Global Research

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) calls itself an initiative “focusing on…cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power.”

Its financial backers include the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, Australian billionaire Graeme Wood and other sources. 

It was used to facilitate the largest ever financial leak, a reported 11.5 million documents, revealing secret offshore holdings of current and former world leaders, along with numerous other high-profile public and private figures.

The Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm is at the heart of the scandal, quietly providing services for high-profile clients, including apparently hiding wealth in tax havens, making money trails murky in the process.

No current or earlier Western leaders or officials so far were named, only UK prime minister David Cameron’s father, Ian. Is evidence of their possible tax avoidance, money laundering or other illegal or suspect activities being concealed?

According to Forbes magazine, America had 536 billionaires in 2015, Western European countries hundreds more.

ICIJ revealed information on 140 politicians from over 50 countries with wealth hidden in 21 tax havens. They include “heads of state, their associates, ministers (and) elected officials.”

Key national leaders named include Argentine president Mauricio Acri, former Georgia prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, Saudi Arabia’s king Salman, other current and former Middle East leaders, and US-installed Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Yet ICIJ’s Panama Papers report prominently featured Putin’s image, alleging his ties to an “offshore network,” despite no evidence suggesting it.

An earlier article discussed a Tax Justice Network (TJN) report, titled “The Price of Offshore Revisited,” revealing an estimated $21 – $32 trillion of hidden or stolen wealth stashed in largely tax-free havens secretly.

Wall Street and other major financial firms manage it. Keeping funds hidden tax free attracts rich clients. Services are offered “no questions asked.”

Governments are complicit in cover-ups. Societal costs are huge, tax justice entirely absent. Rich, powerful elites operate by different standards than ordinary folks, their wrongdoing ignored.

ICIJ indicated more than 100 “media partners” published or broadcast Panama Papers reports, including the BBC, London’s Guardian, and Le Monde, among others.

Nothing links Vladimir Putin to ICIJ revelations. The BBC notoriously bashes him relentlessly, its latest smear alleging his link to “a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring involving (his) close associates.”

London’s Guardian went further, yellow journalism at its worst, spuriously alleging “(a) network of secret offshore deals and vast loans worth $2bn has laid a trail to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.”

“An unprecedented leak of documents shows how this money has made members of Putin’s close circle fabulously wealthy.”

“Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage.”

“The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.”

No evidence corroborates the Guardian’s specious allegations, the latest example of irresponsible Western media Putin bashing.

The Guardian featured in bold letters: “How to hide a billion dollars” accompanied by Putin’s image, the implication clear, evidence linking him to possible wrongdoing absent because none exists.

His spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “it’s obvious that the main target of (ICIJ’s report) is our president,” aimed at discrediting him and affecting Russia’s stability.

He suggested ICIJ ties to Washington. Its dubious funding sources reveal its intention to smear Vladimir Putin irresponsibly – destroying its own credibility in the process.

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.

Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”

Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros.

We are now seeing what looks like a new preparatory phase for the next round of “regime changes” with corruption allegations aimed at former Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The new anti-Putin allegations – ballyhooed by the UK Guardian and other outlets – are particularly noteworthy because the so-called “Panama Papers” that supposedly implicate him in offshore financial dealings never mention his name.

Or as the Guardian writes: 

“Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage. The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.”

Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin delivering a speech on the Ukraine crisis in Moscow on March 18, 2014. (Russian government photo)

Note, if you will, the lack of specificity and the reliance on speculation: “a pattern”; “seemingly”; “suggest”; “appear.” Indeed, if Putin were not already a demonized figure in the Western media, such phrasing would never pass an editor’s computer screen. Indeed, the only point made in declarative phrasing is that “the president’s name does not appear in any of the records.”

A British media-watch publication, the Off-Guardian, which criticizes much of the work done at The Guardian, headlined its article on the Putin piece as “the Panama Papers cause Guardian to collapse into self-parody.”

But whatever the truth about Putin’s “corruption” or Lula’s, the journalistic point is that the notion of objectivity has long since been cast aside in favor of what’s useful as propaganda for Western interests.

Some of those Western interests now are worried about the growth of the BRICS economic system – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as a competitor to the West’s G-7 and the International Monetary Fund. After all, control of the global financial system has been central to American power in the post-World War II world – and rivals to the West’s monopoly are not welcome.

What the built-in bias against these and other “unfriendly” governments means, in practical terms, is that one standard applies to a Russia or a Brazil, while a more forgiving measure is applied to the corruption of a U.S. or European leader.

Take, for instance, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s millions of dollars in payments in speaking fees from wealthy special interests that knew she was a good bet to become the next U.S. president. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Clinton Stalls on Goldman-Sachs Speeches.”]

Image: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Or, similarly, the millions upon millions of dollars invested in super-PACS for Clinton, Sen. Ted Cruz and other presidential hopefuls. That might look like corruption from an objective standard but is treated as just a distasteful aspect of the U.S. political process.

But imagine for a minute if Putin had been paid millions of dollars for brief speeches before powerful corporations, banks and interest groups doing business with the Kremlin. That would be held up as de facto proof of his illicit greed and corruption.

Losing Perspective

Also, when it’s a demonized foreign leader, any “corruption” will do, however minor. For example, in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s denounced Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for his choice of eyewear: “The dictator in designer glasses,” declared Reagan, even as Nancy Reagan was accepting free designer gowns and free renovations of the White House funded by oil and gas interests.

Or, the “corruption” for a demonized leader can be a modest luxury, such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s “sauna” in his personal residence, a topic that got front-page treatment in The New York Times and other Western publications seeking to justify the violent coup that drove Yanukovych from office in February 2014.

Incidentally, both Ortega and Yanukovych had been popularly elected but were still targeted by the U.S. government and its operatives with violent destabilization campaigns. In the 1980s, the CIA-organized Nicaraguan Contra war killed some 30,000 people, while the U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” in Ukraine sparked a civil war that has left some 10,000 people dead. Of course, in both cases, Official Washington blamed Moscow for all the trouble.

In both cases, too, the politicians and operatives who gained power as a result of the conflicts were arguably more corrupt than the Nicaraguan Sandinistas or Yanukovych’s government. The Nicaraguan Contras, whose violence helped pave the way for the 1990 election of U.S.-backed candidate Violeta Chamorro, were deeply implicated in cocaine trafficking. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga.”]

Today, the U.S.-supported Ukrainian government is wallowing in corruption so deep that it has provoked a new political crisis.[See Consortiumnews’com’s “Reality Peeks Through in Ukraine.”]

Ironically, one of the politicians actually named in the Panama Papers for having established a shadowy offshore account is the U.S.-backed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, although he got decidedly second-billing to the unnamed Putin. (Poroshenko denied there was anything improper in his offshore financial arrangements.)

Double Standards

Mainstream Western journalism no longer even tries to apply common standards to questions about corruption. If you’re a favored government, there might be lamentations about the need for more “reform” – which often means slashing pensions for the elderly and cutting social programs for the poor – but if you’re a demonized leader, then the only permissible answer is criminal indictment and/or “regime change.”

Image: Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko.

One stark example of these double standards is the see-no-evil attitude toward the corruption of Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who is touted endlessly in the Western media as the paragon of Ukrainian good governance and reform. The documented reality, however, is that Jaresko enriched herself through her control of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund that was supposed to help the people of Ukraine build their economy.

According to the terms of the $150 million investment fund created by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Jaresko’s compensation was supposed to be capped at $150,000 a year, a pay package that many Americans would envy. But it was not enough for Jaresko, who first simply exceeded the limit by hundreds of thousands of dollars and then moved her compensation off-books as she amassed total annual pay of $2 million or more.

The documentation of this scheming is clear. I have published multiple stories citing the evidence of both her excessive compensation and her legal strategies for covering up evidence of alleged wrongdoing. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Ukraine’s Finance Minister Got Rich” and “Carpetbagging Crony Capitalism in Ukraine.”]

Despite the evidence, not a single mainstream Western news outlet has followed up on this information even as Jaresko is hailed as a “reform” candidate for Ukrainian prime minister.

This disinterest is similar to the blinders that The New York Times and other major Western newspapers put on when they were assessing whether Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted in a coup in February 2014 or just wandered off and forgot to return.

In a major “investigative” piece, the Times concluded there was no coup in Ukraine while ignoring the evidence of a coup, such as the intercepted phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who they would put into power. “Yats is the guy,” said Nuland – and surprise, surprise, Arseniy Yatsenyuk ended up as prime minister.

The Times also ignored the observation of George Friedman, president of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, who noted that the Ukraine coup was “the most blatant coup in history.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]

The Propaganda Weapon

The other advantage of “corruption” as a propaganda weapon to discredit certain leaders is that we all assume that there is plenty of corruption in governments as well as in the private sector all around the world. Alleging corruption is like shooting large fish crowded into a small barrel. Granted, some barrels might be more crowded than others but the real decision is whose barrel you choose.

That’s part of the reason why the U.S. government has spread around hundreds of millions of dollars to finance “journalism” organizations, train political activists and support “non-governmental organizations” that promote U.S. policy goals inside targeted countries. For instance, before the Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Ukraine, there were scores of such operations in the country financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose budget from Congress exceeds $100 million a year.

Image: Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy.

But NED, which has been run by neocon Carl Gershman since its founding in 1983, is only part of the picture. You have other propaganda fronts operating under the umbrella of the State Department and USAID. Last year, USAID issued a fact sheetsummarizing its work financing friendly journalists around the globe, including “journalism education, media business development, capacity building for supportive institutions, and strengthening legal-regulatory environments for free media.”

USAID estimated its budget for “media strengthening programs in over 30 countries” at $40 million annually, including aiding “independent media organizations and bloggers in over a dozen countries,” In Ukraine before the coup, USAID offered training in “mobile phone and website security,” which sounds a bit like an operation to thwart the local government’s intelligence gathering, an ironic position for the U.S. with its surveillance obsession, including prosecuting whistleblowers based on evidence that they talked to journalists.

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in “investigative journalism” that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.

Higgins has spread misinformation on the Internet, including discredited claims implicating the Syrian government in the sarin attack in 2013 and directing an Australian TV news crew to what looked to be the wrong location for a video of a BUK anti-aircraft battery as it supposedly made its getaway to Russia after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.

Despite his dubious record of accuracy, Higgins has gained mainstream acclaim, in part, because his “findings” always match up with the propaganda theme that the U.S. government and its Western allies are peddling. Though most genuinely independent bloggers are ignored by the mainstream media, Higgins has found his work touted by both The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In other words, the U.S. government has a robust strategy for deploying direct and indirect agents of influence. Indeed, during the first Cold War, the CIA and the old U.S. Information Agency refined the art of “information warfare,” including pioneering some of its current features like having ostensibly “independent” entities and cut-outs present U.S. propaganda to a cynical public that would reject much of what it hears from government but may trust “citizen journalists” and “bloggers.”

But the larger danger from this perversion of journalism is that it sets the stage for “regime changes” that destabilize whole countries, thwart real democracy (i.e., the will of the people), and engender civil warfare. Today’s neoconservative dream of mounting a “regime change” in Moscow is particularly dangerous to the future of both Russia and the world.

Regardless of what you think about President Putin, he is a rational political leader whose legendary sangfroid makes him someone who is not prone to emotional decisions. His leadership style also appeals to the Russian people who overwhelmingly favor him, according to public opinion polls.

While the American neocons may fantasize that they can generate enough economic pain and political dissension inside Russia to achieve Putin’s removal, their expectation that he will be followed by a pliable leader like the late President Boris Yeltsin, who will let U.S. operatives back in to resume plundering Russia’s riches, is almost certainly a fantasy.

The far more likely possibility is that – if a “regime change” could somehow be arranged – Putin would be replaced by a hard-line nationalist who might think seriously about unleashing Russia’s nuclear arsenal if the West again tries to defile Mother Russia. For me, it’s not Putin who’s the worry; it’s the guy after Putin.

So, while legitimate questions about Putin’s “corruption” – or that of any other political leader – should be pursued, the standards of evidence should not be lowered just because he or anyone else is a demonized figure in the West. There should be single not double standards.

Western media outrage about “corruption” should be expressed as loudly against political and business leaders in the U.S. or other G-7 countries as it is toward those in the BRICS.

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).

With the last two months of primaries and caucuses in approximately twenty states, the role of African Americans is pivotal.

Both candidates for the Democratic nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders have made special appeals to win over the African American electorate.

This process goes back at least to 1960, when a re-emergent Black electorate swung its support to Democratic candidate Senator John F. Kennedy in a significant move that landed him in the White House. Nonetheless, numerous militants from the period such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael criticized the Kennedy administration for its failure to protect Civil Rights workers as well as navigate legislation through Congress that would protect the social and political rights of this nationally oppressed group.

On August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by the-then President Lyndon B. Johnson. The bill was the product of the escalating struggle of the African American people during the mid-1960s demanding full equality and the right to self-determination.

Restrictions on Voting Rights Reinstituted by Supreme Court

Nearly five decades later on June 25, 2013, the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, struck down the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act. This decision eviscerated the authority of the Justice Department to monitor and intervene when issues related to ballot access and legislative representation is involved.

The recently-deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia during the legal arguments surrounding the decision remarked that such a bill in the modern period represented some form of “racial privilege” for African Americans. This statement was made at a time when the impact of the Great Recession had devastated African Americans in the areas of home foreclosures, job losses, declining income and household wealth.

An article in the New York Times on the decision said the ruling “effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, freeing nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without advance federal approval.” This same report suggested that “At the core of the disagreement was whether racial minorities continued to face barriers to voting in states with a history of discrimination.” (June 25, 2013)

In a quote from conservative Justice John G. Roberts speaking for the majority in relationship to the decision, he said “Our country has changed. While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”

Laws instituted by various states to enhance barriers to ballot access were vindicated by the ruling as in the state of Texas. Authorities in Texas “announced shortly after the decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need federal approval.” (NYT, June 25)

These and other measures such as the denial of ballot access for those having criminal records, disqualifies approximately 25 percent of African American voters in Florida. Overall within this Southern state some 1.3 million people were missing on the voters’ rolls at the time of the primary elections which were held on March 15.

Mass Struggle Escalates in Response to Right-wing Offensive

Under the administration of President Barack Obama no concrete measures were ever initiated to address these concerns. Three consecutive elections held in 2010, 2012 and 2014 witnessed the transformation of the Democrats in Congress from a majority to a minority as the traditional base of the party lacked inspiration for maintaining the status-quo.

The absence of an effective political alternative both within and outside of Congress resulted in the deepening of a right-wing political agenda that has enhanced the capacity of the capitalist class to dominate the workers and oppressed generally. State repression by the police and intelligence agencies reinforces the system of exploitation with impunity.

Nearly all of the mass demonstrations and rebellions since 2012 have been in response to the cop and vigilante killings of African Americans and Latinos. These protests and acts of property destruction has prompted the stark display of the militarization at all levels of law-enforcement which has been supplied with automatic weapons, armored vehicles, tanks, chemicals, batons and sound devices by the federal government which are designed to repress and disperse crowds.

Shifting Political Attitudes in 2016

New polls indicate that the Sanders campaign has gained significant support within the African American community in the Midwest and West coasts. One recent poll indicated that within a period of two months, Sanders now leads Clinton among African American voters in Wisconsin prior to the April 5 primary.

According to a March 31 article published by the Huffington Post, it notes that “On February 27th, Hillary Clinton led Bernie Sanders among African-American voters by 52 points. By March 26th, she led Sanders among African-Americans by just nine points. And today, Public Policy Polling, a widely respected polling organization, released a poll showing that Sanders leads Clinton among African-American voters in Wisconsin by 11 points.”

This same report suggests “In short, the Clinton campaign is in the midst of an historic collapse — much of it due to the unraveling of support for Clinton among nonwhite voters — and the national media has yet to take any notice.” Primary elections in the next few weeks will prove or disprove these assertions.

At any rate there is a degree of desperation in the Clinton campaign particularly in reference to the outcome of the Wisconsin primary.  Clinton held campaign rallies in African-American neighborhoods in Milwaukee during the last week of March.

In two major events, U.S. Representative Gwen Moore, Wisconsin’s sole African American member in the House stood next to Clinton on stage. Moore welcomed Clinton at a Boys and Girls Club by claiming that the former New York senator and first lady had helped African-American youth in South Carolina while working for the Children’s Defense Fund. (WPR.org, March 31)

This same trend was illustrated in Michigan during early March and was reflected in the questionable close margins of victory by Clinton in Illinois and Missouri along with the overall lack of enthusiasm for the former Secretary of State’s second presidential campaign.

The Need for Independent Political Action

What do African Americans have to gain from their continued support for centrist Democratic candidates in light of the history of the 1990s under Clinton and the last eight years of the Obama administration?  Joblessness, poverty, mass incarceration, police terrorism and institutional racism remain as structural barriers to socio-economic advancement and political empowerment.

The apparent shift in outlook toward the Sanders campaign illustrates the discontent within numerous Democratic Party constituencies, which African Americans are an indispensable element. Clinton’s reliance on elected officials and party organizational structures has not been nearly enough to sustain a series of victories in the South and other areas during the early phase of the campaign.

Questions are being raised within the electorate over the role of the “super delegate” process where committed forces, most of whom representing the party bosses, maintain the capacity to override electoral losses suffered by Clinton in several key states including Michigan, Alaska, Hawaii and New Hampshire. This will become a critical debate in light of several polls that show Sanders running a much stronger campaign against Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in the general elections in November.

These shifts in political views must lead towards greater political independence during the primary process, the national elections and beyond. Ultimately, African Americans, the nationally oppressed from other communities and the working class in general must break with the Democratic Party to establish their own organization that will speak in their name fighting for a program of total liberation and genuine socialist construction.

Struan Stevenson, President of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA) is calling for “urgent action to end callous food and medicine blockade” of the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

Mr. Stevenson was a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014 and was President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq from 2009 to 2014. He outlines starkly the ongoing tragedy of the “City of Mosques”, which was seventy percent destroyed by US troops in 2004 with football pitches being turned into cemeteries such was the human carnage wrought by the anglo-American “liberators.”

The suffering, assaults and siege has never ended. Stevenson states:

“The European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA) strongly condemns the cruel and criminal siege of Fallujah, which, together with the denial of access to medicine, has led to the starvation and death of large numbers of innocent civilians. The unfolding tragedy has included the horrific death of a young mother who attached rocks to herself and her children and jumped into the River Euphrates. The people of Fallujah are the victims of crimes committed by Daesh (ISIS) who control the city, on the one hand and the bombing of residential areas by the Iraqi army and the sectarian Shi’ia militias affiliated with the Iranian regime, on the other.

“EIFA calls on the government of Dr. Haider al-Abadi, in line with his recent notable government reforms, to adopt immediate measures to bring food, medicine and basic necessities to the people of Fallujah and to resolve this humanitarian crisis. It also urges the Iraqi Prime Minister to prevent any meddling by the militias affiliated with the Iranian regime who have no objective but to slaughter Sunnis to further their scorched earth tactics. The Iraqi army should create safe corridors to enable people to escape from Fallujah.

“EIFA also calls on the UN, the US, the EU and its Member States, especially members of the international coalition, to take urgent steps to bring food and medicine to the people of Fallujah, including through air-drops. EIFA similarly calls on Iraq’s religious leaders, particularly the Shi’ite leaders, not to keep silent in face of this criminal siege and to employ their extensive resources to save the people of Fallujah.

“Imposing a siege on the people of this city not only fails to help in the fight against Daesh, but by escalating the criminal acts by the militias affiliated with the Iranian Qods Force, politically and socially pours fuel on the flames of conflict and prolongs the existence of Daesh.”

The global financial system has become increasingly exposed to volatility and the risk of a meltdown emanating from what were once considered stable institutions, and national-based monetary authorities exercise a decreasing degree of control over the system.

This conclusion emerges from two analytical chapters of the Global Financial Stability report issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday in the lead-up to its spring meeting later this month.

One chapter deals with the impact of “spillover” effects of turbulence in so-called emerging markets resulting from their closer integration into the global financial system over the past two decades. The other examines the heightened risks posed by insurance companies as they confront increasing problems flowing from the global low-interest rate regime.

The IMF notes that

“spillovers of emerging market shocks to equity prices and exchange rates in advanced and emerging market economies have risen substantially and now explain over a third of variation in asset returns in these countries.”

A spillover is defined as the impact of changes in domestic asset prices in one country on those in another. The impacts emanating from emerging markets have become “significantly stronger since the 2007–2009 global financial crisis.”

Underlying these effects is the growing significance of emerging markets in the global economy. As the IMF notes, they have contributed more than half of global growth over the past 15 years. Another indicator of increasing global integration, flowing from the establishment of global supply chains by major transnational corporations, is the 20-fold rise in trade between emerging market economies since the early 1990s.

The IMF pays particular attention to China, pointing out that the suspension of trading on Chinese markets on January 6 this year “reverberated across major asset markets globally.” When Chinese equities fell sharply on August 24, 2015, following a change in the exchange rate regime for the renminbi, the “subsequent plunge in Asian markets was significant.” US and European markets were also “adversely affected.”

While the IMF does not make this point, the analysis contained in the report is an exposure of the claim that the turn to the “free market” is the road to stability for the global financial system. In the case of China, the exact opposite is the case.

According to the IMF, the “impact of shocks to China’s fundamentals on global financial markets is expected to grow stronger and wider over time.” In addition to the growth of its economy, the size of Chinese financial market spillovers “is also likely to grow because of the transition to a more market-based financial system.”

“In both equity and bond markets, the inclusion of Chinese securities and global benchmarking indices will likely have a large global impact. As banking and market linkages rise, the use of the renminbi as a funding currency as well as a reserve currency will grow, which will also increase spillovers through foreign exchange markets.”

This analysis underscores one of the central features of the historic crisis of the capitalist economy—the ever-deepening contradiction between the global character of economic and financial activity and the nation-state system. Rather than exercising control, national-based central banks and monetary authorities—even the largest, such as the US Federal Reserve—increasingly have to react to, rather than direct, financial flows.

This lack of control has worsened since the 2008 global financial crisis, with various funds, rather than banks, playing a growing role in the intermediation of global capital flows. The result is that “close to two-thirds of dollar funding originates outside the United States,” increasingly dominated by investment funds.

The second chapter deals with the global life insurance industry and the “trends and systemic risk implications” of developments since the 2008 crisis.

It notes that “across the advanced economies the contribution of life insurers to systemic risk has increased in recent years,” while it still remained below that of banks. Systemic risk refers to a situation where the financial problems encountered by an individual company sweep through the money markets as a whole.

What the IMF disingenuously refers to as the “near collapse” of the American insurance giant AIG during the 2008 crisis “prompted a rethinking of the sector’s systemic risk contribution.” In fact, the firm went bankrupt and was only saved by a US government bailout.

By every measure, the insurance companies’ contribution to that systemic risk is rising. They hold some $24 trillion, or 12 percent of global financial assets.

As the IMF explains, this is a result of “common exposures to aggregate risks.” That is, insurance companies are affected by the same turbulence as other parts of the financial system. Furthermore, they are sensitive to interest rates. “Thus, in the event of an adverse shock, insurers are unlikely to fulfil their role as financial intermediaries precisely when other parts of the financial system are failing to do so as well.”

A particular problem for life insurance companies is the low-interest rate regime established by the world’s major central banks in the wake of the 2008 crisis. Their entire business model faces “challenges” because the promised rates of return on long-term contracts now exceed the returns that are available on “safe” assets such as government bonds and high-grade corporate bonds. This leads to a situation where the life insurers could undertake a search for higher yields in riskier assets and possibly “gamble for resurrection.”

This situation is set to worsen because there is little prospect of any major change in the current low-interest rate environment.

The IMF warns that smaller and weaker firms are more likely to take on excessive rises and the “solvency problems of [these] smaller entities may result in cascading effects that become systemic.”

As with the chapter on spillover effects, the IMF’s analysis of the insurance industry points to the increasing impotence of national-based regulatory institutions. It says authorities should take a more macro-prudential approach to the sector—that is, closer regulation of individual firms and tighter national standards. Such an approach, it says, would be complemented by “international adoption of capital and transparency standards for the sector,” indicating that in this global industry none exists at present.

One is reminded of the observation by Marx in the Communist Manifesto that modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, “is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”

On April 3, the Syrian Arab Army liberated the strategic town of al-Qaryatayn in the Homs province. Initially, the SAA units advanced from 4 directions and secured the Northern and Western parts of the town. Then,  following heavy clashes with ISIS, the loyalists took full control of the area. Al-Qaryatayn is located at the important crossroads which link the cities of Homs, Hama and Palmyra. Now, the SAA will likely advance on Ar-Rus Hills in order to fully secure the town’s eastern flank.

Some experts believe, following the liberation of al-Qaryatayn, the Syrian forces is ready to advance directly on al-Suknah. However, it’s more likely that the SAA and its allies will make an attempt to set a secure foothold for the future advances with capturing the mountains area north from Palmyra, and T3 Pumping station east from the ancient city. In other cases, the loyalists at the Palmyra- al-Suknah road will be vulnerable for ISIS counter attacks. Separately, a high concentration of ISIS militants have been observed at the Bir Qudaym-al-Suknah road. The Russian Aerospace forces will likely to intensify the activity in this area.

Heavy clashes are ongoing at the eastern and northern perimeter of al-Eis in southern Aleppo. The SAA and Hezbollah troops supported by Russian warplanes are seeking to enter the militant-held town. It’s confirmed that some 9 Hezbollah troops have been killed in the clashes. In turn, pro-government sources report a heavy death-toll among militants. In the recent days

Iraqi forces freed some 1500 prisoners from an underground jail run by ISIS during a battle for the town of Hit in the Anbar province, Iraqi officials reported on April 2. Last weekend, the Iraqi troops liberated 2 districts of the town from ISIS.

Separately, 60 ISIS militants have been killed during military operations in Iraq’s provinces of Nineveh and Kirkuk. Reports said 30 militants also died in airstrikes near the Nineveh’s Qayyarah oil field.

Last Thursday US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Azerbaijan’s dictator Ilham Aliyev in Washington and called for “an ultimate resolution” of the decades-old conflict in the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh. On Friday, as the hereditary Azeri despot was on the plane back to Baku, Azeri troops were already launching an offensive against the breakaway Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. One of the first casualties was a 12-year-old Armenian boy.

Naturally, the Azeris claim they were attacked first, but this seems unlikely. The front lines in the simmering conflict have been pretty stable since the conclusion of the post-Soviet war between Armenia and Azerbbaijan, which ended in victory for the former and de facto independence for the primarily Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Already in possession of the disputed territory, the Nagorno-Karabakhians had nothing to gain by restarting the fighting —  and it seems more than coincidental that fresh hostilities commenced immediately upon Kerry’s rather absurd pronouncement.

Absurd because the “crisis’ has already been resolved – today Nagorno-Karabakh is an independent state, in spite of the refusal of the United States to recognize it, and it has enjoyed this status since 1994, when the last Azeri troops were driven from the territory. That the Secretary of State would choose to intervene at this point seems, at best, highly suspicious. Did Kerry give the green light to the Azeris?

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. After all, the US has consistently stood with the Azeris no matter which party is in the Oval Office. Washington’s reasons are two-fold: geopolitics and money, not necessarily in that order.

The geopolitical factor involves the US policy of encircling Russia. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, Washington has sought to extend its sphere of influence deep into the territory of the former USSR by courting the Oriential despots, like the Aliyev clan, who rule over these former communist “republics.” Which brings us to the second, albeit no less influential factor: money. The central Asian states like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, etc. are a rich source of Caspian Sea oil, where huge deposits have been discovered. The problem is how to transport the oil to European and US markets – without pumping it through Russian pipelines.

The solution: the BTC (Baku to Ceyhan, Turkey) pipeline. In 1994, Ilham Alivey’s father, Heydar, announced what he called “the Contract of the Century” in a speech to the Harriman Institute in New York City. His government had just signed an agreement with a consortium of oil companies and investment bankers, giving the biggest oil companies in the world – Amoco, Pennzoil, British Petroleum, Unocal, McDermott, Statoil, Lukoil, and the state-owned oil companies of Turkey and the Saudi Kingdom – exclusive rights to Azerbaijan’s oil and gas reserves. A few years later, Aliyev senior was at the White House with Vice President Al Gore presiding over a ceremony announcing a contract with Chevron, Exxon/Mobil and Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company (SOCAR).

The Clinton administration took up this project with alacrity: in the summer of 1998, Bill Clinton created the Office of the Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy – a portentous title for what was one of the most brazenly mercantilist US government projects since the Export-Import Bank. Morningstar started off his career as a corporate lawyer and rose to become President and CEO of Costar Corporation, a maker of plastics and other oil-based byproducts. Clinton appointed him to head up the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, another crony capitalist slush fund, and he went on to become Undersecretary of State on Assistance to the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union and US Ambassador to the European Union. His background as a crony-capitalist and committed internationalist certainly suited him for the Caspian Basin gig, during which time billions of taxpayer dollars were doled out to Big Oil and attendant contractors to fund the BTC pipeline. He was appointed US Ambassador to Azerbaijan by President Barack Obama, in 2012, stepping down in 2015 for a job at Madeleine Albright’s Stonebridge-Albright Group.

Morningstar’s career outlines the corporate and political interests that have been manipulating governments and juggling the fate of nations along the so-called Great Silk Road – the southern Caucasus region that promises great riches to whoever can control it. Long a crossroads of conquering armies, it is today the scene of simmering ethnic and religious conflicts that threaten the best laid plans of the most powerful men on earth – the national aspirations of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh being only one of them.

The original – and cheapest – route for the BTC pipeline went through Armenia, but this was vetoed by Aliyev, and so a more circuitous (and expensive) route was charted: Aliyev gloated that Yerevan would be “isolated.” Yet the pipeline snakes just a few miles from Nagorno-Karabakh, and it isn’t hard to see that this fresh outbreak of violence might endanger operations – and the US government’s hefty investment. It’s not hard to imagine the renewed conflict triggering that old standby of the interventionists: “American interests” (i.e. the financial interests of major corporate donors to the war chests of political candidates) are “threatened”!

Washington has consistently sided with the Azeris in their claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. As I wrote in 1999:

“The US State Department’s tilt toward Azerbaijan on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue was expressed, albeit rather obliquely, in a recent statement: “Armenia’s observance of international law and obligations and OSCE commitments in this respect has been marred by the ongoing conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Karabakh Armenians, supported by the Republic of Armenia, now hold about one fifth of Azerbaijan and have refused to withdraw from occupied territories until an agreement on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh is reached.” But Azerbaijan is a Soviet fiction, created by Stalin who fixed its border to keep the Armenians down and the Azeris fully occupied. But the idea that the borders of the phony Soviet “republics” are permanent, and represent anything even approximating justice, is absurd. Yet this is the position the US government has taken in the past, and continues to take.”

The US position has been consistent to this day, with the State Department demanding the withdrawal of Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and the deployment of Western-backed “peacekeepers” to make sure the Armenians don’t get out of hand with impudent demands for self-determination. The referendum held in 1991 – in which the locals voted for secession from Azerbaijan —  is contemptuously disdained by US officials, just as the Crimean referendum in which voters overwhelmingly chose secession from Ukraine is denounced as “illegitimate.”

Indeed, the Crimean analogy fits Nagorno-Karabakh to a tee. As in Ukraine, which Soviet despot Nikita Khrushchev rewarded with Crimea in 1954, so in the Caucasus, where Joseph Stalin – before his rise to absolute power – handed Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbajian, with Lenin’s approval. As the Soviets marched into Central Asia, subjugating Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Communists decided that it would be better to placate Kemal Ataturk’s regime in Turkey than to allow the Nagorno-Karabakhians the right to set up their own autonomous “republic.” The Stalinist policy of divide and conquer – splitting up the Armenian-populated areas so as to tamp down “anti-Soviet” nationalist sentiment – persisted until Communist rule imploded.

In Ukraine, the US government insists on the legitimacy of Khrushchev’s decision to sever Crimea from Russia and make a gift of it to Ukraine: in Nagorno-Karabakh, they uphold the legacy of Stalin and Lenin, who sought to keep the Armenians in line by making them live under Azeri rule.

Like Lenin and the Bolsheviks, part of Washington’s reason for this latter stance is to placate Turkey, which unequivocally takes the side of their “Turkic” allies, the Azeris. The current conflict is just another dimension of the unfolding Russo-Turkish conflict, which started in Syria and is now being extended into Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenia, for its part, is aligned with Russia). The ultra- nationalistic Turks, whose ideology of “Pan-Turkism” foresees Turkey as a rising superpower expanding its influence all the way across Central Asia until it reaches the border of China (!), are involved in this up to their eyeballs. And remember: Turkey is a NATO member. In any conflict between Turkey and Russia, the US is obligated by treaty to come to their defense.

Now there’s yet another reason why Donald Trump is right about NATO being “obsolete.”

What did Kerry say to Aliyev Junior that precipitated this crisis? We’ll never know for sure, but of one thing we can be certain: Washington’s meddling in this mess can only result in disaster. Will the April Fool’s War, otherwise known as Kerry’s Provocation, go down in history as yet another blundering intervention by the Americans in a troubled region where they have no business interfering?

I’d bet the ranch on it.

Author’s side note:

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 and David 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.

Last Wednesday, March 30, police officials and the Loudoun County Fire Marshal placed Briar Woods High School in northern Virginia on lockdown and conducted bomb sweeps after a “putty-like” substance was found inside the engine of one of the school buses during routine maintenance. The substance was later identified as C-4 and had been used by CIA agents to conduct bomb detection training exercises on the school grounds March 21-24, during spring break.

A press statement by the intelligence agency on the incident said: “CIA K-9 units regularly participate in training with K-9 units from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the Washington Metropolitan Area. Last week, a CIA K-9 unit conducted a routine training exercise with law enforcement [in which] explosive training material was inadvertently left by the CIA K-9 unit in one of the buses used in the exercise.”

According to NBC Washington, the explosive was located in “a small, black package” next to the engine and had been inside the bus as it made eight separate runs Monday and Tuesday with at least 26 special needs children. Loudoun County school officials said that parents of the children placed in harm’s way had been personally contacted about the incident. In addition to Briar Woods High School, children from Rock Ridge High School, Pinebrook Elementary School and Buffalo Trail Elementary School rode on the bus while the explosive was affixed to the engine.

The explosive was detected Wednesday during a routine maintenance inspection.

The CIA announced that the joint program would be suspended until the agency had “taken immediate steps to strengthen inventory and control procedures in its K-9 program.” The CIA-sponsored K-9 program has existed in the Washington, D.C. region since 2010 and according to comments made by the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office to the Washington Post, the incident had been the second time this year that the CIA had used the Loudoun high school for exercises.

“One of the things that we try to do with all canines is expose them to as many different environments and surfaces as we can, so then when the real call comes in, they will already be familiar with that particular environment,” Deputy Fire Marshal Jerry Swain said of the training program’s purpose. “The animals being familiar with the environment they’re going to work in makes them less apprehensive,” he continued, “they’ll be more focused.”

Located just outside of the US capital, Loudoun County is home to numerous federal contractors and government workers. According to the US Census Bureau, Loudoun is the wealthiest county in the United States, with a median household income level exceeding $115,000 yearly.

Seeking to assuage public concern over the lapse, public officials sought to present the incident as more of an embarrassment than a danger. Referring to the deadly C-4 explosive, Loudon County spokesperson Wayde Byard said, “When it is in a benign state, which means it has no blasting cap or electronic triggering devices on it, it is a safe substance.”

“It’s not something that if you picked it up off the street you could blow up,” Byard said, adding “obviously we’re concerned. The CIA really expressed its deep concern and regret today, and it was sincere.” Press reports suggested that C-4 can only be detonated by high heat and a shock wave caused by a blasting cap detonator. While these reports suggest that such conditions could not be created through the heat and motion of a bus engine, that seems far from certain.

While the incident certainly indicates incompetence and lack of regard for public safety, nothing that the CIA says about the events should be taken at face value. An exercise that trains dogs to sniff out explosives also gives CIA personnel experience in planting them. How was it possible that the CIA personnel did not properly inventory the explosives used during a training exercise, none of which were detonated? Where else are explosives being planted by US government operatives in the name of “counter-terrorism” training?

There is a long history of the CIA staging provocations overseas, including the planting of explosive devices, timed to affect political events such as elections or legislative votes, or even provide a pretext for the declaration of martial law and the staging of military coups. There is every reason to be concerned that similar operations are being prepared for within the United States itself, as the social and political situation in America becomes more tense and the working class begins to emerge as an independent political force.

A real leak of data from a law firm in Panama would be very interesting. Many rich people and/or politicians hide money in shell companies that such firms in Panama provide. But the current heavily promoted “leak” of such data to several NATO supporting news organization and a US government financed “Non Government Organization” is just a lame attempt to smear some people the U.S. empire dislikes. It also creates a huge blackmail opportunity by NOT publishing certain data in return for this or that desired favor.

Already some 16 month ago Ken Silverstein reported for Vice on a big shady shell company provider, Mossak Fonseca in Panama. (Pierre Omidyar’s Intercept, for which Silverstein was then working, refused to publish the piece.) Yves Smith published several big stories about the Mossak Fonseca money laundering business. Silverstein also repeated the well known fact that Rami Makhlouf, a rich cousin of the Syrian president Assad, had some money hidden in Mossak Fonseca shell companies. He explains:

To conduct business, shell companies like Drex need a registered agent, sometimes an attorney, who files the required incorporation papers and whose office usually serves as the shell’s address. This process creates a layer between the shell and its owner, especially if the dummy company is filed in a secrecy haven where ownership information is guarded behind an impenetrable wall of laws and regulations. In Makhlouf’s case—and, I discovered, in the case of various other crooked businessmen and international gangsters—the organization that helped incorporate his shell company and shield it from international scrutiny was a law firm called Mossack Fonseca, which had served as Drex’s registered agent from July 4, 2000, to late 2011.

