Global Research

The report below has identified “the crisis”.

The media reports do not not indicate the cause of this loss in marine mammal life.

This year is the worst yet… more than 1,600 marine mammals have been picked up.

No discussion of causality: The unspoken question: Is it related to Fukushima radiation as suggested by several earlier reports?

Michel Chossudovsky. Global Research Editor

10,000 baby sea lions dead on one California island — Experts: “It’s getting crazy… This is a crisis… Never seen anything like it… Very difficult to see so much death” — TV: “Numbers skyrocketing at alarming rates” — “Woman is burying the rotting mammals” after digging graves at beach 

NBC L.A., Mar 12, 2015 (emphasis added): “The sea lion emergency is back all along the California shore“… [Pups] are washing ashore at a rate so alarming, rescuers said Thursday, this year is the worst yet… more than 1,600 marine mammals [have been picked up].

KTLA, Mar 10, 2015: Stranding numbers for the months of January and February were more than 20 times the average [said NOAA].

ABC 10 News, Mar 14, 2015: Friday, Konnie Martinkis was burying her third sea lion… There were at least five within just more than a football field’s length that were dead… she contacted the city… but it just decomposed as more showed up… she will continue building those graves.

Coast News, Mar 12, 2015: [NOAA] said not to feed it [that] will only prolong the animals suffering.

KABC: Numbers are skyrocketing at alarming rates…Sunday, six sea lions were found dead

NY Times, Mar 12, 2015: “It’s getting crazy,” [Wendy Leeds, animal-care expert at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center] said… Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist with [NOAA said] “We do expect the population to take a drop… probably a really good hit”… Michele Hunter, the center’s director of animal care, said, “It’s very difficult to see so much death.

Sacramento Bee, Mar 7, 2015: Tens of thousands of pups birthed last summer are believed to be dying on the islands… some [are] desperately trying to climb onto small boats or kayaks… Scientists noted a worrisome anomaly in 2013, when 1,171 famished pups were stranded… scientists blamed the phenomenon on unseasonably cold waters… On San Miguel… Melin said researchers believe “probably close to 10,000 are dead, and we expect more to die over coming months”… the mortality rate is similar on San Nicolas.

Time: Experts at NOAA say that the culprit is rising ocean temperatures [note “unseasonably cold” ocean temps were the culprit during the record strandings in 2013]… a NOAA climate expert said that they do not believe the stranding increase is tied to climate change.

Marine Mammal Center, Mar 5, 2015: It’s clear these sea lions are trying to tell us something. Their very presence here in such great numbers at this time of year is sounding an alarm up and down the coast… it signals something complex happening in our ocean… sea lions are very sensitive to their environment… alerting us to major changes in the ocean… The scene on the Channel Islands this year is grave, worse even than what researchers saw in 2012, before the Unusual Mortality Event in 2013… “What’s scary is that we don’t know when this will end,” says Dr. Shawn Johnson, Director of Veterinary Science at The Marine Mammal Center. “This could be the new normal—a changed environment that we’re dealing with now.”

LA Daily News, Mar 13, 2015:  “By the end of January, we had as many as we did in (all of) 2013,” [Marine Mammal Care Center’s David Bard] said… “We’ve never seen anything like thiswith back-to-back events that are affecting the same part of the population,” Melin said.

Dr. Melin: “Based on what we are seeing… we should be bracing for a lot more animals”

CBS Los Angeles, Mar 9, 2015: [California Wildlife Center’s Jeff Hall] says the event has escalated into a crisis. “I would personally consider this a crisis,” Hall said… The epidemic has prompted a number of volunteers to step forward, including… television personality Kat Von D [who said] “I think there’s a lack of awareness of what’s going on in the environment.”

TV broadcasts here: NBC | KTLA | ABC | ABC | CBS

The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States, narrated by Roger Waters.  Video, 82 minutes. Available via streaming and DVD at www.occupationmovie.com. The website went live yesterday. The documentary premieres in Massachusetts next month.

Harriet Beecher Stowe is reputed — in Stowe family legend at least — to have been greeted by President Lincoln with, “Is this the little woman who made this great war?”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe’s novel that dramatized government-sanctioned human bondage, is credited, somewhat fancifully, with moving American public opinion about slavery and helping start the US Civil War.

This  documentary film aims to explain why United States media, in contrast to most of the world’s, omit the Palestinian story, and thus why US public opinion favors Israel so markedly.

The film organizes the evidence in plain sight of the unnatural situation that has been maintained in US news reporting — the tropes that reinforce Zionist ideology, and recognize only Jewish Israeli life as imperiled.

Roger Waters narrates that during the July 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza, lasting 51 days — using 20 thousand tons of explosives — “The sheer scale of the attack provoked outrage and condemnation around the world.

“But in the United States the story was different. Polls showed the American people holding firm in their support for Israel.”

Aerial surveys of Gaza now show vast wastelands and ruins of that urban area, holding more than 1.8 million people, the majority exiles from present-day Israel.

The film’s title, “The Occupation of the American Mind” communicates the hope that once the mechanisms are seen, they can’t be unseen.

During operation Protective Shield (summer 2014), as during Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), the plea that “Israel has the right to defend itself” dominated American reporting.

With deft editing, the film shows a risible sequence of Israeli spokesmen, American politicians (up to President Obama) and US newscasters all repeating the same lines of Israeli vulnerability and Arab menace.

We can presume that by understanding the highly calculated effort of American public relations experts and Israeli officials to “explain” the asymmetry of power and suffering between Jewish nationalist forces and Arab civilians, inexorably losing homes and homeland — a passion for justice in Americans will be excited.

The United States is one gentile culture where the Zionist narrative dominates. Key is control of language, controlling thought. US Pollster Frank Luntz was commissioned to maintain this, producing a “dictionary” of language to use — a playbook for shading domination as defense.

“When a narrative is so dominant, without any visible dissent or complication, it’s extremely difficult to make clear to people that it is basically a propaganda story.  How do you make that clear when the spectacle is so unrelenting and total?”  NYU  scholar Mark Crispin Miller, one of the film’s media studies experts, asks.

What would break the spell?  The New York Times made a baby step with its concession in an editorial January 2016 that the “Two-state solution” is “fading.”

In a masterwork of understatement, an American official is quoted by the Times, saying of the settlements that began in late 1967 and continue in 2016, “It is starting to look like a de facto annexation.”

(Israel has moved 3/4 million Jews into the captured territories, including a surprisingly large proportion who’ve moved from the United States).

The argument that the occupied Palestinian territories are held by Israel for “security reasons” serves to screen territorial expansion, the film argues.

“If you buy that (security) argument, then it’s a license to occupy indefinitely,” media and militarism critic Norman Solomon explains in the film.  (Disclosure: Norman Solomon is my brother.)

The film reports the overwhelming financial contributions to American politicians advocating the Jewish nationalist narrative in Palestine, and shows clips from the many public devotionals that congressmen, cabinet members and presidents attend, to pledge what can fairly be described as Zionist allegiance.

Historian Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University says that American media provides “no sense of how this started, where the animus comes from. It’s completely inexplicable in the way it’s generally presented — these people (Palestinians) kill because they hate, and they hate because they’re irrational Muslim fanatics, or whatever.”

In American politics on this issue, we can notice things that don’t happen, as Sherlock Holmes noted the dog that didn’t bark.

When American Jewish legislators speak of their devotion to Israel, no fuss follows, and brilliant non-Jewish politicians like Joe Biden have made careers steeped in American Zionism and mirroring that loyalty.

A January 6 article by Hillary Clinton for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles is an example of the predominant way of relating to Israel/Palestine by centrist US politicians.

Her alignment with Israel is slavish, with a promise to raise the US-Israel relationship to “the next level.” Clinton proclaims her “deep emotional connection with Israel.”

The procession of American presidential candidates at last week’s American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference in Washington (except for Senator Bernie Sanders) gave a graphic demonstration of the place of Israel as something like an honorary US state.

I hypothesize one contributing reason for the American atmosphere: for some American Jews, Jewish statehood is integral to their Jewish identity. Most Americans have not known Palestinians or Arabs, so making sense of the situation requires relating to what they do know — fellow Americans who are Jews.

From that perspective, Americans can imagine Israel as just like the American Jews who are their neighbors, friends, and associates, with no idea of the complexities.

American demographic changes require that Arab-Americans remain a dangerous Other, for the phenomenon of Israeli-American “twinning” to continue.  Otherwise, countervailing sympathy and empathy with Arabs will operate. For Israel’s purposes, Syria’s chaos and evisceration is a godsend, associating Arabs with danger.

With more exposure, the Ku Klux Klan-like behavior of settlers in the occupied Judea and Samaria and the Klan-like blending of religious identity and bigotry in Jewish supremacism may repulse Americans.

However, for Americans to understand the Israeli violence systematically unleashed on captive Palestinians would be to sense a hint of the violence that the United States unleashed methodically in achievement of its North American empire.

That, and much of America’s direct and proxy military adventurism abroad since, has been invisible to the public, much as Israel’s infliction of death and suffering is invisible as precursor to “unprovoked” Arab attacks.

Will Americans become conversant with Israeli, Zionist and Palestinian history, if their own is hidden from them?

One difference from the North American settler-colonialism is the Jewish claim of indigeneity, with accusations that Arabs are settlers in Palestine who should by rights move or be expelled from “the state of the Jewish people.”

A film of this sort can only review so much Zionist and Palestine history to set the scene.  The producers did a nice job fitting in a lot of content, selectively, in the time.

(The US organization Jewish Voice for Peace made an animated short, “Israeli/Palestinian Conflict 101,”that shows the challenge of compressing facts and sequences of events of Zionism and Palestine. Their summary is 6.5 minutes.)

Intended as an educational film to join the Media Education Foundation’s strong list, “The Occupation of the American Mind,” the work of writer/producers Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, is invaluable as a contrast to Israel’s fantasy world in media.

(The film is not about an allied subject, the Zionist Occupation of the American Jewish Mind, where another fantasy world operates, where Jews heroically rebuild Jewish sovereignty.)

The film concentrates on American media dating from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the formalization of Israel’s Western-media Hasbara/PR institutions in reaction to horror at consequences of Israel’s Lebanon occupation.  (Bombardment and siege of Beirut, and massacre at Sabra and Shatilla)

The film’s coda surveys pro-Palestinian campus activism and alliance-building with African American and other groups locked out of the American narrative, younger Americans awakening to the Palestinian perception of events.

A series of Pew polls show that among American young people, Democrats, and independents, sympathy for Palestinian Arabs is growing, and the Republican party is becoming the repository of unconditional Israel advocacy.

Among developed nations, the United States has an unusually high proportion of religious believers, and more Christian Zionists than US Jews figure in the Republican Party’s embrace of militant Zionism.

In the film, executive producer Sut Jhally makes that point: “In fact, it’s not accurate to call it the Jewish lobby. It is the Israel lobby,” not consistent with the views of most American Jews.

It is difficult to imagine that Americans will become conversant with subtleties of Zionist and Jewish history.  One might expect revulsion as the system of political contributions and targeted propaganda to ensure and manipulate American support is illustrated.

Film clips of Israeli violence at checkpoints and demonstrations are followed by Media Education Foundation founder Jhally commenting:

“The more Americans are able to see realities of the occupation with their own eyes, to see routine daily violence, to see repression and humiliation that never make it into mainstream news, the more they will question the image of Israel as this tiny little David up against this bullying Arab goliath, and start to wonder if it’s the outgunned Palestinians who are the Davids here.

“When that starts to become the dominant perception here in the US, all bets are off.  It all comes down to American popular perception.”

Noam Chomsky ends the film saying, “The US government will support it as long as the US population tolerates it.”

If the image of Israel becomes that of a cruel oppressor, may the shift be as consequential as when Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel was part of a march to Civil War?

For Jews, what might a shift of US public opinion about Israel mean? To the extent Israel is identified, naturally, as an indivisibly “Jewish” project — dismounting this tiger isn’t going to be graceful. Injury to Arabs in Palestine, and the manipulation of the United States, in the past Zionist century, will be reckoned.

Abba A. Solomon is the author of “The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech ‘The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.’”

Although the Cuban Revolution is 57 years old and is usually blamed for Cuba’s isolation, it has been 88 years since the last visit to the island by a US head of state. United States President Barack Obama, together with members of his cabinet, including Secretary of State John Kerry, and a large delegation of legislators, visited Cuba on March 20-22, 2016.

The previous US state visit to Cuba was by Calvin Coolidge in January 1928, as part of the 6^th Pan-American Conference. Back then Cuba and much of Central America, including Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua were occupied by the US. Coolidge had come to gloat about the supposed sovereignty of Cuba and express support for his bloody client dictator Gerardo Machado. The Monroe Doctrine was naked then and not cloaked in fake humanitarianism. Like Coolidge, Obama delivered his speech in Havana’s Grand Theater.

The US politicians went to Havana to remedy the embarrassing situation that their country had wound up isolating itself during its attempts to isolate Cuba. In 2011, when the US was still trying to exclude Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS), the member countries, under the impetus of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, formed an alternative group: the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which included Cuba but excluded the US and Canada.

Gradually, Cuba gained membership, formal and informal but always respectful, into more and more Latin American and Caribbean groupings in which the US was not welcome. This was not supposed to happen. After the culmination of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, a severe trade embargo was imposed on Cuba, not only from the US, which was its biggest trade partner, but also from allies of the US. This left the island nation without even basic necessities like toothpaste and toilet paper. The embargo on medication was especially brutal because it was compounded by the flight of thousands of Cuban doctors from the country in 1959 alone and the fact that the country had no foreign exchange due to looting of the public treasury by US client president Fulgencio Batista.

Many Cubans died, but they did not grovel, undo their own revolution and surrender to the US under the worst possible terms, as was expected. Cuba’s ascendance as a major powerhouse in healthcare and biotechnology began with the dispatch of a medical mission to Chile in 1960 to assist the victims of the magnitude-9.5 Valdivia Earthquake. Cuba also changed the course of geopolitics, starting with a shipment of weapons to the Algerians in 1961 during their war against French colonial rule. As Cuba rebuilt its middle class, so too grew its internationalism and its assistance to the victims of natural disasters like hurricanes, and man-made horrors like apartheid South Africa and Haiti’s cholera. For nearly 60 years, Cuba accumulated such a stock of goodwill that the label of being a state that sponsors terrorism became universally dismissed as a Cold War relic. The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted more than 20 times to end the trade embargo. The vote in 2015 was essentially unanimous; 193 countries voted to repeal the embargo, the only exceptions being the US and Israel. Instead of failing because of the embargo, the Cuban revolution succeeded because of it.

Compared to Cuba, a quite different trajectory brought the US to the March 2016 meetings in Havana. In the US, the decision to reestablish relations with Cuba dated from around 2007, when the Atlanta law firm and major Washington lobbyist Alston & Bird donated $33,000 to a relatively unknown presidential candidate during the first few months of his campaign.

Alston & Bird is a giant firm that grossed about 645 million in 2014 and that represents a group of financial service, healthcare, energy, and telecommunication companies. Their interest in the Cuban market is sufficiently strong that in 2006 their lawyers worked pro bono for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on a challenge to the Florida ban on travel to Cuba. As ever in the US, it is big business that directs policy. The new détente with Cuba now merely means that Mr. Obama waited until the last months of his tenure to deliver the goods on a controversial campaign promise.

It took two years of intensive talks to lay the groundwork for the March 2016 state visit. Although Cuba has complained for decades about the harm from the embargo, it is no longer a country without its own toilet paper or medications, but one that has painfully built its own economy. Its tough negotiating stance with US business is apparent from the statements of its officials and actions of the US. On December 17, 2014, the decision to reestablish diplomatic relations was announced simultaneous with the US release of the last three of the Cuban 5 prisoners. Another less obvious concession was the resignation of former USAID Director, Rajiv Shah, who had apparently attempted to infiltrate the Cuban hip-hop movement and distributed a social media program called ZunZuneo to produce anti-government propaganda. On April 10, 2015, with a now-famous handshake, Mr. Obama personally welcomed Cuban President Raul Castro to an OAS summit. By December 2015, the US had removed Cuba from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, John Kerry and other members of Obama’s cabinet had visited Havana, and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla had visited Washington.

The rollback of the US sanctions has been quite limited in terms of the restrictions on trade and investment, although a series of measures with public-relations value have been promulgated. These include an increase in the permitted remittances to Cuba per quarter from $500 to $2,000, the restoration of direct flights and mail service, and a relaxation of travel for family visits, journalistic work, government business, scientific exchange, education, religion, cultural exchange, and sports. Cuba on the other hand has, since December 2014, released the USAID contractor Alan Gross,  and 53 political prisoners  including the CIA mole Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, who had infiltrated Cuba’s Interior Ministry.

The negotiations continue. Cuba remains dissatisfied and wary of the US. On his return to the US, Obama made the grand gesture of asking the Congress to end the trade embargo; however Raul Castro and others believe that, except in the area of telecommunications, the US president has held back from using his executive powers to go further with the repeal of the blockade. At the CELAC meeting of January 28, 2015, Mr. Castro said:

“Prohibitions on credit and the use of the dollar in international financial transactions remain in place; individual travel by U.S. citizens is hampered under the system of licenses for so-called people-to-people exchanges; these are conditioned by subversive goals; and maritime travel is not allowed.

 “Prohibitions remain on the acquisition in other markets of equipment and technology with more than 10% U.S. components, and on imports by the United States of goods containing Cuban raw materials, among many, many others.”

Cuba has also demanded the return of Guantanamo, for which it has not accepted the rent payments since 1959. “I emphasized that the total lifting of the blockade, the return of the illegally occupied territory of Guantánamo, as well as the full respect for Cuban sovereignty, and the compensation to our people for human and economic damages, are crucial to be able to move towards the normalization of relations,” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said. Nevertheless, the US continues to proceed as if it wants the land in perpetuity. A booby-trap article in the Guantanamo lease says that it can only be terminated with the consent of the US or both contracting parties. In other words, all it takes for the US to clear out of Guantanamo is the will to do so. Removal of the US naval base and its odious prison camp would go a long way towards establishing friendly relations with Cuba.

Furthermore, in return for opening its market to the US, Cuba wants equal access to the US market. Currently, Cuba holds more than 30 patents in the area of biotechnology, which is its main export. It manufactures more than 800 products for the health needs of Cubans, for whom it provides universal medical coverage. Cuba would like to sell its biotech products in the US and conduct the requisite clinical trials of Cuban products with US patients.

Computer software is also a big Cuban product. A state-owned company called Albet produces much of this software, which is quite extensive and is sold in Latin America, Spain, and Angola. Cuba has produced numerous computer games, including a popular program that teaches how to play chess; it has produced cell-phone platforms as well as a popular operating system; and of course, it has produced software for the health sector, including programs to capture and visualize digitized images for diagnoses. Finally, Cuba wants to expand its tourism industry.  Out of about 3.5 million tourists in 2015, only about 145,000 Americans visited Cuba, and this represented a doubling compared to 2014. It is reasonable to expect that this sector will grow as the ease of travel to Cuba becomes comparable to any other travel in the Caribbean.

Cuba has had enough experience with the Monroe Doctrine to know that the US goal will always be to turn it into a colony. In 1959, this process was much farther along in Cuba than in Haiti. Although more than 30 percent of the Cuban population were blacks and mulattoes, Jim Crow policies were in effect. Cuba was Havana, cash crops, and misery, and Havana was a casino-bordello run by US mobsters where Americans went to sin, and one of the top occupations for women was prostitution, as it is now in the Dominican Republic. From this horror, in the span of 57 years, Cuba has managed to achieve universal healthcare and equal pay for equal work, as Raul Castro politely pointed out whenever Obama brought up the issue of human rights.

Cuba has also achieved a quite diversified economy that involves many trade partners, including ones like Russia and Venezuela, that were, or still are, shunned by the US. It stands to reason that, without its revolution, Cuba would now be a basket case: much worse than Puerto Rico, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, and much worse than Haiti, where the State coffers are empty, and there is no longer any agricultural economy or government to speak of. American finance and telecommunication companies will want to control the flow of money and information as much as possible, and they will try to exploit this control to pressure Cuba to make policy decisions that will destabilize it and make it dependent on the US.

The new wave of colonists want to be in place now because they think that their work to undermine the Cuban Revolution will become easier after Cuba’s great hero Fidel Castro passes. This is partly the result of a US belief in its own propaganda that Mr. Castro micromanages everything in a country of 11 million people. Three generations of capable Cubans have grown since the revolution, and there should be new people to steer this project through more iterations.

Even as the US courts Cuba, the US intention is clearly a Bay of Pigs invasion with a smile.

The Cuban Revolution has enormous symbolic importance for people throughout the world who are fighting US domination, and the undoing of this revolution would be major psychological blow. The US is already hinting that it wants popular elections that it can manipulate. In a March 22 speech, the US president stressed that “Cuba has a one-party system, [but] the United States is a multi-party democracy.” This is quite laughable, given the subservience of both US parties to the same business concerns, and the charade that currently passes for an election in the US. In response to a question from Cuban-American CNN reporter Jim Acosta about human rights in Cuba, Mr. Obama said, “I’ve met with people who have been subject to arbitrary detention and that’s something that I generally have to speak on because I hear from them directly and I know what it means for them,” to generate the right headlines, although he knew that in preparation for the détente, Cuba had released all 53 political prisoners on a list drafted by the US. In a follow up question to Raul Castro, he responded: “Give me a name, or names… and if we have those political prisoners they will be released before tonight ends.” The next day, in a brilliant show of Cuban openness, an embarrassed Mr. Obama was allowed to meet with a group of Cuban political dissidents so he could collect as many prisoner names from them as he wished. Few countries, including the US would pass the same test. As ever, the Cuban revolution thrives while under attack; one can only hope that it will never imagine it is not.

Dr. Dady Chery is a Haitian-born poet, playwright, journalist and scientist. She is the author of the book “We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation.”

Notes:

• News Junkie Post
• Photographs one and seven by Ed Yourdon; two by Burt Glinn; four and nine by Bud Ellison; five from the Witness Against Torture archive; six and twelve by Tom Graham; composite image eight by Donkey Hotey; photographs ten by Mike Keran, and eleven by Dani.
  

When Republican Party presidential campaign front-runner Donald Trump named 2009 DePaul University graduate George Papadoupolous as a member of his foreign policy advisory team, some in the media raised eyebrows, while others jested that his wunderkind status makes him more likely to serve as office coffee fetcher than in a position of such prestige.

But you aren’t named to sit on such a team without serious connections, few of which the media made with regards to Papadoupolous, who has spent most of his professional career working as a research assistant at the Hudson Institute and now works as director of the Center for International Energy and Natural Resources Law & Security at the London Center of International Law Practice.

The story of who Papadoupolous is begins and ends with the Hudson Institute, a think-tank with a long history of climate change denial and anti-science advocacy.

A DeSmog investigation has revealed that the Hudson Institute, via industry funding its advocacy efforts, has proven instrumental in opening up Israel’s offshore natural gas reserves for drilling in the Mediterranean Sea for Noble Energy. Likewise, the efforts of Papadoupolous have helped pave the way for Noble to tap into the Mediterranean.

One may not realize the full extent of this, though, without some Hebrew language skills.

Hebrew Language Report

In summer 2015, Papadoupolous co-authored a six-page Hebrew language paper — stamped with Hudson’s logo and that of the brands of his collaborating co-authors — that was submitted to the Israeli Energy Ministry. The paper advocates for offshore gas drilling and calls for an industry-friendly financial scheme in the concessions process.

Image Credit: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

According to the Israeli Energy Ministry Hebrew-language website, one of the paper’s co-authors presented it at an Israeli Energy Minister hearing.

Hudson Institute senior fellow Seth Cropsey — a signer of two letters written by the influential neoconservative Project for a New American Century that called for both the bombing and invasions of Kosovo in 1998 and Iraq in 2001 — co-authored the paper with Papadoupolous. The two of them co-wrote the paper with affiliates of both Israel’s Eco Energy and Bethesda, Maryland’s Benjamin Schlesinger and Associates.

Papadoupolous and Cropsey have also co-written other papers together, including a Hudson Institute report titled ”U.S. Policy and the Strategic Relationship of Greece, Cyprus and Israel: Power Shifts in the Eastern Mediterranean” and another titled, “Vice President Biden’s Trip to Cyprus: A Lost Opportunity?” The two published both papers just months before then-GOP presidential nominee Ben Carson, who has since endorsed Trump, announced that Papadoupolous would serve as a member of his foreign policy team.

The names of Cropsey and Papadoupolous are listed as authors in Hebrew in the report, highlighted here:

Image Credit: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Beyond co-authoring papers with Cropsey, Papadoupolous has also authored pro-offshore drilling op-eds on his own published by major Israeli newspapers such as Haaretz and Arutz Sheva. Papadoupolous told DeSmog that he does not have an English-language version of the report and did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the report sent by DeSmog.

Cropsey told DeSmog that Papadoupolous’s current views and positions do not represent those of Hudson, as he is no longer affiliated with the Institute. While not a Hebrew speaker himself, Cropsey also clarified that the report was translated into Hebrew after numerous back-and-forth email exchanges between himself and the report co-authors, and that he has deleted whatever English versions of the report he may have formerly had in his possession.

Months after they submitted the report to Israel’s Energy Ministry in December 2015, the Energy Ministry approved of favorable offshore drilling conditions for Noble Energy and Delek Group. One of Eco Energy’s clients, according to its website, is none other than Delek.

(Not So) Noble Connections

Hudson Institute, meanwhile, has a key link to Noble Energy: people and money.

In 2013, Hudson Institute gave then-Noble Energy CEO Charles D. Davidson its first ever Global Leadership Award for his company’s role in discovering and moving to drill offshore for gas in Israel.

“Davidson was honored today for his transformative successes in developing energy resources in the United States and Eastern Mediterranean, which have led to enhanced U.S. energy security and competitiveness and turned the Eastern Mediterranean into a burgeoning energy-producing region,” reads a December 2013 Hudson press release.

While the Davidson connection explains some things, as does the fact he has in the past funded Hudson Institute, also crucial is the fact that Noble Board member Jeffrey Berensen serves on Hudson’s Board of Trustees and as a top-tier funder according to the Institute’s 2015 Annual Report. Noble Board of Directors member Edward Cox, son-in-law of President Richard Nixon (his wife is the late president’s daughter), is also a Hudson donor.

According to financial disclosure forms released by Trump, he formerly had 17,800 shares of Noble Energy stock, valued at $1.12 million when he sold them in January 2014.

AIPAC at the Center

The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), best known as the heart and soul of the Israel Lobby, also sits at the center of the story and not only because Trump announced his foreign policy team the day after he and Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave major speeches pandering to AIPAC at its annual conference in Washington, DC. (For the first and only time during his presidential campaign, Trump gave his AIPAC speech aided by the use of a teleprompter.)

As with the Hudson Institute, you can’t talk about AIPAC without also talking about its Noble ties.

Bini Zomer, Noble Energy’s Israel Country Manager, formerly was a lobbyist for AIPAC after he began his political career working as a legal advisor to former U.S. Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK).

Nickles now also works as an oil and gas industry lobbyist for his firm Nickles Group. Noble Energy was founded and headquartered in Oklahoma before moving to Houston in 2000.

Zomer has spoken at several AIPAC meetings wearing his Noble hat, including one in 2014, in which he spoke of Noble’s energy prospects in the Holy Land.

“Noble, working with local Israeli companies, has discovered natural gas fields worth billions of dollars that could supply Israel’s needs for the next 150 years,” reads an introduction to that 2014 Zomer AIPAC speaking engagement. “[He] will discuss the find and the potential impact on Israel’s economy and security.”

Zomer and Papadoupolous both also recently spoke at the Noble-sponsored Israel Energy & Business Convention.

Noble and AIPAC have also worked together on offshore drilling lobbying, disclosure records reveal, with the former lobbying for H.R. 3683 and the latter lobbying for its cousin bill S. 1491.

Among other things, the legislation calls for creation of

“a joint United States-Israel Center based in an area of the United States with the experience, knowledge, and expertise in offshore energy development to further dialogue and collaboration to develop energy efficiency, existing energy development programs, and more robust academic cooperation in energy innovation technology and engineering, water science, technology transfer, and analysis of geopolitical implications of new natural resource development and associated areas.”

Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), who now works as a lobbyist for Noble Energy as reported here on DeSmog, served as the sponsor for S. 1491.

Supreme Court Hiatus

So though Trump has pledged not to be bought off by special interests due to his self-financed campaign, like most other U.S. politicians who want to hold office, he has a vested interest in not taking on the powerful Israel Lobby. The same apparently goes for taking on its partner-in-action, Noble Energy, both lobbies of which are embodied in the person of George Papadopoulos.

The Trump campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment sent by DeSmog.

The Noble Energy offshore drilling victory, though, has been put on hiatus. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the controversial stability clause signed between Noble and its corporate colleagues and the Israeli government was made, as the Court wrote, “in contradiction to the basic rules of administrative law in a way that prohibits restricting the considerations of the (Antitrust) Authority.”

Globes, The Wall Street Journal equivalent in Israel, described the state of play as far as Noble is concerned in stark terms.

“Israel’s High Court of Justice has shaken up the entire economy and energy sector by ruling against the natural gas outline agreement and instructing the Knesset to discuss the law again because of the stability clause,” they wrote.

“The stability clause is the most controversial section of the agreement, under which the state promises to make no substantial regulatory changes in the gas industry in the next 10 years, in particular in taxation, exports and ownership of the fields.”

Israel’s parliament now has a year to amend the terms of the contract in negotiations with Noble and other collaborating companies, or the deal is off the table. Cropsey told DeSmog that he thought the ruling was an “unfortunate decision” and that Hudson may, but has yet to, weigh in on the ruling as an institution.

Noble and Delek, Globes reported, has already held meetings with Israel Energy Minister Steinitz in the aftermath of the ruling. Zomer, the former AIPAC lobbyist, attended the meeting on behalf of Noble.

With additional reporting by Itai Vardi.

How ocean pollution affects humans – Graphic by the team at DIVE.in

What can I do to help?

What you do on land can change the fate of what goes on off shore – and small changes in habits can have a large impact on improving our oceans.

1. Keep your sewer drains clear

Prevent rubbish and chemicals from flowing into the sea.  Keeping your property’s drains clear is your responsibility.

2. Dispose of products properly

Household cleaning products, batteries, paint and pesticides can threaten water quality.

3. Reuse and recycle

And opt for no packaging when possible. Carry a reusable water bottle, carry a cotton tote bag and recycle when possible.

4. Plant an organic garden

Pesticides from gardens and lawns can wash into the ocean.

5. Eat sustainably

Overfishing, loss of habitat and market demand has decreased fish populations. When shopping or dining out, choose seafood that is sustainably sourced.

6. Respect the beach

Take your rubbish with you after a day at the beach, and don’t remove rocks and coral.

7. Explore responsibly

Next time you’re off on a dive, cruise or kayak – be mindful of the marine life around you. Find some eco-friendly tours and packages that will respect the marine environment.

From sustenance, natural beauty to economics – the ocean provides plenty for the human race. Respect the ocean by keeping it clean for generations to come.

If you liked this you’ll also love our great infographic on 50 Amazing Facts About The Ocean

What’s worth saving if not our ocean?

If nothing else, this gives us some perspective regarding our role on Earth. We are treating our oceans like our own private junkyard dumping thousands and thousands of tonnes waist straight in – and what will the result be? More dead ocean areas, no more marine life or what? What do you think will become of our oceans and what can we do to stop this?

Notes

• Anderson, T.L. (2013). One world, one ocean, one mission. Earth Common Journal, 3(1).
• Andrews, G. (2013). Plastics in the ocean affecting human health. serc.carleton.edu
• Conserve Energy Future (2015). What is ocean pollution? conserve-energy-future.com
• Hanlon, P. (2012). Heavy metal fish: How mercury ends up on your plate. grist.org
• Jambeck, R.J. et al. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347 (13).
• MarineBio. (2015). Ocean pollution. marinebio.org
• Merkl, A. (2015). Ocean plastic is likely disappearing into the food chain, new study indicates. theguardian.com
• National Geographic. (2015). Save the plankton, breathe freely. education.nationalgeographic.co.uk
• National Geographic. (2015). Things you can do to save the ocean. ocean.nationalgeographic.com
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2015). Ocean. noaa.gov
• Thank You Ocean (2015). Water pollution. thankyouocean.org
• The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Limited. (2014). Oil tanker spill statistics 2014. itopf.com
• The World Counts. (2014). How does pollution affect humans. theworldcounts.com
• Water Pollution Guide. (2015). Marine dumping. water-pollution.org.uk
• United Nations. (2013). UN Convention on the Law of the Sea turns 30. un.org

While gathering material for its new film on Daesh’s activities in the north of Syria and its ties to the illegal oil trade with Turkey, the RT Documentary crew came across bundles of unique documents, which reveal the scope of the illicit business and the revenue it provided; the crew also interviewed some residents who were directly involved.

The RT Documentary Channel crew arrived in northern Syria right after the ceasefire came into force on February 27.

The journalists, whose names are not revealed for security reasons, visited the former Daesh stronghold in this part of Syria, the town of Shadadi, and the towns of Rumilan, Al-Qamishli and Tel Abyad on the border with Turkey.

All the towns are located in an oil-rich area and were populated predominantly by the Syrian Kurds.

One of the buildings used earlier by Daesh (source: RT)

The area was previously under the control of Daesh, and was recently liberated by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

The journalists interviewed the YPG fighters who liberated the area. Shadadi was freed in February 2016 and was the last town the Daesh group controlled in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province. The capture of the city closed off a key supply route for Daesh between Iraqi Mosul and Syrian Raqqa.

A picture of Daesh fighters taken from one of the captives.

The score of left over documents reveal the scope of the pumped and sold oil and an apparent connection with Turkey, as some documents have a Turkish addresses on their cover pages.

What the crew has in its possession are financial records which detail the tracks of the illicit trade, revealing the scope and cost of the extracted oil.

Financial records which detail the tracks of the illicit trade, revealing the scope and cost of the extracted oil.

Over 170 financial records, dated between January 11-24, 2016 were compiled by what appears to be the Sales department of the ISIL (Daesh) Ministry of Natural Resources   which carefully documented the volume of barrels extracted from the oil station of Kabiba near the city of Shaddadi.

The document has the name of the well, the price per barrel, the date of sale, the number of trucks used for delivery and the total cost of the sold crude.

Some documents list the name of the driver and the type of the car used for particular deliveries. Other documents appear to show estimates of how many barrels were left in a well or whether it had been fully emptied.

A document dated January 23, 2016 stipulates that a barrel of crude oil extracted from the oil station of Kabiba was selling at $13. It confirms that throughout the day 383 barrels were extracted and sold for $4979.

One document in particular, dated January 23, 2016 stipulates that a barrel of crude oil extracted from the oil station of Kabiba was selling at $13. It confirms that throughout the day 383 barrels were extracted and sold for $4979.

A document dated January 23, 2016, says that crude oil from Rijura well in the same oil field was sold at $70 per barrel, 19.18 tones were extracted, the daily revenue amounted to $1342.60.

Another one, also dated January 23, 2016,  says that crude oil from the Rijura well in the same oil field  was sold at $70 per barrel, 19.18 tones were extracted with the daily revenue given as $1342.60.

