Global Research

According to leaked documents, the Obama administration’s use of metadata to identify and target terrorists in Pakistan would misidentify over 99,000 innocent people.

The SKYNET program, named after the antagonist in the Terminator movie series, is used to examine the cellular network metadata of over 55 million people in Pakistan and flag suspicious patterns to target for “counter-terrorism” operations like kidnapping, interrogation or drone assassination.

The drone assassination program, begun in 2002 under Republican president George W. Bush, has been greatly expanded under Democratic president Barack Obama. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism conservatively estimates the death toll from these targeted killings at over 3,200.

An unknown portion of these strikes were based on automated programs like SKYNET. According to the former director of the National Security Administration (NSA) as well as the CIA, retired General Michael Hayden, “We kill people based on metadata.”

Documents reviewing the metadata targeting program were leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then published by The Intercept last year. Patrick Ball, a director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, told Ars Technica in an interview that the methods used by the NSA in SKYNET are “ridiculously optimistic” and “completely bullshit.”

In order to process the records for millions of cell phone users the NSA uses a process called “machine learning,” where the computer is fed a set of “known terrorists” and then looks for new targets by how closely an individual’s behavior matches the known set. It is essentially the same method used by corporations to target Internet advertising.

Overall the NSA examines 80 different variables such as travel patterns, co-travelers, SIM card swapping, phone contacts and turning off a phone which the NSA sees as an attempt to evade surveillance. The assumption of the NSA is that the behavior of “terrorists” significantly differs from innocent people in consistent ways.

The method the NSA uses to measure success however is fundamentally unsound. To test the program, the NSA began by taking a random sample of 100,000 people and adding seven “known terrorists.” The NSA then gave the program six of the individuals marked as terrorists to analyze and tasked it with finding the seventh. The exceedingly small seed of “known terrorists,” makes the results of the test unreliable.

This is combined with the fact that the “terrorists” tested were handpicked as belonging to the same network, while the ordinary people were randomly selected, removing a significant portion of their social network from the test. Applying the same program to the full database would result in a significant increase in false positives.

In the leaked documents, when the NSA applied their method to the full data set of 55 million, only one of the “known terrorists” was in the top 100 suspects, and only five of them were in the top 500.

According to the NSA slides, they expect to falsely categorize 0.18 percent of the sample as terrorists. This may sound like an exceedingly small number, but when applied to the data of 55 million people, it comes out to 99,000 innocent people wrongly accused. This is much larger than the Haqqani Network, one of the largest groups targeted by the US which is estimated to have anywhere from a 4,000 to 12,000 members, significantly smaller than the number of expected false positives.

The absurdity of the NSA’s method is exposed in a slide that presents Al-Jazeera ‘s longstanding Islamabad bureau chief, Ahmed Zaidan, as the highest rated target. The top secret slide lists him, in sharp contradiction, as a member of both al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, two opposed organizations. As a journalist, Zaidan has traveled extensively through Pakistan speaking to all sides of various conflicts.

Disturbingly, Zaidan appears to have already been assigned a watch list number as an al-Qaeda member before being flagged by SKYNET, demonstrating significant inaccuracies in the NSA’s set of “known terrorists.”

It is unclear what steps, if any, exist between SKYNET flagging someone as a terrorist and someone being targeted for drone assassination. What is clear from Hayden’s statement is that some people are killed based on metadata and the use of programs like SKYNET.

Within Pakistan where SKYNET operates, the drone assassination program is run with fewer restrictions than in other countries. In 2013, Obama ostensibly tightened the guidelines for targeted killings requiring the CIA to have evidence that the target was an “imminent threat” and that they have “near-certainty” that no civilians would be hit. The drone program in Pakistan has been operating under a waiver that explicitly removes those guidelines.

Overall the drone assassination program is thoroughly brutal and inaccurate. Other leaked documents showed that out of 235 people killed by Operation Haymaker in Afghanistan between 2012 and 2013, only 35 were targets; the rest were bystanders.

Obama has relied heavily on assassination during his presidency in order to avoid the political difficulties of actually trying people accused of terrorism. Many of those detained for terrorism at Guantanamo are being held on circumstantial or inadmissible evidence gathered from CIA torture or illegal NSA spying.

According to the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn: “The drone campaign right now is really only about killing. When you hear the phrase ‘capture/kill’ capture is actually a misnomer.”

Increasingly, the Obama administration is relying on metadata and signals intelligence for identifying “terrorists” and selecting drone targets. In Somalia and Yemen, over half of the intelligence used to select targets is based on electronic signals like phone calls that do not directly identify the target.

The Department of Defense announced last August that it was going to expand its drone program by 50 percent over the next four years and Italy has recently agreed to allow US drones to operate out of a base in Sicily to target Libya. Enormous civilian casualties can be expected from the growth of these mechanized killing operations.

Photo : Ciudad de México, 16 de febrero del 2016. Theotonio dos Santos (centro) recibiendo diploma y medalla de parte de autoridades de la UNAM, antes de comenzar a dictar la Cátedra Maestro Ricardo Torres Gaitán.

Si hay alguien que ha dejado huella en el pensamiento económico de América Latina es Theotonio dos Santos: científico social brasileño, catedrático de la Universidad del Estado de Río de Janeiro, exponente de la Teoría Marxista de la Dependencia y galardonado con el Premio Economía Marxista 2013 de la Asociación Mundial de Economía Política. Dos Santos dictó a mediados de febrero una serie de conferencias sobre teorías del desarrollo como parte de la Cátedra Maestro Ricardo Torres Gaitán que le fue otorgada por el Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas de la UNAM por sus aportaciones en la materia.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez, consiguió entrevistar a Theotonio dos Santos durante su estancia en la Ciudad de México y abordó, entre otros temas, las perspectivas de la economía y el sistema mundial, las contradicciones del desarrollo capitalista de China, el ascenso del yuan como divisa de reserva internacional, los desafíos de la integración latinoamericana, el atasco burocrático del Banco del Sur, el reposicionamiento regional de Estados Unidos, la crisis del pensamiento económico y los problemas que enfrenta la izquierda para construir alternativas.

Por su amplia extensión, la publicación de la entrevista se ha dividido en varias partes. En esta primera entrega Noyola Rodríguez explora con dos Santos la posibilidad de que se materialice una nueva recesión global, la reestructuración de la economía mundial comandada por los BRICS, las contradicciones del desarrollo capitalista de China y el ascenso del yuan como divisa de reserva internacional…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: Muchas gracias por haberme concedido esta entrevista. Quiero comenzar con la complicada situación por la que atraviesa la economía mundial en estos momentos, y cuál será, desde su punto de vista, el impacto sobre los países latinoamericanos. Durante el último mes se ha observado un desplome considerable de las principales bolsas de valores. Las acciones de los grandes bancos de inversiones (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, etc.) se han derrumbado en estos días, lo mismo ha sucedido con los precios de las materias primas (commodities) y los tipos de cambio de los países emergentes ¿Estamos a las puertas de una nueva recesión mundial? ¿En qué posición se encuentra América Latina ante ese posible escenario?

Theotonio dos Santos: La crisis de 2008-2009 fue muy fuerte para los países que formaban parte del centro de la economía mundial, pero al mismo tiempo, China se mantuvo con un fuerte crecimiento junto con los países de los BRICS (acrónimo de Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica), y también casi todos los países en desarrollo. De manera que la tasa de crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) de la economía mundial no cayó. Esto muestra que hubo cambios muy significativos en los últimos años: el motor de la economía mundial se desplazó de la zona central, básicamente de la tríada (Estados Unidos, Europa y Japón), hacia otras regiones.

Esto ha dado origen a una serie de trabajos, de intentos de explicación de este fenómeno. Desde la década de 1970, incluso un poco antes, nosotros mostramos la tendencia a la decadencia de la economía norteamericana y europea, y hasta Japón, que en aquel momento estaba en un auge económico importante, aunque también se comenzó a revelar una cierta tendencia a una caída que operó a partir de la década de 1990. En ese sentido, Japón mostró un poco lo que iba a pasar con las economías industrializadas. La economía japonesa entró en una baja bastante significativa. Recordemos que Japón registró entre 8 y 10% de crecimiento del PIB durante gran parte del período de posguerra, pero en la década de 1990 bajó a cero, incluso obtuvo tasas de crecimiento negativo (-2%, -3%, etc.), y apenas alcanzó un ligero crecimiento en años muy aislados.

Ahora hay otro problema que está causando desesperación en el centro del sistema, y es que los países en desarrollo, los que han ganado una mayor participación en la economía mundial, ahora también empiezan a tener un menor crecimiento. Es que gran parte de la expansión desde los años 2000 hasta 2010-2012, estuvo basada en la demanda china. La demanda de China es un asunto poco estudiado, durante la década de 1990 cuando nosotros llamamos la atención sobre el crecimiento de la demanda china en la economía mundial, la reacción de muchos colegas fue que eso era absurdo, que China, un “país de pobres”, no iba a generar ninguna demanda importante.

Era un gran desconocimiento, China tiene todavía sí, una población bastante pobre, pero en la década de 1980 y 1990 se desarrolló mucho la economía del Sur de China sobre todo, y esa economía alcanzaba ya unos 500 millones de habitantes con un nivel de consumo próximo a todo el Sur de Europa. Es decir, en esos años se agregó a la economía mundial una “Europa del Sur”. Entonces, despreciar este fenómeno era un problema muy grave porque mostraba exactamente la crisis, esa sí bastante grave, del pensamiento económico.

¿Ahora bien, qué pasó con la caída del crecimiento chino? Frente a la crisis, la dirección política de China tomó posiciones que están alterando bastante su participación en la economía mundial en este momento. Una de esas decisiones fue volcarse más hacia su mercado interno. En 2008 China había adoptado ya la decisión de volcar 500,000 millones de dólares para ampliar la demanda de las zonas más pobres, y re-orientar su economía hacia sus propios mercados. Ese giro tuvo un efecto sobre todo para los países que estaban en ascenso, ya que ese ascenso estaba vinculado con el aumento de los productos de exportación hacia China.

Y a pesar de que se tomaron algunas decisiones para intentar aprovechar el auge de las exportaciones, no fueron suficientes, no se logró un cambio tan sustancial que nos permitiera colocarnos de lleno dentro de las nuevas tendencias de la economía china, para así disminuir un poco el efecto de la caída de la demanda mundial. Además hay otro problema, hay una caída de los precios de las materias primas (commodities), que componen el grueso de las exportaciones de nuestros países hacia China. Frente a eso, hemos tenido problemas graves, y en lo que respecta al petróleo sobre todo.

Hay un intento de manipular el mercado petrolero para servir a objetivos geopolíticos, sobre todo de Estados Unidos, país que para hacer frente al auge de China, favoreció el uso de la fractura hidráulica (fracking), que es un método de producción interesante en términos económicos para las empresas de Estados Unidos. El fracking tiene la ventaja de permitir un gran crecimiento de la producción petrolera sin destinar grandes montos de inversión, pero al costo de acabar con el agua. La crisis del agua se va a agravar en Estados Unidos, en unos 15 o 20 años más.

De cualquier forma, era una decisión estratégica para enfrentar a los enemigos que Estados Unidos definió en este período, básicamente Rusia, Irán y Venezuela, golpeando también a Brasil y otros países. Brasil está ingresando en un dominio petrolero muy grande, que afecta bastante el funcionamiento de la economía mundial. En busca de bajar el precio del petróleo, y así generar problemas en América Latina, Estados Unidos apostó por la acumulación de inventarios (stocks) y colocaron al mercado de materias primas (commodities) en una crisis bastante grave, y también profundizaron la crisis energética.

En este cuadro es posible entender que esa política tuvo efectos bastante negativos desde el punto de vista económico, pero desde el punto de vista político no funcionó. Rusia, en vez de aceptar las presiones de la Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte (OTAN) comandada por Estados Unidos, se convirtió entonces en una fuerza muy activa en Europa. Y Europa oriental depende hoy mucho de Rusia, que además se aproximó más a China, garantizando una nueva salida de sus productos de exportación, y además apoyó fuertemente la idea de los BRICS, que es la base de una nueva dinámica económica mundial.

El Oriente Medio también está cansado de Estados Unidos. Arabia Saudita se está reuniendo con Rusia en este momento. La idea es que la Organización de Países Exportadores de Petróleo (OPEP) tenga una política común con los grandes productores de petróleo [Nota: en efecto, momentos después, la OPEP y Rusia acordaron congelar la producción petrolera a los niveles del mes de enero, una medida que busca apoyar el repunte de los precios]. Arabia Saudita siempre ha sido una fuerza fundamental de Estados Unidos en Oriente Medio, no se gustan mutuamente, pero son necesarios entre sí.

Por eso no es simplemente una crisis, estamos en un momento de reestructuración de la economía mundial. Claro que los más débiles, sobre todo Brasil y Venezuela, son los más afectados. Venezuela por su dependencia económica de las exportaciones de petróleo, por el hecho de que ya no esté presente Hugo Chávez, que tenía una calidad de pensamiento y de estrategia, muy por encima de la media. Entonces, todo esto claro, está afectando muy gravemente la situación económica de Venezuela. Y Brasil también está afectado muy fuertemente, lo mismo Argentina.

Todo esto está en el cuadro, más amplio, de que para enfrentar la crisis en Estados Unidos y Europa la fórmula principal fue una acción muy fuerte de parte de los Estados para proteger al sector financiero, que era el más directamente afectado por la crisis de 2008. Así se generó una transferencia masiva de los recursos del Estado hacia el sector financiero. Esto permitió que la crisis no se agravara tanto en un primer momento, pero creó las condiciones para que en un momento siguiente, que es lo que estamos viviendo ahora, no exista forma de pagar estas deudas.

Los Estados se convirtieron en grandes deudores, los países del Sur de Europa, Estados Unidos, etc. El caso de Estados Unidos es muy dramático. La deuda pública de Estados Unidos salta en estos años de 6 a más de 16 billones de dólares, que es igual al monto del resto de la deuda pública del mundo. Y no hay cómo pagar algo así. Deben buscar alguna forma, la deflación (caída precios) quizás sea una salida. La única forma es la quiebra, la deflación sería una quiebra colosal para Estados Unidos.

El otro problema que tiene Estados Unidos, y Europa también, es que no pueden tener una tasa de interés muy alta. Porque eso los llevaría a una baja de su crecimiento mucho más grave. Los bancos centrales de los países industrializados mantienen actualmente tasas de interés cercanas a cero, pero Japón ya lo hacía desde la década de 1990, eso no resuelve el problema en las economías centrales, eso digamos, permite que la crisis no se manifieste tan fuerte, pero se va generando otra crisis, de grandes excedentes de deuda.

En América Latina no estábamos preparados para enfrentar la crisis, a pesar de que algunos de nosotros lanzamos advertencias. La tendencia en nuestra región es de prejuicio, de no entender lo que pasa más allá de la dinámica del pensamiento que viene de Estados Unidos. La verdad es que no se dio importancia suficiente a lo que pasaba en China, India, etc. Nuestros países no se prepararon para hacer frente a una demanda que todo el tiempo se dijo que no existía. Cuando se llega al gobierno se tiene primero una situación de fantástico crecimiento. Por ejemplo, Brasil pasó de exportar mercancías por 60,000 millones de dólares a casi 200,000 millones de dólares. China que al principio no era tan importante, pasó a ser el primer país importador de productos brasileños.

Chávez sí entendió el contexto, hizo un gran esfuerzo junto con la OPEP, para reestructurar el mercado petrolero, para mejorar el papel de Venezuela como país exportador de petróleo. Chávez intentó forzar la industrialización en Venezuela, pero el problema de países como Venezuela, los que están en el Caribe, Cuba también, es que algunos sectores de la población están acostumbrados a utilizar los excedentes de dólares, que se consiguen en ciertos momentos históricos, para comprar bienes de consumo del exterior. No existe la percepción de que ese dinero que posees debe ser cuidado para utilizarlo después como un instrumento para el desarrollo. Tienes muchos dólares y los pierdes en el exterior, no permites que esos excedentes se utilicen en el desarrollo industrial del país.

La industrialización está basada en el avance de la productividad. Y el avance de la productividad no se da en escala nacional solamente. Desde la década de 1960 se va constituyendo una economía de una gran diferenciación de productos y el capital que dirige eso, el capital de las multinacionales va re-orientando su producción a los lugares donde paga menos impuestos, donde encuentra la mano de obra más barata, etc., la economía mundial se reestructura. Tu país se queda con una parte de eso, pero no cuentas con la capacidad tecnológica para que tú mismo dirijas el proceso, ni económica. Entonces se crea un nuevo tipo de dependencia, que incluso se ha profundizado.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: Hay una reforma capitalista que está en curso de dimensiones mundiales, promovida por China y otros países emergentes. En el ámbito de las finanzas internacionales, el gobierno chino consiguió que se incluyera el yuan en los Derechos Especiales de Giro (DEG). Y el Congreso estadounidense destrabó finalmente la reforma del sistema de cuotas de representación del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), con lo cual, China y los BRICS vieron incrementados sus porcentajes de participación, si bien Estados Unidos todavía conserva su poder de veto.

Sin embargo, las concesiones otorgadas por el FMI comprometen a China a llevar a cabo una serie de reformas estructurales que profundizarían su vinculación con el mercado financiero mundial por la vía de la liberalización de las tasas de interés, los tipos de cambio y el mercado de capitales. Los chinos han construido su propio mercado de derivados para emitir títulos financieros respaldados en materias primas (commodities) pero denominados en yuanes, ya no en dólares. Asimismo, la banca en la sombra (shadow banking system), compuesta por las entidades financieras fuera del marco regulatorio, va cobrando una mayor relevancia en el sistema de crédito.

Por otra parte, si bien es cierto que China viene ganando terreno frente al antiguo Grupo de los 7 (G-7, integrado por Alemania, Canadá, Estados Unidos, Francia, Italia, Japón y Reino Unido) en la jerarquía de la economía mundial, al mismo tiempo se mantiene fuertemente ligada a las economías y los instrumentos de los países industrializados, bajo esta perspectiva, parece haber construido una relación de dependencia mutua, más que de autonomía. Por ejemplo, cuando Lehman Brothers quebró, China mantuvo sus adquisiciones de bonos del Tesoro de Estados Unidos. Asimismo, China es hoy el principal socio comercial de Estados Unidos, y uno de los principales destinos de inversión de Estados Unidos, Europa y Japón.

Algunos plantean incluso que el ascenso económico de China será puesto en cuestión en un tiempo breve. La deuda pública sí, todavía es baja, pero la deuda privada, la que incluye la de las familias y las empresas, ha aumentado de modo bastante significativo. La deuda total, esto, es, si sumamos la deuda pública y la privada, sería equivalente a más de 200% del PIB de China.

Entonces, ¿Cómo interpretar el avance económico de China frente al bloque occidental y la construcción de una nueva dinámica económica mundial, cuando en otros aspectos Pekín legitima las instituciones e instrumentos del orden mundial de la segunda posguerra, y reproduce al mismo tiempo muchas de las pautas seguidas por el capitalismo estadounidense?

Theotonio dos Santos: Bueno, estamos en un proceso de armar una nueva economía mundial. La posibilidad de influenciar fuertemente esta nueva economía en un cierto momento parecía muy difícil. Y en la actualidad sí, por supuesto, aún se piensa usar el FMI, digamos, abrir el FMI para lograr una presencia más fuerte, sobre todo de China, pero también de otros países, en términos de mejorar su posición en las cuotas del FMI.

Pero la reforma fue muy pequeña, y ahora finalmente se consiguió, porque Estados Unidos fue obligado a aparentar ayudar un poco la posición de los países en desarrollo. Sin embargo, el FMI actúa para Estados Unidos, también el Banco Mundial. La verdad es que a nuestros países no les interesa más el FMI. Nosotros no somos deudores del FMI, somos acreedores, incluso hemos ayudado con nuevos recursos. Lo que ellos están haciendo claro, es buscar captar nuestras reservas, y buscan mecanismos para lograr eso, muy ayudados por los bancos centrales de nuestros países. 

En China existe una corriente, digamos, dentro del mismo gobierno, que defiende que China entre fuertemente al mercado financiero mundial. Y para hacer eso los chinos tendrían que aceptar gran parte de los instrumentos existentes. Pero hay otra corriente que está armando otro tipo de instrumentos. El banco de los BRICS por ejemplo, creo que se va a convertir, a pesar de que se han creado dificultades para impedir que se consolide, en un órgano más poderoso que el Banco Mundial.

Y lo mismo va a pasar con el Banco Asiático de Inversiones en Infraestructura (BAII). A Estados Unidos le correspondía contener el apoyo de los europeos y no lo consiguió, todos los europeos se fueron a financiarlo. Lo que revela que la influencia china en este momento es más poderosa que la de Estados Unidos, en una cuestión mercantil, no en una cuestión política propiamente, pero sin duda esto tiene desdoblamientos políticos. Es que el BAII no sólo garantiza el funcionamiento de Asia en general, con la entrada de estos países (Alemania, Francia, Reino Unido, etc.), se convierte en un instrumento de actuación muy amplio, incluso para Europa.

Son cambios que no implican simplemente meterse en el mercado financiero mundial, sino que se están estableciendo nuevas reglas para la economía mundial. El otro asunto es que en los próximos 10 años veremos el ascenso del yuan. De 4 años para acá, el yuan pasó de representar 2% a alcanzar más de 8% del total de las operaciones de financiamiento comercial, un crecimiento de 4 veces, según los datos de la Sociedad para las Comunicaciones Interbancarias y Financieras Mundiales (SWIFT, por sus siglas en inglés). Y esta dinámica va a continuar, porque el dólar está en plena caída en verdad, pende de un hilo.

A nadie le interesa que haya una caída tan brutal del dólar, pues se podría acentuar la deflación, por eso están haciendo todo lo posible para evitar su derrumbe. Tampoco la caída del dólar le interesa a los chinos, que tienen muchos dólares en este momento, y que necesitan al dólar para realizar muchas operaciones. Pero, en el contexto de la tendencia económica mundial actual, ¿Qué preferirías tú, dólar o yuan?

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: El yuan, sin lugar a dudas…

Theotonio dos Santos: Evidentemente, es una moneda que se valoriza, cuyo rol en la economía tiende a crecer. El dólar en cambio, es una moneda en decadencia, no paga interés alguno por los títulos de deuda pública norteamericanos. Estados Unidos es un país deudor absoluto. La deuda pública es equivalente al tamaño de su PIB, la deuda misma que el gobierno acepta como tal.

Las deudas que tú mencionas son deudas emitidas por otros agentes sociales, económicos, que el gobierno puede claro, entrar a patrocinarlas, también en un cálculo de que si no lo hacen se haría más profunda la crisis del dólar. Y evitar el colapso del dólar sería mejor para China, pero también para casi todos los jugadores (players) mundiales. Sin embargo, si el yuan consigue mantener ese nivel de ascenso, en unos 10 años podría llegar a 30%, muy próximo a alcanzar 50%. Y cuando llegas a más de 50% entonces puedes emitir moneda, que es lo que hace Estados Unidos. Las previsiones actuales apuntan hacia esa dirección.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: Aunque bueno, quizás las contradicciones del desarrollo capitalista de China entorpezcan el ascenso del yuan como moneda de reserva mundial. El Banco Popular de China ha disminuido en varias ocasiones la tasa de interés de referencia, lo mismo el nivel de encaje de los bancos, precisamente para evitar una mayor desaceleración de la economía, apuntalar la provisión de crédito, e impedir a toda costa que la deflación contagie a su industria manufacturera.

Por otro lado, desde que China comenzó a devaluar el yuan, en agosto de 2014, su banco central se ha visto obligado a ocupar una tercera parte de sus reservas internacionales en la defensa de la estabilidad del tipo de cambio, como una consecuencia sí, en parte de los ataques de los especuladores, pero también por cierta desconfianza de los inversionistas en torno a su fortaleza financiera ¿Considera usted que hay riesgos de que estalle una crisis financiera en China por el agravamiento de las contradicciones de su desarrollo capitalista?

Theotonio dos Santos: No, no veo perspectivas de una crisis financiera en China. Ese tipo de problemas son cuestiones de política monetaria, una política que no busca apreciar el yuan fuertemente. El tipo de cambio yuan/dólar no tiene que ver tanto con la política china, es el resultado de las interacciones del mercado financiero mundial. Los chinos quieren que la apreciación de su moneda sea lenta. Y evitarían sin duda que la crisis del dólar fuera tan grande si ellos estuvieran en condiciones de comandar la política económica mundial. Estados Unidos necesita del apoyo chino para poder evitar la crisis del dólar.

La crisis del yuan no sería un problema grave porque no tendría que ver con la tendencia económica de China, que está invirtiendo en el mundo entero, creando mecanismos propios, de préstamos, de inversión, etc. Entonces para los chinos [la apreciación cambiaria] no es algo que ellos quieran apurar. Es un resultado de la mecánica de la economía mundial, derivada a su vez del rol histórico del capitalismo en su organización. Ahora bien, Estados Unidos puede tener más influencia en la economía mundial, y evitar una crisis más grave si teje alianzas con China, pero bajo una condición subordinada. Y es difícil pensar que los norteamericanos lo vayan a aceptar fácilmente.

Pero quizás sí lo hagan, en alguna medida. Por ejemplo, en cuanto a la renovación de la deuda de Estados Unidos, el presidente del Sistema de la Reserva Federal (FED) de ese momento fue semanalmente a China a discutir el asunto para evitar que China se deshiciera de sus bonos del Tesoro. Los chinos conservaron sus títulos, pero ya no compraron más. Pero para convencerlos de que los mantuvieran, Bernanke tuvo que ir semana tras semana a China, durante 1 mes, 2 meses.

Esto es una subordinación clara, tú depende más de ellos, que ellos de ti. Los chinos no fueron obligados a comprar más títulos respaldados en dólares, sino a renovar. Al renovar, China pide exigencias y condicionamientos. Los acreedores siempre imponen sus propias condiciones, sobre todo cuando la deuda es muy grande, porque hay un instrumento de poder muy importante, que es simplemente no pagar.

A nadie le conviene una caída muy fuerte de los títulos de la deuda pública norteamericana, que ya la hay de hecho, aunque no se habla mucho de eso. Nadie compra un título de deuda de Estados Unidos por lo que vale. Cómo vas tú a pagar 100% por un título que representa en realidad 60% de su valor original, menos aún. Para proteger el dólar es verdad que los norteamericanos necesitan a los chinos, sí.

Pero también hay que presentar esta situación desde el otro lado. Los norteamericanos también dependen de China, no es solamente que los chinos dependan de Estados Unidos. Sí, en cierta parte dependen. Es que los chinos no tienen interés en una depreciación masiva del dólar por la enorme cantidad de reservas que poseen, más de 3.3 billones de dólares. Ese es el gran problema.

Muchos sectores en Estados Unidos quieren una pelea con China porque aún piensan que son dueños del mundo. Piensan que hay que imponerse por la fuerza frente a los chinos. Pienso que sería un error muy grave. Y ese escenario no se desdoblaría solamente en el ámbito financiero.

¿Quién puede controlar esos fenómenos que tú citaste, y que obligarían a China a valorizar más el yuan? Bueno, China acepta que tiene que valorizar, pero no lo quieren hacer del todo, no quieren contribuir a eso. Excepto el sector financiero, ellos sí quieren que China entre rápidamente en el mercado financiero mundial en calidad de gran potencia. Cualquiera que sea la salida, creo que no beneficiará a Estados Unidos, en términos de recuperar su poder en el mundo, más bien será favorable para China…

 Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

 Ariel Noyola Rodríguez: Economista egresado de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

Once again, Moscow has shown itself better able to make strategic choices than we are. Russia is not an ideal partner for the United States, but sometimes its interests align with ours. In those cases, we should drop our Cold War hostility and work with Russia. The best place to start is Syria.

American policy toward Syria was misbegotten from the start of the current conflict five years ago. By immediately adopting the hardest possible line—“Assad must go”—we removed any incentive for opposition groups to negotiate for peaceful change. That helped propel Syria into its bloody nightmare.

Russia, which has suffered repeated terror attacks from Islamic fanatics, is threatened by the chaos and ungoverned space that now defines Syria. So are we. Russia’s policy should be ours: prevent the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, craft a new regime that would include Assad or his supporters, and then work for a cease-fire.

The fall of Assad would create a catastrophic power vacuum like those that have turned Iraq and Libya into terrorist havens. This would be bad for the United States, and even worse for Russia and Iran. We should recognize this common interest, and work with countries that want what we want.

This may seem eminently logical, but the very suggestion is hateful in Washington. It violates a central precept of the liberal/conservative, Republican-Democrat foreign policy consensus: Russia is our eternal enemy, so anything that promotes Russia’s interests automatically undermines ours — and that goes double for Iran. Instead of clinging to this dangerously outdated with-us-or-against-us mantra, we should realize that countries with which we differ in some areas can be our partner in others. Russia is an ideal example.

We would have been more secure as a nation, and might have contributed to a more stable world, if we had followed Russia’s foreign policy lead in the past. The government Moscow supported in Afghanistan, run by Mohammad Najibullah from 1987-92, was more honest and progressive than any that has ruled Afghanistan since American-backed forces deposed Najibullah. Later, Russia urged the United States not to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. They were right both times, and we were wrong. In Syria, Russia is right for a third time. Keeping the odious Assad in power, at least for the moment, best serves American interests. The alternative could be an ISIS “caliphate” stretching from the Mediterranean to the Tigris River.

No military solution is possible in Syria. Continued fighting only adds to the toll of death and horror. Russia wants a negotiated settlement. We are reluctant, because our so-called friends in the region want to keep fighting. They calculate continuing war to be in their interest. It may be — but it is not in the interest of the United States.

Opposition groups in Syria that we have half-heartedly supported refuse to negotiate until a cease-fire is in place. By accepting that formula, the United States guarantees continued war. Instead, negotiations should be aimed at creating a new regime that both Russia and the United States could support. From there, peace can grow.

How long Assad remains in power is not crucial to the United States. Weakening ISIS and al Qaeda is. Fighting those forces is the policy of Russia and Iran. We should recognize this confluence of interests, and work with every country or faction that shares our goals in Syria.

Our reflexive rejection of all cooperation with Russia is a throwback to a vanished era. It prevents us from taking decisive steps to ease the crisis in Syria. Its effects are also being felt in Europe. The Obama administration recently announced a four-fold increase in spending for troop deployments near Russia. Russia responded with military maneuvers near its border with Ukraine. This spiral of tension ignores the reality that Europe can never be truly secure without Russian cooperation.

Refusing to work with Russia hurts us more than it hurts Russia. Seeking avenues of cooperation would benefit both, and contribute to global security. Syria is the best place to start. Russia’s strategy — fight ISIS and al Qaeda, defend Assad, and seek a cease-fire that preserves his regime in some form — is the least bad option. Until we accept it, Syrian blood will continue to flow.

Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Follow him on Twitter @stephenkinzer.

In a bombing operation on Feb. 19 in Sabratha, Libya, said to have targeted an Islamic State training camp, over 40 people were killed by Pentagon F-15E fighter jets. The air strike was aimed at an IS operative who has been linked to an attack on the Bardo museum in neighboring Tunisia during 2015.

This airstrike hit the seaside area 50 miles west of Tripoli targeting Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian national.  Chouchane has been accused of arranging the arrival of Islamic State operatives into Libya.

Chouchane, who is 35, was said by the Pentagon to have been killed in the bombing which leveled a residence with sixty other inhabitants claimed to be affiliated with IS. The attack follows similar airstrikes in June targeting Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar and in November aimed at Abu Nabil, also known as Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al Zubaydi, an Iraqi national who was the leader of the IS military structures in Iraq.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook in a briefing claimed “He (Chouchane) facilitated the movement of potential ISIL-affiliated foreign fighters from Tunisia to Libya and onward to other countries. Destruction of the camp and Chouchane’s removal will eliminate an experienced facilitator and is expected to have an immediate impact on ISIL’s ability to facilitate its activities in Libya, including recruiting new ISIL members, establishing bases in Libya, and potentially planning external attacks on U.S. interests in the region.”(Associated Press, Feb. 19)

Diplomatic Fallout Surrounds Killing of Serbian Nationals

Nonetheless, media outlets are saying that two Serbian nationals held by the IS have been killed in the bombing. It has been reported for months that the Pentagon is drawing up coordinates for the bombing of Libya under the guise of targeting so-called “Islamic extremists.”

IS has established bases in western Libya where they control the city of Sirte, the home of former Jamahiriya leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi who was brutally assassinated in the area on October 20, 2011. Libya had been subjected to a Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engineered war of regime-change which resulted in thousands dead, millions displaced; leaving the once most prosperous state in Africa as a major source of poverty, underdevelopment, human trafficking andinstability throughout the region.

The killing of the two Serbians has prompted protest from both the government in Belgrade and among people across the country. Serbian officials had been negotiating for an end to the captivity of two of its citizens who were said to be diplomats.

According to Russia Today (RT) worldwide satellite television news network, “NATO’s promise of security and attempts to drag Serbia into the alliance are humiliating for the Balkan country at a time when two of its diplomats held hostage in Libya were killed in a pin-point US airstrike, Russia’s FM spokeswoman [Maria Zhakarova]  said….  Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said the death of two embassy workers was ‘terrible collateral damage’ and demanded explanations from Washington.” (Feb. 22)

In response to the attacks and recent pressure to sign a cooperation deal with NATO, Serbians participated in a wave of demonstrations on February 20. The agreement signed by the Serbian government guarantees diplomatic immunity and free movement by NATO military forces.

Thousands who demonstrated in the country were rejecting the accord as unconstitutional and against the popular will of the people.

The same article published by RT also noted “The US government should have known that two Serbian hostages were being held by IS affiliates in Libya, Zakharova said, as the Serbian government had shared their information with US intelligence agencies prior to the strikes. ‘The most tragic is that this information was given to the FBI and CIA. This is what the Serbian authorities asaid,’ Zakharova noted, adding that the US is now ‘denying’ knowledge of the hostages’ whereabouts.”

Bombing May be Precursor to Ground Invasion

This attack comes amid growing threats by German career diplomat and United Nations envoy Martin Kobler to mobilize a 6,000-person military occupation force that would intervene in Libya to impose a proposed unity regime between two rival factions vying for international recognition. The unity accord between the two rival regimes is designed to pave the way for a deployment of imperialist-led troops with the approval of the militia-backed juntas in both Tripoli and Tobruk.

The proposed UN peacekeeping force would be led by Italy and encompass troops from Britain, France and other allied states. Britain has already publically announced that it is planning to launch airstrikes inside Libya as well.

In a January 31 article published in the Daily Mail, it says “Britain is planning aerial bombings against Islamic State militants controlling parts of war-torn Libya, according to a military source.”

In more specific terms, the same report acknowledges “A team of six RAF officers and MI6 operatives flew to an airbase near the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk, which is under control by internationally recognized militia forces. Diplomats from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and US and French military personnel also took part to the gathering, the Sunday Times reports.”

Absent of the consolidation of the accord bringing together the two Libyan camps, the Pentagon will continue to launch air raids and special operations strikes against rebel leaders.

The Obama administration has come under criticism for its war against Libya in 2011 which has become a further stain on the White House seeking to facilitate the election of a Democratic president in November. Over the last seven years the foreign policy of the U.S. has continued its escalating military interventions and the building of bases in various areas throughout Africa.

U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) troops number in the thousands in the Horn of Africa state of Djibouti spreading out its operations into Somalia and Ethiopia to along the Indian Ocean basin across Central and into West Africa and out into the Gulf of Guinea. Pentagon and CIA personnel work in close cooperation with other imperialist states seeking to dominate all of the continental governments through trade, diplomatic maneuvering, intelligence penetration and military “partnerships.”

Obama said on February 16 that “We will continue to take actions where we’ve got a clear operation and a clear target in mind. At the same time, we’re working diligently with the United Nations to try to get a government in place in Libya. And that’s been a problem.” (New York Times)

However, the interim regime in Libya designed to merge the competing factions based in Tobruk and Tripoli, denounced the bombing by the Pentagon saying the operation took place without the consultation and acknowledgement of either faction. There is a lack of unity and uniformity of action among the regimes raising doubts about the viability of this imposed dispensation.

A statement issued by the Libyan coalition of competing forces on February 19 “strongly condemns the airstrikes carried out by the US Air Force at certain positions in the town of Sabratha on Friday morning, February 19, 2016, without any coordination or consultation with the interim Libyan government. Any interference, similar to the one that has taken place, will be considered an open and flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the Libyan state and international law.” (RT.com)

Neighboring Tunisia, which was designated during 2015 as a significant non-NATO state by the Obama administration, has escalated its security operations aimed at keeping armed groups from entering the country from Libya. Although Tunisia is labelled as the only “democracy to emerge from the uprisings in the region during 2011,” the government in Tunis has maintained close ties with both the Pentagon and one of its principal allies in the Middle East, the monarchy of Saudi Arabia.

American proxies are now at war with each other in Syria.

Officials with Syrian rebel battalions that receive covert backing from one arm of the U.S. government told BuzzFeed News that they recently began fighting rival rebels supported by another arm of the U.S. government.

The infighting between American proxies is the latest setback for the Obama administration’s Syria policy and lays bare its contradictions as violence in the country gets worse.

The confusion is playing out on the battlefield — with the U.S. effectively engaged in a proxy war with itself. “It’s very strange, and I cannot understand it,” said Ahmed Othman, the commander of the U.S.-backed rebel battalion Furqa al-Sultan Murad, who said he had come under attack from U.S.-backed Kurdish militants in Aleppo this week.

Furqa al-Sultan Murad receives weapons from the U.S. and its allies as part of a covert program, overseen by the CIA, that aids rebel groups struggling to overthrow the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, according to rebel officials and analysts tracking the conflict.

The Kurdish militants, on the other hand, receive weapons and support from the Pentagon as part of U.S. efforts to fight ISIS. Known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, they are the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s strategy against the extremists in Syria and coordinate regularly with U.S. airstrikes.

Yet as Assad and his Russian allies have routed rebels around Aleppo in recent weeks — rolling back Islamist factions and moderate U.S. allies alike, as aid groups warn of a humanitarian catastrophe — the YPG has seized the opportunity to take ground from these groups, too.

In the face of public objections from U.S. officials and reportedly backed by Russian airstrikes, the YPG has overrun key villages in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. It now threatens the town of Azaz, on the border with Turkey, through which rebel groups have long received crucial supplies. Over the weekend, Turkey began shelling YPG positions around Azaz in response, raising another difficult scenario for the U.S. in which its proxy is under assault from its NATO ally.

Yet as America has looked on while Russia and Syria target its moderate rebel partners, it has failed to stop the YPG from attacking them too. “That is a major problem,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It’s not just that it’s a nonsense policy. It’s that we’re losing influence so rapidly to the Russians that people just aren’t listening to us anymore.”

Othman, the Furqa al-Sultan Murad commander, said the YPG tried to seize two areas of Aleppo under his control, resulting in firefights that left casualties on both sides. He had captured seven YPG fighters and was holding them prisoner, he added.

Othman’s group receives weapons from the U.S. and its allies, including TOW anti-tank missiles, he said, and fights Assad as well as ISIS. The aid is part of a long-running CIA effort approved by Congress and coordinated from an operations room in Turkey with participation from international allies of the rebellion such as Saudi Arabia. Othman said he was in regular contact with his American handlers about the problems on the ground. “The Americans must stop [the YPG] — they must tell them you are attacking groups that we support just like we support you,” he said. “But they are just watching. I don’t understand U.S. politics.”

Officials with three other groups — the Northern Division, Jaysh al-Mujahideen and a coalition called Jabhat al-Shamiya — that have received support from the operations room also said they were now battling the YPG in northern Syria. “There are many groups supported by [the operations room] that are fighting the YPG right now,” said the Northern Division’s Col. Ahmed Hamada, who added that some of his fighters had received U.S. training in the past.

An official with the Turkish government criticized the U.S. for what he described as a Syria policy gone awry. “The YPG is taking land and villages from groups that are getting American aid,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject. “These are groups that are not only getting American aid. Some of them also got training from the Americans.”

The official added that U.S.-backed Arab rebel groups had seen their support dwindle of late, while the YPG was benefiting from a surge of interest from both Washington and Moscow. “The Americans are not giving the moderate rebels enough material. They are not providing any political support,” he said. “And they did not stop the YPG from attacking them.”

“They said we are not in control of the YPG in [those areas],” he added. “That’s the official answer. It doesn’t make any sense to us. What can I say?”

In an emailed statement, Col. Patrick J. Ryder, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees support for the YPG, said he had no information to provide “regarding potential friction between various opposition groups.”

“Syria continues to be a very complex and challenging environment,” he said. “I can tell you that we remain focused on supporting indigenous anti-[ISIS] ground forces in their fight against [ISIS].”

A State Department official acknowledged the increasingly problematic situation. “We’ve expressed to all parties that recent provocative moves in northern Syria, which have only served to heighten tensions and lessen the focus on [ISIS], are counterproductive and undermine our collective, cooperative efforts in northern Syria to degrade and defeat [ISIS],” he told BuzzFeed News, likewise speaking on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for the YPG declined to comment. Yet the group appears to be battling Islamists and U.S.-backed moderates alike, said Faysal Itani, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “The YPG has also been physically capturing territory [around] Azaz, amid Russian bombing and regime progress further south in Aleppo province,” he said. “I see these moves as opportunistic, capitalizing on the insurgent losses in the province to increase YPG territory.”

The YPG is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, the insurgent force warring with the Turkish government in the country’s restive southeast. Both Washington and Ankara list the PKK as a terror group. Yet to Turkey’s increasing anger, the U.S. has sought to differentiate between the PKK and the YPG, promoting the latter as a key partner. In late January, Brett McGurk, President Obama’s special envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, paid a visit to the YPG in the Syrian town of Kobane, which U.S. airstrikes had helped the group defend from ISIS last year.

The YPG fits well with the Obama administration’s growing hesitance to confront Assad: it has long maintained a détente with the Syrian government, focusing instead on pushing back ISIS and other extremists from Kurdish land.

As part of its embrace of the YPG, the Pentagon has propped up a new YPG-dominated military coalition called the Syrian Democratic Front (SDF) and encouraged smaller Arab battalions to join. In October, the U.S. government air-dropped a crate of weapons to the SDF in Syria, and it has also embedded special forces advisors with the group. This is both a bid to give U.S. support to the YPG some political cover and a nod to the reality that driving ISIS from its Sunni Arab strongholds will require significant help from Sunni Arab fighters.

A Department of Defense official sought to distance U.S. efforts from recent YPG offensives around Aleppo. He said the U.S. was supporting the group east of the Euphrates River, in its fight against ISIS, but not in its new campaign against rebel groups to the west. “Some of the Kurdish groups west of the Euphrates” have been “engaging with some Syrian opposition groups,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“What’s important here is that we are not providing any direct support to these groups,” he added. “Our operations have been focused on the SDF east of the Euphrates as they fight ISIS.”

The battle between America’s two proxies reflects the competing impulses of the Obama administration’s Syria policy. “The SDF model is meant to replace the failed [operations room] model,” said Nicholas Heras, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security.

Yet he noted that groups like Furqa al-Sultan Murad are battling ISIS as well as Assad — and still considered a bulwark against the extremists by the U.S. “It is a front-line combatant against ISIS,” he said of the battalion.

The recent clashes could make it difficult for the U.S. to build the crucial Arab component of its ISIS fight, the Washington Institute’s Tabler said. “If this continues, the U.S. is only going to have one option it can work with, which is the YPG. It’s not going to have the Arab option,” he said. “Which would be fine if the Kurds were the majority of the Syrian population, but they’re not. We need Sunni Arabs to defeat ISIS.”

Six years before the fall of the South African apartheid, an editorial by The Daily (“South Africa Love it and Leave it,” September 12, 1985, Editorial, page 4) noted optimistically, “Now, even the most conservative authorities are recognizing that revolution is inevitable. Now, they are divesting not on principle, but out of self-interest.” McGill would later, in November 18, 1985, join dozens of other North American universities in divesting its holdings from South Africa, also becoming the first Canadian university to do so – something that played an important role in taking down legislated apartheid in the country.

Thirty years later, the end of Israeli apartheid appears distant on the horizon as it has been ever since the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel in 1967. The use of the term “apartheid” is a parallel drawn by human rights organizations and activists between the past racial segregation of South Africa and the Israeli concept of Hafrada (“separation”), whereby Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are literally walled off via the Israeli West Bank barrier and the Gaza barrier.

Palestinians in the West Bank – one of two self-governing Palestinian territories as per the Oslo Accords of 1993 – live under Israeli military occupation, or are confined to small islands of land under limited self-control. The Gaza Strip, the other Palestinian territory, home to 1.8 million people in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, suffers the consequences of Israel’s blockade and over a decade of periodic wars with Israel. Israeli settlements in these territories, including East Jerusalem, are considered illegal under international law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention, though Israel disputes this.

Meanwhile, Israel expands its domination over all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, driven by the most right-wing government in the country’s history. While many Palestinians continue to resist this situation with remarkable steadfastness, no conservative authorities are making the claim today that a “revolution is inevitable” in Palestine, or are divesting from Israeli corporations out of self-interest, let alone on principle.

Illustration  by Sarah Meghan Mah

Growing Influence of BDS

But the growing influence of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns have the potential to impose a cost on the ordinary operations of Israeli apartheid. The BDS Movement was launched in 2005 by a call from 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations and, to quote the call, was “inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid.” It specifically called on “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel […] until [it] meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law.”

The dominant trend for BDS campaigns has included passing divestment resolutions that target Israeli and multinational corporations that are complicit in the violations of the rights of Palestinians. Such campaigns don’t strictly adhere to the 2005 call, which supports “boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel,” rather than multinational companies profiting from the occupation. However, such campaigns are generally supported or initiated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) – the organization in Palestine responsible for directing BDS campaigns worldwide – and have successfully compelled companies to withdraw their services from the occupation and settlement expansion.

The creation last week [on February 4th] of the McGill BDS Action Network, or simply McGill BDS, is a part of the spread of these campaigns, and the network’s first goal is to pressure the University to divest from companies profiting from the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Documents from McGill’s Office of Investments show that the University holds investments in at least four companies that profit from activities in the occupied territories: G4S, L-3 Communications, Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank, and RE/ MAX. The money invested in these companies constitutes a small portion of the McGill investment portfolio – less than 1 per cent of the University’s total investments – making divestment a reasonable possibility, fiscally speaking.

The McGill Board of Governors’ Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR)’s terms of reference make explicit their stance toward investing in companies like these that arguably do cause social injury. CAMSR defines “social injury” as “the grave injurious impact which the activities of a company is found to have on consumers, employees, or other persons, or on the natural environment. Such activities include those which violate, or frustrate the enforcement of rules of domestic or international law intended to protect individuals against deprivation of health, safety, or basic freedoms, or to protect the natural environment.” One can argue that many of Israel’s actions in the occupied territories and within its own territory constitute serious violations of human rights and international law, and the complicity of these companies in such activities gives reason to believe CAMSR can be persuaded to divest.

Support for the Prison System

The British private security systems corporation G4S has become the target of BDS campaigns in Europe and around the world especially after 13 Palestinian organizations made a statement call for action against the company in the midst of hunger strikes by Palestinian political prisoners in 2012, mostly due to its service to the Israeli Prison Service (IPS).

According to Who Profits, a research centre that details commercial involvement in the Israeli occupation, the company has “provided a perimeter defense system for the walls of the Ofer facility [in the West Bank] and installed a central command room inside, from which the entire facility could be monitored.” Who Profits also states that the company also “provided the entire security system for the Ketziot Prison, a central command room in the Megiddo Prison and security systems in the Damon Prison,” all of which are located in Israel and have Palestinian detainees. G4S systems have also been installed at the Jerusalem and Kishon interrogation and detention centres.

Israeli prison facilities often hold Palestinians under administrative detention – that is, detention without charge or trial, which can last for periods of several months, sometimes years. By comparison, according to the Associations for Civil Rights in Israel, Israelis living in Jewish-only settlements throughout the West Bank are judged under an ordinary criminal court system and live as right-bearing citizens under Israeli law and the Israeli court system. The difference in these legal systems was even recently acknowledged by the American Ambassador to Israel, who rightly stated that “it seems Israel has two standards of adherence to rule of law in the West Bank – one for Israelis and one for Palestinians.”

Palestinian political prisoners are tortured at Israeli prison facilities. A 2013 UN report wrote that even “Palestinian children arrested by [Israeli] military and police are systematically subject to degrading treatment, and often to acts of torture.”

Under intense pressure from European BDS groups, G4S stated in 2011 that “when certain contracts expired [they] would not renew them,” and reaffirmed this in June 2014. The ongoing campaign has had success with interrupting the usual operations of the IPS, and bringing awareness to the illegitimacy of administrative detention and the treatment of Palestinian political prisoners. BDS campaigns against G4S will continue, however, following a call from the BNC to escalate efforts against the company until it cancels all the contracts the company has with Israel.

Support for the Military Occupation

G4S and L-3 both provide goods to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), enabling violence against Palestinians. Research by Who Profits on both companies shows that they provide equipment to military checkpoints in the West Bank and to the Erez (border) Crossing at the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the IDF in order to limit the flow of goods and people into the Strip. L-3’s subsidiary L-3 Combat Propulsion Systems also signed a multi-year contract with the Israeli Ministry of Defense for the “production and remanufacture of diesel engines for tank and armed personnel carriers.” According to a November 2007 news release by L-3, the company’s subsidiary L-3 Communications MAS and Israeli drone manufacturer Elbit Systems “built on their respective knowledge to offer the state-of-the art Hermes 900 UAS [Unmanned Aerial System],” which was used for the first time in Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 military campaign launched by Israel, resulting in the wounding and death of thousands of people, many of whom were Gazans.

Israel’s periodic military assaults against Gaza are another method of imposing control over the Strip, the most recent of which was Operation Protective Edge. Israel deployed battle tanks and UASs on a large scale in this assault, including the Elbit Hermes 900. Elbit Systems and the IDF are secretive about the details of how their drones operate, although advertisements for the Hermes 900 boast that the drone’s multi-payload capacities help to close “the sensor-to-shooter cycle, quicker than ever before.”

Further, the matrix of military checkpoints in place throughout the West Bank restricts the free movement of Palestinians between cities. Who Profits reported that G4S provided these checkpoints with luggage scanning equipment, metal detectors, and services, while L-3 provided them with SafeView magnetometric scanners and ProVision personal screening machines used to detect concealed objects on individuals. Any Palestinian from Ramallah wishing to visit their relatives in Jerusalem, for instance, will be one of hundreds or thousands of people herded through the Qalandia checkpoint each day. There, they may be detained and searched alongside other Palestinians of all ages – and possibly scanned with equipment from L-3 and G4S – delaying the short journey by several hours.

According to Who Profits, the IDF uses the same scanners at the Erez Crossing into the Gaza Strip. While scanners provided by G4S and L-3 are used for screening people entering Gaza, and not economic goods, it is still relevant to note that Israeli control over Erez and all other crossings into the territory is maintained in order to enforce the blockade of goods into Gaza, strangling the Gazan economy and maintaining Israeli control over most aspects of daily life for the 1.8 million people living there.

Support for the Settlements

The remaining two companies, RE/MAX and Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank, profit from settlement activity in the West Bank. The settlements that are built on occupied Palestinian territories could be considered illegal under article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. According to this article, so long as the territories remain occupied, “the Occupied Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report from January 19 notes that “in November 2015, for example, [RE/MAX] listed 80 properties in 18 settlements on its Israeli website,” and operates an office in Ma’aleh Adumim, one of the largest settlements in the West Bank. By selling real estate in these territories, usually to settlers coming from Canada and the U.S. or from within Israel’s internationally recognized borders, the company facilitates the transfer of Israelis into the West Bank. UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967 Richard Falk, in a report for the UN General Assembly, said that the company “assist[s] in the growth of settlements […] by selling settlement properties.”

Mizrahi-Tefahot, the fourth-largest commercial bank in Israel, operates branches in the settlements of Karnei Shomron, Alon Shvut, and Ramat Eshkol. More significantly, it provides mortgages to homebuyers in settlements, and finances settlement construction. Their mortgage services to these homebuyers, like RE/MAX’s real estate sales, enable settlement growth and expansion. Settlement construction is financed by “accompaniment agreements” made between construction companies and Israeli banks, in which the banks “provide the loan for the construction and protect buyers during the construction phase,” according to the HRW report. According to Who Profits, one such agreement was signed with Mizrahi-Tefahot and Israeli construction company Kotler-Adika to develop a housing project in Ma’aleh Adumim. Furthermore, it is also alleged that the bank has financed the building of several hundred housing units in other settlements.

For these reasons, RE/MAX and Mizrahi-Tefahot have become targets for BDS. The United Methodist Church in the U.S. blocked Mizrahi-Tefahot from its investment fund last month, and Luxembourg’s state pension fund divested in 2014, while a campaign led by U.S. anti-war group Codepink is encouraging people to boycott RE/MAX.

The Rationale for BDS

Divestment from these companies could have meaningful outcomes for Palestinians. RE/MAX and Mizrahi-Tefahot are significant candidates for divestment not simply because of their services and operations in Israeli settlements, but because they play a crucial role in helping transfer Israeli citizens into occupied territory. BDS initiatives targeted against these companies and others like them have the potential to restrict further Israeli colonization of the remaining fragments of land belonging to Palestinians.

Campaigns aimed at companies servicing Israel’s military or prisons, like L-3 and G4S, also serve their own purpose. Although such initiatives have yet to result in Israel losing contracts with the defense industry, successful campaigns have the potential to impose a real economic cost on the occupation. Furthermore, the anxiety in Israel generated by the prospect of BDS campaigns against the Israeli military infrastructure could limit state violence against Palestinians. For instance, in the fall of 2015, the Israeli repression of a growing revolt by young Palestinians elicited protests and actions around the world under the banner #SolidarityWaveBDS. Actions like these – especially if they’re targeted at military infrastructure – might compel IDF soldiers to exercise some caution in their operations, perhaps by avoiding use of live ammunition on demonstrators, in order to prevent the possibility of provoking greater international support for BDS.

The BDS movement obviously won’t lead to Palestine’s emancipation. But the efforts of BDS organizers, if guided properly, might prove important in supporting resistance to further colonization and oppression in Palestine. There is a willingness amongst many non-Palestinian organizers to ask the difficult question of how to properly exercise solidarity with these struggles. Lending support to BDS campaigns is by and large the best way to do this, as it allows non-Palestinians to work alongside Palestinians, using the resources available to those abroad, in countries such as Canada and the U.S., to impose pressure on Israel, while working within the framework outlined in the initial call for BDS. In this way, efforts abroad can supplement Palestinian struggles for self-determination without infringing on them.

Dan MacFadden is a pseudonym for an activist with the McGill BDS campaign. This article first published by the The McGill Daily.

