Global Research

The U.S. claim that it is waging a global “war on terror” is the biggest lie of the 21^st century, a mega-fiction on the same historical scale of evil as Hitler’s claim that he was defending Germany from an assault by world Jewry, or that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a Christianizing mission. In reality, the U.S. is the birth mother and chief nurturer of the global jihadist network – a truth recognized by most of the world’s people, including the 82 percent of Syrians that believe “the U.S. created the Islamic State.” (Even 62 percent of Syrians in Islamic State-controlled regions believe this to be true.)

Only “exceptionalism”-addled Americans and colonial-minded Europeans give Washington’s insane cover story the slightest credibility. However, it is dangerous in the extreme for any country to state the fact clearly: that it is the United States that has inflicted Islamic jihadist terror on the world. Once the charade has been abandoned; once there is no longer the international pretense that Washington is not the Mother Of All Terror, what kind of dialogue is possible with the crazed and desperate perpetrator? What do you do with a superpower criminal, once you have accused him of such unspeakable evil?

President Vladimir Putin came closest last November, after Russia unleashed a devastating bombing and missile campaign against the Islamic State’s industrial scale infrastructure in Syria – facilities and transportation systems that the U.S. had left virtually untouched since Obama’s phony declaration of war against ISIS in September of 2014. The Islamic State had operated a gigantic oil sales and delivery enterprise with impunity, right under the eyes of American bombers. “I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” said Putin. “The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon.” Russian bombers destroyed hundreds of the oil tankers within a week, and cruise missiles launched from Russian ships on the Caspian Sea knocked out vital ISIS command-and-control sites.

Putin’s derision of U.S. military actions against ISIS shamed and embarrassed Barack Obama before the world – an affront that only a fellow nuclear superpower would dare. Yet, even the Russian president chose his words carefully, understanding that deployment of jihadists has become central to U.S. imperial policy, and cannot be directly confronted without risks that could be fatal to the planet. Simply put, Washington has no substitute for the jihadists, who have been a tool of U.S. policy since the last days of President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

That’s why, in August of 2014, President Obama admitted “We don’t have a strategy yet” to deal with ISIS. It had been thirteen years since 9/11, but none of the U.S./Saudi-sponsored jihadists had ever “gone off the reservation,” spitting on the hands that fed them, attacking the al-Qaida fighters (al-Nusra) that are the real force behind so-called “moderate” anti-Assad “rebels,” and threatening to overthrow the Saudi and other Persian Gulf monarchies. Obama had no strategy to combat ISIS, because the U.S. had no strategy to fight jihadists of any brand in Syria, since all the other terrorists worked for the U.S. and its allies.

Obama is still not waging a “war” against the Islamic State – certainly not on a superpower scale, and not nearly as vigorously as did the far smaller Russian forces before their partial withdrawal in March of this year. The New York Times last week published an article that was half apology, half critical of the U.S. air campaign in ISIS territory. The Americans blamed their lackadaisical air campaign on “poor intelligence,” “clumsy targeting,” “inexperienced planners,” “staffing shortages,” “internal rivalries” and – this from a nation that has caused the deaths of 20 to 30 million people since World War Two – “fear of causing civilian casualties.” However, the Pentagon now claims to have hit its stride, and is concentrating on blowing up the Islamic State’s money, targeting cash storage sites, resulting in reductions in salaries of about 50 percent for ISIS troops. The U.S. military says it has destroyed about 400 ISIS oil tankers. (The Russians claim to have destroyed a total of 2,000.)

As a counterpoint, the Times quoted David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who planned air campaigns in Afghanistan in 2001 and in the Persian Gulf in 1991. He called the current U.S. air campaign against the Islamic State “symbolic” and “anemic when considered relative to previous operations.”

The U.S. has averaged 14.5 air strikes a day in the combined Syrian and Iraqi theaters of war, with a peak of 17 a day in April. That’s far lower than NATO’s 50 strikes a day against Libya in 2011, 85 strikes a day against Afghanistan in 2001, and 800 a day in Iraq in 2003. It’s way below Russia’s 55 Syrian strikes a day – 9,000 total strikes over a five and a half month period – by an air force a fraction of the size of the 750 U.S. aircraft stationed in the region (not counting planes on aircraft carriers, or cruise missiles).

The numbers tell the tale: the U.S. is not carrying on a serious “war” against ISIS troop formations, which remain aggressive, mobile and effective in Syria. The Pentagon’s claim that fear of inflicting civilian casualties should be dismissed outright, coming from an agency that has killed between 1.3 million and 2 million people since 9/11, according to a 2015 study by Physicians for Social Responsibility.

American excuses concerning “poor intelligence,” “clumsy targeting,” “inexperienced planners,” “staffing shortages,” and “internal rivalries” might even contain some kernels of truth, since one would expect gaps in gathering intelligence and targeting information on jihadists that were considered U.S. assets, not enemies. And, there is no question that “internal rivalries” do abound in the U.S. war machine, with CIA-sponsored jihadists attacking Pentagon-sponsored jihadists in Syria – the point being, the U.S. backs a wide range of jihadists that have conflicts with one another.

The U.S. plays up the killing of Islamic State “leaders” and the blowing up of money caches. This is consistent with what appears to be the general aim of the Obama administration’s jihadist policy, now deeply in crisis: to preserve the Islamic State as a fighting force for deployment under another brand name, under new top leadership. The Islamic State went “rogue,” by the Americans’ definition, when it began pursuing its own mission, two years ago. Even so, the U.S. mainly targeted top ISIS leaders for elimination, allowing the main body of fighters, estimated at around 30,000, to not only remain intact, but to be constantly resupplied and to carry on a vast oil business, mainly with NATO ally Turkey. (The U.S. has also been quite publicly protecting the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra, from Russian bombing, despite U.S. co-sponsorship of a UN resolution calling for international war against al-Nusra.)

To a military man like retired general Deptula, this looks like a “symbolic” and “anemic” campaign. It’s actually a desperate effort to balance U.S. interests in preserving ISIS as a American military asset, while also maintaining the Mother Of All Lies, that the U.S. is engaged in a global war on terror, rather than acting as the headquarters of terror in world. To maintain that tattered fiction, at least in the bubble of the home country, requires the maintenance of a massive and constant psychological operations apparatus. It’s called the corporate news media.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

Russian and Chinese sovereign independence are the main obstacles to unchallenged US global dominance.

America’s provocative military buildup close to their borders risks a likely inevitable confrontation – how serious the fullness of time will tell.

The risk of possible nuclear war should give world leaders serious concern about allying with America’s potentially catastrophic imperial agenda.

China may declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea to counter increasing US military provocations. Foreign aircraft and vessels could be interdicted for entering without authorization.

America and Japan refused to recognize Beijing’s East China Sea ADIZ, declared in 2013. It includes waters and territory claimed by other countries.

According to the Washington-based US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “(a) Chinese ADIZ in the South China Sea could lead to tense mid-air encounters between US and Chinese aircraft”- the commission irresponsibly blaming Beijing for increasingly hostile US actions.

In February, US Pacific Command head Admiral Harry Harris criticized what he called “destabilizing and provocative” Beijing actions, saying America will ignore a South China Sea ADIZ if declared.

The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations states: “US military aircraft not intending to enter national airspace should not identify themselves or otherwise comply with ADIZ procedures established by other nations, unless the United States has specifically agreed to do so.”

Last week, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned China about what he called building “a great wall of self-isolation,” claiming regional US allies “are voicing concerns publicly and privately at the highest levels, regional meetings and global forums.”

America seeks a different Asia/Pacific future, one it intends to dominate, he didn’t explain, claiming it’s committed to upholding freedom of navigation and commerce – by enforcing Washington rules, he left unsaid.

On June 1, China’s ambassador to America Cui Tiankai asserted his country’s right to defend its territorial claims and maritime rights.

He accused Washington of escalating regional tensions, abusing the freedom of navigation principle, warning America’s imperial agenda “risk(s) the very militarization we all wish to avoid.”

On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Carter’s hostile remarks “laid bare the stereotypical US thinking and hegemony,” maintaining a Cold War era mindset.

Beijing “has no fear of and will counter any actions that threaten and undermine (its) sovereignty and security,” she stressed, accusing Washington of increasing Asia/Pacific militarism, a plot to undermine her nation’s sovereign independence.

US hegemonic aims threaten Russia the same way. Increasingly encroaching on its land and sea borders risks an eventual confrontation.

Possible nuclear war should focus global leaders on prioritizing ways to prevent it, starting with rejecting America’s imperial agenda – the greatest threat to world peace.

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.

With the US primary campaigns drawing to a close, the two parties of the US ruling elite, Democrats and Republicans, are preparing to nominate candidates who may be subject to criminal indictment between now and the general election.

The Republicans have as their presumptive nominee Donald Trump, a man who made his billions through various scams and insider dealings. US newspapers have been filled this week with details of the fraudulent methods he employed to enhance his fortune. Court documents in the lawsuit joined by numerous former students at Trump University allege that the supposed training in real estate provided by the school was a fiction.

It was a fraud on two levels. At an enormous price, up to $35,000 for the “Gold Elite” program, students were told little more than “buy low” and “sell high.” As many as 5,000 students paid a total of $40 million for the worthless instructions, most of which could be obtained, according to press accounts, through a simple Internet search.

As for the claim that Trump would be personally involved in sharing his supposed real estate expertise, with instructors who “are handpicked by me,” the documents show that Trump played no role in the “education” program except allowing his name and face to be used to promote the venture, and then cashing the checks—his cut of loot was at least $5 million.

New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman, appearing on two television interview programs Thursday morning, said, “We have laws against running an illegal, unlicensed university. This never was a university. The fraud started with the name of the organization.” He added, “It was really a fraud from beginning to end.”

While Trump U. accounts for only a small fraction of the real estate mogul’s personal wealth, the methods used were representative of his “business model” as a whole, and for that matter, of his presidential campaign, which has been focused largely on appealing to increasingly desperate sections of workers and the lower middle class, offering Trump’s billionaire persona as the solution to deepening economic afflictions.

There is something extraordinary in the fact that one of the principal parties of the ruling class is preparing to choose an individual like Trump as its presidential candidate. Despite the initial hypocritical criticisms of his vulgar and racist pronouncements, nearly all Republican Party leaders have now reconciled themselves with Trump, culminating in Thursday’s statement by House Speaker Paul Ryan that he will support his candidacy.

This can only explained in relation to broader social tendencies that have produced an immense degradation of American politics. Trump personifies the descent of corporate America into every more brazen methods of speculation, swindling and outright theft, which culminated in the economic crash of 2008. Over the past 40 years, the operations of the American ruling class have taken on an ever more parasitic character, with a mass of financial operations covering over a long-term industrial decline.

On the Democratic Party side, Hillary Clinton is currently under investigation for conducting all her government communications while Secretary of State on a private email server, an arrangement clearly intended to keep her correspondence under her control, regardless of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Later this summer she is expected to be interviewed by the FBI, which could lead to criminal charges over the mishandling of classified materials or perjury.

Clinton represents a more polished version of the same social processes that have created Trump. Bill and Hillary Clinton have accumulated a personal fortune topping $150 million by serving as speechmakers to corporate audiences, backed by their “fundraising” work at the Clinton Foundation, which connects corporate donors and charitable organizations in return for lucrative fees.

The foundation has become the center of a web of international influence-peddling that keeps the Clintons in front of their real constituency, the world’s billionaires, making them fabulously wealthy in the process.

Clinton is also more directly associated with the crimes of the state and the military-intelligence apparatus. The criminalization of the American financial aristocracy has found its reflection in foreign policy—in the casting aside of all legality and the adoption of torture, assassination and “preemptive war” as principal means for asserting the interests of the ruling class abroad.

It is significant that as the viability of her candidacy is being called into question as a result of the continued successes of her rival, Bernie Sanders, Clinton decided to focus a major speech in San Diego California on a critique of Trump’s foreign policy views. Clinton made her pitch to the military, based on the argument that she, and not Trump (or Sanders, or some other candidate) would be the most effective “commander-in-chief” of US imperialism.

Clinton focused her speech on the decision by President Obama and his top military and foreign policy advisers, including Clinton herself, to authorize the Navy Seal Team 6 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. She made no reference to the foreign policy debacle with which she is most closely identified, the US-NATO bombing of Libya, although it “accomplished” the same end. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was murdered in his home town of Sirte by US-backed rebels, an event that Clinton celebrated at the time with the infamous wisecrack, “We came, we saw, he died,” touching off gales of laughter among her claque of traveling aides.

Trump and Clinton are both products of the same process: the criminalization of the American ruling elite, as the methods of the mafia have come to predominate in both the operations of Wall Street and the practice of imperialist “statecraft.”

The ongoing stagnation in the global economy, marked by falling investment and the emergence of overproduction in key basic industries, is fuelling the rise of trade war protectionist measures by the major powers, above all the United States.

Last week, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) launched an investigation into Chinese steel mills which have been accused by the United States Steel Corp of stealing secrets and conspiring to fix prices.

Chinese industrial overcapacity, especially in steel, will be on the agenda of the “strategic and economic” dialogue to be held between the US and China in Beijing next week. The US treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Nathan Sheets, recently called for China to allow its industries to “better reflect capacity and global demand conditions.” In other words, China should cut back production.

Overproduction in the Chinese steel industry has been blamed for an increase in cheap exports and the loss of jobs and plant closures in both Europe and the US.

Recent tariffs on imports of steel have boosted American prices, but authorities are looking for further measures. Industrial overcapacity was important “for the global economy and we hope to make some progress on it” in Beijing, Sheets told a meeting at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The issue is fraught, however, with contradictions because many industrial companies in the US are dependent on cheap steel imports for their business models. Stuart Barnett, the head of the Chicago-based Barsteel Corp which supplies a range of manufacturers said the government had done a “pretty good job” of keeping out the cheapest steel imports. “But now the greatest fear we have is that China keeps cheap steel for itself and makes products that undercut other industries,” he said.

In other words, suppression of the increasingly ferocious struggle for markets and profits in one area of the industrial economy will see it resurface in another.

Pressure from the US for China to cut back production and exports were met with a sharp response from the Chinese government.

Speaking at a briefing in Beijing on Thursday, Zhu Guangyao, China’s vice-finance minister, said: “Trade disputes between China and the US should be addressed in accordance with World Trade Organisation (WTO) principles. We are opposed to abusive trade remedy measures.”

There was an even stronger reaction from China’s Hebei Iron and Steel Group, the country’s largest steel producer. In a statement posted on its website on Thursday, it denounced the investigation by the US ITC.

“The protectionist behaviour taken by the US on purely groundless accusations by US Steel has seriously broken WTO rules, distorted the normal world steel trade and damaged the essential interests of Chinese steel mills and US steel users,” it said.

US Steel filed the complaint a month ago, claiming it was the victim of a Chinese computer hacking incident in 2011. The ITC has now taken up the case, identifying 40 Chinese steelmakers and distributors as being the subject of investigation.

Baosteel, China’s second-largest steelmaker, the world’s fourth-largest and a target for the ITC probe, said the US was in breach of WTO rules and urged the Chinese government to take all necessary measures to ensure the country’s steel industry received fair treatment.

The ITC case has raised concerns it could be the start of far broader measures, possibly including a wholesale ban on Chinese steel imports, according to Simon Evenett, a professor of international trade at University of St Gallen in Switzerland, who is engaged in monitoring protectionist measures.

“The big thing is really the potential scale of this case versus the pinpricks that we have seen unleashed over the past nine months,” he told the Financial Times. “This should be setting off alarms bells. It is really a nuclear option.”

The conflicts go beyond steel and extend to the entire functioning of the WTO, the international body in charge of regulating the global trading system. They are being fuelled by an aggressive push by the United States on two fronts.

Last week, the US told other WTO members it was vetoing the reappointment of Seung Wha Chang, a respected South Korean expert on international trade law, to a second term on the organisation’s appellate body which adjudicates on international trade disputes. Reappointment for a second term has been standard procedure in the past.

Washington cited several decisions that have gone against the US as a pattern of what it called “overreaching” and arriving at “abstract” decisions.

“The appellate body is not an academic body that may pursue issue simply because they are of interest to them or may be to certain members in the abstract,” the US declared. “It is not the role of the appellate body to engage in abstract discussions.”

Other members of the WTO, including Brazil, Japan and the EU say the US veto risks undermining the independence of the appellate body and the entire system. The EU said the US actions are unprecedented and pose “a very serious risk to the independence and impartiality of current and future appellate body members.”

The US move prompted a highly critical editorial in Wednesday’s edition of the Financial Times. The newspaper noted that in the wake of the collapse of the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations last year—largely as a result of the US decision to walk away from further discussions—the last thing the WTO needed was another blow to its authority. With the end of the WTO’s role in negotiating global trade deals, its only real remaining function was to adjudicate between governments over existing trade rules and order “miscreants to bring policies into compliance.”

“The fact that the US is now trying to subvert it by removing a judge who happens to disagree with the American viewpoint is seriously disturbing,” it said.

The episode, it continued, also vindicated, at least in this instance, “those critics of the US who say Washington favours global cooperation only insofar as it controls the international institutions that run it. This is a serious charge to which the US remains exposed.”

The issue of the appellate body is linked to another brewing conflict within the WTO. Following its ascension to WTO membership in 2001, China is this year seeking to be accorded “market economy status,” which would make it more difficult to prosecute Chinese companies for alleged dumping, i.e. selling goods at artificially low prices.

The US is reported to have been lobbying hard for the upgraded status not to be granted, against opposition from at least some European powers, as well as Britain. The British government has portrayed itself as China’s “best friend” in the West, as financial interests in the City of London seek to profit from expanded Chinese investment and financial activity. Britain has said that if China is accorded full market status, dumping charges could still be dealt with under WTO rules. But this does not appear to have had any impact on the push by the US to prevent its status being raised.

Under conditions of global overcapacity, persistently suppressed demand, and warnings of a productivity slowdown in major developed economies, global conflicts over trade are deepening, and, together with the endless promotion of economic nationalism, threaten a global trade war similar to that which emerged in the 1930s. In that period, the growth of protectionism served as the antechamber to world war.

Today, the growth of economic nationalism under conditions of another persistent world slump is likewise fuelling conflicts that threaten to erupt into another global conflagration.

Some Democratic leaders are privately scouting around for someone to replace Hillary Clinton if she stumbles again in California and/or the FBI detects a crime in her email scandal, reports Robert Parry.

For months now, poll after poll have registered the judgment of the American people that they want neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump as the next President, but the two major parties seem unable to steer away from this looming pileup, forcing voters to choose between two widely disdained politicians.

The Republicans are locked in after Trump’s hostile takeover of the party’s selection process, but the Democrats have one final chance to steer clear, on June 7 when they hold several primaries and caucuses including New Jersey and California. If Bernie Sanders can upset Clinton in California – and/or if Clinton’s legal problems over her emails worsen – there remains a long-shot chance that the Democratic convention might nominate someone else.

As far-fetched as this might seem, some senior Democrats, including reportedly White House officials, are giving serious thought to how the party can grab the wheel at the last moment and avoid the collision of two historically unpopular political figures, a smash-up where Trump might be the one walking away, damaged but victorious.

Two Washington insiders – Democratic pollster and political adviser Douglas E. Schoen and famed Watergate investigative reporter Carl Bernstein – have described panicky meetings of top Democrats worried over Clinton’s troubled campaign, with Schoen also describing private talks about possible last-minute alternatives.

I’ve heard similar tales of hushed discussions – with the fill-in options including Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry or Sen. Sanders – but I still believe these fretful leaders are frozen by indecision and don’t have the nerve to pull Hillary Clinton’s hands off the steering wheel even to avoid disaster.

But at least I’m not alone hearing these frightened whispers. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Schoen, who served as a political aide to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, wrote: “There is now more than a theoretical chance that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic nominee for president. …

“The inevitability behind Mrs. Clinton’s nomination will be in large measure eviscerated if she loses the June 7 California primary to Bernie Sanders. That could well happen. …. A Sanders win in California would powerfully underscore Mrs. Clinton’s weakness as a candidate in the general election.

“Democratic superdelegates — chosen by the party establishment and overwhelmingly backing Mrs. Clinton, 543-44 — would seriously question whether they should continue to stand behind her candidacy. …

“Mrs. Clinton also faces growing legal problems. The State Department inspector general’s recent report on Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state made it abundantly clear that she broke rules and has been far from forthright in her public statements. The damning findings buttressed concerns within the party that Mrs. Clinton and her aides may not get through the government’s investigation without a finding of culpability somewhere.

“With Mrs. Clinton reportedly soon to be interviewed by the FBI, suggesting that the investigation is winding up, a definitive ruling by the attorney general could be issued before the July 25 Democratic convention in Philadelphia. Given the inspector general’s report, a clean bill of health from the Justice Department is unlikely.

“Finally, with Mrs. Clinton’s negative rating nearly as high as Donald Trump’s, and with voters not trusting her by a ratio of 4 to 1, Democrats face an unnerving possibility.”

Besides the lack of trust, voters simply don’t like her. On Wednesday, the Real Clear Politics poll average of Clinton’s favorable vs. unfavorable numbers were 37.6 percent to 55.8 percent, an 18.2-point net unfavorable.

Looking for a Fill-in

Schoen continued: “There are increasing rumblings within the party about how a new candidate could emerge at the convention. John Kerry, the 2004 nominee, is one possibility. But the most likely scenario is that Vice President Joe Biden — who has said that he regrets ‘every day’ his decision not to run — enters the race.

“Mr. Biden would be cast as the white knight rescuing the party, and the nation, from a possible Trump presidency. To win over Sanders supporters, he would likely choose as his running mate someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren who is respected by the party’s left wing. …

“All of these remain merely possibilities. But it is easier now than ever to imagine a scenario in which Hillary Clinton — whether by dint of legal or political circumstances — is not the Democratic presidential nominee.”

In a CNN interview after last week’s scathing State Department Inspector General’s report on Clinton’s use of her home email server, Carl Bernstein said he was hearing similar speculation:

“I was in Washington this week, I spoke to a number of top Democratic officials and they’re terrified, including people at the White House, that her campaign is in freefall because of this distrust factor. Indeed, Trump has a similar problem, but she’s the one whose numbers are going south.

“And the great hope in the White House, as well as the Democratic leadership and people who support her, is that she can just get to this convention, get the nomination – which they’re no longer 100 percent sure of – and get President Obama out there to help her, he’s got a lot of credibility… But she needs all the help she can get because right now her campaign is in huge trouble.”

On Tuesday, Clinton received a boost when California Gov. Jerry Brown endorsed her – reflecting the Democratic establishment’s view that it is safer to leave Clinton at the wheel than try to wrestle it away and face the wrath of Clinton’s female supporters who insist that it’s “her turn” after she lost a hard-fought race to Barack Obama in 2008.

Trump also administered another self-inflicted wound with a bitterly defensive press conference about his fund-raising for veteran groups, and he suffered more bruises with the release of court evidence about high-pressure sales tactics used by the now-defunct Trump University.

Trump’s black Tuesday reminded Democrats why they were so hopeful that Trump might first blow up the Republican Party and then blow up his own campaign, letting Clinton win essentially by default. But the fragility of Clinton’s own position was exposed by last week’s IG report, which reinforced public perceptions that she is imperious, entitled and dishonest.

Voter Uprising

Ironically, the two parties reached this collision point from opposite directions. The Republican Party’s establishment wanted almost anyone but Trump but the party’s favored candidates fell victim to the reality TV star’s skill at exploiting their weaknesses – almost as if he were playing a high-stakes reality TV show.

In contrast, the Democratic Party’s leadership tried to arrange a coronation for Hillary Clinton by discouraging other candidates from challenging the powerful Clinton machine, arguing that a virtually uncontested nomination would save money and limit the exposure of Clinton’s political weaknesses.

But the unlikely candidacy of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, technically an Independent although he caucuses with the Senate Democrats, revealed both a powerful hunger for change within the Democratic Party and Clinton’s political vulnerabilities amid a season of voter discontent.

Whereas Republican leaders failed to suppress their voters’ uprising – as Trump torched his GOP rivals one after another – the Democratic leadership did all they could to save Clinton, virtually pushing her badly damaged bandwagon toward the finish line while shouting at Sanders to concede.

But it has now dawned on some savvy Democrats that Clinton’s campaign vehicle may be damaged beyond repair, especially if more harm is inflicted by the FBI’s findings about her sloppy handling of government secrets. The Democrats see themselves stuck with a status-quo, legacy candidate at a moment when the public is disgusted with government dysfunction and demanding change.

Yet, whether the Democrats have the guts to go through the pain of denying Clinton the nomination may depend on what happens in California and inside the FBI.

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 hereor as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

In his recent piece for The Times newspaper in the UK, Viscount Matt Ridley argues that a new report from the American National Academies of Sciences (NAS) leaves no room for doubt that genetically engineered crops are as safe or safer, and are certainly better for the environment, than conventionally bred crops.

Ridley adheres to the belief that GM technology reduces insecticide use and speculates that future GM crops will be even safer, better for the environment and better for human health. He says that it is a disgrace that Greenpeace still campaigns against Golden Rice, a vitamin-enhanced variety that its backers claim could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year.

According to Ridley, opposition from rich westerners adds to the cost of bringing such crops to the market, which he argues restricts the spread of GM technology.

In discussing the labelling of GM food in the US, Ridley argues this leaves consumers with the impression that there is something wrong. He argues that the recent NAS report makes the point that genetic engineering is a method, not a category of crop, and it makes no sense to single it out for special labelling because regulation should be based on traits, not techniques. Ridley implies, therefore, that GM is no different from food that is boiled or roasted as its actual content remains unaffected.

Ridley finishes by saying the NAS report points out that “emerging genetic technologies have blurred the distinction between genetic engineering and conventional plant breeding to the point where regulatory systems based on process are technically difficult to defend.”

With a good dose of industry-inspired PR flurry, he concludes that because gene editing in particular will soon allow scientists to improve crops in ways that have none of the even theoretical risks that critics highlight, if Europe does not embrace biotech plants now, its agriculture will wilt.

Unfortunately, for readers of The Times, Ridley’s piece is the usual concoction of misrepresentations, falsehoods and blunders we have come to expect of pro-GMO puff pieces that rely on flawed sources and reports.

His major blunder is to have accepted at face value the NAS report.

Ridley basing his piece on a flawed NAS report

The NAS is compromised by the serious conflicts of interest within the NAS and its research arm, the National Research Council (NRC). Even studies relied upon by the NAS to show GMO safety are authored by people with conflicts of interest.

Indeed, the new report by Food & Water Watch “Under the Influence: The National Research Council and GMOs” highlights the millions of dollars in donations received by the NAS and NRC from biotech companies.

On its website, GMWatch discusses the Food & Water Watch report, which documents the one-sided panels of scientists the NRC enlists to carry out its GMO studies and describes the revolving door of its staff directors who shuffle in and out of industry groups. The report also shows how it routinely arrives at watered-down scientific conclusions based on industry science.

Some 11 out of the 19 members of the NRC committee listed in the NAS report have ties to the GMO industry or to pro-GMO advocacy. The two reviews of animal data relied on by the NAS to claim GMO safety are authored by people who also have conflicts of interest (an analysis of these reviews and why they are misleading is here).

Readers are advised to read the Food & Water Watch Report to see for themselves the massive conflicts of interests that Ridley either remains ignorant of or wishes to gloss over in order to push a pro-GMO agenda.

GMWatch notes that the NAS committee member chosen to speak about the food safety aspect of the report to the online magazine The Conversation was Michael A. Gallo, emeritus professor of environmental and occupational medicine at Rutgers University. Gallo is a regular pro-corporate commentator who in 2004 defended farmed salmon in the wake of research showing it contained high levels of toxic PCB chemicals.

In his piece for The Conversation, Gallo makes false and misleading statements, which are apparently designed to reassure the public about the safety of GM foods. For example, he says that any changes seen in GMO feeding experiments were “within normal ranges”. GMWatch states that this is an unscientific statement of a type often used to dismiss significant differences found in GM-fed animals compared with the non-GM-fed controls and goes on to highlight how pro-GM scientists make “a nonsense of the scientific method” and to come up with conclusions designed to mislead.

GMWatch concludes:

“It is well established that conflicts of interest affect scientific outcomes and conclusions in every field that has been investigated, from tobacco to pharmaceuticals to GM crops and foods. The public deserves better than the NAS’s biased attempt to convince the public that GMOs are safe.”

It is not the first time advocates for GM like Matt Ridley have used flawed reports to push for this technology and to attempt to pass off tainted sources as ‘independent’ and thus beyond reproach (see this and this).

Readers may also wish to read these commentaries on the NAS report.

Rosemary Mason’s 44-page open letter response to Ridley

Matt Ridley’s piece in The Times may be regarded as part of the government’s on-going push to get GMOs into Britain and a timely intervention as the debate about glyphosate in the EU reaches a head. The final vote on renewing the licence for glyphosate use in the EU will take place on 6th June 2016. The British Government is supporting the European Food and Safety Authority’s assertion that it doesn’t cause cancer, despite the WHO saying it is “probably carcinogenic.”

In her 44-page open letter (1/6/2016) to Ridley and the editor-in-chief of The Times, Rosemary Mason responds to Ridley’s piece by saying, “I think I smell an industry rat.”

While Ridley takes about the safety of GM crops and reduced chemical use, Mason rubbishes such claims by referring to Charles Benbrook’s paper on the massive increases in glyphosate use in trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally (2016) which states that:

“Since 1974 in the U.S., over 1.6 billion kilograms of glyphosate active ingredient have been applied, or 19 % of estimated global use of glyphosate (8.6 billion kilograms). Globally, glyphosate use has risen almost 15-fold since so-called ‘Roundup® Ready’.”

If recent evidence demonstrates anything, it is that GM crops and glyphosate use are joined at the hip where industry profits are concerned. GMOs drive the sales of glyphosate.

As if to underline this, referring to Monsanto, Jack Kasky on Bloomberg reports:

“Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is focused on selling more genetically modified seeds in Latin America to drive earnings growth outside the core US market. Sales of soybean seeds and genetic licenses climbed 16 percent, and revenue in the unit that makes glyphosate weed killer, sold as Roundup, rose 24 percent.”

In the same piece, Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co states that “Glyphosate really crushed it,” implying it was a major boost to Monsanto’s profits.

The bottom line is sales and profit maximisation – and the unflinching and defence of glyphosate despite the cover up of its harm and the effects on communities in Latin America, where cancers, birth defects, infertility and DNA changes since being exposed to GM Roundup® Ready Crops are reported.

Mason draws Ridley’s attention to a recent piece in the New Eastern Outlook. William Engdahl discusses the relicensing of glyphosate in the EU by stating:

“What is amazing about the entire ongoing battle over glyphosate re-approval is that opposition and awareness that the EU Commission is willing by any means possible to bow to the chemical industry glyphosate weed-killer cartel and approve a probable carcinogen, is growing by leaps and bounds, and internationally. That awareness is in turn bringing light to the very dark corners of the world of GMO itself, something that Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Monsanto, Syngenta and friends are none too able to withstand. To date the EU Commission has received a staggering 1.5 million citizen petitions demanding they not re-approve glyphosate. The opposition to EU Commission approval of glyphosate has taken on a self-expanding character and that has the agribusiness weed-killer cartel alarmed. The process is exposing to the general public, for the first time in such a clear manner, the degree of corruption in not only Brussels but also in the so-called scientific bodies that advise it on what is safe and what not.”

Signed by individuals and groups representing 60 million US citizens, Mason also brings the Letter from America to the attention of Ridley, which warned David Cameron (and the rest of the EU) not to authorise GM crops. It confirmed the devastating effects on human health and the environment. GM is not about public good or feeding the hungry as lobbyists claimed, but about corporate control of the food system. It stated:

“Studies of animals fed GM foods and/or glyphosate, however, show worrying trends including damage to vital organs like the liver and kidneys, damage to gut tissues and gut flora, immune system disruption, reproductive abnormalities, and even tumors… These scientific studies point to potentially serious human health problems that could not have been anticipated when our country first embraced GMOs, and yet they continue to be ignored by those who should be protecting us. Instead our regulators rely on outdated studies and other information funded and supplied by biotech companies that, not surprisingly, dismiss all health concerns. Through our experience we have come to understand that the genetic engineering of food has never really been about public good, or feeding the hungry, or supporting our farmers. Nor is it about consumer choice. Instead it is about private, corporate control of the food system Americans are reaping the detrimental impacts of this risky and unproven agricultural technology. EU countries should take note: there are no benefits from GM crops great enough to offset these impacts. Officials who continue to ignore this fact are guilty of a gross dereliction of duty.”

