporations insist on spreading GMO seeds around the World– you should read this carefully researched book. You will learn how these corporations want to achieve control over all mankind, and why we must resist… (Marijan Jost, Professor of Genetics, Krizevci, Croatia)

The book reads like a murder mystery of an incredible dimension, in which four giant Anglo-American agribusiness conglomerates have no hesitation to use GMO to gain control over our very means of subsistence… (Anton Moser, Professor of Biotechnology, Graz, Austria).

Order Now: Online or Mail Order 

List Price US$25.95 plus taxes. 

US$18.00 plus shipping and handling (incl. taxes where applicable)

Every schoolchild knows that in order to makeup one must first offer a sincere apology. They must also be perceived as sincerely regretting whatever offense it was they committed, and show interest in not repeating such an offense or compounding it with similarly antisocial behavior. If such a notion is easily understood by a schoolchild, how come the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears not to know this?

To answer this question, one must read the narrative provided by the Washington-London establishment. Articles like the BBC’s “Can Russia and Turkey heal rift?” provides useful insight.

The article claims:

[Turkish President Erdogan] also said he wanted to improve ties with Russia but that he did not understand what kind of “first step” Moscow was expecting. 

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was clear about that: Moscow expects a formal and public apology from Turkey and also compensation for the jet incident. 

Not something that Ankara seems likely to do.  

To explain why something so simple is not something Ankara is likely to do, the BBC would elaborate by explaining that there is no “international” pressure on Ankara to do so. For long-time readers of news services like the BBC, they will realize that the term “international” actually refers to the US, UK and EU exclusively.

There is no pressure on Turkey from Washington, London and Brussels specifically because the downing of Russia’s warplane over Syria was part of a wider proxy war these centers of power have been waging in Syria against both Damascus and ultimately against Moscow.

The BBC also noted that:

As Russia maintained a de facto no-fly zone in northern Syria by the Turkish border, Turkey lost its ability to give air support to Syrian rebels or protect its borders from Islamic State (IS) militants’ shelling. 

However, this is a transparent falsehood. IS has long been suspected of using Turkish territory as a safe haven and springboard into Syria. More recently, this has become painfully obvious and a point of humiliating contention for Ankara. Ankara is clearly being left holding the most toxic aspects of Washington’s proxy war against Syria, including complicity in propping up IS.

IS “shelling” into Turkey resembles less of a genuine threat to Turkish security, and more of an updated version of a conspiracy revealed by the International Business Tribune (IBT) in which Ankara planned to attack its own territory from Syria to help justify cross border military incursions into Syria by Turkish forces.

IBT would report in its 2014 article, “Turkey YouTube Ban: Full Transcript of Leaked Syria ‘War’ Conversation Between Erdogan Officials,” that:

The leaked call details Erdogan’s thoughts that an attack on Syria “must be seen as an opportunity for us [Turkey]”. 

In the conversation, intelligence chief Fidan says that he will send four men from Syria to attack Turkey to “make up a cause of war”.

The reason Russia is conducting airstrikes along the Syrian-Turkish border is precisely to disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations operating along it. Most importantly, airstrikes along the border have aimed specifically at disrupting the flow of supplies, fighters and weapons from Turkey into Syria. Considering that fact, it is more likely Turkey and its partners in America and Europe are not upset because they are unable to support efforts to stop IS, but are being prevented from they themselves continuing to prop up IS.

All the Benefits of Reconciliation, Without Actually Reconciling? 

Turkey does indeed likely want to repair relations with Russia, with the latest diplomatic row costing Turkey economically, politically and the BBC even alludes to military consequences as well. However, it is clear that Turkey neither seeks actual reconciliation with Russia, nor intends on reforming its current role in the proxy war being waged on Moscow’s allies in Damascus that has caused this widening chasm in bilateral relations.