A year ago someone provided tons of data from Mossak Fonseca to a German newpaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The Munich daily is politically on the center right and staunchly pro NATO. It cooperates with the Guardian, the BBC, Le Monde, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and some other news organization who are all known supporters of the establishment.

The SudDeutsche Zeitung claims that the “leaked” data is about some 214,000 shell companies and 14,000 Mossak Fonseca clients. There is surely a lot of hidden dirt in there. How many U.S. Senators are involved in such companies? Which European Union politicians? What are the big Wall Street banks and hedge funds hiding in Panama? Oh, sorry. The Sueddeutsche and its partners will not answer those questions. Here is how they “analyzed” the data:

The journalists compiled lists of important politicians, international criminals, and well-known professional athletes, among others. The digital processing made it possible to then search the leak for the names on these lists. The “party donations scandal” list contained 130 names, and the UN sanctions list more than 600. In just a few minutes, the powerful search algorithm compared the lists with the 11.5 million documents.For each name found, a detailed research process was initiated that posed the following questions: what is this person’s role in the network of companies? Where does the money come from? Where is it going? Is this structure legal?

Essentially the SudDeutsche compiled a list of known criminals and people and organizations the U.S. dislikes and cross checked them with the “leaked” database. Selected hits were then further evaluated. The outcome are stories like the annual attempt to smear the Russian president Putin, who is not even mentioned in the Mossak Fonseca data, accusations against various people of the soccer association FIFA, much disliked by the U.S., and a few mentions of other miscreants of minor relevancy.

There is no story about any U.S. person, none at all, nor about any important NATO politician. The highest political “casualty” so far is the irrelevant Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson who, together with his wife, owned one of the shell companies. There is no evidence that the ownership or the money held by that company were illegal.

So where is the beef?

As former UK ambassador Craig Murray writes, the beef (if there is any at all) is in what is hidden by the organizations that manage the “leak”:

The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include

Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) which is financed by the U.S. government through USAID.

The “leak” is of data selected by U.S. friendly organization out of a database, likely obtained by U.S. secret services, which can be assumed to include much dirt about “western” persons and organizations.

To only publish very selected data from the “leaked” data has two purposes:

• It smears various “enemies of the empire” even if only by association like the presidents Putin and Assad.
• It lets other important people, those mentioned in the database but not yet published about, know that the U.S. or its “media partner” can, at any time, expose their dirty laundry to the public. It is thereby a perfect blackmailing instrument.

The engineered “leak” of the “Panama Papers” is a limited hangout designed to incriminate a few people and organization the U.S. dislikes. It is also a demonstration of the “torture tools” to the people who did business with Mossak Fonseca but have not (yet) been published about. They are now in the hands of those who control the database. They will have to do as demanded or else …

The unprecedented upsurge in violence along the Line of Contact between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh has raised universal concern that a larger conflict might be brewing, with some analysts seeing it as an outgrowth of Turkey’s destabilizing anti-Russian policies over the past couple of months.

As attractive as it may be to believe such that Azerbaijan is behaving as a total puppet of the West, such an explanation is only a superficial description of what is happening and importantly neglects to factor in Baku’s recent foreign policy pivot over the past year. It’s not to necessarily suggest that Russia’s CSTO ally Armenia is to blame for the latest ceasefire violations, but rather to raise the point that this unfolding series of militantly destabilizing events is actually a lot more complex than initially meets the eye, although the general conclusion that the US is reaping an intrinsic strategic benefit from all of this is clearly indisputable.

Instead of beginning the research from a century ago and rehashing the dueling historic interpretations that both sides have over Nagorno-Karabakh, the article at hand begins at the present day and proceeds from the existing on-the-ground state of affairs after the 1994 ceasefire, whereby the disputed territory has de-facto been administered as its own unrecognized state with strong Armenian support in all sectors. There’s no attempt to advocate one side or denigrate the other, but rather to objectively understand the situation as it is and forecast its unfolding developments.

In keeping with the task at hand, it’s essential that the point of analytical departure be an overview of Armenia and Azerbaijan’s latest geopolitical moves in the year preceding the latest clashes. Afterwards, it’s required that an analysis be given about the limits to Russia’s CSTO commitment to Armenia, which thus helps to put Russia’s active diplomatic moves into the appropriate perspective. Following that, Part II of the article raises awareness about the US’ Reverse Brzezinski stratagem of peripheral quagmire-like destabilization along the post-Soviet rim and how the recent outbreak of violence is likely part and parcel of this calculated plan. Finally, the two-part series concludes with the suggested appeal that Armenia and Azerbaijan replace the stale OSCE Minsk Group conflict resolution format with a fresh analogue via their newly shared dialogue partner status under the SCO.

Not What One Would Expect

Over the past year or so, Armenia and Azerbaijan’s geopolitical trajectories haven’t exactly been moving along the course that casual commentators would expect that they would. Before beginning this section, it’s necessary to preface it with a disclaimer that the author is not referring to the average Armenian or Azeri citizen in the following analysis, but rather is using their respective countries’ names interchangeably with their given governments, so “Armenia” in this instance refers to the Yerevan political establishment while “Azerbaijan” relates to its Baku counterpart. This advisory note is needed in order to proactively prevent the reader from misunderstanding the author’s words and analyses, since the topic is full of highly emotionally charged elements and generally evokes a strong reaction among many, especially those of either of the two ethnicities.

Armenia:

The general trend is that the prevailing geopolitical stereotypes about Armenia and Azerbaijan are not as accurate as one would immediately think, and that neither country adheres to them to the degree that one would initially expect. It’s true that Armenia is a staunch and loyal Russian CSTO ally which maintains a presence of 5,000 troops, a handful of jets and helicopters, a forthcoming air defense shield, and possibly soon even Iskander missiles there, but it’s been progressively diversifying its foreign policy tangent by taking strong strides in attempting to reach an Association Agreement with the EU despite its formal Eurasian Union membership.

This has yet to be clinched, but the resolute intent that Yerevan clearly demonstrated in May 2015 raises uncomfortable questions about the extent to which its decision-making elite may have been co-opted by Western influences. The author was so concerned about this eventuality that he published a very controversial analysis that month explaining the various ploys by which the West has sought to woo Armenia over to its side, including the shedding of crocodile tears for its genocide victims during their centenary remembrance commemoration.

As is the established pattern which was most clearly proven by Ukraine, the more intensely that a geostrategically positioned country flirts with the West, the more susceptible that it is to a forthcoming Color Revolution attempt, so it’s unsurprising in hindsight that the “Electric Yerevan” destabilization was commenced just one month after the Armenian President was publicly hobnobbing with so many of his Western “partners”. That anti-government push was a proto-manifestation of what the author later described in an unrelated work as “Color Revolution 1.5” technologies which seek to use “civil society” and “anti-corruption” elements as experimental triggers for testing the catalyzation of large-scale regime change movements. The geopolitical end goal in all of this, as the author wrote in his “Electric Yerevan” piece cited above, was to get Armenian nationalists such as Nikol Pashinyan into power so that they can provoke a continuation war in Nagorno-Karabakh that might conceivably end up dragging in Russia. They thankfully didn’t succeed in this, and the sitting Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has repeatedly underscored that Armenia does not want to see a conflict escalation in the disputed territory.

Strangely, despite the regime change attempt that the West tried to engineer against Armenia, Sargsyan still declared in early 2016 that “Armenia’s cooperation and development of relations with the EU remain a priority for Armenia’s foreign policy” and “expressed gratitude to the EU for their assistance in carrying out reforms in Armenia.” Also, the EU’s External Action Service reports that the two sides formally relaunched their negotiation process with one another on 7 December with the aim of reaching a “new agreement (that) will replace the current EU-Armenia Partnership and Cooperation agreement.”

An EU analyst remarked in March of this year that he obviously doesn’t believe that it will be identical to the Association Agreement that the EU had offered to Armenia prior to its Eurasian Union ascension, but that of course doesn’t mean that it couldn’t share many similarities with its predecessor and create geopolitical complications for Yerevan’s economic alliance with Moscow. It must be emphasized at this point that while the Armenian state is still closely linked to Russia on the military-political level and formally part of the Eurasian Union, it is provocatively taking strong economic steps in the direction of the EU and the general Western community, disturbingly raising the prospect that its schizophrenic policies might one day engender a crisis of loyalty where Yerevan is forced to choose between Moscow and Brussels much as Kiev was artificially made to do so as well (and possibly with similar pro-Western urban terrorist consequences for the “wrong choice”).

Azerbaijan:

On the other hand, while Armenia was bucking the conventional stereotype by moving closer to the West, Azerbaijan was also doing something similar by realigning itself closer to Russia. Baku’s relations with Washington, Brussels, Ankara, and even Tel Aviv (which it supplies 40% of its energy to via the BTC pipeline) are well documented, as is its geostrategic function as a non-Russian energy source for the EU (particularly in the context of the Southern Corridor project), so there’s no use regurgitating well-known and established facts inside of this analysis. Rather, what’s especially interesting to pay attention to is how dramatically the ties between Azerbaijan and the West have declined over the past year. Even more fascinating is that all of it was so unnecessary and had barely anything to do with Baku’s own initiative.

What happened was that Brussels started a soft power campaign against Baku by alleging that the latter had been violating “human rights” and “democratic” principles, which resulted in Azerbaijan boldly announcing in September 2015 that it was cancelling the planned visit of a European Commission delegation and considering whether it “should review [its] ties with the European Union, where anti-Azeri and anti-Islam tendencies are strong.” For a country that is stereotypically seen as being under the Western thumb, that’s the complete opposite of a subservient move and one that exudes defiance to the West. Earlier that year in February 2015, Quartz online magazine even exaggeratedly fear mongered that “Azerbaijan is transforming into a mini-Russia” because of its strengthening domestic security capabilities in dealing with asymmetrical threats.

While Azerbaijan’s resistance certainly has its pragmatic limits owing to the country’s entrenched strategic and energy infrastructural relationship with the West over the past couple of decades, it’s telling that it would so publicly rebuke the West in the fashion that it did and suggests that the problems between Azerbaijan and the West are deeper than just a simple spat. Part of the reason for the West’s extreme dislike of the Azerbaijani government has been its recent pragmatic and phased emulation of Russia’s NGO security legislation which aims to curb the effectiveness of intelligence-controlled proxy organizations in fomenting Color Revolutions. Having lost its influence over the country via the post-modern “grassroots-‘bottom-up’” approach, it’s very plausible that the US and its allies decided to find a way to instigate Nagorno-Karabakh clashes as a means of regaining their sway over their wayward Caspian ‘ally’.

Amidst this recent falling out between Azerbaijan and the West and even in the years preceding it, Moscow has been able to more confidently position itself as a reliable, trustworthy, and non-discriminatory partner which would never interfere with Baku’s domestic processes or base its bilateral relations with the country on whatever its counterpart chooses to do at home. Other than the unmistakable security influence that Russia has had on Azerbaijan’s NGO legislation, the two sides have also increased their military-technical cooperation through a surge of agreements that totaled $4 billion by 2013. By 2015, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that Azerbaijan’s total arms spending for the five-year period of 2011-2014 had increased by 249%, with 85% of its supplies coming from Russia.

In parallel to that, it also asserted that Russia’s weapons exports to Europe for 2011-2015 increased by 264%, “mainly due to deliveries to Azerbaijan”. It’s plain to see that Russia isn’t treating Azerbaijan as though it were an unredeemable Western puppet state, but is instead applying a shrewd and calculated military balancing strategy between it and Armenia. While unconfirmed by official sources, the head of the Political Researches Department of the Yerevan-based Caucasian Institute Sergey Minasian claimed in 2009 that Russia was supplying its Gyumri base in Armenia via air transit permission from Azerbaijan after Georgia banned such overflights through its territory after the 2008 war. If this is true, then it would suggest that Russian-Azeri strategic relations are at their most trusted level in post-independence history and that Baku has full faith that Moscow will not do anything to upset the military balance in the Southern Caucasus, which of course includes the paranoid fear that some Azeri observers have expressed about Russia conspiring with Armenia to wage another war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Strategic Calculations and CSTO Limits

Russia And Armenia:

Everything that was written above likely comes as a complete shock to the casual observer of international affairs because it flies in the face of presumed “logic”, but this just goes to show that the prevailing geopolitical stereotypes about Armenia and Azerbaijan are inaccurate and do not fully reflect the present state of affairs. The common denominator between the two rival states is their evolving relationship with Russia, which as was just described, appears to be progressively moving in opposite directions. Again, the author does not intend to give the impression that this reflects popular sentiment in either country or its expatriate and diaspora communities, especially Armenia and its affiliated ethnic nationals, since the general attitude inside the country (despite the highly publicized “Electric Yerevan” failed Color Revolution attempt) and for the most part by its compatriots outside of it could safely be described as favorable to Russia. This makes Yerevan’s pro-Western advances all the more puzzling, but that only means that the answer to this paradox lies more in the vision (and possible monetary incentives) of the country’s leadership than the will of its people. Still, the situation is not critical and has yet to approach the point where the pragmatic and trusted state of bilateral relations is endangered.

Russia And Azerbaijan:

That being said, to many conventional observers, Russia’s close military cooperation with Azerbaijan might seem just as peculiar as Armenia’s intimation of a forthcoming pro-Western economic pivot, but that too can be explained by a strategic calculation, albeit one of a much more pragmatic and understandable nature. Russia has aspired to play the role of a pivotal balancing force between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and truth be told and much to the dismay of many Armenians, it did approve of UNSC Resolutions affirming Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity along its internationally recognized borders, specifically the most recent 62/243 one from 2008 which “Reaffirms continued respect and support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders” and “Demands the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all the occupied territories of the Republic of Azerbaijan”.

Nagorno-Karabakh map

Geopolitical Consistency:

What’s happening isn’t that Russia is “betraying Armenia” like some overactive nationalist pundits like to allege, but that it’s maintaining what has been its consistent position since the conflict began and is abiding by its stated international guiding principle in supporting territorial integrity. Key to this understanding is that the conception of territorial integrity is a guiding, but not an irreversible, tenet of Russian foreign policy, and the 2008 Russian peace-enforcement operation in Georgia that led to the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the 2014 reunification with Crimea prove that extenuating circumstances can result in a change of long-standing policy on a case-by-case basis. This can be interpreted as meaning that Moscow at this stage (operative qualifier) does not support the independence of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, but to be fair, neither does Yerevan, although the Armenian state just recently repeated its previously stated position that it could recognize the Armenian-populated region as a separate country if the present hostilities with Azerbaijan increase. Therefore, the main condition that could push Armenia to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state and possibly even pressure Russia to follow suit would be the prolonged escalation of conflict around the Line of Contact.

The Unification Conundrum:

As much as some participants and international observers might think of such a move as being historically just and long overdue, Russia would likely have a much more cautious approach to any unilateral moves that Armenia makes about recognizing the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh. To repeat what was earlier emphasized about Russia’s political approach to this conflict, this would not amount to a “betrayal” of Armenia but instead would be a pragmatic and sober assessment of the global geostrategic environment and the likely fact that such a move could instantly suck Russia into the war. As it stands, Russia has a mutual defense commitment to Armenia which makes it responsible for protecting its ally from any aggression against it, however this only corresponds to the territory that Russia internationally recognizes as Armenia’s own, thereby excluding any Armenian forces and passport holders in Nagorno-Karabakh.

If Armenia recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state, it would likely initiate a rapidly progressing process whereby the two Armenian-populated entities vote for unification, which would then place Russia in the very uncomfortable position of having to consider whether it will recognize such a unilateral move by its ally and thereby extend its mutual defense umbrella over what would by then be newly incorporated and Russian-recognized Armenian territory. On the one hand, Moscow wouldn’t want to be perceived as “betraying” its centuries-long Armenian ally and thenceforth engendering its unshakable hate for the foreseeable future, but on the other, it might have certain reservations about getting directly involved in the military conflict as a warfighting participant and forever losing the positive New Cold War inroads that it has made with Baku.

Russian-Azeri relations, if pragmatically managed along the same constructive trajectory that they’ve already been proceeding along, could lead to Moscow gaining a strategic foothold over an important Turkish, EU, and Israeli energy supplier and thus giving Russia the premier possibility of indirectly exerting its influence towards them vis-à-vis its ties with Baku. In any case, the Russian Foreign Ministry would prefer not to be placed on the spot and in such a zero-sum position where it is forced to choose between honoring its Armenian ally’s unilateral unification with Nagorno-Karabakh and abandoning its potential outpost of transregional strategic influence in Azerbaijan, or pursuing its gambit to acquire grand transregional influence via Azerbaijan at the perceived expense of its long-standing South Caucasus ally and risk losing its ultra-strategic military presence in the country.

The Nagorno-Karabakh Question is thus a quandary of epic and far-reaching geostrategic proportions for Russia, which is doing everything that it can to neutrally negotiate between the two sides in offsetting this utterly destabilizing scenario and preventing it from being forced to choose a disastrous zero-sum commitment in what will be argued in Part II to likely be an externally third-party/US-constructed military-political dilemma. Furthermore, both Armenia and Azerbaijan want to retain Russian support and neither wants to risk losing it, which also explains why Azerbaijan has yet to unleash its full military potential against the Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and why Armenia hasn’t unilaterally recognized Nagorno-Karabakh or made an effort to politically unite with it. Conclusively, it can be surmised that the only actor which wants to force this false choice of “either-or” onto Russia is the US, which always benefits whenever destabilization strikes Moscow’s periphery and its Eurasian adversary is forced into a pressing geopolitical dilemma.

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency.

In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s announcement of a partial withdrawal from Syria upon accomplishing its initial objectives, pundits, politicians, and analysts in the West attempted to capitalize on it by portraying Russia in retreat, broke economically, and attempting to avoid a quagmire it had entangled itself in.

However, more honest and thoughtful analysis noted that Russia’s partial withdrawal was more diplomatic than strategic – a grand gesture by Moscow to the West that it was able and willing to give the perpetrators of this proxy war a graceful exit out – and that enough Russian assets would remain in theater to ensure all gains made by Russian and Syrian forces were not only maintained, but expanded upon further in the near and intermediate future.

Since the announcement, this analysis has proven to be accurate, with Russia continuing to conduct effective military operations in Syria, and most notably, helping the Syrian Arab Army liberate the ancient city of Palmyra – which was overrun by the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) ironically at the height of the United States-led coalition’s alleged battle against the internationally listed terrorist organization.

Despite the fact that Russia is assisting the Syrian government in eradicating an internationally listed terrorist organization from Syrian territory, Western analysts are now crying foul over Russia’s continued military activity in Syria despite its announcement of a partial draw down.

Brookings “Insight” – No Matter What Happens, It’s “Russia’s Fault…” 

The Brookings Institution, a Western policy think tank representing the collective interests of the Fortune 500 who fund it and chair its board of directors, published analysis upon its “Order from Chaos” blog titled, “Why Russia is accountable if the Syrian ceasefire fails.” In it, it claims (emphasis added):

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of victory in Syria has already been eclipsed by his announcement on his willingness to use military force against violators of the ceasefire if he doesn’t get assurances from the United States about how it will control the truce. Meanwhile, it’s become clear that more Russian military hardware is going into Syria instead of leaving, and that Russian forces are openly engaged in ground combat.

Is Putin really offering to secure peace in Syria? Probably not. The conditions that led to Syria’s death spiral into civil war have still not been addressed, and Russia’s withdrawal is a facade. Putin’s announcement highlights that while Russia is a main player in the Syrian conflict, it is far from willing or able to assure peace.

Brookings analysts appear disinterested in the fact that Russia’s forces are fighting ISIS, and that many of the “violators” of the ceasefire are openly collaborating with other listed terrorist organizations, including the Al Nusra Front. The March 30th post fails to make any mention of the liberation of Palmyra days earlier by Russian-backed Syrian forces – in complete defiance of reality.

Brookings concludes by stating (emphasis added):

The Russian military intervention is about Russian interests and gaining an advantageous position within a world order in which it demands to be an equal but sees no equals. Military intervention is meant to upend the international order to the benefit of only Russia and those who align with its interests. The Syrian ceasefire began because Russia said it could. It represents a strategic pause for Russia to reposition itself both politically at home and abroad, and militarily on the battlefield. If it ends, it will likely be because it claims the United States is not living up to its terms, as well as if conditions become favorable for Assad to resume military operations to reclaim lost territory. This is hardly the mark of a nation seeking to lead the peace process and cessation of hostilities. By resorting to the use of force, Russia will be accountable for the ceasefire’s failure, and will prove itself unwilling to peacefully advance the terms it agreed to in order to secure a lasting peace.

It is perhaps ironic that the United States, who has for over a year, unilaterally intervened militarily in Syria to allegedly fight ISIS, is now crying foul when a nation – Russia – has also intervened, only with Syria’s permission, and is actually defeating ISIS in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the force used by the US and its allies. The implications of this run deep including the fact that Russia and Syria are defeating ISIS by cutting their supply lines running straight out of NATO and US-allied territory, but there is at least one point Brookings makes that is valid.

Russia is indeed upending the “international order.”

Russia is upending it, if one understands that the term “international order” actually means the economic, sociopolitical, and military projection of power by Wall Street, Washington, London, and Brussels across the entire planet. Considering that in the West’s “international order,” it is acceptable to unilaterally bomb a sovereign nation without acquiring permission  from that nation’s government, it seems upending such egregious, unchecked injustice, it is not only acceptable, it is mandatory.

That Russia has done so in a measured, prudent, and proportional manner, respecting the principles of the multipolar order it seeks to replace the current “international order” with – one that respects the primacy of national sovereignty over monopolized and skewed notions of “international law,” is probably why it has been so successful in Syria. Considering that every alleged principle underpinning the “international order” Brookings refers to has been subverted first and foremost by the West itself, it is no surprise that a crisis of legitimacy has finally begun to take its toll on Western foreign policy objectives.

And while the US and its policymakers attempt to blame Russia already for a failed ceasefire that has yet to manifest itself, it is the US who is still openly training militants along Syria’s borders in an attempt to further perpetuate the violence that has ravaged Syria now for 5 years.

It is not a surprise that the West’s foreign policy circles, politicians, and media are attempting to frame the Syrian crisis as everyone’s fault but their own, however, doubling down on a failed policy and continuing to frame it dishonestly when much of the world now sees the truth, only deepens the crisis of legitimacy that has led the West to this particular cliff’s edge. Continuing forward rather than taking a step back, ensures the West’s legitimacy plunges further still.

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

“Hypocrisy, the most protected of vices.” – Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673.)

On 18^th March the twenty eight European Union leaders reached: “an agreement that has an irreversible momentum”, according to German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

From Monday 4^th April, all refugees and economic migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey after 20^th March – the majority Syrian and Iraqis fleeing for their lives, risking the perilous sea crossing in which over eight hundred have died, the risk being preferable to the dangers at home – will be returned to Turkey.

In exchange for this disgraceful human-beings-as-chattels deal, Turkey, which already hosts three million fleeing refugees, would see the EU speed the transfer of three Billion Euros in financial assistance, with a further three Billion by 2018. In addition Turkish nationals would have visa free entry to all EU countries by June – dependent on Turkey meeting an astonishing seventy two long outstanding EU criteria, according to Reuters (20^th March.)

Some of the millions of people who have fled Syria. Photo credit: The UN Refugee Agency / G. Gubaeva

However, as groups of desperate souls who have risked the unimaginable to arrive in the EU are being forcibly returned to Turkey with the casualness of shipping commercial cargo, the EU intends to take a refugee from a refugee camp Turkey for each person returned from Greece.

“At a time when Turkey is hosting three million, those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first look at themselves”, said President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a televised speech. His point is certainly valid, especially as the desperate flight has been caused by actions and interference of some EU Member States with a British government implacably reluctant to taking in the displaced, yet always a murderous cheerleader for slaughter and destabilization in far away places.

Amnesty called the agreement “flawed, immoral and illegal” and “an historic blow to human rights.”

Greece, having been fiscally hung out to dry by the EU, trying to somehow host and register countless thousands, is to be belatedly assisted in establishing: “a task force of some 4,000 staff, including Judges, interpreters, border guards and others to manage each case individually.” Who is going to foot the bill as the country reels under EU inflicted penury, seems unclear.

Moreover, the EU seems not to have done their homework – or perhaps they simply not care. Amnesty reports: “large-scale forced returns of refugees from Turkey to war-ravaged Syria” exposing “fatal flaws in a refugee deal signed between Turkey and the European Union …” (1)

Research in Turkey’s southern border provinces: “suggests that Turkish authorities have been rounding up and expelling groups of around 100 Syrian men, women and children to Syria on a near-daily basis since mid-January. Over three days last week, Amnesty International researchers gathered multiple testimonies of large-scale returns from Hatay province, confirming a practice that is an open secret in the region”, but missed by the might of the EU? (Emphasis added.)

All forced returns to Syria are illegal under Turkish, EU and international law.

“In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia.

“It seems highly likely that Turkey has returned several thousand refugees to Syria in the last seven to nine weeks. If the agreement proceeds as planned, there is a very real risk that some of those the EU sends back to Turkey will suffer the same fate”, states Dalhuisen.

In the course of their research Amnesty found three young children deported back to Syria without their parents and the forced return of an eight month pregnant woman.

“The inhumanity and scale of the returns is truly shocking … Having witnessed the creation of Fortress Europe, we are now seeing the copy-cat construction of Fortress Turkey.”

Turkey with a per capita income (Gdp) of under $11,000 (UK $41,787; US $53,000+) has, however, been taking in Syrians fleeing the Western generated terrors since early 2011. Further, until early this year according to Amnesty, Syrian residents with passports had been able to cross freely at border points and those who entered irregularly, “the vast majority” were also able to register with Turkish authorities.

“Over the last few months though, Turkey has introduced visa requirements for Syrians arriving by air, sealed its land border with Syria for all but those in need of emergency medical care … “, according to John Dalhuisen.  Much of the EU has long sealed theirs.

Shamefully, it has long been forgotten that Syria was a generous haven for Iraqis fleeing the US-UK onslaught of 2003. By 2007 1.2 million Iraqis had fled US-UK enforced “liberation, freedom and democracy” to be welcomed by Syria – a country of just eighteen million – and been offered “care and assistance … in spite of the limited nature of its material resources.” (2 pdf.)

Iraqi children were assimilated in the free education system leading to the need for many more schools, as hospitals and clinics also needed to expand to deal with the influx. By comparison, Britain (population 64.1 million) under Prime Minister David Cameron, has finally condescended to take in meager 20,000 Syrian refugees – by 2020 – many whose plight his government’s plotting and bombing has helped create.

Jordan, population just 6.5 million, has taken in 1.4 million Syrians and has been hosting Iraqis since the 1991 blitz and subsequent twelve years of US-UK bombings, then the 2003 invasion and subsequent ongoing bloodshed.

Lebanon, population 4.5 million, hosts over a million Syrian’s seeking safety.

According to Europa.eu: “The EU covers over 4 million km and has 503 million inhabitants, the world’s third largest population after China and India”, yet with very honourable exceptions, the majority of EU countries have turned their back on a human tragedy of enormity.

Greece of course, is carrying the can: “We are expecting violence. People in despair tend to be violent”, the government’s migration spokesman, Giorgos Kyritsis, told the Observer. (3) “The whole philosophy of the deal is to deter human trafficking (into Europe) from the Turkish coast, but it is going to be difficult and we are trying to use a soft approach. These are people who have fled war. They are not criminals.” (Emphasis added.)

An example of the desperation manifested in a comment by Mustafa, a Syrian, with his wife and children: “If they make me go back to Turkey I’ll throw myself and my family into the sea, we went from hell to hell.”

By Sunday night (3^rd April) it emerged that Frontex, the EU border agency, had not even dispatched the appropriate personnel to oversee the operation. “Eight Frontex boats will transport men, women and children … back across the Aegean following fast-track asylum hearings. But of the 2,300 officials the EU has promised to send Greece only 200 have so far arrived, Kyritsis admitted.

“We are still waiting for the legal experts and translators they said they would send”, he added.

Moreover: “Humanitarian aid also earmarked for Greece had similarly been held up, with the result that the bankrupt country was managing the crisis – and continued refugee flows – on very limited funds from the state budget.”

Peter Sutherland, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for international migration and development is scathing: “Collective deportations without having regard to the individual rights of those who claim to be refugees are illegal. Secondly, their rights have to be absolutely protected where they are deported to, in other words Turkey. There has to be adequate assurances they can’t be sent back from Turkey to Syria.” (4)

The founding principles of the European Union include: “ the values of respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights …”

It seems when it comes to Greece both the country and the refugees they have hosted against insuperable odds, have been thrown to the sharks.

Notes:

1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2016/04/turkey-illegal-mass-returns-of-syrian-refugees-expose-fatal-flaws-in-eu-turkey-deal/
2. http://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/FMRpdfs/Iraq/08.pdf
3. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/02/greece-violence-refugees-riot-forced-return-to-turkey
4. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fears-grow-over-refugee-safety-with-eu-returns-plan-set-to-take-effect-a6965641.html

Featured image: a Reaper drone

U.S. Air Force officials has begun to hire private companies to fly drone aircraft operating over Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The unprecedented move is in response to demands from the Obama administration to dramatically expand the drone war just as the Pentagon faces a critical shortage of military pilots.

As a result, civilian pilots will directly participate in military operations for the first time since the drone wars began about a decade ago. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Air Force signed contracts with two private companies in 2015 to provide enough pilots to fly two “combat air patrols” or 24-hour surveillance flights that would involve as many as eight MQ-9 Reaper drones per day. The Air Force plans to eventually expand its fleet of privately piloted drones to 40 over the next four years.

Of the two companies, one, Aviation Unmanned,  is a small, veteran-owned outfit operating out of Dallas, Texas, which was awarded a contract on August 24. The second is General Atomics, a large San Diego, California-based military contractor that builds both the Reaper and Predator drones and has been paid at least $700 million over the last two years for a variety of drone support services. Their contract was awarded April 15.

This is not the first time that private contractors have played a role in the drone wars. Companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics and SAIC  have long held contracts to analyze surveillance data gathered by drones flying over war zones.

While Reaper drones are designed to be able to carry multiple Hellfire and Sidewinder missiles, the Pentagon insists that these privately operated Reapers will simply do reconnaissance and not carry weapons, nor will the pilots have clearance to fire missiles.

Nonetheless, these contracts mark a dramatic uptick in the direct involvement of private companies in military actions, which has drawn criticism even from within the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s office who say that such involvement may be a violation of international law. “Military services should be vigilant to avoid contracted intelligence activities where civilians may exert a significant amount of influence or control over targeting and weapons release decisions,” wrote Major Keric Clanahan, a legal advisor to the U.S. Special Forces, in a recent article in Air Force Law Review. “It is imperative that contractors not get too close to the tip of the spear.”

The decision to deploy private drone pilots stems from a longstanding crisis inside the U.S. military In early 2015, the Air Force operated 65 combat air patrols, or up to 260 drones patrolling war zones around the world, but was under pressure from the  Pentagon to expand the number of drones in the air to 360. But pilots, overwhelmed by the complexity of the work and the grueling schedule, began to vote with their feet and quit.

At an October conference of military contractors and government officials, General Robert Otto, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, summed up the problem. “Those crews have been stressed about to the limit,” Otto said. “Over time, pulling twelve hour shifts, six days a week, year after year, and the only light at the end of the tunnel is their Form DV-214, which their, you know, separation from service. And many of the pilots have decided to take that option.”

This summer, the Air Force was forced to reduce the number of combat air patrols from 65 to 60, in order to keep its remaining pilots from retiring at the end of their contracts. Nonetheless, the Air Force projects that it will be 400 pilots short of the roughly 1,200 it needs to keep the drone program running at current capacity.

Officials hope that the private contractors, along with additional support from Army drone pilots, will fill the gap in the short term. But over the long term, the problem of keeping a fleet of pilots in the service is expected to get substantially worse.

According to a separate Los Angeles Times article, the Air Force recently announced plans to radically expand its global drone operation, adding 65 new Reapers to its fleet, doubling the number of pilots, and building new drone operations centers at Air Force bases around the U.S. The plan is expected to cost roughly $3.5 billion, and the service will have to get Congressional approval before conducting the expansion. Even if lawmakers go along, training new pilots and building the new drone centers will take years. It will be a long time before the service’s current pilots see any relief, so the contractors may well be called upon again to fill an ever-widening gap.

Featured image: Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters new map of the Middle East and the Caucuses (greater Kurdistan)

Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin declared in a letter to the United Nations Security Council that Turkey is the key supplier of weapons and military hardware to the Islamic State terrorist group, and its intelligence services are in charge of these activities, and it is doing so through non-governmental organizations. Moreover, the Russian diplomat cites data about weapons and munitions supplies to terrorists in Syria over a period from November 2015 to late January 2016. “Total supplies to terrorists through Turkey were as follows in 2015: 2,500 tons of ammonium nitrate (worth approximately US$ 788,700); 456 tons of potassium nitrate ($468,700); 75 tons of aluminium powder ($496,500); sodium nitrate ($19,400); glycerine ($102,500); and nitric acid ($34,000),” Churkin wrote in his letter.¹

The diplomat also lists some of the foundations involved in the process like the Besar foundation that is a key player and is most actively engaged in supplies of weapons and equipment to Islamic State fighters. Another major supplier of weapons and military equipment to Syrian territories controlled by Islamic State is the Lyilikder foundation, which dispatched about 25 various supply convoys in 2015.²

Furthermore, Russian Foreign Ministry announced a month earlier that Humanitarian aid convoys bound for Syria from Turkey are supplying arms to militants, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the High Level Segment of the UN Human Rights Council session on March of this year.

Analysis

To understand the functioning of criminal and terrorist organizations you must uncover their money trail.

Who finances, trains, and supplies these mercenary organizations with armaments and salaries to ensure that their viral infection is more potent, and to guarantee the spread of their contagion factor across various nations?

In addition, who benefits from the creation of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other criminal organizations that spread terror and destroy the reputation of Islam and 1.2 billion Muslims across the world?

Why is the West turning a blind eye to the overwhelming evidence presented by the Russians about the corrupt Erdogan’s Turkish government and his son who made millions of dollars in their partnership with ISIS as a result of stolen oil from Iraq?

Is Erdogan and his family are being allowed to join the super-rich status as long as they facilitate the growth of ISIS and the balkanization of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Caucuses, and the entire Near East?

Are the Turkish Barbarians from the Steppes going to once again expand their territory and power, or will they shrink in order to create a greater Kurdistan?

Will Erdogan be eventually slaughtered like every other dictator in the region as the pig is fattened before he is killed?

Ironically, Turkey has been portrayed for years by the West as a Muslim democracy. The reality is that Turkey has always been ruled behind the scenes by its generals, who actually decide the destiny of their political rulers, just like in the United States where the military industrial complex always vets and decides the appropriate choices for presidents.

Why has Turkey a major American ally and a NATO member been authorized to become deeply involved in the destabilization of Syria, Iraq, and the Levant?

Are Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Armenia going to lose territory in order to accommodate the prospective Kurdish nation? Is that region going to continue to have ongoing wars until their territories are finally redrawn?

Are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf nations financing and fueling the fire in the region in the hope of creating a Sunni dominated zones, diminish Iran,  and create small, weak, but bickering homogeneous states to please their American and Israeli Masters?

Will the magic eventually turn on the magician as the Saudis and the Turks become destabilized themselves?

Maybe, the only the lesson to learn from this theater of murder, betrayal, and horror, is that when dealing with the devil expect your soul to be eventually lost to the underworld!

References:

1. Tass, April 1, 2016. Russian diplomat says Turkey is key supplier of weapons to Islamic State. http://tass.ru/en/politics/866703
2. Tass, March 1, 2016. Russia FM says Syria-bound humanitarian aid convoys from Turkey deliver arms to militants. http://tass.ru/en/politics/859863

Last March a coalition of Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia and supported by Washington began a daily bombing campaign and later ground operation in Yemen.

Over the last year this war has accelerated bringing in military forces from Egypt and Sudan in what is seen as a proxy war against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its growing influence throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The aim was to halt and drive back the Ansurallah Movement (Houthis) in their seizure of territory in central and southern regions of the country. The Ansurallah are a Shiite-based movement which has also formed a tactical alliance with elements of the Yemeni military which remains loyal to former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Despite several attempts to broker a ceasefire the bombing of Yemen by Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) utilizing United States manufactured warplanes, offensive weapons and intelligence sharing, is continuing. The administration of President Barack Obama has provided diplomatic cover for the war against Yemen which is a continuation of aerial bombardments and drone attacks which have been in effect for several years.

On April 4 attacks by warplanes killed at least one person and injured many others in Yemen as the Gulf monarchies continued their bombing of residential areas across the country. Yemeni news agencies also reported that the Saudi-GCC bombing raids struck an internally-displaced persons camp located in the northwestern Hajjah Province, leaving at least six children and one woman injured. These bombing operations hit the Lamrour district of al-Shahel, a city in Hajjah.

According to Yemen’s al-Masirah TV, the Saudi-GCC coalition carried out bombing raids earlier on April 4 destroying homes in Sa’ada, in north of the country, killing one person. Additional reports said air strikes also bombed a telecommunications installation in the city of Saqayn as well as a post office in the city Haydan, both of which are located in the Sa’ada Province, a stronghold of Ansarullah. These reports noted that a number of houses were struck in the operations.

