Global Research

According to media reports, President-Elect Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines would be staking a fresh claim on Sabah. He recognises Sabah as a Sulu Sultanate territory.

It is a recognition that has been challenged by various quarters including the Malaysian federal government and the Sabah state government. Many students of law have also disputed the Sulu-Philippine claim which to a large extent has revolved around the question of whether Sabah was leased or ceded by the Sultan of Sulu to representatives of the British North Borneo Company in 1878.  

Whatever happened in 1878, many would argue that what really matters is that the Cobbold Commission established in 1962 to ascertain the sentiments of the people of Sabah and Sarawak towards the formation of Malaysia in 1963 found that the majority in both states wanted to be part of Malaysia. Since the Commission’s findings were endorsed by the UN, Sabah’s position in Malaysia has the imprimatur of international law.

Even more significant from the perspectives of both International and domestic law is the fact that the people of Sabah have on numerous occasions proven that they are part and parcel of the Malaysian nation. This they have done through their voluntary participation in democratic state and general elections since the sixties. By exercising their fundamental right as citizens, they have re-affirmed that Sabah is an integral part of the Malaysian Federation. By fulfilling their duty as voters, the people of Sabah have in a sense expressed their right of self-determination.

In this regard, it is important to observe that no political party or politician contesting in elections in Sabah has ever championed the Sulu-Philippine claim to Sabah. No individual or group in Sabah outside the political process has ever espoused this meaningless cause.  It is a claim that has no takers in Sabah itself.

It is only within political circles in the Philippines that this claim is kept alive. Every time there is a Presidential election, it is trotted out by some candidate or other in the hope of gaining some political mileage. After all, it is an issue related to territory and history and therefore evokes some emotions within a segment of the populace.

Instead of pursuing the claim on Sabah, Duterte should push for the adoption of the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro by the Philippine Congress. The peace Agreement signed between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on the 27^th of March 2014 in Manila paves the way for the creation of a new Muslim autonomous entity, the Bangsamoro, in the southern island of Mindanao. If it is successfully implemented it may bring to an end the conflict and the bloodshed that has blighted southern Philippines for centuries.

Duterte had said on the 28^th of February 2016 that he would like to see the Philippine Congress adopt the Agreement in the form of the Bangsamoro Basic Law within the context of a Federal system of government. He wants the law to be an example for the rest of the Philippines in his drive to transform the nation into a viable federation. He has shown some sympathy for the Muslims in the South and has vowed to “correct historical wrongs.”  Duterte has acknowledged publicly that his grandmother is a Moro and he has daughters-in- law and grandchildren who are Moro.

If under Duterte’s presidency, the longstanding claim of the Philippines government and the descendants of the Sulu Sultan to Sabah is dropped once and for all and an earnest attempt is made to recognise the rights of the Moro people within the framework of a sovereign, independent Philippine nation, the prospects for peace and development in the Philippines as a whole will be much brighter than it has been for decades.  Malaysia and ASEAN will also benefit immensely from these moves.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

Aleppo is Syria’s largest city. During the conflict’s first year Aleppo was relatively calm, unlike many other Syrian cities. In July 2012 hell broke out. The story from medical doctor Tony Sayegh about life in the million-city is dramatically different from the one we usually hear. In this interview he talks about living under terror, about the sanctions and the road to peace. 

Hell on earth. Hospitals bombings. Tens of thousands of refugees.

No one has been able to escape the dramatic news about Aleppo in North Western Syria. But Tony Sayegh is not satisfied with how the Western media describes the situation. The first thing he does when we reach him on the phone is to say thank you.

– I say thank you, because the Western media always reports from the other side. We who are living in the Government-controlled area of Aleppo are never allowed to express our views about what is happening. In almost four years we have lived under the fire from terrorists.

Proletären gets in contact with Tony Sayegh through the Syrian Medical Association in Aleppo. He is a surgeon and teaches at the faculty of medicine at Aleppo University.

– Many doctors have left the city. Either because they are afraid or because there are no jobs. Many hospitals and clinics have been destroyed.

Despite war and hardship Tony Sayegh has stayed and continued with his life, just like most of the city’s residents. He is anxious to give his view on the development and tell who are ones guilty of terrorism and attacks on hospitals.

– We who live here refuse to talk about the western and eastern Aleppo, as if the city would be divided into two parts. It’s not true. Most of the city is under the Syrian government’s control. A small part is in the hands of armed groups, or terrorists as we consider they are.

The words from Tony Sayegh are important. A large majority of Aleppo’s inhabitants, nearly 1.5 million people, are in the government-controlled area. In the ”opposition-controlled” and much smaller part there is about 300,000 people. Yet it is this side media constantly refer to in the reports from Aleppo.

It is also important to note that ”opposition” in this case means Jabhat al-Nusra, stamped as a terrorist group by the UN, and its allies. Because these groups are the ones who control the ”opposition area” of Aleppo.

• What do you think about the allegations that Syrian and Russian air force are bombing civilian targets in the “opposition” Aleppo? In late April, photos were spread from Al-Quds hospital where ”Aleppo’s last paediatrician”, Wassim Mohammed Maaz, was killed. Doctors Without Borders who support al-Quds condemned the attack.

– First I want to say that we in the Syrian Medical Association have not heard of him. Every doctor in Syria must register in the association to be allowed to work. Since we do not know who he is, we can not express an opinion. The same applies to other doctors who are reported dead.

– But I want to inform you that we know many doctors in terrorist-controlled areas, says Tony Sayegh. We have doctors there who work for and are paid by the Syrian government. Residents in these areas need the care as well.

As for al-Quds Tony Sayegh do not believe the media reports. Four years ago there was no such hospital in Aleppo. Whatever it was that was attacked, it was not an established, well-known health facility. Tony Sayegh believes that the images of an anonymous building with sandbags outside indicates that it was a military site.

– Doctors Without Borders is also not a clean organization, they have their financiers and receive outside support, says Tony Sayegh.

Doctors Without Borders have previously admitted that field hospitals in the Syrian opposition areas that the organization supported primarily cared for rebel fighters and not civilians. This is not mentioned in the media reports.

And it is not mentioned that the al-Qaeda group Jabhat al-Nusra in Aleppo has taken over health facilities and used them for other purposes. Already in April 2013 New York Times wrote that al-Nusra ”has set up camp in a former children’s hospital and has worked with other rebel groups to establish a Shariah Commission in the eye hospital next door to govern the city’s rebel-held neighborhoods”.

What was it like in Aleppo before the conflict? And what happened when the war came to the city? We ask Tony Sayegh.

– The people of Aleppo lived a normal life like in any city. It was a quiet town. Aleppo is Syria’s economic and industrial capital. During the first year of the Syrian crisis many people moved here from other cities, because in Aleppo it was quiet and the economical situation was good.

In July 2012 everything changed. But it was not the residents of Aleppo who rebelled against the rulers. Parts of the city were invaded by armed groups with fighters from other areas of Syria and from other countries. Tony Sayegh believes that the interests at stake of the invasion was much bigger than the control of a single city.

– The attempt to overthrow the government of Syria with weapons and riots had failed. Then they decided to focus on Aleppo, to turn against the whole Syrian economy. The armed groups took over the water utilitys and power plants to stop the supplys to the residents, and they focused on the industries. Entire factorys were taken down and driven to Turkey. They stole everything. That was when everything turned upside down and the bad days of Aleppo began.

• Who were behind the invasion and the looting of industries?

– Those who did this are terrorists no matter which name they go under. Most were not even Syrians, although there are Syrians among them. They got orders from outside. The looting of factories to Turkey took place on the orders of Mr. Erdogan, the president of Turkey.

Four years after the invasion, life remains difficult in the Government-controlled area of Aleppo. Power shortage is a major concern. Food is available for purchase, but it is expensive. Something that makes life even more tough are the economic sanctions that the US and EU have imposed on Syria.

– The sanctions do not hit the government but the people. It is us who pay the price. Luckily, Syria still has friends so we can buy medications. Although many doctors left and hospitals have been destroyed, and although we lack a lot, we still give patients a good health care, says Tony Sayegh.

For almost four years the violence has been ever present. The weeks before our conversation there were reports about massive bombardment of rockets, grenades and gas canisters against government areas. Among the places attacked, parts of the Maternity Hospital al-Dabit was destroyed and twenty people were killed.

– It’s nothing new. We get our daily dose of bombs and grenades from the terrorists. We do not know whether it is accidental or intentional, but innocent people are killed, women and children are killed. This is never reported in the West.

• In the Western world we often hear about “moderate rebels” and “opposition” fighting for democracy and getting weapons and military training from the West.

– We are still trying to understand the meaning of “moderate rebels” and “opposition”. We do not understand, we have not found them. They are terrorists who go by different names, like Jabhat al-Nusra or Daesh, and they are supported by the Gulf States, says Tony Sayegh and continues:

– Is Saudi Arabia a defender of democracy and human rights? Compare the situation of women in Syria before the conflict with the situation for women in Saudi Arabia. Their talk of democracy and human rights is a joke.

The war in Syria has been going on for more than five years. Despite the ceasefire agreement and meetings organized by the UN the killing and destruction continues. When these words are written, we hear tragic reports about the horrific terrorist bombings in the coastal cities of Jableh and Tartus with so far 148 dead.

We finish the conversation with Tony Sayegh with the question that we have asked many Syrians during the years of conflict:

• How to make peace in Syria? What should the outside the world do to help Syria and its people to get away from the hell of war?

– I’ll give you a short answer. Leave us alone, forget us.

• What do you mean?

– Well, what we need is the US, Europe, Turkey and the Gulf States to leave us alone and stop supporting terrorists. There should be a decision by the UN Security Council that other states should stay out of Syria and that all those who have supported the terrorists should be punished.

– When you have left us alone, when the borders are closed and you have forgotten about us, then I am confident that the Syrian army can bring us peace.

Patrik Paulov

[email protected]

Two of the five suspects arrested in connection with Berta Caceres’ murder are linked to DESA, the company behind the dam project she fought to stop.

Hillary Clinton’s email dilemma got somewhat sharper over the weekend, with Sunday programs heavy with the theme. Her use of a private email server during her stint as Secretary of State was given a new lease of life by the Office of the Inspector General’s report which took significant issue with her practices when in office.[1] 

The Democratic strategists insisted that there were larger issues at stake.  Such breaches are small feed in the broader matters of state affairs.  Clinton campaign spokesperson Brian Fallon even suggested that the IG report’s demolition of the secretary’s previous claims did not “make her statements untruthful.”[2]  In such circles, it is criminal not to be postmodern.

The campaign statement on Wednesday drew on that great tradition of Clintonian spin doctoring which sees the lie as sacred.  Her opponents were bound to “misrepresent this report for their own partisan purposes” when the documents showed “just how consistent her email practices were with those of other Secretaries and senior officials at the State Department who also used personal email.”

Was it Clinton’s fault?  Hardly, came the crafted response – it was a matter of a faulty system, one exploited by previous secretaries of state.  “The report shows that problems with the State Department’s electronic recordkeeping systems were longstanding and that there was no precedent of someone in her position having a State Department email account until later the arrival of her successor.”  Victimhood again becomes sellable: someone, or something else, did it.

Further attempting to douse the fires with notions that her practice was common (when caught with one’s hand in the till, argue that everybody does it), the statement went on to argue that there was “no evidence of any successful breach of the Secretary’s server.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) came up with an even less impressive defence.  Yes, she had been mistaken in her email practices, but ignorance of the law and protocol could very well be justified.  “She thought it was approved, and the practice was allowed, and she was wrong.”[3]

Schiff also took the line that an abusive practice is rendered less extreme, let alone consequential, if others are doing it.  (Where treason doth prosper indeed!)  Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, for instance, was the stellar example, one not mitigated by the fact that no emails were ever turned over.  “The fact that [Clinton] provided 55,000 pages of emails mitigated the fact that she used a private server.”  The problem for Schiff here is that Powell was the only secretary of state making such extensive use of private email in the conduct of government business.

The IG report does not make pretty reading for the avid Clintonite.  It dismisses a core claim that using government servers was not standard practice during her tenure, pointing to departmental protocols dating back to 2005.

By not actually seeking permission to use a private email server, she had been in violation of established practice.  By the time Clinton assumed office, cybersecurity practices were even more “comprehensive”, “detailed and more sophisticated.”

As for turning over the emails, there was no mitigating factor: she should surrendered them before leaving office, not 21 months after. “[S]he did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”

Clinton has supreme form when it comes to imaginative, and careless “record keeping”.  Her lax attitude to such details was evident during the course of her time as First Lady, when she and her husband presided over the fraying of the post-Cold War Republic.

In 1999, when special prosecutor Ken Starr and Republicans were busying themselves with filling files over an assortment of scandals, a million subpoenaed emails vanished in the Project X affair.  The reason?  A technical problem with a West Wing computer server.  The unseen hand of technological error has often proven helpful to the Clinton cause.

Little wonder then that the latest weaving apologia fell flat in Republican circles, where fiction and fact are synonymous.  Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairman, advanced a theory that the Russians profited from Clinton’s use of a private email server, suggesting that a State Department server would have been somehow immune.  “You have to assume,” claimed Johnson on CBS’s Face the Nation, “that our enemy and adversaries had to have had access to every email that ever went over her private server.”[4]

Johnson, happy with that assumption, suggested that such a private email server might have affected “the invasion of Crimea or eastern Ukraine”; “negotiations with Iran” and even the issues surrounding Assad.

As for the other Democratic contender for the nomination, Bernie Sanders, the IG report was replenishing manna. “It was not a good report for Secretary Clinton.  That is something that the American people, Democrats and delegates are going to have to take a hard look at.”

While Clinton lacks the Teflon attributes of her main rival and presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Donald Trump, Sanders is hoping that such practices disqualify her from the race.  That may well be wishful thinking, reflected by attitudes towards the normalising properties of corruption.  Take the dismissive stance of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.):  “This goes on and on and on.  We’re reaching the final stages of a primary.”  The Clintons have shown themselves to be not only survivors of scandals, but thrivers off them.

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

Notes:

[1] https://oig.state.gov/system/files/esp-16-03.pdf

[2] http://www.factcheck.org/2016/05/ig-report-on-clintons-emails/

[3] http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/281634-rep-adam-schiff-clinton-was-mistaken-on-using-personal

[4] http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/281638-gop-senator-clintons-email-could-have-led-to-russian

In his signature book, The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump boasted that when he wanted to build a casino in Atlantic City, he persuaded the state attorney general to limit the investigation of his background to six months. Most potential owners were scrutinized for more than a year. Trump argued that he was “clean as a whistle”—young enough that he hadn’t had time to get into any sort of trouble. He got the sped-up background check, and eventually got the casino license.

But Trump was not clean as a whistle. Beginning three years earlier, he’d hired mobbed-up firms to erect Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano. That story eventually came out in a federal investigation, which also concluded that in a construction industry saturated with mob influence, the Trump Plaza apartment building most likely benefited from connections to racketeering. Trump also failed to disclose that he was under investigation by a grand jury directed by the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who wanted to learn how Trump obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan.

Why did Trump get his casino license anyway? Why didn’t investigators look any harder? And how deep did his connections to criminals really go?

These questions ate at me as I wrote about Atlantic City for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and then went more deeply into the issues in a book, Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business. In all, I’ve covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years, and in that time I’ve encountered multiple threads linking Trump to organized crime. Some of Trump’s unsavory connections have been followed by investigators and substantiated in court; some haven’t. And some of those links have continued until recent years, though when confronted with evidence of such associations, Trump has often claimed a faulty memory. In an April 27 phone call to respond to my questions for this story, Trump told me he did not recall many of the events recounted in this article and they “were a long time ago.” He also said that I had “sometimes been fair, sometimes not” in writing about him, adding “if I don’t like what you write, I’ll sue you.”

I’m not the only one who has picked up signals over the years. Wayne Barrett, author of a 1992 investigative biography of Trump’s real-estate dealings, has tied Trump to mob and mob-connected men.

No other candidate for the White House this year has anything close to Trump’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks. Professor Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, said the closest historical example would be President Warren G. Harding and Teapot Dome, a bribery and bid-rigging scandal in which the interior secretary went to prison. But even that has a key difference: Harding’s associates were corrupt but otherwise legitimate businessmen, not mobsters and drug dealers.

This is part of the Donald Trump story that few know. As Barrett wrote in his book, Trump didn’t just do business with mobbed-up concrete companies: he also probably met personally with Salerno at the townhouse of notorious New York fixer Roy Cohn, in a meeting recounted by a Cohn staffer who told Barrett she was present. This came at a time when other developers in New York were pleading with the FBI to free them of mob control of the concrete business.

From the public record and published accounts like that one, it’s possible to assemble a clear picture of what we do know. The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service.

Now that he’s running for president, I pulled together what’s known – piecing together the long history of federal filings, court records, biographical anecdotes, and research from my and Barrett’s files. What emerges is a pattern of business dealings with mob figures—not only local figures, but even the son of a reputed Russian mob boss whom Trump had at his side at a gala Trump hotel opening, but has since claimed under oath he barely knows.

Neither Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Hope Hicks, nor Jason Greenblatt, the executive vice president and chief legal officer at the Trump Organization, responded to several emailed requests for comment on the issues raised in this article.

Here, as close as we can get to the truth, is what really happened.

***

After graduating in 1968 from the University of Pennsylvania, a rich young man from the outer boroughs of New York City sought his fortune on the island of Manhattan. Within a few years Donald J. Trump had made friends with the city’s most notorious fixer, lawyer Roy Cohn, who had become famous as lead counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Among other things Cohn was now a mob consigliere, with clients including “Fat Tony” Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, the most powerful Mafia group in New York, and Paul Castellano, head of what was said to be the second largest family, the Gambinos.

This business connection proved useful when Trump began work on what would become Trump Tower, the 58-story high-rise where he still lives when he’s not at his Florida estate.

There was something a little peculiar about the construction of Trump Tower, and subsequent Trump projects in New York. Most skyscrapers are steel girder construction, and that was especially true in the 1980s, says John Cross of the American Iron & Steel Institute. Some use pre-cast concrete. Trump chose a costlier and in many ways riskier method: ready-mix concrete. Ready-mix has some advantages: it can speed up construction, and doesn’t require costly fireproofing. But it must be poured quickly or it will harden in the delivery truck drums, ruining them as well as creating costly problems with the building itself. That leaves developers vulnerable to the unions: the worksite gate is union controlled, so even a brief labor slowdown can turn into an expensive disaster.

Salerno, Castellano and other organized crime figures controlled the ready-mix business in New York, and everyone in construction at the time knew it. So did government investigators trying to break up the mob, urged on by major developers such as the LeFrak and Resnick families. Trump ended up not only using ready-mix concrete, but also paying what a federal indictment of Salerno later concluded were inflated prices for it – repeatedly – to S & A Concrete, a firm Salerno and Castellano owned through fronts, and possibly to other mob-controlled firms. As Barrett noted, by choosing to build with ready-mix concrete rather than other materials, Trump put himself “at the mercy of a legion of concrete racketeers.”

Salerno and Castellano and other mob families controlled both the concrete business and the unions involved in delivering and pouring it. The risks this created became clear from testimony later by Irving Fischer, the general contractor who built Trump Tower. Fischer said concrete union “goons” once stormed his offices, holding a knife to throat of his switchboard operator to drive home the seriousness of their demands, which included no-show jobs during construction of Trump Tower.

But with Cohn as his lawyer, Trump apparently had no reason to personally fear Salerno or Castellano—at least, not once he agreed to pay inflated concrete prices. What Trump appeared to receive in return was union peace. That meant the project would never face costly construction or delivery delays.

The indictment on which Salerno was convicted in 1988 and sent to prison, where he died, listed the nearly $8 million contract for concrete at Trump Plaza, an East Side high-rise apartment building, as one of the acts establishing that S &A was part of a racketeering enterprise. (While the concrete business was central to the case, the trial also proved extortion, narcotics, rigged union elections and murders by the Genovese and Gambino crime families in what Michael Chertoff, the chief prosecutor, called “the largest and most vicious criminal business in the history of the United States.”)

FBI agents subpoenaed Trump in 1980 to ask about his dealing with John Cody, a Teamsters official described by law enforcement as a very close associate of the Gambino crime family. The FBI believed that Cody previously had obtained free apartments from other developers. FBI agents suspected that Cody, who controlled the flow of concrete trucks, might get a free Trump Tower apartment. Trump denied it. But a female friend of Cody’s, a woman with no job who attributed her lavish lifestyle to the kindness of friends, bought three Trump Tower apartments right beneath the triplex where Donald lived with his wife Ivana. Cody stayed there on occasion and invested $500,000 in the units. Trump, Barrett reported, helped the woman get a $3 million mortgage without filling out a loan application or showing financials.

In the summer of 1982 Cody, then under indictment, ordered a citywide strike—but the concrete work continued at Trump Tower. After Cody was convicted of racketeering, imprisoned and lost control of the union, Trump sued the woman for $250,000 for alteration work. She countersued for $20 million and in court papers accused Trump of taking kickbacks from contractors, asserting this could “be the basis of a criminal proceeding requiring an attorney general’s investigation” into Trump. Trump then quickly settled, paying the woman a half-million dollars. Trump said at the time and since then that he hardly knew those involved and there was nothing improper his dealings with Cody or the woman.

***

There were other irregularities in Trump’s first big construction project. In 1979, when Trump hired a demolition contractor to take down the Bonwit Teller department store to make way for Trump Tower, he hired as many as 200 non-union men to work alongside about 15 members of the House Wreckers Union Local 95. The non-union workers were mostly illegal Polish immigrants paid $4 to $6 per hour with no benefits, far below the union contract. At least some of them did not use power tools but sledgehammers, working 12 hours a day or more and often seven days a week. Known as the “Polish brigade,” many didn’t wear hard hats. Many slept on the construction site.

Normally the use of nonunion workers at a union job site would have guaranteed a picket line. Not at this site, however. Work proceeded because the Genovese family principally controlled the union; this was demonstrated by extensive testimony, documents and convictions in federal trials, as well as a later report by the New York State Organized Crime Task Force.

When the Polish workers and a union dissident sued for their pay and benefits, Trump denied any knowledge that illegal workers without hard hats were taking down Bonwit with sledgehammers. The trial, however, demonstrated otherwise: Testimony showed that Trump panicked when the nonunion Polish men threatened a work stoppage because they had not been paid. Trump turned to Daniel Sullivan, a labor fixer and FBI informant, who told him to fire the Polish workers.

Trump knew the Polish brigade was composed of underpaid illegal immigrants and that S&A was a mob-owned firm, according to Sullivan and others. “Donald told me that he was having his difficulties and he admitted to me that — seeking my advice — that he had some illegal Polish employees on the job. I reacted by saying to Donald that ‘I think you are nuts,'” Sullivan testified at the time. “I told him to fire them promptly if he had any brains.” In an interview later, Sullivan told me the same thing.

In 1991, a federal judge, Charles E. Stewart Jr., ruled that Trump had engaged in a conspiracy to violate a fiduciary duty, or duty of loyalty, to the workers and their union and that the “breach involved fraud and the Trump defendants knowingly participated in his breach.” The judge did not find Trump’s testimony to be sufficiently credible and set damages at $325,000. The case was later settled by negotiation, and the agreement was sealed.

***

While Trump’s buildings were going up in Manhattan, he was entering a highly regulated industry in New Jersey – one that had the responsibility, and the means, to investigate him and bring the facts to light.

From the beginning, Trump tried to have it both ways. While he leveraged Roy Cohn’s mob contacts in New York, he was telling the FBI he wanted nothing to do with organized crime in Atlantic City, and even proposed putting an undercover FBI agent in his casinos. In April of 1981, when he was considering building a New Jersey casino, he expressed concern about his reputation in a meeting with the FBI, according to an FBI document in my possession and which the site Smoking Gun also posted. “Trump advised Agents that he had read in the press media and had heard from various acquaintances that Organized Crime elements were known to operate in Atlantic City,” the FBI recorded. “Trump also expressed at this meeting the reservation that his life and those around him would be subject to microscopic examination. Trump advised that he wanted to build a casino in Atlantic City but he did not wish to tarnish his family’s name.”

Part of the licensing process was supposed to be a deep investigation into his background, taking more than a year for would-be casino owners, but Trump managed to cut that short. As he told the story inThe Art of the Deal, in 1981 he threatened to not build in Atlantic City unless New Jersey’s attorney general, John Degnan, limited the investigation to six months. Degnan was worried that Trump might someday get approval for a casino at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan, which could have crushed Atlantic City’s lucrative gaming industry, so Degnan agreed to Trump’s terms. Trump seemingly paid Degnan back by becoming an ardent foe of gambling anywhere in the East except Atlantic City—a position that obviously protected his newfound business investment as well, of course.

Trump was required to disclose any investigations in which he might have been involved in the past, even if they never resulted in charges. Trump didn’t disclose a federal grand jury inquiry into how he obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan. The failure to disclose either that inquiry or the Cody inquiry probably should have disqualified Trump from receiving a license under the standards set by the gaming authorities.

Once Trump was licensed in 1982, critical facts that should have resulted in license denial began emerging in Trump’s own books and in reports by Barrett—an embarrassment for the licensing commission and state investigators, who were supposed to have turned these stones over. Forced after the fact to look into Trump’s connections, the two federal investigations he failed to reveal and other matters, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement investigators circled the wagons to defend their work. First they dismissed as unreliable what mobsters, corrupt union bosses and Trump’s biggest customer, among others, had said to Barrett, to me and other journalists and filmmakers about their dealings with Trump. The investigators’ reports showed that they then put Trump under oath. Trump denied any misconduct or testified that he could not remember. They took him at his word. That meant his casino license was secure even though others in the gambling industry, including low-level licensees like card dealers, had been thrown out for far less.

This lapse illustrated a fundamental truth about casino regulation at the time: Once the state licensed an owner, the Division of Gaming Enforcement had a powerful incentive not to overturn its initial judgment. State officials recited like a mantra their promise that New Jersey casinos were the most highly regulated business in American history, more tightly regulated than nuclear power plants. In Temples of Chance I showed that this reputation often owed less to careful enforcement than to their willingness to look the other way when problems arose.

***

In 1986, three years after Trump Tower opened, Roy Cohn was disbarred for attempting to steal from a client, lying and other conduct that an appellate court found “particularly reprehensible.”

Trump testified that Cohn, who was dying from AIDS, was a man of good character who should keep his license to practice law.

This was not the only time Trump went to bat publicly for a criminal. He has also spoken up for Shapiro and Sullivan. And then there was the case of Joseph Weichselbaum, an embezzler who ran Trump’s personal helicopter service and ferried his most valued clientele.

Trump and Weichselbaum were so close, Barrett reported in his book, that Weichselbaum told his parole officer about how he knew Trump was hiding his mistress, Marla Maples, from his first wife, Ivana, and tried to persuade Trump to end their years-long affair.

Trump’s casinos retained Weichselbaum’s firm to fly high rollers to Atlantic City. Weichselbaum was indicted in Ohio on charges of trafficking in marijuana and cocaine. The head of one of Trump’s casinos was notified of the indictment in October 1985, but Trump continued using Weichselbaum—conduct that again could have cost Trump his casino license had state regulators pressed the matter, because casino owners were required to distance themselves from any hint of crime. Just two months later Trump rented an apartment he owned in the Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan to the pilot and his brother for $7,000 a month in cash and flight services. Trump also continued paying Weichselbaum’s firm even after it went bankrupt.

Weichselbaum, who in 1979 had been caught embezzling and had to repay the stolen money, pleaded guilty to two felonies.

Donald Trump vouched for Weichselbaum before his sentencing, writing that the drug trafficker is “a credit to the community” who was “conscientious, forthright, and diligent.” And while Weichselbaum’s confederates got as many as 20 years, Weichselbaum himself got only three, serving 18 months before he was released from the urban prison that the Bureau of Prisons maintains in New York City. In seeking early release, Weichselbaum said Trump had a job waiting for him.

Weichselbaum then moved into Trump Tower, his girlfriend having recently bought two adjoining apartments there for $2.4 million. The cash purchase left no public record of whether any money actually changed hands or, if it did, where it came from. I asked Trump at the time for documents relating to the sale; he did not respond.

As a casino owner, Trump could have lost his license for associating with Weichselbaum. Trump has never been known to use drugs or even drink. What motivated him to risk his valuable license by standing up for a drug trafficker remains unclear to this day.

Trump, in his phone call to me, said he “hardly knew” Weichselbaum.

***

The facts above come from court records, interviews and other documents in my own files and those generously made available by Barrett, who was the first journalist to take a serious investigative look at Trump. Our files show Trump connected in various deals to many other mobsters and wise guys.

There was, for example, Felix Sater, a senior Trump advisor and son of a reputed Russian mobster, whom Trump kept on long after he was convicted in a mob-connected stock swindle. And there was Bob Libutti, a racehorse swindler who was quite possibly Trump’s biggest customer at the casino tables at the time. Libutti told me and others about arrangements that went beyond the “comps”—free hotel rooms and services, for example—that casinos can legally give to high-rollers. Among these was a deal to sell Trump a less-than-fit horse at the inflated price of $500,000, though Trump backed out at the last minute. Libutti accused Trump of making an improper $250,000 payment to him, which would have cost Trump his license. The DGE dismissed Libutti as unreliable and took Trump at his word when he denied the allegations. (Libutti was a major figure in my 1992 book Temples of Chance.)

Some of the dealings came at a remove. In Atlantic City, Trump built on property where mobsters controlled parts of the adjoining land needed for parking. He paid $1.1 million for about a 5,000-square-foot lot that had been bought five years earlier for just $195,000. The sellers were Salvy Testa and Frank Narducci Jr., a pair of hitmen for Atlantic City mob boss Nicky Scarfo who were known as the Young Executioners. For several adjoining acres, Trump ignored the principal owner of record and instead negotiated directly in a deal that also likely ended up benefiting the Scarfo mob. Trump arranged a 98-year lease deal with Sullivan, the FBI informant and labor fixer, and Ken Shapiro, described in government reports as Scarfo’s “investment banker.” Eventually the lease was converted into a sale after the Division of Gaming Enforcement objected to Sullivan and Shapiro being Trump’s landlords.

Trump later boasted in a sworn affidavit in a civil case that he made the deals himself, his “unique contribution” making the land deals possible. In formal hearings Trump later defended Sullivan and Shapiro as “well thought of.” Casino regulators thought otherwise, and banned Sullivan and Shapiro from the casino industry. But the Casino Control Commission was never asked to look into FBI reports that Trump was involved, via Shapiro, in the payoffs at the time of the land deals that resulted in Mayor Michael Mathews going to prison.

Thanks in part to the laxity of New Jersey gaming investigators, Trump has never had to address his dealings with mobsters and swindlers head-on. For instance, Barrett reported in his book that Trump was believed to have met personally with Salerno at Roy Cohn’s townhouse; he found that there were witnesses to the meeting, one of whom kept detailed notes on all of Cohn’s contacts. But instead of looking for the witnesses (one of whom had died) and the office diary one kept, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) took an easier path. They put Trump under oath and asked if he had ever attended such a meeting. Trump denied it. The inquiry ended.

Taking Trump at his word that he never met with the mobsters in Cohn’s townhouse saved the casino investigators from having to acknowledge their earlier failure—that from the start, they had never properly investigated Trump and his connections to criminals. They certainly had the leverage to push harder if they chose. Indeed, two of the five Casino Control commissioners in 1991 declared that the DGE showed official favoritism to Trump. Commissioner David Waters complained that DGE did not go nearly far enough in seeking a $30,000 fine against Trump for taking an illegal loan from his father, which could be grounds to revoke Trump’s casino licenses. Waters called it “an outrage that the Division of Gaming Enforcement would take this position and fail to carry out what I understand to be its responsibility to enforce the provisions of the Casino Control Act.”

***

Even after he got his license, Trump continued to have relationships that should have prompted inquiries. For example, he made a deal to have Cadillacs dolled up with fancy interiors and exteriors beginning in 1988, marketing them as Trump Golden Series and Trump Executive Series limousines. The modifications were made at the Dillinger Coach Works, which was owned by a pair of convicted felons, convicted extortionist Jack Schwartz and convicted thief John Staluppi, who was so close to mobsters that he was invited to the wedding of a mob capo’s daughter. New York liquor regulators proved tougher than those in New Jersey, denying Staluppi, a rich car dealer, a license because of his rap sheet and his extensive dealings with mobsters, as Barrett’s former reporting partner Bill Bastone found in public records. So why did Trump repeatedly do business with mob owned businesses and mob-controlled unions? Why go down the aisle with an expensive mobbed-up concrete firm when other options were available?

“Why’d Donald do it?” Barrett said when I put the question to him. “Because he saw these mob guys as pathways to money, and Donald is all about money.”

From a $400 million tax giveaway on his first big project, to getting a casino license, to collecting fees for putting his name on everything from bottled water and buildings to neckties and steaks, Trump’s life has been dedicated to the next big score. Through Cohn, Trump made choices that—gratuitously, it appears—resulted in his first known business dealings with mob-controlled companies and unions, a pattern that continued long after Cohn died.

What Trump has to say about the reasons for his long, close and wide-ranging dealings with organized crime figures, with the role of mobsters in cheating Trump Tower workers, his dealings with Felix Sater and Trump’s seeming leniency for Weichselbaum, are questions that voters deserve full answers about before casting their ballots.

The UK is suffering from EU referendum fever and being swamped by arguments for Remain (staying in the EU) or Brexit (getting out of the EU). This mess was originally started by the United Kingdom Independence Party, formed by disgruntled Conservatives who didn’t like Europe.

There’s so much hyperbole, propaganda, false ‘facts’ snatched out of the air and screaming insults being reported in the British media, and all to do with Conservative Party Ministers and MPs splitting in two between In and Out, and tearing each other apart over Europe, that no one really notices that:

The Labour Party is In for Britain

The Green Party is Greener In

The Liberal Democrats say Help keep Britain in Europe – donate today!

All the above statements come from the home pages of the websites of the three most obvious opposition parties in England, and all of which are running their own campaigns rather that team up with the government’s Remain campaign, known as Stronger In.

One hardly needs to ask about Scotland. The Scots, dominated by the Scottish National Party, are overwhelmingly in favour of staying within the EU, and have said more than once that if England votes for Brexit, Scotland will become independent of the UK in a very short time.

The Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru Party wants to stay in and reform the EU from the inside. In Northern Ireland, the Irish republican Sinn Fein Party is following Scotland’s position: they back Remain and if Britain votes for Brexit, they will actively campaign for reunification with Eire. The Ulster Unionists support the Remain side. The Social Democrat Labour Party is backing Remain.

But look! The anti-EU Tories and UKIP have some support – the last group in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party, is recommending Brexit.

The majority of British political parties acknowledge that the EU is in need of serious reforms. But they want to stay in and reform it from the inside. In all likelihood they probably think the referendum is a gross waste of taxpayers’ time and money. It demonstrates that the issue really is a fight within the Conservative Party and its breakaway group UKIP.

But the media is so fixated on the fight between Remain and Brexit it ignores everything else. It ignores the fact that the other parties are staying away from the official Stronger In campaign. They know how toxic that would be. Labour lost most of its Scottish supporters because it campaigned alongside the Tories during the Scottish independence referendum.

Most people are doing their best to shut their ears to this nonsense. They don’t believe either half of the Conservative Party, but then they’ve stopped believing in David Cameron and his cronies over the last year.

It is irresponsible, to say the least, of our government to involve the whole nation in its internal squabbles in this way. It is encouraging racial prejudice, selfishness and very divisive attitudes among ordinary people. The one good result may be that, whatever the outcome of the Referendum, the Conservative Party is on the road to disintegration.

In Brazil the country’s largest newspaper has published a transcript of a secret recording leaked to the newspaper.  The words recorded are the plot by the rich Brazilian elite, involving both the US-corrupted Brazilian military and Supreme Court, to remove the democratically elected president of Brazil under false charges in order to stop the investigations of the corrupt elites who inhabit Brazil’s senate and bring to an end Brazil’s membership in BRICS. The Russian-Chinese attempt to organize an economic bloc independent of Washington has now lost 20% of its membership.

Democracy has been overthrown in Brazil as in Ukraine, Honduras—indeed, everywhere the dirty evil hand of Washington falls, including the US itself.

Glenn Greenwald reports on the extraordinary leak of the 75-minute recording of the conversations between Brazilian elites laying out the plot to frame the President of Brazil in order to protect themselves.

The Government of President Dilma Rousseff was dealing with the corrupt Brazilian elite in a legal, not a revolutionary, way.  This was a strategic error, as neither the Brazilian elites nor their backers in Washington care a hoot about legality.  For them power is the only effective force.\

The world has seen this so many times.  That is why the French Revolution, Marx, Lenin, and Pol Pot concluded that change was impossible unless the elites were exterminated.

In Latin America the populist governments that managed against all odds to be elected bind their own hands by extending the protection of the rule of law to their bitter domestic enemies, who take advantage of the protection afforded them to use their power to overthrow the elected government.

It will ever be so.  Without a Lenin, there will be no change in Latin America or anywhere in the corrupt and elite-controlled Western world.  In the Western world voting is a waste of time. The election hype is nothing but cover for elite control. Electorates, always hopeful, never catch on.

According to a report, the plans also include negotiations over another military base on the border with Paraguay and Brazil.

A military delegation sent by Argentine President Mauricio Macri on Wednesday signed an agreement on military cooperation with the United States, which entails the establishment of a U.S. military base in Ushuaia, the southernmost tip of the South American nation.

Ushuaia is the capital of Tierra del Fuego, whose boundaries extend to Antarctica. The Argentine government has justified the installation by saying “scientific work” will be performed there.

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Argentina President Mauricio Macri during his March 2016 visit. | Photo: EFE

Earlier this week, Vice Defense Minister Angel Tello began a five-day visit to the U.S. aimed at reestablishing bilateral defense relations between the two countries after a freeze in military ties in recent years.

Among the plans reportedly being discussed is the negotiation of another military base in Argentina’s Misiones Province, located in the northeastern corner of the country at the border between Paraguay and Brazil.

Bilateral ties between Argentina and the U.S. had been tense in recent years as the leftist governments of presidents Cristina Fernández and Nestor Kirchner reoriented foreign policy away from the U.S. and toward Latin America in the name of fighting imperialism and strengthening regional integration.

But Macri came to office last year based in part on a promise to rekindle relations with the U.S. while giving the cold shoulder to allies of Argentina’s left-wing Kirchner governments, such as Venezuela. The president has said he wants a “pragmatic and intelligent” relationship with Washington.

In a recent release, the FBI has indicated that it will be presenting a recommendation to Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the Department of Justice:

“James Comey and The FBI will present a recommendation to Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the Department of Justice, that includes a cogent argument that the Clinton Foundation is an ongoing criminal enterprise engaged in money laundering and soliciting bribes in exchange for political, policy and legislative favors to individuals, corporations and even governments both foreign and domestic.”  (Frank Huguenard, Global Research, May 30, 2016)

There are several possible scenarios which affect the outcome of the presidential campaign.

The fundamental question is whether this recommendation –which documents the criminal undertakings of the Clinton Foundation– will be carried out by the Attorney General.

Doubtful?

Loretta Lynch was appointed Attorney General by president Obama in 2010 during his first term. Of significance, Lynch also held the position of U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York under the Bill Clinton administration (1999-2001).

Moreover, as pointed out in a recent article by Jerome Corsi, Loretta Lynch is political crony of the Clintons:

But little known is the fact that Lynch was a litigation partner for eight years at a major Washington law firm that served the Clintons.

Lynch was with the Washington-headquartered international law firm Hogan & Hartson LLP from March 2002 through April 2010.

According to documents Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign made public in 2008, Hogan & Hartson’s New York-based partner Howard Topaz was the tax lawyer who filed income tax returns for Bill and Hillary Clinton beginning in 2004.

In addition, Hogan & Hartson in Virginia filed a patent trademark request on May 19, 2004, for Denver-based MX Logic Inc., the computer software firm that developed the email encryption system used to manage Clinton’s private email server beginning in July 2013. A tech expert has observed that employees of MX Logic could have had access to all the emails that went through her account.

The appointment of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, 2010

It is, therefore, highly unlikely that Lynch will follow the recommendation of James Comey and the FBI.

Nonetheless, even if the indictment is NOT carried out, inevitably Hillary Clinton’s “credibility” as a presidential candidate is in jeopardy.

Hillary: “Losing Horse”

The corporate media may attempt to cover up or distort the findings of the FBI and manipulate public opinion with a view to supporting Hillary’s candidacy.

A process of smearing the FBI is already ongoing. Will it  succeed? Hillary’s reputation has been tainted. A suspected criminal cannot become president of the USA, whether the legal procedure against her is carried out or not.

And the Donald Trump campaign will go into high gear to discredit Hillary Clinton.

Under these circumstances, the Democratic Party hierarchy (not to mention Hillary’s corporate sponsors) may decide to dump Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s Wall Street cronies will not bet their money on a “losing horse”.

Assuming Clinton falls out of the presidential race, what happens?

This scenario has already been contemplated and carefully rehearsed ahead of Hillary’s demise. 

Will the nomination go to Bernie Sanders or will Joe Biden formally enter the race as a “slip in” candidate:

If Clinton’s email-related problems get worse or other developments sink her popularity far below even Trump’s, causing her to step aside, Biden, as a more establishment figure than Sanders, would be the party’s likely choice as a “slip-in” candidate and an almost certain winner against Trump.Notwithstanding these various scenarios, Donald Trump is ahead in the presidential race. (Chicago Tribune, May 27, 2016)

.

The Criminalization of Politics

While Hillary, according to the FBI, is allegedly involved in money laundering and soliciting bribes, Donald Trump’s candidacy is also fragile, given his alleged links to organized crime as documented by David Cay Johnston:

But Trump was not clean as a whistle. Beginning three years earlier, he’d hired mobbed-up firms to erect Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano. That story eventually came out in a federal investigation, which also concluded that in a construction industry saturated with mob influence, the Trump Plaza apartment building most likely benefited from connections to racketeering. Trump also failed to disclose that he was under investigation by a grand jury directed by the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who wanted to learn how Trump obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan.

Why did Trump get his casino license anyway? Why didn’t investigators look any harder? And how deep did his connections to criminals really go? (Politico, May 22, 2016)

Dirty politics. So much for Democracy and “We the People”.

The Criminalization of Politics in America: The leading presidential candidates, Hillary and Donald, have shaky records, with alleged links to criminal wrongdoings.

What choice is left? Revolution. Regime Change in the US…

“O poder não corrompe as pessoas, apenas as revela!”

Heloísa Helena

“O PMDB trata de tentar aturar o PT hoje por conveniência – e, nenhuma descoberta no campo da ciência política, na primeira oportunidade arrematarão o pé nos fundilhos do PT, e se estiverem de muito bom humor sem dar tiros a todos os lados, o que é improvável que aconteça. Isso deve acontecer na eleição de 2014, mas pode ser adiado de acordo com as costuras partidárias que se deem até lá. (…) Em briga de casal bandido, costuma haver divórcio – e quem se mete nela, é atacado por ambos os lados” (artigo Aliança PT-PMDB: Briga de Casal – Mas de Casal Bandido, publicado por este autor em dezembro de 2012 no Observatório da Imprensa).

Se não era necessário ser cientista político nem aspirante a Mãe Diná para fazer tal constatação há 4 anos, tampouco era preciso ter conhecimento de algumas das centenas milhares de cabos liberado por WikiLeaks revelando os segredos de Estado dos Estados Unidos, que trazem à luz inclusive a subserviência da cúpula do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) aos “diplomatas” norte-americanos. Nem mesmo do telegrama denunciado por Julian Assange na primeira semana de maio deste ano, revelando que Michel Temer se prestou a ser informante dos porões do poder de Washington.

O golpe sempre esteve mais que anunciado no Brasil: era apenas uma questão de tempo. Se setores progressistas brasileiros sempre reconheceram que um novo golpe à democracia esteve latente na última década, grande parte da “esquerda” nacional acabava sempre subestimando a capacidade de a oposição executá-lo.

Seu entendimento esteve distraído pelos deslumbres com o poder, a começar pelos “intelectuais” político-partidários. Renan Calheiros, José Sarney, senadores apoiados pelo Palácio do Planalto petista para assumirem a presidência do Senado. O novo “companheiro” Henrique Meirelles, assim chamado por Luiz Inácio e Dilma, nomeado para controlar a economia do país. O abraço fraternal de Luiz Inácio em Paulo Maluf. O também denominado “companheiro” Michel Temer tornou-se vice-presidente à base de confetes (quem se lembra?).

A “esquerda moderada” jamais foi capaz de enxergar, no alto de seu tamanco da arrogância que patrulhava de toda e qualquer crítica construtiva, que a aliança aos velhos oligarcas e coroneis deste país em nome da “governabilidade” nada mais era que entregar a cabeça do próprio “governo neoliberal com aspecto humano” (nas palavras do professor doutor Michel Chossudovski), em uma bandeja às classes dominantes. E junto, a cabeça de mais de 150 milhões de cidadãos pertencentes às classes menos favorecidas.

Patrulhamento petista sem nenhuma diferença do tom agressivo hoje esbanjado pateticamente pelos setores reacionários contra toda e qualquer diferença de ideias, ainda que sem bandeira partidária. Hoje, esses mesmos “intelectuais”, entre eles Emir Sader, desesperados diante da perda do poder, voltam a adotar seu velho discurso mais à esquerda, mesmo discurso que durante os pouco mais de 13 anos do PT no poder, tacharam de ultra-esquerda radical. Emir Sader é especialmente apontado aqui pois, nos nada remotos idos de 2014, qualificou integrantes do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Teto (MTST) de “cães vira-latas”. O motivo? Reivindicavam moradia digna na cidade de São Paulo, onde o Prefeito era e é Fernando Haddad do PT, ao qual o “intelectual” é filiado.

Ironia do destino: o PT necessita hoje, desesperadamente, com o engajamento sobretudo através da tentativa de politização junto à sociedade por parte de movimentos sociais como o MTST, e de comunicadores de uma mídia realmente alternativa (outrora qualificada de “radical) a fim de tentar reverter o impedimento da presidente Dilma Rousseff, tarefa quase impossível.

Grande Mídia: De Ilusória “Companheira” a Inimiga

Em entrevista à rede de TV venezuelana Telesur no início de maio deste ano, a presidente Dilma observou que o Brasil carece da presença de meios de comunicação com enfoques diversos, devido ao fato de que, dentre todos os existentes, uma grande quantidade é regida sob uma mesma tendência editorial.

Lamentou que não existam grandes emissoras de televisão ou jornais que difundam informação com uma visão distinta dos já estabelecidos, em sua maioria com tendências direitistas. Demagogia pouca, grande bobagem, marcou o governo federal sob o PT.

O PT nunca fez o menor esforço para regular a mídia brasileira, e a própria recém-empossada presidente Dilma afirmou, em 2011, que o cidadão não precisava de Leis de Imprensa existente nos países com democracia mais avançada do mundo, pois “tem o controle remoto”.

Sobre o patrocínio petista à mesma mídia contra quem oportunisticamente esperneia hoje, a revista Carta Capital relatouem Publicidade Federal: Globo Recebeu R$ 6,2 Bilhões dos Governos Lula e Dilma, que “entre os jornais, O Globo foi o que mais recebeu verbas; revista Veja recebeu mais de R$ 700 milhões no período. (…) Lula e Dilma investiram um total de R$ 13,9 bilhões para fazer propaganda em todas as TVs do país”.

E pontuou ainda: “A parte destinada somente às emissoras da Rede Globo representa quase metade desse total. Apesar disso, a porcentagem destinada à Globo tem sido reduzida. Ao final do governo de Fernando Henrique Cardoso, em 2002, as emissoras globais detinham 49% das verbas estatais destinadas à propagada em TV aberta, chegaram a 59% durante o governo Lula e, no ano passado, a Globo ainda liderava com R$ 453,5 milhões investidos, mas do total, o valor representa 36%”.

Pois é tão proibido pensar e se expressar a fim de promover a auto-crítica agora, entre militantes petistas mais fanatizados, quanto entre a ala mais reacionária do país. Duas faces de uma mesma moeda raivosa, discriminatória, politiqueira.

Casuísmo na “Revolução Social” do PT

Revolução social do discurso, em grande medida maquiada, fundamentada em demagogias e muito oportunismo. Em poucas palavras, assim se pode definir o PT à frente do governo federal – não fechado em argumentos e retóricas (maior arma petista, historicamente), mas em fatos incontestáveis.

Ao longo destes mais de 13 anos com o PT no Palácio do Planalto, o Brasil seguiu no inaceitável posto de último país do mundo em gastos proporcionais em educação, em relação ao Produto Interno Bruto (PIB). Através de programas de financiamento, diversos jovens tiveram acesso a universidades particulares, mas não houve melhoria e construção significativa de novas universidades federais.

O PT estabeleceu as cotas, medidas louváveis; mas não promoveu melhora no ensino básico a fim de, algum dia, as etnias menos favorecidas possam ingressar nas melhores universidades pelos próprios méritos. Em fevereiro de 2013, o Caderno de Pensamento Crítico Latino-Americano (CLACSO) e o Seminário 10 Anos de Ações Afirmativas: Conquistas e Desafios, organizado pela Faculdade Latino-Americana de Ciências Sociais (FLACSO) em parceria com o Laboratório de Políticas Públicas da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Uerj), apontaram em um debate exatamente a dificuldade de alunos universitários cotistas em acompanhar adequadamente o ritmo das aulas. Pois políticas insuficientes, possuem resultados ineficientes.