The area around the Central Moscow tube stations looks like Aleppo after an air raid. Ruins, destroyed buildings, bulldozers gathering the shambles. No, Moscow was not hit by terrorists: this is a planned demolition of hundreds of small and not-too-small shacks erected (in defiance of planning law) in the vicinity of tube stations in the notorious Nineties, when the Law was vague and easily bought for ready money. The biggest of them, the Pyramid on top of Pushkinskaya Station, went down this week. The municipal workers promptly removed the vestiges of the collapsed constructions, while the erstwhile owners stared in disbelief.

They were surprised by the city hall offensive against illegally built shantytowns; some of them kept trading till the last moment. They received a warning and a demolition order a few months ago, but they did not believe the city would actually apply the order. They were sure the last moment it will be rescinded. It was not. Hundreds of buildings went down in one night.

This was a shocking reminder that Russian authorities can act, after so much ostensibly empty talk. The Russians take their time to saddle up, but they ride exceedingly fast, said the German Chancellor Bismarck quoting a Russian proverb (he served at the Russian court and knew a thing or two about Russians). So many rulers and rebels did not believe the Russian warnings, lulled by their long saddling up, and they usually lived to regret it.

The Muscovites were pleased by the demolitions: the uncouth structures looked ugly and were on the way for people rushing to and from the underground trains. What’s worse, they reminded everyone of Yeltsin’s lawless time, when the shacks were erected. Denuded of these vestiges stations built by the best architects of Stalin’s era in classical style looked so much better now!

Not many people gave a thought to an additional, non-advertised reason for the prompt removal. Moscow tube stations doubled as air raid shelters in wartime. The illegally built shacks would interfere with this purpose. After their demolition, hundreds of tube stations were readied to receive civilian population in case of an attack.

In the same time, the Russian army and Air Force carried out sudden manoeuvres in the south of the country. The TV news covered the army moves with relish. Though Russia still hopes peace will prevail, its leaders do not take chances. There is a risk of general conflagration started by the Syria proxy war.

Cessation of hostilities

The Russians accepted the US proposal to cease fire in Syria (or rather to end hostilities). They had made a similar proposal a few weeks ago, so this is in line with their thinking. Russians have made huge successes in Syria; they achieved an astonishing and unexpected victory with very few losses.

It was a reputational victory it was as well as a military one. Russia entered the Syrian war at a low point internationally. The EU and the US waged severe trade, finance and diplomatic war (“sanctions”) against the Bear; it was isolated from the West and the South. The ruble was crumbling, society was grim and dissatisfied with Putin’s prudent decision to keep away from Ukrainian turmoil (apart from very limited support of the Russian separatists) instead of forcefully interfering, as Russia had been anyway condemned as the aggressor.

Entry into the Syrian war has been met with disbelief and doubts. Will the Russian army succeed so far away from home? Will the Russian planes fly, will the tanks roll, or, devastated by post-Soviet negligence, will they collapse? Domestic and overseas Cassandras prophesied “quagmire”, “Vietnam”, “Afghanistan” for them, and plenty of coffins for their soldiers. But instead, there were roses all the way. The military performed splendidly. The planes, missiles and tanks proved their worth. The Bashar Assad regime was saved, the rebels are on the run. For the Russians, the end of hostilities would allow them to consolidate their victory.

In every war, as a ceasefire is negotiated, there are voices for “war till complete victory”. I remember myself, as a young Israeli soldier in 1973 war, when Kissinger brought the ceasefire, military observers were upset we weren’t allowed to destroy the entrapped Third Egyptian Army on the East Bank of Suez Canal. Who knew how many of us would die if such an attack were to take place?

The Syrian war is not an exception. The Syrian army stands at the door of resounding victory, bellicose military experts say; the rebels are surrounded at Aleppo, their lifeline to Turkey has been cut, now is the time to eliminate the threat and cleanse Syria from the jihadists. However, elimination of enemy pockets can be a very expensive operation in terms of human lives, especially as we speak of a fanatical and well-entrenched enemy. Terrible suicide bombings in Damascus and Homs proved the rebels are as murderous as their predecessors the Assassins. Only Genghis Khan’s Mongols could (and did) destroy such an enemy. Anyway, Russians preferred to negotiate and create a coalition government including some moderate rebels, thus enlarging the base for Assad.

The last few days before the cessation of hostilities will allow Assad’s army to gain some ground in Aleppo area and to switch to the Southern front. I’d expect them to take Palmyra in the course of next few days (consider it a tip).

However, the ceasefire turned out to be an elusive goal, at this stage.

The rebels hesitantly agreed to “cessation of hostilities” but with so many preconditions that it just made no sense. The government forces were not keen to stop the fighting as well, while the wind of success filled their sails. The Russians have no intention of stopping operations against the “terrorists”; the US agreed with them, but who are the ‘terrorists’ and who are the “moderates” has to be hammered out in the negotiations. The UN SC declared Daesh (ISIS) and al Nusra (the Syrian offshoot of al Qaeda, the Nusra Front) “terrorists”, so far, so good, but it is not so simple as it seems. There are hundreds of small organisations affiliated with them, from Abdullah Azzam Brigades to Jamaat Abu Banat (this last one “operates on the outskirts of Syrian cities Aleppo and Idlib, extorting funds from and carrying out kidnappings and public executions of local Syrians” says the UN terrorist list). Should they be protected under ceasefire terms?

The “moderate” (or Saudi-endorsed) rebels say yes. They want to include the Nusra affiliates in the ceasefire arrangements, for without al Nusra, they would be lost. This is not acceptable for the Syrian government and for its Russian allies. Reluctantly, the Americans attempted to include al Nusra in the scheme, at least in Aleppo. We shall see soon how this puzzle will be resolved, if at all.

The Moscow clearance of access to tube stations had more to do with a danger of war with Turkey. Turkey entered the war, albeit in a limited way, by shelling Syrian Kurds. The Russians braced themselves for an armed confrontation with Turkey, but only as a response in case of a full-scale Turkish invasion. This military preparedness (which included airlift of heavy weapons to the Russian air base in Armenia) and NATO statement (saying they will not fight if Turkey were to initiate belligerency) helped to undermine the Turkish resolve. The Russians went to the UN SC asking to censure the Turks; so they did, but in a statement, not by a resolution, as the Russians wanted. Still, this statement cooled off Turkish minds, and it seems their desire to invade and to take a stand at Aleppo evaporated. The Saudi troops did not materialise yet, as I expected (see my previous report).

So, the Syrian war is far from over, but there is a good chance that by March 1^st some ceasefire arrangements will take place on the ground. If the rebels grasp the chance and enter serious negotiations for a coalition government, peace is possible. If they come to Geneva armed with the old mantra “Assad must go”, this opportunity will be wasted. Even if (and it’s extremely unlikely) Russia would agree to sacrifice Assad for the sake of peace, it has no means to deliver. Assad is a strong man and a powerful leader. Russians can’t possibly depose him. So Assad is a given, like it or not. In my view, he is a good leader for this time.

There are two notable changes on the scene: one, more realistic view of Syrian conflict had made its way into American mainstream media. Publication of two pieces by Stephen Kinzer in the Boston Globe called On Syria: Thank you, Russia! and The Media are misleading the Public on Syria was a revolutionary event of first magnitude. For the first time ever, the mainstream American reader learned that “For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.” Kinzer came to a powerful conclusion: “We would have been more secure as a nation, and might have contributed to a more stable world, if we had followed Russia’s foreign policy lead in the past”, namely, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Indeed the world would look different. Perhaps we may connect these publications to a new American mood that manifested itself in primaries’ vote for Trump and Sanders.

The second notable change is the clear position of Israel against a ceasefire in Syria, against Assad and for Daesh and the Nusra. For long time this position had been obscured by Israeli observers and politicians. Israel has been pleased with Arabs killing each other. Now, as the end of war is seen on the horizon, Israel spoke up. Amos Harel, a leading Israeli military observer with high-grade access, made it clear:

“the war in Syria has largely served Israel’s interests. The ongoing fighting has worn down the Syrian army to a shadow of its former capabilities. And Hezbollah, Israel’s main adversary in the north, is losing dozens of fighters every month in battle. Israel has been quietly wishing success to both sides and would not have been against the bloodletting continuing for a few more years without a clear victor” Now, after successful Russian intervention, Israel states openly that “an Assad victory would be bad for Israel” and it calls upon the West “to send real military aid to the less extreme Sunni rebels”.

Thus, the will of Israel, and of Israel Lobby in the US, directly contradicts the will of people as it was lucidly expressed by Stephen Kinzer. You can follow the lead of your Israeli Lobby, or you can have peace and security, but you can’t have both, it is that simple.

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

Global BDS activism is the most vital initiative against Israel’s ruthless agenda, essential to support – why Washington, Britain and Canada want its effectiveness neutralized.

Last year, Obama signed into law so-called fast track “trade promotion authority (TPA)”, enabling him to expedite the legislative process for pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) bills.

Anti-BDS provisions were included – so-called guidelines aimed discouraging European, Asian and other governments from permitting BDS activities, leveraging US trade as an incentive to prohibit them.

In mid-February, Obama announced his intention to sign into law the House and Senate passed Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 – legislation failing to distinguish Israeli goods and services from illegal settlement ones.

The measure includes an anti-BDS provision, authorizing pressure aimed at “discourag(ing) politically motivated boycotts of, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel.”

It’s a slippery slope toward prohibiting BDS activities altogether – a First Amendment guaranteed right.

Last October, a French court ruled against BDS activism, outrageously calling it hate speech.

The global BDS Movement explained impending new UK rules “make it harder for local councils and other public bodies including universities to make ethical procurement or investment decisions” – aimed at countering growing BDS activism, a step toward banning it altogether.

UK Palestinian BDS National Committee spokesperson Rafeef Ziadah responded, saying:

“Rather than working to hold Israel to account for its ongoing human rights violations, UK ministers continue the arms trade with Israel and attack local democracy in order to shield it from any criticism.”

“What sort of message does this send to UK companies like G4S and JCB that aid and abet Israel’s violations of international law?”

“The BDS movement in the UK has achieved wide support precisely because of the failure of successive UK governments to take action in response to Israel’s war crimes.”

“Far from thwarting the growing public support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality, these measures simply shine a spotlight on the UK’s deepening support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and underline the need for solidarity campaigning.”

Cameron’s support for Israel’s worst crimes matches Margaret Thatcher’s South Africa apartheid advocacy.

Canada marches in lockstep, one-sidedly supporting Israel, ignoring its high crimes, backing them by failing to act responsibly against them.

On Monday, a parliamentary motion condemning “any and all attempts” to promote BDS activism at home and abroad passed overwhelmingly.

It calls for condemning BDS activism in all forms, claiming it “promotes the demonization and delegitimization” of Israel.

A National Council of Canada Arab Relations (NCCAR) response stressed “Canadians’ right to free speech,” stating:

NCCAR “invites Canadians to revisit their country’s commendable history with BDS movements and its long-standing relationship with Canadian democratic principles.”

Anti-BDS measures violate the letter and spirit of free expression rights, “enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms” – core principles of democratic governance.

According to NCCAR chair Gabriel Fahel, “freedom of speech and conscientious objections to buying products from countries that contravene international law are core values of a free and democratic society.”

Israel is a fascist police state, run by racist Zionist zealots. Canadian liberal and conservative governments one-sidedly support it, like US Republicans and Democrats – partnering in its highest of high crimes.

Israel turns truth on its head, calling BDS activists anti-Semites, along with labeling Jews opposing its rogue policies self-hating.

On February 17, AP News discussed Israel’s covert scheme to combat BDS activists online, saying:

It’s “using its world-leading expertise in cyber security to” challenge global BDS activism – “allot(ing) nearly $26 million in this year’s budget…”

Intelligence gathering efforts along with cyber-attacks aim to counter BDS effectiveness. “(F)looding the internet” with pro-Israeli content aims to drown out BDS messages.

BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti said “quite a few web pages” BDS sites linked to mysteriously disappeared. He holds Israeli cyber-sabotage responsible – at the same time, explaining it failed to diminish BDS effectiveness.

Founded in July 2005, global BDS activism proved remarkably resilient. It’s a vital just cause idea whose time has come – deserving universal support.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is now the world’s most widely used weed-killer. First sold to farmers in 1974, its use has increased approximately 100-fold since. Nearly all the corn and soy grown in the United States is now glyphosate-tolerant and treated with the herbicide. The weed-killer is also used on numerous other food crops and on landscaping plants. Enough glyphosate is now used to cover nearly every acre of cultivated cropland in the US. The chemical has been found in streams, wastewater, and in rainwater samples taken from all across the country.

Despite the extensive and increasing use of glyphosate, we know little about how much of the chemical people are actually being exposed to. Here in the US, glyphosate is not among the pesticide residues for which the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) routinely tests food. It is also not included among the 200-plus chemicals on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) human biomonitoring program.

Photo by Rob Franksdad Recent science also suggests that glyphosate lasts longer in soil and water than originally anticipated.

In a paper just published in the journal Environmental Health, 14 leading environmental health researchers say current safety standards are based on outdated science and inadequate exposure data and that new research into glyphosate’s toxicity should be a government priority.

“When these chemicals are approved for safety it’s based on assumptions of how they’ll be used,” including “at what time of year and at what quantities,” explains paper co-author Laura Vandenberg, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Even if this was a completely benign chemical, it’s shocking to know how much its use has increased,” she says.

Vandenberg and her co-authors point out that to accommodate changes in use, the levels of glyphosate-based herbicides allowed in crops — that include corn, soybeans, canola, and various livestock feeds have been increased. But they also point out that estimates of safe daily limits for eating food that might contain glyphosate – both in the US and in Europe – are based on science that does not reflect how much the chemical is now used. Recent science also suggests that glyphosate lasts longer in soil and water than originally anticipated.

In addition to using glyphosate at planting time, farmers are now using it just before harvest, to dry leaves in order to make the physical harvesting of plants easier. “Late season, harvest aid use of GBHs [glyphosate-based herbicides] is an important new contributor to the increase in residue frequency and levels in some grain-based food products,” the researchers write. Such use was not accounted for when safety limits were set for glyphosate when the herbicide was introduced. In recent testing done in the United Kingdom, glyphosate residues were found in about one-third of bread samples tested. And in the US, testing by the USDA in 2011 found glyphosate in about 90 percent of soybeans tested. But the paper points out that since such tests aren’t conducted regularly, there is no information about what people are exposed to through food on an ongoing basis.

In addition, there isn’t any continuous data on human exposure. “Glyphosate is being used way more than anyone ever anticipated and there is no biomonitoring data,” says report co-author Bruce Blumberg, professor of cell biology and biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine.

Health concerns

Adding to concerns about glyphosate is the fact that last year, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Glyphosate product manufacturers, including Monsanto, dispute this conclusion.

The chemical also presents other health concerns. Among those, the paper notes, are adverse effects on the liver and kidneys. There is also the possibility that glyphosate may impact the function of certain hormones — impacts that could influence a number of body systems, and influence development of chronic diseases. The researchers also point out that we know little about the effect of glyphosate-based herbicides on the immune and neurological systems – information that would be key to understanding potentially profound but subtle health impacts.

“We don’t know a lot but what we do know suggests harm,” says Blumberg.

“Glyphosate,” explains Vandenberg, “is not an overtly toxic chemical, which in part is why glyphosate use has soared.” But she says, “Glyphosate may contribute to more subtle diseases.”

Research on glyphosate’s toxicity, the paper explains, has typically focused on how much of the chemical will kill a lab animal — not to investigate what happens at low and chronic levels of exposure via food or drinking water. Vandenberg also explains that in addition to understanding how glyphosate itself acts on humans and the environment, it is important to understand the behavior of its primary chemical breakdown compound. That, she says, is yet another data gap.

Yet another concern is that glyphosate-based herbicides are often applied in conjunction with other pesticides and little is known about the effects of these mixtures. Safety levels for pesticides are calculated for each active ingredient individually, despite the fact that in most agricultural operations, a cocktail of them are applied together. Combinations of glyphosate plus other herbicides are now common in agriculture given that many weeds have developed glyphosate resistance from years of overuse.

Closing the data gaps

To close the many gaps in what is known about glyphosate exposure and toxicity, the researchers call for both new research into glyphosate’s biological activity and epidemiological studies. They recommend that the CDC include glyphosate in its biomonitoring program and that the US National Toxicology Program make glyphosate a research priority.

“The main point we were trying to make is that use has gone up and there is a lot of uncertainty about health effects,” says Blumberg.

Given that glyphosate is showing up widely in the environment – something not expected when the herbicide was first approved – and that its use has increased so dramatically since initial safety assessments were made, and what has been learned about its health effects since, suggest that a reevaluation is imperative, the researchers write.

“The big take away,” says Vandenberg, “is don’t throw yours hands up in fear, but that something we’ve been told is safe hasn’t been tested in the way that we can draw that conclusion from.”

In this most bizarre of seemingly endless conflicts in the Middle East, wars ultimately over something as stupid as control of oil, a most alarming report has surfaced introducing the nightmare scenario of nations using tactical nuclear weapons to secure their aims. That were it to happen wouldl be the most stupid thing the human race has done to date to destroy itself. Given the implications and what is being reported it warrants more than close scrutiny.

It’s a report from a serious US journalist, citing an anonymous “source close to Putin” that a nuclear war pitting Russia against USA, NATO, Turkey and Saudi Arabia is possible. I refuse to believe in such a nuclear war over Syria and I want to say why.

The Report

On February 18, Robert Parry, an American investigative journalist of unusually high-quality, one who uncovered explosive details about the 1980’s illegal US Government Iran-Contra scandal among other stories, wrote the following alarming note on his website:

“A source close to Russian President Vladimir Putin told me that the Russians have warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that Moscow is prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons if necessary to save their troops in the face of a Turkish-Saudi onslaught. Since Turkey is a member of NATO, any such conflict could quickly escalate into a full-scale nuclear confrontation.”

I have followed Parry’s research since the 1990’s and find it to be of high professional quality.

Parry’s report was then picked up by Alexander Mercouris for the Russia Insider website. Mercouris is also an unusually serious and careful analyst of events Russian. He added to the Parry report his own details of a February 11 unusual meeting of the highly-important Russian Security Council, followed by a series of military exercises arranged at short notice in their Southern Military District, which look like they were “intended to prepare the Russian military for rapid action at short notice against Turkey should the need arise.”

The Saker, the pen-name of an equally-highly-respected and knowledgeable military analyst, one whose writings on Russia since the US-organized coup d’etat in Ukraine in early 2014 have been exceptionally sober, while reprinting the Mercouris article on his blog, openly disagreed with the Parry report and the Mercouris analysis. On February 20 The Saker wrote, “I don’t see any scenario short of a massive US/NATO attack under which Russia would use her tactical nuclear weapons.” He also cited a translation of Russian doctrine on use of nuclear weapons:

§27: The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use against her and (or) her allies of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, as well as in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons in a way which would threaten her very existence as a state. The decision to use nuclear weapons is taken by the President of the Russian Federation.

My belief

I want to state something completely different about the report on possible use of nuclear weapons over the conflict in Syria. I refuse to believe there will be a nuclear war over Syria and oil. Full stop!

The conflict in Syria is essentially a conflict between two persons–Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, and his neighbor, Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces, General Secretary of the ruling Ba’ath Party and Regional Secretary of the party’s branch in Syria. This is NOT World War III, and I refuse to believe it will become World War III. It is a conflict between two people, Assad and Erdoğan.

If we recognize this reality about the nature of the Syrian conflict, we begin immediately to relativize what’s going on. The problem is that there is a faction in the West drooling at the prospect of engineering a nuclear war with Putin’s Russia and willing to manipulate Erdoğan, Saudi Prince Salman, and anyone and everyone they can deceive to reach that end. They tried and failed in Ukraine.

The problem, a most fundamental problem which I now see more clearly in hindsight, is, when understood in this light, it was an initial error, if an understandable one. Russia’s leadership decided to intervene militarily at the end of September for a complex of reasons I believe, some in defense of Russian military security, some for reasons of Russia’s standing or perceived standing in the world, some for complex psychological reasons going deep into Russian history. All that led Russia to accept the plea of one of the two parties in that Syrian conflict, to make a military war against the terrorists, which were in reality the extended arm of the second party, Erdoğan.

That error has now played into the hands of the war faction in NATO and beyond, a faction in the West that desperately wishes to destroy Russia along with China as a positive force for good in the world.

It matters not whether a trusted person in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle passed that message to Robert Parry about using tactical nuclear weapons should Erdogan’s army invade Syria and threaten the lives of an estimated 20,000 Russian military personnel. Russia’s military action in Syria fed the world more energy of war, killing, hate. That, the world urgently needs less of.

As I stated in a recent interview for the Russian state Sputnik News media, there are no winners in war, by the very nature of war. Everyone in this war is deceiving, playing Machiavellian games — Erdogan, Salman and his son, Prince Salman, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, John Kerry, Obama, David Cameron, Hollande.

Russia is in a most risky situation in Syria if it and its leading people have any illusion that the other actors are reasonable. Hate knows no reason. Syria’s Bashar al Assad cannot win this conflict with Turkey’s Erdoğan. Nor can the most sophisticated air power of Russia win it for him.

That being said, now we have an absurd situation with thousands of nervous Turkish military, standing, armed and peering across the border into Syria. Alongside that stupid spectacle, we have the recent deployment of Saudi Air Force jets now sitting at the Incirlik Air Base–106 miles away from the Russian airbase at Khmeimim, near Latakia, Syria. The Saudi jets sit alongside some 5,000 airmen and the various military jets of the United States Air Force 39th Air Base Wing, and of the Turkish Air Force, along with F-15E jets from the British Royal Air Force that arrived in November, 2015 to join the “attack on ISIS.” It’s worth noting also that Incirlik Air Base today is one of six European NATO airbases holding a stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons.

The Turkish Incirlik Air Base (Red Star) near the Syrian border is one of six European NATO bases which hold tactical nuclear weapons.

As I detail in my newest book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy, dealing with the complex, decades-long unholy alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood death cult and the CIA, going back to Saudi Arabia in the early 1950’s, the conflicts between Syria’s Assad and Turkey’s Erdogan have nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

That’s a fact, no matter who else has decided to join in on either of the two sides. It reminds much like in a barroom brawl once the first beer bottle is hurled. It has not to do with killing of Christians–Orthodox or Catholic or other, despite the recent talks between the Roman Pope and the Moscow Patriarch. It has not to do with a war of Sunni Wahhabists against Shi’ite or Alawites.

The secret: It’s about the oil, stupid!

The poorly-understood reason for this conflict over Syria and over the entire Middle East is a conflict to control its oil–Syria’s reportedly huge oil reserves in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights; Iraq’s huge oil reserves in Kirkuk and elsewhere; Libya’s significant oil reserves and Qatar’s vast gas reserves. They all want the oil–British and US circles, French circles, Saudis, Turks, Syrians, Israelis, Iraqis–all. A good part of the NATO conflict with Russia is also about oil and gas. And even China’s ongoing conflict with her neighbors and with the United States in the South China Sea is significantly about oil.

The Syria conflict in this light must be seen for what it is: it’s essentially a conflict between two persons, Assad and Erdoğan, over control of oil and the vast sums of money from oil. It is not the beginning of World War III as that Pope in Rome said in Jose Marti Airport in Cuba last year. That is why I refuse to believe there will be a nuclear war over Syria and its oil.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

“PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America [Big Pharma’s trade association and lobbying group]) is quoted as saying that “the 271 vaccines in development span a wide array of diseases, and employ exciting new scientific strategies and technologies. These potential vaccines – all in human clinical trials or under review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – include 137 for infectious diseases, 99 for cancer, 15 for allergies and 10 for neurological disorders.” 

Readers of this column, especially parents of vulnerable infants, children and pregnant women, should by now be doing their own independent research into the relative risks and benefits of allowing their children to be injected with the multitude of vaccines that are recommended by the authoritarian leaders of the Big Pharma-influenced Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Medical Association (AMA), and others (see an enlarged list or other professional trade associations and lobbyists further below).

One major reason for making wise decisions about reflexively accepting vaccine advice from Big Pharma and Big Medicine is that none of the current batch of vaccines for infants and children (or pregnant women or older adults for that matter) has followed the stringent research standards that are usually taken for granted when it comes to the approval of potentially dangerous xenobiotics and biologics by the FDA.

In the case of the mercury-containing seasonal influenza vaccines (still recommended for pregnant women and babies over the age of 6 months!), there just isn’t enough time for pharmaceutical companies to do any high quality efficacy or safety studies on the three flu strains chosen to be in the inoculum by the time the flu season starts.

And of course, guessing which three of the hundreds of possible flu viruses that could theoretically cause a so-called “epidemic” next winter must be made many months before the flu season is to start! Simply culturing enough of the viruses to meet demand takes many months. In other words, some vaccine corporation-influenced blue ribbon panel is making educated guesses with our health. And, what I regard as the most serious indictment, those same experts deny (or are ignorant about) the powerful independent basic science research that has been exposing and documenting the serious toxicity of mercury-containing flu vaccines, aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines or live virus vaccines. Yikes!

For every upcoming flu season, vaccine makers engage in a futile race against time that inevitably endangers patients. When manufacturing processes are rushed, good research (that would prove or disprove the long or short-term effectiveness or safety of the vaccines) is impossible.

“4,250% Increase in Fetal Deaths After Flu Shots Were Given to Pregnant Women in 2009”

In this regard it is important to recognize the covered-up story of the huge spike in 2009 and 2010 fetal deaths that occurred when the CDC and Big Pharma – hopefully predicting a pandemic of H1N1 flu in 2010 – recommended adding a second mercury-containing vaccine to the usual seasonal vaccine inoculation for pregnant women!

Not surprisingly, the pandemic never materialized, but because many pregnant women got two thimerosal-containing vaccines that fall there was documented a serious spike in vaccine-related miscarriages and stillbirths during the following months. The data was documented in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS, which typically under-reports adverse events by a factor of 10 – 100) which had been set up in 1986 to theoretically partially compensate vaccine-injured children after Reagan’s National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act vaccine law.

One might ask ”which healthcare organizations were among the ones who participated in creating the hysteria that prompted so many pregnant women to allow themselves to consent to two unsafe, mercury-containing vaccinations in 2009?”

For the answer, read this quote from an article that was titled “4,250% Increase in Fetal Deaths Reported to VAERS After Flu Shot Given to Pregnant Women” (https://vactruth.com/2012/11/23/flu-shot-spikes-fetal-death/).

Eileen Danneman, director of the National Coalition of Organized Women and the author of the article, accused the CDC of 1) deliberately misleading the nation’s obstetricians and gynecologists and 2) colluding with the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG) to mislead the public by advertising in 2010 that the CDC-recommended flu vaccines were safe for pregnant women when they knew full well that the very same vaccines had caused a massive spike in fetal deaths in 2009 – 2010. She wrote:

“Advice from a healthcare provider plays an important role in a pregnant and postpartum woman’s decision to get vaccinated against seasonal influenza. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association (AMA), American Nurses Association (ANA), American Pharmacists Association (APhA), Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), March of Dimes, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are asking for your help in urging your pregnant and postpartum patients to get vaccinated against seasonal influenza.

“The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends that pregnant and postpartum women receive the seasonal influenza vaccine this year, even if they received 2009 H1N1 or seasonal influenza vaccine last year. Lack of awareness of the benefits of vaccination and concerns about vaccine safety are common barriers to influenza vaccination of pregnant and postpartum women.”

“Vaccine Makers Can’t be Sued for Vaccine Deaths or Injuries Thanks to Reagan’s National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986”

Why would a mega-corporate vaccine maker go to the expense of doing thorough safety and efficacy testing when they can’t be sued in the United States if their vaccine turned out to cause injury, death, disability or chronic autoimmune disorders in the recipients?  Good question.

As readers of mine have noted from previous columns, vaccine makers have been unethically protected by the Reagan-era National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, which absolved them of all medico-legal liability (from past or future damage, even from yet-to-be-invented vaccines!) when children die or are disabled from vaccine injuries.

(See http://www.globalresearch.ca/vaccine-induced-immune-overload-and-the-epidemic-of-chronic-autoimmune-childhood-disease/5431013 for the data on vaccine-induced autoimmunity.)

Of course the pre-clinical (animal) and clinical (human) vaccine experiments are not done by the once prestigious (but now corrupted by Big Pharma) FDA and CDC. Rather, the experiments are designed, performed and paid-for by profit-driven pharmaceutical multinational corporations like Merck, Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Medimmune and  Novartis, whose predecessor companies (among them Merck, Wyeth, Lederle, Connaught) black-mailed pro-Big Business legislators in the early 1980s to “legally” halt the flurry of legitimate million dollar lawsuits from parents of children who died, nearly died, were neurologically disabled or were otherwise seriously sickened by vaccines!

Vaccine skeptics and unbiased vaccine researchers sometimes joke that, as with sausage-making, you wouldn’t want to smell or watch the process of manufacturing vaccines; for if you saw what went into the final product, you wouldn’t willingly allow it to get into your body.

Of course, just like most corporations, no unauthorized witnesses are ever allowed inside their manufacturing plants. Corporations insist in keeping secret the nature of the preservatives, adjuvants, contaminants or other toxic substances that actually go into their products. Too much knowledge by consumers, such as reading the product labels, actually paying attention to the small print in the TV advertisements or witnessing the manufacturing processes would be bad for business.

Hence, knowledge about the manufacture of Big Pharma’s synthetic substances that are intended to be injected into patient’s bodies is off limits. They call it “protecting trade secrets”.

There are 271 New Vaccines in Big Pharma’s “Pipeline”

As mentioned above, the pharmaceutical industry is proud to acknowledge that they have 271 new products in their vaccine “pipeline”. These vaccines will likely also have no stringent long-term safety or efficacy data on them, especially concerning the brains of infants, the brains of pregnant women or the brains of demented older people. For one think, such studies would be unethical. But the CDC, AAP, AAFP, AMA and the television ads will still be recommending them for us any time now.

I think that it would be irresponsible for us “consumers” – not to mention us “providers” of vaccines (ie, physicians and clinics) – to continue to be unaware of or unconcerned about their dangers, especially since there is so much proposed legislation in the legislative “pipeline” (at both state and federal levels) that will soon be forcing patients to be vaccinated against their wills, with or without informed consent.

Big Pharma never seem to stop doing the aggressive lobbying that is geared to influence lawmakers in state and federal legislative bodies to pass legislation that insures their profitability. Vaccine makers never seem to stop “investing” in politicians with lucrative campaign “contributions” every 2, 4 or 6 years.

Big Pharma’s obvious intent is no different from all the other mega-corporations, especially since the campaign and corrupt Super-PAC floodgates were opened with the 2011 Citizen’s United ruling led by Antonin Scalia and his pro-corporate/conservative 5-4 majority in the US Supreme Court.

Corporations of all types do everything they can to enhance “shareholder value”, increase future stock prices and increase bonuses for their executives. In the case of the vaccine makers, they try to get legislators to pass laws that will make it unlawful to refuse forced vaccinations that are mandated by the government. Big profits can be assured if the corporate paymasters of bought-and-paid-for congresspersons will pass laws that force their constituents to purchase or otherwise use their products.

The possibility of forced vaccination programs in the case of potential pandemics that threaten the national security has already been made legal by the 2001 Patriot Act (that also makes it easy for the president to declare martial law) when the Cheney/Bush/Rice/Ashcroft/ Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Rove/PNAC administration panicked the US Congress into voting for the pre-written legislation soon after 9/11/01.

Dennis Kucinich was the only legislator that actually read the Patriot Act (which is why he was one of the few who voted against it). By voting for that disastrous bill, every paranoid pro-war congress person voted for the evisceration of the US Constitution.

Partly because vaccines are so profitable and partly because vaccine makers and marketers don’t have to worry about being sued for the inevitable damages, the vaccine industry can’t resist the temptation to push for mandatory vaccinations. Before that happens, people need to inform themselves (and their legislators) and raise the consciousness of their friends so they will not be coerced by healthcare organizations who have serious conflicts of interest and who may have already lied to them.

I end this article with some excerpts from some other vaccine skeptics, information that should give pause to those who used to think that Big Pharma’s vaccine should be trusted.

Serious Synergistic Effects of Toxic Metals (Mercury, Lead, Aluminum)

By Bernard Windham, M.D.

Unabridged article, with references is posted at: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/articles/doc/53

“Mercury and lead are extremely neurotoxic and cytotoxic, but their combined synergistic effect is much worse. A dose of mercury sufficient to kill 1% of tested rats, when combined with a dose of lead sufficient to kill less than 1% of rats, resulted in killing 100% of rats tested….Studies in Australia have confirmed that similar relationships hold for people. This means most people in the U.S. are getting dangerous levels of these metals, enough to cause some neurologic effects.

“The same is true for synergistic effect with other toxic metals like arsenic, and with other toxic chemicals like PCBs. The level of mercury (thimerosal) in vaccines has been shown to be highly neurotoxic, but the effect was found to be much larger due to the synergistic effects with aluminum, which is also in most vaccines. Studies using U.S. CDC data have found thimerosal from vaccines to be major factors in autism and ADHD, along with prenatal Rhogam shots which contain high levels of mercury and are given to some RH negative women during pregnancy.

“Autism has increased in the U.S. more than 10 fold in the last decade. According to the Florida Dept. of Education, the numbers increased from approximately 300 to over 4000 during this time period. There have likewise been large increases in the number of children with ADHD and other developmental conditions, according to the National Academy of Sciences and other sources. A major factor in this appears to be the large increase in vaccinations given to infants. (More documentation is available at the children’s neurological page, www.home.earthlink.net/~berniew1/indexk.html)

“There was an increase of over 45% in learning disabilities in Pennsylvania between 1990 and 2000. But the study showed that the county highest on the Chemical Pollution Scorecard (Montgomery County) had an increase more than double that of the rest of the state. Montgomery County had an increase in ADHD of 32.7% and an increase in autism of 310%.”

And here is an important quote from Donald Miller,  MD, Professor of Surgery, University of Washington:

“A small dose of mercury that kills 1 in 100 rats and a dose of aluminum that will kill 1 in 100 rats, when combined, have a striking effect: 100% of the rats die. 

“Doses of mercury that have a 1% mortality rate will have a 100% mortality rate if some aluminum is there. 

“Currently, in 2004, the two most important sources of mercury exposure for Americans
are dental amalgams and vaccinations. The Federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for reasons not explained, have chosen to ignore this fact. These agencies and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) focus exclusively on mercury in seafood, to the extent that the NIH will not fund studies that address mercury in amalgams and vaccines.

“In lockstep with the government, the American Dental Association (ADA) claims that amalgams are safe, and the mercury in them poses no problem. The (government-funded) Institute of Medicine (IOM) and various specialty societies, notably the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), and the American Medical Association (AMA), say the same thing about mercury in vaccines.

“There is growing evidence, however, that mercury in vaccines and amalgams causes both autism and Alzheimer’s disease. The CDC and the FDA and the medical establishment, led by its specialty societies, discount or ignore this evidence – evidence that includes privately funded epidemiological studies; research on how mercury damages brain cells grown in culture; animal studies in rodents, sheep, and primates; and clinical studies in children and adults.”

And from a toxicology experiment done by Dr Boyd Haley:

“Dr. Boyd Haley illustrates the synergistic toxicity of three ingredients commonly found in vaccines — thimerosal, aluminum hydroxide (AlOH3), and neomycin. 

• By themselves, neomycin and aluminum hydroxide are less cytotoxic than thimerosal.

• 24 hours after a 50nM (50 ppb) exposure to thimerosal, less than 40% of cells survived.

• 12 hours after a combination of thimerosal and neomycin, roughly the same number of cells died.

• 6 hours after combining thimerosal, neomycin, and aluminum hydroxide, the same number of cells died, and after 24 hours 100% of the cells were dead.

• Adding testosterone to the other three vaccine ingredients made the toxic effect total and immediate — 100% of the cells were dead within 3 hours.” 

Dr Kohls practiced holistic mental health care for the last decade of his family practice career. He now writes a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. The last four years of Dr Kohls’ Duty to Warn columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn.

A February 17^th Gallup Poll showed that Americans prefer the chief nation that sponsors international terrorism, when given a choice between that terrorist-sponsoring nation and Iran. The disapproval shown of Iran is 79%; the approval is 14%. Back in 2014, the disapproval / approval were 84%/12%. At that time, Saudi Arabia had figures of 57%/35%. Iran was seen by Americans as being even more hostile toward Americans than Saudi Arabia.

Americans are profoundly misinformed about international relations – and there’s a reason for this: the deep corruption within the American Establishment (the people who shape American political opinions).

Here are the facts: 92% of Saudi Arabians approve of ISIS. That country’s leadership – both the Saud family who own the country, and their clerics – teach them this way.

Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, and the bookkeeper/bagman who had collected, in cash, every one of the million-dollar-plus donations to al-Qaeda up till 9/11, said under oath, in US court-testimony which Western news-media have hidden from the public: virtually all of the Saudi Princes, and many of their close friends (each of which individuals he identified by name) were $1M+ donors to the al-Qaeda organization; and, without those funds, any attacks such as 9/11 would have been simply impossible for them to do.

The bag-man and bookkeeper for Osama bin Laden was captured by the United States and was sent to a maximum-security US prison where he is unable to speak to anyone, but before that, he named many of the leading Saudi Princes and their closest friends as having been the people who had provided the funds. And he said: «Without the money of the – of the Saudi, you will have nothing» of al-Qaeda.

Here’s one exchange:

Q: To clarify, you’re saying that the al-Qaeda members received salaries?

A: They do, absolutely.

The royals’ ‘charity’ that pays not only al-Qaeda but ISIS and other such organizations, is from the donors, to their warriors; the warriors are being paid by those ‘charitable donations’. That’s what pays their salaries. Jihadist organizations are religious charities – whose aim is to spread the Islamic faith (which is why the mullahs or ‘holy men’, who are also being paid by that same Saud family, approve of the Sauds to be the rulers).

Here’s another exchange:

Q: What – what was bin Laden’s attitude towards the Saudi ulema [the religious scholars, the clerics]?

A: It was of complete reverence and obedience. [It was like a Roman Catholic’s attitude] toward the Pope.

Among the mega-donors that he could remember off the top of his head were Prince Waleed bin Talal al-Saud, Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud (affectionately known in the US as «Bandar Bush» (he was Saudi Arabia’s US Ambassador at the time of 9/11; he later became Chief of Saudi intelligence).

The bagman explained:

The Saudi government is – they have two heads of the snake, they have the Saudi, like Al Saud, and the Wahhabi [clerics] were in charge of the Islamic Code of the Islam [the lawmakers and judges] – or Islamic power in Saudi Arabia, okay, and that’s why they have the name ‘Wahhabi’, okay, okay. So the Saudi [the Saud royal family] cannot keep [the Executive or ruling] power in Saudi Arabia without having the agreement, okay, of the Wahhab, the Wahhabi, the scholar [the clerics, who interpret the Quran, the nation’s real Constitution], okay.

One might reasonably wonder, then: why do Americans hate and fear Iran, over and above even the nation – the royal family and their clerics – that were actually behind 9/11? Might it be, perhaps, because the Shia clerics of Iran are as fundamentalist as the Sunni ones in Saudi Arabia? Not at all; but, yet, Americans seem to assume that that’s the case.

The American public are duped by lying ‘news’ media, which don’t let them know the reality – the American people are kept in the dark.

The Sauds, the one family who owns Saudi Arabia, hate the Iranian public, just as much as they hate the American public; and they do so because they (the Saud family) intend ultimately (their descendants) to conquer and rule over both, and over the entire world. But first, they need to kill all Shiites (and Iran is ruled by Shiites), because otherwise even the Islamic world itself won’t be united. Without a united Islam, how could they have a chance ultimately to conquer the non-Islamic world? It wouldn’t even be possible – and they know this. In fact, their nation was created in 1744 by a mutual oath between Muhammad ibn Saud and Muhammad ibn Wahhab that embodied it.

The US aristocracy has been allied with the Saudi royal family for decades. When John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had Kim Roosevelt – Teddy Roosevelt’s  grandson – organize the 1953 CIA overthrow of the progressive democratic secular freely elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, and install there the barbaric Shah and his torture-chambers, it sparked the Iranian public to hate Americans, who had brought this hell to them.

Then, in 1979, came the Iranian revolution installing not a Mosaddegh-type secular democracy such as America overthrew, but instead a Shiite clerical dictatorship, to replace the American fascist one, which had been entirely alien to Iran (though this alien regime used a local dictator, the Shah, as its figurehead, who answered to Washington). In succession now, Mosaddegh’s two enemies – first the US aristocracy, and now the Shiite clergy – have replaced an alien, US, dictatorship by a native one. But that native one (after 1979, the Shia clergy) has no international-jihadist ideology. Though Shia clerics hate the apartheid Israeli regime and fund Hezbollah to fight it, there is otherwise nothing that’s even remotely comparable to jihadism, in the Shia branch of Islam. Jihad (global conquest) is strictly a Sunni phenomenon, and it centers around the Saudi government, which is owned by the Saud family, and whose laws are made by the Wahhabist (the Sauds’ extremely fundamentalist Islamic) clergy, which is financed by the Sauds and by the subjects that the royal family own – the ‘citizens’ of Saudi Arabia. This is why 92% of the Saudi public think that ISIS is good. (By contrast, in the multicultural nation of Syria, which is allied with Iran and Russia and is ruled by a decidedly non-sectarian and secular government that’s composed mainly of Shia, and which has been invaded by Wahhabist-Salafist foreign fighters who are financed by America’s jihadist allies, 78% of the population disapprove of ISIS, and 82% blame the US as being the chief power behind ISIS.)

The original sin that has shaped America’s role in the Mideast (other than our siding with the apartheid nation of Israel and so being widely despised around the world by Muslims) occurred when America’s aristocracy took over Iran in 1953, for their oil companies. But Americans hate Iranians as a result of that original sin, which was done by the Dulleses to Iranians on behalf of US oil-company friends, which include the Sauds. The American people are getting the blowback from the American aristocracy’s international crimes abroad.

And, now, as Gallup is consistently finding, Americans hate the Iranians. That’s because the Iranians have called America «the great Satan» because that’s what America (our aristocracy and its agents) had actually been to them – to the Iranian people. Iran’s public are right, even though the clergy that rule over them are wrong – but Americans don’t know that distinction, and condemn the Iranian nation.

Meanwhile, the Sauds, from whom the American public have suffered 9/11 and so much else, are ‘American allies’ according to the duplicitous US press. They are not allies actually of the American public, but of the American aristocracy, which the American press don’t even expose to the public: this country, after all, is (not) a ‘democracy’.

And our government won’t prosecute, nor attempt to prosecute, the people who actually fund terrorism – not even the terrorism that hits here, never mind in Europe etc. That refusal to prosecute the people who were behind the 9/11 attacks is also what the expurgated 28 pages in the US Senate’s 9/11 report are all about.

Instead, our lying politicians, who are empowered (in both Parties) by money from the same people, constantly call Iran the major backer of international terrorism, though they know that the allegation is rabidly false. Hillary Clinton says, «We have a lot of other business to get done with Iran. Yes, they have to stop being the main state sponsor of terrorism». But actually, she and the other agents of America’s aristocracy are the ones who have to stop their constant lying, because there are plenty of American suckers who believe their lies – and it ends up showing in the Gallup and other opinion-polls, and ultimately in the people that the thus-deluded American public vote for to serve in Congress and the Presidency. Americans are deluded by their aristocracy’s constant lies.

After all, it’s not hard for any authentic news-reporter to prove that Hillary herself is aware that what she said there was false – that her remark was a lie, not merely a slip-up. When she was the US Secretary of State, one of the first things she did (after assisting the fascist junta that had taken over in Honduras on 28 June 2009 to stay in power) was to send a cable to the US Ambassadors in all of the capitals where the donations to al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist groups, were coming from, requiring those Ambassadors to the local aristocracy to tell them to stop doing that; these were the Ambassadors only in fundamentalist-Sunni-run countries: Saudi Arabia (the center of it all), Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Pakistan. In that private cable, she even said things like:

«Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide».

 «Qatar’s overall level of CT [Counter Terrorist] cooperation with the US is considered the worst in the region».

«Kuwait … has been less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks outside of Kuwait. Al-Qa’ida and other groups continue to exploit Kuwait both as a source of funds and as a key transit point».

«UAE-based donors have provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups, including al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups, including Hamas».

Those are our ‘allies’? She knows that al-Qaeda and ISIS received no money from Shia. She knows that al-Qaeda and ISIS are Sunni-only groups, which hate all Shia – they want to defeat Iran, they don’t represent Iran.

Garbage like what Hillary said there against Iran makes it into Presidential candidates’ debates; and none of the ‘press’ says the person was either lying or else incredibly ignorant for saying such a thing. A statement like that poisons the well of US-Iranian relations, even more than a half-century after it had already been poisoned big-time, back in 1953. Why is this poisoning so persistent?

This lie that Hillary Clinton and so many other American politicians spout, is one of many lies that our ‘news’ media can’t expose, because to do that would also expose themselves – that the media themselves have deceived the American public by not pointing out that the politicians are lying about these major, determinative, issues. In this regard, it’s similar to the lie that Bush didn’t lie but merely had been mistaken about «Saddam’s WMD»: how could the press now acknowledge that Bush had lied, when they refused to even examine his lies while they were being made, which is when it counts? And that’s why politicians such as Clinton can get away with their lies about Iran.

America is now piling up with lies, which the nation’s ‘news’ media can’t expose without exposing themselves as being part of the deception of the American public. (After they had stenographically reported George W Bush’s lies about ‘Saddam’s WMD’, they could never admit how rotten the US press were – and still are. They have to hide that, too.) This piling-on of lies is now becoming extremely dangerous, even to the very possibility of restoring democracy to America. Without an honest press, democracy is impossible. Without an honest press, democracy won’t be restored in America.

There is nothing that the US press is as dishonest about as Russia and its traditional allies, such as Ukraine, Syria, and Libya. And this nest of subjects includes the entire topic of jihadism, which America’s aristocracy secretly back (and use as a tactic against Russia and its allies) but which Russia’s aristocracy and public both oppose, consistently – and not only by tokens such as killing al-Qaeda’s leaders, but by getting done the entire ugly job that needs to be done (which was described there with a remarkable lack of bias, in a recent issue of the New Yorker magazine, by Joshua Yaffa, headlining «Putin’s Dragon»). There is no way to defeat jihadism without destroying the jihadist culture itself. Instead, the US has been and is allied to it. Not just in Saudi Arabia, but also in the other Arabic Sunni oil-kingdoms: Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE – and, more recently, also in the resurgently-Sunni NATO ‘ally’: Turkey. So, our ‘press’ must lie big-time, and with only very few exceptions of honesty, about these matters.

That’s what is merely being reflected in Gallup’s latest, and prior, polls about the opinions that Americans have regarding Iran. It is a severe, worsening, and dangerous, sickness of the American ‘press’. And nobody seems to have any solution for it. How can the people of a nation boycott its corrupt press? How can they even know that they should? How can they ever know that they are «being had» – that they are being governed by lies?

On February 22, the US and Russia released a joint statement on the Terms for a Cessation of Hostilities in Syria and proposed the ceasefire to commence at 00:00 (Damascus time) on Feb.27, 2016. The ceasefire is to be applied to those parties that have indicated their commitment to and acceptance of its terms and does not apply to ISIS Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar ash-Sham and other terrorist organizations designated by the UN Security Council.

The sides involved in the conflict should indicate their commitment to the ceasefire by no later than 12:00 (Damascus time) on Feb. 26, 2016. In turn, Russia and the US will exchange pertinent information and develop procedures necessary for preventing clashes between the sides committed to the ceasefire.

The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) Ceasefire Task Force, co-chaired by the US and Russia, has been also established under UN auspices. The Ceasefire Task Force includes Russian and US political and military officials and the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Syria (OSE) as secretariat.

The primary functions of the Task Force are:

• delineate the territory held by “ISIS”, “Jabhat-al-Nusra” and other terrorist groups
• ensure communications among all parties to promote compliance and rapidly de-escalate tensions;
• resolve allegations of non-compliance;
• refer persistent non-compliant behavior by any of the parties and to determine appropriate retaliatory actions.

The formal side of the statement brings up an issue hidden by the main stream media. If the main task force and the ceasefire agreement is set up between the US and Russia, who with whom is in war in Syria? The Russian military grouping is the only force arrived Syria upon the official request of the Syrian government. Thus, according to the international law, the US is an aggressor seeking to seize the Syrian land with hands of its regional partners and proxy forces. It should be noted that Turkey doesn’t play any significant role in the settlement of the conflict because the Erdogan regime isn’t an independent international actor.

The US’s decision speed to agree with the ceasefire shows that the US-led block has really faced a threat of military defeat in Syria. The US-led block can’t dictate terms to Syria and Russia. On the other hand, the Syrian Arab Army and its allies need time to regroup forces and facilities to continue the fight against terrorists.

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For the most part, “everyday people” empathize with other everyday people.

In a world in which a real-time “global conflict tracker” exists, politicians and the news media seem intent on telling their voters and viewers where to focus their full attention.

By some estimates, there are approximately 30 multiple wars and civil wars taking place on the planet right at this very moment.

This brings us to Libya…

There was a time in Libya before the Arab Spring had sprung, and before North American Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 2011 intervention turned the nation into a hotbed for violent extremism. It seems like it was all so long ago. And indeed, it’s been five years since NATO’s so-called ‘kinetic military action’ in Libya, otherwise known as Operation Unified Protector (OUP), an operation that lasted 222 days, requiring some 8,000 personnel and 26,000 sorties that degraded or destroyed some 6,000 targets.

‘WAR IS WAR’ – A school bombed by NATO forces in August 2011. (Photo link aangirfan)

What was the purpose of the 2011 Western-backed military campaign in Libya?

According to American President Barrack Obama, in his own words, “I authorized the Armed Forces of the United States to begin a limited military action in Libya in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians.”

NATO states the following about Operation Unified Protector back in August of 2011:

“Foreign ministers from NATO Allies and non-NATO partners agreed to continue OUP until all attacks on civilians and civilian populated areas ended, the Qadhafi regime withdrew all military and para-military forces to bases, and the regime permitted immediate, full, safe and unhindered access to humanitarian aid for the Libyan people.”

It bears repeating–NATO and Western actions in Libya were conducted “until all attacks on civilians and civilian populated areas ended” in order permit “immediate, full, safe and unhindered access to humanitarian aid for the Libyan people.”

All of the above Western-backed goals to help the people of Libya, could only be achieved by taking out the nation’s leader pictured below…

‘REGIME CHANGE’ – Muammar Gaddafi, deposed Libyan leader. (Photo Time)

Ironically, five years later, the only thing really achieved by Western nations with regard to Libya, is the removal Muammar Gaddafi. The plight of the Libyan people, allegedly the reason for military intervention, appears to be worse than ever.

No one is alleging Muammar Gaddafi was a model human being, but when he was in power, there was not, literally, city-sized waves of Libyan refugees, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, fleeing Libya for Tunisia, Egypt,  Europe and beyond, as seen below.

‘REFUGEE RACE’ – It’s so great after Muammar Gaddafi we can’t wait to get out of here alive. (Photo link blog.livedoor) 

The Libyan refugees simply did not wake up one morning and flee the country by the hundreds of thousands for the first time in the nation’s history. This all happened after Muammar Gaddafi was rendered useless and ultimately killed, thanks to the Western and NATO military backed campaign in 2011.

What about the people? NATO and the President of the United States said that military action was for the oppressed Libyans right?

Let’s take a detour to Syria before returning to Libya…

Libya: By Way of Contrast and Detour into Syria.

Syria, just as Libya, was part of the Arab Spring.  However, Syrian leader, Bashir al Assad, is still in power and there have been increased reports of the Syrian government stabilizing and regaining lost territory.

You can read a recent 21WIRE report on Russian and Syrian success against ISIS HERE.

The effectiveness of the recent Russian-assisted gains made by the Syrian Army in their fight against ISIS seem to be a source of frustration for the American government.

The New York Times writes, that if “a cease-fire is negotiated here [Syria], it will probably come at a moment when Mr. Assad holds more territory, and more sway, than since the outbreak of the uprisings in 2011.” Adding that it may “force Mr. Kerry and President Obama, once again, to consider their Plan B: a far larger military effort, directed at Mr. Assad.”

We see the frustration of the government echoed within Western media – as seen in the CNN video report below…

Note the spin and disappointment of the reporter talking about recent gains made by the Syrian government, as well as the lack of chaos and fleeing refugees within the government controlled areas of Syria he’s broadcasting from.

Finally, Newsweek reports that, “Russia’s commitment to fighting islamist [sic] militants in Syria has been questioned by NATO, U.S , U.K. and France who have cast suspicion that Moscow may be using the airstrikes to help Assad consolidate power.”

You still have to wonder – is unseating Syria’s President Assad the true objective for Western allies and other transnational partners or eradicating ISIS?

Are both a means to destabilize the area for an expensive war and rebuilding process with NATO-approved “good neighbors” and compliant business partners?

President Obama’s declaration that defeating ISIS is the top priority is even a sketchy premise within his own administration. President Obama’s former Defense Intelligence Agency Director, and now retired, Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn stated, “You have to really ask the President, what is it that he actually is doing with the [Syrian] policy that is in place, because it is very very confusing.”

All the while, the public has a front row seat screening the fight between Assad and ISIS, through the myopic lens of Western media. One might think that the real reason is financial, as there appears to zero regard for human suffering within the region. (Doesn’t this feel a lot like Saddam Hussein’s reign, the Iraq War, and the lead up to not finding Weapons of Mass Destruction?)

Unlike the American led campaign against ISIS, where the United States’ Department of Defense states there has been an “average daily cost is $11.4 million for 511 days of operations,” against a staggering 21,000 targets through 2015, the Russian assisted Syrian Army has had more success in stabilizing the region against ISIS.

Speaking of ISIS as a priority, let’s return to the discussion about the current state of affairs in Libya…

Is it really a surprise that ISIS has been building up a presence in Libya, when you consider the fact that Russian air power assisted the Syrian government around the same time?

With Gaddafi out of the equation for several years now and the refugee exodus spiraling even further out of control – there’s no doubt that Libya is worse off.

If “seeing is believing,” then watch the video below where BBC reporter Felas Kilani eloquently opens with, “Bengahzi, the city united in revolution, is now at war with itself.”

Approaching a year from the above report, it is of note that it mentions various jihadist groups being fought against were pledging allegiance to “IS” or Islamic State, commonly referred to as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).

The above video demonstrates that tensions in Libya have been on the rise but for the most part, out of the mainstream media’s focus. Furthermore, any future and seemingly inevitable actions within Libya, as well as the requisite and sensationalized news reports that go along with it, should not be taken out of context, nor should they surprise anyone.