In an article published by Press TV based in Tehran, it says that “The Saudi attacks on Monday (April 4) came as Ansarullah fighters and allied army units continued to launch reprisal attacks on Saudi and pro-Saudi military positions inside and outside Yemen. Yemenis managed to kill scores of Saudi forces in one such attack on troops in Rabuah region, southern Saudi Arabia. The allied forces also launched missile attacks on Saudi-led forces in al-Naser military base, located between Yemen’s Jawf and Ma’rib provinces.” (April 4)

Meanwhile, resistance efforts on the part of the Ansurallah and its allies are complicating the war for the U.S.-backed Saudi-GCC coalition.

In recent days Yemeni resistance fighters have taken 42 Saudi troops into custody in Bayda and Jawf provinces.  Several other Saudi troops have been killed as well in Ma’rib.

The Yemeni armed forces which are supported by Popular Committees loyal to the Houthi Ansarullah Movement, captured 31 Saudi troops in Rada district in the southern province of Bayda and detained 11 others in al-Matma district in the northwestern province of Jawf.

News reports claimed that the detained soldiers were being deployed to the west-central Ma’rib province to enhance the Saudi-GCC forces there when Yemeni forces captured them. In a separate operation, the Yemeni forces launched another operation against Saudi troops utilizing Katyusha rockets in Ma’rib city, resulting in the deaths of six of them and the wounding 17 others. (sabanews.net, April 3)

Attacks were carried out by the Saudi-GCC warplanes in Taiz, the third largest city in the country. Saba News agency reported “Saudi fighter jets waged on Monday (April 4) a series of air raids on many areas in Taiz province, a local official said. The war jets targeted al-Shuqirah market in the central district of al-Wazeyah, leaving damage to houses and private properties, the official added.”

This same reports goes on to emphasize that “The warplanes targeted al-Siteen Street, in the north of Taiz, with several raids leaving serious damage to a number of houses and roads in the area. The Saudi aggression also waged many sorties on Warazan and Khadeer areas in the south of Taiz city, the official added.”

Death and Casualties Figures Escalate

Over the last year it has been estimated by various news and humanitarian sources that up to 10,000 people have died in the intensified fighting in Yemen. At the same time 80 percent of the population is in dire need of assistance.

A report published on March 29 by the United Nations Children Educational Fund (UNICEF) entitled “Children on the Brink”, said that millions of people are being impacted negatively by the war. Children and women have been affected severely through the aerial strikes, ground operations and the attacks on civilian areas including neighborhoods, IDP camps, schools and medical facilities.

Statistics cited by UNICEF indicates that 63 healthcare facilities have been bombed and severely damaged while most hospitals and clinics report extreme shortages in equipment, supplies and personnel. Repeated bombing operations have resulted in sporadic access to electricity.

A news release announcing the reports says “UNICEF verified more than 1,560 incidents of grave violations again children in Yemen. As a result, over 900 children were killed and more than 1,300 were injured in the past year alone. On average, at least six children have been killed or injured every day. These numbers are almost seven times higher than the whole of 2014. With more than 50 verified attacks on schools, children were also killed while at school or on their way to or from school. These numbers represent the tip of the iceberg as they only indicate the cases that UNICEF was able to verify.”

Moreover, the UNICEF report stresses that “disruption of the inflow of food and fuel as a result of the violence and restrictions on imports has paralyzed the delivery of basic services across Yemen. Beyond the direct impact of the war, UNICEF estimates that nearly 10,000 additional deaths may have occurred among children under five years old in the past year due to preventable diseases as a result of the decline in critical health services including immunization and the treatment of diarrhea and pneumonia. This figure is in addition to the nearly 40,000 children who die every year in Yemen before their fifth birthday.”

With the U.S. military and security apparatuses coordinating the war by providing fighter jets, ordinances, refueling technology, intelligence sharing and diplomatic cover for the Saudi Arabian and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coalition and its allied militias, Washington is culpable in the current strife. The impact of the military campaign aimed at the Ansurallah over the last year is compounded by the periodic drone attacks ostensibly targeting al-Qaeda and its partners inside the country.

Many civilians have been killed in the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) targeted drone operations as has been noted in several news reports and documentaries produced by the U.S.-based Public Broadcasting System (PBS) program Frontline. Several of those killed were U.S. citizens who were living in Yemen and accused by Washington of being operatives of so-called “terrorist organizations.”

Nonetheless, resistance by the Ansurallah and other allied forces is formidable with ongoing attacks in Yemen and the spreading of the war into eastern Saudi Arabia. Prior to the initiation of the Saudi-GCC bombing campaign of March 2015, the Obama administration had withdrawn Special Forces from the country along with its diplomatic personnel.

Another ceasefire has been announced for April but if the recent past is any indication it will only intensify the airstrikes and targeting of civilians and therefore worsening the conditions for people living in Yemen.

On 19 March 2016, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission team for Greece held a meeting on how to force Greece into further austerity measures. These would entail deeper wage cuts, more social security cuts, higher taxes and more rapid conformity to IMF-EU policies intended to transfer capital from the middle class and workers to wealthy Greek and Western creditors. The conversation between two IMF officials (Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF’s European Department, and Delia Velkouleskou, IMF Mission Chief for Greece) and an EU official was recorded and someone managed to pass it on to WIKILEAKS. In essence, the IMF representatives were essentially plotting a strategy to force Greece to accept harsher conditions of austerity after five years under such failed policies.

That the IMF was actually caught plotting to force a sovereign nation onto the verge of bankruptcy while creating chaos with EU members sounds like a conspiracy theory, if it were not for the fact that the entire conversation was recorded and released through WIKILEAKS. The IMF conspiracy reveals that blackmail tactics are used by the Fund that have absolutely nothing to do with its original mission when it was created at Bretton Woods in 1944. The IMF covert plot reveals the extent that the organization is willing to go in order to achieve its goal of imposing austerity conditions that results in the impoverishment of nations and massive wealth concentration in the hands of creditors. However this also reveals the extent to which governments of periphery nations have lost all pretenses of any control over their own policies affecting the fate of millions of people.

Clearly, there is convergence of several factors at work here. 1. The Syrian-Iraqi refugee crisis in Europe through Greece; 2. The real possibility that the United Kingdom may not stay in the European Union, and even if it does it would continue to be a thorn on its side; 3. The desire of the IMF to make sure that austerity and neoliberal policies that results in massive wealth concentration continue uninterrupted; 4. The real possibility that the European Union is weakened not just by austerity but also the refugee matter that US-NATO foreign policy has created, and the possibility that the future of the regional bloc would continue to weaken.

This means that Troika (IMF ECB, and European Commission) funds would be withheld forcing panic conditions in Greece. Athens under SYRIZA, a leftist government that has fully embraced austerity and neoliberal policies just as its arch conservative predecessors, has repeatedly accused the IMF of using delaying tactics that prevent funds from flowing into Greece. At the same time, Greece has a major problem with private banks’ “non-performing loans” that essentially have driven the stock prices of the banks down to a tiny fraction of the pre-austerity values. These are the tactics that the IMF has been using to make sure that even harsher measures, deeper cuts in the social security system, deep cuts in wages and public sector jobs, and higher taxes are impose on a country bleeding from IMF-EU austerity since May 2010.

All of this would take place against the background of the United Kingdom’s vote on the referendum either to stay or leave the EU in June 2016. At the same time, the IMF would threaten to abandon TROIKA, thus forcing Germany to go along with the Fund’s proposal for debt relief. Debt relief would be in the form of extended maturities for existing EU loans, longer grace periods, and very modest interest rate reductions; all issues that the IMF has proposed in the past but Germany rejected. The tool the IMF would use is the bailout tranche, which it would delay using the pretext of “Review”. This would then entail that Greece is unable to meet its interest payment obligation to the IMF, thus a “credit event” would be created artificially that would in turn afford all leverage to the IMF vis-à-vis Greece for much more severe austerity measures, while also putting pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel for debt relief.

The IMF scenario assumes that the UK vote on remaining in the EU may not be favorable, and that would impact the entire European continent. Poland and Hungary may start creating noise about staying if the UK leaves. Greece would most likely use the occasion to secure easier terms for itself so that it does not continue cutting wages and pensions while raising taxes that only lowers living standards and raises the GDP to debt ratio, forcing the country into an endless downward cycle of debt relief just to meet interest payments in foreign loans.

Austerity has meant that: 1. Massive exodus of college graduates and professionals seeking opportunities around the world. 2. Public hospitals lack just about everything from essential medications to treat patients to toilet paper that patients’ family bring from home. 3. Social unrest in every sector from journalists to farmers demanding an end to austerity. 4. Massive devaluation of all asset values, especially real estate. 5. Continued NATO pressure to keep defense spending at pre-austerity levels despite the loss of about 25% of GDP. The following statistics further illustrate the failures of austerity to deliver on its promises.

1. Greek GDP-debt ratio: 173.8% (2015), while in 2009 before austerity GDP-debt ratio was 129%.
2. Unemployment: 12% in 2010 – 27% 2015 and expected at around 20% in 2020 – youth unemployment 50%.
3. GDP: $330 billion 2010 – $235 billion 2015.
4. $31,700 annual average per capita – 2008 – $18,900 – 2014.
5. GDP growth rate: 2010 -5.45%; 2011 – 8.86%; 2012 – 6.57%; 2013 – 3.9%; 2014+0.77%; 2015 – 2.27%

The emphasis of the IMF and its TROIKA partners has been to realize “primary government budget surplus” no matter the sacrifice in terms of raising the unemployment rate, driving wages and pension lower and taxes higher. The IMF is even more determined that Greece maintain such a surplus, as though the economy is at the same level of dynamic growth and development to sustain the hard currency as Germany using the same currency. When the WIKILEAKS revelation made headlines around the world, the Greek government immediately demanded clarification from IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. Instead of calling for a political unity to leave the European Union entirely, the Greek government engaged in rhetorical threats and grand standing to demonstrate that it has a modicum of control over national sovereignty when in reality it has none.

The decision to target periphery nations for austerity has always been political since the founding of the IMF in 1944. The US and the core countries essentially decide that the periphery nations undergo austerity as a means of remaining in the periphery of the capitalist world system. Just like the US decided to reindustrialize Germany and Japan for essentially geopolitical reasons, and just like it did likewise with Taiwan and South Korea, it also decided that Latin America and Africa would be relegated to the periphery. More recently, the Balkans is in the same category and for this region the decision was made in Germany with the help of the IMF and the cooperation of northwest core European countries.

In January 2015, Greece elected a government that called itself Socialist and promised to end austerity and neoliberal policies; to restore national sovereignty and the social safety net; to give the country back to the people. In about six months after its election the regime embraced fully the exact policies it had renounced and pursued the exact same road of foreign dependence – a semi-colonial role – as its conservative predecessor. The people are thoroughly demoralized and deeply divided ideologically and politically. Some are convinced that there is nothing they can do because the pro-austerity, neoliberal media – some of the journalists actually re-trained by the IMF – owned by barons whose fortunes are tied to foreign capital and the EU constantly project the impression that the alternative is to wind up isolated like North Korea.

BREXIT may actually present the best opportunity for Greeks to rebel and overthrow the pro-austerity regime. The possibility that a military dictatorship could emerge is not so farfetched. The EU does not permit its members to have non-elected authoritarian regimes. However, the IMF-EU austerity since 2010 has been a form of authoritarianism and foreign control of the country that is hardly any different than a 19th century semi-colony. Even if BREXIT does not take place, the EU will continue to weaken because the pressure will increase from rightwing ultra nationalist elements across Europe against the regional trading and monetary bloc that has deprived nations of their sovereignty for the benefit of large capitalists in each nation and ultimately to allow for German hegemony that in some respects is just as intrusive and detrimental in the lives of Europeans as policies pursued in the Age of Imperialism (1870-1914).

For all practical purposes, Greece is a semi-colony as are all of the Balkans whose role is not much different today than it was during the late 19th century. The future of these periphery countries entering the EU integration model based on a patron-client relationship means almost total absence of national sovereignty on important issues from financial and social policy to defense. This also means even less focus on social justice in the near future. While one could argue that the masses would rise up to rebel against such conditions, the more likely scenario is sociopolitical polarization and probably an increasingly stronger right wing course justified by the fear of Muslims entering Europe because foreign-instigated war has drove them to refugee status. Indeed, the US-led war on terror and interventions in the Middle East only help to strengthen the right wing across Europe. This leaves very little room to be optimistic for those hoping that social justice. The angry masses are clearly divided but the right wing has the upper hand because historically the right wing in Europe has played a greater role than the left that is currently very weak and divided.

Jon Kofas is a retired university Professor from Indiana University.

The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has just released the report For your own good!, which outlines the GMO industry’s expansion across Africa. The report focusses on non-commercial traditional crops, such as cassava, sorghum, sweet potato, pigeon pea, cowpea, banana and rice, which corporations are attempting to genetically modify and roll out under the guise of philanthropy.

The report reveals that a great deal of research and development is currently underway into the genetic modification (GM) of these crops. Most of the on-going trials concentrate on drought and salt tolerance, nitrogen use efficiency, resistance to tropical pests and diseases and nutritional enhancement (biofortification). The key countries that have been targeted include Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi.

The genesis of GM research into these crops can be found in royalty-free donations of various patented GM traits by several transnational companies to experimental programmes undertaken by African scientists employed by government ministries. These companies include Monsanto, Dupont and Pioneer Hi-bred.

Mariam Mayet, Director of the ACB, says:

“This indicates that the GM industry, under the veil of technology donations and public financing, is effectively managing to make further inroads into imposing GM on the African continent. By focusing the research on traits meant to ‘benefit’ farmers and malnourished populations, through inter alia, biofortification, the industry is intent on giving a humanitarian face to the real involvement, vested interests and expanding influence of these MNCs in African agriculture”.

US-based research institutions such as the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (DDPSC) (for cassava) and universities (notably Michigan State University and Kansas State University) play a major role in this ‘philanthropic’ research.

The ACB report notes there is a dearth of literature that critically addresses biosafety issues and socio-economic aspects relating to the biofortification of indigenous crops through GM. According to the authors, this is especially important given the need to move away from an over-emphasis on food fortification strategies towards a permanent solution: diet diversification through locally available foods, which was recognised as early as 1992 by the UN International Conference on Nutrition.

As is the case with the controversial Golden Rice research and development project, the report argues these GM projects are diverting financial and human resources and policies and practices away from implementing the real solutions that can be found within the diversity of natural foods and farming.

Zakiyya Ismail, Consumer Campaigner with the ACB argues:

“The real solutions to address vitamin and mineral deficiencies can be found in ecological farming systems, and traditional kitchen and home gardens, which can better contribute to healthy and diverse diets and empower people to access and produce their own healthy and varied food.”

ACB stresses that smallholder farmers must be given the right to choose their means of production and survival. It adds even if gene sequences and constructs are donated, the accompanying requisite GM inputs will be expensive for farmers. GM crops are highly likely to increase the costs of production for farmers and lead them into indebtedness and dependency.

The report by ACB follows a Global Justice Now report that outlines the role of BMFG in spearheading a drive into Africa on behalf of ‘corporate America’ to facilitate a GMO/green revolution.

With assets of $43.5 billion, BMGF is the largest charitable foundation in the world and distributes more aid for global health than any government. Its strategy is intended to deepen the role of multinational companies, even though these corporations are responsible for much of the poverty and injustice that already plagues the Global South. The foundation’s programmes have a specific ideological strategy that promotes neo-liberal economic policies, corporate globalisation, GMOs and an outdated (colonialist) view of role of aid in ‘helping’ the poor.

Global Justice Now shows that the senior staff of BMGF’s programmes are overwhelmingly drawn from ‘corporate America’. As a result, the question is: whose interests are being promoted – those of corporate America or those of ordinary people who seek social and economic justice rather than charity?

Hardly a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, Peter Buffet is the son of the billionaire investor Warren Buffet. He recently argued that philanthropy only serves to end up perpetuating systems of oppression.

Writing in the NewYork Times, Buffett criticised “philanthropic colonialism,” where rich people get involved with issues they understand very little about. In the meantime, the wealthy get to feel good for “solving” the problems that they or the system they benefitted from caused in the first place.

Buffet wrote:

“As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.”

“Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.”

And as if to underline this, according to ACB, it is highly likely that GM varieties will be subject to plant breeders’ rights and GM certified seed will be sold to farmers by local seed companies who will expect a profit or royalty payments from farmers. This scenario is of vital importance because the traditional crops in question are the common heritage of African farmers and often the last defence against hunger in poor communities.

Mariam Mayet concludes:

“There is no such thing as a free lunch for African farmers. And to add insult to injury, these farmers will be precluded from saving any farm-saved propagating material. In this way, they will be expected to give away their age old farmers’ rights to freely reuse, exchange and sell seed and propagating materials in their farming and seed systems.”

Cessation of hostilities terms exclude ISIS and other Security Council named terrorist groups. War continues to eliminate them, Palmyra’s liberation the most important battlefield success so far.

Spurious media and other misreporting claim Syrian and Russian ceasefire violations. The London-based, Western financed, misnamed Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports propaganda, not hard truths.

Russian photographic evidence shows airstrikes it makes solely strike terrorist targets, scrupulously avoiding civilian ones – polar opposite how America operates, massacring noncombatants indiscriminately in all its wars, committing high crimes against peace unaccountably.

SOHR willfully and maliciously lied, claiming it “document(ed)” Russian warplanes killing “5081 civilian(s)…(nonexistent moderate) rebel(s)” and fighters from other “Islamic Factions,” saying noncombatants comprised 40% of the casualties.

It turned truth on its head, saying Russian and Syrian airstrikes continue killing civilians. The New York Times called excluding ISIS and other UN designated terrorist groups a “gaping loophole,” letting Russia continue to bomb (nonexistent) moderate rebels.

The US/Saudi backed so-called High Negotiations Committee (composed of terrorist groups) accused Russia and Syria of bombing “rebel” positions in Aleppo province, Idlib, Hama, Damascus, Homs, Quneitra, Daraa and elsewhere.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault lied days earlier, claiming “indications (of) attacks, including by air…continuing against zones controlled by the (nonexistent) moderate opposition.”

On April 1, the State Department lied, claiming Syrian warplanes bombed a school and hospital near Damascus, killing over 30 civilians, including 12 children.

Virtually nothing in the West is reported about multiple daily “rebel” violations. Damascus and Moscow strictly observe ceasefire terms, solely attacking armed elements waging war on the people of Syria.

On April 1, the Wall Street Journal accused Russia and Syria of violating ceasefire terms, claiming attacks on “rebel targets,” threatening a “fragile truce.”

Terrorist commander Hassan Haj Ali accused Damascus of “acting like there is no truce at all.”

Russia explained attacks only continue against ISIS and other Security Council designated terrorist groups.

It monitors ceasefire breaches, naming culpable anti-government forces responsible. Since cessation of hostilities began at midnight February 26, Moscow confirmed multiple daily violations by so-called “rebel” groups.

US supported “moderate” fighters are cold-blooded killers. Restoring peace requires eliminating them militarily.

Diplomatic conflict resolution is unattainable. Washington wants war, not peace, continuing to recruit, arm, fund and train anti-government death squads.

Preserving Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity require eliminating the threat they pose.

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.

Writing from the recently acclaimed epicentre of terrorism in Europe, it is remarkable to note the astonishment widely expressed as to the reason behind the attacks in Brussels on 22 March 2016 — as was the case with regard to the attacks in Paris in 2015, or indeed in the earlier case of 9/11.

The question in the minds of many is “why” such irrational attacks are so unreasonably made against innocents. The title of this note is usefully ambiguous, however, for it also holds the more crucial question as to why so little effort is made to address the question of “why”. This is to be compared with efforts to detect and constrain perpetrators by any feasible means — “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted“. The resources allocated to the detection of threat, and the associated investment in security resources, are many orders greater than those devoted to understanding violence and the many forms it may take.

To the extent that there is a sense of being trapped by the degree of violence in society, and the fear it engenders, a valuable insight is offered by policy scientist Geoffrey Vickers: A trap is a function of the nature of the trapped (Freedom in a Rocking Boat: changing values in an unstable society, 1972).

The question here is whether it is in the nature of people not to want to know “why”? Is this because of the fear of change potentially implied? Unknowingly, have we seen the enemy and “them is us — as might be concluded from the argument of John Ralston Saul (The Unconscious Civilization, 1995)? Are there unknowns so terrifying that humanity has no desire to know of them — because of the transformation for which it calls?

Are people unduly content with more superficial responses — those that require little new thinking — as argued by Susan Buck-Morss (Thinking Past Terror, 2006)? Are we then content with the obvious reactions to which they give rise — however unfruitful they may prove to be in the longer term? Is “shooting first” the better strategy when “we are at war” — postponing any more radical questions until later? Or should the ongoing quest for answers by authorities be systematically challenged by the oft-quoted remarks of Albert Einstein:

• To repeat the same thing over and over again, and yet to expect a different result, this is a form of insanity.
• The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

What factors reinforce this incapacity to explore “why” in any depth and why is so little effort made to do so? What might it mean to understand why there is so little effort to comprehend the global indulgence in violence? Would real understanding imply a transformation in thinking so terrifying that such comprehension is systematically avoided, as separately argued (Thinking in Terror, 2005)?

Ironically, given the terror engendering the rising number of refugees arriving in Europe as a consequence of the policies of Brussels-based institutions, “epicentre of terrorism” might indeed be an appropriate expression — perceived otherwise, if unreasonably so.

To Read the Complete Article, click here

Mucho se ha escrito y dicho acerca del viaje ‘Obama en Cuba’ que tuvo lugar dentro del marco del desarrollo de relaciones Cuba–EE.UU. Uno de los temas abordados trata de la naturaleza histórica del viaje. Algunos comentadores dicen que es histórico. A otros les atrae menos este análisis y exponen que la nueva política de Obama representa un mero cambio de táctica a fin de lograr su cometido estratégico de destruir la Revolución Cubana. Así, según este planteamiento, no merece describir la visita como histórica; sin embargo, quizás cada enfoque presenta un interés especial. Más aún, hay otro ángulo que sugiere que sí, que efectivamente es un viaje histórico.

Los días 20-22 de marzo fueran históricos. Por vez primera desde la Revolución encabezada por Fidel Castro en 1959, un presidente de los Estados Unidos fue en Cuba al mismo tiempo que Fidel. ¿Por qué es esto histórico?

Fidel es el Líder histórico de la Revolución Cubana. Representa la defensa a ultranza de la soberanía de Cuba y la edificación de una sociedad justa por medio del socialismo. Pero Fidel es mucho más que eso. Para los cubanos y para gran parte de los pueblos de América Latina y del Caribe, él es el baluarte de la tenaz y valerosa oposición al imperialismo de los Estados Unidos, sus guerras de agresión y del sempiterno peligro de guerra nuclear. Aparte de esto, Fidel Castro es la encarnación de la búsqueda de justicia social, igualdad y protección del entorno mundial.

Muchos países y pueblos de Asia, África y Eurasia sienten también esta reverencia por el líder cubano. Mismo en Occidente, incluido en el propio Estados Unidos, este respeto es tangible entre muchos pueblos y organizaciones. Fidel es considerado por muchos  como la figura política más importante de los siglos XX y XXI. Ahora en su nonagésimo año, aún contribuye a sus metas que le han captivado desde los años cuarenta del siglo pasado.

Como es natural, él estaba en Cuba los días 20-22 de marzo durante la visita de Obama. ¿Qué representa Obama? Aun cuando la tendencia estos días es no ver a Obama desde un ángulo negativo, uno debe poder retroceder un paso y decir las cosas como son: él representa al imperialismo estadounidense.

El imperialismo estadounidense surge con el advenimiento de las trece colonias en el siglo XVII como una autoproclamada y evangélica luz colocada en lo alto de una colina para que toda la gente del mundo mire en esa dirección. Obama suscribe enteramente a este concepto bíblico. Los  propios orígenes de los Estados Unidos son la base del expansionismo, genocidio contra los pueblos autóctonos, esclavitud, racismo, neocolonialismo y luego imperialismo.

Desde los últimos días de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y de Hiroshima y Nagasaki el imperialismo estadounidense es responsable de guerras de agresión, tortura y la muerte y destrucción de millones de personas en todo el globo. El imperialismo también es conocido por la violencia racista interna, el encarcelamiento de afroamericanos y la discriminación contra los ‘latinos’. Hoy día, Obama es el símbolo anuente de este legado, aunque él, una gran parte de la oligarquía en el poder y sus medios de comunicación lo oculten cuidadosamente.

Por consiguiente, los días 20-22 de marzo Fidel y Obama –dos símbolos vivientes que representan dos concepciones y valores opuestos del mundo que inciden en el futuro de la humanidad–, se encontraron por vez primera en la famosa isla, conocida por muchos amigos y enemigos como la Cuba de Fidel. De toda evidencia, eso sí es histórico.

Arnold August 

Traducido del inglés por A. Loría.

Fuente: ALAINET

Arnold August, Periodista y conferencista canadiense, el autor de los libros Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections y más recientemente, Cuba y sus vecinos: Democracia en movimiento. En Twitter: @Arnold_August Su sitio web: www.lademocracia.com

El entrenador argentino marcó a las más grandes leyendas del fútbol con su filosofía de juego, sus cualidades de técnico y su personalidad.

Marcelo Bielsa ejerció su oficio de entrenador en América Latina y en Europa. En todas partes donde estuvo suscitó el respeto de sus pares y la admiración de los hinchas por su filosofía de juego basada en un espectacular fútbol ofensivo. El mundo del deporte reconoce sus innegables cualidades como técnico, ya que consiguió el título de mejor entrenador en todos los países donde ejerció su profesión, sea en Argentina, México, Chile, España o Francia. Incluso recibió una consagración continental con el título de mejor entrenador de América del Sur.

El estilo de Marcelo Bielsa impresionó a las más grandes leyendas del fútbol. Diez figuras mundiales expresaron su opinión sobre el argentino. Diego Maradona, Pelé, Johan Cruyff, Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane, Pep Guardiola, Alex Fergusson, Dunga, Eric Cantona y Arrigo Sacchi rindieron tributo al nativo de Rosario por su compromiso apasionado a favor de un fútbol popular y generoso.

Diego Maradona, considerado el mejor jugador de todos los tiempos, estuvo marcado por el trabajo de Marcelo Bielsa en el Athletic Bilbao de 2011 a 2013. El club español tiene la particularidad de componerse únicamente de jugadores vascos y el entrenador argentino no tuvo entonces la posibilidad de formar su propio equipo. A pesar de este obstáculo y de un grupo limitado, los resultados fueron espectaculares. Bielsa tiene esa capacidad única de sacar lo mejor de sus jugadores. “Marcelo Bielsa creó un equipo de la nada [y] llegó a dos finales”[1], recordó Maradona. En efecto, bajo su dirección el club vasco alcanzó la final de la copa de España y sobre todo la final de la Liga Europa, tras eliminar al mítico club inglés de Manchester United, dirigido por Alex Ferguson. El héroe de la copa del mundo 1986 evocó esta confrontación: “Todos hablan sólo del Barcelona, pero hay que reconocer el juego del equipo de Bielsa, que dejó en ridículo dos veces a un Manchester United con muchísimas figuras”.[2] El equipo español había conseguido la victoria en casa e incluso había ganado 3-2 en el legendario estadio de Old Trafford.

Pelé, leyenda brasileña que tiene el récord de goles marcados en una carrera y disputa a Maradona el título de mejor jugador de todos los tiempos, tiene a Bielsa en alta estima. En 2013 usó toda su influencia para reclutarlo en el club de Santos, en el cual había empezado como jugador. “Hay una gran posibilidad de que Bielsa se vaya al Santos. A mí me gusta. Es un gran entrenador”, declaró en esa ocasión.[3] Pelé valoró el trabajo realizado por el argentino a la cabeza de la selección chilena entre 2007 y 2011, donde promovió una nueva generación de jugadores: “Todo es prueba de que tiene razón con el proceso de renovación, con todos los resultados buenos obtenidos”.[4] Alabó sus capacidades técnicas y sus cualidades humanas: “Bielsa es un gran entrenador. Le conozco y es una excelente persona”. Desafortunadamente para Santos y para el fútbol brasileño no se consiguió un acuerdo entre las dos partes.[5]

Johan Cruyff es el mejor jugador neerlandés de la historia y uno de los más grandes futbolistas de todos los tiempos. Ganó tres copas Champion’s y tres veces el Balón de Oro. Como entrenador revolucionó el juego del FC Barcelona con el cual ganó también la copa Champion’s, y fue nombrado Presidente de honor del club. Cruyff tuvo palabras elogiosas sobre Marcelo Bielsa. Según él, el equipo chileno que dirigió el argentino era la selección que produjo el juego ofensivo más hermoso durante la copa del mundo 2010. “La mejor selección que he visto es la de Chile. Ofrecer algo más a los aficionados siempre ha sido una de nuestras cualidades [Holanda], pero Chile nos ha tomado el relevo en esto. Ha demostrado ya mucho, y ha entendido muy bien que aunque las posibilidades de un título sean pocas, en sus manos está la oportunidad de hacer que el público mire con gusto”. [6]

Lionel Messi, considerado el actual mejor jugador del mundo, expresó su admiración por su compatriota de Rosario. “No lo tuve como técnico, pero es una persona que admiro por lo que hizo con Argentina, Chile y el Athletic y es un técnico al que me hubiera gustado tener”, declaró el quíntuple Balón de Oro, que ganó todas las competiciones nacionales e internacionales con el FC Barcelona, elegido mejor jugador de la Copa del Mundo 2014 y autor de más de 400 goles en su carrera.[7]

Zinédine Zidane, leyenda del fútbol francés y mundial y actual técnico del Real Madrid, expresó su respeto a Marcelo Bielsa. En el marco de su formación para ser entrenador quiso realizar su práctica de observación en el Olympique de Marsella, entonces dirigido por el argentino. Recuerda ese momento inolvidable: “Fue una linda experiencia. Es un entrenador que tiene una increíble experiencia del alto nivel, es una persona muy minuciosa. Ello me marcó. Está en la Commanderie (sitio de entrenamiento del Marsella) de la mañana a la noche. El consejo de Marcelo Bielsa: ‘No imitar a nadie, mantener tu línea’”.[8] El famoso número 10 aclamó el trabajo realizado por el oriundo de Rosario: “Marcelo Bielsa trajo su método y tiene resultados. El OM gana y clasifica primero. Ama a sus jugadores y ama a los jugadores que hicieron la historia del fútbol”.[9]

Pep Guardiola es un exjugador internacional español y actualmente el entrenador más solicitado del mundo. Es el único técnico que ha conseguido un sexteto, es decir, ganar los seis títulos posibles en un mismo año. Así, en 2009, a la cabeza del FC Barcelona, ganó el campeonato, la copa del Rey, la Supercopa nacional, la Liga de Campeones, la Copa intercontinental, la Supercopa de Europa y el Mundial de clubes. Se considera hijo espiritual de Marcelo Bielsa. Antes de convertirse en técnico viajó a Argentina para conocer a su mentor. La entrevista duró 11 horas y marcó de por vida a Guardiola.

No escatima elogios hacia él y alaba su visión del fútbol. “Estamos delante del mejor jugador que hay actualmente en el planeta. Todos los juegos del Athletic Bilbao son un regalo para el espectador. Hace un juego honesto en el que le da igual si gana o pierde”. Es un regalo que esté en esta liga”. El español también alabó su estancia en Marsella en 2014-2015: “Su éxito actual en Marsella me recuerda el que tuvo en el Athletic Bilbao. El OM es un equipo fuerte, sin grandes estrellas pero con una presión importante diariamente. La gran virtud de Marcelo es adaptarse rápidamente a su nuevo entorno y hacer de un equipo regular una formación ultracompetitiva y temible”.[10]

Guardiola también estuvo marcado por la ética de su colega argentino que le explicó por qué se negaba a conceder entrevistas individuales a periodistas, optando en cambio por conferencias de prensa colectivas : “¿Por qué le voy a dar una entrevista a un tipo poderoso y  se la voy a negar a un pequeño reportero de provincias? ¿Cuál es el criterio para hacer una cosa así? ¿Mi propio interés? Eso es ventajismo”. Guardiola tomó nota de la lección y de la noción de equidad y decidió adoptar la misma línea. [11]

Bielsa y Guardiola comparten la misma visión de un fútbol ofensivo y generoso. El técnico catalán confía que la filosofía de fútbol que más lo sedujo fue la que aplicó Bielsa con Argentina durante el Mundial 2002. Recuerda también que el triunfo de Chile en la Copa América 2015 liderado por Jorge Sampaoli, que se proclama también discípulo de Bielsa, se debe en parte al nativo de Rosario: “Todo lo que ha pasado en Chile no hubiera sido posible sin Bielsa. Siempre hay alguien que empieza y hace los planes para la Catedral”.[12]

Recuerda con gratitud el encuentro: “Fue un honor que me recibiera en Argentina, que me abriera las puertas y pudiese compartir todo un día con él hablando de fútbol… fue formidable, me enseñó mucho”.[13]

Alex Fergusson ocupa un lugar de primera magnitud en el panteón de los entrenadores de leyenda. Dirigió el club Manchester United de 1986 a 2013, con el cual ganó todos los títulos posibles y entrenó a los más grandes jugadores, desde Eric Cantona hasta Cristiano Ronaldo pasando por David Beckham. Tras la derrota de su equipo frente al Athletic de Bilbao de Bielsa en Liga Europa declaró su respeto por su colega latinoamericano y alabó su “determinación” y sus cualidades de liderazgo. “Admiro su trabajo pues vemos la emergencia de un equipo de Bilbao muy bueno. Son determinados y muy organizados y albergan una gran confianza. Es la marca de su entrenador. Ha inyectado esas cualidades a sus jugadores”, enfatizó.

Fergusson alabó la filosofía de juego preconizado por el argentino: “Es una maravilla verlos jugar de esta manera. Es el mejor equipo de Bilbao que he visto en años”. El manager escocés no vaciló en reconocer la superioridad colectiva del adversario: “En el segundo tiempo jugaron mejor que nosotros, tuvieron más posesión. Dispusieron tres ocasiones clarísimas y después del segundo gol tuvimos que jugar a la defensiva y no pudimos hacer mucho más”.[14]

Dunga, actual seleccionador de Brasil y capitán emblemático del equipo que ganó la Copa del Mundo 1994, subraya también la contribución mayor de Marcelo Bielsa al fútbol mundial. Como a muchos observadores le impactó el juego generoso que desarrolló Chile bajo la dirección del técnico argentino: “Es un gran entrenador con ideas muy buenas. Es competente, tiene calidad y con él Chile ha hecho buenos partidos. Están muy preparados para este mundial [2010]”.[15]

Eric Cantona, el más inglés de los jugadores franceses, también apreció el trabajo de Marcelo Bielsa en Marsella, equipo que practicó el mejor fútbol del campeonato 2014-2015: “¿La creación permanente? Es lo que dice muy bien Bielsa. Por ello me gusta Bielsa. Me gusta su discurso. […] Hay demasiada gente que sale de un sistema de formación para entrenadores donde aprenden a decir ciertas cosas en determinadas condiciones. Hay también entrenadores que deben expresar su propia personalidad, con su propio análisis de las cosas y sentir lo que necesitan oír los jugadores”.[16] El antiguo líder del Manchester United aprecia la personalidad anticonformista del técnico argentino: “Tiene un discurso. Defiende su personalidad. Muchas veces los entrenadores son formateados. Como en las escuelas de política. Todo el mundo aprende a hablar del mismo modo. Antes de un partido hay que decir tal cosa. Después de un partido hay que decir tal cosa. Los jugadores están acostumbrados a oír la misma cosa. Bielsa es distinto. Siempre me he sentido cercano a estas personas […]. Es bueno que haya gente que no se sienta obligada a llevar el uniforme”.[17]

Arrigo Sacchi, considerado el mejor entrenador italiano de la historia, ganó todos los títulos posibles a la cabeza del Milan AC y fue finalista de la Copa del Mundo 1994 con Italia. Es un gran admirador de Bielsa. “En Chile lo consideran un semidiós, no sólo por los resultados que consiguió sino también por el modo en que los alcanzó”, apuntó, alabando la filosofía del técnico argentino. “Sus equipos juegan un fútbol ofensivo […] y sus jugadores buscan ser los dueños de la cancha y de la pelota. Imponen su propio juego que prima sobre las cualidades individuales”.

Sacchi enfatiza la implicación de Bielsa en su pasión: “Es un perfeccionista que vive y piensa fútbol las 24 horas del día. Sólo tiene una certeza: se puede hacer más y mejor”. El italiano se expresó sobre la convicción de Bielsa, fiel a sus principios de juego: “Es muy exigente. Es un maestro absolutamente convencido de sus ideas, de sus intuiciones y de su sensibilidad”.

Sacchi alaba el estilo generoso del rosarino: “Sus equipos tienen carácter y armonía y cuando uno los ve jugar comprende que el entrenador es Bielsa. La relación entre los jugadores y su posicionamiento en la cancha son prolijas hasta los últimos detalles (siempre 11 en posición activa con o sin pelota), la transición es buena y rápida, el ritmo y los conocimientos colectivos son elevados y el pressing es devastador”.[18]

Marcelo Bielsa, más allá de sus innegables cualidades como técnico, ha marcado el fútbol sobre todo por su línea de conducta y sus valores éticos. En un universo donde sólo importa el resultado, incluso mediante recursos ilícitos, él, al contrario, defiende la nobleza del deporte en el que los principios de juego no son negociables y en que la búsqueda de una victoria merecida siempre será preferible la obtención de un triunfo injusto.

 Salim Lamrani

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

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

Brandon Turbeville of ActivistPost.com joins James Corbett to discuss his recent article, “Kurdish Federalization Reminiscent Of Kerry’s Plan B, Brzezinski, NATO’s Plan A.”