Segundo dados da Unesco, o nível educacional do Brasil, com cerca de 50% de analfabetos entre plenos e funcionais, está entre os mais baixos da América Latina, e na posição de 88º no mundo. Segundo o Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatísticas (IBGE), em 2006, último ano do primeiro mandato do presidente Lula, 75,2% dos municípios não possuíam centros culturais, em 91,3% não havia salas de cinema, em 78,8% não havia teatros nem salas de espetáculo, 7,1% não contavam com museus e 10,9% sequer possuíam uma biblioteca. Não há indicativos de que essa situação catastrófica tenha tido alguma melhora nos últimos anos.

O partido prova de seu próprio veneno agora: a despolitização da sociedade hoje a faz refém, como sempre, da manipulação descomedida da mídia de desinformação em massa. Mesmo veneno, entre tantos, provado através da altamente reacionária lei anti-terrorismo aprovada pela presidente por Dilma, a qual diminui possibilidades de resistência agora, enfraquecendo movimentos sociais, manifestações públicas e até uma necessária desobediência civil pacífica, dos quais o PT tanto depende para a sobrevivência agora.

Atendendo aos interesses das oligarquias nacionais e de Washington, mas contrariando a preservação ambiental, a presidente Dilma aprovou o Código Florestal. Telegramas secretos emitidos pela “Embaixada” dos Estados Unidos em Brasília liberados por Wikileaks, revelam o lobby nos bastidores dos norte-americanos, visando especialmente à Amazônia (leia Em Telegrama, Embaixador é Favorável à Redução de Reserva Legal: https://cartacapitalwikileaks.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/em-telegrama-embaixador-e-favoravel-a-reducao-de-reserva-legal/).

Sim, o índice de empregos cresceu como nenhum dos grandes partidos jamais foi capaz de fazer. Porém, a precarização das condições de trabalho segue igualmente deplorável. O salário mínimo adquiriu ganho real como nunca antes, mas ainda é um dos menores da America Latina – menor em termos absolutos e proporcionais que o do vizinho Paraguai, um dos países mais pobres e desiguais da região. A desigualdade foi modestamente diminuída, porém o país ainda é um dos mais desiguais da América Latina (lembremo-nos que redução da pobreza não possui, necessariamente, ligação com diminuição das desigualdades sociais).

A relativa redistribuição de renda foi uma política acertada do governo Lula… pela metade e, portanto, não se pode dizer que hoje é produtiva ao país medidas tais como o Bolsa Família, por si só: o governo federal, assim como no caso das cotas raciais nas universidades, não tratou de impulsionar a produção do país nesse meio tempo fazendo com que o assistencialismo se perpetua, gerando dependência contínua das classes mais baixas aos programas do governo e uma grande bolha na economia brasileira. Para que ela estourasse, era apenas uma questão de tempo a menos que se mudasse os rumos da política econômica.

O país segue como um dos maiores concentradores de renda do mundo, e muito pouco avançou na última década.

“(…) Segundo Ruy Braga, professor do Departamento de Sociologia da Universidade de São Paulo, o crescimento de vagas de trabalho na última década “se concentrou na faixa de até dois salários mínimos, o que aquece o mercado de trabalho com baixos salários e, consequentemente, em condições muito precárias” (fonte: revista Caros Amigos, maio de 2012, página 20).

“(…) O salário mínimo brasileiro é menor que o paraguaio, mesmo em números absolutos estando quase quatro vezes aquém do recomendado pelo Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Socioeconômicos (Dieese), cujos cálculos estipulam R$ 2.300 como o mínimo para que um trabalhador deveria ganhar para sustentar sua família.

“Nos anos de 1990, a taxa média de trabalhadores com carteira assinada era de 40%. Na década de 1980, 60%. Hoje, esse índice é de 55% (ibidem), o que não pode ser chamado de revolução no campo do trabalho, menos ainda se levarmos em conta que a precarização das condições de trabalho se acentuaram nos últimos anos, atingindo níveis alarmantes de acidentes: em 2001, último ano de Fernando Henrique Cardoso na presidência da República, o número de acidentes de trabalho foi de 340 mil em todo o país; em 2007 este índice deu um salto para 653 mil, e em 2010 os acidentes atingiram, segundo o Ministério da Previdência, 720 mil trabalhadores
(fonte: revista Caros Amigos, outubro de 2012, página 16).”
Nos anos de 1990, a taxa média de trabalhadores com carteira assinada era de 40%. Na década de 1980, 60%. Hoje, esse índice é de 55% (ibidem), o que não pode ser chamado de revolução no campo do trabalho, menos ainda se levarmos em conta que a precarização das condições de trabalho se acentuaram nos últimos anos, atingindo níveis alarmantes de acidentes: em 2001, último ano de Fernando Henrique Cardoso na presidência da República, o número de acidentes de trabalho foi de 340 mil em todo o país; em 2007 este índice deu um salto para 653 mil, e em 2010 os acidentes atingiram, segundo o Ministério da Previdência, 720 mil trabalhadores (fonte: revista Caros Amigos, outubro de 2012, página 16).

Em 10 anos, de 2003 a 2013, a produtividade da mão-de-obra esteve praticamente estagnada segundo a Confederação Nacional da Indústria – houve crescimento de apenas 0,6% ao ano entre 2000 e 2010, contra 6,9% de Taiwan, 6% da República Tcheca, 5% dos Estados Unidos, 4% da Finlândia e 1,2% da hoje crítica Espanha.

No caso da dívida com o Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) e o mito de o Brasil estar livre de dívida externa e ter se tornado mais soberano, não se menciona dois pontos fundamentais:

O Brasil é muito mais devedor de bancos internacionais (entre grandes bobagens governamentais, financiaram agentes internacionais que se instalaram no país à época ditatorial, 1964-1985, e toda a estrutura de manutenção do regime militar; portanto, a dívida externa está longe de ser liquidada).

E o governo Lula, nas palavras de Maria Lucia Fatorelli, em entrevista à Gabriela Moncau para a revista Caros Amigos em janeiro de 2013:

Por isso tudo, não é exagero afirmar que o “governo pela metade” do PT produziu consumidores, mas não cidadãos. Aí está a realidade, lamentada inclusive pelos petistas dante de uma sociedade inerte, absolutamente dessituada, para não nos desmentir.

Não causa surpresa, diante deste cenário político, econômico, sócio-cultural, que Michel Temer, envolvido em esquema ilegal de compra de etanol, considerado culpado, e multado por irregularidades nos gastos de campanha, não gere grande insatisfação na mesma sociedade que clamou raivosamente pelo impedimento da presidente Dilma, falsamente em nome de combate à corrupção.

O PT mesmo deixou o caminho aberto para que Temer acentue ainda mais a fidelidade aos interesses dos mais ricos no Brasil: indicou executivos do Goldman Sachs e do FMI para controlar a economia, e instalou uma equipe neoliberal sem nenhuma representatividade (composta em parte pelo mesmo partido, o PSDB, que perdeu quatro eleições seguidas para o PT). Um desses ministros, José Serra, mencionado diversas vezes em cabos confidenciais e secretos emitidos por “diplomatas” norte-americanos no Brasil, como o preferido de Washington sobretudo pela disposição em entregar o petróleo brasileiro (leia O Perfil de José Serra Feito pelos Norte-Americanos: http://apublica.org/2011/03/o-perfil-de-jose-serra-feito-pelos-americanos/ ; Serra [Se Eleito Presidente] “Buscaria Política Externa Mais Afinada com EUA”: https://cartacapitalwikileaks.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/serra-%E2%80%9Cbuscaria-uma-politica-externa-mais-afinada-com-os-eua%E2%80%9D/ ; ‘WikiLeaks’: Serra Entregaria Pré-Sal à Exploração Norte-Americana: http://www.correiodobrasil.com.br/wikileaks-serra-ia-entregar-pre-sal-a-exploracao-norte-americana/196092/ ; Nos Bastidores, o Lobby pelo Pré-Sal: https://cartacapitalwikileaks.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/nos-bastidores-o-lobby-pelo-pre-sal/).

A equipe de Temer confirma o fundo discriminador e sem nenhum compromisso real com combate a corrupção, argumento que derrubou a presidente Dilma: um ministério sem mulheres, sem negros (maioria no Brasil; de acordo com último senso de 2010, mais de 50% dos brasileiros declarou-se afrodescendente), e 1/3 sob suspeitas de corrupção.

Segundo o jornalista norte-americano Glenn Greenwald, “apesar dos danos [econômicos, políticos e sociais] que o PT está causando ao país, os plutocratas e seus jornalistas-propagandistas e a corja de bandidos em Brasília que arquitetam essa farsa são muito mais nocivos. Eles estão literalmente destruindo a democracia do quinto maior país do mundo”.

Temer e seus ministros exibem sorrisos, mandos e desmandos sem nenhum constrangimento, diante de uma sociedade, em geral, passiva. Diante de uma “esquerda” inerte, apática na essência que, desde 2013 acentuando o tom neste ano, promete reagir e impedir o golpe.

Pois o maior mérito do PT é, sem dúvida, o fato de que “outros grandes partidos na Presidência teriam sido piores”, como os próprios petistas vivem palrando. Lamentavelmente, morreu de joelhos como era previsto. É triste mas o gigante bobão sul-americano, em todos os segmentos, está sendo passageiro do destino que mais merece.

Edu Montesanti

This article was first published in 2010. Iran Contra was it 30 years ago in 1986, or  as revealed by Robert Parry in 1980?

The conventional view of the Iran-Contra scandal is that it covered the period 1985-86, when President Ronald Reagan became concerned about the fate of American hostages in Lebanon and agreed to secretly sell weapons to Iran’s Islamist government to gain its help in freeing the captives.

Supposedly, the scheme went awry when White House aide Oliver North and other participants got carried away, including North’s decision to divert profits from the arms sales to another one of Reagan’s priorities, the Nicaraguan contra rebels whose CIA assistance had been cut off by Congress.

The Iran-Contra scandal was exposed in fall of 1986 after the shooting down of a North supply plane over Nicaragua and revelations in Lebanon of Reagan’s arms sales to Iran. A White House staff shake-up, including North’s firing, and some wrist-slaps from Congress for Reagan’s alleged inattention to details resolved the scandal, at least that was how Official Washington saw it.

The few dissenters who wouldn’t accept that tidy conclusion – such as Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh – were mocked and marginalized by the news media, including the Washington Post (which ran an article concluding that Walsh’s consistency in pursuing the scandal was “so un-Washington” and that he would depart as “a perceived loser”).

But an accumulating body of evidence suggests that the traditional view of Iran-Contra was mistaken, that this conventional understanding of the scandal was like starting a novel in the middle and assuming you’re reading the opening chapter.

Indeed, it now appears clear that the Iran-Contra Affair began five years earlier in 1980, with what has often been treated as a separate controversy, called the October Surprise case, dealing with alleged contacts between Reagan’s presidential campaign and Iran.

In view of the latest evidence – and the crumbling of the long-running October Surprise cover-up – there appears to have been a single Iran-Contra narrative spanning the entire 12 years of the Reagan and Bush I administration, and representing a much darker story.

And it was not simply a tale of Republican electoral skullduggery and treachery, but possibly even more troubling, a story of rogue CIA officers and Israel’s Likud hardliners sabotaging a sitting U.S. president, Jimmy Carter.

Plus, with Washington’s failure to get at the larger truth about the Iran-Contra Affair, crucial patterns were set: Republicans acted aggressively, Democrats behaved timidly, and the U.S. national news media was transformed from Watergate-era watchdogs, to lapdogs and finally to guard dogs protecting national security wrongdoing.

In that sense, the Iran-Contra/October Surprise scandal represented the missing link in a larger American political narrative covering the sweep of several decades, explaining how the United States shifted away from a nation grappling with epochal problems, from energy dependence and environmental degradation to bloated military budgets and an obsession with empire.

For all his shortcomings and half-measures, President Carter had begun promoting solar and other alternative energies; he pushed conservation programs and worked to reduce the federal deficit; and abroad, he advocated greater respect for human rights and pulled back from the imperial presidency.

More on point, he cashiered many of the freewheeling Cold Warriors of the CIA and demanded land-for-peace concessions from Israel.

Unacceptable Dangers

Carter’s potential second term presented unacceptable dangers to some powerful interests at home and overseas. The CIA Old Boys (whom legendary CIA officer Miles Copeland deemed “the CIA within the CIA”) thought they understood the true national interests even if the lazy-minded public and weak-kneed politicians didn’t.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his Likud Party believed in a “Greater Israel” and were determined not to trade any more land conquered in the Six-Day War of 1967 for promises of peace with Palestinians and other Arabs. In 1980, Begin was still fuming over Carter’s Camp David pressure on him to surrender the Sinai in exchange for a peace deal with Egypt.

In other words, the deep-seated concerns of many influential forces intersected in 1980, all with a common desire to sink Carter’s reelection campaign. And the best way to do that was to undermine his efforts to gain the freedom of 52 American hostages then held in Iran. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The CIA/Likud Sinking of Jimmy Carter.”]

The secret relationships, born of the 1980 hostage dealings, created the framework for the Reagan administration’s approval of Israel’s clandestine arms shipments to Iran beginning immediately after Reagan took office in 1981, just as the American hostages were finally released. Those initial Israeli arms sales gradually evolved into the Iran-Contra weapons transfers.

Thus, when the Iran-Contra scandal surfaced in fall 1986, the subsequent cover-up was not simply to protect Reagan from possible impeachment for violating the Arms Export Control Act and the congressional ban on military aid to the Nicaraguan contras, but from exposure of the even darker, earlier phase of the scandal, which would implicate Israel and the CIA.

In authorizing the first investigation of Iran-Contra, Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese set the chronological parameters as 1985 and 1986. Congressional inquiries also focused on that narrow time frame, despite indications that the scandal began earlier, such as the mystery of an Israeli-chartered arms flight that was shot down in July 1981 after straying into Soviet air space.

Only late in the Iran-Contra criminal investigation did Walsh and his investigative team begin suspecting that the only explanation for the futile arms-for-hostage dealings regarding Lebanon in 1985-86 – when each freed hostage was replaced by a new captive – was that the tripartite relationship of Iran-Israel-and-Reagan predated the Lebanese crisis, going back to 1980.

That was one reason why Walsh’s investigators asked George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser (and former CIA officer) Donald Gregg about his possible role in delaying the release of the hostages in 1980. His denial was judged deceptive by an FBI polygrapher.

‘People on High’

Nicholas Veliotes, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, described his discovery of the earlier Iran connections after the Israeli plane went down in the Soviet Union in 1981.

“It was clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment,” Veliotes said in an interview with PBS Frontline.

In checking out the Israeli flight, Veliotes came to believe that the Reagan camp’s dealings with Iran dated back to before the 1980 election.

“It seems to have started in earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980, as the Israelis had identified who would become the new players in the national security area in the Reagan administration,” Veliotes said. “And I understand some contacts were made at that time.”

Though some two dozen witnesses – including senior Iranian officials and a wide range of other international players – have expanded on Veliotes’s discovery, the pressure became overpowering in the final years of George H.W. Bush’s presidency not to accept the obvious conclusions. [For details of the evidence, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

It was easier for all involved – surely the Republicans but also the Democrats and much of the Washington press corps – to discredit the corroborated 1980 allegations. Taking the lead was the neoconservative New Republic.

In fall 1991, as Congress was deliberating whether to conduct a full investigation of the October Surprise issue, Steven Emerson, a journalist with close ties to Likud, produced a cover story for The New Republic claiming to prove the allegations were a “myth.”

Newsweek published a matching cover story also attacking the October Surprise allegations. The article, I was told, had been ordered up by executive editor Maynard Parker who was known inside Newsweek as a close ally of the CIA and an admirer of prominent neocon Elliott Abrams.

The two articles were influential in shaping Washington’s conventional wisdom, but they were both based on a misreading of attendance documents at a London historical conference which William Casey had gone to in July 1980.

The two publications put Casey at the conference on one key date – thus supposedly proving he could not have attended an alleged Madrid meeting with Iranian emissaries. However, after the two stories appeared, follow-up interviews with conference participants, including historian Robert Dallek, conclusively showed that Casey wasn’t at the conference until later.

Veteran journalist Craig Unger, who had worked on the Newsweek cover story, said the magazine knew the Casey alibi was bogus but still used it. “It was the most dishonest thing that I’ve been through in my life in journalism,” Unger later told me.

However, even though the Newsweek and New Republic stories had themselves been debunked, that didn’t stop other neoconservative-dominated publications, like the Wall Street Journal, from ladling out ridicule on anyone who dared take the October Surprise case seriously.

Peculiar Journalism

Emerson also was a close friend of Michael Zeldin, the deputy chief counsel for the House task force that investigated the October Surprise issue in 1992. Though the task force had to jettison Emerson’s bogus Casey alibi, House investigators told me Emerson frequently visited the task force’s offices and advised Zeldin and others how to read the October Surprise evidence.

Subsequent examinations of Emerson’s peculiar brand of journalism (which invariably toed the Likud line and often demonized Muslims) revealed that Emerson had financial ties to right-wing funders such as Richard Mellon Scaife and had hosted right-wing Israeli intelligence commander Yigal Carmon when Carmon came to Washington to lobby against Middle East peace talks.

In 1999, a study of Emerson’s history by John F. Sugg for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s magazine “Extra!” quoted an Associated Press reporter who had worked with Emerson on a project as saying of Emerson and Carmon: “I have no doubt these guys are working together.”

The Jerusalem Post reported that Emerson has “close ties to Israeli intelligence.” And “Victor Ostrovsky, who defected from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and has written books disclosing its secrets, calls Emerson ‘the horn’ — because he trumpets Mossad claims,” Sugg reported.

Yet, the way Washington was working by the end of the 12-year Reagan-Bush-41 era, there was little interest in getting to the bottom of a difficult national security scandal. The House task force simply applied some fantastical logic, such as claiming that because someone wrote down Casey’s home phone number on another key date that proved he was at home, to conclude nothing had happened.

Between the House task force’s finding of “no credible evidence” and the subsequent ridicule heaped on the allegations by major U.S. news outlets, the October Surprise case was cast aside as a “conspiracy theory,” which is how it is still categorized by Washington’s insiders and by Wikipedia.

However, subsequent disclosures have revealed that a flood of new evidence incriminating the Republicans arrived at the House task force in its final weeks, in December 1992, so much so that chief counsel Lawrence Barcella says he recommended that task force chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, extend the investigation for several months. However, Barcella said Hamilton refused, citing procedural difficulties.

Instead, the incriminating evidence was simply kept from other task force members, and the investigation was shut down with a finding of Republican innocence. It even appears that a late-arriving report from the Russian government about its own intelligence on the case – corroborating allegations of a Republican-Iranian deal – was not even shown to Hamilton, the chairman.

When questioned this year, Hamilton told me he had no recollection of ever seeing the Russian report (though it was addressed to him) and Barcella added that he didn’t “recall whether I showed [Hamilton] the Russian report or not.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Key October Surprise Evidence Hidden.”]

According to other recent interviews, dissent within the task force over some of the irrational arguments being used to clear the Republicans was suppressed by Hamilton and Barcella. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Tricky October Surprise Report.”]

In other words, Official Washington preferred to sweep this unpleasant scandal under the rug rather than confront the facts and their troubling implications.

Yet, with Reagan remaining a conservative icon and his anti-government policies still in vogue among millions of Americans – slashing taxes for the rich, weakening corporate regulations, rejecting alternative energy, and expanding the military budget – the lost history of this broader Iran-Contra scandal has turned out to be a case that what the country didn’t know did turn out to hurt it.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.  

Thousands of extra-judiciary drone killings, all personally approved by Peace Nobel Laureate, Obama, and all with casualties and so-called ‘collateral damage’, costs the affected, mostly poor communities, tens of thousands of lives and destroyed properties and public infrastructure valued at millions of dollars; an assurance to keep them poor and submissive.

The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility.

Other serious close calls

In November 1979, a recorded scenario describing a Russian nuclear attack had been entered into the US warning system NORAD. The scenario was perceived as a real full-scale Soviet attack. Nuclear missiles and bombers were readied. After six minutes the mistake became obvious. After this incident new security routines were introduced.

Despite these changed routines, less that one year later the mistake was repeated – this time more persistent and dangerous. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US national security adviser, was called at three o’clock in the morning by a general on duty. He was informed that 220 Soviet missiles were on their way towards the USA. A moment later a new call came, saying that 2,200 missiles had been launched.

Brzezinski was about to call President Jimmy Carter when the general called for a third time reporting that the alarm had been cancelled.

The mistake was caused by a malfunctioning computer chip. Several similar false alarms have been reported, although they did not reach the national command.

We have no reports from the Soviet Union similar to these computer malfunctions. Maybe the Russians have less trust in their computers, just as Colonel Petrov showed? However, there are many reports on serious accidents in the manufacture and handling of nuclear weapons.

I have received reliable information from senior military officers in the Soviet Union regarding heavy use of alcohol and drugs among the personnel that monitor the warning and control systems, just as in the USA.

The story of the “Norwegian weather rocket” in 1995 is often presented as a particularly dangerous incident. Russians satellites warned of a missile on its way from Norway towards Russia. President Yeltsin was called in the middle of the night; the “nuclear war laptop” was opened; and the president discussed the situation with his staff. The “missile” turned out not to be directed towards Russia.

I see this incident as an indication that when the relations between the nuclear powers are good, then the risk of a misunderstanding is very small. The Russians were not likely to expect an attack at that time.

Indian soldiers fire artillery in northernmost part of Kargil region

Close calls have occurred not only between the two superpowers. India and Pakistan are in a chronic but active conflict regarding Kashmir. At least twice this engagement has threatened to expand into a nuclear war, namely at the Kargil conflict in 1999 and after an attack on the Indian Parliament by Pakistani terrorists in 2001.

Both times, Pakistan readied nuclear weapons for delivery. Pakistan has a doctrine of first use: If Indian military forces transgress over the border to Pakistan, that country intends to use nuclear weapons.

Pakistan does not have a system with a “permissive link”, where a code must be transmitted from the highest authority in order to make a launch of nuclear weapons possible. Military commanders in Pakistan have the technical ability to use nuclear weapons without the approval of the political leaders in the country. India, with much stronger conventional forces, uses the permissive link and has declared a “no first use” principle.

The available extensive reports from both these incidents show that the communication between the political and the military leaders was highly inadequate. Misunderstandings on very important matters occurred to an alarming degree. During both conflicts between India and Pakistan, intervention by US leaders was important in preventing escalation and a nuclear war.

We know little about close calls in the other nuclear-weapon states.

The UK prepared its nuclear weapons for use during the Cuba conflict. There were important misunderstandings between military and political leaders during that incident. Today all British nuclear weapons are based on submarines. The missiles can, as a rule, be launched only after a delay of many hours. Mistakes will thus be much less likely. The Guardian carried this report in 2014 with some very serious examples of accidents.

France, on the contrary, claims that it has parts of its nuclear arsenal ready for immediate action, on order from the President. There are no reports of close calls. There is no reason to label the collision between a British and French nuclear-armed submarine in 2009 as a close call.

China has a “no first use” doctrine and probably does not have weapons on hair-trigger alert, which decreases the risk of dangerous mistakes.

Why was there no nuclear war?

Eric Schlosser, author of the book “Command and Control,” told this story: “An elderly physicist, who had taken part in the development of the nuclear weapons, told me: ‘If anyone had said in 1945, after the bombing of Nagasaki, that no other city in the world would be attacked with atomic weapons, no one would have believed him. We expected more nuclear wars.’”

Yes, how come there was no more nuclear war?

In the nuclear-weapon states they say that deterrence was the reason. MAD – “Mutual Assured Destruction” – saved us. Even if I attack first, the other side will have sufficient weapons left to cause “unacceptable” damage to my country. So I won’t do it.

Deterrence was important. In addition, the “nuclear winter” concept was documented in the mid-1980s. The global climate consequences of a major nuclear war would be so severe that the “winner” would starve to death. An attack would be suicidal. Maybe this insight contributed to the decrease in nuclear arsenals that started after 1985?

MAD cannot explain why nuclear weapons were not used in wars against countries that did not have them. In the Korean war, General MacArthur wanted to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese forces that came in on the North Korean side but he was stopped by President Truman.

During the Vietnam war many voices in the USA demanded that nukes should be used.

In the two wars against Iraq the US administration threatened to use nuclear weapons if Iraq used chemical weapons. Many Soviet military leaders wanted to use atomic bombs in Afghanistan.

What held them back?

Most important were moral and humanitarian reasons. This was called the “Nuclear Threshold.”

If the USA had used nuclear weapons against North Vietnam the results would have been so terrible that the US would have been a pariah country for decades. The domestic opinion in the US would not have accepted the bombing. Furthermore, the radioactive fallout in neighbouring countries, some of them allies to the US, would have been unacceptable.

Are moral and humanitarian reasons a sufficient explanation why nukes were never used? I do not know, but find no other.

Civil society organisations have been important in establishing a high nuclear threshold. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) has been particularly important in this regard. IPPNW has persistently pointed at the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and warned that a global nuclear war could end human civilisation and, maybe, exterminate mankind.

The opinion by the International Court in The Hague, that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons was generally prohibited, is also important.

The nuclear-weapon states do not intend to use nuclear weapons except as deterrence against attack. Deterrence, however, works only if the enemy believes that, in the end, I am prepared to use nuclear weapons.

Both NATO and Russia have doctrines that nukes can be used even if the other side has not done so. In a conflict of great importance, a side that is much weaker and maybe is in danger of being overrun is likely to threaten to use its atomic weapons. If you threaten to use them you may in the end be forced to follow through on your threat.

The close calls I have described in this article mean that mankind could have been exterminated by mistake. Only decades after the events have we been allowed to learn about these threats. It is likely that equally dangerous close calls have occurred.

So why did these mistakes not lead to a nuclear war, when during the Cold War the tension was so high and the superpowers seemed to have expected a nuclear war to break out?

Let me tell of a close call I have experienced in my personal life. I was driving on a highway, in the middle of the day, when I felt that the urge to fall asleep, which sometimes befalls me, was about to overpower my vigilance. There was no place to stop for a rest. After a minute I fell asleep. The car veered against the partition in the middle of the road and its side was torn up. My wife and I were unharmed.

But if there had been no banister? The traffic on the opposing side of the road was heavy and there were lorries.

The nuclear close calls did not lead to a war. Those who study accidents say that often there must be two and often three mistakes or failures occurring simultaneously.

There have been a sufficient number of dangerous situations between the USA and Russia that could have happened at almost the same time. Shortly before the Able Archer exercise, a Korean passenger plane was shot down by Soviet airplanes.

What if?

But what if Soviet fighters had, by mistake, been attacked and shot down over Europe?

What if any of the American airplanes carrying nuclear weapons had mistaken the order in the exercise for a real order to bomb Soviet targets? In the Soviet Union bombers were on high alert, with pilots in the cockpit, waiting for a US attack.

What if the fighters sent to protect the U-2 plane that had strayed into Soviet territory in Siberia during the Cuba crisis had used the nuclear missile they were carrying?

Eric Schlosser tells in his book about a great number of mistakes and accidents in the handling of nuclear weapons in the USA.

Bombs have fallen from airplanes or crashed with the carrier. These accidents would not cause a nuclear war, but a nuclear explosion during a tense international crisis when something else also went wrong, such as the “Petrov Incident” mentioned earlier, could have led to very dangerous mistakes.

Terrorist attacks with nuclear weapons simultaneous with a large cyber attack might start the final war, if the political situation is strained.

Dr. Alan Philips guessed in a study from the year 2003 that the risk of a nuclear war occurring during the Cold War was 40%. Maybe so. Or maybe 20%. Or 75%. But most definitely not zero -not close to zero.

Today the danger of a nuclear war between Russia and the USA is much lower that during the Cold War. However, mistakes can happen.

Dr. Bruce Blair, who has been in the chain of command for nuclear weapons, insists that unauthorized firing of nuclear missiles is possible. The protection is not perfect.

In general, the system for control and for launching is built to function with great redundancy, whatever happens to the lines of command or to the command centers. The controls against launches by mistake, equipment failure, interception by hackers, technical malfunction, or human madness, seem to have a lower priority. At least in the US, but there is no reason to believe the situation in Russia to be more secure.

The tension between Russia and the USA is increasing. Threats of use of nuclear weapons have, unbelievably, been heard.

But we have been lucky so far.

As I said in the beginning of this paper, quoting the Canberra Commission:

The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used — accidentally or by decision — defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

The most important source for this review is the Chatham House Report from 2014 “Too close for comfort.”

La humanidad depende de los hidrocarburos, tanto del petróleo como del gas natural. Confunde el nivel de nuestra dependencia cuando no vemos el papel que los hidrocarburos juegan en proveer  energía, combustibles y productos esenciales para la petroquímica y fundamentales en el mundo en que vivimos. Se viene afirmando hace ya algún tiempo que nuestra dependencia de los hidrocarburos está disminuyendo gracias al aumento del uso de otras fuentes energéticas, fuentes alternativas como la eólica, solar, geotérmica o biomasa. Estas afirmaciones aplican solamente al análisis de uso de hidrocarburos en la generación de electricidad, y aún cuando el uso de energías alternativas en esta área es todavía mínimo se puede hablar de disminución. Pero si hablamos del uso general de hidrocarburos más allá de la electricidad, nuestra dependencia es mucho más obvia; y, el gas natural en particular tiene un uso muy variado y crucial para el mundo en que vivimos.

Michael T. Klare en un artículo publicado en Global Research y en TomDispatch, en inglés, y en Rebelión en su versión en español el día 5 de mayo (“El  colapso del viejo orden basado en el petróleo”) nos explica interesantemente  el fracaso de una reunión en Doha, Qatar, de los países de la OPEC a quienes se sumó México y Rusia  en que intentaron reducir la producción petrolera para levantar los precios del crudo, medida que no pudo implementarse porque el principal productor que es Arabia Saudí se negó a reducir su producción, en parte porque mejores precios beneficiarían a Irán que es su enemigo.

Klare plantea que la nueva realidad que en el futuro cercano enfrentan los países productores de petróleo es poco prometedora, y afirma que la oferta supera la demanda por lo que estamos viviendo tiempos del máximo de la demanda, no de la producción de petróleo. Esto, debido en parte a la desaceleración del crecimiento económico, lo que es cierto, y según Klare resultado del comienzo de “una revolución verde.” Esta frase “revolución verde” debemos recordar fue acuñada por los agro-negocios en los años sesenta, por lo tanto: totalmente cuestionable. Klare agrega que en esta revolución verde “el planeta hará la transición hacia fuentes de combustible que no sean en base al carbono” y que “el precio de la energía solar y eólica continuarán cayendo y otras fuentes alternativas de energía han de entrar en funcionamiento.”

Primero, el mundo en que vivimos necesita para funcionar diariamente 95 millones de barriles de petróleo diarios, esa sería la demanda, se ofrecen en el mercado poco más de 96 millones de barriles diarios, que sería la oferta, esto según la Agencia Internacional de Energía (IEA siglas en inglés) y considerando que la diferencia entre ambas oferta y demanda es fluctuante debido a que la industria petrolera es muy compleja, requiere mantenimiento programado de continuo y suceden además imprevistos.  Pensemos simplemente que para  transportan estos 95 millones de barriles diarios se requieren aproximadamente 146 barcos super-tanques transitando en el océano a la vez; si nos imaginamos un barco detrás del otro o uno al lado del otro, estaríamos frente a un espectáculo imponente, y mucho más imponente todavía cuando nos percatamos que este crudo impresionante que se mueve por el mundo es el que se requiere simplemente para el funcionamiento del mundo un solo día. No debemos olvidar que sea cual fuere el precio del petróleo, ya sea 45 dólares el barril o 100 dólares el barril, igual lo consumimos, o sea que el precio no ha bajado el consumo y por lo tanto no va a impedir que el petróleo se agote algún día — no hablemos ni siquiera de cuando sino que dejémoslo así simplemente como algo que inevitablemente va a suceder en el futuro.

Sin duda ha aumentado la explotación de petróleo no convencional, por ejemplo, las arenas bituminosas de Alberta, Canadá y el petróleo y gas natural de esquisto bituminosos (principalmente en Estados Unidos) ambas explotaciones causando destrozos irreparables para el medio ambiente en ambos países, pero el petróleo convencional de bajo costo en el mundo continúa disminuyendo notablemente su producción, debido al agotamiento de sus campos petroleros, aquí en Canadá el mejor ejemplo es la baja de la producción de petróleo convencional de Alberta que  de un millón de barriles diarios en décadas pasadas ha llegado a apenas a medio millón de barriles diarios, y algo similar ha venido ocurriendo en Alaska donde se llegó aproducir 2 millones de barriles diarios en los años 80 pero hoy en día la producción máxima es de alrededor de 400.00 barriles diarios. Se prevé que para el año 2020 la producción de petróleo convencional en Alaska no será de 200.000 barriles diarios y que para el 2030 la famosa tubería extendida de norte a sur en Alaska quedará en desuso debido justamente al agotamiento del petróleo convencional de Alaska –según la ley cuando esta tubería quede en desuso tendrá que ser desmantelada, seguramente por el estado estadounidense ya que las corporaciones petroleras evitan hacer su parte.

Los otros combustibles alternativos para el transporte, los biocombustible que son principalmente el alcohol etanol o etílico (extraído principalmente del maíz, la caña de azúcar y la remolacha, en Estados Unidos y Brasil  se produce el 80 por ciento de este alcohol en el mundo) y el biodiesel (producido de aceites vegetales, principalmente la soja y especialmente en Alemania donde se produce más del 60 por ciento de este biocombustible) son altamente subvencionados por los estados que los producen y tienen una rentabilidad extremadamente variable. Además, vale considerar las contradicciones éticas de usar productos básicos alimenticios para producir biocombustibles en un mundo donde mil millones de personas carecen de alimentos y pasan hambre todos los días.  Considerando entonces su rentabilidad cuestionable, los desafíos éticos que implican, y los que presentan para el transporte (por ser corrosivos para las tuberías al ser higroscópicos, o sea absorben agua) y encima la realidad de que no pueden ser una solución definitiva al problema energético, en Estados Unidos donde se ha hecho más alarde de la producción de etanol y su uso como mezcla con la gasolina que le sirve como oxigenador a ésta, las mezclas son generalmente  10 por ciento de etanol y 90 por ciento gasolina, también se han fabricados vehículos llamados “flex-fuel” donde el alcohol puede llegar al 85 por ciento de la mezcla. Entonces con todo lo que se habla la realidad en Estados Unidos es que sólo el 5 por ciento de los combustibles usados en el transporte son biocombustibles –el 95 por ciento son hidrocarburos.  En Brasil que fue el pionero en el uso de etanol en una mezcla del 25  por ciento de etanol con el resto de gasolina, de los vehículos que circulan diariamente un 25 por ciento usan etanol, el resto usa hidrocarburos solamente.

En el área del transporte reciben mucha publicidad los vehículos de pasajeros eléctricos y los híbridos de electricidad y gasolina. Las corporaciones fabricantes de vehículos le dan relevancia a los llamados vehículos ecológicos en parte por ser estos una estrategia para mejorar su imagen pública, a no olvidar que son las corporaciones las responsables de buena parte de la polución que enfrentamos en el medio ambiente. Pero el uso de vehículos eléctricos o híbridos en el mundo, donde circulan aproximadamente mil millones de vehículos, es de sólo el 0,1 por o sea sólo 1 de cada 1000 vehículos circulante es eléctrico o híbrido. Noruega es una excepción pues declara que el 22 por ciento de sus vehículos son eléctricos, tiene 220 vehículos eléctricos o híbridos cada 1000 vehículos circulantes. Europa en conjunto tiene 14 vehículos eléctricos o híbridos cada mil circulantes (1,4 por ciento); Estados Unidos tiene 7 vehículos eléctricos o híbridos cada mil circulantes (0,7 por ciento); China tiene 8,5 vehículos eléctricos o híbridos cada mil circulantes (0,85 por ciento).  Hay que considerar que los vehículos eléctricos son entre un 50 a un 100 por ciento más caros que los regulares a gasolina o diesel y que los híbridos son entre un 10 a un 20 por ciento más caros que los regulares a gasolina o diesel. Lo que sin duda es de suma importancia, sin embargo, es que en los países más ricos el uso de la electricidad en trenes de pasajeros y buses en algunas ciudades ha aumentado marcadamente.

Volviendo a la energía eléctrica, esta se produce en general de diferentes fuentes, pero el carbón mineral continúa siendo su principal fuente de generación (41 por ciento), el gas natural lo sigue (21 por ciento), luego está la fuente hidroeléctrica (16 por ciento), la nuclear (13 por ciento), la del petróleo (5 por ciento) y la eólica (1 por ciento). La energía solar es una mínima fuente de generación de energía eléctrica en países que dicen usarla como tal. En Alemania, que ha desarrollado la tecnología renovable, y de hecho tiene a más de 350.000  trabajadores produciendo equipos y aparatos para producir energía renovable, industria con la que Alemania abastece  a gran parte del mundo,  pero su propia electricidad es en un 47 por ciento dependiente de quemar carbón, además de ser en un 17 por ciento nuclear y en un 16 por ciento eólica y solar. Alemania está a la cabeza, en el mundo, en el uso de energía eólica.

En Estados Unidos el 78 por ciento de la electricidad es producida en plantas nucleares, el 6 por ciento la produce el petróleo y el gas natural, y el 1 por ciento la energía eólica. En Canadá el 63 por ciento de la electricidad la producen las plantas hidroléctricas, la fuente nuclear produce el 15 por ciento, el carbón produce el 13 por ciento, el gas natural produce el 6 por ciento y la eólica produce el 1 por ciento. Los estados del golfo pérsico viven de la exportación de petróleo y gas y  por su puesto producen electricidad en un 100 por ciento de estos hidrocarburos; lo mismo sucede en Irán, ambos países proyectan construir plantas nucleares para remplazar los hidrocarburos como fuente de energía cuando estos comiencen a declinar. En  Francia el 78 por ciento de la electricidad la producen  plantas nucleares, sólo el 1 por ciento depende de energía eólica. Rusia, que es uno de los grandes productores de gas natural del mundo, utiliza el gas natural para producir electricidad en un 48 por ciento, el carbón en 19 por ciento, energía hidroeléctrica y energía nuclear cada una en un 16 por ciento e igual que la nuclear. Sorpresivamente en Venezuela, que tiene las reservas más grandes del mundo de hidrocarburos, produce su electricidad en un 70 por ciento en base a energía hidroeléctrica.

El petróleo es una fuente vital de energía  en el funcionamiento del transporte terrestre, aéreo y marítimo en el mundo, fundamental en un mundo globalizado dependiente del transporte de bienes. El petróleo es también crucial para el funcionamiento de máquinas en los caminos, en las minas y en la agricultura. Los hidrocarburos producen la materia prima orgánica para la industria de los polímeros (materiales plásticos) que son unos 16 materiales que van desde el poliéster al poliuretano, son además fundamentales en fertilizantes con base en el nitrógeno, y de suma importancia en el combustible que da calor y permite la preparación de alimentos en el mundo. Imaginarse sobrevivir un invierno canadiense sin calefacción es imposible, no sólo que la leña no puede competir con el nivel de calor del gas natural sino que tampoco nos duraría demasiado y tiene también alto nivel contaminante.

Para bien y para mal, hemos construido un mundo completamente dependiente del gas natural y del petróleo, cuya producción sin duda ha de decaer por agotamiento. Un mundo basado en la acumulación de riqueza a corto plazo, sin planes de largo plazo, donde se consume sin mesura, se busca la satisfacción inmediata, se vive alejado o separado de la naturaleza, donde las energías alternativas y el reciclaje aunque válidos no son suficientes por lo que cumplen un papel de adormecedores en el proceso de facilitación acrítica y continuada del consumismo masivo en la práctica y del ideal de este consumismo masivo cuando este no se puede implementar en la práctica. Occidente continúa en su embuste, manteniendo un positivismo engañador usando las energías alternativas, el reciclaje y la falacia de que un día Estados Unidos logrará autoabastecerse de petróleo para evitar el cuestionamiento y la emergencia de alternativas reales a un mundo sin futuro. El medio ambiente peligra pero más peligra la especie humana y su principal enemigo es ella misma.

Mario R. Fernández

First published in September 2, 2014

The most severe crisis in the Middle East to date, the coming to power of the “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria has entered an extremely absurd phase. The European states are about to follow the lead of the U.S. by exporting arms to the Kurdistan Regional Government under the command of Mustafa Barzani.This is being justified as “humanitarian aid”. They allegedly want to help preventing the genocide against the Yazidis. Accompanied by strong media presence, the German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited a family of Yazidi victims. He intended to illustrate the suffering of the Yazidis and the impending genocide in order to manipulate public opinion towards accepting the supposedly exceptional situation of the necessity of German arms exports into a crisis region.

The German government and other governments in the West in conjunction with their mass media are giving the strong impression that arms transfers to the Iraqi Kurds is the only possibility to prevent the impending catastrophe. All the other short- and long-term alternatives have not even been taken into consideration. All indications put forward by experts regarding the dramatic consequences of military support of the Iraqi Kurds are being systematically ignored. Therefore, Western governments raise the suspicion that humanitarian motives to protect the Yazidis merely constitute a fabricated pretext to enforce their own interests.

The U.S. is taking advantage of the incontestable threat posed by the brutal “IS” combatants in order to polish their damaged image in the Middle East and simultaneously try to underline that their further military presence in the region is indispensable. At the same time, the virtual inventor of the “IS” is none other than former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In 2006, during the peak of the U.S.–Iran conflict, she prompted all Sunni states to set up a “Sunni belt” in response to the alleged “Shia belt” that Iran had supposedly created against Arab Sunnis. Henceforth, the Lebanese government received military aid with the explicit purpose of containing Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon. Then the Secretary-General of the Saudi National Security Council, the infamous Prince Bandar bin Sultan, set to work. The results were the birth of brutal groups such as Al-Nusra Front and “ISIS”, which sprang up like mushrooms to fight the Assad regime in Syria. In the final analysis, the outcome of the 2006 Condoleezza Rice plan was also the creation of the barbaric “IS” group, which is unprecedented in the entire history of Islam.

Especially since the beginning of this year, the German political élite are agitating for “more responsibility” in world politics. For this purpose, they want to soften restrictions with regard to arms transfers to crisis-hidden regions as well as remove parliamentary barriers to so-called humanitarian interventions. Since then, there have been massive attempts to eradicate moral objections from the collective memory of Germans to be able to participate in future global military conflicts without any restraints. As a result, the impending genocide against the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq was skillfully built up to be the number one issue by influential media outlets. The credibility of the humanitarian motives of the German government can be measured by the fact that the same government did not say a word about the atrocities of the Israeli government in Gaza which was taking place at the same time. There is silence about the suffering of the Palestinians but the suffering of the Yazidis is being exploited for their own policies. This is a terrifying hypocrisy.

The four regional states affected would be well advised to not allow further intervention by the U.S. and other Western states into the Middle East. The West will not remove the evil of “IS” which it has caused itself. It will rather intensify chaos in the Middle East. The U.S. neoconservatives have long been talking about a policy of “creative chaos” in the Middle East. The “creativity” of this chaos consists of the consolidation of U.S. hegemony in the region by causing area-wide instability and generating more “failed states”. Indeed, ethnic, religious, civil and cross-national wars carry the Middle East in that direction. The reasons for this retrogression should be clear:

By dint of Western arms transfers, Iraqi Kurds will proclaim a Kurdish state in northern Iraq and consequently split Iraq into several parts. The fact that some weeks ago Israel announced that it would immediately accept a Kurdish state should give us cause for concern. The claim to be the sole representatives of a Kurdish state made by the Barzani leadership, who follows the concept of Kurdish nationalism, would inevitably evoke reactions from Kurds in Turkey and Syria who are under the influence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Not least because meanwhile the PKK rejects a Kurdish national state and obviously pursues the aim to create autonomous Kurdish regions within the existing states of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. A civil war between Kurds would be best suited to provoke a war between the four states at hand and to bring nationalist currents into the arena. It is obvious that under such circumstances, the brutal supporters of the “Caliphate” would not be weakened. By contrast, they would find ideal conditions for building their “Caliphate” and “Islamic State” (the Western media carefully abstains from using quotation marks) in the heart of the Middle East and would henceforth frighten all its states and peoples, including numerous ethno-religious minorities. The German and European arms fetishists are walking right into the trap of those U.S. neoconservatives who long ago set this trap in conjunction with their transatlantic puppet masters, when they sell arms to the Iraqi Kurds. To put it bluntly: I think that these arms transfers would be the most imprudent thing that the Europeans could do in the name of “humanitarian intervention”.

Nobody knows whether we can prevent the German and other European governments from committing such stupidity. Regardless of this, it is primarily the four affected states themselves that have a common interest in fighting the cancer of the “Islamic Caliphate”. This “Caliphate” is massively steered from abroad and it threatens all religious and ethnic minorities – the Yazidis of Iraq and Turkey, Christians across the Middle East, the Alawites of Syria, the Alevites of Turkey, Shias of Iraq, Iran and other parts of the Middle East, as well as Kurds of all four countries. Even the majority of Sunnis who resist the policies of the “Islamic State” would be in danger. It is especially a disgrace for the Islamic states in general – and it casts a gloomy cloud over the positive civilizing achievements of tolerance, the protection of minorities and the peaceful coexistence of different peoples and religions within the Islamic world. Most importantly, it is only the four most affected states themselves – Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey – which are in a position to end the “Caliphate” project through common efforts.

The challenge that is currently being posed by “IS” also proves how important it is for the four affected states in the Middle East to act beyond short-term national interests, to cooperate in security matters and to generate a common security framework. Beyond putting an end to the “IS” challenge, only such a perspective allows them to solve common cross-border problems in transnational dialog and negotiations. Apart from “IS”, the Kurdish question poses the most significant common issue of the four states. Within the scope of a joint regional security framework, the Kurdish dream of more administrative autonomy could be realized by dint of direct dialog and negotiations without violating the territorial integrity of the four states’ Kurdish settlement areas. Since the beginning of the 20^th century, this unsolved problem has provoked numerous bloody wars and permanent domestic conflicts. Therefore, the Kurdish population deserves a lasting peaceful resolution.

This could be facilitated if the four states negotiated with all Kurdish movements. Apart from the Kurdish question, there are other broad transnational issues such as the extension of energy and water supply, the development of transport infrastructure, the liberalization of trade and many other projects that can be regulated via the cooperation of the four states in order to increase the social security and welfare of the region. No less important is the fact that the four states could succeed in ending the damaging interventions of the U.S., Israel and other states and create the conditions for a peaceful and economically prosperous Middle East even beyond the frontiers of the four states, providing that they are willing to act in concert.

 Dr. Mohssen Massarrat (professor emeritus at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and expert on international relations and the Middle East)   

 Translated from the German original – entitled “Die Bekämpfung des sogenannten »Islamischen Staates« liegt allein in der Hand der betroffenen Staaten” [Fighting against the »Islamic State« solely lies in the hands of the affected states], NachDenkSeiten: Die kritische Website (Germany), 29 August 2014 – by Kaveh Yazdani, and edited by Ali Fathollah-Nejad.

New data about UK military operations in Iraq and Syria has been released to Drone Wars UK and Vice News over the past few days following separate Freedom of Information (FoI) requests.

Vice News obtained details of the number of combatants killed or wounded in RAF strikes each month since Oct 2014.

The data shows that just under 1,000 combatants had been killed with almost 100 wounded.

While the MoD are extremely careful to say they cannot validate such casualty figures as they have no one on the ground, at the same time they continue to insist that no civilians have been killed in any of 740 British air strikes which have launched around 1,400 bombs and missiles.

Coalition air strike in Kobani, Syria

The claims echo those of the US which argues that only around 40 civilians have “likely” been killed in a total of around 12,000 air strikes by the Coalition.  Reports complied by Airwars indicate that a minimum of around 1,200 non-combatant civilians have died in these strikes.

Airwars founder Chris Wood told the Independent

“Even with the widespread use of relatively precise weapons by the West, air strikes are the most lethal weapon against civilians. It would be unprecedented in the history of warfare for it not to have killed civilians. It is a matter of public record there have been a huge number of civilian casualties and yet the Ministry of Defence continue to deny any caused by the UK.

UK air strikes increase

Figures released to Drone Wars for the first quarter of 2016 show an increase in UK air strikes. The number of strikes carried out by the UK in Iraq and Syria during first three months of 2016 were 30% higher than the previous quarter rising from 161 to 207. ‘Air strike’ however is something of a flexible term. The more reliable metric of ‘munitions fired’ shows a much greater increase of 80%, with 495 bombs and missiles fired in first quarter of 2016 compared with 274 in last quarter of 2015.

The data also shows that while the MoD deployed further aircraft in December 2015 following the decision by parliament to conduct strikes in Syria as well as in Iraq, the vast majority of British strikes continue to take place in Iraq – 86% (178) in Iraq and 14% (29) – in Syria since the beginning of January 2016.