A document dated January 23, 2016, says that crude oil from Rijura well in the same oil field was sold at $70 per barrel, 19.18 tones were extracted, the daily revenue amounted to $1342.60.

Among other papers left in a hurry were Islamic propaganda literature, religious notes and data on various punishments for alleged misbehavior.

The RT crew also interviewed three captive Daesh fighters, who came from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The Syrian Daesh fighter said that he had been fighting against the Kurds alongside Turkey, citing the well-known slogan “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The Saudi fighter revealed that he had easily crossed the Turkish–Syrian border and confirmed that all the supplies that they needed had been coming over from Turkey.

The Turkish serviceman also confirmed how easy it was to cross the border and said that his commander instructed him to flee to Turkey if ever he was wounded or got surrounded. He also commented at length on the Erdogan’s policy, his ties with Daesh and the illegal oil trade.

Their comments were confirmed by a bunch of leftover passports and other IDs shown by a YPG officer. All of them had a Turkish entry stamp.

Among other documents discovered by the crew is a manual, entitled “How to wage an ideal fight against the criminal Assad regime.” The manual was apparently issued and printed in Istanbul, Turkey, as it has the Turkish address, phone numbers and Facebook page in the lower right-hand corner.

A suicide bomber’s head-band and a manual, entitled “How to wage an ideal fight against the criminal Assad regime” found in an office of one of the Daesh jihadists in Shadadi.

The manual was found in one of the hospitals of Shadadi, which Daesh fighters kept holding even after the rest of the town was liberated.

Along with the manual, a suicide bomber’s head-band was found in an office of one of the Daesh jihadists in Shadadi.

The manual was apparently issued and printed in Istanbul, Turkey, as it has the Turkish address, phone numbers and Facebook page in the lower right-hand corner.

Emerging out of nowhere as a viable candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is calling for a “Peoples’ Revolution.” It is obvious that Sanders is tapping into a deeply felt longing for transformation among the American people—as is Donald Trump—though of a progressive vs. Trump’s reactionary model.

What is happening in America is of seismic proportions. Underlying the sense of the chaos, foreboding, and excitement as we watch both parties’ establishment leaderships crumble is the realization that the nation has gone deeply astray and that something must be done about it—now.

Many thought change would come with the election of Barack Obama, and some did come. Inadequate as it may be, we do now have a semblance of a national health care system. There are in fact more jobs—of the low-paying dead-end variety. Interest rates remain low, so some people can still buy homes. And though the military-industrial-intelligence complex continues to dominate, at least Obama did not bomb Iran and backed off a military confrontation with Russia over Syria.

But is it enough? Sanders and his growing army of followers clearly doesn’t believe so, though Hillary Clinton evidently does. If further changes are called for, as her “fight for you” slogan seems to indicate, it is impossible to tell exactly what those might be, if in fact the slogan means anything at all. By contrast, Sanders’ proposed changes are clear—a single-payer health care system, free public college tuition, political campaign finance reform, higher taxes for Wall Street and the rich, and fewer wars abroad.

Sanders may actually be one of those figures history calls forth at times of crisis. The period we are going through is reminiscent of two other watershed eras in America’s past that brought unlikely heroes to the fore. One is the Civil War. From the time of the nation’s founding to the presidential election of 1860, deficiencies in the U.S Constitution, which legalized slavery, had led to an impasse, where the slave-owning states controlled the federal government, with the industrializing free-labor states pushed to the margins. Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 on the basis of only a plurality among four competing parties, the slave states seceded, and war swiftly followed.

Lincoln prosecuted the war through issuance of Greenbacks and government bonds, raising of excise taxes, and the nation’s first income tax. The war resulted in an economic boom that created the basis for modern industrial development. For the next 40 years, progressives fought for a living wage and decent working conditions, even as the Robber Barons and big bankers moved to take over the economy. Their maneuvering culminated in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

Once in control, the bankers engineered economic growth through expanded credit until the system, actually under the domination of the Bank of England, failed spectacularly in the crash of 1929, bringing the Great Depression. As in 1860, the existence of the nation as the hope of freedom and prosperity for all faced crisis. Also as in 1860, the times brought forth an unlikely leader in Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Unlike Lincoln, he was not a self-educated lawyer born in a frontier log cabin. Rather he was a patrician from one of the nation’s oldest families, but one who was castigated as “a traitor to his class.”

When the economy went under, the Republicans under President Herbert Hoover said that government could do nothing except watch and hope while private enterprise struggled to rebound. Roosevelt considered that option nonsense. A true democratic socialist, Roosevelt took over the reins of the economy and installed his own man, Marriner Eccles, as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Through massive social and economic programs, combined with Keynesian deficit spending. Roosevelt created modern America with its full-employment economy and prosperous middle class.

But after World War II, the bankers and the rich again asserted themselves. During the first Eisenhower administration, the banks reached an agreement with the government to begin raising interest rates. Later, President John F. Kennedy made many enemies on Wall Street by his economic growth policies. Stagflation followed in the 1970s until the Federal Reserve crashed the economy in 1980 through unprecedented interest rate increases.

The Reagan Revolution was based on the deregulation of the banking industry, followed by the promotion of overseas outsourcing of industry. The restraints were further removed by the Clinton administration with NAFTA and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall prohibition on the mingling of deposit and investment banking.

By the end of the Clinton years the dot.com bubble had burst, and the economy was reeling. George W. Bush tried to pay for tax cuts for the rich and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by colluding with Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve to pump up the economy with the housing bubble, but by 2007 this too was collapsing. Barack Obama was elected in 2004 after agreeing to support the gigantic Wall Street bailout. Only the massive issuance of T-Bonds and their sale at zero interest to U.S. banks and foreign nations has kept the economy afloat, even as new trade agreements have been proposed. The prognosis remains dark for a country whose industrial dynamism is barely a memory.

From the election of George Washington as the country’s first president in 1788 to Lincoln’s election in 1860, 72 years had passed. Remarkably, this is exactly the time period between Lincoln’s election and that of FDR in 1932. 72 more years brought us to 2004. By then, crisis loomed again, but instead of electing an epoch-making reformer, we got George W. Bush’s second term and an onrushing catastrophe. Then we got the false dawn of Barack Obama. Even as we speak, the crisis remains unresolved.

I think we can say with some degree of confidence that the only candidate in 2016 who has a program that can solve the issues we now face is Bernie Sanders. Can it be that this poverty-born Jewish senator from the small state of Vermont is the Lincoln or Roosevelt of our era?  Unlikely as that may seem, only time will tell. But first he must be nominated—and then elected. And that is up to us.

Richard C. Cook is a retired federal analyst and former whistleblower. Two of his books are “Challenger Revealed” and “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform”

Shortly after a video emerged showing the Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah al-Mouallimi, failing miserably in an effort to justify his nation’s call for elections in Syria while simultaneously refusing to agree to elections in Saudi Arabia, a new contender for “worst defense of your nation in an interview” emerged. This time, the miserable fail comes from the United States and State Department Spokesman Mark Toner.

In another example of what happens when a Western, GCC, or Israeli political figure is simply asked a real question and even timidly held to the fire, Toner was asked whether or not the recent victory of the Syrian Army over ISIS in Palmyra was a positive development. In fact, the question was direct; did he prefer ISIS or Assad to control Palmyra? Such a question would provoke an easy answer on the side of Assad from any reasonable person. But Toner does not represent a reasonable person or a reasonable government. He represents the U.S. State Department.

The transcript of the interview is provided below as well as the video:

Reporter: Do you want to see the regime retake Palmyra?

Toner: Uh . . .

Reporter: Or do you prefer that it stay in Daesh’s hands?

Toner: [laughs awkwardly] Uh. . . It’s truly a . . . uh . . .[giggles awkwardly again] . . . uh . . .um . . . Look. Uh. . . I think what we would . . . uh. . . like to see is . . . uh. . . the political negotiations, that political track . . . uh . . . pick up steam. Uh . . . That’s part of the reason the Secretary’s in Moscow today um . . . so we can get a political process underway um . . . and deepen and strengthen the cessation of hostilities into a real ceasefire and then . . . we

Reporter: You’re not answering my question.

Toner: I know I’m not [laughs] Um . . . I’m giving a broader view. Uh . . . and then we can all increase our efforts to . . . uh . . . to go after Daesh and dislodge it.

Toner later admitted in the press conference that Daesh was “probably” the “greater evil in this case” despite the fact that he also suggested that designation was a close call between Daesh and the “regime” of Bashar al-Assad.

The very fact that Toner could not answer the question in a clear and direct fashion exposes a hard fact about American foreign policy – it is designed to destroy the secular government of Bashar al-Assad. If Toner had readily admitted that the Syrian military’s victory against ISIS was a positive development, he would have effectively admitted that the SAA is the greatest enemy of the terrorist organization bar none and eliminated his State Department’s justification for military intervention and hostility toward the Syrian President.

Still, despite his actual words, Toner’s bumbling response did nothing more than to make it obvious that the United States desires to see the preponderance of terror across Syria but, because of its tangled web of phony narratives, simply cannot admit it outright.

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

The recent changes in Cuba are misunderstood by many western left commentators who, like other western pundits, are absorbed in the logic of western capital and pay little regard to Cuba’s history of resistance.

So we see alarm bells ringing over ‘the end of the Revolution’, because a flood of US tourists and investors are arriving in the island. This will corrupt and destroy Cuban socialism, they claim. Some even posit a ‘split’ between Fidel and Raúl Castro. After all, Raúl was head of government when relations with the US began to be normalised, and now Fidel has written critically on the Obama visit – ‘denounced’ it, as was misreported by much of the US media.

Clearly, the change in US policy is not a marker of some sort of new-found affection for Cuban socialism on the part of Washington; rather, it is a recognition that the strategy of sanctions and isolation has been utterly unsuccessful in its bid to starve the Cuban masses into counter-revolution. As Barack Obama put it at the start of the normalisation process in late 2014: “These 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked. It’s time for a new approach”. The ‘Plan B’, to bury Cuba in consumer envy and ‘American freedom’, has always been around.

US regime change by ‘isolation’ has been an abysmal failure, just like the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961; the string of assassination attempts on the Cuban leadership; the sponsorship of terrorist groups; and the pumping of anti-communist propaganda about and into the island. Now the western media misreports the US abandoning a blockade policy as Cuba ‘opening up’ to the world.

In fact, it was Cuba’s relentless diplomacy at the UN and its 2013 presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC: the 33 nation, 600 million person bloc which excludes the US and Canada), that catalysed Obama’s December 2014 shift. He found the tables had been turned; the US was now isolated in the Americas.

US moves toward normalisation and dismantling the economic blockade represent, above all, a historic victory for Cuba. The failure of the policy of isolation is a tribute to the resilience, heroism and creativity of the Cuban people, combined with their determined and astute political leadership.

Remember, this was a unilateral concession by Washington. Cuba did not change its internal policies. There is no change in Cuba’s 1995 Foreign Investment Law, created to facilitate joint ventures. Cuba’s more recent economic reforms were driven by internal need, and began several years before the recent US policy change. The US wants some quid pro quo, but Cuba does not see ‘normalisation’ that way.

The position expressed by Fidel many decades ago and maintained by Raul today is simply this: the blockade must go. We have to live with our neighbours and some form of co-existence based on international law is both desirable and necessary. Many western leftists have not understood this.

It’s a truism to say that imperialism never gives up its hostility to any socialist, progressive or independent country. There is an intractable conflict between an imperial power and any independent state. Cuban historians say this precedes the Revolution and that Washington has had its ‘annexationist’ eyes on Cuba for two centuries.

Despite this, Cuba never shut the door to relations with the US. It was Washington which imposed threats, sanctions, embargoes, destabilisation and aggression. Cuba owes the US nothing for abandoning these aggressions. Political normalisation and an end to the blockade (not to mention freedom for the Cuban Five) have been key demands of Cuba and its supporters for decades. It is foolish not to recognize the importance of this breakthrough.

Certainly, important questions remain: how will normalisation help the US to engage in counter-revolutionary activities? What will be the cultural impact? What controls must be maintained on foreign investors? These things are well known to a Cuban leadership which has been dealing with them for many years.

Nevertheless, Cuba is in need of capital, technology and management techniques from the more developed countries. For a relatively poor country with limited natural resources, the blockade makes meaningful economic development exceedingly difficult; it creates serious shortages of medicine, foodstuffs, raw materials, energy, industrial materials; it is a massive barrier to accessing modern technology and foreign capital. It also makes it difficult to develop foreign markets for Cuban produce, which in turn limits local industry (such as pharmaceuticals) and foreign exchange. Ending the blockade has always been a key Cuban objective. The country has never wanted isolation.

Havana is well placed to rise to the new challenges that ‘normalisation’ will bring. Its excellent relationships with Venezuela, Brazil, China and Russia help ensure that the US will not be able to dominate Cuba’s system of controlled, joint-venture foreign investment. Its revolutionary leadership is experienced, principled, honest, vigilant, and with deep roots among the masses. They are alert to US plans. As Fidel says in his recent commentary:

“Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of this noble and selfless country will surrender their rights and spiritual wealth that they have won with the development of education, science and culture.”

Cuba will survive the dangers of normalisation, using the same strengths with which it has been able to survive everything else its northern neighbour has thrown at it over the last 57 years. Normalisation with the US, far from capitulation, is a great victory. Cuba is not giving up a single principle. It is a testament to the endurance and heroism of the Cuban people. ¡Que viva Cuba!

Federal authorities from the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency engaged in what can only be described as a criminal conspiracy to conceal the dire health threat to residents of Flint, Michigan from its toxic water supply. While the Democrats and much of the news media have attempted to foist the blame solely on the state’s Republican governor, new evidence shows that the EPA functioned as an accomplice in the poisoning of city residents and its cover-up.

In a just-released June 25, 2015 internal email, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 5 water expert Miguel Del Toral described the situation in Flint as “bordering on criminal neglect” after he discovered high levels of lead in tap water and efforts of state officials to conceal it from the public. Del Toral sent the message to his superior, EPA Section Chief of Ground Water and Drinking Water Rita Bair, the day after submitting a detailed interim reportwarning of high lead in Flint water.

Del Toral reported that city officials had not treated the city’s water supply with anticorrosive phosphates for more than a year after switching the city supply to the highly polluted Flint River. The refusal to treat the water—a violation of the federal Clean Water Act—resulted in the leaching of lead, copper and other neurotoxins from the city’s antiquated pipes into the water delivered to the city’s homes, schools and workplaces.

Image: Miguel Del Toral

Del Toral’s report included detailed results from his sampling and an explanation of why previous testing city water staff showed much lower levels of contamination. Under the direction of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), Flint water department employees took the samples after doing a “pre-flush” of the water from household taps—a method designed to give a distorted and deliberately lower lead content.

In an effort to dissuade him from pursuing the issue, Bair questioned Del Toral’s assertion that high lead levels were pervasive throughout the city. Del Toral responded angrily,

“The widespread high lead is my judgment based on a couple of decades working with lead issues and I stand by it despite the limited data set from Flint. A simple application of scientific principles to the circumstances in Flint along with the limited data are enough to know that there is a problem there. They have had no corrosion control treatment in place for over a year now and they have lead service lines. It’s just basic chemistry on lead solubility. You will have high lead leaching into the water where you are doing nothing to mitigate that. We don’t need to drop a bowling ball off every building in town to know that it will fall to the ground in all of these places.”

After saying “City of Flint is flushing away the evidence before measuring it,” Del Toral wrote, “there is zero chance or close to zero chance that you will ever capture any of the high lead.” He then added,

“I understand that this is not a comfortable situation, but the State is complicit in this and the public has a right to know what they are doing because it is their children that are being harmed. At a MINIMUM, the City should be warning residents about the high lead, not hiding it telling them that there is no lead in the water. To me that borders on criminal neglect. The only people that question the science are the ones that have a vested interest in not finding lead. When we look, we find it. When they look, they either don’t find it or if they find it, they dismiss it as the resident’s plumbing or use some other fabricated reason.”

Image: The Flint water treatment plant

The email not only provides prima facie evidence that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) and local agencies were breaking the law and concealing the truth from residents. It proves that the EPA, the federal agency charged with enforcing safe drinking water standards, was just as responsible for a crime that has led to the deaths of least 10 residents and which has done permanent damage to thousands of children and other residents.

In the same email, Del Toral condemns the EPA.

“I am really getting tired of the bad actors being defended, the bad actions being ignored, and people trying to do the right thing are constantly being subjected to intense scrutiny as if we were doing something wrong. It’s all of this ‘don’t find anything bad’ crap at EPA that is the reason I desperately want to leave. I am not happy to find bad things. It is completely stressful because it means children are being damaged and I have to put up with all of the political crap, but where these problems exist I will not ignore them. I truly, truly hate working here. EPA is a cesspool.”

His superiors at the EPA quashed Del Toral’s interim report. Susan Hedman, Region 5 administrator, who has since been forced to resign, told Flint Mayor Dayne Walling that she was sorry it was ever written and in its form, would never see the light of day.

The atmosphere Del Toral describes in the EPA is not simply the product of bureaucratic indifference by this or that functionary. It is an expression of the decades of deregulation and defunding by both the Democrats and Republicans, which have transformed the character of these governmental agencies that once exercised at least a modicum of oversight over the rapacious activities of big business.

These bodies, from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), set up in 1927 to monitor quality and prices of food products and pharmaceuticals; the Securities and Exchange Commission, (1934), to oversee and regulate the financial operations of banks, the stock market and investment banks; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), (1958), to regulate practices and prices of commercial airlines; the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the EPA, both set up in 1970, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration MSHA, (1977), all fall under the executive branch of government, i.e., under the President.

Over the last four decades, successive governments from Reagan to Obama have slashed funding to these agencies and promoted “free-market” policies that have eviscerated any real check on the relentless drive for profits at the expense of the health, safety and living standards of working people. In many cases, former corporate executives or bought-and-sold trade union officials have been put in charge of “regulating” such operations, leading to the predictable spread of disease, occupational deaths and, of course, the reckless speculation that led to the 2008 financial crash.

Other studies, including by Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards, have pointed to the role of the EPA in covering up the poisoning of water in Washington, DC and other cities. For its part, the Obama administration has reduced funding for water infrastructure and lead testing for children. This is part of an overall slashing of critical spending by both big-business parties, including a 75 percent reduction in water infrastructure in real terms since the 1970s. Meanwhile trillions have been squandered on bank bailouts, corporate tax cuts and endless wars.

In the late 1960s, when Flint was thriving as GM’s industrial powerhouse and had a population of over 200,000, the Detroit water system built a 72-inch pipeline and a brand-new water treatment facility near Lake Huron to bring treated Great Lakes water some 70 miles inland to supply the city. It was engineered with enough capacity to deliver all the water the city would need based on its continued expansion. For 45 years, this pipeline was Flint’s water source.

How then, did the EPA—the body tasked with safe water enforcement—allow the city of Flint to 1) disconnect from this proven source of clean water on the promise that a new pipeline to be built six miles to the north would deliver raw, untreated lake water when completed in late 2016 to Flint’s 130-year-old and largely mothballed treatment plant; and 2) in the interim, use the Flint River as the main water source, which was known to be polluted and corrosive; then 3) allow the water to be pumped into the city’s system with no corrosion control?

The Obama-appointed Administrator of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, stubbornly testified before Congress on March 17 that the EPA had nothing to do with the Flint catastrophe. Her first visit to Flint was a public relations event to “rebuild trust” on February 2 where she put forward the official line that the MDEQ alone was responsible for the Flint poisoning. When a World Socialist Web Site reporter posed the question that the quashing of Miguel Del Toral’s June report made the EPA just as responsible, she denied that the EPA suppressed him.

The email makes clear that Del Toral sought to sound the alarm after he discovered the situation. Rather than immediately informing the public and holding state and city officials accountable for brazenly breaking the law, the Obama administration’s EPA joined in the criminal conspiracy.

On Thursday, the leaders of the US, China, Britain, France, Italy, India and over fifty other countries will gather for a biennial Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. The summit will be dedicated to making largely meaningless declarations of unity and international collaboration in the face of a recent wave of terrorist attacks in Europe.

Behind the scenes, briefing papers published by intelligence agencies and think tanks, whose reports are rarely if ever mentioned in the national press or on the evening news, tell a different story, one hinted at by the decision of Russia not to send representatives to the summit.

One study, published earlier this year by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, is entitled “Rethinking Armageddon: Scenario Planning in the Second Nuclear Age.”

The private intelligence think tank Stratfor declares that the world is in the midst of a “new arms race,” with major global powers, led by the United States, working aggressively to modernize, upgrade and expand both their conventional and nuclear arms.

In 2010, US President Barack Obama vowed that the US would “not develop new nuclear warheads or pursue new military missions or new capabilities.” Like most of his other promises, this pledge was broken. The White House has initiated a $1 trillion program to modernize the US nuclear stockpile. The program will upgrade existing nuclear warheads by wedding them to precision-guided missiles, and will provide mechanisms to adjust their yield so as to make them easier to use on the battlefield in tandem with conventional weapons.

Two former high-level Defense Department officials penned a recent report for the Union of Concerned Scientists warning that the move by the White House “would be viewed by many as violating the administration’s pledge not to develop or deploy new nuclear weapons.”

In January, the Defense Department announced it was moving forward with plans to replace its Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines with a completely new design beginning in 2021. Each one of the US Navy’s 14 Ohio-class ballistic submarines constitute the fifth most powerful military force in the world. Every submarine carries 24 Trident II missiles. Each missile carries eight warheads with a yield up to 36 times greater than the “Little Boy” bomb that killed tens of thousands in Hiroshima in 1945.

Yet the Navy views this as inadequate. Each new submarine, of which there will be 12, will cost $6 billion to $8 billion, up from $2 billion for the Ohio class. This estimate excludes research and development, the price of each submarine’s nearly 200 nuclear warheads, and associated operating costs.

Each of these submarines is estimated to cost 5–10 times more than the construction of a major teaching hospital, which would provide care for thousands of people.

The dramatic development of the US nuclear arsenal is part of a radical modernization of its armed forces, including the expansion of the F-35 fighter program, the estimated cost of which has ballooned, according to the latest figures, to $1.12 trillion.

The US Air Force has complained that that it does not possess a next-generation stealth aircraft capable of delivering high-yield nuclear weapons. The result is the announcement of the procurement of the latest US bomber, the Northrop Grumman B-21, of which the Air Force plans to purchase 100 at half a billion dollars apiece.

The next generation of weapons, including directed-energy beams, rail guns and hypersonic missiles, is already being field-tested and is likely to come into production over the next decade. Stratfor wrote that “as competition heats up among Russia, China and the United States to be the first to deploy” next-generation weapons, “each will become more vulnerable to attack by the others. If tensions rise, so will the risk of pre-emptive strikes among the longtime rivals.”

Numerous reports have warned that the development of precision guided, hypersonic and other next-generation non-nuclear weapons, together with the miniaturization of nuclear warheads and the development of precision-guided nuclear delivery systems, is breaking down the so-called “firewall” between conventional and nuclear war. As a result, US strategists, in particular, are increasingly pondering whether a nuclear war is “winnable.”

Along with shifts in the geopolitical situation and changes in technological capabilities, the US military and its accompanying think tanks are changing their doctrines and terminology.

The world has entered the “second nuclear age,” in the words of author Paul Bracken. The US must be ready to “fight tonight,” as Admiral Harry B. Harris put it when he became head of the Pacific Fleet. Researcher Michael Carl Haas has written on the “Second Pacific War,” involving the US and China, in which “painful losses—in ships and aircraft, sailors and aviators—would have to be expected as a matter of course, and they would probably accumulate quickly, on both sides.”

It is a well-known fact that the outbreak of the First World War was preceded by a race between Germany, Britain and other imperialist powers to build the latest and largest battleships, known as dreadnoughts, together with the expansion of their traditional military forces. Between 1908 and 1913, military spending by the European powers increased by 50 percent.

No one should believe that today’s arms race will have different consequences. These weapons, soaking up a substantial share of the world’s wealth, are meant to be used. For the first time, a world war is on the horizon between combatants possessing nuclear weapons, under conditions where the rules of engagement are being revised to make their use more likely.

Mankind finds itself in a perilous situation. Imperialism is leading society to a catastrophe that can be averted only through revolutionary means.

Superficially rational, there are in truth few instincts more fundamentally illiberal than the drive towards preventative policymaking. Henry Hill, CapX, Mar 21, 2016

Fat wars, sugar wars, salt wars. Health humanitarian crusaders; predatory sugar drink companies; and government accountants. The modern age of nutritionist bitching, with its common cast, has again moved into prominent focus with the discussion about taxing sugary items – more specifically sugary drinks.The British Exchequer was certainly salivating at the prospect of more revenue (approximately £530m), though the issue has been sold as a health one. Austerity Britain is on the hunt for more money to fill the gaps in Chancellor George Osborne’s already deficient budget, and taxes dressed up as medical initiatives is one way of going about it.

The sugar tax, which comes into effect in two years’ time, targets drinks with more than five grams of sugar per 100ml, with higher rates applying to eight grams of sugar per 100ml. Soft drink companies are crying foul over discrimination. Coca Cola argues that the policy is inconsistently applied – the 8p charge per can avoiding milkshakes and fruit juices. Some sugar options are sweeter than others when it comes to the tax collector.

Such inconsistencies did not trouble the delighted chef and food campaigner Jamie Oliver, who has been beating the drum of sugar reform for years. “It’s a profound move that will ripple around the world. It didn’t think we’d get it.”[1]

The move has been opposed by some groups who smell a revenue grab in the works. As the organisation People Against Sugar Tax (proudly free of funding from food and drinks companies) argues, “We already have one. It’s called VAT.” In their campaign, they make the case that such a tax “would be ineffective, regressive, unfair and unwanted.”[2]

The PAST group have also received the news from the Office for Budget Responsibility that implementing the tax would cost a billion pounds. Chief executive Brook Whelan smugly noted that such an amount “could pay for the salaries of 14,900 new nurses for the next three years.”[3]

Another critique has also been offered. Implementing such a sugar tax might well increase sugar consumption by changing food choices for the worse. A culinary migration might well be initiated, with drinkers taking up other sweet substitutes.

What, then, of examples? Mexico stole a march on this topic, having its own “very fat problem” with 71 per cent of its population considered overweight or obese.[4] In January 2014, the state where soft drink is king imposed a tax on high sugar drinks, covering those with added syrup, powder, flavour extract, caloric sweeteners or sugar.[5]

What, then, of the evaluative part of this whole policy? Scientists and policy wonks have latched onto one: an unprecedented BMJ observational study by the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública and the University of North Carolina suggesting declining consumption in sugar drinks in the wake of such an excise.[6]

It found in studying the behaviour of 6,253 Mexican households providing 205,112 observations in 52 cities with more than 50,000 inhabits that “in the short term the tax on sugar sweetened beverages is generally passed on through prices…to consumers, who reduced their purchases of taxed beverages.”

For all its strengths, the authors conceded in the study that “causality cannot be established, as other changes are occurring concurrent with the tax, including economic changes, health campaigns about sugar sweetened beverages, and antiobesity programs.”

Such excises invariably smack of nanny-statism, though the old question always is what nanny actually intends. Doctors and health experts such as epidemiologist Anna Peeters of Deakin University speak of the role of the tax in creating “a culture of healthy eating”.[7] But nannies are not necessarily truthful, sporting the occasional white lie for consumption by the gullible and young. Osborne is a case in point, floundering desperately to plug gaping financial holes.

In Australia, where the debate is also raging, commentators favouring all concerned nanny find her didactically instructive to the sugar fiend. That fiend is to be reformed and reconditioned for his and her own good. Johnny Junkfood is to become Susie Muesli.“Its not about the nanny state treating people like babies,” claims Peter Fitzsimmons from a country that treasures paternal, occasionally punishing direction, “it is the state saying, ‘listen, you bastards, we wish you wouldn’t keep pouring sugar water and the like down your throats, but if you’re gunna, you may well start paying us now for the hospital bills you’ll inevitably face later”.[8]

Since most humans are disposed to be Aristotle’s social animals, health is itself the property of the communal, a debate of how society orders it. But all too often, the health motive is concealed by others.

This is collectivised control that has been analogised to controlling smoking, though not all in the anti-sugar lobby are necessarily in the business of putting food companies out of business. (The same cannot be said about anti-tobacco wars, where the abolition of the tobacco company remains the utopia of campaigners.)

An effective system, however, will be impaired if the intention is one of demonising sugar through the guise of public health authoritarianism. Nor should it be assumed that raising the cost of a product in high demand necessarily diminishes consumption – elasticity, and other unhealthy options, will compete. Such health policies invariably assume that the making of a choice has to arise from the cajoling nature of middle class nanny, concerned or otherwise with the actual welfare of citizens.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/7006990/Cola-and-Pepsi-taxed-in-Budget.html

[2] http://peopleagainstsugartax.com/

[3] http://peopleagainstsugartax.com/obr-confirms-cost/

[4] http://ensanut.insp.mx/informes/ENSANUT2012ResultadosNacionales.pdf

[5] http://theconversation.com/what-the-world-can-learn-from-mexicos-tax-on-sugar-sweetened-drinks-56696

[6] http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6704

[7] https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/expert-reaction-uks-new-sugar-tax-will-it-work,-and-would-it-work-here

[8] http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-fitz-files-sugar-tax-a-form-of-prepaid-health-insurance-20160325-gnqydg.html

This information is especially directed to all journalists and media. In Argentina there is currently a serious attack on freedom of the press, of expression and the right of journalists to inform people.

Firstly, please take the time to find out about the situation as it is very likely that most of you are not aware of the media being censored, teleSUR. It has a Spanish-language international television program that is being silenced in Argentina:

http://www.telesurtv.net/

Click on IN VIVO on the top right to watch their TV program.

For the moment, its English-language media is restricted to an excellent web site, soon to be raised to the level of a television program as well:

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html

What is happening in Argentina?

Let us allow the journalists and teleSUR speak for themselves in their statement published on 28 March 2016.

Arnold August

They Cannot Make the Truth Disappear, They Cannot Make teleSUR Disappear

teleSUR responds to the Argentine government’s decision to withdraw its stake in the multi-state channel.

This Sunday the Argentine daily La Nacion released an article by Jose Crettaz, titled “The Argentine state is leaving teleSUR,” that leaked information about the withdrawal of said country from the multimedia station. This means that teleSUR will no longer be broadcast on the Open Digital Television state platform nor will it be mandatory to include the station in private cable packages.

The article publishes declarations from Communications Minister Hernan Lombardi and the Secretary of Public Communication Jorge Grecco, who have decided to abandon the multi-state channel, made up by Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Uruguay.

The article in La Nacion speaks, with bias, of President Mauricio Macri defending” the “pluralism” of the media, who decided to abandon teleSUR – without any formal communication with the outlet’s leadership nor through the corresponding diplomatic channels. The aforementioned Argentine state official has only proffered declarations to the media, without establishing any contact or giving any notice to the multi-state outlet.

But it is no coincidence that this conservative newspaper published on, Easter Sunday, the news that Argentina would abandon teleSUR. They are the same people who, only hours after Mauricio Macri’s victory as president, published a polemical editorial titled “No more revenge,” in which it asked for amnesty for dictatorship-era repressors, an article which earned the condemnation of Argentines on social media and even their very own journalists.

The article published in La Nacion, which cites statements from the minister of communication, Hernan Lombardi and the Secretary of Public Communication Jorge Grecco, is a declaration of censorship in the name of the pluralism they purport to champion. This is what La Nacion published to describe the decision of President Macri:

The government of President Mauricio Macri has begun the process envisioned in the cooperative agreement with Venezuela to abandon their ownership stake in the chavista news channel.

teleSUR is a revolutionary communication experience, a project of integration, envisioned by Hugo Chavez. It is an unprecedented source of information with more than 40 correspondents in the world, whose sole task is what has upset the big media networks of the oligarchy: telling the stories other media outlets do not.

It is a channel that was born to build the independence and sovereignty of the people, in the service of the ideal of Latin American and Caribbean integration. Chavista news channel? If showing reality via the outlet and not that of the news agency business is being Chavista, then yes, we are.

It must be highlighted that this channel has not received any oral or written communication about the process to abandon teleSUR. Our only meeting with the minister was televised and produced when the channel broadcast live an exclusive interview with Minister Hermann Lombardi and the Uruguayan host Víctor Hugo Morales during our special coverage of the electoral process in the southern nation.

There has not been any communication between Minister Lombardi and the president of our channel, and therefore no discussion of editorial or journalistic issues.

The article from La Nacion indicates that this decision was expected by the Bolivarian government, which President Mauricio Macri has be clashing with since he called for the freedom of prisoners in Venezuela.

The condemnation of Mauricio Macri is not for “political prisoners” it is for the jailed politician Leopoldo Lopez, who initiated and promoted the coup plan known as “La Salida” or The Exit (an allusion to the exit of Nicolas Maduro from the presidency of Venezuela).

Leopoldo Lopez was sentenced to 13 years and nine months in prison for four crimes relating to the anti-government protests of 2014, which led to the deaths of 43 Venezuelans: including public instigation to crime such as property damage and arson.

Macri “stands up” for the freedom of political leaders who have committed crimes but when it comes to his own country, he does not. For example, he asked Argentina’s district attorney’s office to formally open an investigation into Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, for supposedly “initiating collective violence” – what she actually called for was “resisting and confronting” policies created by the Macri government.

The same thing happened in the case of Parlasur lawmakers and social activist Milagro Sala, who Macri’s government accused of allegedly stealing money earmarked for the Tupac Amaru cooperatives, backing up claims of Jujuy Governor Gerardo Morales. But in the end there have been no clear reasons for her detention, other than this: leading a camp that rejects the politics of the state executive.

According to the La Nacion, Macri defends the human rights of Leopoldo Lopez but the newspaper forgets to mention that his own country violates the right to protest freely and even allows the use of force to repress protesters:

Our country does not in any way interfere with the content or the management of the channel. This statement is in line with what we have proposed for public media in terms of pluralism and austerity. – Minister Lombardi

At teleSUR, we are committed to building our own agenda that keeps to its values and professional ethics. We say no to personal interests that look to shift the balance of truth. At teleSUR, analysis of facts go together with our code of values and the journalistic conduct of our more than 40 correspondents and collaborators across the world.

With the slogan ‘our north is the south,’ the channel, launched by the late Hugo Chavez in 2005, was born with the objective of being an alternative voice to the ‘hegemonic’ and ‘neoliberal’ flow of information but was immediately transformed as the mouthpiece of the populist governments that financed it, among them Nestor and Cristina Kirchner. – La Nacion

Nothing different could be expected from the owners of La Nacion, who conform to their class role, which places them on the side of big media and against the collective rights achieved in Latin America. This project belongs not only to Venezuela but also Bolivia, Uruguay, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

The journalistic content published on teleSUR has a leftist editorial line and reaches audiences in Latin America, North America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa, covering issues such as the refugee crisis in Europe, the disappeared in Mexico, the war in Colombia, the blockade against Cuba and the racist killings in the United States, amongst others.

La Nacion labels governments that have made historic social achievements as “populist.” Specifically in the case of the Kirchners, in 10 years poverty was reduced, and around 970 suspects of crimes against humanity, committed during the civic-military dictatorship, were charged.

The Kirchner decade also made other social gains, like increasing coverage for retirees from 66.1 to 94 percent.

The governments dubbed “populist” by La Nacion are connected by one thing: the people are placed above the interests of the powerful elite. With the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela became the country with the fifth-highest university enrollment in the world, according to UNESCO.