This is how the media controls both sides of a story – through a muddy maze of synthetic reality…

Since ISIS took the global stage in 2014, the media has been prepping the public that the group would spread abroad, beyond the borders of both Syria and Iraq.

It’s as if ISIS is ‘diversifying’ their portfolio of terror. If ISIS ‘terror stocks’ are down in Syria, invest in Libya.

Now the group is alleged to be a global threat stretching from San Bernardino, California, in the United States, to the jungles of the Philippines and beyond.

‘FILIPINO TERROR? – The Filipino group seen above, is said to have recently pledged to ISIS. (Photo link yahoo)

Remaining in Syria though, let’s not forget Obama and NATO’s desire to help the Libyans during their deeply troubling humanitarian crisis back in 2011. In fact, as a result of the Western-backed NATO campaign in 2011 used to oust Gaddafi – the instability has only grown.

So any future reports of a sudden humanitarian need, or desire for security, will be presented as if the situation in Libya spontaneously happened. At best, reports will speak of a security vacuum left after the death of Gaddafi.

One thing is nearly certain however, and that is that ISIS will likely be the reason to go into Libya, to secure it, with the end objective being to rebuild it and stabilize it on Western terms, not unlike Iraq.

If the ISIS “terror threat” to the Western nations, or the “on-again off-again” humanitarian crisis are a little too transparent for you, then the reason to go into Libya could very simply be economic.  Staying with the familiar theme of Foreign Interest in The Middle East, the oil and natural resources could be “the reason,” or among the reasons, for outside intervention.

Why not combine terror, the refugee crisis, and any humanitarian issues into one and invoke the scourge and face of terror know as ISIS?  U.S. News and World Report states, the “Islamic State group now looks to expand its de facto caliphate, actively working to take control of the country’s estimated 48 billion barrels of oil and establish a stronghold just 350 miles south of Italy.”

Future ISIS attacks within NATO countries and their allies, any potential “boiling over” of the refugee crisis, and the potential stabilization or defeat of ISIS in Syria, are all just some of the reasons—and perhaps all that is needed—for the media push for military intervention with troops on the ground and the highly desired backing of at least most of the public.

The NATO and Western interest in Libya is nothing new, as seen in this detailed article by James Petras.  In fact, Libya, once a colony of the Italian Empire, was intended to be made into three separate portions. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya writes:

“During the Second World War the Libyans allowed Britain to enter their country to fight the Italians and the Germans. Benghazi fell to British military control on November 20, 1942, and Tripoli on January 23, 1943.  …  London intended to administer the two Libyan provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica separately as colonies, while Paris was given control over the region of Fezzan.”

The plan to divide Libya into three was known as the Bevin-Sfora Plan; although it never passed the United Nations assembly (missing by one vote), the possibility of multiple states where Libya once existed, is as possible now as it ever was.

Over sixty years ago, Libya was nearly divided up as depicted below, as administered by France and Britain.

‘DIVIDE & RULE’ – Bevin-Sfora Plan (Photo link globalresearch)

Today, Libya faces a distinct possibility of going back to the future and something closer to the 1951 Bevin-Sfora Plan.

As of this article, Libya is effectively two governments with a huge ungoverned populace between both of them. One is led by Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni, centered in Bayda, Libya. Khalifa al-Gwell is the other Prime Minister, based Tripoli, who runs the other Libyan Government. 

Both men and their respective Libyan Governments are fighting for control of —surprise — the 800,000 barrels of daily oil production. The two governments are also brokering and positioning for a potential “Unity Government,” as brokered by the United Nations.

It is as if everyone outside of Libya is planning for the Libyans future, and ISIS is becoming a large part of that equation. The Rand Corporation, in their February 3rd, 2016 article entitled “The Three Challenges of Countering ISIS in Libya,” declared the following:

“To take the fight beyond Iraq and Syria, globally, the United States and its allies will need a clear strategy and resources. Lacking this, defeating ISIS in Libya could just displace the group elsewhere in the region — or the world.”

Meanwhile, the mainstream media as reposted here by Yahoo!, points out that the ISIS numbers are down in Syria but have increased to around 5000 in Libya.

Any government in Libya, or “both” governments in Libya, are likely to want outside assistance in their fight for control and against ISIS.

In fact, Pentagon Spokesperson Peter Cook, states there are Special Forces within Libya assessing the situation in what appears to be a “fact finding” exercise prior to any commitments.

Many oil and resource rich nations of the region have been both friends and devils. Whether it is a CEO, a mafia boss, or a politician, it’s not personal — it’s just business.

Like with business, sometimes there are agreements between nations. Other times there are under-handed public relations campaigns, or even literal hostile takeovers that play out over days or even decades.

If you “felt like you’ve seen this game before” it is because you have.

Comply, step down, or else…

‘DEVIL’S DEAL’ – Donald Rumsfeld, “company man” for the Reagan and both Bush administrations, and special envoy to Iraq in this 1983 video still, meets with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. (Photo link twitter)

Dr. Ramzy Baroud writes in August of 2015:

It is becoming clearer that Libya, once a sovereign and relatively wealthy nation, is becoming a mere playground for a massive geopolitical game and large economic interests and ambitions. Sadly, Libyans themselves are the very enablers behind the division of their own country, with Arab and Western powers scheming to ensure a larger share of Libya’s economic wealth and strategic value.

‘TURNING THE SCREW’ – Muammar Gaddafi seen with Barack Obama. (Photo link twitter)

The ‘economic wealth and strategic value’ of Libya, stated above, were not so easy to acquire with Libyan leader Gaddafi still in power.

In the end, Gaddafi appears to have been a mere detour for the West, no matter how many governments and sub-divisions of people and land it takes to get there.

Editorial Comment

Has Haiti’s 38-square-mile offshore island, Ile de La Gonâve been sold outright to foreign interests or transformed into a tax haven where Haiti maintains ownership only of the territory?

Neither of these. Not if we fight. On January 7, 2016 Michel Martelly published a decree to cede this island with about 80,000 residents to a poorly defined entity called the “Gonave Island Financial Center.” It is possible that Michel Martelly, a fraudulently installed occupation president, signed this decree while his son was being threatened with actions related to alleged charges that have apparently been sealed. Whether or not this is so, given the contents of the decree, Martelly and any other signatory deserve to be prosecuted by Haitian justice for treason.

To the United States and France, which are certainly behind this deal, I ask: what do you call former slave-owners that connive to rip off the so-called “poorest country in the western hemisphere?” Let this become part of your names in perpetuity.

All is not lost. Haiti is not its president’s fiefdom, and Martelly never had the authority to sell part of the country. Any contract involving the Haitian State must be presented to the population, and it must be discussed, amended as required for its legality and other aspects, and ratified by the parliament.

It therefore behooves the Haitian population, now more than ever, to remain firm in its insistence that the August 9 and October 25, 2015 legislative election results must be verified. The parliament, which is being qualified as a den of rogues by Haitian rights organizations, should be rid of the criminals who are currently hiding in it because of the immunity it confers on them against criminal prosecution.

For a credible story about La Gonâve, I contacted Professor Beguens Theus, a political scientist and socio-demographer who was La Gonâve’s Representative to Haiti’s Lower House from 2011 to 2015. Mr. Theus was born and raised in Ile de la Gonâve, where he currently resides. He provided me with the following text of a lecture that he recently gave to a group of law students of the Bar Association of the city of Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti.*

Dadi Chery

Haiti Must Invalidate Decree to Cede La Gonave

Professor Beguens Theus

La Gonâve, with its geo-economic-touristic configuration, insularity, hospitable people, healthy climate, beautiful sea, appetizing seafood, delicious coconuts, beautiful sands and attractive shores, offers enormous endogenous potential for its development and that of Haiti. One has only to add the necessary infrastructure that it lacks for it to become the jewel of Haiti and the eco-touristic center of the world. With respect to its investment needs, however, should we accept everything even if it robs us of our rights and freedoms? Let us briefly examine the main points of the January 7, 2016 Decree with 111 articles, some of which are like poisoned candy and others of which are unconstitutional.

1. Land ownership

The decree to establish the Gonave Island Financial Center, in its Article 4, stipulates that “To achieve its mission, the Center may acquire all property, movable and immovable; execute all works or major works that it needs and act as the owner… pledge, give as security, mortgage, give as a guarantee its properties with the permission of the Board of Directors. “And,” on the territory available to the Center, it will be free to subdivide or parcel out, grant farming and rental rights to its residents, receive dues and provide for its needs…” according to Article 6. “Companies or other entities established by the Center may be fully owned by persons or entities who are not nationals or residents of Haiti,” declares Article 56.

Articles 4, 6 and 56 give to foreigners of the Center ownership of all the property of the land area in question for free and without compensation to the local population.

Further, Article 55 says, “Money and other property belonging to entities of the Center or the entire company, persons established or residents in the Center and/or the Financial District are not subject to nationalization procedures, expropriation and/or other restrictions with regard to personal property.”

So this is a perpetual contract granting to the said Center the local land, which in the future may not be nationalized, expropriated or subjected to any form of restriction by the State.

2. Petroleum exploitation

The Center can, not only dispose of movable and immovable property of the terrain, but also eventually of petroleum products of the subsoil via facilities and oil refineries. “The entities of the Center… will not do or allow anything that would be likely to affect the scope of the Financial District, be it installations or oil refineries, toxic residues or wastes,” says Article 57.

Thus, any 5-year-old child understands that the wealth belongs only to the owner and that it can dispose of this wealth without any restriction, as previously wanted by the preceding Articles 4, 6, 55 and 56.

3. Tax exemption

The entities and employees of the Center are exempt from taxes, fees and customs duties. “The entities and employees of the Center are not subject to the payment of taxes, customs duties or other taxes or duties relating to their activities at the Center and the Financial District. However, Haitian personnel who reside in Haiti and work in the Center are subject to payment of income tax in Haiti,” says Article 54. “International Financial Companies (SFI #1) are exempt from all taxes on the structure of their capital and can choose the most appropriate structure…” says Article 96. “The International Financial Company (SFI # 1) is not subject to capital gains tax or withholding taxes on dividend distribution or payment of interest on loans granted to third parties or subsidiaries,” concludes Article 98.

This latest scandal here wants that only the Haitian staff pay taxes. Not even any compensation is provided to the victims of expropriation in this poisoned treaty that grants to the new foreign owners the wealth of the soil and subsoil of the island under the guise of a project that will bring happiness to all.

To summarize the treaty: everything for them, nothing for us.

4. Unconstitutionality

First, all languages are made official by this decree. “The languages used by the Center are the official languages of the Republic of Haiti, meaning Haitian Creole and French, and the language of the international financial community, that is to say English and any other language that may be necessary for the proper development of business” (Article 7).

When all languages are accepted here, then we can accept and drink the poison as the remedy. Even in the United Nations with more than 190 States, all languages are not allowed.

Second, contrary to the Constitution, which reserves to the State the ownership of the wealth from the subsoil, the decree grants to the foreign owners of the Center, for an unlimited period, the movable and immovable wealth from the soil (Articles 4, 6, 55, 56) and subsoil (oil) wealth of La Gonâve (Article 57), simultaneously undermining the national territorial integrity.

Recall that only one fuzzy section of the Guantanamo lease of February 23, 1903 was enough for the United States to take ownership of this Cuban territory in perpetuity. This article says that the Cuban-American treaty (lease) can only be terminated with the consent of the US or both contracting parties. Contrary to simpletons who believe that from the January 7, 2016 Decree will come the happiness of the island, one should keep in mind that now the wealth of the soil and subsoil would belong in perpetuity to the owners of the Center and may not thereafter be nationalized or expropriated or become the objects of any restriction (Article 55).

5. Recommendations

It is up to the Haitian parliament to clean up the said decree by deleting the poisoned-candy Articles 4, 6, 7, 54, 55, 56, 57, 96, 98 before entering into, if possible and still viable, the implementation of the ambitious project therein, on one hand; and adding a renewable maturity period into the “lease” and a more meaningful integration of the local population, on the other hand.

Sources: Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free. | Beguens Theus is the author of a three-volume work on Haitian history titled État de l’État. | Photos one by Sam H. Sloan; two, four, seven, and eight by baturricodeviaje; three from US Naval Surface Warriors; five by C. Bertel; and six by Ben Waldman. | The above lecture is available in French from RFI.

Translated from the French by Dady Chery

Abandoned houses, shelled vehicles, and ruins everywhere were the desolate remains of cities and towns that an RT crew witnessed while flying over areas ravaged in the war with Islamic State militants in Iraq.

The first place RT’s crew viewed by helicopter was the city and suburbs of Fallujah in Anbar province. Once a prosperous place called “a city of mosques,” it now appears to be completely deserted. Cars caught in shelling and dilapidated buildings where people once lived and prayed now look like scenes from a post-apocalyptic movie.

The main battles have been taking place to the northwest of Fallujah, reports RT Arabic correspondent Ashraf Al Azzawi.

Watch exclusive video footage here

The crew also came to the city of Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province, 50 kilometers from Fallujah. The city was seized by IS militants in May of 2015 after about a week of fighting with governmental forces, but the Iraqi military managed to partially liberate it in December

RT’s camera managed to capture the houses – or what was left of them – blasted by Islamic State terrorists. Some of the buildings are still mined, and thus very dangerous.

In Al-Madiq, a Ramadi suburb that also experienced bloodshed during fighting with Islamic State militants, not a stone had been left unturned. RT’s crew took video showing the positions and tunnels built by the jihadi extremists, which they had to abandon after fierce battles with Iraqi security forces.

Islamic State emerged in Iraq in 2013 as an Al-Qaeda affiliate. In 2014, the terror cell attacked Kurdish-held territory in the northern part of Iraq and seized territories in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, including the cities of Mosul and Tikrit. By August of 2014, IS controlled nearly a third of Iraq.

However, Iraqi security forces have been making gains recently with the help of the US-led coalition’s air support.

On February 12, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi claimed that Iraq had won back half of the IS-controlled territory.

This is an updated and amended piece originally published in 2015 which includes new information and new links to journal articles

Despite what many people might think, small farms actually produce most of the world’s food: a lower estimate is 53% for the world as a whole, but others have put the figure at 75%.

The UN Environment Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food all estimate that small farmers produce up to 80% of the food in non-industrialised countries.

The importance of smallholder/family farms can also be viewed from the perspective that they meet between 34% and 114% of domestic calorific requirements across the globe.

These figures are all the more impressive when we consider that existing policy frameworks are often not supportive of small farms and are even outright hostile towards them (for example, see this by the Oakland Institute). Facilitated by an appropriate policy framework, it is therefore reasonable to assume that smallholders could feed the global population.

Throughout the world, however, there is a concerted effort to remove smallholder farmers from the land. They are being squeezed onto less and less land (25 percent, according to GRAIN, but 53 percent, according to this paper), and the world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of big agribusiness, institutional investors and the powerful moneyed classes. If nothing is done to reverse this trend, the world could lose its capacity to feed itself.

In India, small farms account for around 92% of all farms and occupy around 40% of all agricultural land (see this report by GRAIN). They form the bedrock of food production. Yet, as in many other places, the policy framework within which they operate is making farming financially non-viable for them to carry on.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers have taken their lives since 1997, and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops and economic ‘liberalisation’. Facilitated by the WTO and the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, there is a deliberate strategy to make agriculture financially non-viable for India’s small farms, to get most farmers out of farming and to impose a World Bank sanctioned model of agriculture.

The aim is to displace the current model and replace it with a system of chemical-intensive industrial (GMO) agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns That system will determine what is grown, who grows it, how it is grown, who processes it, how it is processed and who sells it.

From seed to plate, transnational agribusiness and retailers will determine everything. This is the pay-off for India’s nuclear agreement with the US and is the impetus behind the Knowledge Agreement on Agriculture.

If you want to see the kind of impact this could have, look no further than what has happened in Mexico on the back of NAFTA, in terms of rising food insecurity, bad food and health and poisoned agriculture (not to mention a devastated economy with former workers driven into the arms of drug cartels to make a living).

It’s not difficult to see where policy makers’ priorities lie in India, as trade and food policy analyst Devinder Sharma highlights:

“Agriculture has been systematically killed over the last few decades… because the World Bank and big business have given the message that this is the only way to grow economically… 60 percent of the population lives in the villages or in the rural areas and is involved in agriculture, and less than two percent of the annual budget goes to agriculture… When you are not investing in agriculture… You are not wanting it to perform…”

The great Indian con-trick

There is a huge con-trick taking place in India: support given to agriculture is portrayed as a drain on the economy and is reduced, while the genuinely massive drain of tax breaks, bail outs, sops, tax avoidance and evasion that benefit industry and the rich are afforded scant attention. Despite these advantages, industry has failed to deliver. And yet regardless of the gross under-investment in agriculture, it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year.

Devinder Sharma continues:

“In the last 10 years, we had 36 lakh crore going to the corporates by way of tax exemptions. Where are the jobs? They just created 1.5 crore (15 million) jobs in the last ten years. Where are the exports? … The only sector that has performed very well in this country is agriculture. Year after year we are having a bumper harvest. Why can’t we strengthen that sector and stop the population shift from the villages…?” (36 lakh crore is 36 trillion rupees: 68 rupees = 1 USD)

What we are witnessing is an illogical, ongoing attack on the smallholder farmer.

It is illogical not least because there is consistent evidence from peer-reviewed papers that small-scale farms are often more productive per unit area, generate more jobs and money within local economies than large-scale industrialsed farms and contain more agrobiodiversity and are more resilient and contribute better to dietary diversity. Dietary diversity is a key indicator of overall food security.

It therefore comes as little surprise that the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report stated that smallholder, traditional farming can deliver food security in low-income countries through sustainable agri-ecological systems.

So why eradicate this model of farming?

This is an issue that the FAO raises.

In 2013, the FAO’s High Level Panel of Experts (2013) stated:

“the fact that smallholder agriculture is able in some cases to outperform large-scale agriculture in terms of yield should be reason enough to concentrate on the question of overcoming the problem of limited or restricted access to factors and inputs to production, rather than to focus on the change of model/scale.”

Yet, regardless of the clear advantages of small-scale farms, India’s policy makers are intent on changing the model. There seems to be a blind rush towards displacing farmers and a belief that the corporate-industrial sector to can pave the way to a brighter future.

Corporate-industrial India has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs, despite the massive hand outs and tax exemptions given to it [see this and this]. The number of jobs created in India between 2005 and 2010 was 2.7 million (the years of high GDP growth). According to International Business Times, 15 million enter the workforce every year.

With GDP growth slowing and automation replacing human labour the world over in order to decrease labour costs and boost profit, there are no jobs to cater for the hundreds of millions of agricultural workers who are to be displaced from the land or those whose livelihoods will be destroyed as transnational corporations move in and seek to capitalise food-related sectors that currently employ tens of millions.

While there is no logic to what is taking place, it is clear to many why it is happening. India’s development is being hijacked by the country’s wealthy ruling elite and multinational corporations. Farmers are being sold out to corporate interests whose only concern is to how secure profits: Monsanto has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars from small farmers in India, who live on a knife edge.

Thanks to its political and commercial influence, Monsanto has already captured the cotton industry in India with its GMOs. It is increasingly shaping agri-policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the ‘contemporary East India Company‘, and regulatory bodies are now severely compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest where decision-making over GMOs are concerned.

The Monsanto enterprise in India is a corrupt one, something that the pro-GMO lobby conveniently ignores. Just like it chooses to ignore the fraudulent way by which GMOs were placed onto the commercial market in the US. Vandana Shiva notes that on a global level Monsanto imposed the false idea of ‘manufacturing’ and ‘inventing’ seeds in order to slap patents on them or in India’s case extract massive royalties. Its collection of these royalties as ‘trait value’ or as a ‘fee for technology traits’ is an intellectual property rights category that does not exist in any legal framework. It was concocted by Monsanto lawyers to work outside of the laws of the land and is thus illegal. Furthermore, the introduction of GMOs without approvals, and thus Monsanto’s original entry into India, was a violation and subversion of India’s biosafety regulations.

To compound the deceptions, transnational agribusiness forwards the myth that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. Its claims are always hidden behind a flimsy and cynical veil of humanitarian intent (helping the poor and hungry), which is easily torn away to expose the hypocrisy and self-interest that lies beneath. The world does not need GM to feed itself. These humanitarian sentiments are little more than a Trojan horse aimed at securing greater control of food and agriculture.

The roots of hunger and food poverty result from structural factors, including trade, distribution problems, lack of personal income and the increasingly globalised system of industrialised agriculture and food production (for instance, see this and this). The companies behind the GM project are part of that system: they fuel it and profit from it. Through patents and royalties, GM is little more that a strategy to secure greater profits and greater control over food and agriculture.

India’s Standing Committee on Agriculture unequivocally concluded that GM seeds and foods are dangerous to human, animal and environmental health and directed the former Government of Manmohan Singh to ban GMOs.  Despite this and the recommendations to put a hold on open field GM trials by the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee, such trials have been green-lighted.

The GM biotech sector should not be trusted. As the sector’s largest player, Monsanto is responsible for knowingly damaging people’s health and polluting the environment and is guilty of a catalogue of decades-long deceptive, duplicitous and criminal practices.

The sector attempts to control the ‘science’ around its product, places restrictions on any independent research into its products, censors findings that indicate the deleterious impacts of its products and attacks scientists who reach conclusions not to its liking.

It cannot demonstrate that yields are better, nutritional values are improved, health is not damaged or that harm to the environment does not occur with the adoption of GMOs. Independent studies and evidence, not inadequate industry funded or back ones, have indicated yields are often worse and pesticide use has increased, health is negatively impacted, soil is damaged and biodiversity is undermined, among other things (this report with links to numerous official reports and peer-reviewed papers supports these claims).

Transnational Agribusiness and US strategy

The US has for many decades used agriculture as a means of subjugating other nations. The oil-rich Rockefeller family set out to control and profit from global agriculture via the petrochemical-dependent ‘green revolution’. Along with other players, such as Cargill Grain Company, Rockefeller interests set out to destroy family farms in the US and the indigenous agriculture and food security of other countries. This hegemonic export-oriented, dollar strengthening strategy was actively supported by their stooges in the US government (for a brief summary of what occurred, see this) and facilitated globally through ‘free’ trade agreements, the IMF, World Bank and WTO. Thanks to the agritech corporations, GMOs now represent the ultimate stranglehold of US interests over food via seed patenting and intellectual property rights.

Of course, GM is phase two of the green revolution. The mainstream narrative about the green revolution is that it was a hugely successful humanitarian venture that saves tens of millions of lives. We are now hearing the same rhetoric to promote GM. Recently deceased farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save outlines here why the green revolution was a disaster for India and any speculative assessments or rhetoric about its successes must be placed within a suitable context and contested.

Despite compliant politicians and officials in high places in India who seem hell-bent on capitulating to transnational agribusiness interests, many recognise the dangers and are actively campaigning in favour of traditional agriculture. However, they are attacked and accused of slowing down growth. Certain activists and civil organisations are also accused of working against the national interest by colluding with foreign interests to undermine‘development’. The hypocrisy is obvious: the state itself has for a long time been colluding with foreign interests to undermine the basis of traditional agriculture.

This is similar to the type of cynical attack we see all over the world. Taking the case of GMOs, any resistance to their introduction is portrayed as robbing food from the bellies of the poor and as ‘anti-human’. While espousing fake concern for the poor in order to help line the pockets of big agribusiness, the pro-GMO lobby says nothing about the structural violence waged on rural communities thanks to agri-business-backed IMF/World Bank/WTO policies or the devastating effects of GMOs in places like South America.

While dodging these issues, that lobby sets out to denigrate opponents and to portray the real solutions (as opposed to the bogus GM solution) its critics offer for hunger and poverty as being ideologically driven. This lobby has been unable to win the debate on GM, so slick PR, dirty tricks and smears have become the order of the day. Its twisted logic effectively attempts to side-line reality. For example, GM is being cynically offered as a solution to reduce edible oil imports, which India was virtually self-sufficient in prior to trade rules decimating indigenous production: a case of running down a sector and then offering a bogus solution as the remedy to reduce the reliance on imports.

The political backing for GMOs by the US State Department, the strategic position of the US GM biotech sector in international trade agreements (from TTIP to the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture) and at the WTO and the push to get GMOs into India does not bode well.

The GMO onslaught in India is ultimately part of a US-led neoliberal invasion (and part of a global war on working people – whether they are smallholders in India or workers in Greece or the US), resulting in the selling off to private concerns of seeds, retail, water, airports, land, industry, energy, telecommunications, etc.

If the beneficiaries are not always India’s ruling elite, then they are its senior associates in the interlocking directorate of state-corporate interests in the West who have plundered their own economies and are now plundering the rest of the planet under the guise of ‘globalisation’. Those behind this project regard the folk whose lands are taken, wealth appropriated and livelihoods stripped away as ‘collateral damage’.

Part of the strategy is a massive PR campaign that involves trying to convince the public that all of this is necessary and represents progress.

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,

I write this letter to you with a heavy heart as it pains me deeply to see the beautiful dream of a strong and proud Israel, the country that was expected to embrace what is virtuous, moral, and just, now losing its reason for being—as a free and secure Jewish state living in peace and harmony with its neighbors.

The state’s social fabric is being torn apart by political divisiveness and economic injustice. The country is increasingly isolated, degenerating into a garrison state surrounding itself with walls and fences, vilified by friends and reviled by enemies.

As the Prime Minister who served longest in this position, the country is virtually crumbling under your watch. The question is, where are you leading the people, and what will be in store for them tomorrow as Israel is now at a fateful cross-road and facing an uncertain future?

Certainly you and those who follow you in good faith will disagree with my analysis, but I urge you to look carefully into the dire issues I am raising here as they unfold, for which you are now more responsible than any of your predecessors.

You conveniently surround yourself with a corrupt political elite—ministers with no morals, no compunction, and nothing but an insatiable lust for power. They are consumed by their personal political agendas and absorbed in domestic corruption and intrigues.

You have several such ministers—among them a Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, who endorsed the idea that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” which is nothing short of a call for indiscriminate killing that will include “its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its properties and its infrastructure”; an Education Minister, Naftali Bennett, who wants to annex most of the West Bank without giving a single thought to the ominous danger that such an ill-fated scheme would inflict on Israel; and a Cultural Minister, Miri Regev, who is out to stifle freedom of the arts and expression—who make a mockery of Israel’s democratic foundation and institutions.

You backed three draconian bills: one would suspend Knesset members who deny Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; the second would withdraw funding from cultural institutions deemed “not loyal” to Israel; and the third would require leftwing NGOs who receive foreign funding to label themselves as such in any publication (while exempting privately-funded right-wing NGOs). You are enveloped in an ideological siege with a ghetto mentality and selective religious precepts, supported by a blind chorus of parliamentarians that only echoes your distorted tune.

You manipulate the public with national security concerns and falsely connect security to borders, only to usurp more Palestinian land and defend the ruinous settlement policy.

You delight in facing an inept political opposition—relegated to a permanent state of suspension—and are thrilled to see them decaying with no political plans to challenge you to find a solution to the endemic Palestinian conflict on which you politically thrive. With these lame opposition parties sitting on the fringes of political despair, they have now become easy to co-opt in support of your misguided domestic, foreign, and Palestinian-targeted policies, all in the name of national unity.

You still boast about Israel’s economic prowess, when in fact the economy as a whole is in a state of stagnation and labor productivity is the lowest among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and a handful of billionaires control the financial heart of the state while tens of thousands of families are scrambling to survive.

More than 1.7 million Israelis are living in poverty—775,000 of whom are children—while hundreds of millions of dollars are siphoned off to spend on illegal settlements and hundreds of millions more are spent to protect the settlers, leaving Arab villages and towns with mostly Middle Eastern Jews to rot.

The gulf between the rich and poor is widening. The top 10 percent of the population earns 15 times that of the bottom 10 percent, making Israel one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. Tourism is diving, foreign investments are plunging, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is gaining momentum.

The corruption and criminality among top officials is staggering; more than 10 ministers and at least 12 members of the Knesset have been convicted of crimes over the past 20 years alone. Former President Moshe Katsav and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were sentenced to seven years and 19 months in prison, respectively. Scores more were indicted, but escaped punishment through various legal loopholes often accorded to top officials.

You discriminate against Israeli Arabs (who constitute 20 percent of the population) with your government’s policy of unequal treatment, and then question their loyalty to the state.

Radical Zionists like you claim that a multi-culturist Israel cannot survive – that apartheid, or something like it, is the only viable alternative – essentially repeating the argument which was used in earlier European history against the Jews themselves.

I might add with deep sorrow that discrimination is not confined to the Israeli Arabs, but extends to Middle Eastern and Ethiopian Jews four generations after the establishment of the State of Israel. The May 2015 violent clashes between police and Jews of Ethiopian origin only reveal the depth of Israel’s social disparity.

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, from your own Likud Party, could not have made the reality more painfully clear than when he stated, “Protesters in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv revealed an open and bloody wound in the heart of Israeli society. This is a wound of a community sounding the alarm at what they feel is discrimination, racism and disregard of their needs. We must take a good hard look at this wound.”

Demographically, the country is facing a grave danger. The number of Israelis emigrating from Israel is roughly equal to the number of those who immigrate to Israel. Nearly one million Israelis, representing 13 percent of the population, emigrated from Israel in the past 20 years. Several polls consistently show that given the opportunity, 30 percent of Israelis would consider leaving the country, mainly for economic reasons and the lack of a prospect of ending the debilitating conflict with the Palestinians.

In particular, the immigration of young American and European Jews to Israel is consistently trending downward. Many of them have lost the sense of pioneering spirit and excitement that gripped their earlier counterparts who wanted to be a part of a historic enterprise unmatched by any in contemporary human experience.

The PalestiniansYou treat the Palestinians in the territories like objects, to be used and abused contingent on the call of the hour. You violate their human rights with brazen impunity and never came to grips with the debilitating and dreadful impact of nearly 50 years of occupation.

You scornfully claim, “The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.”  You never wanted to understand the meaning of being utterly overpowered by another, of having one’s house raided in the middle of the night, terrifying women and children, one’s village arbitrarily divided by the building of fences, one’s home destroyed, and of losing the sense of having any control over one’s life.

Invoking memories of the Holocaust as if to justify the mistreatment of the Palestinians only debases the historical relevance of this unprecedented human tragedy. One would think that those who suffered as much as the Jews would treat others with care and sensitivity. That the victim can become a victimizer is painful to face, but it is a reality nonetheless. Having suffered so much does not give you the license to oppress and persecute others.

US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, no less, put it succinctly when he said, “…too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities…Too much vigilantism [in the West Bank] goes unchecked, and at times there seems to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law, one for Israelis, and another for Palestinians.”

Not that I exempt Palestinians of their role, but by you and your ministers’ own actions and policy toward the Palestinians, you are inciting hostility and ultimately fostering violent extremism. You use national security to justify your prejudicial policies, including the mistreatment of the Palestinians and the expansion of settlements that became the mantra of Israel’s domestic policy, using old and tired talking points about national security which are dismissed as empty, self-convincing gospel.

You speak in support of a two-state solution, but you have never lifted a finger to advance it; your actions only point to the opposite direction. Yes, although the Palestinians have made scores of mistakes and are likely to make many others that will severely undermine their own national interests, they are here to stay.

Israel must determine its own destiny and not leave it to the Palestinians’ whims. You claim that the Palestinians do not want peace, but by being the far more powerful party, you can take a calculated risk, and assume the responsibility to pave the way for eventually reaching a peace agreement instead of further entrenching Israel in the occupied territories. This will make the conflict ever more intractable when coexistence is inevitable under any circumstance.

Time is not on Israel’s side, and even though they are suffering, the Palestinians can wait. You cannot freeze the status quo, and given the regional turmoil, violent extremism targeting Israel will only increase.

Without a carefully thought-out plan to gradually disengage from the occupied territories, there will likely be a million settlers within a few years. This will amount to a de facto annexation of the West Bank, from which Israel will be unable to extract itself without perpetual violent confrontations with the Palestinians and risking a civil war, should a decision be made to evacuate a substantial number of settlers.

Ending the occupation is not a charitable gift to the Palestinians. Only by accepting their right to a state of their own will Israel remain a Jewish and democratic state enjoying peace and security, instead of being drawn toward an abyss from which there is no salvation.

Israel is the only country in the modern era that has maintained, in defiance of the international community, a military occupation for nearly five decades. The Israelis’ complacency about the occupation is adversely affecting Jews all over the world, and as long as the occupation lingers, anti-Semitism will continue to rise.

What has added potency to the substantial rise in anti-Semitism in recent years is your disregard of the international consensus about the illegality of the ettlements, the policy of the continuing occupation, and your disregard of the Palestinians’ suffering and right to self-determination.

Did you consider what would be the ramifications of what you said during the last election, which I believe reflects your true position, that there would be no Palestinian state under your watch? There will be no peace with the Arab states, Jordan and Egypt (regardless of how they feel toward the Palestinians) may well abrogate their peace treaties with Israel under mounting regional and public pressure, the wrath of the EU will be immeasurable, the US will lose patience (if it hasn’t already) and no longer provide Israel with automatic political cover, and the world will blame Israel for feeding into the region’s instability; much of this is already happening.

Israel will constantly live in a state of violence and insecurity, but perhaps this is precisely what you want—to spread fear and use scare tactics to foment public anxiety by painting every Palestinian as a terrorist, as if the occupation has nothing to do with Palestinian extremism.

On foreign policy a sound and constructive foreign policy is foreign to you, which is consequently alienating Israel’s allies and bewildering its friends.

You wantonly discard diplomatic conventions and protocol; you willfully undercut President Obama by addressing a joint session of US Congress, challenging him on the Iran deal only to fail miserably, baffling Democratic and Republican leaders alike.

You clashed with US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro for criticizing Israel’s policy in the West Bank, and condescendingly

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. [email protected] ; Web: www.alonben-meir.com

We are witnessing a major development in the United States as a consequence of the enormous financial, economic, and political crises that have been hurting this country. Wages, the most important variable in determining the standard of living of the popular classes, have been declining for quite some time, as a consequence of the deterioration of the working conditions in the labor market. Good jobs have become very scarce. And the employment sector that has increased the most is for low-paid jobs.

This deterioration, while affecting with special intensity the working class—which, remember, constitutes the majority of the US population—has also affected the middle class, in a process some of us defined some time ago as the “proletarianization of the middle class.” As a consequence, the standard of living of the large majority of the population has been declining, recently reaching its lowest levels in what is known as the “Great Recession.”

Why have the quality of life and well-being of the popular classes declined?

The Great Recession, which for large segments of our population was the Great Depression, had been building up for many years. It did not happen suddenly. If you look at income distribution in the US, you can see that while income derived from capital (property that generates income) has increased since the 1980s (as a percentage of all income), income derived from labor has declined. This is the root of the problem we are facing. The income of the first—a minority—has been increasing enormously at the cost of the second—the majority. Let me add that some of us warned that in the growth of these class inequalities, the seeds of the crisis were planted. I am terribly sorry that we were right. Much suffering has occurred that could have been prevented.

But we have to ask ourselves why this happened. And the answer is easy to see, even though the establishment of this country works forty hours a day to hide and obscure the causes of that enormous harm. Look at the data and you will see. It started with President Reagan in the US and with Prime Minister Thatcher in the UK. They started public interventions to weaken the institutions that historically defended the labor, social, and political rights of the working population. Outside the US, these public interventions are known as “neoliberal policies.” They have included labor market reforms (aimed at lowering wages) and reductions of public social expenditures, with the goal of diminishing the already limited US welfare state. These policies, referred to as “austerity policies” in Europe, have caused enormous harm to the popular classes, awakening movements of opposition on both sides of the North Atlantic. In Spain, we have seen a party—Podemos—that did not exist one year ago become a major force in that country. In the UK, we have seen a large movement of protest against the British establishment, which led the uprising of the grassroots of the Labor Party against its leadership, forcing their ouster and electing the most progressive general secretary the British Labour Party has ever had, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn.

We are indeed witnessing a major protest on both sides of the North Atlantic, against the damage created by public policies that systematically favor capital at the cost of labor, causing enormous harm to people’s health, quality of life, and social well-being. The changes in income distribution that I mentioned are a result of those policies. Popular rebellions have started in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Great Britain, among other countries. Now, the rebellions appear in the US. It started with the Occupy Wall Street movement, clearly inspired by the “Indignados movement” in Spain. The political movement of Occupy Wall Street is the pro-Bernie Sanders campaign.

Popular Rebellions in the US

In the US, there has been, for some time, anger and frustration about the limited democracy that exists in representative political institutions. The splendid slogan that the Indignados movement used in Spain, “no nos representan” (“they do not represent us”), referring to Spanish democratic institutions, also applies to US representative institutions. In the US, these institutions are widely perceived to be controlled by business interests, of what Occupy Wall Street called the top 1% of the population—that is, very small sectors of the population that derive their income from ownership and management of capital. This used to be called the capitalist class or, in the US, the corporate class. Bernie Sanders calls it the billionaire class.

This class holds enormous power in this country that appears in many forms. One is through the privately funded electoral process. In no other country in the Western Hemisphere does the 1% have as much political power as in the US. That class has bought the political process by financing the electoral process. The splendid and inspiring beginning of the US Constitution states that in this country, “We the people decide…” But the power of the billionaire class has changed that sentence, adding an enormous footnote that says, “and the corporate class…” that by its own weight has erased the word “people” from that original sentence. The fact that we, in the US, do not have a national health program that guarantees the basic human right of access to medical care in a time of need is rooted in this reality.

This popular anger and frustration have significantly increased during these years of the Great Recession, which to a large degree was caused by the enormous dominion that financial capital (banks and insurance) have over both branches of the US federal state. And it is this anger toward the political establishment in Washington, DC, that explains what is happening in the Democratic and Republican primaries. The most successful candidates—Donald Trump on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders on the Democrat side—are indicators of this anti-establishment mood of the electorate. Their success has surprised and alarmed the political and media establishments.

The Polarization of Political Life

Trump is, incidentally, the US version of the Le Pen party of France. His movement has characteristics of the ultra-right wing anti-immigrant chauvinist movements (with clear tones of Nazism) that are appearing throughout Europe. It has strong nationalism, with imperialist overtones, led by a man presented as almost superhuman, who uses his success in real estate business (one of the more corrupt speculative sectors of the US economy) as proof of his ability to run the country. Trump indeed represents what a “successful entrepreneur” is supposed to be in the US. Another characteristic of Trump’s candidacy is his authoritarianism and insensitivity to democracy. And, like the French Le Pen party, he claims to have a pro-worker program. Let’s remember that the Nazis and the Fascists called themselves national-socialists. Trump strongly defends Medicare and Social Security in the US. He explicitly runs against the political-media establishments and frequently attacks corporate America, including its media. He is also running against the Republican Party establishment and its media outlets, including Fox. His objective is to attain the vote of the angry, white working class, and the polls show that he is successful. And predict he will continue to be successful.

Socialism in the US?

On the other side of the political spectrum is the socialist Bernie Sanders, who explicitly calls for a political revolution against the “billionaire class” (what used to be called the capitalist class), a class that practically controls the major political institutions such as the US Congress and the major media. His program is similar to what used to be the programs of the social-democratic parties, before social democracy stopped being social democracy (as has happened in Europe). It is true that Sanders is not asking for nationalization of the main means of production, but it calls for a significant redistribution of the country’s resources, increasing the income derived from labor by reducing the amount going to capital. It especially speaks of class struggle, redefined in terms of pitting the majority of the people (what Sanders defines as “middle class and working families”) against the capitalist class, redefined as the “billionaire class.”

The novelty of Bernie Sanders is not only his discourse but also his coherence, matching his discourse with his own biography. He has been fighting for the working class throughout his political life. His speech now is the same as the speech and work he has always practiced. It has, therefore, credibility. It attracts the white working class and the young. The sizes of his audiences are beating records. And it has opened a debate about socialism in America, to a point where, according to recent polls, more Democrats favor socialism than capitalism. He is attracting the white working class and young people, a powerful combination indeed. The exception, however, is limited support from the African American and Latino communities. Why?

Why are African American and women’s organizations not supporting the socialist candidate?

Before answering this question, we have to understand the other candidate, Hillary Clinton, who has the support of the Democratic Party establishment, including the leadership of major organizations in the African American community. The same is occurring, incidentally, with the majority of feminist organizations (like NOW) who support Hilary Clinton, hoping to see, for the first time in history, a woman as president of the US. The support of these two groups (African Americans and women) could play the determining role in the election primaries, making it possible for Hillary Clinton to win over Bernie Sanders.

African American support for Hillary Clinton is due, in part, to sympathy and support for the Clintons, which is surprising, since President Clinton was the major force behind approval of the welfare (means tested) reforms that diminished federal support for poor people. This affected the most vulnerable of the African American population. Professor Kathryn J. Edin of Hopkins University and H. Luke Shaefer of the University of Michigan, in their book $2.00 a Day, showed how the 1996 welfare reform legislation signed by President Clinton reduced federal support for the poor with a devastating impact among the very poor, imposing lifetime limits in cash assistance and increasing the supply of unskilled labor that benefited employers. Hillary Clinton has not criticized or denounced such reforms. Needless to say, her candidacy in the primaries is significantly different and more progressive than any Republican candidacy, all of them profoundly reactionary. But the point is that, without a doubt, the program of Bernie Sanders would benefit the African American community far more than the program of any other candidate, including Hillary Clinton. The evidence is overwhelming. Why then is the African American community supporting Hillary Clinton?

Race and Gender: Power Without Class Power

A similar situation appears among women. Let me stress that the US has some of the largest feminist organizations in the Western world. I should also add that it has the largest organization for the elderly, the AARP. In spite of this, the US is the country where African Americans, women, and the elderly have fewer political, civil, and social rights. African Americans, women, and the elderly have the least health benefits among their equivalents in other developed countries. Women, for example, have the least maternity leave in the Western world (5 weeks without pay). The average in the European Union (EU-15) is 9 months with pay. The elderly have the least coverage of their Social Security and Medicare bills. Almost 40 percent of people in terminal conditions worry about how they or their families are going to pay for their medical bills.

The primary reason for this underdevelopment of human rights is the absence of powerful socialist forces and parties, rooted historically in the working class. This reality, however, is rarely mentioned in the US. It is presented as too “ideological” or antiquated. The scientific evidence that supports this observation, however, is overwhelming. There is no doubt that implementation of Sanders’s proposals would be far more beneficial for the majority of blacks, women, and the elderly than Hillary Clinton’s proposals. No question Hillary Clinton has the best intentions. But, like President Obama, she is a creature of the establishment and a key part of that establishment. That considerably limits what they think, what they want, and what they will be able to do. The solutions for this country will not come from the establishment. You cannot receive significant money and support from corporate America and then promote policies that will curtail its benefits. This is why the socialist candidate is critical of the private funding of US elections. It is a travesty that corrupts the meaning of democracy. It is most unlikely that the president or candidate who receives money from financial capital (that is, from banks and insurance companies) will support the single-payer position that curtails the benefits of those financial institutions. President Obama and candidate Clinton are an example of this.

Why do blacks and women have so few rights in the US?

In the US, one reason for the enormous weakness of blacks, women, and the elderly is that their movements are not based on class but on primarily or only race, gender, or age. Class is what could unite all of them. But class and class policies are basically repressed in the US. This is an indicator of the enormous power of the corporate class. The dominant class does everything possible to have groups that could potentially rebel against the system divided and separated. It allows race and gender discourse, but not class discourse. Needless to say, African Americans and women are divided by class. The objective of the “billionaire class” is to co-opt African Americans and women into the system so they are closer and more aligned to the dominant class. The fact that so little is spoken about class in the US is because the billionaire class does not want people to speak or think in class terms. The politician who saw this reality best was Jesse Jackson, Sr. (I had the privilege of advising him), when he established the Rainbow Coalition. In 1984 he ran as the voice of the minorities. His slogan, “Our time has come,” said it all. The New York Times wrote an extremely supportive editorial that year. Not even Jesse Jackson’s mother would have written such a nice editorial. But in 1988 he presented himself as the voice of the working class. In Baltimore, a working class city par excellence, when he was asked, “How you are going to get the support of the white steelworker?” he replied, “By making him aware he has more in common with the black steel workers by being a worker, than with the boss by being white.” He obtained almost 50 percent of the Democratic delegates in the Atlanta convention. Never before has the left been so powerful in the US (The New York Times incidentally wrote an extremely hostile editorial in 1988).

What about the Latinos (also called Hispanics in the US)?

The reader may have noticed that I, a Hispanic, have not spoken about the Latinos, known also as Hispanics in the US. Yet I have left speaking about Latinos for the end. But last does not mean least. Let me start by making some clarifications. First, while the majority of Hispanics are working class in low-paid sectors, others (primarily those from Cuba) tend to be middle-class exiles from Cuba and Republicans. There are more class differences among Hispanics than among African Americans. This explains their different political behavior. Today, two of the most reactionary Republican candidates are Hispanics, Cruz and Rubio, both originally from Cuba.

But the overwhelming majority of Latinos are indeed working-class individuals from Puerto Rico, Central America, and Mexico. Hispanic people are distinguished by their names (e.g., Navarro) and by their accents, many when they are immigrants, like myself. I was born in Catalonia and Spain, but in the US census category, I am Hispanic (and I am proud of being defined as such). This trait appears even more markedly via my heavy accent (you should know that at Hopkins, in 1968 the students gave me an award for offering the “best course given in a foreign language”). I know what it is to be Hispanic (of the upper middle class, however). But, while I am not insensitive (quite the contrary) to the plight of the majority of Hispanics, my work has focused on class rather than race or ethnicity, fully aware that the best measure to improve the well-being of Latinos and the majority of the working population is to focus on class issues than only on race or ethnic issues.

To do so implies, however, a personal cost. If I had focused on Hispanics primarily, today I might have had (besides a lot of research money) a building named after me. By focusing on class, however, I have had enormous difficulties in doing research on what I wanted to study, because there is little support for researching how to strengthen the working class of the US (including the whites, blacks, yellows, and greens among the population). That is the reality we are living in the US and that you should be aware of. But the new development we are witnessing is that blacks, blues, yellows, greens, and whites may be starting a new movement that could confront the enormous power of the “billionaire class.”

The establishment, including the Democratic Party establishment, keeps enforcing what divides people rather than what unites people. And here is where the leadership of major African American organizations, and the feminist movement, with close links to the establishment, are stressing their own cause without realizing they are harming their own constituencies by not linking their cause with the causes of other groups, with class as the strongest link among them. Please notice that I am not saying “emphasizing class rather than race and gender…” but rather “emphasizing class in addition to race and gender…” For all of these groups, emphasizing class-based policies will get more for their constituents than limiting themselves to their own groups. The evidence in Europe is overwhelming.

Let me finish by stressing what should be obvious: women, the elderly, and ethnic and minority groups have more civil, social, and political rights in Western Europe than in the US. The overwhelming scientific evidence that I show in my teaching and in my books shows this reality. The primary reason is that in Europe, class has played a major role in the guidance of political mobilization, much more than in the US. In other words, socialism has been far more powerful in Europe, and incidentally in Canada, than in the US. This is why the US working population has so few human rights. It is very important and urgent that in your work you show the commonality of class interest that the major components of the popular class in the US have. Let me thus conclude by taking as my point of reference none other than Martin Luther King, Jr., a self-declared socialist, when he said, a few weeks before being assassinated, that “class struggle is the key struggle in the US.”

As with many of his positions, I also agree with this one. It is your responsibility in that conflict that you, as a scientist, working on improving the health and wellbeing of your people, put yourself at the service of the majority of the population, and not at the service of the minority, the billionaire class, which controls or exercises excessive influence on the political, and increasingly the academic, institutions of this country. You will not get many awards or recognition from the establishment and their institutions. But you will feel the satisfaction of having done what needs to be done—many times at even a large personal cost—to oppose so much exploitation and oppression that exist in the US. I hope you agree.

Canadian company TransCanada wants to sue the US for over US$15 billion in damages – because President Obama rejected the contested Keystone XL oil pipeline. A warning sign for extreme corporate rights in EU trade deals such as TTIP and CETA.

Countries around the world have reached a critical moment in the fight against climate change. Last year, hundreds of thousands of people marched in the streets demanding climate action, and renewable energy became more affordable and accessible to communities across the globe. Meanwhile, in sharp contradiction to that, countries negotiated new trade deals that would empower fossil fuel corporations to undermine the exact climate and conservation policies that are needed to tackle the climate crisis.

In January, the Canadian company TransCanada announced its plan to sue the U.S. government for more than US$15 billion under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The company claimed that it deserved this amount as compensation for the Obama Administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline: one of the world’s most notorious and reviled proposed fossil fuel projects, which the Obama Administration rejected amidst widespread concerns of its threat to communities, the environment, and a stable climate. If the environmental community needed a reminder of how trade policies threaten climate progress, it had arrived.

Rather than learning lessons from trade agreements like NAFTA, governments in the United States, the European Union, Canada, and many other countries are now pushing for even more trade and investment agreements that would expand the very tool that TransCanada is using to challenge the rejection of the Keystone KL pipeline: the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system which empowers corporations to sue governments for up to billions of dollars in private trade tribunals.

Corporations have already brought nearly 700 ISDS cases against more than 100 governments.1 Yet governments are seeking to expand these corporate privileges to tens of thousands of additional corporations, including major polluters, in the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the U.S-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

In order to tackle the climate crisis, the U.S., EU, Canada and other countries need to reject “VIP” treatment for corporations and say no to any trade agreement that includes special rights for foreign investors. Doing so is critical in the fight to protect our communities, our democracy, and our climate.

Reading the full briefing (PDF) – How investors use trade agreements to undermine climate action

This morning I was stuck in front of a Fox “News” broadcast for a short period and then with a NPR news program. It was enough to convince me that Nazi propaganda during Hitler’s Third Reich was very mild compared to the constant stream of dangerous lies that are pumped out constantly by the American media.

The New York Times, Washington Post, and a couple of think-tank types were represented on NPR. They delivered the most crude propaganda imaginable and questioned no US government statement.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (image right)

Did you know that all the trouble in Syria is due to the Russians and Assad?

The US has no blame whatsoever. The US is trying to fight ISIS (which the US created, aids and abets), but the evil Russians and Assad are fighting the innocent “democratic rebels” who are trying to bring democracy to Syria as a replacement for a “brutal dictator” (elected by a large majority vote).

The Russians are also bombing schools and hospitals, “collateral damage” when the US does it but war crimes when the Russians are accused of doing it.

The accusers had no evidence for their accusations against Russia beyond the unverified claims of the US government. Despite nonexistent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction,” nonexistent Iranian nukes, and nonexistent use of chemical weapons by Assad “against his own people,” the talking heads continue to accept without question whatever the US government says. I was especially disappointed in Karen DeYoung. As a young reporter she aggressively covered the neoconservatives’ misadventures in Nicaragua. However, to become the Washington Post’s senior foreign affairs reporter she had to give up and join the presstitutes.

Did you know that China was militarizing the South China Sea by building up atolls to accommodate runways and by placing weapons on the site?

It is not militarization when the “exceptional country” allocates 60% of its large fleet to the Pacific, declares the South China Sea, which is thousands of miles from America, to be an area of “American national interest,” and sends warships to patrol the sea. That’s simply “countering the Chinese threat.”

Did you know that the clamor by the British people for UK exit from the European Union has nothing to do with preserving UK national sovereignty and the legal protections of British civil liberty? It is all to do with rejecting refugees, a sign of racism.

Fox “News” informed us that due to his great service to our nation, Justice Antonin Scalia was lying in state in the Supreme Court to be paid homage by both the government representatives and public victims of the police state of which he was an architect. Under Republican leadership the Supreme Court has helped the executive branch elevate its authority above that of the US Constitution, refusing to even hear challenges to indefinite detention. Among Scalia’s accomplishments are:

— Stopping the Florida vote recount in order to install George W. Bush as President

— Kentucky v. King: police should have greater leeway to break into homes without a warrant

— Florence v. Burlington: allowing jail officials freedom of action is more important
than protecting American citizens from debasing strip searches.

Like the Supreme Court the presstitutes have aligned themselves with the rich and powerful. Fox “News” reported that Marco Rubio, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, declared that to make the poor rich requires making the rich poor and we shouldn’t make the rich poor. Apparently, Fox “News” believes that aligning Rubio with the One Percent is helpful to his political career. Fox showed Rubio’s audience cheering and applauding his defense of the One Percent.

This is “democratic America” where the people have no representation.

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.

Video: Vladimir Putin on the Ceasefire in Syria: “I Have Just held a Phone Conversation with President Barack Obama”

By President Vladimir Putin, February 23 2016

Featured image: In this Feb. 17, 2014 photo, Rene Gonzalez, of the “Cuban Five,” poses for a portrait under a framed picture of Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)

“That conscience is ingrained in our internationalism, and is at the essence of our policies of international solidarity. It won’t change just because we establish a normal relationship with the U.S. or any other government,” the Cuban Five’s René González tells MintPress News.

The December 2014 announcement that Cuba and the United States would be normalizing relations was met with both eagerness and suspicion. The diplomatic negotiations which led to the release of the remaining three members of the Cuban Five being held in the U.S. in exchange for USAID subcontractor Alan Gross and an unidentified U.S. spy, also provided the foundations upon which both countries agreed to embark on a new series of diplomatic discussions.

Following a State Department review in April 2015, Cuba was removed from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list — a scheme concocted by the U.S. against Cuba due to the island’s support for revolutionary resistance in South America and Africa. Iran, Sudan and Syria remain on the list.

In August 2015 the U.S. opened an embassy in Havana, ending the historical diplomatic rupture which escalated to U.S. covert and overt actions against Cuba, including over 630 attempts to assassinate former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In his address at the flag raising ceremony at the embassy, Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to the perpetual rhetoric of “democratic transition” in Cuba. Noting that “Cuba’s future is for Cubans to shake,” he continued:

“But the leaders in Havana – and the Cuban people – should also know that the United States will always remain a champion of democratic principles and reforms. Like many other governments in and outside this hemisphere, we will continue to urge the Cuban Government to fulfill its obligations under the UN and inter-American human rights covenants – obligations shared by the United States and every other country in the Americas.”

Yet Kerry failed to acknowledge the United States’ historical and current in role in shaping international dissonance under the guise of democracy.

Meanwhile, as the U.S. wielded its soft power with regard to Cuba, it was also striking against Venezuela with aggressive attempts to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution. The U.S. took part in attempts to sabotage Venezuela, aided in orchestrating a coup against President Nicolás Maduro, and provided political and financial support to the Venezuelan opposition.

The United States’ different attitudes toward these two countries can be viewed as subjugation tactics. The imperialist aggression in Venezuela is reminiscent of the tactics used in Chile, which led to the downfall of democratically-elected socialist President Salvador Allende and the backing of Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship. Cuba, on the other hand, has endured over 50 years of persistent U.S. aggression.