Overall between Sept 2014 and the end of March 2016 the UK launched a total of 682 air strikes against ISIS launching 1,367 missiles and bombs according to MoD figures.  See our statistics page for more details.

British drones in Iraq, Syria and… Libya?

In contrast with the general upward trend however, strikes from British Reaper drones against ISIS declined by around 50% between the two quarters. From October to December 2015 there were 37 drone strikes in Iraq and Syria while from Jan to March 2016 there were just 20.  Although it may be thought that the drop in strikes from British drones may indicate an increase in their use for surveillance and intelligence gathering missions rather than for strikes, in fact the overall number of British Reaper sorties has declined by 22%.

The drop in Reaper operations in Iraq and Syria will add to speculation that some UK drones may have been moved to undertake missions elsewhere – perhaps over Libya alongside US drones.

Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood told the Foreign Affairs committee that British aircraft were conducting surveillance  flights over Libya but declined to name what aircraft were being used.  Although MoD Ministers again told MPs that UK Reaper drones have only been deployed on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sorties in Iraq and Syria, when asked directly how many “operations” UK Reaper drones have undertaken in Libyan airspace the MoD refused to comment. This however may be reading far too much into particular wording.

Support for military intervention against ISIS in Libya has ebbed and flowed over the past few months. In mid-April Defence Secretary Michael Fallon called ISIS in Libya “a direct threat to Britain”.  However ten days later Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond was arguing that there was no immediate threat from ISIS bases in Libya.  For legal and diplomatic cover Western governments want Faiez Serraj, head of the UN backed unity government, to call for security assistance – something he has been reluctant to do since his arrival in Tripoli for fear of being seen within Libya as a western stooge.

A milestone for drones

Meanwhile Reuters recentlyrevealed that in 2015, US drones launched more air strikes in Afghanistan than conventional aircraft for the first time.

While the overall number of strikes in Afghanistan has declined from the height of the intervention in 2011, there have still been more than 1,200 US air strikes in Afghanistan since the ‘end of combat operations’ in December 2014.

In Afghanistan the percentage of strikes launched by drones has risen 10 fold over the past four years, from 5% in 2011 to 56%  last year, with every indication that this was set to continue to rise in 2016 (see graph). In Iraq and Syria, according to figures released to Air Force Times, US drones have launched 7% of US weaponry – around 3,000 bombs and missiles – with 1 in 5 drone flights launching a strike.

While we are a long way from drones dominating air campaigns, the recent commitment of both the USand the UK to increase the number of armed drones in service, as well as their continued heavy investment in drone development for the future, will no doubt see a further rise in their use.

New details have emerged regarding the mysterious downing of EgyptAir flight MS804.

‘TAMPERED EVIDENCE?’ – Alleged items from doomed EgyptAir flight MS804 – notice the debris appears to be without fire damage. Reports suggest workers gathering evidence didn’t follow protocol. (tribwgntv.files.wordpress.com)

According to early reports, we learned that EgyptAir’s MS804 Airbus A320 carrying 66 people, left from Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport at 11.09pm (21.09 GMT) local time on Wednesday night bound for Cairo International Airport 01:15 GMT (03:15 Cairo time).

Around 2.45am Egypt local time (00.45 GMT) Greek air traffic controllers reported MS804, was headed southeast before making an abrupt turn to the northwest – only to vanish from radar while traveling at 37,000 feet, inside of Egyptian airspace.

With no distress call given, officials are still confounded over the direct cause of the air disaster – one week later.

Intially, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos stated that MS804 abruptly ‘swerved’ at a 90 degree angle and then 360 degrees, before dramatically losing altitude  – but according to Egyptian investigators this week, this claim is questionable until the black box is located:

The head of Egypt’s National Air Navigation Services Company is challenging that account. Administrative board chairman Mohi El-Din Azmi told Egyptian state-run media Al-Ahram on Sunday that the plane did not swerve or lose altitude before it disappeared off the radar.

After the disappearance of MH370, there was an onslaught of reportage offering insight into the unprecedented hull loss of the Boeing 777.

Back in 2014, 21WIRE discovered that the ACARS system primarily developed to automatically detect and report changes to the four major flight phases, known as OOOI, (Out of the gate, Off the ground, On the ground and Into the gate) are determined by algorithms tapped into aircraft sensors. ACARS transmissions are then beamed to the ground radar through digital messages. Each new flight phase is recorded and sent to the ground via this system, the flight origin, the amount of fuel, as well as – the flight’s destination.

CNN reported that “French aviation officials revealed that an automated system aboard the plane sent messages about smoke in the front of the aircraft.” This data was acquired from the ACARS system – which would mean authorities would also have access to the location of the aircraft.

‘MS804 MYSTERY’ – More apparent wreckage from the EgyptAir disaster – once again, no fire damage looks to be present.  Larger sections of the plane have yet to be found. (Photo thestar.com)

A Reuters report stated the following earlier this week:

The EgyptAir jet that disappeared last week did not show technical problems before taking off from Paris, sources within the Egyptian investigation committee said late on Tuesday.

The sources said the plane did not make contact with Egyptian air traffic control, but Egyptian air traffic controllers were able to see it on radar on a border area between Egyptian and Greek airspace known as KUMBI, 260 nautical miles from Cairo.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources said the plane disappeared without swerving off radar screens after less than a minute of it entering Egyptian airspace. Air traffic controllers from Greece and Egypt have given differing accounts of the plane’s final moments.

With so many conflicting reports, there is a reasoned and logical explanation for what might have happened to MS804…

As mentioned previously 2014, both the MH370 and MH17 catastrophes lead the 21WIRE to uncover the origin of the Beoing Uninterruptible Autopilot:

The Boeing 777 along with other Boeing models [including the A320] can in fact be flown remotely through the use of independent embedded software and satellite communication. Once this advanced system is engaged, it can disallow any pilot or potential hijacker from controlling a plane, as the rooted setup uses digital signals that communicate with air traffic control, satellite links, as well as other government entities for the remainder of a flight’s journey.

This technology is known as the Boeing Honeywell ‘Uninterruptible’ Autopilot System.

In fact, since 1954, “Boeing filed for a patent called “Composite Aircraft” that related to the ‘method and means’ to control an airliner.”

In 1984 and 1986, Honeywell had two very important patents pertaining to the modernization of Flight Management System technology, both helping with the integration of automated flight digital data processing and in 1995, Boeing filed a patent for an “alternate destination planner,” to be used in conjunction with other Honeywell patents.

‘DRONE JET’ – NASA’s N833NA, was a remotely-piloted Boeing 720 airliner, here it makes a practice approach at Rogers Dry Lake, California on December 1st, 1984. The crash test was widely regarded as a complete failure in terms of the flame-reducing fuel additive – but the real prize was flying a huge airliner remotely. (Photo thisdayinaviation.com)

After the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, President George Bush called for the creation of remote control systems to be placed within commercial airliners in the event of an emergency. This new technology would grant air traffic controllers along with other government agencies control over an aircraft – for its final intended destination.

Remote ‘fly-by-wire’ technology  has been possible with large-scale airliners (Boeing 720’s) since at least 1984. Based on history, evidence suggests Flight Management Systems within Boeing models were capable of remote flight well before Bush’s politicized decree following 9/11.

In August of 2003, Wired magazine linked to a Wall Street Journal report entitled, “Flying Safety Put on Auto-Pilot,” which discussed auto-pilot systems already in place:

Airbus and Honeywell are close to perfecting technology that takes control of airplanes to prevent them from crashing into obstacles, The Wall Street Journal reports. When audible warnings from crash-avoidance systems are ignored, the system overrides actions by the pilot and takes evasive maneuvers, the newspaper said.

The system would link crash-warning devices, already common on airliners, with cockpit computers that could automate flying to prevent collisions, executives from Honeywell (HON) said.

‘FLY-BY-WIRE’ – The United States patent for the Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot
dated November, 28th 2006 (Photo flightglobal.com)

We should also remember that in 2006, Boeing was officially awarded a patent for their ‘uniterruptible’ autopilot system, although their is some speculation a version may have been in use before 9/11. The new system was featured in an article entitled “Boeing wins patent on uninterruptible autopilot system,” republished by Homeland Security News Wire on December 4th, 2006, from John Croft’s Flight Global report, (since taken down from their website) we see clear evidence of those who have direct access to control large commercial airliners at anytime during a flight’s journey, such as the US’s Central Intelligence Agency:

A new Raytheon contract to develop software that uses type of craft, location, and fuel capacity to determine the safest route for a hijacked or otherwise compromised aircraft. This is a great idea, one that must have Chicago, Illinois-based Boeing excited — not out of envy but because it improves the value of its recently awarded patent for a system that, once activated, takes control of the airplane away from the pilots and flies it to a predtermined landing position.

Continuing, the article described Boeing’s counter-terror fly-by-wire method:

Boeing’s is, of course, not the first autopilot technology in existence, but this one has been designed with counterterrorism first and foremost in mind. Not only is it “uninterruptible” — so that even a tortured pilot cannot turn it off — but it can be activated remotely via radio or satellite by government agencies. The system might even include senors on the cockpit door that activate the autopilot of a certain amount of force is used against it.

So what are we to make of the latest EgyptAir disaster involving MS804?

First, we must examine some of the evidence left in plain sight by the media…

In late March, EgyptAir flight MS181 was subjected to a hoax hijack attempt by a passenger claiming to be wearing an “explosive belt.” The BBC reported the following:

Airline officials later said they had been told by Cypriot authorities that the belt was fake.

The hijacker’s motives remain unclear but the Cypriot president said the incident was not terrorism-related.

After a 6 hour ordeal, investigators determined the threat was not real on MS 181, when the Egyptian man facing terror charges, marked by Cypriot officials as Seif Eldin Mustafa, had a ‘hoax’ explosive device attached to him.

Interestingly, Mustafa had a lengthy criminal record and had just been released from prison in March of 2015.

How exactly would someone with the device described, even make it on an aircraft?

Furthermore, why were passengers seen posing in pictures with him?

The BBC had what amounted to a ready-made answer to placate the public, drawing the focus back to airport security:

It is only some small comfort that the man who hijacked Egyptair flight MS181 was bluffing. The bulging white “suicide belt” with wires sticking out turned out to be a fake.

It at least means that this time Egypt cannot be accused of letting someone smuggle explosives through airport security and on to an airliner as they did in October at Sharm El Sheikh airport,destroying a Russian passenger jet in mid-air.

But it still triggers a number of worrying questions about aviation security.

How was it that a passenger, described by the Cypriot authorities as “mentally unstable” was able to carry enough materials through Alexandria airport to resemble a bomb?

And what is to stop any future airline passenger, similarly unarmed, from pretending that he or she has a real device strapped to them?

For Egypt’s battered tourism industry, that has yet to recover from the October airline bombing, this hijack is a further blow it can ill afford.

Although the alleged explosive device was fake according to authorities, Mustafa faced charges of“hijacking, illegal possession of explosives, kidnapping and threats to commit violence,” for an act that was apparently committed for personal reasons to ‘reunite’ with his estranged ex-wife and family.

We have to wonder, was MS181 a warning of things to come for EgyptAir?

We should review some of what we learned in the aftermath of MH 370. Here is a report I compiled in March of 2014, that describes a call for sweeping changes concerning security:

As authorities have mulled over the flights pathway, they’ve enlisted the help of geospatial giant DigitalGlobe, once known as Earth Watch, a satellite imaging corporation that also doubles as a defense contractor. DigitalGlobe was tasked to locate the missing Boeing 777 via their crowdsourcing site tomnod.com. We’re told their efforts have turned up empty, as amateur sleuths combed over millions of satellite images.

Perhaps the true role for this ‘public search’ was to generate excitement for the security and defense surveillance industry – never letting a crisis go to waste. You can already hear the calls for more biometrics, security and surveillance in the wake of MH370, all to be rolled out in an airport near you.

One wonders if the events invloving MS181 in March, were crafted by those in the intelligence community as a precursor for MS804. In many ways, a staged incident becomes a dry run, a drill to gain insight and planning of a future event – all the while gauging the public’s reaction.

In a strange coincidence, MS804 had been the target of so-called vandals who scribbled a warning, “We will bring this plane down,” on bottom of the doomed airliner in July of 2013, after Mohamed Morsi exited office in Egypt.

What are the odds of that happening to MS804?

This kind of media ‘sleight of hand’ was recently explored by 21WIRE contributor Vanessa Beeley, in an article entitled “Gaslighting: State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism,” in which she described a deliberate psychological warfare technique employed to obfuscate the general public over information – perhaps, a precursor to the CIA’s media control program calledProject Mockingbird:

Gaslighting as an abuser’s modus operandi, involves, specifically, the withholding of factual information and its replacement with false or fictional information designed to confuse and disorientate. This subtle and Machiavellian process eventually undermines the mental stability of its victims reducing them to such a depth of insecurity and identity crisis that they become entirely dependent upon their abuser for their sense of reality and even identity.

‘FLIGHT 9268’ – The downed Russian Metrojet in October of 2015. ( Photo missopen)

Egypt in the Crosshairs? 

On October 6th, weeks before the ‘vanishing’ and apparent act of terror on October 31st, involving Metrojet Flight 9268, a Russian Airbus A321 carrying some 224 passengers, Egypt expressed support over Russia’s military intervention in Syria – something which may have put Egypt in the crosshairs of the West. The following report was from Al Arabiya News:

Egypt stands unwavering in its support of Russia’s military intervention in Syria, a stance that reflects the strength of relations between the two countries, but also raises questions on Cairo’s policy towards the Syrian crisis.

On Wednesday, Moscow began a campaign of air strikes over Syria, in what some commentators call its biggest military operation in decades. A few days later, Egypt voiced support for the Russian intervention, saying it will halt the spread of terrorism in the war-torn country.

Egypt’s support of the Russian airstrikes are not a change of tune, observers say. While Cairo has avoided showing direct support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Egypt has always claimed that both itself and Syria are at war against an Islamist insurgency.

Follow the Money 

Lo and behold, another clue left in plain sight (hat-tip to 21WIRE contributor Vanessa Beeley) concerning Egypt…

It turns out, on the same day as the EgyptAir MS804 disaster, according to The Wall Street Journal, “Moscow honored an agreement to loan Egypt $25 billion to build its first nuclear power plant, even though Moscow maintains a ban on flights to Egypt since the October airliner bombing.”

Given that those in Washington, along with their GCC allies and Israel seem obsessed over who holds nuclear power worldwide – the public should consider the extremely tough question of who or whom might have an axe to grind with Egypt over their political alliances and future energy ambitions.

On another note, the WSJ report also outlined the West’s preferable trajectory for Egypt’s policy interests:

An incident like this on the heels of another airline disaster is always going to speed up any cooperation on security even if the cause is not yet clear,” the Western diplomat said.

Regardless of what actually caused the EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo to crash, Michael Hanna, an Egypt expert at the Century Foundation, said recent traffic from Washington suggests the U.S. will seek to increase support for the Sisi regime despite deep concerns about its human-rights record.

The goal is to avoid having Egypt—long a U.S. ally under longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak—follow the downward spiral of Iraq, Syria and neighboring Libya, where terrorists have exploited security vacuums in recent years.

“Egypt is too big to fail in the eyes of the U.S. and Europe,” Mr. Hanna said.

‘MS804 FLIGHT PATH’ – The presence of Mediterranean Sea drills, makes it even more unlikely EgyptAir flight MS804 disappeared from radar. (Photo willyloman)

Missing Planes & NATO Drills

Another intriguing aspect to this recent EgyptAir mystery, is the fact that NATO member nations conducted a rather large Mediterranean Sea drill from May 17th-May-27. The International Phoenix exercise was just two days in to military drills when MS804 went missing from radar.

Sputnik fills us in on the drill below:

This year, Algeria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States, representatives from the NATO Shipping Center, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the EU border management agency Frontex are taking part in the drills.

The naval part of the exercises will test the sides’ abilities to respond to challenges of migration, trafficking and the movement of weapons. They will also conduct search and rescue operations.

The following is from Willyloman, who provides a more in-depth description of the Phoenix naval drill reportedly issued by the US Navy before it was abruptly taken down from their site:

Participants of Phoenix Express have opportunities to enhance expertise in a number of areas: boarding techniques, search-and-rescue operations, medical casualty response, MOC to MOC communication, and maritime domain awareness tools…

A Combined Maritime Operation Center (CMOC), led and comprised of North African navy officers, will form at NMIOTC to manage at-sea operations.

Did the AFRICOM-directed drill, described above, have anything to do with this latest EgyptAir tragedy?

While it is still unclear what exactly transpired during MS804’s final leg of it’s intended voyage, it seems unlikely that the various military present in the Mediterranean Sea, wouldn’t have known the exact location of the missing plane – not to mention the plane’s own tracking systems already in place.

There are serious questions surrounding EgyptAir Flight MS804. The world is still waiting for some real answers.

I have recently posted a piece in which I tried to debunk a few popular myths about modern warfare. Judging by many comments which I received in response to this post, I have to say that the myths in question are still alive and well and that I clearly failed to convince many readers. What I propose to do today, is to look at what Russia is really doing in response to the growing threat from the West. But first, I have to set the context or, more accurately, re-set the context in which Russia is operating. Let’s begin by looking at the AngloZionist policies towards Russia.

The West’s actions:

First on this list is, obviously, the conquest by NATO of all of Eastern Europe. I speak of conquest because that is exactly what it is, but a conquest achieved according to the rules of 21st century warfare which I define as “80% informational, 15% economic and 5% military”. Yes, I know, the good folks of Eastern Europe were just dreaming of being subjugated by the US/NATO/EU/etc – but so what? Anyone who has read Sun Tzu will immediately recognize that this deep desire to be ‘incorporated’ into the AngloZionist “Borg” is nothing else but the result of a crushed self-identity, a deep-seated inferiority complex and, thus, a surrender which did not even have to be induced by military means. At the end of the day, it makes no difference what the locals thought they were achieving – they are now subjects of the Empire and their countries more or less irrelevant colonies in the fringe of the AngloZionist Empire. As always, the local comprador elite is now bubbling with pride at being, or so they think, accepted as equals by their new masters (think Poroshenko, Tusk or Grybauskaite) which gives them the courage to bark at Moscow from behind the NATO fence. Good for them.

Second is the now total colonization of Western Europe into the Empire. While NATO moved to the East, the US also took much deeper control of Western Europe which is now administered for the Empire by what the former Mayor of London once called the “great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies” – faceless bureaucrats à la François Hollande or Angela Merkel.

Third, the Empire has given its total support to semi-demonic creatures ranging from al-Khattab to Nadezhda Savchenko. The West’s policy is crystal clear and simple to the extreme: if it is anti-Russian we back it. This policy is best exemplified with a Putin and Russia demonization campaign which is, in my opinion, far worse and much more hysterical than anything during the Cold War.

Fourth, the West has made a number of highly disturbing military moves including the deployment of the first elements of an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe, the dispatching of various forms of rapid reaction forces, the deployment of a few armored units, etc. NATO now has forward deployed command posts which can be used to support the engagement of a rapid reaction force.

What does all this add up to?

Right now, nothing much, really. Yes, the NATO move right up to the Russian borders is highly provocative, but primarily in political terms. In purely military terms, not only is this a very bad idea (see cliché #6 here), but the size of the actual forces deployed is, in reality, tiny: the ABM system currently deployed can, at best, hope to intercept a few missiles (10-20 depending on your assumptions) as for the conventional forces they are of the battalion size (more or less 600 soldiers plus support). So right now there is categorically no real military threat to Russia.

So why are the Russians so clearly upset?

Because the current US/NATO moves might well be just the first steps of a much larger effort which, given enough time, might begin presenting a very real danger for Russia.

Furthermore, the kind of rhetoric coming out of the West now is not only militaristic and russophobic, it is often outright messianic. The last time around the West had a flare up of its 1000 year old chronic “messianic syndrome” condition Russia lost 20 (to 30) million people. So the Russians can be forgiven if they are paying a great deal of attention to what the AngloZionist propaganda actually says about them.

The Russians are most dismayed at the re-colonization of western Europe. Long gone are the days when people like Charles de Gaulle, Helmut Schmidt or François Mitterrand, were in charge of Europe’s future. For all their very real faults, these men were at least real patriots and not just US colonial administrators. The ‘loss’ of Western Europe is far more concerning for the Russians than the fact that ex-Soviet colonies in Eastern Europe are now under US colonial administration. Why?

Look at this from the Russian point of view.

The Russians all see that the US power is on the decline and that the dollar will, sooner or later, gradually or suddenly, lose its role as the main reserve and exchange currency on the planet (this process has already begun). Simply put – unless the US finds a way to dramatically change the current international dynamic the AngloZionist Empire will collapse. The Russians believe that what the Americans are doing is, at best, to use tensions with Russia to revive a dormant Cold War v2 and, at worst, to actually start a real shooting war in Europe.

So a declining Empire with a vital need for a major crisis, a spineless Western Europe unable to stand up for its own interest, a subservient Eastern Europe just begging to turn into a massive battlefield between East and West, and a messianic, rabidly russophobic rhetoric as the background for an increase in military deployments on the Russian border. Is anybody really surprised that the Russians are taking all this very, very serious even if right now the military threat is basically non-existent?

The Russian reaction

So let us now examine the Russian reaction to Empire’s stance.

First, the Russians want to make darn sure that the Americans do not give in into the illusion that a full-scale war in Europe would be like WWII which saw the US homeland only suffer a few, tiny, almost symbolic, attacks by the enemy. Since a full scale war in Europe would threaten the very existence of the Russian state and nation, the Russians are now taking measures to make darn sure that, should that happen, the US would pay an immense price for such an attack.

Second, the Russians are now evidently assuming that a conventional threat from the West might materialize in the foreseeable future. They are therefore taking the measures needed to counter that conventional threat.

Third, since the USA appears to be dead set into deploying an anti-ballistic missile system not only in Europe, but also in the Far East, the Russians are taking the measures to both defeat and bypass this system.

The Russian effort is a vast and a complex one, and it covers almost every aspect of Russian force planing, but there are four examples which, I think, best illustrate the Russian determination not to allow a 22 June 1941 to happen again:

• The re-creation of the First Guards Tank Army (in progress)
• The deployment of the Iskander-M operational-tactical missile system (done)
• The deployment of the Sarmat ICBM (in progress)
• The deployment of the Status-6 strategic torpedo (in progress)

The re-creation of the First Guards Tank Army

It is hard to believe, but the fact is that between 1991 and 2016 Russia did not have a single large formation (division size and bigger) in its Western Military District. A few brigades, regiments and battalions which nominally were called an “Army”. To put it simply – Russia clearly did not believe that there was a conventional military threat from the West and therefore she did not even bother deploying any kind of meaningful military force to defend from such a non-existing threat. By the way, that fact should also tell you everything you need to know about Russian plans to invade the Ukraine, Poland or the Baltics: this is utter nonsense. This has now dramatically changed.

Russia has officially announced that the First Guards Tank Army (a formation with a prestigious and very symbolic history). This Guards Tank Army will now include the 4th “Kantemirov” Guards Tank Division, the 2nd “Taman” Guards Motorized Rifle Division, the 6th Tank Brigade, the 27th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade Sevastopol and many support units. This Army’s HQ will be located in the Odinstovo suburb of Moscow. Currently the Army is equipped with T-72B3 and T-80 main battle tanks, but they will be replaced by the brand new and revolutionary T-14 Armata tank while the current infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers will be replaced by the new APC and IFV. In the air, these armored units will be protected and supported by Mi-28 and Ka-52 attack helicopters. Make no mistake, this will be a very large force, exactly the kind of force needed so smash through an attacking enemy forces (by the way, the 1TGA was present at the Kursk battle). I am pretty sure that by the time the 1TGA is fully organized it will become the most powerful armored formation anywhere between the Atlantic and the Urals (especially in qualitative terms). If the current tensions continue or even worsen, the Russians could even augment the 1TGA to a type of 21st century “Shock Army” with increased mobility and specializing in breaking deep into the enemy’s defenses.

The deployment of the Iskander-M operational-tactical missile system

The new Iskander-M operational tactical missile system is a formidable weapon by any standard. While technically it is a short-range tactical missile (under 1000km range, the Iskander-M has an official range of 500km), it can also fire the R-500 missile has the capability of striking at an intermediate/operational range (over 1000km, the R-500 has a range of 2000km). It is extremely accurate, it has advanced anti-ABM capabilities, it flies at hypersonic speeds and is practically undetectable on the ground (see here for more details). This will be the missile tasked with destroying all the units and equipment the US and NATO have forward-deployed in Eastern Europe and, if needed, clear the way for the 1TGA.

The deployment of the Sarmat ICBM

Neither the 1TGA nor the Iskander-M missile will threaten the US homeland in any way. Russia thus needed some kind of weapon which would truly strike fear into the Pentagon and White House in the way the famous RS-36 Voevoda (aka SS-18 “Satan” in US classification) did during the Cold War. The SS-18, the most powerful ICBM ever developed, was scary enough. The RS-28 “Sarmat” (SS-X-30 by NATO classification) brings the terror to a totally new level.

The Sarmat is nothing short of amazing. It will be capable of carrying 10-15 MIRVed warheads which will be delivered in a so-called “depressed” (suborbital) trajectory and which will remain maneuverable at hypersonic speeds. The missile will not have to use the typical trajectory over the North Pole but will be capable of reaching any target anywhere on the planet from any trajectory. All these elements combined will make the Sarmat itself and its warheads completely impossible to intercept.

The Sarmat will also be capable of delivering conventional Iu-71 hypersonic warheads capable of a “kinetic strike” which could be used to strike a fortified enemy target in a non-nuclear conflict. This will be made possible by the amazing accuracy of the Sarmat’s warheads which, courtesy of a recent Russian leak, we now know have a CEP of 10 meters (see screen capture)

The Sarmat’s silos will be protected by a unique “active protection measures” which will include 100 guns capable of firing a “metallic cloud” of forty thousand 30mm “bullets” to an altitude of up to 6km. The Russians are also planning to protect the Sarmat with their new S-500 air defense systems. Finally, the Sarmat’s preparation to start time will be under 60 seconds thanks a a highly automated launch system. What this all means is that the Sarmat missile will be invulnerable in its silo, during it’s flight and on re-entry in the lower parts of the atmosphere.

It is interesting to note that while the USA has made a great deal of noise around its planned Prompt Global Strike system, the Russians have already begun deploying their own version of this concept.

The deployment of the Status-6 strategic torpedo

Do you remember the carefully staged “leak” in November of last year when the Russians ‘inadvertently’ showed a super dooper secret strategic torpedo on prime time news? Here is this (in)famous slide:

What is shown here is an “autonomous underwater vehicle” which has advanced navigational capabilities but which can also be remote controlled and steered from a specialized command module. This vehicle can dive as deep as 1000m, at a speed up to 185km/h and it has a range of up to 10’000km. It is delivered by specially configured submarines.

The Status-6 system can be used to target aircraft carrier battle groups, US navy bases (especially SSBN bases) and, in its most frighting configuration, it can be used to deliver high-radioactivity cobalt bombscapable of laying waste to huge expanses of land. The Status-6 delivery system would be a new version of the T-15 torpedo which would be 24m long, 1,5m wide weigh 40 tons and capable of delivering a 100 megaton warhead which would make it twice as powerful as the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated, the Soviet Czar-bomb (57 megatons). Hiroshima was only 15 kilotons.

Keep in mind that most of the USA’s cities and industrial centers are all along the coastline which makes them extremely vulnerable to torpedo based attacks (be it Sakharov’s proposed “Tsunami bomb” or the Status-6 system). And, just as in the case of the Iskander-M or the Sarmat ICBM, the depth and speed of the Status-6 torpedo would make it basically invulnerable to incerception.

Evaluation:

There is really nothing new in all of the above, and US military commanders have always known that. All the US anti-ballistic missile systems have always been primarily a financial scam, from Reagan’s “Star Wars” to Obama’s “anti-Iranian ABM”. For one thing, any ABM system is susceptible to ‘local saturation’: if you have X number ABM missile protecting a Y long space against an X number of missiles, all that you need to do is to saturate only one sector of the Y space with *a lot* of real and fake missiles by firing them all together through one small sector of the Y space the ABM missile system is protecting. And there are plenty of other measures the Russians could take. They could put just one single SLBM capable submarine in Lake Baikal making it basically invulnerable. There is already some discussion of that idea in Russia. Another very good option would be to re-activate the Soviet BzhRK rail-mobile ICBM. Good luck finding them in the immense Russian train network. In fact, the Russians have plenty of cheap and effective measure. Want me to list one more?

Sure!

Take the Kalibr cruise-missile recently seen in the war in Syria. Did you know that it can be shot from a typical commerical container, like the ones you will find on trucks, trains or ships? Check out this excellent video which explains this:

Just remember that the Kalibr has a range of anywhere between 50km to 4000km and that it can carry a nuclear warhead. How hard would it be for Russia to deploy these cruise missiles right off the US coast in regular container ships? Or just keep a few containers in Cuba or Venezuela? This is a system which is so undetectable that the Russians could deploy it off the coast of Australia to hit the NSA station in Alice Springs if they wanted, an nobody would even see it coming.

The reality is that the notion that the US could trigger a war against Russia (or China for that matter) and not suffer the consequences on the US mainland is absolutely ridiculous. And yet, when I hear all the crazy talk by western politicians and generals I get the impression that they are forgetting about this undeniable fact. Frankly, even the current threats against Russia have a ‘half-backed’ feel to them: a battalion here, another one there, a few missiles here, a few more there. It is like the rulers of the Empire don’t realize that it is a very, very bad idea to constantly poke a bear when all you are carrying with you is a pocket-knife. Sometimes the reaction of western politicians remind me of the thugs who try to rob a gas station with a plastic or empty gun and who are absolutely stunned with they get gunned down by the owner or the cops. This kind of thuggery is nothing more than a form of “suicide by cop” which never ends well for the one trying to get away with it.

So sometimes things have to be said directly and unambiguously: western politicians better not believe in their own imperial hubris. So far, all their threats have achieved is that the Russians have responded with a many but futile verbal protests and a full-scale program to prepare Russia for WWIII.

As I have written many times, Russians are very afraid of war and they will go out of their way to avoid it. But they are also ready for war. This is a uniquely Russian cultural feature which the West has misread an innumerable number of time over the past 1000 years or so. Over and over again have the Europeans attacked Russia only to find themselves into a fight they would never have imagined, even in their worst nightmares. This is why the Russians like to say that “Russia never starts wars, she only ends them”.

There is a profound cultural chasm between how the West views warfare and how the Russians do. In the West, warfare is, really, “the continuation of politics by other means”. For Russians, it is a ruthless struggle for survival. Just look at generals in the West: they are polished and well mannered managers much more similar to corporate executives than with, say, Mafia bosses. Take a look at Russian generals (for example, watch the Victory Day parade in Moscow). In comparison to their western colleagues they look almost brutish, because first and foremost they are ruthless and calculating killers. I don’t mean that in a negative way – they often are individually very honorable and even kind men, and like every good commander, they care for their men and love their country. But the business they are in in not the continuation of politics by other means, the business they are in is survival. At all cost.

You cannot judge a military or, for that matter, a nation, by how it behaves when it triumphs, when it is on the offensive pursing a defeated enemy. All armies look good when they are winning. You can really judge of the nature of a military, or a nation, at its darkest hour, when things are horrible and the situation worse than catastrophic. That was the case in 1995 when the Eltsin regime ordered a totally unprepared, demoralized, poorly trained, poorly fed, poorly equipped and completely disorganized Russian military (well, a few hastily assembled units) to take Grozny from the Chechens. It was hell on earth. Here is some footage of General Lev Rokhlin in a hastily organized command post in a basement inside Grozy. He is as exhausted, dirty and exposed as any of his soldiers. Just look at his face and look at the faces of the men around him. This is what the Russian army looks like when it is in the depth of hell, betrayed by the traitors sitting in the Kremlin and abandoned by most if the Russian people (who, I am sorry to remind here, mostly were only were dreaming of McDonalds and Michael Jackson in 1995).

Can you imagine, say, General Wesley Clark or David Petraeus fighting like these men did?

Check out this video of General Shamanov reading the riot act to a local Chechen politician (no translation need):

Shamanov nowadays is the Commander in Chief of the Airborne Forces (see photo) whose size Putin quietly doubled to 72’000, something I mentioned in the past as highly relevant, especially in comparison with the rather tepid force level increases announced by NATO (see “EU suidice by reality denial”). To get a feel for what modern Russian airborne forces are like, check out this article.

It is not my intention here to glorify nuclear war or the Russian Armed Forces. The reason for this, and many other, articles is to try to raise the alarm about what I see is happening nowadays. Western leaders are drunk on their own imperial hubris, nations which in the past were considered as minor stains on a map now feel emboldened to constantly provoke a nuclear superpower, Americans are being lied to and promised that some magical high tech will protect them from war while the Russians are seriously gearing up for WWIII because they have come to the conclusion that the only way to prevent that war is to make absolutely and unequivocally clear to the AngloZionists that they will never survive a war with Russia, even if every single Russian is killed.

I remember the Cold War well. I was part of it. And I remember that the vast majority of us, on both sides, realized that a war between Russia and the West must be avoided at all costs. Now I am horrified when I read articles by senior officials seriously discussing such a possibility.

Just read this article, please: What would a war between the EU and Russia look like? Here is what this guy writes:

To the poetically inclined, the Russian military looks more like a gigantic pirate crew, than a regular army. The ones who rule are the ones with the sharpest cutlass and biggest mouth, typically some scurvy infested mateis who rely on the support of their mates to make any unpopular “officer” walk the plank… Or, more apt, they resemble the members of the cossack horde, run by the brashier warriors… While these troops can be very brave, at times, they are not effective in the field against a well regulated and trained modern military machine. Given this, it is improbably, ney, impossible for ordinary Russian troops to conduct operations of major consequence at more than platoon level against any disciplined armies, especially the US, British, German, or French.

“For our zoo” (old Western dream)

This kind of writing really scares me. Not because of the imbecilic and racist stupidity of it, but because it largely goes unchallenged in the mainstream media. Not only that, there are plenty such articles written elsewhere (see here, here or here). Of course, the authors of that kind of “analyses” make their money precisely the kind of manic cheer-leading for the western forces, but that is exactly the mindset which got Napoleon and Hitler in trouble and which ended with Russian forces stationed in Paris and Berlin. Compare that kind of jingoistic and, frankly, irresponsible nonsense with what a real military commander, Montgomery, had to say on this topic:

The next war on land will be very different from the last one, in that we shall have to fight it in a different way. In reaching a decision on that matter, we must first be clear about certain rules of war. Rule 1, on page I of the book of war, is: “Do not march on Moscow”. Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule.

So who do you trust? Professional cheerleaders or professional soldiers? Do you really believe that Obama (or Hillary), Merkel and Hollande will do better than Napoleon or Hitler?

If the AngloZionist ‘deep state’ is really delusional enough to trigger a war with Russia, in Europe or elsewhere, the narcissistic and hedonistic West, drunk on its own propaganda and hubris, will discover a level of violence and warfare it cannot even imagine and if that only affected those responsible for these reckless and suicidal policies it would be great. But the problem is, of course, that many millions of us, simple, regular people, will suffer and die as a consequence of our collective failure to prevent that outcome. I hope and pray that my repeated warnings will at least contribute to what I hope is a growing realization that this folly has to be immediately stopped and that sanity must return to politics.

Celebration of Memorial Day in the US, originally Decoration Day, commenced shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War. This is a national holiday to remember the people who died while serving in the armed forces. The day traditionally includes decorating graves of the fallen with flowers.

As a Viet Nam veteran, I know the kinds of pain and suffering incurred by over three million US soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen, 58,313 of whom paid the ultimate price whose names are on The Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC. The Oregon Vietnam Memorial Wall alone, located here in Portland, contains 803 names on its walls.

The function of a memorial is to preserve memory. On this US Memorial Day, May 30, 2016, I want to preserve the memory of all aspects of the US war waged against the Southeast Asian people in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia – what we call the Viet Nam War – as well as the tragic impacts it had on our own people and culture. My own healing and recovery requires me to honestly describe the war and understand how it has impacted me psychically, spiritually, and politically.

Likewise, the same remembrance needs to be practiced for both our soldiers and the victims in all the other countries affected by US wars and aggression. For example, the US incurred nearly 7,000 soldier deaths while causing as many as one million in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, a ratio of 1:143.

It is important to identify very concretely the pain and suffering we caused the Vietnamese – a people who only wanted to be independent from foreign occupiers, whether Chinese,France, Japan, or the United States of America. As honorably, and in some cases heroically, our military served and fought in Southeast Asia, we were nonetheless serving as cannon fodder, in effect mercenaries for reasons other than what we were told. When I came to understand the true nature of the war, I felt betrayed by my government, by my religion, by my cultural conditioning into “American Exceptionalism,” which did a terrible disservice to my own humanity, my own life’s journey. Thus, telling the truth as I uncover it is necessary for recovering my own dignity.

I am staggered by the amount of firepower the US used, and the incredible death and destruction it caused on an innocent people. Here are some statistics:

–Seventy-five percent of South Viet Nam was considered a free-fire zone (i.e., genocidal zones)

–Over 6 million Southeast Asians killed

–Over 64,000 US and Allied soldiers killed

–Over 1,600 US soldiers, and 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers remain missing

–Thousands of amputees, paraplegics, blind, deaf, and other maimings created

–13,000 of 21,000 of Vietnamese villages, or 62 percent, severely damaged or destroyed, mostly by bombing

–Nearly 950 churches and pagodas destroyed by bombing

–350 hospitals and 1,500 maternity wards destroyed by bombing

–Nearly 3,000 high schools and universities destroyed by bombing

–Over 15,000 bridges destroyed by bombing

–10 million cubic meters of dikes destroyed by bombing

–Over 3,700 US fixed-wing aircraft lost

–36,125,000 US helicopter sorties during the war; over 10,000 helicopters were lost or severely damaged

–26 million bomb craters created, the majority from B-52s (a B-52 bomb crater could be 20 feet deep, and 40 feet across)

–39 million acres of land in Indochina (or 91 percent of the land area of South Viet Nam) were littered with fragments of bombs and shells, equivalent to 244,000 (160 acre) farms, or an area the size of all New England except Connecticut

–21 million gallons (80 million liters) of extremely poisonous chemicals (herbicides) were applied in 20,000 chemical spraying missions between 1961 and 1970 in the most intensive use of chemical warfare in human history, with as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese living in nearly 3,200 villages directly sprayed by the chemicals

–24 percent, or 16,100 square miles, of South Viet Nam was sprayed, an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined, killing tropical forest, food crops, and inland forests

–Over 500,000 Vietnamese have died from chronic conditions related to chemical spraying with an estimated 650,000 still suffering from such conditions; 500,000 children have been born with Agent Orange-induced birth defects, now including third generation offspring

–Nearly 375,000 tons of fireballing napalm was dropped on villages

–Huge Rome Plows (made in Rome, Georgia), 20-ton earthmoving D7E Caterpillar tractors, fitted with a nearly 2.5-ton curved 11-foot wide attached blade protected by 14 additional tons of armor plate, scraped clean between 700,000 and 750,000 acres (1,200 square miles), an area equivalent to Rhode Island, leaving bare earth, rocks, and smashed trees

–As many as 36,000,000 total tons of ordance expended from aerial and naval bombing, artillery, and ground combat firepower. On an average day US artillery expended 10,000 rounds costing $1 million per day; 150,000-300,000 tons of UXO remain scattered around Southeast Asia: 40,000 have been killed in Viet Nam since the end of the war in 1975, and nearly 70,000 injured; 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured since the end of the war

–7 billion gallons of fuel were consumed by US forces during the war

–If there was space for all 6,000,000 names of Southeast Asian dead on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC, it would be over 9 sobering miles long, or nearly 100 times its current 493 foot length

I am not able to memorialize our sacrificed US soldiers without also remembering the death and destroyed civilian infrastructure we caused in our illegal invasion and occupation of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. It has been 47 years since I carried out my duties in Viet Nam. My “service” included being an eyewitness to the aftermath of bombings from the air of undefended fishing villages where virtually all the inhabitants were massacred, the vast majority being small children. In that experience, I felt complicit in a diabolical crime against humanity. This experience led me to deeply grasping that I am not worth more than any other human being, and they are not worth less than me.

Recently I spent more than three weeks in Viet Nam, my first trip back since involuntarily being sent there in 1969. I was struck by the multitudes of children suffering from birth defects, most caused presumably by the US chemical spraying some 50 years ago. I experienced deep angst knowing that the US is directly responsible for this genetic damage now being passed on from one generation to the next. I am ashamed that the US government has never acknowledged responsibility or paid reparations. I found myself apologizing to the people for the crimes of my country.

When we only memorialize US soldiers while ignoring the victims of our aggression, we in effect are memorializing war. I cannot do that. War is insane, and our country continues to perpetuate its insanity on others, having been constantly at war since at least 1991. We fail our duties as citizens if we remain silent rather than calling our US wars for what they are – criminal and deceitful aggressions violating international and US law to assure control of geostrategic resources, deemed necessary to further our insatiable American Way Of Life (AWOL).

Memorial Day for me requires remembering all of the deaths and devastation of our wars, and it should remind all of us of the need to end the madness. If we want to end war, we must begin to directly address our out-of-control capitalist political economy that knows no limits to profits for a few at the expense of the many, including our soldiers.

S. Brian Willson, as a 1^st lieutenant, served as commander of a US Air Force combat security police unit in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta in 1969. He is a trained lawyer who has been an anti-war, peace and justice activist for more than forty years. His psychohistorical memoir, “Blood On The Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson” was published in 2011 by PM Press. A long time member of Veterans For Peace, he currently resides in Portland, Oregon

“Whatever the truth about the MH-17 shoot-down, the tragedy has proven to be worth its weight in propaganda gold against Russia and Putin, even as the U.S. government hides the actual proof that might show exactly who was responsible.” [1] –Robert Parry

.

 LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:17)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Over the past two years, since the previous government of President Yanukovych was essentially overthrown, the East and South of Ukraine has been ravaged by a civil war. [2]

A government in Kiev, including some neo-Nazi elements had taken power. [3]The people in Crimea and in the region known as the Donbass responded by attempting to distance themselves from the new regime.

In the case of Crimea, this was done through a referendum to rejoin Russia. In the Eastern and Southern regions of Ukraine, a popular resistance, dubbed “Russian-backed rebels” was formed.[4]

Determined to assert its authority, the Ukrainian government elected to use military force to subdue the resistance resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands and the displacement of millions. [5][6]

Efforts to mitigate the death toll and arrive at some sort of ceasefire have been put in place. The current peace agreement known as Minsk II has not as yet ended the violence and bloodshed. However, accountable authorities such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have been monitoring the situation. [7]

Throughout the crisis, there has been a failure on the part of the Western media to accurately report on the situation. The coverage of the conflict is invariably skewed to portray Russia’s President Vladmir Putin as dictatorial and imperialistic.

In early May, South Front reported on increased shelling of areas in the 15 kilometre heavy weapons exclusion zone separating the combatants. Foreign mercenaries and paramilitaries, including Neo-Nazi volunteers from Poland and Austria have been observed alongside Ukrainian Armed Forces in the exclusion zone. What is more, during the period from December 2015 to February 2016, the UAF have been seizing towns and settlements in the zone, consolidating their positions and suggestive of an upcoming summer offensive.[8]

And within the last week of May, a controversial prisoner swap transpired in which Russian citizens Evgeny Erofeev and Aleksandr Aleksndrov were pardoned from a 14 year sentence and released in exchange for the pardon and release of Ukrainian paramilitary Nadya Saravchenko. [9]

On this week’s Global Research News Hour we return to eastern Ukraine with a long overdue update and assessment of events in the Donbass and in Crimea and of the propaganda campaign obscuring them from view.

In the first half hour, the renowned investigative journalist Robert Parry provides his take on the propaganda campaign and information black-out enabling US-NATO aggression in the region. In particular, he talks about the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 as a critical turning point in the so-called “Anti-Terrorism Operation” in Donbass. He also explains some important omissions in the official investigation that should cause the Western world to think twice about what they think they know about that incident.

In the second half hour, Vancouver-based writer and peace activist Roger Annis opens up about the present situation and corrects some of the impressions put forward by Kiev friendly activists and media about the Russian “occupation” of Crimea, the turmoil in Eastern Ukraine and the above-mentioned prisoner swap.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s, and is a founder of and contributor to the on-line investigative newsmagazine consortiumnews.com. He is also the author of America’s Stolen Narrative from Barnes and Noble.

Roger Annis is a socialist and retired aerospace worker, and a long-time champion for peace and social justice causes.He’s a contributing editor at the website New Cold War and his articles have appeared at rabble.ca, counterpunch.org, Global Research and his own website: rogerannis.com.

 LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:17)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

Notes: 

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/more-game-playing-on-mh-17/5526967
2. Ukraine Crisis: Timeline (November 13, 2014); http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26248275
3. http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukrainian-neo-nazis-declare-that-power-comes-out-of-the-barrels-of-their-guns/5371126
4. Ukraine Crisis: Timeline (November 13, 2014); http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26248275
5. ibid
6. http://www.globalresearch.ca/poroshenko-finally-admits-ukraines-military-defeat/5526744
7. http://www.globalresearch.ca/donbass-further-escalation-of-violence/5523667
8. ibid
9. https://www.rt.com/news/344310-russians-arrive-savchenko-swap/ 

Sweden, which historically has been a ‘neutral’ country between the U.S. and Russia, is joining the NATO buildup against Russia, allowing NATO to place nuclear weapons in Sweden for an attack against Russia, and, like NATO (of which Sweden isn’t a member) lying about it to their people, and to the world.

The alleged reason for joining the operation is that “Russian aggression against Ukraine breaches international law and challenges the European security order”, according to Sweden’s ‘defence’ minister Peter Hultqvist. He denied nuclear weapons would be part of it.

He also said, “I have sometimes wondered if there has been deliberate disinformation” by opponents of the proposal. (Let him call this report such ‘disinformation’, because I’m going to link here to solid sources that expose his and ‘The West’s’ other vicious lies leading straight to World War III.)

This is being done by Sweden in the leadup to the NATO Summit on July 8-9 against Russia, and in the context of America’s installation on Russia’s borders of weaponry to disable Russia’s capacity to retaliate against a Western blitz-invasion from NATO. The first successful test of that BMD or “Ballistic Missile Defense” system occurred on 19 May 2016 and constituted a breakthrough in the ability of the United States and its allies to conquer Russia; the test had occurred in Hawaii. Just seven days earlier than that test, the first installation of the system had occurred, which took place in Romania on May 12th. So, U.S. rulers have started to install the ultimate mass-killing system, for the ultimate conquest; it’s the system to block an enemy from defending itself from an invasion. Russia is increasingly surrounded by an expanding NATO, and that expansion up to Russia’s borders is supposed to be accepted by Russia as if it’s not a very aggressive move against Russia. And Sweden’s rulers have decided to be on the winning side of World War III.

The news report on Sweden’s joining this mega-disgusting operation against Russia was published on May 26th, in EU Observer, and added this: “Sweden is also likely to join Nato’s strategic communications centre, Stratcom, in an effort to strengthen the country’s counter propaganda efforts.”

NATO has already been prominently promoting the lie that Russia invaded Ukraine and stole Crimea from Ukraine — which is the basic lie upon which NATO is preparing to invade Russia. Swedish officials are already using that baldfaced lie in order to fool the Swedish public to accept their country’s becoming a staging area for NATO’s buildup to invade Russia (even though Sweden isn’t in NATO) as a measure supposedly to ‘defend’ Sweden and NATO countries from being invaded by Russia. Get that! Since they can’t find any realistic excuse for preparing to invade Russia, the lie that Russia ‘seized’ Crimea suffices.

Here are the facts about this, the West’s Big Lie:

The most important of all parts of U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign-policy plan to take over Russia was the one that enabled him to slap economic sanctions against Russia and that enables NATO to treat Russia as an ‘aggressive’enemy: this is the matter regarding Ukraine and its former peninsula, Crimea, which Russia accepted back into the Russian Federation after Obama’s coup seizing Ukraine hadterrified the Crimean people.

Certainly, Obama’s extremely bloody coup in Ukraine isn’t known to Americans nor to others in The West: the official line, promoted both by the U.S. aristocracy’s government, and by the U.S. aristocracy’s media, and by the media of its associated aristocracies, is that a ‘democratic revolution’overthrew the democratically elected President of that country, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The official line is that this ‘revolution’ arose spontaneously after Yanukovych, on 20 November 2013, had rejected the EU’s offer for Ukraine to join the EU. Not part of the official line is that the U.S. Embassy was already starting by no later than 1 March 2013 to organize the overthrow that occurred in February 2014. Also not part of the official line is that the EU’s membership offer to Ukraine came with a $160 billion price tag, and so was entirely unaffordable. Yanukovych had no real choice but to turn it down. After all, The West needed an excuse to explain the ‘Maidan democracy demonstrations’ that provided a pretext for the overthrow. If one is starting on 1 March 2013 to organize a fascist coup that’s to occur a year later, then one won’t want to provide the victim (Yanukovych and the Ukrainian people) an offer that will beaccepted by him. One will need the offer to be rejected, in order to have a ‘justification’ to overthrow the victim. Such a ‘justification’ was that he was corrupt, but they didn’t mention that all post-Soviet Ukrainian leaders have been corrupt. Another was that Yanukovych had turned down the proposal from ‘the democratic West.’ All of it was lies.