Are they defending pluralism or have they made a decision to censor us?

The slogan of this integrationist project truly is “our north is the south,” teleSUR is not a government mouthpiece, it is the voice of the people, it is live news online and on air, with documentary and news-worthy content, that, despite right-wing government threats and attempts to bombard it, has not stopped broadcasting.

Macri’s decision is no accident, it is yet another tool to censor information. This is evident in the comment published by La Nacion, “Once the notification has been made, a process to deregister the teleSUR branch in Argentina that was registered with the General Inspectorate of Justice and registered in the Register of Signals, will begin.”

In teleSUR, we ask ourselves – are they defending pluralism or have they made a decision to censor us? What was published expresses an open interest in making teleSUR disappear. As a company registered as a business in Argentina, any action against our correspondents would constitute an open illegality and we will denounce it as persecution.

teleSUR began transmission on July 1, 2005, at a time when some left-wing governments in Latin America were already beginning to work together, as was confirmed by the Summit of the Americas in November of that year, which lay to rest the idea of integration on the basis of a continental market.

teleSUR is a multi-state news network that is broadcast from Caracas and is managed by the government of the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro. – La Nacion

La Nacion inundates its article with criticism of our channel and makes obvious its role as an accomplice of Mauricio Macri, shifting attention toward Venezuela and showing us how the channel is “managed” by the government of Nicolas Maduro, while in Argentina the new government dismantles the mechanisms that protect people’s freedom of expression, eliminates gas and electricity subsidies, devalues the currency, executes mass layoffs, names judges by decree, among other neoliberal measures.

The channel was an expression of the alliance of Venezuela with the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. – La Nacion

Sadly, the author the La Nacion article does not understand the substantial difference between a state, that acts as a mediator between the FARC and the Colombian government to put an end to more than half a century of war, and a political ally.

Our journalists in Colombia cannot describe what it has meant to work as a journalist in the middle of an internal armed conflict with accusations like these, which at one time were made by ex-president Alvaro Uribe. Today the world recognizes that Colombia lives in conflict and that this must be resolved through dialogue. The position of teleSUR on conflicts will always be: on the side of the victims.

“This statement is in line with what we have proposed for public media in terms of pluralism and austerity,” argued the minister of communication and public content, Hernan Lombardi.

Indeed Macri’s party Cambiamos seeks to achieve pluralism by eliminating channels, like teleSUR, which is broadcast freely via satellite to America, Europe, Asia and parts of Africa.

“teleSUR must be doing something amazing because so many oligarchs want to silence it,” said Mexican philosopher Fernando Buen Abad.

teleSUR has shown the demonstrations of thousands of Argentines against Macri’s government, which in its first 100 days in power has broken the record of government layoffs, leaving thousands of Argentines jobless. In fact, next April gas services will suffer an increase and they are considering the possibility of increasing the cost of water and electricity services. Analysts calculate a rise of 120 percent that would increase costs to consumers.

Is Macri’s intention to silence critics of his government? Is it about pluralism or censorship?

The television program “Economic Policy,” hosted by Roberto Navarro and broadcast by the channel C5N in Argentina, was not transmitted on March 20 after they promoted a three-hour special analysis called “The business partner of the president,” which sought to expose the links between Mauricio Macri and the businessman and personal friend Nicolas Caputo.

On March 18, the channel C5N was attacked after the Integrated System of Argentine Social Security (AFIP) was informed by an article in the daily La Nacion of the channel’s supposed fraudulent insolvency.

On Dec. 25, 2015, President Macri ordered the channel Senado TV to be immediately suspended until further notice.

Similarly, on Nov. 24, 2015, the Argentine president announced that he would take off the air the program “6,7, 8”, a Kirchner communication program providing social and political critique, broadcast by Public TV.

On March 4, teleSUR was taken off the basic package offered by Cablevision in Argentina, without legal basis, depriving millions of Argentines from enjoying 24-hour nonstop news.

teleSUR is available from more than 90 cable providers and maintains agreements with more than five open television stations in different provinces of the country, reaching, until Feb. 9, more than 20 million potential viewers and 8 million subscribers.

teleSUR reiterates that its love for the Argentine people is unconditional as is our commitment to doing the best we can every day to share the stories of our region in the best way possible.

Our team in Argentina will continue working and we demand on their behalf that they be given the conditions for free journalistic expression.

teleSUR reiterates to the officials of Macri’s government our willingness to debate the reasons and arguments, as well as the truth, so that we can protect our relationship.

They are not going to make the truth disappear, they are not going to make teleSUR disappear.

Caracas, March 28, 2016.

Commenting on The Mirror’s allegations, election law expert Professor Anthony King said:

It all seems pretty fishy. It sounds very plausible that this spending should have been declared by the individual candidates.

Labour MP John Mann was also forthright:

It was explicit support to promote a particular candidate. There were costs and expenses such as the travel being provided. That’s unquestionably an election expense for the candidate being promoted and they need to account for it.

Allegations of criminal conspiracy

UKIP has gone further. As The Canary previously reported, a Channel 4 News investigation unearthed evidence that the Conservatives overspent in three key by-elections they fought against UKIP. Since then, Channel 4 has found evidence that one of the 24 MPs covered in The Mirror‘s investigation, Craig Mackinlay, failed to declare at least £21,151 in expenses, including accommodation and campaign buses, in his general election campaign. Mackinlay ended up beating Nigel Farage by 2,812 votes in Thanet South.

The Electoral Commission has launched an inquiry into Conservative party spending, but it is not a prosecuting authority. So UKIP has now asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to investigate the party over Thanet South and the three by-elections:

UKIP believes that this conduct constitutes offences that are corrupt and illegal practices under sections 73, 75, 76 and 82 [of] the Representation of the People Act 1983 (RPA 1983)… These matters are of the gravest possible nature in a western democracy. The mere suggestion that the party of government potentially conspired, perhaps even at the highest level, to pervert the course of a democratic election is one that requires your very serious personal attention.

The DPP says it has no powers to investigate, although it could invite the police to do so.

“Matters for the police”

John Mann MP has suggested that The Mirror‘s allegations should also be investigated by the police:

It’s a matter for police and I’d expect there to be challenges to the results in those constituencies.

Professor Anthony King has said:

I hope, if people complain, that the local police forces will take their complaints seriously.

But there’s a catch.

The 12-month time limit

To “ensure finality in elections,” there is a 12-month time limit on prosecuting offences relating to election expenses. That time limit has already expired for the by-elections – and it is nearly up for any offences committed during the general election, which was held on May 7 2015.

But, as the Electoral Commission has pointedly warned Kent police, police forces can apply for an extension for investigating allegations. It said: “unless the police apply to the courts for an extension, which they are entitled to do under the Representation of the People Act, they will have missed the opportunity to investigate any allegations.”

Conservative Home has pointed out that “if just 901 people in the most marginal seats had voted Labour instead of Conservative, last month’s majority would never have been achieved: every one of those days spent campaigning was crucial”. Now it seems those 901 people may have been persuaded to vote Conservative using corrupt and illegal practices.

You might think that that holding a governing party to account over allegations that it cheated in a general election would trump concerns over “finality in elections”. But it doesn’t. If we want to protect our democracy, it seems, voters in affected constituencies may need to start complaining to their police forces. Quickly.

Get involved!

Do you live in one of the 24 seats whose Tory candidates were helped to victory by the RoadTrip campaign buses?

Amber Valley, Broxtowe, Bury North, Cannock Chase, Cheltenham, Chippenham, Dudley South, Erewash, Kingston, Lincoln, Morecambe and Lunesdale, North Cornwall, Northampton North, Nuneaton, Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, Pudsey, Sherwood, South Thanet, Sutton and Cheam, Thornbury and Yate, Torbay, Weaver Vale, Wells or Yeovil.

If you do, consider contacting your local police force to make a complaint about your candidate’s spending declaration – and to remind the police that they can apply to the courts for an extension to investigate the allegations.

There’s little doubt that, as president, Hillary Clinton will enact the same sorts of disastrous and criminal policies that her predecessors of both parties have pursued. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is being lauded by many as a much needed change in terms of US foreign policy, someone whose ideas and actions will be guided by a very different understanding of the world.

With one breath Trump talks about wanting to “get along with Russia,” and with another proclaims the need to “punish China” for what he describes as currency manipulation and aggression in the South China Sea. The difficulty in ascertaining just what sort of foreign policy Trump would pursue has led many international observers to wonder aloud whether a Trump presidency might not be the best thing for world peace.

Indeed, when it comes to the Middle East and issues as complex as international terrorism, Syria, and Israel-Palestine, there has been speculation that Trump might in fact be something of a non-interventionist, someone who would focus on US domestic problems and rein in US aggression around the world.

But there is no reason to wonder anymore as Trump recently revealed to the Washington Post some of his core advisers on foreign policy. And, to put it bluntly, a Trump presidency means little more than a continuation of US aggression, criminality, and imperialism.

Who’s Who in Trump’s Foreign Policy Inner Circle?

If, as the old adage goes, you are known by the company you keep, then we already know what to expect from a Trump presidency. While The Donald did not provide a complete list of his advisers, just the small sampling should give pause to anyone who has become enamored of the idea that Trump would tone down US foreign policy.

First up for scrutiny is Walid Phares, perhaps the most well known of Trump’s foreign policy team. Phares is a regular commentator on FOX News where he generally espouses more or less the same policies as any typical Washington neoconservative. Indeed, his pedigree and history place him squarely in the aggressive neocon camp, including as one of the main advisers (along with notable neocons Robert Kagan, Eliot Cohen, Eric Edelman, et al) to Mitt Romney in his failed 2012 presidential campaign.

Phares spent a decade as a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a well known neoconservative think tank long since understood as pro-Israel, and widely regarded as part of the influential Israel Lobby. In fact, FDD president and founder Clifford May described the group’s mission as being “to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.”

To that end, Phares has long-standing ties, both professionally and ideologically, with Israel and the hardliner policies of Tel Aviv. As Professor As`ad AbuKhalil of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley wrote in 2011:

Phares’ first career began early in the Lebanese civil war of the 1975-1990 when he allied himself with the right-wing militias, armed and financed by Israel… After Genral [sic] Michel Auon assumed the presidency of Lebanon in 1988, Phares joined the right-wing coalition known as the Lebanese Front, which consisted of various sectarian groupings and militia [sic]. The Front backed Gen. Auon in his struggles against the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad and the Muslims of Lebanon. Phares’s role was not small, according to Beirut newspaper accounts.. He served as vice chair of another front’s political leadership committee, headed by a man named Etienne Saqr, whose Guardians of Cedar militia voiced the slogan “Kill a Palestinian and you shall enter Heaven.”… The Front was also backed by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, a bitter foe of the Syrians.

Indeed, as respected foreign policy analyst Jim Lobe noted, Phares is “controversial for his past ties to the militant Phalange movement in Lebanon.” For the uninitiated, the Phalange movement is responsible for brutal repression of Palestinians and has been deeply connected to the Israeli state going back to the founding of Israel in 1948. As the New York Times wrote in July 1983 in the aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, “The Maronite Christians of Lebanon and their Phalangist Party became Israel’s key allies during the war in Lebanon that began when Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in June 1982… the Phalangist militias [showed] ruthlessness in massacring hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut last September.”

And this is the world from which the FOX News “expert” and key foreign policy advisor to Trump emerges. So while Mr. Trump touts his “fairness” and not wanting to “take sides” in the Israel-Palestine conflict, he’ll have a key belligerent and party to war crimes against Palestinians whispering in his ear. Not exactly the sort of revelation that engenders much hope. Also interesting to note is the decades old hatred of the Assad family in Syria that Phares has evinced. Perhaps this explains, at least in part, why Trump has publicly called for a ground invasion of Syria and Iraq with up to 30,000 US troops; so much for non-interventionism.

Chairing Trump’s foreign policy team is Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, a far right conservative whose actual positions on the key issues of war and peace demonstrate unmitigated imperialistic views. He voted YES to enlarging NATO to include Eastern Europe (along with his colleague Hillary Clinton), which certainly calls into question the very notion that Trump has any real intention to move the US away from NATO. Additionally, in perhaps the most important political vote in the last few decades, Sessions was unabashedly in favor of the Iraq War. He proclaimed on the floor of the US Senate at the time:

Our motive is good, our goals positive and realistic, and our leaders honest, careful, principled and have the courage to act on those beliefs… I know the vision that President Bush has to protect his people and improve the world…  The American people did not sacrifice to create the greatest military in history to allow China, Russia or even France to have a veto over its use. It is no wonder that these nations would like, through the mechanism of the United Nations, to seize control over our military and to use it as they will.

Aside from being disastrously wrong on Iraq (along with Hillary Clinton), Sessions also voted YES on designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization as part of the National Defense Authorization Act in 2007. He steadfastly supported continued occupation of Iraq long into 2008, when many others had already conceded the war as a disaster and were ready to leave. And, lest anyone think Sessions merely voted this way out of party loyalty during the Bush administration, it should be noted that he voted YES on the bombing of Kosovo under Bill Clinton, yet another instance where he and Hillary were in agreement. Other examples abound of Trump’s foreign policy Chair’s serial warmongering.

Trump also named Keith Kellogg, a former Army lieutenant general, as one of his key advisers. Mr. Kellogg, after having left the Army, has served in executive positions in a number of military contracting firms, including CACI International at the time its employees took part in torture programs at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Having overseen a company directly involved in torturing prisoners of the US military, it should come as no surprise then that Kellogg is a principal foreign policy adviser to Trump who on numerous occasions has promised that under his watch, the US would bring back “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

Kellogg has deep ties to various sections of the military-industrial complex, both from his time as principal adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the disastrous Bush administration (along with other high ranking posts in the Pentagon), and from his myriad positions with private contractors and mercenary organizations; not exactly an anti-establishment outsider.

Then there’s Joe Schmitz – or as Trump referred to him, “the honorable Joe Schmitz” – who was the inspector general at the Defense Department during the Bush administration. Under his watch the US committed countless war crimes for which no one was ever prosecuted. In fact, it was his refusal to prosecute military criminality, including lying to Congress and protecting criminals highly placed in the military bureaucracy, that led to his being investigated by the US Congress.

Rather than face any scrutiny, Schmitz simply resigned his position and immediately took an executive position with the infamous Blackwater USA (mercenary company that has committed war crimes all over the globe) where he served as chief operation officer and general counsel. Again, one has to wonder about a Trump presidency in which wanton criminality is not only stated publicly by the candidate, but is in fact precisely the track record of his foreign policy team.

Finally there are Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, both connected to the “energy-industrial complex,” that is, Big Oil and all the myriad institutions devoted to it.

Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy Capital, a private equity firm that invests in big energy projects and sits at the intersection of Wall Street and Big Oil. Page is a veteran of Wall Street big shots Merrill Lynch where he served as Chief Operating Officer of the Energy and Power Group. Merrill Lynch is of course the corporate and investment banking division of Bank of America, one of the largest financial institutions in the world. In effect then, Carter Page was the top ranking energy executive within the Bank of America investment arm.

Page’s foreign policy experience comes into play when considering that he was the executive in charge of dealing with Russian energy investments, and those in the Caspian region, on behalf of Wall Street interests. He was also a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the primary centers of policy analysis in the US, and one which is firmly within the orbit of the political and financial establishment. Again, one has to question the very notion that Trump’s candidacy represents any sort of threat to the establishment. If anything, it seems to be merely a reflection of it, just like every other candidate.

Finally, George Papadopolous is the director of the Center for International Energy and Natural Resources Law & Security at theLondon Center of International Law Practice. A former adviser to the Ben Carson campaign, Papadopolous is a mostly unknown quantity in energy policy and analysis circles whose minimal published work and analysis has been entirely focused on Israeli gas discoveries in the Leviathan Gas Field,with Papadopolous arguing a pro-Israel position that boils down to Israeli-EU cooperation in the form of Israeli gas sales to Cyprus. He is also an advocate of further NATO expansion to include Cyprus, as well as the permanent stationing of US naval assets on the Greek island of Crete.

As the Washington Post noted, Papadopolous wrote in 2014 that, “Regional economic cooperation between Israel and Cyprus should be the guiding principle that anchors Israel economically to Europe,” and in 2015 argued that “Israel’s energy exports can serve as the basis for enhancing strategic relations between Israel and Egypt. They could also serve as the foundation for political and security cooperation with Greece and Cyprus.”

These clearly pro-Israel analyses, coupled with the fact that his resume boasts publications in staunchly right wing, pro-Israeli outlets such as the Jamestown Foundation and Hudson Institute, among others, point to an obvious slant to his outlook. Indeed, there’s been some question as to whether he’s not simply a mouthpiece for Israel, as suggested by even pro-Israel think tanks such as the Center for a New American Security.

What to Expect from a Trump Foreign Policy

Just the early look at Trump’s foreign policy advisers does not bode well for the notion of non-interventionism being hyped by many. While Trump has publicly voiced such sentiments at times, it remains an open question whether he really believes them, or if he’s just playing to the far right wing, isolationist tendency of many of his supporters. Is it genuine belief or pure demagoguery?

Sitting in the Oval Office, Trump will listen carefully to the advice of Walid Phares who no doubt will advocate for regime change and aggressive policies in the Middle East, as he has throughout the last three decades. Trump will be told of the need to dispense massively lucrative contracts to the private military firms with whom his close advisers Keith Kellogg and Joe Schmitz have long relationships. He’ll be cajoled to follow through with aggressive actions that will benefit Big Oil and Wall Street, all the buddies and pals of people like Carter Page. Trump will “make deals” based on the advice of Israeli mouthpieces like George Papadopolous, not based on reason, let alone strategy in the interests of the US.

In practical terms, Trump will likely escalate America’s mostly fictional and superficial “War on ISIS,” embroiling the US in yet another regional war as he puts boots on the ground in Syria and/or Iraq. Trump will do nothing to rein in NATO, he might simply advocate for a shifting of the burden onto European NATO partners, something that will likely not happen.

Trump will aggressively deal with Russia and Putin, puffing out his chest and acting like some kind of strongman with Putin for public relations effect only. In fact, Trump is likely to damage further the US-Russia relationship with reckless rhetoric and policies, rather than moving toward genuine understanding and reconciliation. One can only cringe to imagine the blustering Trump alongside the always calm and collected Putin whose every move and word is calculated to maximum effect.

In short, Trump represents only the most superficial change in US foreign policy. His manner of plain speaking may be a breath of fresh air to Americans, and many around the world, who have tired of the usual political doublespeak and hollow babble, but his policies and actions will do little to stop the Empire. Trump is, simply put, Hope and ChangeTM of a different sort. And, as with the current Hope and ChangeTM the effect will be disastrous.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The Russian embassy in the UK has publicly questioned why the British government has failed to address the retaking of Palmyra from ISIS militants. The Sunday recapture by the Syrian government was made possible with the help of Russian airstrikes.

Calling the retaking a “major victory over Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL],” the embassy tweeted that the British Foreign Office and the government branch dedicated to defeating the group has failed to acknowledge the efforts.

Liberation of Palmyra a major victory over ISIS.Wonder why @UKagainstDaesh & @foreignoffice keep silent about it pic.twitter.com/BNRPKPZXeN

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) March 28, 2016

Later on Monday, the UK Foreign Office said it welcomed action against IS, but laid responsibility for the conflict and the fate of the UNESCO World Heritage site on “the Syrian regime.”

“…It is the Syrian regime that is ultimately responsible for this conflict. It is deeply regrettable that the iconic site of Palmyra has become a pawn in the wider Syria conflict,” a Foreign Office spokesman told Sputnik.

“The only way out of [the Syrian conflict] is a political settlement,” he added.

#Palmyra ‘not just an archaeological site but a symbol of Syria’ – UNESCO https://t.co/sy3qjlvph2 pic.twitter.com/fSRmg7ufky

— RT (@RT_com) March 27, 2016

Image: SANA/Reuters 

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron has kept silent about the recapture, which released the ancient city from the hands of IS for the first time since May 2015.

According to the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria, Russian air forces “carried out 40 sorties to Palmyra’s area within 24 hours.” Eight command center buildings, 12 bases, two tanks, three artillery units, eight vehicles, and six ammunition warehouses were destroyed in the strikes. Eighty militants were also killed in the operation, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

President Obama has also refused to acknowledge the retaking of the ancient city, with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times speculating that this is because the US has portrayed the battle against IS as a task for Washington and its allies, while accusing Russia of attacking moderate rebels instead of extremists.

The US-led coalition in Syria has previously butted heads with Russia when it comes to conducting airstrikes in the war-torn country. In December, the US and Moscow accused each other of launching a strike which killed three Syrian soldiers at an army base.

NATO is also refusing to comment on the recapture of Palmyra, an alliance official told TASS on Monday.

“As a NATO official, I suggest you contact with your question NATO’s allies, which are all contributing to the International Coalition against ISIL,” the official said.

Meanwhile, London Mayor Boris Johnson has chosen to speak out, despite the silence of his country’s prime minister.

Praising the “ruthless clarity” of Russian President Vladimir Putin in aiding the Syrian government’s removal of “maniac” Islamic State jihadists from Palmyra, Johnson said that Moscow has made the West look “ineffective.”

“If reports are to be believed, the Russians have not only been engaged in airstrikes against Assad’s opponents, but have been seen on the ground as well. If Putin’s troops have helped winkle the maniacs from Palmyra, then (it pains me to admit) that is very much to the credit of the Russians. They have made the West look ineffective; and so now is the time for us to make amends, and to play to our strengths,” Johnson wrote in his column for the Telegraph.

Johnson went on to note the archaeological and historical significance of the city, much of which has been destroyed by Islamic State.

“The victory of Assad is a victory for archaeology, a victory for all those who care about the ancient monuments of one of the most amazing cultural sites on Earth,” Johnson wrote.

“The monsters of ISIL were not just content to murder anyone who refused to accept their barbaric version of Islam. They were so small, so narrow, so stunted in their understanding of the will of God that they regarded any pre-Islamic building or structure – no matter how beautiful – as being somehow a blasphemy. They have mined, bombed and demolished some of the most sublime buildings in the world,” he continued.

Palmyra is home to dozens of remarkable monuments of antiquity, and a number of historical sites have been destroyed by IS jihadists since they captured the city – among which were the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel and the Arch of Triumph.

Giovanni Boccardi of UNESCO’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Unit told RT on Sunday that it remains unclear what can be restored or rescued.

“We are looking at the web and we have seen footage of the city as it looks today, and it looks that there might be even more destruction than what we expected, so it is critical now to be able to go there and to conduct a total assessment as soon as the security conditions will allow,” he said.

There is undoubtedly an information war raging. There are intentional liars, people who witlessly repeat these lies, poor research, and opinions spun to look as if it is research. To sort the ever increasing amount of information from disinformation, there are a few simple methods people can use.

But above all, people must personally dedicate themselves to following the truth no matter where it brings them, having the courage to accept a reality that may not necessarily mesh with their current perception. The inability to do this will render moot all other means of determining the veracity of any given report or piece of analysis.

Find the Original Source

This is fundamental. When anyone, anywhere makes a claim, whether it is in a historical documentary or book, or regarding current events, one must find the original source. Where did this information come from? Is it a direct quote? If so, can this quote be verified? If the quote is “alleged” or “leaked” or otherwise second-hand information or the sources never revealed, it is impossible to verify and therefore impossible to consider as verified.

Often conversations relayed by second-hand sources serve as the basis of propaganda. It is essentially the process of placing words into the mouths of people who never said anything of the sort. Media that repeatedly uses quotes that are impossible to verify may be engaged in disinformation.

If the quote is confirmed, that alone does not mean that what was said was “true.” It simply means that someone made a statement – the veracity of which must be determined through other means. Finding the source of a claim often helps shatter long-held myths. This is particularly true in regards to historical matters.

Follow the Money

All protests, political movements, and armed struggles require immense amounts of resources to start, perpetuate, and most importantly to succeed.  They also require leadership. If one finds themselves reading reports of events that do not mention funding or the names of specific leaders, either those reporting on the events don’t have these facts and should make note that such information is both missing and essential to find, or misdirection and disinformation is at play.

Omitting these facts has been done intentionally across the Western media to obfuscate Western involvement particularly in “political uprisings” and “armed rebellions” that are made to appear spontaneous and indigenous but are in fact long-planned, foreign-backed conspiracies. The so-called “Arab Spring” is perhaps the most notorious example of this, where the Western media failed intentionally and repeatedly to identify the funding and individuals involved in both street protests and subsequent armed attacks on security agencies across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Had the public carefully read through reports, and followed the money, they would have found a combination of US State Department money and the Anglo-American-backed Muslim Brotherhood behind each and every “uprising” across the Middle East, with Al Qaeda forming the subsequent armed groups that overran Libya and are currently leading attempts to overthrow the government of Syria.

Look at What People Do, Not at What They Say…

There are media reports, government press releases, op-eds, analysis, and policy papers of every kind. Many times, these various sources contradict each other. How does one go about determining which is true and which is disinformation? It is quite simple, don’t simply listen to what reporters, analysts, and policymakers say, look at what they and those they have influence over are doing.

The United States claims that it is fighting the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) in Syria. However, if we “follow the money” and realize that it is impossible for ISIS to sustain its fighting capacity within Syria or Iraq alone, and requires an immense amount of resources from abroad to continue its operations, we realize those resources are undoubtedly passing through territory the US and its allies in fact control.

That the US is not interdicting these vital supplies, including additional fighters, weapons, and cash, is proof that claims in the media and amid government press releases that the US is “fighting ISIS” are false.

Conversely, in veteran journalist Seymour Hersh’s 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection,” he stated explicitly, citing US and Saudi officials, that the West and its regional allies planned to use sectarian extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda to wage a regional proxy war against Syria and Iran. This also so happens to be precisely what is now playing out across the MENA region. Hersh’s analysis can be tracked down through his sources, by following the money – as only state-sponsorship can explain Al Qaeda and ISIS’ fighting capacity in Syria, Iraq, and beyond – and by simply looking at what is now unfolding across the region.

None of what the current corporate media or government press releases say can be verified in a similar manner, and certainly, none of what is said by the West currently, matches what is actually happening on the ground.

Finally, let us consider policy papers released by corporate-funded think tanks like the Brookings Institution. Such policy papers have repeatedly laid out plans for arming extremists, incrementally invading and occupying Syria, and eventually toppling the Syrian government. This too, is precisely what we see happening on the ground, though the Western media and Western representatives claim the cause is not a  premeditated Western conspiracy, but a series of coincidences and unfortunate turns of fate.

Final Thoughts 

The truth is hard to arrive at, not only because people intentionally seek to fool others, but because often, many unintentionally fool themselves. Reality can be unpleasant. Watching a nation be destroyed can be heartbreaking and the desire to insulate oneself from the pain through cognitive dissonance can be overwhelming. However, one of the greatest maxims in human conflict is to truly know yourself and know your enemy. Truth isn’t just a matter of virtue, it is a factor that will make the difference between victory and defeat.

If victory over the forces of greed and hegemony is truly our goal, then we must face the facts no matter how unpleasant. Our failure to do so will cost us everything – and those driven by greed and hegemony know. That is why they have invested so much in clouding reality and obfuscating the truth. We must invest more in seeing through this clouded reality, and discover the truth, no matter how unpleasant.

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

In a body blow to the British government, reeling from disastrous foreign policy forays in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf has sided with Argentina, “ratifying the country’s 2009 Report” extending the limit of its territory to include the Falkland Islands, reports the Guardian. (1)

“The UN commission’s finding included the caveat that there is an unresolved diplomatic dispute between Argentina and Britain over the islands.”

Britain is responsible for the Falkland’s defense and foreign affairs.

“This is a historic occasion for Argentina because we’ve made a huge leap in the demarcation of the exterior limit of our continental shelf”,  Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra said. “This reaffirms our sovereignty rights over the resources of our Continental Shelf.”

The “resources” which now potentially become Argentina’s include a great deal of oil.

On 2^nd April 1982, Britain, under the premiership of Prime Minister David Cameron’s great hero, Margaret Thatcher, embarked on a seventy four day conflict with Argentina over the sovereignty of the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which lie off the Argentine coast. The conflicts ended on 14^th June 1982, with the loss of 649 Argentinian military personnel and 255 British.

So far there has been no comment from the British government.

Given David Cameron’s place in an overwhelming international quagmire, the mess he is in over the unnecessary and feckless looming June referendum which he called over the UK membership of the EU, it seems he would be unlikely to embark on a bankrupting air, sea and land assault 8,002 miles away. However, his knee jerk reactions and ever flawed judgment are such, that all options are possible.

Notes:

1. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/29/falkland-islands-argentina-waters-rules-un-commission

There were a lot of sweaty palms on Wall Street yesterday. As the Government Accountability Office released a report suggesting that regulation of Wall Street is a complex maze of inefficiency and fragmentation leaving gaping holes in which crooks can find fertile ground, the U.S. Justice Department was perp-walking a 2002 Harvard Law School graduate (whose family name resides on the student center there) on charges reminiscent of a Bernie Madoff startup.

According to the unsealed complaint from the U.S. Justice Department’s regional U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, 39-year old Andrew Caspersen [image left], whose father and grandfather were the former heads of Beneficial Corp.,  is alleged to have defrauded approximately $24.6 million from a charitable foundation by setting up a fake account, transferring $17.6 million of that amount to his “personal brokerage account” at an unnamed brokerage firm, then churning the hell out of options on the S&P 500 Exchange Traded Fund (SPY), which racked up losses of $14.5 million. What else Caspersen traded is not mentioned, but the complaint notes that as of December 31, 2015, his personal brokerage account had a “net loss of approximately $25 million.”

The Justice Department is calling this a $95 million fraud because on top of the $24.6 million that was defrauded from the charity, Caspersen attempted to obtain “an additional $20 million investment from the same charitable foundation and a $50 million investment from another multinational private equity firm headquartered in New York,” ostensibly to cover up the first fraud in a Ponzi like operation when the charity demanded its first $25 million back. Caspersen failed to obtain the additional sums.

The sweaty palms on Wall Street stem from the fact that some very big names are involved here. While the fraud was taking place, Caspersen was a managing director at PJT Partners Inc., whose largest shareholder is Blackstone Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman. PJT trades on the New York Stock Exchange and the shares tanked yesterday on the news of Caspersen’s arrest, initially dropping as much as 24 percent before closing down a little over 10 percent.

A major law firm, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison – the firm that has serially represented Citigroup over fraud charges – was brought in by PJT to investigate the matter according to Bloomberg News.

But the biggest bombshell comes from the related complaint brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Caspersen. One of the four largest banks in the U.S., Bank of America, was where Caspersen set up the fake investment account, wired $25 million into it and then transferred $17.6 million out of it into his own personal brokerage account according to the Justice Department complaint.

Read Full article at Wall Street on Parade

The hugely destructive power of nuclear weapons can end life on earth.

NYT editors want them kept from “terrorists,” ignoring “state terrorists”, including America and Israel, an alliance posing the greatest of all threats.

An earlier article discussed the devastating effects of a thermonuclear attack on New York – likely if America launches nuclear war on Russia, an unthinkable real possibility.

The city and any other struck would be incinerated. Almost instantly after detonation, temperature at ground zero would be 200 million degrees Fahrenheit (about 100 million degrees Celsius), or about four to five times the temperature at the center of the sun.

Enormous heat and light would ignite fires covering over 100 square miles. Firestorm intensity would create superheated winds of about 300 miles per hour.

Nothing could withstand their overwhelming force. Firestorm intensity would vaporize structures, turning midtown Manhattan into smoldering rubble.

Around 100 square miles of vegetation would become superheated dust. Raging fires would erupt up to nine miles from ground zero.

Material from collapsed buildings could continue bursting into flames when exposed to air months after the firestorm ended.

No one in affected areas could escape. Superheated hurricane-force winds would incinerate everyone. The firestorm would extinguish all life in its path and destroy most everything else.

Last spring, over 150 countries participated in a Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

It aimed to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, promote peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and entirely eliminate this menace.

Conferences have been held every five years since NPT became effective in 1970.

The 2015 conference addressed:

universality of NPT;

nuclear disarmament;

nuclear non-proliferation;

peaceful use of nuclear energy;

regional disarmament and non-proliferation;

implementation of the 1995 resolution on making the Middle East “free of nuclear and all other weapons of mass destruction” and their delivery systems;

measures to address withdrawal from NPT;

ways to promote engagement with civil society in strengthening NPT; and

disarmament education.

Weeks of talks achieved nothing. The US,  Britain and Canada obstructed responsible change. They blocked agreement aimed at preventing nuclear weapons and technology proliferation.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday clock stands at three minutes to midnight, reflecting the “high” probability of “global catastrophe,” BAS saying last year:

“(U)nchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity.”

“World leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.”

Physician, anti-war/anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott explains:

“nuclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced.”

Martin Luther King warned against nations “spiral(ing) down a militaristic stairway into the hell of (potential) thermonuclear destruction.”

Albert Einstein’s theories and work led to the development of atomic power. Splitting the atom changed everything, threatening life on earth.

Einstein understood the danger, in 1946 saying “(o)ur world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil.”

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

We have a choice. End nuclear weapons or they’ll end us.

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.

In the midst of one of the wildest presidential races in the history of United States, the sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has created yet another wrinkle in the campaign’s political fabric. With the Republican leadership delaying consideration of President Obama’s nomination of Merrick B. Garland until next year, a look at some earlier elections and court nominations might be instructive.

Although history will record that congressional Republicans have opposed virtually every program advanced by Obama throughout his administration, including their very own health care plan, history also reveals what happened during a similarly contested election and “lame-duck” nomination of a Supreme Court justice shortly after the United States was founded. Will the Republicans take lessons from the conservative “Federalists” who actually drafted and ratified the Constitution, or will they continue their strategy of obstruction at all costs?

Following George Washington’s two terms as the first president of the United States, party politics first reared its ugly head as Vice President John Adams—who headed the new Federalist Party—was elected President. Washington’s Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson—the leader of the new Democratic-Republican Party—received the second largest number of electoral votes and automatically became the Vice President.

Four years later, the election of 1800 was a rematch between the two candidates. The election was bitterly fought, with the Democratic-Republicans attacking Adam’s pro-British position and his Alien and Sedition Acts and the Federalists attacking Jefferson’s pro-French position. The election, which was held throughout the month of November, resulted in an Electoral College tie vote between Jefferson and Aaron Burr (who was ostensibly Jefferson’s vice-presidential running mate).

When Burr arrogantly declined to step aside, the matter was decided by the House of Representatives during February 1801. Following 36 votes the House finally decided for Jefferson, who was inaugurated on March 4, 1801, with Burr as the Vice President. Simultaneously—and although he had already been defeated for reelection—Adams appointed his Secretary of State, John Marshall, to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Marshall’s nomination was confirmed by the lame-duck Federalist Senate on January 27, 1801, only 35 days before Jefferson was to be inaugurated. Marshall officially took office as Chief Justice on February 4th; however, he continued to serve as Secretary of State until the expiration of Adams’ term a month later.

Marshall went on to dominate the Supreme Court for 34 years under six presidents. He was largely responsible for establishing the doctrines of judicial review, federal supremacy over state laws, and federal regulation of interstate commerce.

