Global Research

US military commanders are preparing to expand US operations in Afghanistan, including through the deployment of more US troops in a front-line combat role and stepped up air strikes, General John Campbell, the outgoing US commander in Afghanistan, told the Washington Post in an interview Friday.

“We shouldn’t sugarcoat it,” Campbell said. “I’m not going to leave without making sure my leadership understands there are things we need to do.

“In the last few months of 2015 it became so obvious that we had to make a decision to go back to what we should have done in the first place.” Campbell added, “We need to stay for years.”

Campbell’s statements are the latest in a series of announcements by the White House and Pentagon that amount to a public acknowledgment that the American military is planning a permanent military occupation of Afghanistan.

Senior unnamed US officers recently told the Post that the Pentagon is basing itself on assumptions that US forces will remain there for “decades.” US forces must stay in Afghanistan for “a very long time” in order to support the Afghan security apparatus with a combination of air strikes, intelligence gathering, logistical assistance and direct participation in ground combat.

General Campbell met with Obama personally on Thursday to discuss his proposed revisions to the administration’s “drawdown” schedule.

The White House visit followed Campbell’s Congressional testimony, during which the general said that “Afghanistan has not achieved an enduring level of security and stability that justifies a reduction of our support.” He demanded Congressional support for daily US air raids.

Referring to the Obama administration’s Afghanistan policy, Campbell criticized the White House for earlier plans to “drawdown” US forces in the country. “They banked on hope instead of reality, and now they’re paying the piper,” he said.

Campbell’s comments, which flout the basic principle of civilian control of the military, are part of growing pressure from sections of the political and military establishment for expanded war in Afghanistan and throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. For its part, the Obama administration, which has sought to focus military resources in East Asia, has responded by pledging to intensify operations in Afghanistan.

Last October, the Obama administration reversed its earlier proposal to reduce US troop presence, announcing that 10,000 troops will remain in Afghanistan at least through the end of his presidency. Behind the scenes, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has been active in planning the expansion of the “secret war” in the country.

In January, the Obama administration authorized the de facto expansion of the war nominally targeting the Islamic State, waged since 2014 across Syria and Iraq, into portions of northeastern Afghanistan.

These moves are also a repines to the intensifying crisis of Washington’s puppet regime in Kabul, which has undercut the administration’s efforts to maintain the US grip over Afghanistan through a minimal exertion of US ground strength.

The Kabul regime has been incapable of securing key cities throughout the country, including Kunduz, where new Taliban assaults are anticipated, central areas of Helmand province and even its own capital. US imperialism has responded by bolstering its presence in the country.

Also of concern to Washington are the efforts of China to secure more of a strategic foothold in Afghanistan, which the US considers a stronghold of its military-political agenda in Central Asia. Reports Sunday that Kabul has accepted Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing’s proposals for projects to enhance railway and other infrastructure linking the two countries have underscored the growing tensions within Afghanistan produced by the growing US-China struggle.

After years of denial, Israel’s Minister for Energy, Yuval Steinitz [pictured left], revealed last week that the flooding of the tunnels into Gaza that facilitate the movement of essential supplies for the besieged civilian population, had been at Israel’s specific request and with the full co-operation of the Egyptian government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. This has taken Israel’s increased co-operation along the border with Egypt to unprecedented levels.

This extraordinarily sensitive situation of co-operation between Israel and Egypt, in the denial of human rights of nearly two million, is a matter of great concern, not least in Egypt itself where the Arab world’s condemnation of Israel’s illegal settlement on Palestinian land is widespread.

Egypt’s clandestine co-operation with Israel follows the many years that Israel’s Netanyahu was ‘in bed’ with former Egyptian President Mubarak who allegedly received huge sums of money for his covert assistance to the Israeli state.  What the specific advantage is to the current Egyptian government in maintaining Israel’s 7 year, illegal blockade of Gaza, is unknown.

One can only conclude that there is essentially little difference between the two adjoining Middle East states of Israel and Egypt.  They share many characteristics none of which, however, could be termed democratic.  Democracy has yet to reach that part of the Middle East where military repression and control, either overt or covert, is sadly the norm.

[email protected]

London  8 February 2016

It has been two months since the UN climate summit in Paris, aka COP 21. One might expect the kind of ebb and flow we often see in popular movements. Interest in climate issues, the cause of the day during the summit, might be expected to wane and move to the back burner of public discourse until another development pushes it forward again.

However, climate change is fundamentally different. It is going to get worse – we will be getting slapped in the face with this one for a long, long time, even under the best scenarios. Only a few weeks after COP 21, the world experienced a wave of floods and extreme weather exacerbated by global warming. In the U.S., there were record-setting floods along the Mississippi River. In South America, floods caused the evacuation of 180,000 persons. In Scotland, floods cut across class lines to threaten a historic castle neighboring the Queen’s Balmoral residence, the swollen Dee river eating away at its foundation. Meanwhile, oil wars and drought continue to drive an immigration crisis in Syria and throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa. The issue of climate is not the “struggle du jour”; it is going to be the main course for quite a while.

Greenpeace activists during a protest in Paris at the COP21 United Nations climate change conference in November.

Shamefully, the broad, “mainstream” climate movement in the so-called “developed” world is woefully inadequate to address this concern. Current conditions call for the kind of real life strategies, analysis and resistance that the movement is not producing. Right now, the dominant character of the movement is actually holding us back, not pushing us forward. It trumpets ambiguous desires for sustainability, but is all too silent when it comes to meaningful demands.

A Pyrrhic Victory

What we got from COP 21 was an accord that set inadequate and unenforceable carbon emissions limits; failed to guarantee reparations or support for the poorest, most exploited nations to develop alternative technologies; adopted market-based schemes that entrench international inequality; ignored the demands of indigenous peoples; and refused to address the huge and negative climate impact of U.S. militarism and resource wars. Of course, no one expected such measures to be passed, so it might be justly claimed as a victory that any kind of agreement or protocol was passed at all. As has been noted, had the agreement been enforceable, the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress would have quashed that government’s participation. But what victory there has been is a Pyrrhic one.