Following terror attacks against Cuba planned by former CIA agents Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, exiled right-wing dissidents embarked upon a series of terror activities targeting tourist sites in Cuba. The Cuban Five were sent to Miami in order to monitor and prevent terror attacks from materializing on the island. Evidence gathered by the Five was eventually passed on to the U.S., which retaliated by arresting and imprisoning the Cuban counter-terror agents in 1998.

On Oct. 7, 2011, René González was the first of the Five to be released. However, additional punitive measures were imposed upon him, with the court mandating a three-year probationary period to be served in the U.S. He was finally granted permission to remain in Cuba after a court-approved visit to attend his father’s memorial service in 2013.

Given the dangerous yet futile attempts of the U.S. to sabotage the socialist movement in Cuba, the alternative option for the U.S. is to infiltrate diplomatically and establish a presence that would facilitate any hypothetical erosion of the Cuban Revolution.

Speaking to MintPress News, González outlines where the U.S. and Cuba diverge politically and in terms of their respective goals for the island nation. Now, González says, the Cuban struggle revolves around questions of how to hold onto the values of the revolution, maintain ties with an imperialist power that is hostile to Cuba, and ensure the survival of socialism in the country.

MintPress News (MPN): Now that the [remaining three members of the] Cuban Five have been released upon diplomatic negotiations between Cuba and the U.S., in what manner will you be continuing the anti-imperialist struggle? Will any future activity — particularly in relation to internationalist solidarity — be hindered by the agreement?

René González (RG): First of all, we have to remember that the agreement between the U.S. and Cuba on December 17, as well as any other step taken by one or both parties after that, has never implied a concession by the Cuban government. The Cuban government has made it crystal clear that our sovereignty and policies are not on the table, in the same way that we don’t impose on the U.S. our views regarding their sovereignty and policies.

International solidarity is a two-way relationship, in which we give solidarity and receive solidarity in return. The struggle for the Five, to give an example, in great part is the result of the answer by millions of people expressing their solidarity with the Cuban people. Most of the peoples of the world share the common destiny of being subjected to exploitation. All of them will be [among] the victims as long as somebody else is being victimized, even if at any given time they are not subjected to direct aggression. As long as somebody is victimized by imperialism, all of us are victims.

That conscience is ingrained in our internationalism, and is at the essence of our policies of international solidarity. It won’t change just because we establish a normal relationship with the U.S. or any other government.

MPN: There have been a lot of conflicting opinions with regard to normalizing ties with the U.S. How does this step fit in with the values of the Cuban Revolution?

RG: We should acknowledge that the normalization of ties with the U.S. is a real conflicting event, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it brings about conflicting opinions.

As a matter of fact, the goals of both parties — the U.S. versus the Cuban government — are by nature in conflict. They see this approach as a better way to restore capitalism and their hegemonic relationship with Cuba, having failed after more than five decades of aggressive policies. We see it as an opportunity to overcome a blockade and policies of aggression which have hindered our capacity to build our socialism.

But when it comes to the values of the Cuban Revolution, one of those values is the principle of having normal relations with the rest of the world, with acceptance of every nation’s system of government and their sovereignty. It wasn’t Cuba that imposed this estrangement between the two countries, but the U.S. government. We would have chosen the path of peaceful coexistence to solve our differences if it was up to us.

So, having a normal relationship with a country which differs from our political system is in agreement with our values. As a matter of fact, Cuba has diplomatic relations with almost every country in the world, regardless of their political system.

That said, we cannot ignore the fact that a relationship with such a big power committed to subverting our socialism, will incur risks regarding our value system. They will try to impose their system of values on us, and for that goal they rely upon lots of resources. It will undoubtedly become a challenge to protect our values under such economical, political and ideological pressures. Awareness of the risks involved is the first defense, but we will have to be clever to transform these events into opportunities and avoid the risks involved, including the erosion of our value system.

MPN: To what extent do you think the US government will cooperate with Cuban requests — particularly an end to the [U.S.] military occupation of Guantánamo?

RG: The two countries have engaged in a long process which will take time to unfold. The U.S. government will try to use any resource as a bargaining chip on this process, and it includes any of the tools now in place as part of the policies of the last half-century. The occupation of Guantánamo, being one of those tools, will be part of that give and take.

I don’t believe that the U.S. government will make any concession out of goodwill. The process of dismantling the policies of the last 57 years will be conditioned by their pragmatic approach to international relations, which has a lot to do with a costs versus benefits analysis. What I hope is that as the process advances, the political costs of keeping in place those instruments of aggression will eventually increase, pushing them in the only direction which is historically right: the lifting of any barrier to the normalization of relations with Cuba, which includes giving back the territory illegally occupied in Guantánamo.

So, when it comes to those issues, our most valuable asset is history itself. We will have to be patient and approach them with a long-term vision. The U.S. base at Guantánamo has little or no practical military use on the age of aircraft carriers. It is kept in place only as part of putting salt on the wounds they have been inflicting upon the Cuban people. Eventually it will be more costly for them, both politically and economically, to keep it in place. Of course, our prerogative is to do everything possible to increase their political costs for keeping that occupation.

MPN: What is the general reaction of Cubans to rapprochement with the U.S.?

RG: I would describe it as cautious optimism. Most of the Cuban population was born and has lived under the blockade and we want it lifted. We want to be allowed to prove that socialism in Cuba is a viable option and the answer to our future. We have fought for that right for 57 years, and view a thaw in the conflict with the U.S. as a triumph of our resistance and determination. We have reasons to celebrate that rapprochement.

On the other hand, we understand the risks and are aware of the U.S. government’s intentions. We know that if things are not done right they might come up with their goal of restoring capitalism in Cuba. We now have to face two challenges as never before: the new imperialist policies, now more subtle and sophisticated, and our own weaknesses and limitations. We look at the future with hope, but at the same time understand that there are big risks associated with our shortcomings, on one hand, and with the policies by the U.S. government, on the other. It is up to us to overcome our shortcomings to prevent their policies from prevailing.

MPN: The U.S. is seeking to establish relations with Cuba and at the same time interfering in Venezuela. How does Cuban internationalism view this contradiction? 

RG: I don’t see it as a contradiction at all. It is consistent with the nature and ways of imperialism. Both policies seek the same outcome that the U.S. government has sought on his dysfunctional relationship with Latin America: to prevent the materialization of the common destiny envisioned by Bolivar and Martí, Fidel and Chavez.

The Cuban Revolution represents the moral compass to the path to that destiny, and the policies of the U.S. government toward Cuba aim to divert that compass from its course. By engaging the Cuban society they seek to subvert our values, and with it kill the example and inspiration that the internationalism and solidarity of the Cuban Revolution embodies for the peoples of Latin America. This approach implies a more soft relation with Cuba.

By contrast, the relationship with Venezuela aims to the destruction of the economic sustenance of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, by launching a war of attrition against the Venezuelan people, which relies heavily on an economic war which cannot be embedded in subtleties. There are no pretensions here. Imperialism relies upon its power to impose hardships on the Venezuelans, as they did before regarding the Cubans.

As for us, again, our solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution is not negotiable. We welcome better relations with the U.S., but it won’t happen if it means turning our backs on those who, during our worst period, were friends with the Cuban people.

The latest report by RealClearPolitics, which includes all polls this month on hypothetical Presidential match-ups in the November general election, indicates that of all the major-Party candidates in the U.S. Presidential contest (Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich), generally the strongest candidate in match-ups against each one of the leading candidates of the opposite Party is Democrat Bernie Sanders. The strongest Republican is John Kasich.

Democrat Hillary Clinton loses by 7.4% to John Kasich, by 4.7% to Marco Rubio, and by 0.8% to Ted Cruz, and she wins by 2.8% over Donald Trump.

Democrat Bernie Sanders wins by 6.0% over Trump, by 4.7% over Cruz, by 0.5% over Kasich, and ties with Rubio.

Consequently, the strongest of all of the candidates, at this point in the contest, is clearly Democrat Sanders (who beats-or-ties all Republicans), but the next-strongest candidate is Republican John Kasich (who easily beats Clinton and virtually ties Sanders).

At this stage in the contest, rational voters whose main concern is to beat the opposite Party will be voting for Sanders if they are Democrats, and for Kasich if they are Republicans.

The most-detailed of the latest polls is the one taken February 10-15 February by Quinnipiac. They summarize it at the opening of their report:

American voters back Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont over Republican candidates by margins of 4 to 10 percentage points in head to head presidential match-ups, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today. The closest Republican contender is Ohio Gov. John Kasich who trails Sanders 45 – 41 percent.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trails or ties leading Republicans in the November face-off.

However, the Fox News Poll that RealClearPolitics includes as being one of this month’s “General Election “ polls wasn’t that, but was instead a survey taken only of South Carolinians. It shouldn’t have been included in this tabulation of “General Election” polls. So, the latest two general-election polls are actually Quinnipiac’s and Suffolk University’s (for USA Today). That USA Today Poll, taken February 11-15, was summarized by USA Today by noting that Hillary Clinton is still the likely winner of the Democratic nomination because of her huge lead in the southern states — the early states, where almost all Democrats are Blacks and intend to vote for Clinton and against Sanders; consequently those southern Democrats might win the Democratic primaries and the nomination for Clinton, despite her being the weaker candidate against the Republican candidates and thus the likelier Democratic candidate to produce a Republican Presidency after November. USA Today also said: “Sanders does slightly better in match-ups against leading Republican candidates,” but noted that Clinton gets 50% of likely Democratic primary and caucus voters while Sanders gets only 40%. Furthermore, in the primaries and caucuses voting within the next two weeks, almost all of the states are southern, so Clinton will probably sweep nearly all of them, which would likely convince Democrats in other states that she’d be the strongest candidate to run against the ultimate Republican choice. This is the reason why bettors have odds favoring Clinton to become the nominee.

According to those two recent general-election polls, there is also an overwhelming likelihood that Trump will win the nomination though Kasich would likely be the far-stronger candidate against the Democratic nominee, regardless of whether that turns out to be Clinton or Sanders.

So, it seems probable that both Parties will reject their strongest candidate — Sanders for the Democratic Party, and Kasich for the Republican Party — because the earliest states to vote will be in the deep south, where racial conflicts have generally been the strongest. Both Party-organizations — Democratic and Republican — made that choice, and it gives the advantage, in both Parties, to the candidates who have exploited racial conflicts the most effectively for their own benefits.

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.

Featured image: President Bill Clinton Laughs It Up as He Signs the Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, November 12, 1999

Thanks to the Presidential debates, most Americans have heard of the Glass-Steagall Act which kept the country’s banking system safe for 66 years until it was repealed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, allowing the risky activities of Wall Street trading firms to merge with insured-deposit banks, setting the stage for the Wall Street collapse in 2008. But few Americans have ever heard of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which Bill Clinton signed into law less than two years after taking office. The Riegle-Neal legislation allowed bank holding companies to acquire banks anywhere in the nation and invalidated the laws of 36 states which had allowed interstate banking only on a reciprocal or regional basis.

Put these two pieces of legislation together with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, also signed into law by Bill Clinton, which allowed trillions of dollars of OTC derivatives on Wall Street to escape regulation, and you have just defined America’s current banking system from hell.

In 1934, there were 14,146 commercial banks with FDIC insurance in the United States. By 1985, that number had barely budged – we had a total of 14,417. But as of this month, we have 6,172 FDIC-insured commercial banks, a decline of 57 percent, with the annual declines accelerating after the passage of Riegle-Neal in 1994.

Making the banking system decidedly grim in terms of both competition and the potential for more taxpayer bailouts, of the current 6,172 banks holding a total of $15.9 trillion in assets, just four banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank, a unit of Citigroup, hold 41 percent of those assets – rendering them too-big-to-fail and an albatross around the neck of the country’s economic prospects and the taxpayers’ pocketbook. (All four of the banks took billions of dollars under the Troubled Assets Relief Program during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and Citigroup received the largest bank bailout in U.S. history: $45 billion in equity infusions, over $300 billion in asset guarantees, and more than $2 trillion in cumulative, below-market rate loans from the Federal Reserve — loans that were initially kept secret from the taxpayer.)

(…)

Read the full article here

The Australian government has little time for the huddled masses who seek to transit to the shores of its continent girt by sea.  Its entrenched gulag system spanning centres at Manus Island and Nauru continues to throw up a host of nasty instances of maltreatment, the latest being a case involving an infant by the name of “Asha”.

Baby Asha was being treated in Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Hospital for burns suffered while in detention on Nauru.  The hospital staff insisted that she would not be released until a suitable home environment had been located.

Australia’s reactionary press smelt blood, and duly exhibited its investigative worth by questioning the mother’s motivations.  The Courier Mail on Tuesday suggested that the baby’s mother had admitted on being interviewed by police that the child was purposely burnt as a means to get to Australia.  She proceeded to refute the claims when interviewed in hospital last Friday as the Queensland police finalised their investigations.

The records from the hospital itself contradicted any such claims.  For one, the harm occasioned by the scalding water showed “no evidence that the burn injury is non-accidental”.  The account from the staff goes on to observe that, “The injury occurred when [the child] pulled a bowl containing recently boiled water off a table onto herself.”[1]  The situation had been exacerbated in the absence of running water and poor accommodation facilities on the island, comprising meagre accommodation tents.

There is much ghoulish precedent on the subject. Asylum seekers, Australians were told by officials of the Howard government, could not be trusted as they made their way across treacherous, life-threatening waters.  Their suffering, distorting in its pain, could only be evaluated by the vague, middle class standards of “Australian values”.

The scandal of the “children overboard” affair revealed the truth denying complex that had taken hold of the Australian immigration and naval authorities.  When it comes to describing the fate of asylum children, governments down under have some form.

On October 7, 2001, as a scrapping Howard government began readying itself for a polarising election, political officials from the Prime Minister’s office, to that of the Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, and Defence Minister Peter Reith, suggested that cowardly, calculating asylum seekers had attempted to cast their children from the Olong into sea.  The exercise was supposedly meant to get them swift passage to Australia.

The vessel, deemed a Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel (SIEV) 4, was carrying 223 asylum seekers and intercepted 190km north of Christmas Island by the HMAS Adelaide on October 6, 2001.  This only happened after the Australian vessel had fired shots across the bows of the Olong. The delicate vessel subsequently sunk as it was being towed by the Adelaide.  Waiting orders from Canberra, Commander Norman Banks, in the sharp words of David Marr, “aimlessly towed them around the Indian Ocean.”[2]

The subsequent Australian Senate Select Committee charged with investigating “a certain maritime incident” found that no children had been put at risk, a fact known by the government prior to heading to the polls.[3]  Pictures taken of the incident, supposedly featuring children being cast into the water, were actually of two sailors attempting to assist stranded asylum seekers.

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, despite admitting that that no children had been thrown from the deck of the Olong in October 2001 would continue to claim that he “did think that if somebody had done that, it was a pretty bad thing to have done – and they did after all sink the boat, didn’t they?”[4] The world of vicious hypotheticals ever so often deters reality.

The case of Asha is no different, the child’s fate exploited and writ large against the cold hand of Australian refugee policy.  Australian doctors themselves, such as Steve Stankevicius, argue that letting an infant injured in an offshore detention centre onto Australian soil “sets a risky precedent,” a sort of green light for empathy seekers. This vapid suggestion is only given credence because, as always, we must be careful about those mendacious asylum seekers locked up with nowhere else to go. The default position is, as ever, a lack of trust.

For Stankevicius, writing in The Age, “Though the public’s intentions [in protesting for Asha] have been noble, the precedent that has been set is a concern.”  The reason being that people, including parents, take risks, often co-opting their children in the process.  “While Asha’s injury was accidental, this decision may motivate others to exploit illness or injury to replicate the outcome.”

Having taken a tactical dump on the case of exploitation, Stankevicius suggested that children were the most notable conduits for heart stirring exploitation.  Take, he considers, those child-beggars operating in impoverished surrounds.  “Though one’s dollars may prevent the hungry child in front of you from being beaten that day, the success of that enterprise ensures the industry will continue on.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has voiced concern on several occasions on how Australia’s refugee policy tends to demonise, rather than evaluate, those seeking asylum in Australia.  In 2011, it urged Australia’s political parties “to take a principled and courageous stand to break this ingrained political habit of demonising asylum seekers.”[5]  But demonisation has not merely become the rationalised condition of Australian policy; it has become its driving, fetishized rationale.  To deny it, to buck it, to attempt to defeat it, is to endure defeat itself.

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

Notes:

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-dutton-accused-of-dirty-politics-after-report-suggested-mother-deliberately-burnt-baby-asha-20160222-gn0wif.html

[2] http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/truth-overboard–the-story-that-wont-go-away/2006/02/27/1141020023654.html?page=fullpage

[3]http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Former_Committees/scrafton/report/c02

[4] http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/truth-overboard–the-story-that-wont-go-away/2006/02/27/1141020023654.html?page=fullpage

By discrediting and disenfranchising Palestinian parliament members, Israel’s democracy is being exposed as a facade.

GR Editor’s Note: This speech by Vladimir Putin was barely covered and commented by the Western mainstream media

Video with English subtitles,

Our thanks to Eurasia Daily for this video:

Translation from Russian by Inessa Sinchougova.

“Dear friends, I have just held a phone conversation with the President of the United States, Barack Obama. The conversation was initiated by Russia, however interest toward dialogue was undoubtedly mutual.

We have agreed on common grounds of understanding for a ceasefire in Syria. Preceding this discussion was the intensive work of Russian and American experts. We were able draw upon previous experience, such as our combined efforts in eradicating chemical weapons from Syria.

Previously, our negotiators held a number of closed consultations. As a result, we were able to reach a concrete decision. We have agreed on ceasefire to take place from midnight of 27th February 2016, Damascus time.

https://www.facebook.com/eurasiadaily.nz/videos/vb.1534348620189458/1576727795951540

The requirements are as follows. Until midday on the 26th of February 2016, all warring parties in Syria must show either to ourselves or to our American partners their dedication to stopping the war. Russian and American personnel can together pinpoint on a map where exactly such groups are operating.

The Syrian Arab Army, the armed forces of the Russian Federation, as well as the US-led coalition, will not carry out military operations against these opposition groups. In response, oppositioners must cease all military activity against the Syrian Arab Army, and parties supporting them.

As for ISIL, Jabhat al-Nusra, and other terrorist groups (as confirmed by the United Nations Security Council) these parties are excluded from the agreement. Military operations against terrorists will continue.

It is critical that the US and Russia put into practice a mechanism for the realisation of this ceasefire, ensuring that military activity from the Syrian government, as well as its opposition, stops. We will set up a “hotline” and a working group, as required, for the exchange of information between parties. Russia will work closely with Damascus – with the legitimate president of Syria. We consider, that the United States will do the same with the groups that they support.

I am assured that our cooperation with the United States can radically change the critical situation in Syria. Finally, we have a chance to stop this ongoing bloodshed and torture. All routes and avenues for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Syria must be freed up.

Very importantly, we are launching a long-term, political consultation process for pan-Syrian discussions in Geneva, to be overseen by the United Nations. Recent history has shown that one-sided actions, that are carried out without a UN resolution, and geared at short term political benefits, lead to tragic results. These examples are on everybody’s tongues; Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Yemen.

It is with this background that we approach the current situation. Russian-American negotiations and efforts to coordinate between all parties, have the potential to become a leading international precedent. This ceasefire is based on principles of international law and the guidelines of the United Nations. It reflects the efforts of the international community in the fight against international terrorism.

I would like to hope that the Syrian government, our partners in the region and further abroad, will all support the given plan of action.”

Joint Statement of the United States and the Russian Federation, as Co-Chairs of the ISSG, on Cessation of Hostilities in Syria

… Consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and the statements of the ISSG, the cessation of hostilities does not apply to “Daesh”, “Jabhat al-Nusra”, or other terrorist organizations designated by the UN Security Council.

There is a word missing in the above when compared to the relevant part of UNSC Res 2254:

… specifically by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), Al-Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL, and other terrorist groups, …

The “associated” with Al Qaeda are not mentioned in the cessation document. In Idleb and other parts on north Syria Jaish al Fatah is the major terrorist alliance:

The Army of Conquest (“Arabic: جيش الفتح‎) or Jaish al-Fatah, abbreviated JaF, is a joint operations room of Islamist Syrian rebel factions participating in the Syrian Civil War.
…
At its founding, Jaish al-Fatah contained seven members, three of them — al-Nusra, Ahrar ash-Sham, and Jund al-Aqsa are directly connected to Al-Qaeda or have a similar ideology. With Ahrar ash-Sham being the largest group, al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham together were reported to represent 90 percent of the troops. Another prominent Islamist faction in the operations room included the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria linked Sham Legion (Faylaq Al-Sham). Jaish al-Fatah collaborated with more moderate Free Syrian Army factions such as Knights of Justice Brigade.

Leaving out the “associated” in the cessation of hostilities declaration gives room for Ahrar al-Sham and a few others, which are clearly “associated” with al-Nusra/al-Qaeda in their Jaish al-Fatah alliance, to take part in it.

There are conditions to that. From the “Terms For Cessation Of Hostilities In Syria attached to the Joint Statement linked above:

The nationwide cessation of hostilities is to apply to any party currently engaged in military or paramilitary hostilities against any other parties other than “Daesh”, “Jabhat al-Nusra”, or other terrorist organizations designated by the UN Security Council.
…
To take part in the cessation of hostilities, armed opposition groups will confirm – to the United States of America or the Russian Federation, who will attest such confirmations to one another as co-chairs of the ISSG by no later than 12:00 (Damascus time) on February 26 2016 – their commitment to and acceptance of the following terms:

• To full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254, adopted unanimously on December 18, 2015, ‑ including the readiness to participate in the UN-facilitated political negotiation process;
• To cease attacks with any weapons, including rockets, mortars, and anti-tank guided missiles, against Armed Forces of the Syrian Arab Republic, and any associated forces;
• To refrain from acquiring or seeking to acquire territory from other parties to the ceasefire;
• To allow humanitarian agencies, rapid, safe, unhindered and sustained access throughout areas under their operational control and allow immediate humanitarian assistance to reach all people in need;
• To proportionate use of force (i.e., no greater than required to address an immediate threat) if and when responding in self-defense.

The same condition plus a cessation of aerial bombing apply to the Syrian government side.

It is “proposed”(?) that the cessation of hostilities commence at 00:00 (Damascus time) on February 27, 2016.

The immediate estimates of various observers of the war on Syria on how long a cessation of hostilities under these conditions would hold varied between 30 seconds and 4 weeks.

The big problem is of course that al-Qaeda is so intermingled with the “moderate rebels” that the U.S. even tried, contrary to UNSC Res 2254, to get the cessation of hostilities applied to it.

Let us assume that Ahrar al-Sham agrees to the cessation of hostilities and follows its terms. The Syrian and Russian intelligence suddenly get good information about the location of the joint operations room of al-Nusra, Ahrar ash-Sham and Jund al-Aqsa.

Now would that joint operations room or headquarter be a legitimate bombing target under the cessation of hostilities agreement? In my view bombing it would obviously be allowed because al-Nusra/al-Qaeda is there. But the “moderate” terrorists, the U.S. and their other sponsors would scream bloody murder about such bombing.

That is why I believe that this cessation of hostilities, should it come in force at all, will hold no longer than one week.

Failure to condemn terrorist attacks in Damascus’ southern Sayeda Zeinab district and Homs last Sunday, killing scores, injuring hundreds, causing enormous damage shows US/Russia negotiated cessation of hostility terms won’t stop future incidents.

In letters to Ban Ki-moon and Security Council president (Venezuelan UN envoy) Raphael Ramirez, Syria’s Foreign Ministry condemned the body’s silence, its failure to denounce flagrant terrorism, encouraging future incidents by irresponsible inaction – especially encouraging Ankara and Riyadh to continue supporting ISIS and likeminded groups waging war on Syria.

The letters demanded action, punitive measures imposed on state-sponsors of terrorism – not forthcoming.

Washington, Britain and France block it, partnering with Ankara and Riyadh, continuing support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, assuring endless conflict – foiling US/Russia announced cessation of hostilities terms before their implementation.

Expect no meaningful change for the better on the ground ahead.  Obama’s war on Syria continues, its objective unchanged – destroying Syrian sovereignty, replacing it with another US vassal state, looting its resources, exploiting its people, eliminating an Israeli rival, isolating Iran ahead of targeting its independence the same way.

Washington deplores peace and stability. Achieving them defeats its imperial objectives. All its post-9/11 wars since October 2001 continue raging – with no resolution in sight, a key indication of what to expect in Syria going forward.

On Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest was less than optimistic, saying ceasefire “is going to be difficult to implement. We know that there are a lot of obstacles, and there are sure to be some setbacks.”

Moscow and Damascus vow to continue combating terrorists responsible for gruesome atrocities, wanting Syrian sovereignty destroyed, caliphate authority replacing it.

They’re irresponsibly blamed for doing the right thing – UK Foreign Minister Phillip Hammond, speaking for Britain, America and their rogue allies lied, saying:

Cessation of hostilities “will only succeed if there is a major change of behavior by the Syrian regime and its backers.”

“Russia, in particular, must honor this agreement by ending its attacks on Syrian civilians and moderate opposition groups, and by using its influence to ensure the Syrian regime does the same.”

Moscow and Washington will work with pro-Western UN envoy to Syria Steffan de Mistura, a US-appointed stooge, aiming to assure all parties abide by ceasefire terms.

So far, no meaningful mechanism was established to mediate reported violations, no enforcement procedure, nothing to hold violators accountable.

Putin expressed optimism after years of failure to end violence, bloodshed and chaos – at the same time stressing “(s)trikes will continue to be carried out against” terrorist groups. They’re excluded from terms agreed on.

The deal calls for opposing parties to decide by Friday whether they’ll comply with cessation of hostility terms – terminology short of a formal, more binding, durable ceasefire.

A White House statement released after Obama and Putin spoke on Monday was guarded, welcoming the agreement with no assurance of success – maintaining the pretense of phony US war on ISIS.

Reality on the ground belies hope for achieving a breakthrough toward conflict resolution after years of failure.

It bears repeating what other articles stressed. Washington wants war, not peace. Obama didn’t launch it to quit.

Resolving it requires calling off his dogs, ending support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, cutting them off entirely, reigning in Ankara and Riyadh, deciding his Syria policy failed and moving on.

Realpolitik has no Hollywood endings. War in Syria rages with no end in sight.

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

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Note from the editor of Tom Dispatch: In October 2001, the U.S. launched its invasion of Afghanistan largely through proxy Afghan fighters with the help of Special Operations forces, American air power, and CIA dollars.  The results were swift and stunning. The Taliban was whipped, a new government headed by Hamid Karzai soon installed in Kabul, and the country declared “liberated.”

More than 14 years later, how’d it go? What’s “liberated” Afghanistan like and, if you were making a list, what would be the accomplishments of Washington all these years later?  Hmm… at this very moment, according to the latest reports, the Taliban control more territory than at any moment since December 2001.  Meanwhile, the Afghan security forces that the U.S. built up and funded to the tune of more than $65 billion are experiencing “unsustainable” casualties, their ranks evidently filled with “ghost” soldiers and policemen — up to 40% in some places — whose salaries, often paid by the U.S., are being pocketed by their commanders and other officials.  In 2015, according to the U.N., Afghan civilian casualties were, for the seventh year in a row, at record levels.  Add to all this the fact that American soldiers, their “combat mission” officially concluded in 2014, are now being sent by the hundreds back into the fray (along with the U.S. Air Force) to support hard-pressed Afghan troops in a situation which seems to be fast “deteriorating.”

Oh, and economically speaking, how did the “reconstruction” of the country work out, given that Washington pumped more money (in real dollars) into Afghanistan in these years than it did into the rebuilding of Western Europe after World War II?  Leaving aside the pit of official corruption into which many of those dollars disappeared, the country is today hemorrhaging desperate young people who can’t find jobs or make a living and now constitute what may be the second largest contingent of refugees heading for Europe.

As for that list of Washington’s accomplishments, it might be accurate to say that only one thing was “liberated” in Afghanistan over the last 14-plus years and that was, as TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy points out today, the opium poppy.  It might also be said that, with the opium trade now fully embedded in both the operations of the Afghan government and of the Taliban, Washington’s single and singular accomplishment in all its years there has been to oversee the country’s transformation into the planet’s number one narco-state.  McCoy, who began his career in the Vietnam War era by writing The Politics of Heroin, a now-classic book on the CIA and the heroin trade (that the Agency tried to suppress) and who has written on the subject of drugs and Afghanistan before for this site, now offers a truly monumental look at opium and the U.S. from the moment this country’s first Afghan War began in 1979 to late last night. Tom

*      *      *

How a Pink Flower Defeated the World’s Sole Superpower

America’s Opium War in Afghanistan

By Alfred W. McCoy

After fighting the longest war in its history, the United States stands at the brink of defeat in Afghanistan. How can this be possible? How could the world’s sole superpower have battled continuously for 15 years, deploying 100,000 of its finest troops, sacrificing the lives of 2,200 of those soldiers, spending more than a trillion dollars on its military operations, lavishing a record hundred billion more on “nation-building” and “reconstruction,” helping raise, fund, equip, and train an army of 350,000 Afghan allies, and still not be able to pacify one of the world’s most impoverished nations? So dismal is the prospect for stability in Afghanistan in 2016 that the Obama White House has recently cancelled a planned further withdrawal of its forces and will leave an estimated 10,000 troops in the country indefinitely.

Were you to cut through the Gordian knot of complexity that is the Afghan War, you would find that in the American failure there lies the greatest policy paradox of the century: Washington’s massive military juggernaut has been stopped dead in its steel tracks by a pink flower, the opium poppy.

For more than three decades in Afghanistan, Washington’s military operations have succeeded only when they fit reasonably comfortably into Central Asia’s illicit traffic in opium, and suffered when they failed to complement it. The first U.S. intervention there began in 1979. It succeeded in part because the surrogate war the CIA launched to expel the Soviets from that country coincided with the way its Afghan allies used the country’s swelling drug traffic to sustain their decade-long struggle.

On the other hand, in the almost 15 years of continuous combat since the U.S. invasion of 2001, pacification efforts have failed to curtail the Taliban insurgency largely because the U.S. could not control the swelling surplus from the county’s heroin trade. As opium production surged from a minimal 180 tons to a monumental 8,200 in the first five years of U.S. occupation, Afghanistan’s soil seemed to have been sown with the dragon’s teeth of ancient Greek myth. Every poppy harvest yielded a new crop of teenaged fighters for the Taliban’s growing guerrilla army.

At each stage in Afghanistan’s tragic, tumultuous history over the past 40 years — the covert war of the 1980s, the civil war of the 1990s, and the U.S. occupation since 2001 — opium played a surprisingly significant role in shaping the country’s destiny. In one of history’s bitter twists of fate, the way Afghanistan’s unique ecology converged with American military technology transformed this remote, landlocked nation into the world’s first true narco-state — a country where illicit drugs dominate the economy, define political choices, and determine the fate of foreign interventions.

Covert Warfare (1979-1992)

The CIA’s secret war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s helped transform the lawless Afghan-Pakistani borderlands into the seedbed for a sustained expansion of the global heroin trade. “In the tribal area,” the State Department would report in 1986, “there is no police force. There are no courts. There is no taxation. No weapon is illegal… Hashish and opium are often on display.” By then, the process had long been underway.  Instead of forming its own coalition of resistance leaders, the Agency relied on Pakistan’s crucial Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and its Afghan clients who soon became principals in the burgeoning cross-border opium traffic.

Not surprisingly, the Agency looked the other way while Afghanistan’s opium production grew unchecked from about 100 tons annually in the 1970s to 2,000 tons by 1991. In 1979 and 1980, just as the CIA effort was beginning to ramp up, a network of heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.  That region soon became the world’s largest heroin producer. By 1984, it supplied a staggering 60% of the U.S. market and 80% of the European one. Inside Pakistan, the number of heroin addicts went from near zero (yes, zero) in 1979 to 5,000 in 1980 and 1,300,000 by 1985 — a rate of addiction so high the U.N. called it “particularly shocking.”

According to the 1986 State Department report, opium “is an ideal crop in a war-torn country since it requires little capital investment, is fast growing, and is easily transported and traded.” Moreover, Afghanistan’s climate was well suited to this temperate crop, with average yields two to three times higher than in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region, the previous capital of the opium trade. As relentless warfare between CIA and Soviet surrogates generated at least three million refugees and disrupted food production, Afghan farmers began to turn to opium “in desperation” since it produced such easy “high profits” which could cover rising food prices. At the same time, resistance elements, according to the State Department, engaged in opium production and trafficking “to provide staples for [the] population under their control and to fund weapons purchases.”

As the mujahedeen resistance gained strength and began to create liberated zones inside Afghanistan in the early 1980s, it helped fund its operations by collecting taxes from peasants producing lucrative opium poppies, particularly in the fertile Helmand Valley, once the breadbasket of southern Afghanistan. Caravans carrying CIA arms into that region for the resistance often returned to Pakistan loaded down with opium — sometimes, the New York Times reported, “with the assent of Pakistani or American intelligence officers who supported the resistance.”

Once the mujahedeen fighters brought the opium across the border, they sold it to Pakistani heroin refiners operating in the country’s North-West Frontier Province, a covert-war zone administered by the CIA’s close ally General Fazle Haq. By 1988, there were an estimated 100 to 200 heroin refineries in the province’s Khyber district alone. Further south in the Koh-i-Soltan district of Baluchistan Province, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the CIA’s favored Afghan asset, controlled six refineries that processed much of the opium harvest from the Helmand Valley into heroin. Trucks of the Pakistani army’s National Logistics Cell, arriving in these borderlands from the port of Karachi with crates of weaponry from the CIA, left with cargos of heroin for ports and airports where it would be exported to world markets.

In May 1990, as this covert operation was ending, the Washington Post reported that the CIA’s chief asset Hekmatyar was also the rebels’ leading heroin trafficker. American officials, the Post claimed, had long refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by Hekmatyar, as well as Pakistan’s ISI, largely “because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.”

Indeed, Charles Cogan, former director of the CIA’s Afghan operation, later spoke frankly about his Agency’s choices. “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets,” he told Australian television in 1995. “We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade. I don’t think that we need to apologize for this… There was fallout in term of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”

The Afghan Civil War and the Rise of the Taliban (1989-2001)

Over the longer term, such a “clandestine” intervention (so openly written and bragged about) produced a black hole of geopolitical instability never sealed or healed thereafter.

Lying at the northern reaches of the seasonal monsoon, where rain clouds arrive already squeezed dry, arid Afghanistan never recovered from the unprecedented devastation it suffered in the years of the first American intervention. Other than irrigated areas like the Helmand Valley, the country’s semi-arid highlands were already a fragile ecosystem straining to sustain sizeable populations when war first broke out in 1979. As that war wound down between 1989 and 1992, the Washington-led alliance essentially abandoned the country, failing either to sponsor a peace settlement or finance reconstruction.

Washington simply turned elsewhere as a vicious civil war broke out in a country with 1.5 million dead, three million refugees, a ravaged economy, and a bevy of well-armed warlords primed to fight for power. During the years of vicious civil strife that followed, Afghan farmers raised the only crop that ensured instant profits, the opium poppy.  The opium harvest, having multiplied twentyfold to 2,000 tons during the covert-war era of the 1980s, would double during the civil war of the 1990s.

In this period of turmoil, opium’s ascent should be seen as a response to the severe damage two decades of warfare had inflicted. With the return of those three million refugees to a war-ravaged land, the opium fields were an employment godsend, since they required nine times as many laborers to cultivate as wheat, the country’s traditional staple. In addition, opium merchants alone were capable of accumulating capital rapidly enough to be able to provide much-needed cash advances to poor poppy farmers that equaled more than half their annual income. That credit would prove critical to the survival of many poor villagers.

In the civil war’s first phase from 1992 to 1994, ruthless local warlords combined arms and opium in a countrywide struggle for power. Determined to install its Pashtun allies in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Pakistan worked through the ISI to deliver arms and funds to its chief client Hekmatyar.  By now, he was the nominal prime minister of a fractious coalition whose troops would spend two years shelling and rocketing Kabul in fighting that left the city in ruins and some 50,000 more Afghans dead. When he nonetheless failed to take the capital, Pakistan threw its backing behind a newly arisen Pashtun force, the Taliban, a fundamentalist movement that had emerged from militant Islamic schools.

After seizing Kabul in 1996 and taking control of much of the country, the Taliban regime encouraged local opium cultivation, offering government protection to the export trade and collecting much needed taxes on both the opium produced and the heroin manufactured from it. U.N. opium surveys showed that, during their first three years in power, the Taliban raised the country’s opium crop to 4,600 tons, or 75% percent of world production at that moment.

In July 2000, however, as a devastating drought entered its second year and mass starvation spread across Afghanistan, the Taliban government suddenly ordered a ban on all opium cultivation in an apparent appeal for international recognition and aid. A subsequent U.N. crop survey of 10,030 villages found that this prohibition had reduced the harvest by 94% to a mere 185 tons.

Three months later, the Taliban sent a delegation headed by its deputy foreign minister, Abdur Rahman Zahid, to U.N. headquarters in New York to barter a continuing drug prohibition for diplomatic recognition. That body instead imposed new sanctions on the regime for protecting Osama bin Laden. The U.S., on the other hand, actually rewarded the Taliban with $43 million in humanitarian aid, even as it seconded U.N. criticism over bin Laden. Announcing this aid in May 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised “the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome” and urged the regime to “act on a number of fundamental issues that separate us: their support for terrorism; their violation of internationally recognized human rights standards, especially their treatment of women and girls.”

The War on Terror (2001-2016)

After a decade of ignoring Afghanistan, Washington rediscovered the place with a vengeance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Only weeks later, in October 2001, the U.S. began bombing the country and then launched an “invasion” spearheaded by local warlords. The Taliban regime collapsed, in the words of veteran New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, with a speed “so sudden and so unexpected that government officials and commentators on strategy… are finding it hard to explain.” Although the U.S. air attacks did considerable physical and psychological damage, many other societies have withstood far more massive bombardments without collapsing in this fashion. In retrospect, it seems likely that the opium prohibition had economically eviscerated the Taliban, leaving its theocracy a hollow shell that shattered with the first American bombs.

To an extent not generally appreciated, for the previous two decades Afghanistan had devoted a growing share of its resources — capital, land, water, and labor — to the production of opium and heroin. By the time the Taliban outlawed cultivation, the country had become, agriculturally, little more than an opium monocrop. The drug trade accounted for most of its tax revenues, almost all its export income, and much of its employment. In this context, opium eradication proved to be an act of economic suicide that brought an already weakened society to the brink of collapse. Indeed, a 2001 U.N. survey found that the ban had “resulted in a severe loss of income for an estimated 3.3 million people,” 15% of the population, including 80,000 farmers, 480,000 itinerant laborers, and their millions of dependents.

While the U.S. bombing campaign raged throughout October 2001, the CIA spent $70 million “in direct cash outlays on the ground” to mobilize its old coalition of tribal warlords to take down the Taliban, an expenditure President George W. Bush would later hail as one of history’s biggest “bargains.” To capture Kabul and other key cities, the CIA put its money behind the leaders of the Northern Alliance, which the Taliban had never fully defeated. They, in turn, had long dominated the drug traffic in the area of northeastern Afghanistan they controlled in the Taliban years. In the meantime, the CIA also turned to a group of rising Pashtun warlords who had been active as drug smugglers in the southeastern part of the country.  As a result, when the Taliban went down, the groundwork had already been laid for the resumption of opium cultivation and the drug trade on a major scale.

Once Kabul and the provincial capitals were taken, the CIA quickly ceded operational control to uniformed allied forces and civilian officials whose inept drug suppression programs in the years to come would, in the end, leave the heroin traffic’s growing profits first to those warlords and, in later years, largely to the Taliban guerrillas. In the first year of U.S. occupation, before that movement had even reconstituted itself, the opium harvest surged to 3,400 tons. In a development without historical precedent, illicit drugs would be responsible for an extraordinary 62% percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2003. For the first few years of the U.S. occupation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “dismissed growing signs that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban,” while the CIA and the U.S. military “turned a blind eye to drug-related activities by prominent warlords.”

In late 2004, after nearly two years in which it showed next to no interest in the subject, outsourcing opium control to its British allies and police training to the Germans, the White House was suddenly confronted with troubling CIA intelligence suggesting that the escalating drug trade was fueling a revival of the Taliban. Backed by President Bush, Secretary of State Powell then urged an aggressive counter-narcotics strategy, including a Vietnam-style aerial defoliation of parts of rural Afghanistan. But U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad resisted this approach, seconded by his local ally Ashraf Ghani, then the country’s finance minister (and now its president), who warned that such an eradication program would mean “widespread impoverishment” in the country without $20 billion in foreign aid to create “genuine alternative livelihood[s].”

As a compromise, Washington came to rely on private contractors like DynCorp to train Afghan manual eradication teams. However, by 2005, according to New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall, that approach had already become “something of a joke.” Two years later, as the Taliban insurgency and opium cultivation both spread in what seemed to be a synergistic fashion, the U.S. Embassy again pressed Kabul to accept the kind of aerial defoliation the U.S. had sponsored in Colombia. President Hamid Karzai refused, leaving this critical problem unresolved.

The U.N.’s Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007 found that the annual harvest was up 24% to a record 8,200 tons, which translated into 53% of the country’s GDP and 93% of the world’s illicit heroin supply. Significantly, the U.N. stated that Taliban guerrillas had “started to extract from the drug economy resources for arms, logistics, and militia pay.” A study for the U.S. Institute of Peace concluded that, by 2008, the movement had 50 heroin labs in its territory and controlled 98% of the country’s poppy fields.  That year, it reportedly collected $425 million in “taxes” levied on opium traffic, and with every harvest, it gained the necessary funds to recruit a new crop of young fighters from the villages. Each of those prospective guerrillas could count on monthly payments of $300, far above the wages they would have made as agricultural laborers.

In mid-2008, to contain the spreading insurgency, Washington decided to commit 40,000 more American combat troops to the country, raising allied forces to 70,000. Recognizing the crucial role of opium revenues in Taliban recruitment practices, the U.S. Treasury also formed the Afghan Threat Finance Cell and embedded 60 of its analysts in combat units charged with launching strategic strikes against the drug trade.

Using quantitative methods of “social network analysis” and “influence network modeling,” those instant civilian experts would often, according to one veteran analyst, “point to hawala brokers [rural creditors] as critical nodes within an insurgent group’s network,” prompting U.S. combat soldiers to take “kinetic courses of action — quite literally, kicking down the door of the hawala office and shutting down the operation.” Such “highly controversial” acts might “temporarily degrade the financial network of an insurgent group,” but those gains came “at the cost of upsetting an entire village” dependent on the lender for legitimate credit that was the “vast majority of the hawalador’s business.” In this way, once again, support for the Taliban grew.

By 2009, the guerrillas were expanding so rapidly that the new Obama administration opted for a “surge” in U.S. troop strength to 102,000 in a bid to cripple the Taliban. After months of rising troop deployments, President Obama’s new war strategy was officially launched on February 13, 2010, in Marja, a remote market town in Helmand Province. As waves of helicopters descended on its outskirts spitting up clouds of dust, hundreds of Marines sprinted through fields of sprouting opium poppies toward the town’s mud-walled compounds. Though their target was the local Taliban guerrillas, the Marines were in fact occupying the capital of the global heroin trade. Forty percent of the world’s illicit opium supply was grown in the surrounding districts and much of that crop was traded in Marja.

A week later, U.S. Commander General Stanley McChrystal choppered into town with Karim Khalili, Afghanistan’s vice president, for the media rollout of a new-look counterinsurgency strategy that, he told reporters, was rock-solid certain to pacify villages like Marja. Only it would never be so because the opium trade would spoil the party. “If they come with tractors,” one Afghan widow announced to a chorus of supportive shouts from her fellow farmers, “they will have to roll over me and kill me before they can kill my poppy.” Speaking by satellite telephone from the region’s opium fields, a U.S. Embassy official told me: “You can’t win this war without taking on drug production in Helmand Province.”

Watching these events unfold nearly six years ago, I wrote an essay for TomDispatch warning of a defeat foretold. “So the choice is clear enough,” I said at the time. “We can continue to fertilize this deadly soil with yet more blood in a brutal war with an uncertain outcome… or we can help renew this ancient, arid land by re-planting the orchards, replenishing the flocks, and rebuilding the farming destroyed in decades of war… until food crops become a viable alternative to opium. To put it simply, so simply that even Washington might understand, we can only pacify a narco-state when it is no longer a narco-state.”

By attacking the guerrillas but ignoring the opium harvest that funded new insurgents every spring, Obama’s surge soon suffered that defeat foretold. As 2012 ended, the Taliban guerrillas had, according to the New York Times, “weathered the biggest push the American-led coalition is going to make against them.” Amid the rapid drawdown of allied forces to meet President Obama’s December 2014 deadline for “ending” U.S. combat operations, reduced air operations allowed the Taliban to launch mass-formation attacks in the north, northeast, and south, killing record numbers of Afghan army troops and police.

At the time, John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector for Afghanistan, offered a telling explanation for the Taliban’s survival. Despite the expenditure of a staggering $7.6 billion on “drug eradication” programs during the previous decade, he concluded that, “by every conceivable metric, we’ve failed. Production and cultivation are up, interdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is up, and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, the 2013 opium crop covered a record 209,000 hectares, raising the harvest by 50% to 5,500 tons. That massive harvest generated some $3 billion in illicit income, of which the Taliban’s tax took an estimated $320 million, well over half its revenues. The U.S. Embassy corroborated this dismal assessment, calling the illicit income “a windfall for the insurgency, which profits from the drug trade at almost every level.”

As the 2014 opium crop was harvested, fresh U.N. figures suggested that the dismal trend only continued, with the areas under cultivation rising to a record 224,000 hectares and production at 6,400 tons remaining near historic highs. In May 2015, having watched this flood of drugs enter the global market as U.S. counter-narcotics spending climbed to $8.4 billion, Sopko tried to translate what was happening into a single all-American image. “Afghanistan,” he said, “has roughly 500,000 acres, or about 780 square miles, devoted to growing opium poppy. That’s equivalent to more than 400,000 U.S. football fields — including the end zones.”

In the fighting season of 2015, the Taliban decisively seized the combat initiative and opium seemed ever more deeply embedded in its operations. The New York Times reported that the movement’s new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was “among the first major Taliban officials to be linked to the drug trade… and later became the Taliban’s main tax collector for the narcotics trade — creating immense profits.” After months of relentless pressure on government forces in three northern provinces, the group’s first major operation under his command was the two-week seizure of the strategic city of Kunduz, which just happened to be located on “the country’s most lucrative drug routes… moving opium from the poppy prolific provinces in the south to Tajikistan… and to Russia and Europe.” Washington felt forced to slam down the brakes on planned further withdrawals of its combat forces.

Amid a rushed evacuation of its regional offices in the threatened northern provinces, the U.N. released a map in October showing that the Taliban had “high” or “extreme” control in more than half the country’s rural districts, including many where they had not previously been a significant presence. Within a month, the Taliban unleashed offensives countrywide that aimed at seizing and holding territory, threatening military bases in northern Faryab Province and encircling entire districts in western Herat.

Not surprisingly, the strongest attacks came in the poppy heartland of Helmand Province, where half the country’s opium crop was then grown and, said the New York Times, “the lucrative opium trade made it crucial to the insurgents’ economic designs.” By mid-December, after overrunning checkpoints, winning back much of the province, and setting government security forces back on their heels, the guerrillas came close to capturing that heart of the heroin trade, Marja, the very site of President Obama’s media-saturated surge rollout in 2010.  Had U.S. Special Operations forces and the U.S. Air Force not intervened to relieve “demoralized” Afghan forces, the town and the province would undoubtedly have fallen. By early 2016, 14-plus years after Afghanistan was “liberated” by a U.S. invasion, and in a significant reversal of Obama administration drawdown policies, the U.S. was reportedly dispatching “hundreds” of new U.S. troops in a mini-surge into Helmand Province to shore up the government’s faltering forces and deny the insurgents the “economic prize” of the world’s most productive poppy fields.

After a disastrous 2015 fighting season that inflicted what U.S. officials have termed “unsustainable” casualties on the Afghan army and what the UN called the “real horror” of record civilian losses, the long, harsh winter that has settled across the country is offering no respite. As cold and snow slowed combat in the countryside, the Taliban shifted operations to the cities, with five massive bombings in Kabul and other key urban areas in the first week of January, followed by a suicide attack on a police complex in the capital that killed 20 officers.

Meanwhile, as the 2015 harvest ended, the country’s opium cultivation, after six years of sustained growth, slipped by 18% to 183,000 hectares and the crop yield dropped steeply to 3,300 tons. While U.N. officials attributed much of the decline to drought and the spread of a poppy fungus, conditions that might not continue into 2016, long-term trends are still an unclear mix of positive and negative news. Buried in the mass of data published in the U.N.’s drug reports is one significant statistic: as Afghanistan’s economy grew from years of international aid, opium’s share of GDP dropped steadily from a daunting 63% in 2003 to a far more manageable 13% in 2014. Even so, the U.N. says, “dependency on the opiate economy at the farmer level in many rural communities is still high.”

At that local level in Helmand Province, “Afghan government officials have also become directly involved in the opium trade,” the New York Times recently reported. In doing so, they expanded “their competition with the Taliban… into a struggle for control of the drug traffic,” while imposing “a tax on farmers practically identical to the one the Taliban uses,” and kicking a portion of their illicit profits “up the chain, all the way to officials in Kabul… ensuring that the local authorities maintain support from higher-ups and keeping the opium growing.”

Simultaneously, a recent U.N. Security Council investigation found that the Taliban has systematically tapped “into the supply chain at each stage of the narcotics trade,” collecting a 10% user tax on opium cultivation in Helmand, fighting for control of heroin laboratories, and acting as “the major guarantors for the trafficking of raw opium and heroin out of Afghanistan.” No longer simply taxing the traffic, the Taliban is now so deeply and directly involved that, adds the Times, it “has become difficult to distinguish the group from a dedicated drug cartel.” Whatever the long-term trends might be, for the foreseeable future opium remains deeply entangled with the rural economy, the Taliban insurgency, and government corruption whose sum is the Afghan conundrum.

With ample revenues from past bumper crops, the Taliban will undoubtedly be ready for the new fighting season that will come with the start of spring. As snow melts from the mountain slopes and poppy shoots spring from the soil, there will be, as in the past 40 years, a new crop of teenaged recruits ready to fight for the rebel forces.

Cutting the Afghan Gordian Knot

For most people globally, economic activity, the production and exchange of goods, is the prime point of contact with government, as is manifest in the coins and currency stamped by the state that everyone carries in their pockets.  But when a country’s most significant commodity is illegal, then political loyalties naturally shift to the clandestine networks that move that product safely from fields to foreign markets, providing finance, loans, and employment every step of the way. “The narcotics trade poisons the Afghan financial sector and fuels a growing illicit economy,” John Sopko explains. “This, in turn, undermines the Afghan state’s legitimacy by stoking corruption, nourishing criminal networks, and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurgent groups.”

After 15 years of continuous warfare in Afghanistan, Washington is faced with the same choice it had five years ago when Obama’s generals heli-lifted those Marines into Marja to start its surge. Just as it has been over the past decade and a half, the U.S. can remain trapped in the same endless cycle, fighting each new crop of village warriors who annually seem to spring fully armed from that country’s poppy fields. At this point, history tells us one thing: in this land sown with dragon’s teeth, there will be a new crop of guerrillas this year, next year, and the year after that.

Even in troubled Afghanistan, however, there are alternatives whose sum could potentially slice through this Gordian knot of a policy problem. As a first and fundamental step, maybe it’s time to stop talking about the next sets of boots on the ground and for President Obama to complete his planned troop withdrawal.

Next, investing even a small portion of all that misspent military funding in rural Afghanistan could produce economic alternatives for the millions of farmers who depend upon the opium crop for employment. Such money could help rebuild that land’s ruined orchards, ravaged flocks, wasted seed stocks, and wrecked snowmelt irrigation systems that, before these decades of war, sustained a diverse agriculture. If the international community can continue to nudge the country’s dependence on illicit opium down from the current 13% of GDP through such sustained rural development, then perhaps Afghanistan will cease to be the planet’s leading narco-state and just maybe that annual cycle can at long last be broken.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years. His more recent books include Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.

Note from the editor of Tom Dispatch: In October 2001, the U.S. launched its invasion of Afghanistan largely through proxy Afghan fighters with the help of Special Operations forces, American air power, and CIA dollars.  The results were swift and stunning. The Taliban was whipped, a new government headed by Hamid Karzai soon installed in Kabul, and the country declared “liberated.”

More than 14 years later, how’d it go? What’s “liberated” Afghanistan like and, if you were making a list, what would be the accomplishments of Washington all these years later?  Hmm… at this very moment, according to the latest reports, the Taliban control more territory than at any moment since December 2001.  Meanwhile, the Afghan security forces that the U.S. built up and funded to the tune of more than $65 billion are experiencing “unsustainable” casualties, their ranks evidently filled with “ghost” soldiers and policemen — up to 40% in some places — whose salaries, often paid by the U.S., are being pocketed by their commanders and other officials.  In 2015, according to the U.N., Afghan civilian casualties were, for the seventh year in a row, at record levels.  Add to all this the fact that American soldiers, their “combat mission” officially concluded in 2014, are now being sent by the hundreds back into the fray (along with the U.S. Air Force) to support hard-pressed Afghan troops in a situation which seems to be fast “deteriorating.”

Oh, and economically speaking, how did the “reconstruction” of the country work out, given that Washington pumped more money (in real dollars) into Afghanistan in these years than it did into the rebuilding of Western Europe after World War II?  Leaving aside the pit of official corruption into which many of those dollars disappeared, the country is today hemorrhaging desperate young people who can’t find jobs or make a living and now constitute what may be the second largest contingent of refugees heading for Europe.

As for that list of Washington’s accomplishments, it might be accurate to say that only one thing was “liberated” in Afghanistan over the last 14-plus years and that was, as TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy points out today, the opium poppy.  It might also be said that, with the opium trade now fully embedded in both the operations of the Afghan government and of the Taliban, Washington’s single and singular accomplishment in all its years there has been to oversee the country’s transformation into the planet’s number one narco-state.  McCoy, who began his career in the Vietnam War era by writing The Politics of Heroin, a now-classic book on the CIA and the heroin trade (that the Agency tried to suppress) and who has written on the subject of drugs and Afghanistan before for this site, now offers a truly monumental look at opium and the U.S. from the moment this country’s first Afghan War began in 1979 to late last night. Tom

*      *      *

How a Pink Flower Defeated the World’s Sole Superpower

America’s Opium War in Afghanistan

By Alfred W. McCoy

After fighting the longest war in its history, the United States stands at the brink of defeat in Afghanistan. How can this be possible? How could the world’s sole superpower have battled continuously for 15 years, deploying 100,000 of its finest troops, sacrificing the lives of 2,200 of those soldiers, spending more than a trillion dollars on its military operations, lavishing a record hundred billion more on “nation-building” and “reconstruction,” helping raise, fund, equip, and train an army of 350,000 Afghan allies, and still not be able to pacify one of the world’s most impoverished nations? So dismal is the prospect for stability in Afghanistan in 2016 that the Obama White House has recently cancelled a planned further withdrawal of its forces and will leave an estimated 10,000 troops in the country indefinitely.