Ukraine is the key in Obama’s plan for four reasons: it’s the main transit-route pipelining Russia’s gas into Europe; it’s also a large country bordering Russia, and thus ideal for placement of American nuclear missiles against Russia; it has (at that time it was on a lease expiring in 2042) Russia’s premier naval base in Sebastopol Crimea, which, for the U.S. to take, would directly weaken Russia’s defenses; and, most importantly of all, the entire case for sanctions against Russia, and for NATO to be massing troops and weapons on and near Russia’s borders to ‘defend’ NATO (now to include Sweden) against Russia, consists of Russia’s ‘aggression’ exhibited in its ‘seizing’ Crimea, and in its helping the residents in the breakaway Donbass far eastern region of Ukraine, Donbass (where the residents had voted 90% for Yanukovych) to defend themselves against the repeated invasions and bombings coming from the Ukrainian government. Crimea is especially important here, because, though Russia refused to accept Donbass into the Russian Federation (and so America’s accusations that the massive bloodshed in Donbass was another ‘aggression’ by Russia was ridiculously false) Russia did accept Crimea.

However, the people in Crimea had voted 75% for Yanukovych and had also wanted to become again a part of Russia, ever since the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 arbitrarily transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. And therefore Russia — not finding acceptable Obama’s soon-to-be seizure of their naval base — supplied protection for Crimeans to be able to hold a peaceful plebiscite on 16 March 2014 in order to exercise their right of self-determination on whether to accept rule by the bloody new Ukrainian coup-regime, or instead to accept Russia’s offer to regain membership (and protection) in the Russian Federation.

97% chose the latter, and Western-sponsored polls in Crimea both before and after the plebiscite showed similarly astronomically high support for rejoining with Russia. But that made no difference in Western countries, because their media never reported these realities but only the official line — as Obama put it: “The days in which conquest of land somehow was a formula for great nation status is [sic] over.” Although he was there describing actually himself (in his ultimate plan to conquer Russia), he was pretending that it described instead Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, who was merely protecting Crimeans, and, in the process, protecting all Russians (by retaining its key naval base), from an enemy (Obama) whose gift for deceiving the public might have no equal in all of human history.

And that ‘seizure of Crimea’ is actually the pretext upon the basis of which Obama’s NATO alliance is now mobilizing to invade Russia.

Here is how Sweden’s ‘defense’ minister, in his 25 May 2016 Stockholm speech, described his reasons for Sweden to join the Western forces surrounding Russia:

The upcoming NATO Summit will take place in a security environment that continues to be challenging. And these challenges affect us all.

First of all, the security order that was established in Europe after the Cold War is challenged by Russia. The illegal annexation of Crimea is the first example in more than 70 years where one European state has occupied territory belonging to another state using military force. If we allow the annexation to become a status quo we make ourselves guilty of destroying one of the very pillars of the European security order as we know it. We see no signs that Russia has changed its position or have softened that.

Moreover, there are no indications that Russia is planning to leave the Donbass region. Instead, Russia is building up its proxy army there, with 25,000 soldiers and more tanks than any EU Member State has. The intensity of the conflict in eastern Ukraine can be Increased or decreased depending on what best serves the interests of the Kremlin at any given moment.

He alleged that all violations of the Minsk agreement (the agreement regarding the war in Donbass) were from the Donbass side, and none at all from the Ukrainian side — the side that has actually been attacking Donbass — but the evidence clearly contradicts that lie. The residents of Donbass fire back when fired upon. What are they supposed to do? Then he listed Sweden’s military increases, and he said: “We do this from a platform of non-alignment.” He’s as much a liar as Obama is.

The U.S. doesn’t actually need additional military bases in countries such as Sweden. The U.S. already has around 800 military bases in foreign countries, according to researcher David Vine in his 2015 book, Base Nation. But when tightening the noose, every little bit of extra pull helps. And after the coup in Ukraine, America’s aristocracy has been giving an extra yank at every opportunity. And they (actually U.S. taxpayers) pay well for it. Hultqvist will get his. It’s a nice business.

Back in 1990 the precondition (and Western promise) on the basis of which the Soviet and then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved in 1991 both the Soviet Union and its NATO-mirror the Warsaw Pact, was the promise by the representatives of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, that if that happened, then NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” — which also turned out to have been a lie.

And the same news-suppression that causes Western publics (such as in Sweden, where this article was even offered as an exclusive to Dagens Nyheter, and was turned down by them) not to know these facts, will now probably cause this news-report to be likewise rejected by virtually all Western ‘news’ media, to all of whom it has been submitted(after its having been declined there). The ones that don’t publish it are sharing in the blame for causing WW III. The few that do publish it will not be to blame for WW III. They all make their choices. (And, if any of them have any allegation to make against this news-report, then any who have honor will publish that allegation, so that the crucially needed public debate can begin, before WW III itself does. The utter lack of that public debate is what’s especially damning against The West.)

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.

Nations without information warfare capabilities in the 21st century are like nations without armies and navies in the 20th century. They are defenseless. 

Imagine a nation without an army, a navy or an air force. What would its prospects be of defending itself against even moderate aggression? What if it had an army, even a formidable one, but was missing an air force and/or navy? Would its chances be any better?

Before the invention of human flight, war was fought in two dimensions by armies and navies upon the surface of the planet. With the introduction of aircraft to warfare, a new dimension was added. Nations that fell behind the curve building and rebuilding their air forces would find themselves consistently at a disadvantage. Those nations that stayed ahead of the curve would cite air power as key to their victories throughout recent history.
Today, undoubtedly, information warfare is no longer a novelty. It has been honed into a weapon of devastating effect able to confuse, divide and destroy nations in a dimension conventional warfare often cannot even reach.

The use of the Internet and information warfare soared to new heights during the Arab Spring. Hardly the spontaneous uprising it was portrayed as across the Western media, for years beforehand the US State Department together with tech-giants Google and Facebook prepared armies of information warriors to disrupt, divide, confuse and take over the information space in the respective nations the US targeted for regime change in 2011.

Like an air force entering undefended airspace, the US State Department’s information warfare capabilities met little resistance and quickly overwhelmed and assumed control over information space in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. Only Syria and Egypt’s immense conventional military and political power prevented tragedies like that which unfolded in Libya from repeating itself elsewhere. However, it cannot be denied that across the region, information warfare was neglected and unnecessary leverage was conceded to the US amid a much larger theater of conflict.

Vulnerabilities in the Information Space 

While the Internet and its use in information warfare is relatively new, information warfare is not. The US and the British before them have spent over the decades, and for the British, centuries, investing in whatever forms of media existed at the time to ensure their voice among it was loudest if not the only voice to be heard.

Today, the US through a myriad of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) reaches deep into a foreign nation’s information space and media creating entire fronts to broadcast their messages from.

With overseas scholarships and training programs they aim at luring young, ambitious journalists into becoming indoctrinated and reliable outlets of US propaganda and ideally, collaborators with US interests when opportunities present themselves.

In many nations, particularly throughout the developing world, governments do not take advances in information technology seriously, failing to recognize the importance of maintaining control over it and countering efforts to co-opt and use it against them. Their views of how to manage the media are very often outdated, leaving them particularly vulnerable across the entirety of their information space.

In these nations, information from the government’s point of view is often disseminated through press releases or government-owned broadcasters that hold little credibility both domestically and internationally.

Building Better Defenses for Information Space 

Defending one’s information space depends on occupying it fully, first and foremost. This means making it difficult if not impossible for foreign nations to set up and operate media operations within a targeted nation’s borders to begin with.

Occupying Your Information Space: Russia’s relatively recent NGO laws forcing foreign-funded organizations to register as foreign agents undermines their legitimacy simply by demanding in reality the transparency these organizations often demand disingenuously as a means of attacking and undermining a targeted government.

By exposing the foreign-funded nature of their operations, effectively exposing the disingenuous intentions and financial motivations they harbor and making it difficult for them to operate while giving space to legitimate, indigenous and most importantly, constructive opposition, squeezes them out of a nation’s information space like a well planned garden crowds out weeds.

Controlling and Projecting From Your Information Space: Russia’s RT, China’s CCTV, Iran’s PressTV and South America TeleSUR are all examples of another means of filling and dominating one’s information space.

Not only do these news organizations adequately cover the news in their respective nations alongside a myriad of similar state-run media operations, they are able to communicate with, appeal to and persuade audiences well beyond their borders. It is a way of countering US and European propaganda both at home and abroad, balancing what has been for decades a lopsided information war.

Because these operations are run as professional, internationally aware and objective news organizations with minimal overt government influence, they are effective at appealing to foreign audiences.

For nations sorely lacking such news organizations, particularly across Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East, nations like Russia and China already exporting defense capabilities of a more conventional kind, could consider exporting defensive capabilities for information space.

Neglecting Information Warfare Invites Attack 

Nations that have habitually neglected information warfare have invited attack. Nations with notoriously unsound defenses for their information space are often flooded with foreign NGOs who occupy and control it to such an extent, governments are forced to capitulate to otherwise easily countered propaganda campaigns.

Investing in information warfare is not “optional” any more so than investing in a properly trained and equipped conventional military. The reality of the 21st century is that wars are no longer fought merely on land, sea, and air. They are fought in information space as well and failure to understand and defend against such threats accordingly is as bad as leaving a nation’s borders undefended, its skies unwatched, and its shores unguarded.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The following extract is from the 2011 lecture ‘Healthy Soils, Healthy People’ by Professor John Ikerd. The lecture discussed the legacy of renowned agronomist William Albrecht, who died in 1974.

We have justified the demise of family farms, decay of rural communities, pollution of the rural environment, and degradation of soil health as being necessary to provide food security for the nation. These justifications are no longer valid or acceptable… an agriculture driven by economics failed to provide for the health of the soil or the health of people. The problems we are facing today are the consequence of too many people, including scientists, pursuing their narrow self-interests without considering the consequence of their actions on the rest of society and the future of humanity… the pursuit of individual, impersonal self-interests – not the long run interests of society or humanity. – Professor John Ikerd

The original text of this excellent lecture (readers are urged to read it in full to grasp the important relevance of Albrecht today) does not include the underlining, which has been added here because that passage is key to understanding why we have arrived at the point where we now find ourselves: embedded within a globalised system of food and agriculture that rakes in massive profits for the few at the expense of the majority.

With so much slick PR from agribusiness companies about ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding a hungry world’, it may be easy for some to lose sight of the fact that what we have is an economic system that rests on self-interest and profit, which has resulted in producing a model of food and agriculture that has led to the falling nutritional value of food and the growing of it with poisonous inputs; it has led to major adverse impacts on the environment, soil, human health and communities; and that model has been used as a tool to secure geopolitical power, undermine food security and create dependency.

Ikerd talks about how narrow self-interests have prevailed in agriculture and have not considered the consequence their actions on the rest of society and the future of humanity. Although he never mentions ‘capitalism’ in his lecture, Ikerd refers to the hugely negative impacts on soil and human health as a result of the drive for profit by powerful commercial interests that have come to dominate food and agriculture.

Blatant self-interest and hegemony

People often attempt to disguise blatant self-interest by saying their intentions and actions coincide with what is good for everyone else and what they are doing is essentially underpinned by good intent. It is a classic case of hegemony: gaining authority and legitimacy by fooling others that your aims and their aims are one and the same, while in realty the opposite is the case. It is what capitalism has relied on, with state violence always (and, these days, increasingly) at hand as a back-up.

Take Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, for instance. According to Reuters, he could receive more than $70 million if Monsanto is taken over by Bayer AG. Monsanto says it is open to engaging in further negotiations with Bayer after turning down its $62 billion bid.

Reuters reports that Grant said his company firmly endorsed “the substantial benefits an integrated strategy could provide to growers and broader society.”

Nice sounding words, but he would say that, wouldn’t he?

The report shows how Grant’s exposure to shares and options means he has an incentive to hold out for the highest possible sale price, which would not only be in the interests of shareholders but also increase the value of his holdings. Other senior figures within Monsanto would also walk away with massive financial gains in shares, bonuses and severance if a deal goes through.

These corporate managers belong to a global agribusiness sector whose major companies all rank among the Fortune 500 corporations. They and their companies, not least major shareholders, are high-rollers in a globalised system of capitalism, where oversize financial packages and huge company profits are directly linked to bad food and poor health, inequitable trade, environmental devastation, thedestruction of communities and ecocide, degraded soil and farmers who live a knife-edge existence and for whom debt has become a fact of life.

Then there is Britain’s political mouthpiece for the GMO biotech sector Owen Paterson, who attacks critics of GMOs through emotive outbursts and by proclaiming his concern for the poor in countries far away. Paterson is an MP and belongs to the Conservative Party, whose neoliberal policies (also adopted by ‘New Labour’) since the 1980s have plunged millions in Britain into poverty, unemployment and debt. Despite him saying he wants to feed the hungry of the world with GMOs, his government’s policies have driven hundreds of thousands towards food poverty in recent years. His hypocrisy is clear for all to see.

Narrow self-interest abounds, whether it is corporate CEOs, wealthy shareholders, ideologically driven politicians like Paterson who do the bidding of global agribusiness or, for example, various molecular biologists and their well-funded career paths who keep the ideological flag flying for the current system of agriculture they advocate, while often touting the ‘virtues’ of a ‘choice-friendly’, ‘democratic’ ‘free market’ capitalism that exists only in their own delusions.

Challenging capitalism

This capitalism thrives on commodity speculation, land speculation, corrupt banking and finance cartels and rigged trade. The World Bank, IMF, WTO, the and other machinery of globalisation (like corrupt trade deals like TTIP, TPA and NAFTA) operate to serve the interests of a small elite of private individuals (an increasingly integrated “transnational ruling class“) who own and control private capital and who ensure the system they benefit from is perpetuated. These interlocking, self-serving interests have instituted a globalised system of war and structural violence that results in poverty and devastated economies.

From Somalia and Ethiopia to the situation across Africa in general and in places like Mexico (see this on the health impacts of NAFTA and this about the overall devastation of Mexico, which NAFTA has contributed to), strategically placed (see this and this) agribusiness has made a financial killing from policies that have destroyed local economies and indigenous farming and which have often turned countries from largely self-sufficient food nations into food importing ones.

People March against Monsanto, campaign against glyphosate or highlight the actions of individual actors or companies. But these entities, products and figures will be replaced with others, the system and its negative impacts will persist and the marches and campaigns against the newest conglomerate to emerge or newest poison to hit the market will continue.

Despite what the well-paid media shills, the co-opted scientists and politicians and the industry PR people say, a system not run for the public good can never serve the public good. Many of these individuals are little more corporate lobbyists or neoliberal ideologues (see this, this, this, this, this and this) who hide behind dogma about choice, democracy or improving productivity, while attacking ‘fundamentalists’ (i.e. anyone who opposes their pro-corporate model of agriculture and ideological neoliberal allegiances).In response, people are fighting back and resisting. From Ghana to India and from Europe to beyond, food sovereignty movements are demonstrating a deep-rooted resistance against neoliberal doctrine and its negative impacts on agriculture, health, communities and the environment. And they are armed with realistic alternatives to corporate dominated agriculture and the policies and framework which allows it to prosper at the expense of both people and the environment.

US special forces soldiers have been caught on camera fighting on the front lines with the Kurds against ISIS in Syria.

The troops were spotted by an AFP photographer, who said there are just over a dozen of them in the village of Fatisah; just 30 miles north of Raqqa.

Some of the troops are wearing plain clothes, while others are in military garb carrying the insignia of the Kurdish YPG:

This takes the mission to ‘assist’ quite far indeed.

Watch a video of this report below, or here on Youtube:

.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook admitted that:

“Our special operations forces in the past have, yes, worn insignias and other identifying marks with their partner forces,”

“They do what they can to blend in.”

However, he stressed:

“They are not on the forward line. They are providing advice and assistance, their advise-and-assist role has not changed.”

Cook couldn’t explain the difference between the forward line and the front line, saying:

“I don’t have a yardstick for you. This is a fluid situation.”

.
Unfortunately for the United States, there is absolutely nothing fluid about the fact that these troops are operating illegally in Syria as they do not have the explicit permission of the Syrian government to be there; unlike the Russians who did have such a mandate.

What do you think these special forces soldiers have been tasked with doing exactly?

The Obama Administration has reversed its position on which countries will be included in its upcoming estimate of the civilian deaths caused by the US drone program, according to a report in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Earlier this week, a report in the Post – based on briefings from anonymous Administration officials – stated that strikes taken in Pakistan by the CIA would not be included in the numbers. However, an article in yesterday’s Post – also based on anonymous US government sources – now suggests that the White House has changed its position, and will include strikes taken in Pakistan in its tally.

The exclusion of Pakistan would have meant that as many as two-thirds of known US drone strikes – including some of the worst reported errors – would have been left out of the US tally of deaths. Strikes in Pakistan have included an attack on a funeral in June 2009 that killed as many as 50 civilians, and a strike on a meeting of tribal elders in March 2011 that killed 41. Pakistan has reportedly seen the use of some of the most controversial aspects of the US drone program, such as ‘signature strikes’, where individuals are targeted on the basis of patterns of behavior.

The absence of the Pakistan numbers would also have avoided any need to address controversial claims made in June 2011 by John Brennan, now Director of the CIA. At the time, Brennan said that no civilians had been killed during a yearlong period from 2010 to 2011. However, in August that year, he altered his position slightly, saying there was no “credible evidence” of such deaths. The Administration has never publicly disputed or corrected his statement.

Recent research by the human rights organization Reprieve – which assists the civilian victims of drone strikes – has found that the US is frequently unable to identify those killed by covert strikes in countries including Pakistan and Yemen. Reprieve has found that, in targeting 41 named individuals, US strikes killed 1,147 unknown men, women and children – often leaving the original target still alive.

Commenting, Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve, said:

It’s been three years since President Obama promised long-overdue transparency over the most dangerous legacy of his Presidency – a drone programme that has reportedly killed thousands in countries where the US is not at war. In that time, we have been inundated with repeated and contradictory claims about the program from ‘anonymous’ sources who cannot be held accountable for their claims.

This week, the Administration’s spin machine was once again in action, first leaking that the government’s numbers would not include Pakistan – a country that accounts for three-quarters of all strikes – and then absurdly walking back that position. Enough panicked legacy spinning – the Administration must reveal the true scale of the civilian deaths it has caused, and at the very least, offer an apology to the victims.

Notes 

1. Reprieve is an international human rights organization. Reprieve’s London office can be contacted on: communications [at] reprieve.org.uk / +44 (0) 207 553 8140. Reprieve US, based in New York City, can be contacted on Katherine [dot] oshea [at] reprieve.org / +1 917 855 8064.

2. The US Government’s claim that Pakistan will be included in its tally was reported by the Washington Post, here, while the previous claims can be found in the Post’s earlier report, here.

3. The 2011 comments by John Brennan can be found here.

4. Reprieve’s recent research into deaths under the US drone program is available here.

Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to visit Hiroshima on Friday, more than seven decades after the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped a 10,000-pound atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on the city whose military value was far less than that of Tampa to the United States. More than 70,000 people were instantly killed, and virtually the entire city was flattened.

Many survivors would suffer prolonged and unimaginably painful aftereffects of radiation, which would cost at least 100,000 more people their lives. The effects of radiation would harm people for years and decades after the initial explosion.   

Obama stood at a podium with the epicenter of the blast, the Genbaku Domu, in the background and said that he had “come to mourn the dead.” While Obama mourned, there was one thing he did not do: apologize. 

He said that “death came from the sky.” No mention of why. Or who was responsible, as if it were a natural disaster rather than a crime perpetrated by actual people. Obama was either unwilling or unable to confront the truth and make amends. 

Here’s what he could have said to try to do so:

Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, an American warplane unleashed the most horrific and inhuman weapon ever invented, immediately imperiling the survival of the entire human species. This act of terrorism was the ultimate crime: a crime of mass murder, a crime of war, and a crime against humanity.

The victims, those who died incinerated in a flash, and those who died slowly and painfully over years from chemical poisoning, were never able to see justice served. Sadly, there is no way the criminals who carried out this heinous and barbaric act will ever face justice for their crimes.

I cannot change that. But, there is one thing I can do as the leader of the nation in whose name the bombing of Hiroshima was carried out: I can tell you, residents of Hiroshima and the rest of Japan, that I am sorry. I am sorry on behalf of my government and my country. I wish an American President would have come earlier and said this. This apology is decades overdue. It is a small and symbolic act, but it is necessary as a first step for true reconciliation.

A nuclear bomb should have never been dropped on Hiroshima. The most important goal of mankind should be to ensure that no nuclear bomb is ever dropped again. Anywhere in the world. Ever.

It would be easy to stand here and tell you that there are reasons why the American military and political officials chose to use a nuclear bomb. I could say it served a greater good of saving lives that would have been lost if the war had continued. I could say it was a decision made by people who were dealing with the pressure and horrors of fighting a war. But that would not be the truth. Those would be empty rationalizations. There is no justification for the bomb. Period.

The truth is that by August 6, 1945 Japan was defeated and had been seeking a conditional surrender for months. And American war planners knew this. They knew it because they had cracked the Japanese code and were intercepting their messages. [1]

Japan was willing to surrender under the condition that their Emperor, who was seen as a God among the Japanese people, be allowed to maintain his throne and not be prosecuted for war crimes. The Emperor himself called for “a plan to end the war” six weeks before the fateful day. [2]  After so much unspeakable death and destruction, this reasonable offer should have been met with ecstatic celebration and relief.

Instead, U.S. officials disregarded it. They decided that it was necessary not just to defeat Japan, but to leave them utterly humiliated and disgraced. They wanted to demonstrate to their public that they could force another country to lay prostrate in front of them in complete submission. This is the mindset of terrorists, torturers, and sadists.

The United States joined with China and Great Britain to issue the Potsdam Declarationon July 26, in which they called on Japan “to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces.” These were terms they understood Japan could not accept.

Unfortunately, the use of the atomic bomb had become inevitable after the massive investment of time and treasure represented by the Manhattan Project. Military planners worried about “the possibility that after spending huge amounts of money … the bomb would be a dud. They could easily imagine being grilled mercilessly by hostile members of Congress.”

Historian and former Nuclear Regulatory Commission employee J. Samuel Walker confirmed that aside from “shortening the war and saving American lives, Truman wanted to justify the expense and effort required to build the atomic bombs.”

That financial considerations and a self-interested desire for bureaucrats to validate themselves and protect their careers could lead to the single most destructive and cruel act in history is an abomination. It is a deep offense to the idea that people are innately moral, and it makes us ask how in a democratic society we can vest people with the authority to make decisions of such profound impact secretly and without accountability?

Walker notes that another consideration for using the bomb on Hiroshima was to put fear into the leaders of the Soviet Union and make them “more amenable to American wishes.” Just six weeks earlier the UN Charter had been established. It included the demand that “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force” against other states. The drafters of the treaty could never have imagined such an unconscionable violation of their words so soon after the monumental pact had been written.

As horrific as the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima was, it did not occur in a vacuum. What no one in mainstream American political discourse has so far been able to admit is that not only was there no justification for the bomb, there was little justification for the war against Japan in the first place.

The war was the result of the notion, which first emanated from the Council on Foreign Relations in 1941, that the U.S.’s “national interest” called for a “Grand Area” that consisted of the Western hemisphere, the British Empire and the Far East, while assuming the majority of Europe would be controlled by Nazi Germany. This was translated into a policy that demanded a military confrontation with Japan for control of the Far East. [3]

A pillar in this policy was an economic embargo against Japan. Cut off from imports and raw materials from the United States and Great Britain, Japan grew desperate and subsequently sought to expand its Empire. Japan saw itself in need of a sphere of influence involving the same areas in the Far East as the United States.

The U.S. had several options to avoid war. For one, they could develop a program of agricultural and economic self-sufficiency which would allow them to insulate themselves from dependence on colonial powers, as well as allow them to steer clear of unpredictable and potentially hostile regions of the world.

But for businessmen who wanted to maintain control over the direction of the economy and keep their own fortunes growing at a limitless pace, this was a nonstarter. Instead, they were dedicated to challenging Japan. Hence, the embargo and the buildup for an inevitable military confrontation over Eastern Asia.

This is the background to Pearl Harbor. Japan was obviously not justified for attacking sovereign American territory in a blatant act of aggression. But we cannot pretend that it was not predictable or logical from their point of view.

Japan felt itself backed into a corner by the embargo. They felt they needed to expand further into Asia. They believed that if they did so, the U.S. military would have attacked them. They were right.

Both countries should have worked together to recognize each other’s perceived interests, deescalate, and achieve a mutually acceptable compromise. It is the ability to understand one’s perceived adversary as a rational counterpart, rather than an evil and irrational enemy, that separates humans from beasts. If we are not able to use this ability, we are no better than a predator seeking his prey.

The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima did not need to happen. But the bombing that took place on this site was just a symptom of the war it was part of. War will necessarily produce horrific crimes, some of which are unimaginable at the time they happen. As horrific as the nuclear bomb was, 70 years of technological advancements have made not just the destruction of an entire city, but of an entire country or continent within the realm of possibility.

We need to eliminate nuclear weapons from the earth. But that is not enough. Chemical weapons like napalm, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, and white phosphorous; biological weapons like Dengue bacteria and germ bombs; and conventional weapons like cluster bombs, pineapple bomblets, butterfly bombs and land mines are just some of the savage weapons used by the U.S. military alone in the years since the close of World War II to kill and maim millions of people. Many other countries possess similar weapons of mass destruction and have the capacity to do the same.

We need to eliminate war. All war. Forever. War is evil, plain and simple. We cannot undo the actions of the past. But we can let them guide us to a better world where we don’t repeat the horrors that the people of Hiroshima suffered here 71 years ago. That will be the only way to prevent the victims from having died in vain.

References 

[1] Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. pp. 423. 

[2] U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: The Effects of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, June 19, 1946. President’s Secretary’s File, Truman Papers. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?pagenumber=33&documentid=65&documentdate=1946-06-19&studycollectionid=abomb&groupid=

[3] Shoup, Laurence H. and William Minter. Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations & United States Foreign Policy. Lincoln, NE: Authors Choice Press, 2004.

Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his blog. You can follow him on twitter.

This article was first published in August 2013

U.S. corporations that reap billions from making nuclear weapons have “a direct voice” as to “their use and deployment,” according to professor Michel Chossudovsky in a recently released book.

What’s more, he says, if nuclear weapons are integrated with conventional armaments, a decision to use nuclear weapons could be made by battlefield generals.

On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day, (August 6 1945), a secret meeting was held at U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Neb., that brought together more than 150 “senior executives from the nuclear industry and military-industrial complex,” writes Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal.

“This mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima”. According to a leaked draft of the agenda, the secret session included discussions on “mini-nukes” and “bunker-buster” bombs with nuclear warheads “for possible use against rogue states,” Chossudovsky writes in his new book, “Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War,” (Global Research, 2012)

The meeting was intended to set the stage for the creation of a new generation of “smaller,” “safer,” and “more usable” nukes for use, in  America’s 21st Century “in-theater nuclear wars”, Chossudovsky writes. No members of Congress representing the public were in attendance.

Barely a week prior to this meeting, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) disbanded the advisory committee that had “independent oversight” over the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the testing and/or use of new nuclear devices.

The nuclear industry — which makes both nuclear devices and their missile delivery systems — Chossudovsky writes, is controlled by a handful of defense contractors, led by Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, BAE Systems Inc, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing. The sales of these six largest US defense contractors (including the UK-US conglomerate BAE Systems Inc) was in 2010 of the order of 242.6 billion dollars, with recorded profits of $16.4 billion.

Meanwhile, “the Pentagon has unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use of nuclear weapons for the ‘defense of the American homeland’,” Chossudovsky writes. He points out:

“In an utterly twisted logic, nuclear weapons are presented as a means to building peace and preventing ‘collateral damage.’ The Pentagon had intimated that the ‘mini-nukes’ with a yield of less than 5,000 tons are harmless to civilians because the explosions ‘take place under ground.’ Each of these ‘mini-nukes,’ nonetheless, constitutes — in terms of explosion and potential radioactive fallout — between one-third and six times the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.”

Based on the twisted notion that the “mini-nukes” are “not dangerous for civilians,” the U.S. Congress in 2003 gave the Pentagon the “green light” to use tactical nuclear weapons in “conventional war theaters” (such as the Middle East and Central Asia) alongside conventional weapons, Chossudovsky writes.

This new nuclear doctrine, he goes on to say, turns reality upside down not only by denying the horrific impact of nuclear weapons but by asserting “in no uncertain terms that nuclear weapons are ‘safe’ and their use in the battlefield will ensure ‘minimal collateral damage’ and reduce the probability of escalation.” Chossudovsky notes, “The issue of radioactive fallout is not even acknowledged with regard to tactical nuclear weapons; neither is the issue of ‘Nuclear Winter’.”

To justify pre-emptive military actions, U.S. National Security Doctrine (NSD) requires the fabrication of a terrorist, or “outside enemy,” threat, the author writes. As well, the doctrine needs to tie said terrorist threats to “state sponsorship” by so-called rogue states. Here, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) directed against Al Qaeda fits right in as essential building blocks in the Pentagon’s GWOT campaign.

Under the latest nuclear doctrine, the Pentagon discards the policy of fighting in “self-defense” in favor of “anticipatory action.” This war would allow the use of nuclear weapons against a “rogue enemy” who is alleged to plan to develop WMD at some undefined future date, Chossudovsky writes.

“Nukes would serve to prevent a non-existent WMD program (e.g Iran) prior to its development,” the author explains. “This twisted formulation goes far beyond the premises of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review and NPSD 17, which state that the U.S. can retaliate with nuclear weapons if attacked with WMD.”

And by integrating nuclear with conventional armaments on the battlefield, “there is the risk that tactical nuclear weapons could be used without requesting… presidential approval,” Chossudovsky writes. He asserts, “combat commanders would be in charge of Theater Nuclear Operations (TNO), with a mandate not only to implement but also to formulate command decisions pertaining to nuclear weapons.”

Moreover, because these “smaller” tactical nuclear weapons have been reclassified by the Pentagon as “safe for the surrounding civilian population,” thereby allegedly “minimizing the risk of collateral damage,” there are no overriding, built-in restrictions to prevent their use, Chossudovsky writes. Stockpiled tactical nuclear weapons, he concludes, are now considered to be an integral part of the battlefield arsenal, “part of the tool box,” so to speak, used in conventional war theaters.

(For further information and/or interviews with Michel Chossudovsky, contact Sherwood Ross Associates, Public Relations Consultants, Miami, Florida, 305-205-8281; [email protected])

Order your SIGNED copy of “Towards a World War III Scenario” by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research Price: US $10.25
(List price: US $15.95, Canada $16.95)
**CLICK TO BUY BOOK **

Also available: PDF version: US $6.50
(Sent directly to your email!)
**CLICK TO BUY PDF**

Ordering from the US or Canada?
Get 3 books for one low price*
Get 10 books for one low price*
(*Offer valid in US and Canada only)

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005). He has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in Western Europe, South East Asia and Latin America, acted as an adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant for several international organizations.

Prof. Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

The Saker reports that Russia is preparing for World War III, not because Russia intends to initiate aggression but because Russia is alarmed by the hubris and arrogance of the West, by the demonization of Russia, by provocative military actions by the West, by American interference in the Russian province of Chechnya and in former Russian provinces of Ukraine and Georgia, and by the absence of any restraint from Western Europe on Washington’s ability to foment war.

Like Steven Starr, Stephen Cohen, myself, and a small number of others, the Saker understands the reckless irresponsibility of convincing Russia that the United States intends to attack her.

It is extraordinary to see the confidence that many Americans place in their military’s ability. After 15 years the US has been unable to defeat a few lightly armed Taliban, and after 13 years the situation in Iraq remains out of control. This is not very reassuring for the prospect of taking on Russia, much less the strategic alliance between Russia and China. The US could not even defeat China, a Third World country at the time, in Korea 60 years ago.

Americans need to pay attention to the fact that “their” government is a collection of crazed stupid fools likely to bring vaporization to the United States and all of Europe.

Russian weapons systems are far superior to American ones. American weapons are produced by private companies for the purpose of making vast profits. The capability of the weapons is not the main concern. There are endless cost overruns that raise the price of US weapons into outer space. The F-35 fighter, which is less capable than the F-15 it is supposed to replace, costs between $148 million and $337 million per fighter, depending on whether it is an Air Force, Marine Corps, or Navy model.

http://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-dods-15-trillion-f-35-broke-the-air-force.html

A helmet for a F-35 pilot costs $400,000, more than a high end Ferrari.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2015/10/26/f-35-helmet-costs-400000-4-times-predecessor/73826180/

(Washington forces or bribes hapless Denmark into purchasing useless and costly F-35:

http://sputniknews.com/news/20160528/1040395012/denmark-f-35-military-nato-lockheed.html)

It is entirely possible that the world is being led to destruction by nothing more than the greed of the US military-security complex. Delighted that the reckless and stupid Obama regime has resurrected the Cold War, thus providing a more convincing “enemy” than the hoax terrorist one, the “Russian threat” has been restored to its 20th century role of providing a justification for bleeding the American taxpayer, social services, and the US economy dry in behalf of profits for armament manufacturers.

However, this time Washington’s rhetoric accompanying the revived Cold War is far more reckless and dangerous, as are Washington’s actions, than during the real Cold War. Previous US presidents worked to defuse tensions. The Obama regime has inflated tensions with lies and reckless provocations, which makes it far more likely that the new Cold War will turn hot. If Killary gains the White House, the world is unlikely to survive her first term.

All of America’s wars except the first—the war for independence—were wars for Empire. Keep that fact in mind as you hear the Memorial Day bloviations about the brave men and women who served our country in its times of peril. The United States has never been in peril, but Washington has delivered peril to numerous other countries in its pursuit of hegemony over others.

Today for the first time in its history the US faces peril as a result of Washington’s attempts to assert hegemony over Russia and China.

Russia and China are not impressed by Washington’s arrogance, hubris, and stupidity. Moreover, these two countries are not the native American Plains Indians, who were starved into submission by the Union Army’s slaughter of the buffalo.

They are not the tired Spain of 1898 from whom Washington stole Cuba and the Philippines and called the theft a “liberation.”

They are not small Japan whose limited resources were spread over the vastness of the Pacific and Asia.

They are not Germany already defeated by the Red Army before Washington came to the war.

They are not Granada, Panama, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, or the various Latin American countries that General Smedley Butler said the US Marines made safe for “the United Fruit Company” and “some lousy bank investment.”

An insouciant American population preoccupied with selfies and delusions of military prowess, while its crazed government picks a fight with Russia and China, has no future.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

New research has shown the U.K. is providing military training and support to over half the countries named on its own watchlist of human rights abusers. An investigation by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Independent has revealed U.K. armed forces have trained security and armed forces personnel from 16 of 30 regimes who are on a Foreign Office (FCO) watch list for use of torture and violence.

The FCO publishes an annual report on Human Rights and Democracy that lists countries of “wide-ranging concern.” While it is no secret the interests of the military-industrial complex come before human rights, information obtained from the Ministry of Defence could arguably be satire if it weren’t so appalling. The discovery that British soldiers have trained armed forces in over half the countries on its own human rights watchlist warrants an even slower hand clap than Tony Blair’s admission, weeks ahead of the Chilcot Inquiry, that his understanding of the Middle East “is a lot deeper today” than when he was Prime Minister.

Further, evidence of the U.Kgovernment’s support for violations of international humanitarian law by Saudi forces in Yemen came to light through a British-made cluster bomb found in a Yemeni village. Despite the use of cluster bombs being banned under the Convention on Cluster Munitions  (to which the U.K. is a State Party) the unexploded munition was discovered by Amnesty International during the inspection of a village in northern Yemen.

Originally manufactured in the 1970s, the weapon contains 147 “bomblets” that scatter across a wide area and often do not detonate until disturbed at a later date.

The U.K. is thought to have sold large numbers of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since the 1980s. Even if the weapons were sold before Britain became a signatory to the Convention, Britain should take responsibility for weapons previously supplied. Better still, the country should honour its claim to have one of the most robust arms export controls in the world — and at least attempt to rein in the industry profiting from death and destruction all over the world.

Only then would the British electorate be able to control, by law, the often covert activities of lobbyists, both inside and outside the House of Commons, acting not in the interests of the United Kingdom but in the interests of an undeclared nuclear state in the Middle East, the hard­-Right government of which has had undue influence over the EU Commission in Brussels for decades.

There is now a renewed effort in the United States to have the Israel lobby in America designated as a ‘Foreign Agent’ under existing legislation, and Britain should follow suit.

The Pro­-Israel Lobby, headed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has been called the NRA of foreign policy lobbies, “a hard edged, pugnacious bunch that took names and kept score”. The almost unilateral popular support of Israel in America, not to mention the nearly $3 billion in aid the country receives every year, did not come about by accident.

It’s the result of over 50 years of hard lobbying. Politicians and pundits alike are quick to support the Israeli state, and reluctant to criticize it. Pro­-Israel groups such as AIPAC spent close $4 million last year, ensuring that US-Israel ties will remain strong. The Pro­-Israel lobby remains one of the strongest and most influential foreign­policy lobbies in the US.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a lobbying group that advocates pro­Israel policies to the Congress and Executive Branch of the United States. It was founded in 1951 by Isaiah Kenen who originally ran the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs as a lobbying division of the American Zionist Council.

One of several pro­-Israel lobbying organizations in the U.S., AIPAC has more than 100,000 members, seventeen regional offices, and “a vast pool of donors. “It has been called “the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel,” and one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States. The group does not raise funds for political candidates itself, but helps organize to channel money to candidates. Its critics have stated it acts as an agent of the Israeli government with a “stranglehold” on the United States Congress with its power and influence. The group has been accused of being strongly allied with the Likud party of Israel, and the Republican Party in the US.

Among the best­-known critical works about AIPAC is The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard University Kennedy School of Government professor Stephen Walt. In the working paper and resulting book they accuse AIPAC of being “the most powerful and best known” component of a larger pro-­Israel lobby that distorts American foreign policy. They write:

AIPAC’s success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. … AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the myriad pro-­Israel PACs. Those seen as hostile to Israel, on the other hand, can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to their political opponents. … The bottom line is that AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress. Open debate about U.S. policy towards Israel does not occur there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world.

Note

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee

The people of the world should ask Western leaders and their allies: Why are you prolonging this war? Why do you continue funding and enabling the terrorists? Isn’t five years of civil war enough? Is overthrowing the Syrian government really worth so much suffering and death?

In late April, President Barack Obama announced that 250 U.S. special operations troops are being deployed to Syria. Unlike the Russian and Iranian forces aiding anti-terrorism efforts in the country, the U.S. military personnel have entered Syria against the wishes of the internationally recognized government.

In terms of international law, the United States has invaded Syria, a sovereign country and United Nations member state. This is the not the first time, though — Arizona Sen. John Mccain crossed into Syria without a visa to meet with anti-government fighters in 2013.

Senator John McCain in Syria with members of the U.S.-backed rebel group Northern Storm.

While the new U.S. boots on the ground have officially been dispatched for the purpose of fighting Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the organization known in the West as ISIS or ISIL), they will most likely be working to achieve one of the Pentagon’s longstanding foreign policy goals: violently overthrowing the Syrian government.

As the terrorism of Daesh and other extremists grows more intense, and as millions of Syrians have become refugees, the heavy costs of the U.S. government’s “regime change” operation in Syria should come into question.

Education, health care and national rebirth

The independent nationalist Syrian government, now being targeted by Western foreign policy, was born in the struggle against colonialism. It took decades of great sacrifice from the people of Syria to break the country free from foreign domination — first by the French empire and later from puppet leaders. For the last several decades, Syria has been a strong, self-reliant country in the oil-rich Middle East region. It has also been relatively peaceful.

Since winning its independence, Syria’s Baathist leadership has done a great deal to improve the living standards of the population. Between 1970 and 2009, the life expectancy in Syria increased by 17 years. During this time period infant mortality dropped dramatically from 132 deaths per 1,000 live births to only 17.9. According to an article published by the Avicenna Journal of Medicine, these notable changes in access to public health came as a result of the Syrian government’s efforts to bring medical care to the country’s rural areas.

A 1987 country study of Syria, published by the U.S. Library of Congress, describes huge achievements in the field of education. During the 1980s, for the first time in Syria’s history, the country achieved “full primary school enrollment of males” with 85 percent of females also enrolled in primary school. In 1981, 42 percent of Syria’s adult population was illiterate. By 1991, illiteracy in Syria had been wiped out by a mass literacy campaign led by the government.

The name of the main political party in Syria is the “Baath Arab Socialist Party.” The Arabic word “Baath” literally translates to “Rebirth” or “Resurrection.” In terms of living standards, the Baathist Party has lived up to its name, forging an entirely new country with an independent, tightly planned and regulated economy. The Library of Congress’ Country Study described the vast construction in Syria during the 1980s: “Massive expenditures for development of irrigation, electricity, water, road building projects, and the expansion of health services and education to rural areas contributed to prosperity.”

Compared to Saudi-dominated Yemen, many parts of Africa, and other corners of the globe that have never established economic and political independence, the achievements of the Syrian Arab Republic look very attractive. Despite over half a century of investment from Shell Oil and other Western corporations, the CIA World Factbook reports that about 60 percent of Nigerians are literate, and access to housing and medical care is very limited. In U.S.-dominated Guatemala, roughly 18 percent of the population is illiterate, and poverty is rampant across the countryside, according to the CIA World Factbook.

What the Western colonizers failed to achieve during centuries of domination, the independent Syrian government achieved rapidly with help from the Soviet Union and other anti-imperialist countries. The Soviet Union provided Syria with a $100 million loan to build the Tabqa dam on the Euphrates River, which was “considered to be the backbone of all economic and social development in Syria.” Nine-hundred Soviet technicians worked on the infrastructure project which brought electricity to many parts of the country. The dam also enabled irrigation throughout the Syrian countryside.

More recently, China has set up many joint ventures with Syrian energy corporations. According to a report from the Jamestown Foundation, in 2007 China had already invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” in Syria in efforts to “modernize the country’s aging oil and gas infrastructure.”

These huge gains for the Syrian population should not be dismissed and written off, as Western commentators routinely do when repeating their narrative of “Assad the Dictator.” For people who have always had access to education and medical care, it is to trivialize such achievements. But for the millions of Syrians, especially in rural areas, who lived in extreme poverty just a few decades ago, things like access to running water, education, electricity, medical care, and university education represent a huge change for the better.

Like almost every other regime in the crosshairs of U.S. foreign policy, Syria has a strong, domestically-controlled economy. Syria is not a “client state” like the Gulf state autocracies surrounding it, and it has often functioned in defiance of the U.S. and Israel. It is this, not altruistic concerns about human rights, that motivate Western attacks on the country.

Syria needs reform, not terrorism

In 2012, Syria ratified a new constitution in response to the protests during the Arab Spring. In compliance with the new constitution, Syria held a contested election in 2014, with international observers from 14 countries.

One thing that distinguishes Syria from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and various other U.S.-aligned regimes throughout the region is religious freedom. In Syria, Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Jews, and other religious groups are permitted to practice their religious faith freely. The government is secular, and respects the rights of the Sunni Muslim majority as well as religious minorities.

In addition to religious freedom, Syria openly tolerates the existence of two strong Marxist-Leninist parties. The Syrian Communist Party and the Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash) openly operate as part of the anti-imperialist coalition supporting the Baath Arab Socialist Party. Communists lead trade unions and community organizations in Damascus and other parts of the country.

Though Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, his wife, Asma, is Sunni like the majority of the country. Historically, the biggest opponents of the Syrian government have been supporters of the Muslim brotherhood, with a bloody episode taking place in 1982. Hoping to heal the longstanding tension, President Assad has made many gestures of solidarity toward the Sunni community in recent years. He has made a point of engaging in religious practices not commonly done by Alawites, such as praying in mosques and studying the Quran.

Shortly after fighting began in 2011, the Syrian government granted autonomy to Kurdish regions andtransferred political authority to leftist Kurdish nationalist organizations.

Syria’s political system is certainly in need of reform and modernization, and representatives of the Syrian government such as U.N. Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari readily admit this. However, the civil war which has raged across Syria for the last five years, is not about reform, democratization or modernization.

The BBC published a “guide to Syrian rebels” in 2013. Among them are not only the infamous “Islamic State” organization, which now horrifies the world, but also the Nusra Front, previously known as Al-Qaida in Syria. Other organizations with names like the “Islamic Front,” the “Islamic Liberation Front,” and the “Ahfad al-Rasoul Brigades” are also listed.

While Western media presents the Syrian civil war as a “battle for democracy” led by “revolutionaries,” the primary goal of almost every insurgent organization is creating a Sunni caliphate — one that does not actually suit Sunnis though, but rather a perverted politicized version of Sunnism created by Saudi Arabia to ideologically control that region. The unifying religious perspective of the Syrian “rebels” is the interpretation of Sunni Islam practiced and promoted by Saudi Arabia, known as Wahhabism.

Foreign fighters, chemical weapons and child soldiers

A large number of the insurgents are not Syrian. Impoverished people from throughout the Middle East have been recruited to fight against the Syrian government. Facilities in Bahrain train recruits to kill, and send them to Syria.

Terrorist training facilities exist in many other U.S.-aligned Gulf states. Foreign fighters from as far away as Malaysia and the Philippines have been found among the ranks of the foreign Wahhabi insurgents that are trying to depose the Syrian government.

The flow of violent insurgents into Syria is not accidental. It has been directly facilitated by the U.S. and its allies. The CIA has spent billions of dollars on training camps in Jordan for anti-government fighters.

The U.S.-aligned regimes of Turkey and Saudi Arabia are openly supporting the Nusra Front, the Al-Qaida-linked organization that has already killed tens of thousands of innocent people in Syria. Gen. David Petraeus has called for the U.S. to join these efforts and begin sending arms directly to the Nusra Front.

The Israeli government has made a point of aiding the Wahhabi extremists by providing them medical care in the occupied Golan Heights. Israel has also made a point of targeting allies of the Syrian government with airstrikes.

While Western media has highlighted allegations that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons,Carla Del Ponte from the United Nations confirmed that the foreign-backed insurgents have long been been using sarin nerve gas and other chemical weapons.

As the insurgents make life unlivable in Syria, kidnapping for ransom, bombing schools and hospitals, beheading people, torturing people, they do it with thousands of child soldiers among their ranks. Impoverished children from across the Arab world have been recruited to work toward violently overthrowing the Syrian government, according to UNICEF.

Between 50 and 72 percent of the population lives in areas controlled by the Syrian government. Meanwhile, even USAID confirmed that the turnout in Syria’s 2014 elections was more than 70 percent.

While the barrage of foreign fighters and extremists, aligned with a minority of the population and armed by Western powers and their allies, is committed to bringing down the Syrian government, the Syrian people clearly disagree. The fact that the Syrian government remains strongly intact after a five-year onslaught shows that the country is dedicated to preserving its independence. Time magazine and other mainstream media outlets have even been forced to admit that President Assad is unlikely to be deposed.

How can the war end?

As foreign fighters have flowed into Syria, hundreds of thousands of people have died over the last five years, and Western media continues to blame the Syrian government for the conflict. However, the war would have been a very short one if not for the foreign support given to the extremists.

As an independent country with a centrally planned economy, Syria has serves as an example to the world. It has proven that without neoliberalism and Western economic domination, it is possible to improve living conditions and develop independently. The Syrian government has made huge sacrifices to aid the Palestinian people and their resistance against Israel, and this has been a contributing factor to Syria’s inclusion on the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Syria has close economic relations with Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The war in Syria is not a domestic conflict. This is a war imposed on Syria by Israel, the U.S., and other Western capitalist powers. The primary promoter of Wahhabi extremism around the world has been the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a U.S. client state. Turkey and Jordan, U.S.-aligned countries bordering Syria, keep their borders open so that weapons, supplies and money can continue to flow into the hands of Daesh and other anti-government terrorists.

At least 470,000 people are dead, and millions of others have been forced to become refugees, but Western leaders and their allies do not end their campaign. The insane chorus of “Assad Must Go” has transformed a small, domestic episode of unrest into a full-scale humanitarian crisis. The war has nothing to do with the calls for democratic reform and the peaceful protests of 2011.

As Daesh now threatens the entire world, the consequences of the Wall Street regime change operation, promoted with “human rights” propaganda, are becoming far more extreme. The Syrian government rallies a coalition of Christians, Communists, Islamic Revolutionaries, and other forces who are fighting to maintain stability and defeat Takfiri terrorism. (The term “Takfiri” refers to groups of Sunni Muslims who refer to other Muslims as apostates and seek to establish a caliphate by means of violence.)

The only real peace plan for Syria is for the U.S., France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and other powers to end their neoliberal crusade. The internationally recognized and recently re-elected Syrian government could easily defeat the insurgents if foreign meddling ceased.