The good news from Paris was those groups that defied the ban on public marches and protests instated following the November 13 terrorist attacks. There were some 200 protesters arrested on November 29, the opening day of the summit, when they broke ranks with officially-tolerated activities and took to the streets, despite authorities “preventatively” detaining a number of activists before the summit began. There was also the December 6 flotilla of indigenous peoples protesting the exclusion of indigenous rights from the accord minus a brief mention in the preamble. The flotilla exposed the machinations of the U.S., European Union, Australia and others to exempt indigenous rights from the body of the agreement. It was refreshing to hear refusals to cooperate with this gag rule.

Around the world people are getting radicalized and making bold efforts to save this biosphere we know and love. In the U.S., Flood the System called for and carried out multiple climate justice actions. The Global Climate Convergence is continuing to build a Peoples Climate Strike. Groups like the Indigenous Environmental Network and Climate Justice Alliance are confronting the legacy of colonialism and its damage to land and water. Fossil Fuel Student Divestment Network is organizing divestment from oil and coal companies in universities. Still, the reality is that the broad climate movement in the “developed” world has mostly been a failure and an obstacle to building an effective and truly relevant movement.

Scaling up Resistance

I travel regularly in Latin America and the Caribbean and see examples of struggles that are far more astute, advanced and relevant than what I see when I return home. I see Colombian farmers fighting corporate land grabs; anti-mining activists defending their communities in Peru; Venezuelan youth confronting the U.S. interference that threatens the gains they have made. These are movements that emphasize the fact that the struggle for planet and people is fundamentally a struggle against Empire.

Unfortunately, political and corporate interests in industrialized nations have done all they can to influence, infiltrate, buy off and otherwise derail movements even in “developing” nations. Such movements are easily infiltrated and manipulated to serve the purposes of Empire. There is little to be gained other than tainted funding for those who would sit at the table and curry favor with mostly White, liberal environmental organizations and government agencies of the industrialized nations.

Rather than being threatened by wolves in sheep’s clothing, our problems are the sheep in wolves’ clothing. We find a leadership that talks big about struggle and taking on climate change, that gives the appearance of strength and cunning, when on the inside, one finds a passive, ruminating herd animal lacking a real bite.

United Front Politics Without Demands

It is easy to focus our ire and ridicule on those we call “climate deniers.” But the worst climate change deniers are not the ones who say it is not happening, but the ones who recognize the problem but refuse to confront its most basic sources and causes. They are the ones who marginalize and ultimately suppress the voices of those proffering radical solutions and expressing urgency commensurate with the times … or lack thereof. They reject the demands of the Global South saying there is no unity. They put their faith in a quest for new technologies rather than fighting for a new system. They reject calling out the destructive nature of capitalism, saying we need a movement that cuts across class lines. And they treat those who speak about Empire as anachronistic visitors from another age. These climate deniers fail to grasp that it is these radicals and anti-imperialists who best understand both the problem and the solution to climate injustice and ecological collapse. They self-censor and censor us in exchange for a dubious “seat at the table.”

There is an all too large contingent of environmentalists who prioritize and even fetishize their desire to build the broad movement. Certainly, we must always work to bring masses of people in and to be as large and inclusive as possible. But without clear demands and goals, such a movement utterly lacks direction. Broad movements for civil rights; to stop wars in Vietnam, Iraq, elsewhere; to demand an end to police brutality and racism; to end mass incarceration in prisons; to demand immigrant rights – these all had identifiable, concrete demands that united contingencies to achieve fundamental victories. But in the climate movement, we have a broad coalition “united” around not a demand but a sentiment – of being “against global warming” and “for Mother Earth,” that sort of thing. This movement can not even agree to call itself a movement for “climate justice”; it is just a “climate movement,” whatever that means. I mean, if I want to see “climate movement,” all I have to do is step outside and look at the sky …. or the dust getting blown up in the dead and dry riverbed a block from my back yard.

Co-opting the Grassroots

To its detriment, the broad climate movement is dominated by a few well-funded and well-connected organizations. These institutions often get their grants from the very corporations most responsible for greenhouse emissions. Or their connections are to the political leaders who constantly seek to obscure the links between climate injustice and global capitalism.

One particularly pernicious example is the organization Avaaz. The internet-based effort brags about a list of more than 40 million followers. It was a major partner in the Climat21 coalition – the more or less “official alternative” organizers for climate events coinciding with COP 21. Avaaz has advocated for U.S./NATO interventions in both Libya and Syria.

One of its last action alerts before the adoption of the Paris climate accord was a call to pressure the sizeable but less “developed” countries of India, Brazil, South Africa and China to stop being “obstacles” and sign on to the accord (which they eventually did). Among the objections these countries raised were the lack of support for “developing” countries and the focus on “solutions” that entrench inequality, such as carbon trading schemes that allow polluting countries to keep polluting by paying off “developing” countries to not develop. At a juncture like that, the correct position to take was to put pressure on the U.S. and Europe – the countries most responsible for increases in greenhouse gases over the last 200 years – to adopt measures that shift the burden of cleaning up their mess on to the world’s poorest countries.

In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Nicaragua’s chief climate negotiator Paul Oquist explained:

“Nicaragua has 4.8 million tons of emissions a year. And that’s 0.03% of emissions. Do we feel responsible for having caused climate change? No, not at all. Have we done something about it? Yes, we have gone from 25 per cent renewable to 52 per cent renewable since 2007, and in 2020 we’ll be 90 per cent renewable …. Ten countries, Amy, have 72 per cent of the emissions. Ten countries …. In the world …. The 20 largest have 78 per cent of the CO2 emissions. Are we going to try to cut out of the 100 countries with 0.3 per cent or out of the 20 countries with 78 per cent, or even maybe just the 10 countries with 72%?”

But when organizations such as Avaaz have such undue influence on the “climate movement,” it is no wonder the movement lacks real solutions. Independent journalist Cory Morningstar writes:

“Avaaz was founded by Res Publica, described as a global civic advocacy group, and Moveon.org, ‘an online community that has pioneered internet advocacy in the United States.’ Launched in 2007, Avaaz is the fastest-growing online movement in history …. The silent voice behind Avaaz, that of Res Publica, is, in the public realm, essentially comprised of three key individuals: Tom Perriello, a pro-war (former) U.S. Representative who describes himself as a social entrepreneur, Ricken Patel, consultant to many of the most powerful entities on Earth [for instance, the International Crisis Group, which receives its funding from a host of Western governments and private entities such as British Petroleum, with both Chevron and Shell on its advisory board] and the long-time associate of Perriello, and Tom Pravda, a member of the UK Diplomatic Service who serves as a consultant to the U.S. State Department.”