With the ratification of the 12th Amendment to the Constitution in 1804, voting for president and vice president in the Electoral College was separated and the situation in which the two offices could be held by members of opposition political parties was largely eliminated. The Amendment also covers the situation wherein no candidate receives an electoral majority and provides the manner by which the matter is to be determined by a vote in the Congress.

The 12th Amendment was tested during the election of 1824 in which none of the three candidates achieved a majority vote in the Electoral College. Even though Senator Andrew Jackson received more popular votes than the next two candidates combined (Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Senator Henry Clay), the House of Representatives voted in what became known as the “corrupt bargain” to give the presidency to Adams. Jackson quit the Democratic-Republican Party and established the modern Democratic Party, which provided the platform for his election as president in 1828.

With the establishment branch of the current Republican Party now threatening to run an independent candidate should the outlier Donald Trump prevail in the primaries, and with Senator Bernie Sanders’ continuing strong progressive challenge to Hillary Clinton—the establishment candidate of the Democratic Party—there is a possibility that no presidential or vice presidential candidate will have a majority when the electors vote in December.

Absent a majority vote, the matter will have to be decided by the 115th Congress after being seated on the 3rd of January. The House, voting by states, will choose the president from the top three candidates. Senators, voting as individuals, will select the vice president from the top two candidates. Should the Republicans retain their current majority in the House of Representatives, the establishment Republican candidate could be chosen, even if he or she received the least number of popular or electoral votes.

The present Republican majority in the Senate is only 54 of 100, and with 34 of the Senate seats being contested in November, the Democrats might more easily obtain a majority in the Senate. Under this scenario, the Nation could once again be faced with the possibility of a vice president being from a different party than the president. More amazingly, if the House failed to obtain a majority vote of 26 states for president by January 20th, the new vice president selected by the Senate would be inaugurated to serve as president until the House could make its choice.

Who can possibly predict at this time how the current political craziness will work itself out? Perhaps the time has come to shutter the anachronistic Electoral College and to allow the American voters to popularly elect their own presidential leadership during shorter, more inexpensive, and less divisive campaigns.

William John Cox is a retired public interest lawyer. His new book, “Transforming America: A Voters’ Bill of Rights” presents the United States Voters’ Rights Amendment, which replaces the presidential Electoral College with national popular elections. He can be reached through his website, http://www.williamjohncox.com.

The Russian Air Force is continuing an aerial campaign in the province of Homs. Following the liberation of Palmyra, Russian warplanes launched air raids in the area of the ISIS stronghold of Sukhanah and at the Palmyra-Sukhanah road. These air raids set the foothold for an expected offensive of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies through the Palmyra- Sukhanah-Deir Ezzor road in order to relieve the 104th Republican Brigade besieged by ISIS.

On a tactical level, the liberation of Palmyra and the expected advance on Sukhanah  greatly reduced ISIS’ ability to threaten key government supply lines, especially along the M5 highway and the road to Aleppo.

The pro-government forces have also launched an operation to seize the town of Quraytayn which is located south from the Tiyas Crossroads. The Syrian forces have already taken Hazm al-Gharbiyat and been advancing on the western gates. Quraytayn is also an important logistical potion, liberation of which will increase the SAA’s freedom of operation in the province.

In a separate development, the SAA and Hezbollah units have liberated the Air Defence Base at the village of Bala al-Kadim and the nearby Zahir Farm pushing Al-Nusra militants from this area in East Ghouta.

How, the Syrian forces control with fire Haush Jarabo which is the only way for the pocket. This makes very difficult for Jaish al-Islam, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army to retreat from the pocket. If Haush Jarabo is seized by the pro-government forces, the strategic situation will become hopeless for the militants encircled there.

On Mar.29, the Iraqi security forces engaged in clashes with ISIS in the village of al-Nasr , west of Makhmour. This advance is a part of the Ninewa operation aimed to recapture villages west of Makhmur District, southwest of Arbil . The 71st Brigade of the 15th Iraqi Army Division, Peshmerga, Popular Mobilization, and tribal fighters are involved in there. Coalition airstrikes and artillery from a U.S. Marine firebase support these forces.

The Turkish military stated that ISIS launched rockets at the Bashiqa base that houses Turkish forces northeast of Mosul on Mar.26. 1 Turkish soldier was killed and 1 wounded.

Last month, US secretary of State John Kerry called for Syria to be partitioned saying it was “Plan B” if negotiations fail.  But in reality this was always plan A. Plans to balkanize Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern states were laid out by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a 2006 trip to Tel Aviv. It was part of the so called “Project For a New Middle East”. This was a carbon copy of the Odid Yinon plan drawn up by Israel in 1982. The plan outlined the way in which Middle Eastern countries could be balkanized along sectarian lines. This would result in the creation of several weak landlocked micro-states that would be in perpetual war with each other and never united enough to resist Israeli expansionism.

“Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan… ” Oded Yinon, “A strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”,

The leaked emails of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reveal advocates of the Oded Yinon plan were behind the US push for regime change in Syria. An Israeli intelligence adviser writes in an email to Hillary,

“The fall of the House of Assad could well ignite a sectarian war between the Shiites and the majority Sunnis of the region drawing in Iran, which, in the view of Israeli commanders would not be a bad thing for Israel and its Western allies,”.

Kerry’s plan B comment came right before UN’s special envoy de Mistura said federalism would be discussed at the Geneva talks due to a push from major powers. Both side’s of the Geneva talks, the Syrian Government and the Syrian National Coalition flat out rejected Federalism. Highlighting the fact that the idea did not come from the Syrian’s themselves. The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Al Jaafari, said that the Idea of federalization would not be up for discussion. “Take the idea of separating Syrian land out of your mind,” he would say.

But some may not completely understand the full implications of federalism and how it is intrinsically tied to balkanization. Some cite the fact that Russia and the United States are successful federations as evidence that federation is nothing to fear. However the point that makes these federalism statements so dangerous is that in accordance with the Yinon plan the borders of a federalized Syria would be drawn along sectarian lines not on whether any particular state can sustain its population.  This means that a small amount of people will get all the resources, and the rest of Syria’s population will be left to starve. Furthermore, Russia and the US are by land mass some of the largest nations in the world, so federalism may make sense for them. In contrast Syria is a very small state with limited resources. Unlike the US and Russia, Syria is located in the Middle East which means water is limited. In spite of the fact Syria is in the so-called fertile crescent, Syria has suffered massive droughts since Turkey dammed the rivers flowing into Syria and Iraq. Syria’s water resources must be rationed amongst its 23 million people. In the Middle East, wars are also fought over water.The areas that the Yinon plan intends to carve out of Syria, are the coastal areas of Latakia and the region of Al Hasake. These are areas where a substantial amount of Syria’s water, agriculture and oil are located.  The intention is to leave the majority of the Syrian population in a landlocked starving rump state, and create a situation where perpetual war between divided Syrians is inevitable. Ironically promoters of the Yinon plan try and paint federalism as a road to peace. However, Iraq which was pushed into federalism in 2005 by the US occupation is far from peaceful now.

Quite simply, divide and conquer is the plan. This was even explicitly suggested in the headline of Foreign Policy magazine,  “Divide and conquer Iraq and Syria” with the subheading “Why the West Should Plan for a Partition”. The CEO of Foreign Policy magazine David Rothkopf is a member of to the Council of Foreign Relations, a think tank Hillary Clinton has admits she bases her policies on.  Another article by Foreign Policy written by an ex-NATO commander James Stavridis, claims “It’s time to talk about partitioning Syria” .

The US hoped to achieve this by empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups, and introducing Al Qaeda and ISIS into Syria. The Syrian army was supposed to collapse with soldiers returning to their respective demographic enclaves. Evidence of this could be seen in the headlines of NATO’s media arm in 2012, which spread false rumours that Assad had run to Latakia, abandoning his post in Damascus. The extremists were then supposed to attack Alawite, Christian and Druze villages. The US hoped that enough Alawites, Christians and Druze would be slaughtered that Syria’s minorities would become receptive to the idea of partitioning.

Then NATO planned on shifting narratives from, ‘evil dictator must be stopped” to “ we must protect the minorities”. Turning on the very terrorists they created and backing secessionist movements.  There is evidence that this narrative shift had already started to happened by 2014 when it was used to convince the US public to accept US intervention in Syria against ISIS. The US designation of Jabhat Al Nusra as a terrorist organisation in December of 2012 was in preparation for this narrative shift. But this was premature as none of these plans seemed to unfold according to schedule. Assad did not leave Damascus, the Syrian army held together, and Syrian society held onto its national identity.

It could be said that the Yinon plan had some success with the Kurdish PYD declaration of federalization. However, the Kurdish faction of the Syrian national coalition condemned  PYD’s declaration.  Regardless, the declaration has no legal legitimacy. The region of Al Hasakah where a substantial portion of Syria’s oil and agriculture lies, has a population of only 1.5 million people, 6% of Syria’s total population. Of that, 1.5 million, only 40% are Kurdish, many of which do not carry Syrian passports.  PYD’s demand that the oil and water resources of 23 million people be given to a tiny part of its population is unlikely to garner much support amongst the bulk of Syria’s population.

Former US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger understood that the key to dismembering a nation was attacking its national identity.  This  entails attacking the history from which this identity is based upon. In an event at Michigan University Kissinger stated that he would like to see Syria balkanized, asserting that Syria is not a historic state and is nothing but an invention of the Sykes-Picot agreement in the 1920’s. Interestingly, Kissinger is using the same narrative as ISIS,  who also claims that Syria is a colonial construct. In fact, ISIS has been a key tool for Kissinger and the promoters of the project of a New Middle East, as ISIS has waged a campaign of destruction against both Syrian and Iraqi historical sites.

In spite of efforts to convince the world of the contrary, the region that now encompasses modern day Syria has been called Syria since 605 BC . Sykes-Picot didn’t draw the borders of Syria too large, but instead, too small. Historical Syria also included Lebanon and Iskandaron. Syria and Lebanon were moving towards reunification until 2005, an attempt at correcting what was a sectarian partition caused by the French mandate. Syria has a long history of opposing attempts of divide and conquer, initially the French mandate aimed to divide Syria into 6 separate states based on sectarian lines, but such plans were foiled by Syrian patriots. The architects of the Yinon plan need only have read Syria’s long history of resistance against colonial divisions to know their plans in Syria were doomed to failure.

Maram Susli also known as “Syrian Girl,” is an activist-journalist and social commentator covering Syria and the wider topic of geopolitics. especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook.”

ISIS is struggling to expand its influence in Southeast Asia amid the dramatic series of loses started with the Russian military operation in Syria. Following the ISIS leadership’s logic, this region such as North Afirca could become a new base of the terror group if it loses the territory in Syria and Iraq. It’s known that from 1000 to 1500 citizens of Malaysia and Indonesia are reportedly joined ISIS and Al Nusra in Syria and Iraq.

Experts believe that ISIS has already sent to Indonesia about 100 militants headed by the Indonesian citizen, Muhammad Bahrun Naim in order to set the group’s affiliate in Southeast Asia, Katibah Nusantara. Naim has participated in the warfare in Syria and also known as a producer of ISIS propaganda videos. According to reports, Naim’s goal is to unite the efforts of scattered Islamist groups in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. Katibah Nusantara has created a number websites which recruit neophytes. Health workers, teachers, mechanics, physical trainers, lawyers, theologians and bookkeepers are mainly needed in the terrorist group.

At least 4 regional groups reportedly claimed allegiance to Katibah Nusantara. However, Muhammad Bahrun Naim will need own hit squad to conduct terror attacks and overawe his new followers.

On Jan. 14, a terrorist attack in the Indonesian capital killed 2 people and wounded 24. The Indonesian Special Services believe that Muhammad Bahrun Naim was organizer of the attack. Katibah Nusantara has been reportedly preparing a series of terror attacks aimed against local tourist infrastructure and foreign citizens which will impact the Indonesian economy, for sure. Now, the ISIS local branch doesn’t conduct a serious threat for the regional security yet. However, if the local security services miss a beat, Katibah Nusantara will likely be able to entrench in the region and start a terror war.

La economía norteamericana ha incrementado los riesgos de convertirse en el epicentro de la próxima recesión global. A pesar de que la tasa de interés de los fondos federales (‘federal funds rate’) se mantiene en un nivel históricamente bajo, entre 0,25 y 0,50 por ciento, los bancos continúan negándose a otorgar crédito a las empresas. Es que los banqueros no confían en que los préstamos les serán devueltos, simplemente no encuentran señales contundentes de recuperación en la esfera productiva.

En estos momentos, a los magnates de las finanzas de Estados Unidos les resulta más rentable realizar fusiones y adquisiciones (‘mergers & acquisitions’) entre corporaciones, adquirir sus propias acciones, o bien comprar bienes raíces en los países emergentes. El incremento de la productividad no es suficiente, la inversión empresarial es demasiado débil y los salarios permanecen estancados. En consecuencia, la inflación sigue muy por debajo del objetivo del 2 por ciento. Esta situación tiene desesperada a la presidenta de la Reserva Federal (FED), Janet Yellen, quien ya no encuentra cómo dinamizar la economía.

El proceso de recuperación es tan frágil que a mediados de marzo el Comité Federal de Mercado Abierto (FOMC, por sus siglas en inglés) de la FED dejó intacta la tasa de interés de los fondos federales. Recordemos que apenas en diciembre pasado, cuando se llevó a cabo el primer aumento de la tasa de interés de referencia en casi una década, Dean Turner, analista de la firma de servicios financieros UBS, pronosticó que los integrantes del FOMC iban a subir por lo menos cuatro veces los tipos de interés a lo largo de 2016.

Sin embargo, hoy los inversionistas bursátiles más optimistas consideran que como máximo habrá dos incrementos: siempre y cuando el mercado laboral mejore y la inflación aumente, será durante la segunda mitad del año cuando la FED eleve otra vez la tasa de interés de referencia en no más de un cuarto de punto porcentual. Es que el panorama ahora es más sombrío. Toda vez que la confianza puesta en la recuperación de la economía global bajo el liderazgo de la locomotora norteamericana se ha venido desvaneciendo, incluso hay quienes anticipan que Estados Unidos volverá a caer en recesión.

De acuerdo con los cálculos del equipo de asesores de Citigroup a cargo de Willem Buiter, la economía mundial únicamente se expandió 2 por ciento durante el último trimestre de 2015, la cifra más baja desde que la zona euro padeció los mayores estragos de la crisis de deuda soberana durante los años 2012 y 2013. A los economistas de Citigroup no deja de sorprenderles que los países industrializados, aquellos que venían disfrutando de un crecimiento más sólido del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) en los meses recientes, ahora se estén desacelerando dramáticamente, en especial Estados Unidos.

Para el famoso empresario norteamericano Jim Rogers, el escenario es todavía más pesimista. A su juicio, existe una probabilidad de ciento por ciento de que la economía de Estados Unidos vuelva a sumergirse en la recesión a lo largo del año en curso. “No hay que prestar atención a las cifras del gobierno, hay que prestar atención a los números reales”, declaró en una entrevista.

Sucede que durante los primeros tres meses del año la economía estadounidense manifestó nuevas señales de vulnerabilidad. La evolución del mercado de trabajo no es tan boyante como todo el mundo piensa. De acuerdo con los datos publicados por el Departamento del Trabajo, la nómina no agrícola añadió un récord de 242.000 empleos en febrero, con lo cual, la tasa de paro oficial se mantuvo por segundo mes consecutivo en 4,9 por ciento, el registro más bajo de los últimos ocho años. Por añadidura, según los datos actualizados de los meses previos, en enero las contrataciones aumentaron a 172.000, mientras que en diciembre de 2015 subieron a 271.000, una revisión al alza de 30.000 empleos en ambos casos.

Aparentemente, todo se desenvolvía de modo favorable para la economía norteamericana. El incremento de la nómina no agrícola del mes pasado superó con creces los 230.000 puestos de trabajo, el promedio mensual obtenido a lo largo de 2015. Sin embargo, de acuerdo con las propias cifras del Departamento del Trabajo, 80 por ciento de los nuevos empleos de febrero corresponden a los sectores con los salarios peor pagados: cuidado de la salud, asistencia social, comercio minorista, servicios de alimentación y servicios educativos privados. Por otro lado, si se contabilizan aquellas personas que han abandonado la búsqueda de empleo (1,8 millones) así como las ocupadas a tiempo parcial (6 millones), el subempleo alcanza una tasa de 9,7 por ciento.

Es evidente que Estados Unidos no goza de “pleno empleo”. En la actualidad 36 estados de la Unión Americana padecen de desempleo crónico, pues su tasa de paro promedio (en términos anuales) fue superior en 2015 que en 2007. De hecho, una investigación realizada por Danny Yagan y publicada por la Universidad de California (Berkeley) hace unos días, apunta que bajo el ritmo actual de recuperación, no será sino hasta el año 2020 cuando el mercado de trabajo de las regiones más deprimidas vuelva a la normalidad: más de una década después de la Gran Recesión, la misma que amenaza con regresar más fuerte que nunca.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Voice of America: Remontemos un poco en la historia. Más de medio siglo de ruptura diplomática. ¿Puede recordarnos las fechas claves de este conflicto entre los dos países?

Salim Lamrani: Conviene recordar que el diferendo que opone Estados Unidos a Cuba se remonta al siglo XIX pues la isla fue el primer objetivo de la política exterior de Washington. Los Padres Fundadores siempre vieron a Cuba como el apéndice natural a agregar a la Unión Americana. Thomas Jefferson habló de ello en 1805. Conocemos también la teoría de la “fruta madura” de John Quincy Adams.

En el siglo XX, durante el periodo republicano, Estados Unidos apoyó a la dictadura militar de Fulgencio Batista y se opuso a la llegada al poder de Fidel Castro mucho antes que 1959. Permítame citar a Allen Dulles, entonces director de la CIA, en diciembre de 1958: “Tenemos que impedir la victoria de Castro”.

Cuando Fidel Castro llegó al poder en 1959 se enfrentó inmediatamente a la hostilidad de Estados Unidos, que acogió en un primer tiempo a todos los dignitarios del antiguo régimen y que impuso enseguida sanciones económicas contra Cuba. Permítame recordar la constatación lúcida del antiguo presidente John F. Kennedy quien declaró lo siguiente: “Debíamos haber dado a Fidel Castro una más calurosa bienvenida. Ello nos hubiera evitado muchos problemas”.

VOA: Avancemos un poco. Rápidamente se impuso el embargo. ¿Cuál era la situaciónen aquel momento?

SL: Estados Unidos impuso sanciones económicas a Cuba a partir de 1960. Es importante recordar que la retórica diplomática de Washington para justificar la hostilidad hacia Cuba evolucionó según las épocas. En 1960, Cuando Eisenhower impuso las primeras medidas de retorsión económica, evocó el proceso de expropiación y nacionalización de las empresas estadounidense. Luego Kennedy evocó la alianza con la Unión Soviética para justificar la imposición de sanciones económicas totales en 1962. En los años 1970 y 1980 Washington aludió al intervencionismo de Cuba en África en apoyo a los movimientos independentistas. Desde 1991 y el desmoronamiento de la Unión Soviética, Estados Unidos justifica el mantenimiento de una política hostil hacia Cuba evocando la democracia y los derechos humanos.

Es importante entonces recordar que esta retórica fluctuó según las épocas.

Hoy el Presidente Obama ha hecho una constatación muy lúcida sobre la política de Estados Unidos. Se ha dado cuenta de que era ineficiente. Es obsoleta pues se remonta a la época de la Guerra Fría.

VOA: ¿Es Cuba todavía ese bastión comunista de la Guerra Fría?

SL: América Latina ha cambiado desde hace medio siglo. Desde luego Cuba es una sociedad diferente con un sistema político y un modelo social distintos de los de Estados Unidos. Hay evidentemente dos concepciones completamente diferentes de la democracia. Los dos presidentes lo subrayaron durante la conferencia de prensa.

Creo que Washington ha comprendido que es necesario basar las relaciones con La Habana en un principio de reciprocidad, de entendimiento cordial y de diálogo. La política de hostilidad ha fracasado.

Hoy día hay una mayoría en la opinión pública de Estados Unidos que está a favor de una normalización de las relaciones con Cuba. Ello supera la oposición demócratas/republicanos. Muchos estados con mayoría republicana, particularmente en el Midwest, desean tener relaciones normales con Cuba por razones económicas evidentes.

VOA: Todavía está el embargo y, desde un punto de vista económico, puede que se demore en levantarse. ¿Cuáles serían las consecuencias para la isla si el proceso que ha impulsado Barack Obama no llegase a su término?

SL: Las sanciones económicas constituyen el principal obstáculo al desarrollo del país. La inmensa mayoría de la comunidad internacional las condena de modo unánime. En octubre de 2015, por vigesimocuarto año consecutivo, 191 sobre 193, incluso los más fieles aliados de Estados Unidos, exigieron a Washington un cambio de su política y un levantamiento de esas sanciones.

Las razones son evidentes. Esas sanciones son anacrónicas pues se remontan a la Guerra Fría. Son crueles porque afectan a las categorías más vulnerables de la población cubana y no a los dirigentes. Finalmente son ineficientes en la medida en que el objetivo inicial de derrocar la Revolución Cubana fue un fracaso.

La constatación actual es edificante: en vez de aislar a Cuba en la escena internacional estas sanciones han aislado a Estados Unidos.

El presidente Obama ha adoptado medidas constructivas relativas al levantamiento de algunas restricciones. Pero lamentablemente las sanciones siguen vigentes. Es verdad que está el obstáculo del Congreso pero creo que es marginal. El presidente de Estados Unidos, como jefe del poder ejecutivo, dispone de todas las prerrogativas para desmantelar el 90 % de estas sanciones. Hay muy pocos sectores que él no pueda tocar.

VOA: ¿Está de acuerdo en que Barack Obama tomó una decisión histórica aunque el futuro de Cuba suscite todavía muchas interrogantes?

SL: Sin duda. El presidente Obama ha puesto fin a una anomalía histórica. Ha establecido el lazo con el pueblo cubano. Ha reconstruido el punto roto en 1959 y creo que marcará la historia siendo el presidente que habrá adoptado el enfoque más constructivo para resolver un diferendo que se remonta a más de medio siglo. Si hay algo que debemos recordar de la presidencia de Barack Obama es el proceso de normalización de las relaciones con Cuba.

Voice of America, que empezó sus programas en 1942, es un servicio multimedia financiado por el Gobierno de Estados Unidos a través del Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA difunde alrededor de 1.500 horas de noticias, informaciones, programas culturales y educativos cada semana, para más de 125 millones de auditores, telespectadores y lectores.

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

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Los reyes de España nos trajeron a los conquistadores y dueños, cuyas huellas quedaron en los hatos circulares de tierra asignados a los buscadores de oro en las arenas de los ríos, una forma abusiva y bochornosa de explotación cuyos vestigios se pueden divisar desde el aire en muchos lugares del país.

El turismo hoy, en gran parte, consiste en mostrar las delicias de los paisajes y saborear las exquisiteces alimentarias de nuestros mares, y siempre que se comparta con el capital privado de las grandes corporaciones extranjeras, cuyas ganancias si no alcanzan los miles de millones de dólares per cápita no son dignas de atención alguna.

Ya que me vi obligado a mencionar el tema, debo añadir, principalmente para los jóvenes, que pocas personas se percatan de la importancia de tal condición en este momento singular de la historia humana. No diré que el tiempo se ha perdido, pero no vacilo en afirmar que no estamos suficientemente informados, ni ustedes ni nosotros, de los conocimientos y las conciencias que debiéramos tener para enfrentar las realidades que nos desafían. Lo primero a tomar en cuenta es que nuestras vidas son una fracción histórica de segundo, que hay que compartir además con las necesidades vitales de todo ser humano. Una de las características de este es la tendencia a la sobrevaloración de su papel, lo cual contrasta por otro lado con el número extraordinario de personas que encarnan los sueños más elevados.

Nadie, sin embargo, es bueno o es malo por sí mismo. Ninguno de nosotros está diseñado para el papel que debe asumir en la sociedad revolucionaria. En parte, los cubanos tuvimos el privilegio de contar con el ejemplo de José Martí. Me pregunto incluso si tenía que caer o no en Dos Ríos, cuando dijo “para mí es hora”, y cargó contra las fuerzas españolas atrincheradas en una sólida línea de fuego. No quería regresar a Estados Unidos y no había quién lo hiciera regresar. Alguien arrancó algunas hojas de su diario. ¿Quién cargó con esa pérfida culpa, que fue sin duda obra de algún intrigante inescrupuloso? Se conocen diferencias entre los Jefes, pero jamás indisciplinas. “Quien intente apropiarse de Cuba recogerá el polvo de su suelo anegado en sangre, si no perece en la lucha”, declaró el glorioso líder negro Antonio Maceo. Se reconoce igualmente en Máximo Gómez, el jefe militar más disciplinado y discreto de nuestra historia.

Mirándolo desde otro ángulo, cómo no admirarse de la indignación de Bonifacio Byrne cuando, desde la distante embarcación que lo traía de regreso a Cuba, al divisar otra bandera junto a la de la estrella solitaria, declaró: “Mi bandera es aquella que no ha sido jamás mercenaria…”, para añadir de inmediato una de las más bellas frases que escuché nunca: “Si deshecha en menudos pedazos llega a ser mi bandera algún día… ¡nuestros muertos alzando los brazos la sabrán defender todavía!…”. Tampoco olvidaré las encendidas palabras de Camilo Cienfuegos aquella noche, cuando a varias decenas de metros bazucas y ametralladoras de origen norteamericano, en manos contrarrevolucionarias, apuntaban hacia la terraza donde estábamos parados. Obama había nacido en agosto de 1961, como él mismo explicó. Más de medio siglo transcurriría desde aquel momento.

Veamos sin embargo cómo piensa hoy nuestro ilustre visitante:

“Vine aquí para dejar atrás los últimos vestigios de la guerra fría en las Américas. Vine aquí extendiendo la mano de amistad al pueblo cubano”.

De inmediato un diluvio de conceptos, enteramente novedosos para la mayoría de nosotros:

“Ambos vivimos en un nuevo mundo colonizado por europeos”. Prosiguió el Presidente norteamericano. “Cuba, al igual que Estados Unidos, fue constituida por esclavos traídos de África; al igual que Estados Unidos, el pueblo cubano tiene herencias en esclavos y esclavistas”.

Las poblaciones nativas no existen para nada en la mente de Obama. Tampoco dice que la discriminación racial fue barrida por la Revolución; que el retiro y el salario de todos los cubanos fueron decretados por esta antes de que el señor Barack Obama cumpliera 10 años. La odiosa costumbre burguesa y racista de contratar esbirros para que los ciudadanos negros fuesen expulsados de centros de recreación fue barrida por la Revolución Cubana. Esta pasaría a la historia por la batalla que libró en Angola contra el apartheid, poniendo fin a la presencia de armas nucleares en un continente de más de mil millones de habitantes. No era ese el objetivo de nuestra solidaridad, sino ayudar a los pueblos de Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau y otros del dominio colonial fascista de Portugal.

En 1961, apenas dos años y tres meses después del Triunfo de la Revolución, una fuerza mercenaria con cañones e infantería blindada, equipada con aviones, fue entrenada y acompañada por buques de guerra y portaviones de Estados Unidos, atacando por sorpresa a nuestro país. Nada podrá justificar aquel alevoso ataque que costó a nuestro país cientos de bajas entre muertos y heridos. De la brigada de asalto proyanki, en ninguna parte consta que se hubiese podido evacuar un solo mercenario. Aviones yankis de combate fueron presentados ante Naciones Unidas como equipos cubanos sublevados.

Es de sobra conocida la experiencia militar y el poderío de ese país. En África creyeron igualmente que la Cuba revolucionaria sería puesta fácilmente fuera de combate. El ataque por el Sur de Angola por parte de las brigadas motorizadas de Sudáfrica racista los lleva hasta las proximidades de Luanda, la capital de este país. Ahí se inicia una lucha que se prolongó no menos de 15 años. No hablaría siquiera de esto, a menos que tuviera el deber elemental de responder al discurso de Obama en el Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso.

No intentaré tampoco dar detalles, solo enfatizar que allí se escribió una página honrosa de la lucha por la liberación del ser humano. De cierta forma yo deseaba que la conducta de Obama fuese correcta. Su origen humilde y su inteligencia natural eran evidentes. Mandela estaba preso de por vida y se había convertido en un gigante de la lucha por la dignidad humana. Un día llegó a mis manos una copia del libro en que se narra parte de la vida de Mandela y ¡oh, sorpresa!: estaba prologado por Barack Obama. Lo ojeé rápidamente. Era increíble el tamaño de la minúscula letra de Mandela precisando datos. Vale la pena haber conocido hombres como aquel.

Sobre el episodio de Sudáfrica debo señalar otra experiencia. Yo estaba realmente interesado en conocer más detalles sobre la forma en que los sudafricanos habían adquirido las armas nucleares. Solo tenía la información muy precisa de que no pasaban de 10 o 12 bombas. Una fuente segura sería el profesor e investigador Piero Gleijeses, quien había redactado el texto de “Misiones en conflicto: La Habana, Washington y África 1959-1976”; un trabajo excelente. Yo sabía que él era la fuente más segura de lo ocurrido y así se lo comuniqué; me respondió que él no había hablado más del asunto, porque en el texto había respondido a las preguntas del compañero Jorge Risquet, quien había sido embajador o colaborador cubano en Angola, muy amigo suyo. Localicé a Risquet; ya en otras importantes ocupaciones estaba terminando un curso del que le faltaban varias semanas. Esa tarea coincidió con un viaje bastante reciente de Piero a nuestro país; le había advertido a este que Risquet tenía ya algunos años y su salud no era óptima. A los pocos días ocurrió lo que yo temía. Risquet empeoró y falleció. Cuando Piero llegó no había nada que hacer excepto promesas, pero ya yo había logrado información sobre lo que se relacionaba con esa arma y la ayuda que Sudáfrica racista había recibido de Reagan e Israel.

No sé qué tendrá que decir ahora Obama sobre esta historia. Ignoro qué sabía o no, aunque es muy dudoso que no supiera absolutamente nada. Mi modesta sugerencia es que reflexione y no trate ahora de elaborar teorías sobre la política cubana.

Hay una cuestión importante:

Obama pronunció un discurso en el que utiliza las palabras más almibaradas para expresar: “Es hora ya de olvidarnos del pasado, dejemos el pasado, miremos el futuro, mirémoslo juntos, un futuro de esperanza. Y no va a ser fácil, va a haber retos, y a esos vamos a darle tiempo; pero mi estadía aquí me da más esperanzas de lo que podemos hacer juntos como amigos, como familia, como vecinos, juntos”.

Se supone que cada uno de nosotros corría el riesgo de un infarto al escuchar estas palabras del Presidente de Estados Unidos. Tras un bloqueo despiadado que ha durado ya casi 60 años, ¿y los que han muerto en los ataques mercenarios a barcos y puertos cubanos, un avión de línea repleto de pasajeros hecho estallar en pleno vuelo, invasiones mercenarias, múltiples actos de violencia y de fuerza?

Nadie se haga la ilusión de que el pueblo de este noble y abnegado país renunciará a la gloria y los derechos, y a la riqueza espiritual que ha ganado con el desarrollo de la educación, la ciencia y la cultura.

Advierto además que somos capaces de producir los alimentos y las riquezas materiales que necesitamos con el esfuerzo y la inteligencia de nuestro pueblo. No necesitamos que el imperio nos regale nada. Nuestros esfuerzos serán legales y pacíficos, porque es nuestro compromiso con la paz y la fraternidad de todos los seres humanos que vivimos en este planeta.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Marzo 27 de 2016

10 y 25 p.m.

«Il nemico oscuro che si nasconde negli angoli bui della terra» (come lo definì nel 2001 il presidente Bush) continua a mietere vittime, le ultime a Bruxelles. È il terrorismo, un «nemico differente da quello finora affrontato», che si rivelò in mondovisione l’11 settembre con l’immagine apocalittica delle Torri che crollavano.

Per eliminarlo, è ancora in corso quella che Bush definì «la colossale lotta del Bene contro il Male». Ma ogni volta che si taglia una testa dell’Idra del terrore, se ne formano altre. Che dobbiamo fare? Anzitutto non credere a ciò che ci hanno raccontato per quasi quindici anni. A partire dalla versione ufficiale dell’11 settembre, crollata sotto il peso delle prove tecnico-scientifiche, che Washington, non riuscendo a confutare, liquida come «complottismo».

I maggiori attacchi terroristici in Occidente hanno tre connotati. Primo, la puntualità. L’attacco dell’11 settembre avviene nel momento in cui gli Usa hanno già deciso (come riportava il New York Times il 31 agosto 2001) di spostare in Asia il centro focale della loro strategia per contrastare il riavvicinamento tra Russia e Cina: nemmeno un mese dopo, il 7 ottobre 2001, con la motivazione di dare la caccia a Osama bin Laden mandante dell’11 settembre, gli Usa iniziano la guerra in Afghanistan, la prima di una nuova escalation bellica. L’attacco terroristico a Bruxelles avviene quando Usa e Nato si preparano a occupare la Libia, con la motivazione di eliminare l’Isis che minaccia l’Europa.

Secondo, l’effetto terrore: la strage, le cui immagini scorrono ripetutamente davanti ai nostri occhi, crea una vasta opinione pubblica favorevole all’intervento armato per eliminare la minaccia. Stragi terroristiche peggiori, come a Damasco due mesi fa, passano invece quasi inosservate.

Terzo, la firma: paradossalmente «il nemico oscuro» firma sempre gli attacchi terroristici. Nel 2001, quando New York è ancora avvolta dal fumo delle Torri crollate, vengono diffuse le foto e biografie dei 19 dirotta-tori membri di al Qaeda, parecchi già noti all’Fbi e alla Cia. Lo stesso a Bruxelles nel 2016: prima di identificare tutte le vittime, si identificano gli attentatori già noti ai servizi segre-ti.

È possibile che i servizi segreti, a partire dalla tentacolare «comunità di intelligence» Usa formata da 17 organizzazioni federali con agenti in tutto il mondo, siano talmente ineffi-cienti? O sono invece efficientissime macchine della strategia del terrore? La manovalanza non manca: è quella dei movimenti terroristi di marca islamica, armati e addestrati dalla Cia e finanziati dall’Arabia Saudita, per demolire lo Stato libico e frammentare quello siriano col sostegno della Turchia e di 5mila foreign fighters europei affluiti in Siria con la complicità dei loro governi.

In questo grande bacino si può reclutare sia l’attentatore suicida, convinto di immolarsi per una santa causa, sia il professionista della guerra o il piccolo delinquente che nell’azione viene «suicidato», facendo trovare la sua carta di identità (come nell’attacco a Charlie-Hebdo) o facendo esplodere la carica prima che si sia allontanato. Si può anche facilitare la formazione di cellule terroristiche, che autonomamente alimentano la strategia del terrore creando un clima da stato di assedio, tipo quello odierno nei paesi euro-pei della Nato, che giustifichi nuove guerre sotto comando Usa.

Oppure si può ricorrere al falso, come le «prove» sulle armi di distruzione di massa irachene mostrate da Colin Powell al Consiglio di sicurezza dell’Onu il 5 febbraio 2003. Prove poi risultate false, fabbricate dalla Cia per giustificare la «guerra preventiva» contro l’Iraq.