Most of the countries in the EU apart from Britain took that advice and opted out of GM (including Scotland, Wales and Ireland). .

Mason argues that glyphosate is a biocide: it kills life. She knows this from her direct experience on her nature reserve in the UK and cites various sources of evidence to highlight a correlation of the huge loss of biodiversity with GMOs and glyphosate use in the US, the massive adverse impacts on human health and links between herbicide use (including glyphosate) and antibiotic resistance.

In citing a wide array of sources throughout her letter, Mason also highlights the ongoing collusion between academia and biotech companies, not least Monsanto, resulting in fraudulent practices intended to deceive the public and fool it into accepting harmful but highly profitable products.

Readers are urged to read Mason’s open letter to Ridley in full here

In it, she outlines how GMOs, glyphosate and the increasingly globalised system of chemical-intensive food and agriculture have led not only to academic fraud but also to an increase in congenital anomalies in the UK, decreased mental acuity and adverse impacts on fetal and child development and a wide range of diseases and illnesses.

And she also takes apart Ridley’s claim about GM crops and new techniques being no different from conventionally bred crops and safer (as have others), highlights various conflicts of interest within prominent bodies which shape policy and public opinion and addresses the issue of Golden Rice that Ridley also misrepresents in his piece.

Ideology and self-interest driving the pro-GMO lobby

Whereas Ridley offers a short but prominent newspaper article based on a flawed report, industry-inspired clichés and falsehoods, Mason is compelled to respond with a 44-page, comprehensive and fully-referenced text that pulls together relevant scientific research on GMOs and glyphosate. At the same time, she highlights the corruption and deceptions that have made it possible for powerful commercial interests to destroy the environment and human health for profit.

A privileged viscount like Ridley, affluent biotech company CEOs, politicians and well-paid career scientists spout public relations rhetoric and deride critics for denying GM to the hungry poor. However, the pro-GMO lobby relies on fraud, regulatory delinquency, non-transparent practices, smear campaigns, dirty tricks, the debasement of science and PR messages such as a trillion meals containing GMOs have been eaten and no one has died or become ill as a result and that ‘the debate is over’. Aside from well-funded slick PR, it also relies on secretive studies and makes baseless claims wrapped up as scientific facts.

And yet it is their critics who are dismissed for supposedly being emotive, unscientific, ideologues driven by self-interest.

In making such accusations, pro-GMO figures attempt to deflect attention from their own self-interested motives, their hypocrisy concerning their policies towards the poor or their massive political influence.

These people tend to be part of an enclosed world that promotes allegiance to a corporate-dominated paradigm that is intolerant of alternative views. And the result is a certain self-righteousness that leads them to impose their will and neoliberal ideology on the rest of humanity in collusion with the machinery and active backing of national states, while they set out to denigrate models of agriculture that could sustainably feed much of the world and ignore those factors (largely fuelled by the neoliberal system they support) that currently create poverty, hunger and food insecurity.

When saying that Europe’s agriculture will wilt if it rejects GM, Ridley mirrors the claim made by Owen Paterson that Europe will become a museum of world farming if it does not embrace GM crops (and, by implication, its chemical inputs). The evidence indicates that this is nothing more than fear-mongering. Ridley’s tone reflects Paterson’s baseless attacks on critics of GM.

Finally, for those who may not be aware, Owen Paterson is a British MP and the former environment minister. Due to his ongoing promotion of GM, fellow Conservative Party MP Zac Goldsmith described him as a puppet of the biotech industry. He is also Matt Ridley’s brother-in-law.

On May 30, units of the Iraqi army and the Iraqi counter-terrorism forces entered the city of Fallujah, located 50km from Baghdad. Commander of the Fallujah operation, Lt. General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi and other sources in the Iraqi military argue that the security forces have gained a significant progress in the operation, aimed to liberate the city center, but ISIS militants maintain a significant resistance.

There are 2 versions that could explain such statements. The first is this is a common practice of providing wishful stories for the audience. The second is the Iraqi authorities have achieved some success in negotiations with the local clans about a formal capitulation as it was in Ramadi. This is possible if the Iraqi government is ready to allow the transition of the administrative power to the local Suni sheiks.

The mass deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea has reached a new, grim record over the first five months of 2016. According to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR), at least 2,510 refugees drowned between January and May during their attempts to cross to Europe. The European governments and European Union bear full responsibility for turning the Mediterranean into a mass graveyard for refugees.

By questioning the survivors of recent accidents, the UNHCR estimated the number of victims. According to this, 880 refugees lost their lives in the Mediterranean in the last week of May alone. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) even suggests there could have been more than a thousand drowned refugees.

Previous estimates put the number at 700 victims from three capsized boats, but refugees reported many more were confined in the holds of the boats. In addition, 47 refugees are missing after a lifeboat with at least 125 on board deflated and capsized.

“For so many deaths to have occurred just in a matter of days and months is shocking and shows just how truly perilous these journeys are,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. Compared to the same period last year, when 1,855 refugees lost their lives in the Mediterranean, the number of deaths has increased by 35 percent.

According to UNHCR figures, 203,981 refugees have been registered after successfully surviving the crossing to Europe to seek protection there. Of these, 46,714 came to Italy, about the same number as last year.

Particularly in the months January to March, the overwhelming majority came via Turkey through Greece. In the process, 376 people drowned. But since the so-called Balkan route has been closed by means of the dirty deal between the EU and Turkey to ruthlessly deport refugees, the numbers of deaths on the much longer and riskier route from Libya to Italy has risen dramatically.

“The North Africa-Italy route is dramatically more dangerous: 2,119 of the deaths reported so far this year are among people making this journey, making for odds of dying as high as one in 23,” explained UNHCR spokesman William Spindler.

In other words, out of every 100 refugees starting their journey in Africa, four die in the attempt. The Mediterranean, directly adjacent to the rich countries of Europe and a popular tourist destination, is thus by far the most dangerous sea route for refugees in the world. According to official estimates, at least 30,000 refugees have drowned there in the last fifteen years.

The EU has responded with indifference to the rapidly rising number of victims. When the refugee assistance organisation SeaWatch, which supports rescue efforts in the Mediterranean, recently published a picture of a volunteer holding a dead baby in his arms, it provoked no outrage about the European governments’ inhumane policy of sealing off Europe’s borders.

When in September 2015 the picture of the drowned Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi lying on a Turkish beach was prominent in the media, empty promises and hypocritical phrases of sympathy were heard from Berlin and Brussels. However, the latest refugee tragedies in the Mediterranean have been virtually ignored. “The mass deaths of refugees on Europe’s borders are being accepted as collateral damage,” wrote Spiegel Online.

The deaths in the Mediterranean are part of the logic of the EU’s refugee policy, calculated to act as a deterrent. When, on October 3, 2013, 366 refugees horrifically drowned off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, then Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta launched Operation Mare Nostrum. Originally intended as a mechanism to force boats back to the Libyan coast, it was unwillingly transformed into a sea rescue mission, since the rescue of people from shipwrecks is a central tenet of international law. Almost 150,000 refugees were thus saved from drowning.

But the rescue of refugees was an irritant for the EU, and above all for the German government. With the absurd argument that Mare Nostrum was encouraging more refugees to set off for Europe, German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere called a halt to it. Instead, on November 1, 2014 the EU adopted the much smaller Operation Triton, which was concentrated on a limited coastal area of sea, and led to the resumption of the mass deaths in the Mediterranean.

In early 2015 almost 1,500 refugees died within a few weeks, as the EU and its border protection agency Frontex looked on. “It is not enough to cry in front of the television in the evening when refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean, and hold a moment of silence in council the next morning,” EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said at the time. The EU’s response consisted in the militarisation of the Mediterranean.

Since then, two dozen warships from the European states have been patrolling the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy as part of Eunavfor Med (European Naval Force—Mediterranean) Sophia. But their goal is not the rescuing of shipwrecked passengers, but rather the combatting of smugglers, whose boats are to be captured and destroyed. The mission has just been extended for a further year and is to be stepped up along the Libyan coast.

In order to obtain a mandate from the UN, the Libyan puppet government of Fayez al-Sarraj imposed by the US and European powers has requested support in building up the coastguard and the combatting of the arms trade. In truth, the al-Sarraj government has no power in the North African country, and is merely in place to follow the orders of the western powers and sign off on a new NATO intervention.

Since the NATO war of 2011 to topple the Gaddafi government, Libya has been destroyed and is engaged in a bloody civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people were either slaughtered or driven from their homes. The countless refugees from African countries to the south were treated arbitrarily and are now confined to internment camps, where they have been tortured and abused.

Despite this, the EU is pushing for close cooperation with Libya to prevent refugees from travelling to Europe. “Now the task before us is to agree such a cooperation with Libya,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in March, following the conclusion of the deportation agreement with Turkey.

The European Union has no qualms about working together with despotic regimes in Africa. The Eritrean government, which tramples human rights underfoot, received €200 million from the EU to detain refugees. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been charged by the International Criminal Court in The Hague with genocide and crimes against humanity, has received technical equipment for border surveillance from the EU.

In addition, the EU is supporting the construction of refugee camps in Sudan. The regimes in Egypt and Morocco are also being provided by European arms concerns with border surveillance and military equipment. The goal of the EU’s policy is to prevent refugees from reaching the Mediterranean coastline at any price and to detain refugees in far off camps in Africa and Asia.

More than 14 million refugees are already confined to camps in Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Lebanon. They are victims twice over of the criminal policies of the imperialist powers. The top ten list of countries with the highest number of refugees is practically identical with a list of the countries that have been the victim of a military intervention, proxy war or orchestrated regime change operation which have been initiated over the last twenty years by the US and its European allies.

The list includes Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Iraq. More than 60 million people around the world are refugees, and half of these are under 18.

In Africa, an additional factor driving hundreds of thousands to flee is the brutal neocolonial policy of the EU, which ruthlessly exploits the continent’s natural resources and completely destroys the standard of living of the populations by structural adjustment programmes and dictated trade regulations. These people place all their hopes in finding work in Europe.

But Europe hermetically seals itself off from the wave of refugees it has itself produced, and allows them to drown miserably in the Mediterranean, vegetate in huge refugee camps under outrageous conditions, and be shot on the Turkish-Syrian border, where the Turkish government has allegedly established automatic firing posts. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungreported, “intelligent” surveillance towers are involved, with heat-sensing cameras and machine guns, in the regions of Hatay, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa and Marden.

Wall Street Behind Brazil Coup d’Etat

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 01 2016

(Image) Wall Street Mastermind Henrique de Campos Meirelles, Interim Minister of Finance Control over monetary policy and macro-economic reform was the ultimate objective of the Coup d’Etat. The key appointments from Wall Street’s standpoint are the Central Bank, which dominates…

Barack Obama’s Meager Legacy: Incomplete Accomplishments and Provoked Wars: What Happened?

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, June 01 2016

“The evil that men do lives after them.” — William Shakespeare (1564-1616), ‘Julius Caesar’ The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to…

An Ex-CIA Agent Blows the Whistle on Torture and Secret Prisons

By Edu Montesanti, June 02 2016

A former CIA agent, John Kiriakou spent two years in prison for blowing the whistle about the Intelligence Agency torture program against prisoners, “obsessed with the idea that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden would launch another attack against the United…

Dreams of Control: Israel, Global Censorship, and the Internet

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 02 2016

“Under the cover of darkness, there is no limit to the expansion of Big Brother.” Ilan Gilon, Meretz Party (Israel), Times of Israel, Feb 4, 2016 While Israel’s central justification for its often reactionary policies is couched in hyper-exceptionalist rhetoric,…

“State of Black America”: National Urban League Report Says African Americans Remain ‘Locked Out’

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 02 2016

In its annual report on the “State of Black America”, one of the oldest research organizations in the African American community documents the continuing levels of national oppression and economic exploitation. This report for 2016 represents the fortieth anniversary of…

Provoking Moscow: NATO Needs Enemies to Justify Its Existence

By Stephen Lendman, June 02 2016

NATO was always more about offense than defense, about America controlling the policies of Alliance members, increasing their numbers, pressuring them to stress militarism more than they’d chose otherwise – and selling them lots of US weapons. When founded in…

On Friday 3 June, African citizens, organisations and unions will disrupt the shareholder meeting of the Bolloré group at its headquarters in Puteaux, just outside of Paris, France. The protestors represent a movement composed of thousands of farmers who have been displaced from their lands by industrial oil palm and rubber plantations. Since Wednesday, this movement has also been occupying factories and plantations in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The representatives of the African diaspora—who will gather on 3 June at 9:00am at Bolloré Tower, 21-32 quai de Dion Bouton in Puteaux—come bearing the following message: “Since we no longer have access to our lands, we will prevent you from accessing your meeting”. The protestors have organised a sit-in and a non-violent blockade to stop the shareholders’ meeting from taking place. They also demand that Vincent Bolloré explain why the company Socfin (of which Bolloré owns a 38.7% share) has failed to comply with 2013 and 2014 commitments intended to resolve conflicts between local communities and Socfin plantations. Bolloré, who is also the head of the Paris-based media company Vivendi, will face a broad coalition including African organisations, NGOs, the French farmers’ union Confédération Paysanne and the activist group Attac. Parallel to this action in France, affected communities will carry out demonstrations and blockades at the facilities of Socfin subsidiaries in West Africa: Socapalm in Cameroon, SOGB in Côte d’Ivoire, LAC in Liberia and SAC in Sierra Leone.

Since 2008, these plantations have been continuously expanding. Socfin’s plantations in African countries (RDC, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Nigeria) have increased from 87,303 ha in 2011 to 108,465 ha in 2014—a 24% increase that has occurred largely at the expense of local communities. In light of the response of local Socfin managers—who routinely refuse to acknowledge their associations, preferring to deal only with public authorities—affected communities founded the “International alliance of local communities of the Socfin Bolloré plantations” (Alliance internationale des communautés riveraines des plantations Socfin Bolloré) with support from the French NGO ReAct. The Alliance demands that Bolloré push Socfin to engage in a dialogue to return land to local communities and respect their right to compensation, healthcare, water and electricity.

Vincent Bolloré opened the door to dialogue, but then abruptly closed it. He justifies his actions by virtue of his “status as a minority shareholder, not manager”. In a letter to the Alliance dated 4 April, he explains that Socfin “is a responsible company”; that he has “full confidence” in its leaders; and that “there has been increasing dialogue since 2015 (…) and many concrete actions for the benefit of local people”. However, local communities respond: “your stated confidence in the company is based solely on your own claims. You cannot reap profits from Socfin and deny your responsibility for the suffering experienced by thousands of people affected by Socfin’s industrial plantations”. Indeed, large banners on display at the Bolloré tower on Friday will read: “Bolloré and Socfin: profit without responsibility?”

Emmanuel Elong, leader of the Union of Local Farmers in Cameroon (Synaparcam), stated:

“Vincent Bolloré embodies predatory and irresponsible capitalism. He has no respect for the promises he has made; he makes widespread investments and then denies his responsibility to the people affected by those investments. Furthermore, we fear that his recent takeover of Canal+ and other French media will stifle voices like ours, which challenge his practices.”

NATO was always more about offense than defense, about America controlling the policies of Alliance members, increasing their numbers, pressuring them to stress militarism more than they’d chose otherwise – and selling them lots of US weapons.

When founded in April 1949, Soviet Russia was a North Atlantic Alliance enemy in name only, ravaged by WW II – needing years after Stalin’s April 1953 death to regain pre-war normality, peace essential to restore it.

Washington controls NATO, covering 75% of its budget, calling the shots, installing subservient Alliance officials to serve its agenda.

At a time when no US enemies exist, they’re invented to justify NATO’s existence – including Milosevic, bin Laden and the Taliban, Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Yemeni Houthis, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, and independent democratic leaders everywhere America doesn’t control.

Cold War II is much more intense than its earlier version, Putin bashed and denigrated shamelessly for not bowing to Washington’s will, for wanting multi-world polarity according to international rule of law principles.

Russia’s envoy to NATO, Alexandr Grushkko, understands how US-dominated NATO operates, its aims and ways whereby it justifies its existence.

It pressured Europe to treat peaceful, good neighbor Russia as a major adversarial threat – at a time it seeks mutual cooperation among all nations, a world at peace, and nuclear disarmament, polar opposite to America’s agenda.

Russian diplomacy can’t change US-led NATO’s rage for war, waging endless ones, spurning peace and stability, promoting American interests belligerently “from Greenland to the Caspian Sea, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Levant,” said Grushko.

“The question is where is the US and where is the Caspian Sea,” each distant from the other, Moscow not about to let it become a US-dominated NATO lake – while concentrating its own military strength within its borders, polar opposite America’s empire of bases.

Provoking Moscow with US-led NATO combat troops and warships near its borders, so-called missile defense systems entirely for offense, hyping nonexistent “Russian aggression,” denigrating its legitimacy, and falsely calling it America’s greatest threat risks East/West confrontation with super-weapons able to end life on earth.

Speaking in Warsaw on Tuesday, US-installed NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg hyped “the importance of collective security (and) NATO’s (so-called) essential role in continuing to keep the peace” while claiming a nonexistent “more assertive Russia intimidat(es) its neighbors and chang(es) borders by force.”

Truth is polar opposite his willful Big Lies, bashing Putin, claiming he threatens continental security, ignoring his preeminent peacemaker role.

Instead of Europe seeking peaceful, cooperative relations with its important Russian neighbor, it lets Washington bully it into being an imperial tool – harming its welfare and security 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.

Look at our cities – the concrete, the unbeautiful buildings where people live separated from each other; the constant rumble of traffic, the noise, the dirt and the polluted, heavy air. Look at the rich men making yet more money that they don’t need while the poor sleep on the streets, the homeless who have no vote, no say in what happens to their country, their land.

But we have other cities, places where the land is soft under our feet, or hard with rock and root. It may be quieter but the traffic is just as busy.  Leaf litter is a maze of active highways; fox and deer step carefully between the trees while the branches deal with air traffic. And underground are other creatures, and nature’s internet, a web of roots and fungal filaments, an information highway hidden from view.

Each wood is a city of a million souls, each tree and hedgerow a vibrant town, each grassy bank a village – busy communities all. Think of scrub and grasslands as nature’s urban sprawl. For wherever you look and everywhere you tread, there are nonhuman lives going about their business, nature’s work of keeping the earth healthy, balanced and sustainable. We do not trouble to listen to them, no matter how loud they shout. Indeed, most people do not believe they have a voice.

Yes, we think these communities are lovely, balm for the spirit, and we sometimes fight for their protection. That is why, for those who care, we value the influence of the EU and want to hold on to its environmental protections.  But still, only humans have the ‘power of speech’. All else is dumb.

Once, millennia ago, this land was one big city, stretching from sea to sea.  Its tiny remnants of ancient woodland are felled, bulldozed flat for development. Its people can’t ‘relocate’, no matter what the planners think. They die, along with their ancient homes, voices lost forever.

All that life, those hidden citizens, make this land what it is. Without them we could not exist.

Before the Ice Age the British Isles were part of the European land mass.  The ice melted and the seas rose and turned us into islands. Over the centuries wave after wave of human migrants from Europe became the dis-United Kingdom of today, fighting over whether we should ‘Remain’ or ‘Brexit’. Welsh, Scots, Irish or English, all our history makes us European.  Europe is where we belong.

This part of Europe has for centuries welcomed other migrants, new citizens from around the world that are part of our nation.  We are used to a multi-cultural, multi-racial society. That also is who we are.  And look around you. There’s not a garden in the land that doesn’t have its migrants, its ‘foreigners’ that we have taken in and planted to make our human lives more beautiful.

Britain’s other citizens, nature’s ignored majority, also know about migrants and migration. As man-made climate change kicks in, their relatives in Europe (that we insist on seeing as apart from us) flee to colder climes. Fish swim, birds and insects fly, seed and pollen float on the wind, and mammals and reptiles hitch lifts on our endless trade.

The woods across the land cry out for a vote. My friends the badgers would surely vote to stay in Europe because that is where they live. They do not understand nations, just the soil in which they tunnel to make their home, the soil on which all we humans depend. Nothing can live well in isolation; there is no power in cutting our ties, no matter what some believe.

The woods, the badgers and all the other citizens of hidden Britain have no vote.  That is why we have to vote for them.

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer who writes for The Ecologist and other media on the badger cull and other environmental topics, and on political issues for UK and international websites.

The American taxpayers have been fleeced for almost seventy years by a so-called «intelligence» agency that has systematically violated the US Constitution, broken practically every federal law on the books, and penetrated virtually every facet of American life. The Central Intelligence Agency’s creation was bemoaned by its creator, President Harry S Truman, who, in a fit of personal angst following the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy, wrote in a newspaper column,

“I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations… I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment… and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere”.

During a presidential election year, two of the three remaining major candidates – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – have given no indication that they will heed the words of President Truman. For example, Trump has indicated he will give the CIA authority to torture that even the CIA considers illegal.

As for Mrs Clinton, her zeal in supporting the violent overthrow and assassination of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 only gives added impetus to the out-of-control players inside the CIA to commit similar actions in a Clinton administration. Only Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders appears to channel the beliefs of Truman when it comes to reining in the CIA.

It is not known whether Trump, who has made favorable noises to interventionist neo-conservatives within the Republican Party, will stand by his comments that the war in Libya was a mistake. But Trump was one of the cheerleaders urging US intervention in 2011. He said,

“Gaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is, and we’re sitting around. We have soldiers all over the Middle East and not bringing them to stop this horrible carnage… We don’t want to get involved and you’re going to end up with something like you’ve never seen before”.

Trump, Mrs Clinton, and Obama were wrong about Libya and Gaddafi on all counts. Gaddafi was not killing “thousands of people”. That was being done by the jihadist rebels supported by the CIA. The late US ambassador/weapons smuggler in Libya, Christopher Stevens, who was ironically killed by the very same jihadists with whom he was brokering deals to ship Libyan weapons to Syria, ensured that the latest NATO weaponry ended up in radical Islamist hands in Libya. It was these weapons that killed “thousands of people” – Libyan and African guest workers and their families – in a country wracked by a civil war manufactured by Mrs Clinton and CIA director General David Petraeus.

The CIA, in particular, had for decades, fantasized about overthrowing Gaddafi. Never did this most incompetent of US government agencies contemplate the effects of Gaddafi’s ouster: the spread of Saudi-financed jihadist terrorism across the Sahel region of Africa. The CIA’s fanciful notions that Gaddafi’s days were numbered were highlighted in a formerly Secret CIA report titled, “Libya: Will the Revolution Outlast Gaddafi?” Issued in June 1988, the report was obviously intended to bolster those within the Reagan administration who argued for a US military attack on Libya by taking advantage of what the CIA perceived was a weakened Gaddafi government at the end of the 1980s. The CIA, as usual, was extremely off-base in its assessment of Gaddafi’s staying power.

The CIA report states: “Gaddafi’s revolution has largely run its course, and he must rely on coercion to perpetuate his revolutionary vision”. In fact, Libyans had the highest standard of living on the African continent with oil revenues being shared with the entire population. The CIA’s erroneous assessment of Libya in 1988 continued: “Just as Libya in 1969 was ripe for a change to a more nationalistic and activist regime, we believe it now ripe for a return to normality”. The call for “regime change” by the CIA in 1988 was, in fact, a call for the return to the status quo ante of 1968: a Libya governed by a corrupt oligarchy led by a feeble monarch. Today, a motley crew of United Nations-selected Libyan gangsters governs the country as a “paper tiger” entity called the “Government of National Accord”. Meanwhile, jihadists of Ansar al-Sharia govern Benghazi while the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) governs Sirte, Derna, and a swath of territory southeast of Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

Just as the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party and military infrastructures in Iraq following the US invasion and occupation led to the complete collapse of the Iraqi nation-state, the destruction of the four key institutions that united Libya under Gaddafi led to “failed state” status for the country. The CIA cited these key institutions in its 1988 report but no effort was made to preserve them after Gaddafi’s assassination by CIA-supported forces.

The four key institutions in Libya were, according to the CIA, the tribally-based security battalions, the regular Armed Forces, the Military Intelligence service, and the revolutionary committees. These institutions were wiped out in order that the CIA’s wish in 1988 could be realized: that Libya would return to the “normality” of 1968: government by a restored monarchy led by a pretender to the al-Senussi family’s throne once occupied by King Idris I. However, Libya became a polyglot of warring tribes and jihadists, many of the latter imported from conflict zones abroad.

Whether governed by a restored monarchy or a military-dominated successor regime, the CIA saw a post-Gaddafi government desiring “a more constructive relationship with the United States and the West”. The CIA added, “Libyan successors probably would turn first to Western Europe for better economic relations and some arms. They also would be likely to seek greater US participation in the Libyan economy”. However, after Gaddafi agreed to abandon his so-called “weapons of mass destruction” chemical and nuclear programs, the United States and Western Europe had a more constructive relationship with Libya and the country was wide open for Western economic investment. After Mrs Clinton, Petraeus, Obama, Britain’s David Cameron, and other Western leaders had their way with Libya, it is now a wasteland. The infrastructures of irrigation, road and air transport, social welfare, public education, health care, and employment for African guest workers lie in ruins. The clearly demented Mrs Clinton’s private e-mails show that she and her cabal of interventionists were clearly overjoyed by the misery that befell Libya and its people. When she was informed of Gaddafi’s brutal assassination, one that involved his sodomization, Clinton uttered the preamble to what may be called the “Hillary Doctrine” – “We came, we saw, he died!” She followed her declaration with her signature hideous cackling laughter.

The 1988 CIA report does not seem to care much for Gaddafi’s style of governance through some 2000 local “people’s congresses”, described by the CIA as “a hybrid of a New England town meeting and a Bedouin tribal gathering”. This demonstration of the “people’s will” in the Libyan “Jamahiriya” was anathema to the CIA’s goals for Libya, even Libya’s emulation of New England-style direct democracy.

A system of direct democracy in an Arab Muslim nation defied the CIA’s wish for the region, which was and remains an alliance of pro-US theocratic states governed by corrupt elites that wield power through US-equipped armed forces. The CIA report on Libya admits that initially, Gaddafi’s system of direct democracy and the exercising of the people’s will “actually worked”. Only in the jaundiced view of the United States was such a system of government a threat, not only to US interests and goals, but to those of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Morocco, and other corrupt and theocratic US client states in the region.

Last week, the Iraqi government began operations to “liberate” Fallujah from Islamic State (IS) fanatics, with Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announcing on Sunday that Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) will be entering the city in “two days”.

His grandiose claims aside, the eventual result of this operation is a foregone conclusion in military terms. IS cannot hold Fallujah as they do not have the manpower to effectively garrison the city, they lack the technological capability to mitigate the devastating impact of US airpower and they are completely surrounded and cut off from resupply by forces that number in the tens of thousands.

As such, those who just want to see IS lose can rest assured as that will happen sooner or later, even with the incompetence of the ISF and its allied Hashd al-Sha’abi (Popular Mobilisation Forces – PMF) sectarian Shia militias.

But the battle for Fallujah is about more than just defeating IS, and it cannot be seen as a liberation in the true sense of the word either. A quick look at recent history is instructive in understanding what has been going on for quite some time now with little to no international outcry, and what is likely to happen in Fallujah.

When the Iraqi government announced that it would retake Tikrit in 72 hours last year, it actually took them almost two months to take a town occupied by around 200 IS fighters, and enthusiastic time estimates were also given for the battles in Baiji, Ramadi and other towns.

What happened after “liberation”? ISF and PMF fighters presided over the sectarian slaughter of Sunni Arabs, and at one point were even filmed slicing up the burnt corpse of a Sunni man with a sword “like shawarma”.

Fallujah has not even been taken yet, and already the PMF are massacring civilians in field executions that are undoubtedly war crimes. After the town of Karma was taken, just north of Fallujah, the PMF executed 17 men and boys after accusing them of being IS militants.

Sunni tribal leaders fear dozens of others who were kidnapped by the PMF in Karma will soon face the same fate and called upon the international community and Iraq’s politicians to do something to stop these terrible crimes. Has anyone heard their pleas? Of course not, as Iraqi blood is even cheaper than that of Syrians or Palestinians.

Under siege

Fallujah has an almost legendary history amongst Iraq’s Sunni Arabs as it is seen as a city that stood fast against occupation and invasion since 2003. The city was first taken out of government control by a coalition of Iraqi revolutionary fighters in January 2014, including such groups such as the General Military Council for the Iraqi Revolution who were formed after the viciously sectarian former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, ordered peaceful Sunni Arab protesters slaughtered throughout 2013. Fallujah was not, as the media portrays today, held by IS alone until around the time US forces were drawn into the conflict in the summer of 2014.

Since early 2014, Fallujah has been under a near total siege, with regular shelling of its medical facilities by the Iraqi government, yet another war crime as it is not a legitimate military target.

Prior to the recent effort to recapture the city, the siege has also resulted in Baghdad pursuing a policy of starving the people of Fallujah as another example of the government equating Sunni Arabs with IS. Horrifying images have surfaced on Iraqi social media recently, showing women and children starved and bombed to death by the government that is supposed to shield them from violence. To make matters worse, the UNHCR recently reported that IS are now executing males who are unwilling to fight for them.

In short, the people of Fallujah are being smashed between the hammer of the Iran-backed sectarian Shia militias and the anvil of brutal IS savages whose adherence to Islam I have already questioned elsewhere.

Sectarian cleansing

No one should be under any doubt about what will happen once Fallujah is “liberated”. Sectarian cleansing is a well-established programme in Iraq, under the aegis and encouragement of the radical mullahs of Iran. In fact, areas around Samarra are being actively cleansed of any Sunni Arabs in order to create a Sunni-free corridor that stretches from the Iranian border to what the Shia consider to be their holy shrines and sites in the predominantly Sunni city.

The entire world is silent as this goes on, and instead of standing up for the human rights and freedoms they constantly harp on about are turning a blind eye to the crimes against humanity going on in Sunni areas and the continuation of the Iraqi Holocaust that the West has an enormous role in instigating and perpetuating alongside the Iranians and even Iraq’s other neighbours, whether Turk or Arab.

As Fallujah is the last major city to be held by IS apart from Mosul itself, what happens there will be indicative of what will happen when the assault against IS in Mosul begins. As I wrote in my recent research published by RUSI, the Sunni Arabs have close to no faith in the Green Zone government in Baghdad and would fear a “liberation” of Mosul for understandable reasons, including PMF and government brutality against Sunnis stretching back for a decade and more.

An interesting idea that arose was that UN-sanctioned peacekeeping forces that included neighbouring Arab countries and Turkey would increase Mosul’s Sunnis’ confidence in any operation to dislodge IS, as it would mean that there would be observers and troops on the ground to protect them from sectarian excesses.

It is, however, unlikely that the international community will have the stomach for a boots-on-the-ground peacekeeping mission in Mosul. Although they have stated that they want to rid the world of IS’s violence, they seemingly do not care about what violence is inflicted upon the Sunni community, staying silent on Iraqi government and PMF war crimes and crimes against humanity as, it would seem, the ends justify the means.

However, removing IS will not destroy extremism, just as weakening al-Qaeda did nothing to reduce terrorism. In fact, terrorism flourished and evolved to the point that al-Qaeda are barely mentioned in the media these days as they seem almost normal when compared to the newly charted territory of extremism that IS has forged.

Fallujah will fall to the Iraqi government. Fallujah’s people will suffer untold misery, death, destruction and violence that will be heaped upon them by the government and its allied militias that are supposed to be protecting them. Fallujah will be a prelude to the recapture of Mosul, and if things continue as they are, IS will either return to asymmetric traditional terrorism that will be both regional and international in nature, or else the horrors inflicted upon the Sunni community will breed an even more terrifying group that will make IS pale in comparison.

Tallha Abdulrazaq is a researcher at the University of Exeter’s Strategy & Security Institute, and winner of the Al Jazeera Young Researcher Award. He blogs at thewarjournal.co.uk and tweets from @thewarjournal

Bernie Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said Wednesday that it would be difficult for Hillary Clinton to keep running for president if she were under criminal indictment.

Like his boss, who remarked to Clinton last fall that the country was sick of “your damn emails,” Weaver was hesitant to make the email issue central during his surprising appearance on the conservative morning show Fox & Friends.  However, Sanders said Sunday that unpledged superdelegates would be taking a look at Clinton’s email scandal as they decided who to support at the Democratic convention.