So Avaaz is not an activist organization that found a seat at the table with those in power: they were already seated at the table when they set themselves up and decided to go out and get active in – and divert and derail – the grassroots movement. They are just one example of the kinds of organizations that have infiltrated and co-opted the grassroots “climate movement.” The result is a movement that can turn out hundreds of thousands of people into the streets to demand nothing and feel like they have done something when in fact their impact is, at best, questionable and has not translated into a sustainable and enduring movement.

The Necessity of Radical Analysis and Solutions

Journalist Chris Hedges explained how the same thing happened back in September 2014, for the People’s Climate March in New York:

“The march, because its demands are amorphous, can be joined by anyone. This is intentional. But as activist Anne Petermann has pointed out, this also means some of the groups backing the march are little more than corporate fronts. The Climate Group, for example, which endorses the march, includes among its members and sponsors BP, China Mobile, Dow Chemical Co., Duke Energy, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Greenstone. The Environmental Defense Fund, which says it ‘work[s] with companies rather than against them’ and which is calling on its members to join the march, has funding from the oil and gas industry and supports fracking as a form of alternative energy. These faux environmental organizations are designed to neutralize resistance. And their presence exposes the march’s failure to adopt a meaningful agenda or pose a genuine threat to power.”

My organization, Alliance for Global Justice, participated in the Peoples Climate March and its preparations, especially in the march’s “Peace Hub.” We also brought the largest U.S. delegation to the Peoples Climate Summit in Lima during the COP 20 meeting in December 2014. (And I will say that in Lima, the criticisms of capitalism and imperialism were, to the praise of the organizers, not muted.) We subsequently followed and to some smaller extent participated in the preparations for the “alternative” events in Paris. But we lost all enthusiasm when we observed case after case where the demands of the developing world – against carbon trading schemes and REDD, in favor of reparations and support for alternative technology development, against resource wars, against free trade agreements, and so on, were one by one dismissed – by organizers who may not deny the reality of climate change, but do deny radical analysis and solutions. They see the disease, but the cures they offer are snake oil. Worst of all, these deniers loathe to talk about imperialism due to an infantile sentiment that the very term is antiquated when every day world events reinforce the word’s lamentable relevance.

Linking Climate Injustice with Imperialism

The attacks in Paris on November 13 ripped the scab from the open wound of the climate movement’s lack of foresight or clear vision. A climate movement that understood the threat of imperialism would have made an end to oil wars in Syria and elsewhere one of its key demands. But this movement could not or would not connect the dots. Rather they accepted or worked within a gag rule denying public protest. When they did have sanctioned or tolerated public events they made no mention of Syria or the “global war on terrorism,” even though this so-called war is but a justification for robbing oil and other resources for the furthering of private development and wealthy nation consumerism. The correct response to the Paris attacks and the Paris summit would have been to show how the events are linked. But the broad, “mainstream” climate movement could not even get it together to make a weak demand. Empire’s resource wars and exploitations have been most responsible for sowing the seeds of terrorism, just like they have been responsible for the conditions creating global warming. A movement that fails to get this devolves into a sideshow of false hopes while the planet careens toward destruction.

U.S./Nato interventions in Libya and Syria, supported by the likes of Avaaz, are, like the war in Iraq, oil wars. While a lust for oil is not the only issue at stake in these cases, its motivating role should not be dismissed or understated – and in truth, it has hardly even been mentioned in most corporate media. Syria has large oil resources and is home to an oil pipeline connecting northern Iraq and the coast of Syria. That pipeline has been shut down since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the companies most effected are ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum and Haliburton. This is a major reason why U.S./NATO have insisted on regime change and have allied themselves with reprehensible partners, including Al-Qaeda. U.S./NATO policies have never been focused on getting rid of ISIS so much as winning concessions for Big Oil and consolidating and furthering U.S./NATO geopolitical goals throughout the region. That the broad climate movement can be silent on this is all the proof one needs to see that it has gotten lost on a road to irrelevancy.

Instead, the “official alternative” organizers in Paris, with nary a word about oil war in Syria, organized alternatives to their own alternatives to comply with France’s gag orders. Rather than march in the streets, they formed chains of people holding hands on the sidewalks. Rather than gather in protest, they laid out empty shoes in rows to symbolize those that might have come had they held an actual demonstration. In fact, at one point the organizers sent out an internal email encouraging participating organizations not to get the word out too far and wide about their events because having too many people might lose them the tolerance being shown by the police. These organizers not only refrained from criticisms of Empire and its resource wars, they ignored, marginalized and dampened those within the coalition who tried to raise these concerns.

Reproducing Imperialism, Racism, and Inequality

One demand that did emerge was a broad call to “leave oil in the ground.” But this is really an idealistic, unrealistic and even racist and imperialist demand outside certain contexts. First of all, it is a juvenile demand to make – one that destroys communities and puts workers out of jobs – if it is not accompanied by aggressive mobilizations for actual, existing alternatives. Without a plan for economic conversion, it is unjust to ask workers in extractive industries to give up their jobs while the CEOs at the top lose nothing.

What’s more, it is imperialist and racist for activists to call for leaving oil in the ground if they are not at the same time demanding reparations and support for alternative technologies and sustainable agriculture for “developing” nations – something the broad movement in the Global North has had an all too difficult time understanding. If the broad movement does not put these demands center stage, it has no business calling for oil to stay in the ground. It is simply unjust to confront “developing” nations’ oil and mining projects in the same way one does “developed” nations, especially projects in popular democracies that are publicly owned and at least trying to mitigate damage by giving seats at the table for indigenous and community representatives and using profits to invest in social programs. Unfortunately, much of even the more radical climate movement makes the rather arrogant mistake of treating all nations the same, regardless of the context, in their simplistic, blanket opposition to all extraction. Those of us who oppose carbon trading, REDD and other market schemes that entrench inequality must recognise that out of context anti-development demands by “first world radicals” against poorer nations also entrenches inequality.

Making Real Demands

It is past the time for us to get serious about climate justice. If our linking of climate injustice with imperialism drives some people away, perhaps it is time we let them go. Better to have a smaller movement that can grow into something more significant than to have a large one that has nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to say.