Manlio Dinucci

Guerres d’Irak et d’Afghanistan : un rapport accablant

The Japanese government downgraded its assessment of the economy last Wednesday following a similar move by its central bank the previous week. Notwithstanding the initial hype which surrounded it, Prime Minister Abe’s economic agenda—so-called Abenomics—is now a dead letter so far as any economic revival is concerned. Growth has continued to contract while wages remain stagnant.

In a sign of investors’ lack of confidence in the government’s economic measures, the yield on 10-year Japanese Government Bonds has dropped to a record low. This follows the decision by the Bank of Japan at the end of January to charge banks at a rate of 0.1 percent for any new deposits they placed with it.

The aim was to try to force the banks to lend to the real economy but all that has happened is that they have put their money in government bonds, forcing up the price and lowering the yield, which move in an inverse relation to each other.

The yield on the 10-year Japanese Government Bond (JGB) fell to minus 0.135. This means that if a purchaser held the bond to maturity they would make a negative real return on their investment. The aim of the bond purchaser, however, is to find someone who will pay an even higher price for the financial asset—the “bigger fool” theory—and thereby enable them to make a gain on its sale.

Twenty-year bonds also fell by 0.1 percentage points [10 basis points] but remain in positive territory with a yield of just 0.29 percent.

The movements in financial markets are a reflection of the confusion over the direction of the economy and the growing sentiment that the government has no viable program. Consumer spending reflects the same trend as households cut expenditure, fearing the introduction of negative interest rates means the economic outlook must be worse than they had thought.

“The principal driver of negative JGB yields was the Bank of Japan’s deposit rate cut to -10bp, and the market now expects additional cuts during this year starting from as soon as the next Bank of Japan meeting,” said David Tan, of global JPMorgan Asset Management. “This has contributed to a sell-off in banking stocks and a renewed flight to safety into government bonds.”

Global economic conditions are also having a negative impact on the Japanese economy. While the hope is that lower oil costs will improve economic conditions for Japan, there is also fear things could go in the other direction. Hisashi Yamada, chief economist at the Japan Research Institute, said in January, “Oil revenues move around the world in various ways. If they shrink, it could deal a blow especially to emerging countries. This might eventually trigger a sell-off on global stock markets and have a negative impact for Japan.”

Despite the contraction of the Japanese economy at an annual rate of 1.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda argued on March 15 that his agenda was working.

“Since we brought in minus rates, short and long-term bond yields have fallen and that has clearly fed through to falls in mortgage and lending rates—so on the interest rate side the effects are already clear,” he said.

Others are not so sure. Economy Minister Nobuteru Ishihara said the effects of the interest rate cut were still not clear and it would take another three months to gauge the result.

The BoJ is also considering other measures, including expanding its quantitative easing program by increasing its purchases of financial assets from their present level of 80 trillion yen annually. But the 5–4 vote on the governing council to bring in negative rates show there are significant divisions and uncertainty.

Abe came to office in December 2012 promising to revive Japan’s long stagnant economy. His proposed “Abenomics” would introduce three “arrows.” The first was a limited package of stimulus measures while the second arrow was the quantitative easing program.

Ultimately though, the Japanese bourgeoisie is demanding austerity measures. The “third arrow” of Abenomics was unveiled in the summer of 2014. It contains more than 200 pro-market restructuring measures, attacking the social position of Japanese workers, lowering the corporate tax rate into the 20 percent range and moving to eliminate lifetime employment. Abe is also planning to further increase the consumption tax.

However, big business is highly dissatisfied with the pace at which these measures have been implemented. BoJ Deputy Governor Hiroshi Nakaso stated at the beginning of March that he hoped Abe’s “third arrow” would “fly higher and faster.”

“Monetary policy to overcome deflation and the structural reform [the third arrow] to raise the potential growth rate must be pursued in tandem to bring Japan’s economy back on track toward sustained growth,” he said.

The highly unpopular increase in the consumption tax is another attack on workers. In 2014, it rose from 5 percent to 8 percent, sending the economy into recession. A planned increase to 10 percent is scheduled for April 2017. However, calls for Abe to delay the increase have become louder recently. While the prime minister currently states the government plans to go ahead with the scheduled tax rise, it is widely speculated that he will announce a postponement at or following the G7 summit, scheduled for May 26–27 in Japan.

For workers, wages have remained stagnant with the median wage level remaining almost entirely unchanged in the past 20 years. Toyota this year has agreed to a paltry basic wage increase of 1,500 yen ($13) a month compared to 4,000 yen last year. This has led to calls from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a “fourth arrow;” measures to increase wages in order to achieve the desired 2 percent inflation rate. However, to offset the company’s lost profits, the IMF also suggested tax incentives for companies that raise wages.

There is also talk that Abe may dissolve the lower house of parliament to hold a double election along with that scheduled for the upper house in July. Abe similarly called a snap election in November 2014 after delaying the tax increase scheduled for October 2015. With the opposition in Japan largely in disarray, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) would likely take both houses, allowing Abe to use the election as a referendum and justification for his agenda.

Amid growing revelations of state foreknowledge of the March 22 attacks in Brussels, ruling circles are trying to cover up their responsibility in attacks that have now claimed 35 lives and left 340 injured. As the central role of Islamist networks developed by the NATO powers in their proxy war in Syria comes to light, Belgian and French politicians are stoking up anti-Muslim hatred.

Over the last week, it has emerged that Belgian intelligence had identified the attackers and their ties to Islamist militias fighting in Syria and had been warned of the timing and targets of their attacks. Nevertheless, police did not monitor the attackers or apprehend them as they amassed a huge bomb-making arsenal and took it to their targets. Information continues to emerge about how the backing of Islamist forces by Washington and its allies in Syria has produced a network of Islamist fighters in Europe enjoying a considerable level of complicity from the state.

“Western spy assessments for months misjudged the jihadi group’s ambition to export violence,” lamented the Financial Times in an article that estimated the number of fighters who have returned to Europe. With approximately 30,000 foreign fighters having travelled to Syria, there are according to the FT “well over 1,200 returnees inside the EU’s borders. Britain has about 350, France 250 (plus another 250 believed to be on their way back), Germany 270, Belgium 118, and Scandinavia about 200, according to official intelligence figures.”

The few thousand youth who do join ISIS are allowed to go to Syria by the Belgian secret services like their colleagues across Europe to fight the proxy war for regime change operations in Syria. It is these European governments that created the conditions for terrorist attacks in their own countries. As the scandal mounts in Belgium over the state’s role in the attacks, bourgeois politicians of all stripes are seeking to divert attention from the politically criminal character of their policies by instead inciting fear and hatred of Europe’s Muslim population.

In terms that could have easily been used by the neo-fascist National Front (FN), social-democratic French youth minister Patrick Kanner issued an extraordinary denunciation of Molenbeek, the immigrant area of Brussels where fugitive Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam was found. Though Abdeslam was supposedly “Europe’s most wanted man” for the four months he was in hiding, it has been revealed that Belgian police were aware of his exact address the entire time.

Speaking to i>Télé, Kanner denounced Molenbeek as “a deeply un-integrated system, a mafia system with an underground economy, a system where the public services have almost disappeared, a system where elected officials have given up trying.”

In comments that threaten immigrants in France with a police crackdown, Kanner smeared immigrant neighbourhoods across France with the same brush: “There are today, as is well known, hundreds of neighbourhoods in France that present potential similarities to what happened in Molenbeek.”

In Belgium, leading members of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the Flemish-nationalist party that is the main force behind the government of Belgian prime minister Charles Michel, are also denouncing Muslims and immigrants.

N-VA leader and Antwerp mayor Bart de Wever gave an interview to Der Spiegel denouncing German chancellor Angela Merkel’s “historic mistake” in announcing last year that Germany would grant asylum to refugees fleeing the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He called the integration of Muslims in Belgian society a failure: “We were not in a position to offer them a Flemish version of the American dream. That is our problem.”

At the same time, reports have made it quite clear that the Belgian government played a key role in the far-right, anti-Muslim protest that took place in Brussels on Sunday.

On Saturday, the government cancelled a demonstration called “The March Against Fear” organised by the Socialist Party (PS), a francophone party that is currently Belgium’s main opposition party. Interior Minister Jan Jambon (N-VA) and Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur (PS) joinly announced the cancellation of the protest: “Given police capacity on the ground, and because the priority goes to the judicial enquiries, we would like to ask that you not demonstrate tomorrow [Sunday].”

On Sunday, more than 400 far-right youth from the Vilvoorde area near Brussels converged on the local station to go to the square where the “March Against Fear” protest had been called. Local police did not intervene. The youth boarded a train bound for Brussels where they were met at the station by federal and local police. Police accompanied the youth to the Brussels stock exchange, where silent vigils have been held everyday since the attacks.

The youth took over the square, in front of the stock exchange, starting a vicious anti-immgrant and anti-Muslim demonstration featuring Nazi salutes. Those at the vigil were forced to take refuge on the steps of the stock exchange.

The far-right youth carried banners saying, “The Casuals against terrorism”. They belong to the Belgian wing of “Casuals United” originally formed in Britain from football hooligans on an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim basis. The 400 or so youth had been expected, as they had organised their trip on the organisation’s Facebook page in the preceding week.

The double standard involved in the Michel government’s handling of the matter is self-evident. A far-right protest was allowed to proceed and even granted police escort, while the PS organisers of a demonstration ostensibly against fear and for multicultural understanding hurriedly called it off, bowing to official claims there was no police available to watch protests.

The government’s role in the protest points to the significance of the well-known, far-right sympathies of elements of the Belgian government, in line with moves to rehabilitate neo-fascistic sentiment in France and across Europe.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon, a top N-VA official and associate of de Wever, maintains little ambiguity on his ties to the extreme right. Asked in 2014 about his attendance at a 2001 meeting of the Saint-Maartensfonds, an association defending World War II-era Flemish volunteers who joined the Nazis’ genocidal war of aggression against the USSR, he told La Libre Belgique:“People who collaborated with the Germans had their reasons. I was not alive at the time.”

He then called Belgian collaboration with the Nazi rule in Belgium during World War II an “error,” but proceeded to downplay its significance—dismissing the collaboration, which involved the formation of a fascist regime in Belgium, as a “minor news item.”

After two decades of progressive governments spreading by the region with unprecedented economic, political and social gains, especially in human rights year by year recognized by the UN and several international organizations, Latin America faces the advance of aggressive neoliberal sectors secretly supported and financed by the Washington regime.

Journalist, Writer and Filmmaker John Pilger [image left] granted this exclusive interview where he talks about the US war on democracy in Latin America. “Modern era imperialism is a war on democracy. Genuine democracy is a threat to unfettered power and cannot be tolerated”, he says.

Pilger produced War on Democracy set in Latin America and the US in 2006, when he traveled across Venezuela with the then-President Hugo Chávez. He talks about his motivations to produce that documentary. The film shows how serial US intervention, overt and covert, has toppled a series of legitimate governments in the Latin American region since the 1950s.

Evidencing the democratic character with profound social transformations in Venezuela, in this interview John Pilger tells of his experiences in the cradle of the Bolivarian Revolution. “Children were learning about history and the arts for the first time; Venezuela’s literacy programme was the most adventurous in the world.”

He also speaks of his experiences with then-President Chávez, interviewed by the filmmaker as well as several ex-CIA agents who took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries in the region. “I traveled with Hugo Chavez across Venezuela. I have never known a national leader so respected and held in such affection as Chavez. He was an extraordinary man, who never seemed to sleep, who was consumed by ideas. (…) He was also, incorruptible and tough – tough in the sense that he was brave.”

Pilger evaluates the mainstream media coverage regarding to Venezuela: through accurate data, he evidences how people around the world have been misinformed by the media propaganda.

The prominent filmmaker ends this interview with not very positive forecasts for the country that has the largest oil reserve in the world, Venezuela, and for the richest region in terms of biodiversity in the world, exactly Latin America. “This is a dangerous time in Latin America. (…) The United States wants their ‘farm’ back,” says John Pilger among other important observations.

He also out his new production to be published in the near future, The Coming War between America and China.

Edu Montesanti: Thank you, John, for granting me this interview; I am so very honored by it. Would you comment please your new documentary The Coming War between America and China, to be published? What will it bring to us, what motivates you and what’s your aim?

John Pilger: The new film describes a dangerous and unnecessary cold war between the United States and China: the same cold war that’s directed at Russia. It examines President Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ – the shift of two thirds of American naval power to the Asia-Pacific by 2020 as a military response to the economic rise of China.

The film is set on island ‘frontlines’ in the Pacific and Asia: the Marshall Islands, where the US tested its nuclear bombs during the 1940 and 50s and now maintains a ‘Star Wars’ base; Okinawa where the US has 32 military installations less than 400 miles from China; Jeju Island (Korea), where a recently completed naval base allows the US to aim its Aegis missiles at China; and Shanghai, where I have interviewed a range of people about China’s rise; they are voices seldom heard in the West.

Like all my films, the aim is to push back the facade of propaganda that covers so many critical issues, especially those of war and peace.

Edu Montesanti: What motivated you to produce your 2006 film, set in Latin America, The War on Democracy?

John Pilger: Modern era imperialism is a war on democracy. Genuine democracy is a threat to unfettered power and cannot be tolerated. Most of the governments the US has overthrown or attempted to overthrow since the end of World War two have been democracies; and Latin America has been its theme park of corrupt power and imposing its will. One US ‘success’ was the destruction of the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954.

Jacobo Arbenz was a democrat and modest reformer who didn’t believe the United Front Company should run his country and reduce the lives of his people to peonage. To Washington he represented what later said of Nicaragua under the sandinistas; democracy in Guatemala was ‘the threat of a good example’. This was intolerable to the US, and Arbenz was overthrown, personally humiliated and expelled from his own country.

That set the pattern for the entire continent.

Edu Montesanti: Would you comment your idea, John, on Venezuela when you left the country after producing your film? What most drew your attention, and what has changed (if anything has changed) in your ideas about the caribbean country, and the Bolivarian Revolution itself?

John Pilger: My impression was that Venezuela was undergoing imaginative, historic, even epic changes.

In the barrios, local democracy in the form of autonomous communal councils was changing people’s lives. Children were learning about history and the arts for the first time; Venezuela’s literacy programme was the most adventurous in the world.

The rate of poverty halved. What struck me was the pride ordinary people felt – pride in their revitalised lives, and in the previously unheard of possibilities that lay ahead and in their government, especially Hugo Chavez.

It was also clear that Venezuela was not revolutionary; it was and still is a social democracy. This is not to say that many of the chavista ideas were not revolutionary in spirit; but in practice Venezuela bore similarities to Britain under the reforming Attlee Labour government of 1945-51. The wealthy and so-called middle classes, those who live extremely well in East Caracas and look to Miami as a kind of spiritual home, retained economic power if not political power. So two Venezuelas existed side by side; in revolutionary terms, this was and remains untenable.

Edu Montesanti: You interviewed former Presidente Hugo Chávez for hours, John. Taking into account and what you saw in the country, what can you say about Hugo Chávez, as a president and as a human being?

John Pilger: I traveled with Hugo Chavez across Venezuela. I have never known a national leader so respected and held in such affection as Chavez. He was an extraordinary man, who never seemed to sleep, who was consumed by ideas. He would arrived at a farmers’ meeting with a stack of books under his arm: Dickens, Orwell, Chomsky, Zola.

He had marked passages to read to his audience and people listened intently; he saw himself as the people’s educator. He was also, incorruptible and tough – tough in the sense that he was brave.

He was also mischievous. Once, I feel asleep in the sun during one of his long outdoor meetings, I awoke to hear y name being called out, and people laughing. To ease my embarrassment, ‘El Presidente’ presented me with a local wine. “He is Australian; he likes red wine,” Chávez told the crowd.

I should say I almost never speak of politicians in this way. His flaw was that essential power flowed down from him; he was Venezuela’s caudillo and idealist-in-chief; and when he died, the gap was too great.

Edu Montesanti: What similarities do you see between the economic warfare perpetrated by the US against Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970’s, and against the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela today? How much do you think this secret warfare by Washington, besides the information warfare, has influenced the opposition’s victory in the Parliamentary election in Venezuela, in December, 2015?

John Pilger: There is an enduring dynamic third force in Latin American countries that tries to control events and destroy social justice — that’s the United States. US subversion, whether direct or via a proxy in countries that have elected reformist governments the US fosters a permanently aggrieved opposition. When you think of the indoctrination of North Americans who are told their country is a paragon of ideals, the irony is hideous.

This ‘warfare’, as you describe, has been significant in every Venezuela election – but it wasn’t the major factor in the 2015 Parliamentary elections; and it can’t be compared with the US campaign against Allende. Inflation, shortages and political fatigue were crucial elements, not to mention the grievous absence of Chávez.

Edu Montesanti: Commet please the mainstream media coverage of Venezuela, since Hugo Chávez won the presidential election in 1998.

John Pilger: The University of the West of England ran a study over ten years on the BBC’s reporting of Venezuela. The researchers looked at 304 BBC reports broadcast or published between 1998 and 2008 and found that only three mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by the Chavez government.

The BBC has failed to report adequately on any of the democratic initiatives, human rights legislation, food programmes, healthcare initiatives, or poverty reduction programmes. Mission Robinson, the greatest literacy programme in human history received only a passing mention.

The Guardian’s reporter made no secret of his animosity towards Chavez. The same was true of many of the US and European correspondents.

Has there been such a relentless display of bad faith journalism? I doubt it. As a result, people in the US and the UK and elsewhere were denied any real sense of the remarkable changes in Venezuela.

Edu Montesanti: In the end of your documentary The War on Democracy, you said that “what happened in the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, has a special place in the struggle for freedom and democracy throughout Latin America and the world. The vowel is ‘never again’”.

Countries in Latin America with progressive governments have lived under the constant threat of the “color revolution”, a non-violent method to overthrow governments perfected by the American Gene Sharp, a North-American professor of Political Science. Given also the opposition pro-US victory in recent elections in Venezuela, Argentina and in a referendum in Bolivia, do you fear a new dominance of US interests in the region? What is your prospect for Latin America, and what does the Bolivarian Revolution mean for the region?

John Pilger: This is a dangerous time in Latin America. The gains made by the social democracies are more precarious than ever. The US used to refer to Latin America as its “farm”, having never accepted the independence of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and, of course, Cuba.

The US wants its “farm” back. There is much to lose. I read the other day that, according to the Bolivian Ministry of Health, 85,000 lives had been saved in Bolivia by Cuban doctors. It’s an achievement on that scale that is at risk now.

They need our voices and support as never before.

The original version of this interview was published here in Portuguese.

A news report from Russia’s Interfax News Service quotes “the press-secretary of the US embassy in Moscow,” whom it identifies as “William Stevens,” as saying that during a meeting U.S. CIA Director William Brennan had in Moscow with “Russia officials” “in early March,” “Director Brennan” chose “to emphasize with Russian officials the importance of Russia and the Assad regime following through on their agreements to implement the cessation of hostilities in Syria” and that, “Director Brennan also reiterated the US government’s consistent support for a genuine political transition in Syria, and the need for Assad’s departure in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people.”

All of this is from Russia’s Sputnik News, that allegedly “William Stevens told RIA Novosti.”Western news services are citing that Russian source as the sole source in their own reporting of the matter; and no denial has yet been issued by the U.S. government.

If the allegation is true, then the U.S., “in early March,” was demanding “Assad’s departure,” despite there being no participation of the Syrian people in that decision — no new election in Syria, much less Assad’s losing any such election; and, yet, Mr. Brennan was demanding this, “in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people,” somehow (despite there being no democratic process whatsoever).

Even Western polling firms have been finding that Assad’s remaining as Syria’s leader is supported by 55% of Syrians, and that the U.S. is blamed by 82% of Syrians as being the source of Syria’s civil war: “82% agree ‘IS [Islamic State] is US and foreign made group’.” In other words: Syrians, the most secular, the most anti-theocratic, people in the entire Middle East, blame people such as John Brennan as the source of their miseries. This same poll found that “79% agree ‘Foreign fighters made war worse’.” It also found: “70% agree ‘Oppose division of country’.”

The Obama Administration favors breaking Syria up into sectarian enclaves: Alawite-Shiite, versus Sunni, versus Druze, versus Kurd. This would be essential in order to permit Saudi Arabia to build an oil pipeline into Europe through the Sunni part of Syria, and Qatar also to build a gas pipeline through the Sunni part of Syria, both in order to get their (U.S.-corporate-backed) oil and gas into Europe, so as to replace Russia’s main market for its oil and gas, which is the EU.

The same poll also found that “65% agree ‘Syrians can live together again’.”

Clearly, American involvement in the political process in Syria is unwelcomed, if not loathed, by the Syrian people. They don’t want the U.S. to continue supporting the jihadists who are destroying their country; and they also don’t want the U.S. dictating that Bashar al-Assad will stop being their leader.

None of these facts are brought up by any of the moderators in the U.S. Presidential candidates’ debates. However, some of those moderators are on my email list for all of my news-reports (which have covered all of these matters), and therefore it would seem unlikely that the reason for the matter’s not being covered — at all — is that they are ignorant of the reality. The explanation must be something other than ignorance.

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.

As Sanders Surges, Cable News Runs Prison Reality Show, Jesus Documentary

Over the past week, Bernie Sanders racked up six wins out of seven primary contests, winning 92 delegates more than his rival Hillary Clinton to chip into her pledged delegate lead. While not an existential shift in the race, the momentum has changed in Sanders’ favor, especially since he won the last three primaries—Hawaii, Washington state and  Alaska—with between 70 and 82 percent of the vote.

You, however, would hardly have noticed had you been watching cable news the night of the Saturday primaries. Both MSNBC and CNN forwent live election coverage on arguably Sanders’ biggest night of the year, instead deciding to air a normally scheduled prison reality show and a “documentary” on Jesus. As The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel noted Saturday night:

The networks cared so little for Saturday’s primary results that the Hawaii results, which in fairness came in around 2:30 am, were totaled by online volunteers and revealed to the public using a Google Doc.

The race is far from over, yet most of the major cable networks have all but moved on. Clinton’s lead, while considerable, is far from insurmountable. Indeed, the netting of 66 delegates Saturday night pulls Sanders to within 268 pledged delegates of the former secretary of State—with 2,073 delegates yet to be awarded.

The Republican primary race, which Trump has led with little or no suspense, has received A-list treatment throughout the race, despite having far less drama than the Clinton/Sanders battle. This is consistent with a New York Timesstudy that showed the Republicans receiving three times as much coverage as the Democratic primary—most of which was handed, entirely for free, to the showy frontrunner, Donald Trump.

The Democratic party has 57 primary contests, 22 of which haven’t chimed in this election. There is no law of reporting that gives more weight to ones that come early, other than the horserace drama networks seek. If cable networks are going to follow the early contests like Woodstock, they could at least give some token coverage to Sanders’ recent string of victories.

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him onTwitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.

The atrocities in Brussels — and they are horrific, criminal atrocities — are not occurring in a vacuum. They are not springing from some unfathomable abyss of motiveless malevolence. They are a response, in kind, to the atrocious violence being committed by Western powers on a regular basis in many countries around the world. And just as there is no justification for the acts of carnage in Brussels (and Paris and Turkey and elsewhere), there is likewise no justification for the much larger and more murderous acts of carnage being carried out by the most powerful and prosperous nations on earth, day after day, year after year.

The Western powers know this. For many years, their own intelligence agencies — in study after study  — have confirmed that the leading cause of violent “radicalization” among a small number of Muslims is the violent Western intervention in Muslim lands. These interventions are carried out for the purpose of securing the economic and political domination of Western interests over lands rich with energy resources, as well as their strategic surroundings. That they have not even the slightest connection to “liberating” people from religious or political persecution, or making the world “safer,” is glaringly transparent. They are about domination, pure and simple.

Indeed, this point is scarcely disputed, although champions of domination claim it is a good thing. For decades, one has heard the argument from American exceptionalists that “if we don’t do it” — that is, if we don’t dominate the world militarily and economically — “then somebody else will.” The implication, of course, is that such a “somebody else” will be far worse than our own divinely blessed, goodhearted selves.

There is a fiercely primitive worldview underlying this philosophy (which is held almost universally across the American political spectrum, and in those countries who cling to the coattails of American dominance). It says that violent domination is the only reality in human affairs: one must dominate, or be dominated. One must eat or be eaten. One must kill or be killed. There is no alternative. If “we” don’t dominate — by force if necessary, doing “whatever it takes” — then it is a given that some other power will do so. Domination and power are all that exists; the only question is how they are distributed, and who controls that distribution. And there is no price too high to pay in order to gain — or maintain — that control.

You can see how this primitive belief plays out in domestic politics too. More and more, politics across the Western democracies (and other nations as well) are revolving around the question of who should dominate in a society — or more specifically, who feels their domination over society is being threatened. This dynamic is driving nationalist movements across the board. In the United States, it is expressed in the panic and dismay felt by an increasing number of white people — especially but by no means exclusively white males — that their “natural” domination of American society is slipping away. They want to “take our country back,” or else they’ll be overwhelmed — dominated — by a flood of unworthy others: African-Americans, Mexicans, Muslims, homosexuals, women, etc. This self-pitying fear has been rife in right-wing discourse for decades, and has now burst into the open, and into the mainstream, with the likely nomination of Donald Trump as presidential candidate of a major party.

Again, the dynamic of domination is key: since nothing exists outside this dynamic, since there is no other way, then one group MUST dominate the others. The idea of equal citizens working, living, and sharing together is a fantasy in this worldview. If blacks or immigrants or women or gays are perceived to have gained a small share in the national life, then that share must have been “taken” from the dominant group. And since, in this view, domination is the goal of all groups, since it is the organizing principle of human life, then those upstart groups are not just seeking a fair share of society’s bounty and freedoms and opportunities; no, they are actually aiming to subjugate the dominant group. In this extremely limited worldview, life is always a zero-sum game. To give someone else more opportunity means less for yourself, and your kind. The freer someone else is, the less free you are. There is only so much to go around. You will find more sophisticated and empathetic worldviews on grade-school playgrounds, or in wolf packs.

And so we come to the foreign policies of Western nations today. They are all, without exception, built on the goal of securing effective control (in whatever form) of economic and strategic resources for the benefit of their own power structures. Again, it is beyond dispute that these policies do not involve trying to make the world a better, safer place so that their own citizens might pursue their lives in peace. These policies manifestly do not involve trying to achieve “security” for their own people. Those who advance these policies knowingly and deliberately accept the fact that they will invariably cause destruction abroad and “blowback” at home. They know and accept that these policies will destabilize the world, that they will radicalize some of those who suffer from them, that they will lead to less security at home, that they will drain public treasuries and leave their own people to sink in broken communities with decaying infrastructure, mounting debt, shrinking opportunities, bleak futures and despairing lives.

They know all of this is true — not only because they can see it happening with their own eyes, as we all can, but also because their own experts tell them, time and time again, that this is so. But they accept all this as the price that must be paid to advance and maintain their dominance. In the words of Madeline Albright, when she was confronted with the fact that the US/UK sanctions on Iraq had at that time killed at least 500,000 children, our leaders believe this price “is worth it.”

In private, they no doubt tell themselves that it is the domination of their good and “special” nation, or the domination of the worthy “values” of “Western civilization” that they are trying to secure with their policies, by doing “whatever it takes.” But in practice, of course, the chief beneficiaries of these policies are invariably the ruling classes of the nations involved. This has become much more brazenly evident in recent years, as the conditions and prospects of even the middle classes are so clearly deteriorating. There is little room left to pretend that the “rising tide” of militarized hyper-capitalism is “lifting all boats” when even those who once benefitted from expanding opportunity (in the post-war boom) are now sinking. (The poor, of course, have almost always been invisible.)

The people in Brussels — like the people in Paris, and like the far greater multitude of victims in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, etc — are, yes, “reaping the whirlwind” of Western foreign policy. The criminals who carried out the most recent attacks have adopted the mindset of our Western elites, who teach the world, day after day, that the destruction of innocent lives is an acceptable price to pay in order to achieve your objectives. You can and must do “whatever it takes” — even if whatever it takes is, say, the death of half a million innocent children. Or a war of aggression that leaves a million innocent people dead. Or drone-bombing a wedding party. Or sending missiles into a hospital. Or sitting in the Oval Office — your Peace Prize gleaming on the mantelpiece — while you tick off the names of victims on your weekly “Kill List.”

We wonder how these terrorists can commit such barbarous atrocities as we see in Brussels — even while most of us happily countenance, even celebrate, far more extensive and continuous atrocities committed by our leaders in pursuit of domination. Then we pretend that the former has no connection to the latter. Yet the targets of these foreign policies live through a hundred Brussels attacks, a dozen 9/11s every year. We teach violence to the world — brutal destruction of individual lives, of societies and communities, of entire nations — yet are shocked when the world responds in kind.

I will say it again: there is absolutely no justification for the murder of innocent people such as we saw in Brussels today. None. But crimes of equal horror — killing innocent people, disrupting the lives of millions of others, and filling them with fear — are being carried out, routinely, and on a much larger scale, by the leaders of our Western nations and their allies. This too is equally unjustifiable, and is worthy of the same level of rejection and outrage we rightly apply to the Brussels atrocity.

A virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the US election campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost certain to win the Republican Party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as the “women’s candidate” and the champion of American liberalism in its heroic struggle with the Evil One.

John Pilger

The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama should have alerted even the most dewy-eyed. Obama based his “hope” campaign almost entirely on the fact of an African-American aspiring to lead the land of slavery. He was also “anti-war”.

Obama was never anti-war. On the contrary, like all American presidents, he was pro-war. He had voted for George W. Bush’s funding of the slaughter in Iraq and he was planning to escalate the invasion of Afghanistan. In the weeks before he took the presidential oath, he secretly approved an Israeli assault on Gaza, the massacre known as Operation Cast Lead. He promised to close the concentration camp at Guantanamo and did not. He pledged to help make the world “free from nuclear weapons” and did the opposite.

As a new kind of marketing manager for the status quo, the unctuous Obama was an inspired choice. Even at the end of his blood-spattered presidency, with his signature drones spreading infinitely more terror and death around the world than that ignited by jihadists in Paris and Brussels, Obama is fawned on as “cool” (the Guardian).

On March 23, Counterpunch published my article, “A World War has Begun: Break the Silence”.  As has been my practice for years, I then syndicated the piece across an international network, including Truthout.com, the liberal American website. Truthout publishes some important journalism, not least Dahr Jamail’s outstanding corporate exposes.

Truthout rejected the piece because, said an editor, it had appeared on Counterpunch and had broken “guidelines”. I replied that this had never been a problem over many years and I knew of no guidelines.

My recalcitrance was then given another meaning. The article was reprieved provided I submitted to a “review” and agreed to changes and deletions made by Truthout’s “editorial committee”. The result was the softening and censoring of my criticism of Hillary Clinton, and the distancing of her from Trump. The following was cut:

Trump is a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism. Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama … The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system… As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope”.

The “editorial committee” clearly wanted me to water down my argument that Clinton represented a proven extreme danger to the world. Like all censorship, this was unacceptable. Maya Schenwar, who runs Truthout, wrote to me that my unwillingness to submit my work to a “process of revision” meant she had to take it off her “publication docket”. Such is the gatekeeper’s way with words.

At the root of this episode is an enduring unsayable. This is the need, the compulsion, of many liberals in the United States to embrace a leader from within a system that is demonstrably imperial and violent. Like Obama’s “hope”, Clinton’s gender is no more than a suitable facade.

This is an historical urge. In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern liberals seem to pay unflagging homage, John Stuart Mill described the power of empire. “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians,” he wrote, “provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” The “barbarians” were large sections of humanity of whom “implicit obedience” was required.

“It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers,” wrote the British historian Hywel Williams in 2001, “but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open ended nature – its conviction that it represents a superior form of life [while denying its] self righteous fanaticism.” He had in mind a speech by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, in which Blair promised to “reorder this world around us” according to his “moral values”. The carnage of a million dead in Iraq was the result.

Blair’s crimes are not unusual. Since 1945, some 69 countries – more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – have suffered some or all of the following. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted and their people bombed. The historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. With the demise of the European empires, this has been the project of the liberal flame carrier, the “exceptional” United States, whose celebrated “progressive” president, John F Kennedy, according to new research, authorised the bombing of Moscow during the Cuban crisis in 1962.

“If we have to use force,” said Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state in the liberal administration of Bill Clinton and today a passionate campaigner for his wife, “it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

One of Hillary Clinton’s most searing crimes was the destruction of Libya in 2011. At her urging, and with American logistical support, NATO, launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, according to its own records, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. See the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. Read the UNICEF report on the children killed, “most [of them] under the age of ten”.

In Anglo-American scholarship, followed slavishly by the liberal media on both sides of the Atlantic, influential theorists known as “liberal realists” have long taught that liberal imperialists – a term they never use – are the world’s peace brokers and crisis managers, rather than the cause of a crisis. They have taken the humanity out of the study of nations and congealed it with a jargon that serves warmongering power. Laying out whole nations for autopsy, they have identified “failed states” (nations difficult to exploit) and “rogue states” (nations resistant to western dominance).

Whether or not the targeted regime is a democracy or dictatorship is irrelevant. In the Middle East, western liberalism’s collaborators have long been extremist Islamists, lately al-Qaeda, while cynical notions of democracy and human rights serve as rhetorical cover for conquest and mayhem – as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Haiti, Honduras. See the public record of those good liberals Bill and Hillary Clinton. Theirs is a standard to which Trump can only aspire.

Follow John Pilger on Twitter @johnpilger and on Facebook

La Europa austericida no asume su responsabilidad y culpa a los estados serviles de las brutales consecuencias de los rescates que les ha exigido. Así lo pone de manifiesto el libro ‘La construcción europea al servicio de los mercados financieros’, que acaba de lanzar Icaria. “La autoría del diseño del programa pertenece a las autoridades del estado miembro afectado”, se excusan CE y BCE. “Los ministros de Finanzas de cada país son quienes deben asumir la responsabilidad política”, se defiende el Parlamento Europeo.

Jérôme Duval y Fátima Martín

CADTM

Is organic-based farming merely a niche model of agriculture that is not capable of feeding the global population? Or does it have a major role to play?  

In addressing these questions, it would be useful to consider a selection of relevant literature to see what it says about the role of organic farming, how this model of agriculture impacts farmers and whether or not it can actually feed the global population.

Organic farming and sustainable livelihoods

In ‘The impact of organic farming on food security in a regional and global perspective’, Halberg et al (2006) argue that while present food production in theory is sufficient to cover the energy and protein needs of the global population, there are still more than 740 million food insecure people, the majority of whom live in the Global South. The researchers indicate that if a conversion to organic farming of approximately 50% of the agricultural area in the Global South were to be carried out, it would result in increased self-sufficiency and decreased net food import to the region.

Following on from this, in the 2013 book ‘Organic Agriculture for Sustainable Livelihioods’ by Halberg and Muller, the authors suggest that organic crops tend to provide farmers with a higher net income compared to their conventional counterparts due to lower production costs. The book provides convincing evidence that organic farming has a positive influence on smallholder food security and livelihoods. This is important because smallholder agriculture is key to food production in the Global South, where food insecurity is most prevalent.