Weaver said Sanders’ position had not changed, however, pointing out the “substantive” differences between him and Clinton on the issues. Co-host Brian Kilmeade, however, pointed to the State Department Inspector General report out last week that slammed Clinton’s email conduct.

“I know, but this is new, Jeff,” Kilmeade said. “You’re in second place with those issues. This could be something that gets into character and integrity and how you act in office.”

“Well, I think that the IG report really speaks for itself,” Weaver said.

“Anybody who’s interested in it can certainly go read it and see what they want, but look, the process is still going on with respect to the emails. There’s an FBI investigation going on. I think the State Department proper, as opposed to the IG, is also doing its own investigation, so this process still has a little ways to play out.”

Co-host Ainsley Earhardt noted a Rasmussen poll out Tuesday that showed 43 percent of respondents thought Clinton should cease campaigning immediately if she was charged with a felony regarding her server. Fifty percent said she should keep campaigning until a verdict was reached.

“Well, that’s obviously a wild hypothetical,” Weaver said. “I would find it difficult to believe that a candidate who’s under indictment could continue to run.”

Weaver insisted he was speaking from a “practical standpoint.”

“There’s no indication that’s going to happen, frankly,” he said.

Sanders and Clinton are locked in a tight race in delegate-rich California. Clinton appears poised to clinch the nomination next week, but Sanders has vowed to fight all the way to the nomination, pointing to the tight race between the two in the pledged delegate count.

“Under the cover of darkness, there is no limit to the expansion of Big Brother.”

Ilan Gilon, Meretz Party (Israel), Times of Israel, Feb 4, 2016

While Israel’s central justification for its often reactionary policies is couched in hyper-exceptionalist rhetoric, current interest in censoring the Internet is far from exceptional.

Like a machine of justification against its critics and its enemies, Israel enlists various projects under the banner of the remarkable and precious, when it is simply accomplishing what other states have done before or since: the banal and ordinary. All states want to limit expression, control criticism and marginalise the sceptics. Some do it more savagely, and roughly, than others.

Israel’s military censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, who is part of the IDF’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, gave a good example of this in February by insisting that social media activists and bloggers submit material relevant to security matters for approval prior to posting.[1] The move also revealed an increasing interest to police the digital realm, previously considered an anarchic jungle incapable of effective policing.

Up to 32 Israeli bloggers and social media activists were informed about the directive, one of the first being Yossi Gurvitz, a left-wing activist running the “Friends of George” Facebook page. In rather unceremonious fashion, he was informed via Ben Avraham’s private Facebook account that he was obligated to run future submissions by her office. To his credit, he promises to defy the order.

Internal censorship is but one aspect of this policy. Israel Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has dipped into the discourse of censorship to convince others that limiting various social media platforms on a global scale is the way to go. In January, he revealed the inner ambition of Israel’s security establishment to internationalise the censorship effort.

To achieve that goal, Erdan speaks of an “international coalition” that would make limiting criticism of Israel its primary objective. The central aim is hardly imaginative: making such providers as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook face up to responsibility as to what they host on their sites.

The Erdan plan suggests that various countries would form a “loose coalition that would keep an eye on content and where it is being posted, and members of the coalition would work to demand that the platforms remove the content that was posted in any of their countries at the request of members.” The simple idea behind this collusion is extra-territorial cooperation, effectively circumventing the global nature of such platforms.

As for the scurrilous subject matter itself, the issues are universal fare for states keen to control matters that supposedly stimulate the darker side of human nature. (Read: contrary to state interests.) Erdan’s office gives the example of material from a Palestinian (of course) disclosing the best locations on the body to inflict fatal stab wounds.

This begs that grand question about how far such an effort goes: control the more sordidly violent sides of the Old Testament because it encourages various unsavoury practices? Limit suggestive literature being discussed in the whirl of social media, buzzing away with malicious promise? The mind is an untidy place filled with remarkable things, and not all of them necessarily make it to actual perpetration. This is a point that continues to elude the mighty warriors of the security state.

Another justification is being thrown in: they, the social media giants, rake in the proceeds, and should therefore man the barricades. “We are planning to put a stop to this irresponsibility,” claimed Erdan’s office, “and we are going to do it as part of an international coalition that has had enough of this behaviour as well.”

Other governments have also done their bit to limit the internet and content available to their citizens. Most famously, Beijing runs its own “Great Firewall of China”, overseen by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), while the State Council Information Office and the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department examine content.

In recent times, countries of a supposedly democratic character have taken to the blinds and endeavoured to do what Erdan dreams about. Dangerous thoughts are seen as the reason for dangerous actions. To that end, the country that gave Europe the Enlightenment has been busy forging its own vision of global internet censorship, using a mixture of security and privacy concerns.

The latter has proven to have potentially pernicious consequences, framed largely as an effort to protect the privacy of the French citizen. From that vantage point, a vision of global control has been built on a premise forged in European law: the right to be forgotten. The Court of Justice of the European ruling of May 13, 2014 (Google Spain v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González) has supplied the subject matter for the latest enlargement of censorship powers.

The French response has been intrusively enthusiastic, with the privacy regulator, CNIL, fining Google 100,000 Euros in March for not applying the right to be forgotten across the global network. In the chilling words of the regulator, “For people residing in France to effectively exercise their right to be delisted, it must be applied to the entire processing operation.”[2] Erdan may well be irritated he did not come up with that one.

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

Notes:

[1] http://www.timesofisrael.com/military-censor-seeks-control-over-blogs-facebook-posts/
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/internet-censorship-a-la-mode-1459380903

A recent New York Times editorial that criticized China’s rightful territorial claims in South China Sea is misleading by misconstruing and ignoring facts and international norms, said Ben Reynolds, a U.S. foreign policy analyst.

The Times editorial, “Playing Chicken in the South China Sea,” accused China of escalating tensions between itself, its neighbors, and the United States.

The editorial has vastly overstated the importance of the South China Sea to an audience that is increasingly skeptical of overseas interventions, argued Reynolds in a column piece with China-US Focus, an open-platform website focusing on China-U.S. relations based in Hong Kong.

Overinflating the Sea’s Importance

The editorial misstated and overly exaggerated the fact of the South China Sea being rich in resources, wrote Reynolds, pointing out that the only resource currently being extracted from the region in significant quantities is fish.

Regarding other energy resources like oil and natural gas, the vast majority of their reserves lie outside disputed areas according to the U.S. Energy Information administration, wrote the columnist.

Reynolds acknowledged the argument that the South China Sea is of vital strategic importance because it contains major trade flows is partially correct, but he argued that no party to the territorial disputes believes or suggests that China’s claims pose a threat to peacetime trade.

Ignoring Facts

The Times editorial blamed China’s land reclamation and construction activities in the South China Sea as an “aggressive and outrageous tactic,” but it ignored the fact that U.S. allies and partners involved in the dispute have also expanded or constructed islands in the South China Sea in recent years, argued Reynolds.

Reynolds continued his rebuttal on the Times’ innuendo from bringing up China’s rising military budget, noting that the editorial deliberately omitted the fact that the 2015 U.S. military budget was 601 billion U.S. dollars, more than three times than that of China.

Reynolds pointed out that the Times editors offered little criticism on the United States’ own astronomical military budget and its deployments in the Asia-Pacific.

“I should not have to remind the reader, much less the editors of a major global newspaper, that the United States is not located in Asia,” wrote Reynolds.

Mouthpiece For U.S. Interventionist Foreign Policy

Reynolds proceeded to point out the hypocrisy of the editorial’s argument that China is attempting to dangerously revise the post-World War II international norms.

The argument ignored the fact that the post-war order in Asia was designed by the United States to hedge against the influence of the Soviet Union, wrote Reynolds. “It was not designed to promote freedom and democracy”.

“Again, we see that the object of the Times’ critique is not militarism, threatening behavior, or the revision of international norms as such…Rather, the Times is critiquing Chinese behavior because China is a geopolitical rival of the United States,” wrote Reynolds.

Misleading the American people about U.S.-China rivalry in the South China Sea with omissions and half-truths is the job of the Defense Department, not the press, said Reynolds.

The New York Times has been on the wrong side of history in almost every proposed foreign intervention since World War II, which in its history endorsed the Vietnam War, the 2003 Iraq War, and the bombing of Libya, according to the columnist.

“Let us hope that the New York Times is more thorough and careful with the facts in future pieces, lest it sell the American public on yet another disastrous foreign intervention.”

The Russian Defense Ministry has rejected allegations that Russian warplanes conducted airstrikes on the city of Idlib. Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Tuesday that the Russian Aerospace Forces haven’t conducted sorties in the Idlib area. The Western media reports had argued Russian airstrikes targeted several Idlib sites, including one next to a hospital, killing from 23 to 60 people, and injuring 200 more. The initial information about Russia’s airstrikes has been released by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO run by an individual residing in the UK.

Since the start of the ceasefire agreement in Syria, there has been a lack of the reports about the Russian air power’s actions by the Russian MoD. On May 31, the Russian MoD stated that Russian warplanes destroyed the terrorists’ objects of illegal oil producing near al-Taura, 42 km to the south-west from Raqqah while other sources said that airstrikes were also conducted in the Maskanah Plains, east to Aleppo, and in the area of Tall al-Harra in Western Daraa.

Following heavy clashes, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Hezbollah troops cleared from terrorists the Military Construction Base and at the southern outskirts of Beit Na’am in East Ghouta. The loyalist forces launched an advance to seize the towns of Beit Naim and al-Mohammadiya, entering the central part of the region.

Meanwhile, there are reports that the Syrian government is deploying 5000-strong force to Eastern Hama in order to conduct a military operation in the direction of Deir Ezzor and further Raqqa. Desert Hawks Brigade, Syrian Marines, Golani Regiment, 550th Regiment of the 4th Mechanized Division, and Al-Ba’ath Battalions will reportedly take part in the advance.

On May 31, the Pentagon confirmed that 2 U.S. military servicemen have been wounded during the so-called “non-combat operations” against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. 1 US soldier was wounded advising Peshmerga units in Iraq’s Nineveh province while another was wounded in Northern Raqqa where the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces was conducting operation against ISIS. Despite the Washington’s denies there are reports that US Special Forces are spearheading the Kurdish advance in Syria.

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Thousands of Independents May Not Get to Vote

Misleading voter information, a different set of rules for independents, a lawsuit and an ultra conservative third party could all play a role in California’s crucial Democratic primary — and lead to thousands of being deprived a chance to vote. With 10 days to go before Californians cast their ballot, WhoWhatWhy looks at potential problems.

That is good news for Bernie Sanders, who needs a massive victory in the Golden State to have any chance of matching the number of pledged delegates Hillary Clinton has won. The Vermont senator has fared much better in open primaries than closed ones, which only allow registered Democrats to vote.

However, while registered Democrats will likely experience a smooth voting process, independents will have to navigate some hurdles before they can cast their ballots.

California Election Documents Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from California election documents collected by Bernie Sanders Video (berniesandersvideo.com)

The state’s Democratic primary on June 7 is open, which means that registered Democrats and independents who register as “No Party Preference” (NPP) voters are eligible to vote.

The majority of Californians vote by mail, which is a simple process for registered Democrats, who receive ballots in the mail. NPP voters, the only other group eligible to vote in the Democratic primary, have a harder time. They must request a so-called “Democratic crossover ballot.” And the rules dictating how and when to request these ballots may not be clear to everybody.

The California Elections Code requires that printed applications for mail-in votes include information clearly telling voters that their completed application “must be received by the elections official not later than seven days prior to the date of the election…” In this case, the deadline would be Tuesday, May 31.

The law also mandates that the application must include “a conspicuously printed statement substantially similar to the following: ‘You have the legal right to mail or deliver this application directly to the local elections official of the county where you reside’.”

A lawsuit filed May 20 alleges that election officials failed to comply with the law because they sent out information that was misleading with regard to deadlines and the right of NPP voters to request a crossover ballot to participate in the Democratic primary. In addition, voters were not informed they could drop off their mail-in ballot in person.

“The polls have been open since May 9. Voters have the right to come to the polling place up to the final day of elections on June 7 and ask for the ballot of their choice,” said Bill Simpich, a civil rights attorney representing the plaintiffs. “We intend to make sure they know that this is their right.”

A pro-Sanders website has compiled images of elections materials that were sent to voters but did not comply with the California Elections Code. One of the forms, distributed by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, notifies voters that they have to request their crossover ballots by March 18, more than two months before the actual deadline. James Roguski, who runs that website, said he received that notification more than six weeks after the alleged deadline had already passed.

It stands to reason, and there is evidence, that a lot of NPP voters who initially read it were led to believe that they had missed their chance to vote in the Democratic primary. Mailers sent out in other counties said the deadline was on various days in mid-April.

LA County election notification
Photo credit: Bernie Sanders Video (berniesandersvideo.com)

The defendants in the lawsuit are the Alameda County Registrar of Voters and the San Francisco Board of Elections, which had sent out mailers with deadlines in mid-April. Alameda County did not respond to WhoWhatWhy’s requests for comment while a San Francisco elections official referred us to the City Attorney’s Office because the inquiry involved an issue currently being litigated.

However, other election officials, whose offices were not named in the lawsuit but who had sent out information with incorrect deadlines, argued that these mailers were meant to help voters and the election agencies alike.

The Riverside County Registrar of Voters sent out a mailer to approximately 100,000 registered NPP voters indicating that the deadline to request a crossover ballot was April 22. Candice Gordon from the registrar’s office told WhoWhatWhy that this was a “soft deadline” meant to “avoid a bottleneck” at the end of the application period, which could have made it difficult to ensure every NPP voter received their crossover ballot in time.

Gordon stressed that the correct information was displayed at all times on the registrar’s official website. She noted that the phones in the office were “ringing off the hook” when the mailer was sent out and that voters who called were informed that they had until May 31 to request the crossover mail-in ballots.

In a follow-up email, Rebecca Spencer of the registrar’s office stated that the April 22 deadline was for voters who “wanted their crossover ballot mailed out with the first vote-by-mail ballots on May 9, 2016. If we received their crossover request later, the voter would receive their No Party Preference ballot first and then their crossover request would be treated as a replacement request.”

Spencer pointed out that all NPP voters also received an application to get a crossover ballot on the back of their sample ballot. This document, which was provided toWhoWhatWhy, includes the correct deadline.

Sonoma County officials gave a similar response.

“The cards mailed to permanent vote by mail voters were done to comply with EC section 3205,” Sonoma County Chief Deputy Registrar of Voters Elizabeth Acosta toldWhoWhatWhy. “The postcard notice both educates voters about no party preference rules in a presidential primary election, and provides them information about their options.”

Acosta pointed to the various logistics challenge as a reason for why the postcards are sent early and also noted that there is a difference between a notice and an application for a crossover ballot, which included the May 31 date for Sonoma County NPP voters.

Brenda Duran, a public information officer for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, also strongly rejected any claims of impropriety. Duran’s office had sent out the mailer with the March 18 deadline. She told WhoWhatWhy that this particular mailer was just one piece of a large voter education campaign meant to help spread out the applications for crossover ballots to ensure all of them would be processed in time.

Duran provided documents showing that the correct deadline had been included in subsequent documents mailed to voters, including the sample ballot for NPP voters. The registrar’s spokesperson noted that the information had also been disseminated in various ways, including the office’s website and on social media. In addition, Duran said Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan had done 30 print, radio and TV interviews in different languages to ensure that voters were aware of processes and deadlines.

In the counties WhoWhatWhy looked at, it seems that voters had eventually been provided with the correct information — if they read all of the mail they received from election officials closely and did not simply believe that the deadline of receiving a crossover ballot had already passed.

A membership card for the 1969 American Independent Party. Independent California voters may have been confused enough in their application process to have checked off the box for this ultra-conservative party. Photo credit: Unknown / Wikimedia

Another, likely much bigger, problem for Sanders — and independents wanting to vote in the Democratic primary — is the existence of the American Independent Party, an ultra-conservative party on whose ticket George Wallace once ran in California.

Voters who did not take the time to read their application thoroughly and checked “American Independent Party” because they thought that this would make them an “independent” will not be able to vote in the Democratic primary — and there are indications that this could affect tens of thousands of voters who will show up at the polls but not receive the ballot they want. The same fate may await anybody who wrote “Independent” on their registration forms.

It is interesting to note that the American Independent Party, in addition to individual voters and the Voting Rights Defense Project, a pro-Sanders group, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit referenced above. The suit seeks a judgment that state election officials violated the law by not providing the correct information. The suits asks that the correct information be made available in the two weeks leading up to the primary and that actions be taken to allow eligible NPP voters to cast their ballots in the Democratic primary even if they did not request a crossover ballot.

At press time, the Sanders campaign had not responded to inquiries as to what it had done to educate voters about the procedures once it became aware of these potential problems.

While it is too late for anybody not currently registered as Democrat or NPP to vote in the Democratic primary, those Californians who are registered as one or the other can still request their mail-in ballot until May 31. In addition, even people who applied to vote by mail have the fallback option of voting in person at any time until June 7 at their county registrar’s office or another satellite voting location. If they have already received a ballot in the mail, they should bring that along and “surrender” it. That process appears to be the safest way to ensure their vote is counted.

However, even if all Democratic and NPP voters take these steps, it appears likely that large numbers — primarily those who signed up for the American Independent Party — might show up at the polls on June 7 only to be turned away.

In its annual report on the “State of Black America”, one of the oldest research organizations in the African American community documents the continuing levels of national oppression and economic exploitation.

This report for 2016 represents the fortieth anniversary of the yearly study with the first issued in 1976. During this period the United States was impacted by a severe recession triggering long-term restructuring of the world economic system.

Released under the title: “Locked Out: Education, Jobs and Justice, A Message to the Next President”, the document provides more than enough evidence to suggest that the African American people remain an oppressed nation within the political and economic clutches of Washington and Wall Street. Despite the advent of the first African American president in the personage of Barack Hussein Obama, the fundamental problems facing this population of at least 45 million are still unresolved some 151 years since the abolition of chattel slavery and the conclusion of the Civil War.

The study utilizes what is called an “equality index”, looking at what percentage of the socio-economic matrix which African Americans have access. Using this method the NUL report says that overall African Americans do not have full equality but only 72 percent of what whites possess.

Although there are potential pitfalls in using such a framework due to the class divisions among African Americans as well as the need to take into account the systematic national discrimination imposed on this population through the denial of economic and social opportunities which could be realized absent of a racist and class dominated society. However, it does provide a form of measurement that acknowledges in real terms the disparity that remain throughout the decades.

Oppression and Exploitation Still Intact

What is striking about the National Urban League (NUL) findings in its current report is the degree to which the overall social conditions of African Americans have remained essentially unchanged. This stagnation has continued through successive Republican administrations, as in 1976, to a Democratic one in 2016.

This conclusion is not to discount or minimize gains that have been made over the four decades particularly in the area of educational achievement.   According to the report, “Eighty-six percent of African Americans are high school completers; the share with a bachelor’s degree or more has more than tripled (from 6.6% to 22.2%); and roughly one-third of 18-24 year-olds are enrolled in college.  While whites have increased college enrollment faster than Blacks between 1976 and 2014 (most recent data available), the college completion gap has narrowed 20 percentage points over this time (from 43% in 1976 to 63% in 2014).”

Nevertheless, in essential areas such as job acquisition and retention, unemployment rates among African Americans as in 1976 are twice as high as whites during a period in which the government and business says that there is a recovery. These figures are a reflection of the abolition of millions of jobs in heavy and light industry which has ramifications in the areas education, public services and consumer viability.

The NUL report says “despite notable absolute progress for Black America, there has been much less relative progress towards economic equality with whites, especially when compared to the progress made toward educational equality.  This is especially notable when it comes to unemployment.  With few exceptions, the Black unemployment rate has consistently remained about twice the white rate across time and at every level of education.  Compared to 40 years ago, the income gap has remained basically unchanged (now at 60%), and the homeownership rate gap has actually grown 6 percentage points (now at 59%).”

As mentioned in the above quote, another important area in assessing the quality of life among African Americans is the ownership of residential housing. This NUL report emphasizes that “The foreclosure crisis has left Black homeownership rates at approximately the same point they were in 1976, while the white homeownership rate is now 5 percentage points higher.  On the other hand, there has been slow, but ongoing progress in reducing poverty, in spite of the economic challenges presented by the Great Recession.  According to the most recent estimates, the Black poverty rate is now 2.4 percentage points lower than in 1976 (down to 27% from 29.4%).”

Taking these statistics related to poverty rates at their face value means that based upon the official low-income measurement indexes well over one-quarter of the African American population is impoverished. Aggravating this quantitative data related to poverty is the high levels of joblessness which could easily imperil the households of those who are designated as not being impoverished.

It is important to recognize that there are other forms of measurement in determining poverty and the subjective outlooks of households within modern U.S. society. In 2014, a survey was published indicating that in general nearly half of people in the U.S. were either in poverty or near this category.

This methodology known as the Census Department’s Relative Poverty Measure is often used in developed countries to designate poverty. The Economic Policy Institute uses the term “economically vulnerable.” With this standard, 18 percent of Americans are below the poverty threshold and 32 percent are below twice the threshold, putting them in the low-income category. (Paul Buchheit, Alternet, March 23, 2014)

The worst state in the U.S. for African American unemployment is Illinois with specific concentrations of poverty, inequality and joblessness being in the Chicago metropolitan area.

In a study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, it notes that “During the first quarter of 2016, covering January through March, the unemployment rate among Black Illinoisans was 14.1 percent. That’s up from 13.1 percent during the fourth quarter of 2015, when Illinois also had the nation’s worst African-American unemployment rate, according to the liberal think tank’s report. Illinois also tied with Washington for having the highest Hispanic unemployment rate, 7.8 percent, during the first quarter of 2016.” (progressillinois.com, May 20)

Impact of the Obama Administration and the Way Forward

This report provides much hard data which necessitates a critical look at the lack of progress made during two terms of the Obama administration. African Americans voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008 and 2012 securing his two terms in office.

Unemployment rates in the area in which he emerged politically from the state and federal senate, Illinois, exposes the futility of an electoral agenda absent of substantive demands based on the concrete conditions facing the working class and poor.

These statistics poses a challenge for mass organizations to continue to put forward a political program for real jobs, decent housing, quality education and economic parity. It would be safe to say that irrespective of who is elected to the White House and Congress for 2017, the oppression and exploitation will not wither away.

In an article published as part of the State of Black America report, Joy-Ann Reid, a national correspondent for MSNBC, predicts that “Whether the next president is a Democrat or Republican, Black leadership will likely be pressed as never before to deliver on the ‘hope floor’ laid by the election of the first Black president…In short, the Age of Hope is poised to give way to the Era of Radical Demands for Change.”

For this era of radical demands for change to be effective it must take on an anti-capitalist character. There is most of all a dramatic need for the redistribution of wealth from the ruling class to the working class and the nationally oppressed.  This transferal of wealth can only occur under a socialist system which would guarantee full employment, income equality, housing and education for everyone along with the total liberation of the African American people and all oppressed nations.

Did the Canadian Government Bribe Saudi Officials to Obtain its Arms Deal?

By Julie Lévesque, June 01 2016

In 1965, the United States and the UK were competing to sell war planes to Saudi Arabia. In order to get the lucrative contract, a « commission » had to be paid to members of the Saudi government. The history…

Hillary Out Following FBI Racketeering Charges? Or Hillary-Bernie Ticket? Clinton, Sanders Camps in Talks for “Party Unity”

By Stephen Lendman, June 01 2016

A previous article called Clinton the most recklessly dangerous president aspirant in US history. Humanity’s fate is up for grabs with her finger on the nuclear trigger. She’s also damaged goods, vulnerable to indictment on federal racketeering charges, her Clinton…

Colluding in EU-British Lies: The Brexit Debate

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 01 2016

The Brexit argument (whether Britain should remain or otherwise in the European Union), has become hysterically hyperbolic. That was the view of former Tory MP Gyles Brandreth, expressed with usual alacrity on the news quiz show Have I Got News…

“Evil” Presidential Candidates: Write-in Voting and Political Protest

By William John Cox, May 31 2016

With the increasingly likelihood of a presidential contest between the generally despised Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, millions of angry voters are considering protesting the lineup by either sitting out the election or writing in alternatives. With almost one-third of…

The South African National Student Uprising of 1976: Looking Back 40 Years Later

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 01 2016

On June 16, 1976, students in the Southwest Townships (Soweto) outside of Johannesburg stayed away from school in protest against the Bantu education system which was enacted by the racist apartheid government beginning in the early 1950s. The Bantu Education…

Learning from the History of Presidential Elections: Barry Goldwater versus Donald Trump

By Michael T. Bucci, June 01 2016

Those old enough to have lived through the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis; attended the movies Dr. Strangelove, On The Beach and Seven Days In May; and experienced November 22-25, 1963 “as it happened”, might remember Senator Barry…

Receiving scant attention from Western mainstream media outlets except for a few notable exceptions, Americans and many alternative media outlets have remained ignorant to the fact that private mercenaries from Blackwater (aka Academi) appear to have been contracted by the GCC Gulf state feudal monarchies to assist in the military war of terror in Yemen against the Houthi rebels and the embattled Yemeni people.

Still, on December 9, a flurry of reports from media outlets such as Press TV, TeleSur TV, Al-Manar,Al –Bawaba, and Colombia Reports have revealed that around 15 Blackwater mercenaries have been killed in a fierce battles with the Houthi forces.

Al-Masirah, Yemen’s Arabic language website reported that the Commander-In-Chief of the firm’s operation in Yemen, a Mexican national, was killed in the al-Omari district of Ta’izz Province.

Press TV reports that a number of British, French, and Australian advisers and commanders as well as six Colombian soldiers were killed.

In late November of 2015, it was reported that around 1,800 former Latin American soldiers who had been recruited by a program once managed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince were being trained in the desert of the United Arab Emirates to be used against the Houthis at some point.

It was estimated that about 450 of the soldiers were from Colombia.

The New York Times wrote that

 “The United Arab Emirates has secretly dispatched hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Yemen to fight in that country’s raging conflict, adding a volatile new element in a complex proxy war that has drawn in the United States and Iran.”

El Tiempo placed the mercenary presence much earlier, however, suggesting that 100 Colombian soldiers had entered Yemen in October, a claim corroborated by The New York Times.

Colombia Reports stated that the mercenaries were being paid around $1,000 more per week than what they would have been paid as part of the Emirati deployment, and over triple the amount they would have made as members of the Colombian military. The contracts are allegedly for three-month-front-line service.

The New York Times reported on November 25,

The Colombian troops now in Yemen, handpicked from a brigade of some 1,800 Latin American soldiers training at an Emirati military base, were woken up in the middle of the night for their deployment to Yemen last month. They were ushered out of their barracks as their bunkmates continued sleeping, and were later issued dog tags and ranks in the Emirati military. Those left behind are now being trained to use grenade launchers and armored vehicles that Emirati troops are currently using in Yemen.

Emirati officials have made a point of recruiting Colombian troops over other Latin American soldiers because they consider the Colombians more battle tested in guerrilla warfare, having spent decades battling gunmen of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the jungles of Colombia.

The exact mission of the Colombians in Yemen is unclear, and one person involved in the project said it could be weeks before they saw regular combat. They join hundreds of Sudanese soldiers whom Saudi Arabia has recruited to fight there as part of the coalition.

In addition, a recent United Nations report cited claims that some 400 Eritrean troops might be embedded with the Emirati soldiers in Yemen — something that, if true, could violate a United Nations resolution restricting Eritrean military activities.

The United States has also been participating in the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, providing logistical support, including airborne refueling, to the nations conducting the airstrikes. The Pentagon has sent a team to Saudi Arabia to provide targeting intelligence to the coalition militaries regularly used for the airstrikes.

The New York Times also reports that, interestingly enough, the training program and the use of Colombian and other third world mercenaries by Gulf State countries has been taking place since as far back as 2010. The article states,

Hundreds of Colombian troops have been trained in the Emirates since the project began in 2010 — so many that the Colombian government once tried to broker an agreement with Emirati officials to stanch the flow headed to the Persian Gulf. Representatives from the two governments met, but an agreement was never signed.

Most of the recruiting of former troops in Colombia is done by Global Enterprises, a Colombian company run by a former special operations commander named Oscar Garcia Batte. Mr. Batte is also co-commander of the brigade of Colombian troops in the Emirates, and is part of the force now deployed in Yemen.

It should also be noted that Blackwater, or at least Erik Prince, was involved in setting up the program early on, although the firm currently denies ties to the program in 2015. Foreign media outlets obviously disagree on the level to which Blackwater and/or Prince’s firm are involved in the program. That the foreign fighters are mercenaries, however, is beyond doubt.

According to Al-Masdar’s Yemen correspondent, Tony Toh, another piece of the puzzle has now been provided in regards to the mission and methodology of the Saudi-Blackwater cooperation. Toh states that Al-Masirah News, a Yemeni news organization, has revealed that Reflex Responses Management Consultancy LLC is the company doing the actual hiring of mercenaries from Blackwater to fight in Yemen.

RRMC LLC is an Emirati-owned company that specializes in hiring foreign mercenaries and fighters for the UAE’s military.

According to the Yemeni news source, Major General ‘Issa Seif Mohammad Al-Mazrawi, an Emirati officer, is the individual most heavily involved in the deployment of these mercenaries. Al-Masirahalso reports that a contract worth $529 million was signed between RRMC and the UAE government in March, 2015, around the beginning of the Yemeni crisis.

It is clear that the Saudis and the Emirates are grasping at any straws within their reach in order to shore up their faltering military campaign in Yemen and make up for the weakness of their own military forces that have repeatedly demonstrated that the GCC countries are nothing but paper tigers.

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

Like the Israel-Palestine conflict, the world has gotten tired of it, “what, the two Koreas still unable to sort it out”?  Also, like Israel-Palestine, the USA is in it; making the situation complicated.

Never has the situation been so tense after the end of the war in Korea more than 60 years ago.  Not only because of the nuclear bomb with missiles in North Korea, and the hawkish pro-nuke reaction in South Korea and Japan, but because of no moves forward to solve the underlying conflict.  And where is that conflict?  Not between North and South Korea, but between North Korea and USA that after 140+ years of victorious warfare had to accept armistice, not victory, in Korea.

Conflict means incompatible goals. Travel to Pyongyang and find that their goals are peace treaty, normalization of relations, and a nuclear free Korean Peninsula.  And the US goal is the collapse of the present NK regime; failing that, status quo.  Given the threat of a major war, even nuclear war, that goal is untenable.  Some points.

• Why does NK have nuclear capability? Because NK is threatened by the USA-South Korea alliance in general and their “Team Spirit” in particular to deter conventional, or nuclear attacks; failing that to fight back, and particularly against where the attack might come from: US bases in Okinawa-RyuKyu, and from Japan proper. Militarily trivial.
• AND to have a bargaining chip in any denuclearization that of course has to be monitored; given the US cheating in connection with Austrian neutralization in 1955 focused particularly on that one.
• AND to show that we are not collapsing, we are capable of making nuclear bombs and the missiles to carry them; far from collapsing.
• AND, ominously: as the ultimate response if threatened by collapse. Nuclear suicide?  More likely killing those seen as never listening, never thawing in sunshine, using boycotts and sanctions.

Beat a dog repeatedly and it becomes crazy. NK has been beaten, also by exceptional rain causing slides of clay covering enormous cultivated areas, but mainly by an unholy alliance Seoul-Washington. Seoul even commits fratricide on their brothers and sisters in NK, into death and collapse, because Seoul dislikes their regime.

This situation has made both Koreas absurd societies, detached from reality. In the North a fundamentalist Confucian society with a filial piety through the Kims, assuming that the spirit of Kim Il Sung drifts down to son and grandson as incorporations in one person of the national will; in the South through the Parks, at present running a society that is a carbon copy of Japan down to the smallest details on the basis of hysterical anti-Japanism, run by US micro-management.

They will both change.  Absurdities are unsustainable.

SK is also a Christian, Methodist-Catholic, country.  But one senses no Love Thy Neighbor and Love Thy Enemy, only much of Seoul sitting in “judgment over living and dead”.  Jointly with USA.

Sanctions are multi-state terrorism, like terrorism and state terrorism hitting the weak, defenseless, and like them backfiring. Idea: “get rid of your leaders and terrorism will stop”. Reality: the victims turn against the killers, not the leaders. One more absurdity.