They break down the Kurdish groups that are involved in the plan and the globalist institutions that have shaped it.

March 27 marked 18 months since the disappearance in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state of the 43 Ayotzinapa teaching students (normalistas), a hideous state crime.

The normalistas had left Ayotzinapa on September 26, 2014, to go to protest deep cuts to education under President Enrique Peña Nieto’s so-called Pact for Mexico, a program instituted to eviscerate decades of gains won by workers. The students were monitored the entire time of their trip by the Guerrero state police. They were fired upon by local police in Iguala, rounded up while a garrison of federal troops stood by, and then disposed of.

The Mexican government continues to try to cover up the circumstances of the disappearance of the normalistas, in which all levels of the Mexican government are implicated.

The official version of the government continues to be that local Iguala police delivered the students to a local gang, who then killed them and burned their bodies in a dump by a river in the neighboring town of Cocula.

Government investigators claimed to have verified that the remains of two students were found at the Cocula site. But in December of last year a group of distinguished experts from the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights known as the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts that studied the case reported that evidence showed that the students were not incinerated at that location.

The Mexican government wants the independent experts to wrap up their investigation by April 30. But the parents of the 43 normalistas seek a six-month extension because they do not trust the government. They also continue to demand the return of their children, refusing to accept that they cannot be located.

According to Felipe de la Cruz, a spokesman for the parents, Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong had previously committed to extend the independent investigation if the case had not been solved by the end of April. De la Cruz said he expected to make a formal request for an extension to the Mexican Attorney General’s office (PGR) during the first week of April.

The normalista parents charge that the Mexican government has obstructed the efforts of the independent experts. For example, the experts have not been permitted to interview over a hundred persons, including suspects identified by the government, who some allege have been coerced to give statements supporting the government’s line, as well as officials who may be implicated. Although the army was likely complicit in the students’ abduction, that investigative avenue has been shut off.

In order to continue the cover-up of the crime, government authorities have mounted a smear campaign against the independent expert group, questioning its members’ competence, and even their integrity.

Private lawyers have also sought legal recourse against the government for its failure to conduct a thorough investigation and punish those responsible. For example, the attorney for the Center for Human Rights has sued the PGR. In part the suit demands that potentially incriminating videotapes missing from material produced by the Guerrero state judicial authorities to the PGR that were made by local authorities in Iguala on the night of the disappearance be produced, and an investigation into the chain of command and chain of custody of those videos.

Given the course of the government’s investigation its credibility with the Mexican populace remains virtually nonexistent. The government’s hope that if it stalls long enough popular outrage will dissipate has proven to be wishful thinking.

In yet another effort to bury the case the government has sunk to trying to buy off the families of the normalistas. Recently the Interior Ministry confirmed that it will “pay compensation” for the missing students.

A statement by the Office of Human Rights in the PGR confirmed that under the law the government has an obligation to provide care, assistance, support, protection and reparations for the damage or impairment suffered by those whose human rights have been violated. However, the agency said, compensation could not be paid without first assessing the social and psychological condition of the students’ families.

De la Cruz, the families’ representative, responded that they would not accept money from the Mexican government as reparations. He added that this was not the first time that reparations had been mentioned; that previous offer of money by federal and state authorities visiting the parents’ homes had been rejected. De La Cruz said that “they have come to offer money, but they forget that the parents of the 43 missing are not interested in that. We will not sell our children, and the posture of the Ayotzinapa movement remains the same.”

Later at a March 26 rally in Mexico City marking 18 months since the Iguala disappearance, de la Cruz said,

“We call for the existence of a single movement, first to find the truth and do justice. … Full compensation for harm is much more than the payment of compensation; it should include concrete measures of restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction and especially measures of non-repetition. … We prefer to ask for and receive help from you, the citizenry; that will keep the government from buying off the movement.”

De la Cruz also emphasized that donations were critical because they would fund continuing work by the independent expert group.

The courage, integrity and perseverance of the normalista families and their supporters cannot be questioned. But such atrocities can be prevented only if the Mexican masses tear down the Mexican ruling class and its corrupt and violent state. For its part, the Mexican state is quickly putting in place emergency powers to crush opposition to state policies in the Mexican working class.

When Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ran for the top office in 2014, he promised voters he would sell Roshen, Ukraine’s largest candy business, so he could devote his full attention to running the country.

“If I get elected, I will wipe the slate clean and sell the Roshen concern. As President of Ukraine I plan and commit to focus exclusively on welfare of the nation,” Poroshenko told the German newspaper Bild less than two months before the election.

Instead, actions by his financial advisers and Poroshenko himself, who is worth an estimated US$ 858 million, make it appear that the candy magnate was more concerned about his own welfare than his country’s – going so far as to arguably violate the law twice, misrepresent information and deprive his country of badly needed tax dollars during a time of war.

Poroshenko did this by setting up an offshore holding company to move his business to the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a notorious offshore jurisdiction often used to hide ownership and evade taxes.

His financial advisers say it was done through BVI to make Roshen more attractive to potential international buyers, but it also means Poroshenko may save millions of dollars in Ukrainian taxes.

In one of several ironic twists in this story, the news about the president’s offshore comes as the Ukrainian government is actively fighting the use of offshores, which one organization says are costing Ukraine US$ 11.6 billion a year in lost revenues.

Details about the Roshen deal can be found in the Panama Papers, documents obtained from a Panama-based offshore services provider called Mossack Fonseca. The documents were received by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

And in a more painful irony, the Panama Papers reveal that Poroshenko was apparently scrambling to protect his substantial financial assets in the BVI at a time when the conflict between Russia and Ukraine had reached its fiercest.

The Law

Poroshenko’s action might be illegal on two counts: he started a new company while president and he did not report the company on his disclosure statements.

According to documents from Mossack Fonseca, on Aug. 4, 2014, George Ioannou, then a senior associate of the law firm Dr. K. Chrysostomides & Co LLC, sent an email to the Mossack Fonseca’s incorporation department asking to register a new company for “a person involved in politics.”

“The company will be the holding company for his business … and will have nothing to do with his political activities,” Ioannou wrote, inquiring whether the registration agent would accept the job.

Seventeen days later, a new company with Ukrainian origins was submitted to the local registry of the British Virgin Islands.

A scan of Petro Poroshenko’s passport from Mossack Fonseca’s internal files.

Called Prime Asset Partners Ltd., a name similar to that of Poroshenko’s Ukrainian holding company, it was located in the Akara Building in Tortola, an address used by thousands of offshore companies from around the world. The sole shareholder of the company was Poroshenko with an address in Kyiv. A copy of his passport confirmed that the beneficial owner was indeed the Ukrainian president.

Mossack Fonseca records specify that Prime Asset Partners would serve as the holding company for the Ukrainian and Cyprus companies of Roshen confectionary corporation, with “proceeds from the business trade” of the corporation being its source of funds.

Oleksii Khmara, executive director of Transparency International Ukraine, told OCCRP that this is a big problem, calling it a conflict of interest and apparent violation of both the constitution, which bans the president from business activities, and the corruption laws, which ban all public officials from conducting private business.

“If a new business is created (after the election) and a public official is listed as the beneficiary, that means he’s actively engaged in business,” says Khmara. “This is a violation of the law, no matter what the conditions (under which it’s registered) or the jurisdiction used.”

The president also failed to report the newly registered BVI company and additional companies in his 2014 asset disclosure statements, a second possible violation of the law. The information is also missing on the 2015 asset forms. The Kyiv-based financial service group ICU (the president’s financial advisers) disclosed there were two more companies: one in Cyprus called CEE Confectionery Investments Ltd., registered in September 2014; and a second, registered in the Netherlands in December 2014, called Roshen Europe B.V. The BVI holding company holds the Cyprus company which in turn holds the Dutch company.

Meanwhile, the president’s income declaration for that year gives no mention of either foreign income, or investment in the statutory funds of foreign companies.

According to an email from Makar Paseniuk, managing director of ICU, this is because “shares in (BVI) Prime Asset Partners Limited have no par value, and the declaration for 2014 required only shares having a par value to be included.”

Share Register for Prime Asset Partners Limited.

But the documents obtained by OCCRP show that starting from the registration date of Aug. 21, 2014, Prime Asset Partners Ltd.’s shares indeed had a total value of US$ 1,000 and listed Poroshenko as the sole shareholder. Its Cyprus subsidiary CEE Confectionary has shares with the total value of €2,000, while the Dutch Roshen Europe has the statutory capital of US$85. While the amounts are small, they still must be reported, experts say. When Poroshenko’s advisers were asked about the discrepancy, the advisers told an OCCRP reporter that his information was inaccurate.

Had the new president listed new foreign assets in his declarations at such a critical time in Ukraine’s war with separatists, it might have raised difficult questions for him.

Yevhen Cherniak, an analyst with Transparency International Ukraine, looked at information provided by OCCRP on the BVI, Cyprus and the Netherlands’ companies established by Poroshenko and pointed out that the president’s 2014 income declaration doesn’t say “a single word about foreign companies” in the section disclosing company shares.

Cherniak said that the failure to disclose shares held by Poroshenko in the BVI Prime Asset Partners Limited constitutes a “blatant” violation of an administrative code article “Violation of Financial Control Requirements,” which deals with the submission of false information in income declarations by public officials, as provided under the anticorruption law. He added that Poroshenko was only liable for the violation for one year and that year passed on March 30 of this year, so he can’t be fined for 2014.

As for the subsidiary companies in Cyprus and Netherlands, Cherniak explained that the old anticorruption law, which was in place last year, is vague about the term “beneficiary ownership.”

Certificate from Mossack Fonseca asserting Poroshenko’s ownership as of December 8, 2015

The president’s 2015 declaration published on April 1, 2016, which was filed according to the old law, likewise makes no mention of his BVI company, or foreign income from selling its shares. According to the Panama Papers, he continued to be a direct shareholder holding $1,000 worth of shares in the BVI Prime Asset Partners Ltd as of December 8, 2015. No further changes to the shareholding structure were recorded throughout the rest of 2015.

Poroshenko’s adviser Paseniuk said in a March 22, 2016 response to OCCRP that when the new law is enforced, “all companies beneficially owned by the client will be properly declared.”

A Changing Story

Poroshenko and his advisers have told an evolving story. His campaign-trail promise to sell his company was soon dropped in favor of a plan to create an independent trust to operate the company.

During a news conference in Kyiv last January, Poroshenko said that in 2016 all his Roshen shares had been put in a blind trust managed by a “respectable first-league foreign bank” which will “own, control and manage the assets.” Even earlier, he made the same claim in an interview with Deutsche Welle in November of 2015, saying the trust was a done deal.

Those statements now appear premature.

A new story emerged when OCCRP was referred by the president’s office to his financial advisers. Paseniuk’s response on behalf of the president mentioned difficulties with the sale of Roshen corporation, citing investors’ caution amid “the volatile geopolitical and economic environment.” As a result, the offshore structure was created to sell the president’s business and “improve attractiveness of the Roshen group.”

Paseniuk also told OCCRP that the trust was still a work in progress. “The stake in Roshen will be transferred into a trust after all legal formalities are completed,” he said.

He said the BVI company has already set up subsidiaries in Cyprus and the Netherlands, though none of them “holds any assets at the moment.”

Regarding the use of offshores, Paseniuk said “As a matter of practice, Ukrainian businesses commonly use similar structures.”

On March 21, a day before Paseniuk’s letter arrived, Ukraine’s National Bank, and the country’s fiscal and anti-monopoly agencies announced they had agreed to work jointly towards “de-offshorization” of Ukrainian business.

According to Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based tax-haven watchdog, between 2004 and 2013 Ukraine lost an average of US$ 11.6 billion a year, due to illicit financial flows. In 2013, this equaled to nearly a quarter of the country’s budget.

Why BVI?

OCCRP spoke to legal and tax experts who said setting up a holding company offshore – whether for trust purposes or sale – comes with a huge tax advantage.

Daniel Bilak, managing partner of the Kyiv office of the international law firm CMS Cameron McKenna, did not discuss the specifics of Poroshenko’s case but said saving on taxes is a key reason for moving assets offshore and setting up a trust.

“Such jurisdictions as the British Virgin Islands, Panama, and Malta are in general considered offshores, because they have very flexible laws for managing assets and company registration, while keeping maximum confidentiality and minimal taxation,” Bilak says. “And this way I’m allowed to limit paying taxes.”

Yaroslav Lomakin, managing partner of the Honest&Bright consulting group which operates in London, Moscow and Kyiv, calls setting up a BVI-registered holding company the simplest and cheapest way to protect assets, albeit “bad for image and reputation.”

“In general, there is a presumption that trusts are created for better protection of assets and lowering of tax obligations,” Lomakin says. “The corporate income tax both for BVI and trusts is approaching zero. While the most interesting and multi-level (options) begin when it comes to profit distribution.”

But just because politicians can sometimes create offshore trusts, should they?

Andreas Knobel, an expert with the Tax Justice Network, says the potential problems with politicians and offshore holdings or trusts can only be resolved by transparency. Any politician with a trust shall “disclose the existence of a trust, the laws under which it was created (to check if an abusive regime was chosen), and … all trust assets to find out what companies, stocks are held there.”

Knobel adds that while in general incorporating a company in a tax haven may be based on valid reasons such as lowering the tax rate or benefiting from laxer laws, many will use them for tax avoidance, tax evasion or corruption.

“It would be interesting to inquire the reasons for establishing those companies,” Knobel says. “Was it a tax reason? Secrecy? Why not hold everything from Ukraine?”

The Kettle

Poroshenko registered his companies during one of Ukraine’s darkest periods.

At the end of July and early August of 2014, Ukrainians worried and watched as Poroshenko called up reservists and warned of an invasion by Russian troops. TV casualty reports were a daily reminder of the war’s costs.

To bolster the nation’s confidence, on July 26 Poroshenko invited the media to a National Guard base to film him in camouflage fatigues atop a new armored vehicle boldly firing its machine guns. His commanders were deep in planning a bold counter-offensive designed to reclaim parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts from separatists.

But during those dark days, Poroshenko was also busy setting up his offshore companies halfway around the world. On Aug. 4, 2014, Poroshenko’s advisers started the registration procedures in the BVI.

Also in August, the Ukrainian general staff moved to recover territory lost to separatists and ordered four volunteer battalions to enter Ilovaisk, a key railway hub 40 kilometers from Donetsk.

The plan was to cut a Russian supply line for the Donetsk-based separatists. The command, however, failed to act on reports that a force of 3,500 professional Russian troops had moved into the region.

On August 21, 27 Ukrainian soldiers fell in what would become known as the “Ilovaisk Kettle,” victims of intense Russian rocket bombardments.

That was the same day Poroshenko’s BVI holding company was officially registered.

Within a week, the Ukrainian battalions were encircled and their commanders seemed unable to act for a number of critical days.

Khmara says the president’s moral obligation should have been to put it on hold.

“He could’ve at least said ‘Boys, girls, don’t deal with this now – we have more important issues to take care of,’” he said. “So his silent consent… his inactivity at the time, contributed to this moral crime.”

The few weeks of fighting in the Kettle would lead to more deaths than in any other battle – nearly 20 percent of the soldiers killed during the war.

In his response to OCCRP’s questions, Paseniuk said the transactions were planned and agreed long before the military developments in Ukraine and that the two events were unrelated.

On September 1, 2014, Poroshenko announced Russia has openly attacked Ukraine. On the same day he provided Mossack Fonseca with a copy of his utility bill to prove his home address.

The indiscriminate bombing of tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and civilians retreating from Kuwait is one of the most heinous war crimes in history.

Beholden to special interests; complicit in US war crimes across the globe; held top secret information on an unsecured home server; incessantly lies (like most politicians); and is married to a man who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault: the fact that Hillary Clinton is even remotely capable of becoming President of the US is symptomatic of how corrupt and screwed up the US political system actually is.

Puppet on a String

Clinton is the walking, talking definition of a political prostitute, completely controlled by special interests, Israel and the shadow establishment. Since the beginning of 2013, Clinton has received at least $21.7 million for 92 speeches she has given to private organizations and groups. This includes $225,000 from Morgan Stanley; $225,000 from Deutsche Bank; $225,000 from Bank of America; and $675,000 from the Goldman Sachs Group (for three separate speeches). George Soros, the investor, billionaire and regime change extraordinaire, has also put millions into Clinton’s campaign.

Hillary is controlled by the parallel US government, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In 2009, she revealed her relationship with the CFR when she addressed the council at their newly opened outpost in Washington D.C.:

“I have been often to the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”

A look at the corporate membership of the council reveals the level of power vested in such a small amount of hands, with approximately 200 of the most influential corporate players belonging to the group, including: Exxon Mobil Corporation; Goldman Sachs Group; JPMorgan Chase; BP plc; Barclays; IBM; Google Inc; Facebook; Lockheed Martin; Raytheon; Pfizer; Merck & Co; Deutsche Bank AG; Shell Oil Company; and Soros Fund Management.

War Criminal in Chief

Hillary is complicit in numerous crimes and atrocities perpetuated by the US when she was Secretary of State from January, 2009 to February, 2013. One of the most notable examples of this was the belligerent war in Libya in 2011. Clinton played a pivotal role in the NATO intervention which led to the toppling of the Libyan leader, Muammar al- Qaddafi, the destabilization of the country and the exacerbation of “humanitarian suffering.”

As Alan J. Kuperman, an Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, wrote in his 2013 policy brief for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, titled:Lessons from Libya: How not to Intervene:

“NATO’s action magnified the conflict’s duration about sixfold, and its death toll at least sevenfold, while also exacerbating human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors. If Libya was a ‘model intervention,’ then it was a model of failure.”

NATO has been repeatedly accused of committing war crimes in Libya, but as we know, there is no accountability for Western imperialism. Many have accused NATO of deliberately bombing civilian targets, including Libya’s water infrastructure. To Hillary (the war hawk) Clinton however, the intervention in Libya was a triumph. She famously remarked that “we came, we saw, he died” (before demonically laughing).

Arming Al-Qaeda

Clinton was also the Secretary of State during the 2012 Benghazi attack, when militants attacked a US compound in Benghazi, Libya, and a CIA facility nearby, killing four US personnel, including US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. The failure to protect the compound has been widely written about, but the real story is what the compound was actually involved in. Numerous journalists – including Seymour Hersh – have reported that the compound was a key outpost for a covert operation that involved shipping weapons from Libya to the Syrian rebels who were fighting against Bashar al-Assad. Many reports have accused the US and their allies of covertly sending heavy weapons from the North African country to Syria.

A formerly classified document released by Judicial Watch from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reveals that the White House was at least aware of arms shipments from Libya to Syria, although the document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons (parts of the document are redacted however):

“Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles… The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm]” (DIA Doc).

Clinton was a strong supporter of the ludicrous and nefarious strategy of arming the Syrian rebels, even though USmilitary intelligence was reporting in August 2012 that: “The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [(al-Qaeda in Iraq)], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” In 2015, Clinton also called for the creation of a no-fly zone in Syria, which as we saw in Libya, would result in the US bombing the Syrian army in a bid to oust al-Assad.

It’s impossible to document Hillary’s crimes without briefly discussing the allegations made against her husband, Bill Clinton. It’s highly ironic that Hillary’s platform for President is largely based on her (supposed) support for women’s rights, yet her husband has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault – Capitol Hill Blue documented some of these allegations. In 1998, Bill even paid Paula Jones $850,000 in an out-of-court settlement to drop a sexual harassment lawsuit against him. Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill of raping her in 1978, also accused Hillary of threatening her if she spoke out.

It’s hard to think of any political figure that has been plagued by so many scandals in recent years. If Hillary is installed as President by the shadow elite, it will not just be catastrophic for the US, but for the entire globe as well.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

“If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I’ve seen, if they’d watched children fry to death from Napalm and bleed to death from a cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do.” – John Pilger

Professor Francis Boyle, distinguished Professor of Law in Illinois and long-time thorn in the side of the Imperial Establishment has publicly expressed his disgust at the UN complicity with the sanctions that engendered starvation on a catastrophic scale in Iraq in the early 1990s.  Over 500,000 children died from malnutrition:

“During the summer of 1991 I was contacted on behalf of several Mothers in Iraq whose children were dying at astounding rates because of the genocidal economic sanctions that had been imposed upon them by the Security Council in August of 1990 at the behest of the Bush Senior administration.”

Boyle went on to present his complaint accusing President Bush of committing international genocide against the 4.5 million children in Iraq, “in violation of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 and in violation of the municipal legal systems of all civilized nations in the world”

“My Complaint estimated that since sanctions were first imposed against Iraq in August of 1990, Iraqi children were dying as a direct result thereof at the rate of about 500 per day.”

Boyle expressed his frustration at the UNSC [Security Council] failure to suspend the crippling sanctions against Iraq.

“Despite my best professional efforts working on behalf of my Clients pro bono publico, the grossly hypocritical United Nations Organization adamantly refused to act to terminate these genocidal sanctions and thus to save the dying children of Iraq.”

Professor Boyle’s full speech: Legal Protection of Children in Armed Conflict: The Iraqi Children Genocide

Shortly after Professor Boyle’s attempt to derail the genocide being carried out against an entire generation of Iraqis, endorsed by the UNSC, then US secretary of State, Madeleine Albright made her horrifying statement on CBS TV network.

May 12^th 1996 TV presenter, Leslie Stahl posed this question: “We have heard that a half a million children have died [in Iraq]. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And-and, you know, is the price worth it?”

Albright’s reply is still shocking, 20 years after the first US NATO campaign of extermination in Iraq.

“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

Is the UN Repeating History in Yemen?

Mona Relief 1/4/2016: Bani Quis, Hajjah, Northern Yemen on border with Saudi Arabia.

Since the start of the illegal Saudi-led coalition war of aggression against Yemen that began on the 26th March 2015, the UN has appeared to work in lock-step with the lawless aggressor, Saudi Arabia and its allies to exacerbate the widespread suffering of the Yemeni people.

UNSC Resolution 2216 was adopted on the 14th April 2015.  It called specifically for the arms embargo to be imposed against 5 named individuals.

“Arms Embargo: All Member States shall immediately take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to, or for the benefit of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Abdullah Yahya al Hakim & Abd al-Khaliq al-Huthi.”

Two other names were included in the Annex to this list, Abdulmalik al-Houthi and Ali Ahmed Saleh.

Basis for Resolution 2216

This resolution was entirely based upon the premise of the legitimacy of the fugitive, former President of Yemen, Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

“Reaffirming its support for the legitimacy of the President of Yemen, Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and reiterating its call to all parties and Member States to refrain from taking any actions that undermine the unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Yemen, and the legitimacy of the President of Yemen” ~ Resolution 2216

On the same day that the UNSC signed off on a resolution of staggering partiality and bias towards one party in the conflict, namely ex President Hadi and his Saudi backers, a letter had been addressed to the UN by Ali AlAhmed, Director of the Gulf Institute. In this letter, AlAhmed clearly states that, legally,  Hadi is NOT the legitimate President of Yemen.

“To reiterate, at present Mr. Hadi is a former president of Yemen. The UNSC has no legal authority to appoint him as president of Yemen, or treat him in such capacity. Although his term ended February 25, 2014, Hadi remained in office until February 2015; one year after his term has expired, in violation of the UNSC-endorsed GCC Initiative. He also failed to call for general presidential elections per the agreement he signed.

Because the Saudi-led war on Yemen was built on the false premise that Hadi is the current legitimate president of Yemen, it must be emphasized that he is, in fact, not a legitimate leader of that country. Legally, Mr. Hadi is the former transitional president of Yemen whose term expired February 24, 2014.”

AlAhmed reminds the UNSC that Hadi had been elected in a one-horse-race election in February 2012 under the terms of the GCC Initiative [Gulf Cooperation Council]. That term of presidency had been set to expire after two years, when new elections would be held in Yemen.

One month prior to the agreed election date, in January 2014 the NDC [National Dialogue Conference] took the decision, to extend Hadi’s term under the pretext that the transition period was incomplete and that a draft constitution would not be ready for referendum until March 2015.

According to Abdulazeez Al-Baghdadi, a former legal advisor for the Ministry of Interior, the extension of Hadi’s term in office and the justification for this action was:

“A fraud that has no legal basis in constitutional terms….the NDC has no legal authority to extend Hadi’s term because NDC members do not represent the Yemeni people,” he said. “Hadi’s term expired when his two-year term stipulated in the GCC Initiative ended in February 2014.”

During the UNHRC [Human Rights Council], 31st Session in Geneva March 2016, Mohammed al Wazir, Yemeni-American Lawyer and Director of Arabian Rights Watch Association testified that:

“UN Security Council Resolution 2216 is about an arms embargo on 5 people, yet its being used as a cover to justify a blockade on 27 million Yemenis. According to the 2016 Humanitarian Needs Overview released in November 2015, 21.2 million people making up 82% of the population are now in need of some form of Humanitarian assistance.  Nearly 2.1 million people are currently estimated to be malnourished, including more than 1. 3 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.”

Mona Relief: Bani Quis April 2016

According to Al Wazir’s statement to the UNHRC, Hadi had in fact resigned on the 22nd January 2015 and despite calls from various political factions, he refused to withdraw his resignation prior to the expiry of his questionable extended term as President of Yemen.

In a bizarre turn of events, perhaps after his Saudi controllers had put pressure on their marionette, Hadi fled Sanaa [Yemen’s capital] for the port city of Aden. Once safely ensconced in Saudi loyalist territory, Hadi plucked up the courage to renew his claim to the Presidency.

Hadi even attempted to relocate the Government to Aden but once he realised this was not a popular decision and with the Yemeni army closing in, Hadi fled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. From there he requested that the Saudi Arabian government launch a war against his own people to reinstate him as President, a post he had resigned from, weeks previously.

So are we seeing the UN endorse and sustain an illegal war without a UN mandate, being waged against the Yemeni people by a known human rights violating, totalitarian, absolute monarchy, Saudi Arabia? And if so, on what basis? To protect an illegitimate, fugitive President who has called for the destruction of his own people?

Is the UN Defending Yemen’s Sovereignty, Independence & Territorial Integrity?

Resolution 2216 states: “Reaffirming its strong commitment to the unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Yemen, and its commitment to stand by the people of Yemen”

Why then did the UN ignore the statement of their own Special Envoy, Jammal Benomar, made on the 28th April 2015?

“When this campaign started, one thing that was significant but went unnoticed is that the Yemenis were close to a deal that would institute power sharing with all sides, including the Houthis”

Why then did the UN not strongly oppose the Saudi war of aggression that has decimated the Yemeni people or demand that humanitarian aid be allowed entry to alleviate the universal suffering of the already impoverished nation.

Instead the UN flung the door wide open to the Saudi-led war of aggression against Yemen. A war devoid of any legal, moral or ethical justification. A war that would punish the Yemeni people for striving to form their own government without foreign meddling or Saudi corruption and neo-colonialist intent.

Why is the UN not defending the determination of the Yemeni people to create a new government that would guarantee equal citizenship and governmental proportional representation for previously marginalised minorities?

Is the UN Preventing the Deteriorating Humanitarian Situation in Yemen?

Resolution 2216:

“Expressing grave alarm at the significant and rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Yemen, and emphasizing that the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate in the absence of a political solution.

Recalling that arbitrary denial of humanitarian access and depriving civilians of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supply and access, may constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.”

Having allowed the Saudi-led coalition to bomb all hopes of a political solution into smithereens, why is the alarm not being sounded against this oppressive, despotic regime that has the worst human rights record in the region?

Mohammed Al Wazir at the UNHRC:

“So, in summary, the Saudi-led coalition of absolute monarchies and military dictatorships conducted daily airstrikes and imposed a comprehensive land, air and sea blockade for the past year on 27 million Yemenis in order to re-install Hadi, a person whose mandate had expired in Yemen.  Is this what we call defending legitimacy? Collective punishment and terror, inflicted on the entire population in order to deter a group called the Houthis who are less than 1% of the population.  I can say with utmost confidence, there is a major issue with proportionality and a reckless disregard for the principles of distinction and military necessity not to mention international law.”

Mona Relief: September 2015 KSA bombing of Humanitarian
convoy on the Hodeida to Taiz road.

The UN is, in reality, actively allowing the denial of human rights to the Yemeni people by the predatory aggressor, Saudi Arabia.  The UN is sanctioning the “depriving of civilians of objects indispensable to their survival”.  When the Saudi Coalition bombs humanitarian supply convoys does the UN not consider this to be “wilfully impeding relief supply and access”?

Is the UN wittingly allowing these grave violations of humanitarian law or is it an unwilling victim, prey to far more powerful geopolitical players in the region?

What is the UN’s Mandate in Yemen?

“The UN was established to maintain state sovereignty, and both national and international unity.  Instead we appear to be witnessing a process of fracturing society along false sectarian fault lines and the disruption of internal reconciliation and political peace processes within nation states.”

The UN is allegedly seeking a peaceful political transition in Yemen according to the terms laid out in the GCC initiative and its implementation mechanism.

This objective becomes untenable when we consider that effectively, the GCC initiative has expired.  So who precisely is obstructing the peaceful political transition?  The Yemenis or those who launched an illegal war against them and who are destroying their ability to survive let alone decide their political future?

“That is if we take the GCC initiative as a legal document with full force and effect, which is not conceded by any means….but even by its own terms, it has expired.” – Mohammed al Wazir

The illegitimate, fugitive President, Mansour Hadi fled Yemen and incited a war against his own people from Riyadh. A war that has massacred over 8000 people and injured tens of thousands more.  A war that has left Yemen without resources, infrastructure, electricity, communication, food and water.

In a logical, rational world all those who supported Hadi’s endeavour should be found by the UN “Sanctions Committee” and Panel of Experts to be “obstructing the peaceful political transition in Yemen” and be considered the main instigators of instability and insecurity in Yemen.

Conclusions

It is almost impossible not to conclude that multiple parties are colluding to starve Yemen into submission to Saudi objectives. Objectives that are aligned with those of the US, NATO and Israel.

“The UN embargo/blockade against Yemen and the Yemenis violates Genocide Convention article II (e):  Deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” – Prof. Francis A Boyle

The Arms Trade

The UK has sold over £ 2.8bn in arms to Saudi Arabia since this illegal war began.  The US, a staggering $33bn.  Lockheed Martin, a major player in the Military Industrial Complex announced in January 2016 that they would be opening an “expanded repair capability centre” in Saudi Arabia, the first support centre for their Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod technology outside the US.  To ensure “fleet readiness”.  France has just signed off on a mind-blowing $ 7.5 billion arms contract with Qatar [member of the Saudi coalition].

The Oil Trade

Saudi Arabia’s annual $10 trillion oil revenue is a major factor. Yemen is essential for the survival of the Gulf States in this market, and by default, pivotal to US and NATO resource needs. If Saudi Arabia lost control of Yemen, the effects would be catastrophic for the Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia is the only Gulf state with the geographic potential of an east-west pipeline which would give access to the west and the Red Sea, if ever a conflict should arise with their arch enemy Iran who controls the eastern Straits of Hormuz, the primary crude oil shipping channel. However that east-west pipeline was converted in 2001 to gas and it would take some time to restore it to suitability for oil. Saudi Arabia has recently replaced Iraq as India’s number one crude oil supplier.

It is no accident that Saudi proxy forces, AQAP [Al Qaeda Arab Peninsula] and ISIS have seized swathes of land in the southern province of Hadramaut and the port of Aden.  According to a 2008 Wikileaks cable, Saudi Arabia’s intent is to lay a pipeline from the oil and gas rich areas of Al Jawf and Marib in Yemen to the southern coastline, enabling them to avoid both the Straits of Hormuz and the Yemen controlled, Bab el Mandeb straits.

“A British diplomat based in Yemen told PolOff that Saudi Arabia had an interest to build a pipeline, wholly owned, operated and protected by Saudi Arabia, through Hadramawt to a port on the Gulf of Aden, thereby bypassing the Arabian Gulf/Persian Gulf and the straits of Hormuz.” – Wikileaks

This would liberate Saudi Arabia from the clutches of Iranian logistical control and challenge Iran’s regional hegemony head on. With Japan, India, China and S Korea representing the expanding crude oil markets, the geopolitical and economic significance of Yemen to the Gulf States becomes transparent.

The Human Trade

Finally and perhaps most disturbingly, lets review the actions of known US outreach agent and neo-colonialist battering ram, USAID. In July 2015, USAID announced that it would turn the aid tap off to Yemen.

“Given the current situation in Yemen, USAID is placing most development programs on a full suspension,” spokesman Sam Ostrander told Al-Monitor. “The suspension will allow us to keep programs in place so that we can restart development activities quickly when the situation becomes more permissive.”

Criticism abounded against this decision accusing the US of facilitating Saudi human rights violations in Yemen. However, nothing should surprise us when we learn that almost simultaneously Saudi Arabia established its first, official, international Human Rights NGO..there are so many oxymorons in that one sentence.

“A UN source said he expected it to operate as the Gulf State’s equivalent of USAID – the state aid agency of the United States”

With barely a fanfare, the King Salman Centre was launched to fill the crater left in Yemen,  by the departure of USAID and by the US UK and NATO supplied weapons of mass destruction. The chutzpah of this move is only challenged by the flattening of Gaza by Israel who is then tasked and paid to rebuild it.

During my recent visit to the UNHRC, to testify against the Saudi coalition’s illegal use of US supplied cluster munitions on civilian targets in Yemen, I had the misfortune to attend a Saudi presentation of their Humanitarian flagship. There were numerous UN organisations in attendance.  At the end of the Saudi unveiling, oozing with hypocrisy and inflated claims of universal humanitarianism, the representative of UNICEF raised their hand.  I paraphrase their comment.

“We would like to thank Saudi Arabia for their continued efforts to provide humanitarian assistance on a global basis and look forward to many years of continued and increased collaboration”

So, having appointed Saudi Arabia to chair of a key human rights panel inside the UNHRC, the UN is now fully endorsing an absolute monarchy’s attempt to further whitewash their crimes against Humanity.  One look at King Salman Centre’s partners, denies UN impartiality when dealing with Saudi atrocities against the Yemeni people. Does it implicate the UN in these crimes?  Combined with the unjustified and illegitimate bias of UN Resolution 2216,  it must certainly raise questions that need answering.  The Yemeni people deserve an answer.

Has the UN been bought and paid for by a Monarch? Is this the ultimate spin cycle to rinse the blood of innocent Yemeni men, women and children from the hands of the Saudi monarchy and its allies, including the UN, US, NATO & Israel.

The UN is disproportionately influenced by the 5 permanent members of the Security Council, with particular reference to the helmsman, the US and it includes 3 permanent members who are backing the Saudi-led coalition.  France, the UK and the US.  Maintaining impartiality is virtually impossible under these circumstances and too much is geopolitically at stake if Saudi Arabia loses its grip on Yemen.

“Impartiality does not – and must not – mean neutrality in the face of evil. In the face of genocide, there can be no standing aside, no looking away, no neutrality – there are perpetrators and there are victims, there is evil and there is evil’s harvest.” ~ Kofi Annan, Rwanda 1998 after UN peacekeeping forces deserted, handing 1 million civilians over to mass murderers.

It is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that Iraq does not happen again.  Yemen does not deserve this level of collective punishment from one of the world’s most oppressive, soulless and malevolent regimes and the UN must answer for its failure to protect Yemen against the Saudi coalition murderous ravages.

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

118 years after U.S. troops landed at Guánica, Puerto Rico (see image below), the liberal political site the New Republic asks, “Why Are We Colonizing Puerto Rico?”

The occasion for this comically tardy acknowledgment of Puerto Rico’s colonial status is a Republican proposal to deal with the island’s $72 billion debt problem by allowing a cabal of unelected technocrats carry out austerity measures against the will of the Puerto Rican people.

Or, as the bill puts it: “To establish an Oversight Board to assist the Government of Puerto Rico … in managing its public finances.”

The Republican plan most certainly would “spell disaster for vulnerable Puerto Rican citizens, and create a bonanza for private corporations looking to take over public functions,” as David Dayen writes in the New Republic piece. But Dayen is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

As I reported recently, vulnerable Puerto Ricans are already facing disaster in the form of cuts to social programs and oppressive increases in taxes. Private corporations have already taken over public functions, including the island’s largest airport and its largest highway. Former Governor Luis Fortuño created the Public Private Partnership Authority to allow the firesale of public assets to corporate vultures nearly seven years ago.

Alternative plans have been advanced in the Senate and the Obama administration. Both of these would allow restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt, which the House Republican plan would not. While the Republican legislative proposal for Puerto Rico is vastly inferior to either of the other options, neither the Democratic Senate plan nor the White House plan would be fair to Puerto Rico’s residents.

The Senate plan would grant priority for pensions over bondholders. This would directly challenge the outrageous clause in Puerto Rico’s colonial Constitution which mandates that if revenues are ever insufficient to cover appropriations, the interest on public debt must be paid before anything else.

The plan introduced by New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez would also grant Puerto Rico tax credits and address lower distributions to Puerto Ricans of Medicare and Medicaid funds they contribute to through payroll taxes. The White House also submitted a proposal for restructuring all of Puerto Rico’s debt that would grant similar protections as Chapter 9 without formal bankruptcy proceedings.

The catch is that both the Senate and White House plans, like the House Republican one, would include a financial board to oversee (read: dictate) economic policy. Despite proclamations that the board would function in merely an advisory role, there is no doubt that in practice they would serve the same purpose as all unaccountable technocrats: implementing structural adjustment and slashing social spending, policies that populations would never submit to willingly through their own freely elected representatives.

Dayen laments that an oversight board “effectively moves the capital of Puerto Rico from San Juan to Washington. The discussion draft proposes a war on self-government.”