We must raise a movement that recognizes the reality and gravity of the task at hand, no matter how difficult. Recently, an international network of 37 organizations from the Americas, Euskal Herria (the occupied Basque Country) and Spain released a document titled “If We Want to Save the World – An Internationalist Declaration.” It is a modest beginning that encapsulates the kind of analysis and response we must develop if we really want to advocate for climate justice. But we need more than declarations. We need solidarity with those nations and movements that are challenging Empire in ways that give real support to the needs of Earth and her people.

We must have real demands that, at a minimum, include:

• an end to all oil and other resource wars;
• the repeal of environmentally-damaging free trade agreements;
• that the industrialized countries historically most responsible for global warming produce the lion’s share of cuts to greenhouse emissions;
• that these countries be required to pay reparations to the countries that, due to colonialism and Empire, are suffering the worst effects of global warming;
• that carbon trading, REDD and other market based schemes that entrench international inequality be rejected;
• that the richest countries be required to invest heavily in the development of alternative energy technologies in the 100 poorest countries;
• that attention be given to the poor in the rich countries who have lost jobs due to globalization and the resultant transfer of wealth to the one per cent in their countries.

We must take to the streets again and again with demands that get to the heart of the problem. There are those of us who still hope that a “better world’s in birth.” We must be its midwives. Otherwise, the new world we so eagerly await will be still born.

James Jordan is a National Co-Coordinator of Alliance for Global Justice in the USA. He can be reached at James[at]afgj.org

Two years ago, Russian officials discussed plans to privatize a group of national enterprises headed by the oil producer Rosneft, the VTB Bank, Aeroflot, and Russian Railways. The stated objective was to streamline management of these companies, and also to induce oligarchs to begin bringing their two decades of capital flight back to invest in the Russia economy. Foreign participation was sought in cases where Western technology transfer and management techniques would be likely to help the economy.

However, the Russian economic outlook deteriorated as the United States pushed Western governments to impose economic sanctions against Russia and oil prices declined. This has made the Russian economy less attractive to foreign investors. So sale of these companies will bring much lower prices today than would have been likely in 2014.

Meanwhile, the combination of a rising domestic budget deficit and balance-of-payments deficit has given Russian advocates of privatization an argument to press ahead with the sell-offs. The flaw in their logic is their neoliberal assumption that Russia cannot simply monetize its deficit, but needs to survive by selling off more major assets. We warn against Russia being so gullible as to accept this dangerous neoliberal argument. Privatization will not help re-industrialize Russia’s economy, but will aggravate its turn into a rentier economy from which profits are extracted for the benefit of foreign owners.

To be sure, President Putin set a number of conditions on February 1 to prevent new privatizations from being like the Yeltsin era’s disastrous selloffs. This time the assets would not be sold at knockdown prices, but would have to reflect prospective real value. The firms being sold off would remain under Russian jurisdiction, not operated by offshore owners. Foreigners were invited to participate, but the companies would remain subject to Russian laws and regulations, including restrictions to keep their capital within Russia.

Also, the firms to be privatized cannot be bought with domestic state bank credit. The aim is to draw “hard cash” into the buyouts – ideally from the foreign currency holdings by oligarchs in London and elsewhere.

Putin wisely ruled out selling Russia’s largest bank, Sperbank, which holds much of the nation’s retail savings accounts. Banking evidently is to remain largely a public utility, which it should because the ability to create credit as money is a natural monopoly and inherently public in character.

Despite these protections that President Putin added, there are serious reasons not to go ahead with the newly-announced privatizations. These reasons go beyond the fact that they would be sold under conditions of economic recession as a result of the Western economic sanctions and falling oil prices.

The excuse being cited by Russian officials for selling these companies at the present time is to finance the domestic budget deficit. This excuse shows that Russia has still not recovered from the disastrous Western Atlanticist myth that Russia must depend on foreign banks and bondholders to create money, as if the Russian central bank cannot do this itself by monetizing the budget deficit.

Monetization of budget deficits is precisely what the United States government has done, and what Western central banks have been doing in the post World War II era. Debt monetization is common practice in the West. Governments can help revive the economy by printing money instead of indebting the country to private creditors which drains the public sector of funds via interest payments to private creditors.

There is no valid reason to raise money from private banks to provide the government with money when a central bank can create the same money without having to pay interest on loans. However, Russian economists have been inculcated with the Western belief that only commercial banks should create money and that governments should sell interest-bearing bonds in order to raise funds. The incorrect belief that only private banks should create money by making loans is leading the Russian government down the same path that has led the eurozone into a dead end economy.  By privatizing credit creation, Europe has shifted economic planning from democratically elected governments to the banking sector.

There is no need for Russia to accept this pro-rentier economic philosophy that bleeds a country of public revenues. Neoliberals are promoting it not to help Russia, but to bring Russia to its knees.

Essentially, those Russians allied with the West—“Atlanticist Integrationists”— who want Russia to sacrifice its sovereignty to integration with the Western empire are using neoliberal economics to entrap Putin and breach Russia’s control over its own economy that Putin reestablished after the Yeltsin years when Russia was looted by foreign interests.

Despite some success in reducing the power of the oligarchs who arose from the Yeltsin privatizations, the Russian government needs to retain national enterprises as a countervailing economic power. The reason governments operate railways and other basic infrastructure is to lower the cost of living and doing business. The aim of private owners, by contrast, is to raise the prices as high as they can. This is called “rent extraction.” Private owners put up tollbooths to raise the cost of infrastructure services that are being privatized. This is the opposite of what the classical economists meant by “free market.”

There is talk of a deal being made with the oligarchs. The oligarchs  will buy ownership in the Russian state companies with money they have stashed abroad from previous privatizations, and get another “deal of the century” when Russia’s economy recovers by enough to enable more excessive gains to be made.

The problem is that the more economic power moves from government to private control, the less countervailing power the government has against private interests.  From this standpoint, no privatizations should be permitted at this time.

Much less should foreigners be permitted to acquire ownership of Russian national assets. In order to collect a one-time payment of foreign currency, the Russian government will be turning over to foreigners future income streams that can, and will be, extracted from Russia and sent abroad. This “repatriation” of dividends would occur even if management and control remains geographically in Russia.