There is a way out.  Build on the North Korean goals, hold NK to their words. Their regime will, like all regimes, change; even the USA is now heading for basic change.  Design a peace treaty, like with South Korea, normalize diplomatic relations North-South and North-USA; and design a regime for a nuclear free peninsula, destroying or removing weapons monitored by solid UN inspection, also claims of no weapons.

The two instruments for normalization and denuclearization are then exchanged by depositing them in an escrow with a third party–the UN General Assembly, not UNSC, too similar to the Six Parties Talks.

Then: implementation; preferably quick; de Gaulle style.

But that is only the beginning, only remedies for a pathological and very dangerous situation.  Then comes the peace-building, based on cooperation for mutual and equal benefit, equity (not some SK chaebol-재벌 getting cheap labor in NK), and on harmony based on deep empathy with each other, sharing joys and sorrows; not the opposite, like enjoying suffering and imminent collapse because “sanctions are having a bite”.

Of 40 such proposals here are two.

There is the contested maritime zone between the two different maritime border: use it for joint fishing andjoint fish breeding. Share the income 40-40-20; 20 for the ecology and administration.

There is no flight Seoul-Pyongyang: start it both ways. Use it also for the construction workers and personnel for two embassies.

Admittedly, it is unlikely that USA will come to its senses and initiate all of this although not impossible-the absurdity built into the US boycott of Cuba is being remedied after 58 years. For Korea under a Trump or Sanders presidency, but not belligerent Clinton.

South Korea has to do it, by becoming an independent, autonomous country, not micro-managed, on at least this issue.  There is a longer term mechanism: absurdities have limited life expectancy as witnessed by the decline and fall of empires to the UK, Soviet and US empires.

And there is a short term possibility: presidential power in SK accrues to the two term UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, if elected as a candidate for the governing Saenuri party. Watching his choice of words on the Korean issue, he is always emphasizing dialogue. He would know how to handle a UN General Assembly Uniting for Peace, could have dialogue contact with NK; the rest more or less as above.

Could a united Korean nation with two states at peace inspire the other four of the Six, their ten relations all non-peace, some even recently at war?  History moves quickly these days.  If pushed by democratic pressure from below. And pulled by power from above.

Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU. He has published 164 books on peace and related issues, of which 41 have been translated into 35 languages, for a total of 135 book translations, including ‘50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives,’ published by theTRANSCEND University Press-TUP.

The head of the Organization of American States (OAS) on Tuesday called for an emergency meeting over what he described as an “institutional crisis” of democracy in Venezuela. But supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and other leftist governments in the region, are saying that—while Brazil essentially “burns under coup”—the hemispheric body is going after the wrong villain.

In a 132-page letter (pdf), OAS secretary general Luis Almagro invoked the Inter-American Democratic Charter, calling for a permanent council meeting to address the “alteration of the constitutional order and how it gravely affects the democratic order” in the socialist country.

“The institutional crisis in Venezuela demands immediate changes in the actions of the executive branch,” Almagro wrote, adding that the South American nation is “at risk of falling immediately into a situation of illegitimacy.”

As AFP explains, the Permanent Council may vote to suspend Venezuela’s membership in the OAS with a two-thirds vote. The move was requested by Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress to assess whether the Maduro government was in violation for imposing a state of emergency as the country struggles with shortages of food, medical supplies, and blackouts as a result of plunging oil prices.

Maduro has said that the “fascist right,” with the help of the United States, is attempting to capitalize on the crisis to overthrow the leftist government.

Meanwhile, Almagro has not remained impartial during this time. TeleSUR reports:

The former Uruguayan foreign minister has been brazen in his attacks on the government of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, including penning a tirade against Maduro published on the OAS website on May 19. The letter prompted OAS member state Ecuador to issue a swift rebuke, saying Almagro’s statement “uses improper terms and a tone removed of equanimity and restraint required by the representative of an organization that brings together thirty-four states in the hemisphere.”

This is the first time an OAS chief has activated the charter against a member state over the will of its government. And, critics note, it comes as another left-wing member government is facing an overt crisis of democracy.

“OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro invoked the body’s Democratic Charter against Venezuela, which could lead to the suspension of the Caribbean nation from the Organization of American States, while taking no action in regards to the recent legislative coup in Brazil which placed a right-wing unelected government in power, who has very close ties to the Obama Administration,”

notes TeleSUR, which is funded by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia and is headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela.

The recent ouster of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was recently exposed by leaked transcripts to have been orchestrated by government, military, and oil officials seeking to escape an internal corruption probe.

“Despite such damning reality in Brazil and mounting evidence that opposition lawmakers and elite conspired against the democratically elected government,” TeleSUR continues, “Almagro opted to take no action and instead invoke his body’s charter against Venezuela upon the request of the Venezuelan opposition, which leads the country’s national assembly.”

However, the state-sponsored media outlet charges, “the reality is according to the body’s charter and its 28 articles, what has happened in Brazil does in fact warrant taking action by the OAS against the coup government.”

Those old enough to have lived through the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis; attended the movies Dr. Strangelove, On The Beach and Seven Days In May; and experienced November 22-25, 1963 “as it happened”, might remember Senator Barry Goldwater’s nomination for the presidency on the GOP ticket in 1964. They might also remember the most famous ad in political history that doomed Goldwater, “Daisy”.

In election year 1964, on the heels of the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy, Republican nominee Goldwater vied against Democratic incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson. 

In his acceptance speech for the nomination in what Smithsonian magazine dubbed “the ugliest of Republican conventions since 1912” where “entrenched moderates faced off against conservative insurgents,” Goldwater proclaimed, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Goldwater later admitted that the remark was not original with him: “In fact, I believe Cicero used it in some form at one time,” he said, “and I have been able to trace it rather faintly back to some of the early Greeks. So, while I was very proud of the fact that I made the speech, it’s certainly not original.”

Goldwater is often credited with sparking the American conservative movement in the 1960’s and influencing the libertarian movement. Goldwater conservatives rejected the legacy of the New Deal as strongly as conservatives and libertarians today reject government spending on most social programs since enacted. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s GOP 2017 budget proves how Goldwater conservatism of the 1960’s has radically progressed today.

In 1964, however, “an era in which a national consensus seemed to have coalesced around advancing civil rights, containing Communism and expanding government, the moderates believed they had to win to preserve the Republican Party,” wrote Smithsonian magazine. “The conservatives – who wanted to contain the role of the federal government and roll back Communism – believed they were saving not just the party but Western civilization.”

At the Cow Palace in San Francisco, Goldwater conservatives succeeded to break the rule of moderate “Wall Street Republicans” – the “few secret kingmakers in New York,” as Phyllis Schlafly called them, who conspired to run away with the presidential nomination every four years. Several hundred copies of Schlafly’s book, A Choice Not An Echo, were distributed in the summer of 1964 rallying conservatives to defeat “Establishment Republicans” and the “liberal Rockefeller” wing of the party.

The 1964 Goldwater campaign “helped usher in the modern conservative movement in the United States,” according to conservapedia.com. “The political careers of both Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan got a big boost during the campaign.”

The 1964 campaign also marked the first time since before the Civil War that the states of the Deep South, angered by L.B.J.’s support for civil rights, broke from the Democratic Party and gave their electoral votes to the Republican nominee Goldwater. 

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller – a rival candidate for the nomination – cast Goldwater as an opponent of civil rights and an isolationist who wanted to withdraw from the United Nations. Goldwater had lambasted President Johnson for failure in Vietnam and Panama, supported a tougher blockade against Cuba, and encouraged Communist “eviction from positions of control” in the world and keeping the Soviet Union in check. What would later ricochet into the “Daisy” ad, Goldwater mentioned how low grade Atomic bombs could be used to expose the supply of Communists in Vietnam.

Just shy of securing the nomination after winning the California primary, Goldwater began the search for a running mate beginning with four easterners. Among them was William Scranton who was asked by President Eisenhower to be “more available.” Eisenhower disavowed the “Stop Goldwater” movement advising Scranton not to get involved “in a cabal against anyone.” Moderates felt this effectively ended the anti-Goldwater movement. After securing the nomination, Goldwater was asked to soften his political stances.

Exploiting the fissure within the Republican Party and Goldwater’s positions on social security, Cuba, the military, atomic weaponry, the role of the Federal government, together with an unfavorable press and fears over the support given him by the KKK and John Birch Society, President Johnson portrayed Goldwater as an extremist.

Goldwater used the slogan, “In your heart, you know he’s right.” Democrats retorted: “In your gut, you know he’s nuts.”

Goldwater billboard on Atlantic City’s Million Dollar Pier across from Convention Hall near where the 1964 Democratic Convention was being held.

The Goldwater campaign brochure addressed:

Government Bureaucracy:

“I think that the people’s uneasiness in the stifling omnipresence of government has turned into something approaching alarm. But bemoaning the evil will not drive it back, and accusing fingers will not shrink government.”

States Rights:

“There is a reason for (the Constitution’s) reservation of ‘States’ Rights. The people have long since seen through the spurious suggestion that federal aid comes free. They know that the money comes out of their own pockets, and that it is returned to them minus a broker’s fee taken by the federal bureaucracy. They know, too, that the power to decide how that money shall be spent is withdrawn from them and exercised by some planning board deep in the caverns of one of the federal agencies. They understand this represents a great and perhaps irreparable loss-not only in their wealth, but in their priceless liberty.”

Civil Rights:

“In the schools, the Attorney General already has the authority through court decrees to effect integration. But if more authority must be granted, we should write a law that is tightly drawn, that can be used like a rifle, not a shotgun … No matter how we try, we cannot pass a law that will make you like me or me like you. The key to racial and religious tolerance lies not in laws alone but, ultimately, in the hearts of men … Unenforceable government edicts benefit no one. Continued public attention and moral persuasion, I believe, will do more, in the long run to create the good will necessary to the acceptance of decent racial relations in all segments of our society.”

Labor:

“The labor movement was born out of the threat of the loss of freedom through excesses of overbearing business monopolies. It has served well to bring the pendulum back from the extreme. I believe that unionism, in its proper sphere, accomplishes a positive good for the country … But the pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction and we are faced, as a people, with the stern obligation to halt a menacing misappropriation of power before it completely engulfs the liberties of labor, management and the general public.”

Social Security:

“I favor a sound Social Security system and I want to see it strengthened. I want to see every participant receive all the benefits this system provides. And I want to see these benefits paid in dollars with real purchasing power … Essentially, protection against need in America depends upon a free economy … I believe Social Security has a vital and legitimate supporting role.”

Fiscal Responsibility:

“Barry Goldwater believes that the first fiscal responsibility of the Federal Government is to preserve the value of the dollar … Local governments must take on more and not less responsibility in meeting needs when those needs are fully established … Let us, by all means, remember the nation’s interest in reducing taxes and spending.”

The Welfare State:

“Barry Goldwater has issued a clear call to halt the relentless drift toward the welfare state … We must elect uncommon men to do an uncommon job for an uncommon country.”

The American Dream:

“I understand what the people of America are saying in this decade. Their message has been heard and understood. The people are now eager for a leader who will restore the Constitutional limitations of government, who will mobilize moral force of 180 million people to reduce and to limit the inequitable, concentration of power in any government, organization or economic combine.”

Go Goldwater “A Choice Not an Echo”

Political advertising for the Johnson campaign was handled by ad agency DDB headed by Bill Bernbach. Attack ads capitalized on Goldwater statements suggesting his willingness to use nuclear weapons that others would find unacceptable. One ad was titled “KKK for Goldwater”; another titled “Eastern Seaboard” took aim at Goldwater saying the country would be better off “if we could just saw off the eastern seaboard and let it float out to sea.”

Bob Dylan once said of Senator Goldwater, “I’m liberal up to a degree, I think everybody should be free, but if you think I’ll let Barry Goldwater move in next door and marry my daughter, you must think I’m crazy. I wouldn’t let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.

“I am compelled to urge Negroes and all people of goodwill to vote against him,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. “His election would be a tragedy, and certainly suicidal almost for the nation and the world.”

As election day approached, DDB, considered the leading force behind the “Creative Revolution” on Madison Avenue during the 1950’s and 1960’s, along with concept and creative consultant Tony Schwartz created for Johnson what became the most famous ad in political history.

Advertising Age lists it as one of the greatest ads of the 20th Century. Roger Ailes (CEO of Fox), Democratic adman Joe Trippi and GOP media consultant Mike Murphy rated it the “#1 Top Game Changing Political Ad of All Time.”

Peace, Little Girl (“Daisy”) aired only once, just after Labor Day in 1964.

After “Daisy” aired, the race was never close, and Johnson won in a landslide.

Peace, Little Girl (“Daisy”)

Candidate: President Lyndon Johnson

Agency: DDB

Consultant/Creator: Tony Schwartz

1964

Michael T. Bucci is a retired public relations executive currently living in New England. He has authored nine books on practical spirituality collectively titled The Cerithous Material.

Notes:

[1] “1964 Republican Convention: Revolution From the Right”. Rick Perlstein. Smithsonian Magazine. August 2008.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1964-republican-convention-revolution-from-the-right-915921/?no-ist

[2] Barry Goldwater. Wikipedia. (accessed May 30, 2016)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater

[3] Schlafly, Phyllis, A Choice Not an Echo. 1964. (PDF)

https://www.metabunk.org/files/Schlafly%20-%20A%20Choice%20Not%20an%20Echo%20-%20The%20Inside%20Story%20of%20How%20American%20Presidents%20are%20Chosen%20%281964%29.pdf

[4] “Goldwater’s 1964 Acceptance Speech”. Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm

[5] “Barry Goldwater”. Wikiquote.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater

[6] “Barry Goldwater for President 1964 Campaign Brochure”. 4President.org

http://www.4president.org/brochures/goldwater1964brochure.htm

[7] “Barry Goldwater presidential campaign, 1964”. Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater_presidential_campaign,_1964

[8] “Finding Bill Bernbach”. David Andres Lloyd. Advertising Age. August 15, 2011.

http://adage.com/article/creativity-news/finding-bill-bernbach/229269/

[9] “Peace Little Girl (Daisy)”. The Living Room Candidate. (Video)

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy

[10] “Daisy (advertisment)”. Wikipedia. (Video)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_%28advertisement%29

[11] “(High Quality) Famous “Daisy” Attack Ad from 1964 Presidential Election”. YouTube. (Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k

The besieged civilian population of Fallujah is confronting a “human catastrophe” as a US-backed offensive to retake the Iraqi city from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) intensifies, a human rights group warned Tuesday.

While forces backing the Iraqi government, including troops of the elite Counter Terrorism Service, Iraqi Army soldiers, police and Shia militiamen of the Popular Mobilization Units, have moved to the outskirts of the city, stiff ISIS resistance Tuesday prevented them from advancing into its center. At least 50,000 civilians are believed to be trapped in Fallujah.

“A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out,” warned Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has provided aid to civilians in the area.

“The stories coming out of Fallujah are horrifying,” said Nasr Muflahi, NRC’s Country Director in Iraq.

“A lack of food, medicine, safe drinking water and electricity are pushing families to the brink of desperation. People who managed to flee have told us of extreme hunger and starvation. We haven’t been able to see this for ourselves or assist people inside the town, and we are extremely concerned about the full extent of the terrors unfolding there.”

The United Nations’ humanitarian aid director in Iraq, Lise Grande, further warned that the city could be only “days away from a cholera outbreak,” because of the lack of clean drinking water.

Fallujah has been under siege for close to a year, with roads that bring in vital supplies cut by the Iraqi Army and Shia militias. Now, its residents are facing intensifying bombardment from US and allied warplanes, Apache attack helicopters and Iraqi artillery.

Fallujah was the first major Iraqi city to fall to ISIS at the beginning of 2014, six months before the Islamist militia overran Mosul, Iraq’s second largest population center, along with roughly a third of Iraqi territory.

The early victory in Fallujah was made possible by a revolt on the part of the city’s Sunni population against the Shia-dominated central government in Baghdad, which was widely reviled for carrying out sectarian repression against Sunnis.

While there have been widespread reports of ISIS exploiting the city’s civilians as “human shields”—a charge frequently made by the US military to provide an alibi for carnage inflicted by American air strikes—it is also reported that the bulk of the ISIS fighters are city residents.

This marks the third time in a little over a decade that Fallujah has been subjected to an all-out military siege. Twice in 2004, the US Marines, backed by heavy aerial bombardments, stormed the city, killing thousands and reducing the bulk of Fallujah’s homes and infrastructure to rubble. A center of resistance to the 2003 US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, the city was subjected to merciless collective punishment.

Fallujah’s fate this time around has been presaged by that of previous Iraqi Sunni towns retaken by forces loyal to the Baghdad government. These include Ramadi, where at least 70 percent of the buildings were destroyed by bombardment and the population of 400,000 has been driven out, and Tikrit, where Shia militias carried out bloody reprisals against the population for the atrocities committed by ISIS, which included the massacre of up to 1,700 predominantly Shia military cadets.

Sunnis view this US-backed campaign as an exercise in ethnic cleansing designed to expel them from Iraq. The massive destruction unleashed on these cities, however, has also been seen in the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobane, which was largely razed to the ground, as well as the Yazidi town of Sinjar. It is a function of the type of warfare employed by the Pentagon, in which proxy ground forces, often with the participation of US special operations troops, rely on heavy air support to defeat ISIS.

While the US military is supporting the offensive against Fallujah with intense air strikes, the Pentagon had reportedly opposed the move against the city, seeing it as a distraction from the buildup for an attack on Mosul, Iraq’s second city, which had a population of some 2 million before falling to ISIS in June 2014.

Washington is also uneasy about the prominent role being played by Iranian advisers on the ground as well as the Shia militias, which provide much of the manpower for the siege. The US views Iran as its major regional rival for hegemony over the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular.

For Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, the siege of Fallujah is seen as a political imperative for his government, which has faced mounting popular opposition from within Baghdad’s impoverished Shia majority. Crowds have twice stormed the heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of the central government, to protest rampant corruption and the failure to ensure essential services.

Also fueling the growing popular anger is a series of terrorist attacks centered in poorer Shia neighborhoods. The government has charged that Fallujah, less than 40 miles west of the capital, is the center from which these attacks are planned and executed.

Unfolding parallel to the siege of Fallujah is a separate anti-ISIS operation to the north also backed by extensive US-led air strikes. This operation, directed at preparing an offensive against Mosul, is being conducted largely by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and allied militias, with the participation of US special forces, who are increasingly engaged in combat.

Similarly, Kurdish paramilitaries of the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units) are providing the main ground forces for a campaign across the border in Syria aimed at re-taking the city of Raqqa, the capital of ISIS’s self-styled caliphate.

While the Kurdish forces, supported by US special operations “advisers” and US warplanes, are advancing from the northwest, the Syrian military, backed by Russian airpower, is advancing from the southwest.

This race for Raqqa reflects the underlying conflict between Washington and Moscow over Syria, with the US backing a war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and Russia working in alliance with the government.

In both Iraq and Syria, Washington’s reliance upon Kurdish forces has antagonized its NATO ally, Turkey, which has demanded that the US brand Syria’s Kurdish militia as “terrorist” because of its ties with the Turkish Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), against which the Turkish military is waging a simmering civil war.

Not only has the Obama administration resisted Ankara’s pressure on this score, the chief of the US Central Command paid a visit to the Kurdish units in northern Syria last month. Subsequently, photographs of US special forces wearing YPG patches on their uniforms provoked fresh outraged protests from the Turkish government.

At the same time, the prospect of Kurdish forces “liberating” either Raqqa in Syria or Mosul in Iraq, both predominantly Sunni cities, has sparked new fears of ethnic cleansing and partition.

The advance of the disparate anti-ISIS offensives has served to underscore the catastrophic destruction inflicted upon the region by US imperialism, which deliberately incited sectarian divisions, first as part of its divide-and-rule strategy in Iraq, and then to promote a sectarian-based war for regime change in Syria.

At the same time, the prospect of defeating ISIS only exposes even more clearly the mutually opposed interests of the various outside powers that claim to be united in their opposition to the Islamist militia, raising the specter of the present conflict spawning regional and even world war.

Hillary Clinton should be immediately indicted for:

1.  Obstruction of justice.  If any average citizen lied to investigative officials, failed to turn over evidence, provided only selective evidence,  they would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  If any average military personnel with even the lightest of Security Clearance was in breach as Clinton clearly was, they would be prosecuted.  Why are our officials not held accountable for their actions?

2.  Spoliation of evidence.  If any average citizen wiped the hard drive after requests from authorities to turn it over, they would be prosecuted.  Why are our officials not held accountable for their actions?

3.  Violaton of Federal Records Act (perhaps willful).  Our officials agree to be accountable when they hold office.  They also agree to comply with the Federal Records Act.  Why are our officials not held accountable for their actions?

4.  Violation of Espionage Act (perhaps willful).  Our officials with Security Clearances agree to hold sensitive information vital to our country’s security with strict restrictions.  Ignoring these restrictions should be prosecuted in full, and not doing so is treason against every American.  Why are our officials not held accountable for their actions?

The Clinton Foundation ties to weapons deals should also be thoroughly investigated.

To sign petition click here

The McClatchy news service scoop that Labib al-Nahhas, the Syrian foreign affairs director of al-Qaeda’s ally Ahrar ash-Sham, visited Washington, DC in December 2015 should have created a huge political stir in a presidential election year.

However, the fact that the Obama administration has been consorting with terrorist allies of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and other countries has received little to no coverage in the American media. More astoundingly, Ahrar ash-Sham, which, along with the al-Nusra Front massacred 19 Alawite Muslims in the Syrian village of Zara in May, is not designated a terrorist group by the US State Department.

The simple fact is that from CIA director John Brennan to national security adviser Susan Rice and US Central Command chief General Joseph Votel to Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Senator John McCain, the Obama administration and the Republicans who control Congress have consorted with Islamist terrorists. These groups have included those who have executed Americans and who help finance and plan terrorist attacks against civilians around the world. The visit of al-Nahhas to Washington follows a long tradition of the US government consorting with Sunni Mujahideen (called the «muj» by their CIA overseers), jihadists, and Salafists starting with the support for Muslim insurgents in Afghanistan and continuing with the provision of military training and weapons to Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq.

Votel, who paid a May visit to northern Syria, is not the first US official who entered Syria for a «get acquainted with» session with US-armed jihadist rebels, which was disguised as a «fact-finding mission». In May 2013, Senator McCain entered northern Syria and met with a man who strongly resembles Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The more McCain’s staff and his neo-conservative apologists tried to claim the man was not al-Baghdadi but an unidentified commander of the Northern Storm Brigade, a group linked to the practically non-existent Free Syrian Army, the more McCain’s and the neocons’ lies became apparent. Reports from Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Hezbollah’s media outlets in Beirut all confirmed that the CIA, along with the Israel Defense Force, were actively providing weapons, training, and logistics support to ISIL and allies units in Syria and western Iraq.

Ever since President Jimmy Carter’s fervently anti-Russian and extreme nationalist Polish national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski began training and arming the most radical jihadist Sunni Pashtun and Arab fighters he could find to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan, the CIA and Pentagon have maintained a problematic relationship with Islamist radicalism. The CIA’s own widely-used term, «blowback», is the only word that can adequately describe what Brzezinski’s decision has cost the United States and the civilized world.

The CIA’s recruitment of jihadist fighters from across the Middle East was so rampant in 1980s that Michael Springmann, the US Vice Consul in Jeddah, reported that he was ordered by resident CIA officers at the consulate to grant US visas to individuals who Springmann said were jihadist recruits of Osama bin Laden. During the CIA’s military operations in Afghanistan, Bin Laden was a trusted and much-valued US ally. For blowing the whistle on the visas for al-Qaeda, Springmann was fired by the State Department.

A December 1986 formerly Secret CIA report concluded that «well-educated» and «urban» Muslim fundamentalists were the best ranks from which to recruit a «charismatic leader» capable of galvanizing «an untapped pool of potential fundamentalists» from «the lower classes». Whether in Afghanistan in the 1980s or Syria today, the CIA and its Pentagon cohorts have followed the 1986 CIA template with regard to Bin Laden and Al-Baghdadi. These are but a few disgraceful examples of Brzezinski’s, Henry Kissinger’s, and current CIA director John Brennan’s «realpolitik» in the conduct of American foreign policy for almost four decades.

The CIA report also stated that in 1986, with most Syrians «benefitting» from the rule of the Assad family, «radical fundamentalism» was «unlikely to gain a strong foothold in Syria». The US support for the «Arab Spring» in Syria changed all that and the destabilization of Syria by mostly foreign agitators saw a consequential erosion of popular support for the Syrian government, especially among Sunni tribes close to the porous border with Iraq.

By 1986, some Islamist radicals that were recruited to participate in the «jihad» against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan had committed their fair share of what the Pentagon calls «collateral damage». This included the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and early signs of trouble in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and Pakistan with recently-returned jihadists from Afghanistan clashing with police in street demonstrations held in Cairo, Amman, Tunis, and various Pakistani cities.

Financial problems caused by Western bankers at the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the investment firms of Wall Street and the City of London brought on the initial stages of social upheaval in the Arab world. Thirty percent of Jordan’s trained engineers and one-third of its medical doctors were unemployed. Rent-controlled apartments became scarce in Cairo, with only the wealthy able to afford to rent, let alone buy, a home. A breakdown in public services resulted in raw sewage flowing in the streets of Alexandria. Public transportation woes included overcrowded buses and inoperable trains. The danger of collapsing residential buildings in Algiers put 6000 people in mortal jeopardy. There is little wonder, therefore, that 90 percent of the jihadists in the 1980s were in their twenties and thirties. Fighting in a far-away battlefield was preferable to living in a slum.

These ready-made recruits were valuable fodder for the CIA in the war in Afghanistan. For the CIA, it also made sense to curry favor with and keep lines of communications open with fundamentalist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which the CIA sold to the American people and an international audience as «moderate» fundamentalists. Today, the CIA and Pentagon have done the same with regard to the jihadists in Syria. Some fundamentalists, like the terrorist Ahrar ash-Sham «foreign minister» al-Nahhas, are called «moderates».

One thing should be clear: there are no «moderate» Sunni jihadists, whether in Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Yemen today or Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1980s. While there are moderate fundamentalist Shias, Ibadis, Ismailis, Zaidis, Ahmadis, Alevis, Sufis, Akhbaris, and Alawites in Islam, moderate Sunni fundamentalists, thanks to Saudi Wahhabist influence around the world, are as rare as hen’s teeth. Wahhabism and its Salafist tenets have resulted in only two choices in the Sunni world: jihadism or secularism. Baathist or pan-Arab socialism, which the US has all-but-destroyed in the Arab world, placed secularism over Islam. There has been no other similar movement to fill the vacuum, especially in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. In any case, the CIA was never interested in «moderate» Sunni fundamentalists. The fools who ran and continue to run America’s intelligence community wanted only those Sunni recruits who were willing to die in battle or commit suicide for their jihad, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or Libya. Unfortunately, for the civilized world, these jihadists went on to die for their jihad in places like Paris, Brussels, London, San Bernardino, Boston, Istanbul, Moscow, Ottawa, and Madrid.

Jihadist terrorists should pay for their crimes against humanity. But so should those whose policies enabled the rise of jihadist terrorists and trials for aiding and abetting terrorism for Messrs Brzezinski, Brennan, McCain, and Mmes Rice (Susan and Condoleezza), Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power, and Hillary Clinton should be seriously considered.

The United States and its NATO allies have recently established ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and Romania. The United States claims that these systems are set up for the purpose of protecting Romania and Poland.

However, Russian leaders interpret the systems as a threat to them because these “defense systems” are strike enabling. The new ballistic missile systems enable NATO forces in Poland and Romania to strike Russia with cruise missiles, and then deflect any response.

Russia and China raised similar objections to the missile system being established in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. In Cold War terms, these missile systems give “first strike capability” to the United States and its NATO allies in Eastern Europe.

The installation of the missiles in Poland has been quite unpopular. Naturally, the installation of the system in Poland has been accompanied by a crackdown on political forces that object to it.

Mateusz Piskorski, a Pan-Slavic activist and former member of the Polish parliament has been detained without specific charges. Authorities allege, without citing anything specific, that he has been engaged in espionage.

To anyone trained in criminology or the history of espionage, it should be highly obvious that Piskorski has not engaged in any illegal activity. Piskorski is a well-known political activist. He leads a small political party and runs a Pan-Slavic publishing house. As a well-known public figure, Piskorski is the last person that any intelligence agency would cooperate with. Piskorski has been detained because he is an outspoken critic of NATO and the European Union, and is loudly voicing his opposition to Polish cooperation with hostility to Russia.

Piskorski is not the only one who has been targeted by the pro-NATO government in Poland. On April 1st, the right-wing political party that runs the country passed a sweeping anti-Communist law. The law outlaws displays honoring adherents of the “Anti-Polish Communist Ideology.” The law specifically lists a number of Polish historical figures who cannot legally be honored. Among them are not only leaders of the post-war socialist regime, but also the Dabrowski Brigade of Polish volunteers who fought fascism in Spain, and any members of the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania, once led by Rosa Luxemburg. A number of anti-Nazi resistance groups, led by Communists, that operated during the Second World War are also outlawed.

On March 31st, four leaders of the Communist Party were convicted of “promoting totalitarianism.” Their crime was operating a website and printing a leftist newspaper. They were sentenced to nine months in prison with hard labor.

The “Law and Justice Party” which leads Poland is leading the crackdown on Communists, leftists, and Pan-Slavists while at the same time allowing Neo-Nazis and other fascists to operate openly. While Communists and Pan-Slavists are forced into the shadows, 400 Neo-Nazis paraded through the streets on April 13th in a public rally.

Imagine if Vladimir Putin were to crackdown on his pro-liberal, western opponents in such a way? In Putin’s Russia, the “Union of Right Forces” and other parties that embrace western ideologies operate openly. Groups promoting free market capitalism, falsifying Russian history and accusing great historical figures of genocide, openly operate all across Russian soil, and often receive western funding as they do so.

The “human rights” allegations against Russia pale in comparison to what is being openly done by the pro-NATO polish regime, as the missile systems are being erected, paving the way to World War Three.

The hypocrisy of western media and the “human rights” NGO noise machine should be very obvious.

Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On June 16, 1976, students in the Southwest Townships (Soweto) outside of Johannesburg stayed away from school in protest against the Bantu education system which was enacted by the racist apartheid government beginning in the early 1950s.

The Bantu Education Act of 1953, which was drafted by H.F. Verwoerd, who later became prime minister in the 1960s, had also met protests from the African population. These demonstrations during the 1950s were eventually crushed by the security forces of the settler colonial regime.

Bantu education was designed for Africans with the expressed intent to convey through this methodology that equality with whites was not to be pursued by the majority population. One unintentional consequence of the Bantu Education Act was to increase enrollment of Africans within the school system and therefore providing a base for the expression of mass discontent with the overall system of racist oppression.

In 1976, the Nationalist Party government declared that educational instruction would be conducted in both English and Afrikaner languages, the tongue of the dominant oppressors inside the country. Students who had already been undergoing a radicalization process for several years decided to take action in opposition to not only the language policy but to the overall deplorable system of education in general.

The march on June 16 was reportedly called by the Action Committee of the Soweto Students Representative Council and initially involved two high schools, Naledi High in Naledi and Morris Isaacson in Mofolo. Nonetheless, other accounts contend that the main focus of activity was Phefeni Junior Secondary, located near Vilakazi Street in Orlando. (sahistory.org.za)

Phefeni was close to the railway station where many students got off the trains to join the demonstration. The plan was set up where the students from Naledi High were to march from this direction and later mobilize students from the schools on the way toward Morris Isaacson.

Students from Morris Isaacson were to march from their school connecting with others until they arrived at a central location where they would continue in a disciplined manner collectively to Orlando Stadium. There were other schools that also participated in the manifestation bringing thousands of youth into the streets.

Police encountered the young people who were conducting their protest peacefully first by throwing teargas into the crowd and later firing live bullets striking at least four students initially. After the first massacre of students, people scattered enraged by the outrageous killing of youth.

Soon enough the West Rand Administrative Buildings (WRAB) and vehicles were set on fire and burned to the ground. Later a white WRAB bureaucrat was pulled from a car and beaten to death.

Stores selling alcoholic beverages were burned and looted. Other clashes with the police took place where dozens more students were murdered in the vicinity of the Regina Mhundi church in Orlando and the Esso garage in Chiawelo. When the students were halted and dispersed by the police in one locality they swiftly moved on to other areas.