It’s unclear whether Dayen is entirely ignorant of Puerto Rico’s history, or whether he is cynically implying that U.S. control over Puerto Rico for more than a century has actually been based on a disinterested desire to help people while denying them the democratic rights it grants to citizens in the incorporated states.

Regardless of which U.S. government “solution” to Puerto Rico’s financial crisis is carried out, Puerto Ricans will not be losing any sovereignty over affairs they previously controlled on their own. Since the invasion of 1898, the United States has claimed sovereignty over the island. The people of Puerto Rico are unable to make foreign policy, enter into trade agreements, control their borders, issue tariffs, or provide universal public health care.

Though Puerto Rico’s political structure was modified in 1952 with the passage of a new Constitution which created a nominal Commonwealth, the island’s political status remained equivalent to what it had been for the previous half century: a colony of the United States without self-determination.

Puerto Ricans cannot vote for President of the United States, nor elect their own representatives to Congress. (They do elect a Resident Commissioner, but the position is non-voting.) They are unable to change their political status. That right is reserved for the U.S. Congress. It is a political arrangement without even the pretension of consent of the governed.

The U.S. courts already play the same role that an oversight board would play in dictate political and economic policy. Their decisions for the island are based on a legal system developed and maintained without any input from the Puerto Rican people themselves or regard for their interests. Puerto Rico’s political system and its laws must fit within the framework of the U.S. Constitution, which they have no ability to amend.

Recently the Puerto Rican government implemented a “Walmart tax” on big-box retailers. The special tax would apply to businesses with revenue of more than $2.75 billion. Hugely profitable foreign companies, who send most of their earnings to investors on the mainland, would thereby face a greater responsibility for contributing to the territory’s coffers. This would in turn alleviate the financial burden on working people and local businesses in Puerto Rico.

But a judge in the United States District Court in Puerto Rico struck down the tax last week as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The clause prohibits states from giving advantages to their own businesses at the expense of those located in other states. Puerto Rico, which is not even a state, must give corporations like Walmart the same unfettered access to its domestic markets as companies owned and operated by locals.

As I have written before, this directly subverts Puerto Rico’s self-sufficiency. Several years ago, a federal judge sided with milk processors and blocked Puerto Rico from enforcing regulations that allowed locally produced milk to be directed to a state-run company to produce dairy products like yogurt, cheese, and UHT milk, and determined how to divide up the proceeds of milk sales between producers and distributors. The decision struck a blow against the viability of Puerto Rico’s dairy industry, one of the only successful industries producing foodstuffs locally for the population.

While restructuring Puerto Rico’s debt is imperative and would help temporarily alleviate the humanitarian and economic crisis that has been well underway for a decade, it would be a band-aid that would not even address the fundamental issue at its root. Proposals to deal with Puerto Rico’s debt problem without ending colonialism are distractions from the U.S. government’s ongoing exploitation and subjugation of the Puerto Rican people.

Matt Peppe writes the Just the Facts blog. He can be reached on Facebook and Twitter or by email at [email protected].

CIA Bombs in School Buses: Is there a Nexus Between “Intelligence Training” and Terrorist Attacks on the American Homeland?

By Rev. Richard Skaff, April 03 2016

Par Andre Damon, 02 avril 2016

Ce jeudi, les dirigeants des États-Unis, la Chine, la Grande-Bretagne, la France, l’Italie, l’Inde et plus de cinquante autres pays se réunissent à Washington pour un sommet biennal sur la sécurité nucléaire. Le sommet sera consacré à des déclarations d’unité et de collaboration internationale totalement creuses face à une récente vague d’attaques terroristes en Europe.

Oh, How primitive we are still!

Around 1600, when Europeans began to use the methods of learning that are now called scientific, Galilleo peered at the moon. In 1969, a man walked on the moon. In fewer than 400 years, people went from peering at the moon to walking on it.

Scientific knowledge works. Yet beliefs, claims that are not and often can never be known, have caused human beings to kill each other in wars at least since the first city states were organized around 4,000 BCE.

The people who lived in these states believed that their cities were protected by patron deities and when the cities went to war, the war was thought of as fought for or even by the deities themselves. Ever since, war has always had a religious aspect. Armies have always gone into battle believing god was on their side, even when two peoples who claimed to believe in the same god fought each other. The absurdity of that seems to have always eluded people. It is noteworthy that even today the leaders of nations ask their patron deities to bless their countries.

The American president, for instance, always asks god to bless America, never the American people. Gods, it seems, only protect states, not their peoples who are decimated in wars for the sake of their nations. Remember John F. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Throughout human history, people, like soldier ants, have always existed to preserve the state rather than visa versa. So here we are, seven millennia since the founding of city states, still acting just like the pagans of Mesopotamia. For seven millennia of belief guided human history, the progress of human nature has stood still!

I have written previously that mankind is creedal rather than rational an that ideology (creed, dogma, belief) is a lie that will not die. Religious beliefs certainly exhibit those characteristics. The primitive nature of religion is also evident. In the Ancient World, religious rites were practices to propitiate gods. Today they are used to dispatch dead souls to their rightful places in eternity. The funerals of Antonin Scalia and Nancy Reagan are examples of rites that date at least as far back as the Roman Empire. It is clear that the conventional notion is that religious belief is a “higher” virtue. Those with it are considered to be better than those without it. This notion persists despite the large number of logical absurdities that have been identified in religious doctrines and other creeds. Remember Tertullian’s Credo quia absurdum—”I believe because it is absurd.”

Despite this history, people seem to be addicted to creeds. In the United States of America, whose Constitution prohibits the Congress from adopting a state religion, officials still commonly speak the language of belief—”In God we trust,” “one nation under God,” and “God bless America.” Yet religious Americans worship multiple gods. Freedom of religion is a constitutional right. So the word ‘god’ in these expressions has no definitive denotation. The God of the New Testament is incompatible with the God of the Torah. Americans seem oblivious to the fact that a sentence containing a substantive with no denotation is utterly meaningless, and any connotation it possesses is entirely subjective.

The French, during the Revolution of 1789, sought to destroy the Catholic religion specifically and religion in general. But in 1801, Napoleon signed an agreement with Pope Pius VII marking an end to the attempt. Similarly, during the First World War. Orthodox Russian prelates carried holy icons through the trenches before battles begging God to bring victory in coming battles only to see the Russian army annihilated instead. So when the Russian Revolution occurred in 1917, the newly created Union of Soviet Socialist Republics banned religion and locked the doors to all churches. Yet in 1991, when the USSR was transformed into the Russian Federation, the church doors were unlocked and the Russian people flocked to churches to resume their faith in the Orthodox Church. Similar attempts to promote the eradication of religious belief are going on in China with little success. What accounts for this persistence of creedology?

In fact, this persistence is so strong that it is commonly considered to be virtuous. The admonition, “Stand up for your knowledge” is never heard, but “Stand up for your beliefs” is common. Yet if beliefs are claims that are not known to be true or cannot ever be known to be true, the admonition advises people to maintain and flaunt their ignorance. Creedology is an attribute of utter stupidity. Still creeds seems to be what human beings live by.

Any nation’s “way of life” is defined by its creeds—religious, political, economic, social, educational. No one has ever shown that any of these creeds is better than the others. As a matter of fact, creedology is such a dominant trait of human beings that even science has become a creed. Not only does science consist of a well defined group of methods of learning, it also conveys the belief that those methods will eventually solve all of mankind’s problems, a belief entirely like the Christian belief in the Second Coming. But there is not one iota of evidence to support this belief. Instead of science making mankind less creedal, creedalism has made science into just another creed. Science has become nothing but a handmaiden of belief. Scientists are now as much soldiers in ideological wars as seekers of knowledge. This kind of science will never make it possible for human beings to live in harmony with nature or live together in peace. Unless human beings can be weaned off of this attachment to belief, Homo Sapiens is a doomed species.

But such a weaning might not be possible. The human attachment to belief might be instinctive. In fact, considering the attachment to belief as instinctive might be the only way to explain the human attachment to creeds for over seven millennia, which makes all of the horrible deeds of people to be the result of a generic trait rather than personal faults.

Is this stupidity the essence of the human condition? It is if standing up for beliefs is a virtue rather than a vice. Standing up for what is known to be true is the better practice.

People do not wage war over what mankind knows; they wage war over what they merely believe and that is doubly dumb.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

Washington (AFP) – reported on April 1, 2016 that a Virginia school bus transporting students to and from classes this week had explosives under the hood after the CIA accidentally left them following a training exercise, the intelligence agency said.¹

Furthermore, the intelligence agency declared in a statement on Thursday 03/31/16 that

“last week, a CIA K-9 unit conducted a routine training exercise with law enforcement officials in Loudoun County, VA.”

Apparently, “during the exercise, explosive training material was inadvertently left by the CIA K-9 unit in one of the buses used in the exercise.” Moreover, “the Loudoun County sheriff’s office said in a statement that the bus was used Monday and Tuesday to transport high school and elementary students, who were in no danger because the explosive materials were “incredibly stable.”¹

In addition, The CIA announced that it had taken “immediate steps to strengthen inventory and control procedures” in the training program and would conduct a “thorough and independent” review of the incident.

Seemingly, the agency placed the explosive materials inside the engine compartment while training explosives-detecting dogs during spring break, the CIA said. However, the sheriff’s office said that some of the material “appears to have been dislodged… and fell into the engine compartment.”

According to AFP, a technician conducting routine maintenance on the bus found the explosives on Wednesday 03/30/16. As a result, the sheriff’s office proclaimed that the CIA has suspended its program until it completes its review.¹

Analysis

The astute observer of this incident can’t help but worry that bombs were left in school buses as children were transported to and from school. This story should also make the concerned citizen wonder how can the most sophisticated, best financed, and supremely trained agency in the world commit such an enormous error that could’ve killed tens of children and adults.

How can an agency that specializes in covert ops, destabilizing of states, as well as detecting and preventing alleged terror plots, be so careless and negligent?

What would’ve happened if these explosives detonated and caused massive destruction and death?

Would the intelligence agency and the sheriff’s department have taken the blame, or the government would have declared a state of emergency in Virginia claiming a terrorist attack by ISIS militants and its supporters?

We should all ask ourselves these critical questions.

Reference:

1. AFP (April 1, 2016). CIA Leaves explosives on school bus after training exercise.

Encirclement of Russia: the war in Ngorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan: April 3, 2016: There have been military clashes between the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan since the night of Friday to Saturday. Many deaths are reported. 

The strong fighting is reported between Martakert and Hadrut on the front line. The Armenian army based in Nagorno-Karabakh, mainly populated by Armenians,** reportedly shot down two drones, tanks and two helicopters according to sources of the Armenian news agency. Baku announced that the Armenian army has lost a number of soldiers.

Plan U.S.A.?

Is it because Armenia refused to become a NATO base? According to the NATO website*** dated March 10, 2016 Armenia would be a basis for the establishment of partnerships. NATO would, therefore, try to support Armenia in its intent to keep Nagorno-Karabakh and to infiltrate the lines of Russian diplomacy?

NATO has, in any case, the desire to open a new front against Russia, since, according Azernews article dated as of March 10, 2016, as on the NATO website, we clearly see NATO’s attempts to obtain agreements with Armenia and Azerbaijan to encircle Russia. Azerbaijan, which has been trying for years to distance itself from Russia has finally agreed to become the NATO base against Armenia since 10 March 2016. Azerbaijan, as an ally to Turkey including on the Armenian genocide issue and as a NATO partner, would attack Armenia to injure an ally to Russia, which refused to support NATO%?

In any case, the war between NATO and Russia is resuming in Karabakh while NATO threatens Russia in Ukraine and in the Baltic countries. Since 2014 strong NATO troop movements have been observed in Central Europe. Night-time movements of NATO military convoys have been seen by people in Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Poland.

In 2017 NATO must consolidate its troops in countries of the European Union border with Russia. With new fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh the threat of a Third World War is getting closer and NATO’s intent to encircle Russia is confirmed. The Russian President, as ever, calls for ceasefire!

 Translated from French by Tom Winter, in Novorossia Today

Translator’s note: in 1922 Stalin, as Commissar of Nationalities, assigned Ngorno-Karabakh on the west of Armenia to the Azerbaijan SSR, and also Nakhichevan from the east side of Armenia. Today, there are no Armenians in Nakhichevan. The struggle parallels that over Crimea: In each case, the shibboleth of “Territorial Integrity” is the cover for the western world’s ignoring self-determination. In each case, “territorial integrity” sanctifies the whim of one man: Krushchev ‘voting’ for all of Crimea, and Stalin ‘voting’ for all of Karabakh.

P.S. When I was last in Armenia, July 2010, maps were popular that included Karabakh as part of Armenia.

** Why the author has to say the Armenian Army is mainly staffed by Armenians is somewhere between odd and interesting.

***NATO-Armenia

“When you can give AK-47s to a group of guys and they slaughter a group of people on the streets of Paris, why would you really care about something like transporting radiological material?” – Andrei Baklitsky, Sputnik, Mar 31, 2016

Nuclear summits are the great talk shops of international diplomacy, the brain child of President Barack Obama after his nuclear weapons free aspirations were voiced in Prague. They tend to be characterised by hyperbole and fantasy. Most importantly, they tend to make the nuclear club a matter of necessity while always advertising the point that some states can have options while others cannot.

Each of these summits tends to come with its assortment of terrors as well, real or imagined.  The dirty bomb is always the demon star of the show, the hypothetical that has kept experts and tenured chatterers busy in astrological prediction for years. No such bomb has ever materialised, and the prospects of ever creating one are small.

As John Mueller observed in Atomic Obsession (2009), such radiological weapons, which are supposedly “the poor man’s nuclear weapon” of choice, are actually “incapable of inflicting much immediate damage at all.”  Dispersal of such matter effectively would be nigh impossible to make them worthwhile.  They constitute, not so much weapons of mass destruction as those of mass disruption.

The threat of an event of singular terror, used as policy motif, is a form of self-entitlement.  States which are part of the nuclear club can then direct their resources to making sure that others do not acquire a nuclear option.  Challengers can be contained, if not eliminated. This always enables the retention of nuclear weapons in some number.

An international system dedicated to controlling the trafficking and trade of radioactive or fissile material is constantly hyped for reasons of seriousness and worth.  These are objects of mass distraction, but they form the subject of each nuclear summit.

Obama has played the same tune as his predecessors: worry about the unknown agent of insanity, the mad, blood lusting professor, the suicidal freak show keen to spread destruction. Never mind the normalised madness that characterises the very desire to have such weapons to begin with.  The sanity of those in the club, in other words, is never questioned, let alone probed. It is merely assumed.

“The danger of a terrorist group obtaining and using a nuclear weapon is one of the great threats to global security,” he claimed in convening the meeting of world leaders in Washington on Friday.

The point for Obama is to give the impression that the world is somehow safer, if indeed it was ever more or less unsafe.  (Such terms of reference are always irrelevant considerations; they cannot be measured or evaluated, only contemplated.)  Since the first such summit was convened six years ago, the US president claimed that steps had been taken to reduce the likelihood of a nuclear terrorist attack through “concrete, tangible steps”.

Now the new terrorist boys on the block, who go by the various stylised versions of ISIS, ISIL and Islamic State, have captured the imagination of the nuclear doomsdayers.  This, despite remaining essentially conventional in their methods of killing.  “There is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material,” warned Obama, “they most certainly would use it to kill as many innocent people as possible.”[1]

False comparisons are offered.  If a terrorist group can use chemical weapons, then it is equivalent that they would be able to use nuclear weapons.  Such oft made relativising positions are not useful at all, suggesting parity between groups that merely serves to cloud the issue.

Such a fear necessitates acts that would make sure that such material “doesn’t fall into the wrong hands in the first place,” which is another way of suggesting what the right hands are to begin with.

Not all in the nuclear country club wished to participate at these talks.  Others were also excluded, demonstrating the tenuous link between the moral aspiration of securing nuclear material on the one hand, and the realities that afflict the global security environment.  Having such weapons is ultimately ideological.

According to Andrei Baklitsky of the Moscow-based PRI Centre, the Russian absence was prompted by the exclusion of Moscow’s prominent allies.  Being hosted by the United States, it became something of a selective round table. “With this arbitrary approach, there was always this feeling that maybe [the summit] should be hosted someplace where everybody could participate and engage.”[2]

The other terror of concern was North Korea, which constituted an odd point of discussion given the tenor of the talks.  “The Nuclear Security Summit 2016,” goes the site’s description, “will continue to provide a forum for leaders to engage with each other and reinforce our commitment at the highest levels to securing nuclear materials.”[3]

As if anticipating this exact point, the regime in Pyongyang on Saturday tested what was said to be a new anti-aircraft weapons system.  Leader Kim Jong-un similarly taunted those at the talks, specifically dismissing the US-Japan-South Korea summit as “nonsensical”.  Furthermore, the West’s broad approach against the North Korean nuclear program was in violation of rights to “legitimate access to nuclear weapons.”[4]

After such summits, and a bit of back slapping, the only genuine conclusion to reach is that states, rather than groups, remain the greatest threats to international security. The idea of the rational statesman is as much a fiction as the nuclear armed non-state agent keen on perpetrating an existential holocaust.

Notes:

Azerbaijan launched a full-blown attack on multiple positions of the Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh, NKR) contact line overnight on April 1-2. The Azerbaijani army employed tanks, military helicopters, drones, and various caliber weapons in an assault targeting the Line of Contact on the southern, southeastern, and northeastern fronts. The NKR Defense Army retaliated, and, according to the NKR Defense Ministry Twitter page, brought down two helicopters and two drones, and destroyed three tanks. There are multiple casualties on both sides. Civilians have also been targeted. According to reports, 12-year-old Vaghinag Grigoryan was killed in the Marduni region, while two other children were wounded, from a Grad BM-21 multiple rocket launcher attack.

During an emergency meeting of Armenia’s National Security Council held on the evening of April 2, Armenia’s President Serge Sarkisian announced that as a result of the attacks, the Armenian side suffered 18 casualties, while 35 people were injured. Azerbaijan’s losses—including air force, personnel, and armored vehicles—were “significant,” he added, according to PanArmenian. Azerbaijan has reported 12 combatant casualties, although the NKR Defense Ministry says the Azerbaijani side has 200 losses.

Azerbaijan launched a full-blown attack on multiple positions of the Nagorno-Karabagh contact line overnight on April 1-2.

A number of Armenian soldiers wounded in the attack are being flown to Yerevan for medical treatment, according to PanArmenian.net. Meanwhile NKR President’s spokesperson Davit Babayan told Civilnet that the number of Azerbaijani casualties are in the dozens, if not hundreds. Babayan told Tert.am that the situation is now relatively calm following the overnight attacks.

According to reports, Sarkisian was briefed on the attack midair, on his way to Yerevan from Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, NKR Prime Minister Arayik Harutyunyan immediately returned to Artsakh from Yerevan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for an immediate ceasefire. Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has reached out to his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts—Seyran Ohanyan and Zakir Hasanov—to quell the situation.

Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Executive Director Aram Hamparian called for immediate Obama Administration action to stop Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s latest attacks against Nagorno-Karabagh—the worst since the ceasefire established in 1994.

The attack comes after the conclusion of the 4th Nuclear Security Summit in Washington D.C.; participants to the summit included Armenian President Serge Sarkisian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

On the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit, Aliyev met with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. According to the Azerbaijani president’s official website, “[Biden] said the USA resolutely supported Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, adding that this was of great importance for the United States.”

The site of the downed Azerbaijani helicopter (Photo: Artsakh Press)

The ANCA strongly criticized Biden’s meeting with Aliyev. “Vice President Biden, in personally meeting Azerbaijani President Aliyev in this manner—without any public challenge to his escalating regional aggression and worsening domestic repression—openly emboldened his belligerence while actively undermining American efforts to keep the peace and reach a negotiated settlement,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.

The ANCA also criticized Secretary of State John Kerry for failing to mention concerns regarding Azerbaijan’s track record of ceasefire—as well as domestic human rights—violations to Aliyev. “Secretary Kerry in his public remarks with President Aliyev, regretfully, made no mention at all of any American concerns regarding President Aliyev’s threats and acts of violence or his crackdown on domestic dissent. There has, as well, been no mention, in the public record, of the life-saving Royce-Engel peace proposals that the State Department has publicly supported.”

“The Obama Administration’s failure, in Washington, to confront Azerbaijan’s aggression gave Aliyev the green light to launch these attacks on Karabagh,” said Hamparian.  “Immediate action must be taken by the Obama Administration to stop President Aliyev’s latest attacks, along with concrete steps to ensure a lasting peace in the region which respects the right to self-determination and freedom for the people of Nagorno Karabagh.”

Meanwhile the Co-Chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group—Ambassadors Igor Popov of Russia, James Warlick of the U.S., and Pierre Andrieu of France—issued a statement expressing “grave concern” over the ceasefire violations. “We strongly condemn the use of force and regret the senseless loss of life, including civilians,” read the statement. “The Co-Chairs call upon the sides to stop shooting and take all necessary measures to stabilize the situation on the ground. They reiterate that there is no alternative to a peaceful negotiated solution of the conflict and that war is not an option.”

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s (ARF) Supreme Body in Armenia also issued a statement condemning the attack, and declaring that the ARF stands beside NKR’s and Armenia’s governments to safeguard the security of both governments and their populations, reported Aztag Daily. The ARF also called upon all Armenian organizations and the public to respond to Azerbaijan’s aggression in a unified manner and impose peace on the aggressor.

The ANCA has urged the public to take action by sending a webmail to President Obama, Congress, and the OSCE Karabagh negotiators urging them to take immediate action to stop Baku’s latest attacks. To take action, click here.

On October 7th, 2012, after hearing of his victory as the nation‘s candidate with 56 percent of the vote, President Hugo Chávez Frias announced from a balcony in his hometown that a new cycle was beginning the very next day, October 8th.

Only a few days later, on October 20th, he headed the first meeting calling together the ministers of this new cycle, the Comandante called for a series of critiques and self-criticisms in order to expand efficiency, strengthen communal power, and further develop the National System of Public Media, among other themes regarding the construction of socialism.

This document synthesizes his words, as a tool for a debate in which we should all participate.

The New Cycle of the Transition

We are speaking, above all, on the theme of economics, we are looking over papers, documents, plans, projects, we are closing one cycle and opening up a new cycle after the Bolivarian victory on October 7th, which has broadened the political horizon as well as bringing us a popular victory, the Bolivarian victory, which guarantees our nation‘s stability.

I was reading somewhere that Venezuelan bonds have shot up. The world knows, PDVSA [Petroleum of Venezuela] now appears to be the second largest company among Latin America’s top 500, making it one of the largest in the world, a solid position, and Venezuela continues to occupy a place that it deserves. And this is only possible, and it will only be possible to continue in this direction, to open these horizons, through these steps, using these roads, in the construction of socialism.

Here I have a [book written by] István Mészáros, chapter XIX, called “The Communal system and the Law of Value.”1 There is a sentence that I underlined a while ago, I am going to read it to you, ministers and vice president, speaking of the economy, of economic development, speaking of the social impulses of the revolution: “The yardstick,” says Mészáros, “of socialist achievements is the extent to which the adopted measures and policies actively contribute to the constitution and deep-rooted consolidation of a substantively democratic…mode of overall social control and self-management.”

Therefore we arrive at the issue of democracy. Socialism is in its essence truly democratic, while, on the other hand, there is capitalism: quintessentially anti-democratic and exclusive, the imposition of capital by the capitalist elite. But socialism is none of these things, socialism liberates; socialism is democracy and democracy is socialism, in politics, the social sphere, and in economics.

Giordani also says this, in his book The Venezuelan Transition to Socialism, by our dear minister, friend and teacher, Jorge Giordani.2 Jorge speaks about some of the decisive factors in the transition: one of them is the transformation of the country’s economic base in order to make it fully and fundamentally democratic, because the economic base of a capitalist country is not democratic, it is anti-democratic, it is exclusive. That is how it generates great wealth for a minority, for the elite, the bourgeoisie, and for the big monopolies, this also how it generates poverty and squalor for the vast majority of the population.

The problem is an economic one, it is impossible to separate the social from the economic, I always give water as an example, H2O, hydrogen and oxygen, the economic and the social.

Here is the book: The Venezuelan Transition to Socialism, the conditions which guide the passage, that is to say, the transition. “When one is dealing with revolution or a productive transformation,” Giordani says, “as far as the productive transformation is bound to an accumulative model, it will be defined by five aspects:”

These are the elements which help to guide the transformation and is what we are going to be talking about today: the economy and how right now, with this new cycle starting, we must become more efficient in the revolutionary construction of a new political, economic, social, and cultural model.

This effort that we have undertaken and that we continue to take on, it is a serious one, and it must be taken even more seriously, that is what Jorge is saying: we must modify the productive base of the country, in a way that assures an economic democracy. For example, here in the Miranda Airbase, in La Carlota, a pole of scientific-technological development is taking form, and this is one of the strategic points of this theme of which we have been speaking, science and technology, independence, it is all related.

Let us recall the five major historic objectives of the Program for the Homeland that we will now begin to apply.

It is about the steps that we have taken, which is why we speak of transition, of stages. None of this existed in Venezuela and none of this would exist in Venezuela if capitalism was imposed upon us, if we converted once again into the colony that we once were. This is why the political revolution comes before the economic one. It must always be this way: first the political revolution, political liberation and then the economic revolution. We must maintain political liberation and from that point the political battle is a permanent one, the cultural battle, the social battle.

The Socialist Democracy of the 21st Century 

We are touching on the key points of this project, if we do not understand these points well enough yet decide to move forward we can do good things, however we will not be doing what is precisely necessary to leave, in a manner that is both progressive and firm, the model of capitalist exploitation behind us in order to create a new model: a socialism that is Venezuelan, Bolivarian, and of the XXI century.

It is a new cycle of the transition; the construction of socialism, of our model. We should territorialize the models. I can imagine, for example, a sector of Sarria, the Calle Real de Sarria, the buildings and the bakery, the PDVAL [Venezuelan Production and Distribution of Food] and the Farmapatria [State-run pharmacy] are new elements, like implants. Now colleagues, comrades, if this element did not form part of a systematic plan, of something new, like a network, this would be A and this would be B, this would be C, D, E, etc., and a network that works like a gigantic spiders web covering the new territory, if it didn’t work this way it would all be doomed to fail; it would be absorbed by the old system, which would swallow it up, because capitalism is an enormous amoeba, it is a monster.

I don’t say this to make you feel defeated or daunted; quite the opposite, it is so we can gather our strength when faced with the complexity of the challenge. Let us remember what happened in the Soviet Union: in the Soviet Union there was never democracy, there wasn’t socialism, it was diverted and the leaders did not realize it, or if they did realize it they were incapable of changing things and it became a beaten empire. The fault does not lie solely with Soviet Union, the blame also lies with all of the external aggressions, economic sabotage, biological and bacterial wars, bombings and explosions in the Soviet oil industry, as well as the contradictions, the divisions, the culture.

That is why the socialism of the XXI century, which has resurfaced here as if from the dead, is something new; it has to be truly new, and one of the things that is fundamentally new in our model is the democratic character, a new democratic hegemony which obliges us not to impose, but rather to convince, and that is where we are coming from: The subject of the media, communications, of our arguments, so that the whole country is aware of what we are presenting today; of how we can achieve it, of how we can make it happen.

A change in culture. An impact on a cultural level is vital for the revolutionary process and for the construction of a XXI century socialist democracy in Venezuela.

A Self-Criticism Which Clarifies

Now the self-criticism; in many occasions I have insisted on this, I read and read, and this is very nice and well done, I don’t doubt it, but where is the commune? Maybe the commune is only for the Ministry of the Communes? I have thought about this often, I am going to have to eliminate the Ministry of the Communes. Why? Because many people think that this is the Ministry that deals with the communes.

This is a very serious error that we are committing. We will not comment on it any further. We will revise it. I have signed a decree creating something that is a superior entity to the communes. Where is this entity? It has not served its function.

Nicolás, I entrust you with this task as I would entrust my life to you: the communes, the rule of law, and the justice system.3 There is already a Law of the Communes, of communal economy. Therefore, how will we make it happen…?

I asked the same question in Ciudad Caribia: Where is the commune, no, not the commune, but the communes? Where will we create the communes, the new ones? And in Ciudad Belén, we continue to create housing, but we do not see communes anywhere, not even the spirit of the commune, which at this point is much more important than the commune itself: the cultural commune. Do you understand? Will I continue to preach in the wilderness for things like this? All of us here are a part of this, all of us, from me, the President of the Republic; here in Miraflores there should already be a commune. We all are a part of this; it is part of the soul of this project.

Self-criticism is used to clarify, not to speak empty words, as if we were to throw our criticisms into a void. It is used so we can act now, ladies and gentlemen, Ministers, the communes dictate that we search out the Law of the Communes, that we read it, and study it. Many people, I am sure, and I am not necessarily speaking about those of you here, haven’t read it, because it is believed that it isn’t important to us. Many people haven’t even read the Law of Communal Economy because they believe No, it doesn’t have anything to do with me.

You may ask, which are these so-called communes under construction? I am sure that the communes do not exist in the majority of these projects, be they small, medium, or large, that we are developing: from housing, creating new cities and centers of scientific and agricultural development, like in the Plains of Maracaibo, in the municipality of Mara, even in the state of Sucre, where the large sardine processing plant that we recently opened is located, a huge plant, even in the glass businesses that we expropriated, la Faja de Orinoco [the Orinoco Belt], the communes do not exist. Where will we search for them, on the moon? Or on Jupiter?

Friends, permit me to be as tough as I can be, and as I should be, regarding the new self-criticism on this theme. Rafael Ramírez, for example, should already have around 20 communes in the PDVSA, in the Faja de Orinoco, but the PDVSA doesn’t believe that they should have anything to do with them. The problem is a cultural one, friends. And I mention PDVSA in full recognition of this great industry.

The communes. Once I actually had Carmen Meléndez make, I don’t remember how many, copies of Mao Zedong’s writings on communes from his little red book, now I want to make 30 more copies to give, once again, to each minister. It seems as if no one ever read them since I never even received one page of commentary regarding them.

Self-criticism: either independence or nothing, either the commune or nothing. Or what exactly is it that we are doing here? This is where we need the Mission of Culture, to concentrate its fire, like artillery.

The micro-missions, the spirit of the micro-missions is to concentrate that fire. Someone tell me, how many Ministers, you my dear friends, have gone to sleep in a neighborhood for three days; tell me who has done so. I can’t set the example, as much as I would like to, I’m sorry but I can’t, but you could go there, to Caño Cuibarro to see what is happening with the Cuiba Indian’s project, and you could stay there three days, or scatter yourselves around Sarría. A minister and a vice-minister could be there, walking around, living there for a few days or they could go house to house, this doesn’t only have to take place during an electoral campaign, going street corner to street corner. Haven’t you seen the amount of paper that I am bombarded with, that fall in my truck everywhere I go? Now they throw the paper with rocks, so that it reaches me, or with an arrow, once there was an arrow with a piece of paper on the tip: “Chávez help me…” and on and on.

So, the commune, popular power, does not come from Miraflores nor does it come from office of the Ministry. This is not where the problem will be solved.

We do not believe that because we are going to open the Cemento Cerro Azul factory or the industrial manufacturing equipment factory in Guanare, or the computer factory, or the satellite factory, or this factory or the other that we have just finished, no; nor because we have nationalized the cement industry….

Be careful, if we are unable to realize this, we are done for, and not only are we done for, but we will be the ruin of this project. Those of us here, those present, face a historical responsibility. Each time you go to the bathroom, or wherever there is a mirror, look at yourselves in the face, look yourselves in your eyes. I will be the first to do it.

Socialism Cannot Be Made By Decree

Factories constructed with capitalist ends carry the indelible mark of their “operating system,” the division of the social hierarchies of work from which they were built. A productive system which aims to activate the full participation of the associated producers, the workers, requires a multiplicity of “parallel” producers, who are coordinated in a suitable way, as if in a corresponding operating system that is radically different to the centrally operated alternative of the capitalist driven economy or its well-known post-capitalist varieties which are presented deceitfully as “planning.”

How many hours of study, of reading, of reflection, do we dedicate ourselves to each day? It is necessary, I would say, above all of our other obligations, to dedicate ourselves many hours a day because we are talking about elements that are vital for this project. Sometimes we think that everything should be controlled from Caracas. No! It is about creating, as Mészáros says, a coordinated combination of parallel systems and from there the regionalization, the initiative districts. But we still haven’t created a single one, and we have the law, we have our decree, but it was just a decree, and inside the initiative districts are the communes.

Occasionally we can fall into the illusion that by calling something a certain name, I am against calling everything “socialist,” socialist stadium, socialist avenue, what a socialist avenue, kid! This is suspicious. Somebody over there wanted to call an avenue “socialist,” socialist bakery, socialist Miraflores. This is suspect because one could be led to believe that okay, it’s done, we called it socialist, we’re all done; change the name and that’s it.

It’s like the joke of the capybara and the Indians. A Spanish priest arrives, this was years ago, during holy week, traveling along the plains through Indian lands so he comes to an indigenous town and the Indians are there, dancing and everything, they have their ways of celebrating, their own gods, their customs, their food; so the priest tells them, “You can’t eat pork during holy week. On Holy Thursday you have to eat fish or capybara”. Because there was a big fat pig there and the priest sensed what was waiting for him, so he asks: “Do you understand?” “Yes we understand”. “You can’t eat pork or meat from livestock,” The priest, before leaving, brings them to the river to baptize them and he asks: “What are your names?” The Indian was named Caribay. “No, no, what is this Caribay? Your name is Juana. We must give people Christian names”.

“And you what is your name? Another Indian name, Guaicaipuro. “No, what is this give me a break Guaicaipuro, your name will be Nicolás.” He left and when he came back on Holy Thursday, he saw that the Indians were dancing and roasting a pig: “How is it possible that you are going to eat this pig? I told you that you cannot eat pork” So one of the Cacique [Indians] says: “No, we solved the problem. We baptized the pig and named it capybara.”

They changed its name, they brought it to the river, they put it into the water, “Pig, your name is capybara,” and they ate the pig.

This is how we are with socialism: “You are called socialism, kid,” but you continue being a pig deep down. I make these remarks, a product of my reflections, after some study and a comparison with reality.

We Must Implant Social Prosperity With The Spirit of Socialism 

Look at this view. This is the Mene Grande plant. Another plant could fit here. It must be seen what can be produced in the surrounding land, Satellite Miranda, it seemed useless, just jungle and snakes. Each factory that we create should be able to start producing the day it is opened, guava in this case, as an example; does this make sense? The plant should be on land that is unproductive, probably national land, a thousand hectares of social property that can coexist with small property.

We have to associate ourselves with the small producers, but we must implant social property with the spirit of socialism, all down the line, from agricultural work, where mangoes are grown, guava, strawberries, to the systems of distribution and consumption of the local producers.

We have done all of this in the interests of the transition; however we should not lose sight, friends, of the core part of this project: we mustn’t continue opening factories that are like an island, surrounded by the sea of capitalism, because the sea will swallow it up.

The same thing happens with housing. Where are the productive zones in Ciudad Caribia? We have created plenty of housing there, but I don’t see the industrial zone. And I remember having said years ago, when we started there, we went there and we walked around: That is where El Junquito is, the sea is there, my God the night is nice and cool, great for tourism, there should already be some lodgings there.

Simón Bolívar said: “What we want will not come to us through divine intervention”. There should already be a system of hotels there, restaurants with a view of the sea. There is a magic mountain there that I call the Wall, it is the Path of the Indians. What is it that Cipriano Castro said? “It is the insolent mark of the foreigner, the insolent mark of the Spanish invader, that they could never pass through this path!” They never made it through this road.

I believe that you can even find human remains there, or that there were remains of indigenous craftwork, that is why it is called the Path of the Indians, and the other one: the Path of the Spaniards, but this was Guaicaipuro’s path, not a single Spaniard passed through there, or we can say, in respect for modern day Spain, not a single imperialist, not a single imperialist passed through.

These were the paths of Guaicaipuro, the road of heaven, it is made up of seven plateaus that can be seen clearly from above. Therefore, remember what we spoke about, look, this is really good for the cultivation of citrus, that is where citrus comes from, flowers, and they even said they would make an area for the industrial zone. Where is the industrial zone? Did you see it? Where are the industries? There aren’t any. This is Ciudad Caribia, I will be happy the day that I see some changes there.

Since the first day that we began to construct housing there we should have begun, I even said, once, Why should we wait until the housing is built, since it is a longer process? We are working on the transport and the roadways. What we are doing in Ciudad Caribia is a colossal undertaking, but for us to wait until it is all finished before we begin to plant the trees, the nurseries for the citrus fruits, flowers, urban agriculture, tubers.

Carayaca is near there, once we walked around and ended up in Carayaca, over there you arrive at the Naval School, behind it, in the patio, but as far as I know there isn’t even a hectare still there, right?

Once when I wasn’t in a big hurry I went there, via the Caracas-La Guaira highway, with entrances and roads that go both places. Go there so you can see it.

I went and came across fields of tomatoes, and a man operating a water pump. I asked him: Where do you extract the water? “Over there under the ravine, on your right as you go towards it, there is an opening there,” I saw mango groves, grafted [an agricultural process] with those really big mangoes, and a litter of chickens on a small piece of land, peppers, etc. I asked the man: Who owns all of this? “Mr. so and so.” And how much does he pay you? “Well, sometimes he pays us and sometimes he doesn’t.” See? They are exploited, on these small farms.

Recently we inaugurated the Mamera-El Junquito highway. Tell me if you have seen a farm there, a collective one. Remember it was there three years ago, and the first image that I had was what great potential, what beautiful land, what beautiful hills, what a beautiful climate. We have finished the highway and yet there is not a single productive unit there that we have created ourselves

It was our belief that the highway was the the main objective, will the railroad be our goal? Will the highway be our goal? Or, in terms of the central concept, do we change the entire geographic-human socio-territorial and cultural relation around? A change is clearly necessary, but sometimes we don’t want to understand, not just sometimes, we almost never understand it.