In other words, Turkey wants the penalties of its actions negated, while continuing its destructive behavior toward both Syria and Russia. Nothing could be a more irrational and unreasonable foreign policy or more indicative of the immature and irresponsible policymakers currently residing in Ankara.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Começa hoje (7 de junho), na Polônia, a Anakonda 16, “a maior manobra militar aliada deste ano”: participam mais de 25 mil hommes de 19 países da Otan (entre estes Etados Unidos, Alemanha, Reino Unido, Turquia) e de 6 parceiros (1): Geórgia, Ucrânia e Kossovo (reconhecido como Estado), de fato já na Otan sob comando dos Estados Unidos; Macedônia, que não está ainda na Otan apenas devido à oposição da Grécia sobre a questão do nome do país (o mesmo de uma das províncias gregas, que a Macedônia poderia reivindicar); Suécia e Finlândia, que se aproximam cada vez mais da Otan (elas participaram em maio na reunião dos ministros das Relações Exteriores da Aliança).

Formalmente a manobra está sob a condução polonesa (daí o “k” no nome), para satisfazer o orgulho nacional de Varsóvia. Na realidade, está sob comando do US Army Europe que, como “área de responsabilidade” abrange 51 países (incluindo toda a Rússia), tendo por missão oficial “promover os interesses estratégicos americanos na Europa e Eurásia”. Cada ano esse exército efetua mil operações militares em mais de 40 países da área.

O US Army Europe participa na manobra com 18 de suas unidades, entre as quais a 173ª Brigada aerotransportada de Vicenza. A Anakonda 16, que se desenvolve até 17 de junho, é claramente dirigida contra a Rússia. A manobra prevê “missões de assalto de forças multinacionais aerotransportadas” e outras incluindo a área do Mar Báltico na fronteira do território russo.

Na véspera da Anakonda 16, Varsóvia anunciou que em 2017 aumentará as forças armadas polonesas de 100 a 150 mil homens, constituindo uma força paramilitar de 35 mil homens denominada “força de defesa territorial”. Distribuída em todas as províncias, a começar pelas orientais, ela terá como missão “impedir a Rússia de controlar o território polonês, como ela fez na Ucrânia”.

Os membros da nova força, que receberão um salário mensal, serão treinados, a partir de setembro, por instrutores estadunidenses e da Otan segundo o modelo adotado na Ucrânia, onde treinam a Guarda Nacional incluindo os batalhões neonazistas. A associação paramilitar polonesa Strzelec, que com mais de 10 mil homens constituirá o ponto nevrálgico da nova força, já começou seu treinamento participando na Anakonda 16. A constituição da força paramilitar, que no plano interno fornece ao presidente Andrzej Duda um novo instrumento para reprimir a oposição, participa no aumento do poderio militar da Polônia, com um custo previsto de 34 bilhões de dólares, de agora até 2022, sob o encorajamento dos Estados Unidos e da Otan com finalidades antirrussas.

Os trabalhos já começaram para instalar na Polônia uma bateria terrestre de mísseis do sistema estadunidense Aegis, semelhante ao que já está em funcionamento na Romênia, que pode lançar tanto mísseis interceptadores como mísseis de ataque nuclear. Aguardando a cúpula da Otan de Varsóvia (8 e 9 de julho), que oficializará a escalada anti-Rússia, o Pentágono se prepara para deslocar para a Europa uma brigada de combate de cinco mil homens que se movimentará entre a Polônia e os países bálticos.

Ao mesmo tempo, intensificam-se as manobras militares dos EUA/Otan dirigidas contra a Rússia: em 5 de junho, dois dias antes da Anakonda 16, começou no Mar Báltico a Baltops 16, com 6.100 militares, 45 navios e 60 aviões de guerra de 17 países (inclusive a Itália) sob o comando dos EUA. Nela participam também bombardeiros estratégicos estadunidenses B-52. A cerca de 100 milhas do território russo de Kalingrado.

É uma escalada ulterior da estratégia de tensão, que a Europa impulsiona para uma confrontação não menos perigosa que a da guerra fria. Sob o silêncio politico-midiático das “grandes democracias” ocidentais.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo em italiano :

http://ilmanifesto.info/nelle-spire-dellanaconda/

 Tradução de José Reinaldo Carvalho, para Resistência