Selling public assets in exchange for a one-time payment is what the city of Chicago government did when it sold the 75 year revenue stream of its parking meters for a one-time payment. The Chicago government got money for one year by giving up 75 years of revenues. By sacrificing public revenues, the Chicago government saved real estate and private wealth from being taxed and also allowed Wall Street investment banks to make a fortune.

It also created a public outcry against the giveaway. The new buyers sharply raised street parking fees, and sued Chicago’s government for damages when the city closed the street for public parades or holidays, thereby  “interfering” with the rentiers’ parking-meter business. Instead of helping Chicago, it helped push the city toward bankruptcy. No wonder Atlanticists would like to see Russia suffer the same fate.

Using privatization to cover a short-term budget problem creates a larger long-term problem. The profits of Russian companies would flow out of the country, reducing the ruble’s exchange rate. If the profits are paid in rubles, the rubles can be dumped in the foreign exchange market and exchanged for dollars. This will depress the ruble’s exchange rate and raise the dollar’s exchange value. In effect, allowing foreigners to acquire Russia’s national assets helps foreigners to speculate against the Russian ruble.

Of course, the new Russian owners of the privatized assets also could send their profits abroad. But at least the Russian government realizes that owners subject to Russian jurisdiction are more easily regulated than are owners who are able to control companies from abroad and keep their working capital in London or other foreign banking centers (all subject to U.S. diplomatic leverage and New Cold War sanctions).

At the root of the privatization discussion should be the question of what is money and why should it be created by private banks instead of central banks. The Russian government should finance its budget deficit by having the central bank create the necessary money, just as the US and UK do.  It is not necessary for the Russian government to give away future revenue streams in perpetuity merely in order to cover one year’s deficit. That is a path to impoverishment and to loss of economic and political independence.

Globalization was invented as a tool of American Empire. Russia should be shielding itself from globalization, not opening itself to it. Privatization is the vehicle to undercut economic sovereignty and increase profits by raising prices.

Just as Western-financed NGOs operating in Russia are a fifth column operating against Russian national interests, so are Russia’s neoliberal economists, whether or not they realize it.  Russia will not be safe from Western manipulation until its economy is closed to Western attempts to reshape Russia’s economy in the interest of Washington and not in the interest of Russia.

In his classic work “Capitalism and Slavery” Eric Williams exposed in vivid detail a fact that the west would like to forget. The west owes it’s wealth in large part to slavery (and genocide of course). It was slavery that funded the industrial revolution. Not in some abstract way but quite literally the famous Watt engine (The first steam engine) was funded with money from the West Indian sugar plantations.

Many of Europe’s great fortunes owe themselves to slavery. Williams wrote his book long ago in 1942 but the facts he revealed have been intentionally ignored ever since. Thus only recently historians have rediscovered what Williams wrote about back then.

Williams work is a classic of both Marxist analysis and black history. Actually Marx himself had noted the role of Slavery in fueling the rise of Capitalism. Williams focuses his work on the relationship between British capitalism and slavery, but he also deals with the role slavery played in funding the rise of France and the US. Those interested in the role of slavery in fueling France should read C. L. R. James classic “Black Jacobins” which I discussed in my August 2015 article “Revolution in Haiti”.

Williams charts the economic history of slavery fueling the expansion of commercial capitalism, leading to the rise of Industrial Capitalism. Lavery Williams argues was abolished in England not purely for the moral reasons cited at the time but simply as part of the triumph of free trade over mercantilism. Slavery was abolished in the British empire but ended up being “outsourced” to Latin America and the United States. Slave grown cotton would fuel the industrial revolution of the 19th century just as the profits from slave grown sugar had fueled the 18th century.

Anti-Slavery would become a cover for British Imperialism as it expanded in India, and would serve as the excuse for the conquest of Africa later in the century. Actually I’m currently reading Gerald Horne’s “Negro Comrades of The Crown” which deals with the great use England made of the slavery issue against it’s american rivals mobilizing slaves to rise up against their masters during the war of 1812 or using black troops (former slaves) to defend Canada. It’s another masterpiece but lets return to Eric Williams Classic work which has inspired (and doubtless been plagiarized by) so many recent historians.

I should mention that Eric Williams later became the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago an important biographical detail.

“Capitalism and Slavery” begins by examining the origins of slavery. Slavery arose out of the economic necessity for labor. First to be enslaved were the Natives but they died quickly, or knowing the local territory often escaped. Ironically next it would be the turn of the whites who were forced into servitude. In a detail especially relevant today with the rise of mass incarceration state as Glen Ford calls it was the way the legal system was used to force the whites into servitude for a variety of petty crimes.

They were given the choice of deportation and servitude or a hanging. However servitude was temporary not permanent. In addition the english poor mounted violent resistance against the “spirits” as they called those who kidnapped people into servitude anyone they suspected could easily be killed by an angry mob. In the colonies it was much easier for a white in servitude to run away and pass for free. Williams offers a vivid picture of the terrible conditions faced by those in servitude who were also packed into ships in only slightly better conditions then the slaves, and reminds his readers that it was perfectly legal for masters to beat their white servants both in England and it’s colonies. Africa became the new source for forced labor and their slavery was usually permanent.

I should explain There were two types of colonies. First Those with poor soils and little resources like the northern US or Canada. Ironically this would later be to their advantage as they were forced to become diversified self sufficient economies. However the second type colonies with rich soils or natural resources could be used for quick and easy profits by producing a single crop. In the 17th and 18th centuries one extremely valuable cash crop was sugar cane. Sugar was the Oil of it’s day with the introduction of tea and coffee back in Europe there was ever growing demand for sugar.

The most efficient way to cultivate it was on large plantations. Since it was so valuable it was cheaper to just import food with the profits so as much land as possible could be dedicated to sugar cultivation. It was the islands of the west indies like Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, and Barbados that were ideal for growing it. Sugar Cane exhausted the soil which would be an important factor in the future. The British West Indies were far more valuable then the mainland in the amount of profits it generated. The British West Indies were at one point 4 times as valuable as all the other British colonies combined. The Growth of the still colonial future northern united states was fueled by providing the food and supplies for these islands which generated enormous fortunes. Those plantation owners who got rich in the sugar returned to England where they formed the powerful “West Indian Interest” as Williams called it which bought a number of famous english politicians like Gladstone and the famous conservative Burke. They used their political muscle to enforce a sugar monopoly forcing England to buy it’s more expensive west indian sugar instead of the cheaper sugar from France’s newer and hence more fertile Caribbean colonies. This would later be their downfall but for a time they would rule England and their enormous fortunes would fund the industrialization of England.