Aaron Iverson makes a pertinent point about this book: Halberg and Muller factor into their analyses the economic benefits of organic agriculture over conventional agriculture, which accrue over several years to decades. Iverson says that such analyses on these time scales are rare. Based on extensive research and modelling, the two authors indicate that organic farming promotes crop diversity, improves worker health due to less chemical exposure, increases social and human capital, increases farmland biodiversity, lowers pollution, increases soil fertility and is less financially risky due to lower upfront costs. Among other things, it also sequesters more soil carbon and is less vulnerable to climate change due to improved soil properties.

UN FAO: organic could feed the world

In 2007, the UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) noted that the advantage of organic agriculture is that it relies on fossil-fuel independent and locally-available production assets. Organic models work with natural processes, increase cost-effectiveness and contribute to resilience in the face of climatic stress. The FAO concluded that by managing biodiversity in time (rotations) and space (mixed cropping), organic farmers use their labour and environmental factors to intensify production in a sustainable way and that organic agriculture could break the vicious circle of indebtedness for agricultural inputs, which causes an alarming rate of farmers’ suicides.

The FAO recognises that agroecology contributes to improved food self-reliance, the revitalisation of smallholder agriculture and enhanced employment opportunities. It asserts that organic agriculture could produce enough food on a global per capita basis for the current world population but with reduced environmental impact than conventional agriculture.

In a similar vein, although not focusing solely on organic, Jules Pretty et al note that sustainable, resource-conserving agriculture has the potential to significantly increase yields. It also improves nutrition, food security and crop diversity (contrast this with what Daniel Miangi says about the chemical-intensive mono-cropping system and its adverse impact on diet).

UN Special Rapporteur on agroecology and the right to food

Olivier De Schutter, former UN special Rapporteur on the right to food, produced this report in 2011 that was based on an extensive review of recent scientific literature. He concludes that, by applying agroecological principles to the design of democratically controlled agricultural systems, we can help to put an end to food crises and address climate-change and poverty challenges. He is not the only one who asserts organic farming is better suited to addressing climate-related challenges. This peer-reviewed paper also argues that organic is a “concrete and sustainable option” for adapting to climate change and variability.

De Schutter argues that agroecological approaches could address food needs in critical regions and could double food production in 10 years.

His report focussed on regions like Africa and South East Asia and showed an average crop yield increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% for all African projects. Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of 3-10 years. However, De Schutter notes insufficient backing for organic-based farming seriously hinders progress.

And this last point should not be understated. For instance, the success of the green revolution is often touted, but how can we really evaluate it? If alternatives had been invested in to the same extent, if similar powerful and influential interests had invested in organic-based models, would we now not be pointing to the runaway successes of organic-based farming and, importantly, without the massive external costs of a polluted environment, less diverse diets, degraded soils and nutrient deficient food, ill health and so on?

And if green revolution technology and thinking had not been wedded to and fuelled and driven by powerful commercial and geopolitical interests, would it not have been employed more judiciously to serve farmers and the public better?

UNCTAD: better incomes and food availability

In 2012, the Deputy Secretary General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Petko Draganov, during the opening of the 2nd African Organic Conference in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, stated:

“Organic agriculture can offer an impressive array of food security, economic, environmental, and health benefits for developing countries, including in Africa.”

He went on to state that expanding Africa’s shift towards organic farming will have beneficial effects on the continent’s nutritional needs, the environment, farmers’ incomes, markets and employment.

According to UNCTAD, organic agriculture can increase farm yields markedly and help farmers receive higher prices for their produce, which sells at a premium. The method also helps create jobs in rural areas.

A meta analysis conducted by UNEP–UNCTAD (2008) assessed 114 cases in Africa. In Kenya, maize yields increased by 71% and bean yields by 158%. Increased diversity in food crops available to farmers resulted in more varied diets and thus improved nutrition. The 114 projects covered 2 million hectares and 1.9 million farmers showing a 116% higher average crop yield on average for all African projects and 128 higher for the projects in East Africa. The UN agencies concluded that organic agriculture can be more conducive to food security in Africa than most conventional production systems and that it is more likely to be sustainable in the long term. These projects increased food availability for local people and gave the farmers involved higher incomes.

IAASTD recommends agroecology

The IAASTD peer-reviewed report, produced by 400 scientists and supported by 60 countries, recommends agroecology to maintain and increase the productivity of global agriculture. It cites the largest study of sustainable agriculture in the Global South, which analysed 286 projects covering 37 million hectares in 57 countries, and found that on average crop yields increased by 79% (the study by Pretty et al, referred to earlier – which includes ‘resource conserving’ non-organic conventional approaches).

The purpose of listing these reports is to show that there is enough evidence to demonstrate that organic-based approaches are vital for guaranteeing food security, rural development, better nutrition and sustainability, especially in the Global South.

The Cuban model

Aside from the evidence provided above, there are numerous other studies which testify to the efficacy of organic farming: for example, there are reports/studies from the Rodale Institute, Oakland Institute, Women’s Collective of Tamil Nadu, Newcastle University, UN Green Economy Initiative and Washington State University. We also need look no further than the results of organic-based farming in Malawi. Organic approaches have also enhanced farmers’ livelihoods in India and play a key role in contributing to rural development.

However, if we want to really appreciate what happens when a major widespread shift to organic farming occurs, we need look no further than Cuba.

Cuba is the one country in the world that has made the biggest changes in the shortest time in moving from industrial chemical-intensive agriculture to organic farming.

Miguel Altieri notes that, due to the difficulties Cuba experienced as a result of the fall of the USSR, it moved towards organic and agroecological techniques in the 1990s. Thousands of oxen replaced tractors that could not function due to lack of petroleum and spare parts. Farmers substituted green manures for chemical fertilizers and artisanally produced biopesticides for insecticides.

Altieri states that from 1996 to 2005, per capita food production in Cuba increased by 4.2 percent yearly during a period when production was stagnant across the wider region. In the mid-2000s, the Ministry of Agriculture endorsed the creation of 2,600 new small urban and suburban farms and allowed farming on some three million hectares of unused state lands.

Today Cuba has 383,000 urban farms, covering 50,000 hectares of otherwise unused land and producing more than 1.5 million tons of vegetables. The most productive urban farms yield up to 20 kg of food per square meter, the highest rate in the world, using no synthetic chemicals. Urban farms supply 50 to 70 percent or more of all the fresh vegetables consumed in cities such as Havana and Villa Clara.

Altieri and his colleague have calculated that if all peasant farms and cooperatives adopted diversified agroecological designs, Cuba would be able to produce enough to feed its population, supply food to the tourist industry and even export some food to help generate foreign currency.

What Cuba has done is a major achievement, as Garry Leech argues:

“The shift to a more ecologically sustainable agricultural production has resulted in healthy organic food being the most convenient and inexpensive food available to Cubans. Because of the US blockade, processed foods are more expensive and not readily available. This reality stands in stark contrast to that in wealthy capitalist nations such as the United States and Canada where heavily-subsidized agri-businesses flood the market with cheap, unhealthy processed foods while organic alternatives are expensive and more difficult to obtain. The consequence in the United States is high levels of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.”

Cuba shows what can be done (see how it was done and the dangers it now faces) when the political will exists and what should be done if we are to move away from an unsustainable model of agriculture that creates food insecurity, environmental degradation, bad food and ill health.

The US model

Contrast this with what NAFTA did to Mexico. Driven by an industrial chemical-intensive US model of food processing, retail and agriculture, the outcome has been bad health, the undermining of food security and the devastation of small farmers and businesses.

Processed junk food ridden with toxins and a propped up agribusiness sector with subsidies has become a feature of the US chemical-intensive model of agriculture, which has led to all kinds of health and environmental problems in the US, as highlighted here.

For Olivier De Schutter, a programme that deals effectively with hunger and malnutrition has to focus on Mexico’s small farmers and peasants. They constitute a substantial percentage of the country’s poor and are the ones that can best supply both rural and urban populations with nutritious foods.

And the writing is on the wall for places like India too as the neoliberal invasion and transnational agribusiness armed with its chemicals (and GMOs) increases its hold over food and agriculture. It is turning out to be disastrous for Indian farmers, the environment and the health of the public (see this too).

In the meantime, supporters of the unhealthy, unsustainable, industrialised petro-chemical model of agriculture wish to continue to rip up indigenous agriculture and recast it accordingly. And they attempt to justify this by stating there is no alternative and that organic-based approaches, including a genuine democratic-participatory movement like agroecology, cannot deliver.

Despite places like Russia, Cuba and Sikkim (India’s first fully organic state) are showing the way forward, these supporters would say that, wouldn’t they?

From NAFTA and trade agreements like the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (India), TTIP and TPP to the ongoing infiltration of Africa by Bill Gates and ‘corporate America’, they require business as usual: to offer governments strings-attached loans and ensure export cash-crop monocropping takes hold (see this articlefrom 1999 about India), to make farmers reliant on external inputs, to get them onto a highly profitable but unsustainable GMO/chemical treadmill and to incorporate them into an system of globalisation centred on rigged trade, debt traps and the manipulated international ‘free’ market.

And all for what? To capture the entire supply chain from seed to plate, to serve the commercial interests of transnational agritech/agribusiness and food retail corporations and to use agriculture as a political tool to create dependency. All of this at the expense of self-sufficiency, sustainable indigenous agriculture and the livelihoods of those involved in traditional food production, processing and retail. And all of this too at the expense of regional food security, the environment and a nutritious, healthy and diverse diet.

Routing ISIS from Palmyra decisively is the most important strategic victory in the struggle to liberate Syria from foreign terrorist invaders since Obama launched naked aggression in March 2011.

He continues using them as imperial foot soldiers, death squad mercenaries, not Syrians waging civil conflict, the official Big Lie.

Triumph over the weekend highlighted the enormous contribution of Russian air power, logistical and other support.

Moscow backs its allies forthrightly. Washington uses other countries to further its imperial interests. The difference in approaches is stark.

Since Russia intervened on September 30, the tide of battle turned. ISIS and other terrorist groups suffered significant defeats. They continue losing ground to government forces.

Russia’s anti-terrorist campaign is real. US intervention with its allies is phony – anti-Syrian, pro-terrorists they support, bombing infrastructure and government sites while pretending otherwise.

Russia’s vital contribution to liberating Palmyra from ISIS exposed the Big Lie about its campaign targeting (nonexistent) “moderate rebels,” killing civilians and striking nonmilitary sites – but don’t expect scoundrel media explanations.

Washington’s aerial campaign supported by covert special forces and weapons smuggled cross-border along with other material support helped ISIS and other terrorist groups advance against Syrian troops, gain control of large parts of the nation’s territory.

US support for terrorists continues despite claims otherwise, longstanding policy since mujahideen fighters were recruited in Afghanistan against Soviet Russia.

Moscow’s intervention turned things around decisively, perhaps one day making Syrian liberation possible.

At the same time, it handed Washington a major geopolitical defeat, foiling its regional imperial agenda, maybe liberating Iraq the next shoe to drop.

On Sunday, Putin congratulated Assad. According to his spokesman Dmitry Peskov, both leaders spoke by phone.

Putin stressed Moscow’s continued support for its Syrian ally, his commitment to defeat the scourge of terrorism. Russian air power, intelligence and other support made liberating Palmyra possible, Peskov explained.

Iran remains a valued Syrian ally. Its Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani called “(t)he real resolve and determination of the Syrian nation, government and army to purge the territories occupied by terrorist and Takfiri groups…reason for praise and pride…”

“(T)he Iranian government and armed forces will continue their full support for Syria and the axis of resistance” against dark forces vital to defeat.

Liberating Palmyra facilitates more strategic victories against ISIS and other terrorist groups controlling Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and other Syrian territory. It makes final victory more possible.

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.

We don’t need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, because our commitment is to peace and fraternity among all human beings who live on this planet.

Tourism today, in large part, consists of viewing the delights of our landscapes and tasting exquisite delicacies from our seas, and is always shared with the private capital of large foreign corporations, whose earnings, if they don’t reach billions of dollars, are not worthy of any attention whatsoever.

Since I find myself obliged to mention the issue, I must add – principally for the youth – that few people are aware of the importance of such a condition, in this singular moment of human history. I would not say that time has been lost, but I do not hesitate to affirm that we are not adequately informed, not you, nor us, of the knowledge and conscience that we must have to confront the realities which challenge us. The first to be taken into consideration is that our lives are but a fraction of a historical second, which must also be devoted in part to the vital necessities of every human being. One of the characteristics of this condition is the tendency to overvalue its role, in contrast, on the other hand, with the extraordinary number of persons who embody the loftiest dreams.

Nevertheless, no one is good or bad entirely on their own. None of us is designed for the role we must assume in a revolutionary society, although Cubans had the privilege of José Martí’s example. I even ask myself if he needed to die or not in Dos Ríos, when he said, “For me, it’s time,” and charged the Spanish forces entrenched in a solid line of firepower. He did not want to return to the United States, and there was no one who could make him. Someone ripped some pages from his diary. Who bears this treacherous responsibility, undoubtedly the work of an unscrupulous conspirator? Differences between the leaders were well known, but never indiscipline. “Whoever attempts to appropriate Cuba will reap only the dust of its soil drenched in blood, if he does not perish in the struggle,” stated the glorious Black leader Antonio Maceo. Máximo Gómez is likewise recognized as the most disciplined and discreet military chief in our history.

Looking at it from another angle, how can we not admire the indignation of Bonifacio Byrne when, from a distant boat returning him to Cuba, he saw another flag alongside that of the single star and declared, “My flag is that which has never been mercenary…” immediately adding one of the most beautiful phrases I have ever heard, “If it is torn to shreds, it will be my flag one day… our dead raising their arms will still be able to defend it!” Nor will I forget the blistering words of Camilo Cienfuegos that night, when, just some tens of meters away, bazookas and machine guns of U.S. origin in the hands of counterrevolutionaries were pointed toward that terrace on which we stood.

Obama was born in August of 1961, as he himself explained. More than half a century has transpired since that time.

Let us see, however, how our illustrious guest thinks today:

“I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people,” followed by a deluge of concepts entirely novel for the majority of us:

“We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans,” the U.S. President continued, “Cuba, like the United States, was built in part by slaves brought here from Africa. Like the United States, the Cuban people can trace their heritage to both slaves and slave-owners.”

The native populations don’t exist at all in Obama’s mind. Nor does he say that the Revolution swept away racial discrimination, or that pensions and salaries for all Cubans were decreed by it before Mr. Barrack Obama was 10 years old. The hateful, racist bourgeois custom of hiring strongmen to expel Black citizens from recreational centers was swept away by the Cuban Revolution – that which would go down in history for the battle against apartheid that liberated Angola, putting an end to the presence of nuclear weapons on a continent of more than a billion inhabitants. This was not the objective of our solidarity, but rather to help the peoples of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and others under the fascist colonial domination of Portugal.

In 1961, just one year and three months after the triumph of the Revolution, a mercenary force with armored artillery and infantry, backed by aircraft, trained and accompanied by U.S. warships and aircraft carriers, attacked our country by surprise. Nothing can justify that perfidious attack which cost our country hundreds of losses, including deaths and injuries

As for the pro-yankee assault brigade, no evidence exists anywhere that it was possible to evacuate a single mercenary. Yankee combat planes were presented before the United Nations as the equipment of a Cuban uprising.

The military experience and power of this country is very well known. In Africa, they likewise believed that revolutionary Cuba would be easily taken out of the fight. The invasion via southern Angola by racist South African motorized brigades got close to Luanda, the capital in the eastern part of the country. There a struggle began which went on for no less than 15 years. I wouldn’t even talk about this, if I didn’t have the elemental duty to respond to Obama’s speech in Havana’s Alicia Alonso Grand Theater.

Nor will I attempt to give details, only emphasize that an honorable chapter in the struggle for human liberation was written there. In a certain way, I hoped Obama’s behavior would be correct. His humble origin and natural intelligence were evident. Mandela was imprisoned for life and had become a giant in the struggle for human dignity. One day, a copy of a book narrating part of Mandela’s life reached my hands, and – surprise! – the prologue was by Barack Obama. I rapidly skimmed the pages. The miniscule size of Mandela’s handwriting noting facts was incredible. Knowing men such as him was worthwhile.

Regarding the episode in South Africa I must point out another experience. I was really interested in learning more about how the South Africans had acquired nuclear weapons. I only had very precise information that there were no more than 10 or 12 bombs. A reliable source was the professor and researcher Piero Gleijeses, who had written the text Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, an excellent piece. I knew he was the most reliable source on what had happened and I told him so; he responded that he had not spoken more about the matter as in the text he had responded to questions from compañero Jorge Risquet, who had been Cuban ambassador and collaborator in Angola, a very good friend of his. I located Risquet; already undertaking other important tasks he was finishing a course which would last several weeks longer. That task coincided with a fairly recent visit by Piero to our country; I had warned him that Risquet was getting on and his health was not great. A few days later what I had feared occurred. Risquet deteriorated and died. When Piero arrived there was nothing to do except make promises, but I had already received information related to the weapons and the assistance that racist South Africa had received from Reagan and Israel.

I do not know what Obama would have to say about this story now. I am unaware as to what he did or did not know, although it is very unlikely that he knew absolutely nothing. My modest suggestion is that he gives it thought and does not attempt now to elaborate theories on Cuban policy.

There is an important issue:

Obama made a speech in which he uses the most sweetened words to express: “It is time, now, to forget the past, leave the past behind, let us look to the future together, a future of hope. And it won’t be easy, there will be challenges and we must give it time; but my stay here gives me more hope in what we can do together as friends, as family, as neighbors, together.”

I suppose all of us were at risk of a heart attack upon hearing these words from the President of the United States. After a ruthless blockade that has lasted almost 60 years, and what about those who have died in the mercenary attacks on Cuban ships and ports, an airliner full of passengers blown up in midair, mercenary invasions, multiple acts of violence and coercion?

Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of this dignified and selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth they have gained with the development of education, science and culture.

I also warn that we are capable of producing the food and material riches we need with the efforts and intelligence of our people. We do not need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, as this is our commitment to peace and fraternity among all human beings who live on this planet.

Fidel Castro Ruz

March 27, 2016

10:25 p.m.

We just got news that Tom Feeley, editor of Information Clearing House (ICH) who relentlessly for many years brings us on a daily basis incisive independent news and analysis has been hospitalised.

We have been asked to notify his readers about his absence.

He is recovering and should be back shortly. We wish him good health.

He has not given up his struggle to provide Truth in Media on a daily basis.

In the words of  author Mike Whitney “Tom is an incredible guy with unshakable convictions”

He can be contacted at [email protected]

Michel Chossudovsky, Editor of Global Research

Seventeen year ago: March 1999, NATO’s war on Yugoslavia. Article originally published in 1999 on Jackson Progressive, published by Global Research in 2003.

General Wesley Clark (image right) , NATO’s Supreme commander in Europe, confirmed in late May [1999] that “NATO’S air campaign has not reached its peak yet and the alliance should be prepared for more civilian casualties.”.

General Clark also confirmed that “he would be seeking to increase the number of air strikes in Kosovo and expand the range of targets.

As the bombings entered their third month, there was also a noticeable change in “NATO rhetoric”. The Alliance had become increasingly unrepentant, NATO officials were no longer apologising for civilian casualties, claiming that the latter were contributing to “helping Milosevic’s propaganda machine.”

Low Intensity Nuclear War

With NATO air-strikes entering their third month, a new stage of the War has unfolded. NATO’s “humanitarian bombings” have been stepped up leading to mounting civilian casualties and human suffering. Thirty percent of those killed in the bombings are children.¹ In addition to the use of cluster bombs, the Alliance is waging a “low intensity nuclear war” using toxic radioactive shells and missiles containing depleted uranium. Amply documented, the radioactive fall-out causes cancer potentially affecting millions of people for generations to come. According to a recent scientific report, “the first signs of radiation on children including herpes on the mouth and skin rashes on the back and ankles” have been observed in Yugoslavia since the beginning of the bombings.²

In addition to the radioactive fall-out which has contaminated the environment and the food chain, the Alliance has also bombed Yugoslavia’s major chemical and pharmaceutical plants. The bombing of Galenika, the largest medicine factory in Yugoslavia has contributed to releasing dangerous, highly toxic fumes. When NATO forces bombed plants of the Pancevo petrochemical complex in mid-April “fire broke out and huge quantities of chlorine, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer flowed out. Workers at Pancevo, fearing further bombing attacks that would blow up dangerous materials, released tons of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube.”³

Nato to the “Rescue of Ethnic Albanians”

Ethnic Albanians have not been spared by NATO air raids. Killing ethnic Albanians in Kosovo is said to be “inevitable” in carrying out a “humanitarian operation on behalf of ethnic Albanians”. In addition to the impacts of the ground war between the KLA and the Yugoslav Armed Forces, the bombings and the resulting radioactive fall-out in have been more devastating than in the rest of Yugoslavia.

Presented as a humanitarian mission, the evidence amply confirms that NATO’s brutal air raids of towns and villages in Kosovo have triggered the exodus of refugees. Those who have fled their homes to refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania have nothing to return to, nothing to look forward to… An entire country has been destroyed, its civilian industry and public infrastructure transformed into rubble. Bridges, power plants, schools and hospitals are displayed as “legitimate military targets” selected by NATO’s Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Vicenza, Italy and carefully “validated prior to the pilot launching his strike.”

With the “diplomatic shuttle” still ongoing, the Alliance is intent on inflicting as much damage on the Yugoslav economy (including Kosovo) as possible prior to reaching a G8 brokered “peace initiative” which will empower them to send in ground troops.

“Allied commanders have steadily widened their list of economic targets… Increasingly, the impact of NATO air strikes has put people out of work… causing water shortages in Belgrade, Novi Sad and other Serbian cities. … [T]he effect was to shut down businesses, strain hospitals’ ability to function and cut off water…”⁴.

Some 115 medical institutions have been damaged of which several have been totally demolished. And hospital patients –including children and the elderly– are dying due to the lack of water and electricity…⁵

General Wesley Clark, NATO’s Supreme commander in Europe, confirmed in late May that “NATO’S air campaign has not reached its peak yet and the alliance should be prepared for more civilian casualties.”⁶. General Clark also confirmed that “he would be seeking to increase the number of air strikes in Kosovo and expand the range of targets.⁷ As the bombings entered their third month, there was also a noticeable change in “NATO rhetoric”. The Alliance had become increasingly unrepentant, NATO officials were no longer apologising for civilian casualties, claiming that the latter were contributing to “helping Milosevic’s propaganda machine.”

Extending the Conflict Beyond the Balkans

Drowned in the barrage of media images and self-serving analyses, the broader strategic interests and economic causes of the War go unmentioned. The late Sean Gervasi writing in 1995 had anticipated an impending War. According to Gervasi, Washington’s strategic goals stretched well beyond the Balkans. They largely consisted in “installing a Western-style regime in Yugoslavia and reducing the geographic area, power and influence of Serbia to a minimum….”⁸

In this context, the installation of American power in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean also constitutes a step towards the extension of Washington’s geopolitical sphere of influence beyond the Balkans into the area of the Caspian Sea, Central Asia and West Asia.

In this regard, NATO’s military intervention in Yugoslavia (in violation of international law) also sets a dangerous precedent. It provides “legitimacy” to future military interventions. To achieve its strategic objectives, national economies are destabilised, regional conflicts are financed through the provision of covert support to armed insurgencies… In other words, the conflict in Yugoslavia creates conditions which provide legitimacy to future interventions of the Alliance into the “internal affairs of sovereign nations”.

The consolidation of American strategic interests in Eastern Europe, the Balkans (and beyond) was not only marked by the enlargement of NATO (with the accession of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic as NATO members) barely two weeks before the beginning of the bombings, the War in Yugoslavia also coincided with a critical split in geopolitical alignments within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

In late April, Georgia, the Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldava signed a pact in Washington, creating GUUAM, a regional alliance which lies strategically at the hub of the Caspian oil and gas wealth, “with Moldava and the Ukraine offering [pipeline] export routes to the West”.⁹ This geopolitical split bears a direct relationship to the crisis in Yugoslavia. The region is already unstable marked by nationalist conflicts and separatist movements.

The members of this new pro-NATO political grouping not only tacitly support the bombings in Yugoslavia, they have also agreed to “low level military cooperation” with NATO while insisting that “the group is not a military alliance directed against any third party, namely Moscow.”¹⁰

Dominated by Western oil interests, the formation of GUUAM is not only intent on excluding Russia from the oil and gas deposits in the Caspian area but also in isolating Moscow politically thereby potentially re-igniting Cold War divisions…

The War Has Stalled Nuclear Arms Controls

In turn, the War in Yugoslavia has significantly stalled nuclear arms-control initiatives leading to the cancellation of an exchange program “that would have had US and Russian nuclear weapons officers in constant contact at year’s end to prevent any launches as a result of Year 2000 computer troubles.”¹¹

Moreover, Russia’s military has also voiced its concern “that the bombing of Yugoslavia could turn out in the very near future to be just a rehearsal for similar strikes on Russia.”¹².

According to Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford, co-president of the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the impact of NATO bombings of Yugoslavia “on nuclear weapons policy is an extremely serious development… Russians feel a sense of betrayal by the West… because NATO took this action outside the UN.”¹³

Aleksander Arbatov, deputy chairman of the Defence Committee of the Russian State Duma U.S.-Russian relations describes the War in Yugoslavia as the “worst most acute, most dangerous juncture since the U.S.-Soviet Berlin and Cuban missile crises.”¹⁴ According to Arbatov:

“START II is dead, co-operation with NATO is frozen, co-operation on missile defence is out of the question, and Moscow’s willingness to co-operate on non-proliferation issues is at an all-time low. Moreover, anti-U.S. sentiment in Russia is real, deep and more wide-spread than ever, and the slogan describing NATO action – “today Serbia, tomorrow Russia,” is “deeply planted in Russian’s minds.”…¹⁵ Mary-Wynne Ashford also warns that whereas Russia was moving towards integration with Europe, they [the Russians] now:

“…. perceive their primary threat from the West. Officials in [Russia’s] Foreign Affairs (Arms Control and Disarmament) told us that Russia has no option but to rely on nuclear weapons for its defence because its conventional forces are inadequate…. Even if the bombings stop now, the changes in Russia’s attitude toward the West, its renewed reliance on nuclear weapons with thousands on high alert, and its loss of confidence in international law leave us vulnerable to catastrophe…. This crisis makes de-alerting nuclear weapons more urgent than ever. To those who say the Russian threat is all rhetoric, I reply that rhetoric is what starts wars”.¹⁶

The Media War: “Silencing the Silent Majority”

This war is also “a War against the Truth”. With protest movements developing around the World, NATO has reinforced its clutch over the mass media. In a stylised (“wag the dog”) media mascarade, the Alliance is relentlessly portrayed as “the saviour of ethnic Albanian Kosovars”. A full-fledged “cover-up operation” has been set in motion with a view to thwarting public debate on the War. The hidden agenda is to “silence the silent majority.” The Western media heeding to the Alliance’s demands has blatantly misled public opinion. Casually portrayed on TV screens, civilian deaths are justified as inevitable “collateral damage”. According to the Pentagon, “there is no such thing as clean combat.”¹⁷

Meanwhile, anti-war commentators (including former ambassadors and OSCE officials) have been carefully removed from mainstream public affairs programmes, TV content is closely scrutinised, the images of civilian deaths and destruction relayed from Belgrade are seldomly and selectively displayed, journalists are under tight supervision. While the media does not hesitate to criticize NATO for having committed “errors” and “tragic mistakes”, the legitimacy of the military operation and its “humanitarian mandate” are not questioned:

“Public opinion is confronted with a loaded question which allows only one answer. In the present war, that question is, “Doesn’t ethnic cleansing have to be stopped?” This simplification allows the media to portray Yugoslavia rather than NATO as the aggressor. The alliance, in a complete inversion of reality, is presented as conducting an essentially defensive war on behalf of the Kosovar Albanians…” when in fact ethnic Albanians are the principle victims of NATO’s “humanitarian bombings.”¹⁸

According to NATO’s propaganda machine, “ethnic Albanians do not flee the bombings” and the ground war between the KLA and the Yugoslav Army. According to Diana Johnstone this makes them “nearly unique [because] throughout history, civilians have fled from war zones…. No, as we have heard repeatedly from NATO spokesmen and apologists, Kosovo Albanians run away from only one thing: brutal ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbs.”¹⁹

The refugee crisis we are told by NATO is limited to Kosovo. Yet the evidence (withheld by the Western media) confirms that people throughout Serbia are fleeing major cities:

Reliable estimates put the number of refugees who have left Belgrade to escape the bombing at 400,000. Most are women and children, as with the Kosovo Albanians. At least another 500,000 have left Serbia’s other cities, notably Novi Sad and Nish, where NATO bombing has caused air pollution, cut the water supply, and struck purely civilian targets such as market squares. Altogether, according to the Italian daily “Il Manifesto”, the NATO bombing has produced at least a million refugees in Serbia. Predrag Simic, foreign policy adviser to Serbian opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, told a Paris conference [in late May] that Kosovo was being so thoroughly devastated by NATO bombing that nobody, neither Albanians nor Serbs, would be able to go back and live there”.²⁰

 Who is Responsible for War Crimes?

Public “disapproval” of NATO bombings is immediately dismissed as “Serb propaganda”. Those who speak out against NATO are branded as “apologists of Milosevic”. While most anti-War critics in NATO countries are not defenders of the Milosevic regime, they are nonetheless expected to be “balanced” in their arguments. “Looking at both sides of the picture is the rule”: anti-war commentators are invited to echo NATO’s fabricated media consensus, to unequivocally “join the bandwagon” against Milosevic. Under these circumstances, an objective understanding and analysis of the role of the Milosovic government since the civil War in Bosnia and in the context of the present crisis in Kosovo has been rendered virtually impossible.

Media double standards? Whereas President Milosevic and four members of his government were indicted by the Hague International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) (late May) for organising a policy of “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, the news media failed to mention that several parallel law suits were launched at The Hague Tribunal (ICTY), accusing NATO leaders of “crimes against humanity.”²¹

It is also worth mentioning that the UK government (whose Prime Minister Tony Blair is among the list of accused in one of the parallel law suits) has provided The Hague Tribunal with “intelligence on the situation within Kosovo” since the beginning of the bombings.²² Part of this intelligence material was relayed by the KLA with which British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has been in frequent contact as well as through British Special Forces (SAS) directly collaborating with the KLA.

Law Suit Directed Against NATO Leaders

In May, a group of 15 Canadian lawyers and law professors together with the American Association of Jurists (with members in more than 20 countries) launched a suit against NATO leaders at the ICTY in the Hague.²³ The suit points to “open violation” of the United Nations Charter, the NATO treaty, the Geneva Conventions and the “Principles of International Law Recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal”. The latter makes: “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances” a crime.²⁴

The list of crimes allegedly committed by NATO leaders includes:

“wilful killing, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, extensive destruction of property,… employment of poisonous weapons [implying radioactive fall-out] or other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity,… “²⁵

Under the terms of reference of the ICTY “a person who planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime shall be individually responsible for the crime” and “the official position of any accused person, whether as Head of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility or mitigate punishment.”²⁶

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson (and former President of Ireland) confirmed in Geneva on 30 April 1999 that the Prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal (ICTY) has the mandate not only to prosecute Serb forces but that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and NATO may also come under scrutiny, “if it appears that serious violations of international humanitarian law have occurred.”

According to Walter J. Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials:

“The bombing war also violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent “Polish atrocities” against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.”²⁷

Shaky Evidence of a “Humanitarian Catastrophe” Prior to the Bombings

In the course of “covering-up” the real motivations of NATO in launching the War, the international media has also failed to mention that an official intelligence report of the German Foreign Ministry (used to establish the eligibility of political refugees from Kosovo) confirmed that there was no evidence of “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo in the months immediately preceding the bombings. Who is lying? German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had justified NATO’s intervention pointing to a “humanitarian catastrophe”, yet the internal documents of his own ministry say exactly the opposite:

“Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of Kosovo is still not involved in armed conflict. Public life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc. has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a relatively normal basis. The actions of the security forces [were] not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponent [KLA] and its actual or alleged supporters.”… “²⁹

[W]ith an agreement made with the Serbian leadership at the end of 1998 … both the security situation and the conditions of life of the Albanian-derived population have noticeably improved… Specifically in the larger cities public life has since returned to relative normality.”²⁹

The above assessments are broadly consistent with several independent evaluations of the humanitarian situation in Kosovo prior to the onslaught of the bombing campaign. Roland Keith, a former field office director of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), who left Kosovo on March 20th reported that most of the violence in Kosovo was instigated by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA):

“Upon my arrival the war increasingly evolved into a mid intensity conflict as ambushes, the encroachment of critical lines of communication and the [KLA] kidnapping of security forces resulted in a significant increase in government casualties which in turn led to major Yugoslavian reprisal security operations… By the beginning of March these terror and counter-terror operations led to the inhabitants of numerous villages fleeing, or being dispersed to either other villages, cities or the hills to seek refuge… The situation was clearly that KLA provocations, as personally witnessed in ambushes of security patrols which inflicted fatal and other casualties, were clear violations of the previous October’s agreement [and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1199]. The security forces responded and the consequent security harassment and counter-operations led to an intensified insurrectionary war, but as I have stated elsewhere, I did not witness, nor did I have knowledge of any incidents of so-called “ethnic cleansing” and there certainly were no occurrences of “genocidal policies” while I was with the KVM in Kosovo. What has transpired since the OSCE monitors were evacuated on March 20, in order to deliver the penultimate warning to force Yugoslavian compliance with the Rambouillet and subsequent Paris documents and the commencement of the NATO air bombardment of March 24, obviously has resulted in human rights abuses and a very significant humanitarian disaster as some 600,000 Albanian Kosovars have fled or been expelled from the province. This did not occur, though, before March 20, so I would attribute the humanitarian disaster directly or indirectly to the NATO air bombardment and resulting anti-terrorist campaign.”³⁰

Chronology of NATO Planning

Carefully removed from the public eye, preparations for both “the air campaign” and “the ground War” have been ongoing for almost a year prior to the beginning of NATO’s “humanitarian bombings” on March 24th 1999.

Responding to broad strategic and economic objectives, the Alliance’s first priority was to secure the stationing of armed combat troops in Macedonia on the immediate border with Kosovo. US Secretary of Defense William Cohen had travelled to Skopje in late December 1997 for discussions with the Macedonian government and Military. These high levels talks were followed a few months later by the visit of Macedonia’s Defense Minister L. Kitanoski to Washington for meetings at the Pentagon. On the agenda: the establishment of a NATO base in Macedonia.³¹

No time was lost: on May 6, 1998, the NATO Council met “to review alliance efforts” in the region; a major military exercise entitled “Cooperative Best Effort” was slated to take place in Macedonia in September. NATO nonetheless “reassured the international community” that the military exercise was not meant to be “a rehearsal”, rather it was to enable “NATO military authorities to study various options. Decisions on whether to execute any of those options would be a matter for future decision.”³²

Largely the consequence of KLA terrorism, the deterioration of the security situation in Kosovo conveniently provided NATO with a pretext to build up its ground forces in Macedonia (composed largely of British and French troops). According to NATO, it was therefore necessary to envisage “a more complicated and ambitious [military] exercise [in Macedonia] to send a clear political signal [to Belgrade] of NATO’s involvement”.³³

The Role of the Kosovo Liberation Army

In parallel with the setting up of its military operations in Albania and Macedonia, NATO had established direct links with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). A US Department of Defense briefing confirms in this regard that “initial contacts” between the KLA and NATO had taken place by mid-1998:

“…the realization has come to people [in NATO] that we [NATO] have to have the UCK [acronym for KLA in Albanian] involved in this process because they have shown at least the potential to be rejectionists of any deal that could be worked out there with the existing Kosovo parties. So somehow they have to be brought in and that’s why we’ve made some initial contacts there with the group, hopefully the right people in the group, to try and bring them into this negotiating process. ³⁴

While these “initial contacts” were acknowledged by NATO officially only in mid-1998, the KLA had (according to several reports) been receiving “covert support” and training from the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) since the mid-nineties.³⁵

The concurrent building up of KLA forces was part of NATO planning. By mid-1998 “covert support” had been gradually replaced –despite the KLA’s links to organised crime– by official (“overt”) support by the military Alliance in violation of UN Security Council Resolution UNSCR 1160 of 31 March 1998 which condemned:

“…all acts of terrorism by the Kosovo Liberation Army or any other group or individual and all external support for terrorist activity in Kosovo, including finance, arms and training.”