Were you to cut through the Gordian knot of complexity that is the Afghan War, you would find that in the American failure there lies the greatest policy paradox of the century: Washington’s massive military juggernaut has been stopped dead in its steel tracks by a pink flower, the opium poppy.

For more than three decades in Afghanistan, Washington’s military operations have succeeded only when they fit reasonably comfortably into Central Asia’s illicit traffic in opium, and suffered when they failed to complement it. The first U.S. intervention there began in 1979. It succeeded in part because the surrogate war the CIA launched to expel the Soviets from that country coincided with the way its Afghan allies used the country’s swelling drug traffic to sustain their decade-long struggle.

On the other hand, in the almost 15 years of continuous combat since the U.S. invasion of 2001, pacification efforts have failed to curtail the Taliban insurgency largely because the U.S. could not control the swelling surplus from the county’s heroin trade. As opium production surged from a minimal 180 tons to a monumental 8,200 in the first five years of U.S. occupation, Afghanistan’s soil seemed to have been sown with the dragon’s teeth of ancient Greek myth. Every poppy harvest yielded a new crop of teenaged fighters for the Taliban’s growing guerrilla army.

At each stage in Afghanistan’s tragic, tumultuous history over the past 40 years — the covert war of the 1980s, the civil war of the 1990s, and the U.S. occupation since 2001 — opium played a surprisingly significant role in shaping the country’s destiny. In one of history’s bitter twists of fate, the way Afghanistan’s unique ecology converged with American military technology transformed this remote, landlocked nation into the world’s first true narco-state — a country where illicit drugs dominate the economy, define political choices, and determine the fate of foreign interventions.

Covert Warfare (1979-1992)

The CIA’s secret war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s helped transform the lawless Afghan-Pakistani borderlands into the seedbed for a sustained expansion of the global heroin trade. “In the tribal area,” the State Department would report in 1986, “there is no police force. There are no courts. There is no taxation. No weapon is illegal… Hashish and opium are often on display.” By then, the process had long been underway.  Instead of forming its own coalition of resistance leaders, the Agency relied on Pakistan’s crucial Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and its Afghan clients who soon became principals in the burgeoning cross-border opium traffic.

Not surprisingly, the Agency looked the other way while Afghanistan’s opium production grew unchecked from about 100 tons annually in the 1970s to 2,000 tons by 1991. In 1979 and 1980, just as the CIA effort was beginning to ramp up, a network of heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.  That region soon became the world’s largest heroin producer. By 1984, it supplied a staggering 60% of the U.S. market and 80% of the European one. Inside Pakistan, the number of heroin addicts went from near zero (yes, zero) in 1979 to 5,000 in 1980 and 1,300,000 by 1985 — a rate of addiction so high the U.N. called it “particularly shocking.”

According to the 1986 State Department report, opium “is an ideal crop in a war-torn country since it requires little capital investment, is fast growing, and is easily transported and traded.” Moreover, Afghanistan’s climate was well suited to this temperate crop, with average yields two to three times higher than in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region, the previous capital of the opium trade. As relentless warfare between CIA and Soviet surrogates generated at least three million refugees and disrupted food production, Afghan farmers began to turn to opium “in desperation” since it produced such easy “high profits” which could cover rising food prices. At the same time, resistance elements, according to the State Department, engaged in opium production and trafficking “to provide staples for [the] population under their control and to fund weapons purchases.”

As the mujahedeen resistance gained strength and began to create liberated zones inside Afghanistan in the early 1980s, it helped fund its operations by collecting taxes from peasants producing lucrative opium poppies, particularly in the fertile Helmand Valley, once the breadbasket of southern Afghanistan. Caravans carrying CIA arms into that region for the resistance often returned to Pakistan loaded down with opium — sometimes, the New York Times reported, “with the assent of Pakistani or American intelligence officers who supported the resistance.”

Once the mujahedeen fighters brought the opium across the border, they sold it to Pakistani heroin refiners operating in the country’s North-West Frontier Province, a covert-war zone administered by the CIA’s close ally General Fazle Haq. By 1988, there were an estimated 100 to 200 heroin refineries in the province’s Khyber district alone. Further south in the Koh-i-Soltan district of Baluchistan Province, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the CIA’s favored Afghan asset, controlled six refineries that processed much of the opium harvest from the Helmand Valley into heroin. Trucks of the Pakistani army’s National Logistics Cell, arriving in these borderlands from the port of Karachi with crates of weaponry from the CIA, left with cargos of heroin for ports and airports where it would be exported to world markets.

In May 1990, as this covert operation was ending, the Washington Post reported that the CIA’s chief asset Hekmatyar was also the rebels’ leading heroin trafficker. American officials, the Post claimed, had long refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by Hekmatyar, as well as Pakistan’s ISI, largely “because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.”

Indeed, Charles Cogan, former director of the CIA’s Afghan operation, later spoke frankly about his Agency’s choices. “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets,” he told Australian television in 1995. “We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade. I don’t think that we need to apologize for this… There was fallout in term of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”

The Afghan Civil War and the Rise of the Taliban (1989-2001)

Over the longer term, such a “clandestine” intervention (so openly written and bragged about) produced a black hole of geopolitical instability never sealed or healed thereafter.

Lying at the northern reaches of the seasonal monsoon, where rain clouds arrive already squeezed dry, arid Afghanistan never recovered from the unprecedented devastation it suffered in the years of the first American intervention. Other than irrigated areas like the Helmand Valley, the country’s semi-arid highlands were already a fragile ecosystem straining to sustain sizeable populations when war first broke out in 1979. As that war wound down between 1989 and 1992, the Washington-led alliance essentially abandoned the country, failing either to sponsor a peace settlement or finance reconstruction.

Washington simply turned elsewhere as a vicious civil war broke out in a country with 1.5 million dead, three million refugees, a ravaged economy, and a bevy of well-armed warlords primed to fight for power. During the years of vicious civil strife that followed, Afghan farmers raised the only crop that ensured instant profits, the opium poppy.  The opium harvest, having multiplied twentyfold to 2,000 tons during the covert-war era of the 1980s, would double during the civil war of the 1990s.

In this period of turmoil, opium’s ascent should be seen as a response to the severe damage two decades of warfare had inflicted. With the return of those three million refugees to a war-ravaged land, the opium fields were an employment godsend, since they required nine times as many laborers to cultivate as wheat, the country’s traditional staple. In addition, opium merchants alone were capable of accumulating capital rapidly enough to be able to provide much-needed cash advances to poor poppy farmers that equaled more than half their annual income. That credit would prove critical to the survival of many poor villagers.

In the civil war’s first phase from 1992 to 1994, ruthless local warlords combined arms and opium in a countrywide struggle for power. Determined to install its Pashtun allies in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Pakistan worked through the ISI to deliver arms and funds to its chief client Hekmatyar.  By now, he was the nominal prime minister of a fractious coalition whose troops would spend two years shelling and rocketing Kabul in fighting that left the city in ruins and some 50,000 more Afghans dead. When he nonetheless failed to take the capital, Pakistan threw its backing behind a newly arisen Pashtun force, the Taliban, a fundamentalist movement that had emerged from militant Islamic schools.

After seizing Kabul in 1996 and taking control of much of the country, the Taliban regime encouraged local opium cultivation, offering government protection to the export trade and collecting much needed taxes on both the opium produced and the heroin manufactured from it. U.N. opium surveys showed that, during their first three years in power, the Taliban raised the country’s opium crop to 4,600 tons, or 75% percent of world production at that moment.

In July 2000, however, as a devastating drought entered its second year and mass starvation spread across Afghanistan, the Taliban government suddenly ordered a ban on all opium cultivation in an apparent appeal for international recognition and aid. A subsequent U.N. crop survey of 10,030 villages found that this prohibition had reduced the harvest by 94% to a mere 185 tons.

Three months later, the Taliban sent a delegation headed by its deputy foreign minister, Abdur Rahman Zahid, to U.N. headquarters in New York to barter a continuing drug prohibition for diplomatic recognition. That body instead imposed new sanctions on the regime for protecting Osama bin Laden. The U.S., on the other hand, actually rewarded the Taliban with $43 million in humanitarian aid, even as it seconded U.N. criticism over bin Laden. Announcing this aid in May 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised “the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome” and urged the regime to “act on a number of fundamental issues that separate us: their support for terrorism; their violation of internationally recognized human rights standards, especially their treatment of women and girls.”

The War on Terror (2001-2016)

After a decade of ignoring Afghanistan, Washington rediscovered the place with a vengeance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Only weeks later, in October 2001, the U.S. began bombing the country and then launched an “invasion” spearheaded by local warlords. The Taliban regime collapsed, in the words of veteran New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, with a speed “so sudden and so unexpected that government officials and commentators on strategy… are finding it hard to explain.” Although the U.S. air attacks did considerable physical and psychological damage, many other societies have withstood far more massive bombardments without collapsing in this fashion. In retrospect, it seems likely that the opium prohibition had economically eviscerated the Taliban, leaving its theocracy a hollow shell that shattered with the first American bombs.

To an extent not generally appreciated, for the previous two decades Afghanistan had devoted a growing share of its resources — capital, land, water, and labor — to the production of opium and heroin. By the time the Taliban outlawed cultivation, the country had become, agriculturally, little more than an opium monocrop. The drug trade accounted for most of its tax revenues, almost all its export income, and much of its employment. In this context, opium eradication proved to be an act of economic suicide that brought an already weakened society to the brink of collapse. Indeed, a 2001 U.N. survey found that the ban had “resulted in a severe loss of income for an estimated 3.3 million people,” 15% of the population, including 80,000 farmers, 480,000 itinerant laborers, and their millions of dependents.

While the U.S. bombing campaign raged throughout October 2001, the CIA spent $70 million “in direct cash outlays on the ground” to mobilize its old coalition of tribal warlords to take down the Taliban, an expenditure President George W. Bush would later hail as one of history’s biggest “bargains.” To capture Kabul and other key cities, the CIA put its money behind the leaders of the Northern Alliance, which the Taliban had never fully defeated. They, in turn, had long dominated the drug traffic in the area of northeastern Afghanistan they controlled in the Taliban years. In the meantime, the CIA also turned to a group of rising Pashtun warlords who had been active as drug smugglers in the southeastern part of the country.  As a result, when the Taliban went down, the groundwork had already been laid for the resumption of opium cultivation and the drug trade on a major scale.

Once Kabul and the provincial capitals were taken, the CIA quickly ceded operational control to uniformed allied forces and civilian officials whose inept drug suppression programs in the years to come would, in the end, leave the heroin traffic’s growing profits first to those warlords and, in later years, largely to the Taliban guerrillas. In the first year of U.S. occupation, before that movement had even reconstituted itself, the opium harvest surged to 3,400 tons. In a development without historical precedent, illicit drugs would be responsible for an extraordinary 62% percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2003. For the first few years of the U.S. occupation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “dismissed growing signs that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban,” while the CIA and the U.S. military “turned a blind eye to drug-related activities by prominent warlords.”

In late 2004, after nearly two years in which it showed next to no interest in the subject, outsourcing opium control to its British allies and police training to the Germans, the White House was suddenly confronted with troubling CIA intelligence suggesting that the escalating drug trade was fueling a revival of the Taliban. Backed by President Bush, Secretary of State Powell then urged an aggressive counter-narcotics strategy, including a Vietnam-style aerial defoliation of parts of rural Afghanistan. But U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad resisted this approach, seconded by his local ally Ashraf Ghani, then the country’s finance minister (and now its president), who warned that such an eradication program would mean “widespread impoverishment” in the country without $20 billion in foreign aid to create “genuine alternative livelihood[s].”

As a compromise, Washington came to rely on private contractors like DynCorp to train Afghan manual eradication teams. However, by 2005, according to New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall, that approach had already become “something of a joke.” Two years later, as the Taliban insurgency and opium cultivation both spread in what seemed to be a synergistic fashion, the U.S. Embassy again pressed Kabul to accept the kind of aerial defoliation the U.S. had sponsored in Colombia. President Hamid Karzai refused, leaving this critical problem unresolved.

The U.N.’s Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007 found that the annual harvest was up 24% to a record 8,200 tons, which translated into 53% of the country’s GDP and 93% of the world’s illicit heroin supply. Significantly, the U.N. stated that Taliban guerrillas had “started to extract from the drug economy resources for arms, logistics, and militia pay.” A study for the U.S. Institute of Peace concluded that, by 2008, the movement had 50 heroin labs in its territory and controlled 98% of the country’s poppy fields.  That year, it reportedly collected $425 million in “taxes” levied on opium traffic, and with every harvest, it gained the necessary funds to recruit a new crop of young fighters from the villages. Each of those prospective guerrillas could count on monthly payments of $300, far above the wages they would have made as agricultural laborers.

In mid-2008, to contain the spreading insurgency, Washington decided to commit 40,000 more American combat troops to the country, raising allied forces to 70,000. Recognizing the crucial role of opium revenues in Taliban recruitment practices, the U.S. Treasury also formed the Afghan Threat Finance Cell and embedded 60 of its analysts in combat units charged with launching strategic strikes against the drug trade.

Using quantitative methods of “social network analysis” and “influence network modeling,” those instant civilian experts would often, according to one veteran analyst, “point to hawala brokers [rural creditors] as critical nodes within an insurgent group’s network,” prompting U.S. combat soldiers to take “kinetic courses of action — quite literally, kicking down the door of the hawala office and shutting down the operation.” Such “highly controversial” acts might “temporarily degrade the financial network of an insurgent group,” but those gains came “at the cost of upsetting an entire village” dependent on the lender for legitimate credit that was the “vast majority of the hawalador’s business.” In this way, once again, support for the Taliban grew.

By 2009, the guerrillas were expanding so rapidly that the new Obama administration opted for a “surge” in U.S. troop strength to 102,000 in a bid to cripple the Taliban. After months of rising troop deployments, President Obama’s new war strategy was officially launched on February 13, 2010, in Marja, a remote market town in Helmand Province. As waves of helicopters descended on its outskirts spitting up clouds of dust, hundreds of Marines sprinted through fields of sprouting opium poppies toward the town’s mud-walled compounds. Though their target was the local Taliban guerrillas, the Marines were in fact occupying the capital of the global heroin trade. Forty percent of the world’s illicit opium supply was grown in the surrounding districts and much of that crop was traded in Marja.

A week later, U.S. Commander General Stanley McChrystal choppered into town with Karim Khalili, Afghanistan’s vice president, for the media rollout of a new-look counterinsurgency strategy that, he told reporters, was rock-solid certain to pacify villages like Marja. Only it would never be so because the opium trade would spoil the party. “If they come with tractors,” one Afghan widow announced to a chorus of supportive shouts from her fellow farmers, “they will have to roll over me and kill me before they can kill my poppy.” Speaking by satellite telephone from the region’s opium fields, a U.S. Embassy official told me: “You can’t win this war without taking on drug production in Helmand Province.”

Watching these events unfold nearly six years ago, I wrote an essay for TomDispatch warning of a defeat foretold. “So the choice is clear enough,” I said at the time. “We can continue to fertilize this deadly soil with yet more blood in a brutal war with an uncertain outcome… or we can help renew this ancient, arid land by re-planting the orchards, replenishing the flocks, and rebuilding the farming destroyed in decades of war… until food crops become a viable alternative to opium. To put it simply, so simply that even Washington might understand, we can only pacify a narco-state when it is no longer a narco-state.”

By attacking the guerrillas but ignoring the opium harvest that funded new insurgents every spring, Obama’s surge soon suffered that defeat foretold. As 2012 ended, the Taliban guerrillas had, according to the New York Times, “weathered the biggest push the American-led coalition is going to make against them.” Amid the rapid drawdown of allied forces to meet President Obama’s December 2014 deadline for “ending” U.S. combat operations, reduced air operations allowed the Taliban to launch mass-formation attacks in the north, northeast, and south, killing record numbers of Afghan army troops and police.

At the time, John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector for Afghanistan, offered a telling explanation for the Taliban’s survival. Despite the expenditure of a staggering $7.6 billion on “drug eradication” programs during the previous decade, he concluded that, “by every conceivable metric, we’ve failed. Production and cultivation are up, interdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is up, and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, the 2013 opium crop covered a record 209,000 hectares, raising the harvest by 50% to 5,500 tons. That massive harvest generated some $3 billion in illicit income, of which the Taliban’s tax took an estimated $320 million, well over half its revenues. The U.S. Embassy corroborated this dismal assessment, calling the illicit income “a windfall for the insurgency, which profits from the drug trade at almost every level.”

As the 2014 opium crop was harvested, fresh U.N. figures suggested that the dismal trend only continued, with the areas under cultivation rising to a record 224,000 hectares and production at 6,400 tons remaining near historic highs. In May 2015, having watched this flood of drugs enter the global market as U.S. counter-narcotics spending climbed to $8.4 billion, Sopko tried to translate what was happening into a single all-American image. “Afghanistan,” he said, “has roughly 500,000 acres, or about 780 square miles, devoted to growing opium poppy. That’s equivalent to more than 400,000 U.S. football fields — including the end zones.”

In the fighting season of 2015, the Taliban decisively seized the combat initiative and opium seemed ever more deeply embedded in its operations. The New York Times reported that the movement’s new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was “among the first major Taliban officials to be linked to the drug trade… and later became the Taliban’s main tax collector for the narcotics trade — creating immense profits.” After months of relentless pressure on government forces in three northern provinces, the group’s first major operation under his command was the two-week seizure of the strategic city of Kunduz, which just happened to be located on “the country’s most lucrative drug routes… moving opium from the poppy prolific provinces in the south to Tajikistan… and to Russia and Europe.” Washington felt forced to slam down the brakes on planned further withdrawals of its combat forces.

Amid a rushed evacuation of its regional offices in the threatened northern provinces, the U.N. released a map in October showing that the Taliban had “high” or “extreme” control in more than half the country’s rural districts, including many where they had not previously been a significant presence. Within a month, the Taliban unleashed offensives countrywide that aimed at seizing and holding territory, threatening military bases in northern Faryab Province and encircling entire districts in western Herat.

Not surprisingly, the strongest attacks came in the poppy heartland of Helmand Province, where half the country’s opium crop was then grown and, said the New York Times, “the lucrative opium trade made it crucial to the insurgents’ economic designs.” By mid-December, after overrunning checkpoints, winning back much of the province, and setting government security forces back on their heels, the guerrillas came close to capturing that heart of the heroin trade, Marja, the very site of President Obama’s media-saturated surge rollout in 2010.  Had U.S. Special Operations forces and the U.S. Air Force not intervened to relieve “demoralized” Afghan forces, the town and the province would undoubtedly have fallen. By early 2016, 14-plus years after Afghanistan was “liberated” by a U.S. invasion, and in a significant reversal of Obama administration drawdown policies, the U.S. was reportedly dispatching “hundreds” of new U.S. troops in a mini-surge into Helmand Province to shore up the government’s faltering forces and deny the insurgents the “economic prize” of the world’s most productive poppy fields.

After a disastrous 2015 fighting season that inflicted what U.S. officials have termed “unsustainable” casualties on the Afghan army and what the UN called the “real horror” of record civilian losses, the long, harsh winter that has settled across the country is offering no respite. As cold and snow slowed combat in the countryside, the Taliban shifted operations to the cities, with five massive bombings in Kabul and other key urban areas in the first week of January, followed by a suicide attack on a police complex in the capital that killed 20 officers.

Meanwhile, as the 2015 harvest ended, the country’s opium cultivation, after six years of sustained growth, slipped by 18% to 183,000 hectares and the crop yield dropped steeply to 3,300 tons. While U.N. officials attributed much of the decline to drought and the spread of a poppy fungus, conditions that might not continue into 2016, long-term trends are still an unclear mix of positive and negative news. Buried in the mass of data published in the U.N.’s drug reports is one significant statistic: as Afghanistan’s economy grew from years of international aid, opium’s share of GDP dropped steadily from a daunting 63% in 2003 to a far more manageable 13% in 2014. Even so, the U.N. says, “dependency on the opiate economy at the farmer level in many rural communities is still high.”

At that local level in Helmand Province, “Afghan government officials have also become directly involved in the opium trade,” the New York Times recently reported. In doing so, they expanded “their competition with the Taliban… into a struggle for control of the drug traffic,” while imposing “a tax on farmers practically identical to the one the Taliban uses,” and kicking a portion of their illicit profits “up the chain, all the way to officials in Kabul… ensuring that the local authorities maintain support from higher-ups and keeping the opium growing.”

Simultaneously, a recent U.N. Security Council investigation found that the Taliban has systematically tapped “into the supply chain at each stage of the narcotics trade,” collecting a 10% user tax on opium cultivation in Helmand, fighting for control of heroin laboratories, and acting as “the major guarantors for the trafficking of raw opium and heroin out of Afghanistan.” No longer simply taxing the traffic, the Taliban is now so deeply and directly involved that, adds the Times, it “has become difficult to distinguish the group from a dedicated drug cartel.” Whatever the long-term trends might be, for the foreseeable future opium remains deeply entangled with the rural economy, the Taliban insurgency, and government corruption whose sum is the Afghan conundrum.

With ample revenues from past bumper crops, the Taliban will undoubtedly be ready for the new fighting season that will come with the start of spring. As snow melts from the mountain slopes and poppy shoots spring from the soil, there will be, as in the past 40 years, a new crop of teenaged recruits ready to fight for the rebel forces.

Cutting the Afghan Gordian Knot

For most people globally, economic activity, the production and exchange of goods, is the prime point of contact with government, as is manifest in the coins and currency stamped by the state that everyone carries in their pockets.  But when a country’s most significant commodity is illegal, then political loyalties naturally shift to the clandestine networks that move that product safely from fields to foreign markets, providing finance, loans, and employment every step of the way. “The narcotics trade poisons the Afghan financial sector and fuels a growing illicit economy,” John Sopko explains. “This, in turn, undermines the Afghan state’s legitimacy by stoking corruption, nourishing criminal networks, and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurgent groups.”

After 15 years of continuous warfare in Afghanistan, Washington is faced with the same choice it had five years ago when Obama’s generals heli-lifted those Marines into Marja to start its surge. Just as it has been over the past decade and a half, the U.S. can remain trapped in the same endless cycle, fighting each new crop of village warriors who annually seem to spring fully armed from that country’s poppy fields. At this point, history tells us one thing: in this land sown with dragon’s teeth, there will be a new crop of guerrillas this year, next year, and the year after that.

Even in troubled Afghanistan, however, there are alternatives whose sum could potentially slice through this Gordian knot of a policy problem. As a first and fundamental step, maybe it’s time to stop talking about the next sets of boots on the ground and for President Obama to complete his planned troop withdrawal.

Next, investing even a small portion of all that misspent military funding in rural Afghanistan could produce economic alternatives for the millions of farmers who depend upon the opium crop for employment. Such money could help rebuild that land’s ruined orchards, ravaged flocks, wasted seed stocks, and wrecked snowmelt irrigation systems that, before these decades of war, sustained a diverse agriculture. If the international community can continue to nudge the country’s dependence on illicit opium down from the current 13% of GDP through such sustained rural development, then perhaps Afghanistan will cease to be the planet’s leading narco-state and just maybe that annual cycle can at long last be broken.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years. His more recent books include Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.

I noticed an attack on this letter (below) in the comments at third party media basically smearing Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) by association with Bernard Kouchner, a man that departed the organization over 35 years ago over philosophical differences. I had supported Doctors Without Borders because they had been apolitical, and largely neutral in conflicts. This neutrality had begun a process of erosion in Syria. Unlike the attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, where there was no question of which belligerent controlled the air power responsible (NATO’s USA), and where the organization called for an independent, third party investigation, those actors responsible for the attacks concerning the MSF aligned clinics in Syria are not as convincing and clear, arguably creating even more pressing demand for impartial, third party investigation.

Following these most recent attacks on clinics aligned with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Syria, Mego Terzian, President of MSF France, immediately blamed Russia and Assad. MSF International President has gone on record also blaming Russian aligned forces, stating “It was probably carried out by the Syrian-government-led coalition that is predominantly active in the region.”  This statement of Dr Liu is disingenuous. Turkey is a major player in its support for jihadi militia in that very area and has a vested interest in information operations intended to undermine the coalition supporting the Assad regime. This is the purpose of false flag attacks.  Recent history demands if the finger of superficial appearance had pointed to the NATO aligned nations, there would be calls for impartial investigation rather than immediate trial and conviction by propaganda operations perpetrated in western media.

Relevant to this preceding, it is a fairly safe presumption all high profile international non-governmental organizations will be targets of intelligence agencies for diverse purpose. However there is a large qualitative difference between that organization and the organization which, on the whole, has been tipped by intelligence to a point of co-option; where the organization itself has become the intelligence asset. Médecins Sans Frontières would appear to pointed towards co-option. Here is my response:

Dear MSF,

A monthly donor of many years, I feel an explanation is in order for my cancellation and further refusal to participate as a MSF “Field Partner.” I am a former military special operations intelligence professional and anti-corruption investigator of many years. Based on my expertise in open source intelligence analysis and closely following several of the ongoing conflicts, including Ukraine and SYRIA, it has become clear MSF is becoming a tool for geopolitical ends. Either you’ve been penetrated by intelligence agencies for this purpose of promoting false flag information operations or your organization is being manipulated to same effect. I cannot, with clear conscious, be a party to this with further contributions.

The several NATO intelligence agencies are in full force pursuing anti-Russian propaganda operations, which likely include the recent attacks on MSF aligned Syrian clinics; purposeful and professional operations intended to smear Russia and President Putin for purposes of generating political capital for pursuit of geopolitical manipulations. Your organization immediately pointing the finger at Assad and/or the Russians, without time taken to properly investigate, is unethical.

NATO aligned intelligence agency false flag examples provided:

NATO’s Turkey suppressing investigation into their intelligence agency, MIT, providing sarin gas to al Nusra (al Qaida) that killed 1,400 Syrians at Ghouta, blamed on the Assad regime, in August, 2013. Turkish parliamentarians complain of the suppressed facts:

Noteworthy state sponsored crimes committed to demonize Putin include but are not limited to:

– The Litvinenko report by the British

– The Maidan snipers in Kiev trained by the CIA according to Member of European Parliament, backed by a leaked phone call between the EU foreign policy chief and the Estonian Foreign minister revealing the snipers were aligned with the new regime in Kiev. This crime had been blamed on the Russian aligned preceding government.

and…

The crimes in Syria against MSF aligned facilities serve the same propaganda purposes and the Erdogan government cannot be ruled out as committing them, whereas it is NOT in the Russian interest to perpetrate these attacks. Here is a list of Turkish support for bad actors in Syria compiled by Jihad Watch:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/11/report-turkey-collaborating-with-the-islamic-state

It is sad to see MSF go the route of some other organizations and become a pawn of dirty players in geopolitics. I suggest your organization pursue a professional investigation to determine how, and by who, you’ve become manipulated to both a stooge and minion of evil.

Regards,

Ron West

http://ronaldthomaswest.com

“The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than a history of crime” -Voltaire

*

According to the official information provided by the media of the United States, Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran are villains: thus the American media urges support for the actions of the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to achieve peace in the region. This point of view is absolutely contrary to what is happening in Syria, in fact, it will lead to the continuation of the war and civilian casualties. This was stated by journalist Stephen Kinzer, who called the coverage of events in Syria a “shameful page in the history of the American press”.

American journalists, following the official line of the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, present the head of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and also Russia and Iran as villains. They support, according to U.S. media,  Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This position, which is due to the deliberate distortion of what is actually happening in Syria, will lead to the prolonging of the war and an even greater number of civilian casualties, writes the journalist of the newspaper the Boston Globe – Stephen Kinzer. According to him, coverage of the conflict in Syria will be one of the most shameful pages in the history of the media of the United States.

As the main example, Kinser gives the siege of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Within three years the town was ruled by militants, who have imposed cruel orders such as the ban on children attending school under the threat of death, the journalist notes. Terrorists destroyed factories in the hope that workers will go to them in search of work, and sold the seized equipment to Turkey. In February, the army of Syria with the support of the Russian airforce started pushing the militants out of the city, according to Kinzer.

The retreating militants in response shelled residential areas of Aleppo, with rockets and canisters of gas. This picture, said the journalist, does not match the official line of Washington. As a result, U.S. media reported that Aleppo was besieged by the governmental army of Syria with the support of Iran and Russia, writes Kinzer.

“This is nonsense, but do not blame the Americans for believing it. We do not have any information about the parties to the conflict, their goals or methods of action. The blame belongs to the American media,” — emphasizes Kinser on the pages of the Boston Globe.

Correspondents covering the war in Syria get information from the Pentagon, State Department, White House and their “experts”, believing they represent a lot of opinions on this issue. This type of activity that passes for news journalism, can only be described as shorthand, says Kinser.

“The official picture of events shockingly contradicts what is really going on, and maintaining this position will lead to the continuation of the conflict and condemn the innocent civilians of Syria to an even longer war and painful death,” concludes the columnist of the Boston Globe.

The Russian/American bilateral agreement announced Monday was dead-on-arrival, much as Syrians and anti-war supporters wish otherwise.

The US-led Western supported Riyadh-based so-called High Negotiations Committee (HNC) comprised of anti-Syrian terrorist groups threw a spanner in the works straightaway – consenting to ceasefire terms with unacceptable preconditions, including:

• halting Russian/Syrian bombing, falsely claiming it targets nonexistent moderate rebels, civilians and nonmilitary targets;

• releasing prisoners responsible for gruesome atrocities;

• ending the blockade of areas held by terrorists, reopening their supply lines to Turkey if agreed to;

• Syrian forces to halt advancing into territories held by terrorist groups agreeing to ceasefire terms; and

• delivering humanitarian aid – ISIS and other terrorist groups steal it for their own use or sale to desperate people at unaffordable prices.

Demanding these conditions constitutes an automatic deal-breaker before it’s officially announced by all warring parties.

Expect Moscow and Damascus to be wrongfully blamed when things break down – when proposed terms are flagrantly breached by US supported terrorists.

Chances for resolving Syria’s conflict diplomatically are virtually nil. Putin and Assad have no peace partners in Washington, London, Paris, Ankara, Riyadh, Doha, Tel Aviv or other rogue state capitals.

Russia and America jointly proposed a February 27 ceasefire date, effective midnight Damascus time – “applied to those parties to the Syrian conflict that have indicated their commitment” to observe it.

ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other Security Council designated terrorist organizations are excluded.

Moscow and Washington agreed to “exchange pertinent information,” distinguishing territories held by ISIS and other terrorist groups from others agreeing to accept ceasefire terms.

A so-called International Syria Support Group (ISSG) ceasefire task force will be established under US-controlled UN auspices – a sham arrangement, letting America have final say on who’s in-or-out-of-compliance, using the world body to do its finger-pointing.

Assad supported ceasefire long before the current initiative. At the same time, he vows unrelenting resistance against terrorist invaders until their scourge is eliminated.

So does Russia, knowing foreign-supported terrorist groups must be defeated to have any chance for a durable peace.

Sergey Lavrov and his diplomatic team worked tirelessly for conflict resolution since at least 2012. Washington undermined their best efforts.

Is this time different? Do rogue state hegemons ever reinvent themselves as peacemakers?

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

References:

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, was once used only sparingly. It had to be, as the herbicide kills basically any plant it touches.

This meant that although it killed many weeds, farmers couldn’t safely apply it near their crops, lest they risk killing off their crops as well. It was only used where farmers wanted to kill all vegetation, such as between the rows in orchards or in industrial yards.

This all changed in 1996, when Monsanto’s so-called “Roundup Ready,” genetically engineered (GE) glyphosate-tolerant crops (soy, corn and cotton) were introduced.

The GE crops are impervious to glyphosate’s toxic effects, which allows farmers to spray the chemical onto their crops with abandon.  And spray they did.

Glyphosate Is the Most Used Agricultural Chemical in History

Since 1996, the use of glyphosate has risen nearly 15-fold, according to a new study published in Environmental Sciences Europe.1 Since glyphosate was introduced in 1974, 1.8 million tons have been applied to U.S. fields, and two-thirds of that volume has been sprayed in the last 10 years.

Worldwide, 9.4 million tons have been sprayed from 1974 to 2014. The chemical has now earned the ominous title of the most heavily used agricultural chemical of all time.2

In fact, the analysis showed that farmers sprayed enough glyphosate in 2014 to apply 0.8 pounds of the chemical to every acre of cultivated cropland in the U.S. and nearly 0.5 a pound of glyphosate to all cropland worldwide.

GE herbicide-tolerant crops account for more than half (56 percent) of global glyphosate use. The researchers stated:3

In the U.S., no pesticide has come remotely close to such intensive and widespread use. This is likely the case globally, but published global pesticide use data are sparse.

Glyphosate will likely remain the most widely applied pesticide worldwide for years to come, and interest will grow in quantifying ecological and human health impacts.

Does Glyphosate Cause Cancer? 

In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is the research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), determined glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, to be a “probable carcinogen” (Class 2A).

This determination was based on evidence showing the popular weed killer can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and lung cancer in humans, along with “convincing evidence” it can also cause cancer in animals.

Monsanto has maintained that the classification as a carcinogen is wrong and continues to tout glyphosate (and Roundup) as one of the safest pesticides on the planet.4

However, they’ve now been slapped with a growing number of lawsuits alleging they long knew that Roundup’s glyphosate could harm human health. California resident Brenda Huerta and her husband James filed one such lawsuit in January 2016.

The couple lived on a commercial sod farm for several years, which exposed them to the chemical. Brenda was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2013.5

It’s probably no coincidence that California has both the highest level of glyphosate usage and the most cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the type of cancer linked to Roundup, in the U.S.6

California environmental officials intend to add glyphosate to their Proposition 65 list of cancer-causing chemicals. Established in California in 1986, Proposition 65 requires consumer products with potential cancer-causing ingredients to bear warning labels.

Rather than label their products sold in California as likely carcinogenic, most companies reformulated their product ingredients so as to avoid warning labels altogether, and they did this on a national scale, not just in California.

Monsanto, however, is trying a different strategy. They filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block California from listing glyphosate as a known carcinogen.

Why Isn’t the U.S. Government Testing Your Food for Glyphosate Residues?

In December 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released data from the 2014 Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual Summary.

More than 10,000 food samples were tested, and 0.36 percent contained pesticide levels that were above the tolerance levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This means more than 99 percent of foods should contain pesticide residues that fall within “safe” limits.

This isn’t as reassuring as it sounds for a couple of key reasons. First, one of the EPA’s regular responsibilities is to set a tolerance, or maximum residue limit, for pesticide residues on food, which are designed to protect you from harmful levels of pesticides.

But these tolerance levels are regularly challenged by the pesticide industry, including the likes of Monsanto and Syngenta. These companies know how many pesticides are being sprayed (or applied otherwise) on your food, hence their petitions to increase the allowable limits.

Second, the USDA does not test for residues of glyphosate in your food. As forwhy the USDA continues to avoid testing for glyphosate residues in your food, perhaps that’s a question we should be posing to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack — a former Monsanto lawyer and advocate. As reported by Reuters in 2015:7

A USDA spokesman who asked not to be quoted said that the test measures required for glyphosate are ‘extremely expensive… to do on an regular basis …’

In response to growing public concern about the toxicity of glyphosate, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that U.S. regulators may start testing for glyphosate residues on food in the near future.

But keep in mind that current allowable limits may be set too far high to protect your health, so unless that’s revised as well, you may be lulled into a false sense of security.

Global Environmental Contaminants 

It’s not surprising that Monsanto is trying to keep people in the dark about the health risks associated with glyphosate. Not only has the company been steadfastly fighting against GMO labeling, but they also feigned ignorance on the dangers of PCBs for several decades.

Monsanto (and Monsanto-related entities) is now facing at least 700 lawsuits on behalf of people who claim their exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which Monsanto manufactured until the 1970s, caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.8 The company claimed the PCBs it produced were “singularly free of difficulties,” yet the U.S. government banned PCBs in 1976 due to their carcinogenic potential.9

In 2002, Monsanto was found guilty of decades of “outrageous acts of pollution” in the town of Anniston, Alabama, where it dumped PCBs into the local river and secretly buried the toxic chemical in a landfill.10 Internal documents revealed Monsanto had full knowledge of the severity of the pollution problem it caused for at least three decades, and decided to ignore it.

San Diego has sued Monsanto for polluting the Coronado Bay with PCBs,11 and Seattle recently became the sixth city to file a lawsuit against the company for PCB pollution.

The City of Seattle wants Monsanto to pay to help clean up pollution it caused in the Duwamish River and also wants to hold Monsanto responsible for making the river’s fish too contaminated to eat. The city alleges that Monsanto knew all along that PCBs were toxic but continued to market them anyway. According to Seattle Weekly:12

The lawsuit details internal documents that show Monsanto knew its chemicals were harmful to human health, but continued to market it — all but assuring that PCBs would eventually end up in waterways across the world.

The company formed internal committees on the subject acknowledging that PCBs were ‘global environmental contaminants leading to contamination of human food (particularly fish).’ But discontinuing production was not an option, one memo reads: ‘There is too much customer/market need and selfishly too much Monsanto profit to go out.’

In addition to Seattle and San Diego, San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley, California and Spokane, Washington have also filed lawsuits against Monsanto for continuing to produce and promote PCBs despite knowing their hazards.13

Monsanto Has Long Fought to Keep You in the Dark About GMO Foods

Monsanto has spent millions to defeat GMO labeling initiatives. In 2013, the company donated nearly $5 million to the anti-labeling campaign in Washington State, and in 2012 they donated more than $7 million to help defeat California’s Proposition 37. Curiously enough, Monsanto is more than willing to “support” GMO labeling once they run out of options.

They even ran an ad in the U.K. letting British consumers know how much the company supports the mandatory labeling of their goods — even urging Britons to seek such labels out — ostensibly because Monsanto believes “you should be aware of all the facts before making a decision.”

They may feel defeat is near in the U.S. as well, as they’ve announced in the U.S. that they support GMO labeling. It’s a ridiculous statement considering the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), whose 300-plus members include Monsanto, Coca-Cola, and General Mills, is pushing a Congressional bill called the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014.”

The bill, dubbed the “DARK” (Denying Americans the Right to Know) Act, would actually preempt all states from passing GMO labeling laws. It would also bar states from enacting laws that make it illegal for food companies to misrepresent their products by labeling GE ingredients as “natural.” Last but not least, the DARK Act would also limit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) power to force food companies to disclose GE ingredients.

They are trying to HIDE the presence of genetically engineered ingredients and are pulling out ALL the stops to do so. Monsanto can say they support GMO labeling because they want to pass a federal bill to ensure “voluntary” labeling, which already exists today, while banning any state from passing a mandatory labeling law.

The GMA is another organization with a sordid past. In 2013, Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit against the GMA, alleging the association violated the state’s campaign disclosure laws. Ferguson alleged the GMA illegally collected and spent more than $7 million on the “No On Initiative 522” GMO labeling campaign, while hiding the identity of its contributors in order to shield them from consumer backlash.

According to the Washington State Office of the Attorney General:14

Attorney General Bob Ferguson today announced that his office has asked a court to grant summary judgment and penalize the Grocery Manufacturers Association for GMA’s intentional subterfuge in an effort to elude state campaign-finance laws. Ferguson also asked the court to unseal “confidential” GMA documents in the landmark case.

To date, Campbell Soup Co. is the only major U.S. food company to respond to consumer demand and announce that it will label its products with GE ingredients. Ironically, PepsiCo., which spent $8.8 million in 2015 to overturn state labeling initiatives, requested a non-GMO Project label for their Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice.15

Monsanto Loses Syngenta Merger

Monsanto pursued Syngenta, the world’s largest pesticide producer, for four years, hoping to take over the company. Monsanto has made at least three takeover offers, but now has lost out on the merger for good.

China National Chemical Corporation has agreed to buy Syngenta for about $43 billion, a move that has Food & Water Watch calling for antitrust authorities to block the takeover, noting such a merger “would accelerate the hyper-consolidation in the global seed and agrochemical market.”16

When you factor in the 2015 merger between DuPont and Dow Chemical, this latest merger would put just three companies in control of more than 75 percent of corn and 80 percent of soybean seeds in the U.S. Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter voiced concerns to Corporate Crime Reporter:17

The Department of Justice and antitrust authorities of governments across the world must act to block these seed megamergers … The rapid concentration of economic power and seed patents in the hands of a tiny and diminishing number of global agribusiness giants harms farmers and eaters worldwide. Farmers will undoubtedly be forced to pay more for a reduced selection of options controlled by the gargantuan seed monopoly.

The companies use the patented seed varieties — overwhelmingly biotech crops with accompanying pesticides and agrochemicals — to control not only the selection of what farmers plant, but how they cultivate their crops, what chemicals they use on their fields and how they can manage their farms. The merger has far reaching impacts on the food supply, the environment and consumers …

There is a growing demand by consumers to know what they are eating, how it is grown and how it impacts their communities. Global agribusiness mega-mergers like the proposed ChemChina-Syngenta deal give a corporate cabal a stranglehold on the world’s farmers and the world’s eaters. When fewer firms control more of the seed and agrochemical market, both farmers and consumers lose out.

Academics Selling Out to Monsanto

Last year, a New York Times article highlighted the lengths Monsanto will go to seem credible, including enlisting prominent members of academia to push their own self-serving agendas.18 One of the most talked-about scandals involved University of Florida professor Kevin Folta, a vocal advocate of GMOs who vehemently denied ever receiving any money from Monsanto.

However, he was caught having been less than forthright about his connections to the company when his email correspondence was released in response to a freedom of information (FOIA) request by U.S. Right to Know. In August of 2014, Folta did in fact receive a $25,000 unrestricted grant from Monsanto, and Folta wrote back to a Monsanto executive saying: “I am grateful for this opportunity and promise a solid return on the investment.”

The most flagrant piece of evidence against Folta showed that not only did he solicit these funds from Monsanto, but he also appeared to do so with intent to hide the financial connection between them. Folta even went so far as to create a bizarre alter ego, Vern Blazek, a supposed radio personality in Tillamook, Oregon, who held podcasts to sort through “the shills and charlatans to distill the scientific truth.”

Another example involves former University of Illinois Food Science professor Bruce Chassy, Ph.D. a respected “expert” researcher who often writes about food safety issues and worked as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health.

E-mails revealed through an FOIA request showed Chassy was part of a group of U.S. academics who were, according to Alternet, “quietly collaborating with Monsanto on strategies aimed at not just promoting biotech crop products, but also rolling back regulation of these products and fending off industry critics.”19

The e-mails show money flowing into the university from Monsanto as Chassy collaborated on multiple projects with Monsanto to counter public concerns about genetically modified crops (GMOs) — all while representing himself as an independent academic for a public institution. 20

At least one email exchange between Chassy and the biotech industry involved how to “spin” a government study that revealed high levels of glyphosate in air and water samples. Carey Gillam, research director at U.S. Right to Know, explained:21

The revelations in the emails about Chassy, Folta and other assorted academics, leave many questions about who to trust, and how to trust, information critical to understanding our evolving food system. With food labeling issues at the forefront of debate, it’s time for more transparency.

GMOs Fuel CAFOs, Which Also Want to Hide Behind a Cloak of Secrecy

Monsanto’s glyphosate-laden GMO crops are a staple food for the millions of animals raised on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)  — another industry that is trying to keep the public in the dark about what really goes on behind their closed doors.

So-called “ag-gag” laws, which legally prevent people from filming or photographing conditions on factory farms, are being heavily promoted by lobbyists for the meat, egg, and dairy industries to essentially prevent anyone from exposing animal cruelty and food-safety issues at CAFOs. Montano, Utah, North Dakota, Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa already have such laws in place preventing people from taking photos or videos of CAFOs.

On January 1, 2016, a law took effect in North Carolina that not only makes secret filming on CAFOs illegal but also secret videos or photos at nursing homes, day care centers and veterans’ facilities, among others. Anyone who violates the law can be sued by the business owners for bad publicity!22

Do You Want to Avoid Pesticides in Your Food?

Glyphosate has a number of devastating biological effects beyond being a probable carcinogen, including the following:

Your best bet for minimizing health risks from pesticide exposure (even those the government claim are “safe”) is to avoid them in the first place by eating organic as much as possible and investing in a good water filtration system for your home or apartment. If you know you have been exposed to pesticides, the lactic acid bacteria formed during the fermentation of kimchi may also help your body break down pesticides.

So including fermented foods like kimchi in your diet may also be a wise strategy to help detox the pesticides that do enter your body. One of the benefits of eating organic is that the foods will be free of GM ingredients — and this is key to avoiding exposure to toxic glyphosate. Following are some great resources to obtain wholesome organic food.

Eating locally produced organic food will not only support your family’s health, it will also protect the environment from harmful chemical pollutants and the inadvertent spread of genetically engineered seeds and chemical-resistant weeds and pests.

What You Need to Know About GMOs

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or genetically “engineered” (GE) foods, are live organisms whose genetic components have been artificially manipulated in a laboratory setting through creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacteria, and even viral genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods.

GMO proponents claim that genetic engineering is “safe and beneficial,” and that it advances the agricultural industry. They also say that GMOs help ensure the global food supply and sustainability. But is there any truth to these claims? I believe not. For years, I’ve stated the belief that GMOs pose one of the greatest threats to life on the planet. Genetic engineering is NOT the safe and beneficial technology that it is touted to be.

The FDA cleared the way for GE (Genetically Engineered) Atlantic salmon to be farmed for human consumption. Thanks to added language in the federal spending bill, the product will require special labeling so at least consumers will have the ability to identify the GE salmon in stores. However, it’s imperative ALL GE foods be labeled, which is currently still being denied.

The FDA is threatening the existence of our food supply. We have to start taking action now. I urge you to share this article with friends and family. If we act together, we can make a difference and put an end to the absurdity.

QR Codes Are NOT an Adequate Substitute for Package Labels

The biotech industry is trying to push the QR code as an answer for consumer concerns about GE foods. QR stands for Quick Response, and the code can be scanned and read by smart phones and other QR readers.

The code brings you to a product website that provides further details about the product. The video below shows you why this is not an ideal solution. There’s nothing forcing companies to declare GMOs on their website. On the contrary, GE foods are allowed to be promoted as “natural,” which further adds to the confusion.

These so-called “Smart Labels” hardly improve access to information. Instead, by making finding the truth time-consuming and cumbersome, food makers can be assured that most Americans will remain ignorant about the presence of GMOs in their products. Besides, everyone has a right to know what’s in the food. You shouldn’t have to own a smartphone to obtain this information.

Non-GMO Food Resources by Country

If you are searching for non-GMO foods here is a list of trusted sites you can visit.

• Organic Food Directory (Australia)
• Eat Wild (Canada)
• Organic Explorer (New Zealand)
• Eat Well Guide (United States & Canada)
• Farm Match (United States)
• Local Harvest (United States)
• Weston A. Price Foundation (United States)

In my archives there is a column or two that introduces the reader to John Perkins’ important book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. An EHM is an operative who sells the leadership of a developing country on an economic plan or massive development project. The Hit Man convinces a country’s government that borrowing large sums of money from US financial institutions in order to finance the project will raise the country’s living standards. The borrower is assured that the project will increase Gross Domestic Product and tax revenues and that these increases will allow the loan to be repaid.

However, the plan is designed to over-estimate the benefits so that the indebted country cannot pay the principal and interest. As Perkins’ puts it, the plans are based on “distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting,” and if the deception doesn’t work, “threats and bribes” are used to close the deal.

The next step in the deception is the appearance of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF tells the indebted country that the IMF will save its credit rating by lending the money with which to repay the country’s creditors. The IMF loan is not a form of aid. It merely replaces the country’s indebtedness to banks with indebtedness to the IMF.

To repay the IMF, the country has to accept an austerity plan and agree to sell national assets to private investors. Austerity means cuts in social pensions, social services, employment and wages, and the budget savings are used to repay the IMF. Privatization means selling oil, mineral and public infrastructure in order to repay the IMF. The deal usually imposes an agreement to vote with the US in the UN and to accept US military bases.

Occasionally a country’s leader refuses the plan or the austerity and privatization. If bribes don’t work, the US sends in the jackals—assassins who remove the obstacle to the looting process.

Perkins’ book caused a sensation. It showed that the United States’ attitude of helpfulness toward poorer countries was only a pretext for schemes to loot the countries. Perkins’ book sold more than a million copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 73 weeks.

Now the book has been reissued with the addition of 14 new chapters and a 30-page listing of Hit Man activity during the years 2004-2015.

Perkins shows that despite his revelations, the situation is worse than ever and has spread into the West itself. The populations of Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the United States itself are now being looted by Hit Man activity.

Perkins’ book shows that the US is “exceptional” only in the unbridled violence it applies to others who get in its way. One of the new chapters tells the story of France-Albert Rene, president of Seychelles, who threatened to reveal the illegal and inhumane eviction of the residents of Diego Garcia by Britain and Washington so that the island could be converted into an air base from which Washington could bomb noncompliant countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Washington sent in a team of jackels to murder the president of Seychelles, but the assassins were foiled. All but one were captured, tried and sentenced to execution or prison, but a multi-million dollar bribe to Rene freed them. Rene got the message and became compliant.

In the original printing of his book, Perkins tells the stories of how jackals arranged airplane crashes to get rid of Panama’s non-compliant president, Omar Torrijos, and Ecuador’s non-compliant president, Jaime Roldos. When Rafael Correa became president of Ecuador, he refused to pay some of the illegitimate debts that had been piled on Ecuador, closed the United States’ largest military base in Latin America, forced the renegotiation of exploitative oil contracts, ordered the central bank to use funds deposited in US banks for domestic projects, and consistently opposed Washington’s hegemonic control over Latin America.

Correa had marked himself for overthrow or assassination. However, Washington had just overthrown in a military coup the democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, whose policies favored the people of Honduras over those of foreign interests. Concerned that two military coups in succession against reformist presidents would be noticed, to get rid of Correa the CIA turned to the Ecuadoran police. Led by a graduate of Washington’s School of the Americas, the police moved to overthrow Correa but were overpowered by the Ecuadoran military. However, Correa got the message. He reversed his policies toward American oil companies and announced that he would auction off huge blocks of Eucador’s rain forests to the oil companies. He closed down, Fundacion Pachamama, an organization with which a reformed Perkins was associated that worked to preserve Ecuador’s rain forests and indigenous populations.

Western banks backed up by the World Bank are even worse looters than the oil and timber companies. Perkins writes: “Over the past three decades, sixty of the world’s poorest countries have paid $550 billion in principal and interest on loans of $540 billion, yet they still owe a whopping $523 billion on those same loans. The cost of servicing that debt is more than these countries spend on health or education and is twenty times the amount they receive annually in foreign aid. In addition, World Bank projects have brought untold suffering to some of the planet’s poorest people. In the past ten years alone, such projects have forced an estimated 3.4 million people out of their homes; the governments in these countries have beaten, tortured, and killed opponents of World Bank projects.”

Perkins describes how Boeing plundered Washington state taxpayers. Using lobbyists, bribes, and blackmail threats to move production facilities to another state, Boeing succeeded in having the Washington state legislature give the corporation a tax break that diverted $8.7 billion into Boeings’ coffers from health care, education and other social services. The massive subsidies legislated for the benefit of corporations are another form of rent extraction and Hit Man activity.

Perkins has a guilty conscience and still suffers from his role as a Hit Man for the evil empire, which has now turned to the plunder of American citizens. He has done everything he can to make amends, but he reports that the system of exploitation has multiplied many times and is now so commonplace that it no longer has to be hidden. Perkins writes:

“A major change is that this EHM system, today, is also at work in the United States and other economically developed countries. It is everywhere. And there are many more variations on each of these tools. There are hundreds of thousands more EHMs spread around the world. They have created a truly global empire. They are working in the open as well as in the shadows. This system has become so widely and deeply entrenched that it is the normal way of doing business and therefore is not alarming to most people.”

People have been so badly plundered by jobs offshoring and indebtedness that consumer demand cannot support profits. Consequently, capitalism has turned to exploiting the West itself. Faced with rising resistance, the EHM system has armed itself with “the PATRIOT Act, the militarization of police forces, a vast array of new surveillance technologies, the infiltration and sabotage of the Occupy movement, and the dramatic expansion of privatized prisons.” The democratic process has been subverted by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other court decisions, by corporate-funded political action committees, and by organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council financed by the One Percent. Cadres of lawyers, lobbyists, and strategists are hired to legalize corruption, and presstitutes work overtime to convince gullible Americans that elections are real and represent the workings of democracy.

In a February 19, 2016 article in OpEdNews, Matt Peppe reports that the American colony of Puerto Rico is being driven into the ground in order to satisfy foreign creditors.

The airport has been privatized, and the main highways have been privatized in a 40-year lease owned by a consortium formed by a Goldman Sachs infrastructure investment fund. Puerto Ricans now pay private corporations for the use of infrastructure that tax dollars built. Recently Puerto Rico’s sales tax was raised 64% to 11.5%. A sales tax increase is equivalent to a rise in inflation and results in a decline in real incomes.

Today the only difference between capitalism and gangsterism is that capitalism has succeeded in legalizing its gangsterism and, thus, can strike a harder bargain than can the Mafia.

Perkins shows that the evil empire has the world in the grip of a “death economy.” He concludes that “we need a revolution” in order “to bury the death economy and birth the life economy.” Don’t look to politicians, neoliberal economists, and presstitutes for any help.

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.

A long delayed investigation into the assassination of African-Caribbean historian Walter Rodney (1942-1980, pictured left) has revealed that former President Forbes Burnham was behind his murder.

Although this was the assumption after Rodney was killed when a communication device exploded in his brother’s car on June 13, 1980, the government of Burnham claimed that the historian, who was the leader of the opposition Working People’s Alliance (WPA), was engaged in an attempt to bomb a prison near where the incident took place.

The Commission of Inquiry (COI) was convened in 2014 some 34 years after the assassination of Dr. Rodney who was a leading figure in the intellectual and political affairs of both Guyana and the African world as a whole. Since 1980 when he was killed, his comrades within the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), the Rodney family, along with colleagues throughout the internationally community, have demanded a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death.

It would take two years for the completion of a 155-page report outlining the Commission’s findings. However, the struggle for full disclosure is ongoing within Guyana where tremendous opposition has existed for decades in regard to a probe into the assassination.