But it was not merely the wealthy plantation owners of the colonies that made their fortunes off of slavery. The economic growth of the English cities was closely tied to slavery as Williams documents in extensive detail. Liverpool owed it’s fortune in the slave trade.

They supplied not just english colonies with slaves but their Spanish and French competitors. It was well known at the time and once when a visiting (and intoxicated) actor was being heckled he shouted back that he refused to be insulted in a town built entirely on the blood of slaves. From it’s humble beginnings with a single slave ship stetting sail in 1709 by 1795 Liverpool controlled 5/8 of the British Slave Trade and 3/7 of the whole european slave trade. Bristol had begun as the dominant slave trading city but was forced by Liverpool’s competition into the equally slavery related sugar refining interest.

The Growth of Manchester was driven by the cotton manufacturing Cotton supplied by slave labor in America’s south. Birmingham sold Guns that were traded for African slaves (1 gun for 1 slave) fueling the massive but forgotten slave catching wars that would destabilize much of the continent spreading chaos, horror and murder across Africa. Incidentally as Gerald Horne points out once Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 the United States would take over, Brazil for example owes it’s massive black population to the energetic efforts of the american slave traders.

In addition to fueling the growth of some of Britain’s most important cities. Williams points out the many sectors of the english economy whose growth was fueled by the profits of slavery and slave trade. The growth of Iron industry was fueled by the demands for chains, swords, guns used in the slave trade. Slavery Financed the growth of the commercial Insurance industry a vital element in the growth of capitalism allowing for the “management of risk” the slave Trade was a risky business with the constant threat of shipwreck, disease, and of course uprisings among the captured slaves. Each slave, a valuable piece of merchandise was insured for the voyage.

The Banking industry also owed it’s growth to the massive profits generated by slavery. In fact many bankers began as slave traders. Captain on a slave ship was the first step on the ladder that lead ultimately to the Merchant-Banker as Williams points out. One famous bank that made it’s fortune off slavery is Barclays for example. The rich West Indies Planters often became bankers on their return to England. Actually they were so rich that even the King was annoyed and envious of their opulence and they quickly married into the highest ranks of the nobility. Of course even the monarchs of Europe got rich off the slave trade. In fact one major reason for the “Glorious Revolution” as Williams points out was to destroy the lucrative royal monopoly on the slave trade opening the doors to the “Free Trade in Slaves” which would fuel England’s economic growth during the 18th century. England and France fought wars over the “Asiento” the right to sell slaves to Spain’s colonies.

To return to the industries fueled by slavery and the slave trade, there was shipping. Slavery contributed to a huge growth in shipbuilding and paid for the construction of the ports and docks in Liverpool Bristol, and other cities. Textile manufacturing was fueled by the need to provide clothes for the millions of slaves. Wool for example was used to clothe the slaves even though it was completely inappropriate for the tropics. The raw materials for cotton came from slavery and the finished goods were traded in Africa for more slaves. The dye industry developed to provide colorful patterns to trade for slaves. There was a whole industry that produced useless trinkets to trade for slaves. The Iron industry itself produced bars of iron which were used as currency on the coast to pay for slaves. The wealthy west indian interests funded the invention of the steam engine as Williams describes in detail. They also invested heavily in building England’s railroads the Industrial revolution was thus fueled by slavery. Cotton would drive the massive growth of industry in 19th century England. Cotton mills were the biggest factories in England and their raw material was grown by slaves in the US south, Latin America, and the supposedly “free” semi-slave labour of their Indian empire.

Even England’s great philanthropists had been enriched by the slave trade. The various Churches were also involved. In America slave traders would found famous universities like Brown. Some of the most powerful politicians in England were in the west indian interests pockets. Slavery was perfectly respectable. As Williams points out it was only changing economic circumstances that forced a change in attitude although there were important geopolitical reasons as well. For example the victory of the Haitian revolution and the inability of the British to conquer the island where they suffered disastrous defeat at the hands of the former slaves who were masters of guerrilla and conventional war and beat the British, the Spanish and the French.

Williams devotes the last two chapters of his book to examining the abolition of slavery. First he deals with the efforts of reformers who were backed by powerful new economic interests intent on destroying the west indian sugar monopoly. They wanted cheaper food so they could pay their workers less and so wanted to institute free trade in food. England had become the most powerful economy in the world and it was cheaper to rely on the slave labor of the United States and Latin America, as well as the cheap labor of feudal India. Free markets became the key to english economic dominance and the West Indian interest were standing in their way. The abolitionists were the tools of a new East India interest.

These were the economic motives behind the abolition movement. Of course as the system of slavery was a nightmare of barbarous cruelty (again I recommend C. L. R. James who provides a full account of the horrors of slavery where a hundred different forms of torture and grisly murder became part of everyday slang) Thus it was easy to whip up a massive public relations campaign simply by describing the everyday conditions of slavery.

A powerful mass movement against slavery was built up. To break the power of the west indian lobby democratic reforms were carried out to redistrict parliament. Politicians debated endlessly in parliament. However as Williams points out there was a certain unavoidable hypocrisy in all this as it was still to profitable to trade with the slave societies like the US and Latin America for Capitalism to actually break it’s ties with slavery. In fact until 1823 the english abolitionists didn’t seek to end slavery which they claimed would die out naturally. They were only trying to end the slave trade.

Williams attributes the real cause of the abolition of Slavery to the resistance of the Slaves themselves. In the wake of the Haitian revolution the West Indies was rocked by waves of slave insurrections. British Guyana, Jamaica and Barbados all had nearly successful slave revolts. Upon learning of the outlawing of the slave trade in 1807 they misinterpreted it as being a Royal decree ending Slavery itself and began to refuse to work and to constantly petition the authorities. While the politicians debated back in London the Caribbean had become a powder keg and Britain was faced with the choice of either ending slavery or loosing control of their colonies altogether as France had lost control of Haiti.