As U.S. media bemoans the humanitarian crisis, somehow blaming on the Syrian government and its president, and the U.S. directly sends its military forces into the country, the people of the world should ask Western leaders and their allies: Why are you prolonging this war? Why can’t you just leave Syria alone? Why do you continue funding and enabling the terrorists? Isn’t five years of civil war enough? Is overthrowing the Syrian government really worth so much suffering and death?

Caleb Maupin is a MintPress journalist and political analyst who resides in New York City focusing his coverage on US foreign policy and the global system of monopoly capitalism and imperialism.

After continued Pentagon denials that US Special Forces in Syria equals “boots on the ground” in Syria, new video has just emerged of a US soldier standing next to what looks like an armored personnel carrier with Kurdish militia “YPG” spray-painted on it. It appears he is asked some kind of question and he turns to the camera with a menacing smirk and says:

Let me tell you something. I”m from the United States of America and I say kill ’em all!

Watch the video here:

US invader announces his intention to kill all the #Syria|ns in the city of #Raqqa pic.twitter.com/bea48WCyIS

— Partisangirl (@Partisangirl) May 27, 2016

While US Special Forces troops may number far higher than the 300 admitted by the White House, they have no legal authority to operate inside of Syria. As the US government continues to maintain that the current Syrian government must be overthrown and that Syrian president Assad “must go,” there is no reason to expect that the “kill ’em all” mission statement of this US Special Forces soldier will end once Raqqa is liberated from ISIS control. That US troops will participate in the removal of ISIS from Raqqa and then pack up and go home is extremely unlikely, as the original motivation for US action in Syria was the removal of Assad.

In short, this is a tip-of-the-spear US invasion of Syria whose end-game is the physical removal of Assad. You read it here first.

“The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used — accidentally or by decision — defies credibility”

This unanimous statement was published by the Canberra Commission in 1996. Among the commission members were internationally known former ministers of defense and of foreign affairs and generals.

The nuclear-weapon states do not intend to abolish their nuclear weapons. They promised to do so when they signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970. Furthermore, the International Court in The Hague concluded in its advisory opinion more than 20 years ago that these states were obliged to negotiate and bring to a conclusion such negotiations on complete nuclear disarmament. The nuclear-weapon states disregard this obligation. On the contrary, they invest enormous sums in the modernization of these weapons of global destruction.

It is difficult today to raise a strong opinion in the nuclear-weapon states for nuclear disarmament. One reason is that the public sees the risk of a nuclear war between these states as so unlikely that it can be disregarded.

It is then important to remind ourselves that we were for decades, during the Cold War, threatened by extinction by nuclear war. We were not aware at that time how close we were. In this article I will summarize some of the best-known critical situations. Recently published evidence shows that the danger was considerably greater than we knew at the time.

The risk today of a nuclear omnicide—killing all or almost all humans—is probably smaller than during the Cold War, but the risk is even today real and it may be rising. That is the reason I wish us to remind ourselves again: as long as nuclear weapons exist we are in danger of extermination. Nuclear weapons must be abolished before they abolish us.

Stanislav Petrov: The man who saved the world

1983 was probably the most dangerous year for mankind ever in history. We were twice close to a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the USA. But we did not know that.

The situation between the USA and the Soviet Union was very dangerous. In his notorious speech in March 1983, President Reagan spoke of the “Axis of Evil” states in a way that seriously upset the Soviet leaders. The speech ended the period of mutual cooperation, which had prevailed since the Cuba crisis.

In the Soviet Union many political and military leaders were convinced that the USA would launch a nuclear attack. Peter Handberg, a Swedish journalist, has reported of meetings with men who at that time watched over sites where the intercontinental missiles were stored. These men strongly believed that an American attack was imminent and they expected a launch order.

In Moscow, the leaders of the Communist party prepared for a counter attack. The head of the KGB, the foreign intelligence agency, General Ileg Kalunin, had ordered his agents in the world to watch for any sign of a large attack on the Mother Country.

A previous head of the KGB, Jurij Andropov, was now leader of the country. He was severely ill and was treated with chronic dialysis. He was the man ultimately responsible for giving the order to fire the nuclear missiles.

The nuclear arms race was intense. The USA and the Soviet Union were both arming the “European Theater” with medium-distance nuclear missiles. President Reagan’s “Star Wars” program was a source of much anxiety on the Russian side. The belief was that the USA was trying to obtain a first strike capacity. In Russia, a Doomsday machine was planned—a system that would automatically launch all strategic nuclear weapons if contact with the military and political leaders of the country was completely disabled.

Stanislov Petrov

The increased risk of war was felt particularly strongly by those in Russia who were ordered to prepare for an immediate response in case of a nuclear attack. The command centre situated in the military city Serpukov-15 was the hub for the vigilance, evaluating reports from satellites in space and radar stations at the borders. Colonel Stanislav Petrov was ordered to take the watch on the evening of September 25, instead of a colleague who had called in sick.

Late in the evening, the alarm sounded. A missile had apparently been fired from the American west coast. Soon two were detected; finally four. The computer warned that the probability of an attack was at the highest level.

Petrov should now, according to the instructions, immediately report that an American attack had been discovered. Against orders, he decided to wait. He knew that if he reported a nuclear attack a global war would be likely. The USA, the Soviet Union, and most of mankind would be exterminated. Petrov waited for more information.

He found it very unlikely that the USA had launched only a few missiles. Petrov was well informed about the computer system and he knew that it was not perfect.

After a long wait the “missiles” disappeared from the screens. The explanation came at last: There was a glitch in the computer system.

Petrov had himself been involved in developing the system. Maybe this special knowledge saved us? Or unusual self-confidence and courage in an unusual individual?

This fateful event became known when a superior officer, who had criticized omissions in Petrov’s records of the evening, told the story on his deathbed. Petrov has received rather little recognition in Russia.

What happened that critical night—and Petrov’s part in the story—is played out in a recent movie by the Danish producer Peter Anthony: “The man who saved the world.”

“Able Archer”: A NATO exercise which could have become the last

 Just like the “Petrov incident,” the “Able Archer” crisis was known only to a few military and political leaders in Russia and the USA until decades later. Only in 2013 could the Nuclear Information Service get access to the classified US file. Important documents from Russia and Great Britain are still not available. Why do our leaders feel they need to “protect” us against the truth of the greatest dangers mankind has faced?

Soviet SS-20 missile

“Able Archer” was a NATO exercise carried out in the beginning of November 1983. The purpose was so simulate a Soviet invasion stopped by a nuclear attack. About 40,000 soldiers participated and large troop movements took place.

Similar exercises had been carried out in previous years. The development could be monitored by Soviet intelligence through radio eavesdropping. What was new was that the tension between Soviet and the USA was stronger than before. In the background was the Soviet operation RYAN, an acronym for an attack with nuclear missiles. RYAN had become the strategic plan of the Soviet KGB two years earlier, on how to respond to an expected American nuclear attack. The combination of Soviet paranoia and the rhetoric of President Ronald Reagan did place the world in great danger.

Soviet leaders thought that this exercise could be a parallel to Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the military maneuver that suddenly was turned into a full-scale attack on the Soviet Union.

The Soviet leaders placed bomb planes on highest alert, with pilots in place in the cockpits. Submarines carrying nuclear missiles were placed in protected positions under the Arctic ice. Missiles of the SS-20 type were readied.

NATO concluded the exercises after a few days, with an order to launch nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. No missiles were fired, however, and the participants went back home.

After the exercise the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher learnt from the intelligence service how the NATO command had been ignorant of the serious misunderstanding in Russia of the intention of this exercise. She conferred with President Ronald Reagan. It is likely that this information, together with his viewing of the film “The Day After,” caused the conversion of the President which was expressed in his State of the Union message in 1984: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Reagan continued this process up to the famous meeting in Reykjavik in 1986, when he and President Gorbachev for a brief moment agreed to abolish all nuclear weapons before the end of the century.

An interesting and most worrying rendition of how the exercises were perceived in Russia is given in the documentary movie “1983: Brink of the Apocalypse.” The story is based on documents that became available in 2013 and on interviews with some of those who were active on both sides in the situation. Two spies were important in convincing the leaders of KGB that no attack was underway. One was a Russian spy in NATO headquarters who insisted to the KGB that this was an exercise and not a preparation for an attack. The other, a Russian spy in London, gave the same picture.

We can conclude that a lack of insight in the USA and in NATO into the perceptions in the Soviet Union put the world in mortal danger. Did two spies save the world?

A reflection of the danger associated with this NATO exercise plays out in the recent German TV production “Deutschland.”

The Cuba crisis: More dangerous than we knew

Soviet nuclear weapons were placed in Cuba. Fidel Castro and Russia’s generals intended to use them if the USA attacked. A Russian submarine that came under attack carried a nuclear weapon. A nuclear attack on the US was closer than we knew.

The development of this crisis has been described in several American books. “Thirteen Days” by Robert Kennedy is the best known and has also been made into a movie. As the story is so well known I will not repeat it here.

In the reports, we can experience how badly prepared the political and military leadership were for such a situation, and how little these two groups understood each other. The generals saw no alternatives other than doing nothing or destroying Cuba with a full-scale nuclear attack. Robert Kennedy wrote that he even feared a military coup!

The US side had little information about plans and evaluations in Moscow. There was no direct communication between Kennedy and Khrushchev.  The final Russian answer to President Kennedy’s proposal was sent from the Russian Embassy to Kennedy by a bicycle messenger! (The “Hot line” was installed after—and because of—the Cuban Missile Crisis).

We know less about what went on in Moscow, but Khrushchev’s memoirs give some information. It seems that the Russian generals were greatly worried about the image and prestige of Russia. “If we give in to the US in this situation how could our allies trust us in the future. How could the Chinese have any respect for us?”

The world knew at the time that the crisis was very dangerous and that a nuclear war was a real possibility. Decades later we know more. Thus, Cuban President Fidel Castro, at a meeting many years later with US Secretary of Defense McNamara, said that if the USA had attacked Cuba, Castro would have demanded that Russian nuclear missiles be launched against the USA.

An American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba during the crisis. Only much later were we informed that another U-2 plane in the Arctic had entered over Soviet territory, misled by the influence of the Northern Light! US fighter planes were sent to protect the U-2 plane. These planes were equipped with nuclear weapons for this mission. Why? Was it possible for the lone pilot to launch these weapons?

We have also belatedly learned that four Russian submarines carrying nuclear torpedoes were navigating close to Cuba. The commanders were instructed to use their nuclear weapons if bombs seriously damaged their vessel. At least one of the submarines was hit by charges that were intended as warnings, but the commander did not know this. The captain believed his submarine was damaged and he wanted to launch his nuclear torpedo. His deputy, Captain Vasilij Alexandrovich Arkhipov, persuaded him to wait for an order from Moscow. No connection was established but the submarine escaped. Arkhipov’s role has been highlighted in a movie which, like the film about Petrov, is called “The man who saved the world.”

What would have been the consequence had the nuclear torpedo hit the US aircraft carrier that led the US operation?

Quite recently, reports have surfaced from the US base on Okinawa, Japan. During the Cuba crisis the order came to prepare for a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. There was considerable confusion at the nuclear command at the base. An increase in the alarm level from DefCon-2 to DefCon-1 was expected but never came.

A bizarre event, which could have been come from a novel by John le Carré, was called “Penkovsky’s sighs.” Oleg Penkovsky was a double agent who had given important information to the CIA—the US Central Intelligence Agency—about the Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba. He had been instructed to send a coded message—three deep exhalations repeated twice—to his contact were he informed that the Soviets intended to attack. This sighing message was sent during the Cuba crisis to the CIA. The CIA contact, however, realized that Penkovsky had been captured and tortured and the code had been extricated.

Other serious close calls

In November 1979, a recorded scenario describing a Russian nuclear attack had been entered into the US warning system NORAD. The scenario was perceived as a real full-scale Soviet attack. Nuclear missiles and bombers were readied. After six minutes the mistake became obvious. After this incident new security routines were introduced.

Despite these changed routines, less that one year later the mistake was repeated—this time more persistent and dangerous. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US national security adviser, was called at three o´clock in the morning by a general on duty. He was informed that 220 Soviet missiles were on their way towards the USA. A moment later a new call came, saying that 2,200 missiles had been launched. Brzezinski was about to call President Jimmy Carter when the general called for a third time reporting that the alarm had been cancelled.

The mistake was caused by a malfunctioning computer chip. Several similar false alarms have been reported, although they did not reach the national command.

We have no reports from the Soviet Union similar to these computer malfunctions. Maybe the Russians have less trust in their computers, just as Colonel Petrov showed? However, there are many reports on serious accidents in the manufacture and handling of nuclear weapons. I have received reliable information from senior military officers in the Soviet Union regarding heavy use of alcohol and drugs among the personnel that monitor the warning and control systems, just as in the USA.

The story of the “Norwegian weather rocket” in 1995 is often presented as a particularly dangerous incident. Russians satellites warned of a missile on its way from Norway towards Russia. President Yeltsin was called in the middle of the night; the “nuclear war laptop” was opened; and the president discussed the situation with his staff. The “missile” turned out not to be directed towards Russia.

I see this incident as an indication that when the relations between the nuclear powers are good, then the risk of a misunderstanding is very small. The Russians were not likely to expect an attack at that time.

Indian soldiers fire artillery in northernmost part of Kargil region.

Close calls have occurred not only between the two superpowers. India and Pakistan are in a chronic but active conflict regarding Kashmir. At least twice this engagement has threatened to expand into a nuclear war, namely at the Kargil conflict in 1999 and after an attack on the Indian Parliament by Pakistani terrorists in 2001. Both times, Pakistan readied nuclear weapons for delivery. Pakistan has a doctrine of first use: If Indian military forces transgress over the border to Pakistan, that country intends to use nuclear weapons. Pakistan does not have a system with a “permissive link”, where a code must be transmitted from the highest authority in order to make a launch of nuclear weapons possible. Military commanders in Pakistan have the technical ability to use nuclear weapons without the approval of the political leaders in the country. India, with much stronger conventional forces, uses the permissive link and has declared a “no first use” principle.

The available extensive reports from both these incidents show that the communication between the political and the military leaders was highly inadequate. Misunderstandings on very important matters occurred to an alarming degree. During both conflicts between India and Pakistan, intervention by US leaders was important in preventing escalation and a nuclear war.

We know little about close calls in the other nuclear-weapon states. The UK prepared its nuclear weapons for use during the Cuba conflict. There were important misunderstandings between military and political leaders during that incident. Today all British nuclear weapons are based on submarines. The missiles can, as a rule, be launched only after a delay of many hours. Mistakes will thus be much less likely.

France, on the contrary, claims that it has parts of its nuclear arsenal ready for immediate action, on order from the President. There are no reports of close calls. There is no reason to label the collision between a British and French nuclear-armed submarine in 2009 as a close call.

China has a “no first use” doctrine and probably does not have weapons on hair-trigger alert, which decreases the risk of dangerous mistakes.

Why was there no nuclear war?

Eric Schlosser, author of the book “Command and Control,” told this story: “An elderly physicist, who had taken part in the development of the nuclear weapons, told me: ‘If anyone had said in 1945, after the bombing of Nagasaki, that no other city in the world would be attacked with atomic weapons, no one would have believed him. We expected more nuclear wars.’”

Yes, how come there was no more nuclear war?

In the nuclear-weapon states they say that deterrence was the reason. MAD—“Mutual Assured Destruction”—saved us. Even if I attack first, the other side will have sufficient weapons left to cause “unacceptable” damage to my country. So I won’t do it.

Deterrence was important. In addition, the “nuclear winter” concept was documented in the mid-1980s. The global climate consequences of a major nuclear war would be so severe that the “winner” would starve to death. An attack would be suicidal. Maybe this insight contributed to the decrease in nuclear arsenals that started after 1985?

MAD cannot explain why nuclear weapons were not used in wars against countries that did not have them. In the Korean war, General MacArthur wanted to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese forces that came in on the North Korean side but he was stopped by President Truman. During the Vietnam war many voices in the USA demanded that nukes should be used. In the two wars against Iraq the US administration threatened to use nuclear weapons if Iraq used chemical weapons. Many Soviet military leaders wanted to use atomic bombs in Afghanistan.

What held them back? Most important were moral and humanitarian reasons. This was called the “Nuclear Threshold.” If the USA had used nuclear weapons against North Vietnam the results would have been so terrible that the US would have been a pariah country for decades. The domestic opinion in the US would not have accepted the bombing. Furthermore, the radioactive fallout in neighbouring countries, some of them allies to the US, would have been unacceptable.

Are moral and humanitarian reasons a sufficient explanation why nukes were never used? I do not know, but find no other.

Civil society organisations have been important in establishing a high nuclear threshold. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War has been particularly important in this regard. IPPNW has persistently pointed at the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and warned that a global nuclear war could end human civilisation and, maybe, exterminate mankind. The opinion by the International Court in The Hague, that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons was generally prohibited, is also important.

The nuclear-weapon states do not intend to use nuclear weapons except as deterrence against attack. Deterrence, however, works only if the enemy believes that, in the end, I am prepared to use nuclear weapons. Both NATO and Russia have doctrines that nukes can be used even if the other side has not done so. In a conflict of great importance, a side that is much weaker and maybe is in danger of being overrun is likely to threaten to use its atomic weapons. If you threaten to use them you may in the end be forced to follow through on your threat.

The close calls I have described in this article mean that mankind could have been exterminated by mistake. Only decades after the events have we been allowed to learn about these threats. It is likely that equally dangerous close calls have occurred.

So why did these mistakes not lead to a nuclear war, when during the Cold War the tension was so high and the superpowers seemed to have expected a nuclear war to break out?

Let me tell of a close call I have experienced in my personal life. I was driving on a highway, in the middle of the day, when I felt that the urge to fall asleep, which sometimes befalls me, was about to overpower my vigilance. There was no place to stop for a rest. After a minute I fell asleep. The car veered against the partition in the middle of the road and its side was torn up. My wife and I were unharmed.

But if there had been no banister? The traffic on the opposing side of the road was heavy and there were lorries.

The nuclear close calls did not lead to a war. Those who study accidents say that often there must be two and often three mistakes or failures occurring simultaneously.

There have been a sufficient number of dangerous situations between the USA and Russia that could have happened at almost the same time. Shortly before the Able Archer exercise, a Korean passenger plane was shot down by Soviet airplanes. But what if Soviet fighters had, by mistake, been attacked and shot down over Europe? What if any of the American airplanes carrying nuclear weapons had mistaken the order in the exercise for a real order to bomb Soviet targets? In the Soviet Union bombers were on high alert, with pilots in the cockpit, waiting for a US attack.

What if the fighters sent to protect the U-2 plane that had strayed into Soviet territory in Siberia during the Cuba crisis had used the nuclear missile they were carrying?

Eric Schlosser tells in his book about a great number of mistakes and accidents in the handling of nuclear weapons in the USA. Bombs have fallen from airplanes or crashed with the carrier. These accidents would not cause a nuclear war, but a nuclear explosion during a tense international crisis when something else also went wrong, such as the “Petrov Incident” mentioned earlier, could have led to very dangerous mistakes. Terrorist attacks with nuclear weapons simultaneous with a large cyber attack might start the final war, if the political situation is strained.

Dr. Alan Philips guessed in a study from the year 2003 that the risk of a nuclear war occurring during the Cold War was 40%. Maybe so. Or maybe 20%. Or 75%. But most definitely not zero—not close to zero.

Today the danger of a nuclear war between Russia and the USA is much lower that during the Cold War. However, mistakes can happen. Dr. Bruce Blair, who has been in the chain of command for nuclear weapons, insists that unauthorized firing of nuclear missiles is possible. The protection is not perfect. In general, the system for control and for launching is built to function with great redundancy, whatever happens to the lines of command or to the command centers. The controls against launches by mistake, equipment failure, interception by hackers, technical malfunction, or human madness, seem to have a lower priority. At least in the US, but there is no reason to believe the situation in Russia to be more secure.

The tension between Russia and the USA is increasing. Threats of use of nuclear weapons have, unbelievably, been heard.

But we have been lucky so far.

As I said in the beginning of this paper, quoting the Canberra Commission: “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used — accidentally or by decision — defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

The most important source for this review is the Chatham House Report from 2014 “Too close for comfort.”

The decline of US influence in key regions around the world, such as the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, North Africa and Europe, directly results from the so-called phenomenon of imperial over-stretch.

The most tangible consequences are Washington’s reduced ability to predict and react in focal areas of the world. The constant need to subdue and control each aspect of life has ended up alienating the involvement and importance of the US role in these regions. For the moment, it is important to focus on where Washington continues to demonstrate considerable influence and strategic skills, it is still able to influence the course of events.

Contrary to what happens in the rest of the world, Southeast Asia and South America find themselves increasingly drawn into the sphere of American influence. Attributing these developments to an attitude or a precise Washington tactic would be a mistake. One of the major defects expressed by US foreign policy can be traced back to a lack of strategic planning. More likely we are looking at different phenomena depending on the location, be it Asia or South America. The rise of China as a major Asian superpower has completely different effects than the more dramatic collapse of the weak South American economies of Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina. Yet both regions suffer from the so-called effects of modern hybrid wars.

The 21st century’s conflicts do not necessarily require the use of firearms or armed assaults on a legitimate government. Hybrid warfare is a theme of frightening actuality today. It is a new way for the US to impose its specific weight without a constant need to be nurtured and supported as a military operation. It is the ideal tactic to stretch their financial and cultural tentacles where military force would be ineffective or unenforceable. The most striking example is the combination of the dollar in trade with the international sanctions and the general slowdown in emerging economies. Many economists have correlated a slowdown in growth of emerging countries with factors such as interest rates decided by the FED, collapse of oil prices and the more general consequences of the economic crisis of 2008.

The only antidote functioning seems to be the relatively new strategy of de-dollarizing economies to reduce the effects of western financial aggression. It is not just a matter of diversification but rather of having strategic monetary reserves not limited to dollars.

A matter of survival.

A country that operates solely in dollars, in an international system dominated by financial institutions loyal to Washington, is a country exposed to a considerable number of vulnerabilities. It is no surprise that in a certain context this interwoven relationship can become a flaw to be exploited for the benefit of Washington, as we have seen recently in Argentina and Venezuela with the victory of Macri and the bourgeois right.

In Asia, the situation is very different given such combination of factors as the growing Chinese influence in the region (Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road) and the decline in emerging economies. In recent times, this has required a rebalancing of power in the region. Translated, this means that if up to a decade ago, many Asian countries were seeking an exclusive cooperation with Beijing, today they also turn towards Washington to develop a balance in their relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the typical geopolitical dance based on ambiguity. Washington dreams of a strategic realignment of many Asian countries at Beijing’s expense, while smaller regional players utilize Washington and the TPP as a bargaining chip against the PRC in order to obtain better conditions. All these events are intrinsic to the very concept of a multipolar world. Countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia have reached unexplored levels of integration and dependence on the Chinese locomotive.

Although Beijing has an attitude anything but imperialist, it remains in a position of strength derived from being the dominant regional player in Asia. Balancing the power in the region means forcibly engaging the only global actor able to compete with China, the United States. The most striking case is India, decisive core of a future multipolar world. New Delhi has instinctively increased cooperation and development with Washington, reinvigorating old criticisms that have always seen it as a US trojan horse for BRICS and then the SCO. Leaving excessive alarmism aside, we must take note that modern methods of hybrid warfare (financial) have devastating effects on multipolar development, and that much has to be done to neutralize this threat.

Multipolar approach to currency.

The need for a genuine transition from the current unipolar currency (US dollar), too easily manipulated by Western financial institutions, is becoming increasingly manifest and pressing. To further substantiate these claims, we can see the actions pursued by the three leaders in the multipolar arena: Tehran, Moscow and Beijing. Diversifying into gold rather than US government securities has two concrete and immediate effects. First, one is avoiding the enormous public debt financing, which allows Washington to spend for wars and chaos in the world. Second, one is creating an alternative to the dollar as world currency (gold-backed Yuan). The moves of the Chinese-Russian-Iranian triad are an effective countermove to the hybrid financial-cultural war the West is waging.

The eurasian powers cannot fight conventional or nuclear wars but have all the unconventional means to halt growing US influence. De-dollarization, diversifying into gold, gradually abandoning US Treasuries, increasing trade in alternative currencies, expanding the basket of currencies in the IMF, encouraging the creation of new international bodies (ASEAN, BRICS, etc) – all are armed carriers directed against American hegemony. It is mainly thanks to these strategies designed around a table and planned by mutual agreement that other crucial locations of the globe slowly start to flow from a unipolar to a multipolar vision of cooperation.

Historical allies of Washington

We can not unite the evolution of the situation in Europe with the drift that has taken the Middle East, North Africa and even the Persian Gulf. Yet as they may seem diametrically opposed situations, they remain in truth united by a common factor, namely the diminishing role of the United States. Some Washington-centered analysts continue to consider these events as a conscious strategic choice of the United States: the pivot to Asia rather than ensuring the European Atlantic security framework; American energy independence thanks to shale gas rather than being involved in the Middle East and needing to defend and assist regional allies (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey). But the reality is totally different and much less favorable to the United States. The pivot to Asia is a fictitious doctrine invented by the Obama administration to justify the continued loss of influence of Washington in Europe and the Middle East.

There is no rebalancing of American forces in Asia but rather local actors that, in a multipolar dimension, prefer to have good relations with China together with the United States, thereby not precluding possible alternatives. Washington insists on painting this scenario as a geopolitical shift of the Asian region to the east. The reality is quite different, and the enormous problems in reaching an agreement on the TPP is a clear demonstration of this. In contrast, the consequences of this fictitious strategic reorganization of Washington’s foreign policy have resulted in a more than real earthquake in the important foreign relations between Washington and decades-old allies. From Egypt to Saudi Arabia, through to Turkey and the European Union – all have suffered the consequences of ineffective American foreign policy. Analysts in the Eurasian sphere make the same mistake of their American colleagues in saying that one often has the impression that the United States has deliberately decided to lessen commitment in these regions, resulting in a rapid deterioration of relations with allies. Such an argument would not differ much from those in the West suggesting that there is a rebalancing of power eastwards.

They are both wrong and based on a fundamental mistake, namely the presumption that the United States consciously dictates its own agenda. Nothing could be more wrong. Once again, it is the multipolar integration between people and nations that removes Washington as the unipolar fulcrum, thereby reducing its influence. It is cooperation between Iran, Russia and China (who drag with them dozens of other nations) that creates the right antibodies to resist hybrid financial wars and also discourage attempts of direct military aggression.

Discouraging does not always prevent aggression.

The initial aggression against Ukraine and Syria could be the last concrete attempts to influence the regions of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe with hybrid warfare techniques (color revolutions, Arab spring) to keep Washington’s influence active. The European situation, for example, is the perfect representation of the crock pot between two iron pots (USA and Russia). In the long run, this obvious existential vulnerability, which began with the Georgian war and culminated with the events in Kiev, opened a breach in the intellectual thinking of the old continent, causing unexpected victories of political movements with anti-systemic agendas. It is the first sign of a larger awakening that will inevitably lead to the reevaluation and reprioritization of their own interests compared to a normal, self-defeating and complete devotion to the US cause.

Witty analysts in 2014 predicted with prescience that in the medium term, the crisis caused by the coup in Kiev would resonate in the minds of the European oligarchy as an alarm bell: no one is indispensable. In North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, the situation has been even more dramatic, with the complete failure of the hybrid war called Arab Spring color revolution. The different synergies achieved by the combined Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis has allowed assaulted nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt to look back and take refuge in the newborn multipolar world, countering the aggression of Washington in a more or less effective way. Other than pivoting towards Asia and becoming energy-independent, the United States has ended its unipolar moment and begin to suffer the consequences of a relentless multipolar world increasingly willing to integrate. Thus the reaction of US allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and Turkey, who are aware of the true strategy of Washington (chaos at all costs, in the absence of the strategic planning that’s missing) should not come as a surprise.

These countries try to advance their own interests at any cost, regardless of the consequences and the opinion of Washington. It remains to be emphasized that the deadlock in the Middle East especially is a direct consequence of the action of multipolar forces that neutralized any direct intervention of regional actors in the context of Iraq, Syria or Yemen. The consequent and recent nervousness in Ankara, Riyadh, Doha and Tel Aviv is a reaction to a total inability to change events in the region, to deeply influence the political framework and to achieve  a greater involvement of the United States. The cards to play are no longer there, and what remains is a situation that inevitably tends towards the worst for Washington’s former allies. Just as Europe is experiencing an existential threat as a result of the disasters arising in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe, Turkey, Israel, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are faced with the need to rebalance their geopolitical structure, adapting to a new multipolar world.

Change to survive.

The challenge for Doha, Tel Aviv, Ankara and Riyadh is to change and adapt without drowning in American machinations of color revolutions and Arab Springs. Let us remember the paradox that these four nations face: they are at the most and the most vulnerable to an economic attack, basically being totally locked into the Western financial system. Even more importantly, they are also the last tool that Washington has to condition and influence events in the region. With this in mind, it is easier to understand why from Turkey to Saudi Arabia there are alarming situations, fully suited for the usual pattern of Washington’s hybrid warfare. Turkish generals want closer cooperation with Iran; the Saudis would like to start to trade in Yuan with China; Doha would like to cooperate with Tehran in the gas industry; and Israel is coordinating in many ways with Moscow. These aspects are suppressed, hidden, concealed and denied by the same actors, but they are nonetheless real, tangible and often a source of tension with Washington. Yet again humanity is placed in a precarious position as the world transitions and proceeds inexorably towards the new multipolar world.

THEY are the people who fabricated the pretexts to the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.

THEY are the people who spy on us illegally and call the whistleblowers who expose their crimes traitors.

THEY denied they were spying on us for years despite evidence to the contrary and at the same time they were building a vast, illegal technological prison around us.

THEY are the ones who commit war crimes with impunity and jail those who reveal their murders.

THEY are the ones who torture and imprison people outside of any legal or moral framework.

THEY are criminal bankers who are rewarded with bailouts instead of indictments for their crimes.

THEY make billions destroying the economic future of millions with Ponzi schemes and then blame their victims.

THEY are the complicit media who protect the people who are committing crimes against humanity instead of investigating and revealing them.

THEY are the ones who write talking points like the question “Who are They?” in an attempt to portray people who question the motives and morality of global planners as paranoid.

THEY are being exposed by brave whistleblowers and investigative journalists and their days are numbered.

“Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger.

As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger.”  

James L. Jones,  U.S. National Security Advisor,  Feb. 8th, 2009 (quoted by  CFR)

(Please read Part I, Part II, and Part III prior to this article)

Part III heavily detailed the three most explosive regional factors currently threatening the Balkans, whereas this current chapter will look at three less imminent, but no less impactful, ones that could also throw the region’s stability into jeopardy.

The Croatian-Serbian Missile Race

Historical Foundation:

The rivalry between Croatia and Serbia is centuries-long, stretching to before either of them were modern-day nation states and back to the time when they were still under the occupation of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, respectively. It’s been argued that both people are of the same ethnic origin, with their only substantial differences being in dialect and adherence to a particular Christian sect (Catholicism for Croats, Orthodoxy for Serbs). Extended research has already been published on the fraternal similarities between these two people and the reasons for their contemporary perception of “separateness” as regards the other, so the present study will refrain from repeating what has already been established long before it and begin the historical discourse from the more relevant period of World War II.

Leading up to the intercommunal hostilities that formally broke out after the Nazi invasion (although incidents of violence were indeed present right before then), the Croats had been agitating for an autonomous ethno-centric sub-state within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and they finally received their wish with the August 1939 Cvetkovic-Macek Agreement that established the Croatian Banovina. The Ustase, a hyper-fascist Croatian organization led by Ante Pavelic, had been pushing for this for quite some time, seeing it as a stepping stone to outright independence and the fulfillment of their nationalist ambitions to forge Greater Croatia. Observed from abroad, the Croatian fascists obviously seemed like ideal and natural partners for the Nazis to cooperate with before and after their forthcoming invasion of Yugoslavia, and it’s no surprise that Hitler would later work hand-in-glove with Pavelic in exterminating the Serbs. Their pre-war collaboration was so deep that the “Independent State of Croatia”, the Nazi-controlled puppet project during World War II (the most radical manifestation of Greater Croatia), would be declared right after Hitler’s invasion and over a week prior to the formal capitulation of the Yugoslav government, suggesting that its supporters were eagerly awaiting the offensive and understood that it was only with Nazi support that their nationalist nightmare could become a reality.

The pertinence that all of this has to the present era is that the Hitler-Pavelic project for Greater Croatia incorporated the entirety of Bosnia and created a precedent (however ethically disturbing and brief) of ‘leadership’ in the Western Balkans that imprinted a very specific form of geo-nationalism on the historical memory of most Croats. While thankfully never carried out to the ultra-extreme form of its fascist predecessors, this brand of radical Croatian nationalism would return as a factor during the destructive dissolution of Yugoslavia. The Croatian military wanted not only to purge ethnic Serbs from the Republic of Serbian Krajina that they had established in part of the former Socialist Republic of Croatia (itself the post-war formalization of most of the Croatian Banovina), but they wanted to take it even further and cleanse their rival demographic from most of Bosnia as well (although this latter objective thankfully failed). Indicative of just how intimately intertwined the genocide against Serbs has become in the modern-day Croatian national identity, 5 August, the date that the Republic of Serbian Krajina was destroyed, is annually celebrated as the “Day of Victory and Thanksgiving and the Day of Croatian Defenders”.

The takeaway from this broad overview is that the Croatian political-military establishment is vehemently anti-Serbian and that the geo-nationalist historical memory still lingering from World War II can be easily manipulated to gin the population up for supporting another crusade. The focal point in any forthcoming conflict for carving out a Greater Croatia (whether in fact or in form) is undoubtedly Bosnia, and the provocations that Sarajevo has lately launched against Republika Srpska bode quite negatively for the entity’s future stability. More than likely, the Croatian deep state (the permanent military, diplomatic, and intelligence apparatuses) is interested in unbalancing Bosnia in order to create the opportunity for wiping Republika Srpska from the map and turning the entirety of the country into an American-Croatian protectorate, or in other words, the post-modern manifestation of the Hitler-Pavelic project for Greater Croatia.

Missile vs. Missile:

This brings the study to the point of discussing the missile race that’s begun between Croatia and Serbia. It was reported in mid-October 2015 that Croatia is planning to purchase 16 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) from the US. Although no formal statement was yet to be issued on the topic, it’s predicted that Croatia will claim that the MLRS are for “defensive” purposes and shouldn’t trigger worry from anyone, but the fact that they give the country the capability of striking Serbia is a cause for serious concern. It’s perplexing to try and make sense of what’s foreseen to be Croatia’s “defensive” ‘justification’ for the arms purchase considering that the system only has an offensive purpose. It’s thus not for naught that Serbian Prime Minister Vucic spoke about his interest in purchasing Russian anti-missile systems and other equipment during his late-October visit to Moscow, since Serbia now needs to find a way to nullify this emerging military threat.

Of course, if Serbia for whatever reason backs out of its verbal commitment to purchase the Russian arms, then it would automatically place itself in a position of military blackmail vis-à-vis Croatia (acting as a Lead From Behind proxy on behalf of the US) and would be powerless to correct the military imbalance. Provided that both transfers go through, then it’s inevitable that the US will push its Croatian proxy into purchasing different sets of weaponry in order to upset the strategic equilibrium that Serbia’s Russian-made anti-missile systems would bring to the region. This would beget a symmetrical response from Serbia, thus plunging the two neighbors into an American-initiated arms race that neither of their two frail economies might be able to sustain.

In this sense, Croatia would have an institutional advantage over Serbia since its NATO membership might entitle it to discounted weaponry that could prove effective in shifting the military balance, while Serbia has no such agreement with Russia. Nonetheless, in such a case Russia would probably propose an advantageous and deferred payment plan to allow Serbia to receive the necessary defensive armaments in maintaining its security. Cyclically, one sale leads to another, and before anyone realizes what happened (except of course the US, which engineered this whole scenario), the Western and Central Balkans’ strongest militaries are engaged in a spiraling arms race across every military spectrum, drawing their American and Russian allies closer to a New Cold War proxy confrontation with the other.

Battleground Bosnia:

Going back to the conclusion reached after the historical overview at the beginning of this subsection, Croatia and its Western backers are working closely with Sarajevo in engineering the pretexts (whether legal, military, or ‘socially driven’ through a Color Revolution) to abolish Republika Srpska. Such a struggle won’t come easy, however, as the Serbs are sure to symmetrically fight back against any aggressive infringement on their sovereignty, be it legal and/or military. Everything that’s happening right now as regards the Croatian military buildup is predicated on preparing Zagreb to take the lead in any prospective anti-Srpska operation, whether through a direct or indirect role. The Bosnian Armed Forces are not capable on their own of carrying out the task, considering also that the Serbian members would immediately mutiny and fight for their constituent republic as opposed to the overall federation (which is being hijacked by the Croat-Muslim entity as it is). Therefore, from the perspective of American grand strategy in waging the next battle in the War on Serbia and drawing Belgrade into a Reverse Brzezinski trap, it’s imperative for it to use Croatia as its vanguard proxy in achieving this geo-critical objective.

At this juncture, Croatia’s missile buildup makes complete sense, since it gives Zagreb the capacity to project force into Serbia to counter any support that Belgrade gives to Banja Luka. It’s not for sure that Croatia would ever directly attack Serbia itself (although it might feel compelled to if the US pressures it in this direction), but the mere fact that American missiles could once more rain down on Serbian cities would certainly affect Serbia’s strategic calculations in this scenario. If the country didn’t have adequate defenses for nullifying this threat, then Croatia would be able to blackmail Serbia and prevent it from directly or indirectly intervening to support Republika Srpska. However, if Serbia’s defenses were buffeted with state-of-the-art Russian-built anti-missile technology, then Croatia’s blackmail threat instantly disappears and Belgrade would have a much freer course of action in assisting Republika Srpska however it deemed fit.

Croatia would then only have the choice of attacking Serbia directly in face-to-face aggression either in the Bosnian ‘middle ground’ or directly on its own soil and risk escalating the war to unforeseen heights. Depending on the global New Cold War conditions at the time, the US and NATO might not be so eager to directly assist in Croatia’s offensive, thus hanging it out to dry in fighting Serbia on its own. This isn’t a risk that Croatia’s decision makers would want to take lightly, thus meaning that if their surface-to-surface missile blackmail is deterred by Serbia’s Russian-provided anti-missile defense systems, then it becomes markedly less likely that they’d directly attack Serbian soil and would probably contain their aggression to the Bosnian battlespace. In turn, this increases the chances that Republka Srpska can withstand whatever joint Croatian-Muslim offensive is being planned against them, knowing that they can depend on Serbian assistance if need be without having to fear that their ally is under ballistic-missile blackmail in being forced to stay on the sidelines. From a larger and conclusive perspective,Serbian-Russian military cooperation in balancing against the Croatian-American buildup might even indefinitely delay a unipolar offensive on Republika Srpska and give the multipolar world the adequate time that it needs in brainstorming a solution to this impending brinksmanship.

NATO’s “Drang Nach Suden”

Southern Expansionism:

During the final years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the US reached a verbal agreementwhereby Moscow would allow for the reunification of Germany in exchange for the US agreeing to never expand NATO further East. As history attests, the US shamelessly reneged on its guarantee the moment the Soviet Union collapsed and was powerless to effectively stop it, swallowing up almost the entirety of Eastern Europe (save for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine) and all the Baltic States by 2004. What’s less studied by observers is NATO’s “Drang Nach Suden” (Drive to the South), which represents one of the last fronts of continental NATO expansionism and has been in the works ever since the end of the Cold War.

Theoretically speaking, this corner of Europe didn’t fall under the Soviets’ purvey when they made their verbal agreement with the US. Moscow didn’t have any forces stationed in Yugoslavia or Albania that would soon be withdrawn, thus making these countries’ prospective membership into NATO a moot point for Moscow to even discuss because it had no power or influence one way or another to even decide on it. Faced with its own internal problems and its forthcoming theater-wide withdraw from Central and Eastern Europe, it’s likely that the Soviet Union didn’t even consider the then-unthinkable scenario that a series of American-engineered proto-Hybrid Wars would soon lead to the dissolution of Yugoslavia along federative lines and one day see two of its formerly unified members plus Albania under the NATO nuclear umbrella.

Alas, that’s exactly what happened, and it can be suggested that one of the US’ partial motivations for dismembering Yugoslavia was to create a chain of weakened nation-states that would be much easier to absorb into the bloc than the formerly unified and strong federal entity. It was earlier discussed at the beginning of the book’s Balkan research that Slovenia was the most gung-ho pro-Western state out of the entire former Yugoslavia, being the first to join both the EU and NATO. To remind the reader of what was written at that earlier point, Slovenia was largely insulated from the chaos of the Yugoslav Wars owing to its advantageous geography, and its small population was disproportionately well endowed with a legacy of Yugoslav investment that allowed it to rapidly achieve the highest GDP per capita of all the former communist countries in Europe.

Consequently, it joined NATO and the EU in 2004, making it the first Balkan state with membership in both organizations. This was designed to serve as an example-setting precedent for other similarly pro-Western regional elite who wanted to emulate the “Slovenian success story”, leading them to believe that it was Ljubljana’s impassioned desire to join Western-dominated institutions that explained its success and not its inimitable geographic, historic, and economic factors. Be that as it was, the deceptive ploy prevailed in convincing the Croatian elite of their own self-delusions and consequently in furthering their informational investments in misleading the rest of the population into supporting their predetermined decision to join both blocs. Zagreb would later enter into NATO in 2009 and join the EU in 2013, thus following the Slovenian scenario and dispensing of the tiny Balkan country’s strategic purpose to either organization (hence the institutional neglect that it’s received from both since then).

The situation was a bit different with Albania, as it wasn’t influenced by Slovenia’s example at all. It joined NATO the same year that Croatia did for the complementary reasons of supporting the US’ Lead From Behind grand strategy in the Western Balkans and in placing itself in a more ‘regionally intimidating’ position for promoting Greater Albania sometime again in the future (most likely against Macedonia). Also, it can’t be discounted that Tirana’s elites were motived to a large degree by their conception of ‘triumphalism’ in formally allying with the bloc that bombarded Serbia and led to the temporary severing of its Province of Kosovo. Taking into account the Albanian understanding of ‘pride’ and how the Ottoman-era culture of completely disrespecting one’s enemy are still influential factors that impact on the Albanian psyche, it’s very likely that one of the country’s driving interests in joining NATO was simply to spite Serbia.

Waiting In The Wings?:

Looking at the rest of the Balkans, every country has some form or another of institutional relations with NATO.

Serbia

To begin with, Serbia agreed to an Individual Partnership Action Plan in January 2015, in an event that bizarrely received barely any publicity in the country’s media. One would have been led to believe that Serbia’s closer relations with the same military bloc that bombed it into submission 16 years prior would garner intense outcry among the country’s opinion leaders and institutions, but the fact that it didn’t speaks loudly about the strong entrenchment of influential pro-Western figures inside the country’s establishment.

Also, it’s notable that this decision was undertaken under the Vucic’s Premiership, which has gone to great lengths to please the West. This stands in stark contrast to the contemporaneous Nikolic Presidency, which has worked hard to make pragmatic strides in Serbia’s relations with Russia. The glaring discrepancy between the foreign policy priorities of the Prime Minister and the President doesn’t seem to be an elaborate ‘balancing’ ruse between the West and Russia, but rather a clumsy and disjointed struggle to hash out compromise between the respective Serbian elites that each figurehead represents.

Anti-NATO march in Belgrade, February 2016

This political predicament is inherently untenable and cannot progress for much longer without the country being thrown into domestic destabilization. Pragmatic approaches towards multiple geopolitical directions are welcome for any country, but when radical moves such as deepening the relationship with NATO are made, it indicates a decisive power play on behalf of the pro-Western forces. Couple that early-2015 announcement with the news at the end of the year in December that Belgrade is formally in accession talks with Brussels, and 2015 becomes the ‘Year of the West’ for Serbia. This can’t help but result in opposition from the pragmatic voices represented by Nikolic (who is reflective of the majority of society), which must feel their influence waning amidst Vucic’s pro-Western advancements.

The governmental split that’s being produced by Vucic’s unwavering pro-Western institutional course (continued despite his visit to Moscow and appeal for Russian weaponry) will inevitably result in an intensification of the ongoing power struggle between the two factions of the Serbian elite, the pro-Westernizers and the political pragmatists, unless Vucic tempers his approach. Failure to do so will force the country into the same manipulated “civilizational choice” that the West imposed on Ukraine in November 2013, which would ultimately work out to the US’ grand strategic benefit at the expense of every Serbian. Provocatively speaking, it might follow the Ukrainian scenario so closely that a Color Revolution breaks out in Belgrade, albeit with diametrically different geopolitical consequences than the pro-Western one that succeeded in Kiev.

Bosnia

Moving along, Bosnia and the other two remaining Balkan countries that will be discussed have agreed to Membership Action Plans with NATO, which means that they have officially committed their governments to a path that’s supposed to end with NATO membership some time or another. It’s practically impossible for this scheme to succeed in Bosnia without a renewal of civil warfare between Republika Srpska and the Croat-Muslim entity, but more than likely, that’s the point of Sarajevo pursuing such a farfetched plan. The Serbs would never accept joining NATO because that would lead to the extinguishment of their autonomous republic, but reversely, if the autonomy of Republika Srpska could be revoked (the scenarios of which Sarajevo and its Western patrons are subtly exploring), then NATO membership would be institutionally uncontested and incapable of being stopped. As has been discussed extensively already, Bosnia is a giant geopolitical time bomb that’s waiting to be detonated by the West, and Sarajevo’s determined and timed movement towards NATO could be the spark that lights the next Balkan fuse.

Macedonia

The surface conviction among many is that Skopje has committed itself to an irreversible pro-Western trajectory regardless of leadership, and judging by official statements on the matter, that does indeed seem to be the case. Digging deeper, however, and unraveling the changing domestic and international contexts surrounding Macedonia, the argument can convincingly be made that there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to Skopje’s pro-Western institutional associations. December 2014 forever changed the calculations of the Macedonian leadership because of the Russia and China’s dual announcements of the Balkan Stream and Balkan Silk Road megaprojects, respectively, both of which are envisioned to crucially transit through the country’s territory.

Of course, neither Great Power would have made such ambitious plans without having first consulted with the Macedonian government, and Skopje was more than willing to agree after taking stock of the enormous economic windfall that it would receive from either project’s successful completion. Also, neither Moscow nor Beijing likely made any ultimatums to Skopje for its cooperation (such as saying that it mustn’t join NATO and/or the EU), but that it was probably strongly implied that substantially moving forward with either of these ‘formal’ institutional goals could endanger the projects, and thus, the geostrategic and economically profitable benefits that Macedonia stood to incur.

After discreetly acquiring Macedonia’s advance approval for their initiatives, Russia and China went public with their regional visions, but this triggered the US to initiate its back-up regime change plans for the country in order to keep it firmly in its orbit and pressure it to cancel the multipolar megaprojects. The US was probably tipped off to its geopolitical rivals’ plans well in advance and had begun tinkering with a destabilization scenario in Macedonia long ago, using it and its allies’ spy agencies to surreptitiously wiretap government and private citizens for use in a forthcoming political blackmail campaign. In the months preceding the monumental multipolar announcements relating to Macedonia, the US ordered its regime change proxy, ‘opposition’ leader Zoran Zaev, to selectively release suggestive snippets from the Western intelligence agency-doctored ‘recordings’ in order to test the waters and gauge the public’s reaction.

Pro-government rally in Skopje, May 2015

After recognizing that the ‘wiretap’ scenario had the potential to stir a critical mass of manipulated public unrest (with the hand-in-hand support of Soros-affiliated organizations and media outlets), the US knew that it had a powerful tool with which to pressure the government. Prime Minister Gruevski didn’t fold to Washington’s implied regime change demands, however, and he instead stood proudly defiant in the face of the externally imposed coup attempt being pursued against him. At around this time in early 2015, he probably started getting second doubts about his ‘Western partners’ (if he hadn’t had them already by this point) and questioning the strategic wisdom of continuing his country’s established pro-Western course.

At the same time, being the leader of a super-strategic but comparatively small country, Gruevski keenly understood his limits of action and came to the conclusion that forcefully rejecting the West would be contrary to his and his country’s physical security. This explains why his formal statements are in support of the unipolar EU and NATO, while his multipolar actions in cooperating with the Balkan Silk Road and Balkan Stream megaprojects speak more sincerely to the strategic direction that he truly plans on taking his country. Gruevski’s prudence in taking this approach was vindicated after the US attempted an unsuccessful Hybrid War push against him in May 2015 (Zaev’s failed Color Revolution intermingled with the Albanian terrorist plots in Kumanovo), showing the desperate lengths that they were willing to go in getting him removed and stopping the multipolar megaprojects.

Despite this obvious regime change attempt and the subsequently more subtle methods being employed to try and oust him (the EU-mediated ‘negotiations’ with the ‘opposition’ and the forthcoming early elections), Gruevski is still aware that if he succumbs to the emotional temptation to publicly disown the EU and NATO in response, then he might fall victim to an assassination attempt (which is what the plane scare over Switzerland in late-May 2015 was meant to convey to him).  For these reasons, the Macedonian Premier must continue his clever game of telling the West what they want to hear while doing the opposite in practice, although it’s unclear whether he can continue doing so indefinitely without being forced by the US into making a resolute choice one way or another.