The People are the Objective

You remember, Jacqueline,4 it seems like a hundred years ago you were the president of Hidrocapital and I, watching television, saw that you were in the Cota 905 putting in water pipes, and I called you, I barely knew you, and I said: Doctor, engineer Jacqueline, what project is accompanying the main idea of the pipe? Is it just the pipe? And those shanties alongside the site, does anyone see them? Is the pipe the objective? Is the objective the oil pipeline? Or is it an instrument? Is the highway the objective? I could go on and on.

Once we came with [Ramon] Carrizales, I remember that he was the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, we were coming from Elorza heading towards Mantecal in some helicopters and I saw that they were still working on the highways. I said, lets land there, between Mantecal and Elorza. I asked the workers: Where do you live? Mantecal, Elorza. How many of you have your own house? Almost none of them. What kind of housing do you have? A shack. I remember that I said to Carrizales: hey, it would have been great, or it would be, to make a sketch. I’m going to make another sketch. Look, this is Elorza, Mantecal and the highway, kilometers, thousands and thousands of hectares cross this highway and the result is that the very workers who are working on the highway don’t have housing.

I asked some engineers who were there: How many houses fit in a hectare? Let’s say 10 hectares, 800 houses, simple ones not buildings or anything, so taking advantage of the impulse, as they say, with the machinery used for the highway, millions of Bolivars, technicians, engineers, the very same workers who didn’t have housing could have built a residential area for themselves.

It is not the same thing to simply finish the highway, their work is over, and what awaits those workers? The majority of them end up damaging the highway so that they can return to work on the same highway, that is how they pass their lives, surrounded by land on all sides, they finish their lives without a home and they leave their children homeless. And not just homeless. I would pick up that little town of ten hectares and maybe on this side 100 more hectares, livestock, agriculture. You know the highway from the capitalist point of view, who benefits most from the highway? The large estate owner that can now ship more livestock at lower costs.

Putting your feet on the ground can be beneficial, because maybe, if you have a bicycle, an old one, you can travel by bicycle along the highway in bits and pieces to get to the next town, or you can walk along the highway, this is the benefit that having ones feet on the ground gives to those who are exploited; on the other hand someone who has a small herd of animals, a farm and a few trucks, that person will benefit a million times more than the person with their feet on the ground.

Therefore, in terms of the highway, from a traditional point of view, we are actually making the rift wider, it seems that we often don’t even realize how to find the right formula.

What I am doing is organizing my reflections so that you can make adjustments to what you are working on so that you work together and communicate as a team and we can all give everything the utmost importance, as small as it may be even if it is a little project over there in a small town in Mérida. Not just: “This is a trout farm,” What else is there? As small as it is we must give it this character.

I believe that over these years we have accumulated experience, we have created entities that did not exist before. I believe that we have ended up accumulating resources, investing resources and we will continue to do so. I think we have new codes; I believe we have a new legal framework, starting with the Constitution; we have laws for communal councils, the law for the developmental initiative districts; but those of us responsible for enforcing them haven’t paid any attention to these laws.

I hope to see answers to these reflections and to this public self-criticism that I am making.

Better Efficiency for Better Results

And you, my dear friends, ministers, I don’t want you to work alone, you say I have the power to do what the law requires, in this there is no question. I shouldn’t have to deal with this at all, sometimes there is jealousy, and I have come across ministers or vice-ministers who get jealous.

You are all obliged to keep me informed, not to be quiet. If any of you see that within a certain ministry, or other entity, there is an exclusive clique forming, tell me because I have the power that the constitution gives me, a power that no one else has, I will shoot a missile at them, you can’t do it, but I can, and I will do it with pleasure; believe me, I will do it with pleasure.

It is sad that we stay quiet, so that I am not seen to be shoddy. We are not second grade students, nor are we in elementary school, this is the revolutionary government of Venezuela, ratified by the people two weeks ago, but also highly criticized by the people and for a reason, and these reasons are based on our lack of efficiency.

I read somewhere, and it has been mentioned before, but since there are various ministry councils, various phases, it is possible that some of you haven’t heard me say this, or maybe you understand it better than I do: a team that does not communicate, or a team that communicates badly, will not amount to much.

We need a level of communication, of coordination, a crossing, or an intersection of plans, of diagnosis, of problems, of coordinated action. It’s like a war: What would the infantry do without us, the tanks? And what would the armored division do without the infantry or the marines without the army? What does a male do alone, or a female alone, or night without day, or the root by itself, or the branches on their own? We are nothing without integrating our vision, in our work, in everything, it will be hard but we will persevere.

That is why I ask you, I ask Nicolás who will now step up to take on the role of vice president and the newly arrived Ministers as well as those who are staying, to make a bigger effort, to give a little more. I will do my part as well, I will be involved in everything.

Reinforcing the National Public Media System

Another criticism, and I hope that no one feels bad about it, I won’t name anyone, but recently, as always, I have been watching TV. I watch a few programs on our channel, the channel of all of Venezuela, and it seems as if we will persist in clinging to the past, giving a voice to those who barely have anything to say to the country, airing their videos. Is this the most important thing right now? And the management of the government? Why not have programs with workers? Where we can voice our self-criticisms, we should not be afraid to criticize, nor to self-criticize. We need it, it gives us nourishment.

I imagine, for example, my dear Vanessa in the Copelia factory, speaking at length with experts, dedicating an hour to them. I imagine my dear Mario over there in the Cerro Azul plant, even if it is eleven at night it doesn’t matter, interviewing workers, walking around the factory, looking at the cement, being shown around.

Four hours there on one Saturday isn’t enough. This must be a systematic plan, permanent, continuous, etc.

And not just on channel eight, no, on every channel. I often watch Tves, there are good documentaries, and Vive as well; but I have the impression that each channel does its own thing. We don’t really have, although we like to talk about it, a National Public Media System, we don’t.

Ernesto, convert yourself into the leader of this system.5 Create it, we will create it together, it will include, finally, as a system, connectivity with other systems, or subsystems, community media, popular media. It’s like the story I told you of the bugle and the horse: Local television, local newspapers, international news, Telesur; each one is on its own. This is the truth.

I am sure that this is how it is. There isn’t a National Public Media System, we don’t have one. We will create it; we have the instruments to do so. What we lack is the will and, maybe, obviously, the capacity. If we take the risk we will do it. It is necessary.

Notes

1. István Mészáros,Más alla del capital: Hacia una teoría de la transición (Caracas: Vadell Hermanos, 2001) [the English edition isBeyond Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995)].
2. Jorge Giordani,La transición venezolana al socialism [The Venezuelan Transition to Socialism] (Caracas: Hermanos Vadell, 2001).
3. [Nicolás] Madero, at that time recently named Vice President of the Republic.
4. Jacqueline Farías, Head of Government of the Venezuelan Capital District.
5. Ernesto Villegas, named Minister of Popular Power for Communication and Information.

In spite of the ongoing struggle for dominance in Syria by the various factions, there is in fact less and less to dominate, as the country has largely been destroyed by the four-year war raging there.

It is commonplace to see a picture of a Syrian army soldier flashing a “V” for victory sign after some recent success in battle, while in the background most of buildings in the town or city depicted lie in ruins, and the former occupants of the dwellings are living elsewhere in refugee camps. More than 400,000 Syrians have been killed in the four-year war, at least one million have been wounded, and an estimated twelve million Syrians (half the population) are refugees, some inside and some outside the country.(1) An entire generation of Syrian children are growing up without an education in a landscape laid to waste. In this sense Syria has become hell on Earth. How did this happen?

It might seem that Syria is inherently difficult to unite and govern and is therefore in constant danger of fracturing, composed as it is of a plethora of religious sects and ethnic groups, including Sunnis, Shia, Alawites, Druze, Greek Orthodox Christians, Maronite Catholics, and among ethnic groups primarily Arabs (90%) and Kurds (9%). But somehow Syria ’s pluralistic society experienced 400 years of almost continual peaceful coexistence as part of the Ottoman Empire . Therefore there must be a divisive force today that is consciously or unconsciously driving a wedge into the formerly pluralistic society and causing it to splinter. A brief review of Syrian history since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire may help clarify why Syria is shattered into pieces today.

While it was the allied forces of the United States, England and France that brought an end to the Ottoman Empire when it was defeated along with Germany at the end of World War I, it was primarily Syrian Arabs fighting for an independent Syria that defeated the Turks and took Damascus in 1918. (2) Soon afterwards, elections for a Syrian National Congress were held, with delegates representing all sectors of “Greater Syria,” which at that time included Lebanon and Palestine . Despite earlier British promises to Arab leaders that Arab territories would be free to rule themselves (in trade for Arab participation in the British war effort), Britain and France signed a secret accord called the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 dividing up the Arab world between them as “spheres of influence and control.” In the agreement Syria was given to France , while Britain took control of Palestine , Jordan and Iraq. The newly formed Syrian parliament refused to acknowledge any right claimed by the French to any part of Syrian territory. In 1920 France issued an ultimatum to the Syrians to relinquish control, and then intervened militarily and occupied Damascus in June 1920, dissolving the Syrian Congress.

In the Sykes-Picot Agreement Palestine was split off from Syria as a separate entity, control of that territory soon given to Britain . This was in anticipation of turning Palestine into a new Jewish state, as had been promised in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, even though at that time Palestine was 85% Arab and only 7% Jewish. The leading theory for why the British government made this agreement is “to assist in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.” (3)

Arthur Balfour (for whom the Declaration was named) was a fundamentalist Christian who believed that the Almighty had chosen him to be an instrument of the Divine Will, the purpose of which was to restore the Jews to their ancient homeland, as a precursor to the Second Coming of the Messiah (as prophesied in the bible, see for example Luke 21:24). For the Jews to succeed in this divinely inspired task they had to drive 700,000 Palestinians out of the country. Israel now claims 80% of what had been Palestine , while there are 4,255,000 million Palestinian refugees living in Syria , Lebanon , Jordan and the West Bank . Understandably, this imposition of a Jewish state on Arab land has not been fashionable with the Arabs.

French rule over Syria was unpopular and was resisted. A revolt broke out in 1925 with fierce battles being fought and Damascus being shelled by the French. Syrians declared independence a second time in 1936, but the French refused the proposition. Independence was declared a third time in 1941, when France itself was occupied by Germany . When the French government came back into power in 1945, it attempted to regain its Syrian colony (just as it attempted to regain control of Vietnam and the rest of what it called “French Indochina”), aerially bombing and shelling Damascus, killing 400 people, destroying hundreds of homes and burning the parliament building to the ground. Continuing pressure from Syrian nationalist groups forced the French to evacuate the last of their troops in April 1946 and Syria became an independent state, overseen by a government which had been elected by the Syrian people in 1943.

Direct U.S. involvement in Syria began in 1949, when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) sponsored a coup that overthrew President Shukri al-Quwatli. (4) The overridding U.S. policy objective in Syria at the time was allowing the construction of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, which the democratically elected government of Syria had blocked. The pipeline project was immediately ratified following the successful coup. When U.S. State Department official Dean Hinton became aware of the planning for the coup, he presciently stated:

““I want to go on record as saying that this is the stupidest, most irresponsible action a diplomatic mission like ours could get itself involved in, and that we’ve started a series of these things that will never end.” (5)

After this initial imposition of American will on Syria , instances of U.S. intervention in Syrian affairs are almost too numerous to recount. (6) In 1956 the CIA planned to once again overthrow al-Quwatli, who had been re-elected to the Syrian presidency the previous year. When that plan failed another coup attempt was fomented by the CIA in 1957, followed by a CIA -planned triple assassination of three Syrian government leaders (who had helped foil the 1957 coup attempt), this being part of a larger plan to disrupt the functioning of Syrian society. This effort included supplying weapons to paramilitary groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, leading then (according to the CIA plan) to an invasion of Syria to establish a government compliant with U.S. demands. These well-documented affront to Syrian sovereignty will give the reader an understanding of American efforts to control the policies and the politics of Syria and the Middle East without enumerating a long list of outrages against the Syrian people. It also goes a long way in explaining why the Syrian government evolved from democratic beginnings to a controlling authoritarian state; there were constant pressures from abroad to destroy it.

A series of papers written by Israeli and American policy think tanks in the 1980s and 1990s advised that the best way to enhance the security of Israel would be to break up the Arab world into statelets. The initial division of the Middle East under Sykes-Picot was devised to deflect Arab unity. In 1920 the French created the new state of Lebanon out of the coastline of Syria ; in 1922 Palestine was extracted from Greater Syria. An Israeli paper titled A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s recommended “the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.” (7) An American Report issued 1996 noted that “ Israel can shape its strategic environment by weakening Syria , and recommended regime change in Iraq in order to weaken Syria . (8) In 2006 William Roebuck, chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Damascus outlined strategies for destabilizing the Syrian government and presented the increasing presence of Islamic extremists as an ‘opportunity,’ (9) and indeed the following year the Bush administration began to fund Islamic fundamentalists in Syria, including the Muslim Brotherhood. (10) Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote in a lengthy article on Syria in early 2016 that the war in Syria did not start with protests in 2011, but rather “when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia , Jordan , Syria and Turkey ”—which Syria opposed. (9)

A more accurate starting point for the war in Syria would be the secret drafting of the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916, which operated under the grandiose presumption that the British and the French had some mysterious right to dictate the future of other societies and nations. A second step towards the war in Syria was the pathological imaginings of Arthur Balfour, who perceived himself as a divinely chosen messenger, the message being the transfer of Palestine from the Arabs to the Jews for Christ’s sake. Then came years of American covert and overt intervention, including repeatedly supporting and arming Islamic fundamentalists. The propriety and legality of this sordid tale of decades of American intervention in the internal affairs of Syria (and many other societies and countries) is summarized by an observation by political commentator Noam Chomsky, who stated that if the laws formulated at the Nuremburg trials in Germany at the end of World War II to try and sentence the Nazi war criminals were to be upheld, “then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” (12)

It must be noted that America’s inimical behavior towards Syria is not an isolated phenomenon; the United States has engaged in serious interventions into the functioning of other nations at least 70 times since the end of World War II (13), slaughtering an estimated 20 to 30 million people in their home countries in that time (14). Americans with any sense of ethics, intelligence of love for the rest of humanity who want to participate in altering this tragic scenario are going to have to come up with “a new way of thinking,” as Albert Einstein put it.

The core problem is twofold,

1) human beings are genetically and/or culturally programmed to seek and adhere to external authority, to do as they are told to do. But this system does not work; power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The United States government, which has almost absolute power, carries out one mindless atrocity after another ( Vietnam , Laos , Cambodia , Korea , the Philippines , Libya , Iraq , etc), but the masses of people continue to believe in the authority of government as if it were a religion.

2) The second problem is that most human beings have not developed a deep sense of relationship to the Earth, which is not only our only home, but is the mysterious (and mystical) source of our lives. As a result almost everyone is willing to support a pathological government, paying for the continuance of the grotesquely bloated military industrial complex and U.S. nuclear arsenal—both of which threaten the viability of the biosphere—and remain utterly mute in the face of continual atrocities against the human family and the Earth itself. The only way forward is for people to wake up from dream of subservience to a higher (governmental) power and discover their genuine identity as sovereign members of the Community of Life, with all the joys, sorrows and responsibilities that such awareness entails.

Dana Visalli is a biologist living in Washington State ; he has visited Iraq and Afghanistan often and attempted to visit Damascus in Syria in March of this year. He has essays on Iraq , Afghanistan and Vietnam at www.methownaturalist.com 

Notes

When we wrote earlier that based on a leaked Wikileaks transcript, which the Greek government interpreted “as revealing an IMF effort to blackmail Athens with a possible credit event to force it to give in on pension cuts which it has rejected”, the article promptly went viral. While it remains to be determined if the IMF indeed made such an implied threat, we attribute this spike in interest to the general public’s surprise that the IMF could stoop to such a low, even by its own standards, level as to use a nation of 11 million people as a lab rat on which to conduct policy experiments.

But why the surprise?

As the below transcript from a April 2012 interview given by Lagarde to the Wharton school at UPenn, none other than IMF president Lagarde herself admitted that for the IMF to “thrive”, the world has to “goes downhill“, and that the IMF “to be sustainable” it needs to be “very in touch with our client base.”

She added that “when the world goes well and we’ve had years of growth, as was the case back in 2006 and 2007, the IMF doesn’t do so well both financially and otherwise“

It goes without saying that Lagarde’s sole prerogative as the managing director of the IMF is to make sure it “does well.”

She concluded by saying that “we need to be able to invent and reinvent ourselves in many ways.” One such client-facing “reinvention” just happened to be caught on tape.

Here is the key section:

Knowledge@Wharton: Of all the things that you do here, what are you most passionate about? What would you really like to make sure happens? It could be a small thing, it could be a large thing. What is it that really has your heart?

Lagarde: That’s complicated. I think it’s this issue of relevance … that is of real concern to me. You see, this is a very fascinating institution because it’s completely counter-cyclical. When the world around the IMF goes downhill, we thrive. We become extremely active because we lend money, we earn interest and charges and all the rest of it, and the institution does well. When the world goes well and we’ve had years of growth, as was the case back in 2006 and 2007, the IMF doesn’t do so well both financially and otherwise.

For this institution, which is a fascinating mix of almost all countries of the world with a single objective that should transcend all their respective individual policies and strategies, for it to be sustainable, we need to be very agile, very in touch with our membership, with our client base, if you will. We need to be able to invent and reinvent ourselves in many ways. So, as I was explaining about going from bilateral to multilateral surveillance, from a narrow focus to something that is more holistic, that is exactly what is at stake

h/t @rudyhavenstein

It might have been a moment that jolted Israelis to their senses. Instead the video of an Israeli soldier shooting dead a young Palestinian man as he lay wounded and barely able to move has only intensified the tribal war dance of the Israeli public.

Last week, as the soldier was brought before a military court for investigation, hundreds of supporters protested outside. He enjoys vocal support too from half a dozen cabinet ministers, former army generals, rabbis and – according to opinion polls – a significant majority of the Israeli Jewish public.

It is worth reflecting on this generous act of solidarity.

It is hard to dispute the main facts. On March 24 two Palestinians – Abdel Fattah Al Sharif and Ramzi Qasrawi, both aged 21 – were shot during an attack on soldiers manning a checkpoint in the occupied city of Hebron in the West Bank.

Ten minutes later, the 19-year-old soldier at the centre of the investigation arrived. Qasrawi was dead and Al Sharif was lying in the road wounded. Other soldiers milled around, close by.

At that point, the soldier – who cannot be named because of a gag order – approached Al Sharif, aimed his gun at the young man’s head and pulled the trigger.

All of this was captured on video, as was a trail of blood that leaked from Al Sharif’s head seconds later.

This was not a killing in the fog of war; it was a cold-blooded execution. As Amnesty International noted, such an act constitutes a war crime.

And yet, for most Israelis the soldier is the victim of this story. Some 57 per cent oppose an investigation, let alone prosecuting or jailing him. Some 66 per cent describe his behaviour in positive terms, and only 20 per cent think criticism is warranted. Only a tiny 5 per cent believe the killing should be judged “murder”.

Should this video and the aftermath serve just one purpose, it is to open a window on the rotten state of the Israeli body politic.

The incontestable evidence of Al Sharif’s execution is challenging Israeli Jews to maintain the deception, among themselves and to outsiders, that the institutions of their tribal, ethnic state have any abiding commitment to universal values and human rights.

For decades Israel has trumpeted its army as uniquely “moral”. The claim was always risible. But in an era of phone cameras, hiding the systematic crimes of a belligerent occupying power has proved ever harder.

The past six months has seen a wave of desperate attacks by Palestinians – mostly improvised, using knives and cars – to end the occupation. Some 190 Palestinians have been killed in this period.

A number of the incidents have been captured on film. In a shocking proportion, Palestinians – including children – have been shot dead even when they posed no threat to Israeli soldiers or civilians. In military parlance, this is called “confirming the kill”.

The latest video is distinctive not only because the evidence is so indisputable but because it exposes Israel’s wider military culture.

When the soldier took his shot, his comrades registered not the least surprise that their prisoner had just been executed. This looked suspiciously like an event that had played out many times before: standard operating procedure.

Back in December Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, spoke out against the Israeli army’s trigger-happy attitude. She was lacerated by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and barred from entering Israel.

Last week a letter from 10 US senators – written before the Hebron killing – was made public, echoing Wallstrom’s concerns. Netanyahu was again indignant, saying his soldiers were not “murderers”.

Wallstrom was concerned that, by refusing to investigate or condemn obvious examples of summary executions, Israeli officials were sending a message to their soldiers and the wider Israeli public that they condoned such acts.

It is therefore hardly surprising that most Israelis feel this soldier is being singled out. His crime was not executing a Palestinian – that happens all the time – but being caught on film doing so. That was nothing more than bad luck.

The Israeli public did not reach this conclusion by accident. They have been schooled in a tribal idea of justice from a young age. Palestinians are not viewed as fully human or deserving of rights.

That attitude has only intensified of late. Politicians from across the ideological spectrum have urged soldiers, police and armed settlers to kill any Palestinian who raises a hand against a Jew. The incitement has grown intense, and no one – from Netanyahu down – has spoken against it.

In fact, quite the reverse. The few Israeli organisations trying to protect Palestinian rights have come under concerted assault.

Breaking the Silence, a group helping Israeli soldiers turn whistle-blowers, was recently accused by the defence minister of “treason”. Israel is busy bullying and silencing the messengers, whether foreign diplomats or its own soldiers.

Netanyahu has left no doubt where his sympathies lie. Last week his office issued a press release highlighting that he had called the father of the soldier to commiserate with him.

Rabbis too are contributing to the mood music of this war dance.

As supporters feted the Hebron soldier as a hero, one of the country’s two highest religious authorities, Yitzhak Yosef, the Sephardic chief rabbi, ruled that Israel’s non-Jews – some 2 million Palestinian citizens – should either agree to become servants to Jews or face expulsion to Saudi Arabia.

Two weeks earlier he told soldiers they were under a religious obligation to kill anyone who attacked them.

Note something else revealing about the Hebron soldier. He was serving in the medical corps. Although his job was to save lives, he believed his greater duty – in the case of Palestinians – was to terminate life.

He is no aberration. The other Israeli medics at the scene – including those affiliated with, and supposedly obligated by, the code of the Red Cross – can be seen ignoring al-Sharif, despite his life-threatening wounds, and clustering instead around a lightly injured Israeli soldier. Palestinian and Jewish life are patently not equal to these medics.

Many recent videos tell a similar story. In November an Israeli ambulance drove past 13-year-old Ahmed Manasra, leaving him untreated, as he lay bleeding from a serious head wound after his involvement in a stabbing attack in occupied East Jerusalem.

And then there are Israel’s legal authorities.

Israeli media reported last week that the justice ministry had failed even to open an investigation into a policeman suspected of executing a Palestinian man following an attack last month near Tel Aviv, even though the moment was caught on camera.

In the case of the Hebron soldier, the military court is already refashioning the soldier as the victim. In imposing a gag order preventing his identification, they have suggested to ordinary Israelis he is equivalent to a rape victim.

Last week the prosecutors showed the pressure was getting to them – as it doubtless will later to the military judge – when they downgraded their accusations from murder to manslaughter. The army officer who presided over the hearing has already effectively freed the soldier, restricting him to his unit’s base.

The Israeli public understand that this soldier is being investigated for appearance’s sake, only because the evidence is there for all the world to see.

He may not be a victim, but he is a scapegoat. He acted not just on his own initiative but in accordance with values shared by his unit, by the army command, by most Israeli politicians, by many senior rabbis, and by a significant majority of the Israeli public.

We should judge him harshly, but it is time to extend that censure beyond the lone soldier.

Those who over many decades sent him and hundreds of thousands of others to enforce an illegal, belligerent occupation and taught them to view Palestinians as lesser beings are at least as guilty.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

This important article presents the DPRK’s position. It is written by a North Korean researcher based at the Institute for American Studies (IFAS),  a research and advisory agency affiliated to the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

We bring this text to the attention of  our readers with a view to clarifying the ongoing debate regarding the DPRK. It is essential that this position be heard and understood by Western public opinion an the international community with a view to reaching a peaceful settlement on the Korean peninsula.

 The viewpoints expressed in this article are those of the author.

Article Highlight: 

“At present, the US hostile policy against our Republic is extremely vicious, which is unprecedented in intensity.

The resultant hostile relations between the DPRK and the US seriously obstruct the development of inter-Korean relations and DPRK-Japan relations as well as DPRK-US relations.

Only when the belligerent and hostile relations between the DPRK and the US are put to an end with the conclusion of the peace agreement, can the relations between the countries in the northeast Asian region be normalized and lasting peace regime be established on the Korean peninsula.”

(Michel Chossudovsky. GR Editor)

*     *     *

Even today, 60 odd years after the sound of gunshots of war went off, the Korean people’s peaceful survival and development are seriously threatened. The United States that claims complete liberty, equality and the rights to peaceful development of human beings as the highest duty and mission of its independence and nation-building and as the soul of its Constitution, the country that called for peace more often than any others from the moment of its founding, is the very one posing the threat.

The government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has proposed to replace the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement as one of the ways to terminate such threats from the United States. However, the United States, while turning a blind eye to the DPRK’s sincere effort, persistently evades its responsibility in terms of replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement.

The essay is intended to prove that the United States cannot shirk its responsibility as an actual, primary and direct party to the issue and explain the significance of the replacement.

I. The United states is directly responsible for terminating armistice and ensuring lasting peace in Korea

The primary reason that the United States should be directly and mainly responsible for replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement is because it is a direct signatory to the Armistice Agreement as the leading force of the united forces involved in the Korean War against the DPRK.

The armed forces from 15 satellite countries and south Korea mobilized for the Korean War engaged in combat operations under the direct command of the US commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the Far East veiled as the commander-in-chief of the “UN Forces” in the whole period of the war.

However, the US commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the Far East never answered to the UN, but to the US president, Pentagon and the headquarters of Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It is noteworthy that when the counterattack by the Korean People’s Army turned tables in the wake of the war it provoked by instigating south Korean puppet army, the United States raised the veil as the wire puller and took over and exercised operational command over the south Korean land, naval and air forces from the Syngman Rhee regime over the whole period of the war.

The US military personnel mobilized for the Korean War was numbered at about 1,408,000 which far exceeded the number of military personnel from 15 satellite countries and south Korea which respectively stood at about 79,000 and over 570,000.

The US generals acted as representatives in the talks for Korean ceasefire and the Armistice Agreement was signed by US Army General Clark, US commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the Far East and US Army Lieutenant General Harrison, not representatives of the UN or any other country.

The United States has been abusing the name of the “UN Forces” of its own accord without any agreement among or consent of the United Nations and there is no doubt that the so called “UN Forces” are none other than the U.S. Forces.

Hence, the UN has also acknowledged on several occasions that the “UN Forces” in south Korea has nothing to do with the UN, but are only a military instrument which the United States has arbitrarily forged.

That the U.S. is the very one which has been posing the gravest threat to the survival and development of the DPRK since the end of the war further substantiates the fact that the U.S. is directly responsible for concluding a peace agreement with the DPRK.

The United States has for decades pursued a hostile policy the harshest ever in its history towards the DPRK and sought to politically obliterate, economically isolate and militarily stifle the latter.

As early as the 1950s, the United States ignited the Korean War with the aim of destroying the DPRK by use of force.

In the post-war days after its defeat in the war, the United States has made a string of agreements with south Korea including the “US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty” so as to permanently station its land, naval and aerial forces in any part of the south Korean territory, and it holds the wartime operational control over the south Korean puppet army till date.

The United States has systematically brought a large stockpile of nuclear arsenal into south Korea since the late 1950s turning south Korea into a huge depot of nukes.

In the late 1960s, the United States had kicked off US-south Korea joint military exercises featuring surprise landing and capture and airlifting operations targeting the DPRK. Since then the US has continued to update and elaborate a series of north-targeted nuclear operational plans with the objective of toppling the DPRK’s leadership and occupying the northern part of the peninsula at a stroke. Under those plans, the means for preemptive nuclear strike such as aircraft carrier fleets and strategic bombers have frequently been dispatched to the Korean peninsula.

The US has also employed political and economic means along with military instruments in their persistent pursuance of its strategy to undermine our State.

The US seeks to tarnish the image of our Republic by raising the alleged “Human Rights issue” while imposing toughest economic sanctions on the latter for its differing ideology and ideals and for its alleged development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The Declaration for developing inter-Korean relations and ensuring peace and prosperity adopted at the inter-Korean summit  meeting in 2007 states that the north and the south shared the understanding about the need to put an end to the existing armistice mechanism and build a lasting peace mechanism and agreed to cooperate with each other in the efforts to push forward the issue of arranging the meeting of the heads of state of three or four parties directly concerned on the Korean Peninsula and declaring an end to the war.

Given the fact that it is a party to the Korean War and to the issue of reunification, one cannot say that south Korea is totally irrelevant to establishing lasting peace mechanism by way of replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement.

Nonetheless, under the circumstances where the US stations its huge armed forces in the south targeting the DPRK and takes hold of wartime control over the south Korean armed forces, it is meaningless to give precedence to north-south talks on signing a peace agreement.

China is also a participant in the Korean War and a signatory to the Armistice Agreement. But, its involvement in signing a peace agreement is something to be considered only after the US actually agrees to replace the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement.

Moreover, China has officially announced its position, through the speech of the then foreign minister at the UN General Assembly in 1975, that it is the practical way for the direct parties to the Korean Armistice Agreement to negotiate and sign a peace agreement in replacement of the Armistice Agreement under the changed circumstances where the Chinese People’s Volunteers’ Corps withdrew from Korea a long time ago and a majority of components of the “UN Command” dispersed.

It stands to reason that, in order to put an end to the unstable state of ceasefire and secure lasting peace by way of replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement, the US should be the first to come out to sign a peace agreement.

II. Significance of replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement

Once the state of ceasefire between the DPRK and the US is terminated and a peace agreement is reached, a precarious ceasefire regime can be replaced with a lasting peace regime and it would, in turn, lead to fundamental removal of risks of war on the Korean peninsula.

An armistice agreement technically means a temporary suspension of combat operations by warring parties, and even if the armistice agreement is duly observed, it does not imply that the state of war has actually terminated and durable peace has settled in.

Furthermore, given that the Korean Armistice Agreement and the subsequent ceasefire regime has completely lost its binding force and is no longer in effect due to the US during the past 60 years, signing of a peace agreement becomes all the more urgent.

The US intentionally refused to implement the Article IV of the Armistice Agreement which stipulates that a higher level political conference shall be convened to seek to secure lasting peace in Korea, and systematically shipped ultra-modern war equipment including nuclear weapons into the whole territory of south Korea. Worse still, in the 1990s, the US appointed a general of the south Korean puppet army, which is neither an actual signatory nor a nominal party to the Armistice Agreement, as the senior representative to the Military Armistice Commission, thus completely breaching core provisions of the Armistice Agreement.

In particular, the US has been hell-bent on aggressive military provocations against the DPRK for decades under the pretext of “defense-oriented exercises” in flagrant violation of the basic spirit of the Armistice Agreement: a complete cessation of all hostilities by all armed forces under their control.

The venue of such military movements, the size of the forces mobilized and the contents of constantly renewed, north-targeted operational plans vividly indicate that those exercises are dangerous hostile acts aimed at occupying the northern part of our Republic by mounting a large-scale surprise attack at any time.

It is a universally acknowledged international practice and the requirement of any international law that if an agreement between any countries becomes essentially nullified due to one party, such an agreement would no longer be valid and subsequently, there would be no reason for the other party to stay bound by that agreement.

At present, the central boundary line of the ground military demarcation line drawn by the Armistice Agreement is barely  retained. However, the August incident of last year teaches a lesson that any accidental incident can lead to a full-scale nuclear war in this region where huge forces of warring parties are standing in acute confrontation.

The uncontrollable and dangerous situation, in which the DPRK and the US remaining technically at war consider themselves no longer legally bound in terms of use of force against each other, can be alleviated only when the Armistice Agreement that exists only in name is replaced with a peace agreement.

Can danger of a war be completely averted, only when the US withdraws its troops stationed in south Korea, quits reinforcing its armaments and suspends hostile military acts such as joint military drills as a result of the conclusion of a peace agreement.

If the hostile relations between the DPRK and the US are improved and the US hostile policy towards the DPRK is verifiably terminated through the process of peace agreement, a radical change would be brought about in normalizing the relations between countries in northeast Asia.

In general, termination of acts of war and normalization of relations through elimination of hostile relations between warring parties constitute two major elements of a peace agreement.

At present, the US hostile policy against our Republic is extremely vicious, which is unprecedented in intensity.

The resultant hostile relations between the DPRK and the US seriously obstruct the development of inter-Korean relations and DPRK-Japan relations as well as DPRK-US relations.

Only when the belligerent and hostile relations between the DPRK and the US are put to an end with the conclusion of the peace agreement, can the relations between the countries in the northeast Asian region be normalized and lasting peace regime be established on the Korean peninsula.

In the past, a number of countries were engaged in a war with the United States, and in the long run, they brought the war to a complete halt and secured permanent peace by way of concluding or proclaiming a peace treaty or similar documents.

Like the Korean War, the Vietnamese War was a clash between the US strategy towards Asia and the interests of the Vietnamese people and, at the same time, a confrontation between two conflicting ideals.

Vietnam was of geo-political significance as much as Korea for the United States in terms of realizing its strategy for domination over Asia. However, unlike the Korean War, the Vietnamese War came to an end with the signing of the peace agreement.

As seen above, there is no reason why the United States can’t agree to reaching a peace agreement.

Despite the fact that signing of a peace agreement between the DPRK and the US is becoming a matter of great urgency, the latter persistently rejects the proposal by demanding nuclear abandonment on the DPRK’s part as a precondition.

Although the signing of a peace agreement is an issue to be addressed without any delay or precondition in light of its priority and urgency, the United States refuses to sign a peace agreement by asking for the DPRK’s nuclear abandonment as a precondition claiming it as a package solution to all other relevant issues.

As long as the belligerent and hostile relations between the DPRK and the US continue to exist, talk of “respect for sovereignty”, “equality” and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula sounds hollow, devoid of any practical significance.

The DPRK’s option for building up its nuclear force under such difficult circumstances is not intended for seeking any political and economic benefits from the US and other countries or for intimidating anyone.

The DPRK was compelled to opt for building up its nuclear force to deter serious threats to our State and people posed by the United States which possesses the world’s most destructive nuclear force in quantity and quality and is in state of war against the former.

Therefore, the argument that the DPRK’s scrapping of nuclear weapons would pave the way for concluding a peace agreement is a sophism where the cause and the outcome is completely reversed.

That out of the two parties in belligerent and hostile relations, one party demands the other of its disarmament while continuing to inflict serious military threats on the latter is an expression of inequality in itself and it goes to prove that the former intends to prolong the belligerent relationship, not to bring peace.

We have witnessed a string of precedents where the United States has coaxed those countries with differing ideology and ideals, the countries that stand in the way of realizing its strategy for world domination, into disarming themselves with fraudulent promises to lift sanctions and normalize the relations before toppling them.

It is utter nonsense for the United States to demand the DPRK of its denuclearization while constantly imposing nuclear threats upon the DPRK by military provocations such as large scale joint military drills involving nuclear strike means.

“A policy based on the approach of laying stress on denuclearization alone on the conception that North Korea is equal to nuclear threats is doomed to fail. It is because the only way for North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons is to convince the former into trusting in the US, and therefore, such a policy of merely sticking to the nuclear issue and pursuing stand-off is infeasible,” once noted Kissinger, former US Secretary of State.

The sitting US government officials voice their interest, on every possible occasion, in détente and ensuring peace on the Korean peninsula, and if they are as sincere as they sound, they should take a strategic option for giving priority to replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement before addressing the rest of the issues.

Today, thanks to the DPRK’s deterrence, the balance of power is maintained and nominal peace is preserved by the skin of its teeth on the Korean peninsula.

The conclusion of a peace agreement is not the only way for achieving peace.

If the US persists on its strategy of stifling our Republic by the use of force while constantly rejecting the conclusion of a peace agreement, the DPRK will have to make the inevitable choice to deter the war by means of force and protect the peace.

Jong Nam Hyok is a researcher at the Institute for American Studies (IFAS) The IFAS, which is a research and advisory agency affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), was established on Jan 29. 2014.

‘The StatsCan mantra is “you will be prosecuted, fined and jailed” if you don’t comply with the census…The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the American military through Lockheed Martin Corporation (contractor) and IBM (sub-contractor) will in time have access to the Canadian census data base.  Part of the census work was “out-sourced”, effectively to the American military (Lockheed Martin) starting in 2003 and continues in spite of citizen protest.’ Sandra Finley [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:14)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Canada has the distinction of sharing a border and a continent with the most formidable military power on the planet.

The United States has continued to project its power throughout the world. It operates over 1000 military installations and/or bases in 63 countries. [2]It has deployed hundreds of thousandsof military personnel in foreign countries around the globe. [3]The world’s remaining superpower commands the high seas, and according to 2015 estimates, has stockpiles 7,100 nuclear armed warheads, or about 45% of the world’s supply. [4]

The US has also secured advantages in the realm of cyber-surveillance. Edward Snowden famously outlined the capacities of the US State’s capabilities in this regard. [5]

The awesome clout of Canada’s next door neighbour compels one to wonder just how far it can hope to exercise any genuine sovereignty.