Finally in 1833 Slavery was abolished in the English empire although it secretly continued in India. Of course as Williams pointed out in 1942 this history of slave rebellion is constantly being suppressed just as more then 70 years later the same is equally true. This is of course no accident our present day masters want us to forget that we have the power not only to resist but to overturn their entire fragile system based on the exploitation of the many by the few. A friend in Academia tells me that research along these lines is actively discouraged. Thus we are continually forced to discover anew our history. Brilliant works like “Black Jacobins” and “Capitalism & Slavery” are suppressed forgotten and then rediscovered again and again.

To conclude the wealth of the western powers like France, America, and Great Britain was based on slavery and genocide. Today this same process continues and Ironically as the UN revealed recently slavery is on the rise worldwide. Meanwhile with the end of the civil war in the United States they put an important loophole in the abolition of slavery allowing it for prisoners. Prison Labor is a massively growing sector of the american economy and just as the great fortunes of the 18th and 19th century were tied to slavery todays multinational corporations are deeply invested in the growth of the mass incarceration state. Of course it would take a whole new article to describe the companies involved big names like McDonalds and Goldman Sachs. Slavery didn’t end like they told us in school. Slavery is on the rise! Latin American workers in the US have become major new victims. There is no crime that capitalism will not commit if it creates a few percentage points of profit. Until Capitalism is abolished the world will never know an end to war, slavery, genocide, imperialism, exploitation and poverty.

Sources

A Special Thank You to @Zaganashikwe for suggesting I read this book.

You should definitely read Eric Williams “Capitalism and Slavery” for yourself as I’ve only offered a brief outline. It is written with a delightful irony. I also recommend C. L. R. James “Black Jacobins” which does a great job of showing how slavery fueled french economic growth and unlike Williams who deliberately avoids the topic, gives a nightmarish picture of what life was like for the slaves on the sugar plantations. I’ve just begun reading Gerald Horne’s “Negro Comrades of the Crown” and I highly recommend it as well. Horne is a master at bringing suppressed history vividly to life and I’ll smile whenever I hear the year 1812 I’ll imagine angry slaves burning the white house and stealing president Madison’s silver ware.

Since it is Black History Month I direct you to Abayomi Azikwe’s podcast where I have learned a great deal of black history from listening too. It was from Azikwe that I learned about Williams, James and Horne.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/panafricanjournal

And Check out The Black Agenda Report which created the term “mass incarceration state” and does a great job of exposing the crimes of capitalism.

http://blackagendareport.com

And Check out my friend @arghshell who has a blog and a podcast that did a great expose of the US military role in Sex Trafficking another continuation of slavery

http://n0p3.net

Here is the third episode which describes the lives of enslaved women in the US

http://n0p3.net/2015/10/01/us-military-trade-in-trafficked-persons-and-sexual-servitude-part-3/

Consider that India had for generations sustained one of the highest densities of population on earth, without any chemical fertilisers, pesticides, exotic dwarf strains of grain or ‘bio-tech’ inputs. And it did it without degrading the soil. That is according to the evidence provided by Arun Shrivastava. What is truly impressive, however, is he then goes on to demonstrate that in the 18th and 19th centuries India achieved better productivity levels with organic methods than those of the ‘green revolution’.

Now consider that, in 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (Olivier de Schutter) called on countries to reorient their agriculture policies to promote sustainable systems, not least agro-ecology, that realise the right to food. And Consider that The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was the work of over 400 scientists and took four years to complete. It was twice peer reviewed and states we must look to smallholder, traditional farming to deliver food security in third world countries through agro-ecological systems which are sustainable.

Yet, for all these considerations, what we witness from powerful interest groups is an on-going campaign to denigrate and marginalise organic-based farming and systems based on it. For example, here is a quote from a recent article by Shanthu Shantharam:

Almost all anti-GM folks believe in organic agriculture and they have been active at the state level in India to convince gullible politicians that organic agriculture can feed the world and give food security. This is not accepted by most established agricultural scientists. Most farmers’ organizations in India, including BKS and SJM, are champions of organic farming, and organic farming completely prohibits the use of GM seeds. So, if the country accepts organic farming, there is no place for GM technology, and therefore they want it to be banned. India will pay a heavy price if they heed the anti-GM lobby on organic farming, a niche mode of cultivating crops on a small scale or in kitchen gardens.

If you read the entire article from which that extracts comes, it is clear that pro-GMO lobbyist Shantharam thinks the best way to push for GM is to attack and smear scientists and campaigners (with unsubstantiated claims) who disagree with him and degrade credible approaches to agriculture that do not involve GM.

The case for GM cannot be made in terms of better yields, less chemical inputs, safety, impact on the environment, nutritional value or improved farmers’ incomes, so the tactic is to denigrate alternative solutions. And Shatharam’s favourite target is organic agriculture and anyone who advocates for its widespread use.

Using less bombast than Shantharam to make his point, pro-GM microbiologist Tony Trewavas of Edinburgh University believes organic approaches like agro-ecology are not sufficient to feed the world:

If agro-ecological approaches can currently match yield that can be attained by using modern farming methods then by all means use it. But if not and my understanding is that currently it cannot, then they should not be the farming method of recommended choice at present… No-one with any concern for humanity or the welfare of its population should currently consider any other alternative [to GM]. The groups that campaign for this kind or that kind of farming method and destroy crops to try and bounce others into their point of view have lost that fundamental concern for their own species.

In an attempt to drive his belief home, Trewavas does his cause no help by using GM industry-inspired PR rhetoric masquerading as ‘expert opinion’ in an attempt to smear and marginalise proponents of agro-ecology by implying they are ‘enemies of humanity’. And he is not alone in going down this route.

Whether in academia or elsewhere, mouthpieces for their transnational agribusiness masters have no shame in churning out misinformation and cheap slurs to forward a pro-GM agenda that is based on fraud and a subversion of science, as documented in Steven Druker’s book ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truths’. And this agenda does not possess overwhelming support within science, despite the claims of GM supporters. This much has been made clear by Food & Water Watch and by Druker himself in a recent TV debate and his follow up points here.

But PR, slurs and smears aside, the pro-GM lobby’s specific attack on organic agriculture (and more generally agro-ecology) merely being a ‘kitchen table niche’ mode of farming flies in the face of reality.

According to new research carried out by a team of US scientists, organic farming could provide ample food for the whole human population, while causing less pollution and fewer health problems than conventional agriculture.