For the time being, however, although Macedonia is formally pursuing integration into Western institutions, its policies in practice are purposely ambiguous, and in light of the changed domestic and international circumstances that were just explained, one should hold off on rendering full judgement about Gruevski’s officially declared commitments until after he gains more freedom of political maneuverability following the early elections in April.

Fighting Back:

The final Balkan country that has yet to be discussed is Montenegro, which just received its official invitation to join NATO during the bloc’s early-December meeting in Brussels. Even before the announcement was ever formally made, Prime Minister Djukanovic (the country’s ruler in one form or another for almost the past thirty years) declared that his country would unreservedly accept NATO membership, prompting an unprecedented display of public unrest. The majority of the 600,000 or so Montenegrin citizens are against their country joining the same military bloc that bombed it 16 years ago when it was still part of rump Yugoslavia, and the political opposition has called for the issue to be put before a referendum. The government refused to accede to their suggestion and instead responded with disproportionate force that suppressed the protests and produced an ever stronger reaction of anti-NATO sentiment.

The result was that the violent crackdown predictably intimidated some of the population and led to a noticeable decline in their outward protest activity. This government interpreted this according its preordained expectations and assumed that this meant that the anti-NATO movement was finished. That wasn’t the case, however, since the form of resistance had simply adapted to the repressive conditions in the country and moved away from large manifestations in the capital in favor of smaller gatherings in the towns and villages. On the one hand, this was a tactical necessity in order to preserve the protesters’ safety, but on the other, it created the deceptive illusion that the population had been forced into complacency and may have unintentionally contributed to NATO going forward with the membership offering, as opposed to withholding it out of fear that extending the invitation would push the country over the edge and result in the overthrow of their long-cherished proxy.

Opposition parties demand a national referendum on the issue of Montenegro’s membership in NATO, December 2015.

As it stands, it’s expected to take between one to two years for Montenegro for complete the NATO accession process, meaning that there’s a critical last-minute window of opportunity for the protesters to make history and be the first to carry their country away from the organization after it’s already agreed to join. Theoretically speaking, it’s entirely possible for Montenegro to set a new precedent in this regard, but it’s clear that the only way to do this is by overthrowing the government or pressuring it to the extent that it acquiesces to a referendum. Granted, even a public vote might not be enough to stop the NATO machine, since it’s unsure at this time whether it would be just as crooked of a motion as the previous ballots held under Djukanovic’s rule. More than likely, given the donkey-like obstinacy that Djukanovic and his Mafioso clique have, plus their propensity to resort to extreme violence amidst pressure, it’s probable that the only way to reverse the NATO decision is to replace Djukanovic with a sincere opposition figure that will pull Montenegro out of the initiation process before it’s fully completed.

Montenegro’s strategic importance to NATO is disproportionate to its tiny size, and its membership in the bloc is an important step in bringing Serbia more firmly under Atlantic control. Assuming the most negative scenario where Montenegrins are unable to save their country from occupation, then NATO would have succeeded in tightening its noose of encirclement around Serbia and would then feel more confident in making bolder moves against it and Republika Srpska in the future. Keep in mind that Montenegrins are closely related to Serbs and that many Serbs still live in the country. Officially, the government lists them as being 28% of the population, but given Djukanovic’s history of statistical manipulations (be it in the 2006 independence referendum or every election in which he’s ran), the real percentage is likely higher. This is all very important for NATO since they know that they can thus exploit Montenegro as a ‘social laboratory’ for perfecting informational and other strategies for use against the larger Serbian demographics in Republika Srpska and Serbia, thereby giving their campaign in the tiny Adriatic country a heightened strategic importance that is usually lost on most observers.

With all that being said, the anti-NATO and anti-government resistance movements in Montenegro (which are morphing into a unified force at the moment) are indispensably important in pushing back against NATO’s “Drang Nach Suden”. Their success would provide the Central Balkans with strategic breathing space and stunningly put a sudden halt to the strategic plan that the US had taken for granted up until that point. Looked at from the opposite perspective, NATO sees the incorporation of Montenegro as one of the final pieces in completing its geo-military encirclement of Serbia. It also tangentially expects to receive valuable social feedback from this experience that it can then weaponize against Republika Srpska and Serbia, and the critical momentum that Montenegro’s accession would create could turn into a psychological battering ram for diminishing the population’s resistance in these two states and the Republic of Macedonia. Due to the high stakes involved for all sides, it’s doubtful that Djukanovic and his allies would leave in peace if confronted with a renewed opposition movement against them, thus raising the disturbing specter that the country might descend into civil war if its people try to free themselves from impending NATO domination.

Orban The Fox

Victor Orban may not be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but he’s definitely a fox. He sly presents himself as a populist voice that outspokenly represents emerging social norms, placing him at the vanguard of a changing Europe and endearing him with millions of fawning followers. There’s unquestionably a strong degree of institutional resistance from the established European powers to his raging popularity and iconic status, but by and large, this ‘old guard’ resistance to the ideals that Orban embodies only makes his popularity surge even more, and he’s quickly become an iconic and cult-like figure throughout Central and Eastern Europe, including the Balkans.

A fox is known for its cunningness, and this trait more than any other aptly describes the Hungarian Prime Minister. To many, Orban defines a new generation of ‘anti-systemic’ European leaders that are bravely defying the unipolar dictates of the US and the EU, but upon closer scrutiny, this is all but a carefully crafted sham (albeit with sincere convictions on Orban’s part) to ‘let the fox loose in the henhouse’ and undermine multipolar social movements before they ever have the chance to enact tangible change in Europe.

The Shifting EU Zeitgeist:

It’s important for the reader to suitably comprehend the shifting social mood that’s been underway in Europe for at least the past couple of years. Maligned by the mainstream media as “Euroscepticism”, it could more accurately be described as “Euro-caution”, with many people all over the continent progressively becoming disenchanted with the anti-democratic dictates given to their countries by Brussels and behaving more reluctantly in following its commands. Whether it’s the Greek bailout packages or the current “refugee” crisis to name but two of most prominent examples, the EU’s actions have struck a raw nerve with a critical mass of people who no longer endorse the organization in its present form. The radical liberal-progressive ideology and rabid power moves of the past decade have finally caught up to its technocratic elite, and they’re having to unexpectedly (for them, at least) contend with rising conservative and pro-sovereignty resistance to their rule. The threat lies in the fact that this organic pan-continental social movement could become ‘uncontrollable’ and either lead to the EU’s dissolution (whether in full or in part) or indefinitely cripple its efficiency if a Euro-cautionary national leader decides to make things difficult and obstruct the organization’s functioning (the caveat being that the said individual mustn’t be co-opted by the US and acting under its strategic guidance, whether purposely or unwittingly).

The Two-Faced Fraud:

Viktor Orban, however, took Euro-cautionary steps to cripple the EU when hefenced off the Hungarian border with Serbia and initiated a chain reaction of border buffering that unsettled the Balkan region. The more prominent aftershocks of this policy indirectly resulted in EU-leader Germany re-imposing temporary border restrictions with Austria and de-facto violating the very same principles that it had previously pledged to protect at all costs. Partially as a result of this and other actions, Orban has become the leader of the anti-“refugee” movement in Europe, taking the strongest and loudest stand of any EU member in questioning the intentions of these individuals, legally challenging Brussels’ quota resettlement scheme, and decrying the liberal-progressive ‘religion’ of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘zero-borders’. In a sense, he’s positioned Hungary as the underdog in foiling Angela Merkel’s German-led vision of a liberal-progressive Europe, conservatively proposing a more sovereignty-centric approach to intra-union affairs and spearheading the way in leading by example. In general, Orban’s approach has enjoyed the full backing of his citizenry, as well as many other distressed Euro-cautionary individuals all across Central and Eastern Europe, turning him into the normative leader of the EU’s new nation-centric zeitgeist.

Hungarian PM Victor Orban

Enchanted by his fearless rebukes of Brussels and the strength of personality that he has in carrying out his populist decisions, Orban’s international supporters tend to overlook his less scrutinized role as a sleazy salesman for NATO expansionism. It was reported in early October that Hungary would host one of the bloc’s command centers, despite not sharing any border with Russia and thus invalidating the organization’s stated reasoning for such a facility. Looked at in a regional perspective, Romania and Bulgaria are doing the same thing, and the one point of commonality that they all share is that these countries border Serbia, one of the only European countries that’s not part of the grouping and is a key transit state for Balkan Stream and the Balkan Silk Road. Keep in mind that Hungary is supposed to be the terminal point for both projects, but alas, this doesn’t mean that Orban is immune from the temptation to project influence towards the country that he’ll one day become strategically dependent on if either project is ultimately completed.

In late November, Orban announced that he supports NATO membership for Macedonia, ‘justifying’ his position by saying that while Hungary wants “a unified economic and security zone, today there is a void between Hungary and Greece”, implying that it needs to be filled not just by the Macedonia, but also by Serbia. Granted, Hungary is in a much better position to influence the latter than it is the former, and it could potentially exert pressure on it by inciting ethnic disturbances in the demographically heterogeneous Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. Orban’s personal motivation wouldn’t be to disrupt the multipolar megaprojects that are expected to make his country the premier trade and energy hub of Central Europe, but to use this newfound position to expand Hungary’s influence over its neighbors and de-facto resurrect a new form of the Hungarian Empire (St. Steven’s Space, as it was referred to earlier). Of course, this neo-imperial vision can easily be used by the US as a carrot in goading Orban along into carrying out his majestic fantasy of national glory in order to facilitate the ‘unintentional’ obstruction of both projects, with the Hungarian leader being too blinded by the new nationalism that’s taken hold of his thinking (and that of Europe in general) to realize that he’s been tricked.

Around the same time that he was trying to impress Macedonian Prime Minister Gruevski with his fervent pro-NATO attitude, Orban also met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and received a congratulatory pat on the back for all that he has done in stepping up Hungary’s “collective security” commitment. What was being specifically addressed was how Orban increased the country’s defense budget (with the expectation that some of the new funds will be diverted to NATO) and ordered his country to participate in the anti-Russian Baltic “air-policing mission”. The NATO chief also thanked Orban for continuing to provide Hungarian troops to the bloc’s ongoing occupations of Afghanistan and the Serbian Province of Kosovo. Along the topic of NATO, Orban’s Foreign Ministerattended the early-December summit in Brussels and helped brainstorm ideas for how the US-led military alliance could get more heavily involved in the Mideast against ISIL. Assessed from a neutral perspective unadulterated by the sway of Orban’s magnetic political personality and attractive advocacy of social conservatism, it’s objectively accurate to state that he’s one of the most pro-NATO leaders in the entire EU, and worse still, he’s also the only one that’s gained enough social ‘trust’ from the Central Balkan people to potentially mislead some of them down the path of formal American occupation.

Nationalist Pressures:

It was earlier stated that Orban, led by his own desires, won’t intentionally do anything that would make the Balkan Stream and Balkan Silk Road projects unviable, believing that Hungary has too much to strategically lose than to foolishly play with fire for no tangible reason whatsoever. The problem arises when one becomes mindful of just how strong of an influence nationalist thought has on Orban and the rest of the population at the moment, and herein it’s necessary to draw a definitive difference with patriotism. Nationalism and patriotism are commonly (but improperly) used interchangeably by many people, unaware that although they might at times manifest themselves in similar ways, they are conceptually separate strands of thought. Nationalists tend to be more influenced by racial interests than state-based ones whether they’re cognizant of this reality or not, and in many of the cases where people blur the distinction between patriotism and nationalism (like in Hungary), the country in question has a strong degree of ethnic homogeneity. Patriotism differs from the previous by placing a stronger emphasis on the whole country’s interests, not just those of the titular majority, even if they come off as contravening the “racial interest” ardently supported by their nationalist counterparts.

A good example of this is in Russian Patriots supporting the authorities in the Muslim and autonomous Chechen Republic despite the majority of the Russian Federation being ethnic Russians and Orthodox Christian practitioners. A Russian Nationalist is absolutely opposed to any form of positive interaction with the non-Russian, non-Orthodox members of the country’s society, believing that individuals who don’t share these two demographic traits aren’t worthy of being part of Russia. Per this example, Russian Nationalists are thus predisposed to the racist slogans of American proxy Alexei Navalny to “stop feeding the Caucasus”, with the inference that Russia should ‘cut them off’ to become independent countries. This would lead to the voluntary Brzezinski-esque unravelling of the diverse Russian state and fulfill the US’ principle geopolitical objective for a fraction of the cost. Comparatively, a Russian Patriot has a vested interest in preserving Russia’s rich cultural, ethnic, and religious history and not in cutting the country apart based on identity lines, seeing his motherland’s diversity as a source of its civilizational strength.

Returning back to Hungary after clarifying this important difference between concepts, it’s difficult at the moment to tell whether Orban is a nationalist or a patriot, since, as was mentioned, his country is one of those hard-to-discern types where the vast majority of the population is ethnically homogenous. The deciding factor in assessing which of the two ideologies he actually adheres to is in his government’s policies towards the Hungarian minority in Vojvodina, where they constitute around 13% of the population heavily concentrated near the border. At this time, Orban hasn’t taken any concrete moves in supporting that community’s “separateness” from the Serbian state, but the real test will come if the nationalist Jobbik Party happens to stir up ethnic discontent there and prompts a news-making provocation that he’s forced to respond to.

Should this happen, then the Hungarian Prime Minister would find himself in a political trap of his own making. He has already done so much to promote nationalism/patriotism (it’s not yet clear which one because of the blur between them due to Hungary’s demographic situation) that some citizens will surely be upset at him regardless of what he does because they too were confused over which ideology Orban had been peddling. The nationalists will be distraught to the point of potentially protesting against him if he doesn’t take strong and forceful anti-Serbian measures in response to a Jobbik provocation in Vojvodina, whereas patriots will be equally upset with him if he does, realizing that such a move would endanger Balkan Stream and the Balkan Silk Road. The very zeitgeist that Orban thought he had under his control could unwittingly prove to be his undoing if the nationalist opposition chooses to put him in the spot and force his hand one way or the other. Along the same train of thought, the US could indirectly influence Jobbik in this direction, knowing that their nationalist ideology makes them gullibly susceptible to being led along such a route.

The anti-government protests that could erupt in this scenario would be much more intense than the ones that preceded them in October 2014. At that time, NGOs organized thousands of people to march against him after the government levied a controversial internet tax, and John McCain even joined in the fray by maligning Orban as a “neo-fascist dictator”. While the fervor quickly died down after Budapest backtracked on the tax, the message that the protests sent was clear – the US is more than capable of stirring up Color Revolution unrest in Hungary if Orban doesn’t fall in line with its preferred policies. While he’s ‘behaving’ himself nice and well for the moment, if he ever does decide to ‘step out of line’ in a significant enough manner, the US could revive the Color Revolution threat against him, but by replacing the anti-tax protesters with much more aggressive and violent nationalists, provided of course that Orban falls deeper into the trap by refusing to go along with the anti-Serbian provocation scenario that’s set for him. Predictably, however, he’ll probably acquiesce to whatever he’s being guided to do, since the October 2014 Color Revolution scare seems to have made a significant enough of an impression on him that he’s now promoting NATO to the highest degree.

The Verdict:

Orban pretends to be against ‘the system’, but in all actuality, he supports the US’ unipolar deigns in crafty and unexpected ways. His continental popularity stems mostly from being a vanguard of the evolving strategic paradigm for controlling post-“refugee” Europe, where nationalism/patriotism (again, the difference depends on domestic contexts and the individual leader practicing it) are becoming the order of the day. The US is turning away from using liberal-progressives as its agents of choice and is instead switching to nationalists and fake patriots, with the latter label being used to describe people who verbally espouse “patriotism” but actually practice nationalism. Orban falls under this category, since he’s deceptively gained much of Central and Eastern Europe’s trust through his conservative commentary and nationalist actions regarding the “refugee” crisis, but he’s a Trojan Horse in spreading normative support for NATO.

It’s too early to tell if he’ll voluntarily practice his nationalist-NATO policies towards Serbia or if he’ll have to be tricked into doing so by the US and/or Jobbik, but there’s a very real possibility that Hungary will one day activate its ethnic card in Vojvodina for whatever political ends it has in mind (be it to gain a one-up advantage on ‘upstream’ Serbia or to viciously destroy the multilateral Balkan Stream and Balkan Silk Road projects). For these reasons, while Orban might appear like a willingly enthusiastic multipolar partner in some respects (and he could very well be serious in his cooperative intent owing to the strategic-economic advantages that Hungary will predictably reap), he’s also an easily misled unipolar stooge in others, if not an outright agent of the US.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the post-graduate of the MGIMO University and author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

This is a press statement from the organisation Stop NATO in Norway, regarding Sweden’s recent decision to sign a Host Country Agreement with NATO:

A sad day for Sweden. A sad day for the Nordic countries. A sad day for peace.

On May 25th Riksdagen (the Swedish National Assembly) sacrificed the Swedish neutrality policy by joining the  NATO Host Country Agreement. This happened almost without any public debate. Popular protests and 41 300 signatures have been swept aside by Riksdagen.

The Agreement makes Sweden a possible host country for aggressive NATO exercises during peacetime. In addition, the Swedish government may allow NATO to invade the country if a crisis or a conflict should occur. Inevitably, Sweden will become directly involved in NATO’s armament proliferation and their aggressive provocations against Russia. Large-scale fleet exercises in the Baltic Sea will further increase the danger of confrontation and war.

This is not only a tragedy for Sweden; it increases the arms race and the danger of war throughout Europe. The fact that Sweden has been staying out of military alliances until now, has been a stabilizing factor throughout Northern Europe. The Swedish submission to NATO may spell the end to peace in the Nordic region.

Forcing Sweden and Finland into the military alliance has been an aim for NATO and the United States for a long time. The governments of Denmark and Norway have been henchmen in this filthy game. The appointments of Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Jens Stoltenberg as Secretary Generals have been part of a strategy to coerce and bribe Sweden and Finland into joining the alliance.

Stop NATO in Norway feels obliged to alert our Swedish brothers against the consequences of becoming a slave to NATO and the United States. If the goal is safety and peaceful coexistence in the Nordic region, NATO offers the opposite. NATO has turned Norway into a front-line for US nuclear strategy and a spying central in the Arctic region. In reality, Norway has no foreign or security policy of its own. Norwegian special forces are being deployed into aggressive military operations against peoples and states that have never threatened our country – like in Afghanistan, Libya and now in Syria. Norwegian social spending is cut back while our tax money is being spent on an unrestrained build-up of offensive weapons of war, because NATO demands it.

The best way the Swedish people can contribute to peace is to defend their country’s neutrality and sovereignty until the bitter end. The best way for the Norwegian people to contribute to peace in the north is to pull Norway out of the war alliance called NATO.

Stop NATO, Norway
May 25th 2016

While you read this report, keep the fact that Turkey is a NATO ally firmly in mind.

Russian Lt. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy has issued a damning report explicitly stating that material support for the terrorist group al-Nusra, AKA al-Qaeda, is arriving directly from Turkey on a daily basis:

The never-ending flow of large trucks from Turkey carrying weapons and ammunition crosses the Turkish-Syrian border.

This constant feed of live forces and weapons allows terrorists from the Nusra Front to continue their provocative shelling and make advances on Syrian government forces, which diminishes [government military] activity against Islamic State terrorists in other areas,

Everyone knows, and our US partners admit that the biggest hot spots of active military operations are those parts of the Syrian Republic where the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists from the al-Nusra Front run rampant.

It is very clear that the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra, active in the regions of Aleppo and Idlib, is the main obstacle to expanding the ceasefire regime to northern areas of Syria,

By the sound of it, the situation in Syria would be far different if this constant stream of munitions and jihadists was not allowed to pass freely through Turkey.

Peace might be a lot closer to reality if the West forced their NATO ally to start working towards such an aim, instead of facilitating the continued destruction of the Syrian state.

Which raises the question, why is the West not doing more to stop Turkey’s open support for terrorism?

Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of globalization?

At the height of the battle over the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement in the 1980s, full page ads promised the deal would bring “more jobs, better jobs.”

The ads were expensive, but easily afforded by Canada’s 160 largest public corporations, who paid for them as the Business Council on National Issues.

‘Bad deal’: French trade minister Matthias Fekl said his country is likely to drop TTIP talks after leaks that US wants lower labour and environmental standards.

The ad blitz was intended counter the effective campaign by opponents who warned Canadians that tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs would be lost.

Opponents won the battle for hearts and minds but lost the 1988 election on the issue, thus making Canada and the US “free trade” guinea pigs.

Hundreds of such deals have been signed since, in spite of the fact that the critics were right. Canada lost some 334,000 jobs between 1988 and 1994 as a direct result. Still, since 1988, the promoters of these investment protection agreements have held sway in large part because of massive support by corporate media.

Now, three decades later, citizens around the world are waking up and asking: just whom do governments govern for?

Battlegrounds in US and Europe

That question is being raised loudly in the E.U. and the U.S. In those two powerhouse economies, opposition to such deals could save us from more of them. On the line specifically are the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Canada’s proposed deal with the E.U., the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). If the U.S.-E.U. deal (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – TTIP) fails CETA is unlikely to survive.

So-called trade deals empower transnational corporations by radically compromising the nation-state’s capacity for democratic governance. This emasculation of democracy is accomplished in large part through the investor-state provisions which allow corporations to directly sue government for profits lost due to environmental, health or other legislation.

Governments sign these agreements enthusiastically promising jobs and growth. But, while it has taken almost two generations, millions of American workers simply no longer believe the rhetoric.

Fuelling Trump and Sanders

Increasingly grim inequality has revealed the broken promise and American workers are pissed. That is in large part what drives the mind-boggling Trump phenomenon in the U.S. It’s not exactly class warfare but Trump supporters sense the system as a whole, political and economic, is truly broken.

And the support for Bernie Sanders is as close to class conflict as the U.S. ever gets.

For the first time in over 30 years, these corporate rights deals are a hot U.S. election issue with all three remaining candidates opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Equally important, the state apparatus itself is showing cracks in its own consensus. This has taken the form of leaks from within the U.S. government about the TTIP and a government study of the benefits of the TPP to the U.S. Both present genuine threats to the future of these agreements in the U.S. And defeats in the US could be the death knell for these deals everywhere.

The leak regarding the TTIP came right on the heels of the typical reassuring noises from the Obama administration regarding protection for labour and the environment standards in the TTIP. According to an article titled “The Free-Trade Consensus Is Dead” in The New Republic magazine, “documents leaked by Greenpeace Netherlands revealed that U.S. negotiators working on a trade deal with the European Union have actually been pressuring their trading partners to lower those same standards.”

The leak was a revelation to the French trade minister who declared that the talks were “likely to stop altogether” as a result. (In 1998 France killed the Multilateral Agreement on Investment — the largest deal ever conceived.)

Alarms from within

The second nail in the coffin of free trade consensus in the U.S. came from a U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) analysis of the benefits the U.S. could expect from the even larger deal, the TPP. The report, released this past week, will be difficult for promoters to explain away:

…the ITC estimates a worsening balance of trade for 16 out of 25 U.S. agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors… Indeed, output in the manufacturing sector would be $11.2 billion lower with TPP than without it in 2032… the proposed 12-nation trade deal will increase the U.S. global trade deficit by $21.7 billion by 2032.

Could these instances of clear resistance to the accepted wisdom “free trade” deals be the beginning of the end of corporate globalization?

I am not suggesting that the governments of developed countries are going to suddenly return to the good old days of the post-war social contract. But what has allowed them to proceed for three decades with political impunity has been the power of ideology to overwhelm evidence and reason.

Breaking the spell

Neo-liberalism has held sway for so long it has been almost impossible for ordinary citizens to imagine anything different. But now they can — not just because of political outliers Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but because Hillary Clinton, a long-time, fervent backer of neoliberal trade deals, is now watering down such enthusiasm on the campaign trail and even switching her position to oppose the TPP.

Once members of the political elite begin to question the high priests of free trade the spell is broken and all sorts of alternative political narratives present themselves. It takes an accumulation of unlikely suspects breaking with the consensus before that happens and we have already seen some high-profile defectors from the TPP — including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, economist Jeffrey Sachs and in Canada RIM co-founder Jim Balsillie. At first the Teflon seemed to hold but there is always a lag time when it comes to cultural change.

In Canada, regrettably, Balsillie’s warnings about trade deals stifling creativity and consigning Canada to “colonialism” that costs us billions of dollars aren’t likely to be echoed any time soon by most members of our corporate elite.

It is the nature of ideology that if the medicine doesn’t work, increase the dose. Unless more Canadians speak out on these investment protection agreements and get behind their counterparts in the United States and European Union, the Liberal government will keep prescribing the same medicine.

In recent months, the British establishment has engaged in the most blatant and concerted propaganda campaign since the Scottish independence referendum or the Iraq war. Every day, the establishment spreads more fear in an attempt to keep Britain in the European Union (EU); with this propaganda campaign completely undermining the democratic process. 

In April, the British government spent nearly £10 million on a pro-EU propaganda leaflet which they sent to every household in the UK. Even though every-minute of every-day taxpayers’ money is wasted on killing innocent people in imperial wars abroad, openly spending approximately £10m on a propaganda leaflet is surely one of the biggest wastes of taxpayers’ money in recent years; especially in a country where Greek-style austerity is trying to be forced upon the people, and public service cuts have been a key feature of the current Tory government.

It also raises an important question: can a referendum that is called by a government be classified as fair, free and democratic, when the very same government is running a concerted propaganda campaign to coerce the citizens to vote in a particular way? In a free and democratic society, the citizenry should be allowed to vote and not be bullied and terrified into voting in a certain way. In a free and democratic society, the government should stay largely neutral and allow the people to decide for themselves. In a free and democratic society, the government serves the citizens; the citizens are not at the behest of the government.

The EU referendum is just another example that democracy in Britain is merely an illusion; it has no basis in reality. Even if the government does not rig the referendum directly – there was some speculation that the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 was rigged – they have engaged in information warfare to the point that the referendum is already rigged in the favour of Britain remaining in the EU. At this point, it is highly unlikely that Britain will vote to leave the EU on the 23rd of June. Whatever your opinion is on the matter, everyone should recognise that a government engaging in a blatant propaganda campaign over an issue of this magnitude is antithetical to the democratic process.

It should also be noted that the British people were not allowed to vote on whether they wanted to join the EU in the 1970s. In 1973, Britain joined the European Economic Community (EEC), the precursor to the EU. It was not until two years later that the British people were allowed to vote, after they had adjusted to the status quo of EEC membership. With a 65% turnout, 67% voted in favour of remaining in the EEC. But the central point – which is often misleadingly presented – is that the British people voted to remain in the EEC, they were never asked whether they wanted to join in the first place. A referendum in 1973 on whether Britain wanted to join the EEC may have produced a different result, yet the political elite had no interest in the wishes of the people.

It is clear that the establishment wants Britain to stay in the EU, and is merely holding a referendum in order to appease anti-EU voices and maintain the façade of democracy in Royal Britannia. The list of individuals who are part of the Western establishment and want Britain to stay in the EU continues to expand by the day. Starting with David Cameron and the current government, pro-EU voices include: Barack Obama; Tony Blair; Peter Mandelson; Angela Merkel; Gordon Brown; and numerousformer North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) chiefs.

The European project is part of a much grander agenda by the global elite, and it is improbable that the British people will be allowed to vote to leave in June.

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

Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party’s rigged convention.  The great counter revolution had begun.

The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America’s victims in faraway places.

“We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don’t you forget it.”  So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.

The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, “Which side did you fight on?”

A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called “The Price of Freedom” at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa’s grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved “a million lives”; Iraq was “liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision”. The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington’s boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it “never happened …Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. It didn’t matter … “. Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called “a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is “cool”. One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.

In 2009, Obama promised to help “rid the world of nuclear weapons” and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is “modernising” America’s doomsday arsenal, including a new “mini” nuclear weapon, whose size and “smart” technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is “no longer unthinkable”.

James Bradley, the best-selling author ofFlags of Our Fathers and son of one of the US marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, said, “[One] great myth we’re seeing play out is that of Obama as some kind of peaceful guy who’s trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. He’s the biggest nuclear warrior there is. He’s committed us to a ruinous course of spending a trillion dollars on more nuclear weapons. Somehow, people live in this fantasy that because he gives vague news conferences and speeches and feel-good photo-ops that somehow that’s attached to actual policy. It isn’t.”

On Obama’s watch, a second cold war is under way. The Russian president is a pantomime villain; the Chinese are not yet back to their sinister pig-tailed caricature – when all Chinese were banned from the United States – but the media warriors are working on it.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has mentioned any of this. There is no risk and no danger for the United States and all of us. For them, the greatest military build-up on the borders of Russia since World War Two has not happened. On May 11, Romania went “live” with a Nato “missile defence” base that aims its first-strike American missiles at the heart of Russia, the world’s second nuclear power.

In Asia, the Pentagon is sending ships, planes and special forces to the Philippines to threaten China. The US already encircles China with hundreds of military bases that curve in an arc up from Australia, to Asia and across to Afghanistan. Obama calls this a “pivot”.

As a direct consequence, China reportedly has changed its nuclear weapons policy from no-first-use to high alert and put to sea submarines with nuclear weapons. The escalator is quickening.

It was Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State in 2010, elevated the competing territorial claims for rocks and reef in the South China Sea to an international issue; CNN and BBC hysteria followed; China was building airstrips on the disputed islands. In its mammoth war game in 2015, Operation Talisman Sabre, the US practiced “choking” the Straits of Malacca through which pass most of China’s oil and trade. This was not news.

Clinton declared that America had a “national interest” in these Asian waters. The Philippines and Vietnam were encouraged and bribed to pursue their claims and old enmities against China. In America, people are being primed to see any Chinese defensive position as offensive, and so the ground is laid for rapid escalation. A similar strategy of provocation and propaganda is applied to Russia.

Clinton, the “women’s candidate”, leaves a trail of bloody coups: in Honduras, in Libya (plus the murder of the Libyan president) and Ukraine. The latter is now a CIA theme park swarming with Nazis and the frontline of a beckoning war with Russia. It was through Ukraine – literally, borderland — that Hitler’s Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people. This epic catastrophe remains a presence in Russia. Clinton’s presidential campaign has received money from all but one of the world’s ten biggest arms companies. No other candidate comes close.

Sanders, the hope of many young Americans, is not very different from Clinton in his proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. He backed Bill Clinton’s illegal bombing of Serbia. He supports Obama’s terrorism by drone, the provocation of Russia and the return of special forces (death squads) to Iraq. He has nothing to say on the drumbeat of threats to China and the accelerating risk of nuclear war. He agrees that Edward Snowden should stand trial and he calls Hugo Chavez – like him, a social democrat – “a dead communist dictator”. He promises to support Clinton if she is nominated.

The election of Trump or Clinton is the old illusion of choice that is no choice: two sides of the same coin. In scapegoating minorities and promising to “make America great again”, Trump is a far right-wing domestic populist; yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal for the world.

“Only Donald Trump has said anything meaningful and critical of US foreign policy,” wrote Stephen Cohen, emeritus professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, one of the few Russia experts in the United States to speak out about the risk of war.

In a radio broadcast, Cohen referred to critical questions Trump alone had raised. Among them: why is the United States “everywhere on the globe”? What is NATO’s true mission? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?

The hysteria in the liberal media over Trump serves an illusion of “free and open debate” and “democracy at work”. His views on immigrants and Muslims are grotesque, yet the deporter-in-chief  of vulnerable people from America is not Trump but Obama, whose betrayal of people of colour is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin’s gulag.

This presidential campaign may not be about populism but American liberalism, an ideology that sees itself as modern and therefore superior and the one true way. Those on its right wing bear a likeness to 19^th century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.

In Britain, this is Blairism. The Christian war criminal Tony Blair got away with his secret preparation for the invasion of Iraq largely because the liberal political class and media fell for his “cool Britannia”. In the Guardian, the applause was deafening; he was called “mystical”. A distraction known as identity politics, imported from the United States, rested easily in his care.

History was declared over, class was abolished and gender promoted as feminism; lots of women became New Labour MPs. They voted on the first day of Parliament to cut the benefits of single parents, mostly women, as instructed. A majority voted for an invasion that produced 700,000 Iraqi widows.

The equivalent in the US are the politically correct warmongers on the New York Times,the Washington Post and network TV who dominate political debate. I watched a furious debate on CNN about Trump’s infidelities. It was clear, they said, a man like that could not be trusted in the White House. No issues were raised. Nothing on the 80 per cent of Americans whose income has collapsed to 1970s levels.  Nothing on the drift to war. The received wisdom seems to be “hold your nose” and vote for Clinton: anyone but Trump. That way, you stop the monster and preserve a system gagging for another war.

The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America’s victims in faraway places.

“We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don’t you forget it.”  So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.

The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, “Which side did you fight on?”

A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called “The Price of Freedom” at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa’s grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved “a million lives”; Iraq was “liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision”. The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington’s boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it “never happened …Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. It didn’t matter … “. Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called “a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is “cool”. One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.

In 2009, Obama promised to help “rid the world of nuclear weapons” and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is “modernising” America’s doomsday arsenal, including a new “mini” nuclear weapon, whose size and “smart” technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is “no longer unthinkable”.

James Bradley, the best-selling author ofFlags of Our Fathers and son of one of the US marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, said, “[One] great myth we’re seeing play out is that of Obama as some kind of peaceful guy who’s trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. He’s the biggest nuclear warrior there is. He’s committed us to a ruinous course of spending a trillion dollars on more nuclear weapons. Somehow, people live in this fantasy that because he gives vague news conferences and speeches and feel-good photo-ops that somehow that’s attached to actual policy. It isn’t.”

On Obama’s watch, a second cold war is under way. The Russian president is a pantomime villain; the Chinese are not yet back to their sinister pig-tailed caricature – when all Chinese were banned from the United States – but the media warriors are working on it.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has mentioned any of this. There is no risk and no danger for the United States and all of us. For them, the greatest military build-up on the borders of Russia since World War Two has not happened. On May 11, Romania went “live” with a Nato “missile defence” base that aims its first-strike American missiles at the heart of Russia, the world’s second nuclear power.

In Asia, the Pentagon is sending ships, planes and special forces to the Philippines to threaten China. The US already encircles China with hundreds of military bases that curve in an arc up from Australia, to Asia and across to Afghanistan. Obama calls this a “pivot”.

As a direct consequence, China reportedly has changed its nuclear weapons policy from no-first-use to high alert and put to sea submarines with nuclear weapons. The escalator is quickening.

It was Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State in 2010, elevated the competing territorial claims for rocks and reef in the South China Sea to an international issue; CNN and BBC hysteria followed; China was building airstrips on the disputed islands. In its mammoth war game in 2015, Operation Talisman Sabre, the US practiced “choking” the Straits of Malacca through which pass most of China’s oil and trade. This was not news.

Clinton declared that America had a “national interest” in these Asian waters. The Philippines and Vietnam were encouraged and bribed to pursue their claims and old enmities against China. In America, people are being primed to see any Chinese defensive position as offensive, and so the ground is laid for rapid escalation. A similar strategy of provocation and propaganda is applied to Russia.

Clinton, the “women’s candidate”, leaves a trail of bloody coups: in Honduras, in Libya (plus the murder of the Libyan president) and Ukraine. The latter is now a CIA theme park swarming with Nazis and the frontline of a beckoning war with Russia. It was through Ukraine – literally, borderland — that Hitler’s Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people. This epic catastrophe remains a presence in Russia. Clinton’s presidential campaign has received money from all but one of the world’s ten biggest arms companies. No other candidate comes close.

Sanders, the hope of many young Americans, is not very different from Clinton in his proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. He backed Bill Clinton’s illegal bombing of Serbia. He supports Obama’s terrorism by drone, the provocation of Russia and the return of special forces (death squads) to Iraq. He has nothing to say on the drumbeat of threats to China and the accelerating risk of nuclear war. He agrees that Edward Snowden should stand trial and he calls Hugo Chavez – like him, a social democrat – “a dead communist dictator”. He promises to support Clinton if she is nominated.

The election of Trump or Clinton is the old illusion of choice that is no choice: two sides of the same coin. In scapegoating minorities and promising to “make America great again”, Trump is a far right-wing domestic populist; yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal for the world.

“Only Donald Trump has said anything meaningful and critical of US foreign policy,” wrote Stephen Cohen, emeritus professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, one of the few Russia experts in the United States to speak out about the risk of war.

In a radio broadcast, Cohen referred to critical questions Trump alone had raised. Among them: why is the United States “everywhere on the globe”? What is NATO’s true mission? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?

The hysteria in the liberal media over Trump serves an illusion of “free and open debate” and “democracy at work”. His views on immigrants and Muslims are grotesque, yet the deporter-in-chief  of vulnerable people from America is not Trump but Obama, whose betrayal of people of colour is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin’s gulag.

This presidential campaign may not be about populism but American liberalism, an ideology that sees itself as modern and therefore superior and the one true way. Those on its right wing bear a likeness to 19^th century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.

In Britain, this is Blairism. The Christian war criminal Tony Blair got away with his secret preparation for the invasion of Iraq largely because the liberal political class and media fell for his “cool Britannia”. In the Guardian, the applause was deafening; he was called “mystical”. A distraction known as identity politics, imported from the United States, rested easily in his care.

History was declared over, class was abolished and gender promoted as feminism; lots of women became New Labour MPs. They voted on the first day of Parliament to cut the benefits of single parents, mostly women, as instructed. A majority voted for an invasion that produced 700,000 Iraqi widows.

The equivalent in the US are the politically correct warmongers on the New York Times, the Washington Post and network TV who dominate political debate. I watched a furious debate on CNN about Trump’s infidelities. It was clear, they said, a man like that could not be trusted in the White House. No issues were raised. Nothing on the 80 per cent of Americans whose income has collapsed to 1970s levels.  Nothing on the drift to war. The received wisdom seems to be “hold your nose” and vote for Clinton: anyone but Trump. That way, you stop the monster and preserve a system gagging for another war.

U.S. Ambassador Lewis Lukens’s sworn testimony in the case of Hillary Clinton’s privatization of the U.S. Secretary of State’s email is the first evidence to be released in the Clinton email cases, and it was published on May 26th at the website of Judicial Watch, the organization that originally brought the suit. Headlining “First Deposition Testimony from Clinton Email Discovery Released”, it reported that:

Judicial Watch today released the deposition transcript of Ambassador Lewis Lukens, former deputy assistant secretary of state and executive director of the State Department’s executive secretariat.  The transcript is available here.  Amb. Lukens was deposed last week as part of the discovery granted to Judicial Watch by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in response to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unsecured, non-government email system (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)).

Lukens is the first of seven depositions of former Clinton top aides and State Department officials that Judicial Watch has scheduled over the next four weeks.  Also to be deposed are Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, as well as top State Department official Patrick Kennedy, and former State IT employee Bryan Pagliano.

In his testimony, Lukens described his State Department role:

I’ve been a Foreign Service officer for 27 years. I’ve served in Southern China; in the Ivory Coast; in Sydney, Australia; in Dublin, Ireland; in Baghdad; Vancouver, British Columbia; Dakar, Senegal; and three tours in Washington, D.C., as well as my current position in San Francisco.

While Clinton was Secretary of State, his role was heading “logistics and management support” and he had “roughly 110 employees working for me” including the “IRM” or Information Resource Management team. Also, during his questioning, he was asked “You traveled with Mrs. Clinton on all of her foreign travel?” while he was employed there, and he answered: “Yes.”

Representative excerpts from his testimony will be presented here:

While Clinton’s office was being prepared for her:

Q: Do you know if Mrs. Clinton — if the IRM office set up an e-mail address for Mrs. Clinton?

A: I don’t believe they did.

Q: Do you know why they didn’t?

A: I don’t think it was asked for.

Q: Would Mrs. Clinton have — was it required for Mrs. Clinton to ask for an e-mail address for one to be assigned to her?

A: Yes.

Q: Was it unusual — at the time did you think it was unusual that Mrs. Clinton didn’t want an e-mail address assigned to her?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: I’m not aware of former Secretaries of State having e-mail addresses on our system.

In other words: her having an e-mail address assigned to her was “required,” but the custom at the U.S. Department of State was to ignore this ‘requirement’.

Regardless of whether violating the regulations or even the law has been ignored in the past, violations are supposed to be punished or prosecuted. Prior refusal to prosecute does not constitute legal excuse for continuing refusal to prosecute: it instead constitutes a government in which some persons who are supposedly in the service of, and who are definitely being paid by, the public, are, in practice, above the regulations or even the laws — in other words, a dictatorship. However, this aspect of the questioning was not pursued.

Lukens then said that her violation on that matter was ignored and that a “BB” or Blackberry account was instead requested by “HRC’ Hillary Rodham Clinton. Lukens’s notes indicated that he had asked HRC’s agent, “On the BB for HRC, can we chat this morning?” and “I may have thought of a workaround [to evade the State Department’s regulations] but need more info on her BB use.” He explained during this questioning of him: “So the crux of the issue was that BlackBerrys and iPhones are not allowed in the Secretary’s office suite, so the question was, how is the Secretary going to be able to check her e-mails if she’s not able to have the Blackberry at her desk with her.”

Q: And so what did you — did you propose a solution at that point?

A: So my proposal was to set up a computer on her desk, a standalone computer [not part of the State Department’s system], for her to be able to access the Internet to check her e-mails [privatized — and therefore not subject to FOIA requests or historians’ investigations].

However, Clinton’s agent insisted on a private computer also being set up “across the hall” “for her to check her BlackBerry” even though no private BlackBerry was allowed on the premises. This was to be the “workaround.”

In an email, Lukens had written, and the questioner referenced it:

Also think we should go ahead, but will await your green light, and set up a standalone PC in the Secretary’s office connected to the Internet, but not go through our system, to enable her to check her e-mails from her desk.

That proposal was accepted and was done. Then:

Q: Do you know if this setup would have been any different from the setup of other employees?

A: Yes, this would have been different.

Q: How would it have been different?

A: My understanding is that most of the employees’ computers in the State Department are connected through the State Department’s OpenNet e-mail system …

Q: So this would have been separate from the OpenNet system?

A: Correct.

He was asked why he had proposed this solution, and he said it was “For ease of access” and, “as far as I knew, there was no requirement for her to be connected to our system” (even though he had earlier said that her having an email address assigned to her in the State Department’s system, the OpenNet system, was “required”). He said that the “ease of access” would be because of there being “fewer passwords.”

He was asked whether doing things this way was necessary in order for her to be able to access the Internet from the State Department, and he said, ”the Internet is available” to employees at the office, just as anywhere.

He was asked about the inconvenience of the State Department’s passwords system, and he said that he eliminated her need for any passwords:

A: She wouldn’t have had a password.

Q: So the computer would have just been open and be able to use without going through any security features?

A: Correct.

Though he was paid by U.S. taxpayers, apparently his only concern was to please his superiors, whom he trusted unquestioningly despite their evident unconcern about “security” etc.

In further questioning of Mr. Lukens, it became clear that he never gave any thought to what the purpose behind the State Department’s regulations was: he didn’t even notice that Hillary Clinton’s buddy and top aide Huma Abedin at the Department was also using only a private email account — even though he regularly had been communicating via email with her.

There were many instances in the questioning, in which the U.S. Department of ‘Justice’s attorney there, Caroline Lewis Wolverton, was trying to hamper the attorney for Judicial Watch from asking questions of Mr. Lukens, such as this:

Q: At any point during these conversations or during these e-mails or others did you find it unusual that Ms. Abedin was using a non-state.gov e-mail account?

MS. WOLVERTON: Objection. Vague.

Q: When sending these e-mails to Ms. Abedin, did you think about the fact that they were not — you were sending e-mails to her non-state.gov e-mail account?

A: Not that I recall.

Q: Thinking about it now, do you think it’s — was it rare to send emails to State Department employees on another e-mail account but the one that was assigned by the State Department?

MS. WOLVERTON: Objection. Vague.

Q: Was this unusual, sending e-mail — was it unusual for you to send emails to Ms. Abedin on a non-state.govaccount?

MS. WOLVERTON: Objection. Lack of foundation.

Q: During your four years, did you communicate with — sorry, during the two years of overlap, did you communicate with Ms. Abedin by e-mail?

A: Yes.

Q: Was it frequent?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you recall — during that time, did you recall sending e-mails to her state.gov e-mail account?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you recall — before receiving these exhibits, did you recall sending e-mails to a non-state.gov account?

A: No.

Q: Do you recall thinking at any point about where you were sending e-mails to Ms. Abedin?

A: No.

Q: Do you recall if Ms. Abedin ever told you what e-mail accounts to use for her?

A: No.

Q: Do you recall how you — do you know how you would have received the e-mail account that was used to send these e-mails?

MS. WOLVERTON: Objection. Lack of foundation.

Q: Do you recall — I’ll ask the question again. Do you recall how you learned where to send these e-mails, or how you learned of the e-mail address that you used to send these e-mails?

A: I must have received an e-mail from her at some point from that address.

Q: So this may have been an auto fill on your BlackBerry or Outlook when you were sending these?

MS. WOLVERTON: Objection. Objection, calls for speculation.

Q: Would this — to ask the question again, was it most likely an auto fill feature or do you think you would have manually entered in her e-mail account to send her these e-mails?

MS. WOLVERTON: Same objection.

MR. BEKESHA [representing the Questioner, but now addressing the lawyer for the ‘Justice’ Department]: Are you instructing the witness not to answer?

MS. WOLVERTON: No.

Q: Would you like me to repeat the question?

A: Yes, please.

Q: Would this — would you have sent these e-mails using this e-mail address because of an auto fill feature on a piece of computer equipment or because you would have manually typed in her e-mail address?

MS. WOLVERTON: Same objection.

A: I would say because of the auto fill feature.

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

This past week the Greek Parliament voted by a narrow margin of 153 to 145 to impose even more austerity on its people — thus implementing the latest austerity demands by the Eurozone Troika required for the Troika’s release of loans earmarked for Greece last August 2015.

Earlier this year the Troika signaled to Greece, if it wanted to receive its next tranche of loans needed to make a scheduled payment of 3.5 billion euros to the ECB this July, Greece would have to toughen its austerity program still further. The Syriza government complied, and cut pensions and raised income taxes beyond what it had even originally agreed to last August.

Greek Government’s Latest Austerity Measures

In its May 22, 2016 decision last week, the Greek government then added still more austerity. That vote raised the sales (VAT) tax to 24 percent, imposed higher taxes on coffee, alcohol and gas, revised the privatization program to accelerate the sale of publicly owned transport, electricity, water and port systems, added finances to cover Greek banks’ growing backlog of non-performing business loans, and added contingency measures to cut government spending even further over the next three years should Greece miss the austerity targets imposed by the Troika last August 2015.

Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras’ public response in the wake of still further austerity was “Greece is keeping its promises, now it’s their (Troika) turn to do the same”. But what promises? And to whom?

The past six years of Troika debt deals and austerity demands shows clearly that whenever the Troika has agreed to terms of lending to Greece in exchange for more austerity from it, the deal is never really closed. The Troika keeps demanding even more austerity, with nearly every quarterly review of Greece’s austerity compliance, before releasing just enough of the loans for Greece to repay the Troika for prior loans. The Troika dribbles out the loans and then squeezes Greece for still more austerity. That has been the Troika’s practice ever since the three major Troika Greek debt restructuring deals of May 2010, March 2012, and August 2015.

Greece’s Unsustainable Debt Load

By latest estimates total Greek debt is 384 billion euros, or US$440 billion. That’s approaching nearly twice the size of Greece’s annual GDP. A decade ago, in 2007-08 before the global crash, Greek debt was roughly half of what it is today, in terms of both total debt and as a percent of GDP. Greek debt was actually less than a number of Eurozone economies. So Greece’s debt has been primarily caused by the 2008-09 crash, Greece’s six year long economic depression followed, the extreme austerity measures imposed on it by the Troika during this period which has been the primary cause of its long depression, and the Troika’s piling of debt on Greece to repay previously owed debt.

Contrary to European media spin, it’s not been rising Greek wages or excessive government spending that has caused the US$440 billion in Greek debt. Since 2009 Greek annual wages have fallen from 23,580 to less than 18,000 euros. Government spending has fallen from 118 billion euros to 82 billion.

Bankers and Investors Get 95 percent of all Debt Payments

Who then has benefited from the escalation of Greek debt? To whom are the payments on the debt ultimately going? To Euro bankers and to the Troika, which then passes it on to the bankers and investors, the ultimate beneficiaries.

As a recent in depth study by the European School of Management and Technology, ‘Where Did the Greek Bailout Money Go?, revealed in impeccably researched detail, Greek debt payments ultimately go to Euro bankers. For example, of the 216 billion euros, or US$248 billion, in loans provided to Greece by the Troika in just the first two debt deals of May 2010 and March 2012, 64 percent (139 billion euros) was interest paid to banks on existing debt; 17 percent (37 billion euros) to Greek banks (to replace money being taken out by wealthy Greeks and businesses and sent to northern Europe banks), and 14 percent (29 billion euros) to pay off hedge funds and private bankers in the 2012 deal. Per the study, less than 5 percent of the 216 billion euros went to Greece to spend on its own economy. As the study’s authors concluded, “ the vast majority (more than 95 percent) went to existing creditors in the form of debt repayments and interest payments”. And that’s just the 2010 and 2012 Troika deals. Last August’s third deal is no doubt adding more to the totals.