By the conclusion of the first day of the uprising most of Soweto, including Diepkloof, which was relatively unaffected during the earlier hours, were impacted by the unrest. The apartheid authorities closed all schools early and many students headed towards home amid townships on fire.

Hundreds of people were killed in the days that followed as the demonstrations spread to Cape Town and other regions of the country. This protest extended across the country from the youth sector to the working class.

A Renewed Struggle

The outbreak of strikes and rebellion in 1976 provided the banned exiled national liberation movements an opportunity to recruit youth who were fleeing the country as well as those who remained inside South Africa.

African National Congress (ANC) leaders escalated their efforts to provide political and military training to a new generation of youthful militants. Several clashes between cadres of the ANC military wing Um Khonto we Sizwe (MK) were reported in the following months during 1976.

Both the ANC and its breakaway Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) experienced a boost in membership and affiliation. By 1980, the armed struggle had escalated where coal to fuel production facilities were bombed by the ANC on June 1. The attacks on SASOL I, NATREF and SASOL II took place in order to coincide with the apartheid Republic Day.

A new generation of resistance took hold leading to the mass upsurge of the 1980s involving the formation of unions, civic organizations, a cultural revival, and a more consistent armed struggle leading to the demise of the racist system by 1994.

The racist apartheid regime attempted to ruthlessly suppress the national liberation struggle through mass incarceration, targeted assassinations, massacres of protesters and strikers along with cross border raids into neighboring Frontline States accused of harboring MK guerrillas.

ANC offices and training camps in Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Botswana were raided and bombed by the South African Defense Forces (SADF). It is estimated that over one million died in the struggle to free South Africa and Namibia including efforts to drive out the SADF from southern Angola during the late 1970s and 1980s.

The Republic of Cuba provided hundreds of thousands of volunteers in the fight to defeat the SADF in Angola. The Southwest Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) in Namibia also waged a heroic campaign between 1960 and 1989 leading to their independence in 1990.

Lessons From the South African Liberation Movement

Today some twenty-two years since the ascendancy of the ANC to power in South Africa the struggle is by no means over. Although advances have been made in the acquisition of political power; the construction of homes; providing water to township and rural residents; educational opportunities and medical care; the national wealth of South Africa has not been transferred to the African majority.

Legitimate grievances remain and they are reflected in the ongoing unrest among the African working class and urban residents. Nonetheless, the United States government, which reaped tremendous benefits from corporate investments in the apartheid system is still seeking to undermine the ANC government.

The ANC is facing formidable challenges in the local governmental elections scheduled for August. The country is undergoing an economic crisis with the decline in the value of the national currency, the rand, and rising unemployment rates fueled by capital flight carried out by the mining firms and financial institutions.

What lessons can youth in the U.S. and other western states learn from these struggles for the 21st century? Like the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the South African Revolution was based upon both national and class oppression.

In the U.S., African Americans and Latina/os are subjected to higher rates of joblessness, poverty, police repression and mass incarceration. Linking the plight of the youth with that of the working class was a fundamental strategic aspect of the movement to liberate Southern Africa as a whole.

The U.S. is undergoing a national election in 2016 where the issues related to the social conditions involving the oppressed are not seriously discussed. This reality suggests the need for independent self-organization within a similar framework as the ANC and its allies within the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

These lessons from the national student uprising of 1976 and the subsequent struggle encompassing the working class and peasantry should be seriously considered as a way forward for the realization of self-determination and social emancipation in the U.S. As in both South Africa and the U.S., the capitalist relations of production must be overturned in order for genuine liberation and social justice to become a reality.

For decades, the story of Saudi Arabia recycling petrodollars, i.e., funding the US deficit by buying US Treasuries with proceeds of its crude oil sales (mostly to the US), while the US sweetened the deal by providing the Saudis with military equipment and supplies, remained entirely in the conspiracy realm, with no confirmation or official statement from the US Treasury department.

Now, that particular “theory” becomes the latest fact, thanks to a fascinating story by Bloomberg which gives the background and details of secret meeting between then-US Treasury secretary William Simon and his deputy, Gerry Parsky, and members of the Saudi ruling elite, and lays out the history of how the petrodollar was born.

Here is the background:

It was July 1974. A steady predawn drizzle had given way to overcast skies when William Simon, newly appointed U.S. Treasury secretary, and his deputy, Gerry Parsky, stepped onto an 8 a.m. flight from Andrews Air Force Base. On board, the mood was tense. That year, the oil crisis had hit home. An embargo by OPEC’s Arab nations—payback for U.S. military aid to the Israelis during the Yom Kippur War—quadrupled oil prices. Inflation soared, the stock market crashed, and the U.S. economy was in a tailspin.

Officially, Simon’s two-week trip was billed as a tour of economic diplomacy across Europe and the Middle East, full of the customary meet-and-greets and evening banquets. But the real mission, kept in strict confidence within President Richard Nixon’s inner circle, would take place during a four-day layover in the coastal city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The goal: neutralize crude oil as an economic weapon and find a way to persuade a hostile kingdom to finance America’s widening deficit with its newfound petrodollar wealth. And according to Parsky, Nixon made clear there was simply no coming back empty-handed. Failure would not only jeopardize America’s financial health but could also give the Soviet Union an opening to make further inroads into the Arab world.

It “wasn’t a question of whether it could be done or it couldn’t be done,” said Parsky, 73, one of the few officials with Simon during the Saudi talks

As noted above, the framework of the required deal was simple: the U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending.

The man leading the US negotiation, US Treasury Secretary William Simon, had just done a stint as Nixon’s energy czar, and “seemed ill-suited for such delicate diplomacy. Before being tapped by Nixon, the chain-smoking New Jersey native ran the vaunted Treasuries desk at Salomon Brothers. To career bureaucrats, the brash Wall Street bond trader—who once compared himself to Genghis Khan—had a temper and an outsize ego that was painfully out of step in Washington. Just a week before setting foot in Saudi Arabia, Simon publicly lambasted the Shah of Iran, a close regional ally at the time, calling him a “nut.”

But Simon, better than anyone else, understood the appeal of U.S. government debt and how to sell the Saudis on the idea that America was the safest place to park their petrodollars. With that knowledge, the administration hatched an unprecedented do-or-die plan that would come to influence just about every aspect of U.S.-Saudi relations over the next four decades (Simon died in 2000 at the age of 72).

In the beginning it wasn’t easy: “it took several discreet follow-up meetings to iron out all the details, Parsky said.”

But at the end of months of negotiations, Bloomberg writes, there remained one small, yet crucial, catch:King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud demanded the country’s Treasury purchases stay “strictly secret,” according to a diplomatic cable obtained by Bloomberg from the National Archives database.”

The secret remains… until May 16 when the US Treasury for the first time ever revealed the full extent of Saudi TSY holdings.

Bloomberg adds that with a handful of Treasury and Federal Reserve officials, the secret was kept for more than four decades—until now. “In response to a Freedom-of-Information-Act request submitted by Bloomberg News, the Treasury broke out Saudi Arabia’s holdings for the first time this month after “concluding that it was consistent with transparency and the law to disclose the data,” according to spokeswoman Whitney Smith. The $117 billion trove makes the kingdom one of America’s largest foreign creditors.”

The TIC data released later that day confirmed the FOIA response.

To be sure, as we commented in mid-May, it is very likely that the Treasury report is incomplete, and that the Saudis also own hundreds of billions in Treasurys held in custody with offshore trading centers such as Euroclear. After all, the current tally represents just 20 percent of its $587 billion of foreign reserves, well below the two-thirds that central banks typically keep in dollar assets

What’s more, the commitment to the decades-old policy of “interdependence” between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which arose from Simon’s debt deal and ultimately bound together two nations that share few common values, is showing signs of fraying. America has taken tentative steps toward a rapprochement with Iran, highlighted by President Barack Obama’s landmark nuclear deal last year. The U.S. shale boom has also made America far less reliant on Saudi oil.

Needless to say, the real total notional amount of Saudi holdings will eventually become known, especially if the middle-eastern nation follows through with its threat of liquidating some or all of them.  What is more notable, however, is that with the first disclosure of this data since the birth of the petrodollar, something appears to have changed:

What’s more, the commitment to the decades-old policy of “interdependence” between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which arose from Simon’s debt deal and ultimately bound together two nations that share few common values, is showing signs of fraying. America has taken tentative steps toward a rapprochement with Iran, highlighted by President Barack Obama’s landmark nuclear deal last year. The U.S. shale boom has also made America far less reliant on Saudi oil.

“Buying bonds and all that was a strategy to recycle petrodollars back into the U.S.,” said David Ottaway, a Middle East fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. But politically, “it’s always been an ambiguous, constrained relationship.”

One thing that certainly changed is that in a world where central banks are ravenously buying up each others’ (and their own) debt, the need for Petrodollar recyclers such as Saudi Arabia is no longer there.But that was not always the case:

[B]ack in 1974, forging that relationship (and the secrecy that it required) was a no-brainer, according to Parsky, who is now chairman of Aurora Capital Group, a private equity firm in Los Angeles. Many of America’s allies, including the U.K. and Japan, were also deeply dependent on Saudi oil and quietly vying to get the kingdom to reinvest money back into their own economies.

“Everyone—in the U.S., France, Britain, Japan—was trying to get their fingers in the Saudis’ pockets,” said Gordon S. Brown, an economic officer with the State Department at the U.S. embassy in Riyadh from 1976 to 1978. For the Saudis, politics played a big role in their insistence that all Treasury investments remain anonymous.

America’s reliance on Saudi Arabia to fund its deficit – and obtain a cheap price for oil – meant that the kingdom would be granted Platinum status in every form of interaction with the US.

Tensions still flared 10 months after the Yom Kippur War, and throughout the Arab world, there was plenty of animosity toward the U.S. for its support of Israel. According to diplomatic cables, King Faisal’s biggest fear was the perception Saudi oil money would, “directly or indirectly,” end up in the hands of its biggest enemy in the form of additional U.S. assistance.

Treasury officials solved the dilemma by letting the Saudis in through the back door. In the first of many special arrangements, the U.S. allowed Saudi Arabia to bypass the normal competitive bidding process for buying Treasuries by creating “add-ons.”Those sales, which were excluded from the official auction totals, hid all traces of Saudi Arabia’s presence in the U.S. government debt market.

“When I arrived at the embassy, I was told by people there that this is Treasury’s business,” Brown said. “It was all handled very privately.”

* * *

Another exception was carved out for Saudi Arabia when the Treasury started releasing monthly country-by-country breakdowns of U.S. debt ownership. Instead of disclosing Saudi Arabia’s holdings, the Treasury grouped them with 14 other nations, such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria, under the generic heading “oil exporters”—a practice that continued for 41 years.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia continued buying: by 1977, Saudi Arabia had accumulated about 20 percent of all Treasuries held abroad, according to The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets by Columbia University’s David Spiro.

The deal led to assorted headaches: “an internal memo, dated October 1976, detailed how the U.S. inadvertently raised far more than the $800 million it intended to borrow at auction. At the time, two unidentified central banks used add-ons to buy an additional $400 million of Treasuries each. In the end, one bank was awarded its portion a day late to keep the U.S. from exceeding the limit.

Most of these maneuvers and hiccups were swept under the rug, and top Treasury officials went to great lengths to preserve the status quo and protect their Middle East allies as scrutiny of America’s biggest creditors increased.

Over the years, the Treasury repeatedly turned to the International Investment and Trade in Services Survey Act of 1976—which shields individuals in countries where Treasuries are narrowly held—as its first line of defense.

The strategy continued even after the Government Accountability Office, in a 1979 investigation, found “no statistical or legal basis” for the blackout. The GAO didn’t have power to force the Treasury to turn over the data, but it concluded the U.S. “made special commitments of financial confidentiality to Saudi Arabia” and possibly other OPEC nations.

Simon, who had by then returned to Wall Street, acknowledged in congressional testimony that “regional reporting was the only way in which Saudi Arabia would agree” to invest using the add-on system.

Ultimately, Saudi dominance in the US Treasury market meant they were untouchable. “It was clear the Treasury people weren’t going to cooperate at all,” said Stephen McSpadden, a former counsel to the congressional subcommittee that pressed for the GAO inquiries. “I’d been at the subcommittee for 17 years, and I’d never seen anything like that.”

Today, Parsky says the secret arrangement with the Saudis should have been dismantled years ago and was surprised the Treasury kept it in place for so long. But even so, he has no regrets. Doing the deal “was a positive for America”, he says cited by Bloomberg.

And with that the story of how the Petrodollar was born is now public information, something which Saudi Arabia may not be too happy with. For the sake of the US, it better have its ducks in order because the release of this story simply means that the US Treasury is confident it will no longer have a strategic need for its long-time Saudi partner. The Fed, which has implicitly stepped into the Saudi role, better not disappoint.

The Brexit argument (whether Britain should remain or otherwise in the European Union), has become hysterically hyperbolic. That was the view of former Tory MP Gyles Brandreth, expressed with usual alacrity on the news quiz show Have I Got News For You.

Times in Britain are viciously partisan. No one wants to see their dog left out of this particular fight. The result is a vicious mauling being handed out by all sides on whether the leavers or stayers have the upper hand.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, one of Britain’s more prominent tax think tanks, went in against the Vote Leave campaign, suggesting that the austerity regime would be prolonged by a departure from the EU. That would be the only way to plug consequential multi-billion pound holes in the budget arising from lower foreign investment and poorer trade returns.

The IFS also took issue with various figures being used by the Leave campaign, most notably the suggestion that Brussels receives £350 million every week from the sceptred isle. That particular figure has become the holy marker for former London mayor Boris Johnson. According to the body, that assessment conveniently ignored the role of the rebate and a range of other subsidies for business and research. Taken together, the amount ending in EU coffers was more likely £150 million.

Vote Leave, in what has been symptomatic of the debate, could only dismiss the IFS projections as issuing from a “paid-up propaganda arm of the European Commission”. Naturally, “The IFS was not a neutral organisation.”[1] Objectivity is suffering a long drawn out death.

Then came a study by Migration Watch which emphasised the undesirables coming into the country. While Johnson and company rail against the succubi of Brussels, they also fear the influx of humans.

Migration Watch duly supplied some ammunition with a suitably alarmist prediction, claiming that up to half a million refugees and their assortment of relatives would make their way to Britain after 2020. The supposition there is that those granted asylum in other EU countries – Germany, Greece, and Italy – would leapfrog their way into the UK on acquiring citizenship.

The group’s report asserts that leaked documents from Germany suggest that each person granted asylum would be followed by up to four family members. Building on figures farmed from Eurostat that 1 million migrants would be successfully granted asylum for 2015 and in the first quarter of 2016, the numbers are predictably inflated for effect.

According to the group’s chair, Andrew Green, “The UK could well face a significant secondary flow of refugees from Europe in the coming years adding to the already huge strain being placed on housing and public services.”[2]

Britain Stronger in Europe, the official front for the cause to stay in the EU, had another position, rubbishing the projections as counterfeit. For Emma Reynolds, MP for Wolverhampton North East and former shadow communities secretary, the “overwhelming majority of refugees will never get the right to come to Britain”. Another charming state of affairs.

On the side of the stayers, the situation has also been absurd, focusing on subjects emptied of political content. Vapid videos from the In Campaign are proliferating about how a lifestyle is at risk if the vote of June 23 favours departure. One, Votin, proves particularly grating in its semi-literate framing, using grammatically challenged terms. The unfortunate casualty in that production is the letter g. There is “earnin”, “makin”, “roamin” and “chillin”; there is “ravin” topped off by the smashing hashtag “#votin.”[3]

Its supposition is that the young are suitably disengaged in mindless activity to avoid the argument altogether. The reaction from that very segment was savage. “It failed to speak their language,” snorted The Telegraph, “instead implying they are stupid.”[4]

The corporate sector is similarly using another tack that emphasises a rather different notion of governance. For them, the profit factor, rather than the representative, democratic one, counts. Their apocalyptic warnings say little about reforming the EU and everything about keeping capital free.

Airbus, for instance, has insisted that leaving the EU would lead to a fall in investment in Britain. The company itself employs somewhere in the order of 15,000 people. Such direct arguments, even threats, tend to resemble acts of electoral bullying. If you vote to leave, goes this line of thought, you vote for the dire consequences of unbalanced budgets and lower growth.

Rather than drawing constructive arguments from each side, the descent to a bottom in the maelstrom of illogical fear has been undertaken. Between the dogmatic Brexiteers and the warning stayers, there is much more nonsense to be had before the referendum.

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

Notes:

[1] http://www.scotsman.com/news/institute-for-fiscal-studies-rejects-eu-propaganda-arm-label-1-4137731
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/31/claims-of-mass-refugee-immigration-to-uk-branded-false-and-bogus
[3] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2016/may/25/is-the-votin-campaign-really-this-lame-or-are-they-just-pullin-our-legs
[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/25/the-cringey-pro-eu-votin-campaign-is-patronisin-beyond-belief/

In 1965, the United States and the UK were competing to sell war planes to Saudi Arabia. In order to get the lucrative contract, a « commission » had to be paid to members of the Saudi government.

The history of this colossal deal is recounted in a 1999 BBC documentary, The Mayfair Set. Four Stories about the Rise of Business and the Decline of Political Power. The first episode is titled Who Pays Wins.

The voice over images of the Queen of England and the Saudi King shaking hands and parading the streets of London to celebrate the historic deal explains: “December 1965, the Saudis announced they would buy the British planes. The bribes had worked. It was the biggest export dealing in Britain’s history and King Faizal came on a state visit to celebrate.“

Saudi King Abdullah with PM Harper

Lord Caldecote, the director of the military aeroplanes manufacturer English Electric explained this blatant corruption in those words: paying a commission to Saudi officials in order to obtain a contract is a cultural thing, just like having many wives. In other words, the Saudis have different customs, and paying bribes is not a form of corruption. It is just the Saudi way of doing business.

Almost 50 years later, in 2014, Canada was just like the UK signing its biggest export contract of all time, a 15-year arms deal worth $15 billion. A Crown corporation, the Canadian Commercial Corporation, negotiated and signed the contract. The armoured vehicles will be supplied by General Dynamics, based in London Ontario.

Knowing the Saudi « customs », which have not evolved much for the past 50 years, Canadians have every right to wonder if the Canadian government offered bribes to the Saudi royal family in order to obtain the most important contract of its history.

In 1965, the sale of British war planes to Saudi Arabia was closed as a war was raging in Yemen, where Nasser’s Egypt backed the republican Yemenites who were fighting against the royalist forces supported by Saudi Arabia. The British planes were instrumental in driving the Egyptians out of Yemen, reasserting British control over important trade routes and protecting the Saudi influence in the region.

In 2014, while Canada was concluding its sale of armoured vehicles to the Saudi kingdom, a war broke out in Yemen involving, once more, Saudi Arabia.

On March 27 2015, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Rob Nicholson voiced the support of the Canadian government for the U.S.-Saudi war in Yemen: “Canada supports the military action by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] partners and others to defend Saudi Arabia’s border and to protect Yemen’s recognized government at the request of the Yemeni president.”

In this history that repeats itself, one can seriously doubt the saying “other times, other customs.” The BBC documentary shows how the historic British deal in 1965 was “the beginning of the modern arms trade with the Middle East which has grown to dominate Britain’s economy.” The deal also gave rise to a blooming trade in other economic sectors, such as the construction business, opening a foreign market for British contractors.

According to the Globe and Mail:

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government made Saudi Arabia’s “emerging market” a priority as part of a foreign policy that focused on international trade and business. Ottawa made careful diplomatic overtures to Riyadh in the years before the 2014 arms deal, according to Saudi government documents made public last year by Wikileaks. The Saudis, in turn, made their own investments in Canada, such as donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to expand private Islamic schools in this country.

…

The Harper government lobbied hard for the arms deal, which was brokered by a federal Crown corporation, Canadian Commercial Corp. Canada beat French and German companies to get the contract. Ed Fast, then the federal trade minister, touted the deal in February, 2014, as a triumph for Canada’s economic diplomacy.” (The Saudi arms deal: What we’ve learned so far, and what could happen next, The Globe and Mail, May 24, 2016)

The Trudeau government, which initially declared it “didn’t approve” the contract and was simply refusing to terminate it, actually approved the remaining export permits. Thus, this deal was approved by both the Harper and Trudeau governments.

How did Canada beat the French and German companies? Did the Conservatives and the Liberals offer and/or secure bribes to Saudi officials in order to obtain this historic sale, thereby helping to maintain the influence of the most repressive, misogynist regime in the Middle East, which, by the way, is also responsible for training and financing terrorism which Canada is allegedly fighting at home and abroad?

An inquiry into this largely secret arms deal is needed.

originally published at The Saker

John Helmer, who explains military-strategic matters better and more knowledgeably than just about anyone, headlined on May 30th, “The Red Line Crossed, In the Cross-Hairs, At Trigger Point”, and he opened:

First there was the red-line announcement. On Friday [May 27th] in Athens there was the cross-hairs statement. By the month of October, the month before the US presidential election, there will be the trigger point.

The US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies are going to war with Russia, accelerating the inevitability that Russia will strike in self-defence. This is what the first and second statements by President Vladimir Putin warn. There will be no statement of warning.

News media in the West treat any such report — that Russia might be placed into a situation in which a blitz nuclear attack against the West would (and maybe even will) be Russia’s rational response to Western operations to surround Russia with hostile forces on its borders — as if there’s something kooky about any such opinion: they treat it as if the West weren’t ruled by people who are that evil, as if recognizing such evil in a ruler in the West is to be prohibited (especially if that ruler is America’s President, instead of, for example, Turkey’s President, whom apparently one is allowed to impute to be evil). On the present occasion, however, they should pay close attention to the situation Helmer describes, and they should report about the matter, while there might still be time enough to avert an unimaginable catastrophe, which (as Helmer explains in detail) could quite possibly happen this year.

The West is in stark reality-denial. Whereas the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, between JFK and Khrushchev, was accompanied by an appropriate public fear on both sides, the even more dangerous situation this time, between Putin and Obama, elicits such fear only among the Russian people, not at all among Americans and other Westerners.

Mutually Assured Destruction, or M.A.D., isn’t only a reality in a nuclearly armed multipolar world, but it is also, and equally importantly, also a mass-psychology, of belief that there cannot be any winner of a nuclear war — that (especially regarding a nuclear conflict between the two nuclear superpowers) any nuclear war will destroy the planet we all share. This sense of a shared fate on both sides, is central to M.A.D., as what it was — the foundation-stone of the post-world-war era, the era in which existed the longest extended period without a global war, since the advent of global war in 1914.

That era is, tragically, now over.

M.A.D. ended as a mass-psychology in the West, but not in the East — not in Russia, and not in any other of the world’s free nations, otherwise known as the independent nations (the nations that aren’t under the control of the U.S. aristocracy and of any of the aristocracies that are allied to that aristocracy — nor of any other foreign nation’s aristocracy), or also called the “BRICS” nations (which just recently lost its “B” when Brazil underwent a coup, which changed Brazil to becoming now a satellite of the U.S., which will probably (if nuclear war is averted) then be ‘rescued’ by IMF loans that will increasingly strip the Brazilian public and leave them with even lower living-standards and even deeper indebtedness, which will increasingly be owed to foreign lenders).

M.A.D. resulted from the balance that existed when America’s NATO alliance was counterbalanced by the USSR’s Warsaw Pact alliance. Therefore, the very idea of nuclear ‘conquest’, in a military sense, was simply assumed to be impractical, not only by the publics on both sides, but (at least as crucially) by the two opposed aristocracies, West versus East, U.S.-allied versus U.S.S.R.-allied.

The end result of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush’s secret strategy, in 1990-1991, of terminating that M.A.D. by his regime’s lying so as to fool Gorbachev to terminate the USSR and its Warsaw Pact while Gorbachev (and then his successor Yeltsin) allowed continuation and even expansion of NATO, has become, in the West, a total lack of the near-hysteria of mutual fear of nuclear annihilation that had existed in both the West and the East during the Cold War, and its replacement now by a nonchalant West and an increasingly terrified East, as the West is making preparations for what the U.S. aristocracy seems increasingly to believe to be a previously unprecedented situation, in which the U.S. aristocracy and its allied stooge-aristocracies (in Europe, Japan, and Australia) can emerge as actual victors after a nuclear war.

Thus, in the West, there is no hysteria, such as once existed, for everyone to build his/her own family bomb-shelter, even as the West now is tightening its nuclear noose around the Russians’ collective neck. Instead, that previous fear and sometimes even hysteria, has been replaced by a situation in which only some individuals (no one knows whom nor how many) from the West’s aristocracies, have purchased elaborate hardened underground luxurious bunkers, in preparation for their increasingly likely future existences in a presumed post nuclear-holocaust world, and meanwhile the Western masses are not at all outraged at their being left fully exposed with no bunkers at all; and, the reason they’re not, is that they believe that, as their country becomes ‘protected’ by a ballistic-missile-‘defense’ or BMD or ABM (anti-ballistic-missile) system against the ‘enemy’ (now just Russia), they’ve got no more need to worry about ’the enemy’.

The Reagan-era ‘Star Wars’ anti-ballistic missile defense dream for the American aristocracy, is now starting to be realized finally in an Obama-era Lockheed Martin “Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System” nightmare for the Russian people alone, as the putative imagined pathway towards global victory for America’s aristocracy is becoming installed in eastern Europe and other areas bordering on and close to Russia. The American and other Western publics are blithely unworried about it, because the aristocracy’s ‘news’ media have told them that this is ‘just a defensive measure against possible further Russian aggression’ (not a reach-for-global-conquest by America’s aristocracy, which it actually is).

This is one of the reasons why, from the standpoint of America’s rulers, it’s so vitally important for information about those luxurious bunkersto be circulated only in publications for the elite, such as FORBES. If the general public were to become increasingly aware that the few billionaires amongst them are making their own preparations for living in a possible post-nuclear-holocaust nation, then the uncomfortable questions would arise as to why the federal government is not assisting the general public to do likewise (or at least to live in some kind of bunker, such as did happen back in ‘the good old days’).

This is also the result of the ‘libertarian’ or ‘neoliberal’ ideology, the ideology of ‘individualism’, which the aristocracy has systematically inculcated now into generations of people in the West, which denigrates the government’s obligations to the public, and which raises instead to the ideal, the belief in the rightness of ‘every man for himself’ and ‘we are not in this together’, because ‘the masses of lazy bums and stupid people should get nothing more than whatever they deserve’. If, perhaps, a billionaire can afford to live ‘safely’ deep underground, then “more power to him,” according to this ideology, which proclaims that equality of rights is wrong, and that instead a person deserves to have no more rights than he or she has property, wealth, dollars — things to trade with other individuals who possess wealth. In the U.S., this transactional basis for individuals’ rights was the ideology of the Supreme Court in a series of decisions such as the 2010 Citizens United decision, that a person’s right to ‘free speech’ should be proportional to how much money he/she spends to buy it so as to persuade others to vote the way one wants them to vote, or to buy whatever else one wants them to buy.

This transactional concept of an individual’s rights is a protection of dollars, not really of people. It’s for (and in service to) an aristocracy, not a democracy. This Supreme Court has supported aristocracy, not democracy. And, since, after WW II, this has increasingly become the new ethos, not only in the United States but in all countries that take the U.S. to be the ideal, Western publics are not at all outraged at being left high-and-dry in the event that perhaps the new military-security system, which is replacing the shared safety of M.A.D., is replacing it with the competitive and non-shared safety of ’nuclear primacy’, and will end up leaving the public out in the cold nuclear winter in the enemy’s camp.

After all, in the totally competitive world, what’s won is taken, and what’s lost is given; and, ‘to the victor belong the spoils’. This might not necessarily be so in economics, but it certainly is so in the military; it even defines the military outlook — which, after all, is what we’re talking about here.

And, if people have to pay for their rights, then the ‘enemy’ isn’t the aristocracy — certainly not that of one’s own nation — but instead, it is the people who don’t have the money to buy their own rights. Some people call this type of political system ‘liberty’ or ‘libertarianism’ or ‘liberalism’ or ‘neoliberalism’; but, by whatever name it is called, it certainly isn’t democracy, and it certainly isn’t equality of rights, and it certainly isn’t equality of opportunity. It is, in a word: fascism. That’s an extension of the military outlook, into everything.

But another accurate term for it is: madness. However, it is a madness that has been sold, by Western aristocracies, to the publics in the West, which is the reason why the belief in M.A.D. is now gone from the West. The popular belief there now is: eat or else be eaten. And, what is to be eaten isn’t the aristocrats who are selling this poison; it’s ‘the enemy’. (Meanwhile, America and NATO can call thugs like this ‘friends’ and even “members of NATO” and still call themselves supporters of ‘democracy’, a term that’s now devoid of meaning in the West.) This is why Western publics don’t care about the fear that the Russian people feel concerning the installation of America’s anti-ballistic missile systems.

In the most fundamental sense, the concept that we are all in this together is gone, in the West. If it doesn’t exist in both the West and the ‘East’ (namely, in Russia, where it does exist), then a nuclear war is extremely likely, and the real question is: When will it be likeliest to happen?

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

So-called Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) imposition by any country involves protecting its national security interests.

Foreign aircraft entering it without authorization may be intercepted, ordered out, or forced down if refuse. In the case of the South China Sea, vessels could be interdicted for entering protected waters without permission.

US-generated tensions risk escalating dangerously. A previous article indicated China intends deploying nuclear-armed subs in Pacific Ocean waters for the first time – to counter America’s growing threat.

Unjustifiably claiming freedom of navigation rights, provocative US air and naval military patrols, along with joint exercises with Asian allies, ups the stakes for possible direct Sino/US confrontation.

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Beijing may declare “an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea, two years after it announced a similar one in the East China Sea, according to sources close to the People’s Liberation Army and a defence report.”

Timing depends on regional security concerns, notably increasing US hostile activities. According to an unnamed Beijing source, “(i)f the US military keeps making provocative moves to challenge China’s sovereignty in the region, it will give Beijing a good opportunity to declare an ADIZ in the South China Sea.”

Its Defense Ministry declared its sovereign right to impose it. Its 2013 East China Sea AZIZ includes waters and islands claimed by other regional countries.

Beijing considers America’s expanding Pacific military footprint the region’s greatest threat. Its Ministry of National Defense spokesman Yang Yujun urged Washington “to stop stirring up a storm in a teacup and stop sowing seeds of discord so as to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, which conforms to the common interests of all parties.”

Beijing wants provocative US air and sea-based surveillance activities stopped. Its Defense Ministry minced no words, calling “large-scale and frequent (US) close-in reconnaissance activities against China by US military vessels and aircraft” unacceptable close encounters, the “root cause” for its security concerns.

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.

A previous article called Clinton the most recklessly dangerous president aspirant in US history. Humanity’s fate is up for grabs with her finger on the nuclear trigger.

She’s also damaged goods, vulnerable to indictment on federal racketeering charges, her Clinton Foundation a suspected criminal enterprise masquerading as a charitable NGO.

She’ll likely escape federal prosecution because of longstanding close ties to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and become Democrat party nominee in July.

Her delegate lead is too great to overcome. Next Tuesday’s California primary should put her way over the top.

Reports indicate camps representing her and Sanders in talks for party unity. Earlier she said “(o)nce the primaries are over…we will begin talking in more detail about what we can do to unify the party.”

“Because as I’ve said many times, and Senator Sanders has said, we both are going to do everything we can to prevent Donald Trump from getting anywhere near the White House.”

“I will certainly do everything I can to unify the Democratic Party. Our campaigns have been reaching out to one another. We will continue to do that.”

On the one hand, Sanders vowed to continue contesting to become Democrat party nominee. On the other, he hinted at what’s ahead if he fails, saying “(w)hat happens the day after (if) it appears that I am not going to become the nominee, that’s subject for further discussion.”

Several times earlier he promised to support Clinton as party standard bearer if she’s nominated. Will he serve as her running mate if asked?

A previous article explained his popularity among young voters combined with most women for her would be a formidable challenge for Trump to overcome.

A Clinton/Sanders ticket would dispel the undeserved faith of his diehard supporters in his alleged populist advocacy, phony throughout his 30-year political career, voting 98% of the time with Democrats, supporting their deplorable agenda.

He’s more opportunist than populist. She represents pure evil. Partnering with her would irreparably taint him more than already – making him complicit in her high crimes.