Although the Guyana government under the previous administration of President Donald Ramotar of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) embarked on the controversial inquiry, the-then (1980) ruling People’s National Congress (PNC) has been resistant to fully cooperate with the investigation. Forbes Burnham, who held power in Guyana from 1964-1985 when he died while undergoing surgery, was said to have felt threatened by Rodney and his organization of an opposition party, the WPA, which sought to bridge the political gap between the majority East Indian and African populations.

The three major political parties in Guyana during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the ruling PNC, the opposition PPP led by Cheddi Jagan and the WPA headed by Rodney, all claimed to socialist. The approaches of the two opposition parties, the PPP and the WPA, were quite different.

Efforts by the WPA were clearly aimed at the removal of the Burnham government and therefore viewed as the principal threat against the PNC. Prior to Rodney’s assassination in 1979, the historian and politician was charged along with other WPA members of an arson attack against a government facility.

Rodney was facing prosecution on these charges nonetheless he continued to organize and speak out against the PNC administration. Those close to Rodney say he believed that there was a plot underway to take his life.

Obstacles to Making the Report Public

There was a delay in the printing of the Commission report and it has still not been made fully public or presented to the legislative body of the country.

Current Guyana President David Granger is the former Commander of the Guyana Defense Forces (GDF) and held that position at the time of Rodney’s assassination. Granger has been a leading figure in the PNC party for years.

He contested the presidential elections against the PPP on behalf of the PNC-Reform party and lost to Ramotar in 2011. Nonetheless, he ran again in May 2015 representing the opposition coalition APNU-AFC winning a majority of the votes.

According to the COI report

“Further, given the manner in which the country was run coupled with the threats issued by Prime Minister Burnham to the members of the WPA and the evidence of Mr. Robert Allan Gates, we conclude that Prime Minister Burnham knew of the plan and was part of the conspiracy to assassinate Dr. Walter Rodney…..  Given all the relevant facts, events and circumstances set out in the report, we unhesitatingly conclude that Gregory Smith was not acting alone but had the active and full support, participation and encouragement of, and/or was aided and abetted by the GPF (Guyana Police Force), the GDF (Guyana Defense Force), agencies of the State and the political directorate in the killing of Dr. Walter Rodney.” (Quoted from Demerara Waves, Feb. 20)

The COI concluded that an operative of the GDF, Gregory Smith, carried out the assassination of Rodney. Smith was then sent out of the country to French Guiana, a colony of Paris. Smith is said to have died in 2002.

An article published by Denis Chabrol on the COI report says:

“Former GDF pilot, Gerry Gouveia testified before the three-member commission, saying that he recalled flying a man, who closely resembled Smith, a woman and children to Kwakwani aboard an army plane. GDF officers, who testified before the commission, had said they could not have found any records about how Smith left the army and the aircraft logs at that time.” (Demerara Waves, Feb. 20)

This same article continues noting:

“Shortly after the incident, the GDF had denied having any Gregory Smith enlisted but only admitted after the privately-owned Catholic Standard newspaper published a photo of Smith clad in a GDF uniform.”

A section of the COI report released concludes that:

“We accept that Gregory Smith, renamed Cyril Milton Johnson, received State assistance in going to French Guiana. The choice of country was deliberate and was no doubt informed by the fact that (the) French government, of which French Guiana was a Department had a policy opposed to the death penalty. In short, it would have been difficult, virtually impossible, to secure the extradition of Smith/Johnson from French Guiana.”

The independent Justice for Walter Rodney Committee called for the full report to be submitted to the Guyana National Assembly as well as the family and supporters of the martyred historian.

In a statement from the Justice for Walter Rodney Committee the group demands that:

“The President… must recognize the historical significance of this inquiry, not only as a means of bringing closure to an aspect of Guyana’s sad history over the last 50 years but as a measure that if dealt with properly, can aid the beginnings of the long awaited and lofty ideal of reconciliation, and the expectations of Guyanese at home and abroad for a new beginning.” (Demerara Waves, Feb. 20)

Rodney Made Significant Contributions to Socialist Thought

Rodney was a well-known and influential Pan-Africanist and Marxist historian as well as a political activist who studied at the University of the West Indies, the University of London and held a faculty position for years at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

After working for several years in Tanzania and as a visiting scholar in several higher educational institutions such as the University of Michigan in 1972, Rodney was invited by the University of Guyana to take a faculty position. However, the government of Burnham blocked the appointment in an effort to prevent Rodney from remaining in his country of birth.

Rodney remained and later organized the WPA bringing together several Left and Pan-African organizations. His presence in Guyana politically challenged the image of the Burnham government which sought to portray itself as a supporter of African liberation movements and socialism.

At the time of his assassination, Rodney was writing a seminal “History of the Guyanese Working People” which was published in its incomplete form after his death. His study entitled “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, initially published by the government of Tanzania in 1972, remains a signature text on the role of imperialism in the continuing struggle for genuine liberation and socialism in Africa and internationally.

Ben Rhodes, Assistant to Obama and Deputy National Security Advisor, provides crucial input into the new tactical road map for Cuba policy regarding Cuba–US relations. Rhodes, who is also officially the speechwriter for Obama, is to be commended, along with the President himself, for the new Cuba policy, including the decision concerning the President’s visit to Cuba.

One of the most important documents serving as the basis of this visit is the February 18, 2016 transcript of a Press Briefing by Rhodes and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Unfortunately, it has not been widely disseminated. During the course of the briefing, Rhodes had to answer questions from journalists, which forced him to elaborate on the plan for the President’s visit to Cuba as part of Cuba–US relations.

The briefing indicates that the US is on the offensive with regard to Latin America and the Caribbean; the Cuban visit constitutes part of this road map. However, in answering questions, Rhodes had to candidly admit and partially recognize that Cuba has its principled stand. Actually, it is more than that. The Cuban government, far from letting its guard down, is also on the offensive regarding Cuba–US relations.

Although many issues were raised during the briefing, only some of them are dealt with here.

Dissidents

After a summary of the visit to Cuba with a short mention of a second leg of that trip to Argentina, Rhodes entertained questions from correspondents. The first question concerned dissidents:

“Q: Will the President meet with dissidents when he’s in Cuba? And would you negotiate that with the Cuban government?

MR. RHODES: Yes, he’ll be meeting with dissidents, with members of civil society, including those who certainly oppose the Cuban government’s policies.”

The issue came up again. In response to another reporter’s question, “Who determines which dissidents the President will meet with?,” Rhodes answered, “We determine… and we’ve certainly indicated to the Cubans…” In yet another query on the same theme that compared Cuba to other countries where the US works with an established opposition, Rhodes had to admit, “you have a one-party system [in Cuba], and then you have elements of opposition but it’s not analogous [to other countries].” Later on, in defending the administration’s decision to reopen the US Embassy in Havana, he said that the “embassy allows us to better represent our interests, to better engage civil society.”

Blockade

One of the correspondents mentioned that:

“The trade minister [Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca], earlier this week, prescribed things that he thinks the White House can do without the lifting of the embargo – allowing the dollar to be used in a third country, and permitting U.S. import of rum and cigars.”

It should be noted that only the legislature (Congress) can fully lift the blockade, because it is codified into legislation; however, important aspects of the blockade can indeed be mitigated by White House executive orders. Regarding the journalist’s appropriate question on the international use of the dollar, one also has to take into account the Cuban demand: the Cuban government wants to be able to use the dollar for international transactions not only in countries other than the US, but also in trade and commerce with the US itself. The Cuban delegation headed by Malmierca visited Washington in mid-February for several days. He went much further than mildly “prescribing things,” as Rhodes seems to imply. Malmierca strongly stressed the Cuban government’s position while right in middle of his US political and business counterparts. He dared to go on the offensive against the blockade as well on the need for the Obama administration to use all the executive powers at his disposal to effectively gut it. Rather than responding to the examples provided by the questioning, such as allowing the dollar to be used, Rhodes said:

“[O]ur judgment is that the embargo should be lifted. Short of that, we want to look at what are the areas where we can open up space that can promote the greatest travel and commercial activity that ultimately benefits the Cuban people.”

In response to persistent questions about the embargo (blockade), Rhodes said:

“[T]his is a government that was very comfortable for over five decades with the embargo in place and with the United States as essentially the source of legitimacy that they drew upon because of what we were trying to do to Cuba.”

How can the Cuban government be described as “comfortable” when in fact it has fought courageously against the blockade for five decades? In the 2015 United Nations General Assembly, it won the support of the entire international community with the exceptions of the US and Israel. However, Rhodes’s last words indicate that his road map is still quite convoluted when it comes to the use of executive powers to render much of the blockade ineffective. The Cuban government is forced to be in assault mode with regard to this executive option comfortably in the hands of Obama. Will Obama’s visit to Cuba make a decisive dent in the blockade?

Travel Ban

A journalist asked if the Obama administration will use an “executive order to lift the travel ban to the extent that [he] can.” Rhodes response seemed to be evasive: “[W]hat we’ve aimed to do is promote additional travel, commerce and economic activity in Cuba that, again, we believe benefits the Cuban people.” In response to another question on the blockade and in that context lifting the travel ban, once again travel is circumscribed by Rhodes. He said that the administration is continuing to allow travel only for “Americans who want to travel to Cuba to engage the Cuban people, or American businesses that want to engage in Cuba, but also, frankly, in helping ordinary Cubans.” One can ask, then, are Americans who want to visit Canada or the UK beholden to “engage” Canadians or the British? Or if they wish to travel to other countries in the Third World, are they restricted to “helping ordinary people” there? Why is there a double standard? The use of an executive order to lift the travel ban as much as possible, in the words of the correspondent, is definitely a step that can be taken in the period leading up to the Obama visit.

Guantanamo

In response to a query on Guantanamo, Rhodes stated:

“I’m sure that will be part of the discussion. I know that because I’ve had that discussion many times with my Cuban counterparts. They are insisting, obviously, that our presence there is not legitimate and that the facility be returned to them. But again, that is not on the table as a part of our discussions. We’re focused on the range of issues that I discussed. But I’m sure that they will raise it. It continues to be an issue of concern to them.”

Actually, to say that the Cubans are “insisting” that it be returned is somewhat of an understatement. The Cubans have been – and are – fighting tooth and nail on all international tribunes for return of the territory to Cuba. This demand is a mark of national pride and dignity for the Cuban people, and it constitutes a major roadblock to normalizing Cuba–US relations. As far as US–Cuba policy, why is this thorny issue that can be solved by a stroke of the presidential pen not “on the table”?

Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot Policy

On August 19, 1994, President Bill Clinton announced his “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy: Cubans who land on US soil (“dry–foot”) could remain in the US, even if they did not enter the country through the standard legal immigration channels. However, migrants who were intercepted by the US Coast Guard at sea (“wet–foot”) would be returned to Cuba. This policy applies only to Cubans, thus encouraging illegal emigration and a pool of people to be usedas a political tool against the Cuban economic/social/political system. The change of this Cuba policy is something that the executive branch can do in the same way that President Bill Clinton initiated it.

A question went right to the point. While in Cuba, is the “wet-foot, dry-foot policy … something that the President is going to address?” Rhodes response was disappointing, but clear: “We are not planning to institute change with respect to wet-foot, dry-foot… Our focus is on how can conditions improve in Cuba so that over time there’s more economic opportunity and less of a need, frankly, for Cubans to have to pursue opportunity elsewhere.”

The Argentine Leg of the Obama Visit

In the November 2014 Argentine presidential elections, after more than a decade of left-wing governments, the right-wing won the vote. During his electoral campaign, the new president Mauricio Macri promised, among other policies, to realign Argentina’s foreign policy away from Venezuela and closer to the US.

Even though the subject of the Rhodes press briefing was the Cuba trip, he also said in his opening remarks:

“Following the trip to Cuba, I’d just note the President will be traveling to Argentina. The Cuba opening also has to be seen as part of an effort by the United States to significantly increase our engagement in the hemisphere. This is a region that had long rejected our Cuba policy. Our Cuba policy had, in fact, isolated the United States more than it had isolated Cuba in the hemisphere. Argentina is a country that, until recently, had a President who had, I’ll say, problematic relations with the United States. The new President there has indicated his interest in beginning and restoring and renewing U.S.–Argentina relations.”

Rhodes is very frank about the new Cuba policy being linked to the US reputation and prestige in Latin America. In fact, the White House indicated its adoption of this orientation in various statements and documents released around the December 17, 2014 Obama speech to announce the new chapter in Cuba–US relations.

Even though the Argentine sojourn was relegated to a very secondary position in the opening briefing, it did provoke two questions. The responses further flesh out the road map leading to the Argentine visit. The first question concerned “…whether they [new Argentine First Family] can be an ally. And what kind of reception do you expect the President to get, especially considering the one that President Bush received when he went down there?” The Bush reception refers to the November 4–5, 2005 Fourth Summit of the Americas that was held at Mar del Plata, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of Buenos Aires in Argentina. This summit gathered the leaders of all the countries of the American continent, except Cuba. President George W. Bush’s plan to push though the Free Trade Area of the America’s plan (FTAA) was a debacle. The charge against it was led by the host, President Néstor Kirchner of Argentina; President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela; and President Lula da Silva of Brazil.

The response by Rhodes to the query is perhaps indicative of where his road plan is intended to lead:

“With respect to Argentina, we definitely anticipate that they’ll be a closer partner on a range of issues… He’s [new president Mauricio Macri] signaled that he’d like to have closer economic and diplomatic cooperation with the United States. So we believe this is really a new beginning and a new era in our relationship with Argentina, and it mirrors the sentiment we see across the region, particularly since our Cuba opening, where there’s much more receptivity to working with the United States.”

The latter part of this citation indicates that, according to Rhodes, the US is, as planned, already reaping the fruit of the Cuba opening in Latin America.

In response to the second question requesting further elaboration on the Argentine visit, Rhodes said that the goal of the Obama administration is to “demonstrate that a cornerstone of the President’s legacy is his approach to Latin America [that] involves the Cuba opening…”

Cuba Sticks to Its Principles

By playing the Cuba card, the US offensive in Latin America seeks to drive a wedge between Argentina and countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. The US game plan would also like to force differences between Cuba and the other left-wing countries. However, the Cuban revolutionary government carries out its own push to fully support the revolutionary processes in these countries. Cuba is also one of the main stalwarts of regional integration through the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, for its Spanish initials). It includes all countries in the Americas except the US and Canada.

The US is using its Cuba policy to make tracks along the path of diplomacy, such as with the Obama visit to Argentina. However, the US has not limited its approach to just this relatively peaceful road: it is simultaneously interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador in order to bring about regime change.

Thus, the situation in Cuba and Latin America is complex. We will see how it develops in the period leading up to Obama’s visits to Cuba and Argentina, as well as in their aftermath throughout 2016.

Arnold August, a Canadian journalist and lecturer, is the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections and, more recently, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion. Cuba’s neighbours under consideration are the US, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Arnold can be followed on Twitter @Arnold_August.

Are we entering a new era where cash is outlawed and a cashless society is becoming an Orwellian reality? The European Central Bank President Mario Draghi recently said that the bank is “considering action” to drop 500 euro notes because of its links to criminal activities. The former treasury secretary and director of the National Economic Council in the White House, Lawrence H. Summers is also calling for the elimination of the 500 euro notes and the $100 bill in a Washington Post article where he referred to Harvard’s ‘Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government’ which he is the current director, published a paper by senior fellow Peter Sands and current students for making “a compelling case for stopping the issuance of high denomination notes like the 500 euro note and $100 bill or even withdrawing them from circulation.”

Summers even went as far to mentions a “global agreement” to eventually “stop issuing notes worth more than say $50 or $100.” The main reason Summers is calling for the elimination of the $100 bill is to deter crime or even terrorism. Summers says that the 500 euro note is called the “Bin Laden” within “certain circles”

[But there is a hidden agenda which purports to sustain the hegemony of the US dollar, Summers was Secretary of the Treasury during the last year of Clinton administration, he was one of the architects of the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act implying the de facto repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, M.Chossudovsky, GR Editor]:

The fact that — as Sands points out — in certain circles the 500 euro note is known as the “Bin Laden” confirms the arguments against it. Sands’ extensive analysis is totally convincing on the linkage between high denomination notes and crime

In an interesting turn of world events, ISIS declared that the US dollar is their preferred currency of choice in recent days (I am not saying that it is a conspiracy between Summers and ISIS to ban cash because ISIS can use US dollars to finance terrorism). In the African continent, MasterCard is making its moves toward a cashless society in Nigeria using Egypt (who collaborated with MasterCard) as an example.  MasterCard’s Press Release earlier this month ‘Cashless Africa Achievable through Partnerships’ quotes division President for sub-Saharan Africa, MasterCard, Daniel Monehin, clarified the importance of the public-private partnership meeting called the ‘African Mobile Phone Financial Services Policy Initiative’ (AMPI) meeting recently held in Dakar, Senegal:

Advancing financial inclusion requires a broad collaboration between the private and public sector, in essence, a cooperation between multinational companies and local players.  An example of this can be seen in Egypt, where MasterCard collaborates with the Egyptian Government to extend financial inclusion to 54 million citizens.  Through a digital National ID (NID) program, which links citizens’ NID to existing national mobile money platforms and allows Egyptians to participate in the formal electronic economy through a single, easy-to-use cashless program.

“In order for financial inclusion initiatives to be both sustainable and scalable we need to develop fully functional payment ecosystems, as seen in Egypt. Approaching the project holistically, we wanted to ensure the payment technology introduced was interoperable and that all stakeholders across the spectrum were involved,” said Monehin.

In 2013, MasterCard has partnered with various companies and banks including the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and Etisalat to launch a mobile banking system which allows Egyptian subscribers to visit any of the NBE or Etisalat locations for its banking options without an account. They can exchange physical cash for credits transferred to the subscribers’ mobile phone app where they can transfer funds and even withdraw cash. According to The National, based in the United Arab Emirates who reported in 2015 that the mobile phone can advance “cashless” payments:

Despite more than half of the population being without access to any form of traditional banking, nearly 98 per cent of Egyptians have a mobile phone – a ripe climate for mobile banking. This has resulted in various payment methods being offered.

“The mobile phone has emerged as an extremely effective tool to drive financial inclusion and advance cashless transactions in Egypt,” says Raghu Malhotra, the division president of the Mena region for MasterCard. For nearly two years, MasterCard has been reaching out to local vendors and the Egyptian government to incorporate cashless payments through mobiles

The call for banning cash across the globe will accelerate as major banking institutions continue to impose “negative interest rates” on depositors.  Zero Hedge has been reporting extensively on the issue and has published several articles, most recently ‘This Is the Real Reason for the War on Cash’ which explains the purpose of “negative interest rates”:

Negative rates are a tax on deposits with banks, with the goal of prodding depositors to remove their cash and spend it to increase economic demand. But that goal will be undermined if citizens hoard cash. And hoarding cash is easier if you can take your deposits out in large-denomination bills you can stick in a safe. It’s harder to keep cash if you can only hold small bills.

Negative interest rate means a tax on deposits for the banks. According to the political and banking establishments, people can easily spend smaller denomination bills which can add a boost to the economy rather than the use of large denomination bills (500 euro notes or $100 bills) which can easily be stored outside of the bank. If cash is withdrawn in larger denomination bills, it becomes easier to store under your mattress or a safety deposit box.

Governments and banks want to force individuals and businesses to convert currencies into bank deposits to create a tax base and allow them to track peoples spending habits. What would be the consequences of such actions enforced by the political and banking establishment? Zero Hedge published an in-depth article titled ‘What a Cashless Society Would Look Like’ and made a few important points to consider on the unintended consequences of a cashless society. One important point to consider is the following:

The government loses an important alternative to pay for its debts, namely by printing true-to-the-letter paper money. This is why Greece may have to leave the euro, since its inability or unwillingness to adopt more austerity measures, a precondition to secure more euro loans, will force it to print drachma bills to pay for its debts

Another point Zero Hedge makes concerning the administrative hassle “of handling millions of very small cash transactions and related customer queries” and “Of course enforcing a government mandate to ban cash transactions must carry penalties. This in turns means more regulations, disclosure requirements and compliance costs, potentially exorbitant fees and even jail time”. But one very important factor Zero Hedge makes clear is the following:

Banning cash transactions might even propel the demise of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The share of US dollar bills held abroad has been estimated to be as high as 70% (according to a 1996 report by the US Federal Reserve). One thing is to limit the choices of your own citizens; another is trying to force this policy onto others, which is much harder. Foreigners would probably dump US dollar bills in a hurry and flock to whichever paper currency that can offer comparable liquidity

People will move to other paper currencies including the Russian Ruble and the Chinese Yuan which eventually can be backed by gold.  The article makes clear that “replacing the US in offshore cash transactions would create substantial demand for the Chinese yuan, at that stage without any real competition from other major economies as presumably none would be using paper.” One last important factor to consider is that “The guys and gals who generate real wealth and employment need encouragement and support, not more penalties on how they choose to go about their business.”

Money Metals Exchange published an interview with economist Marc Faber, who is also the publisher of the ‘Gloom, Boom and Doom Report’ titled ‘Marc Faber on Cashless Society Insanity and Why Wall Street Hates Gold.’ Here is part of the interview:

Mike Gleason: Furthering the point there, let’s talk about the war on cash for a moment. We have negative interest rates coming into the picture, as you just mentioned, with our own Fed telling U.S. banks to start thinking about how they would handle negative rates. Meanwhile, we’re seeing people who want to deal in cash, withdraw their cash, even deposit cash, getting hassled in various ways. Why do you personally think that cash and cash holders are increasingly disfavored by the financial establishment?

Marc Faber: Well, it’s clear to me. If you look at the world over the last 100 years, you have a group of people that want to have more and more control over you and me. They want to know where you are, what you do, what you’re looking at. Basically, we’re moving into an Orwellian society where they can check everything. And cash will still be one of the means where you could go somewhere and buy something and nobody would really know about it. Now they want to abolish it. Of course, if you have negative interest rates, you want to essentially prevent people from hoarding bank notes in their safes at no cost. So you want to deprive them of that privilege, of that freedom, so you introduce a cashless society. In my opinion, it will not work, and let me explain to you why.

Let’s say you and I live in a small town of a thousand people and suddenly the government says, “No more cash.” Say, I’m the baker and you’re the butcher, and a friend of ours is the pharmacist. We can then barter among each other and effect the balances every month or every 3 months and so forth.  Then, some kind of paper money comes back up. These are vouchers. So the war on cash would have the exact opposite effect. You will have a voucher system in every small city, and even in big cities, some smart people will develop the voucher system. So instead of having just one currency, paper currency, you’ll have hundreds of paper currencies. Number two; if they want to really launch a cashless society, they would have to take your gold away. That, in some countries, will simply not fly. In other countries, a cashless society is simply not practical because 80% of the population doesn’t have a bank account and doesn’t have cash to start with. So in my view, this cashless business is going to fail very badly. The argument is, of course, “Oh, we want to move into a cashless society because we want to prevent criminality.” This is all nonsense. They want to move into cashless society so they can control you.

So will small and even big cities and communities resort to alternative communities? Can it happen? There are a few examples that are currently taking place around the world. In 2011, The Guardian published an interesting article titled ‘Local currencies the German way: the chiemgauer’ explaining how a local currency in Germany is taking hold:

The chiemgauer has managed to bring on board local co-operative banks and credit organisations, and it’s even possible to pay in chiemgauer using a debit card, run by Regios, an association of co-operative banks.

What makes the chiemgauer different to conventional currency is that it automatically loses value if you don’t spend it. Unlike traditional money that can be saved, the chiemgauer is only valid for three months – the idea being that it must be spent, thereby boosting the local economy. If the notes aren’t spent, they can be renewed by buying a stamp that costs 2% of the note’s face value – so over a year, the currency depreciates 8%. Notes can be renewed up to seven times

The article interviewed a local by the name of Angela Hamberger:

That might sound off-putting, but users are happy with the system. Angela Hamberger from the small town of Trostberg, explains how it works: “You can use the chiemgauer in all sorts of shops – from the hairdresser’s to the baker’s. You just have to register in the scheme and go to a participating bank to change your euro into chiemgauer. It’s worth it to support the community.” When registering, users nominate one of 230 local charities and organisations to receive 3% of their chiemgauer transactions. And the depreciation? “Ah, I only paid that once, and what’s 2% after all?” she says

Here is a video by RT News which reports on a Washington D.C. based local currency which is also used in the suburbs of Northern Virginia and Maryland called “Potomacs”:

There is another interesting concept based in Ithaca, New York. The Ithaca HOUR is considered a $10.00 bill because $10 per hour is the average wage one can earn. The HOUR notes comes in five denominations which can buy a variety of goods and services including carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, nursing, child care, car repairs, food, firewood, gifts, etc. According to their website www.ithacahours.com “while dollars make us increasingly dependent on transnational corporations and bankers, HOURS reinforce community trading and expand commerce which is more accountable to our concerns for ecology and social justice.” Ithaca HOUR even has a credit union that “accepts them for mortgage and loan fees. People pay rent with HOURS.”

There is also the idea of the TEM, an alternative currency in the created through a grass-roots movement in the Greek Port City of Volos during the start of the Greek debt crisis. The TEM is based on an exchange system that gives credit to those who offer goods and services. One TEM is equal to one Euro.

Marc Faber makes a valid point when he said that a completely cashless society will “fail very badly” because we as human beings always find ways to resist any form of tyranny including financial tyranny and that is what Western governments fear. Maintaining “Full Spectrum Dominance” through financial control is one aspect and that is absolutely essential to have complete power over society. A cashless society will be a disaster on many levels especially for the Western banking elites.

An analysis of Federal Election Commission records, by TIME, which was published on 23 October 2015, showed that the 2012 donors to Romney’s campaign were already donating more to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign than they had been donating to any one of the 2016 campaigns of — listed here in declining order below  Clinton — Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, or Jim Gilmore. Those major Romney donors also gave a little to two Democrats (other than to Hillary — who, as mentioned, received a lot of donations from these Republican donors): Martin O’Malley, Jim Web, and Lawrence Lessig. (Romney’s donors gave nothing to Bernie Sanders, and nothing to Elizabeth Warren. They don’t want either of those people to become President.)

Clinton is the only Democratic candidate who is even moderately attractive to big Republican donors.

In ascending order above  Clinton, Romney’s donors were donating to: John Kasich, Scott Walker, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush. The top trio — of Bush, Cruz, and Rubio — together, received around 60% of all the money donated for the 2016 race by the people who had funded Mitt Romney’s 2012 drive for the White House.

 

So: the Democrat Hillary Clinton scored above 14 candidates, and below 6 candidates. She was below 6 Republican candidates, and she was above 11 Republican candidates (Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore). The 6 candidates she scored below were: Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, and John Kasich.

This means that, in the entire 17-candidate Republican  field, she drew more Republican money than did any one of 11 of the Republican candidates, but less Republican money than did any one of 6 of them. So, if she were a Republican (in what would then have been an 18-candidate Republican field for 2016), she would have been the 7th-from-the-top recipient of Romney-donor money.

Therefore, to Republican donors, Hillary Clinton is a more attractive prospect for the U.S. Presidency than was 64% of the then-current  17-member Republican field of candidates.

Another way to view this is that, to Republican donors, a President Hillary Clinton was approximately as attractive a Presidential prospect to lead the nation as was a President Graham, or a President Kasich — and was a more attractive prospective President than a President Lindsey Graham, a President Rand Paul, a President Carly Fiorina, a President Chris Christie, a President Rick Perry, a President Mike Huckabee, a President Donald Trump, a President Bobby Jindal, a President Rick Santorum, or a President George Pataki.

To judge from Clinton’s actual record of policy-decisions, and excluding any consideration of her current campaign-rhetoric (which is directed only at Democratic voters), all three of those candidates who were in Clinton’s Republican-donor league — Graham, Clinton, and Kasich — would, indeed, be quite similar, from the perceived self-interest standpoint of the major Republican donors.

As to whether any one of those three candidates as President would be substantially worse for Republican donors than would any one of the Republican big-three — Bush, Cruz, and Rubio — a person can only speculate.

However, the main difference between Clinton and the Republican candidates is certainly the rhetoric, not  the reality. The reason for that Democratic rhetoric is that Ms. Clinton is competing right now only  for Democratic votes, while each one of the Republican candidates is competing right now only  for Republican votes.

Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric is liberal, but her actual actions in politics have been conservative, except for her nominal support for liberal initiatives that attracted even some Republican support, or else that the Senate vote-counts (at the time when she was in the Senate) indicated in-advance had no real chance of becoming passed into law. In other words: her record was one of rhetoric and pretense on a great many issues, and of meaningful action on only issues that wouldn’t embarrass her in a Democratic primary campaign, to attract Democratic voters.

In terms of her actual record in U.S. public office, it’s indistinguishable from that of Republican politicians in terms of corruption, and it’s indistinguishable from Republican politicians in terms of the policies that she carried out as the U.S. Secretary of State for four years. Her record shows her to be clearly a Republican on both matters (notwithstanding that her rhetoric has been to the exact contrary on both matters).

In a general-election contest against the Republican nominee, Clinton would move more toward the ideological center, and so also would any one of the Republican candidates, who would be nominated by Republican primaries and so running against her in the general election, to draw votes from the center as well as from the right. The rhetorical contest would be between a center-right Clinton and a slightly farther-right Republican; but, at present, the rhetorical contest is starkly  different on the Democratic side than it is on the Republican side, simply because the candidates are trying right now to appeal to their own Party’s electorate (Democrats=left; Republicans=right) during the primary phase of the campaign, not addressing themselves now to the entire electorate (as during the general-election campaign).

Only in the general-election contest do all of the major candidates’ rhetoric tend more toward the center. The strategic challenge in the general election is to retain enough appeal to the given nominee’s Party-base so as to draw them to the polls on Election Day, while, at the same time, being close enough to the political center so as to attract independent voters and crossover voters from the other side.

A good example of the fudging that typically occurs during the general-election phase would be the 2012 contest itself. Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney drew closer to the rhetorical center during the general-election matchup; but they were actually much more similar to each other than their rhetoric ever  was. (After all, Obamacare is patterned upon Romneycare.) During the general-election Romney-Obama contest, Romney famously said that Russia “is without question our number one geopolitical foe, they fight for every cause for the world’s worst actors.”

Then, Obama criticized that statement, by saying, “you don’t call Russia our No. 1 enemy — not Al-Qaida, Russia — unless you’re still stuck in a Cold War mind warp.” But, now, as President, Obama’s own National Security Strategy 2015  refers to Russia on 17 of the 18 occasions where it employs the term “aggression,” and he doesn’t refer even once to Saudi Arabia that way, even though the Saudi royal family (who control that country) have been the major funders of Al Qaeda, and though 15 of the 19 perpetrators on 9/11 were Saudis — none of them was Russian — and though 92% of the citizenry in the nation that the Saud family owns and whose ‘news’ media and clerics drum into those people’s heads the holiness of jihad, approve of ISIS (which the Saud family prohibit inside Saudi Arabiua even while supporting and funding the jihadists in Syria and elsewhere), and though the Sauds as the country’s leaders are using American weapons and training to bomb and starve-to-death Yemenis.

Instead of calling the Saudi regime “aggressors,” we supply arms to them, and cooperate with them against their major oil-competitor, Russia. (For example, we arm the Saudi-funded jihadists that Russia is bombing in Syria, because Syria is a key potential pipeline route into Europe for Saudi oil and Qatari gas, to replace Russian oil and gas in Europe. So, we support the jihadists, even though Obama’s rhetoric opposes them — and even though Obama killed Osama bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda was funded mainly by the Saud family and their friends. Hillary Clinton is even more hawkish against Russia than is Obama. She would be even better for Republican donors than Obama has been.)

Also regarding such fudging: on 27 March 2009, President Obama in secret told the assembled chieftains of Wall Street, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks. … I’m protecting you.”

Romney could have said the same, if he had been elected. And President Obama’s record has now made clear that he indeed has fulfilled on that promise he made secretly to them. The reality turned out to be far more like Romney, than like Obama’s campaign rhetoric had ever been. Similarly, on Obama’s trade-deals (TPP, TTIP, and TISA), he has been very much what would have been expected from Romney, though Obama in the 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries had campaigned against Hillary Clinton for her having supported and helped to pass NAFTA. Obama’s trade-deals go even beyond NAFTA, to benefit international mega-corporations, at the general public’s expense.

What Hillary’s fairly strong appeal to Romney’s financial backers shows is that the wealthy, because of their access to leaders in government, know and recognize the difference between what a candidate says in public, versus what the winning public official has said to them (in private) and actually does  while serving in office. They know that she keeps her promises to them, not  her promises to the electorate.

Hillary Clinton is a good investment for a billionaire — even  for the 70% of them who are Republicans. And, based on those 2015 donation-figures, it seems that they would prefer a President Hillary Clinton, over a President Donald Trump. However, their three favorite candidates, in order, were: Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. But, in a Clinton-versus-Trump contest, Hillary Clinton would likely draw more money from Republican mega-donors than Trump would, and, of course, she would draw virtually all of the money from Democratic mega-donors. In such an instance, Hillary Clinton would probably draw a larger campaign-chest (especially considering super-pacs) than any candidate for any political office in U.S. (or global) history. Hillary Clinton would almost certainly be the most-heavily-marketed political product in history, if she becomes nominated and ends up running against Trump.

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.

In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis discusses the launch of his new ‘Democracy in Europe’ movement (DiEM25), the UK’s upcoming referendum on EU membership, and why a surge of democracy is needed to prevent the EU from sliding toward disintegration.

You have just launched a new political movement, DiEM25, which has the aim of democratising Europe. Your manifesto states that ‘the EU will either be democratised or it will disintegrate’ and calls for a constitutional assembly to be convened to decide on a future democratic constitution that will replace all existing European treaties within a decade. Why does Europe need DiEM25?

For a very simple reason. In 20 years’ time, if we don’t do something like what we’re proposing, the next generation will look us in the eye and say, where were you? Why didn’t you stop this slide into the abyss? In exactly the same way that in the 1950s young people asked their parents’ generation why they didn’t stop what was going on in the 1930s: a period that culminated in such a catastrophe in the shape of the Second World War.

We are now in a similar situation. We’re witnessing the disintegration of the European Union. Schengen is being suspended. The Eurozone is in an advanced state of deconstruction. Eastern European governments are openly stating their opposition to the principle of solidarity. The British electorate has become alienated from Brussels and might only vote to stay in out of fear of what would happen if it left. The only thing that can put an end to this inexorable slide toward catastrophe is a surge of democracy that gives hope and stabilises Europe.

What would you say to those who might argue that Europe has tried to establish a democratic constitution before and it essentially ended in disaster?

Of course the constitutional treaty was a disaster. A failed President of France took it upon himself to write a charter of the rights of capital. This is not how you write a constitution. All proper constitutions, like the constitution of the United States, are concerned with the rights of men and women.

What we need is to have a constitutional assembly, where the peoples of Europe are empowered through their representatives to author this document. Otherwise we’re going to end up with another kind of debacle. But in order to get to that point we first need to stabilise Europe. The Europe of today is not in the position that it was in ten years ago. It’s in a slide toward disintegration and we need to stabilise it.

We need to do this through transparency and a rational reconfiguration of policies within the next one or two years – this is all the time we have left in my estimation. And once we do that we will see to the constitutional assembly. This is what DiEM25 stands for.

Following David Cameron’s renegotiation, the UK has set the date for its referendum on EU membership as the 23^rd of June. How should British voters who are dissatisfied with the EU view the referendum?

We should reject wholeheartedly the fudge that David Cameron came back from Brussels with. He is asking the public to support staying within a reformed Europe, but he has deformed Europe in the process of creating this fudge.

Yet at the same time we should also reject the Eurosceptic view that Britain should leave the EU, but stay within the single market. I have a lot of respect for Tory Eurosceptics with a Burkean view of the sovereignty of national parliaments. The problem is that they also support staying in the single market. This is an incoherent proposition: it’s impossible to stay in the single market and keep your sovereignty.

Neither withdrawing into the safe cocoon of the nation state, nor giving in to the disintegrating and anti-democratic EU, represent good options for Britain. So instead of seeing the referendum as a vote between these two options, and these two options alone, the UK needs a third option: to vote to stay in the European Union so that it can fight tooth and nail against the EU’s anti-democratic institutions.

Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist and the former finance minister of Greece

Many commentators have mentioned (such as here and here and here and here) that Hillary Clinton left behind no major achievement as U.S. Secretary of State; but, actually, she did. Unfortunately, all of her major achievements were bad, and some were catastrophic. Six countries were especially involved: Honduras, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. The harm she did to each country was not in the interest of the American people, and it was disastrous for the residents there.

Hillary Clinton at every campaign debate says “I have a better track-record,” and that she’s “a progressive who gets things done.” Here’s what she has actually done, when she was Secretary of State; here’s her track-record when she actually had executive responsibility for U.S. foreign-affairs. This will display her real values, not just her claimed values:

SUMMARY OF THE CASE TO BE PRESENTED

The central-American nation of Honduras is ruled today by an extremist far-right government, a fascist junta-imposed government, because of what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did in 2009. The lives of all but the top 0.001% of the population there are hell because of this.

The matter in Haiti was similar but less dramatic, and so it received even less attention from the U.S. Press.

Furthermore, under Secretary of State Clinton, failures at the U.S. Department of State also caused the basis for a hatred of the United States to soar in Afghanistan after the U.S. has drawn down its troops there. This failure, too, has received little coverage in the U.S. press, but our nation will be paying heavily for it long-term.

Hillary Clinton was the Administration’s leading proponent of regime-change, overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. That worked out disastrously.

Clinton was also the Secretary of State when the 2006-2010 drought was causing massive relocations of population in Syria and U.S. State Department cables passed along up the chain of command the Assad government’s urgent request for aid from foreign governments to help farmers stave off starvation. The Clinton State Department ignored the requests and treated this as an opportunity to foment revolution there. It wasn’t only the Arab Spring, in Syria, that led to the demonstrations against Assad there. Sunni jihadist fighters streamed into Syria, backed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. The U.S. was, in effect, assisting jihadists to oust the non-sectarian, secular Shiite leader of Syria and replace him with a fundamentalist Sunni dictator.

The groundwork for a coup d’etat in Ukraine was laid by Hillary Clinton, when she made her State Department’s official spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who had been the chief foreign-affairs advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Nuland then became the organizer of the 20 February 2014 coup in Ukraine, which replaced a neutralist leader of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, with a rabidly anti-Russian U.S. puppet, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and a bloody civil war. Nuland is obsessed with hatred of Russia.

On top of all that, Hillary Clinton is incredibly corrupt. And she treats subordinates like trash.

No well-informed Democrat will vote for her in the Democratic Party primaries. Here is what voters in the Democratic primaries need to know before they vote:

HONDURAS

On 28 June 2009, the Honduran military grabbed their nation’s popular democratically elected progressive President, Manuel Zelaya, and flew him into exile.

The AP headlined from Tegucigalpa the next day, “World Leaders Pressure Honduras to Reverse Coup,” and reported: “Leaders from Hugo Chavez to Barack Obama called for reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested in his pajamas Sunday morning by soldiers who stormed his residence and flew him into exile.”

Secretary Clinton, in the press conference the day after the coup, “Remarks at the Top of the Daily Press Briefing”, refused to commit the United States to restoration of the democratically elected President of Honduras. She refused even to commit the U.S. to using the enormous leverage it had over the Honduran Government to bring that about. Here was the relevant Q&A:

Mary Beth Sheridan. QUESTION: Madam Secretary, sorry, if I could just return for a second to Honduras, just to clarify Arshad’s point – so, I mean, the U.S. provides aid both under the Foreign Assistance Act and the Millennium challenge. So even though there are triggers in those; that countries have to behave – not have coups, you’re not going to cut off that aid?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Mary Beth, we’re assessing what the final outcome of these actions will be. This has been a fast-moving set of circumstances over the last several days, and we’re looking at that question now. Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome. So we’re looking at all of this. We’re considering the implications of it. But our priority is to try to work with our partners in restoring the constitutional order in Honduras.

QUESTION: And does that mean returning Zelaya himself? You would insist on that in order to –

SECRETARY CLINTON: We are working with our partners.

She refused to answer the question, even though Zelaya had been an ally of the U.S., a progressive democrat. (Though Republicans decried Zelaya for pushing land-reform, the fact is that Honduras is virtually owned by two dozen families, and drastically needs to drag itself out of its feudal system. Doing that isn’t anti-American; it’s pro-American. It’s what Zelaya was trying to do, peacefully and democratically.

Our nation’s Founders fought a Revolution to overthrow feudalism – British – in our own country. Hillary was thus being anti-American, not just anti-democratic, here.) This is stunning. The U.S had even been outright bombed by fascists, on the “day that will live in infamy,” December 7, 1941; and, then, we spilled lots of blood to beat those fascists in WWII. What was that war all about, if not about opposing fascism and fascists, and standing up for democracy and democrats? A peaceful democratic U.S. ally had now been overthrown by a fascist coup in Honduras, and yet Hillary Clinton’s response was – noncommittal?

The coup government made no bones about its being anti-democratic. On July 4th of 2009, Al Giordano at Narcosphere Narconews bannered “Honduras Coup Chooses Path of Rogue Narco-State,” and he reported that,

“Last night, around 10 p.m. Tegucigalpa time, CNN Español interrupted its sports news programming for a live press conference announcement (‘no questions, please’) by coup ‘president’ Micheletti. There, he announced that his coup ‘government’ of Honduras is withdrawing from the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States. … The Honduras coup’s behavior virtually assures that come Monday, the US government will define it as a ‘military coup,’ triggering a cut-off of US aid, joining the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, PetroCaribe, the UN and the rest of the world in withdrawing economic support for the coup regime.”

But that didn’t happen. The U.S. just remained silent. Why was our Secretary of State silent, even now?

It certainly couldn’t have been so on account of her agent on the ground in Honduras, the U.S. Ambassador to that country: he was anything but noncommittal. He was fully American, not at all neutral or pro-fascist.

Here was his cable from the U.S. Embassy, reviewing the situation, for Washington, after almost a month’s silence from the Administration:

From: Ambassador Hugo Llorens, U.S. Embassy, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 24 July 2009.

To: Secretary of State, White House, and National Security Council.

“SUBJECT: TFHO1: OPEN AND SHUT: THE CASE OF THE HONDURAN COUP”

This lengthy message from the Ambassador closed:

The actions of June 28 can only be considered a coup d’etat by the legislative branch, with the support of the judicial branch and the military, against the executive branch. It bears mentioning that, whereas the resolution adopted June 28 refers only to Zelaya, its effect was to remove the entire executive branch. Both of these actions clearly exceeded Congress’s authority. … No matter what the merits of the case against Zelaya, his forced removal by the military was clearly illegal, and [puppett-leader Roberto] Micheletti’s ascendance as ‘interim president’ was totally illegitimate.

On the same day when the Ambassador sent that cable, AFP headlined “Zelaya ‘Reckless’ to Return to Honduras: Clinton,” and reported that our Secretary of State criticized Zelaya that day for trying to get back into his own country. “‘President Zelaya’s effort to reach the border is reckless,’ Clinton said during a press conference with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. … Washington supports ‘a negotiated peaceful solution to the Honduran crisis,’ Clinton said.” It wasn’t “the Honduran coup” – she wouldn’t call it a “coup” – it was “the Honduran crisis”; so, she accepted the junta’s framing of the issue, not the framing of it by Zelaya and everyone other than the fascists. She wanted “a negotiated peaceful solution” to the forced removal at gunpoint of Honduras’s popular democratically elected President. Furthermore, Hillary’s statement here was undiplomatic: if she had advice for what the elected President of Honduras ought to be doing, that ought to have been communicated to him privately, not publicly, and said to him by suggesting what he ought to do, not by insulting what he already was doing, publicly calling it “reckless.” Such a statement from her was clearly not meant as advice to help Zelaya; it was meant to – and did – humiliate him; and diplomats around the world could see this. Manifestly now, Hillary Clinton supported the fascists. However, her boss, the U.S. President, stayed silent.

During the crucial next two weeks, Obama considered what to do. Then, on 6 August 2009, McClatchy newspapers bannered “U.S. Drops Call to Restore Ousted Honduran Leader,” and Tyler Bridges reported that Zelaya wouldn’t receive U.S. backing in his bid to be restored to power. Though all international organizations called the Honduran coup illegitimate, and refused to recognize the leader chosen by its junta, the Obama Administration, after more than a month of indecision on this matter, finally came out for Honduras’s fascists. According to James Rosen of McClatchy Newspapers three days later, the far-right Republican U.S. Senator Jim DeMint had “placed a hold on two nominees to senior State Department posts to protest Obama’s pushing for ousted Honduran President Manuel Zalaya’s return to power, which the administration backed away from last week.” Obama, after a month of silence, caved silently. Instead of his using the bully pulpit to smear the fascist DeMint publicly with his fascism, Obama just joined him in it, silently. Why?

Perhaps it was because the chief lobbyist hired in the U.S. by the Honduran aristocracy (whose thugs had installed this new Honduran government), was Hillary’s old friend, Lanny Davis. As slate.com had said on 27 August 2008, headlining “A Day in the Life of Hillary’s Biggest Fan”: “When it comes to defending Hillary Clinton, Lanny Davis has no rival.” He was the fascists’ fixer, inside the Obama Administration. On 9 July 2009, The Hillbannered “Hondurans Lobby Against Deposed Leader,” and reported that Honduras’s equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which was controlled by those two-dozen families) had hired “Lanny Davis, the former special counsel to President Bill Clinton,” and that, “The lobbying blitz began [6 July] Monday, one day before Zelaya met with Clinton as part of his push to be reinstated.” Lanny Davis had had his input to Hillary even before President Zelaya did. Moreover, The Hill reported that, “17 Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) [and DeMint] wrote Secretary Clinton and asked her to meet with officials from the interim government of Honduras.” America’s Republican leadership were immediately and strongly supporting Honduras’s fascists. This Republican Senators’ letter attacked “the rush to label the events of June 28th a coup d’etat,” and said that it instead reflected “‘the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders.’ In a 125-3 vote, the Honduran Congress approved of the actions taken to remove Mr. Zelaya from office and install Mr. Micheletti.” (The article “2009 Honduran coup d’état” at wikipedia says that after the military seized the President on June 28th, “Later that day, the Honduran Congress, in an extraordinary session, voted to remove Zelaya from office, after reading a false resignation letter attributed to President Zelaya.” A link to the forged letter was provided. To Republicans, that is how democracy is supposed to operate, not a “coup.” Just masked men with machine guns, and then forged documents and well-connected foreign lobbyists.)

So, the Honduran aristocracy (mainly the Facussé, Ferrari, Canahuati, Atala, Lamas, Nasser, Kattan, Lippman, and Flores, clans) had purchased a line straight to the U.S. Secretary of State, via Mr. Davis. And Obama caved. On 13 August 2009, Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research headlined a Sacramento Bee op-ed “Obama Tacitly Backs Military’s Takeover of Honduran Democracy” and he reported that the Administration’s recent “statements were widely publicized in the Honduran media and helped to bolster the dictatorship. Perhaps more ominously, the Obama administration has not said one word about the atrocities and human rights abuses perpetrated by the coup government. Political activists have been murdered, independent TV and radio stations have been shut down, journalists have been detained and intimidated, and hundreds of people arrested.” There was now, again as under Bush, widespread revulsion against the U.S. throughout Latin America. Also on the 13th, Dick Emanuelson, at the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, headlined “Military Forces Sow Terror and Fear in Honduras,” and he described in Honduras a situation very much like that which had occurred in Argentina when the generals there took over in 1976 and rounded up and “disappeared” leaders who constituted a threat to the aristocracy’s continued rule in that country.

The U.S. was now the only power sustaining the Honduran junta’s government. Hillary had said “We are working with our partners,” but she lied. It turned out that the U.S. was instead working against “our partners” – against virtually all of the world’s democratic nations. Brazil Magazine headlined on August 13th, “Brazil Urges Obama to Tighten the Vise on Honduras to Get Zelaya Back,” and reported that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had urged President Obama to come out publicly for the “immediate and unconditional” restoration of Zelaya to office. It didn’t happen, however; and on Friday, August 21st, Mark Weisbrot thus bannered in Britain’sGuardian, “Obama’s Deafening Silence on Honduras: Seven weeks after the coup in Honduras, the US is hindering efforts to restore President Manuel Zelaya to power.” Weisbrot documented lies from the Obama Administration regarding the coup; and he noted, “The one thing we can be pretty sure of is that no major US media outlet will look further into this matter.” He was assuming that the U.S. had a controlled press, and it seems that he was correct, except for the McClatchy Newspaper chain, which courageously reported on the Honduran horrors.

Obama was lying – not even acknowledging that the coup was a coup – even though (as Weisbrot pointed out) “on Wednesday, Amnesty International issued a report documenting widespread police beatings and brutality against peaceful demonstrations, mass arbitrary arrests and other human rights abuses under the dictatorship. The Obama administration has remained silent about these abuses — as well as the killings of activists and press censorship and intimidation. To date, no major [U.S.] media outlet has bothered to pursue them.” America’s aristocracy were clearly supporting Honduras’s.

Nearly a hundred scholars signed a public letter saying that if only the U.S. were to come out clearly against the coup, “the coup could easily be overturned,” because only the U.S. was keeping the coup regime in power (via banking and other crucial cooperation with the coup government). The U.S. was key, and it chose to turn the lock on the Honduran prison, and leave its victims to be murdered.

During the following months, as the shamefulness of America’s position on this became increasingly untenable, Obama seemed to be gradually tilting back away from the coup in Honduras. However, Senator DeMint and some other Republicans travelled to Honduras and spoke publicly there against the U.S. Government, and endorsed the coup-installed Honduran leadership. DeMint headlined in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, on 10 October 2009, “What I Heard in Honduras,” and he wrote:

“In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military ‘coup’ that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it created. After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders, … I can report there is no chaos there. … As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.”

All governments in the hemisphere except the U.S. labeled the coup a “coup,” but DeMint and other top Republicans such as Mitch McConnell simply denied that it was. DeMint received ovations in Washington, at the far-right Heritage Foundation, which he now heads. This U.S. Senator condemned Zelaya there as “a deposed would-be Marxist dictator,” and he referred to the junta as “friends of freedom.” He condemned Obama by indirection, as being the enemy, who led “an American foreign policy unmoored from our commitment to human rights and human freedom and tied instead to the President’s personal ambition,” perhaps communist. Obama remained silent, in the face of these lies against both Zelaya and himself.

The assertion by Republicans that the coup was not a “coup” was a blatant lie. Everyone worldwide except America’s Republicans referred to it as a “coup.” Furthermore, Ambassador Llorens in Tegucigalpa was constantly speaking with leaders (but only leaders) of business, religious, civic, and other organizations throughout Honduras, and everyone he spoke with stated his position in regards to the “coup.” For example (from the Embassy cables), “Monsignor Juan Jose Pineda, the Auxiliary Bishop of Tegucigalpa … stated that the Church had not taken sides in relation to the coup d’etat,” but “vociferously condemned the poor treatment of the Church by what he believed to be elements of the anti-coup movement.” And the leaders of two conservative political parties “argued that anti-coup protests have not been peaceful.” Only America’s Republicans lied that it hadn’t been a “coup.” Not even Republicans’ friends in Honduras, the fascists there, did. It was a coup. Republicans simply lied, as usual. (This is why Fox “News” has been found in every study to have the most-misinformed audience of any major news medium – they’re being lied to constantly.)

On 5 October 2009, Jason Beaubien of NPR headlined “Rich vs. Poor at Root of Honduran Political Crisis,” and he reported that, though Honduran conservatives were charging that Zelaya secretly intended to make Honduras into a communist dictatorship, the actual situation in Honduras was, as explained by an economics professor there, that “power in Honduras is in the hands of about 100 people from roughly 25 families. Others estimate that Honduran elite to be slightly larger, but still it is a tiny group.” This professor “says the country’s elite have always selected the nation’s president. They initially helped Zelaya get into office, and then they orchestrated his removal” when President Zelaya pressed land- and other- reforms. If communists would ever come to power in Honduras, it will be because of fascists’ intransigence there, not because of progressives’ attempts to end the hammer-lock of the local feudal lords.

Adolf Hitler similarly used a popular fear of communism to persuade conservative fools to vote for himself and for other fascists; but fascists and communists are alike: enemies of democracy. This hasn’t changed. Nor has The Big Lie technique that fascists still use.

Then, on 6 October 2009, The New York Times bannered “Honduran Security Forces Accused of Abuse.” (“Abuse” had also been the term that the Times and other major media employed for torture when George W. Bush did it, but now they applied this euphemism to the outright murders perpetrated by Honduras’s junta.) Such “abuse” was “news” to people inside the United States, but not to the people in other nations around the world, where the horrors in Honduras were widely publicized. Also on October 6th, narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield headlined “Poll: Wide Majority of Hondurans Oppose Coup d’Etat, Want Zelaya Back,” and Al Giordano reported “the first survey to be made public since a July Gallup poll showed a plurality of Hondurans opposed the coup d’etat.” This poll of 1,470 randomly chosen Honduran adults found 17.4% favored the coup, 52.7% opposed it. 33% opposed Zelaya’s return to power; 51.6% favored it. 22.2% wanted the coup-installed leader to stay in power; 60.1% wanted him to be removed. 21.8% said the National Police were not “engaging in repression”; 54.5% said they were repressing. Furthermore, the survey found that “the two national TV and radio stations shut down by the coup regime happen to be the most trusted news sources in the entire country.” Finally, approval ratings were tabulated for the twenty most prominent political figures in the country, and Zelaya and his wife were rated overwhelmingly above all others, as, respectively, #1 and #2, the two most highly respected public figures in Honduran politics.

An American visitor to Honduras posted online photos of the country prior to Zelaya’s Presidency, and he described them: “It took me awhile to get used to the sight of heavily armed guards and policemen everywhere. … Every supermarket we visited had an armed guard, carrying a shotgun, patrolling the parking lot. Most restaurants or fast food establishments we visited, such as Pizza Hut, had an armed guard in the parking lot. … Only 30% of the people have wealth. The other 70% are poor. Being rich in Honduras can be dangerous. That is why most rich people live in walled or fenced compounds. … And they all have armed guards on the grounds.” This is the type of society that Wayne LaPierre and other officials of the NRA describe as the ideal – every man for himself, armed to the teeth. Republicans, like Honduras’s aristocrats, want to keep such a Paradise the way it is; but the vast majority of Hondurans do not – they want progress.