The IMF: Pro-Greece or Pro-IMF?

Recognizing the impossibility of Greece ever being able to repay the debt, the IMF — a member of the Troika — has recently broken ranks with its Troika partners and has recommended the Troika provide debt relief to Greece. The Syriza government is no doubt betting on the IMF being able to convince the rest of the Troika to agree to debt relief. But in so doing, it is making the same error it made in last year’s 2015 debt negotiations: it is depending on the assistance of one wing of the Troika to convince the others to give Greece a break. Last year it was Syriza’s strategy to leverage certain liberal members of the EC and the Eurozone’s finance ministers group on its behalf. That failed. German ministers and bankers demanding more austerity prevailed last August 2015 over the “soft” or liberal elements in the EC and among the Eurozone’s finance ministers group. Syriza is now betting on the IMF, and proving its willingness to continue with austerity in the interim, to show it is “keeping its promises” to enforce austerity. But that similar strategy will fail as well.

The IMF’s proposal for debt relief for Greece, in its just released “Country Report 16/130,” proposes to extend the current Greek loans by 14-30 years more beyond current 2040 expiration dates; to introduce “grace periods” during which payments may be suspended; and reduce interest rates on the loans to a fixed 1.5 percent instead of variable rates much higher. However, data show that results in no debt relief in real terms at all.

Instead of forcing Greece to generate a budget surplus of 3.5 percent a year, out of which to repay the loans and achieved by means of severe austerity, the IMF also proposes to reduce the annual budget surplus to 1.5 percent. That would reduce Greece’s debt from 200 percent of GDP to “only” 127 percent… by 2040. Even that nominal debt reduction would fail, per the IMF, if Greece’s GDP grew at only 1 percent. It’s been declining at -5 percent and more for the past six years, so even 1 percent is highly unlikely. If Greece’s growth is 1 percent or less, then the IMF admits the other European states will have to add still more debt piled on Greece in order for it to repay the old debt. In short, the IMF version of ‘debt relief’ for Greece has little chance of economic relief for Greece. Nor does it mean any reasonable change in austerity for Greece. Things will get worse, just perhaps worse not as fast as in recent years.

What’s behind the IMF’s Shift?

The IMF is no friend of Greece. What are its possible motives for breaking ranks with the ultra-conservative elements in the Troika — led by Germany and its northern Europe banker allies in the Netherlands and elsewhere?

First, the IMF sees rising demands for its bailout funding on the horizon, not only in the Ukraine but in emerging market economies in the near future. Second, the IMF is feeling the heat from other IMF members in those economies demanding no more special debt considerations for Greece. Looming large on the horizon is also the possibility of the UK exiting the European Union, and elections in June as well in Spain. As secret discussions within the IMF in March exposed by “WikiLeaks” revealed, the IMF is concerned a re-emergence of Greek resistance to the Troika, concurrent with a possible Brexit vote and Spain elections, might converge into an economic ‘perfect storm’ this summer. The IMF wants the Troika to get in front of the curve with Greece before it escalates. Dampen the resistance before it begins by making concessions to Greece now, that won’t take effect for years to come, could be behind the IMF’s move.

Most likely, however, is that the IMF is maneuvering with the rest of the Troika to work a compromise whereby the Troika will buy the IMF out of the Greek debt negotiations. That would mean restructure the Greek debt, to pay off the IMF’s 14.6 billion euros share of the 384 billion euro Greek debt.

That has some appeal to the hardliners in the Troika. However, Germany is demanding that there be no debt relief for Greece before 2018. It is looking at German elections in 2017. So what is most likely is a compromise, resulting in a phasing out of IMF commitment and a phasing in of Greek debt relief that starts only in 2018 after German elections. It appears that’s exactly what the Troika may have decided in its May 24 most recent meeting in Brussels.

What all that means for Greece, however, is not only likely more of the same austerity, but perhaps even an intensification of austerity between now and 2018 —as the German-led conservatives within the Troika demand even more austerity now in exchange for the possibility of debt relief after 2018.

Jack Rasmus is author of the forthcoming book, ‘Looting Greece: An Emerging New Financial Imperialism’, Clarity Press, July 2016, and the just published ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, Clarity Press, January 2016. He blogs at jackrasmus.com

The assault against the Bolivarian revolution has intensified in the recent days and weeks. Editorials and front pages in US and Spanish newspapers are screaming about hunger in Venezuela and demanding the removal of the “dictatorial regime”. Ongoing scarcity problems have led to instances of looting. The right-wing opposition is attempting to trigger a presidential recall referendum, but is also threatening violent action and appealing to foreign powers, including in some case for military intervention. What is really happening in Venezuela and how can these threats be faced?

On Friday May 13th, Venezuelan president Maduro extended the “Economic Emergency Decree” which had given him special powers in January, and further decreed a 60-day State of Emergency which includes sweeping powers to deal with foreign military threats and to deal with problems of food production and distribution.

As was to be expected, the world’s capitalist media joined in a chorus of denunciation, screaming about a “dictatorship”, while one of the main right-wing opposition leaders, Capriles Radonski made a public appeal to disobey the decree. The threats, however, are very real. It is worth giving a few examples. A month ago,an editorial in the Washington Post openly called for “political intervention” by Venezuela’s neighbours. At the weekend, former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, at a “Concordia Summit” in Miami, made an open call for the Venezuelan Armed Forces to carry out a coup or, failing that, for foreign military intervention against “the tyranny”.

The Venezuelan right-wing opposition has made repeated appeals for the Organisation of American States to use its “Democratic Charter” to intervene against president Maduro. They feel emboldened by the successful removal of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and want to go down the same road as soon as possible, by any means necessary, legal or illegal. Influential Venezuelan right-wing journalist and blogger Francisco Toro (editor of the Caracas Chronicles) has just written an article openly discussing the pros and cons of a coup, which he says would be within the constitution and “The Opposite of a Crime”.

Today, the Venezuelan government reported violation of the country’s airspace by US military aircraft.

In an attempt to capitalise on the severe economic problems the country is facing, the reactionary opposition has been busy trying to create a situation of chaos and violence which would justify a coup or foreign intervention to expedite the removal of president Nicolás Maduro. There have been incidents of violence in Zulia and Tachira. There are constant, mostly false, rumours of looting and rioting.

A very serious crisis

I have been involved in the defence of the Bolivarian revolution for more than 13 years now, visited the country often and written about it on a regular basis. None of what I have just described is really new. Since the very beginning, when Chavez was elected in 1998, and particularly since the enabling laws in December 2001, the Venezuelan oligarchy and imperialism have been engaged in a constant campaign of harassment, violence, destabilisation, coups, lies and slanders, diplomatic pressure, economic sabotage, you name it, they have done it.

This time, however, something is different. On all the previous occasions, the revolutionary will of the Bolivarian masses of workers, peasants and the poor, has defeated the counter-revolutionary attempts to put an end to the revolution. This was the case even against the coup in April 2002 and then the lockout and sabotage of the oil industry in December of the same year, before the revolution was able to grant any real improvements in living standards. Those came mainly after the government was able to get full control of the state-owned oil company in 2003.

For ten years, the revolution was able to grant widespread reforms and massively improve the living standards of the masses. This was accompanied by a process of political radicalisation in which the late president Chávez and the revolutionary masses pushed each other forward. Socialism was declared as the aim of the Bolivarian revolution, there were wide ranging experiences of workers’ control, factories were occupied and expropriated, companies were re-nationalised. Millions became active at all levels in an attempt to take their future into their own hands. The motor force of the revolution and its main source of strength which allowed it to thwart all the attempts of the oligarchy and imperialism were the revolutionary masses, active, politically aware and engaged at all levels.

Of course, this period was helped by high oil prices (which reached a peak of over $140 a barrel in 2008). The government could use a massive amount of money from oil revenues to fund social programs which benefited millions (in education, healthcare, food, housing, pensions, etc). The question of taking over the means of production was not immediately posed.

Capitalism cannot be regulated

Measures were taken which limited the normal functioning of the free market capitalist economy in order to defend the revolution against the sabotage of the ruling class. These included foreign exchange controls (to prevent the flight of capital) and price controls on basic food products (to defend the purchasing power of the poor).

Soon, the capitalists found a way around this. Foreign exchange controls became a swindle and resulted in a massive transfer of hard currency from oil revenues directly into the pockets of unscrupulous capitalists. How did that happen? The government instituted a subsidised foreign exchange rate which was to be used to import basic products (food and medical supplies) as well as parts for industry.

Instead, private capitalists applied for preferential dollars which they then syphoned into the black market (which developed as an inevitable side effect of currency controls) or to offshore bank accounts. Thus we witnessed the incredible situation where imports in volume decreased, while imports in value (in dollars) massively increased. Marxist economist Manuel Sutherland has worked out the figures for imports of pharmaceutical products:

The red column represents pharmaceutical imports in millions of Kg, the blue column represents their value in millions of US$. Source: http://www.rebelion.org

In 2003, Venezuela was importing pharmaceutical products at 1.96 US$ per Kg. By 2014 the price had reached 86.80 US$ per Kg. Imports had collapsed by 87% in volume, but increased nearly 6-fold in price! Similar figures can be produced for almost every sector of the economy in which private capitalists were receiving subsidised dollars to import goods.

A similar situation developed with price controls. The private sector, which still has almost monopoly control of food processing and distribution of many basic items, refused to produce anything covered by price controls. Thus, in order to bypass regulated prices for rice, for instance, they started producing flavoured or coloured varieties, which were not regulated.

This blocking of production on the part of the private capitalists forced the whole weight of producing and distributing basic food products onto the state. The state imported food from the world market, paid at world market prices with oil dollars, then sold it at heavily subsidised prices in state-run supermarket chains (PDVAL, MERCAL, Bicentenario).

For a period, while oil prices were high, this situation worked, more or less. Once oil prices went into freefall and the economy entered into a deep recession, the whole edifice came down like a house of cards. In 2014 Venezuelan oil was still 88 US$ a barrel. In 2015 it halved to $44. In January 2016 it had reached its lowest level for over 10 years, at $24.

Venezuelan money supply. Credit: www.tradingeconomics.com

In order to continue to pay for the social programs (including subsidised food products), the state started to print massive amounts of money which was not backed up by anything. Between 1999 and 2015, the M2 measure of money supply increased by over 15,000%!

Inevitably, the combination of massive flight of capital, the associated development of a huge dollar black market, the massive expansion of the money supply at a time of economic recession (2014 -3.9; 2015 -5.7%) inevitably caused hyperinflation. In 2014 the annual inflation rate reached a record 68%, but in 2015 it was even higher at 180% according to the Venezuelan Central Bank. It has to be pointed out that inflation for food and non-alcoholic beverages was even higher than the average.

The black market exchange rate for the dollar jumped from 187 Bolivars per $ in January 2015 to over 1,000 Bolivars per dollar now (having reached a peak of 1,200 in February this year). This is the exchange rate at which most prices of products are now calculated.

Another effect of this massive economic dislocation is the rapid depletion of foreign reserves:

Foreign exchange reserves. Credit: www.tradingeconomics.com

From US$24bn at the beginning of 2015, they have collapsed down to US$12.7bn now, according to the official figures of the Venezuelan Central Bank.

This dire situation has led to a sharp decrease in government imports of food and other basic products. Overall imports went down by 18.7% in 2015. This has created permanent scarcity of basic products in the state-owned supermarket chains selling them at regulated prices. In turn this has created a huge black market for these products. The root cause of the black market is scarcity, which is then aggravated by the existence of the black market itself. The massive difference created between the regulated prices (ever more scarce) and the black market, then acts as a huge magnet for products towards the latter. This is a comparison of the prices of some basic products as sold by bachaqueros (black marketeers) in the working class and poor neighborhood of Petare in Caracas in March:

Credit: teleSUR 

The government has decreed increases in the minimum wage, several times, over the last two years, from around 10,000 Bs in November 2015 to 15,000 now (to which we have to add 18,000 Bs of the cesta ticket (food supplement). Still, if you have to purchase most of your weekly basket of products in the black market, this is not enough. Since state imports of food have sharply gone down, scarcity of regulated products has increased and people are forced to get a bigger share of their shopping basket on the free and black market.

Scarcity has led to massive corruption at all levels, diverting products from the official state-run supply chain onto the black market. From the family that queues for hours and then re-sells some of what they’ve bought, to the state supermarket manager who diverts whole lorries full of products (in connivance with the national guard officers guarding the establishment), to criminal gangs who hire people to queue for hours and buy whatever subsidised products are available (threatening and paying off supermarket workers, national guards, supermarket managers, etc), to the nationwide director of the Bicentenario state supermarket chain who diverts ship-loads of products.

To this we have to add a thousand and one different ways in which the private sector breaks the price regulation regime. Maize flour is permanently scarce, butareperas are always well stocked. Chickens are almost impossible to purchase at regulated prices, but roast chicken joints never lack them. Wheat flour can’t be bought at the official price, and bakeries use lack of flour as an argument not to produce the normal loaf of bread (the price of which is regulated), but then they are mysteriously able to produce any other variety of bread, cakes and biscuits, which we have to assume are made with flour. What’s behind this mystery? The fact that private wholesale producers do supply these establishments, but of course not at regulated prices.

Any attempt to clamp down on this situation by using repressive measures against black marketeers, though necessary, is bound to fail. The root cause is not thebachaqueros big or small, but the actual inability of the government to fund the supply of the necessary amount of products to cover the whole demand combined with the unwillingness of the private sector to produce and sell products at the regulated prices fixed by the government.

One of the main reasons for this unsustainable economic dislocation is therefore, the “natural” rebellion of the capitalist producers against any attempt to regulate the normal workings of the “free market”. This is the real meaning of the “economic war” that the Bolivarian government has denounced for many years. Yes, there is, undoubtedly, an element of deliberate economic sabotage aimed at hitting the working masses in order to undermine their support for the revolution. But at the same time it is easy to understand that from the point of view of the capitalists, if they can get a profit margin of 100%, 1000% or even higher in the black market, they will not sell, nor produce regulated products on which they can make only a very modest gain or sometimes a loss.

What has failed in Venezuela is not “socialism” as the capitalist media likes to highlight in their propaganda campaign. It is precisely the opposite. What has clearly failed is the attempt to introduce regulations in order to make capitalism work, even if only partially, in the interest of working people. The conclusion is clear: capitalism cannot be regulated. The attempt has led to economic dislocation on a massive scale.

The government’s response: appeals to the private sector

The majority of Venezuelans are aware, to one degree or another, of the despicable role played by private companies, like Grupo Polar, in creating this situation of hoarding, racketeering, black market, speculation, etc. In my last visit to Venezuela I witnessed the following argument at a supermarket queue: “- Mujer A: “aquí tienen su patria bonita” – Mujer B: “a ver si creen que es el gobierno que produce la Harina PAN”” [Woman A, scornfully: “here’s your beautiful fatherland” (meaning: this is what chavismo has given you, queues) Woman B, sharply: “do you think it is the government that produces Harina PAN” (in fact it is Grupo Polar which has a monopoly control over the production of maize flour).] The problem is not that people do not realise that the private sector is sabotaging the economy. The problem is that they cannot see the government as being able or willing to take the necessary measures to solve this situation.

To the problems of food scarcity and crime we have to add the severe drought affecting Venezuela as a by-product of El Niño which has meant problems in energy generation at the El Guiri hydroelectric dam. This has led to regular power outages in recent months. In April, the government decreed a 2-day working week in public institutions as a measure to reduce electricity consumption.

Even on this question we have to factor in a deliberate campaign of sabotage of the country’s power grid. There have been, for a number of years now, regular bomb attacks against power generating plants, power stations and substations in different parts of the country. They usually coincide with election campaigns and moments of heightened political tension and they have the aim of provoking power outages in order to spread a feeling of collapse, chaos, instability…

What has been the government’s response to these extreme problems? Since at least 2014 there was an open recognition of the failure of the previous model of regulation of capitalism and the use of oil revenues to fund social programs. You could say that the turning point was the exit of the former finance minister Giordani from the government in July 2014. Since then, the dominant line in the economic policy of the government has been one of making even more concessions to the capitalists in the hope of winning back their trust so that they can collaborate with the government in order to turn the situation around. This has been expressed in a whole series of concrete measures which have been taken: the partial liberalisation of foreign exchange, partial lifting of the subsidy on the price of fuel, the establishment of Special Economic Zones in order to attract foreign direct investment, as well as the repatriation of capital held abroad by Venezuelan capitalists, the opening up of the Arco Minero (111,000 Sq Km of land) for mining exploitation, etc.

None of this has worked. The government holds regular talks with businessmen where concessions to their interests are agreed and appeals are made for them to invest. At the following round of talks, businesses demand even more concessions, but the economy remains in a state of deep crisis.

To be fair, the government’s concessions to the private sector are from time to time accompanied by threats of expropriation. These threats are never followed by actions. Thus on Friday, May 13, when president Maduro extended the Economic Emergency and decreed emergency powers for 60 days, he specifically warned that “any factory that a capitalist paralyses, we will take it over and hand it to the communal power”. Less than 48 hours later, in an interview with Reuters, the vice-president in charge of the whole economic area of the government, Perez Abad, reassured international capital by “ruling out the take over of plants which are paralysed for lack of raw materials”. In the same interview he stressed Venezuela’s intention to continue to pay its foreign debt obligations, religiously, in full and on time. He added that this would mean a further reduction in imports for 2016.

In fact, although Maduro’s warning was highlighted by the international media, in Venezuela people did not take much notice. He has made the same threat of expropriation, specifically aimed at Grupo Polar, on so many times, that it is like the man who cried wolf. Whenever workers in the recent period have taken over factories which had been paralyzed by the bosses, they have been met with either an endless string of bureaucratic obstacles or direct repression on the part of the Bolivarian police. In most of the cases, even though laws introduced by Chavez are on the side of the workers and allow for expropriations and workers’ control, in reality the majority of labour inspectors are in the pockets of the bosses. Instead of expediting expropriation, they keep giving the owners extensions in order to pay wages and restart production, which results in the demoralisation of the workers in struggle.

Perez Abad is a chief representative of this policy of concessions to the capitalist class. He himself is a businessman and former president of one of the country’s employers’ federations. He became minister in charge of economic affairs of the government in February when he replaced Luis Salas, who was seen by the capitalists as a “radical”. Just before Maduro decreed an extension of economic emergency powers, Perez Abad had already announced a further increase in the prices of regulated products, after discussions with the capitalist affected.

More recently, in an attempt to deal with the question of scarcity, the government attempted to promote the formation of Local Provisioning and Production Committees. The idea is that the organised communities themselves will deal directly with the distribution of subsidised food products to the families. This is a step in the right direction, which could strengthen the role of rank and file organisations. However, the measure has only had a partial impact, so far. Also, it only deals with the question of final distribution, but not with the more important question of production and processing, which is where the crux of the problem lies.

Impact on consciousness

I said before that something is different this time. What has changed from previous attempts of the counter-revolution to defeat the Bolivarian movement? The constant stress and strain of having to queue for hours to get basic products, the uncertainty created by scarcity and hyperinflation, the fact that this situation has been going on for over a year now and instead of getting better is getting worse, the realisation that while the masses are suffering there are those who call themselves “Bolivarian” in positions of power who are benefitting massively from corruption, the weariness brought on by having to battle against the bureaucracy within your own movement, etc., all of this has had an impact on the consciousness of an important layer of the masses who previously supported the revolution. This is the key reason for the defeat in the December 6 National Assembly elections which were won by the right-wing opposition for the first time in 18 years. At that time, the Bolivarian revolution lost about 2 million votes, allowing the opposition to win an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly.

That defeat created a situation of institutional deadlock. The right-wing dominated National Assembly has attempted to pass some reactionary laws (a scandalous Amnesty Law, the privatisation of housing), but these have been blocked either by the president or by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, initiatives taken by the President are ruled out of order by the Assembly.

Currently, the opposition is attempting to trigger a presidential recall referendum (a democratic guarantee introduced by the Bolivarian revolution under Hugo Chávez). They need to get a certain number of signatures to trigger the process, and then, in an Electoral Council-supervised process, get 20% of the electoral census to sign for it (3.9 million). Then a referendum would be called in which the opposition would have to get more votes than Maduro received when he was elected in order to force his removal. If he is removed within this year, 2016, then the right-wing president of the National Assembly takes over until new presidential elections are held. But Maduro will attempt by all means to delay any recall referendum until 2017, because if he is removed at that time, the vice-president takes over for the remainder of his term (until 2019). This also shows how the leadership of the Bolivarian movement seems to view the struggle from a purely legal-institutional point of view.

The oligarchy also feel emboldened by the electoral defeats in Argentina, Bolivia and the removal of Dilma in Brazil. Their side “is winning” and now they want to “overthrow the regime” in Venezuela. They cannot wait to go through the whole process of a recall referendum, and even less until the end of Maduro’s term.

The situation has reached its limits from the point of view of the patience of the masses. A week ago a comrade from Catia, a revolutionary stronghold in Caracas, described the situation thus: “Up until a few weeks ago you had to queue for 4, 6, 8 hours, but you could do your shopping for two or three weeks. Now there’s nothing. On Monday, me and my mum queued and could only get rice and pasta. The rest you have to get it in the black market at bachaquero prices. Wages are not enough to get by. The national guard is now outside the local supermarket with assault rifles manning the queues and they pushed it back a few hundred meters to dissuade people from looting.” There have already been small scale incidents of looting in Aragua and Guarenas.

In these conditions, there is the danger that any appeals made to the masses to mobilise against the threat of counter-revolution could fall on deaf ears. The masses have shown over and over again their willingness to struggle and push the revolution forward. But they are not at all convinced that their leaders know where to go, nor how to get there.

A military coup?

The combination of an institutional stalemate, a deep economic crisis, and a situation of violence in the streets which the opposition wishes to create, could also push a section of the army to intervene “in order to restore law and order”. Over the last few weeks there have been constant rumours of a coup in the making. On Tuesday, May 17, reactionary opposition leader Capriles, called on the army to rebel against the president “in order to uphold the constitution”. Capriles, of course, is no stranger to coups, having played a role in the short-lived reactionary coup of April 2002. The top command of the army has repeatedly stated publicly its loyalty to Bolivarianism. But everything has its limits.

This is a very dangerous juncture for the Bolivarian revolution. A military intervention, whatever form it would take, would be the prelude for a “transition” towards the oligarchy retaking control of state power. A section of the Bolivarian leaders, some of the corrupt, bureaucratic and reformist elements at the top, are already preparing to jump ship and would be quite ready to participate in some sort of transitional government of “national unity”, as long as they are guaranteed some sort of immunity.

At the same time as a layer of the masses is tired and worn out, there is also a layer of the advanced activists who are very angry and have been radicalised as a result of the election defeat in December. There was a movement from the bottom demanding the radicalisation of the revolution.

If the Bolivarian leadership were to take firm and decisive action to address the problem of scarcity, this would rekindle a wave of revolutionary enthusiasm. Such measures would be: a monopoly of foreign trade; expropriation of the food production and distribution chain under the democratic control of the workers, communities and small peasant producers; a default on the foreign debt; expropriation of the banks and big businesses; a national democratic plan of production to satisfy the needs of the majority. This program, if implemented, would immediately provoke an even bigger clash with the Venezuelan oligarchy and its imperialist masters, but at least it would have the benefit of solidifying and extending support for it amongst the masses which would see their problems finally addressed in a serious way.

Let us be under no illusion. If the right wing were to achieve its aims of regaining full control of state power (by whatever means), Venezuela would not go back to “normal” capitalist democracy. No. The program of the ruling class in a country riddled by a massive economic and social crisis would be one of war on the working people. They would go on the offensive against all the social gains of the revolution. But they would also be faced with fierce resistance on the part of the masses and therefore they would attempt to crush the movement by force. Under those conditions a new Caracazo uprising would be on the cards.

Toby Valderrama and Antonio Aponte put it very sharply in a recent article:

“The government must understand that economic war, foreign invasion, attacks by foreign spokespersons, be they [OAS secretary general] Almagro, be they [former Colombian president] Uribe, they all have the same name: capitalism! And they can only be fought with one weapon: socialism. It is not possible to fight them with capitalism, because that does not convince anyone and you cannot achieve victory. These are times of decisiveness, either you are revolutionary or you are capitalist, the ability of social-democracy of making fiery speeches and then acting as a firefighter to put them down is coming to an end.”

This is correct. As we have explained, the attempt to regulate capitalism has failed. There are only two ways out: either to go back to “normal” capitalism (that is, to make the workers pay the price for the crisis), or to go forward to socialism (that is to make the capitalists pay).

It it not too late. The hour is one of extreme danger. This can only be overcome by extreme measures and firmness. Enough with vacillations. Carry out the revolution to the end!

President Barack Obama will finish up his current Asia trip by becoming the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, Japan — site of the fateful atomic bombing attack on Aug. 6, 1945, that killed tens of thousands of Japanese citizens.

The people of Hiroshima and (three days later) Nagasaki suffered unspeakable horrors. Some in the US government didn’t want Americans to see what really happened. Today, WhoWhatWhy revisits our past coverage of that painful final chapter of World War II, whose long shadow still haunts the world today

What follows is the first in a three-part series that first ran on March 16, 2014:

“A Hole in American History”

Dozens of hours of film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the fall and winter of 1945-1946 by an elite US military unit was hidden for decades and almost no one could see it. The raw footage, in striking color, languished in obscurity. As the writer Mary McCarthy observed, the atomic bombing of Japan nearly fell into “a hole in human history.”

US Navy photographer captures Hiroshima atomic bomb victim.  Photo credit: NARA / Wikimedia

As our nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union escalated, all that most Americans saw of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the same black-and-white images: a mushroom cloud, a panorama of emptiness, a battered building topped with the skeleton of a dome — mainly devoid of people.

Once top secret, the shocking images now carry an “unrestricted” label. You have, quite possibly, seen a few seconds of clips on television or in film documentaries. If so, those images may be burned into your mind. Yet no one was allowed to view them when the horror they captured might have prevented more horror by slowing down or even halting the nuclear arms race.

Compounding the cover-up, the American military seized all of the black-and-white footage of the cities shot by the Japanese in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. They hid the film away for many years. It was known in Japan as the maboroshi, or “phantom,” film. It, too, rests in the National Archives today.

“Never again.” At least not with outmoded bombs

To find out how and why all of this historic footage was suppressed for so long, I tracked down the man who oversaw the handling of both the Japanese and American film. His name is Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern. He told me that high officials in the Pentagon didn’t want those images out because,

“…they showed effects on man, woman and child. … They didn’t want the general public to know what their weapons had done — at a time they were planning on more bomb tests.”

Not incidentally, those planned tests were designed to help the US military build bigger and better nuclear bombs.

McGovern also said, “We didn’t want the material out because … we were sorry for our sins.”

* * *

The secret color footage was finally shown to the public, however limited, on June 2, 1982. The New York City screening coincided with the high point of the antinuclear movement.

In response to an escalating arms race stoked by a new president, Ronald Reagan, who said a nuclear war with the Soviets was “winnable” — a “nuclear freeze” campaign had been organized in hundreds of cities and towns. It captured the imagination of the media and a massive anti-nuclear march in Manhattan was set for June 12.

Despite this campaign, few in America challenged the view that dropping the bomb had been necessary. When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were invoked, even within the antinuclear movement, it was usually not to condemn, but merely to make the declaration: never again.

No matter what one thought of Truman’s decision in 1945, this much was clear: Endorsing the bombings and saying “never again” did not fit together comfortably. Washington, after all, maintained its “first-use” nuclear option, and still embraces it today.

According to this policy, under certain circumstances the United States can strike first with nuclear weapons — and ask questions later. In other words, there is no real taboo against using the bomb.

Ten days before the June 12 march, a few dozen Americans first saw some of the historic color footage shot by the American military — but not in an American film.

It was the Japanese who put together the film, and only because of a chance meeting in New York between Herbert Sussan — who, as a young soldier, helped shoot some of the 1946 footage — and a Japanese activist. When the activist learned of the secret film from Sussan, he lead a mass movement in Japan to raise enough money to copy 90,000 feet of it. (They also purchased a copy of the suppressed, black-and-white film shot by the Japanese newsreel team.) The film was shown at the Japan Society in Manhattan.  It was called “Prophecy.”

Photo caption: Herbert Sussan

At the Japan Society, the now-elderly Sussan, who had become a pioneering TV director at CBS, told the audience,

“I have waited so long for this moment. For years, all of my own efforts to obtain this unique footage to show the American people have been frustrated. This film has been locked in vaults, declared classified and held away from the public. I am pleased that the world will finally see a small bit of what the true reality of the nuclear age really is…

“I felt that if we did not capture this horror on film, no one would ever really understand the dimensions of what had happened.”

Then they rolled the film. The footage revealed miles of devastation dotted by rubble and twisted girders, close-ups of artifacts — blackened statues, a collapsed church or school — and victims displaying their inflamed scars. Doctors in shattered hospitals bandaged gruesome wounds.

The distinctive, rubbery keloid scars left by burns on faces and arms looked all the more painful in blazing color.

Patients, most of them women and children, exposed to the camera their scarred faces and seared trunks. They acted stoic, dignified, yet their intense gaze suggested deep wells of bitterness at the US for dropping the bomb — or perhaps at Sussan for subjecting them to this further humiliation. Or was it both?

A Film That Flopped?

Despite a good turnout that day, there was very little, if any, coverage about “Prophecy” or Herbert Sussan in the days that followed, despite its announcement inThe New York Times’ “Going Out Guide” the day it was to be shown, along with other Japanese films on the bombing.

Weeks passed. The nuclear freeze campaign continued to grow, and that October, I was named editor of the leading antinuclear magazine in the country, Nuclear Times. When I took over, the first major story I assigned was a profile of Herbert Sussan.

When I reached Sussan by telephone, he sounded edgy, maybe a little scared. He had recently retired and was ill, he said, with a form of lymphoma “they are finding in soldiers exposed to radiation.”

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books, including “Atomic Cover-up.” He is the former editor of Nuclear Times and Editor & Publisher and writes a daily column at The Nation.

A series of coordinated and organized suicide bombings across the Syrian coast on Monday has left around 120 people dead. Despite the worldwide expression of solidarity that occurred during the Paris and Belgian attacks, however, there has been no mention of the Syrian attacks nor has there been any mass expression of condolences and solidarity with Syria.

The attacks took place in both Tartus and Jobleh, two cities that are fiercely loyal to the Syrian government and where two Russian bases are located. Syrian state media has reported a lower death toll than that of the West and the terrorist-supporting “activists” (or, rather “activist”) known as the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.

Two or three blasts took place in Tartus while four explosions took place in Jobleh, with one bomber captured after his blast failed to take his life along with this victims. The blasts were coordinated to take place at a time when the target areas were expected to be crowded with civilians. In Jobleh, the bombings hit a busy bus station, a government electricity office, and an emergency room hospital entrance. In Tartus, the bombs hit a residential neighborhood and another bus station.

Ziad Fadel of Syrian Perspective provides a timeline of the bombings. He writes:

9:00 a.m. – we are at the entrance to the Jabla Transportation Garage, essentially a taxi and bus station, where people come into the town from nearby areas, including Tartous and Banyaas, to shop, attend school or transact business. This time is the busiest of the day before 8:00 p.m. when crowds begin returning to their destinations. A Toyota pickup, manufactured by the conformist and amoral Japanese, – bought by the Saudi cockroaches – was driven into the entry area and parked there. The pickup was stuffed with 350 kgs of C-4 (Semtex) and sundry metal items, like ball bearings and nails, to insure more lethality. It was detonated by remote control. The Syrian Security Services are now sweeping the area in search of a male suspected of being the trigger-man.

9:10 a.m. As word got out of the explosion, citizens naturally gravitated to the area in order to help or to determine if any loved one was among the injured. A distance of only 100 meters away was the Directorate for Jabla’s Electrical Company. People who heard the explosion at the taxi station were on alert and noticed a woman screaming out “Allahu Akbar” as she detonated her explosive belt right at the entryway to the building. She is now in a thousand pieces of porcine fragments, but, she killed enough people to insure her swift descent into the maws of Erebus.

9:11 a.m. At the entrance to the city of Jabla from the major Latakia-Homs Highway, a male suicide bomber drove his automobile, stuffed with NATO-provided C-4, and detonated his payload at the intersection that leads into the Al-Tadhaamun Quarter. My readers may find this hard to believe, but, the driver survived the explosion and is now in critical condition at the Latakia National Hospital where doctors are frantically trying to keep him alive since his expected testimony will implicate both Erdoghan and Prince Muhammad bin Salmaan (and also, possibly, Obama and Cameron) in this atrocity. My source tells me that the explosion was strong enough to throw the driver from the car violently into some hedges. His survival is, still, quite amazing.

9:25 a.m. – At the Emergency Division of the Jabla National Hospital, a slinky rodent terrorist exploded his belt at the entryway to the emergency ward destroying a whole section of the first floor where Sunnis were being rushed for treatment. The evidence is still flimsy, but, it appears this terrorist had connections to the Sulaybi Quarter of Latakia.

Residents now fear the possibility of more attacks in the region over the coming weeks.

While Western media is reporting that ISIS is responsible for the attack, citing another report from Amaq, a “news agency” associated with Daesh and curiously allowed to operate despite the West maintaining the most sophisticated surveillance and electronic warfare state on the planet, where the terrorist organization allegedly took credit for the bombings. The attacks also come after an alleged ISIS spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnai allegedly urged fighters to increase the frequency of suicide attacks since the group is suffering numerous defeats in head-on battle situations. Adnai’s call was allegedly issued before the weekend.

Syrian media, however, is reporting that Ahrar al-Sham is the party responsible for the bombing.

The question of which terrorist organization is responsible for the bombing is incredibly important in terms of international politics and could have far-reaching effects on the geopolitical scene. Ever since the recent “ceasefire” agreement that excludes ISIS and Nusra, Syria and Russia have argued that Ahrar al-Sham is also a terrorist organization and should therefore also be excluded. However, the United States is refusing to label Ahrar al-Sham, one of the organizations that make up the bulk of the so-called “Syrian opposition,” as a terrorist group.

If the responsible party was indeed Ahrar al-Sham, then the United States can chalk up one more horrific atrocity to their publicly-supported pets and will be faced with a difficult row to hoe in front of the rest of the world as the bankrupt U.S. administration inevitably tries to obfuscate and defend the terrorist group.

But Syria and Russia do not necessarily need to point to the bombings in Tartus and Jabla as an example of why Ahrar al-Sham is a terrorist organization nor do they need to prove that Ahrar al-Sham was the guilty party. The terrorist group has already committed untold numbers of atrocities in Syria against soldiers and civilians (See here for video evidence). After all, there is absolutely no difference between Ahrar al-Sham and ISIS besides a mere name. They both have the same goal of Sharia. They both hate minorities, Christians, Alawites, Shiites, etc. They both torture. They both rape. We could go on and on.

We should also mention that the United States and NATO support both organizations. For public relations needs, however, the U.S. can claim that Ahrar al-Sham is the good, “moderate” terrorist organization that is fighting for democratic jihadism. But when an atrocity is committed that gains attention in the media, ISIS – the bad extremist terrorist organization fighting for extreme jihadism – can immediately take both the credit and the blame.

It’s very much like a movie script, but the script resembles that of a sequel that has gone through so many presentations that not only are the scenes predictable but the actors are wholly unconvincing and the plot entirely unbelievable. Unfortunately, the crisis bears another uncanny resemblance to a bad movie script – the American people eat it up without question.

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

There is an irony that would be amusing if it was not depressing about news that Donald Trump has been courting the 92-year old foreign policy sorcerer Henry Kissinger. Of course, the irony is that earlier in the presidential campaign Hilary Clinton proudly claimed Kissinger as ‘a friend,’ and acknowledged that he “relied on his counsel” while she served as Obama’s Secretary of State between 2009-2013. It is indeed strange that the only point of public convergence between free-swinging Trump and war-mongering Clinton should be these ritual shows of deference to the most scandalous foreign policy figure of the past century.

Kissinger should not be underestimated as an international personality with a sorcerer’s dark gifts. After all, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his perverse role in Vietnam diplomacy. Kissinger had supported the war from its inception and was known as a strong proponent of the despicable ‘Christmas bombing’ of North Vietnam. He had earlier joined with Nixon in secretly extending the Vietnam War to Cambodia, incidentally without Congressional knowledge, much less authorization.

This led to the total destabilization and devastation of a country that had successfully maintained its neutrality for the prior decade. It also generated the genocidal takeover by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s resulting in the death of a third of the Cambodian population. It was notable that the Nobel had been jointly awarded to Luc Duc Tho, Kissinger’s counterpart in the negotiations, who exhibited his dignity by declining the prize, while Kissinger as shameless as ever, accepted and had an assistant deliver his acceptance speech because he was too busy to attend. Significantly, for the first time, two members of the Nobel Selection Committee resigned their position in disgust.

The more familiar, and more damning allegation against Kissinger, is his association with criminal violations of international law. These are convincingly set forth in Christopher Hitchens The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001). Hitchens informed readers that he “confined himself to the identifiable crimes that can and should be placed on a proper bill of indictment.” He omitted others. Hitchens lists six major crimes of Kissinger:

1. The deliberate mass killing of civilian population in Indochina.
2. Deliberate collusion in mass murder, and later in assassination in  Bangladesh.
3. The personal suborning and planning of murder, of a senior constitutional officer in a democratic nation—Chile—with which the United States was not at war.
4. Personal involvement in a plan to murder the head of state in the democratic nation of Cyprus.
5. The incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor.
6. Personal involvement in a plan to kidnap and murder a journalist living in Washington, DC.”

Whether the evidence available would support a conviction in an international tribunal is far from certain, but Kissinger’s association and approval of these unlawful and inhumane policies, and many others, is clear beyond reasonable doubt.

Kissinger with Argentina’s General Videla (1976)

In some respects as damaging as these allegations of complicity in war crimes is, it is not the only reason to question Kissinger’s credentials as guru par excellence. Kissinger shares with Hilary Clinton a record of bad judgments, supporting some foreign policy initiatives that would be disastrous if enacted and others that failed while inflicting great suffering on a foreign civilian population. In his most recent book, World Order published in 2014, Kissinger makes a point of defending his support of George W. Bush’s foreign policy with specific reference to the war of aggression undertaken in 2003. In his words, “I supported the decision to undertake regime change in Iraq..I want to express here my continuing respect and personal affection for President George W. Bush, who guided America with courage, dignity, and conviction in an unsteady time. His objectives and dedication honored his country even when in some cases they proved unattainable within the American political cycle.” [pp. 324-325] One would have hoped that such an encomium to the internationally least successful U.S. president would be a red flag for those presidential candidates turning to Kissinger for guidance, but such is his lofty reputation, that no amount of crimes or errors of judgment can diminish his public stature.

Kissinger first attracted widespread public attention with a book that encouraged relying on nuclear weapons in a limited war scenario in Europe, insisting that the United States could prudently confront the Soviet Union without inviting an attack on its homeland. [Nucelar Weapons and Foreign Policy (1967). As already indirectly suggested, he supported the Vietnam War, the anti-Allende coup in Chile, Indonesian genocidal efforts to deny independence to East Timor, and many other dubious foreign policy undertakings that turned out badly, even from his own professed realist perspective.

It is true that Kissinger has a grasp of the history of diplomacy that impresses ordinary politicians such as Trump and Clinton. True, also, he rode the crest of the wave with respect to the diplomatic opening to China in 1972 and pursued with impressive energy the negotiation of ceasefire arrangements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. As well, TIME magazine had a cover featuring Kissinger dressed as superman, dubbing their hero as ‘super-K.’ There is, in this sense, no doubt that Kissinger has been a master as refurbishing his tarnished reputation over the course of decades.

Yet fairly considered, whether from a normative or strategic outlook, I would have hoped that Kissinger should be viewed as ‘discredited’ rather than as the most revered repository of foreign policy wisdom in this nation. Bernie Sanders struck the proper note when he said “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend.” And when queried by Clinton as to who he would heed, Sanders responded, “I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger.” In contrast, the words of Hilary Clinton confirm her affinity for the man: “He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels.” In fairness she did qualify this show of deference with these words: “[t]hough we have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past….” This was the only saving grace in her otherwise gushing review of Kissinger’s World Order (2014) published in the Washington Post.

Let me offer a final comment on this shared adulation of Kissinger as the éminence grise of American foreign policy by the two likely candidates for the presidency. It epitomizes and helps explain the banality of the political discourse that has dominated the primary phases of the presidential campaign. It is hardly surprising that during this time dark clouds of despair hang heavy in the skies above the American body politic. Before either presidential hopeful even walks into the Oval Office both Trump and Clinton are viewed unfavorably by over half of all Americans, and regarded with a mixture of dismay, fear, and shock by political leaders and their publics around the world. To show obeisance to Kissinger’s wisdom and wizardry is thus emblematic of the paucity of mainstream American political imagination, and should worry all who care about the future of the country and the world.

‘Syria Solidarity UK’ (SSUK), led by some British ‘leftists’, is strongly backing the US-led war on Syria and appears to support all the al Qaeda aligned armed groups. They use the pretence of concern for refugees while stoking a terrible war which drives those refugees.

Even after five years of proxy war, where it has become very clear that NATO states and the Gulf monarchies are using vicious extremist groups in an attempt to topple the Syrian Government, some small, deluded western ‘left’ groups still pretend this is a ‘revolution’.

I first became aware of the SSUK very recently when they lobbied a Greek academic conference (Crossing Borders) to have me removed as an invited keynote speaker. I had been invited to present on the relationship between the war on Syria and the European refugee crisis, after interest in my recent book, The Dirty War on Syria.

To Order Tim Anderson’s Book, click link or image

The SSUK is very different to the Syria Solidarity Movement SSM, which opposes the war on Syria. When I looked closer at the SSUK I saw it had been created in 2014 by members of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and/or splinter groups formed over 2013-2014, after a rape scandal within the SWP.

Spokesperson for the SSUK and SWP member Mark Boothroyd was joined by a number of his party comrades – including James Bloodworth, Razan Ghazzawi, Clay Claiborne, Kyle Orton and Paul Canning – in opposing my presentation at the conference. They had all backed the NATO bombing of Libya and now urge western arming of the al Qaeda linked groups and direct western intervention in Syria. I provide some detail of this below.

The SSUK split from the British Stop the War Coalition, which they criticised for ‘opposing any UK military involvement’ in Syria and for casting doubt on some of the claims against the Syrian Government, claiming (like the US Government) that Assad is ‘worse than ISIS … that most Syrian refugees are fleeing Assad’s violence’ (SSUK 2015). The SSUK also criticises Stop the War UK for casting doubt on the 2013 East Ghouta chemical weapons incident, which the armed Islamist groups had falsely blamed the Syrian Army (see Anderson 2015).

Mark Boothroyd (2015), makes it very clear that the SSUK backs the armed opposition, called ‘moderate rebels’ by Washington and several European states. This includes the Saudi-backed Jaysh al Islam, the Turkish coalition Jaysh al Fatah (led by the banned Jabhat al Nusra) and Ahrar as Sham. That latter group was reported in May 2016 as having killed 150 civilians in a series of car bombings along the Syrian coast (FARS News 2016).

All of the above groups have worked hand in glove, for many years, with the banned terrorist group Jabhat al Nusra, while the SSUK Facebook site opposes Iraqi Government and Syrian Government bombing of ISIS strongholds in Raqqa and Fallujah. According to the British SSUK, Arab Governments cannot fight banned terrorist organisations in their own countries. This is much the same line as Washington.

Lesvos Refugee Camp

Invitation to “Crossing Borders” Conference

My invitation to the ‘Crossing Borders’ conference had come in February from a Greek academic:

GA: “We are having a conference on the refugee crisis in Lesvos. Please consider coming as keynote speaker … Maybe if you could speak about Syria and what you describe in your book [that] would be interesting to the audience.”

I responded: ‘The link between the wars of the New Middle East and the refugee crisis?’

GA: “Yes…exactly. That would be perfect since we want to give an anti-war tone to the conference. Just to be clear from the beginning CITS is only launching and so you will need to arrange expenses with your university.”

Three months later, after I had booked my flights to Greece, I received this message:

GA: “Unfortunately there has been some very negative feedback about your participation … Some other speakers have threatened not to come.”

The conference committee had received a petition from the SSUK, signed by 66 people, then a series of emails. The committee caved in very quickly, after being emailed by the anti-Syrian group.

GA: “They have connected your name with anti-left alliances [and] with for Assad people … many people from our list have been sending messages complaining and asking to be removed as speakers.”

Of course, it had always been clear that I supported the Syrian Government and opposed the war, based on the principle of self-determination for the Syrian people. More importantly, my book documented in detail the various myths created about the war.

It was an impressive achievement on the part of the SSUK to get 66 people to lobby the conference to remove one of its speakers. But why so much effort? Especially when the history of attempts to gag public speakers and ban books tend to attract much more attention. And why would any ‘left’ group so vehemently back yet another US-led Middle East war?

Who are the SSUK?

The SSUK (2016) proclaims its support for ‘the popular revolution against the Assad regime’. Boothroyd (2015) says the group does not support the Kurdish YPG as they are “not in conflict with the Assad regime, so don’t constitute part of the armed rebellion.” He cites with approval the ‘Free Syrian Army’, Jaysh al Fatah, Ahrar as Sham and Jaysh al Islam – all groups the US, Turkey and the Saudis openly back.

SSUK social media sites link up to western front organisations like the Syria Campaign and the White Helmets’, two of several ‘human rights’ front groups used to create ‘propaganda storms’ with distorted and fake information, helping escalate and prolong the war (Beeley 2016; Bartlett 2015).

The SSUK petition against me included Bissan Fakih, campaigner with The Syria Campaign, and Rafif Jouejati, director of the US-based charity the ‘FREE-Syria Foundation’. The latter was a spokesperson for the Local Coordinating Committees (LCC), which by late 2012 had aligned itself with the ‘Free Syrian Army’ (FSA) and Jabhat al Nusra. In 2013 Jouejati objected to the small scale of proposed US missile attacks on Syria, saying: “The LCC does not support a limited strike [on Syria]. As John Kerry said, this would be ‘unbelievably small’(Democracy Now 2013).

The petition included Australian Michael Karadjis, who has openly backed the official al Qaeda group in Syria, saying that ‘despite the jihadist [Jabhat al] Nusra leadership, much of its ranks are decent revolutionaries’ (Karadjis 2013). He also posted on his Facebook site his support for what would be an illegal and criminal Turkish-Saudi invasion of Syria:

“I know this won’t win points with 90% of my friends … but I would be in favour of a Turkish-Saudi action to drive Assad out. At very least it would be the lesser evil … I support providing the Free Syrian Army with massive supplies of anti-aircraft weaponry. I’m not sure how anyone can look at this and disagree. Short of that a regional action is, unfortunately, next best.”

Michael Karadjis was joined on the petition by Australian freelance journalist Antony Loewenstein who, in turn, was joined by the pro-Israel British journalist Nick Cohen and British journalist and SWP member James Bloodworth. The latter backs western intervention in Syria and has demanded ‘free speech’ when his own SWP is under attack (Bloodworth 2014). They all wanted to block my views on the conflict and its implications for refugees.

Under banners of ‘Protect civilians’ and ‘Listen to Syrians’, the SSUK FB site reproduces pro-ISIS propaganda. They cite with approval posts in ‘Solidarity with the peoples of Fallujah and Raqqa’, which complain about Iraqi, US, Kurdish, Iranian and Syrian attacks on ISIS in Raqqa and Fallujah, arguing: “Will Stop the War Coalition [UK] oppose the US-backed Iranian and Kurdish YPG blitzkriegs of Raqqa and Fallujah?” The SSUK links to a video from another British group which claims Iraqi Army attacks on ISIS in Fallujah represent “the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis”.

Peter Tatchell, a British gay activist, was one of those who emailed the conference organisers. He is a person who, even after the disaster in Libya, called for a no-fly zone in Syria. He disingenuously claimed that his ‘Don’t bomb Syria … no bomb zone’ placard did not mean ‘UK bombing of Syria’. But, after the NATO destruction of Libya, all intelligent people should understand what a ‘no fly zone’ means. Even conservative US academic reports, after the event, have demonstrated that more than ten times as many people died in Libya after the NATO intervention, on the ‘no fly zone’ pretext (Kuperman 2015).

Another signatory to the petition, British man Oz Katerji, supported the NATO ‘no fly’ intervention in Libya, and tries to justify it even after the disaster. He supports the armed groups in Syria. Further, he is a project coordinator for ‘Help Refugees UK’, and takes aid to the refugee flooded but Jabhat al Nusra-dominated town of Gaziantep in Turkey (Help Refugees UK 2016).

This highlights a dilemma with these ‘humanitarian’ al Qaeda supporters. They proclaim political support for the al Qaeda groups then, in the name of helping refugees, deliver aid to camps controlled by those same internationally banned terrorist organisations. This is a short step away from providing material support to terrorist groups.