On 24 September 1998, another key UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR 1199) was adopted which called “upon the authorities in Belgrade and the leadership of the Kosovar Albanian community urgently to enter without preconditions into a meaningful dialogue on political status issues.” It also required Belgrade to withdraw its troops from Kosovo.

Following a renewed wave of KLA terrorism, the Yugoslav authorities were blamed for the “crackdowns on ethnic Albanians” providing NATO defense ministers meeting in Vilmoura Portugal (September 24th on the same day as the adoption of UNSCR 1199) with the “justification” to issue an “activation warning” for a campaign of air strikes against Serb positions. The Vilmoura statement called upon Belgrade to “take immediate steps to alleviate the humanitarian situation…, stop repressive actions against the population and seek a political solution through negotiations with the Albanian majority”.³⁶

This so-called “activation warning” was followed in mid-October by “an activation order” by the North Atlantic Council authorising NATO’s Supreme Commander for Europe General Wesley Clark to initiate “limited air strikes” and a “phased air campaign” … should the Yugoslav authorities refuse to comply with UNSCR 1199.³⁷

Under the impending threat of air strikes, a partial withdrawal was carried out by Belgrade (following the adoption of UNSCR 1199) creating almost immediately conditions for the KLA to occupy positions previously held by retreating Serb forces. In turn, the strengthening of the KLA was accompanied by renewed terrorist activity and a consequent “worsening of the security situation”. NATO’s hidden objective, in this regard, was to use the KLA insurgency to further provoke ethnic tensions and generate social strife in Kosovo.

In the meantime, US envoy Richard Holbrooke had entered into discussions with President Milosovic. Forged under the threat of NATO air strikes, negotiations on Kosovo’s political status had also been initiated in Pristina between a Serbian delegation led by President Milan Milutinovic and Ibrahim Rugova, President of the Democratic League (DLK) representing ethnic Albanians. While Mr Christopher Hill, the US envoy had been invited as an observer to these meetings, Milutinovic had insisted that the negotiations (which proceeded from UNSCR 1199) were an internal matter.

Following the agreement between US envoy Richard Holbrooke and President Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia was to complete negotiations on “a framework for a political settlement” by the 2nd of November 1998. Moreover, a Verification Mission to establish compliance with resolutions UNSCR 1160 and UNSCR 1199, was put in place in Kosovo under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). A parallel NATO air verification mission (complementing the OSCE verification mission) was established following an agreement signed in Belgrade on 15 October 1998 by the Yugoslav Chief of General Staff and NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, General Wesley Clark.

The terms of both the OSCE and NATO verification agreements were subsequently embodied in UNSCR 1260 of October 24th. Whereas Belgrade was given a 96 hour “deadline for compliance”, the Alliance decided to postpone the initiation of air strikes following talks in Belgrade (October 25-26) between President Slobodan Milosevic and General Wesley Clark. According to the Alliance statement: “NATO will remain prepared to carry out air operations should they be necessary” ³⁸. In the meantime, NATO launched Operation Eagle Eye using unarmed aircraft and unmanned predator aerial vehicles (UAVs). Eagle Eye surveillance activities were coordinated with the “ground verification” mission conducted by OSCE observer teams and by the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM).

A Former “Iran-Contragate” Official Heads the OSCE Verification Mission

In the meantime, a career US diplomat, Ambassador William G. Walker [see image on the right] was appointed Head of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM). A tailor-made assignment: Walker was well-known for his role in the “Iran-Contragate” scandal during the Reagan administration. The KLA insurgency was in many regards a “carbon copy” of the Nicaraguan Contras which had also been funded by drug money with covert support from the CIA.

Well documented by court files, William G. Walker –in association with Oliver North– played a key role in channelling covert funding to the Nicaraguan Contras while serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs in the Reagan Administration. In this capacity, he became a special assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, “a figure whose name would soon be making its way into the headlines on a daily basis in connection with … the “Iran-Contra” affair.”³⁹

William G. Walker had been involved in the so-called Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (“NHAO”) in the State Department which was a cover-up fund whereby covert military aid was supplied to the Contras. The objective was to circumvent the so-called “Boland Amendments”, –ie. “riders” to the Department of Defense Appropriation Act, “which prohibited the [US] government from spending money for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua”. ⁴⁰ Confirmed by files of the US Court of Appeal (District of Columbia), “Walker attended some meetings of the Restricted Interagency Group for Central America, of which Oliver North was a member”.⁴¹

Walker was never indicted for criminal wrong-doings in the Iran- Contragate scandal. Upon completing his work with Oliver North, he was appointed US Ambassador to El Salvador. His stint in El Salvador coincided with the rise of the death squadrons and a period during which the country was virtually “under the grip of US sponsored State terror.”⁴²

In Kosovo, William G. Walker applied his skills in covert operations acquired in Central America. As head of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), Walker maintained close links to the KLA military command in the field.⁴³ From the outset of his mission in Kosovo, he used his position to pursue the interests of the Alliance.

“The Racak Massacre”

The so-called “Racak massacre” occurred shortly before the launching of the Rambouillet “peace initiative”. although it turned out to be a fake, the Racak massacre nonetheless played a key role in “setting the stage” for NATO’s air raids. William Walker declared (in his capacity as head of KVM) that the Yugoslav police had carried out a massacre of civilians at Racak on January 15th. The Yugoslav authorities retorted that local police had in fact conducted an operation in this village against the Kosovo Libration Army and that several KLA soliders had died in cross-fire. As later reported by several French newspapers (Le Monde, Le Figaro and Liberation), it was confirmed that the “Racak massacre” was indeed a fake put together with a view to discrediting Belgrade:

“Eventually, even the Los Angeles Times joined in, running a story entitled “Racak Massacre Questions: Were Atrocities Faked?” The theory behind all these exposs was that the KLA had gathered their own dead after the battle, removed their uniforms, put them in civilian clothes, and then called in the observers.”⁴⁴.

The Rambouillet Process

On January 22, senior officials of the so-called “Contact Group” of six countries (including the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy) meeting in London called for a peace conference which would bring together the Yugoslav government and “representatives of ethnic Albanians.” In turn, NATO warned that it was “ready to act” if the peace plan to be finalised by the Contact Group were rejected. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan concurred during a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels that the threat of force was “essential” to press both sides into a settlement.⁴⁵

In the meantime, while supporting the KLA insurgency on the ground, the Alliance had also contributed to spearheading KLA leader Hashim Thaci (a 29 year “freedom fighter”) into heading the Kosovar delegation to Rambouillet, on behalf of the ethnic Albanian majority. The Democratic League headed by Ibrahim Rugova had been deliberately side-stepped. The Alliance was relying on its KLA puppets (linked to organised crime) to rubber-stamp an agreement which would have transformed Kosovo into an occupied territory under NATO military rule.

Albright and KLA leader Hashim Thaci

While negotiations were ongoing in Rambouillet, NATO decided to increase the readiness of its assigned forces “so as to make them able to execute the operation within 48 hours”.⁴⁶ In other words, “peace negotiations” had been initiated in Rambouillet (contrary to the Vienna Convention) under the threat of impending air strikes. NATO had granted a three weeks period to the parties meeting in Rambouillet to conclude negotiations.

On February 19, one day prior to the deadline, NATO Secretary General Javier Solano reaffirmed that, “if no agreement is reached by the deadline set by the Contact Group, NATO is ready to take whatever measures are necessary to avert a humanitarian catastrophe”.⁴⁷ And on 22 March 1999, NATO’S North Atlantic Council authorised “the Secretary General to decide, subject to further consultations, on a broader range of air operations if necessary.”⁴⁸ And on 23 March 1999, NATO’s Secretary General directed the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe General Wesley Clark to initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Air operations commenced on 24 March 1999 under the nickname “Operation Allied Force.”⁴⁹

Sending in Ground Troups Under a G-8 “Peace Plan”

Since the brutal onslaught of the air campaign on March 24, the Alliance has continued to build up its ground combat troops on the Macedonian border in anticipation of an impending military invasion. Initially NATO had envisaged a Kosovo occupation force of 50,000 troops which could be increased to 60,000 with a larger US share than the 4,000 initially envisaged under Rambouillet.

In other words, the proposed invasion force was to be more than double that under Rambouillet (28,000 troops) while also enforcing all the normative clauses of the initial Rambouillet agreement including the “free movement” of NATO combat units throughout Yugoslavia.

In the meantime, NATO’s military establishment was forcing the pace of international diplomacy. The Alliance hinted in May that a ground offensive could be launched prior to reaching a “peace agreement” sanctioned by the G8 and ratified by the United Nations Security Council.

In addition to the 16,000 ground troops already stationed (well before the beginning of the bombings) in Macedonia (of which almost half are British), some 7000 NATO troops and “special forces” were also present in Albania, not to mention the NATO troops stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina under Operation Joint Endeavour:

“We’ve already put quite a lot of troops in Macedonia as the nucleus of that operation”, said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. “There are over 12,000 there already… and last weekend [14-15 May] we committed another two and a half thousand to go there. We need to build up – actually we need to build up now…”⁵⁰.

In late May, the 60,000 troops target was revised to 150,000. Alliance officials estimating that “if the alliance later decides to mobilize for a land attack … an invasion force could number more than 150,000 soldiers.”⁵¹ Prime Minister Tony Blair in a separate statement had (without any form of parliamentary debate) confirmed the sending of 50,000 British troops as part of the 150,000 invasion force.

In early June, a NATO led invasion under a bogus G8-UN peace initiative was put forth. While the latter served to appease and distract public opinion, it usefully provided the Alliance with a semblance of legitimacy under the UN Charter. It also purported to overcome the hesitation of elected politicians including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema. The US Administration also required the “rubber stamp” of the United Nations Security Council so as to acquire the assent of the Republican dominated Congress:

“House and Senate Democrats agree there is little support at this point for launching ground troops… even if Clinton and other NATO leaders could reach a consensus on such a dramatic shift in tactics. For now, Clinton has said he is opposed to ground troops.”⁵²

The US House of Representatives (in what appeared to be a partisan “anti-Clinton” vote) has declined to even endorse the air campaign while signifying its refusal to authorize a “ground war” without congressional approval. In early April, Republicans and Democrats joined hands in the House and threw out a proposed “declaration of war on Yugoslavia” by an overwhelming 427-2 vote.

In late May, seventeen members of Congress launched a suit against President Clinton pointing to the blatant breach of the US Constitution:

“that the Defendant, the President of the United States, is unconstitutionally continuing an offensive military attack by United States Armed Forces against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without obtaining a declaration of war or other explicit authority from the Congress of the United States as required by Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution, and despite Congress’ decision not to authorize such action.” ⁵³

The law suit launched in District Court (District of Columbia) also pointed to the violation of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a Vietnam War-era legislation which requires “the sitting President congressional approval for the “introduction into hostilities” of the U.S. armed forces for longer than 60 days”:

Plaintiffs also seek a declaration that a report pursuant to Section 1543(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution was required to be submitted on March 26, 1999, within 48 hours of the introduction into hostilities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of United States Armed Forces. Additionally, Plaintiffs seek a declaration that, pursuant to Section 1544(b) of the Resolution, the President must terminate the use of United States Armed Forces engaged in hostilities against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia no later than sixty calendar days after March 26, 1999. The President must do so unless the Congress declares war or enacts other explicit authorization, or has extended the sixty day period, or the President determines that thirty additional days are necessary to safely withdraw United States Armed Forces from combat.⁵⁴

NATO as “Peace-keepers”

Echoing the barrage of self-serving NATO propaganda, the media scam now consists in skilfully portraying Alliance ground troops as bona fide “peace-keepers”. Public opinion should not be deluded as to the meaning of a G8-UN brokered diplomatic solution.

An “international presence” consisting largely of NATO troops under the G8 proposal (ratified by the Serbian Parliament in early June) could include a token participation of “non-NATO forces” including Russia and the Ukraine. While Moscow agreed in early June that all Yugoslav forces be withdrawn from Kosovo alongside the disarmement of the KLA, Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin nonetheless insisted that the command structure of the proposed international force be under the control and jurisdiction of the United Nations.

Despite his perfunctory condemnation of NATO bombings, Russian President Boris Yeltsin is a Western puppet. Chernomyrdin writing in the Washington Post had earlier warned that a continuation of the air raids could hurt US-Russian relations: “The world has never in this decade been so close as now to be on brink of nuclear war…” adding that “Russia would pull out of the negotiating process if NATO bombing, which started March 24, doesn’t stop soon.”⁵⁵

In the meantime, the Alliance, however, had persisted in maintaining a unified NATO command structure (which was unacceptable to Moscow and Belgrade). NATO has also stepped up the bombings as a means of pressuring Belgrade into accepting (without prior negotiation) NATO’s “five conditions”.

If the G-8 proposal were to be ratified, NATO would first send in US Marines into Kosovo from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit in the Adriatic Sea. The Marines would be part of a so-called “Enabling Force” prior to the moving in of a force of 50,000 troops.

A G-8 “peace proposal” (implying a de facto military occupation of Kosovo) could be formally ratified at the Cologne G7-G8 Summit in mid-June. All G7 heads of government and heads of State together with President Boris Yeltsin will be in attendance at Cologne in what is hoped to be a highflown display of unity in favour of a (G8 sanctioned) NATO led invasion. NATO nonetheless warned in early June that should the diplomatic initiative not succeed, the Alliance would proceed with a ground invasion involving 150,000 troops….

The Sending in of “Special Forces”

In the meantime, an incipient undeclared ground War has already commenced: special British, French and American forces were reported to be advising the KLA in the conduct of ground combat operations against regular units of the Yugoslav Army. To support this initiative, a Republican sponsored bill was launched in the US Congress to provide direct military aid to the KLA.

These “special forces” are “advising the rebels at their strongholds in northern Albania, where the KLA has launched a major recruitment and training operation. According to high-ranking KLA officials, the [British] SAS is using two camps near Tirana, the Albanian capital, and another on the Kosovar border to teach KLA officers how to conduct intelligence-gathering operations on Serbian positions”.⁵⁶ In May, three French special forces officers wearing uniforms of the French Armed Forces (“Parachutistes”) were reported killed on the Albania-Yugoslavia border by the Yugoslav daily Vecernje Novosti. According to the French daily Libration, the three men were allegedly “instructors in charge of coordinating ground war activities by the KLA…”⁵⁷.

An Unholy “Marriage of Convenience”

In addition to the dispatch of Western special forces, Mujehadeen mercenaries and other Islamic fundamentalist groups (financed inter alia by Iran and Saudi financier Osmane Bin Laden) have been collaborating with the KLA in the ground war.

“[B]y early December 1997, Iranian intelligence had already delivered the first shipments of hand grenades, machine-guns, assault rifles, night vision equipment, and communications gear… Moreover, the Iranians began sending promising Albanian and UCK [KLA] commanders for advanced military training in al-Quds [special] forces and IRGC camps in Iran…⁵⁸.

Bin Laden’s Al Qa’ida allegedly responsible for last year’s African embassy bombings “was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, … Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994 … Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists”.⁵⁹

Nato in Close Liaison with KLA Ground Operations

According to Jane Defence Weekly (10 May 1999), the KLA’s new chief of staff is former Croatian Armed Forces Brigadier General Agim Ceku (an ethnic Albanian) who is currently under investigation by the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague (ICTY) for his role in “summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and `ethnic cleansing’ during the War in Bosnia.”⁶⁰

NATO spokesman Jamie Shea’s response to the appointment of a War criminal as KLA chief of staff was communicated in a Press Briefing:

“I have always made it clear, and you have heard me say this, that NATO has no direct contacts with the KLA. Who they appoint as their leaders, that is entirely their own affair. I don’t have any comment on that whatever.”⁶¹

Shea’s statement that NATO has “no direct contacts with the KLA” is a lie. It is in overt contradiction with other Alliance statements: “I speak regularly to Hashim Thaci, the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army who’s in Kosovo. I spoke to him at the end of last week” said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.⁶²

Operations on the ground (led by the KLA and NATO Special forces) are now being carefully coordinated with the air campaign. Moreover, some 50 Canadian armed forces “are working with the KLA in Kosovo” to help report “where the bombs are falling” so they can better target “where the next bomb should go.”⁶³

Pentagon Sponsored Mercenaries in Kosovo

The KLA has also been provided with “a long-term training deal with Military and Professional Resources International [MPRI], a mercenary company run by former American officers who operate with semi-official approval from the Pentagon and played a key role in building up Croatia’s armed forces [during the War in Bosnia].”⁶⁴ And General Brigadier Agim Ceku (despite his role in “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia), is currently collaborating closely with the Pentagon’s mercenary outfit MPRI on behalf of the KLA.

The KLA to Form a “Post-conflict Government”

A self-proclaimed provisional KLA government of Kosovo has been established. With KLA leader Hashim Thaci as Prime Minister designate, the KLA has already been promised a central role in the formation of a “post-conflict government”.

While openly promoting a “freedom movement” with links to the drug trade, NATO was also intent in bypassing the civilian Kosovo Democratic League and its leader Ibrahim Rugova who had earlier called for an end to the bombings. Rugova was branded as a “traitor” by the KLA. According to Albanian state-run TV, the KLA had sentenced Rugova to death accusing him of being “an agent of the regime in Belgrade.”⁶⁵

In April, Fehmi Agani, one of Rugova’s closest collaborators in the Democratic League was killed. The Serbs were blamed by NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea for having assassinated Agani. According to Skopje paper Makedonija Danas quoting reliable sources in Albania: “Agani was killed… on the orders of Tirana where Thaci is located with the members of his illegal government”.⁶⁶

According to a report of the Foreign Policy Institute:

“…the KLA have [no] qualms about murdering Rugova’s collaborators, whom it accused of the “crime” of moderation. Most recently, although Rugova’s recent meeting with Milosevic may well have been under duress, the KLA declared Rugova a “traitor” – yet another step toward eliminating any competitors for political power within Kosovo.”⁶⁷

The KLA military regime had replaced the duly elected (by ethnic Albanians) civilian provisional Kosovar government of President Ibrahim Rugova. In a statement issued in April, the KLA considered the (parallel) “parliamentary elections” organised by the Democratic League and held in March 1998 to be invalid.

The self-proclaimed Kosovar administration is made up of the KLA and the Democratic Union Movement (LBD), a coalition of five opposition parties opposed to Rugova’s Democratic League (LDK). In addition to the position of prime minister, the KLA controls the ministries of finance, public order and defence. In the words of US State Department spokesman James Foley:

`We want to develop a good relationship with them [the KLA] as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization,’ ..`[W]e believe that we have a lot of advice and a lot of help that we can provide to them if they become precisely the kind of political actor we would like to see them become.’⁶⁸

With the KLA poised to play a central role in the formation of a “post conflict” government, the tendency is towards the installation of a “Mafia State” with links to the drug trade. The US State Department’s position is that the KLA would “not be allowed to continue as a military force but would have the chance to move forward in their quest for self government under a ‘different context'” meaning the inauguration of a de facto “narco-democracy” under NATO protection: “If we can help them and they want us to help them in that effort of transformation, I think it’s nothing that anybody can argue with.”⁶⁹

In recent developments, the Alliance, however, has sought through the intermediation of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to reconcile divisions between Thachi, Rugova and other ethnic Albanian leaders “primarily with a view to strengthening its [the Alliance’s] own position in the region.”⁷⁰

Imposing “Free Market” Reforms

Wall Street analysts concur that “war is good for business” particularly during a period of “economic slowdown”. The US Congress has approved increased budgetary allocations to finance the War in Yugoslavia which will result in multi-billion contracts for America’s Defense industry. In turn, the War will boost the military-industrial complex and its related high tech sectors in the US and Western Europe. A ground war combined with a prolonged military occupation (as in Bosnia) will prop up military spending. In turn, covert support and financing of “freedom fighters” (extending beyond the Balkans into Central Asia and the Middle East) will contribute to boosting the lucrative contraband in small arms for an expanding market of insurgent nationalist movements.

“Economic Reconstruction”

The “post conflict” agenda (under the proposed G8 “peace initiative” consists in establishing in Kosovo an occupied territory under Western administration (broadly on the same model as the 1995 Dayton Agreement imposed on Bosnia-Herzegovina).

“Free market reforms” are envisaged for Kosovo under the supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions. Article I (Chapter 4a) of the Rambouillet Agreement stipulates that: “The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles”.

“Civilian administration [in Kosovo] and reconstruction would be carried out by non-military bodies including the EU and the OSCE, with input from the World Bank and the IMF to rebuild war-damaged infrastructure and rehouse refugees.⁷¹

In close liaison with NATO, the Bretton Woods institutions had already analyzed the consequences of an eventual military intervention leading to the military occupation of Kosovo: almost a year prior to the beginning of the War, the World Bank conducted “simulations” which “anticipated the possibility of an emergency scenario arising out of the tensions in Kosovo”.⁷² The “simulations” conducted in Washington have in fact already been translated into a panoply of “emergency recovery loans” for Macedonia and Albania, and there is more to come… Since the imposition of the embargo, Yugoslavia, however, is no longer considered a member of the Bretton Woods institutions and will not be eligible for IMF-World Bank loans until the sanctions are lifted.

The proposed “Marshall Plan” for the Balkans is a delusion. We recall that in Bosnia, the costs of reconstruction were of the order of 50 billion dollars. Western donors initially pledged $3 billion in reconstruction loans, yet only a meagre $518 million dollars were granted in December 1995, part of which was tagged (under the terms of the Dayton Peace Accords) to finance some of the local civilian costs of the Implementation Force’s (IFOR) military deployment as well as repay debt arrears with international creditors.⁷³

The eventual “reconstruction” of Yugoslavia formulated in the context of the “free market” reforms and financed by international debt largely purport to create a safe haven for foreign investors rather than rehabilitate the country’s economic and social infrastructure. The IMF’s lethal “economic medicine” will be imposed, the national economy will be dismantled, European and American banks will take over financial institutions, local industrial enterprises which have not been totally destroyed will be driven into bankruptcy. The most profitable State assets will be transferred into the hands of foreign capital under the World Bank sponsored privatisation programme. In turn, “strong economic medicine” imposed by external creditors will contribute to further boosting a criminal economy (already implanted in Albania and Macedonia) which feeds on poverty and economic dislocation.

“The Allies will work with the rest of the international community to help rebuild Kosovo once the crisis is over: The International Monetary Fund and Group of Seven industrialized countries are among those who stand ready to offer financial help to the countries of the region. We want to ensure proper co-ordination of aid and help countries to respond to the effects of the crisis. This should go hand in hand with the necessary structural reforms in the countries affected — helped by budget support from the international community.⁷⁴

In turn, the so-called “reconstruction” of the Balkans by foreign capital will signify multi-billion contracts to multinational firms to rebuild roads, airports and bridges which will eventually be required (once the embargo is lifted) to facilitate the “free movement” of capital and commodities.

The proposed “Marshall Plan” financed by the World Bank and the European Development Bank (EBRD) as well as private creditors will largely benefit Western mining, petroleum and construction companies while fuelling the region’s external debt well into the third millennium. And the countries of the Balkans are slated to reimburse this debt through the laundering of dirty money in the domestic banking system which will be deregulated under the supervision of Western financial institutions. Narco-dollars from the multi-billion dollar Balkans drug trade will be recycled (through the banking system) and channeled towards servicing the external debt as well as “financing” the costs of “reconstruction”.

The pattern for Kosovo is, in this regard, similar to that of Macedonia and Albania. Since the early 1990s, the IMF’s reforms have impoverished the Albanian population while spearheading the national economy into bankruptcy. The IMF’s deadly economic therapy transforms countries into open territories. In Albania and Macedonia it has fostered the growth of illicit trade and the criminalisation of State institutions.

Moreover, even prior to the influx of refugees, NATO troops in Macedonia and Albania had already occupied civilian facilities (including hotels, schools, barracks and even hospitals) without compensating the national governments for the use of local services.⁷⁵

In a cruel irony, a significant part of these incurred costs as well as those associated with the refugee crisis are now to be financed not by the Alliance but by the national governments on borrowed money:

“[T]he Albanian government’s formal structures have been paralysed by the crisis. The country’s treasury has been emptied by the initial efforts to help the refugees.”⁷⁶

Who Will Pay War Reparations?

The extensive destruction of Yugoslavia, would normally require the Alliance to “pay war reparations” to Belgrade. However, following a pattern set in both Vietnam and Iraq, the Alliance will no doubt compel Belgrade “to pay for the costs” of Operation Allied Force (including the cruise missiles and radioactive shells) as a condition for the “normalisation of relations” and the lifting of the economic embargo.

We recall in this regard that whereas Vietnam never received War reparations payments, Hanoi was compelled –as a condition for the “normalisation” of economic relations and the lifting of the US embargo in 1994–, to recognize the “bad debts” of the defunct Saigon regime which were largely used to finance the US War effort. By recognizing (in a secret Paris Club agreement negotiated in 1993) the legitimacy of these debts, Vietnam had accepted “to pay war reparation damages” to her former enemy.⁷⁷

Similarly Baghdad has been “billed for the costs of the Gulf War”, – –ie. accumulated Iraqi debts including private claims against Iraq have been carefully recorded by a special unit of the UN Security Council. The recognition of these debts by Baghdad at some future date will be a condition for the lifting of sanctions on Iraq.

Notes:

1. Statement by UNICEF Representative in Belgrade, quoted in Yugoslav Daily Survey, Belgrade, 23 May 1999, No. 4351.
2. Report by Dr Siegwart-Horst Guenther, meeting of the PBS (Federal Socialists), Bonn, 17 May 1999.
3.  International Action Center, “NATO Bombing Unleashes Environmental Catastrophe in Europe”, Press Release, 14 May 1999).
4.  Joseph Fitchett, “Is Serb Economy the True Target? Raids Seem Aimed at Bolstering Resistance to Milosevic”, International Herald Tribune, Paris, 26 May 1999.
5. Tanjug Press Release, 25 May 1999.
6. Statement to Ambassadors of 19 NATO Countries, quoted in Daily Telegraph, London, 28 May 1999.
7. Ibid.
8. Sean Gervasi, Bosnia and Vietnam, draft text, 1995.
9. Financial Times, London, 6 May 1999, p. 2.
10. Ibid.
11. The Boston Globe, 8 April 1999.
12. According to Viktor Chechevatov, a Three-star General and Commander of ground forces in Russia’s Far East, quoted in The Boston Globe, 8 April 1999
13. Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford, “Bombings Reignite Nuclear War Fears”, The Victoria Times-Colonist. 13 May 1999, page A15. Mary-Wynne Ashford is co-president of the Nobel Peace Prize winning IPPNW.
14. Quoted in Mary-Wynne Ashford, op. cit.
15. Quoted by Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford, op. cit.
16. Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford, op cit.
17. Quoted in The Washington Post, May 9, 1999, page A20.
18. World Socialist Website editorial, 24 May 1999.
19. Diana Johnstone, On Refugees, Paris, 30 May 1999.
20. Ibid.
21. See “Lawyers Charge NATO Leaders Before War Crimes Tribunal”, Toronto, 6 May 1999.
22. See Financial Times, 27 May 1999.
23. See “Lawyers Charge NATO Leaders Before War Crimes Tribunal”, Toronto, 6 May 1999; see also Jude Wanniski, “Memo to US House Majority Leader”, Polyconomics, New York, 10 May 1999.
24. Lawyers Charge NATO, op cit.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Chicago Tribune, 10 May 1999. 28. Intelligence Report from the German Foreign Office, January 12, 1999 to the Administrative Court of Trier.
28. Status Report of the German Foreign Office, November 18, 1998 to the Upper Administrative Court at Mnster, February 24, 1999.
29. See, Roland Keith, “Failure of Diplomacy, Returning OSCE Human Rights Monitor Offers A View From the Ground in Kosovo”, The Democrat, May 1999.
30. US Department of Defense Press Release, 6 April 1999. The stated purpose of the mission was “to discuss a range of security issues with the recent ethnic clashes in Kosovo.” In Skopje, the agenda consisted in examining security arrangements to be implemented after the termination of United Nations UNPREDEP programme.
31. Background briefing by a Senior Defense Official at NATO Headquarters, Thursday, June 11, 1998.
32. Ibid.
33. US Department of Defense, Background Briefing, July 15, 1998.
34. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo `Freedom Fighters’ Financed by Organised Crime, Ottawa, 1999.
35. Quoted in The Daily Telegraph, London, 25 September 1998.
36. See Federation of American Scientists, “Operation Determined Force”, 24 March 1999, see also Financial Times, October 12, 1998.
37. Quoted in Federation of American Scientists, op. cit.
38. See Roland Keith, Appendix, op. cit.
39. United States Court of Appeals, for the District of Columbia Circuit, Filed January 23, 1996, Division No. 86-6, in Re: Oliver L. North.
40. Ibid.
41. Roland Keith, Appendix, op. cit.
42. Confirmed by several press reports as well as statements of the KLA, see also Radio 21 Dispatch, Tirana, February 28, 1999.
43. Roland Keith, Appendix, op cit.
44. Daily Telegraph, London, 29 January 1999.
45. Federation of American Scientists, op. cit.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. “Margaret Warner talks with Cook about the latest developments in the Yugoslav conflict”, Jim Lehrer News Hour, 21 May 1999.
50. New York Times, 26 May 1999.
51. Washington Post, 23 May 1999.
52. Action launched in United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Complaint for Declaratory Relief, Preliminary Statement, District of Columbia, 27 May 1999.
53. Ibid., see also Truth in Media, Phoenix, 23 May 1999.
54. Washington Post, 27 May 1999.
55. Sunday Telegraph, London, 18 April 1999.
56. Libration, Paris, 19 May 1999.
57. Yossef Bodansky, “Italy Becomes Iran’s New Base for Terrorist Operations,” Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, London, February 1998. Bodansky is Director of the US House Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare
58. Chris Steven, “Bin Laden Opens European Terror Base in Albania”, Sunday Times, London, 15 November 1998.
59. “War Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops ‘Cleansed’ the Serbs,” New York Times, 21 March 1999.
60.  NATO Press Briefing, 14 May 1999.
61. Jim Lehrer News Hour, op cit.
62. According to Canadian MP David Price, April 19, 1999, UPI Press Dispatch. 64. Sunday Telegraph, London, 18 April 1999.
63. “US Is Trying to Reconcile Ethnic-Albanian Separatists”, Belgrade, Tanjug Press Dispatch, 30 May 1999.
64. Quoted in Tanjug Press Dispatch, 14 May 1999.
65. See Michael Radu, “Don’t Arm the KLA”, CNS Commentary from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, 7 April, 1999).
66. New York Times, 2 February 1999.
67. Ibid.
68. Tanjug Press Dispatch, 30 May 1999.
69. See World Bank Development News, Washington, 27 April 1999.
70. Ibid.
71. See Michel Chossudovsky, Dismantling Yugoslavia, Colonising Bosnia, Covert Action Quarterly, No. 56. Spring 1996.
72. Statement by Javier Solano, Secretary General of NATO, published in The National Post, Toronto May 1999).
73. See Jan Oberg, Press Info, no. 59, Insecuring Macedonia, Transnational Foundation TFF, March 18, 1999.
74. Jane Intelligence Review, June 1999.
75. See Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of Poverty, Impacts of IMF and World Banks Reforms, Third World Network Penang and Zed Books, 1997, chapter 8.

References:

On the KLA: http://www.transnational.org/features/crimefinansed.html

On the break-up of Yugoslavia: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/022.html and http://www.lbbs.org/yugoslavia.htm

On the impact of the bombings:http://www.diaspora-net.org/food4thought/chossudovsky.htm

Since terrorism’s tragedy is again in the news, it is timely to revisit perhaps one of the biggest acts of terrorism in modern history – the illegal invasion and destruction – ongoing – of Iraq.

March 20^th marked the thirteenth anniversary of an action resulting in the equivalent of a Paris, Brussels, London 7^th July 2005, often multiple times daily in Iraq ever since. As for 11^th September 2001, there has frequently been that death toll and heart break every several weeks, also ongoing.

America and Britain have arguably engaged in and generated the legacy of one of the longest recorded attacks of terrorism since World War Two.

There are no minutes silences or Eiffel Tower bathed in the colours of the Iraqi flag – or indeed those of the other ongoing Western engineered catastrophes, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, or for the US-UK complicity in the human carnage in Yemen, or for the forty three dead and two hundred and thirty nine injured in Beirut in November, reportedly by ISIS, the day before the Paris attack.

The Eiffel Tower did not display the Russian colours after ISIS claimed the October 2015 crash of a Russian airliner after leaving from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh airport, the result they stated of a bomb they placed, killing all two hundred and twenty four passengers. ISIS mass murders in Africa are mostly ignored.

Since ISIS was spawned by the Iraq “liberation” (“Operation Iraqi Liberation” – OIL) it is worth revisiting Tony Blair’s speech to Parliament on 20^th March 2003, the day of the invasion. (1)

“On Tuesday night I gave the order for British forces to take part in military action in Iraq.

“Tonight British servicemen and women are engaged from air, land and sea.

“Their mission: to remove Saddam Hussein from power and disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction”, said Blair.

Breathtaking. Little Britain’s “mission” was to remove from power the President of a country whose “sovereignty and territorial integrity” was guaranteed by the UN. As for “weapons of mass destruction”, probably millions of words have given the lie to their existence and to both the US and Britain’s near certainty that there were none after near ten years of exhaustive work by the UN weapons inspectors.

“ … this new world faces a new threat of disorder and chaos born either of brutal states like Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction or of extreme terrorist groups”, stated the would be Butcher of Baghdad.

“Both hate our way of life, our freedom, our democracy.

“My fear, deeply held, based in part on the intelligence that I see is that these threats come together and deliver catastrophe to our country and our world.

“These tyrannical states do not care for the sanctity of human life – the terrorists delight in destroying it.”

The world, of course, faced no threat from Iraq. Even Iran, with which Iraq had fought the horrific 1980-1988 – with both the UK and the US arming both countries and profiting handsomely from the blood, heartbreak and destruction both sides of the Iran-Iraq border – stated repeatedly that Iraq posed them no threat.

As for hating “out way of life, our freedom, our democracy”, until the embargo was imposed on Iraq in August 1990, Iraq contributed £ millions to the British and US economies sending post-graduate university students to gain further degrees in the West, ensuring an educational broadness in the advantage of studying in both academic spheres.

Visiting homes of those with the money to travel it usually just minutes before the photo albums were produced showing joyful holidays in the UK, US and across Europe.