Naturally, therefore, the U.S.’s Republican Party was overwhelmingly opposed to Zelaya, and were thus opposed to the Honduran public, who didn’t like their feudal Paradise. Obama remained remarkably silent on the matter. The Obama Administration brokered a supposed power-sharing deal between Zelaya and the coup government, but it fell apart when Zelaya learned that Obama actually stood with the fascists in letting the coup government oversee the imminent election of Honduras’s next President – which would give the “election” to the fascists’ stooge. On 5 November 2009, the Los Angeles Times headlined an editorial “Obama Must Stand Firm on Honduran Crisis: A U.S.-brokered deal to return Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to office is unraveling, and the Obama administration seems to be wavering.” They closed by saying:

“If the Obama administration chooses to recognize the [winner of the upcoming] election without Zelaya first being reinstated [with powers to participate in overseeing the vote-counting], it will find itself at odds with the rest of Latin America. That would be a setback for democracy and for the United States.”

But it’s exactly what Obama did. On 9 November 2009, McClatchy Newspapers bannered “Honduran Deal Collapses, and Zelaya’s Backers Blame U.S.” Tyler Bridges reported that Senator DeMint now dropped his objections to a key State Department appointment, when the appointee, Thomas Shannon (and also Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself), made clear that the Obama Administration agreed with DeMint. Thus, “Zelaya’s supporters, who’ve been organizing street protests against the [coup-installed] Micheletti regime, are down to their final card: calling on Hondurans to boycott the elections.”

On 12 November 2009, the Washington Post bannered “Honduras Accord Is on Verge of Collapse,” and quoted a spokesperson for U.S. Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying: “The State Department’s abrupt change in policy last week — recognizing the elections scheduled for November 29th even if the coup regime does not meet its commitments under the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord — caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate.” (Let’s hope that Kerry will turn out to be a better Secretary of State than his predecessor was.)

A week later, on November 19th, the Latin American Working Group bannered “Honduras: Things Fall Apart,” and summarized the joint culpability of the Obama Administration, and of the Honduran fascists.

On 29 November 2009, the Heritage Foundation bannered “Heritage in Honduras: ‘I Believe in Democracy’,” and Big Brother propagandized: “Today the Honduran people are voting in an historic election with consequences for the entire region. Heritage’s Izzy Ortega is on the ground as an official election observer speaking with Hondurans practicing their right to vote. Watch his first interview below.” A typical reader-comment posted there was “I want WE THE PEOPLE back in the United States. For once in my life I’am jealous of another country!” Conservatives wanted fascism in the U.S.A. – not only in Honduras. Of course, the aristocracy’s stooge was “elected” in Honduras. (Zelaya wasn’t even a candidate in this “election.” Most democratic countries throughout the world did not recognize the results of this “election.” However, the U.S. did; and so did Israel, Italy, Germany, Japan, Peru, Costa Rica, and Panama.)

By contrast, on the same day, Costa Rico’s Tico Times headlined “Peaceful March Faces ‘Brutal Repression’ in San Pedro Sula” Honduras. Mike Faulk reported that, “About 500 people marching peacefully in the northwestern city of San Pedro Sula were repressed by tear gas and water cannons on Election Day today.” The next day, Agence France Presse headlined “Conservatives Win Honduran Election,” and reported that “Conservative Porfirio Lobo has claimed a solid win. … The United States was quick to underline its support.” Barack Obama was the leading (virtually the only) head-of-state supporting the Honduran fascist transfer of power to their new “elected” Honduran President. The major “news” media in the U.S. deep-sixed what was happening in Honduras, but the Honduran situation was widely reported elsewhere. Typical of the slight coverage that it did receive in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal bannered on November 26th, “Honduras Lurches Toward Crisis Over Election,” and their “reporter,” Jose de Cordoba, opened, “Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s push to rewrite the constitution, and pave the way for his potential re-election, has plunged one of Latin America’s poorest countries into a potentially violent political crisis.” Rupert Murdoch’s rag never reported the gangster-government’s violence.

Moreover, Zelaya had never pushed “to rewrite the constitution”; he had wanted to hold a plebiscite on whether there should be a constitutional convention held to rewrite the nation’s existing Constitution, which everyone but the Honduran aristocracy said contained profound defects that made democracy dysfunctional there. The editors of the former U.S.S.R.’s newspaper Pravda would have chuckled at Murdoch’s “reporting.” By contrast, for example, blog.AFLCIO.org had headlined on 16 November 2009, “Trumka: Free Elections Not Possible Now in Honduras.” The American labor movement was reporting on events in Honduras, but had been defeated by the U.S. aristocracy increasingly since 40 years earlier (Reagan), and therefore no longer constituted a major source of news for the American people. Richard Trumka was the AFL-CIO President, but was by now just a marginal character in the new fascist Amerika.

On 9 January 2010, the Honduras Coup 2009 blog translated from a Honduran newspaper published that day, and headlined “Honduras Is Broke.” Honduras’s Finance Minister, Gabriela Nuñez, was quoted as saying that international aid must keep coming in order for the nation to continue paying its bills, and that avoiding default is “a work from week to week.”

A few months later, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs headlined on 5 March 2010, “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Does Latin America,” and reported that, “While in Buenos Aires, she carelessly stated,

‘The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion … It was done without violence.’ This is being labeled as a misguided statement considering the physical violence including murders, beatings, torture that the coup government used in order to repress the opposition. Many of these tactics are still being used. This diplomatic stumble is expected to draw significant attention to the multiple errors in the U.S. approach.”

Moreover, while there, she was “announcing that the Obama administration will restore aid that had been previously suspended.” The commentator said that this drew attention to “a political decision that once again may have served to isolate the U.S. from much of Latin America.” Furthermore, “While in Costa Rica, … Clinton said the post-coup [Honduran] government … was, in fact, democratically elected,” which made a mockery of the term “democracy.” That election was perhaps even less democratic than the “elections” in Iran have recently been, but it was remarkably similar, with the main difference being that in Honduras the aristocracy controlled the “election,” whereas in Iran the theocracy did. Anyway, Hillary approved.

On 1 May 2010, Britain’s Guardian headlined regarding Honduras, “Cocaine Trade Turns Backwater into Hideout for Brutal Assassins: The Central American nation is on the brink of becoming a fully-fledged narco-state,” and reported that, “Corrupt police and drug gangs are blamed, with the government unable or unwilling to crack down on them.”

The Herald of Tegucigalpa, El Heraldo, headlined on 26 January 2011, “Presidente Asigna Medalla de Honor al Mérito a J. J. Rendón,” and reported that President Porfirio Lobo had decorated with the Order of Merit the master-propagandist who had deceived enough Honduran voters to “elect” Lobo (with the assistance of vote-rigging and terror). That was the same “John Rendon” (or actually Juan José Rendón) who had been hired by the George W. Bush Administration to deceive the American public into invading Iraq in 2003. This time, he was working for Barack Obama, instead of for George W. Bush, but it was fascism just the same.

Without Obama, Honduras’s fascists would have been defeated. Obama’s refusal to employ either his financial and banking power or his bully pulpit, and Hillary’s outright support of the fascist junta, together sealed the deaths of many thousands of Hondurans. The U.S. thus, single-handedly among all nations, kept Honduras’s newly-installed fascist regime in power. A U.S. professor who specialized in Honduras, Orlando Perez, said that Obama did this probably because he concluded “that Honduras’ political, military and economic elite wouldn’t accept Zelaya’s return”; in other words, that Obama wanted to serve Honduras’s aristocracy, regardless of the Honduran public, and even regardless of the increased contempt that Latin Americans would inevitably feel toward the U.S. from this matter.

The results for Hondurans were hellish. On 11 April 2011, McClatchy Newspapers bannered “Honduran Police Ignore Rise in Attacks on Journalists, Gays,” and reported that within just those almost-two years, Honduras had become “the deadliest country in the hemisphere,” because of the soaring crime-rate, especially against homosexuals and against journalists. The new fascist government tacitly “sends a message to the criminals, the paramilitaries and the hit men that they can do as they please.” Hondurans were by then five times likelier to be murdered than Mexicans were. Honduras’s aristocrats, however, were safe, because they hired their own private security forces, and also because the government’s security-apparatus was controlled by the aristocracy. Only the public were unprotected.

Fox “News” Latina bannered, on 7 October 2011, “Honduras Led World in Homicides in 2010,” and (since Rupert Murdoch’s Fox is a Republican front) pretended that this had happened because Latin America was violent – not because Fox’s Republican friends had had their way in policy on Honduras, and had thus caused the Honduran murder-rate to soar. (During the latest year, whereas homicides had declined in all of the other high-homicide nations, homicides had skyrocketed 22% in Honduras – and that’s why Honduras now led the world in homicides, but Fox “News” didn’t mention any of these facts.)

The actual problem was that the U.S. had a Republican government under nominal “Democratic” leadership, both at the White House and at the State Department (not to mention at Treasury, Justice, and Education). Obama not only gave Rupert Murdoch a nice foil to gin-up his hate-machine; he also gave Murdoch the most politically gifted Republican in the country: Obama, a Republican in “Democratic” clothing. It certainly was so with regard to Honduran policy, in which Obama seemed to be following Hillary Clinton’s lead to the right.

On 21 October 2011, the Nation bannered “Wikileaks Honduras: US Linked to Brutal Businessman,” and Dana Frank reported that, “Miguel Facussé Barjum, in the embassy’s words, is ‘the wealthiest, most powerful businessman in the country,’ one of the country’s ‘political heavyweights.’”

He owned a 22,000-acre palm-oil plantation, including lots of vacant land that thousands of peasants or “campesinos” wanted to farm and make their homes. “The campesinos’ efforts have been met with swift and brutal retaliation,” hired killers – a cost of doing business (like exterminators). Furthermore, wikileaks cables from during George W. Bush’s Presidency indicated that

“a known drug trafficking flight with a 1,000 kilo cocaine shipment from Colombia … successfully landed … on the private property of Miguel Facusse. … Its cargo was off-loaded onto a convoy of vehicles that was guarded by about 30 heavily armed men.”

The plane was burned and bulldozed into the ground, and the U.S. Ambassador said that this probably couldn’t have happened without Facussé’s participation. But now, the U.S. was actually on the side of such people. Not only was the U.S. continuing as before in Honduras, but “The US has allocated $45 million in new funds for military construction,” including expansion of the U.S. air base that had participated in the 2009 coup. Other wikileaks cables indicated that someone from the U.S. Embassy met with Facussé on 7 September 2009. Furthermore, “A new US ambassador, Lisa Kubiske, arrived in Honduras this August. She is an expert on biofuels – the center of Miguel Facussé’s African palm empire.”

Moreover, on 13 August 2009, hondurascoup2009.blogspot had headlined “Get to Know the 10 Families that Financed the Coup,”and cited a study by Leticia Salomón of the Autonomous University of Honduras, which said that, “A fundamental person in the conspiracy was the magnate Miguel Facussé, decorated by the Colombian Senate in 2004 with the Orden Mérito a la Democracia, and who today monopolizes the business of palm oil and in 1992 supported the purchase of land from campesinos at less than 10% of its actual value.”

Furthermore, the coup “was planned by a business group lead [led] by Carlos Flores Facussé, ex-president of Honduras (1998-2002) and owner of the newspaper La Tribuna, which together with La Prensa, El Heraldo, TV channels 2, 3, 5 and 9 were the fundamental pillar of the coup.” Moreover, on 10 February 2010, the Honduras Culture and Politics blog headlined “Mario Canahuati Goes to Washington,” and reported that Honduras’s new Foreign Minister, Mario, was related to Jorge Canahuati, “owner of La Prensa and El Heraldo,” and also to Jesus Canahuati, who was the VP of the Honduran chamber-of-commerce organization that hired Lanny Davis. Meanwhile, Mario’s father, Juan Canahuati, owned textile factories that assembled clothing for major U.S. labels, and which would thus benefit greatly from the fascists’ roll-back of Zelaya’s increase in the minimum wage. (Other articles were also posted to the web, listing mainly the same families behind the coup.)

So, as such examples show, the aristocracy were greatly enriched by the Honduran coup, even though the non-criminal (or “legitimate”) Honduran economy shriveled. By supporting this new Honduran regime, Obama and Hillary assisted the outsourcing of clothes-manufacturing jobs, etc., to such police-states. International corporations would be more profitable, and their top executives and controlling stockholders would reap higher stock-values and capital gains and bigger executive bonuses, because of such fascist operations as the 2009 coup. If workers or campesinos didn’t like it, they could leave – for the U.S., where they would be competing directly against the poorest of our own country’s poor.

An article quoted Jose Luis Galdamez, a journalist for Radio Globo (a Honduran station briefly shut down by the junta) explaining how that nation’s elite impunity functions: “The rich simply send you out to kill … and then kill with impunity. They never investigate into who killed who, because the groups in power control the media, control the judiciary, and now control the government [the Executive Branch] again.” This is to say: In Honduras, hired killers are safe. The Government represents the aristocracy, not the public; so, aristocrats are free to kill. America’s congressional Republicans like this “Freedom.” It’s maximum liberty – for aristocrats: the people these “Representatives” actually serve.

On 18 November 2011, Mark Weisbrot in Britain’s Guardian headlined “Honduras: America’s Great Foreign Policy Disgrace,” and he reported that, when the junta’s man

“Porfirio Lobo took office in January 2020, … most of the hemisphere refused to recognize the government because his election took place under conditions of serious human rights violations. In May 2011, an agreement was finally brokered in Cartagena, Colombia, which allowed Honduras back into the Organization of American States. But the Lobo government has not complied with its part of the Cartagena accords, which included human rights guarantees for the political opposition.”

The frequent murders of non-fascist political and labor union leaders “in broad daylight” (so as to terrorize anyone who might consider to replace them) had continued, despite the accords. Weisbrot noted that, “when President Porfirio Lobo of Honduras came to Washington last month, President Obama Greeted him warmly” and Obama said, “What we’ve been seeing is a restoration of democratic practices and a commitment to reconciliation.” How nice. However, Lobo did comply with one aspect of the Cartagena agreement: he let Manuel Zelaya and his wife back into Honduras.

Honduras was now (even more than before Zelaya) under a “libertarian” government – a government that respected only property-rights of approved people, no personal or other rights for anyone (such as Facussé’s propertyless campesinos). Paul Romer, the husband of Obama’s former chief economist Christina Romer, was joining with other libertarians to promote the idea of a totally “free market” model city in Honduras. On 10 December 2011, Britain’s libertarian ECONOMIST magazine bannered “Hong Kong in Honduras,” and “Honduras Shrugged [a play on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged]: Two Start-Ups Want to Try Out Libertarian Ideas in the Country’s New Special Development Regions.” Then, on 6 September 2012, Britain’s Guardian bannered “Honduras to Build New City with Its Own Laws and Tax System.” However, the entrepreneur aiming to develop this new Honduran city freed from the law, the grandson of the far-right economist Milton Friedman, Patri Friedman, headlined at his Future Cities Development Inc., on 19 October 2012, “Closing Statement From Future Cities Development, Inc.” and he announced that though “passing with a vote of 126-1” in the Honduran legislature, his project was ruled unconstitutional by a judge, because it would remove that land from the Honduran legal system. Patri had been fundraising for this project ever since he had publicly announced at the libertarian Koch brothers’ Cato Institute, on 6 April 2009, “Democracy Is Not The Answer,” and he then said, “Democracy is rigged against libertarians.” He ended his statement by announcing “my proposal,” which was to “build new city-states,” where there would be no democracy, and only the investors would have any rights at all – an extreme gated community. Just months later, the new Honduran President, a libertarian like Patri, invited him to do it, but this judge killed the idea.

Inasmuch as Honduras was becoming too dangerous for Americans, the AP headlined on 19 January 2012, “Peace Corps Pullout a New Blow to Honduras,” and reported that, “The U.S. government’s decision to pull out all its Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras for safety reasons is yet another blow to a nation still battered by a coup and recently labeled [by the U.N. as] the world’s most deadly country.” Three days later, on the 22nd, Frances Robles of the Miami Herald, headlined “Graft, Greed, Mayhem Turn Honduras into Murder Capital of World,” and reported the details of a nation where aristocrats were protected by their own private guards, the public were on their own, and all new entrants into the aristocracy were drug traffickers and the soldiers and police who worked for those traffickers. Narcotics were now by far the most booming industry in Honduras, if not the only booming industry there post-coup. Robles reported, “Everybody has been bought,” in this paradise of anarchism, or libertarianism (i.e.: in this aristocratically controlled country).

On 12 February 2012, NPR headlined “Who Rules in Honduras? Coup’s Legacy of Violence.” The ruling families weren’t even noted here, much less mentioned, in this supposed news-report on the subject of “Who Rules in Honduras?” However, this story did note that, “Many experts say things got markedly worse after the 2009 coup.” (That was a severe understatement.)

Jim DeMint, who has since left the Senate, and who recently took over as the head of the far-right Heritage Foundation where he had formerly been a star, got everything he wanted in Honduras, and so did Hillary Clinton’s friend Lanny Davis – the aristocrats’ paid hand in the affair, on the “Democratic” side. (The aristocrats had many other agents lobbying their friends on the Republican side.) Honduras’s public got only hell. Four days later, on February 16th, Reuters headlined “Honduras Under Fire After Huge Prison Blaze,” and reported: “Survivors of a Honduran jailhouse fire that killed more than 350 inmates [some not yet tried, much less convicted], accused guards of leaving prisoners to die trapped inside their cells and even firing on others when they tried to escape.”

This was how law operated, in a supremely fascist nation. Dwight Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers had done a similar thing to the Iranians in 1953, and then to the Guatemalans in 1954; Obama now, though passively, did it to the Hondurans. When Ike did it in Iran, who would have guessed at the whirlwind that would result there 26 years later, in 1979? (Ironically, when Ike did it, the mullahs were delighted that the elected Iranian President, Mossadegh, whom they hated, had been overthrown. America now reaps their whirlwind.)

This is the type of hypocritical leadership that has caused the United States to decline in public approval throughout the world under Obama – ironic after his Nobel Peace Prize awarded within just months of his becoming President. On 10 December 2010, Gallup bannered “U.S. Leadership Ratings Suffer in Latin America,” and reported that approval of “the job performance of the leadership of the United States” had declined since 2009 in 14 of 18 nations in the Western Hemisphere. It had declined steepest in Mexico, Argentina, Honduras, and Venezuela. Honduras, however, was the only country where approval of the U.S. was now even lower than it had been under George W. Bush in 2008. This Honduran plunge since the 2009 coup had been that steep. Then, on 19 April 2012, Gallup headlined “U.S. Leadership Losing Some Status,” and reported that across 136 countries, approval of the U.S. had peaked in 2009 when George W. Bush was replaced by Obama, but that “the U.S. has lost some of its status” since 2009, and that the “U.S. Image Sinks in the Americas,” down one-quarter from its 2009 high, though still not yet quite as low in most countries as it had been under Bush. Then, three months later, on June 13th, the PewResearch Global Attitudes Project headlined “Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted,” and reported that favorable opinion of the U.S. had sunk during Obama’s first term. It declined 7% in Europe, 10% in Muslim countries, 13% in Mexico, and 4% in China. However, it increased 8% in Russia, and 13% in Japan. It went down in eight countries, and up in two, and changed only 2% or less in three nations.

The global fascist push to eliminate Zelaya’s Presidency had first been well outlined by Greg Grandin in the Nation on 28 July 2009, headlining “Waiting for Zelaya.” He wrote:

“The business community didn’t like Zelaya because he raised the minimum wage. Conservative evangelicals and Catholics – including Opus Dei, a formidable presence in Honduras – detested him because he refused to ban the ‘morning after’ pill. The mining, hydroelectric and biofuel sector didn’t like him because he didn’t put state funds and land at their disposal. The law-and-order crowd hated him because he apologized on behalf of the state for a program of ‘social cleansing’ that took place in the 1990s. … Zelaya likewise moved to draw down Washington’s military presence; Honduras, alone among Central American countries, hosts a permanent detachment of US troops.”

Later that same year (2009), John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, came out with his new Hoodwinked, in which he said (p. 213): “I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president who wanted to remain anonymous, ‘Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly [minimum-wage] rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom.’” The increase in Honduras’s minimum wage was widely cited as having probably been the coup’s chief source.

Zelaya offered an explanation as to why the U.S. helped the fascists. On 31 May 2011, “Democracy Now” radio headlined “Exclusive Interview with Manuel Zelaya on the U.S. Role in Honduran Coup,” and Zelaya revealed that when he was abducted from his house, “We landed in the U.S. military base of Palmerola,” before being flown from there out of the country, and that “Otto Reich started this.” Reich had been the fanatical far-right Cuban-American who ran U.S. Latin-American policy for the Republican Reagan and both the father and son Bush Administrations, including Iran-Contra against Nicaragua (which helped Iran’s mullahs), and the fascist 2002 coup against Venezuela’s popular elected President Hugo Chavez, which coup was then peacefully overturned and reversed, due to worldwide repudiation of the junta everywhere except the U.S. Government. Zelaya said that the coup against himself had been organized via both Reich and the previous, George W. Bush-appointed, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Charles Ford, who had subsequently been appointed to “the U.S. Southern Command … in order to prepare for the coup d’etat” in Honduras. Zelaya didn’t personally blame Obama. “Even though Obama would be against the coup, the process toward the coup was already moving forward. … They are even able to bend the arm of the President of the United States, President Obama, and the State Department.” Zelaya portrayed a weak President Obama, not a complicit one. If this was true, then Lanny Davis was pushing against a weak leader, not against strong resistance within the then-new Democratic U.S. Administration. Hillary Clinton’s press conference the day after the coup reflected unconcern regarding democracy, not (like with Republicans such as Sen. DeMint) outright support of fascism. The situation that was portrayed by Zelaya was a U.S. Government that was heavily infiltrated by fascists throughout the bureacracy, and a new Democratic President and Secretary of State who had no stomach to oppose fascists – an Administration who were mere figureheads.

On 15 March 2012, Laura Carlson, at Foreign Policy In Focus, bannered “Honduras: When Engagement Becomes Complicity,” and she opened: “U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Honduras on March 6 with a double mission: to quell talk of drug legalization and reinforce the U.S.-sponsored drug war in Central America, and to bolster the presidency of Porfirio Lobo. The Honduran government issued a statement that during the one-hour closed-door conversation between Biden and Lobo, the vice president ‘reiterated the U.S. commitment to intensify aid to the government and people of Honduras, and exalted the efforts undertaken and implemented over the past two years by President Lobo.’ In a March 1 press briefing, U.S. National Security Advisor Tony Blinken cited ‘the tremendous leadership President Lobo has displayed in advancing national reconciliation and democratic and constitutional order.’ You’d think they were talking about a different country from the one we visited just weeks before on a fact-finding mission on violence against women. What we found was a nation submerged in violence and lawlessness, a president incapable or unwilling to do much about it, and a justice system in shambles.”

Carlson went on to note: “Land grabs to transfer land and resources from small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, and poor urban residents into the hands of large-scale developers and megaprojects have generated violence throughout the country. Many of the testimonies of violence and sexual abuse that we heard from Honduran women regarded conflicts over land, where the regime actively supports wealthy interests against poor people in illegal land occupations for tourism, mining, and infrastructure projects, such as palm oil magnate Miguel Facusse’s actions.” She noted: “The United States helped deliver a serious blow to the Honduran political system and society. The United States has a tremendous responsibility for the disastrous situation.” And she closed: “There’s no excuse for spending U.S. taxpayer dollars on security assistance to Honduras as human rights violations pile up.” She called this “A Coup for Criminals.”

What Iran and Guatemala became to the historical record of Eisenhower’s Presidency, Honduras will be to that of Obama. Sometimes even a small country, even a banana republic, can leave a big black mark on a President’s record. Though Czechoslovakia was just a small and weak country, it’s even what Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is primarily remembered for nowadays – his yielding it to the fascists in 1938.

In November 2013, the Center for Economic Policy Research bannered a study, “Honduras Since the Coup,” and among the highlights they reported were:

Economic growth has slowed since the 2009 coup. From 2006-2008 average annual GDP growth was 5.7 percent. In 2009 Honduras’ GDP, as with most countries in Central America, contracted due to the world recession. From 2010-2013, average annual growth has been only 3.5 percent.

Economic inequality, which decreased for four consecutive years starting in 2006, began trending upward in 2010. Honduras now has the most unequal distribution of income in Latin America.

In the two years after the coup, over 100 percent of all real income gains went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Hondurans.

Poverty and extreme poverty rates decreased by 7.7 and 20.9 percent respectively during the Zelaya administration. From 2010-2012, the poverty rate increased by 13.2 percent while the extreme poverty rate increased by 26.3 percent.

The unemployment situation has worsened from 2010-2012.

Crime rates and other non-economic factors were unfortunately ignored in this study, but it indicated clearly that, from at least the economic standpoint, the public in Honduras suffered while the elite did not. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had done to Honduras something rather similar to what George W. Bush and his team did to Iraq, but with this major difference: Zelaya was a good and democratic leader of Honduras, whereas Saddam was a tyrant (though Iraq was even worse after his reign than during it). This “Democratic” U.S. Administration turned out to support fascism, much as its Republican predecessor had done.

The soaring murder-rate after the U.S.-supported coup caused a soaring number of escapees from the violence; they’re flooding into the U.S. now as illegal immigrants.

HAITI

In Haiti, the situation is similar as an example of the U.S. backing aristocrats, so as to keep the masses in poverty and for American aristocrats to profit from doing so. On 1 June 2011, the Nation headlined “WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day,” and Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives reported that, “Contractors for Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked in close concert with the US Embassy when they aggressively moved to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest-paid in the hemisphere, according to secret State Department cables. … The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 9-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica. But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.” Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed hard to reverse the new law. “A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum ‘did not take economic reality into account’ but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to ‘the unemployed and underpaid masses.'” An “Editor’s Note” from the Nation added: “In keeping with the industry’s usual practice, the brand name US companies kept their own hands clean, letting their contractors do the work of making Haiti safe for the sweatshops from which they derive their profits — with help from US officials.” Those “officials” were ultimately Clinton and Obama. On 3 June 2011, Ryan Chittum at Columbia Journalism Review headlined “A Pulled Scoop Shows U.S. Fought to Keep Haitian Wages Down,” and he added some perspective to the story: “Hanesbrands CEO Richard Noll … could pay for the raises for those 3,200 t-shirt makers with just one-sixth of the $10 million in salary and bonus he raked in last year.” And then, when the U.S. turns away “boat people,” trying to escape the “voluntary” slavery of the Haitian masses, the standard excuse is that it’s done so as to “protect American jobs.” But is that really where Hillary Clinton gets her campaign funds?

AFGHANISTAN

On 26 July 2009, Marisa Taylor bannered at McClatchy Newspapers, “Why Are U.S.-Allied Refugees Still Branded as ‘Terrorists?’,” and she reported that “DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is working with other agencies, such as the State Department, to come up with a solution” to the routine refusal of the United States to grant U.S. visas to translators and other local employees of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan who wanted to move to the U.S. and who had overwhelming reason to fear retaliation from anti-Americans in their home countries after we left. The State Department did nothing. Then, Human Rights First headlined on 13 August 2009, “Senator Leahy on ‘Material Support’ Bars,” and reported that, “In a powerful statement submitted for the Congressional Record on August 5, 2009, Senator Leahy (D-VT) reaffirmed his commitment to ‘restore common sense’ to the bars to refugee and asylum status based on associations with what the Immigration and Nationality Act defines as terrorism,” which was “written so broadly” that it applied even to “children who were recruited against their will and forced to undergo military training, doctors (acting in accordance with the Hippocratic oath) … and those who fought against the armies of repressive governments in their home countries.”

The State Department failed to act. On 2 February 2013, the Washington Post bannered “Alleged Terrorism Ties Foil Some Afghan Interpreters’ U.S. Visa Hopes,” and Kevin Sieff in Kabul reported that, “As the American military draws down its forces in Afghanistan and more than 6,000 Afghan interpreters seek U.S. visas, the problem is threatening to obstruct the applications of Afghans who risked their lives to serve the U.S. government.” What kind of lesson is this teaching to interpreters and other local employees of the U.S. missions in unstable foreign countries? Helping the U.S. could be terminally dangerous.

LIBYA

“We came, we saw, he died! (Chuckles)”

And what happened afterwards?

(And what happened before?)

But what happened afterwards is even worse than people know: as Wayne Madsen recently reported, Hillary’s success at overthrowing Gaddafi served brilliantly the purposes of the U.S. aristocracy and of the jihadists who are financed by the Saud family and the other fundamentalist Sunni royal faimilies in Arabia. Even if she doesn’t become President, she has already done enough favors for those royals so as to be able to fill to the brim the coffers of the Clinton Foundation.

SYRIA

A record drought in Syria during 2008-2010 produced results like this:

“Two years before the ‘Arab Spring’ even began:

In the past three years, 160 Syrian farming villages have been abandoned near Aleppo as crop failures have forced over 200,000 rural Syrians to leave for the cities. This news is distressing enough, but when put into a long-term perspective, its implications are staggering: many of these villages have been continuously farmed for 8000 years.

That source had been published on 16 January 2010.”

The drought continued on through 2010 and sporadically afterwards, and it intensified in Syria the already widespread ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations against the existing regimes.

Even before the ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations in 2011, the Syrian government was pleading with foreign governments for food aid, and these pleas were reported to Secretary of State Clinton, but she ignored them.

Obama grabbed this opportunity to dust off an old CIA 1957 plan to overthrow the Ba’athist Party that ruled Syria — the only secular, non-sectarian, party in Syria, and the only political force there that insisted upon separation between church and state. The Ba’athists were allied with Russia, and the U.S. aristocracy wanted to conquer Russia even after the end of communism there in 1990. Replacing a secular government by a fundamentalist Sunni Sharia law regime would end Syria’s alliance with Russia; so, Obama worked with other fundamentalist Sunni dictatorships in the region — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Turkey — toperpetrate a sarin gas attack in Syria that they’d all blame on Syria’s Ba’athist leader, Bashar al-Assad, even though the U.S. and its Arab partners had actually perpetrated it.

On 12 November 2011, Secretary of State Clinton said:

The failure of the Assad regime, once again, to heed the call of regional states and the international community underscores the fact that it has lost all credibility. The United States reiterates its calls for an immediate end to the violence, for free unfettered access for human rights monitors and journalists to deter and document grave human rights abuses and for Asad to step aside.

In other words: she was already demanding “regime change” in Syria. Back in 2002, she had similarly demanded “regime change in Iraq,” because the Ba’athist, Russia-allied, anti-sectarian, Saddam Hussein ruled there. She did it again in Syria — just as she had done it in Lybia in order to get rid of the non-sectarian Russia-allied dictator there, Muammar Gaddafi.

During the Democratic primary debate on 20 December 2015, her opponent Bernie Sanders said:

I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be.

Yes, we could get rid of Saddam Hussein, but that destabilized the entire region. Yes, we could get rid of Gadhafi, a terrible dictator, but that created a vacuum for ISIS. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS.

He said that defeating the jihadists in Syria should be completed before the issue of what to do about Assad is addressed. The questioner, David Muir, asked Clinton whether she agreed with that. She replied:

We are doing both at the same time.

MUIR: But that’s what he’s saying, we should put that aside for now and go after ISIS.

CLINTON: Well, I don’t agree with that.

She is obsessed with serving the desires of the U.S. aristocracy — even if that means the U.S. helps supply sarin gas to the rebels in Syria to be blamed on Assad, and even if it also means that the existing, Ba’athist, government in Syria will be replaced by a jihadist Sunni government that serves the Saud family and the other Arabic royal families.

UKRAINE

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose as being the State Department’s chief spokesperson Victoria Nuland who was previously the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to 2005, after having been appointed by President George W. Bush as the U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the anti-Russian military club NATO from 2000 until 2003. Her big passion, and her college-major, as a person who ever since childhood hated Russia, was Russian studies, and she “was twice a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations — as a ‘Next Generation’ Fellow looking at the effects of anti-Americanism on U.S. relations around the world, and as a State Department Fellow directing a task force on ‘Russia, its Neighbors and an Expanding NATO.’” Although her career started after the Soviet Union and its communism ended in 1990, it has nonetheless been obsessed with her hatred of Russia and with her passion for the U.S. aristocracy to take it over, as if communism hadn’t really been a factor in the “Cold War” — and she has been promoted in her career on that basis.

V.P. Cheney liked her “neo-conservatism,” which she shared with her husband, Robert Kagan, who had been one of the leading proponents for “regime change in Iraq.” (“Neo-conservatism” is the group of policy intellectuals who passionately argued for “regime change in Iraq” during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations, and who support every policy to overthrow the leaders of any nation that’s at all friendly toward Russia.)

When Hillary Clinton retired in 2013, Obama made Nuland the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and Nuland’s first assignment (she was already at work on it by no later than 1 March 2013, which was before the U.S. Senate had even confirmed her appointment) was to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine because Ukraine is next door to Russia and the U.S. aristocracy has, since communism ended in the Soviet Union in 1990, been trying to surround Russia by NATO missiles, most especially in Ukraine. President Obama hid from the public his hostility toward Russia until he became re-elected in 2012 (he even mocked his opponent, Mitt Romney, for saying, at 0:40 on this video, that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe”), but then, once he was safely re-elected, immediately set to work to take over Ukraine and to add it to NATO. Then, in his National Security Strategy 2015, he identified Russia as being by far the world’s most “aggressive” nation. Hillary Clinton is determined to carry this anti-Russian hostility through as President, even though she lies as Obama does and so, similarly, won’t say it during the Democratic primaries. But the takeover of Ukraine was an Obama operation in which she played an important role, to set it up.

Here is the recording of Nuland on 4 February 2014, telling the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, whom to place at the top of the Ukrainian government when the coup will be completed, which occurred 22 days later. It was to be the culmination of her efforts, which had started even prior to 1 March 2013.

Here is the broader video of that coup.

Here is the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor saying it was “the most blatant coup in history.”

Here is the electoral map showing the voting percentages in each region of Ukraine for the election that had chosen the President, “Janukovych,” whom Obama overthrew in that coup. The region in purple on that map had voted 90% for “Janukovych.” It’s called Donbass and consists of Donetsk and Luhansk. It refused to accept the coup-imposed leaders. Obama wanted the residents there bombed into submission. Here’s a video of that bombing-campaign. Here’s another — specifically of firebombings (which are illegal). The money for that bombing-campaign came from taxpayers in U.S. and EU, and also from the IMF, in the form of loans that saddled Ukraine with so much debt it went bankrupt on 4 October 2015, as determined by a unanimous vote of the 15 international banks that collectively make this decision. The infamously high corruption in Ukraine went even higher after the U.S.-EU takeover of Ukraine. After Ukraine’s bankrupttcy, the IMF changed its rules so that it could continue to lend money there, until the people in Donbass are either exterminated or expelled. The U.S. President controls the IMF. For the international aristocracy, the U.S. President is the most important servant there is. Hillary Clinton wants to become that servant. It’s why her top twenty financial backers represent the U.S. aristocracy.

OTHER MATTERS

Finally, it should also be noted that Hillary’s record as the chief administrator at the State Department was also poor. The State Department’s own Accountability Review Board Report on Benghazi Attack said: “In the months leading up to September 11, 2012, security in Benghazi was not recognized and implemented as a ‘shared responsibility’ in Washington, resulting in stove-piped discussions and decisions on policy and security. Key decisions … or non-decisions in Washington, such as the failure to establish standards for Benghazi and to meet them, or the lack of a cohesive staffing plan, essentially set up Benghazi.” That’s failure at the very top. It’s not in Libya. It’s not even in Africa. It’s in “Washington.”

Who, at the State Department in “Washington,” had “buck stops here” authority and power? Hillary Clinton.

Republicans are obsessed with the Benghazi failure, because it reflects negatively upon her but not on themselves. However, Hillary’s real and important failures reflected negatively upon Republicans also, because these failures (such as her supporting fascists in Honduras) culminated actually Republican foreign-policy objectives, and dashed Democratic (and democratic) policy-objectives. This is the real reason why Republicans focus instead upon Hillary’s Benghazi mess.

Hillary Clinton also was a notoriously poor administrator of her own 2007-2008 presidential primary campaign. Even coming into 2014, some leading Democrats were afraid that if she were to become the Party’s candidate, then the entire Party would get “Mark Penned,” which is the euphemism for her inability to select top-flight people for key posts. Obama had a far higher-skilled campaign-operation than she did, even though she started out with an enormous head-start against Obama in 2008.

Back in 2006, the encyclopedically brilliant Democrat Jack Beatty headlined in The Atlantic, “Run, Barack, Run,” and he contrasted the “enthralling” presence and speaking-style of Barack Obama to the presence and speaking-style of the Party’s presumptive 2008 nominee. He said of Clinton: “As she showed in her speech at the memorial service for Coretta Scott King, Hillary Clinton is a boring, flat-voiced, false-gesturing platform speaker. She shouts into the microphone; Obama talks into it. Her borrowed words inspire no trust – they remind us of her borrowed foundation – and her clenched personality inspires little affection. Money can’t buy her love, nor buzz protect her political glass jaw. The question for Democrats is, Who will break it first? Will it be one of her Democratic challengers – Obama, Joe Biden, John Edwards – or John McCain?” He was hoping that it would turn out to be one of the Democrats, especially Obama, so as to avoid a continuation of the Bush years. He got his wish, even if not his intended result. (Obama was so gifted a con-man that even the brightest Democrats, such as Beatty, couldn’t see through his con. Nobody could – so, the Republicans had to invent an ‘Obama’-demon that was almost diametrically opposite to the real one, in order to provide a punching-bag that their suckers would hate. Republicans ended up punching actually the most gifted Republican since the time of Ronald Reagan — a black and charismatic version of Mitt Romney, the man who lost to Obama in 2012 though having created the model both for Obamacare and for Obama’s policies toward Wall Street, and even toward Russia.)

At the start of the present campaign, it had seemed almost inevitable that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2016. A Quinnipiac poll released on 7 March 2013 was headlined “Clinton, Christie Lead The Pack In Early Look At 2016,” and reported that, “Former First Lady, and Secretary of State Clinton wins easily against any” opponent, from either Party.

Her public statements aren’t consistent, because she changes them whenever politically convenient to do so; but the statements of a liar are simply ignored by intelligent people, anyway. Her statements are ignored by intelligent voters. What matters is her actions, her actual record, which is lengthy, and ugly. Her record is, moreover, consistent. So, it leaves no doubt as to what her actual policies are: only fools will listen to anything that a liar such as she is, says on the stump, because she’s a con-person who is selling, essentially, a toxic dump, and trying to get top-dollar for it by describing the pretty land covering it over, and by crossing her fingers that not many people will smell any stench percolating up from down below. The only people who can intelligently trust her verbal commitments are her big donors, who hear those commitments in private, not in public, and who understand how to interpret them. Her voters are there merely to be conned, not to be served. She needs them to be the rug she walks upon in order to get back into the White House, where she intends to be serving real gold to her big donors, to make their bets, on her, profitable for them.

And here are her big donors — the people she seeks to serve there.

This presentation will now close with a brief update on the situation in Honduras, because that catastrophe was Hillary Clinton’s first one as the Secretary of State:

On 15 February 2016, Alexander Main, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, headlined an op-ed in The New York Times, “An Anti-Corruption Charade in Honduras,” and he wrote there:

In Honduras, protests erupted when a local journalist revealed that millions of dollars of public funds from the country’s health care system had been funneled to the ruling National Party and the election campaign of President Juan Orlando Hernández. A handful of administrators and business executives have been indicted for other corruption in the health system, but no charges have been brought against Mr. Hernández or other top party officials over the diversion of funds to the party. … The country’s security forces are heavily infiltrated by organized crime — ‘rotten to the core,’ a former police official told The Miami Herald. Two weeks later, the official was shot dead. Scores of journalists, lawyers, land rights activists, gay rights advocates and opposition figures have been assassinated, without consequence for their killers. …

Sadly, the American government is ill positioned to offer help. In 2009, the State Department under Secretary Hillary Clinton helped a military coup in Honduras succeed by blocking efforts to restore the left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya, to power. Since then, Washington’s diplomatic efforts have focused on shoring up a series of corrupt post-coup governments. More than 100 members of Congress have called on the Obama administration to condemn human rights violations by security forces, and have questioned America’s security assistance to Honduras.

Yet Washington continues to back Mr. Hernández.

Hillary Clinton did, indeed, have an impact as the Secretary of State, and it continues to this day, and will live on as a curse, probably for decades to come — especially in the lands that she played a principal role in helping to destroy.

She prides herself on her “experience,” as if having a title, “Secretary of State,” and performing miserably in that function, qualifies someone to be a good U.S. President. America’s press hasn’t challenged her on the claim, either. Thus, many people, who trust both her and the American press, think that there must be truth to her claim: that she has achieved a lot, and that what she has achieved was terrific for the American people, and for the world. They’ve been successfully deceived.

There is an alternative, within the Democratic Party: Bernie Sanders. Here is his experience. And here are his top donors.

CONCLUSION

Only fools vote for her. Her campaigns are targeting especially fools who are either female or black or Hispanic, but she (and her financial backers) will welcome any fool to vote for her, because clearly no non-fool (except those financial backers) will.

PostScript:

This article was submitted to the major print news-media, and major online news-media, with the question: “Would you want this as an exclusive?”

None replied even to say something like, “Maybe, give us a week to check out the linked sources.” None replied at all. Consequently, this article is now being provided free of charge to the public, and free of charge to all media to publish, but that’s the choice a journalist must make in order to present a truthful and reasonably comprehensive picture of Hillary Clinton’s record as the U.S. Secretary of State.

Republican ‘news’ media don’t want this article, because it shows her as being hardly different from the Republicans on international matters; and Democratic ‘news’ media don’t want it, because it shows her as being hardly different from the Republicans on international matters. So, only the few news-media that are neither Republican nor Democratic, and are dedicated only to honestly and truthfully informing the public about the candidates for the U.S. Presidency, will publish it, even if it’s offered free-of-charge. About foreign affairs, there’s no truth in any of the large U.S. ‘news’ media: they’re all controlled by the U.S. aristocracy, who agree in both Parties, and who are united against the interests of the publics in every nation.

Here below are the news-media that had received the article, submitted to them for consideration as an exclusive, and all of which media rejected this article, without comment, so that you can see that the editors there know the information that’s revealed here (they have read it here, even if they didn’t already know it before and simply hid it all along from their readership). The reason they don’t want their readers to know these facts is that they don’t want the public to know that (except on purely groupist issues concerning women, Blacks and Hispanics — her voting-base) Hillary Clinton is actually a Republican in ‘Democratic’ verbal garb. Neither Republican, nor Democratic, ‘news’ media, want their readers to know that she’s actually a Republican — even more than her husband was. Anyway: here, you’ll see that though the information that has been included in this article is ignored in the reporting by all of the big reporters and by the talking heads on TV ‘news,’ they’re not actually unaware of it; they’re simply not allowed to let the public know it.

Those media are: Vanity Fair, National Review, Rolling Stone, Harper’s, BusinessWeek and Bloomberg News, McClatchy newspapers, New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post, Mother Jones, Nation, Progressive, New Republic, New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Politico, Salon, Huffington Post, and Slate. (If any of your friends subscribe to or read those, why not pass this along to them, so that they’ll know what they don’t know about Hillary Clinton. Maybe they already know how bad the Republicans are, but do they know how bad the Clintons and Obama really are? Perhaps they don’t know it, from sources that want them not to know it.)

Any news-medium that wishes to publish this article without this “PS” is hereby welcomed to do so, because, at this particular moment, I am more concerned to get the truth out about Hillary Clinton, than about the U.S. press.

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.

 

On Feb.20, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), mainly the “Tiger Forces” and the Cheetah Forces “Team 3”, supported by Russian warplanes launched a successful advance west along the imperative Aleppo-Raqqa Highway in order to complete the encirclement of ISIS-controlled area in Eastern Aleppo.

Following heavy clashes, the SAA took control of Umm Turaykiyah in the Al-Safira Plains. It had been that last terrorist stronghold between the SAA positions aling the Aleppo-Raqqa Highway and the Jibreen district of the Aleppo city. At least 800 ISIS militants were encircled in the newly appeared pocket.

On Feb.21, the SAA continued the advance and imposed full control over the villages of Jubb al-Safa, Kabarah, Rayyan, Al-Halabiyah, Dakwanah, Tall Istabl, Ain Sabil and Tall Riman, smashing the terrorists encircled there. Al-Safira Plains are under the full control of the SAA.

In a separate development, ISIS cut the government’s supply route, the Ithriyah-Khanasser road, leading to the Aleppo province. According to reports, ISIS was able to do it by capturing Rasm Al-Nafal from the National Defense Forces (NDF).

The Ithriyah-Khanasser road is a vital supply route of the Syrian forces located in Aleppo and an integral roadway that gives the latter access to several regions in northern Syria. It’s the second time in the recent months ISIS cut this supply route. This shows how vulnerable the SAA’s logistics in the region. According to reports, the SAA are going to launch a military operation to recapture Rasm Al-Nafal.

The SAA is continuing military operartions aganist ISIS along the Salamiyah-Raqqa Highway. Last weekend, the SAA and its allies liberated Al-Massbah, Point 4, Point 5, and a number of other small hilltops near the Zakiyah Crossroad located at the Hama-Raqqa border.

ISIS is widely using roadside bombs in order to slow down the loyalist forces’ advances along the road. Moreover, the strategic town of Zakiyah near the crossroad is still under the terrorists’ control. The SAA’s mid term goal in the area is to reach the Strayef Crossroad and launch an operation to liberate the Tabaqa Military Airport.

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“I want to go on record as saying that this is the stupidest, most irresponsible action a diplomatic mission like ours could get itself involved in, and that we’ve started a series of these things that will never end.” Dean Hinton, US State Department official pertaining  to planned CIA coup against Syria in 1949 (1)

The following is a timeline of US and allied interventions over the past 100 years. (1916-2016)

1916– Sykes-Picot Agreement, Syria ‘given’ to France, Iraq to Britain. (2)

1920– French defeat an independence movement in Syria. (3)

1925– France defeats a second independence movement in Syria, shells Damascus (3)

1936– France grants Syria independence, but French parliament refuses to ratify (3)

1941– Syria declares independence (3)

1944- Jewish irregular armed units operating independently of Jewish Agency control (but at times with its tacit approval) launch a campaign of terror against British personnel and Arab civilians in Palestine. (4)

1945– France tries to stop independence movement, shells Damascus, kills 400 (3)

1946– Independence from France, Syrian President is Shukri al-Quwatli (5)

1947– The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon—UN testimony by Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (6)

1948– Israel created out of Palestine, Arab-Israeli War

1948- Syria participates in Arab wars against Israel in 1948, 1967 & 1973, earning U.S. enmity. (7)

1949– CIA-sponsored coup under Truman over oil pipeline through Syria, see Deane Hinton quote (1)

1949– Two more coups, CIA man overthrown in the second, another returned in third

1954– Fourth coup, CIA-supported Adib Shiskali overthrown (5)

1955– Shukri al-Quwatli re-instated (see above, 1946). (5)

1956– CIA under Eisenhower tries to overthrow al-Quwatli with ‘Operation Straggle’ (8)

1957– Eisenhower implements ‘Operation Wappen,’ another coup attempt (5)

1957- Turkey masses 50,000 troops on Syrian border after the latter was claimed to be a ‘Soviet Satellite’ with ‘not more than 123 Russian MIGs’ (fighter planes). Reporter Kennett Love later said that “there were indeed ‘not more than 123 Migs’. There were none.” (8)

1960s– Frequent coups, military revolts, civil disorders and bloody riots

1970– Minister of Defense Hafez al-Assad (image left) seizes power in a bloodless coup

1979– Syria earns increased animosity of the U.S. government by supporting the Iranian revolution. (9)

1980– National Security Council urges President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to identify “possible alternative regimes to Syria’s Hafez al-Assad government. (10)

1982– “Israel must become an imperial regional power, and must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.” from ‘A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s’ (11)

1996– American Report: “Israel can shape its strategic environment by weakening Syria .”A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. The document proposed regime change in Iraq primarily as a “means” of “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria . As Pat Buchanan put it: “In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel ’s enemy remains Syria , but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad .” (12)

2003– Israel launches a missile attack on Syria , the first strike into Syrian territory in 30 years. President Bush immediately condoned the attack

2004-. Labeling Syria “an extraordinary threat, US Congress passed sanctions against the country. (13)

2006– Cable from William Roebuck, chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Damascus published later by Wikileaks. The cable outlines strategies for destabilizing the Syrian government. (14)

2007– We need to do everything possible to destabilize the Syrian regime. Cheney’s Middle East adviser David Wurmser. (15)

2009– US blocks Syrian efforts to join the World Trade Organization, which along with sanctions negatively impacts the Syrian economy.(16)

*     *     *

2011- March. Onslaught of terror attacks in the border city of Daraa, supported by US-NATO, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel 

2012– From Defense Intelligence Agency document: “The West, Gulf Countries and Turkey support the Syrian opposition…There is a possibility of establishing a Salfist Principality in Eastern Syria .”

2012– CIA known to be funneling weapons to Syrian opposition (17)

2016– 320,000 Syrians killed since open warfare began in 2011, with 12 million refugees (out of a total population of 22 million), and the human and ecological infrastructure of the country largely destroyed.

 

Dana Visalli is n biologist living in Washington State ; he has visited Iraq and Afghanistan often and is on his way to Syria. He has essays on Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam at www.methownaturalist.com

Notes

1. http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/washingtons-long-history-syria-8717

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Syria

4. http://www.coldwarstudies.com/2012/12/04/palestine-israel-timeline-1942-1948/

5. http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/washingtons-long-history-syria-8717

6. http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815

7. http://www.nmhtthornton.com/mehistorydatabase/arabisraeliwars.php

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Syria_relations

10. NSC (1980) ‘ Syria July 16, 1980’, National Security Council, 4203XX, Memorandum for Zbigniew Brzezinski, declassified document.

11. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1025.htm

12. http://scotthorton.org/fairuse/2014/01/27/a-clean-break-a-new-strategy-for-securing-the-realm-by-david-wurmser-1996/

13. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/11/us.syria/

14. US Embassy Damascus (2006) ‘Influencing the SARG in the end of 2006’, Cable to US State Department, Wikileaks, 13 December, online: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html

15. http://original.antiwar.com/dan_sanchez/2015/06/29/clean-break-to-dirty-wars/

16. Sadat, Mi H and Daniel B Jones (2009) ‘U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Syria: balancing ideology and national interests’, Middle East Policy Council, Summer, Volume XVI, Number 2, online:http://www.mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policyarchives/us-foreign-policy-toward-syria-balancing-ideology-and-national-interests?print

17. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=0

 

Dozens of people have been killed and injured in a double bombing attack in Homs, Syria. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs, said at least 34 people had been killed, but other sources say the death toll was even higher.

The explosions at a traffic light at al-Siteen Street in the al-Zahra neighborhood happened within minutes of each other, witnesses said. One of them may have been triggered by a suicide bomber.

Witnesses said at least one of the two blasts was triggered by a suicide bomber driving a car.

A follow-up bombing after an initial blast is a common terrorist tactic, which allows them to hit first responders, who rush to help victims.

Double bombings within less than a minute of each other targeting civilians in Zahra district #Homs pic.twitter.com/H4wLbpHQ8m

— The ‘Nimr’ Tiger (@Souria4Syrians) February 21, 2016

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said the bombing was aimed at derailing the ongoing peace talks between Damascus and rebel forces, and called on the UN Security Council to condemn the attack. The Syrian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to take responsibility for the preservation of international peace and security and take “immediate punitive and deterrent actions” against the sponsors of terrorists, particularly Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, in two letters addressed to the UN Secretary General and the Security Council’s Chairman, SANA reports.

VBIED explodes on 60th Street in Zahraa #Homs, reports of 2 explosions pic.twitter.com/NNcgi7YmTi

— Hassan Ridha (@sayed_ridha) February 21, 2016

In the letters, the ministry called the terrorist organizations acting in Syria tools of the Saudi and Turkish regimes adding that the Sunday attacks were Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s attempt to impede the diplomatic efforts aimed at finding a political solution to the Syrian crisis.

Bombings targeting civilians happen regularly in Syria, which has been riven by a five-year armed conflict. Islamic State claimed responsibility for a bombing in Homs last month, which killed at least 24 people. Another attack in December claimed 32 lives.

One year after the victory and six months after the coup, we shouldn’t fool ourselves: This was a defeat, of the Greek government. But it’s not only Syriza that has failed (for now). The whole left has failed in Greece – and in the rest of Europe, indeed. Europe is no longer what it was. It’s impossible to defend this project of European unification from the left without falling into pure illusions.

Ever since the last European Parliament elections, the minimal demand is: ‘No further transfer of powers from the national to this EU.’ This is certainly right, but then what?

Some hope that now they can score points with alternatives to the current EU. But already before the crisis there was the question: What’s the concrete strategy we could use to carry out these alternatives? The social union was our model for 20 years and it’s turned into an illusion. The greater the defeat – the submission of the Greek government – the more radical the left’s defiance becomes, whether this means that we support a ‘LExit’ (left exit), a radical democratization of the EU or for instance an unemployment insurance for all. None of this is realistic if it is disconnected from a strategy of how to get there. It’s all a politics that amounts to nothing more than proclamations and intellectual games far from the seats of power. There’s no subject for carrying it out. As a world view for organizing and a political orientation, these desperate attempts at self-assertion are good for nothing. I, for one, am uncertain about how we can go forward with a view to social transformation.

Shifting the Balance of Power?

The left in Europe, hasn’t been able to do anything to shift the balance of power. Our solidarity with Greece was symbolically important, but demonstrations for healthy food, for example, reach many more participants than demonstrations for solidarity and protests against the German government’s austerity policies.

And now a divisive debate has broken out that’s felt not just in Greece. It is, so to speak, Wolfgang Schäuble‘s second victory: the left has been split. In Germany it’s not so dramatic, but it’s serious enough to distract from our own problems and mistakes. But in France, for instance, there is a real danger of a split of the Front de Gauche about anti- or pro-European position, a possible split in times of an increasing radical right becoming the major force.

Lesson 1: Become More

What would a strategic position be – not only a programmatic one – that would actually change the relation of forces? This puts the question of organization back on the agenda. And here there is a lot to learn from the post-2011 experiences in Greece and Spain. With our solidarity we haven’t managed to make a difference because we are too small, have nowhere near enough anchoring among subaltern groups, and have not developed anywhere near enough connective praxis. This of course also goes for the left in Portugal, Ireland, France, Italy and elsewhere. Here’s where we could begin: a strategy that is more strongly oriented toward intervention in concrete everyday social relations through civil-society organizing. And with this a combination of building some kind of connective practices between different movements, parties and/or new platforms that link this to the changed practices within a left mosaic (see Candeias/Völpel 2014).