This week’s Global Research News Hour broadcasts two stories relating to the question of living in the shadow of empire.

In the first half hour, we resurrect the plight of US military personnel seeking refuge in Canada rather than participate in the war in Iraq, or endure the penalty for desertion. Michelle Robidoux of the Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign joins us to talk about litigation initiated under the previous Harper government that has not been blocked or canceled by the Liberal Trudeau Government. Rhetoric expressed during last year’s federal election led many to believe the war resisters may finally be welcomed as new Canadians rather than expelled like lepers.

The War Resisters Support Campaign is organizing a campaign to Encourage Canadians to write to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and demand he end the litigation facing four US War resisters. A model letter with email contact info can be found at this link.

In the second half hour, Sandra Finley, a community activist originally from Saskatchewan talks about her concerns about the Canadian Census and particularly Statistics Canada’s Contracting partner Lockheed Martin. The former leader of the Saskatchewan Green Party claims that despite StatsCan assurances, personal information cannot be kept private from LM and the US Security State. She states that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects Canadians from having to disclose private personal information. She also raises concerns about how the groundwork for a global police state is being rolled out through this technology and centralized control of information.

More resources are available at her website sandrafinley.ca.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:14)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Notes:

1) http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=248

2) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-worldwide-network-of-us-military-bases/5564

3) Ibid

4) https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat

5) http://www.globalresearch.ca/edward-snowden-and-the-emerging-police-state/5343230

Image: Prescott Bush

This article by William Bowles was first written in 2003. Original source williambowles.info

When I started putting this essay together, it started out as investigation of Richard Armitage as a typical example of the kind of people employed to run the United States on behalf of their imperialist masters. Then I came across a piece written in 2000 by Michael Ruppert of Beyond the Wilderness, that broadened my inquiries as the article links Kellog Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton to the worldwide distribution of drugs via the global network that Halliburton owns or operates on behalf of the US government and various corporations including major oil companies. A network that evolved over time initially through the CIA’s connection to the drug trade in the Golden Triangle but which has its roots in Nazi Germany over thirty years earlier and its connection to US big business. And in the post-war period, Brown Brothers Harriman were also involved in laundering Nazi money through a Dutch-based bank.

And then synchronicity kicked in, as in the middle of writing this piece, I get emailed an article in the New Hampshire Gazette that expands on the piece I included in the ‘Bush Family Saga‘ on Prescott Bush, Avril Harriman and Brown Brothers Harriman Bank and its connections to the Nazi Party that it now emerges continued until 1951. What the new information reveals is that the financial connections between US and German capitalism extended even further than had been known when new documents were released.

A central player in the US/Nazi big business connection was Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Rockefellar-owned corporation that during the 1930s merged with IG. Farben, one of the major backers of Hitler’s National Socialist Party and supplier of the infamous gas Cyklon B used in the extermination camps. Standard Oil (now Exxon) also owned the oil concessions in Saudi Arabia (later to be renamed Aramco). Other major players involved in the Nazi business connection include General Motors, Ford and ITT.

The Bush regime is part of an unbroken link that extends back to the founding of Hitler’s National Socialist Party through the funding it received from Brown Brothers Harriman Banking, Prescott Bush’s bank and the subsequent link between this bank and Kellog Brown and Root, now a subsidiary of Halliburton and its connections to Bush through the Rumsfeld/Cheney connection and their connection to Halliburton. Brown Brothers Harriman Bank owned Dresser Industries, one of the world’s largest oil drilling companies that in 1998, under urging from Dick Cheney was purchased by Halliburton in an $8.1 billion dollar deal. The link is complete. And yes, it is the same Brown in Brown and Root as the Brown Brothers Harriman Bank.

The point is, a clique of key big business interests extending back over several generations runs the US. And that if anyone doubted that, putting it down to wild ideas of a conspiracy, you have to be blind not see it now. That Bush’s wealth descends directly from backing the Nazi Party is incontrovertible and that the Bush family’s involvement in the trade in drugs and weapons as an intrinsic part of the ‘war on communism’, later to become the ‘war on terror’ that extends back thirty years is also incontrovertible.

But why has the current Bush administration hired so many key individuals from the Reagan/Bush years including Richard Armitage, Colonel ‘Ollie’ North, Michael Ledeen, Otto Reich and others? What was so special about a bunch of guys at the centre of the Iran-contra scandal, money laundering operations, drug smuggling and other dirty dealings going back forty years? Enter Ruppert’s article.

Ruppert’s piece illustrates the central role that Brown and Root/Halliburton have played as a global conduit for drugs and the central role that Halliburton/Brown and Root play in Bush’s imperial grab for power. In this context, Armitage suddenly looks like small fry, but consider this; the people who have carried out the imperial policies of subsequent US administrations that extend back to Roosevelt in the 1930s, are people like Armitage, without whom, executing the imperium’s plans could well be severely compromised. Why? A close-knit group of people, all with intimate ties to US intelligence services including the DEA, the CIA and the DIA as well as connections to the banking, oil and defense industries, are also people who are intimately connected to the global trade in drugs, weapons and laundered money. Links that extended to the Vatican Bank, (Banco Lavorno Nationale), BCCI and Nugan Hand. Key players in Iran-contra were also officers or had connections to these banks. Some were involved in laundering money for the CIA. The notorious S&L banking crashes of the 1980s also involved Bush family members.

“[Richard] Armitage, a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been far from the Bush family’s side. Throughout his career, both in and out of government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA drug smuggling operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post story, called Armitage, “my white son.” In 1990, then President Bush dispatched Armitage to Russia to aid in its “transition” to capitalism. Armitage’s Russian work for Bush has been frequently connected to the explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became virtual rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had extensive involvement in Albania at the same time that the Albanian ally, Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and consolidating its grip, according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering western Europe.”

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html

Strictly speaking, when dealing with politics, the personalities of the people involved are supposedly less important than the context, the power relations, money, class and so forth. But when it comes to the cabal of individuals grouped around the Bush presidency, many of whom have a history of involvement with assassinations, terrorism, drugs, money laundering and other illegal activities, the motivations, the psychology of the individuals involved has a direct bearing on the nature of the activities. Such is the case with people like Richard Armitage although there are others such as Otto Reich, Michael Ledeen and Colonel ‘Ollie’ North. In fact, the list is so big, and stretches back through the administrations of several successive US presidents, that the relationship between the policies and the individuals has to be viewed as inseparable. One could justifiably argue that breaking the law in order to further US policies is now an inseparable part of ‘doing business’.

South East Asia, oil, guns and drugs; Nicaragua guns and drugs; Iran, oil and guns; Israel, guns and oil; Iraq, guns and oil; Saudi Arabia, guns and oil; Albania, drugs and oil; Russia oil and drugs, Central and South America, guns, drugs and oil. In all of these situations the name Richard Armitage crops up time and again over more than thirty years of loyal service to US capitalism.

Outrageous? The global trade in cocaine and heroin is estimated at around $500 BILLION and no doubt this is an under-estimate. The US is the major market for drugs just as it is for oil and in turn it is the world’s number one seller of weapons. Is it any wonder that the three commodities go hand in hand and that the US should be at centre of the global trade in these three valuable commodities.

“Noting the indiscreet arrogance of Wall Street in engaging in criminal behavior, I wrote in May’s issue, after Citigroup’s brazen acquisition of Mexico’s drug money-laundering bank, Banamex, “It doesn’t matter anymore whether the American public chooses to notice. The fait accompli is that drug money and criminal money are now out of the closet as the most important determinants of economic success for the US financial system. The careless arrogance of these moves only reveals the utter confidence in Washington, on Wall Street and in the banking system that no voices from the wilderness can stop it.” Michael Ruppert

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html

What started out as an intrinsic component of the ‘war on Communism’ has its logical conclusion in the ‘war on terror’ and oil, guns and drugs are the threads that tie the current Bush administration to over three decades of international piracy and terrorism that forms the backdrop for the current policies of the Bush regime.

That the US uses the tactics that it accuses its enemies of using should come as no surprise, especially when we consider that the supposed enemies of the US are more often than not its creatures, some of whom have returned to haunt it and especially the cocaine barons. It should also come as no surprise that the corporate media in both the US and the UK have a vested interest in covering up this shameful past, for to do otherwise would expose the cosy relationship that exists between the media and corporate capitalism. Exposing it now would also expose the hypocrisy of the 4^th estate and its complicity in deceiving us all. And even as I write, the BBC quotes Armitage as he calls for intensifying the ‘war on terrorism’ as though he were ‘just a diplomat’, completely ignoring the man’s past record and the total airbrushing of history in the classic Stalin mode that goes completely unchallenged.

The same names crop up with tedious regularity and raise the issue that far from being the odd ‘bad apple’ or lose cannon, the individuals who now constitute the core of the Bush cabal, have been breaking the law, both domestic and international, in order to further the interests of US capitalism. But what we see now, is way beyond the ‘normal’ practices of furthering US foreign policy. What it formerly chose to hide, it is now brazenly advocates, indeed it forms the core of its policy as outlined in the PNAC and other strategic documents.

But it’s the corporations that these individuals have or had an interest in such as Halliburton, Unocal, Boeing, Chevron, Enron before its demise, and a host of other defence, electronics and pharmaceuticals corporations, that have been the principal beneficiaries of the policies of the Bush regime and of previous US administrations, especially Halliburton and the subsidiary, Brown and Root, have both been connected to the drug trade:

“A closer look at available research, including an August 2, 2000 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) at www.public-i.org, suggests that drug money has played a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under Cheney’s tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000. This is especially true for Halliburton’s most famous subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant, Brown and Root. A deeper look into history reveals that Brown and Root’s past as well as the past of Dick Cheney himself, connect to the international drug trade on more than one occasion and in more than one way.

“This June the lead Washington, D.C. attorney for a major Russian oil company connected in law enforcement reports to heroin smuggling and also a beneficiary of US backed loans to pay for Brown and Root contracts in Russia, held a $2.2 million fund raiser to fill the already bulging coffers of presidential candidate George W. Bush. This is not the first time that Brown and Root has been connected to drugs and the fact is that this “poster child” of American industry may also be a key player in Wall Street’s efforts to maintain domination of the half trillion dollar a year global drug trade and its profits. And Dick Cheney, who has also come closer to drugs than most suspect, and who is also Halliburton’s largest individual shareholder ($45.5 million), has a vested interest in seeing to it that Brown and Root’s successes continue.”

Moreover, it’s the connection between war, oil, drugs and US corporations that is the key to the Bush imperium, for without war, or preparing for one where would corporations like Halliburton be? Ever since 9/11 the profits of Halliburton have literally shot through the roof. Indeed, ever since 1990, with no country or entity to curb the ambitions of US imperialism, profits from wars of one kind or another have seen the rise of the warfare state that makes the profits made out of the Vietnam War pale into insignificance. And without the ‘war on drugs’, the US would not be in the position to use its economic and military clout to subvert the governments and economies of so many countries around the world. The line between the ‘war on drugs’ and the ‘war on terror’ has effectively dissolved. Linking the two wars is oil, the ‘drug of choice’ for US capitalism.

“[E]verywhere there is oil there is Brown and Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown and Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown and Root’s traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the U.S. military. Now, instead of U.S. Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown and Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms to rations to vehicles.

“As described by the Associated Press, during “Iran-Contra” Congressman Dick Cheney of the House Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North. This was in spite of the fact that North had lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White House briefing. Oliver North’s own diaries and subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector General have irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine smuggling during the 1980s and the opening of bank accounts for one firm moving four tons of cocaine a month. This, however, did not stop Cheney from actively supporting North’s 1994 unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia just a year before he took over the reins at Brown and Root’s parent company, Dallas based Halliburton Inc. in 1995.

“As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels in northern Iran. The Kurds’ primary source of income for more than fifty years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Having had some personal experience with Brown and Root I noted carefully when the Los Angeles Times observed that on March 22, 1991 that a group of gunmen burst into the Ankara, Turkey offices of the joint venture, Vinnell, Brown and Root and assassinated retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Gandy.

“In March of 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees, long-time assets of the CIA, were being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War. Saddam, seeking to destroy any hopes of a successful Kurdish revolt, found it easy to kill thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish security forces, trained in part by the Vinnell, Brown and Root partnership, turned thousands of Kurds back into certain death. Today, the Vinnell Corporation (a TRW Company) is, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp (FTW June, 00) one of the three pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world. It is also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the Middle East. Not surprisingly the Turkish border regions in question were the primary transhipment points for heroin, grown in Afghanistan and Pakistan and destined for the markets of Europe.”

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html

These extracts are from an article written in 2000, three years before the US invaded Iraq and before Bush the smaller stole the election. It’s clear from the connections between all the players including Colin Powell, whose links to Iran-Contra and who is a close pal of Armitage, and the guns for drugs scandal, Halliburton, Brown and Root, Dyncorp, Vinnell Corporation go all the way back to old man Prescott Bush and his links to financing the German Nazi Party via Brown Brothers Harriman Bank that owned Dresser Industries that is now owned by Halliburton. Dresser built oil platforms in key drug routes around the world including the Gulf of Mexico. What better offloading location could one have than an oil platform.

And clearly, the illegal nature of the activities of the Armitages of this world, mixing with drug smugglers, assassins, money launderers, covert arms dealers and the like, means that their actions are already thoroughly compromised. And this is critically important to my analysis because it exposes the so-called morality that the imperialists like to espouse as fundamental to their policies of supposedly supporting human rights, democracy and the like as a complete fraud.

So who is Richard Armitage and why is Armitage and his peers — with involvements stretching back to the Vietnam War era and even before — suddenly back in ‘favour’? What is it that they bring to the Bush administration that makes them so important to have onboard?

Power, drugs, guns, money and the connections that come with it are at the top of the list and as I hope to show, they go to the very heart of the totally corrupt regime that now runs America. Most important of all, it exposes the ruthless nature of the capitalist system, a system that takes ends justifying the means to the ultimate conclusion, that in order to preserve the system anything goes including the use of drugs as an integral part of projecting US economic and political power.

Armitage is, I suppose, typical of the kind of person who does the dirty work of imperialism, whether it’s for money, prestige or personal satisfaction. (For a complete listing of Armitage’s financial investments see http://www.public-i.org/cgi-bin/WhosWhoSearch.asp?Display=Details&Person_ID=1007)

The CIA’s involvement in drug running that started during the Vietnam War with Project Phoenix is perhaps the key to the current situation as the connections made during that period set the scene for later US involvement with the sale of drugs as means to further US foreign policy, whether as a source of finance for the illegal purchase and sale of weapons or as a means of destabilising countries and communities, or winning friends and influencing people. Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Afghanistan, Albania, Russia are just some of the countries whose economies and cultures have been taken over through the US policy of the ‘war on drugs’.

“Project Phoenix…was financed in part with opium money. It has been alleged that the close relationship with SE Asian drug dealers continued after the US withdrawal from Vietnam, with Iran used as a conduit for drugs and money. It has also been reported that, as a sequel to Project Phoenix, an off-the-books assassination program was established in Iran.

“The Phoenix or Phuong Hoang Operation was originally designed to “neutralize,” that is assassinate or imprison, members of the civilian infrastructure of the [Vietnamese] National Liberation Front. Phoenix offices were set up from Saigon down to the district level. Their functions were to: (1) collate intelligence about the “Vietcong Infrastructure”; (2) interrogate civilians picked up at random by military units carrying out sweeps through villages; (3) “neutralize” targeted members of the NLF . . . The original Phoenix concept was quickly diluted, for two main reasons: (1) pressure from the top to fill numerical quotas of person to be neutralized; (2) difficulties at the bottom of identifying NLF civilian infrastructure, who were often indistinguishable from the general population, and the near impossibility of proving anyone membership in the NLF. The result was vastly to increase the numbers of innocent persons rounded up and imprisoned, indiscriminately murdered, and brutally tortured in an effort to show results . . . Between 1968 and 1972 hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians were rounded up and turned over to the Vietnamese police for questioning. Such interrogation has usually been marked by brutal torture.
http://www.vicpeace.org/stories/03/1070.html

“After four tours with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, Armitage joined the U.S. Defense Attaché’s Office in Saigon in 1973, just in time to play a key role in “preparing” the botched evacuation of friendly South Vietnamese. Tens of thousands of loyal partners who had worked with the Americans were abandoned to advancing North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces.

Never one to admit failure or duplicity, Armitage covered his own posterior by accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of wrongly predicting that a deal for an orderly pullout could be arrived at with the advancing communists and then failing to provide enough notice that Saigon was about to fall.

Fresh from the debacle in Southeast Asia, Armitage went to work as a consultant for the Defense Intelligence Agency, where the quality of his work, to say the least, did not improve.”

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=673

Following the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, Armitage joined the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was posted to Tehran where he excelled at not predicting the overthrow of the Shah (the man he had been assigned to keep on the throne) and even went as far as accusing the Ayotollah Khomeini of being a friend of the Soviets.

“Armitage became a special consultant to the Department of Defense, working out of Bangkok and dealing with unrepatriated prisoners and the missing in action. Armitage also started a mysterious business called the Far East Trading Company. Meanwhile, from 1976 to 1979 in Iran, Richard Secord was supervising the sale of US military aircraft and weapons to Middle Eastern nations. During this same period, there are reports that Shackley, Clines, Secord, and Armitage set up several curious corporations and subsidiaries around the world including Lake Resources, Stanford Technology Trading Group, Compa[g]nie de Services Fiduciaria, CSF Investments and Udall Research Corporation.”

http://www.vicpeace.org/stories/03/1070.html

In fact all the companies referred to above, were and those that still exist, are so-called proprietaries of the CIA, a fact that further reinforces the belief that during this period Armitage was in the employ of the CIA, and although we can only speculate as to his role during this period, it is generally believed that the front companies were used for CIA covert actions in Southeast Asia and later in Afghanistan and it’s been suggested that the idea of using heroin as a weapon in the ‘war against communism’ in both Indo-China and Afghanistan was Armitage’s idea.

“His critics had alleged in the past that he was the author of the idea of using heroin to weaken the fighting capability of the communists in Indo-China and then in Afghanistan though the late Le Comte de Marenches, the head of the French External Intelligence Agency under Presidents George Pompidou and Giscard d’Estaing, had claimed that it was he who had given this idea to the Americans with specific reference to Afghanistan.”

http://www.saag.org/papers5/paper473.html

1978 saw him (officially) rejoining government when he joined the staff of Senator Robert Dole and then as an advisor to Reagan election campaign who rewarded his services in 1981 by appointing him Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs and then in 1983 he became Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs until 1989. His specialty was special forces operations and ‘counter-terrorism’. Under George Bush Snr he was made ‘Special Emissary’ to King Hussein of Jordan during the 1991 Gulf War.

But it’s Armitage’s role in the ‘Secret Team’ that was at the heart of the Iran-contra scandal during this period that kept him out of government until Bush the smaller grabbed the throne of state when Armitage was rewarded for his loyalty by being appointed as deputy secretary of state under his old friend Colin Powell.

“Armitage’s under investigation for his role in the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra scandal. Though he testified that he didn’t know about the administration’s secret sale of arms to Iran until November 1986, when they became public knowledge, independent counsel Lawrence Walsh’s report laid out extensive evidence that he knew about them a year earlier.

“In fact, Armitage apparently opposed the arms sales as early as December 1985, on the grounds that Iranians were “sleazebags.” Secord later testified that he met with Armitage then in an effort to change his mind. Armitage claimed not to remember meeting with Secord, though Armitage’s own meeting logs show that he did. Armitage kept a December 6, 1985 document describing the legal ramifications of the Iran arms sales, entitled “Possibility for Leaks,” locked in his Pentagon safe until June 1987, when it was belatedly turned over to Walsh and the congressional Iran-Contra committee.

“Armitage also attended a Pentagon meeting in August 1986 in which Oliver North outlined the covert activities in support of the Contras that he had been supervising through the National Security Council. Armitage denied remembering anything about this meeting as well. In his final report, Walsh said he declined to prosecute Armitage for his numerous dubious statements on these issues because he could not prove they were knowingly false.”

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/07/naureckas2507.html

“The Bush cabinet is a virtual who’s who of oil, defense and pharmaceutical bigwigs.1 The Bush family is itself closely tied financially to the bin Ladens.2 , 3 Both families are involved in the Carlyle Group.4 Bush Sr. sits on the board of Carlyle, a 12 billion Equity company with oil holdings and defense contracts.5 Dick Cheney was the former CEO of Halliburton Oil. Colin Powell is a major stockholder in several defense contractors. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice sat on the board of Chevron. Andrew Card, the Chief of Staff is from General Motors. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, was CEO of Searle Pharmaceuticals. Dick Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has ties to the Russian mafia and is a board member of Carlyle. Robert Jordan, the Saudi ambassador, was a member of Baker Botts, a legal firm specializing in oil and defense (the Baker in Baker Botts is James Baker). Tony Principi, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, comes from Lockheed Martin. Gordan England, Secretary of the Navy, is tied to General Dynamics. James Roche, Secretary of the Air Force, is from Northrop Grumman. Gen. Thomas White, retired, Secretary of the Army, is from Enron Energy. Donald Evans, the Commerce Secretary, owns Colorado Oil Company. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice sat on the board of Exxon. And Mr. Carlucci, the Chief of Carlyle, sits on the Middle East Policy Council. 6

“”Several western oil companies [some represented by Richard Armitage] including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes riveted on Albania’s abundant and unexplored oil deposits. Western investors were also gawking [at] Albania’s extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum””

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/regional/KLA1.html

So we’ve come full circle, from the earliest days of the Bush family’s involvement with Nazi Germany via Brown Brothers Harriman Bank and Standard Oil/IG Farben and later, Saudi Arabia (Aramco), through to the Vietnam War and the Golden Triangle where the trade in drugs started, and then to Iran and Iran-contra and the South American drug connection, and then onto Afghanistan and finally Iraq where Dresser Industries (Brown Brothers), Brown & Root, all come together under the aegis of the Bush emperium with Halliburton as the final link. Throughout it all, key individuals have played important roles in linking together oil, guns and drugs as part of a web of business and political connections designed to further the interests of big capital. The question is, how much longer can this web of deceit be kept hidden from the public? How much longer can the mass media ignore the crimes of a dynasty that extends back through three-quarters of a century?

Notes

1. The Oil behind Bush and Son’s Campaigns by Ranjit Devraj, Inter Press Services, 5 October 2001. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/DEV110A.html
2. George W. Bush’s Dubious Friends , Intelligence Newsletter, 2 March 2000. http://globalresearch.ca/articles/INL110A.html
3. BUSHLADEN by Jared Israel, Emperor’s Clothes; 8 October 2001.
   http://emperors-clothes.com/news/bushladen.htm
4. Judicial Watch: Bush/bin Laden Connection “has now turned into a scandal!”, Jared Israel, Emperor’s Clothes; 6 October 2001.
   http://emperors-clothes.com/news/jw.htm
5. The Carlyle Group , Alfred Mendes, Spectrezine.
   http://www.spectrezine.org/global/carlyle.htm
6. You’ve got to be Up Front , Mike McCormick, transcription of an interview with Stan Goff; October 24, 2001. http://narconews.com/goffmccormick1.html,
   http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=3795

References

• Tales from the Grassy Knoll: From 1911 to 9/11
• Richard Armitage Links (more links to Armitage sources)
• William J Casey and Iran/contra
• My Dream and the Color of Suffering by Michael C Ruppert
• ‘War is Horrible. But…’: Speech by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, January 21
• Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Armitage: background notes
• The Bush 100: Richard Armitage
• Richard Armitage’s Colorful Past
• The Dangers of Richard Armitage
• The Background is Oil
• The Dick Cheney Deep Data Dump
• It’s a Lie by Michael C Ruppert
• Secret Agent Man: Iran-contra operative Richard Armitage is now Colin Powell’s No.2
• Kosovo Liberation Army and Albanian Sponsors Have Well Documented Roots in The Heroin Trade
• The Golden Triangle Texts
• CIA
• Behind the Bushes: The New Generation
• The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire
• Bank of New York Laundromat
• 911 Timeline by Michael C Ruppert

The ancient forest of Białowieża [image left] – the last remaining primeval forest in the European lowlands – straddles the Polish/ Belarus border, and is the last home of wild European bison. It is now under threat from a Polish government decision to log more than 180,000 cubic metres. Meanwhile, the Finnish Government has unexpectedly brought forward to today a vote in the Finnish Parliament on a new Forestry Act that will enable it to engage in an unprecedented land grab that threatens the last old growth forests of Finnish Lapland and the reindeer herding homeland of the indigenous Sámi Peoples.

While Finnish education may be the envy of the world, one aspect of it appears to leave mainstream Finnish foresters unable to contemplate any approach to forestry that does not involve turning the rich biodiversity of indigenous forests into commercial monocultures. This is an approach they are still exporting to the rest of the world with disastrous consequences for indigenous forests and indigenous peoples elsewhere. Now the same approach is being turned on their own last remaining old growth indigenous forests: the reindeer herding homeland of the indigenous Sámi Peoples.

Hannibal Rhoades and Tero Mustonen note that:

“This crisis arrives in a context in which the previous Finnish Government failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, leaving the Sámi vulnerable. Now the current government in Finland is moving fast to completely wreck the existing rights of the only Indigenous Peoples living in the European Union. . .

“The new Act would affect 2.2 million hectares of water systems and 360,000 hectares of land, mostly in the Sub-Arctic and North Boreal areas of Finland, the Sámi’s Home Area. This area constitutes the last preserved wilderness of Europe. The Act would transfer power over this region further into the hands of state authorities, opening up the Sámi Home Area and sub-Arctic ecosystems to railway construction, and with that, potential expansion of mining, forestry and other infrastructure projects.

“The new Forestry Act would no longer require Metsähallitus, the Finnish state-run enterprise which already controls 90% of the Sámi Home Area, to liase with the Sámi Parliament and the Skolt Sámi Village Council on issues of land management and their potential impacts on indigenous people’s lives. The preparation of this Act has not been conducted with the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of the Sámi People.”

Indigenous Sami leaders and Arctic scientists are asking for help from the international community:

The President of the Finnish Section of the Saami Council, Jouni Lukkari, is calling for urgent help from the international community, saying that:

“Sámi reindeer herding and the Sámi way of life are in danger of disappearing if the new Forestry Act legislation passes in the Finnish Parliament. In this case we will have few opportunities to influence the decision making over our lands. Rather, our territories will be controlled by market economy values.”

Tero Mustonen informs us that:

“Despite fierce opposition from a large part of the Finnish public, all Sámi reindeer herding cooperatives, Snowchange and a large international coalition of peoples, the Forestry Act has passed one hour ago in the Finnish Parliament.

“108 MPs voted for the Act, 64 against, 3 voted nothing. Finnish parliament has 200 MPs. The law will take effect when the Finnish President will sign it, expected to be 15th April, 2016.

“It is a dark hour for Finland, for the Arctic and climate change, as the forests the law will now condemn to clear cuts act as crucial carbon sinks for the world, in addition to being the Sámi homeland. Additionally, 2,2 million hectares of waters will be the subject of potential commercial uses.

“We will be contemplating next steps with the Sámi Council and other Sámi actors over the coming days and will send information in due time about the ways to stop this land grab, one of the largest in European history, against Indigenous peoples and nature.”

Though none actually leading the 2013-2014 Euromaidan putsch would seriously claim that the unrest was aimed at preserving Ukrainian self-determination and independence, many who took to the streets believed this to be so. They believed that Russia possessed unwarranted influence over their nation and sought to move out from the shadows they felt they still dwelt in from the era of Soviet rule.

Would the rank and file who have been led first into the streets against their own elected government, then onto the battlefield against their own brothers and sisters, have been so eager to follow if they knew they were trading in alleged Russian influence for legislated European integration and domination?

The most recent shadow engulfing Ukraine has not been cast by the Soviet Union. Instead, it is cast by the ever encroaching NATO military alliance and the likewise ever eastward-expanding European Union. Indeed, in name alone, the “Euromaidan” was the overthrow of an elected government accused of being pro-Russian in favor of one pro-European and specifically to force Ukraine into the the Ukraine-EU Association the nation had refused to sign for obvious reasons.

The arrival of the Ukraine-EU Association now, makes it abundantly clear that Ukrainian independence was not only never in the cards, but after the regime in Kiev signs it, independence never will be again. In fact, the entire story of Ukraine’s post-Soviet existence can be told as a balance between East and West versus Washington, London and Brussels’ attempts to incorporate and consume Ukraine entirely, sovereignty and all.

Ukraine-EU Association: Beginning of the End of Ukrainian Sovereignty 

Europeans as of late have noted that the union to which they are subjected, has made it virtually impossible for respective states to pursue domestic and foreign policies that are in their own best national interests. So vocal has this dissatisfaction become among nations, one wonders if Ukrainians can here it from within their own borders. And despite this growing dissatisfaction, Ukraine’s leadership is moving forward toward greater integration with this increasingly dysfunctional union.

Since the 2013-2014 putsch, Ukraine has been plagued by incompetent leadership, internal conflict, war in its eastern most region, the ascension of Crimea into the Russian Federation and the circling of its economy around a blackhole of debt and dysfunction. In many ways, the EU has helped Ukraine into this precarious situation, with NATO fully encouraging Kiev in its war against its own people and the EU lending money to the regime rather than addressing systemic corruption and economic mismanagement.

Kiev’s leadership willfully, almost eagerly brought Ukraine into the most precarious position possible ahead of finally signing the Ukraine-EU Association, leaving Kiev with virtually zero leverage. Isolated from Russia and completely dependent on the EU and NATO for its very survival, Ukraine’s independence is already as good as gone.

Integration, not Association 

However, once the Association goes into full effect, the over 2,000 pages of requirements aimed at rewriting virtually every law and regulation ever independently conceived in Ukraine will begin transforming the nation from a sovereign state into an extension of Washington, London and Brussels international order.

Whatever it was that the putschist thought they were saving their country from in regards to alleged Russian influence, they have ensured is fully realized, enumerated in exacting detail within the 2,000+ pages (.pdf) of the Ukraine-EU Agreement.

Everything from labor, to education, to economics, to the environment and the management of natural resources, to security, to the laws of the European Union itself, as well as “values” determined and arrived at by the EU, not Ukrainians, will be systematically imposed upon Ukraine. Reading the text of the agreement reveals the one-way nature of this process, where the “association” is more of an integration in which all things Ukrainian are expunged and replaced by terms set by the EU.

Inconvenient Incompatibility or Birds of a Feather? 

Consider the lofty terms of the Ukraine-EU Association which states:

The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement replaced the EU-Ukraine Partnership and Cooperation Agreement as the legal basis and framework for EU-Ukraine relations. The AA provides for a shared commitment to a close and lasting relationship based on common values, in particular full respect for democratic principles, rule of law, good governance, human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Then consider the facts that “common values,” “full respect for democratic principles,” “rule of law” and “good governance” are contradictions in terms regarding Ukraine in its current state.

Opposition parties have been all but eliminated and even among remaining parties, dissension leads to violent reprisals. Battalions of literal Neo-Nazis serve as Kiev’s most dependable and loyal enforcers, but often return to the capital over pay and political disputes, bringing their weapons and their newly honed combat skills with them. The concept of “human rights” is questionable at best in Ukraine where the government has been shelling, bombing and attacking its own population.

And none of these issues are even remotely close to being resolves since they are systemic, a manifestation of what came to power in the wake of the Euromaidan, and what must remain in power in order to oversee the implementation of an agreement no loyal Ukrainian would see through.

For the European Union to rush forward with the agreement despite Ukraine failing to represent any of the basic principles the agreement is allegedly predicated upon is no surprise. Little that the EU does actually reflects the values it allegedly stands for. It and the US’ role in the armed putsch in 2013-2014 to effect regime change to ramrod the agreement through to begin with is indicative enough of this.

It is also curious that the recent refugee crisis has helped fan the flames of racism, bigotry and many of the other unsavory characteristics in Europe that indeed can be found in vast quantities among the prevailing forces in Kiev. It is convenient that, while the EU has no hopes of bringing Kiev up to the level of civility articulated in the language of the agreement, the EU has managed to lower its population down to Kiev’s level.

In reality, Ukraine may have previously been under Russian influence, but it was also under European influence. It played both sides of East and West to its own advantage, or to as near to it as it could manage. After the putsch, this balancing act was turned into free fall. In this free fall, Ukraine finds itself grasping at anything it can before it reaches the bottom, and unfortunately for the people of Ukraine, that “something” is servility to Brussels.

Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Now that the Syrian armed forces have liberated Palmyra, President al Assad has thanked Vladimir Putin and the Russian people for the substantial support they provided to his country. Side by side, Syria and Russia have been fighting against the ISIS and other terrorist groups operating in the region – mainly the implants from the staunch allies of the West: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

After recent victories in Syria, the myth of invincibility of the terrorism has collapsed, smashed to pieces. It has become clear that if fought honestly and with full determination, even the most fanatical ones can be defeated.

It has also become obvious that the West has very little interest in defeating these groups. First: they were invented in the Western capitals, at least conceptually. Second: they serve numerous purposes and in many different parts of the world; they brutalize rebellious countries in the Middle East, and they are spreading fear and frustration amongst the European citizens thus justifying increasing ‘defense’ and intelligence budgets, as well as grotesque surveillance measures.

It is so obvious that the West is unhappy about the marvelous success of both the Syrian and Russian forces in the Middle East. And it still does all it can to undermine it, and it is belittling and even smearing it using its propaganda apparatus.

*

The State sponsors of ISIS

Now that the ISIS has been pushed away, further and further from all key strategic locations inside Syria, the question comes to mind: if finally defeated, where is it going to go next?

Its fighters are, of course, in neighboring Iraq, but Baghdad has also been forging a closer and closer alliance with Russia, and the terrorist groups may soon not be safe there, either.

By all accounts, the easiest place for the ISIS to expand is Lebanon.

Because the ISIS is already there! Its dormant cells are spread across the entire country, from Bekaa Valley, and even to some of the posh (and not necessarily Muslim) neighborhoods of Beirut.

Historically, Syria and Lebanon are a single entity. The movement of people between these two countries is substantial and constant. After the war in Syria began, hundreds of thousands of refugees, poor and rich, entered tiny Lebanon, some settling in the makeshift camps in Bekaa Valley, others renting lavish apartments on the Corniche in Beirut.

Officially, Lebanon (a country with only 4.5 million inhabitants) is “hosting” around 1.5 million refugees, mostly Syrians, but also those from Iraq and elsewhere. That is in addition to approximately 450,000 ‘permanent Palestinian refugees’ who are living in several large camps administered by UNRWA.

On some occasions, when the fighting got too vicious, the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon spiked (unofficially) to over 2 million.

For many years, the border between Lebanon and Syria has been porous, and even checks at the border crossings were relatively lax. It began to change, but only recently.

With the refugees (mostly families escaping from battles and from the extreme hardship caused by the conflict), came a substantial number of jihadi cadres – fighters from the ISIS, Al Nusrah and other pro-Saudi and pro-Turkish terrorist groups. They took full advantage of the situation, infiltrating the flow of legitimate émigrés.

Their goal has been clear and simple: to regroup in Lebanon, to create strong and effective cells, and then to strike when the time is ripe. The ‘dream’ of the ISIS is a mighty Caliphate in the north of Lebanon, preferably with full access to the Mediterranean Sea.

In recent history, Lebanon has become an extremely weak state, divided along the sectarian lines. For almost two years it has been unable to elect a President. To date, the government has been dysfunctional, almost paralyzed. The country is suffering from countless lethal ailments: from never-ending ‘garbage crises’ to constant electricity shortages, and problems with water supply. There is no public transportation, and public education is underfunded, inadequate and serves only the poorest part of the population. Corruption is endemic.

From time to time, Israel threatens to invade. It has attacked Lebanon on at least 5 separate occasions; the last time was as recent as in 2006.

In the northeast of the country, on the Syrian border, both Lebanese military and Hezbollah are engaged in fighting the ISIS.

But the Lebanese military is under-staffed, badly armed and terribly trained. In the end it is Hezbollah, the most prominent military, social and ideological force in Lebanon, which is holding the line. It is fighting a tremendous, epic battle, in which it has already lost more men than it did when combating the most recent Israeli invasion in 2006.

So far, Hezbollah’s combat against the terrorist groups is successful. But in addition to providing defense, it is now the only political force in Lebanon that is willing to reach across the sectarian divides. It is also offering much needed social support to hundreds of thousands of poor Lebanese citizens.

In Lebanon and in fact all over the Middle East, Hezbollah is deeply respected. But it is Shi’a; it has been closely linked with Iran and Syria, and it is known to be fiercely critical of the West and its murderous actions in the Middle East and the Gulf. It is fighting precisely those terrorist groups that are armed and supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

Therefore, it is antagonized.

The Lebanese government persistently refuses to place Hezbollah on the ‘terrorist list’, something that has already been done by many Western countries and by most of the pro-Western members of the Arab League.

To the dismay of Saudi Arabia, both Iraq and Lebanon refused to vote in favor of declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Syria would also refuse, but predictably it was not invited to vote.

Lebanon is increasingly critical of the West, of the international organizations and of the Arab League countries. It is outraged over the double standards related to the so-called ‘refugee crisis’. It is also unusually outspoken.

One of Lebanon’s major newspapers, the Daily Star, reported on March 26^th, 2016:

“Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil Saturday accused the international community of approaching the Syrian refugee crisis with a double standard; hours after U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon departed Beirut following a two-day visit.

Bassil pointed to the inconsistency of countries that back Syria’s armed insurrection to call on Lebanon to put human rights first, noting that many of those states were removing refugees by force – a move Beirut has not taken.

“They create war, and then call on others to host refugees in line with human rights treaties,” he said in a televised news conference from his residence in Batroun.”

The Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and his party are in fact in a coalition with Hezbollah. He was extremely critical of the top ranking visitors who are lately overwhelming Lebanon: U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

Mr. Bassil even refused to meet Ban Ki-moon in person.

One of my sources that attended the closed-door meeting of Ban Ki-moon, Jim Yong Kim and the heads of the U.N. agencies in Beirut, commented: “almost nothing new, concrete or inspiring was discussed there.”

In Beirut, it is often mentioned that while Turkey and Jordan are able to negotiate billions of dollars for hosting the refugees on their soil, Lebanon is only given empty promises from the EU and the rest of international community. It is also being threatened with legal consequences, in case it were to decide to remove the refugees by force (the West’s allies like Thailand regularly remove refugees by force, often even killing them, but there are never any substantial threats delivered. Several European countries are also forcing refugees to leave).

How a country of 4.5 million will manage to cope with 1.5 million immigrants is uncertain. What is clear is that Lebanon’s infrastructure is collapsing or, as some say, is already gone.

*

It appears that there is a plan, a reason for choking Lebanon.

Several Beirut-based experts are claiming that the country will soon become indefensible.

The Saudis cancelled more than U$4 billion in the aid earlier promised to the Lebanese military forces.

Robert Fisk wrote for the Independent on March 2^nd, 2016:

“Now Saudi Arabia, blundering into the civil war in Yemen and threatening to send its overpaid but poorly trained soldiers into Syria, has turned with a vengeance on Lebanon for its unfaithfulness and lack of gratitude after decades of Saudi largesse.

After repeatedly promising to spend £3.2bn on new French weapons for the well-trained but hopelessly under-armed Lebanese army, Saudi Arabia has suddenly declined to fund the project – which was eagerly supported by the US and, for greedier reasons, by Paris. Along with other Gulf states, Riyadh has told its citizens not to visit Lebanon or – if they are already there – to leave. Saudi Airlines is supposedly going to halt all flights to Beirut. Lebanon, according to the Saudis, is a centre of “terror”.”

The fact that last year Lebanon dared to arrest a Saudi Prince at Rafik Hariri International Airport, as he was trying to smuggle two tonnes of Captagon amphetamine pills bound for Saudi Arabia on a private jet, did not help. The Prince was also smuggling cocaine, but that was, most likely, for his personal consumption. Captagon amphetamine is also called the ‘combat drug’, and was, most likely, destined for pro-Saudi fighters in Yemen.

So what will happen if the Lebanese military gets no new weapons? Maybe Iran could help, but if not?

Then Hezbollah would be the only force facing the ISIS that will soon be pouring out of the liberated cities in Syria in all directions, particularly towards the coast of Lebanon.

But Hezbollah is ostracized, choked and demonized by the West and the Gulf.

One tiny new Israeli invasion and almost all Hezbollah forces would be tied up in the south, the ISIS would attack from the north, the dormant cells would be activated in Beirut, Tripoli and other cities, and Lebanon would collapse within few days. Is this a plan? After all, Israel and Saudi Arabia are two close allies, when it comes to their ‘Shi’a enemies’.

Then this tiny, proud and creative country would basically cease to exist.

The Gulf States (their rulers, not the people) would rejoice: another bastion of tolerance gone. And one more Shi’a stronghold – Hezbollah areas inside Lebanon – would be plundered and destroyed.

The West might be officially expressing its ‘concern’, but such a scenario would fit into its master plan: one more rebellious country would be finished, and Syria would for years be threatened from the western direction. After all, Damascus is only 30 minutes drive from the Lebanese border.

The “Paris of the Middle East” as Beirut used to be called, would then be ‘decorated’ with those frightening black flags of the ISIS. Lebanon as a whole would experience total collapse, year zero, the end.

This is not some phantasmagoric scenario. All this could happen within one year, even within a few months.

Right now, Lebanon has only two places where to ask for help, for protection: Teheran and Moscow. It should approach both of them, without any delay!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.  Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

Con man credentials are required to become US president – being a master deceiver and serial liar. His war on terrorism, especially on ISIS, is a complete fabrication. 

The Wall Street Journal supplied the latest evidence unintentionally, reporting on ISIS using Iraq’s Mosul University chemistry lab for bomb-making – the facility not struck by US air strikes despite claims otherwise.

It said the lab is used “to concoct a new generation of explosive devices (including chemical bombs and other chemical weapons) and train militants to make them” – citing US and Iraqi military sources familiar with what’s going on.

According to General Hatem Magsosi, “Iraq’s top explosives officer,” ISIS recruits “go to Raqqa (the group’s Syria stronghold), then to Mosul University…”

Alleged US airstrikes haven’t touched the facility. Its smart bombs aim elsewhere, targeting Iraqi infrastructure and government sites – supporting, not combating ISIS, the same scheme used in Syria against Assad.

US military spokesman in Iraq Col. Steve Warren lied claiming “we bombed them,” no additional details provided, no damage to the alleged sites struck.

Russian airstrikes could level the facility straightaway if ordered, eliminate it as a bomb-making threat.

When ISIS seized Mosul in summer 2014, it obtained 40 kilos of uranium compounds kept at the university’s lab, materials enabling it to produce terror weapons.

According to former CIA officer Jack Rice, the group has no known capability to enrich uranium, but could likely produce dirty bombs able to irradiate areas where detonated.

Washington has been well aware of ISIS’ Mosul University operations all along, yet has done nothing to stop them.

Claims of US warplanes bombing the facility are Big Lies. A few smart bombs from a single sortie could destroy it in short order.

Why not? Because Washington uses ISIS fighters as imperial foot soldiers, continues supplying them with arms and other material support – complicit with its rogue Western and regional allies.

It wants the lab kept operating, able to produce terror weapons. Otherwise it would have smashed it without delay.

The Journal failed to explain what’s most important. Instead it hyped a phony threat to Western cities – state-sponsored false flags when violent incidents occur, not terrorist attacks as reported.

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.

Featured image:  Bystanders look on at the carnage following a suicide car bombing in the Yemeni city of Aden (AFP)

As the Syrian Army and its Russian partners gradually regain control of the disaster created by Washington and its NATO and GCC allies in Syria, the western media is slowly coming around to realize 12 months late (but better late than never) that Saudi Arabia has been pounding its neighbor Yemen, and killing and maiming many innocent people in the process.

Why the silence? The answer is simple: business. More specifically, the arms and ‘defense’ (what an oxymoronic term this has become) business. As we reported yesterday, as Saudi Arabia continues to drop its US and UK-made bombs down on the people of Yemen, the US and UK have cashed-in on sales to the GCC worth at least $33 Billion – in just eleven months according to Defense News.

War is a racket, and for some, no matter how many people are murdered and how much damage it causes – war is simply good for business.

Watch this stunning ITV News report detailing the human cost of war in Yemen, as the UK is investigated for selling arms to Saudi Arabia, which is behind the bombings…

Russia’s envoy to the United Nations (UN) says he has submitted to the Security Council purported evidence of the illicit transfer of arms and military hardware by Turkey to Daesh terrorist group in Syria.

“The main supplier of weapons and military equipment to ISIL fighters is Turkey, which is doing so through non-governmental organizations. Work in this area is overseen by the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey,” Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin wrote in a letter to the UNSC, RT report on Friday.

Churkin also said that the transfer of military supplies to the notorious terrorist group “mainly involves vehicles” that operated across Syria under the cover of “humanitarian aid convoys.”

He identified in his letter a number of NGOs funded by Turkish and other foreign sources that shipped to Syria cargoes of various sorts, including military equipment, throughout the past year.

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Vitaly Churkin

“The Besar foundation is most actively engaged in pursuing these objectives and, in 2015, formed around 50 convoys to the Turkmen areas of Bayirbucak and Kiziltepe (260 kilometers north of the Syrian capital of Damascus),” the Russian envoy said. He also identified the Iyilikder Foundation and the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms as other groups involved in the alleged operations.

According to Churkin, such deliveries are carried out through various checkpoints on the Turkish-Syrian border as well as waterways, specifically the Euphrates River.

The Russian military released a batch of purported evidence implicating Turkey in late 2015, including satellite images of columns of oil tanker trucks moving into Turkey from areas controlled by Daesh militants in Syria.

Ankara is widely believed to be the key conduit for armed militants slipping into Syria to join the foreign-backed militancy across Syria that seeks to topple the Damascus government.

A file photo of Daesh militants in Syria

Gallup reported on March 18th:

For the first time since Gallup first asked the question in 1994, a majority of Americans say they oppose nuclear energy.

The 54% opposing it is up significantly from 43% a year ago, while the 44% who favor using nuclear energy is down from 51%.

Similarly, Gallup reported Wednesday:

Opposition to fracking rises to 51% from 40% in 2015

***

Opposition to the practice of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” has increased significantly in the past year as environmental concerns, such as earthquakes, have grown, even though the procedure has helped keep oil prices low.

Both fracking and nuclear are insanely destructive to health and the environment … so it is good news that the public has turned against them.

What types of energy do Americans favor?

A third Gallup report from last month found:

Seventy-three percent of Americans say they prefer emphasizing alternative energy, rather than gas and oil production, as the solution to the nation’s energy problems.

Hillary Clinton’s signature project as Secretary of State – the “regime change” in Libya – is now sliding from the tragic to the tragicomic as her successors in the Obama administration adopt increasingly desperate strategies for imposing some kind of order on the once-prosperous North African country torn by civil war since Clinton pushed for the overthrow and murder of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The problem that Clinton did much to create has grown more dangerous since Islamic State terrorists have gained a foothold in Sirte and begun their characteristic beheading of “infidels” as well as their plotting for terror attacks in nearby Europe.

There is also desperation among some Obama administration officials because the worsening Libyan fiasco threatens to undermine not only President Barack Obama’s legacy but Clinton’s drive for the Democratic presidential nomination and then the White House. So, the officials felt they had no choice but to throw caution to the wind or — to mix metaphors — some Hail Mary passes.

The latest daring move was a sea landing in Tripoli by the U.S./U.N-formulated “unity government,” which was cobbled together by Western officials in hotel rooms in Morocco and Tunisia. But instead of “unity,” the arrival by sea threatened to bring more disunity and war by seeking to muscle aside two rival governments.

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

The sea landing at a naval base in Tripoli became necessary because one of those rival governments refused to let the “unity” officials fly into Libya’s capital. So, instead, the “unity” leaders entered Libya by boat from Tunisia and are currently operating from the naval base where they landed.

With this unusual move, the Obama administration is reminding longtime national security analysts of other fiascos in which Washington sought to decide the futures of other countries by shaping a government externally, as with the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s and the Iraqi National Congress in 2003, and then imposing those chosen leaders on the locals.

(When I heard about the sea landing, I flashed back on images of Gen. Douglas MacArthur splashing ashore as he returned to the Philippines in World War II.)

Making the Scheme Work

But the new mystery is how this Libyan “unity government” expects to convince its rivals to accept its legitimacy without the military muscle to actually take over governance across Libya.

The Obama administration risks simply introducing a third rival government into the mix. Though the “unity government” drew participants from the other two governments, U.S. resistance to incorporating several key figures, including Gen. Khalifa Haftar, a military strongman in eastern Libya, has threatened to simply extend and possibly expand the civil war.

The U.S. scheme for establishing the authority of the “unity government” centers on using the $85 billion or so in foreign reserves in Libya’s Central Bank to bring other Libyan leaders onboard. But that strategy may test the question of whether the pen – poised over the Central Bank’s check book – is mightier than the sword, since the militias associated with the rival regimes have plenty of weapons.

Besides the carrot of handing out cash to compliant Libyan politicians and fighters, the Obama administration also is waving a stick, threatening to hit recalcitrant Libyans with financial sanctions or labeling them “terrorists” with all the legal and other dangers that such a designation carries.

Immediately after being selected as Prime Minister of the U.N./U.S.-arranged “unity government” Fayez Sirraj reached out to Gen. Khalifa Haftar on Jan. 30, 2016, a move that upset U.S. officials who favored isolating Haftar.

But can these tactics – bribery and threats – actually unify a deeply divided Libya, especially when some of the powerful factions are Islamist and see their role as more than strictly political, though the Islamist faction in Tripoli is also opposed to the Islamic State?

I’m told that another unity plan that drew wider support from the competing factions and included Haftar as Libya’s new commander-in-chief was rejected by U.S. officials because of fears that Haftar might become another uncontrollable strongman like Gaddafi.

Nevertheless, Haftar and his troops are considered an important element in taking on the Islamic State and, according to intelligence sources, are already collaborating with U.S. and European special forces in that fight.

After the sea landing on Wednesday, the “unity government” began holding official meetings on Thursday, but inside the heavily guard naval base. How the “unity” Prime Minister Fayez Sirraj and six other members of the Presidency Council can extend their authority across Tripoli and then across Libya clearly remained a work in progress, however.

The image of these “unity” officials, representing what’s called the Government of National Accord, holed up with their backs to the sea at a naval base, unable to dispatch their subordinates to take control of government buildings and ministries, recalls how the previous internationally recognized government, the House of Representatives or HOR, met on a cruise ship in Tobruk in the east.

Meanwhile, HOR’s chief rival, the General National Congress, renamed the National Salvation government, insisted on its legitimacy in Tripoli, but its control, too, was limited to several Libyan cities.

On Wednesday, National Salvation leader Khalifa Ghwell called the “unity” officials at the naval base “infiltrators” and demanded their surrender. Representatives of the “unity government” then threatened to deliver its rivals’ names to Interpol and the U.N. for “supporting terrorism.”

On Friday, the European Union imposed asset freezes on Ghwell and the leaders of the rival parliaments in Tripoli and in Tobruk. According to some accounts, the mix of carrots and sticks has achieved some progress for the “unity government” as 10 towns and cities in western Libya indicated their support for the new leadership.

Shortly after being selected by U.S. and U.N. officials to head the “unity government,” Sirraj reached out to Haftar in a meeting on Jan. 30, 2016, but the move upset U.S. officials who favored isolating Haftar from the new government.

Political Stakes

Prime Minister Fayez Sirraj of Libya’s new Government of National Accord, as selected by U.N. and U.S. officials, is welcomed by naval officers after landing in Tripoli.

The success or failure of this latest Obama administration effort to impose some order on Libya – and get the participants in the civil war to concentrate their fire on the Islamic State – could have consequences politically in the United States as well.

The continuing crisis threatens to remind Democratic primary voters about Hillary Clinton’s role in sparking the chaos in 2011 when she pressured President Obama to counter a military offensive by Gaddafi against what he called Islamic terrorists operating in the east.

Though Clinton and other “liberal interventionists” around Obama insisted that the goal was simply to protect Libyans from a possible slaughter, the U.S.-backed airstrikes inside Libya quickly expanded into a “regime change” operation, slaughtering much of the Libyan army.

Clinton’s State Department email exchanges revealed that her aides saw the Libyan war as a chance to pronounce a “Clinton doctrine,” bragging about how Clinton’s clever use of “smart power” could get rid of demonized foreign leaders like Gaddafi. But the Clinton team was thwarted when President Obama seized the spotlight when Gaddafi’s government fell.

But Clinton didn’t miss a second chance to take credit on Oct. 20, 2011, after militants captured Gaddafi, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him. Appearing on a TV interview, Clinton celebrated Gaddafi’s demise with the quip, “we came; we saw; he died.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on Jan. 23, 2013, about the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. 2012. (Photo from C-SPAN coverage)

However, with Gaddafi and his largely secular regime out of the way, Islamic militants expanded their power over the country. Some were terrorists, just as Gaddafi had warned.

One Islamic terror group attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, killing U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American personnel, an incident that Clinton called the worst moment of her four-year tenure as Secretary of State.

As the violence spread, the United States and other Western countries abandoned their embassies in Tripoli. Once prosperous with many social services, Libya descended into the category of failed state with the Islamic State taking advantage of the power vacuum to seize control of Sirte and other territory. In one grisly incident, Islamic State militants marched Coptic Christians onto a beach and beheaded them.

Yet, on the campaign trail, Clinton continues to defend her judgment in instigating the Libyan war. She claims that Gaddafi had “American blood on his hands,” although she doesn’t spell out exactly what she’s referring to. There remain serious questions about the two primary incidents blamed on Libya in which Americans died – the 1986 La Belle bombing in Berlin and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

But whatever Gaddafi’s guilt in that earlier era, he renounced terrorism during George W. Bush’s presidency and surrendered his unconventional military arsenal. He even assisted Bush’s “war on terror.” So, Gaddafi’s grisly fate has become a cautionary tale for what can happen to a leader who makes major security concessions to the United States.

The aftermath of the Clinton-instigated “regime change” in Libya also shows how little Clinton and other U.S. officials learned from the Iraq War disaster. Clinton has rejected any comparisons between her vote for the Iraq War in 2002 and her orchestration of the Libyan war in 2011, saying that “conflating” them is wrong. She also has sought to shift blame onto European allies who also pushed for the war.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confronts Sen. Bernie Sanders in Democratic presidential debate on Jan. 17, 2016.

Though her Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, hasn’t highlighted her key role in the Libya fiasco, Clinton can expect a tougher approach from the Republicans if she wins the nomination. The problem with the Republicans, however, is that they have obsessed over the details of the Benghazi incident, spinning all sorts of conspiracy theories, missing the forest for the trees.

Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger.

Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations.

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 and barnesandnoble.com).

US President Barack Obama yesterday concluded the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, involving more than 50 countries, with a bland statement highlighting his presidency’s supposed achievements in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. In reality, the Obama administration has greatly heightened, not lessened, the danger that nuclear devices will be used.

The summit was held under the banner of the “war on terror,” with the supposed purpose of engendering international collaboration in preventing Al Qaeda or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) gaining access to nuclear weapons. “There is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material they most certainly would use it to kill as many innocent people as possible,” Obama declared.

The greatest danger confronting humanity, however, is not that ISIS or Al Qaeda will obtain and use nuclear weapons, but rather that the madmen in the White House have recklessly inflamed flashpoints in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia, setting the stage for a catastrophic conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

So acrimonious are relations between Washington and Moscow that Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to attend the summit. On the eve of the gathering, the US military announced that by February 2017, it plans to maintain a “permanent footprint” of three armoured brigades in Eastern Europe in NATO countries bordering Russia.

In the Middle East, using the pretext of combating ISIS, the US and its allies are engaged in a dangerous confrontation with Russia to oust Moscow’s ally—the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The potential for a military clash was underscored last November when NATO ally, Turkey, shot down a Russian aircraft that allegedly intruded briefly into its airspace—a provocation undoubtedly sanctioned by Washington.

The absence of Russia from the summit highlights its fraudulent character. The US and Russia together hold 90 percent of the world’s nuclear bombs—a huge arsenal of around 10,000 warheads in service—making a mockery of Obama’s “vision of a world without nuclear weapons.” The aim of Washington’s “non-proliferation” policy is not to rid the globe of nuclear bombs but to ensure the US retains its dominant position over any potential rival, including Russia.

The White House’s chief focus at the nuclear summit was on China. When Obama met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines on Thursday, the tensions were palpable. In a comment in the Washington Post the previous day, the US president flagged “North Korea’s continued provocations” as “unfinished business.” While China and the US agreed on the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, Xi “firmly opposed” the Pentagon’s plans to base a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea.

Since coming to office, Obama has stymied any resumption of six-party talks to eliminate North Korea’s weapons and facilities. Instead, he has repeatedly exploited flare-ups on the Korean Peninsula to justify the US military build-up in South Korea and Japan, as part of its broader “pivot to Asia” against China.

Despite US assurances to the contrary, the anti-ballistic missile system is primarily directed against China, not North Korea. While the constant drumbeat from Washington is about the “threat” posed by China’s military expansion, the US has overwhelming superiority in the sophistication and size of its nuclear arsenal—some 5,000 warheads in service, compared to an estimated 260 for China.

Moreover, while promoted as a defensive weapon, the THAAD system is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to achieve “nuclear primacy” over any rival. Unlike China, the United States has never ruled out a nuclear first strike. The THAAD systems are to ensure any Chinese weapons that are not destroyed in a pre-emptive US nuclear attack can be shot down before reaching any American targets.

Xi and Obama also traded diplomatic blows over the South China Sea. Before their meeting, US officials again accused China of “militarising” islets under its control and warned against any declaration of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ). On Wednesday, Deputy Defence Secretary Richard Work branded an ADIZ as “destabilising,” saying the US would not recognise it. In 2012, the Pentagon flew nuclear-capable B-52 bombers into the East China Sea after Beijing announced an ADIZ in that region.

The rising instability in the South China Sea is a direct consequence of the actions of Washington, which has encouraged countries like the Philippines and Vietnam to aggressively press their maritime claims against China. Over the past year, the US has repeatedly condemned China’s land reclamation and “expansionism” in the South China Sea. On two occasions—last October and again in January—the US dispatched US navy destroyers to conduct “freedom of navigation” operations within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit around Chinese-administered islets.

According to the New York Times, Obama on Thursday again pressed Xi “on China’s construction of military facilities in the South China Sea.” In response, Xi told Obama he hoped Washington would “strictly” abide by its commitment not to take a position on the territorial disputes and “adopt an objective and impartial attitude.” According to China’s Xinhua news agency, Xi warned that Beijing would not accept violations of its sovereignty in the name of “freedom of navigation.”

This week, the New York Times provided another example of propaganda posing as journalism, with first-hand accounts from an embedded reporter on board a US navy cruiser in the South China Sea. The on-the-spot reporting made clear that US military encounters with Chinese forces are now routine in the South China Sea. Each of these encounters poses the danger of a miscalculation leading to an armed clash and a wider conflict.

The New York Times article on Thursday, entitled “Patrolling disputed waters, US and China jockey for dominance,” reported a conversation overheard two weeks ago between Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Joseph Dunford, and Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Command. “Would you go to war over Scarborough Shoals [reefs claimed by China and the Philippines]?” Dunford asked. The reply was not heard.

Whether the answer was yes or no, the fact that two of the US military’s most senior commanders were casually discussing war with China is revealing in itself. Moreover, there is an inherent logic to Washington’s escalation of tensions in Asia. Were the US to refuse to back the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoals, or Japan over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islets, or South Korea over an incident with North Korea, the whole web of US alliances in Asia and internationally would be called into question.

It is this underlying dynamic, notwithstanding Obama’s posturing at the Nuclear Security Summit, that poses the very real danger of a nuclear war.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lashed out on several occasions Thursday against supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and critics of her right-wing political record, amid reports suggesting that her poll lead in both New York state and nationally has become precarious.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday showed Clinton leading Sanders by only 54 percent to 42 percent in New York, the state she represented for eight years in the US Senate. This means Sanders has wiped out three-quarters of Clinton’s 48-point lead, 71 percent to 23 percent, in an Emerson College survey earlier in March.

Even a poll giving her a 12-point lead showed Clinton with a net unfavorable rating, 45 percent to 49 percent among likely Democratic voters, while Sanders have a net favorable rating of 24 points, 54 percent to 30 percent.

The New York primary April 19 will award 291 delegates to the Democratic nominating convention, the second largest number of any state. A Clinton defeat in New York would be catastrophic for her campaign, and set the stage for further defeats April 26, when five states in the same region vote: Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island, accounting for another 384 delegates.

The Clinton campaign began the New York phase of the campaign with a rally Wednesday in Harlem. The decision to shift focus to that state amounted to conceding the April 5 Wisconsin primary, where Sanders now has a lead of six-eight points in public polls, and is believed by both campaigns to be safely ahead.

Sanders responded by launching his own New York primary campaign Thursday night with a huge rally at St. Mary’s Park in the South Bronx, attended by an estimated 18,500 people, many of them black and Latino. The location of the kickoff rally and the endorsers who shared the stage with the candidate, including actress Rosario Dawson and director Spike Lee, marked a deliberate effort by the Sanders campaign to appeal to minority voters in New York City, who could well decide the outcome of the primary.

Claiming that he would support more resources going to the Bronx and other impoverished urban communities, Sanders described his own background growing up in a Jewish immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn. “I learned a little bit about what it means to grow up in a family that has no money and I also learned a little bit about the immigrant experience,” he said.

Sanders made his now-familiar denunciation of “Wall Street crooks” and billionaires, while demanding Clinton release transcripts of speeches she delivered to audiences at Goldman Sachs and other top financial firms for six-figure fees. He said sarcastically, “If you’re going to get paid $250,000 for a speech, it must be a brilliant speech. It must be an Earth-shattering speech written in Shakespearean prose.”

Speaking on CBS “Morning News” Friday, Sanders cited the large turnout at the Bronx rally as evidence that his campaign had broad support. “We are going to win New York,” he said, the first time his campaign has suggested it could actually defeat Clinton in the state she was twice elected to the US Senate. “We’re going to do rallies all over the state, and I think we have a good shot at this,” he said.

Clinton has encountered unexpected public opposition at several New York campaign appearances. Speaking Thursday at the SUNY Purchase in suburban Westchester County, she was interrupted by pro-Sanders hecklers among the college students, who chanted, “She wins, we lose,” and then marched demonstratively out of the auditorium.

Clinton then told the SUNY Purchase audience that Sanders was making unrealistic promises to win support among young people. He “goes around telling young people that he’s going to give them free college. Well, I wish it were so.” The result, she said, was that young Sanders supporters “won’t listen to anybody else,” and didn’t want to hear “the contrast between my experience, my plans, my vision, what I know I can get done and what my opponent is promising.”

A few hours later, Clinton became visibly angry when an organizer for Greenpeace USA, Eva Resnick-Day, confronted her along a rope line about contributions to her campaign from figures in the fossil fuel industry. Clinton denied taking money “from people who work for fossil fuel companies,” then exploded, “I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about that,” pointing her finger at the questioner.

Greenpeace later released figures showing that Clinton has received donations bundled by 57 fossil fuel industry lobbyists that total more than $1.1 million. Much larger sums, at least $3.4 million, have been funneled by the industry into Priorities USA Action, the Super PAC supporting Clinton. The environmental organization noted that is has not endorsed Sanders, but has repeatedly challenged all candidates not to take money from oil, coal and natural gas industry.

Clinton has the backing of virtually the entire New York state Democratic Party apparatus, including Senator Charles Schumer, Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel and unions like the United Federation of Teachers, Service Employees International Union and building trades.

The primary is limited to registered Democrats, meaning that independent voters, who have given Sanders margins of 70 percent or more, cannot cast ballots in New York. The Sanders campaign spent much of its efforts in New York urging young people and other registered independents to re-register in the Democratic Party before the March 25 deadline to vote in the primary.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who has previously downplayed Sanders’ chances, wrote Friday, “If not for a certain Manhattan billionaire, Bernie Sanders’s surprising strength and Hillary Clinton’s relative weakness would be the big political story of the year.” Clinton has won in 18 states, while Sanders has taken 14, making the contest far more competitive than expected.

The weakness of the Democratic frontrunner was increasingly obvious, he wrote: “… look at the bigger picture: It’s April and Clinton has not managed to put away a 74-year-old avowed socialist who wasn’t even a Democrat until he began his campaign. Why is that not worrisome?”

The Sanders campaign has won a response among millions of young people and sections of the working class, revealing a broad shift to the left in the thinking of working people, and their turn to a political program described by the candidate and the media as “socialist.” At the same time, Sanders himself remains a conventional capitalist politician, whose policies would not touch the foundations of the profit system, and go no further than the liberalism that was standard in the Democratic Party 50 or 60 years ago, but has long been discarded as the Democrats moved steadily to the right.

Russia does not take part in the two-day nuclear security summit in Washington. Does it mean that Russia is not worried about the nuclear crisis in the DPRK (North Korea) or the dirty bomb of the Islamic State?

According to Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, Russia’s decision not to take part in the summit was a missed opportunity. Rhodes also said that he took Russia’s move as a step towards self-isolation.

Yet, officials at the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs said that summits “have played their role” and now interfere in the activities of the UN, the IAEA, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism Initiative, Interpol and Global Partnership. This is an attempt to impose the view of several countries on the above-mentioned international organizations and initiatives to bypass their own political decision-making mechanisms, Russian officials said.The nuclear security summit in Washington brought together representatives of 52 countries. The summit has been held under the patronage of the president of the United States of America since 2010.

Credit Suisse’s ability to survive in its present form is threatened by the latest revelations of past mismanagement and dysfunctional trading.

Follow our Blog which will carry the latest updates as the drama unfolds.

CS CEO Tidjane Thiam [image left] admitted in a video interview that the bank had followed a Pursuit of Revenue “At All Costs” policy which had facilitated traders secretly holding high risk illiquid positions. Losses may eventually run into billions of dollars. Updates here and here point to fractured internal communications.

The drama is unfolding of a massive amount of illiquid debt scrip. (Illiquid scrip or illiquidity refers to investments for which there is no market, i.e. no buyers. Forced sales can result in massive price drops.) Credit Suisse wants to unload $90 billion of thinly traded debt scrip in unfavourable conditions.

CS’s weak position is an ironic reversal for a bank which often strove to exploit weaker counterparties. Thousands of those exploited by the bank’s greed will regard it as due comeuppance. Lisa Abramowicz’s video report on Credit Suisse’s woes highlights poor risk management by senior officers.

The bank’s capital ratio was already down to 11.4% – after the $6 billion capital raising. Those investors lost badly in the massive drop in CS’s share price. The bank can hardly expect further capital from that source.

The bank currently carries $380 billion of leverage. A loss of 10% on the $90 billion it is attempting to divest in the current difficult market would cost $9 billion and drive the bank close to junk territory.

A loss of 5% on its $380 billion of leverage would take $19 billion off its balance sheet and could have it looking for a bailout.

Both scenarios are conservative if the uncertainties described below eventuate. Bank of America has just reiterated its “Sell” Rating for Credit Suisse.

No Buffer from Credible Uncertainties

There is no buffer from credible uncertainties. The deflation cycle looks set in for a while and resource prices are heading down (again). China’s stock market is teetering (again) and The Street is confident a Chinese crash is imminent. ISIS want to explode a dirty nuclear bomb and some respected experts are only surprised it hasn’t already happened. Central banks are playing a dangerous game which has the probable outcome that deflation will morph into stagflation – for which there is no known remedy.

Any significant combination of these would turn Credit Suisse into junk or worse. Thiam now expects further Q1 losses following the bank’s massive Q4 loss of $5.75 billion.

CS’s Crazy Creation – It is Taking Out Catastrophe Insurance

Matt Levine has unpackaged the complexities of CS’s drama. Here is a quick paraphrase: CS intends to sell its risk of a catastrophe so that it doesn’t need extra capital to cover it. It includes risk of big losses from illiquid investments and rogue-trading. But it is more complex resembling a Möbius strip or a Klein bottle:

“Credit Suisse packaged that risk into securities, gave some of the securities to its own bankers as part of their bonuses (surprise!), hedged the rest of them by buying yet another derivative from yet another counterparty, and then agreed to fund any amounts that the counterparty owed under the derivative.”

It is projected to include rogue-trading risk at the same time it is under criminal investigation for allowing rogue-trading. It is projected to be sold as an Operational Risk insurance policy through Operational Re Ltd. (Bermuda!) claiming it is catastrophe insurance with a relatively remote risk, with the “expected loss said to be just 0.15%”. My estimate of the risk is multiples of that and I wouldn’t want to litigate any claim in Bermuda.

To understand it, first read Matt Levine, then this, and this and this and then that and then this post.

The upshot of this is that the bank’s official 11.4% capital adequacy may be an over-estimate. Perhaps the bank is already on the brink of a Liquidity Death Spiral. Note that about 40 percent of the bonds in the $1.4 trillion U.S. junk-debt market didn’t trade at all in the first two months of this year, and those that did were “absolutely crushed”. An estimated loss of only 10% on the $90 billion fire sale may be over-optimistic.

The Insider’s Version of the Story

Apart from Thiam’s video – the other half is in the confessions of a top ex-Credit Suisse banker – Mr X  – who managed some of its wealthiest billionaire clients. Mr X, who was identified as CS private banker Patrice Lescaudron, got the job because he could speak Russian. Banking experience? He had none before joining the bank. Less than two years after joining Credit Suisse, he said, he was handling the bank’s biggest clients in the region. He reportedly became one of Credit Suisse’s most successful bankers, until he was fired.

Credit Suisse said it suffered a 1.5 billion Swiss franc outflow of client funds. The bank has set aside 250 million Swiss francs in provisions for litigation related to the banker’s case, a person familiar with the matter said.

Bank Ignored Warnings for Years

We repeatedly warned the bank of a similar situation in Credit Suisse – but they refused to accept our reports and covered up the illegal activity instead. An account manager who had no relevant experience, but was chosen because he could speak the right language. In our case, his banking ignorance was convenient because there was a huge securities scam going on between various bank people and entities in organized crime (outside the bank). The Swiss accomplice had an arrest warrant out for him for wire fraud and money laundering. However, the Swiss ignored the US arrest warrant.

Mr X’s inside information

Mr X’s inside information (courtesy of Matt Levine) makes for good TV drama:

He joined Credit Suisse at age 40 with no prior banking experience, and almost immediately got some big clients, including Georgian politician-tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili.

“Around April-May, I told myself that all my clients had to make profits so they would stop annoying me with their criticism about lack of performance,” he told bank investigators.

Can you imagine? Mr. X is new to banking, he’s good at client relationships, he picks up some big clients, he has fun going out to dinner with them or whatever. “Within weeks, he said, he was actively trading without permission, using Ivanishvili’s credit line to buy about $100 million in Russian stocks and bonds.” And: “With markets around the world surging, he had soon more than made up the missed gains, he said.”

But: a trade lost money, there were margin calls to clients who weren’t aware they were trading on margin, and the whole thing unraveled. He told investigators he could have prevented the margin calls with more unauthorized trading. But he was trying to enjoy the last day of his Italian vacation, he said. “I had had enough of this situation that had upset me so much.”

Was It Pursuit of Revenue or Illegal Profit – “At All Costs”?

It is apparent that the bank’s criminal convictions, its fractured internal communications and its bloated distressed debt were intimately intertwined. The burning question is:

Were they all caused by policies designed to protect corporate crime – through ingrained deliberate ignorance and wilful blindness?

Thiam’s 7 minute video interview has inspired a multitude of media comments:

It is going from bad to worse for Credit Suisse.

Mr. Thiam said the problems in the investment bank were connected to the pursuit of revenue “at all costs.”

Credit Suisse Chief Says Risky Bets Were a ‘Surprise’

A Credit Suisse wealth manager made rogue trades for 6 years just to keep his clients off his back

Liquidity Death Spiral Traps Credit Suisse

Credit Suisse CEO Blindsided as Bank Added to Risky Positions

There was clearly an active decision to retain illiquids that CS took which other firms didn’t take

Thiam said he was blindsided by a buildup of illiquid trading positions that will probably spark a first-quarter loss, and pledged to make deeper cost cuts.

For him to say he was surprised by the size of the position is clearly not good ….. It highlights, at best, historic control failures and is not good for confidence.

The shares dropped to the lowest since 1989 last month and are down 33 percent this year.

Thiam also warned trading revenues are expected to fall by up to 45 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier.

But investors should know there is no quick fix for a bank the size of Credit Suisse.

Fixed-income revenue was down 61 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter

Thiam says his bank will report a bad first quarter

CFTC Fines Credit Suisse $665,000 Over Futures Debacle and giving the regulator false information.

The bank suffered $258 million of writedowns this year through March 11, and $495 million of losses in the fourth quarter, because of its holdings of distressed debt, leveraged loans and securitized products.

Apparently people at Credit Suisse don’t talk to each other? 

… if I ever got hired by an investment bank to be its CEO, I would spend my first week or two just sort of wandering around the trading floors, sidling up to people to ask questions like “so do you have any illiquid credit positions that might trigger oh say $1 billion of write-downs?”

Credit Suisse Confusion on Costly Trades Adds to CEO’s Woes

Credit Suisse’s $90 Billion Bitter Pill

As any trader knows, when a big player like Credit Suisse exits, it’s a shock for everyone involved. That’s even more true when the market is highly illiquid.

How is the bank going to reduce leverage in its global markets unit to $290 billion from $380 billion by the end of 2016?

That’s $90 billion of assets that may be unloaded at fire-sale prices. If these positions are illiquid, which some of them seem to be, it could have a major impact on several markets.

Illiquid Positions Add to Credit Suisse Confusion

China’s Stock Market Is About to Crash — Sell Before It’s Too Late

Many U.S. experts consider the eventual detonation by terrorists of a dirty bomb containing radiological materials to be inevitable, because the mechanics of such a device are simple and widely-known.

The fuel for a nuclear bomb is in the hands of an unknown black marketeer

A distressed credit index touched a level not seen since 2009 in February as oil traded at $30/barrel

Credit Suisse `A Drag’ for Herro Awaiting Overhaul Success

Marvel At The Derivative On Its Derivatives That Credit Suisse Wrote To Itself

Mourn For The Derivative On Its Derivatives That Credit Suisse Wrote To Itself

CS turns to bonds to hedge rogue trader risk

Don’t believe or buy this:  CS Operational Risk insurance policy has a relatively remote risk, with the expected loss said to be just 0.15%.

If you make money you’re a trader but if you don’t you’re a rogue trader.

Fitch hasn’t changed the banks ratings yet but warned that the bank’s “Accelerated Restructuring Adds to Execution Risks”. It made a detailed release outlining possible consequences of the current upheavals which may lead to ratings adjustments.

The Bank’s Solution

Credit Suisse plans to monitor employee behavior to catch rogue trading through Artificial Intelligence surveillance, see: Signac – a 50/50 partnership with AI firm Palantir Technologies Inc.

KISS: Why not Read Your Mail?

Considering that the bank ignored repeated warnings of rogue activity, is it naive to suggest that the bank should read its mail?