After months of campaigning since last year, voters in November will get to choose between a billionaire demagogue and an unindicted criminal racketeer/war goddess/Wall Street tool.

If Sanders supports what he campaigned against, he’ll prove himself just another dirty politician – saying one thing, intending something entirely different, betraying his supporters, showing business as usual always wins.

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.

Originally published in April 2016

America’s B61-12 mini nuke portrayed as an instrument of peace.

“The danger of a terrorist group obtaining and using a nuclear weapon is one of the greatest threats to global security,” said Obama at the Nuclear Security Summit attended by more than 50 world leaders in Washington. A nonsensical statement.

According to Obama, “… al Qaida has long sought nuclear materials”, intimating that a nuclear device or a “dirty bomb” could be used in a terror attack against a Western capital (Brussels or Paris), … “‘ISIL has already used chemical weapons, including mustard gas, in Syria and Iraq.  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.”  These madmen, according to Obama could “kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people using only plutonium the size of an apple.”

click image to order Michel Chossudovsky’s Book

The focus on ISIS “madmen”  capable of developing a nuclear bomb is an obvious smokescreen, a PR campaign to dissipate the fact that the danger of nuclear war largely emanates from decision-making at the highest levels of US government. 

If Al Qaeda and Daesh are the threat to global security, what about the State actors of US foreign policy including Hillary Clinton:

 “What I said and what I mean is that there will have to be consequences for any violation by Iran and that the nuclear option should not at all be taken off the table. That has been my position consistently.” (ABC News, December 15, 2015)

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” (ABC “Good Morning America.”, quoted by Reuters, April 22, 2008)

The potential role of  Al Qaeda and ISIS acquiring nuclear capabilities borders on the absurd, not to mention the fact that ISIS is supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, America’s closest allies.

The Al Qaeda legend is being used to distort the most likely causes of nuclear war, as well co-opting  international leaders into accepting US global hegemony with regard to the control over nuclear weapons and nuclear materials.

Moreover, lest we forget, US intelligence has acted as a sponsor of Al Qaeda since the heyday of the Soviet Afghan War. If Al Qaeda and ISIS constitute a nuclear danger, who are their State sponsors?

The dangers of nuclear war are nonetheless real.

The US is developing a trillion dollar project which consists in refurbishing its nuclear arsenal, not to mention the development of the B61-12 tactical nuclear weapon.

Tactical nuclear weapons or so-called mini nukes (with an explosive capacity of one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb) were cleared by the Senate in 2002 for use in the conventional war theater. They are considered “harmless to the surrounding population because the explosion is underground” according to scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon.

The mini-nukes portrayed as instruments of peace are bona fide thermonuclear bombs with a lower explosive capacity.

Turkey has 90 tactical B61 nuclear bombs at its Incirlik air force base, which are deployed against targets in the Middle East.

The Nuclear Security Summit is a propaganda ploys intent upon distorting the nuclear threat which largely emanates from the US and its NATO allies under the Pentagon’s post 9/11 nuclear doctrine, which consists in the use of nuclear weapons on a pre-emptive first strike basis against nuclear as well as non-nuclear states.

Michel Chossudovsky’s interview with RT America regarding the April 2016 Nuclear Security Summit

Since the first Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010, neither the discourse nor the agenda has changed.

What Washington wants is to gain a monopoly over nuclear weapons as well acquire and control nuclear materials.

The issue of terrorism is a smokescreen.

Michel Chossudovsky’s interview regarding the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit

With the increasingly likelihood of a presidential contest between the generally despised Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, millions of angry voters are considering protesting the lineup by either sitting out the election or writing in alternatives. With almost one-third of all eligible voters already failing to participate in elections, a greater abdication of voting responsibility in an election between the lesser of two evils could lead to a tyranny of the minority. On the other hand, by carefully writing in the names of their true choices, voters can exercise the only power available to them. If sufficiently widespread, such a protest could have a lasting effect on the course of the Nation, including the abandonment of the two major political parties and the emergence of new—more relevant—alignments.

The beauty of a massive write-in protest vote is its bipartisan appeal. There may be as many “Never Trump” Republicans unwilling to hold their noses and vote for Donald Trump, as there are progressive Democrats who are proclaiming “Bernie or Bust” in their opposition to Hillary Clinton. Even those voting for Libertarian and Green Party presidential candidates, in states where they are not qualified, might consider doing so by writing in their choices. The only problem is that—with the control of voting left up to the states by the Constitution and with tabulation taking place on the local and county level—most write-in votes would not be counted.

Under state laws, political parties must “qualify” for their candidates to be listed on the ballots and counted. The two major parties are qualified in every state, but the Libertarian Party candidates will appear on the ballots in only 33 states, the Green Party in 21, and the Constitution Party in 13.

By definition, the names of write-in candidates are not listed on ballots; however, interested candidates must still file various forms of paperwork in 35 states for their votes to be counted, and seven states do not allow write-in votes for presidential candidates. While permitted in the remaining eight states, votes for write-in candidates may not be counted or reported by local registrars.

Even after the end of this year’s political conventions and the statutory period to qualify for the ballots in individual states, steps could still be taken by alternative candidates, such as Bernie Sanders or an establishment Republican, to register a willingness to accept write-in votes in those states where they are permitted.

All of this could change with the enactment of the U.S. Voters’ Rights Amendment (USVRA), which will finally guarantee that every citizen has the right to cast effective votes in all elections. In addition, the USVRA mandates a national, hand-countable paper ballot in all federal elections, allows write-in candidates for all federal offices, and requires that all such votes be counted. Moreover, for presidential elections, the ballots would list the 12 most critical questions facing the Nation, compelling all candidates to actually address the true issues. The People would be better informed and empowered to make their own national policy—and to elect representatives most qualified to carry out their policies.

A national policy referendum, in conjunction with presidential elections, would create broad federal guidelines, rather than binding laws. Elected representatives would be expected to carry out the policies and direction of the People, and could be held accountable if they fail to do so.

Rather than responding to billions of dollars in negative advertising about the inadequacies of opposition candidates, a barrage of slick promotional propaganda concealing those deficiencies, and misleading party platforms, voters in the 2016 election should have the power to create policy for themselves. They should decide whether international trade pacts should be approved; the cap on Social Security withholding taxes should be eliminated; a supplemental national retirement system should be enacted; space-solar energy should be generated to energize the national highways in lieu of a reliance on polluting petroleum products; and whether the crumbling national infrastructure should be repaired and upgraded.

The People should have a direct say about whether the war on drugs should end and private prisons should be prohibited. Those most affected by domestic policies should decide whether everyone has a right to national health care; whether paid maternity leave should be provided; women should have the freedom of choice in childbearing; and everyone should have the right to marry whomsoever they chose. Voters who are smart enough to earn a paycheck and pay taxes are certainly qualified to decide if a national minimum wage should be guaranteed; all existing student loans should be forgiven; the right to education extended through college; and whether military spending should be reduced.

Instead of an income tax disproportionally imposed on salaried workers and small business owners, the People should have the right to decide whether government initiatives are to be paid for by a tiny tax on the movement of all money in the economy, including stock and currency transactions and the financial manipulations of all banks, insurance companies, and other corporations. In doing so, the burden of taxation would be lifted from those who work the hardest and shifted to those who profit the most from our economy.

Those who founded the United States and drafted its Constitution did not trust the vast majority of its citizens to vote. They left voting questions up to the states and established the Electoral College—rather than a majority vote of the People—to elect the president and vice president.

At first, only white males owing sufficient property were permitted to vote, but slowly over the years, others have been allowed to participate. These rights are fragile and can be taken away at the whim of state legislatures—as is being done by the widespread enactment of voting suppression schemes, such as voter identification laws.

The USVRA will eliminate the Electoral College and implement a national popular vote for the offices of president and vice president. It also establishes a uniform presidential primary, limits the length of campaigns, requires universal voter registration, and outlaws voter suppression. Finally, it declares that corporations do not have constitutional rights and that campaign contributions are not the same as free speech.

If America is to continue as a representative democracy, it must transform its government into one that actually represents and cares for those who elect it—rather than the corporations and financial elites who are now paying for election campaigns and bribing the candidates. The USVRA provides a constitutional basis for the transformation of the United States government; however, the energy to compel its enactment will come from the incredible power of the pen literally held in the hands of the People.

William John Cox, a retired public interest lawyer, is the author of “Transforming America: A Voters’ Bill of Rights.”

The US Supreme Court granted the long-standing aspirations of the local Ministry of Justice and the US intelligence agencies to “hack” computers around the world- to combat terrorism of course. However, any clarification is unlikely to appease people who value the integrity of personal space. The US Justice Department insisted on the introduction of relevant amendments to the federal criminal law since 2013. The agency’s position can be divided into two components:

• It is necessary to fight against terrorism, and all legal means are good for that
• The existing legislation is vulnerable, and it allows villains to insolently use “anonymizing” software and other technical gadgets to conceal their identities.

The proposed expansion of rights to special services in the Ministry of Justice of the United States is considered “minor” by the Establishment.

It also seems that they are genuinely puzzled about the ferocity of the cries of human rights defenders and their shouts to go back to the “Constitution”. The constitution contains a direct prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

Opponents of the legislation do not also hide the expectationthat the FBI will now be carrying out a massive hacker attack on computer networks around the world. An important detail, which follows from the document itself: a subject can theoretically be anywhere, including China, Iran or Russia. But does this legislation really matter? The Washington believes in the principle of its total jurisdiction all over the world. Why are they letting the Supreme Court make this call, when the US special services can invade the privacy of any computer user in the world without any formal approval from the Court. All of us have long been told so by Assange and Snowden.

Recent cyber-security and privacy alarms from around the world are becoming more regular. In November 2015, the UK saw echoes of the current decision of the US allowing intelligence agencies to monitor networking activities of their targets on the Internet, and even without a court order. Another widely known incident was in 2010 when, a malicious computer worm, Stuxnet, was identified.

Although neither state has confirmed this openly, anonymous US officials speaking to the Washington Post claimed the worm was developed during the Obama administration to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program with what would seem like a long series of unfortunate accidents. The very same time, the US blames its geopolitical opponents for cyber attacks on a constant basis. If these reports are true, even partly, it becomes clear that all sides are involved in the silent cyber standoff. Ironically, these efforts have nothing to do with improving their own citizens’ security.

US-NATO’s Fake “Humanitarian” “War on Terrorism”, Defiant Syria

By Mark Taliano, May 31 2016

There’s really no excuse for supporting the NATO/terror position. We’ve seen the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, now Syria, all built on lies, all beneath the guise of “humanitarian interventions”. Since people with any sense of historical memory can not…

Video: The Dirty War on Syria – Prof. Tim Anderson on GRTV

By Prof. Tim Anderson and James Corbett, May 31 2016

Government propaganda and NGO misinformation have coloured the story of the war on Syria from its inception. Stepping in to set the record straight, Dr. Tim Anderson explores the real beginnings of the conflict, the players behind it, and their agenda

Reject Censorship at Conference on Refugees. The “Dirty War on Syria” is the Cause of the Refugee Crisis

By Syria Solidarity Movement, May 31 2016

All voices should be welcome at the “Crossing Borders” conference on refugees, 7-10 July 2016, organized by the Cooperative Institute for Transnational Studies (CITS) in collaboration with the University of the Aegean, and taking place on the Greek island of…

The Unique Risks of GM Crops: Pro-GMO Lobby Engages in Fraud, Smear Campaigns and the Debasement of Science

By Colin Todhunter, May 31 2016

The purpose of this piece is to draw readers’ attention to an important chapter from a document by Aruna Rodrigues that discusses the unique risks associated with GM crops. Contrary to what supporters of GM often claim, it shows that…

Anglo-America: Regression and Reversion in the Modern World

By Prof. James Petras, May 31 2016

The Anglo-American drive to establish a global regressive social order has pushed billions of workers on five continents into destitution, insecurity and lifelong exploitation.

Six Giant Corporations Control the Media, and Americans Consume 10 Hours of ‘Programming’ a Day

By Michael Snyder, May 31 2016

If you allow someone to pump hours of “programming” into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world.  In America today, the average person…

An article last week in the British-based Guardian reported that the Chinese military “is poised to send submarines armed with nuclear missiles into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, arguing that new US weapons systems have so undermined Beijing’s existing deterrent force that it has been left with no alternative.”

While the timing is uncertain, the move ups the ante in an intensifying nuclear arms race between the US and China that heightens the risk of war. Since coming to office, the Obama administration has engaged in a military build-up and strengthening of alliances throughout Asia in preparation for war with China. It has committed more than $1 trillion over 30 years to the upgrading and expansion of the US nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

The Chinese regime has responded by taking measures to maintain its ability to launch a reprisal in the event of a US nuclear attack on its military apparatus, cities and leadership. The decision to send nuclear-armed nuclear submarines (SSBNs) on patrol in the Pacific Ocean is the latest step in Beijing’s efforts to protect its relatively small nuclear force—estimated at 260 warheads, as compared to 7,000 for the US.

According to the Guardian, Chinese military officials insist that such patrols are “inevitable” following the announcement by the US and South Korea in March to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system to the Korean Peninsula. While Washington’s pretext is the supposed threat posed by North Korea, the THAAD deployment is part of the US anti-missile system build-up in North East Asia aimed against China.

There is nothing defensive about the Pentagon’s anti-ballistic missile installations, which are an integral component of its strategy for fighting a nuclear war against China. Unlike Beijing, Washington has never renounced a nuclear first strike—that is, being the first side in a war to unleash nuclear weapons. The Pentagon’s plan is to seek to obliterate the entire Chinese nuclear arsenal in a first strike, rendering China incapable of retaliating. The relatively small number of THAAD interceptors could not counter a Chinese first strike and only have significance as the means of destroying stray Chinese missiles that escaped the initial American onslaught.

In other words, the US is no longer seeking to maintain a balance of terror—the strategy known during the Cold War as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)—but is aiming to achieve nuclear primacy, which means the use of nuclear weapons to render a rival completely defenceless against further attacks.

An article in the prestigious US-based Foreign Affairs magazine a decade ago entitled “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy” provoked furious denials by the Pentagon and the White House. Nevertheless, behind a phony campaign of championing nuclear disarmament, the US has been striving to achieve nuclear primacy over any potential rival—especially Russia and China.

The article focussed primarily on Russia, which has a far more extensive and sophisticated nuclear force. Nevertheless, its analysis of Chinese nuclear capabilities goes a long way to explaining China’s moves to ensure that its nuclear weapons would not be completely wiped out in a US attack. It stated:

“China’s nuclear arsenal is even more vulnerable to a US attack [than Russia’s]. A US first strike could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. China has a limited strategic nuclear arsenal. The People’s Liberation Army currently possesses no modern SSBNs or long-range bombers. Its naval arm used to have two ballistic missile submarines, but one sank, and the other, which had such poor capabilities that it never left Chinese waters, is no longer operational.

“China’s medium-range bomber force is similarly unimpressive: the bombers are obsolete and vulnerable to attack. According to unclassified US government assessments, China’s entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMs. These are not ready to launch on warning: their warheads are kept in storage and the missiles themselves are unfueled. (China’s ICBMs use liquid fuel, which corrodes the missiles after 24 hours. Fuelling them is estimated to take two hours.) The lack of an advanced early warning system adds to the vulnerability of the ICBMs. It appears that China would have no warning at all of a US submarine-launched missile attack or a strike using hundreds of stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles.”

Over the past decade, the Chinese military has taken strenuous steps to remedy these major deficiencies. It has built solid-fuel missiles, constructed four Jin-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines, reportedly developed a mobile rail-mounted missile, improved its early warning systems and taken other counter measures. However, China’s arsenal remains small and vulnerable and many of the technologies are generations behind those of the United States.

Wu Riqiang, a Chinese academic from Renmin University in Beijing, told theGuardian that China’s Jin or Type 094 nuclear submarines were too noisy and easily located by US attack subs, and would never get to the mid-Pacific to enable them to hit continental America. “My argument is that because of the high noise level of the Type 094 and China’s lack of experience of running a SSBN fleet, China cannot and should not put 094 in deterrent patrol in the near future,” he said.

The concern in the Pentagon about China’s nuclear submarines is one of the real reasons behind its “freedom of navigation” provocations in the South China Sea. The US is determined to maintain its free access to these waters, which are directly adjacent to Hainan Island, where the Chinese submarine fleet is based. The Pentagon is determined to be able to track the movements of China’s nuclear submarines and thus have the ability to destroy them before they reach the open waters of the Pacific.

US nuclear supremacy poses difficult dilemmas for the Chinese leadership, which up until now has been reluctant to relinquish tight control over its nuclear arsenal, and has therefore stored warheads and missiles separately. By arming nuclear submarines, warheads and missiles would be stored on board, posing the question: would the commander be authorised to launch in the event of a US “decapitation” strike on the Chinese leadership in Beijing?

While the Chinese nuclear posture is largely defensive, the scramble to build a nuclear arsenal is nevertheless reactionary and dangerous. The Chinese leadership defends the interests of a tiny super-rich oligarchy and is organically incapable of making any appeal to workers in the United States or internationally. Its whipping up of Chinese nationalism and militarism further divides the international working class, the only social force capable of halting the slide toward a nuclear holocaust.

The nuclear arms race is compounding the increasingly volatile and unpredictable situation in Asia. As American academic Jeffrey Lewis, from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told the Guardian: “The law of unintended consequences is in danger of taking the upper hand. The two sides may thus be stumbling blindly into severe crisis, instability and growing competition by China with respect to strategic forces. A competition between unevenly matched forces is inherently unstable.”

In its own cautious way, Lewis’s comment is another warning of the rising risks of a nuclear war.

The Sun Herald (Sydney) of 22 May 2016 reported that the Australian families of the MH17 disaster had “served” the European court of Human Rights (ECHR) with a claim seeking compensation of $10 million for each victim.

The report referred to the “proposed respondents” to the claim being the Russian Federation and its President Vladimir Putin. The solicitor acting for the plaintiffs was quoted in a separate report (1) claiming, “we have facts, photographs, memorandums (sic), tonnes of stuff.” He also claimed that the claim document ran to “over 3500 pages in length.”

These reports closely followed the publication of the New South Wales Coroner’s Court report into the deaths of six of the victims who were resident in New South Wales. The Coroner’s findings closely followed those of the Report of the Dutch Safety Board of 13 October 2015, attributing the deaths of those aboard MH17 to a BUK missile detonating close to the aircraft, causing the plane to disintegrate and a consequent immediate loss of life to all aboard.

It was not part of the Coroner’s jurisdiction to attribute blame, that being the subject of a separate criminal investigation (JIT). The results of that investigation are expected to be announced later this year.

The Dutch head of the JIT investigation, Mr Fred Westerbeke wrote to all the Dutch victim’s families in February 2016 giving them an update on the investigation. A query to the Australian Federal Police as to whether the Australian families might receive a similar briefing was effectively ignored.

Something Mr Westerbeke did say that was of particular interest was that the United States had released their satellite data to the Dutch Security Services. Whether that data could be used and if so in what format, was for security reasons an unresolved issue.

Those data are of considerable significance. It is known that there were three US satellites overhead the Donbass region at the material time. They had the undoubted capability of determining exactly what was fired at MH17, from precisely where, and by whom. US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed as much in an interview with NBC shortly after the tragedy.

The American refusal to publically release the data leads to the very strong inference that it is being concealed for the reason that it does not support the “blame Russia” meme so favoured by the western media.

The incuriosity of the Australian media was again on display when they gave extensive coverage to the report of the alleged claim being filed in the ECHR.

There are a number of problems with this purported claim, accepted so uncritically be the Australian media. There was a clue in the use of the phrase “proposed respondents”. If proceedings had been filed in any court, then the respondents are not “proposed”. They either are or they are not.

A check with the ECHR website on 26 May 2016 showed that there was no record of any such claim having been filed. John Helmer, on his website (2) reports a similarly negative result when a query was made with the ECHR’s Registrar.

The problems with the alleged claim do not stop there. As noted above, the plaintiff’s solicitor said that the claim ran to more than 3500 pages. Rule 47 of the ECHR’s Rules state that the application must contain:

(e) a concise and legible statement of the facts;

(f) a concise and legible statement of the alleged violation(s) of the Convention; and

(g) a concise and legible statement confirming the applicant’s compliance with the admissibility criteria laid down in Article 35(1) of the Convention.

Whatever else they may be, a 3500-page claim does not remotely comply with any definition of “concise.”

The ECHR Rules further provide that any additional submissions do not exceed 20 pages (Rule 47 (2) (b)) in length.

The plaintiffs have failed to provide any relevant details from their 3500 page claim (or at all) that would enable an independent observer to assess what “facts, photographs and memoranda” they have that were not available to the Dutch Safety Board Inquiry. Given the combined resources available to the Dutch led inquiry, it would be remarkable that a firm of solicitors would be able to state their claims so categorically when a major government report was not able to do so.

The plaintiff’s difficulties do not end with their lack of credibility.

The ECHR Rules further provide that any application made under Article 34 of the Convention is required to be made (Article 35(1)) within six months of the event giving rise to the application.

As the relevant event occurred on 17 July 2014, the six months expired on 17 January 2015. No explanation has been forthcoming nor any inquiry made by the incurious mainstream media as to how this potentially fatal flaw in the proceedings could be overcome.

That is not the end of the plaintiff’s woes. Rule 10(b) governs Article 34 applications to the Court. That rule requires the plaintiff to demonstrate that “the applicant has complied with the exhaustion of available domestic remedies.”

One of the plaintiffs named in the purported ECHR proceedings is Mr Tim Lauschet, a relative of one of the victims. Mr Lauschet is also the plaintiff in proceeding 2015/210056 filed in the New South Wales Supreme Court. Malaysian Airlines System Berhad is the respondent in those proceedings.

The original pleadings sought various declarations that would facilitate a claim for damages under the relevant provisions of the Civil Aviation (Carriers Liability) Act 1959. That limits liability to a maximum of special drawing rights equivalent to approximately A$215,000. There is a two year time limit for the making of such claims, so that right expires on 17 July 2016, only a few weeks away.

The purported proceedings in the ECHR makes no attempt to reconcile their $10 million claim with the liability of international air carriers which is considerably less by an order of magnitude. Neither did the media bother to ask.

The Judge politely pointed out a number of deficiencies in Mr Lauschet’s pleadings (2015) NSWSC 1365) and adjourned the matter with various timetable orders to enable the plaintiff to remedy the many deficiencies in the pleadings.

The matter has been back before the Court a further four times since that hearing, with the only apparent progress being that the plaintiff has now filed a statement of claim. (3) It is now scheduled for a further Directions Hearing on 30 May 2016.

The conclusion for present purposes must be that Mr Lauschet has not achieved “the exhaustion of available domestic remedies.” Whether any of the other Australian plaintiffs in the purported ECHR proceeding have even started, let alone exhausted, their domestic legal remedies is unknown. But in Mr Lauschet’s case (and possibly all of the others) he therefore faces another fatal flaw.

There is one other element in this case that the mainstream media is either unaware of or has chosen to ignore. In 2012 the then Gillard government made amendments to the Social Security Act 1991 to enable payments of up to $75,000 to victims of terrorism.

Eligibility for those payments (the acronym for which is AVTOP) were backdated to 11 September 2001. A necessary pre-condition for the payment is a declaration by the Prime Minister of the day that the event concerned was a “terrorist act.”

To date there have been nine such declarations, the latest being the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris, France. The shooting down of MH17 should qualify under most definitions as a “terrorist act.”

The relevant Prime Ministers since 17 July 2014, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, have not made such a declaration, which would then entitle victim’s families to claim compensation under the Act.

Requests to the Prime Minister’s office for information as to whether such a declaration was going to be made, and if not, why not, were ignored. A Freedom of Information Act request has therefore been made and is currently pending.

There may be a number of reasons why such a declaration has not been made. The overwhelming weight of evidence is that only the military units of the Ukrainian armed forces had the means, motive and opportunity to shoot down MH17 (4).

As a recently joined member of Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s “advisory council” former Prime Minister Tony Abbott would be in a difficult position if the shoot down was declared to be a terrorist act and the JIT investigation put the blame where it rightly belongs, on the Ukrainian government. It is not surprising that the announcement at the recent ASEAN-Russia meeting that Malaysia and Russia were cooperating in an investigation of the MH17 tragedy caused concern in US and Ukrainian circles. (5)

Although the current Australian Prime Minister Turnbull has been more circumspect than his predecessor in making ill-conceived allegations against Russia and its President, he will not wish to expose himself to a finding by the JIT that does not fit the propaganda meme so assiduously pursued by the western media.

There are a number of losers in this charade, not least the victims of the atrocity and their families who deserve better than to be exploited by both politicians and dubious claims in the ECHR. The public, who might reasonably expect to be better served by their media, are also the losers.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The G7 meetings, which were originally little more than simple informal conversations between the Western leaders, flirted for a while with the idea of becoming a world governement before falling back to organising a sort of public relations training course. The Ise-Shima summit reviewed the world’s main problems, and defined, for each of them, the elements of language which should be employed.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Pete Kimberley

An engineered drama unfolds along the Turkish-Syrian border as terrorists armed and backed by a US-led coalition including NATO-member Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar allegedly battle both the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) and Syrian-backed “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) near and around the Syrian city of Azaz.

Reuters in a recent article titled, “Islamic State advance near Turkish border, civilians trapped,” reports that:

Islamic State fighters captured territory from Syrian rebels near the Turkish border on Friday and inched closer to a town on a supply route for foreign-backed insurgents fighting the jihadists, a monitoring group said.

The hardline group has been fighting against rebels in the area for several months. The rebels, who are supplied via Turkey, last month staged a major push against Islamic State, but the group counter-attacked and beat them back.

Reuters, however, leaves out very crucial information – information that if concludes, would raise suspicions about the entire narrative alleged across Western media outlets like Reuters.

If rebels are being directly supplied across the Turkish-Syrian border by a multinational coalition, how is it possible that ISIS forces are somehow better equipped and able to overwhelm these forces? The length of any ISIS logistical line supporting its fighters in this alleged battle – if not also extending over the Turkish-Syrian border in the immediate vicinity of the fighting, must be hundreds of miles long and in itself an immense strain on ISIS’ fighting capacity.

It would be rather remarkable, in fact, unbelievable for ISIS to somehow not be being aided and abetted from directly across the Turkish-Syrian border where allegedly “foreign-backed insurgents” are allegedly receiving aid from nations like the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

And in fact, ISIS, as well as Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front, are accused of receiving such aid via Turkey – most recently with the Russian General Staff accusing Al Nusra of receiving “daily arms shipments across the border from Turkey.”

Not Merely “Russian Propaganda” 

While some will easily dismiss accusations of NATO involvement in arming, aiding, and abetting listed terrorist organizations amid the ongoing war in Syria as “Russian propaganda,” it should be noted that as early as 2007, Western journalists themselves had attempted to warn the public of an unfolding criminal conspiracy among Western special interests to do precisely this.

In the New Yorker’s 2007 article, “The Redirection Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?,” Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh would warn (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 

Hersh’s sources, which included former CIA agent Robert Baer, warned of an impending “cataclysmic conflict” being engineered between Sunni and Shia’a Muslims as part of this conspiracy. He predicted the necessity of Shia’a groups forming the front lines against sectarian genocide carried out by US and Saudi-backed extremists with the responsibility of protecting not only Shia’a Muslims, but also Christians and other ethnic minorities, falling upon groups like Hezbollah.

The Meaning Behind Border Chaos… 

In hindsight, Hersh’s words now appear prophetic. Warnings of Western support of extremists in 2007 manifested as open warfare in 2011, and between the beginning of the war and now, an incremental revelation of US, Turkish, Saudi, and Qatari complicity in the rise and perpetuation of extremists like Al Nusra and the many terrorist organizations fighting along side it, including openly US-backed terrorist organizations like Ahrar Al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam.

This begs the question as to whether or not ISIS’ departure from Al Nusra was more political than any actual strategic, organizational, or ideological schism. Rhetoric aside, examining the logistical necessities of ISIS’ current “war” with US-backed terrorists in northern Syria, it is clear that the group, along with Al Nusra, are receiving support from Turkish territory.

What is unfolding in northern Syria is yet another attempt by the US and its allies to create and exploit chaos, rather than stem it.

Continued support of extremists by either neglecting border security, or directly and intentionally supplying, arming, and otherwise supporting terrorist organizations ensures maximum violence, humanitarian catastrophe, and a continued pretext for further incursions by both US and Turkish forces along Syria’s borders in pursuit of long-desired “safe havens” where terrorist forces can better be protected and positioned to project their destruction deeper and more effectively into Syrian territory.

In reality, the chaos the US and its allies are citing as justification for further involvement in Syria’s conflict could easily be brought to an end simply by securing Turkey’s borders within Turkish territory. Turkish forces are arrayed along the border alongside US special forces, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and myriad of European and Persian Gulf military and intelligence assets. Failure to secure the border and cut off Al Nusra and ISIS’ supply lines is intentional.

Securing the Borders 

For Syria, securing its own borders has been infinitely problematic. Attempts to approach and retake territory along the borders has been met not only by obviously Turkish-backed terrorist forces, but also by NATO-backed Turkish military provocations. Turkey regularly shells Syrian territory. Its aircraft and anti-aircraft systems have regularly been deployed along the border attempting to deter first Syrian, then Russian aircraft from targeting the streams of supplies being sent into Syrian territory to sustain terrorist groups including ISIS and Al Nusra.

Attempting to avoid a more direct and costly confrontation with Turkey has forced Syria and its allies to take a more indirect means of securing the borders, using SDF fighters to occupy and face off against Turkish and NATO forces without implicating Damascus directly.

Conversely, the use of these irregular forces has given NATO apparent leeway to make incursions of its own into Syrian territory – as they can claim they are not fighting Syrian forces, but merely “Kurdish terrorists.” While this chaffs directly with America’s alleged support of Kurdish groups elsewhere in the country, this is mitigated by a feigned political fallout between Washington and Ankara – despite US forces still graciously being hosted in Turkey and the two still clearly working in tandem toward the destruction of neighboring Syria.

A multinational peacekeeping force placed along Syria’s northern border or Syrian-Russian bases placed further north may force one of two moves by the US and its collaborators. Directly attacking peacekeepers or Syrian-Russian bases from Turkish territory risking a wider war, or using proxies in Turkish territory, but at the cost of further exposing Washington and Ankara’s hands in propping up and perpetuating Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Either option is fraught with complications and obstacles to overcome – perhaps even insurmountable obstacles. Additional covert resources supplied to SDF fighters along the Syrian-Turkish border could also be an attractive alternative. Syria and Russia could also work further on exposing the precise nature of Al Nusra and ISIS supply lines originating in Turkey – as well as in Jordan and through Iraq via Saudi Arabia directly.

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

The FT reports that Bayer, which has made a bid to take over Monsanto, has a relatively squeaky-clean brand, with ‘lots of positive connotations’. This, despite the company being rocked by scandal in 2001 when its cholesterol drug Lipobay was found to have serious side-effects and its production of a neonicotinoid insecticide which may have contributed to the decline in the bee population.

“Its oldest brand is aspirin, after all,” says Torben Bo Hansen, head of Philipp und Keuntje, a German advertising agency, adding “But for large parts of the population Monsanto is evil personified.”

In another FT article, Dirk Zimmermann explains:

“Bayer is by no means an exemplary company. After all, their business model is the same as Monsanto’s — they also sell genetically modified seeds that are resistant to the herbicides they produce. None of this is compatible with the idea of sustainable agriculture, or at least our understanding of it.”

Monsanto is opposed because of its leadership in producing and promoting genetically modified organisms – Germany is one ‘no-go’ area where 1m hectares of land are farmed organically. Countries producing GM crops are shown below (in dark blue):

Monsanto is also widely associated with the production and promotion of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, which the World Health Organisation said last year was probably carcinogenic. The EU is currently debating whether to relicence glyphosate, with many European governments opposed.

Countries banning or labelling GMOs (compiled by Canadian campaigner)

“One option for Bayer would be to drop the Monsanto name if the transaction went through”. Is rebranding the answer?

The Brand Failures blogspot recalls that when massive amounts of radioactive material were released from the UK’s Windscale atomic works in 1957, following a serious fire, the local community in Cumbria were understandably terrified about the health implications of uncontained radiation. Rather than close the plant down, the government believed the best way to put distance between the disaster and the nuclear plant as a whole was to change the name, from Windscale to Sellafield.