Let’s call it a change from the discursive (arguments transmitted by programs and by media) to the material (interventions in concrete social relations). This is how, in Spain and Greece, the base could be broadened far beyond the usual milieus of the left and the already active. Their constituent parts are local units in which members do not just talk about politics but also take part in everyday practice by preventing forced evictions, organizing tenants, supporting labour struggles, doing refugee work, etc. These are solidarity networks that draw more people into political organizing. In this way it was possible to also reach the precariat, often of immigrant background, that no longer expect anything from elections and democracy. What could be promising in the long term are pilot projects for Transformative Organizing in so-called social flash points. Solidarity practices in the ‘middle and bottom’ of society laid the bases for successes of Syriza, the Spanish municipal movements in Barcelona, Madrid (and we have figures on this), and many other cities (Podemos still has its litmus test ahead of it). To be able to ‘fail’ like Syriza, we might have to be as successful as it was, we would have to come as far as it did.

This is perhaps the first lesson to learn from the failure.

Lesson 2: Successful failure has to be organized

This also applies to those who see their politics as confirmed by Syriza’s defeat. Stathis Kouvelakis, a proponent of a left Grexit and former member of Syriza’s party executive and leading member of the Left Platform, which has split off under the name ‘Unity’, says:

“Our position is the typical ‘I always said it from the beginning’ strategy. But if no motivating force can be developed out of this position it means political failure – for if we are powerless and have proven incapable of translating our position into a course of action for the masses, then our position obviously has not been validated” (in: Marx21, 21 July 2015).

The discourse of ‘none of it meant anything in the end’ was already dominant after the dying down of Occupy and the indignad@s and turned out to be of little use, premature, and above all wrong. Admittedly, the defeat this time is especially heavy (at least for the short history of the left since the beginning of the recent major crisis). But defeats were always also important moments of reappraisal, learning, and reorganization. Viewed in this way, failure has always been the left’s most important form of motion.[1] Such learning effects are of course not automatic. In order for lost struggles not to lead to disorganization and splits, there also has to be a connective practice in evaluating and reorganizing – especially if the struggle has not even ended, as in the case of Greece and the European austerity regime. Reducing everything to the question of Grexit or not is detrimental to such a strategic reorientation.

A moment of catharsis – if it is used.

The decisive strategic questions are organized around the perspectives and the praxis of the left in Europe and especially Germany. But even then, we cannot duck down to formulate a solidary critique of the first Tsipras government as a point of crystallization of left aspirations. Such a balance must start from the real and concrete situation, not from left projections and exaggerated hopes (a problematic with every inspiring project like the movements and left governments in Latin America or Rifondazione Comunista in Italy). Greece was about finding a way out of crisis and austerity. “It was about reinventing reformism after the neoliberalization of the European social democracy and opening up space for new opportunities for movements, which could not be ‘represented’ by the government” (Mezzadra 2016). In any case, accusations of betrayal or anything else of the kind are out of the question.

In what follows there will, therefore, be no good advice ‘to the Greeks’. I will only formulate three more general problematics and conclusions for future left projects. We should keep in mind that civil-society solidarity structures and unifying practices (see Candeias/Völpel 2014) were what made it possible for Syriza to come to power and for us to even argue about it now. Whatever our differences about the first Tsipras government, none of us should ever fall back below the level of this experience of practice.

Lesson 3: Use the historical moment

We have repeatedly seen how important it is not to pause at the moment of an (electoral) victory. The enemy is weakened, and the momentum of mobilization is still at a high point. The carrying out of decisive projects is more probable at this point, as long as the political enemy has not yet recovered his strength, coordinated with others, and been able to develop a new strategy. Obama, who, whatever his faults, as still the first African-American president of the U.S., provides an example. After enormous mobilization, he was able to win amidst the most serious economic crisis since 1929. But instead of using the moment and curbing the power of Wall Street, taxing the rich, and carrying out a kind of public New Deal, he pursued the false idea of a ‘balanced policy’ and negotiated for a long time with the Republicans – until the Democratic Party lost its majority in the mid-term elections. The rest is history.

But Syriza, too, was unable to use the historical movement. Although before the election a clear immediate-action program and a strategy for the first steps definitely had been drawn up, some of the people closest to Tsipras feared it would lead to failure. The decision was made against the ratified program, and without any further consultation with the party, to negotiate with the creditors without preconditions. Confrontation with the creditors (which perhaps would have created a better starting point) was to be avoided.

The original plan was to declare insolvency right after taking office in order to make a new attempt at debt cancellation within the Eurozone. The insolvency was indeed real and not caused by Syriza. Declaring it unilaterally would have been a calculated breaking of the rules, including the introduction of capital controls. Greece could have credibly said to the European public that the preceding corrupt governments and the Troika’s policy had for years covered up, exacerbated, and protracted the country’s insolvency. Everyone who cared to know it knew that Greece had long been bankrupt. The Troika and the European ‘caste’ still had not agreed on a strategy for dealing with the newly elected left government. There were many within the power bloc – not just the IMF – who had long thought that Greece was bankrupt and that debts would have to be written off. Insolvency would have put the creditors under strong pressure to offer an immediate solution. Success would by no means have been certain. But the moment fizzled out without being used.

After months of the Greek government’s desperate negotiations, defeat was palpable. In this moment of hardship, the referendum was a good chess move for a possible exit from the messy situation. The party rank and file and civil society organizations mobilized in a showing of remarkable strength for the OXI vote against submission to a third Memorandum. The referendum was supposed to improve the negotiating position. Whether the moment was consciously unused is unknown.

On the other hand, what was successful to an extent was the notably rapid implementation of the measures to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Greece. Despite the lack of experience with administrative apparatuses, important measures were carried out in the areas of refugee policy, the reintroduction of the minimum wage, food stamps for the poorest, reconnection and free basic electricity provision, easements for over-indebtedness, reintroduction of basic pensions, reintroduction of unemployment and health insurance for low income earners, recruiting of doctors and free access to healthcare also for the non-insured, the recognition of same-sex partnerships, etc. (see Bussemer 2015).

Except for smaller reforms in the taxation of businesses and the slow-moving detection of tax evasion and money laundering, a direct attack on the Greek oligarchy and its corrupt connections within the state, the economy, and the media was avoided. “Outrageous is the fact, that is was not possible to pass our tax legislation through the parliament, providing us the exit to the resources necessary for survival in this struggle. Outrageous that we were not able to reintroduce collective bargaining laws, providing working people with the means for their struggle for democracy and dignity at their workplace” (Iliopoulos 2015).

“Schäuble is not to blame for not passing an institutional reform, able to contain police violence, to reform education… to shut down the gold mine at Skouries, to bring forward a solidarity economy… to tax the wealth of the church… This was what Syriza announced and what was not in the focus of the Troika. The government did not implement these reforms,” said Yannis Albanis (2015), member of the Syriza’s central committee.

A twofold strategy seemed too dangerous to the government. Still, perhaps it was exactly what would have been necessary. The propaganda in the creditor states said that the corrupt classes of the super-rich in Greece should not be called on to help service the debt because it was the fault of the Greeks themselves, which is hypocritical, but effective. “We did not fight the struggles, able to strengthen and encourage us, but those weakening us… Our biggest error was not committed in the negotiations” with an over-powerful combatant, “but not to push forward the social processes and struggles in the country,” sums up Tasos Koronakis (2015b), the former General Secretary of Syriza. But even less confrontative democratic changes were not resolutely advanced: “with regard to transparency, corruption, revaluation of municipal and regional governments, democratization of public administration” (Spourdalakis 2015).

Another reflection: “Our opponents took us seriously. They thought we were dangerous for the system, not economically, but in terms of politics. They took us as a threat for the hegemony of the neoliberal paradigm… We didn’t take ourselves so seriously. We never prepared for an actual battle” (Iliopoulos 2015).

Could have, should have, would have… What can we learn from all this? To never engage the struggle ‘below the level of the current relations of force’ (Luxemburg, GW 1.2, 433) and never let the brief moments of historical possibilities go unused.

Lesson 4: Hegemony in civil-society before taking office is not enough…

From Gramsci we learn that “there has to be ‘political hegemony’ already before taking office, and in exercising political leadership or hegemony one ought not to count solely on the power and material strength it confers.” This advice was heeded. Syriza was a point of condensation that translates civil-society self-organization and protest into the perspectives of taking governmental power.

But it is not enough to have won hegemony in civil society before taking office. Government and civil society have to be rethought:

“It was clear that the room for manoeuvre inside the given institutions was going to be ‘more than narrow: Neither the clutch of the Troika nor that of the international financial markets would be loosened – on the contrary. … A left government would be wedged between authoritarian European constitutionalism and a bureaucratic apparatus occupied clientelistically by PASOK and ND. It would also have to expect an economic crisis aggravated by measures taken on the capitalist side. Rejection and renegotiation of the Memorandums … will not be enough’” (Candeias 2013).

At any rate, it was equally clear that Syriza had no choice. After the electoral victory it would have been impossible to not take office and leave it to a ‘grand’ coalition of the corrupt ‘system parties’ that shared responsibility with the Troika for the country’s catastrophic condition. “There was a kind of mobilization from the lower classes, expecting Syriza to take government” (Spourdalakis 2015). Nevertheless, one should have been able to know – and many did know it – that the government’s expectation of being able to govern in the usual way was not viable. The initially swiftly implemented humanitarian emergency program needed to be accompanied “by a rupture that would involve large parts of the population in a process of collective reorganization and refounding of democracy” (Candeias 2013).

“Syriza originally started with a different approach. The party wanted to ‘put society back into the center’. She promised to realize this practically, to approach to and learn from the movements, without behaving like a paternalistic Avantgarde or typical representative… Her practice and program were designed to realize an active social participation in the institutions… From this practice she formulated a ‘right’ to govern and execute power” (Spourdalakis 2015).

A true transformation cannot be a transformation via the state. As Nicos Poulantzas said:

“A transformation of the state apparatus in the sense of a withering away of the state can only rest on an increased intervention of the masses in the state – certainly with the help of the trade-union and political representatives of the masses but also through the unfolding of their own initiatives within the state. … (it will) not be able to limit itself to a mere democratization of the state. … This transformation must be accompanied by the development of new forms of direct grassroots democracy and the spread of networks and centers of self-governance,” (1978, 289f).

Andreas Karitzis puts it like this:

“Escalation by the elites requires a counter strategy, empowering people to take over fundamental socio-economic functions in an alternative way… We cannot free ourselves from our oppressors as long as we do not develop the power to provide the necessary goods and practices independently” (Karitzis 2015).

And Hilary Wainwright observes: “Solidarity initiatives can be important points of departure for struggles around/for the welfare state.” In these struggles, as organizational nodes, “people’s self-conception of what they can achieve” can change, “Together with [these struggles] the sense of their own capacity for power” can develop (2012, 122). These initiatives are therefore potentially not only an effective remedy against (right-wing) populism but can also reduce dependency on (left) governments and prevent clientelism. They do not limit themselves to ‘civic engagement’ that compensates for the thinning out of the welfare state but aim, through civil disobedience and direct appropriation, at its reconstruction and its democratic remodelling. From this perspective, the expansion and democratization of the welfare state should redirect funds and decision-making power toward civil society. ‘In and against the state’, to recall an old slogan.

No one can be mobilized by asking five people to cross their fingers in negotiating with the Troika, just as no one can be mobilized to exit the euro. In both cases there is no role for movements or for individuals, no perspective for taking action. To concretely reclaim the state at the point where people experience it in their daily lives – in healthcare, education, media, in workplaces, and organizing the necessary financial means – that is what could have mobilized and connected with an existing praxis. “This requires rethinking governmental and administrative practices as well as movements… which have to overcome their narrow corporatist mentality,” insofar as state recourse and decision making is transferred to these new actors (Karitzis 2015).

An example: The movement of solidarity clinics with their knowledge and engagement of doctors, healthcare workers, patients, relatives, and activists could have been a basis for a reform of the public healthcare system that aims at participation and transparency and opens up the administrations to the masses, uses their knowledge, and anchors their power there. Some steps in this direction were made, but extremely carefully.

Councils could have been formed everywhere. This could push forward the reconstruction of the state more powerfully than a single left minister at the head of an apparatus shot through with clientelism and corruption (especially in the tax administration).

This twofold strategy of negotiations and rupture was not taken up. The wish was to avoid a ‘war on two fronts’ and so not risk a conflict with the Greek bourgeoisie within the country. And so there was no turning to the very mobilization that could have bolstered the government – not only at the European level but also in the struggle against corruption and tax evasion, for cutting the horrendous arms expenditures, and the introduction of a wealth tax. These were precisely the points used by the anti-Greek propaganda in the creditor countries to continually accuse the government – incredible hypocrisy as we know since the Troika itself prevented these measures from being taken.

Moreover, a mobilization of civil society could have also been an important corrective for the government (every trade-unionist knows how helpful such pressure can be for negotiations). Forgoing it tended to render civil society passive. “Syriza as a whole – despite the mass presence of single members in the movements – evoked mass participation more than really developing it. Contrary to their communiques the government did not ‘open‘ institutional procedures and did not even think about broader negotiations and participatory democracy” (Albanis 2015).

Incidentally, the Left Platform also had no such strategy and with its program focused on a Grexit pursued a purely parliamentary and etatist tactic. They seemed uninterested in mobilization. Panagiotis Sotiris, ex-Antarsya member and now member of Popular Unity sums up self-critically: “The forces building the new ‘Unity’, they “acted like a variation of Syriza, that credibly upheld its principles but not as a new front that organically grew out of the movements and social conflicts… Our party did not succeed in … opening itself to the experiences of the movement” (Sotiris 2015). “Unity as well as the government obviously did not share principles and experiences of the radical left: neither to be broadly anchored in class, nor thick ties to solidarity networks and social movements were considered as particularly important. They refused to actively take part in the latter” (Spourdalakis 2015).

That the movements had already waned by the time Syriza came to power, as we so often hear, is an erroneous analysis (Sablowski, JW 18 July 2015; Strohschneider ND 5 August 2015). What does one mean by ‘movement’? The relatively ineffective general strikes and other spectacular demonstrations? Or the spread of organizing through the solidary structures in the whole country and the development of a connective party (socially as well as through parliament)? The former had indeed long since died down. After the occupation of Syntagma Square there was the laborious everyday work of organizing in the neighborhoods and of a multi-faceted solidary economy (Candeias/Völpel 2014). The latter is less visible and involves enormous wear and tear but also continual engagement and effect. In fact, with the refugee crisis that has been coming to a head already for a long time, the solidary structures have lost nothing of their dynamic but have grown in terms of activists, engagement, and dynamic, as Eleni Chatzmichali of the Network of Solidarity Clinics reports.

And after the big defeat in July, it became clear for everyone, in this situation solidarity structures will not become dispensable, because even a left government is not able to reestablish and expand the welfare state. You can’t rely on the government for your everyday survival. So, for instance in cooperatives or “markets without middlemen” numbers and engagement of activist are growing. We have to do it ourselves. In doing so, “we have to care about not eroding the political kernel of solidarity structures,” to reduce them to mere structures of help. “Antagonistic movements like anti-privatization or anti-eviction initiatives however were demobilized much more, but not the solidarity structures” (ibid.).

The notion of the demobilization of civil society is also refuted by the OXI. The mobilization surprised the participants (especially the government) perhaps even more than the outcome of the referendum. Although months had been thrown away, the OXI could have been used. But “there was no careful consideration how to mobilize the social forces, which demonstrated their willingness with 61 per cent at the referendum, and there was no careful consideration either how to strengthen the solidarity and parallel structures, that emerged out of the crisis” (Panagiotakis 2015).

Although the indispensable role of movements is recognized widely in the left, there is a dominant understanding of a linear ascending process of political organization: in the beginning there are protests and movements, then follows the building up of new or rebuilding of old left party structures, then there is the electoral process and campaigning to win the majority and assume (governmental) power to implement the “right” policies. Movements have their – more or less – important role, but the understanding of taking power remains the same old stylish, office-seeking, and etatist one, centered around parliamentary and administrative procedures – “We do it for you.” But this traditional relation toward government “is not sound anymore. The state is not able to provide what people need” (Karitzis 2015). Instead, it should be clear, that the moment of seizing governmental power is not the moment of replacing the moment of movements and social mobilization. Taking office should be understood as the moment of strengthening mobilization and self-organization of the subaltern classes in all fields of society. New connective practices between the different functions – government, party, movement, social self-organization in the neighborhoods and on the shop floor – must be developed – instead of acting in the name of movements and voters or the invocation of movements as the cases arise to mobilize people for the government.

Repeated mobilization in individual cases – like for the referendum – without giving people a real voice, a real possibility to decide, however, leads to disillusion. Not only has the Left Platform split off; still more serious is the loss of the base, which is leaving the party in droves, with many of the most active liaison people in civil society and the movements among them. The “connective party” failed.

There is still no open break between movements and Syriza; people are still discussing what the right consistent approach should be. “Movement-oriented people left” the party, so it will become “difficult to negotiate politics to strengthen solidarity structures only with people orientated toward parliamentary procedures,” reassess Chatzimichali (2015). There is ongoing discussion of founding a new civil-society platform that would not exhaust itself working within the government but pursue its own agenda of social organizing and transformation – a platform able to either pressure on, or support of, Syriza, depending on the specific conditions. The relation between party and movements now has to be directed toward a relation of cooperation and conflict, consolidating the autonomy of movements, comparable less to a connective party then to the model of the Brazilian landless movement MST in the time of the Lula government.

Tsipras and Syriza won a second mandate. Learning from our own failures is the duty. Because it will not be enough to socially cushion the Memorandum measures. It became immediately obvious that the European institutions will not tolerate such a tactic. When the Greek government tried to cushion the hardship of the memorandum measures with a parallel program of social measures (health insurance for all, municipal centers of help for the poor, an end to the foreclosure sale of the land of the cooperative Vio.Me etc.), the vote in the parliament had to be suspended because of the pressure from the Eurogroup. Therefore the creditors’ shift from “fiscal blackmail to direct political control… They not only set the legal frame for Greek politics,” but they are binding “the next payments to political compliance of the government, permanently supervised. They will prevent Greece from wining any room for manoeuvre for a new offensive” (Blockupy goes Athens, 12.7.15). So, the strategy to cushion the measures of the Memorandum has failed too.

Indefensible is any strategy “that privileges the ‘representation’ of voters over the organization of the society, with the goal, to struggle against the measures of the Memorandum today, and to bear a new economic war tomorrow” (Albanis 2015).

Lesson 5: Autonomy of the party from the government and parliament

Syriza has undertaken far-reaching changes in the political structure of its own organization and developed close institutional, indeed organic, ties with the movements. Together with the movements if founded the Solidarity4all network in order to network and strengthen the structures of solidarity countrywide; every deputy gives a significant part of his or her salary to Solidarity4all’s solidarity fund; at least one of each deputy’s staff is made available for work in the movement, etc. And so there were very good connections from the party to the movements. The party provides an infrastructure for the construction of the solidarity movements, that was enormously important.

However, there was little ability to guarantee an opposite path of impulses from the movements to the party, as it was still possible in the period of the Syntagma Square occupation. “We did not build an active relation to the society,” in this sense of lacking openness “there was no real difference to ND and PASOK” (Koronakis 2015b).

Furthermore, from the very start Syriza was threatened by “the danger of being completely absorbed by government duties,” as Elena Papadopoulou put it (2015). Situations are repeatedly arising “in which party cadre are absorbed into the state apparatus” and a left party “only still exists as a government party,” or as a parliamentary party, which describes Syriza with some exceptions. Against this, Papadopoulou recommends, it is necessary to “hold on to our own presence in the social field and even to expand it.” This did not succeed. The party was marginalized in relation to the government and parliament. It no longer played an independent role. “And the members were never consulted about any question, not at any time” (Panagiotakis 2015). A classic mistake.

“Since 2012, action of the party was too strongly oriented toward ‘governing‘. …Syriza privileged the parliamentary game, social practices degenerated into compulsory exercise. They stopped making initiatives in society and lost ingenuity, they still had in 2010 and 2011. This became clear at the founding party convention of Syriza. The questions debated there were mostly of procedural nature, nearly exclusively on inner-organizational structures – with it the party seemed disconnected from the societal field. Without creativity, the organization was not able to correspond to its own strategy” (Spourdalakis 2015).

In contrast inner-party conflicts between the different political currents dominated the debate, without representing or organizing a majority in the party. No entity within the party was dedicated to connective practices, bridging the differences.

“The ‘federal‘ character of the currents, functioning as networks or even parties within the party, was not useful. It prevented a real connection between the currents… Connecting the pieces is hard work. And a working and lively party debate is a precondition, supporting the Syriza strategy in all its organs, representing the new. It hasn’t worked. Division is due to these deficits, and it costs strength, effectiveness and votes.”

Along with this, those who had been important in organizing the close connection between the party and the movements, who had built vital relationships in civil society and were, precisely, for the twofold strategy of negotiation with the creditors and rupture in the sense of mobilization within the country, were ground down or made invisible within the clash of the government and its negotiating strategy, on the one hand, and the Left Platform, with its never developed exit option, on the other. Among other groups, I am thinking here of the “Group of 53,” a group within Syriza that advocated Syriza’s cohesion, its democratic functioning, and its radical left, movement-oriented direction. Central figures, such as the party’s General Secretary, Tasos Koronakis, or Christos Giovanopoulos, the coordinator of Solidarity4all, have since left the party.

For the sake of future left projects we would have to ask: How can the relation of those in government, of the parliamentary group and the party be shaped so that the necessarily emerging contradictions can be cooperatively worked through? How can one guarantee that the party is neither subordinated to the government nor pitted against it? What concrete conflicts can be foreseen? How are conflicts to be managed and democratic inner-party decisions made? To develop a connective praxis that cross the fault lines within the party and the social left should be a task of all parts of the left but, at a minimum, of its leadership groups.

What Does Defeat Mean Now for Us in Europe?

It was more than clear and repeatedly said, also by Tsipras, that one country alone actually cannot carry it off. They tried the impossible, bought time, and politicized the question of democracy in Europe. But what does this mean for us?

As I said: we haven’t made a difference. The Left – parties and movements, intellectuals and trade unions – which altogether is not all that little – have at no point managed to create a common initiative in order, beyond all trench warfare, to come nearer to the shared goal of the end to austerity and of Europe’s authoritarian-neoliberal regime.

As in a burning glass, Greece and the politics of all of the left in Germany for instance shows that the forms of politics that have been pursued, whether movement, trade-union, or party politics, are not good enough. Therefore we need a different strategy of organizing and becoming more, as I said, based on organizing in the everyday struggles, in the neighborhoods, etc., bringing more people to take their interest into their own hands.

Even if we in Germany do not have a dynamic like that of Greece or Spain, what needs to be done now is to develop capacities, prepare things, reinforce organizing processes – in order both to be effective (despite the lack of a dynamic) and to be prepared for the coming dynamic. “To be active within a fundamental temporal discontinuity means, on the one hand, to gather forces and develop and, on the other, to be open for the unforeseen, for the ‘untimely’. In the language of the ‘politics of the event’ this means an attitude that is ready to ‘grasp the opportunity’, to intervene in those temporary openings that allow a leap forward and the creation of more favorable relations of forces” (Caccia/Mezzadra 2015).

Of course, alongside this priority of popular anchoring in solidarity praxis, there also needs to be a programmatic position and discursive strategies that can convey the connection of these everyday hardships to the European crisis – a left populism, so to say, that clearly names the perpetrator and addresses the anxiety – anxiety in the face of a feeling of ‘external’ threat (Greece and the euro crisis, Ukraine/Putin, refugees, surveillance/NSA, terrorism) – that is predominantly related to the situation here and couples it to solidarity praxis.

Lesson 6: A common ‘Oxi’ camp

Europe no longer represents hope. In fact, we should consider whether certain powers ought to be transferred ‘back’ from the European to other levels. This would involve a new connection of decentralization but with transnational mediations. In terms of municipal concerns, it is at this level that decisions should be made. On what has effects beyond one municipality and region should be decided on higher levels: on a supra-regional or national basis with the participation of those effected – and of course there are questions that can only be approached on a European level. Which matters these should be would be clarified within a constitutive process aimed at a fundamental refoundation of the European project.

The means and end of a refounding of Europe would have to be the strengthening of the sovereign, that is, of the population. In this way, the impulse toward re-nationalization could be remodelled into an impulse toward decentralization and Europeanization. For a broad political debate on the prospects, Europe-wide assemblies should be called – a constituent process of consultation and organizing of a European civil society. It should not involve an abstract Europe discourse but would be close to the everyday worries and desires of people. This is the perspective. How to get there is the issue.

With this aim, Varoufakis is proposing the founding of a new European platform. The initiatives around the so-called Plan B (Mélanchon, Lafontaine, et al.) are also pursuing a discussion of the new orientation of the process of European integration and not just a debate about Lexit (Owen Jones). Instead, movements are focusing on diverse processes of intervention in concrete everyday organizing in connection with transnational assemblies and civil disobedience, but they are still going through a process of strategy clarification.

Those forces that can be called movements of a new municipalism have a somewhat different strategic focus. They assume that far-reaching attempts at European organizing are hopeless if not based on the organizing within the everyday life of individuals, in the neighborhoods, at the workplace, and in the municipalities. Within the Spanish state, connective platforms were able to win majorities in most of the country’s large cities. Not only in Barcelona and Madrid can the new left municipal governments name the mayor; in the USA, too, the various successes after the defeat of the Occupy movement can mostly be seen at the local and municipal level (for instance, around the minimum wage). In Italy, there is a long left tradition of social centers as places of organizing. The municipality needs to be won back as a locus of politics, of (self-)organizing, and participation. With Syriza we have seen the limits left governments come up against in an authoritarian Europe. This of course, is also true, in another way, for a new municipalism. This also involves jumping scale to translate and connect such politics and organizing with the European level – for a network of cities and regions or, more emphatically, the perspective of a European Commune as the constitutive process for another Europe from below?

We have also seen that European campaigns can serve to establish a new political space from below in Europe. By now there have been several such campaigns: on water, ACTA, seaports, TTIP, and others. The start of a mutual European understanding from below could be an organizing campaign for a European citizens’ initiative that would name maybe three still to be defined central goals: perhaps an end of social cuts and privatization, a European debt conference, taxing the rich with a European property levy, investments in a Europe-wide social infrastructure (healthcare, education, housing, energy), and a solidary refugee policy. It can be formulated better and more concretely, not more than three points. That European campaigns can be successful has recently been shown by the anti-TTIP campaign. But this new campaign should be more sophisticated.

Anti-democratic hegemonism of the German government and the subjection and impoverishment of Greece also finds its critics even in Germany among a relevant minority of 20 to 30 per cent, up to now within the left-liberal, Green, and bourgeois centre spectrum represented by Jürgen Habermas, Gesine Schwan, Reinhard Bütikofer, and many others. The refugee drama is considerably aggravating this anxiety. “More than ever, we need to go beyond the current limits of protest and create a social bloc that says ‘OXI’ to the social cuts and destruction of democracy in Europe, that goes beyond the classic left milieus” (Riexinger, ND 11 August 2015). In the rest of Europe, resentment, especially of the German government, has grown enormously. It would not hurt if left parties, social movements, and critical trade-unionists could unite Europe-wide around a few minimal demands in order to get such a campaign started.

The European institutions would certainly reject such a European Citizens Initiative (ECI). However, as was the case with TTIP, this could have a mobilizing effect, if you will, for a bold referendum for a Europe from below, as the beginning of self-empowerment for a constituent process.

These and other strategies are going to be discussed at a European Strategy Conference organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) in June 2016 together with the most diverse social initiatives, groups, tendencies, and organizations. Along with the political content, the conference will also deal with what the right political forms could be and their linkages, as well as a strategy for connecting the most diverse levels – local/municipal, national, European – in view of the left’s scarce resources: in each case, where is the right level of political intervention and organizing? The aim – despite current differing positions and goals – is to find connective perspectives and praxis that make possible not a unified modus operandi but at least a synchronization of politics of resistance for another Europe. This time together!

We have to be aware that we are experiencing a great crisis – things can change rapidly. And when they do, it will be rapid in every direction. Maybe in ours, if we learn from our defeats.

Mario Candeias is the director of the Institute for Critical Social Analysis and editor of the review LuXemburg.

Notes:

1. “The history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmentary and episodic. In the history of the activity of these groups there is doubtless a tendency to unity, if only at provisional levels, but this tendency is continually broken by the initiative of the ruling groups” (Gramsci, Prison Notebook 9 [German edition p. 2191]).

References:

• Albanis, Yannis, 2015: “Neubeginn in der Sackgasse,” in: LuXemburg-online, September.
• Blockupy goes Athens, 2015: “Die Niederlage verstehen heisst den Sieg vorbereiten,” 12 July 2015.
• Bussemer, Johanna, 2015: “Aus Spesen nichts gewesen?,” in: #This is a Coup, Supplement edited by ND and RLS, August, 24-25.
• Caccia, Beppe, und Sandro Mezzadra, 2015: “Unterm Himmel des Interregnums Anmerkungen zur politischen Methode der Veränderung heute,” in: Luxemburg-online.
• Candeias, Mario, und Eva Völpel, 2014: Plätze sichern! ReOrganisierung der Linken in der Krise
• Zur Lernfähigkeit des Mosaiks in den USA, Spanien und Griechenland, VSA, Hamburg.
• Candeias, Mario, 2015: “Ein gemeinsames Lager des OXI” in: ND, 4.8.2015 bzw. LuXemburg-online.
• Candeias, Mario, 2013: Wo bitte geht’s zum Winterpalast? Transnationale Resonanzen und blockierte Transformation, in: LuXemburg, No.3.
• Candeias, Mario, 2010: Von der fragmentierten Linken zum Mosaik, in: LuXemburg, No. 1, 6-17.
• Chatzimichali, Eleni, 2015: Stand und Debatte in den Solidarbewegungen Griechenlands, Contribution on the 2nd Democracy Conference of RLS, “Zerfall der EU oder demokratische Reorganisation von links. Wie weiter mit Europa?,” 14.11.2015, Berlin.
• Chondros, Giorgios, 2016: “Der einzige Kommunist im Dorf,” taz, 19.1.
• Gramsci, Antonio, 1991 ff: Gefängnishefte (Gef.), Vol. 9, Hamburg-Berlin
• Iliopoulos, Nasos, 2015: “Die Bürde von Syriza,” in: LuXemburg-online, August. English version: “The burdens of Syriza.”
• Karitzis, Andreas, 2015: “The Dilemmas and Potentials of the Left: Learning from Syriza,” in: Socialist Register 2016, edited by L. Panitch et.al., via: The Bullet No. 1183, 6 Nov. 2015.
• Koronakis, Tasos, 2015a: “Wir haben es bis hierhin geschafft, weil die Einigkeit im Kern unseres Planes stand,” in: LuXemburg-online.
• Koronakis, Tasos, 2015b: Nach dem Coup. Partei und Bewegung – Ende der verbindenden Partei?, Contribution on the 2nd Democracy Conference of RLS, “Zerfall der EU oder demokratische Reorganisation von links. Wie weiter mit Europa?,” 13.11.2015, Berlin.
• Koronakis, Tasos, 2011: Linkspartei auf dem Syntagma-Platz, in: LuXemburg, No. 4, 36-41.
• Kouvelakis, Stathis, 2015: Griechenland: der Kampf geht weiter, in: Marx21, 21.7.2015.
• Luxemburg, Rosa, 1974ff: GW – Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 1.2, Berlin
• Mezzadra, Sandro, 2015: Die europäische Perspektive. Offene Lage, bleibende Chancen, in: ND, 2.1.2016.
• Panagiotakis, Michaelis, 2015: Humanitäres Management eines Protektorats?, in: LuXemburg-online, September 2015.
• Papadopoulou, Elena, und Michalis Spourdalakis 2015: Zwei Monate Syriza-Regierung: Schwierigkeiten und Herausforderungen, in: LuXemburg-online, April.
• Poulantzas, Nicos, 1978: Staatstheorie, Hamburg 2002.
• Riexinger, Bernd, 2015: Möglichst viele sammeln, in: ND, 11.8.2015.
• Sablowski, Thomas, 2015: Die Etappenschlappe, in: Junge Welt, 18.7.2015.
• Spourdalakis, Michaelis, 2015: Lasst uns den Faden wieder aufnehmen, in: LuXemburg-online, December.
• Sotiris, Panagiotis, 2015: “First Thought On the Greek Elections,” in: Jacobin, 22.9.2015.
• Strohschneider, Tom, 2015: Der griechische Katalysator, in: ND, 5.8.2015.
• Wainwright, Hilary, 2012: Griechenland: Syriza weckt Hoffnungen, in: LuXemburg, No. 3, 118–25
• Werner, Alban, 2015: Für ein wildes Referendum gegen Merkels Europa, in: ND, 13.8.2015.
• Wolf, Frieder Otto, 2016: Wie kann aus der gegenwärtigen Krise einkonstitutiver Moment erkämpft werden?, RLS-Berlin (to be published).

Twin car bomb hit Al-Zahra neighborhood in Homs, again and again, near to the heavily populated bus station.  Coward terrorists remotely detonated the cars filled with explosives. Since the very beginning of the so-called revolution in Syria, this district was the main target for the western backed moderate terrorists.

Today in the early hours of Sunday/ 21/ February/ 2016:  Two blasts hit this neighborhood, claimed the lives of more than 60 persons, and left hundreds wounded, in addition to the huge material damage to the buildings around.

This neighborhood has been attacked more than 60 times since the beginning of the Syrian crisis.   Most recently was 26 / January when another car filled with explosives was remotely detonated, after which the terrorist blew himself up to kill those who came to help.  Twenty-four Syrians were murdered on that day.

On this same Sunday /21/ February, however it was on the afternoon, three terrorists blasts hit the other target, which also the so called moderate rebels have been bombing since the year 2011, the year of the bloody “revolution” birth.

It is Sayyda Zainab district in Damascus,  a terrorist car bomb then followed by explosive belts [suicide bombers], as if blowing up the loaded explosive car is not enough! So when the people gather to help the injured, the terrorists start to detonate their explosive belts against those innocent people!

More than 86 martyrs and a hundreds of wounded most of them are kids and women, furthermore, the huge harm caused to the area, near to both a public hospital and a public school.* The scene looks like an earthquake hit the place!

The most recent previous massacre in Sayyda Zainab on 31/ January also involved remote detonation of a car near a bus station and with two suicide bombers to kill the helpers. Forty-five Syrians were murdered.

All this terrorists blasts are not new, it started with the color revolution brand, sponsored by CIA, Saudi, Israel, and Turkey, against the Syrian people’s lives. Moreover, now they blame on the so-called ISIS, as known as Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, just to make the so-called moderate rebels look in innocent shape, meanwhile they are two faces for one coin, and made in the same factory!

To read complete article click here

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir at the Westin Grand Hotel during the Munich Security Conference: “ISIS is as much an Islamic organization as the KKK in America is a Christian organization.”

Interview Conducted By Samiha Shafy and Bernhard Zand

In an interview, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir expresses his continued support for regime change in Syria and his desire for rebels to be supplied with anti-aircraft missiles that could shift the balance of power in the war.

The wait for the interview with the minister takes six hours, but then he greets the journalists in a large conference room in a grand hotel in Munich. Adel al-Jubeir, 54, a slim, amiable man, wears a traditional robe and looks a bit fatigued. He and his counterparts spent the previous evening negotiating a cease-fire in Syria well into the night. And since early this morning, they have been busily discussing current global events. Al-Jubeir is the embodiment of a new breed of top Saudi Arabian leaders: He went to school in Germany and college in the United States and then served as the Saudi ambassador to Washington. In contrast to his longtime predecessor

Prince Saud al-Faisal, who served as the country’s top diplomat for decades stretching from the oil crisis in the 1970s until early 2015, al-Jubeir is not a member of the royal family. At the time of his appointment as foreign minister last April, Saudi Arabia had just gone to war with neighboring Yemen and the situation in Syria was escalating.

Al-Jubeir is now responsible for representing his country’s controversial foreign policy. And he allowed himself plenty of time to do so in this interview with SPIEGEL. When his staff sought to end the interview after 45 minutes because he had a speech to give at the Munich Security Conference, al-Jubeir suggested we continue the discussion in his limousine — both on the way to his talk and back to the hotel afterward.

*

SPIEGEL:Mr. al-Jubeir, have you ever seen the Middle East in worse shape than it is in today?

Al-Jubeir: The Middle East has gone through periods of turmoil before. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were revolutions. When monarchies were collapsing in a number of countries, we had radicals and we had Nasserism. Today it’s a little bit more complicated.

SPIEGEL: The most complicated and dangerous situation, obviously, is the one in Syria. What does Saudi Arabia want to achieve in this conflict?

Al-Jubeir: I don’t think anyone can predict what the short term will look like. In the long term, it will be a Syria without Bashar Assad. The longer it takes, the worse it will get. We warned when the crisis began in 2011 that unless it was resolved quickly, the country would be destroyed. Unfortunately, our warnings are coming true.

SPIEGEL: What do you want to do now that the Assad regime has gained the upper hand?

Al-Jubeir: We have always said there are two ways to resolve Syria, and both will end up with the same result: a Syria without Bashar Assad. There is a political process which we are trying to achieve through what is called the Vienna Group. That involves the establishment of a governing council, which is to take power away from Bashar Assad, to write a constitution and to open the way for elections. It is important that Bashar leaves in the beginning, not at the end of the process. This will make the transition happen with less death and destruction.

SPIEGEL: And the other option?

Al-Jubeir: The other option is that the war will continue and Bashar Assad will be defeated. If, as we decided in Munich, there will be a cessation of hostilities and humanitarian assistance can flow into Syria — then this will open the door for the beginning of the political transition process. We are at a very delicate juncture, and it may not work, but we have to try it. Should the political process not work, there is always the other approach.

SPIEGEL: Assad has said he considers a short-term cease-fire in Syria to be impossible. Has the Munich agreement failed already?

Al-Jubeir: Bashar Assad has said many things. We will see in the near term whether he is serious about a political process.

SPIEGEL: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke of the danger of “World War III” at the Munich Security Conference.

Al-Jubeir: I think this is an over-dramatization. Let’s not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls. Their parents were told: “You will never see them again. If you want to have children, go to your wife and make new ones.” Assad’s people rebelled. He crushed them brutally. But his military could not protect him. So he asked the Iranians to come in and help. Iran sent its Revolutionary Guards into Syria, they brought in Shia militias, Hezbollah from Lebanon, militias from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, all Shia, and they couldn’t help. Then he brought in Russia, and Russia will not save him. At the same time, we have a war against Daesh (the Islamic State, or IS) in Syria. A coalition that was led by the United States, with Saudi Arabia being one of the first members of that coalition.

SPIEGEL: You’ve just named all the actors. Is that not already a world war of sorts?

Al-Jubeir: I will get to this in a second, if you allow me. The air campaign started, but it became very obvious that there may have to be a ground component. Saudi Arabia has said that if the US-led coalition against Daesh is prepared to engage in ground operations, we will be prepared to participate with special forces. The Russians say their objective is to defeat Daesh, too. If the deployment of ground troops helps in the fight against Daesh, why is that World War III? Is Russia worried that defeating Daesh will open the door for defeating Bashar Assad? That would be a different story. But I don’t think World War III is going to happen in Syria.

SPIEGEL: Would Saudi Arabian ground troops only battle Islamic State or would you also join the fight against Assad?

Al-Jubeir: We expressed our readiness to join the US-led, international coalition against Daesh with special forces. All of this, however, is still in the discussion phase and in the initial planning phase.

SPIEGEL: Is Saudi Arabia in favor of supplying anti-aircraft missiles to the rebels?

Al-Jubeir: Yes. We believe that introducing surface-to-air missiles in Syria is going to change the balance of power on the ground. It will allow the moderate opposition to be able to neutralize the helicopters and aircraft that are dropping chemicals and have been carpet-bombing them, just like surface-to-air missiles in Afghanistan were able to change the balance of power there. This has to be studied very carefully, however, because you don’t want such weapons to fall into the wrong hands.

SPIEGEL: Into the hands of Islamic State.

Al-Jubeir: This is a decision that the international coalition will have to make. This is not Saudi Arabia’s decision.

SPIEGEL: The Russian intervention has had a big impact on the situation in Syria. How would you describe Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Russia at this point?

Al-Jubeir: Other than our disagreement over Syria, I would say our relationship with Russia is very good and we are seeking to broaden and deepen it. Twenty million Russians are Muslims. Like Russia, we have an interest in fighting radicalism and extremism. We both have an interest in stable energy markets. Even the disagreement over Syria is more of a tactical one than a strategic one. We both want a unified Syria that is stable in which all Syrians enjoy equal rights.

SPIEGEL: That sounds well and good, but you are also providing support to the opposing camp in a war. Even more than your relationship with Russia, the world is worried about the deep schism between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Al-Jubeir : Iran has been a neighbor for millenia, and will continue to be a neighbor for millenia. We have no issue with seeking to develop the best terms we can with Iran. But after the revolution of 1979, Iran embarked on a policy of sectarianism. Iran began a policy of expanding its revolution, of interfering with the affairs of its neighbors, a policy of assassinating diplomats and of attacking embassies. Iran is responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in the Kingdom, it is responsible for smuggling explosives and drugs into Saudi Arabia. And Iran is responsible for setting up sectarian militias in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, whose objective is to destabilize those countries.

SPIEGEL: If all this is the case, then how can you possibly establish “the best terms you can” with Iran?

Al-Jubeir: Yes, we want to have good ties with the Iranians, but if they want good ties with us, then I tell them: Don’t keep attacking us as you have done for the last 35 years. As long as Iran’s aggressive policies continue, it’s going to be bad for the region. Iran has to decide whether it wants a revolution or a nation-state.

SPIEGEL: Are the Iranians the only ones to blame? What can Saudi Arabia offer to improve this vital relationship?

Al-Jubeir: Show me one Iranian diplomat we killed! I can show you many Saudi diplomats who were killed by Iran. Show me one Iranian embassy that was attacked by Saudi Arabia. Show me one terrorist cell that we planted in Iran. Show me one activity by Saudi Arabia to create problems among Iranian minorities.

SPIEGEL: Your Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, accused Saudi Arabia of provoking Iran by actively sponsoring violent extremist groups.

Al-Jubeir: What’s the provocation that he’s talking about?

SPIEGEL: Is Saudi Arabia not financing extremist groups? Zarif speaks of attacks by al-Qaida, the Syrian al-Nusra and other groups — of attacks on Shiite mosques from Iraq to Yemen.

Al-Jubeir: Yes, but that’s not us. We don’t tolerate terrorism. We go after the terrorists and those who support them and those who justify their actions. Our record has been very clear, contrary to their record. They harbor al-Qaida leaders. They facilitate al-Qaida operations. They complain about Daesh, but Iran is the only country around the negotiating table that has not been attacked by either al-Qaida or Daesh.

SPIEGEL: Can the West play a role in mediating between Saudi Arabia and Iran, following the example of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the organization which helped end the Cold War?

Al-Jubeir: The Iranians know what they need to do in order to become a responsible member of the international community and in order to become a good neighbor, and it’s really up to them to change their behavior.

SPIEGEL: So there is nothing that Saudi Arabia itself or the West could do to encourage this process?

Al-Jubeir: There is nothing to encourage. The Iranians should just stay away from us.

SPIEGEL: How do you explain the ideological closeness between the Wahhabi faith in Saudi Arabia and Islamic State’s ideology? How do you explain that Daesh applies, with slight differences, the same draconian punishments that the Saudi judiciary does?

Al-Jubeir: This is an oversimplification which doesn’t make sense. Daesh is attacking us. Their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, wants to destroy the Saudi state. These people are criminals. They’re psychopaths. Daesh members wear shoes. Does this mean everybody who wears shoes is Daesh?

SPIEGEL: Are you contesting the similarities between the extremely conservative interpretation of Islam in Saudi Arabia and Islamic State’s religious ideology?

Al-Jubeir: ISIS is as much an Islamic organization as the KKK in America is a Christian organization. They burned people of African descent on the cross, and they said they’re doing it in the name of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, in every religion there are people who pervert the faith. We should not take the actions of psychopaths and paint them as being representative of the whole religion.

SPIEGEL: Doesn’t Saudi Arabia have to do a lot more to distance itself from ISIS and its ideology?

Al-Jubeir: It seems people don’t read or listen. Our scholars and our media have been very outspoken. We were the first country in the world to hold a national public awareness campaign against extremism and terrorism. Why would we not want to fight an ideology whose objective is to kill us?

SPIEGEL: At the same time, your judges mete out sentences that shock the world. The blogger Raif Badawi has been sentenced to prison and 1,000 lashes. On Jan. 2, 47 men were beheaded, among them Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. His nephew Ali has been sentenced to death as well and his body is to be crucified after the execution.

Al-Jubeir: We have a legal system, and we have a penal code. We have the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and people should respect this. You don’t have the death penalty, and we respect that.

SPIEGEL: Should we respect the flogging of people?

Al-Jubeir: Just like we respect your legal system, you should respect our legal system. You cannot impose your values on us, otherwise the world will become the law of the jungle. Every society decides what its laws are, and it’s the people who make decisions with regards to these laws. You cannot lecture another people about what you think is right or wrong based on your value system unless you’re willing to accept others imposing their value system on you.

SPIEGEL: Is it even compatible with human rights to display the body of an executed person?

Al-Jubeir: This is a judgment call. We have a legal system, and this is not something that happens all the time. We have capital punishment. America has capital punishment. Iran has capital punishment. Iran hangs people and leaves their bodies hanging on cranes. Iran put to death more than a thousand people last year. I don’t see you reporting on it.

SPIEGEL: We have reported on it.

Al-Jubeir: Anyway, Nimr al-Nimr …

SPIEGEL: … who was executed on Jan. 2 and was the uncle of Ali al-Nimr …

Al-Jubeir: Nimr was a terrorist, he recruited, he plotted, he financed and as a consequence of his actions a number of Saudi Arabian police were killed. Are we supposed to put him on a pedestal? He was put on trial. His trial was reviewed at the appellate level. It went to the supreme court, and the sentence was death, like the other 46 people who were put to death.

SPIEGEL: Your foreign policy has become more aggressive as well. According to the United Nations, about 6,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the beginning of the Saudi Arabian offensive in March 2015. What do you want to achieve with this war?

Al-Jubeir: The war in Yemen is not a war that we wanted. We had no other option — there was a radical militia allied with Iran and Hezbollah that took over the country. It was in possession of heavy weapons, ballistic missiles and even an air force. Should we stand by idly while this happens at our doorstep, in one of the countries in which al-Qaida has a huge presence? So we responded, as part of a coalition, at the request of the legitimate government of Yemen, and we stepped in to support them. We have removed, to a large extent, the threat that these weapons posed to Saudi Arabia. Now 75 percent of Yemen has been liberated and is under the control of the government forces.

SPIEGEL:For how long is this supposed to continue? Half of the victims in this war have been civilians.

Al-Jubeir: We will continue the operation until the objective is achieved. We hope that the Houthis and Saleh will agree to a political settlement, and we are prepared, along with our Gulf allies, to put in place a very substantial reconstruction plan for Yemen. We have no interest in seeing an unstable Yemen or seeing a Yemen that is devastated.

SPIEGEL: With several interventions in Yemen, Syria and other countries in the region, it appears that Saudi Arabia is aspiring to become the Middle East’s hegemonial power. Isn’t your country punching above its weight?

Al-Jubeir: We are not seeking this role for Saudi Arabia. What we want is stability and security so we can focus on our own development. But we have these problems in our region, and nobody has been able to resolve them. The whole world was saying that the countries of the regions should step up and resolve their problems, so we stepped up. Now people are saying, “Oh my God, Saudi Arabia has changed.” It’s a contradiction. Do you want us to lead, or do you want us to play a supporting role? Because we can’t do both. If you want us to lead, don’t criticize us. And if you want us to play a supporting role, then tell us who is going to lead.

SPIEGEL: Does Saudi Arabia feel threatened by the Iranian nuclear deal, by a possible rapprochement between your hostile neighbor and your closest ally in the West, the United States?

Al-Jubeir: We support any deal that denies Iran nuclear weapons, that has a continuous and robust inspection mechanism and that has snap-back provisions in case Iran violates the agreement. Our concern is that Iran will use the income it receives as a result of the lifting of the nuclear sanctions in order to fund its nefarious activities in the region.

SPIEGEL: The United States’ foreign policy in the Middle East has become more restrained under President Obama. Is that a mistake?

Al-Jubeir: I don’t believe in the theory that the United States is reducing its presence in the Middle East. Quite the contrary, in the Gulf, we see an increase in American military presence, as well as an increase in American investments. The argument is more accurate when one says America is focusing more attention to the Far East. But I don’t believe it comes at the expense of the Middle East.

SPIEGEL: Your Excellency, we thank you for this interview.

Muhammad al-Qiq is a Palestinian journalist. Last November 21, Israeli authorities lawlessly arrested him. He committed no crimes.

On December 17, an administrative detention order was issued against him, used when Israel wants someone imprisoned without just cause.

It’s usually imposed for six months, renewable ad infinitum. Thousands of Palestinian political prisoners languish in its gulag.

Al-Qiq is dying for justice, hunger striking for an astonishing 90 days, enduring great pain and suffering, more than any human being should be forced to bear.

Last week, Israel’s High Court showed no mercy, refused his legitimate request for release, likely condemning him to death in the process.

He’s is too weak to function normally. He slips in and out of a coma. His vision, hearing and ability to speak are badly impaired. In whatever way he was able to communicate, he told friends, family and supporters to remain “steadfast.”

His body’s ability to sustain life could fail at any moment. Death remains imminent. Medical science can’t explain how he remains alive without sustenance after three months.

Last Monday, a video circulated online, showing him crying out in severe pain. Through his attorneys, he requested transfer to a Palestinian Ramallah hospital.

Israeli authorities refused, claiming outside their direct control he’d threaten national security. He’s helpless near death, virtually unable to stand, walk, see, hear or speak.

His wife, Fahya Shalash, and young children are prohibited from visiting him. On Sunday, Israel’s High Court denied her petition to enter Israel to be with her husband.

It refuses to grant al-Qiq’s request to be transferred to a Palestinian hospital. On February 18, B’Tselem’s executive director, Hagai Elad, addressed Netanyahu by letter, requesting al-Qiq’s immediate release, so far in vain, saying in part:

His detention uncharged “reflects a new low in the instrumentalist approach to human beings,” an appalling example of injustice.

“You bear responsibility for al-Qiq’s life. I urge you – I implore you – to order (his) immediate release before it is too late.”

Longtime Israeli collaborator/illegitimate Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has done nothing to help him – beyond meaningless lip service promises.

Throughout his excruciating ordeal, al-Qiq refused medical treatment, declining it as long as he’s lawlessly detained.

His condition deteriorated so badly, it may be too late to save him or restore functions he lost, regardless of what happens going forward.

His appalling treatment is one of countless examples of Israeli barbarism, victimizing millions of Palestinians for not being Jews – supported by billions of US taxpayer dollars annually.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

For now, Canada’s CF-18 fighter jets have flown their last mission in both Iraq and Syria. Canada is transitioning to bringing the jets home and instead dramatically increasing troop presence overseas. Canada is going to triple the number of special forces who are said to be tasked with the objective of training Iraqi forces for at least the next two years. The country has already allocated a budget of over $1 billion toward the effort. The military missions in Iraq and Syria are going to be extended for another year, until March, 31, 2017. There has also been over $800 million promised in humanitarian assistance over the next three years.

The fight in Syria has been going on for several years now and it’s claimed that Canada has conducted roughly 2.5 per cent of all the airstrikes that were conducted in Iraq and Syria. The majority of the strikes that were launched took place in Iraq. It’s alleged that the United States has launched over 9,000 airstrikes itself in the ongoing fight against ISIS. Several years of fighting, billions of dollars, and thousands of airstrikes later, the enemy seems to be still a threat now more than ever.

Trudeau has been criticized for pulling Canada’s jets out of the fight and a variety of political representatives have condemned the move for Canada to step back in any way from the fight. Trudeau’s government maintains that they want Canada to have a “broader role” in the fight, and they hope to see more effective results delivered on the ground. This is a fight that doesn’t appear to have any clear end objective in sight and thus far as already cost Canadians billions of dollars.

When it comes to the worsening and ongoing fight in Syria, the situation is certainly a confusing one. Especially when one considers the origins of the terror group itself.

Perhaps Canada should take a step in a different direction, look instead toward focusing on its own nation and citizenry, rather than allocating billions in a fight which many say violates international law. It is the battle that has no seeming end, because when the deadline arises, it simply gets extended. Never-ending war doesn’t offer any benefit to Canada or its citizens. If anything it is quite the detriment, as we can see by looking to the United States as an example, with the many lives that the conflict will endanger and cost overall, and with the amount of wealth that will be wasted on the endeavor.

Children that arrive alone to the UK are being returned once they turn 18 (Image: Shutterstock)

Removals to the country have now been temporarily halted as lawyers argue that the security situation in the country is now so unsafe that no-one should be returned.

However, last month lawyers for the Home Office argued in a court of appeal case that removals should continue. The judgment on the hearing, is expected imminently.

The latest figures also show 657 former child refugees have been returned to Iraq since 2007, including 22 last year and 38 in 2014 when IS began to take a grip on the region.

The peak for removals was in 2009, the year UK troops withdrew from operations, when 153 people were deported.

The Foreign and Commonwealth office advises against “all but essential travel” to half of Iraq, and against any travel to the north-westerly areas. The latest guidance from the Home Office notes serious conflict in the country but finds it is still safe to return people to Baghdad.

A Home Office spokesman said:

“All applications to remain in the UK are considered on their individual merits, including an applicant’s age, the length of time they have spent in the UK, their ability to reintegrate and any compelling or compassionate circumstances.”

But the effect on the young person can be devastating. Gillian Hughes, a child psychologist at London’s Tavistock centre and who works with asylum seeking children, has said. “These children come to the UK and start painfully rebuilding their lives, and often do incredibly well, but then to lose all of that a second time, it’s just unbearable.

“We hear people saying I just won’t go back, I’ll kill myself before doing that.”

MP Louise Haigh also questioned how seriously the Home Office was taking the problem after it supplied two vastly different sets of numbers to the same questions posed by her and the Bureau via a Freedom of Information request and an official Parliamentary Question.

In a Written Answer to the Commons in November, Brokenshire said just 1,040 former child refugees had been returned to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya since 2007.

The Bureau spotted this was different to a Freedom of Information request reply, so the Home Office then supplied a third set this week, showing an increase of 250% in deportation totals.

Haigh said this had implications for policymaking. She said: “The reality is that Ministers have been basing their confident assurances on protecting these extremely vulnerable young people on a calamitous guesstimate which seriously misjudged the numbers they were forcibly removing to war-torn countries.

“How can Ministers claim to protect vulnerable people in the immigration system when they don’t even know how many they were supposed to be protecting?”

James Brokenshire, the Minister for Immigration, wrote to Haigh to apologise and blamed the mistaken data on “an error during the extraction process”.