There were of course, near no Middle East allied “terrorists … destroying” entertainment venues, metro stations, commercial centres until the Iraq invasion. Attacks in Europe were near always home grown separatist groups usually feeling victims of historical injustices. Lessons are clearly never learned.

There is, however, the darkest irony in Blair’s fears that: “ threats come together and deliver catastrophe to our country and our world.” His and Bush’s actions have delivered just that.

Saddam Hussein and fundamentalism were two different planets and any inkling of a threat was instantly dealt with – yes, sometimes brutally, but Iraq and the region remained secular and apart from the domestic problems and criminalities common to near all nations, the streets safe and life normal. In Baghdad, until the deprivation and desperation wrought by the 1990 embargo and the 1991 bombing people did not even lock their doors.

“Should terrorists obtain these weapons now being manufactured and traded around the world the carnage they could inflict to our economies, to our security, to world peace would be beyond our most vivid imagination”, Blair continued. Indeed. The US-UK spawned ISIS who obtained arms from the US disbanded Iraqi army, arms from the US provided and trained new Iraqi army as they fled multiple conflicts in  multiple areas, leaving all behind and indeed have “obtained these weapons” which have been dropped from the air to them on multiple occasions – by the US.

Blair is also clearly clairvoyant: “My judgment as Prime Minister is that this threat is real, growing and of an entirely different nature to any conventional threat to our security that Britain has faced before.”

Ironically his infatuation with George W. Bush and the “dodgy dossiers” produced under his premiership to attempt to justify the legally unjustifiable, delivered exactly that of which he warned.

And here is a whopper of staggering scale:

“Removing Saddam will be a blessing to the Iraqi people: four million Iraqis are in exile, 60% of the population dependent on food aid, thousands of children die every year through malnutrition and disease, hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes or murdered.”

The result of “removing Saddam” (read: lynching Saddam) has been a blood soaked daily litany for thirteen years. The majority of Iraqis in exile fled to send money back home to keep their families and extended families during the decimating embargo which had resulted in basic food stuffs increasing in price often over eleven thousand fold.

The “thousands of children” were indeed dying “every year” – from “embargo related causes” according to the UN. The government set up a ration distribution system to try and counter the food crisis (Iraq had imported 70% of near everything.) The UN called the efficiency of the system exemplary, but the embargo prevented food and essential imports. Even soap, toothpaste and shampoo and sanitary requirements had become luxury items. Prior to the embargo, the country had free health service, food was inexpensive and plentiful and water borne diseases mostly eradicated. Between the embargo and the bombing all was destroyed.

The Kurdish complexities indeed led to displacement – but Iraq too felt threatened with the CIA and Mossad ensconced in Kurdistan, which had been given near autonomy. As for “murdered”, the “Iraq mass graves” became a catch-all mantra. The tragic majority found were from the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 war and subsequent US encouraged uprising. Even Iraq’s part in the monstrous deaths at Halabja are thrown in to question by a 1990 Report from the US Army War College. (2)

Blair blathered on to Parliament:

“I hope the Iraqi people hear this message. We are with you. Our enemy is not you but your barbarous rulers.

“Our commitment to the post-Saddam humanitarian effort will be total.

“We shall help Iraq move towards democracy and put the money from Iraqi oil in a UN trust fund so it benefits Iraq and no-one else.” Never in the field of human conflict have so many lies been told to so many by so few – to misquote Churchill.

Now to the nub of the statement: “Neither should Iraq be our only concern.

“As so often before on the courage and determination of British men and women serving our country the fate of many nations rest.” Usually, when the British and US get involved “the fate of” the people of nations lie in mass graves.

The “fate” of Iraq of course, was to be threatened, distorted and their people hung in the balance, as so many warned, including the then head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa: “If Iraq is invaded, the Gates of Hell will open.”

“President Bush and I have committed ourselves to peace in the Middle East based on a secure state of Israel and a viable Palestinian state.” Ah, as ever about Israel. Saddam sent aid to Palestinians, displaced, bereaved, desperate and to families of those enough so to even relinquish their lives. The demonized, also secular, President Assad, of course, also supports the Palestinians.

“Dictators like Saddam. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, threaten the very existence of such a world.”

Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda again linked together. The former never threatened the world, al-Qaeda’s offshoot ISIS, non-existent in Iraq under Saddam, now threatening the Middle East, Europe, the US, and Africa.

Blair concluded: “That is why I’ve asked our troops to go into action tonight.”

Blair was not alone making it up as he went along, singing to his pal Bush’s hymn sheet, he was also singing to that of Benjamin Netanyahu, who six months earlier (September 2002) had assured the US Congress: “If you take out Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region… The task and the great opportunity and challenge is not merely to effect the ouster of the regime, but also to transform the region.” (3) It has certainly done that. The Cradle of Civilization is now a valley of tears, widows, widowers and orphans.

President Nobel Obama has commemorated the 20^th March anniversary by sending more troops to Iraq and by the US bombing of Mosul University, killing around ninety people and injuring up to one hundred and fifty Including Professor Dhafer al Badrani, Dean of Computer Sciences and his wife.

According to an academic from the city: “The whole faculty residential building were destroyed, university headquarter, girl’s dormitory, science college, central publishing center of the university, and womens education college. The university is built on very close to the Nimrud archeological entrances to the Assyrian empires (2500 B.C.) I am sure using bunker buster bombs destroyed most of these historical sites.”

In Fallujah, besieged by militias and according to another contact: “ … bombed since 1 January 2014 by the government (armed by the USA and with US military advisers this whole time) and since August 2014 by the US Coalition”, the people are starving: “ On 17th March a husband threw himself his wife with their three children in to the river (Euphrates) from a bridge and drowned. They were desperate from hunger …” And the bodies of: “Nearly four thousand killed civilians have been taken to the hospital since January 2014.”

On 26^th March 26^th March forty one people were killed and one hundred and five injured at a soccer match by a suicide bomber at a stadium thirty kilometres from Baghdad.

A few days ago an Iraqi in Baghdad commented: “We only had two bombs today, people went out.”

On 27^th March Tony Blair was back giving his views. (4) They broadly include invading Iraq, Syria and Libya to save Europe from ISIS, remarking of ISIS: “… This ideology is not interested in coexistence. It does not seek dialogue but dominance”, said the man who was interested in neither and enjoined a “Crusade” – an equally thousand year outdated fundamentalism.

Anyone who listens to the advise of the author who did so much to spawn the horror, genocide, destruction, insanity, barbarism and should be facing a war crimes Tribunal for his part in bringing the all about, is arguably certifiably insane.

Talking of insanity, the UN has designated 20^th March as International Day of Happiness, a day founded to recognize happiness as a “fundamental human goal.” Tell that to the people of Iraq.

Notes:

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2870581.stm
2. https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/168/37420.html
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHmhf_wrcrM
4. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/27/tony-blair-west-must-be-ready-to-deploy-ground-troops-against-isis#img-1

Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked “specific information” on “many key aspects” of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.

But that’s not what top Bush administration officials said during their campaign to sell the war to the American public. Those officials, citing the same classified document, asserted with no uncertainty that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, concealing a vast chemical and biological weapons arsenal, and posing an immediate and grave threat to US national security.

Congress eventually concluded that the Bush administration had “overstated” its dire warnings about the Iraqi threat, and that the administration’s claims about Iraq’s WMD program were “not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting.” But that underlying intelligence reporting — contained in the so-called National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was used to justify the invasion — has remained shrouded in mystery until now.

The CIA released a copy of the NIE in 2004 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, but redacted virtually all of it, citing a threat to national security. Then last year, John Greenewald, who operates The Black Vault, a clearinghouse for declassified government documents, asked the CIA to take another look at the October 2002 NIE to determine whether any additional portions of it could be declassified.

The agency responded to Greenewald this past January and provided him with a new version of the NIE, which he shared exclusively with VICE News, that restores the majority of the prewar Iraq intelligence that has eluded historians, journalists, and war critics for more than a decade. (Some previously redacted portions of the NIE had previously been disclosed in congressional reports.)

‘The fact that the NIE concluded that there was no operational tie between Saddam and al Qaeda did not offset this alarming assessment.’

For the first time, the public can now read the hastily drafted CIA document [pdf below] that led Congress to pass a joint resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, a costly war launched March 20, 2003 that was predicated on “disarming” Iraq of its (non-existent) WMD, overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and “freeing” the Iraqi people.

Click here (and scroll down) to read the full document

Read complete article on Vice News 

Follow Jason Leopold on Twitter: @JasonLeopold

The Syrian Armed Forces and National Defense Forces, backed by the Russian Air Force, have triumphantly recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra in the heart of the Syrian Desert.

The Syrian Armed Forces began their wide-scale offensive on March 8th, striking the surrounding hills and orchards before they eventually stormed the ISIS-held bastion.

The number of ISIS militants killed in the 18-day long battle has not been confirmed by the Syrian Arab Army; however, a third-party source who has been accompanying the Desert Hawks during the battle has conformed to Al-Masdar News that hundreds of jihadis have been killed, along with a large number of vehicles and heavy weapons destroyed.

On May 21st, 2015, ISIS’ reign of terror began over the strategic city of Palmyra; this terrorist group brutally massacred dozens of the government troops as well as pro-government civilians.

Upon the capture of Palmyra, the terrorist group wreaked havoc on shrines, temples and monuments.

Priceless antiquities that have stood defiant to centuries of natural and man-made disasters, have been tragically destroyed by ISIS.

Palmyra is strategically important because its situated in a desert that stretches to the Iraqi borders to the east, and ISIS’ de facto capital of Ar-Raqqah to the north.

Located in the central city of Homs, the ancient city is located 210 km away from the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The fall of Palmyra will most likely pave the way for the Syrian Army to advance towards the terrorist group’s stronghold in Ar-Raqqah as well as the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor.

Currently, the highly-decorated Republican Guard forces are still defending the Deir ez-Zor military and the provincial capital, where tens of thousands of civilians are suffering from a ruthless imposed by ISIS.

It has been an alliance between the leaderships of U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE; but, regardless of whether it’s called “the U.S. alliance” or “the Saudi alliance,” or even (possibly) “the Turkish alliance” (and it could be called by any of those three names), it’s the jihadist alliance, and it now seems to be near its final defeat, by, quite clearly, the Russian alliance: Russian air power has enabled the Syrian army (called the SAA or “Syrian Arab Army”) of Bashar al-Assad, plus Lebanon’s Shiite warriors (called “Hezbollah”), plus organization by Iran’s generals, to exterminate thousands of ISIS jihadists. The pro-Syrian alliance, under Russian air-power, are now making final preparations to finish the job, in the Syrian headquarters of ISIS — the city of Raqqa, where ISIS’s “Caliph” is, who could soon be meeting his end.

This major military victory, in Palmyra — the center of the Jihadist-controlled region of Syria (and located south of Raqqa, separated from it only by desert) — was announced on Easter Sunday, 27 March 2016, by the website Syrian Perspective (one of the world’s two great news-sites covering the Syrian war, the other being Al Masdar News), as they headlined, “Palmyra Liberated! General Ayyoob Reviews Troops in Aftermath of Enormous Victory; What’s Next?” Reporter Ziad Fadel opened:

HOMS: The rats inside were finally given the go-ahead to withdraw to Al-Sukhna, Al-Raqqa and Dayr El-Zor, but not by the rodent commanders in Al-Raqqa. This was a desperate order by Abu-Ihaab Al-‘Iraaqi, the local commander who, evidently, values his life on earth a lot more than what was promised to him by the shamans of ISIS This morning at 5:00 a.m., the SAA had confirmation from sources inside the city that the piece-meal escape was taking place. The Syrian high command ordered troops to stand down until the last rodent had left, after which time the SAAF and RuAF would take to the skies to see how many of the stragglers could be exterminated. It’s over.

The Syrian and Russian Air Forces have been directed into the air to block any movement of terrorist ISIS rodents to any area considered a stronghold. This means that no deal was ever struck between the army and the murderers inside the city. Instead, what happened was the army was commanded to permit a withdrawal with the understanding that escaped rats would still be targets once the city was liberated. As I write, SAA engineers are everywhere inside the city removing IEDs, booby-traps and mines. It’s a thankless task replete with danger, but, it must be done in order to return the population to a safe city.

He went on to explain that the head of SAA’s Special Forces unit, called “Tiger Forces,” “is very keen on being the leader of the force which will liberate Al-Raqqa and his forces to the east of Aleppo are preparing for exactly that.”

The key question now is whether a deal can be reached with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS’s leader or “Caliph,” in Raqqa — a deal which won’t require the entire population of Raqqa to be massacred, in order for the Russian alliance to eliminate all of ISIS’s leadership, and all of its jihadists there. Ideally, some way will be found to salvage at least some of the civilian population who are being held, essentially as slaves, by ISIS. However, Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, has stated, on several occasions, that what’s most essential is for the jihadists in Syria, and in Iraq, to be killed where they are — not allowed to escape to become terrorist cells in Russia or anywhere else (as has been happening, though not on the huge scale that would result if Baghdadi and his jihadists are allowed to escape.

In a related event that also signals the defeat of the terrorist alliance, Middle East Eye, yet another of the key independent reporting sites regarding the war in Syria — and specializing on the entire Middle Eastern region — headlined on Friday the 25th of March, “Jordan’s King Accuses Turkey of Sending Terrorists to Europe,” and David Hearst reported:

King Abdullah of Jordan accused Turkey of exporting terrorists to Europe at a top level meeting with senior US politicians in January, the MEE can reveal. 

The king said Europe’s biggest refugee crisis was not an accident, and neither was the presence of terrorists among them: “The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook.”

Asked by one of the congressmen present whether the Islamic State group was exporting oil to Turkey, Abdullah replied: ”Absolutely.”

In other words: the U.S. alliance is coming apart, at least at the edges, when the reality becomes revealed — despite the long hiding of this fact on the part of Western ‘news’ media — that the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-Turkish-UAE-Israeli alliance has been supporting jihadist Sunni groups in order to weaken the only non-Sunni-run nations in the Middle East, Syria and Iran, both of which (and Syria’s government is more properly to be called non-sectarian  than Shiite, because the Ba’athist Party, which has been leading Syria since the 1950s, is ideologically committed to secularism and against sectarianism of any type, neither Shiite nor Sunni nor any) have allied themselves with Russia, instead of with the U.S.

The origin of the CIA aspect of this operation was well covered in an extraordinary BBC documentary in 1992, and the broader aristocratic operation was reported in my article, “The Two Contending Visions of World Government.” During Obama’s Presidency, one of the major physical battlefields in this global war has been in Syria; another, in Ukraine, Obama’s coup there, was well covered here.

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.

Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is a well-known Washington establishment figure – currently US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit chief judge.

He’s a 1974 Harvard summa cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa, class valedictorian graduate, former president of its Board of Overseers, a Harvard Law School 1977 magna cum laude graduate, its Harvard Law Review articles editor.

All High Court members, including the recently deceased Antonin Scalia, attended Harvard or Yale law schools. If Garland’s nomination is approved, tradition will remain unchanged.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Columbia Law School after transferring from Harvard.

Garland clerked for US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Judge Henry Friendly, later for Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.

He’s a former federal prosecutor and private law firm Arnold & Porter corporate litigation partner. Earlier he taught antitrust law at Harvard Law School.

On March 16, Obama nominated him to fill the vacancy left by Scalia’s death. He represents privilege, not populism. In Odah v. United States (2003), he ruled against federal courts hearing challenges from Guantanamo prisoners – reversed by the Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush (2004).

Since the High Court’s 1789 founding, its rulings show allegiance to power, not “we the people.”

Privilege alone matters. The prevailing fiction about America’s founders establishing an egalitarian system representing all citizens equitably is polar opposite reality.

The nation was always ruled by men (more recently including women), not laws. They lie, connive, misinterpret laws, and pretty much do what they please for their own self-interest and powerful constituents.

Democracy is pure fantasy. So is liberal governance in all three federal branches. A chief executive serves as a virtual dictator in times of war.

One senator can negate the will of the majority. Congressional committees are run by power brokers. Money controlled lobbyists wield enormous influence.

America is a one-party state with two wings, each in lockstep on issues mattering most – notably war and peace, corporate empowerment and cracking down hard on resisters.

The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 stating “(t)he Congress shall have power to…provide for (the) general welfare of the United States” – the so-called welfare clause applicable to the Executive and High Court belies reality.

America’s sordid history includes endless wars, police state laws, streets turned into battlegrounds, cops licensed to kill with impunity, unchecked political and corporate corruption, racketeering labor officials, and neglected social needs.

In his important book, titled “Democracy for the Few,” Michael Parenti called the Supreme Court America’s “aristocratic branch.”

Its members are appointed for life with enormous power, serving privilege, not “we the people,” nearly always siding with wealth and power interests.

Even during the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal era, “the Supreme Court was the activist bastion of laissez-faire capitalism,” Parenti explained.

High Courts notably “oppose restrictions on capitalist power…support(ing) restrictions on the civil liberties of persons who agitated against that power.”

Justice in America is a four-letter word. High Courts earlier and now “treated the allegedly pernicious quality of a radical idea as evidence of its lethal efficacy and as justification for its suppression.”

“(T)he threat of revolution in the United States has never been as real or harmful as the measures taken to ‘protect’ us from revolutionary ideas…”

America’s courts, especially its highest, serve as guardians of power, continuity of a system serving privilege exclusively.

The Warren Court (1953 – 1969) was the exception proving the rule. Its distinguished members included William J. Brennan, Jr., William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter and Thurgood Marshall for a short period.

For the first time ever, justices ruled “repeatedly on behalf of the less affluent,” Parenti explained, including the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, ruling “separate educational facilities inherently unequal” – years before Marshall joined the High Court.

Post-Warren courts for nearly half a century have been notably right-wing, today more than ever. High Court injustice prevails, people rights and needs consistently spurned, privilege exclusively served.

Garland represents business as usual. No modern-day William Brennans or Thurgood Marshalls are considered for High Court appointments. America’s privileged class demands its own.

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.

The Los Angeles Times and other main-stream media (MSM) networks has criticized actor and filmmaker Robert De Niro for allowing the screening of the anti-Vaccine documentary film ‘Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe’ produced and directed by Dr. Andrew Wakefield.

The article ‘How Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival sold out to anti-vaccine crackpots’ criticized DeNiro’s decision to air the movie during the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City:

The festival, which was co-founded by Robert De Niro in 2002, has placed a film purporting to defend Wakefield and accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of a cover-up on its program this spring. The film is called “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Conspiracy.” Its director: Andrew Wakefield

However, DeNiro (whose son has autism) canceled the screening of the film due to the MSM pressure on his decision to air the film. The LA Times confirmed DeNiro’s decision to cancel the film in an UPDATE:

TheTribeca Film Festival has canceled its showing of Andrew Wakefield’s documentary “Vaxxed,” following widespread condemnation of its plans. In an emailed statement, Robert De Niro, the festival’s co-founder, said: “My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for”

The Los Angeles Times also claimed that Dr. William Thomson’s “Conspiracy Theory” has been debunked due to a “2014 survey of scientific studies” showed that the MMR vaccines are “not” associated with the “development of autism” or “autism spectrum disorder”:

As my colleague Steven Zeitchik reports, the festival’s publicity for this film endorses its conclusion that “vaccines do cause autism” and treats the controversy in pure Hollywood style: “The most vitriolic debate in medical history takes a dramatic turn when senior-scientist-turned-whistleblower Dr. William Thompson of the Centers for Disease Control turns over secret documents, data and internal emails confirming what millions of devastated parents and ‘discredited’ doctors have long-suspected.” You would think it’s the second coming of “The China Syndrome.” But it’s nothing of the kind. Wakefield’s work, and the “conspiracy theory” of Thompson, have been thoroughly debunked.

Let’s be absolutely plain about this: There is absolutely no evidence of any link between the MMR vaccine and autism. In a 2014 survey of scientific studies covering 1.26 million children, researchers stated bluntly that “vaccinations are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder. Furthermore, the components of the vaccines (thimerosal or mercury) or multiple vaccines (MMR) are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder.” That’s just one example of the many studies finding no link. Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative that was used until 1999 in the MMR vaccine

The Los Angeles Times also criticized anchor, journalist and television host Katie Couric’s decision to give conspiracy-mongers airtime exposing HPV vaccines  and called former model and television host Jenny McCarthy ignorant for linking the MMR vaccine to autism:

That hand-waving in favor of “dialogue” can shield a lot of damaging mischief. It’s the same sentiment that was behind Katie Couric’s decision to give equally irresponsible conspiracy-mongers about HPV vaccines a platform on her syndicated daytime show in 2013, exposing their science-free viewpoints to millions of viewers. Couric soon acknowledged her misstep, recognizing that children’s health and even lives are at stake when parents are encouraged to doubt the efficacy and safety of vaccines. (We’re not even talking about starlet Jenny McCarthy, whose claims about the links between the MMR vaccine and autism are merely ignorant.)

Dr. Wakefield’s anti-vaccine movement started back in 1998, when he published a paper in the British medical journal called ‘The Lancet’ which he discovered links between the MMR vaccine and autism. Robert De Niro is now a conspiracy theorist and who joins the conspiracy theory club. He is not alone. Actors Woody Harrelson, Rosie O’Donnell, Charlie Sheen, Marion Cotillard and Mark Ruffalo questioned the September 11 attacks. Other celebrities such as Richard Belzer of the American television series, Law & Order has written several books on conspiracies, one of them is called ‘UFOs, JFK & Elvis: Conspiracies You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Believe’ where he claims that the moon landing is a “hoax.” Belzer is not the only person that believes that the Apollo 11 mission to the moon was a fake. Russia has called for an investigation into America’s moon landing because of evidence that actually disappeared. The Daily Mail published an article in 2015 on the subject titled ‘Russia suggests America has NEVER landed on the moon and calls for ‘an investigation into what really happened’:

A Russian official has cast doubt on the first moon landings and demanded an investigation into what really happened after original NASA footage of the event disappeared. Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Russian government’s Investigative Committee, says he wants an inquiry after the video from 1969 and a piece of lunar rock, which was brought back to earth, went missing

Belzer also questions the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, as does Hollywood director Oliver Stone. All considered “Conspiracy Theorists.” Hollywood actor and martial artist Jean Claude Van Dam recently joined the growing list of “Conspiracy Theory” celebrities. On the ‘Le Grand Journal’ a French TV show, Van Damme spoke about who really runs U.S. elections and why Donald Trump and Ted Cruz will not win. “Well, they are not going to win.”Why? Well the answer Van Damme gives falls in the line of conspiracy theories. He declared on French television that “you still have the Rockefeller, people like the Rothschild, those big families that dominate continents….these are families that rise in 1827, a family with five sons that expands, it’s above everything we’re talking (about) tonight.” Van Damme was correct to point out to the public who really controls the U.S. elections behind the scenes.

The MSM has criticized celebrities in the past who question certain events. Now Robert DeNIro is on the list of “Conspiracy Theory” celebrities. Rest assured, censorship of Dr. Wakefield’s film in the Tribeca film festival has just given the film more publicity. Hopefully the public’s curiosity on why Deniro decided to pull the film would propel them to watch the film.

Here is the trailer for ‘Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Conspiracy’:

It seemed a foregone conclusion, but here it was, a ghastly cuddling show between Turkish officials and Donald Tusk, President of the European Council. Both political forces had united behind a refugee containment system that is compromised from start to finish, one designed to frustrate and ultimately terminate the desire to flee lands in conflict.

The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will be finding much to muse in the arrangement, not least of all because of his boastful remark last November that he could flood Greece and Bulgaria with refugees. In stating that, the Turkish leader was very clear that he wanted some arrangement in place on how to deal with the refugee crisis in his country. There would be more cash – and incentives. The sense of blackmail in this measure has been palpable from the start.

The exchange of humans (“one-in and one-out”), which effectively monetises a humanitarian situation by convincing the Turkish authorities to accept the unaccepted human cargo from the Aegean, is again another brutal measure undertaken in the name of false logic. Such measures are designed to plug holes in the leaking edifice of regional security, one ever exacerbated by foreign interventions and power plays.

Good lashings of false generosity have been spun by public relations apologists. All sides to this seedy arrangement have suggested that they are doing asylum seekers and refugees favours while targeting the business of traffickers.

News agencies have picked up on the main line pushed by the EU and Turkey: that the deal has brought a halt to human trafficking on the Aegean. Bravo, they are saying. Things are working. Agence France-Presse (Mar 25, 2015) went through descriptions by a certain fisherman, Hasan Balci, as he played cards in a café in Bademli, noting how prior to the “EU agreement there were hundreds of refugees crossing the sea here. But now there are none.”

In a matter of days, the desperate human presence has vanished. Locals at Çeşme to the south and opposite the island of Chios, and Küçükkuyu further north, opposite the known island transit point of Lesbos, have noted the trend.

All of this has the haunting tone of bogus humanitarianism, a middleclass squeamishness that finds refuge in denying refuge using the image of the drowning and the unscrupulous operation of people smugglers as helpful alibis.

What this latently ignores is the obvious point that the smugglers are making money from validly availed rights in international refugee law. States, however, have taken it upon themselves to make sure that such rights are frustrated and only pursued in a strict and decent fashion. Even safer land routes have been closed of, starting with Greece itself, which was pressured to erect razor wire fencing to stifle movement of people from Turkey in 2012.

Marianna Fotaki of the University of Warwick accurately stated that the denial of the right to asylum on reaching the EU was against international law. “And refusing protection to unarmed people fleeing war and persecution by sending them back to Turkey, a country under threat of a civil war, is unconscionable.”[1]

To prove Fotaki’s point, a day after the EU-Turkish deal was struck, a suicide bomber killed at least five people, including himself and four foreigners, in a busy portion of Istanbul. Since October, Turkey has become accustomed to the large-scale terror strike, which have cost almost 200 lives. This has also taken place as Turkey wages its own, ever aggressive war against Kurdish separatists, some of which are also engaged in fighting the Syrian regime.

Even now, the baying critics in untouched Britain insist that more should be done. The trade in people is deemed squalid and suitably immoral to warrant righteous condemnation. Yvo Fitzherbert, penning regular screeds against the asylum tide for The Spectator, suggests that the people-smugglers of Istanbul are hardly making much of the EU-Turkish deal. “Greece is an hour away, and the Turkish coastguards do nothing to deter migrants from making the crossing.”[2]

Fitzherbert is right on the blind eye being turned by Ankara to the smuggling industry itself. (A similarly large blind eye is being turned to the ongoing oil trade between Turkish entrepreneurs and Islamic State.) This will go on, thriving as do so many other means of trade through Asia Minor. The desperate demand is there. According to a cynical former opposition politician, Aykan Erdemir, “Human smugglers will outsmart the Turkish authorities just a they have outsmarted EU authorities.”

Greece certainly lacks the means to process such arrivals, relying, instead, on the power of propaganda to discourage those inspired to make the journey. The idea of herding in orderly fashion thousands of refugees back to Turkey is not merely a gruesome prospect, but a difficult one to imagine.

Such persistent meanness continues to be the guiding principle in EU policy towards the refugee crisis. At the regional level, the failure of individual states and the EU proper to genuinely enact a mechanism by which refugees are assessed and resettled has become enshrined dogma. The costs of this venture will prove telling in time.

In the meantime, the good will of EU citizens, when manifested, will continue to demonstrate the vast gulf between institutional paralysis in Brussels and the community insistence that humanitarianism prevail. They will not be thanked for that.

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

Notes

[1] http://theconversation.com/outsourcing-a-humanitarian-crisis-to-turkey-is-that-the-european-thing-to-do-55915

[2] http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/what-the-people-smugglers-of-istanbul-make-of-the-eus-deal-with-turkey/

Obama à Cuba: une nouvelle ère ou un nouvel habit?

Par Claude Morin, 23 mars 2016

J’ai écouté avec attention la conférence de presse qui a suivi les échanges des deux dirigeants. Je n’ai perçu aucun changement chez Obama quant aux objectifs de changement de régime à Cuba.

The Brussels and Paris terror attacks are interrelated.  

This article first published on November 9, 2015 in the immediate wake of the Paris attacks is of relevance in analyzing the nature of both the Paris and Brussels events.

As France finds itself in the grips of martial law and its first mandatory curfew since it was occupied by Germany during world War II, there exists a number of questionable details surrounding the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.

Only hours after the first shots were fired, stories and reports are beginning to change and contradict one another. Considering the history of the French government, French Intelligence agencies and the Anglo-American/NATO Intelligence apparatus, particularly the recent events surrounding the Charlie Hebdo attacks that were exposed as false flags, one would be justified in wondering whether or not these recent attacks in Paris were of the same variety.

Below are a number of reasons to question the official story of the Paris terror attacks.

1.) How many gunmen? Already, the number of individuals involved in the Paris attacks is in question. While some reports suggested four shooters were involved, others suggested three. The majority of mainstream reports seem to be only acknowledging two shooters. So how many shooters were there? Two, three or four? One witness, Pierre Marie Bertin, a 36-year-old who was at the theater when the shooting began, stated that there were as many as four gunmen. Bertin described some male hostages who “went onto the balcony and tried to negotiate for the life of their wives with one of the guys [terrorists]. It was sickening.” Bertin recounted somewhat more detail than some other witnesses and was clear that there were as many as four gunmen. Australian news media is reporting that three gunmen have been killed.

This might seem inconsequential to many readers, but in informed researching circles it is well-known that the information that comes out shortly after the event is usually the most reliable. This is not to discount the existence of confusion related to panicked reports coming from eyewitnesses and the like. However, the information coming out early on has not yet been subjected to the top-down media revision that will inevitably take place as the story becomes molded to fit the narrative pushed by the individuals who either directed the attack at the higher levels or at least have connections with those who are able to control the manner in which various media outlets report the event. For instance, in times of false flag attacks, the initial reports may point to 5 gunmen. Very shortly after, reports may only mention two. Only a few hours after the attack, however, all references to more than one gunmen are removed entirely, with only the “lone gunman” story remaining. Any other mention of additional gunmen after this point is ridiculed as “conspiracy theory.”

2.) The types of weapons used – While some reports suggest that the attackers were using AK-47s, other reports are suggesting that shotguns were used. While the contradiction in reports can certainly be attributed to victims and witnesses simply not being aware of the type of weapons being used in the attacks and panic in the heat of the moment, there is none the less contradiction in the reports being issued. As of the time of the writing of this article there has been no clarification as to what type of weapons were used. Since the assailants were supposedly killed by police it should be clear what weapons they used.

3.) Were the gunmen killed or arrested? While the number of gunmen itself is in doubt, news reports coming from Fox and Sky are suggesting that a suspected gunmen was actually arrested. In fact, the suspect allegedly stated to police, “I am from ISIS” giving us all the information we need as for who is responsible for this attack.

4.) Gunmen connected to ISIS, gunmen connected to Syria – Along with the very convenient and immediate statement by an allegedly arrested suspect that he was from ISIS, we also have screams of a shooter that “This is for Syria!” This gives us all the information that we need regarding the motivation of the alleged attackers. They are from ISIS. They hate the French because the French are “attacking” ISIS and because somewhere in France in a very darkened corner, under the sofa, there are freedoms. ISIS hates freedoms. This is quite coincidental considering the fact that a Russian airliner was recently bombed, allegedly by ISIS – at least according to the West.

5.) The timing of the event – Aside from the obvious connotations derived from the attacks occurring on Friday the 13th, the Paris massacre has taken place shortly before a major climate summit that was set to take place in France. The French government was expecting massive protests they alleged could potentially become violent, by activists opposed to globalization and energy austerity. Interestingly enough, France had already planned to impose border controls starting on November 30th in anticipation of the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Paris “because of the terrorist threat or risk of public disorder.” Needless to say, there will be no massive protest now considering the fact that 2015 France resembles the 1943 version of itself more than anything else.

6.) Security – Considering the fact that the security had been so heightenedboth on the heels of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the anticipation of disorder for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change, how on earth did such a major terror attack slip through the hands of the DGSE? After all, France is nothing if not a police state. It is also giving the United States a run for its money in the contest for how much information it is able to nab up on its citizens. No doubt, we will be sold the line of “pre-civilized savages outsmarted first-world high end military surveillance states.”

7.) Drills – One hallmark of the false flag operation is the running of drills shortly before or during the actual attack. Many times, these drills will involve the actual sequence of events that takes place during the real life attack . These drills have been present on large scale false flags such as 9/11 as well as smaller scale attacks like the Aurora shooting.For instance, as Webster Tarpley documents in his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made In USA, at least 46 drills were underway in the months leading up to 9/11 and on the morning of the attack. These 46 drills were all directly related to the events which took place on 9/11 in some way or other. Likewise, the 7/7 bombings in London were running drills of exactly the same scenario that was occurring at exactly the same times and locations.

Although one reason may take precedence over the other depending on the nature and purpose of the operation drills are used by false flag operators for at least two reasons. One such purpose is the creation of intentional confusion if the drill is taking place during the actual attack. The other, more effective aspect, however, is using the drill as a cloak to plan the attack or even “go live” when it comes time to launch the event. Even more so, it gives the individuals who are involved in the planning of the event an element of cover, especially with the military/intelligence agency’s tight chain of command structure and need-to-know basis. If a loyal military officer or intelligence agent stumbles upon the planning of the attack, that individual can always be told that what he has witnessed is nothing more than the planning of a training exercise. This deniability continues all the way through to the actual “going live” of the drill. After the completion of the false flag attack, Coincidence Theory is used to explain away the tragic results.

All of this must be considered, when one reads reports suggesting that the UK conducted counter-terrorism drills earlier this year that included scenarios that involved terror attacks in Paris similar to those that took place on the Charlie Hebdo massacre. As the reports surrounding the UK drills were released, a number 10 spokesman confirmed “it had been agreed that future exercises, which take place on a regular basis, should seek to learn from events in France.” David Cameron himself stated that there was  a need for police “to call on military help if there was a major emergency.”

8.) Charlie Hebdo – The recent Paris attacks were similar to the Charlie Hebdo massacre that occurred earlier this year. The Charlie Hebdo attacks, however, were largely revealed as a false flag operation. Evidence for which can be seen in my article “15 Signs the Charlie Hebdo Attack Was a False Flag.” Thus, there exists a clear precedent for such attacks in France, albeit on a much larger scale.

9.) Who controls ISIS? For many, claims that the attackers belong to ISIS is a deal breaker. For these individuals, ISIS is a shadowy terrorist organization that supports itself and has created a caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq that can scarcely be defeated (except when the Russians bomb it). However, the facts do not support such a shallow understanding of the ISIS terrorist organization. ISIS was entirely created, funded and directed by the United States, Britain, France and other NATO countries. Its actions have been coordinated by the Anglo-American Intelligence apparatus for geopolitical purposes all across the world both at home and abroad. For this reason, the declaration that ISIS committed a terrorist attack in Paris is by no means a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Western Intelligence apparatus. Instead, it is the trademark of their handiwork. Please see these articles for more information on the nature of ISIS: here, here,here and here.

While the information presented above may not be enough evidence to conclude that the Paris attacks were false flag attacks, it is reason enough to question the official story thus far. If these attacks are indeed placed in the lap of ISIS, however, all fingers should immediately point to NATO and the Atlanticist Intelligence apparatus. It is they who control ISIS and they who bear the responsibility for its actions.

Emergency Drills Took Place on Morning of Paris Terror Attacks: Report

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions andDispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 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 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.