Dr Rola Hallam, another of the signatories on the petition to gag me, is a doctor involved with the UK-based NGO ‘Hand in Hand for Syria’ (HHS). She supports US military intervention in Syria. HHS, backed by the BBC, was exposed by British investigator Robert Stuart for fabricating evidence over an alleged Syrian attack on a Syrian school in August 2013. The aim was clearly to create a scandal which would attract western military intervention.

Building a catalogue of evidence, Robert Stuart (2016) found the BBC sequences of the alleged school attack, ‘purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack … are largely, if not entirely, staged.’ Fabrications included the filmed commentaries from Dr Rola Hallam.

Amongst the other signatories on the SSUK petition were academic Thomas Pierret, who backed the NATO intervention in Libya and has since commented ‘Why should we be scared of statelessness in Syria? Libya is so much better than Syria without a state’. Razan Ghazzawi quotes with approval an article which says ‘the Western left should reject knee-jerk anti-imperialism’. Kyle Orton (2015) argues ‘NATO Was Right to Intervene in Libya’.

Similarly, Clay Clairborne regards the NATO-bombed catastrophe of Libya ‘a revolutionary success story’, arguing that Assad is behind al Qaeda (Clairborne 2015), even as the al Qaeda groups slaughter Syrian soldiers as well as civilians. Louis Proyect (2012), who calls himself ‘The Unrepentant Marxist’, attacks ‘the Islamophobic left’ for not supporting the campaigns to arm Islamist groups against Libya and Syria. He says he is ‘inspired by’ the Islamist attacks on Libya and Syria.

There is no extremist armed group in Syria that the SSUK and its allies have not backed, while they claim to support refugees that flee from war and the head choppers. Most displaced people within Syria seek refuge in government controlled areas, in Sweida, Damascus, Lattakia and Aleppo. They are clearly not ‘fleeing Assad’.

The SSUK never uses the sort of detailed evidence that I have applied in my book, yet their online campaign seemed to carry more weight with the ‘Crossing Borders’ committee. I simply ask my academic colleagues: what is wrong with reasonable public debate?

Sources

Anderson, Tim (2015) ‘The Dirty War on Syria: Chemical Fabrications, The East Ghouta Incident, Global Research, 12 December, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria-chemical-fabrications-the-east-ghouta-incident/5493698

Anderson, Tim (2016) The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance, Global Research, e-book available online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria-washington-regime-change-and-resistance/5504372

Bartlett, Eva (2015) ‘“Human Rights” front groups (“Humanitarian Interventionalists”) Warring on Syria’, Fall, online: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/tag/the-syria-campaign/

Beeley, Vanessa (2016) ‘George Soros: Anti-Syria Campaign Impresario’, 21^st Century Wire, 22 April, online: http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/04/22/george-soros-anti-syria-campaign-impresario/

Boothroyd, Mark (2015) ‘Who are the Syrians rebels?’ Syrian Solidarity UK, 19 December, online: http://www.syriauk.org/2015/12/who-are-syrian-rebels.html

Bloodworth, James (2014) ‘Shutting down abortion debates and banning the SWP – what a terrible week for free speech’, 21 November, online: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/shutting-down-abortion-debates-and-banning-the-swp-what-a-terrible-week-for-free-speech-9875022.html

Clairborne, Clay (2014) ‘Why I consider Libya a revolutionary success story’, Linux Beach, 4 March, online: http://claysbeach.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/why-i-consider-libya-revolutionary.html

Cohen, Nick (2015) ‘Future generations will despise our ‘realism’ on Syria’, The Guardian, 13 September, online: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/13/west-offer-alternative-to-isis-and-assad

Democracy Now (2013) ‘As Assad Regime Accepts Russian Plan on Chemical Weapons, A Debate on Syria’s Path Forward’, 10 September, online: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/as_assad_regime_accepts_russian_plan

FARS News (2016) ‘Ahrar Al-Sham, Not ISIL, Responsible for Monday Blasts in Lattakia’, 24 may, online: http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950304001226

Ghazzawi, Razzan (2012) ‘Libya and Syria: When anti-imperialism goes wrong | Pham Binh’, 5 July, online: https://razanghazzawi.org/2012/07/05/libya-and-syria-when-anti-imperialism-goes-wrong-pham-binh/

Ghazzawi, Razzan (2016) ‘Revolt and war in Syria five years on’, Socialist Worker, 8 March, online: https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/42301/Revolt+and+war+in+Syria+five+years+on

Help Refugees UK (2016) ‘Turkey’, online: http://www.helprefugees.org.uk/tag/turkey/

Karadjis, Michael (2013) ‘Syrian rebels overwhelmingly condemn US bombing as an attack on revolution’, online: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/syrian-rebels-overwhelmingly-condemn-us-bombing-as-an-attack-on-revolution/

Kuperman, Alan J. (2015) Obama’s Libya Debacle’, Foreign Affairs, 16 April, online: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2015-02-16/obamas-libya-debacle

Orton, Kyle (2015) ‘Why NATO Was Right To Intervene In Libya’, 21 October, online: https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/why-nato-was-right-to-intervene-in-libya/

Proyect, Louis (2012) ‘Libya, Syria, and left Islamophobia’, The Unrepentant Marxist, online: https://louisproyect.org/2012/07/23/libya-syria-and-left-islamophobia/

Sinclair, Ian (2016) ‘Countering Peter Tatchell’s pro-war anti-war arguments on Syria’, Open Democracy, 15 January, online: https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/ian-sinclair/countering-peter-tatchell-s-pro-war-anti-war-arguments-on-syria

SSUK (2015) Why Stop the war don’t want to listen to Syrians’, 12 November, online: http://leftfootforward.org/2015/11/why-stop-the-war-dont-want-to-listen-to-syrians/

SSUK (2016) Syria Solidarity UK’, online: http://www.syriauk.org/p/about-us.html

SSUK FB (2016) Facebook Posts, online:

https://www.facebook.com/SyriaUKorg/

https://eternispring.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/fallujah-and-raqqa-are-getting-or-are-about-to-get-blitzkrieged/

https://www.facebook.com/doammuslims/videos/1066232390090994/

Stuart, Robert (2013-2016) ‘Fabrication in BBC Panorama ‘Saving Syria’s Children’’, online: https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/

Two of the major issues at the centre of global politics and economics—US-led preparations for war against China and the deepening divisions among the major powers in the face of the ongoing stagnation of the world economy—dominated the first day of the G7 summit in Japan on Thursday.

The summit meeting, which concludes Friday, is expected to issue a statement on “maritime security” in the South China Sea, where China’s territorial claims are being challenged by the US and its regional allies.

Speaking to reporters at the conclusion of the first day, a Japanese official said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe led the push for the other major powers to align with the US over the conflicts in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. The leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Canada reportedly agreed that “it was necessary for the G7 to issue a strong signal.”

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on the eve of the summit, Abe asserted that “ensuring freedom of navigation”—the cynical pretext being used to justify US military incursions into Chinese-claimed waters and airspace—was both a “prerequisite for economic growth and a precondition for stability” but “regrettably not every nation recognises that.”

The stage is being set for a dramatic escalation of tensions in the wake of the G7 summit. China has already reacted strongly. A government statement declared that issues in the region had “nothing to do” with the G7 and that Beijing was “resolutely opposed” to “individual countries hyping up the South China Sea.”

Despite the moves by the G7 to issue an implicitly anti-Chinese statement, there are divisions among the major powers over policy toward Beijing, in particular from Britain. In the early months of 2015, the US sought to prevail on other major economies not to join the Chinese-backed Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Washington’s plans were thwarted when Britain broke ranks and announced it would become a founding member of the AIIB—a move quickly followed by the other European powers. This prompted a sharp rebuke from the Obama administration over what it called Britain’s “constant accommodation” to China.

Britain decided to join the bank in the search for economic advantage, in opposition to advice from the country’s foreign policy establishment that it could jeopardise the country’s strategic relationship with the US.

The financial centre of the City of London is seeking to place itself at the centre of Chinese global financial activities. This week, the Chinese finance ministry announced it will issue Rm 3 billion ($458 million) of bonds in London’s offshore renminbi market. As the Financial Times noted, the British government has “aggressively courted” renminbi business as part of a “broad push to promote greater economic ties with China.”

Reports in the lead-up to the summit suggested that Prime Minister David Cameron would come under pressure from both the US and Japan over Britain’s stance as China’s “best partner in the West,” which cuts across their demands for an increased diplomatic and military push against Beijing.

The meeting also revealed deep divisions over measures to try to lift the world economy out of stagnation. In a bid to win support for more economic stimulus measures, especially in Europe, Abe presented a series of graphs comparing the present economic conditions to those which prevailed in 2008, which led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the global financial crisis.

Abe’s charts focused on falling commodity prices and significantly lower growth in emerging markets in order to highlight the dangers of a new crisis in financial markets. His arguments were brushed aside in the Western press as “implausible,” with reports suggesting he had brought them forward to justify moving away from a commitment to lift Japan’s consumption tax from 8 to 10 percent next year. Abe has previously said that he would only make such a move in response to a major earthquake or a Lehman-type failure in the international banking system.

A spokesman for the British government said Prime Minister Cameron did not share Abe’s views and had “made positive noises about the global economy.” Germany also opposed stimulus measures.

The trends to which Abe pointed, however, are becoming ever more apparent. The stagnation in Europe is continuing, with figures showing a 0.2 percent fall in prices in April, the second month of deflation in a row. In the US, profits are down for the third consecutive quarter, with a report by the Conference Board, a US think tank, showing that productivity growth in the US is set to fall for the first time in more than three decades.

Emerging markets and commodity-exporting countries are again under pressure. There are concerns that a rebound in their currencies and equity markets in March and April could have ended because of the possibility that the US Federal Reserve may lift interest rates again in June. The 0.25 percent rise in December is widely believed to have been a factor behind the turmoil in financial and commodity markets in the first two months of the year.

The intensified struggle among the major powers for markets and profits has led to deepening conflicts. In the lead-up to the summit, the US criticised statements by the Japanese government that it might intervene to lower the value of the yen, while the EU has warned that it could take action over what it alleges to be dumping of Chinese steel.

Foreshadowing possible protectionist measures, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker declared, “If somebody distorts the market, Europe cannot be defenceless.” A draft of the G7 communique, while not mentioning China, expressed concern over the excess supply of steel. Juncker said China’s overcapacity in steel amounted to double the EU’s annual steel production and had contributed to the loss of thousands of steel jobs since 2008.

The issue is being linked to China’s push to secure “market economy status” under the World Trade Organisation, which the US is reported to be working to ensure is denied. But this issue has also given rise to divisions, with a spokesman for the British government insisting that the issue of steel should not be mixed with the question of China’s status.

When the G7 was established more than 30 years ago, the ruling elites claimed that it would function as a stabilising mechanism and bring about co-ordinated action on the global economy. That has well and truly gone by the board, as each power pushes its own national and strategic interests.

Obama is seeking to use the summit to intensify pressure against China. Cameron is seeking G7 support for his opposition to a Brexit from the EU. Abe wants the backing of the G7 against China, while seeking to push his own nationalist credentials by telling Obama of his “anger” and the “profound resentment” in Japan over the killing of an Okinawan woman by a US military contractor.

It is by no means clear precisely how each of the major powers will eventually align. One thing, however, is certain: international relations increasingly resemble those of the 1930s, in which the Great Depression fuelled a global wave of nationalism and protectionism that led ultimately to the Second World War.

More than seventy years since the end of that war, the deepening global slump and increasing divisions among US allies are pushing Washington to take ever-more reckless measures. It is not only targeting China, against which it is staging a continued series of military provocations in the name of “freedom of navigation,” but also Russia, which boasts a nuclear arsenal nearly comparable to that of the United States.

These developments raise the profound danger of a global military conflict, potentially involving nuclear weapons, that threatens the very existence of humanity.

The forever changing 9/11 story is entering a new phase.  Blame is being transferred from Osama bin Laden to the Saudi Arabian government. 

There are 28 pages classiied secret of a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that allegedly found Saudi financial support for the alleged 9/11 hijackers. Neither the George W. Bush nor the Obama regimes would release the classified pages.  Only a few members of Congress have been permited to read it under guard, and they are not permitted to speak about it.  Nevertheless, Congress now has before it the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act which, if passed, permits families of victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue the Saudi Arabian government for damages.  In other words, although Congress has no information except rumor with which to support the bill, Congress is going ahead.  Obama says if Congress passes the bill, he will veto it.

The refusal to declassify the evidence against the Saudis and the veto threat have put many commentators in high dudgeon.

What is going on here?

One possible answer is that the public’s confidence in the 9/11 story is eroding as a result of growing expert opinion that challenges the official line.  In order to redirect the public’s skepticism, a red herring is being pulled across the trail.  The Saudi angle satisfies the belief that some sort of government coverup is involved but redirects the suspicion from Washington to the Saudis.  The Saudi angle also fits the neoconservatives’ original plan for overthrowing the Saudi government along with the governments of Iraq, Syria, and Iran.  If the American people can be worked up against the Saudis, the neocons can get their wish for “regime change” in Saudi Arabia.

We are probably experiencing a deep state disinformation play designed to protect the false 9/11 story.  The public’s skepticism is now directed at Saudi Arabia, and the public’s outrage is directed at the US government for covering up for the Saudis. Possible reasons that the report can’t be released are (1) it is just disinformation created as a red herring and if made public knowledgeable experts would expose it and (2) it is disinformation fed to the inquiry by neoconservatives who seized the opportunity to set up Saudi Arabia for attack.

No explanation has been provided as to why Saudi Arabia, with its long and tight connection to Washington and to the Bush family, has any interest in enabling a terrorist attack on the US. The Saudis need American protection.  They have no interest in making their protector look so weak as to be humiliated by a handful of young men armed only with boxcutters. Such a weak protector is no protection.

Moreover, the Saudis are fighting the war in Yemen for Washington.  If the Saudis want to harm the US, why not leave the US to fight its own war in Yemen?

Here is a Saudi’s take on the alleged involvement of Saudi Arabia in 9/11:  http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/05/26/state-sponsors-terrorism-us-planned-and-carried-out-9-11-attacks-but-blames-other-countries-them-out.html

Katib Al-Shammari says that the US planned and carried out 9/11 in order to obtain hegemony over the Middle East and placed the blame for 9/11 on an ever changing list of culprits depending on Washington’s goal at the time.  First, he says, it was Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.  Then Saddam Hussein and Iraq. A New York Court blames Iran.  Now Saudi Arabia is given the villain role.  The Americans, he says, always come up with suspicious documents and claim to have evidence that they never show.

Americans would greatly benefit from reading the perspective of others.  Do read the Saudi’s explanation of 9/11.  It makes more sense than the official story.

Over 45 million Americans live in poverty—but you wouldn’t think potential leaders of the country are expected to know or care anything about this, listening to the questions asked by the elite journalists who moderated the Democratic debates this primary season.

A FAIR analysis of all nine democratic debates over the past seven months shows that not one question was asked about poverty. By contrast, 30 questions were asked about ISIS or terrorism (almost half of them concentrated in the December 19 debate, which took place days after the San Bernardino shootings) and 11 questions were asked Russia. Ten questions were asked about socialism or communism, all of which were directed at Bernie Sanders.

The candidates themselves have brought up poverty, either in their prepared remarks or in response to more abstract questions about the economy. Sanders brought up poverty in all but two debates, broaching the topic 11 times, or approximately 1.2 times per debate. Clinton brought up the issue three times in total, or on average once every three debates.

According to the 2014 census, 14.5 percent of Americans, or over 45 million people, live in poverty, up from 11.3 percent in 2000. Child poverty (which Sanders points out consistently) is especially troubling, with an estimated 16 million Americans under the age of 18 living below the poverty line.

A 2011 study attributed 133,000 deaths a year to poverty-related illnesses. Poverty has also been linked to diminished IQ in children—in the United States, but not in other wealthy countries—and has been shown to impact economic gains, overall health and quality of life. Put simply: Poverty touches large swaths of America, by any objective metric.

Americans are literally a million times more likely to live in poverty than to have been killed by “jihadi terror” since 9/11: The total figure for the latter is 45, or about 3 people a year. According to the Washington Post (11/23/15), the average American is more likely to be killed by home furniture than a terrorist.

Homeless man on National Mall (cc photo: Elvert Barnes); ABC‘s David Muir at December 19 Democratic debate in Manchester, N.H.

While vague notions of “inequality” or “economic anxiety” were touched on occasionally, the issue of poverty and its effects remained entirely absent. No specific questions about poverty, its causes or possible federal solutions were asked by any of the moderators in any of the nine debates. If any of the candidates had a plan to ameliorate the plight of the poor, the moderators weren’t interested in hearing about it.

Eight out of the nine debates were hosted by a subsidiary or joint venture of one of four corporations: Comcast, Viacom, Disney and Time Warner (combined market value $383 billion).

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

In early April, as renewed fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region made headlines in Turkey, there was little talk of the crucial role of Israeli weapons in the clashes. Only the daily Hurriyet reported on Azerbaijan’s use of the Israeli Harop armed drone, which generated Armenian protests.

Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesperson Omer Celik summarized why the issue should be important to the press: “Azerbaijan’s battle is our battle; their martyrs are our martyrs.” Indeed, Azerbaijan consistently scores as Turkey’s closest friend in Turkish public opinion polls, while Israel maintains its status as a serious threat in the same polls.

Intriguingly, Israel is Azerbaijan’s main arms supplier, a situation that poses a puzzle: Why have Turks remained silent as Azerbaijan, their closest friend, and Israel, their greatest rival — if not necessarily enemy — have grown closer? The silence of two sections of Turkish society is particularly noteworthy: One is Turkish ultra-nationalists, whose commitment to Azerbaijan is near-absolute; the other is Islamists, who miss no opportunity to bash Israel. Why are these two groups, whose protests are rarely if ever curtailed by the police in Turkey, ignoring this development?

The Israeli-Azeri cooperation has expanded as Israeli-Turkish relations have soured since the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center (RSC), an independent think tank in Yerevan, Armenia, told Al-Monitor, “Israel has replaced Turkey as an essential military patron of Azerbaijan, as seen in the 2012 deal involving the Azerbaijani procurement of drones and anti-aircraft missile defense systems from the state-run Israel Aerospace Industries for $1.6 billion.” Giragosian explained that the bilateral relations are not limited to the weapons trade. The countries’ interests converge in three main areas — “security and military, including intelligence cooperation; energy and trade; and geopolitical strategy,” he said.

So why are Turkish Islamists and ultra-nationalists remaining silent as their rival Israel expands its presence in Azerbaijan? There are at least two intertwined explanations for this rational ignorance: the media’s silence and political pragmatism.

There is an undeclared media gag order in Turkey on publishing, and not just on anti-AKP stories considered unpleasant for the government. The Israeli-Azerbaijani relationship is diligently ignored in mainstream media. Hence, several leading figures of grass-roots Islamist and nationalist movements told Al-Monitor they are not aware of the extent of the strategic friendship between Turkey’s best friend and its most outspoken rival in the region. It was particularly noteworthy that none of the ultra-nationalists and only one of the Islamists was willing to go on the record with their views on the subject.

A middle-aged, self-described bozkurt (a nickname for a member of the Gray Wolves, the Turkish ultra-nationalist group) who worked in organizing youth told Al-Monitor, “Our youth are happy to see Azerbaijan triumph. We all wish it was mostly Turkish-made weapons being used, but we are not there yet. In the meantime, we cannot fuss about the identity of the manufacturer.” Turkey sells arms to Azerbaijan as well.

When reminded of the increasing presence of Israeli intelligence in Azerbaijan, as well as in the oil and gas trade, realpolitik came to the fore. Approaching the question in a frivolous manner, the Gray Wolf said, “Our [Turkish] relations are much better with Israel now, so are the Azerbaijanis’. Who is going to call the kettle black? Times have changed.”

Times have changed indeed, as one of the last critical pieces of news on the topic from the Turkish government dates back to a 2011 story on Hurriyet. Back then, Turkey had asked Azerbaijan to scale back its relationship with Israel. So the age-old saying “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” has become the tacit motto of the Turkish government in the Israeli-Azeri strategic friendship. Behind closed doors, the Turkish-Israeli-Azeri bloc seems to be working fine on almost all fronts. For the ultra-nationalists, a potential Azeri victory over Armenia overrides their dislike of Israel.

Turkish Islamist groups are more conflicted about the issue. Most of these groups cherish any negative news about Israel. Though Israel bashing in Turkey has softened noticeably in the past year, one can still spot at least a couple of anti-Israeli opinion pieces daily with a good dose of anti-Semitism in the conservative media outlets. So it is difficult to imagine these groups are warming up to the idea of being friends with Israel.

Indeed, a comparison of Kadir Has University’s Foreign Policy Perceptions research findings of 2015 and 2016, released May 18, reveals a significant indication of how the Turkish public justifies its silence and acceptance of Israeli arms flooding Azeri markets. The percentage of those Turks surveyed who view Azerbaijan as a friend has jumped from 37.2% in 2015 to 59.3% in 2016. There has been a significant decrease in the percentage of those who see Israel as a threat: from 42.6% in 2015 to 26% in 2016.

Turkey’s increased anti-US and anti-Russian reporting this year has led to a significant shift in Turkish perceptions of the United States and Russia. Survey respondents consider them the top two major threats, at 44.1% and 34.9%, respectively. Foreign policy perceptions are known to be highly susceptible to fluctuations in news reporting, as these Turkish findings show. So a good portion of Turks have accepted Israel’s apology for the Mavi Marmara flotilla and replaced Israel on the threat perception scale with the United States and Russia. Al-Monitor contacted Osman Atalay of the Humanitarian Relief Fund in Turkey, which is known for its rallies against Israel, but he declined comment.

Some Islamists, however, are willing to speak up. One group is the independent Salafi ultra-conservative Islamic sect, which does not associate with the established religious orders. Twelve individuals who self-identified as Salafists told Al-Monitor it is not worth protesting against Israel or Azerbaijan because both are infidels. One shopkeeper from Adiyaman said, “What do you expect from the Shia? They are the infidels … of course they will collaborate with the Jews.” This was surprising to hear because most critics of the Azeri government brand the country as a supporter of the Sunni Islamic State. Yet again, the same confusing scenario is true for almost every other Muslim country.

Kadir Akaras, chairman of Ehli Beyt Scholars Association, which represents Turkish Shiites, was blunt in his criticism of Israel during a TV program in April. He went on the record asking, “We approach [the disputed] Karabakh as we approach Palestine and view Armenia as we view Israel. Why wouldn’t the Saudi-led coalition of Muslim countries come to the assistance of Azerbaijan?”

One of the openly outspoken groups against Turkish-Israeli rapprochement has been the Kurdish Islamist Party Hudapar. Hudapar’s spokesperson Sait Sahin was straightforward in his position, saying, “Turkey’s ‘zero problems with neighbors’ policy collapsed completely. Turkey strained its relations with Russia and since then has been sending positive messages toward Israel; hence, we cannot expect Turkey to protest Azerbaijan’s friendship with Israel,” he told Al-Monitor.

Overall, as Azeri-Israeli strategic cooperation deepens, we are once more reminded that radical groups in Turkish society are still taking their cues from the government and are in sync with the state. Hence, it would be too soon to interpret the results of Kadir Has University’s research as a significant change in anti-Israel sentiment in Turkey. A more sober analysis would be that even the hatred for Israel can be controlled if it is in the interest of these groups.

Over 100 Freedom of Records Act (FOIA) requests have finally forced the euphemist US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to admit a widely used vaccine preservative is the equivalent of a neurological armageddon.

With help from PhD Scientist and Biochemist, Brian Hooker, the agency has finally had to reveal that they have known for years that thimerosal, which was banned in 1999, but still used in over 60 vaccines, causes autism. Robert F. Kennedy has been trying to alert the public of the same troublesome findings that Hooker has unveiled, but he is often dismissed, or worse, made into a media fool by the pharmaceutical industry.

“When the results of the Verstraeten study were first reported outside the CDC in 2005, there was no evidence that anyone but Dr. Verstraeten within the CDC had known of the very high 7.6-fold elevated relative risk of autism from exposure to Thimerosal during infancy. But now, clear evidence exists. A newly-acquired abstract from 1999 titled, “Increased risk of developmental neurologic impairment after high exposure to Thimerosal containing vaccine in first month of life” required the approval of top CDC officials prior to its presentation at the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) conference. Thimerosal, which is 50% mercury by weight, was used in most childhood vaccines and in the RhoGAM shot for pregnant women prior to the early 2000s.The CDC maintains there is “no relationship between Thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism rates in children,” even though the data from the CDC’s own Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database shows a very high risk. There are a number of public records to back this up, including this Congressional Record from May 1, 2003. The CDC’s refusal to acknowledge thimerosal’s risks is exemplified by a leaked statement from Dr. Marie McCormick, chair of the CDC/NIH-sponsored Immunization Safety Review at IOM. Regarding vaccination, she said in 2001, “…we are not ever going to come down that it [autism] is a true side effect…” Also of note, the former director of the CDC, which purchases $4 billion worth of vaccines annually, is now president of Merck’s vaccine division.” [Source]

What is Thimerosal and Why Should I Care?

Thimerosal is a mercury-based vaccine adjuvant (preservative) that causes a number of brain-injuring problems, with autism among them. Thimerosal is also a human carcinogen, mutagen, and teratogen that also interrupts the immune system and interrupts proper fetal development.

Thimerosal, is metabolized into toxic, and highly dangerous methylmercury. From there, the methylmercury is converted into the even more harmful, persistent, inorganic mercury that is retained in our physical tissues to wreck havoc on our health. For the immune-sensitive, this is the equivalent of a one-two punch. That must be why the World Health Organization (WHO) thinks thimerosal is ‘safe.’ It follows right along with their covert agenda to thin the herd.

READ: The UN’s Plan to Halt Population Growth by Turning Nature Against Us

There is no safe level of exposure to this neurotoxin, yet it is still used widely by Merck, Eli Lilly, and numerous other pharmaceutical companies. It is also still used in almost every flu vaccine currently administered.

According to Hooker, hundreds of thousands of babies born between 1991 and 1997, had their vaccine files analyzed by CDC epidemiologist Thomas Verstraeten, MD. Hooker says that this, “proves unequivocally that during 2000, CDC officers were knowledgeable internally of the very high hazard of autism, non-natural sleep problem and speech disorder associated with Thimerosal exposure.”

CDC as a Murderous Agency

These alarming facts, along with the testimony of whistleblowers like Kennedy expose the CDC as a dangerous, even murderous, government agency that cannot be trusted. They have lied to scientific bodies, fixed data, and withheld important information that could have prevented any number of autism cases, among other health dangers. With over 22 different medical cases that prove vaccines can cause autism, and the latest documentation from Hooker that reveals what the CDC has withheld, why would anyone trust this agency as a protector of public health?

Hope for the Future

Dr. Hooker’s is adamant about what must happen going forward: “We have to make certain that this and different proof of CDC malfeasance are supplied to Congress and the general public as quick as viable. Time is of the essence. Kid’s futures are at stake.” It will take vigilance with propaganda being slung from every direction.

Christina Sarich is a staff writer for Waking Times. She is a writer, musician, yogi, and humanitarian with an expansive repertoire. Her thousands of articles can be found all over the Internet, and her insights also appear in magazines as diverse as Weston A. Price, Nexus, Atlantis Rising, and the Cuyamungue Institute, among others. She was recently a featured author in the Journal, “Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and Healing Arts,” and her commentary on healing, ascension, and human potential inform a large body of the alternative news lexicon. She has been invited to appear on numerous radio shows, including Health Conspiracy Radio, Dr. Gregory Smith’s Show, and dozens more. The second edition of her book, Pharma Sutra, will be released soon.

I am a lifelong FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) Democrat and therefore am anything other than prejudiced against the Democratic Party. But, that Party died when Bill Clinton became President and undid FDR’s regulations on the megabanks and FDR’s AFDC income program for children in poor families, and when Clinton replaced that with restoration of Wall Street’s control over America (like before FDR, only a more convoluted form of it).

However, the way in which both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton endanger all people’s lives and property and health and welfare, has to do with something else, something that’s even more evil than what Bill Clinton did, and it’s the Obama-Clinton (that’s Secretary of State and now Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton) foreign policy, to overthrow the leaders of nations who are allied with or supportive of Russia — such as most recently Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, but before that Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych, and before that Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. It’s no mere coincidence that all three had had cordial relations with Russia.

George W. Bush’s 2003 overthrow of yet another pro-Russian head-of-state, Saddam Hussein, had already done enormous damage not only to Iraq but to the U.S., and yet Obama and Clinton are at least as determined to surround Russia by enemies, as Bush was; and they now even support the installation, on-and-near Russia’s very borders, of a ‘Ballistic Missile Defense’ system that’s actually designed to disable Russia’s ability to retaliate against a U.S. surprise nuclear attack on Russia — the BMD is astoundingly aggressive, especially considering that whereas in 1991 the Soviet and then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev terminated both the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact on the basis of an understanding from George Herbert Walker Bush and his agents, that NATO would not move “one inch to the east”, this crucial promise from the U.S. government was violated by Bill Clinton’s extending NATO into the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland; and by Bush’s son Bush then extending NATO into Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia; and by Obama then extending NATO into Albania and Croatia and trying to bring into it also Ukraine and some other nations bordering or near Russia.

American President JFK didn’t allow the Khruschev regime to place nuclear missiles 90 miles from the U.S. in Cuba in 1962, and Russian President Putin can’t stand the Obama regime to place nuclear missiles right on Russia’s borders, but it’s happening now, and it endangers us all — not onlythe Russian people. Post-communist Russia is vastly different than the communist USSR was, and the U.S. government’s treating it even more aggressively than the USSR ever was treated is simply mega-criminal and can be ‘justified’ only on the basis of lies.

Furthermore, with the support of both U.S. President Obama and his neo-conservative former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (famous for her psychopathic “We came, we saw, he died, ha ha!!” comment), NATO’s current Secretary General and other top people at NATO are now increasingly beating the drums for war against Russia, and are using for ‘justification’ of it the very same lie that both Obama and Clinton do, as Obama has stated it: Russia’s alleged ‘conquest’ of Crimea. As I have documented headlining “The Entire Case for Sanctions Against Russia Is Pure Lies”, there was no such ‘conquest’, and even Western-sponsored polls of Crimeans both before and after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to reject the newly imposed February 2014 Obama-engineered coup-government of Ukraine and to rejoin Russia of which Crimea had been a part until involuntarily transferred to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954, showed the very same overwhelmingly high level of public support for rejoining with Russia that was shown in the plebiscite-results.

The U.S. government accepts the right of self-determination of peoples, so that the residents of Scotland can vote to separate from the UK if they wish, and the residents of Catalonia can vote to separate from Spain if they wish, but where it comes now to the right of the residents of Crimea,who had voted 75% for Viktor Yanukovych and who were disgusted by Obama’s overthrow of him, to separate from the newly-imposed Obama-coup-regime in Kiev (and even the head of Stratfor called it “the most blatant coup in history”), Obama and Clinton reject that same right for the Crimean people. Why do they reject it? They have to do this, in order to support NATO’s war-buildup against Russia, and support their surrounding Russia with extremely dangerous missiles. (In fact, Russia’s alleged ‘seizure’ of Crimea is even the ‘justification’ that Obama gives for his economic sanctions against Russia; so, he’s deep into lying about it.)

The expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders proves NATO’s (that’s to say, the U.S. aristocracy’s, and its subordinate national aristocracies that are represented in NATO) aggressive intent against Russia. Putin had done everything he could to have friendly relations with America, but now under Obama the relationship has plunged into clearly a pre-war situation, not only in Syria, and Ukraine, and elsewhere on Russia’s borders, but in American propaganda against Russia. The addition of installation now of BMD is flashing to all Russians the extreme-danger signal that the next stop is Moscow, and if Russia therefore launches a surprise nuclear attack against the U.S. at some time before the BMD becomes fully operational, the blame for it belongs to George Herbert Walker Bush, and Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, and all who have lied so viciously against Russia and who so blatantly violated the promise that the George Herbert Walker Bush regime had made to Gorbachev in 1990.

Fair is fair, regardless of the particular nation, and unfair is unfair, regardless of the particular nation; and, in this case,clearly, the U.S. government has been extremely unfair to the Russian people, and so the Russian government’s patience with the lies of the U.S. government and of its NATO stooges, might have a limit that precedes activation of BMD — this would mean a Russian first-strike (and theywon’t warn about it in advance). They don’t want to be just sitting ducks. And they all know that only fools think that disabling an opponent’s ability to retaliate is only a defensive act. Any intelligent person knows that it can be also an extremely aggressive act. And the coup in Ukraine, which started to be organized in the U.S. Embassy in Kiev by no later than 1 March 2013 — a year before the coup itself — was an extremely hostile and aggressive act against not only Yanukovych, but also against Russia. The U.S. went so far as to be one of only three countries voting in the U.N. General Assembly against a resolution condemning “glorification of Nazism” and “neo-Nazism”, because there was a widespread recognition among U.N. representatives, that what the U.S. had recently done in Ukraine was supporting and even putting into place as the new Ukrainian government a specifically anti-Russian form of nazism. Obama couldn’t deny it on the facts, so he simply had his neoconservative U.N. representative Samantha Powers vote “No” on it — and she even cited (the new, post-coup) Ukraine’s vote against it as being her reason for voting against it, as if following those thugs’ leadership was somehow ‘American’. Obama’s reversal of FDR there was simply shocking.

The way in which Obama and Clinton are endangering all of us is that, if Russia waits and the BMD (which itself is ‘justified’ only on the basis of lies) that’s now starting to be installed, turns out to work, then only Russia will immediately be reduced to nuclear char; but, if it doesn’t work, then both sides will be destroyed; and, if Russia doesn’t even wait to find out, but instead strikes first, then only the U.S. and maybe other NATO nations will immediately be destroyed; and, in any case, the level of nuclear contamination of the entire world, and the amount of smoke that will be thrown up into the high atmosphere from the fires and then generate a long-term global freezing (“nuclear winter”) that will be just as extreme and far more sudden than the otherwise global warming, will make life not even worth living.

Obama and Clinton aren’t the only Americans who are pushing this needless vile brinksmanship, but it is needless; it’s entirely unnecessary, and, on the U.S.-NATO side, it’s based clearly upon lies; so, the U.S. government must repudiate it and halt the BMD, right now.

If there’s anything sane that’s still remaining in American politics, this issue will be the central issue of the 2016 Presidential campaign. Because, if things continue drifting in the way that they have been drifting, then the world-as-it’s-always-been-known will soon end, and what replaces it will become hell-on-Earth, everywhere. And America’s leaders will have been the cause of it.

Any Presidential candidate who doesn’t condemn both Obama and Clinton for it, has no rational justification for receiving anyone’s vote. Because, if the next U.S. President doesn’t forthrightly repudiate and reverse this pathological policy, then we’d all better somehow join the aristocracy and buy deep nuclear bunkers, with years of supplies to outlast the first phases of nuclear decay. Except that the people who have already done so are fools for even wanting to live in such a post-war world. (But at least they’re smart enough to recognize that things are heading in this direction.)

The only solution to it is to avoid electing Presidents such as the ones we’ve been electing. Instead, to elect a President who condemns them — and for the sane reasons, not for other, insane, ones. Because this issue is too important to continue any insanity.

There is simply no ‘justification’ for it, other than lies. And it’s the most dangerous policy in the entire world, right now.

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

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies engaged in the clashes with ISIS in the Southern side of al-Sha’er oilfield in the province of Homs. Militants reportedly suffered a heavy death toll and an ISIS vehicle carrying a large volume of ammunition and explosive devices exploded. Separately, the pro-government forces re-took the hill of Tal Sawanah near the al-Sha’ar gas field. Clashes are ongoing in the area.

SAA artillery units reportedly shelled al-Nusra Front’s concentration centers in the al-Basatin area in East Ghouta. Earlier, the loyalists dismantled a network of terrorist bombers inside the capital city of Damascus.

In the Yarmouk Refugee Camp, clashes are ongoing between ISIS and Al Nusra militants. ISIS sources argue that the group seized the camp from the Al Qaeda affiliate. This can not be confirmed independently, yet.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the US-led coalition, have liberated at least 6 settlements in the operation ongoing in Northern Raqqa – Ayn Issa, Al-Qantari, Al-Fatsah, Bir Sadr, Bin Hammud, Abu Kabra, Matmasraja – and an electricity station near Tal as-Saman. There are reports that some “American fighters”, apparently US special operation forces, are among SDF ranks. They coordinate the military operation.

ISIS media outlet Amaq News reported late Wednesday, 28 SDF troops have been killed by a suicide truck attack in Northern Raqqa. No more information is available.

Reports appeared on May 25 that Russia will postpone airstrikes against Al Nusra-held areas in Syria because it’s asked by some militant groups that are willing to join the ceasefire. The armed formations argue they need time to drive Al-Nusra from their territories.

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Subscribe our channel!: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaV1…

Visit us: http://southfront.org/

Many people have been made aware of the corporate media reports about the purported rebirth and revitalization of Detroit.

The city during the period of 2012-2014 underwent the agony of a state-imposed “Financial Stability Agreement”, and later the appointment of an emergency manager who filed for bankruptcy, the largest municipality in the United States where this was carried out.

The underlying causes of these actions had more to do with the political agenda of the right-wing Republican Governor Rick Snyder than the actual financial situation in the city. After the 2010 mid-term elections, numerous conservative spokespersons took to the airwaves and leading publications calling for the elimination of defined pension systems, a wholesale assault on unions representing municipal employees and teachers, along with the passage of “right to work” legislation.

The Democratic Party won control of both the U.S. House and Senate in 2006 and later extending that majority in 2008 when President Barack Obama was elected by a substantial majority. Many working and oppressed people felt this was a mandate to not only end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but to also initiate significant reforms on a domestic level aimed at job creation, the rebuilding  of the cities, increased revenues for public education and genuine empowerment efforts targeting African Americans, Latino/as, Women and other marginalized groups.

The experience of Detroit proved just the opposite of what many had anticipated. During the first several months of the Obama administration, a Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm appointed an emergency manager over the Detroit Public Schools without the consent of the elected board, a situation which remains intact through 2016 under a Republican state administration.

A so-called bailout of the banks and the auto industry resulted in the continuing loss of homes through foreclosures and evictions as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs eliminated in production facilities across the U.S. However, cities such as Detroit and Flint were affected disproportionately due to their historical character.

This downsizing in the heavy production industries extended back at least to the mid-to-late 1980s where plant closings in Detroit and Flint were taking place at a rapid rate. The broader impact of plant closings was felt in other sectors including services, education and municipal affairs. People left cities such as Detroit, Flint, Highland Park and Benton Harbor in search of employment, better schools and public services.

These developments coincided with the election of the first African American mayors and city councils of these cities. White racist media outlets claimed that the economic downturn was closely related to the growth of Black political power.

Flint, General Motors and the Water Crisis

Another major issue involving a majority African American populated city in Michigan is the poisoning of the water system in Flint which was under emergency management in 2014.

Flint like Detroit was victimized by the wave of industrial “restructuring” that was characteristic of the mid-to-late 1980s. General Motors had announced during this period that it would eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs in order to maintain its profitability and to ensure that it could compete in a changing global market. Since the late 1980s through 2016, the volume of sales in Asia has far outstripped the U.S.

In a similar trend as Detroit, which went from a population of 1.8 million in 1950 to approximately 670,000 in 2016, Flint dropped from a city of nearly 200,000 to one less than 100,000. Today Flint is 65 percent African American where Detroit is said to be 79 percent Black.

After the appointment of an emergency manager over Detroit in early 2013, the stage was set for a “restructuring” of the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD). By the spring of 2014, Flint was disconnected from the DWSD creating a new system that drew water from the polluted Flint River. This source had been contaminated for years in part due to the industrial waste from plant closing by General Motors.

Immediately residents of the city began to complain about the foul smelling and discolored water coming out their taps. People were made ill by the water along with their pets.

Nonetheless, the emergency manager Darnell Earley, who was later appointed to head the Detroit Public Schools, working on behalf of Governor Snyder, denied that there was a problem. Officials from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) claimed that they were testing the water and the lead and other contamination levels were acceptable for human consumption.

A group of community activists worked tirelessly demanding that the emergency manager, MDEQ and later the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) take action. All of these entities continued to deny there was a problem until interventions by a pediatrician in the area who wrote reports indicating that children were suffering from lead poisoning as well as scientists from Virginia Technological University whose assessments substantiated these claims.

Children, adults and pets were sickened by the tap water which due to corrosive contaminants that went untreated or not properly treated, caused the old and decaying pipes to leech lead into the system. Many are currently suffering from lead and copper poisoning. There was also an outbreak of Legionnaires disease that many have traced to the problems with the water system.

By late 2015 and early 2016, the state could no longer deny the problem and declared a “water emergency” in Flint eventually leading to the reconnection of the city water supply back to the DWSD system. Nonetheless, the damage had been done. Lead poisoning in children is irreversible.

Three lower level officials have been indicted in the water crisis. However, the masses are calling for the resignation of and prosecution of Snyder.

Since the Flint crisis, the problems of elevated blood lead levels across the U.S. are being exposed. Therefore, we must salute the people of Flint for making this contribution at great costs to their families and community.

Free Rev. Edward Pinkney: the Benton Harbor Crisis

Finally we must look at the political prosecution of Rev. Edward Pinkney of Berrien County in the southwest region of the state on Lake Michigan. Rev. Pinkney is the leader of the Benton Harbor Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO). This group has been fighting over a decade against the racist police practices, unjust courts, the privatization of city services, including the theft of land and water resources.

Rev. Pinkney became known nationally after a rebellion in Benton Harbor in June 2013 in response to the death of an African American motorcyclist who was chased by several law-enforcement agencies to his death in a crash. The youth rose up in rebellion for several days, prompting the deployment of the state police.

In later years Rev. Pinkney was unjustly prosecuted in 2006-2007 allegedly for tampering with absentee ballots during a recall election targeting two city commissioners. He was sentenced after two trials, the first ending in a hung jury, to one year of house arrest and four years of probation.

By the end of 2007, after he published a letter quoting the Bible in a Chicago-based publication, a Berrien County judge said it was a threat against his family and sentenced Pinkney to 3-10 years in prison. This conviction was overturned on appeal by the late 2008 after a nationwide defense campaign.

The most recent prosecution of Pinkney was also racially and politically motivated. He was unjustly charged with altering five dates on a recall petition to remove the-then Mayor James Hightower in 2014. There was no material evidence, eyewitnesses or any real motivation cited in the trial. He was tried by an all-white jury, a white prosecutor and judge who allowed his political views to be entered as evidence in the trial.

Pinkney was sentenced to 30-120 months in state prison. He now resides at Marquette correctional facility in northern Michigan, twelve hours from his home and family.

An appeals court hearing was held on May 11 in Grand Rapids. Another motion for bond pending the outcome of the appeal was filed the following week by his lawyer. His supporters are continuing to build a national campaign in his defense. On May 28, a delegation from Detroit will travel to Benton Harbor to join others from around the country to protest the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Senior Tournaments which have been held in Benton Harbor since 2012 on land stolen from the people and privatized.

Conclusion 

These case studies on the plight of African Americans and working class people in general in Michigan are not isolated instances. They reflect a national and global phase of the international crisis of capitalism.

From the U.S. and Greece to France and South Africa, the working class and poor are being subjected to heightened degrees of exploitation and oppression.

The struggles of the people of Michigan should be studied for clear insights into the world system which has unfolded over the last four decades.

Note: This paper was presented at the Left Forum held at John Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY) on a panel entitled “The Wars Come Home.” Other participants on the panel were Ana Edwards, a member of the editorial committee of the Virginia Defenders newspaper based in Richmond; Margaret Kimberley, senior columnist for Black Agenda Report; Jaribu Hill, founder of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights; and Christine Marie of 350.org.

Since the Ukraine crisis exploded into civil conflict and war in 2013, we have known that we live in troubled times. It has become increasingly clear that the peace order in Europe, established at the end of the Cold War in 1989, is unstable. The arrangements made at that time appear to have generated more conflicts than they were able to resolve.

While the European Union claimed at certain points to be a peace project – and internally it has achieved much in that respect – all around the borders of the proposed “ring of friends”, as the then president of the European Commission Romano Prodi put it in 2002, it is an “arc of fire”. In North Africa, states have collapsed and the whole region is challenged once again to find an appropriate balance between security and democracy. The Middle East is the focus of several proxy wars piled upon each other in multiple layers.

Russian troops march through Moscow to mark Victory Day. PA/Alexander Zemlianichenko

Since Russia’s military intervention in Syria at the end of September 2015, one of the most salient conflicts has been the struggle between Russia and the US for the right to decide who would have priority in deciding Syria’s fate. This is just one of the issues over which an armed confrontation could take place. In fact, there are so many potential tripwires that it is impossible to predict which precisely could set off a chain of events that could escalate into outright military confrontation.

Escalation and militarisation

On the one side, the US-led NATO build-up on land, sea and air around Russia’s borders, accompanied by the activation in May 2016 of missile defence installations in the region, is perceived as a threat to the very existence of Russia as a sovereign state.

Moscow views the US Aegis Ashore system installed in Romania as having the potential to negate its nuclear deterrence capability. Intermediate-range cruise missiles are banned by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, yet appear to be creeping in through the back door. Advanced American warships now demonstratively exercise just a few dozen kilometres from Russian bases in the Baltic and Black seas.

Russia sees much of this as a direct threat to its own security, and threatens to deploy nuclear-capable missiles to Kaliningrad and even possibly Crimea. The Russian armed forces are just about to test the prototypes of the S-500 Prometei air and missile defence system (also known as the 55R6M Triumfator M), capable of destroying ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), hypersonic cruise missiles and planes at over Mach 5 speeds. The weakening or even abrogation of the INF and START treaties could destroy decades of painstaking arms control negotiations.

On the other side, some defence analysts argue that the post-Cold War settlement is already destroyed, above all by Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The former deputy commander of NATO and British general Sir Alexander Richard Shirref, in his book 2017: War with Russia, makes no bones about the imminent danger of war.

He predicts that to escape what it believes to be encirclement by NATO, Russia will try to seize territory in Eastern Ukraine to open up a land corridor to Crimea and invade the Baltic states. These Strangelovian fantasies have a long pedigree in NATO thinking. When the events in Ukraine began to spiral out of control in early 2014, the head of NATO forces in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, became quite an expert in predicting various Russian invasions, prompting particular concern in Germany.

The Atlantic security community is in danger of sleepwalking into war. The very talk of such a conflict “normalises” the possibility. A BBC2 filmaired in February 2016 acted out the scenario of a Russian attack on Latvia escalating into a nuclear exchange. The Obama administration is pressuring Germany to deploy a German contingent to bolster NATO’s presence on Russia’s borders. Few in Russia forget the devastating consequences the last time this happened in 1941.

Back from the brink

While Atlantic defence commentators talk of Vladimir Putin’s “increasingly aggressive behaviour” and have made the phrase “Russian aggression” part of the standard language, few have stopped to think what created such a dangerous situation in the first place.

Tu-95 strategic bomber. PA/Alexander Zemlianichenko

As the Chinese have repeatedly noted, the Ukraine crisis did not come from nowhere. The slogan of the NATO defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels in mid-May was “deter and dialogue”, but in the event the emphasis was more on the former than the latter. The Warsaw NATO summit in July 2016 is likely to confirm that “Russian aggression”, Iranian adventurism, Chinese land reclamation and Middle Eastern instability pose a threat to the US and its allies.

Instead of piling more fuel on a fire that is already in danger of getting out of control, it would be wiser to start a diplomatic process. NATO insists that there can be no “business as usual” until the Minsk commitments are fully implemented, yet some of the most important provisions are up to Ukraine to fulfil. So Russia, and with it the peace of Europe, is held hostage by some radicals in Ukraine who block any moves towards elections in the Donbass and the stipulated decentralising constitutional reforms.

Shirreff admits in his book that Russia is increasingly worried about the spread of NATO bases around its borders, yet advocates yet more of the same. Russia is a continental-sized great power armed with the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. The ambition to achieve Western military superiority is simply unattainable.

In his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 28 2015 Putin asked of the West, surveying years of failed military interventions that have devastated countries and destabilised whole regions: “Do you realise now what you have done?” Russia is undoubtedly a difficult partner, but on some of the most pressing global issues of our time, including Syria, the Russian analysis has been correct.

The deal offered in 2012 whereby Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would go but the secular regime in Damascus would stay was peremptorily dismissed by the West, assuming that Assad would soon fall and the “moderates” triumph. The result was years of civil war that has now spilled over into a refugee crisis that threatens Europe in its entirety.

Catastrophe

It is pointless to speculate what a war between Russia and the Atlantic community would look like, or even how it would start. This really would be a war to end all wars, since there would be no one left to fight another war. The emphasis now must be on averting such a doomsday scenario, and for that there must be honest recognition of earlier mistakes by all sides, and the beginning a new and more substantive process of engagement.

The endless prolongation of sanctions and a rhetoric of violence and scapegoating creates an atmosphere where a small incident could easily spiral out of control. It is the responsibility of our generation to ensure that it never happens.

For an alternative view, click here.