“The potential is definitely there for Bayer’s brand to suffer in a takeover,” adds Hansen. “One option for Bayer would be to drop the Monsanto name if the transaction went through, to prevent that “negative sentiment carrying over to the new company” said Jeffrey Stafford, analyst at Morningstar (investment management).

But as Brand Failures records, in many cases, including Windscale/Sellafield and the Post Office/Consignia, the 99% are no longer so easy to fool.

Professor James Petras

What does it mean when the US and British financial systems launder hundreds of billions of dollars of illicit funds stolen by world leaders while their governments turn a ‘blind eye’, and yet the very same Anglo-American officials investigate, prosecute, fine and arrest officials from rival governments, rival banks and political leaders for corruption?

What does it mean when the US government expands a world-wide network of nuclear missiles on bases stretching from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Gulf States to Japan, surrounding Russia, Iran and China, while the very same US and NATO officials investigate and condemn rival defense officials from Russia, China and Iran, as military threats to peace and stability?

What does it mean when Anglo-American economic officials devote decades to raising the age of retirement, reducing working and middle class household income, cutting workers compensation, expanding part-time work, setting the stage for mass layoffs slashing unemployment and health benefits and reducing social spending by the hundreds of billions of dollars and then turn around and investigate and threaten rival countries, like China and Argentina with loss of markets, investment and employment for not doing the same thing ?

The meaning of Anglo-America’s long-term, large-scale structural regression is clearly evident across the world.  From Europe to Latin America and from Asia to Africa, socio-economic and politico-military agendas have been reversed.

Since the end of the Second World War there had been incremental gains in labor rights, stable employment, poverty reduction and working conditions.

Recently, these have all been reversed:  Longer working days and weeks with reduced salaries and benefits; unstable temporary work replaces stable employment; employer-funded pensions are eliminated and replaced by multi-billion dollar corporate tax cuts and off-shore tax evasion.

Systematic structural swindles by the leading financial institutions have forced employees to delay retirement for years in order to ‘self-finance’ their own meager ‘pensions’, some expecting to ‘die at the job’.

Capitalist regression has been implemented by arbitrary state dictates and authoritarian decrees, erasing any pretense of democratic procedures and constitutional laws.

The regressive and retrograde leader-states from the imperial centers impose their conditions on follower regimes like Mexico and Russia forcing them to reverse their legacy of social progress while blackmailing these regimes’ oligarchs with the loss of lucrative markets, access to tax and money-laundering havens and impunity for their crimes and swindles.

Anglo-America:  Historic Reversion

For the past three decades, the US and Great Britain have led the global drive to undermine labor’s advances.  First, the economic structure sustaining labor organizations were dismantled and fragmented.  Then organized labor was decimated, co-opted and corporatized.

Capital proceeded to reverse labor and social welfare legislation and lower wages, in order to impose longer workdays and destabilize employment.

The mass media re-packaged the regression cycle as  ‘economic reform’, a euphemism, which disguised the re-concentration of power, wealth and income over the last three decades.

The growth of inequality and the concentration of wealth and assets to the 1% became ‘the standard’ for the Anglo-American era.  However, class organization and the vicissitudes of class struggles continued to constrain efforts to impose unchallenged Anglo-American capitalist rulership throughout the world.

The first decisive blow against  social reform resulted from the systematic Anglo-American breakdown of the former USSR and allied nations of the Warsaw Pact in East Europe.  This was followed by the endogenous dissolution of Communist Party rule in China, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Baltic and Balkan states and their conversion into capitalist satellites.  Social welfare, full employment, public pensions and health systems were shredded; labor lost all its rights except one – the right to emigrate to the West as cheap labor.

From Russia to Latvia and Poland to Bulgaria and Romania, there were massive layoffs, plant closures and the total dissolution of social security networks driven by the Anglo-America neo-liberal onslaught.  The Atlantic Alliance brought their new Eastern satellites to social submission.

Until the second decade of the 21^st century, Western Europe’s centers for the defense of the progressive social agenda were in France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal.  The social agenda in Latin America and China faced the Anglo-America offensive even earlier.

France:  The Strategic Key to Anglo-American Social Regression

France has been the center where the Anglo-American regressive attack on socio-economic policy and Southern Europe’s resistance has been playing out.

By 2015 the regressive alliance had overturned all progressive social policy in the former communist bloc countries.  Their alliance with Germany’s finance sector give them tight control of the EU and they successfully decimated the progressive social programs and labor legislation in Greece, Spain and Portugal.

France became the centerpiece for Western capitalism’s drive to incorporate Italy into the regressive orbit.  The conquest of France and Italy would completely reverse 70 years of incremental labor gains after the defeat of fascist capitalism.

The assault on  France’s progressive social agenda is spearheaded by the retro-Socialist President Francois Hollande and his troika of authoritarian hyper-capitalist ministers:  Financial Minister Michel Sapin, Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron.

The strategy of relying on a ‘nominal socialist’ to destroy the social welfare state is a classic ‘Trojan Horse’ operation. Hollande’s virulent anti-labor policy is implemented by decree under a joint plan developed in association with France’s leading industrialists.

The imposition of the regressive policy in France began in stages.  It first established the retrograde political leadership with Valls, a notorious authoritarian police-state official willing to over-ride any democratic niceties.  The Economy Minister, Emanuel Macron, a millionaire investment banker, is a direct associate of the financial elite, with no qualms in slashing labor programs.  The Finance Minister Michel Sapin, a long-time accomplice of the French bureaucratic-capitalist elite, is prepared to slash pensions and public services while reducing job security in order to lower the cost of labor to capital.

Once the Hollande and his troika took control of the centers of political power, (and after militarizing French society in response to the terrorist attacks), the regime launched its anti-labor offensive to shred the progressive social agenda.  Its first target was its most formidable – the mass of the French working class.

Declaring ‘anti-ISIS’ martial law powers, Hollande adopted an outright authoritarian strategy, bypassing the elected French Parliament in the legislature and imposed ‘rule by decree’ with the announcement of a highly regressive labor law against the French people.

The dictatorial labor decree was a first step to weaken organized labor’s capacity to protect wages and job security in order to give a powerful impetus to employer control over the French labor force.

Once Hollande’s labor decree established capitalist supremacy, his Troika would be in a decisive position to reverse seventy of incremental social advances.

The joint Hollande-Troika-capitalist bloc emasculated the legislature, leaving a weak, bleating chorus of so-called ‘left Socialists’ to bemoan their political impotence. Then an entirely new business anti-labor code was rolled out, which included the right of bosses to hire and fire workers at will, extend the workday , lengthen the work week, undermine labor’s bargaining power and restrain strikes and job actions.  This would open the way for a wave of irregular and contingent jobs for new workers . . . Using the pretext of terrorist attacks, the French capitalist class had begun to rule by decree to further expand and deepen their long planned assault on labor.

Hollande’s troika and France’s capitalists are lowering corporate taxes and employer contribution to social payments.   Regulations that restrained the concentration of elite power were eliminated.

With curfews and ‘anti-terrorist’ militarized police in the streets, French business elite could now freely begin to to imitate the Anglo-American capitalist elite and impose an iron-fisted New Order.

Without labor constraints on French capital, the bosses are is free to relocate factories and investments any and everywhere, under the most favorable wage, tax, employment and environmental conditions.

No longer required to invest in French industry, the business elite can transfer capital from industry to financial sectors, allowing hundreds of billions of euros to be laundered in off shore tax havens.

The Hollande troika will now also establish its own version of ‘Security and Exchange investigators’ to prosecute and fine its rival Anglo-American financial swindlers, just as the Anglo-Americans pursue their French competitors today.

The Hollande regime’s regressive social agenda has opened the door for an even more extreme Presidential prototype to follow and Alain Juppe is waiting.

The rabid Republican Party presidential candidate, Alain Juppe, promises to go ‘whole hog’ in utterly destroying the French welfare state, as it has existed since the fall of fascism.  If elected president, Juppe promised to slash 100 billion euros from the budget – double the amount that the Hollande regime currently seeks to cut.  Juppe has pledged to eliminate 250,000 civil service jobs in all vital social sectors; to delay the retirement age from 62 to 65; eliminate the 35-hour workweek; facilitate worker layoffs and decimate unemployment benefits.  Finally, Juppe has promised French capital that he would implement their entire business agenda, cut taxes for business and bankers and eliminate the tax on inheritance implemented nearly four decades ago.

In other words, the Hollande regime’s assault on labor and embrace of business has opened the door for the rise of the extreme right.  Moreover, Hollande has manipulated the incidents of Islamist terrorism to assume arbitrary decree powers wiping out any pretense of a democratic government.  The terrorist incidents are arguably related to Hollande’s colonialist embrace of the ‘regime change’ assaults against the secular nationalist governments of Libya and Syria and his policy of sending (or tolerating the recruitment of) marginalized French youth of North African ancestry to fight in the ensuing civil wars.  This has further strengthened the rise of the extreme right in France.

As the Socialist and Republicans compete for dictatorial powers to serve business’ regressive agenda, the nationalist, protectionist and social reformist policies of the National Front are emerging as the populist alternative in the coming presidential race.  Anti-fascist rhetoric has worn thin and important sectors of the working class will turn to the National Front in defense of their jobs and social legislation.  The anti-immigration rhetoric of the National Front is now part of the political vocabulary of the Republicans as well as Prime Minister Valls.

The only alternative to a power grab by the French hard right is a mass general strike and sustained street battles in order to resist the reaction by decree.

As throughout history, popular struggles in France begin in the streets – among the trade unions and young workers angrily facing low wages, austerity and the grim prospect of ‘permanently’ temporary jobs.

The outcome of the intensifying French labor-capital conflict will have a decisive impact on the future of labor throughout Europe, especially among all Left unionists.

Latin America:   The Labor-Capital Showdown

Beyond Europe, the Anglo-American onslaught against labor and the working class resonates most directly in Latin America and to a lesser extent in Asia and Africa.

The first country to fall victim to capital’s attack was Mexico with the implementation of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  By the early 1990’s NAFTA had demolished the independent Mexican trade unions, crippled social legislation, eliminated subsidies to small corn farmers, forced peasants into debt, reduced minimum wage, doubled poverty levels and turned the majority of the labor force into landless, indebted, casual workers.  On the other hand, NAFTA has been a bottomless source of wealth as capitalists accumulate double and triple digit profits and absolute power to hire and fire employees.  Mexico’s government, under Anglo-American capital, has allowed the illicit transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars of Mexican assets to US, English and other overseas banks, which have become immense money-laundering operations.  The proximity of Mexican drug cartels to the US banks has facilitated the extension of their networks into the US market.   The horrific expansion of drug cartel death squads, linked to Mexico’s political leaders, dates from the 1990’s and the signing of NAFTA.  This bloody nexus has consolidated neoliberal political power in Mexico and weakened the possibility of a viable mass electoral alternative.

Anglo-American dominance in Latin America in the 1990’s led to an entire panoply of regressive policies: privatizing and denationalizing the most lucrative natural and state resources, banks and industries; reducing wages and social spending for labor while increasing the concentration of capital.  By 2001 however the Anglo-American edifice collapsed throughout South America with the demise of its neo-liberal political leadership.

From Venezuela in 1999, to Argentina in 2002, Brazil 2003, Bolivia 2006 and Ecuador 2007, left and center-left parties capitalized on their mass support and were elected into power.  They took advantage of global economic conditions with the rising commodity prices, booming Chinese markets and new regional alliances to fund a variety of progressive social agendas, including increased social expenditures, guaranteed pensions, family allowances, minimum wages, wage increases for public sector and expanded labor rights.

The Anglo-American power elite was in retreat and isolated, but it was far from defeated.  They retrenched and prepared to re-mobilize their strategic business, banking and political allies when the opportunity arose.   They counter-attacked when global and regional conditions turned unfavorable to the social regimes.

The assault on Latin America was preceded by the Anglo-American neo-liberal take-over of Northern Europe from the 1990’s to the first decade of the 21^st century.  This was followed by the sweep and grab of the Balkans and Southern Europe.  The combined Anglo-American-EU-NATO offensive now seeks to reverse the last social-welfare regimes in Europe: France and Italy with the help of President Hollande and Prime Minister Renzi.

Simultaneously the Anglo-American offensive has been launched throughout Latin America.  Their goal is to recover the imperial prerogatives, political power and economic privileges lost during the previous decade.  The primary Euro-American target is the ‘golden triangle’, Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela.  These countries constitute a global center of immense oil and agro-mineral wealth.

The Argentine neo-liberal restoration took off in December 2015 with the election of  far-right President Mauricio Macri (image left).   His junta wasted no time in stripping the state of its social legislation, dismantling job security through large-scale layoffs and assuming authoritarian rule by decree to devalue Argentina’s currency by 40% and to eliminate state subsidies and raising the price for gas, electricity, transport, and water between 300 and 800 %.

The regressive offensive was in full force.  Next, Brazil’s twice elected President Dilma Rousseff was ‘impeached’ and essentially overthrown by a bizarre legislative right-wing coup-d’état, designed to reverse a generation of progressive regulatory, labor and employment legislation.  It was also secretly designed to halt corruption investigations against many right-wing politicians.

Venezuela is next.  It will be the scene of a full-scale-elite coup-d’état with imperial backing, to overthrow the government of President Maduro and end decades of progressive social advances under the Chavista governments.

While in France and Italy, the great social reversal is being implemented by internal enemies from the ‘progressive’ political parties (“Trojan Horses”), in Latin America the reversal is led by openly hostile class enemies who depend on the arbitrary exercise of executive power.  The drive to put a definitive end to the ‘welfare state’ in Europe and Latin America is marked by the use of dictatorial decrees, (in the style of Mussolini in the 1920’s) as exercised by Argentina’s elected President Marci in January 2016 and Brazil’s ‘Interim (Coup) President’ Temer in April 2016.  Meanwhile capitalist lockouts, hoarding and sabotage are being used to crush Venezuela’s elected government.

This epochal confrontation has spread across Africa and Asia. China’s capitalist offensive has seen a four-fold increase in the number of new billionaires in less than a decade, at the expense of hundreds of millions of workers stripped of their rights and social programs.

South Africa, under the ANC government, turned its back on social gains promised by the liberation struggle and has imposed regressive social legislation and repressive anti-labor decrees.  A corrupt class of black and white billionaires now rule by guns and clubs over the black working class.

In Africa and the Middle East, the social welfare states of the nationalist regimes in Iraq and Libya have been completely shredded through imperialist military intervention and civil war.  Their once advanced societies have been thrown back into ethno-tribal warfare with no remaining modern social institutions in those two blighted, resource-rich nations.

Wither the Class Struggle:  Historical Reversal and Class Revolt?

The Anglo-American offensive to reverse decades of social advance has captured most of Europe.  They have incorporated or coopted the Social Democratic parties and are moving swiftly toward dismantling the decade-long center-left welfare states in Latin America.

In Africa, the centerpiece of Anglo-Americanization is South Africa, the continent’s most advanced bastion of international capitalism.

In Asia, China, the second most important capitalist economy in the world, has been leading the struggle to overturn the social agenda of the revolutionary past.

Large-scale, prolonged class resistance in several decisive centers is emerging to confront this Anglo-American process of reversion. The class confrontation however takes specific characteristics in each country.

In France, the major protagonists of street fighting and marches are young unemployed or casual workers, members of the strategic transport and oil unions and student-workers facing a bleak future of marginal employment and a shredded social safety net.

Trade unions and farmers’ association have joined the street struggles on numerous occasions, possibly in preparation for a general strike.

In Latin America, the center of the class struggle is Argentina.  Power-mad President Macri immediately imposed regressive policies against all sectors of the working class.  His actions managed to unite the four major trade union confederations, multiple retirees associations and small businesspeople bankrupted by exorbitant charges on gas and electrical use and regional neighborhood federations.  The widespread growth of job actions among public sector employees points to a general strike.

The regressive assault on long-term social legislation in Brazil immediately followed the thinly disguised capitalist coup.  The ousting of President Rousseff has provoked street demonstrations, led by the huge rural landless workers movement (MST), the confederation of industrial and service workers (CUT), social movements of the homeless workers and the recipients of Lula’s poverty programs.  New revelations, based on taped conversations among the coup plotters reveal their plans to oust the incumbent President Rousseff in order to derail official investigations into their own corruption scandals.  This has enraged the general public.

With the initial take-over, the Brazilian political-financial elite has prepared to launch its full-scale reversal of pensions and employment laws and wage guarantees.  The pro-business leadership plans to slash corporate and wealth taxes and to appoint business executives to all leading ministries.  The deep corruption scandal and the mass demonstrations suggest the rightwing power grab may not survive.

The regressive offensive in Venezuela has severely crippled the national economy and deeply eroded living standards of the vast majority of the working class.  The rightist Congress, backed by the US and allied with international mass media, industry and multinational banks, are trying to force the resignation of Socialist President Maduro.

Maduro has declared a state of emergency and mobilized the armed forces.  He  called on the military and popular militia to defend the constitutional order and has threatened to mobilize the workers to “take control of the means of production”.  Still, the leftist government vacillates over arming the militias and workers.   A wide gap remains before the word and the deed.

In the meantime Venezuela’s right wing and left-wing mass mobilizations face each other in the streets seething with class hatred and waiting to engage in a decisive confrontation.  The military thus far remains constitutionalist and on the side of the elected president.

In South Africa, the corrupt pro-business ANC led by President Zuma (image right) murdered dozens of striking mine workers.  It has impoverished millions of shantytown residents, while increasing the wealth and power of the black-white elite.  On April 30, 2016, 1.1.million South African activists, including civil society and community organizations and trade unions covering the mining, manufacturing and service sectors have organized to form a new confederation linked with informal, unemployed and poor workers.  The South African Workers Summit replaces the moribund and corrupt labor confederation, COSATU, the ‘labor desk’ for the neo-liberal ANC regime.  The new confederation will co-ordinate mass struggles and reclaim social programs as a central part of the anti-capitalist revolution.

In China, the growth and consolidation of the world’s second largest concentration of billionaires has led to the proliferation of large-scale industrial workers’ strikes, walkouts and confrontations with factory bosses, company unions and government officials.  China is becoming the epicenter of Asia’s working class struggles.  Chinese workers have forced the government to investigate and jail over 200,000 corrupt officials, high and low, and to concede substantial wage increases and social compensation to factory workers.  Fearing more social upheaval, China’s billionaires and multi-millionaires have transferred hundreds of billions of dollars of stolen assets abroad in a buying spree of high-end property in the ‘safe’ Anglo-American “heartland” of world reaction.

The continued advance of working class struggles against the public and private oligarchs has forced the Chinese Prime Minister to reform elite privileges and prosecute large-scale banking swindles and illegal seizure of farmland.  Especially important, millions of workers have successfully secured double-digit wage increases and the right to legally live in urban/industrial and construction centers.

As it gains momentum, class struggle in China can become the centerpiece for a wider Asian social transformation and a great leap forward to socialist values.

Conclusion

The Anglo-American drive to establish a global regressive social order has pushed billions of workers on five continents into destitution, insecurity and lifelong exploitation.  The capitalist world rules by fiat and violence, declaring that social regression and worker repression are the ‘wave of the future’. For the elite, the proper order of the universe is being ‘restored’!

In response, new working class organizations have emerged and engage directly to defend their historic social advances and economic rights.

In the course of defending their past progressive social legacy, the new working class militants can clearly see the imperative to challenge and overthrow the entire political and economic order.  From France to Latin America, from China to South Africa, class struggle is defining the present and future of class relations.

This year has seen the globally hottest-ever April, and indications point to the worst-ever summer. The media is reporting rock bottom reservoir water levels at the start of summer, and dire predictions of worse days to come for farmers and rural people, and also urban dwellers. Due to this worst drought in living memory that has hit most of India, around 300 million people, as estimated by one source, are migrating. One can only wonder why this on-going tragedy does not make it to the front pages of newspapers.

The callousness of many leaders towards this national crisis is revealed by their finding the time to pat themselves on the back, announce and celebrate their “achievements” at public expense and give themselves raises in their own salaries, but not finding time to visit drought-hit people or allocate sufficient funds for drought relief. It needed the Supreme Court of India to goad state and central governments to commence serious action to provide water to thirsty populations.

There are fears of water-based conflicts within and between the societies of rural and urban areas. These have happened in the past, but the scale of conflicts may be more intense and widespread in 2016 if, for example, the heated official exchanges regarding water demands of downstream Delhi and Haryana and upstream Punjab over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal are any indication.

While there are several important aspects to the water issue, only two major aspects are addressed here due to space restrictions, namely, the governance involved in urban water supply, and the “solution” of interlinking rivers (ILR).

Water governance in urban areas

Governments are giving conflicting reports in the media, with some officials saying that it is possible to tide over the urban scarcity, and others saying that conditions are going to get much worse. Officials of course insist on anonymity, for fear of action against them, while politicians do their standard politicking, and grandly pass orders to the officials to “ensure that drinking water supply is not interrupted”.

Always at the receiving end of slipshod governance, most people get water for a few hours once in two or three or seven days while some get water daily, enabling their domestics to wash cars and driveways with a hose. When a water pipe bursts (not uncommon because of inferior materials and/or poor workmanship due to corrupt practices) the water supply authority reacts tardily, and millions of litres of precious water gush away into the drains, even while thousands line up with pots at street pipes, and the better-off purchase water from tankers operated by a water-tanker mafia.

Public announcements calling for water conservation are rare and, when issued, they politely call upon citizens to cooperate and use water carefully, even while non-working water meters, illegal water connections and unpaid water bills place financial strain on the water suppy system. The reason for politeness of tone and request for cooperation in a decidedly grim, even desperate situation, is clear evidence of weak governance stemming from systemic corruption. Public determination to handle the worsening situation is essential, to find a viable course of action.

Essential measures

When the sources of water fail, focus needs to shift from demand-driven supply augmentation to managing available water through realistic demand management. Some of its essential facets itemized are:

# Improve system efficiency including planning distribution and delivery, infrastructure and renewals, electrical energy costs, personnel training.

# Revise tariff with steep rates for high consumption.

# Enforce existing by-laws and rules regarding functioning of meters, illegal connections and unpaid bills, with appropriate penal action against defaulting consumers and staff.

# Address system water-loss and assure minimum supply timings.

# Periodic public programs for water conservation.

# Use IT management tools (GIS and MIS) for realizing revenue.

Interlinking rivers

The interlinking rivers (ILR) project estimated in 2002 to cost at least Rs.5,60,000 crores (but more likely Rs.10,00,000 crores), seeks to link 30 major rivers with 37 mega canals, involving acquiring an estimated 6,00,000 hectares of land, for mass-transfer of flood water from “water-surplus” areas to drought-prone “water-deficit” areas, to simultaneously relieve flood and drought. While the proposal appears attractive, it has serious inconsistencies, only two of which are outlined here. (For more details, please see References).

Firstly, flood water is to be sourced from Ganga near Bhagalpur which is at about 60-m elevation above MSL, where flood flow averages 50,000 cumecs. The maximum that a canal of 100-m width and 10-m depth can carry is 2,000 cumecs of water, which will “relieve” the flood by a mere 4%. Apart from the huge initial and annual maintenance costs to keep the water flowing into the canal and removing sediment, this 2,000 cumecs can only flow by gravity to levels lower than 60-m elevation on the East coast, whereas the drought-prone areas are on the Deccan plateau at levels over 1,000-m elevation. Thus neither flood nor drought can be relieved by interlinking.

Secondly, the flood season is for four monsoon months. During 8-months dry season, Ganga flows at an average 5,280 cumecs. The headworks of the interlinking canal will be far from the main flowchannel, and feeding the canal with water will call for expensive heavy engineering every year besides, much more importantly, handling the strong resistance of people of the region who will resist transfer of 2,000 cumecs (38% of water) in the dry season when they need it most.

Thus, since neither flood nor drought can relieved, and the system will have questionable utility during monsoon and be useless in the dry season, making it economically unviable. The argument of mass transfer of water from “water-surplus” to “water-deficit” areas is fundamentally flawed.

The promotion of water-sharing through grandiose plans of dams and canals to interlink rivers, by quoting the mandate of a distant Court of Law will not slake the thirst for water for drinking or agriculture. The fact that there are several unresolved inter-State water disputes before water disputes tribunals indicates that water-sharing between States is essentially problematic. Even between districts within the same State, water disputes have had to be bulldozed by State governments, leaving sullen, disillusioned, water-starved populations. In the general context of national water stress, pressing ILR can only lead to more social unrest and political instability.

The fact is that every State needs and wants water and they are loathe to part with water. In situations of dire water shortages, whatever the method of its computation, local compulsions will predominate over the dictates of distant seats of executive or judicial power. Enforcement of the writ of governments, whether due to their own political expediency or their being forced by superior courts of law, can only be by use of state police, central police and military force. Resort to such strong-arm measures with regard to water will indicate that governance has failed and the situation is outside the scope of political management. Indeed, in Latur (Maharashtra), Police have been posted near water sources to protect the water and ensure that people do not “steal” water from the source!

What a situation!

The present water situation is at best sub-critical. Only efforts to holistically understand the problems and their magnitude can provide genuine relief in the present, and effect a relatively easy transition to a future of certainly lowered water availability.

The ILR project is essentially a demand-based, supply-augmentation, systemically flawed macro “solution”. The examples of the SYL Canal (an incomplete canal for water-sharing between three States) and the Cauvery River (the water of the river being less than the total demand of the riparian states) should be indication enough of the political problems of ILR, which can snowball into constitution-shaking proportions.

India, already severely water-stressed in a warming globe, is in the midst of a water-crisis which is predicted to repeat itself. We have entered the era of the consequences of thoughtless supply-side management practices. The urgent need is for socially sensitive, economically viable demand-side water management.

Failing to build democratic and effective water management structures for democratic governance processes will risk violent social situations due to water conflicts. Political leaders in the States and the Centre need to come out of their “Nero-fiddling” role and firmly steer a course away from impending chaos and disaster. The way forward is local water conservation and management.

References

1. Vombatkere, S.G., “A Systems Approach to Interlinking Rivers in India: An examination of Viability”, An Anthology of Essays titled “Interlinking of Rivers in India: Issues and Concerns”, Ed: M. Monirul Qader Mirza, et al; Pub: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, pp.77-89.

2. Vombatkere, S.G., “From Water Crisis to Constitutional Crisis?: A Suggested Solution”, Mainstream, New Delhi, Vol XLV No 9, February 17, 2007.

Major General S.G. Vombatkere, VSM, retired in 1996 as Additional DG Discipline & Vigilance in Army HQ AG’s Branch. President of India awarded him Visishta Seva Medal in 1993 for distinguished service rendered in the high-altitude region of Ladakh. He holds a PhD degree in Structural Dynamics from I.I.T, Madras. With over 470 published papers in national and international journals and seminars, his area of interest remains strategic and development-related issues. E-mail: [email protected]

They always say, “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Oh well…

As news breaks that US NATO backed opposition leader, Mohammed Alloush [Jaish al Islam] has resigned in disgust that his terms are not being met in the Geneva peace talks, the media is struggling to conceal the Saudi, NATO and US control mechanisms that are in place to manoeuver their terrorist chess pieces across the war-against-Syria chessboard.

In March 2016, while negotiating for “peace”, Alloush stated:

“We believe that the transitional period should start with the fall, or death, of Bashar al-Assad,” chief opposition negotiator Mohammad Alloush said.

“It cannot start with the presence of the regime, or the head of this regime still in power.” ~ ABC

The following article from IBT demonstrates clearly that Alloush is nothing more than another terrorist piece of the Saudi, US, NATO jigsaw.

How much longer will the NATO “Left” continue supporting these fake “moderate rebels” who are blatantly destroying Syria and responding to commands from their foreign, “regime-change” intent handlers? :

Mohammed Alloush, the chief peace negotiator of the mainstream Syrian opposition has resigned from his post, following the failure of the UN-backed talks in Geneva. On 29 May, Alloush, who is a member of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, High Negotiations Committee (HNC), and a member of the rebel faction Jaysh al-Islam, said that peace talks failed to bring over a political transition or help millions of Syrians who are caught in the war.

Alloush further said that peace talks were a “waste of time”, if demands of the main opposition are not met. He added that talks are unlikely to resume so long as the current Syrian government remains in power and do not agree to enter “serious negotiations”.

“The three rounds of talks were unsuccessful because of the stubbornness of the regime and its continued bombardments and aggressions against the Syrian people,” BBC reported.

His resignation was accepted in a meeting by chief coordinator of HNC, Riad Hijab, in Riyadh. The HNC previously refused to attend any further peace talks until radical changes are seen on the grounds in the war-torn country.

The office of UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura in a statement on 26 May said that a date to resume peace talks will not be set for at least the next three weeks.

The Syrian government along with Russia and Iran does not recognise the HNC as the main opposition and have branded Alloush a “terrorist”.

The Syrian Arab Republic’s flag was raised over the municipal building inside the city of Mu’adhimiyah on Sunday as a reconciliation agreement was put in place by local committees. Ajnad al-Sham had controlled it. All barricades inside the city are removed.

On Friday, the Russian General Staff reported that Russian had intensified air strikes against oil sites and smuggling routes to Turkey controlled by an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Al Nusra Front. The Russian Aerospace Forces reportedly conduct air raids against Al Nusra and ISIS militants in the provinces of Aleppo and Homs. However, Russia’s Defense Ministry doesn’t provide information about the number of sorties and destroyed targets.

The ground operation of the Syrian Democratic Forces is ongoing in Northern Raqqa. There are clashes in the Ain Issa district, Brigade 93 and al-Nakhil area. Moreover, on May 29, the SDF launched a new operation against ISIS on the eastern bank of Euphrates. It’s aimed at recapturing the town of Tabqa.

The US-led coalition has bombarded ISIS positions with more than 150 airstrikes since the ground offensive in the area launched last Tuesday. According to Russian sources, Russian planes dropped arms and munitions to the SDF units in order to support the operation.

In the area of Fallujah, the Iraqi Security Forces and the Popular Mobilization Forces continued operation against ISIS. On May 28, the allies took control of Sijar and the Sijar bridge, the Mukhtar village and nearby Islamic cemetery. Separately, Iraqi forces advanced south of Fallujah, recapturing the villages of Al-Hoor and Albu Hawah. We remember, the Iraqi Army has declared on Saturday the start of an operation to liberate Fallujah’s city center. The operation is shifting to urban warfare while Iraqi forces are completing the siege of the city.

The Kurdistan Region Security Council annouced on May 29 that the Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched a military operation East of Mosul in Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate. The strategic goal of the operation is to increase pressure on ISIS militants in and around the city. Kurdish units already seized 7 villages, including Muftia, Tal Aswad. Some 5500 Peshmerga troops reportedly participate in the opperation.

The offensive is supported by the US-led coalition’s air power. There are also reports that the US soldiers loading armored vehicles have been seen outside the village of Hassan Shami, a few miles east of the frontline.

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There’s really no excuse for supporting the NATO/terror position. We’ve seen the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, now Syria, all built on lies, all beneath the guise of “humanitarian interventions”. Since people with any sense of historical memory can not legitimately plead ignorance, supporters of the terrorist invasion of Syria fall into the category of “fake humanitarians”. They aren’t “progressive” or “left” when they support the criminal violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Canadian peace activist Ken Stone, recently returned from Syria, expresses similar sentiments in his newly released book, Defiant Syria|dispatches from the Second Tour of Peace to Syria.  He explains,

The point for me is to ask why otherwise intelligent people can fall for such shit (referring to a 2015 New Internationalist magazine article: “The forgotten revolution of Syria”), and not once but repeatedly.  It’s not as if Syria is the very first government targeted for regime change by the USA.  It’s not that people are unaware of the fact that the first casualty of war is the truth … there is never a shortage of “leftists” in the West who can be either bought or convinced through incredible naivété, warped political outlook, or Eurocentric arrogance, that the motives of Empire are good.

People such as Ken, who have visited Syria and have seen with their own eyes the devastation wrought by Western-supported terrorists against civilization, have less tolerance for the lies, the propaganda, and the gullible, “fake humanitarians” who enable it all.

Stone doesn’t mince words when he describes some of his on-the-ground observations of Homs, Syria; observations fortified by his historical memory of NATOs imperial destruction elsewhere:

Judging from the many corpses found buried around the city, some of which were missing eyes and various internal organs, many have speculated that the mercenaries ran a lucrative trade in human organs, besides their human trafficking in Syrian women, boys, and children, and their other rackets such as rapine and pillage … The terrorist organizations were working in accordance with a well-rehearsed imperial script here in Homs.  The KLA, NATOs foot soldiers in Kosovo (formerly part of Yugoslavia) also ran an organ smuggling operation out of a house in Pristina in 1999.

To their detriment, the fake “humanitarians” and pseudo “leftists” are shielded from such on-the-ground realities.

In a later chapter, “Palmyra: Bride Of The Desert”, Stone also bemoans the self-proclaimed “leftists” who cast the Russians as “imperialists” and as guilty as the West in the war against Syria – conveniently forgetting that Russia is legally in Syria, while NATO is not:

“It’s true,” he writes, “that Russia is unfortunately no longer a socialist country.  However, it doesn’t act like an imperialist country either.  Mr. Putin consistently respects the sovereignty of other countries, such as Syria, and speaks up at the United Nations for the observance of international law, which the USA, priding itself as “the exceptional country” and the “sole indispensable country”, tramples on almost every day.”

This resonates with the author’s earlier piece, “Western Hegemony vs Russian Sanity”, and the “Saker’s” observations of the differences between the “Anglo-Zionist Unipolar Imperial Model” and the “Russian Multipolar Model”.

Sustainable evidence demonstrates, for example, that the current Russian multipolar model respects the rule of international law, ideological and cultural pluralism, and the use of military force as a last resort.

The illegal Western war of aggression against Syria, on the other hand, is consistent with the “Anglo-Zionist Unipolar Imperial Model” which defies the rule of international law, negates ideological and cultural pluralism, and uses military violence as a first resort.

The West’s invasion contradicts the rule of international law: Russia is in Syria legally, whereas the West is not; it negates Syria’s ideological and cultural pluralism and seeks to replace with a Wahhabist stooge government or an assortment of stooge governments in balkanized states; and it demonstrates the West’s propensity to use military violence as a first resort – the invasion, after all, was planned well in advance.

Given the fact of the West’s criminality, consistent with the “Anglo-Zionist Unipolar Imperialist Model”, and the concurrent failures of the “fake humanitarians” and the fake “left” to reconcile themselves to evidence-based findings and historical memory, Stone reiterates some concrete steps that should be taken by those of us who support foreign policy trajectories consistent with peace and the rule of international law, rather than the current reality of war and barbarism.

Important steps would include normalizing diplomatic relations with Syria, ending illegal sanctions, withdrawing from all criminal military interventions against Syria, and withdrawing from NATO.

Canada needs to assert an independent foreign policy, and it needs to reject the current barbarity implicit in its status as a vassal appendage of the Anglo-Zionist Unipolar Imperial Model.  This is what Real Change would look like.

The IAEA issued a new report reconfirming that Iran is “complying with the P5+1 nuclear deal, and that Iran’s stockpiles have all remained below the limits set forth in the deal.”

The ‘deal’ has been selectively imposed, mainly by the US, as a propaganda and war-weapon against Iran, which the US has sought to reconquer since its proxy dictator was overthrown in 1979. While forcing Iran to comply with the strict regime, Washington ignores nuclear violations and ambitions by its allies or proxies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The US itself remains the world’s leading violator of nuclear weapons law and the only country that has used nuclear weapons on people, including in human experimentation.

New Pentagon figures show that, while accepting peace prizes and preaching disarmament, Obama has worked specifically to‘dramatically’, as Jason Ditz puts it, slow down the rate at which the US reduces its nuclear arsenal. Instead, he has illegally allocated at least a trillion dollars towards ‘modernizing’ nuclear weapons, a move experts have said is “counterproductive” and “sure to cause an arms race.”

At the same time, Obama has told residents of the impoverished US village of Flint to drink polluted water, and has violatedinternational law by refusing to provide water at all to residents of Detroit, many of whom have been affected by off-shoring of manufacturing in search of workers that are easier to repress.

In better news, the US seems to be caving to international pressure to stop selling illegal cluster bombs to Saudi dictator Salman bin Abdulaziz, who, with US support, has been killing civilians in a war of aggression against Yemen.

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

The strongest evidence linking the alleged hijackers to 9/11 was a video said to be from the closed circuit TV (CCTV) system at Dulles International Airport in Washington DC. The video was not made available until the day before the9/11 Commission Report was released, in 2004, and it helped to pave the way for widespread acceptance of the official account. Since the other evidence against the accused hijackers was dubious and suspiciously convenientfor the FBI, which provided it, the Dulles video should be examined closely.

Doing so has led some independent 9/11 investigators to conclude that the Dulles video contains “no information to link its images to AA 77.” Reasons include that:

1. 1. None of the Dulles airport staff remembered seeing the alleged hijackers at the airport
   2. Dulles had over 300 cameras but no footage was released except for portions of this one video (and no video was available from the other airports)
   3. The alleged Dulles video contains no date, time stamp, or camera identification
   4. The video was shot at a rate of 30 frames per second (fps), which the investigators said is not typical of CCTV videos
   5. The video appears to be an edited composite of shots taken from different angles

Additionally, it has been noticed that the airport screeners in the Dulles video did not perform their duties according to airport requirements. An attorney representing 9/11 victims’ families stated that security agents in the video screened the suspects in ways that were not like those required in Dulles training videos.

Could the video be fraudulent?

Dulles airport security manager Ed Nelson said that the FBI confiscated the actual video from the CCTV system “some time after 10:00 a.m.” on 9/11. Nelson wondered how the FBI “knew who the hijackers were out of hundreds of people going through the checkpoints.” Two days later it was reported that FBI agents had “examined footage from dozens of cameras at the three airports where the terrorists boarded the aircraft.” However, the official account claimed that no such footage existed except for the one video later released as the Dulles CCTV evidence.

Recently, I had an online discussion with a man who managed maintenance of the Dulles CCTV system until mid-2000. His comments shed some light on questions of whether the video is genuine. This was the second of two former employees of Stratesec who made comments on my blog early this year. Stratesec was the security company that had contracts for several of the facilities impacted on 9/11 including Dulles Airport, the WTC, and United Airlines.

Like the first former Stratesec employee who contacted me, Andrew Olson, the Dulles video manager (calling himself only “David C”) is now working on contracts for the U.S. Department of Defense. David C’s comments on my blog were made from an IP address belonging to the U.S. DOD Network Information Center in Washington, DC, run by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Apparently, David C went from a job at Stratesec to working for a “dot com start-up…just two blocks from the WTC” to working at the DIA where he makes comments defending Stratesec.

That these two former Stratesec employees now serve as military suppliers reflects the fact that Stratesec’s leaders also went on to profit from the crimes of 9/11. For example, the company’s chief operating office Barry McDaniel started a police-state supply business with a close colleague of Dick Cheney. And Stratesec’s chief executive, Wirt D. Walker, went on to run businesses with people who have close ties to U.S. military and intelligence agencies.

David C worked for Stratesec from 1995 to 2000, in the role of Senior Field Engineer Technician for most of that time. He was responsible for operations of security systems, access control systems, badging systems, and CCTV systems installation and management at Dulles airport. He has provided images of documents that support these claims. It’s important to note that David C was not operating these systems at the time of 9/11. Management of the Dulles CCTV system had changed from Stratesec to ADT a year before the attacks.

The cameras used in the Dulles CCTV system came from Verint Video Solutions. Coincidentally, Verint cameras were also used at the Pentagon, the WTC and, later, in the London subway system at the time of the July 2007 bombing. It was Verint employee David Brent who reported that he had viewed all the video from over 300 camerasthat had recorded the events at Dulles on 9/11.

When David C was asked about the evidence suggesting the Dulles 9/11 video might be altered or fraudulent, he responded with extensive comments, many of which were not specific enough to be useful. With regard to the five reasons listed above, the most important of David C’s answers relate to reasons 3 and 4.

3. Why was there no timestamp on the video? David C’s answer: Dulles used a state-of-the-art Loronix video software system. The system recorded date and time information, which could not be altered. But the video could be exported without the timestamp showing. This was done in some cases where the timestamp obscured some of what was taking place.

4. How could the video be shot at 30 fps when typical security video is at 1 to 4 fps? David C’s answer: The state-of-the-art Loronix recording software allowed for “real time” (30 fps) video to be recorded and stored for up to two weeks.

The use of Loronix video software at Dulles was confirmed in a 1998 paper (pdf) from the University of Southampton. The paper states that, with the Loronix system, “Each video clip is fingerprinted through a mathematical algorithm during the video capture process. The fingerprint becomes part of the clip and is used by the playback software to verify the video has not been altered.” Therefore, although the date and time stamp are not necessarily present, the Dulles video file can be confirmed to be genuine and unaltered if one has access to the Loronix software program in which to view it. The video can be downloaded here although it is not in the original format.

It’s interesting that the video did not appear as publicly available evidence until 2004, more than a year after the Dulles system was upgraded in a way that allowed the video files to be accessed remotely. Until the video fingerprint is confirmed independently, the question of whether the video genuinely represents activities filmed on 9/11 at Dulles will remain unanswered.

Additionally, it’s odd that David C knew about the Loronix software but said he had never heard of Verint, the company that manufactured the cameras and owned the Loronix product. He also stated “I think we may have had only two cameras at the security checkpoints [at Dulles]” and yet could not explain how the evidentiary video appeared to be made of shots from different angles. Perhaps follow-up questions will reveal more of the truth.

If the video is a fake, how could that have been done? There are a number of considerations in answering this question.

The video was leaked to the press (at a politically timed moment) in 2004 by the law firm Motley Rice, represented at the time by terrorism propagandist Jean-Charles Brisard. How the firm came by the video was never reported. However, it is known that the FBI confiscated the original video and had shown it to a 9/11 family member who said “the terrorists’ faces had been digitally disguised.” Why would the FBI take the time to digitally disguise the faces of dead suspects? Moreover, if the Bureau could do that what other modifications could be done?

The FBI made at least one “training film” at Dulles. The Bureau had strong ties to Stratesec as well, in that the company’s president from 1998 to 1999 was Charles Archer, the FBI’s former Assistant Director In Charge of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division. Stratesec’s directors had also previously owned a movie production company called Prism Entertainment.

How about Verint? In 2002, the year before remote access to Dulles video files became a possibility and two years before the video was released, the company named Howard Safir as a director. Safir is a former New York City Police and Fire Commissioner who was appointed to those roles by his close friend (and 9/11 suspect) Rudy Giuliani. Did Safir have any role in release of the Dulles video?

In any case, because the Dulles 9/11 video is the strongest evidence implicating the alleged hijackers, investigating its validity remains important. As shown above, questions that remain unanswered about the video can still be resolved with an objective approach that is open to dialogue and open to possibilities.

Kevin Ryan blogs at Dig Within.

All voices should be welcome at the “Crossing Borders” conference on refugees, 7-10 July 2016, organized by the Cooperative Institute for Transnational Studies (CITS) in collaboration with the University of the Aegean, and taking place on the Greek island of Lesbos. The organizers say “Today, ‘the West’ is facing the worst crisis of human dispossession since the aftermath of the Second World War. ….These urgent questions and conditions necessitate that radical activists, artists, politicians, refugees, scholars and students gather, discuss and debate.”

Unfortunately the organizers have been pressured to censor discussion and debate. A campaign was launched to disinvite keynote speaker Dr. Tim Anderson (University of Sydney). His book “The Dirty War on Syria” exposes the role of the USA and its allies in destabilizing Syria, funding and promoting the conflict that has led to the current refugee crisis. As they have in the past, some groups and individuals who support the armed opposition in Syria are trying to prevent a broader discussion.

Whatever our views about Anderson or any of the other speakers, it is wrong to silence an important voice at the conference, and especially one that expresses a repressed viewpoint. We should always be concerned when someone tries to prevent us from hearing an alternative explanation.

The advocates of censorship have said that they will ask other speakers to withdraw if Anderson is allowed to speak. That is their right. Speakers are free not to speak. But for the organizers to withdraw an invitation to a confirmed speaker is to remove that speaker’s right as well as the right of the attendees to hear him.

We call on the organizers of the conference to reject censorship and encourage open discussion and debate on the causes of dispossession and destruction leading to migration. It is essential for the conference to include voices like Dr. Tim Anderson’s and to consider the responsibility of the USA and its allies in the destruction of Syria and creation of the refugee crisis.

The purpose of this piece is to draw readers’ attention to an important chapter from a document by Aruna Rodrigues that discusses the unique risks associated with GM crops. Contrary to what supporters of GM often claim, it shows that criticisms of this technology are based on credible concerns, sound logic and solid science.

However, some background information and context might first be useful to indicate that, while critics rely on science, the pro-GMO lobby is mired in duplicity and engages in the debasement of science.

Introduction

The public continues to be fed the message that GMOs are safe and there is a consensus within the ‘scientific community’ over this. We are also informed that there is no difference between crops that have been traditionally bred and GM crops.

To promote GM, however, the pro-GMO lobby relies on fraud, regulatory delinquency, non-transparent and undemocratic practices, smear campaigns against critics, dirty tricks and repeating the message that, for instance, a trillion meals containing GMOs have been eaten and no one has died or become ill as a result and that ‘the debate is over’. Aside from well-funded slick PR, it also relies on secretive studies, reports riddled with conflicts of interest and makes baseless claims wrapped up as scientific facts.

It is to the industry’s advantage and those of its co-opted officials, scientists and journalists to promote GM and to deflect attention away from their own interests in batting for this technology. While attempting to denigrate critics of GMOs as somehow being tainted, independence and objectivity appear to be alien concepts to these figures.

Their PR machine is deployed to unscientifically attack scientists working on biosafety, such as Árpád Pusztai, Ignacio Chapela, Irina Ermakova, Éric Séralini and myself. Many journalists, having no scientific background themselves, have become soldiers in this PR assault. Privileged white men like Mark Lynas, Jon Entine and Michael Specter, with no practical experience in agriculture, armed only with BA degrees and ties to corporate-controlled media, are being used to undermine real scientific findings about the impact of GMOs on our health and ecosystems. – Vandana Shiva, ‘Fine Print of the Food Wars’

Aruna Rodrigues and the unique risks of GM crops

The purpose here, however, is not to go over old ground by describing the glaring hypocrisy, misrepresentations and double standards that the pro-GMO lobby engages in. This has been highlighted time and again and can be read about by clicking on some of the links provided above.

The aim is draw readers’ attention to the document mentioned at the start. Written by Aruna Rodrigues, it sets out a scientific argument for rejecting GM and shows how the pro-GMO case is too often based on deceit and myths. Such concepts should have no place in scientific discourse yet have become commonplace.

Through a writ petition in the Supreme Court of India, Aruna Rodrigues has challenged the Government of India’s promotion of GM. She believes that a completely independent regulatory body should be set up to conduct safety tests for possible risks to humans and the environment. The evidence she provides shows that such independence is currently lacking and the push for GMOs in India is based on secrecy, regulatory delinquency and, ultimately, fraud (as is the case elsewhere too).

She is not the only one to have noted industry influence on decision-making processes surrounding GMOs in India.

The government is facilitating profiteering by MNCs without addressing the concerns about bio-safety, monopoly control over seeds and having a fool-proof regulatory mechanism in place. – People’s Democracy, Communist Party of India (M)

Rodrigues discusses how GMOs came into being in the US, describes how regulations and protocols have been bypassed or breached, outlines the science behind GM and dismisses the claims that GM is essential for feeding the world. In presenting her carefully thought out arguments, she refers to dozens of official reports, statements and independent peer-reviewed research.

Read what Aruna Rodrigues has to say by clicking on the following link:

“The Precautionary Principle (PP) Requires to be Interpreted Critically and Pre-emptively for its Proper Application to the Unique Risks of GM crops” by Aruna Rodrigues

(Download courtesy of Food Sovereignty Ghana)

If you allow someone to pump hours of “programming” into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world.  In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market. 

In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the “programming” that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world.  So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous “propaganda matrix”?

Just think about your own behavior.  Even as you are reading this article the television might be playing in the background or you may have some music on.  Many of us have gotten to the point where we are literally addicted to media.  In fact, there are people out there that become physically uncomfortable if everything is turned off and they have to deal with complete silence.

It has been said that if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out.  It is the things that we do consistently that define who we are, and so if you are feeding your mind with hours of “programming” from the big media corporations each day, that is going to have a dramatic affect on who you eventually become.

These monolithic corporations really do set the agenda for what society focuses on.  For example, when you engage in conversation with your family, friends or co-workers, what do you talk about?  If you are like most people, you might talk about something currently in the news, a television show that you watched last night or some major sporting event that is taking place.

Virtually all of that news and entertainment is controlled by the elite by virtue of their ownership of these giant media corporations.

I want to share some numbers with you that may be hard to believe.  They come directly out of Nielsen’s “Total Audience Report“, and they show how much news and entertainment the average American consumes through various methods each day…

Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes

Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes

Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes

Using  a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes

When you add all of those numbers together, it comes to a grand total of more than 10 hours.

And keep in mind that going to movie theaters, playing video games and reading books are behaviors that are not even on this list.

What in the world are we doing to ourselves?

The combination of watching live television and watching time-shifted television alone comes to a total of more than five hours.

If you feed five hours of something into your mind day after day, it is going to change you.  There is no way around that.  You may think that you are strong enough to resist the programming, but the truth is that it affects all of us in very subtle ways that we do not even understand.

And as I mentioned above, there are just six giant corporations that account for almost all of the programming that we receive through our televisions.  Below is a list of these six corporations along with a sampling of the various media properties that they own…

Comcast

NBC
Telemundo
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
USA Network
Bravo
CNBC
The Weather Channel
MSNBC
Syfy
NBCSN
Golf Channel
Esquire Network
E!
Cloo
Chiller
Universal HD
Comcast SportsNet
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Studio Home Video

The Walt Disney Company

ABC Television Network
ESPN
The Disney Channel
A&E
Lifetime
Marvel Entertainment
Lucasfilm
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Disney Mobile
Disney Consumer Products
Interactive Media
Disney Theme Parks
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures

News Corporation

Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox News Channel
Fox Business Network
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 2
National Geographic
Nat Geo Wild
FX
FXX
FX Movie Channel
Fox Sports Networks
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
Barron’s
SmartMoney
HarperCollins
20th Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Blue Sky Studios
Beliefnet
Zondervan

Time Warner

CNN
The CW
HBO
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
HLN
NBA TV
TBS
TNT
TruTV
Turner Classic Movies
Warner Bros.
Castle Rock
DC Comics
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
New Line Cinema
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine

Viacom

MTV
Nickelodeon
VH1
BET
Comedy Central
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Country Music Television (CMT)
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land

CBS Corporation

CBS Television Network
The CW (along with Time Warner)
CBS Sports Network
Showtime
TVGN
CBS Radio, Inc.
CBS Television Studios
Simon & Schuster
Infinity Broadcasting
Westwood One Radio Network

Fortunately, those enormous media conglomerates do not have quite the same monopoly over the Internet, but we are starting to see a tremendous amount of consolidation in the online world as well.  Just check out these numbers…

Overall, the top 10 publishers — together owning around 60 news sites — account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.

The biggest online news publisher for the U.S. audience was MSN, owner of MSN.com, with just over 27 billion combined page views across mobile and desktop, followed by Disney Media Networks, owner of ESPN and ABC News, with 25.9 billion.

The battle for the future of this nation is a battle for the hearts and minds of individuals.

And it is hard to see how things will be turned in a dramatically different direction as long as most of us are willingly feeding our hearts and minds with hours of “programming” that is controlled by the elite each day.

The good news is that there are signs of an awakening.  More Americans than ever are becoming disenchanted with the mainstream media, and this is showing up in recent survey numbers.  Here is one example…

Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans’ skepticism about what they read on social media.

Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions.

As Americans (and people all over the world) have lost confidence in the mainstream media, they have been seeking out other sources of news and entertainment.  This has greatly fueled the rise of the alternative media, and the dozens of websites all over the Internet where this article will ultimately be published are examples of this explosion.

You can only enslave people for so long.  Ultimately, they will want to break free of the chains that are holding them back and they will want to find the truth.

In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves.  If you find that you are still addicted to the “programming” that the giant media corporations are feeding you, I would encourage you to start unplugging from the matrix more frequently.

In the end, you will be glad that you did.

Two and a half months ago, asked by award-winning playwright Lin-Manuel Mirandaabout imprisoned Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar López Rivera – whose only crime, according to Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is “conspiracy to free his people from the shackles of imperial justice” – President Barack Obama told the Hamilton creator that he “had [the case] on his desk.” Miranda, whose parents hail from Puerto Rico, used his invitation to the White House to bring up the issue of López Rivera’s continued incarceration, which is of tremendous importance to Puerto Ricans. Both on the island and in the diaspora, freedom for the 73-year-old political prisoner enjoys overwhelming popular support and has united people across the political spectrum.

Sunday marked the 35th anniversary that López was imprisoned. He was convicted in 1981 of “seditious conspiracy” for trying to overthrow the U.S. government by force, as well as minor charges including possession of firearms and transporting stolen vehicles across state lines. López was acussed of holding a leadership position in the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertoriqqueña), a Puerto Rican nationalist organization, which he did not admit to but did not dispute. The group claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in Chicago and New York during the 1970s and 1980s, though as the Chicago Tribune noted the bombings were carried out “to damage property rather than persons” and the FALN “were out to call attention to their cause rather than to shed blood.”

López was never personally tied to any bombing or any other act of violence that resulted in the death or injury of any person. Undoubtedly, if the government possessed any evidence of his participation in, or organization of, a violent act they would have charged him with it in court. But they merely charged him with conspiracy to commit sedition, the same political charged used by the apartheid South African government to convict Nelson Mandela two decades earlier. López has now served seven more years in prison than Mandela did before being freed and becoming South Africa’s first post-apartheid President.

Thousands of people gathered Sunday in San Juan to mark the 35th anniversary of López’s imprisonment and demand his release. Marchers chanted “Obama, listen to me! We want Oscar free” and “We don’t want this board, we want to be free,” according toFox News Latino.

The later slogan references the stipulation in the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability (PROMESAS) Act that would create a financial control board made up overwhelmingly of members from outside the island and not appointed by representatives elected by Puerto Ricans. The board would be vested with power over all fiscal decisions, effectively overriding Puerto Rico’s own elected representatives. The bill was passed by a House committee on Wednesday and is expected to draw a vote in the full chamber next month. It has the support of leadership in both the Republican and Democratic parties in Congress as well as the Obama administration.

But Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro García Padilla and much of the Puerto Rican public are opposed to what they see as an overt imposition of colonialism by allowing unelected technocrats not representative of – or accountable to – the Puerto Rican people to hold veto power over spending decisions, and even decrease the minimum wage.

López himself opposes the financial control board, telling El Nuevo Día in a phone interview (prison officials denied the newspaper’s request for an in person interview): “This is a problem created by Washington. The problem is in Washington and Wall Street. The people of Puerto Rico should not accept it. No Puerto Rican should doubt that we can solve our own problems… We need for them to respect our right to self-determination and not depend on the crumbs that Washington gives us.”

Obama’s answer to Miranda about whether he would grant López a pardon or commutation suggests a sense of urgency. If the matter is indeed “on his desk,” he presumably intends to take swift action on it. However, this is clearly not the case. Both Obama’s record as having issued fewer pardons than almost any President in history, and his years of refusing to attend to López’s case in particular, attest to Obama’s indifference to the unjust detention of prisoners by the government he leads.

Since being elected seven years ago, Obama has been directly presented with appeals to free López Rivera from three fellow Nobel Peace Laureates, Puerto Rico’s non-votingmember of Congress, Puerto Rico’s current governor and foreign presidents. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro even publicly offered to release opposition leader Leopoldo López if Obama released López Rivera. Yet the Obama administration has maintained its silence.

Last week, three Puerto Rican American members of Congress – Luis Gutiérrez, Nydia Velázquez and José Serrano, along with Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi – revealed that they had sent a letter to Obama in February calling on him to grant clemency to the man who has now spent nearly half his life behind bars without ever being charged with an act of violence.

After months without receiving a response, the legislators decided to go public to try to put pressure on Obama to recognize the will of virtually all of Puerto Rico and issue a pardon.

“You know how much this means to us, because we have personally expressed it to you. To our understanding, there is no legimitate criminological objective in continuing the imprisonment of this 73 year old Puerto Rican, when his country and others that value human rights clamor for his liberation,” they revealed that they wrote to the President.

Two and a half years ago, I argued that Obama’s refusal to free López was emblematic of the propensity of the U.S. government to ignore the political demands of the Puerto Rican people and solely use the colonial relationship to pursue the perceived economic and strategic interests of the ruling class:

“Without any representation in Congress or a vote in Presidential elections, Puerto Ricans have their political rights subjugated to the U.S. government. Even on an issue as popular among Puerto Ricans as the release of Oscar López, they have no recourse to participate in the political process at the federal level.

There is no indication that Obama intends to even respond to López’s clemency plea, much less grant it. In his speech at Nelson Mandela’s funeral, Obama said that ‘around the world today, men and women are still imprisoned for their political beliefs.’ The overwhelming opinion among Puerto Ricans is that this description applies precisely to López.

The disregard that Obama has shown for recognizing the will of Puerto Ricans to free Oscar López demonstrates the uphill challenges Puerto Ricans face to shed their second-class status and obtain equal rights. If the President refuses even to grant a simple pardon, what chance do Puerto Ricans have of the U.S. government acting on the 2012 referendum and allowing them to achieve self-determination?”

The question of why Puerto Ricans would believe that anyone in the U.S. government respects their opinions or their political desires should be more urgent than ever. We are in the middle of another campaign season, which for many Americans is seen as an opportunity for them to participate in the political process by voting in elections. However, for Puerto Ricans it is another reminder that while they are American citizens, they are denied the right given to Americans in the states to select Congressional representatives and take part in the Presidential election.

The policies that will be decided after the election at the federal level will apply to Puerto Ricans, though they will have had no role in choosing those policies and no way to voice their dissatisfaction at policies they oppose by voting out those who supported them.

The only way Puerto Rico can recover from its economic and debt crisis, as López Rivera said in his interview with El Nuevo Día, would be to achieve sovereignty and self-determination. This would grant them the ability to prioritize local business and the needs of the population, and free them from being merely a captive market for U.S. products and a source of cheap labor for U.S. corporations.

But any promise that the 2012 referendum, in which a 54% majority rejected the current colonial status, had of achieving this has disappeared. The U.S. Congress, which must approve any change in Puerto Rico’s political status, has not given any indication it will even consider doing anything to end the “Commonwealth” colonial status that Puerto Ricans voted against.

On the contrary, Puerto Ricans are being presented with the prospect of a financial control board that is a blatant affront to the idea that people should rule themselves, and a reminder of their powerlessness as colonial subjects.

The fact that Oscar López Rivera still sits unjustly in a prison cell is proof that the voices of Puerto Ricans simply do not matter to first-class American citizens on the mainland who hold power.

Not a day goes by without US Think Tankland doing what it does best; pushing all sorts of scenarios for cold – and hot – war with Russia, plus myriad confrontations with China and Iran.

That fits into the Pentagon’s Top Five existential threats to the US, where Russia and China sit at the very top and Iran is in fourth place – all ahead of «terrorism» of the phony Daesh «Caliphate» variety.

Here I have come up with some concise realpolitik facts to counterpunch the hysteria – stressing how the Russian hypersonic missile advantage renders useless the whole construct of NATO’s paranoid rhetoric and bluster.

The US Aegis defense system has been transferred from ships to land. The Patriot missile defense system is worthless. Aegis is about 30% better than the THAAD system; it may be more effective but their range is also limited.

Aegis is not a threat at all to Russia – for now. Yet as the system is upgraded – and that may take years – it could cause Russia some serious concern, as Exceptionalistan is increasingly pushing them eastward, so near to Russia’s borders.

Anyway, Russia is still light-years ahead in hypersonic missiles. The Pentagon knows that against the S-500 system, the F-22, the awesomely expensive F-35 and the B-2 stealth airplanes – stars of a trillion-dollar fighter program – are totally obsolete.

So it’s back to the same old meme: «Russian aggression», without which the Pentagon cannot possibly fight for its divine right to be showered with unlimited funds.

Washington had 20,000 planners at work before WWII was ended, focused on the reconstruction of Germany. Washington had only six after the destruction of Iraq in 2003’s Shock and Awe.

That was no incompetence; it was «Plan A» from the get-go. The former USSR was deemed a mighty threat at the end of WWII – so Germany had to be rebuilt. Iraq was a war of choice to grab oil fields – mixed with the implementation of hardcore disaster capitalism. No one in Washington ever cared or even wanted to rebuild it.

«Russian aggression» does not apply to Iraq; it’s all about Eastern Europe. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov anyway has made it clear that the deployment of the Aegis will be counterpunched in style – as even US corporate media starts to admit that the Russian economy is healing from the effects of the oil price war.

Take a look at my liquid asssets

Here my purpose was to show that China is not a House of Cards. Whatever the real Chinese debt to GDP ratio – figures vary from as low as 23% to 220% – that is nothing for an economy the size of China,  especially because it is entirely internally controlled.

China keeps over $3 trillion in US dollars and other Western currencies in reserves while it gradually delinks its economy from the real House of Cards: the US dollar economy.

So under these circumstances what does foreign debt mean? Not much. China could – although they don’t do it yet – produce more yuan and buy back their debt, as much as the US with quantitative easing (QE) and the European Central Bank (ECB) as it asks certain ‘favorite countries’ (strong NATO supporters) to produce more than their share of euros.

And yet Beijing doesn’t really need to do this. China, Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and what’s left of the BRICS (Brazil is on hold until at least 2018) are slowly but surely forging their own internal currency and currency transfer system (in China and Russia it works already internally) to sideline SWIFT and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).

When they are ready to roll it out for the rest of the world to join them, then US dollar-based foreign debt will be meaningless.

US Think Tankland, as usual, remains clueless. As one of my Chinese sources explains,

whenever a Western big mouth mentions China’s debt ‘problem’ they quote a figure that seems to come out of thin air, and it includes all debts, central, provincial, city government levels, estimated all corporate debts, loans from banks outside China. Meanwhile, they compare this total number in China with those of Western countries and Japan’s central government debt alone.

The source adds, 

China is operating with a balance sheet of the equivalent to $60 trillion. Loans from external sources is in the $11 trillion range while cash and equivalent is in the $3.6-4 trillion range. All this cash – or very liquid asset – is the biggest discretionary force in the hands of China’s leaders while nothing worth mentioning is in the hands of any other Western government.

Not to mention that globally, Beijing is betting on what the World Economic Forum calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution. China is already the central hub for global production, supply, logistics and value chain. Which leads us to One Belt, One Road (OBOR); all roads lead to the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads, which will connect, deeper and deeper, China’s economy and infrastructure all across Eurasia. OBOR will simultaneously expand China’s global power while geopolitically counterpunching the so far ineffective «pivot to Asia» – Pentagon provocations in the South China Sea included – and improving China’s energy security.

Sanctions, like diamonds, are forever

Another major Exceptionalistan fictional narrative is that the US is «worried» about the inability of European banks to do business in Iran. That’s nonsense; in fact, it’s the US Treasury Department that is scaring the hell out of any European bank who dares to do business with Tehran.

India and Iran have struck a $500 million landmark deal to develop the Iranian port of Chabahar – a key node in what could be dubbed the New India-Iran Silk Road, connecting India to Central Asia via Iran and Afghanistan.

Immediately afterwards the US State Department has the gall to announce that the deal will be «examined» – as the proverbial Israeli-firster US senators question whether the deal violates those lingering sanctions against Iran that refuse to go away. This happens in parallel to a mounting official narrative of «unrest» contaminating former Soviet republics in Central Asia – especially Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. CIA-paid hacks should know those sources of unrest well – as the CIA itself is fomenting it.

India doing business with Iran is «suspicious». On the other hand, India is more than allowed to formalize a historic military cooperation deal with the US hazily dubbed the «Logistics Support Agreement»  (LSA) – according to which the two militaries may use each other’s land, air and naval bases for resupplies, repairs and vaguely-defined «operations».

So it’s all hands on deck all over Exceptionalistan to counter Russia, China and prevent any real normalization with Iran. These localized offensives – practical and rhetorical – on all fronts always mean one thing, and one thing only; splitting and fracturing, by all means necessary, the OBOR Eurasian integration. Bets can be made that Moscow, Beijing and Tehran simply won’t be fooled.