Their review of hundreds of published studies provides evidence that organic farming can produce sufficient yields, be profitable for farmers, protect and improve the environment and be safer for farm workers, even though organic production currently accounts for only one percent of global agricultural land. It is the first such study to analyse 40 years of science comparing organic and conventional agriculture across the four goals of sustainability identified by the National Academy of Sciences: productivity, economics, environment, and community well-being.

In their paper published on 3 February in the journal Nature, John Reganold and Jonathan Wachter, agronomists at Washington State University, argued that that yields from organic farms were indeed between 8% and 25% lower than those of conventional farms, depending on the crop. With effective use of organic polyculture, however, this gap narrowed to 9%, and with increased crop rotation it shrank to just 8%.

But one area where organic farming trumped conventional methods is in periods of severe drought; a phenomenon set to become increasingly common as the global climate is disrupted. The authors argue that the weight of evidence argues that yields from organic farms are more reliable in periods of drought because their healthier soil retains more moisture (as perfectly described previously by Bhaskar Save, based on his many decades of organic farming in India).

It is also noted that organic farmers often make a better living than their pesticide-spraying colleagues, with revenues between 22% and 35% higher. The two agronomists state that humanity’s conversion to organic farming should not rest solely on the question of yields by noting that wider issues must be addressed as well:

We should also reduce food waste, improve access to food distribution, stabilise the global population, eliminate the conversion of crops into biofuels and adopt a more plant-based diet.

The authors also say that the downsides of conventional farming are clear: it uses costly pesticides, pollutes water with nitrates and phosphates, causes high greenhouse gas emissions and reduces biodiversity on cultivated land. As well as contributing to a variety of chronic diseases, conventional farming methods also produce food with lower nutritional values than organic methods; a finding supported by 12 of the 15 studies identified by the researchers on this subject.

Numerous studies in the review indicated that organic farms tend to store more soil carbon, have better soil quality, and reduce soil erosion. Organic agriculture also creates less soil and water pollution and lower greenhouse gas emissions. And it is more energy efficient because it doesn’t rely on synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. It is also associated with greater biodiversity of plants, animals, insects and microbes as well as genetic diversity. Biodiversity increases the services that nature provides like pollination and improves the ability of farming systems to adapt to changing conditions.

In terms of the social impact of the two farming methods, organic farming also came out on top: organic farms create more jobs, are less damaging to their employees’ health and actually improve their diet, promote interaction between producers and consumers and provide better conditions for animals.

Reganold concludes.

Hundreds of scientific studies now demonstrate that organic farming should play a greater role in feeding our planet. 30 years ago, there were only a handful of studies comparing organic and conventional agriculture. In the last 15 years their number has massively increased.

Of course, it is conceivable that, given breakthroughs in non-GM biotechnology, not least marker assisted selection, systems of agriculture based on organic techniques will in future narrow the gap further or even outperform petro-chemical intensive farming.

This latest research follows on from other recent studies that puts paid to the claim that organic-based farming is a kitchen table niche incapable of playing a major, dominant role in feeding the world. For example, we now have:

1. The Rodale Institute’s 30-year research trial into organic farming, which concludes that organic yields match conventional yields, outperform conventional in years of drought and actually build soil fertility rather than deplete it. In addition, there is also this study from 2014, that indicated the gap between organic and chemical-intensive models is not so great (even absent in many cases) and that organic could produce enough to feed the world.
2. Last year’s Oakland Institute findings that demonstrated the “tremendous success” of agro-ecology across Africa. The Oakland Institute presented 33 case studies that were successful in combining sound ecological management, including minimising the use of toxic inputs by using on-farm renewable resources and privileging endogenous solutions to manage pests and disease, with an approach that upholds and secures farmers’ livelihoods. The research provides irrefutable data and information how agricultural transformation can yield immense economic, social, and food security benefits, while ensuring climate justice and restoring soils and the environment. Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute, coordinated the research and argued that the research debunks the myths about the inability of agro-ecology to deliver and highlights the multiple benefits of agro-ecology, including affordable and sustainable ways to boost agricultural yields while increasing farmers’ incomes, food security and resilience.
3. Reports from Tamil Nadu (South India) on women’s collectives organising to restore traditional foods and farming methods, resulting in lower costs, higher yields and improved nutrition. By practising agro-ecology, an increasing number of women farmers are now free from chemical fertilisers and pesticides and grow many crops together – grains, lentils, beans, oilseeds – to create biodiversity, using maximum input from the land within the farm to produce food.
4. A peer-reviewed study in the British Journal of Nutrition showing that organic crops and crop-based foods are between 18 to 69% higher in a number of key antioxidants such as polyphenolics than conventionally-grown crops. Moreover, significantly lower levels of a range of toxic heavy metals were found in organic crops. For instance, cadmium is one of only three metal contaminants, along with lead and mercury, for which the European Commission has set maximum permitted contamination levels in food. It was found to be almost 50% lower in organic crops. Nitrogen concentrations were also found to be significantly lower in organic crops. Concentrations of total nitrogen were 10%, nitrate 30% and nitrite 87% lower in organic compared to conventional crops.  The study also found that pesticide residues were four times more likely to be found in conventional crops than organic ones. The study is the biggest of its kind ever undertaken. The international team of experts led by Newcastle University in the UK analysed 343 studies into the compositional differences between organic and conventional crops.
5. Various studies indicating the superior nutritional value of organic food, while pesticide-dependent chemical-intensive agriculture has led to soil degradation, mineral-deficient soils, de-nutified food, poisoned water and a range of health problems and diseases.

From Cuba to Uganda, there are of course many more examples that could be added to the above list to highlight the successes of agricultural systems based on organic. The point is that organic agriculture could feed the world, certainly if it were to be prioritised and invested in to the extent green revolution technology has been over the decades.

The ability to feed the world, however, involves a lot more than focussing on organic vs chemical or a bogus technical quick-fix GM solution that rides on the back of successes in conventional breeding.

The geopolitics of food and agriculture has played a significant role in creating food-rich and food-deficit regions and populations. Any serious commitment to feeding the world must therefore address various issues, not least international trade policies and the globalised system of ‘capitalism’ that has led to, for example: structural inequality and poverty; the privatisation of seed, knowledge, land and water; the marginalisation of smallholders, the backbone of global food production; commodity speculation, resulting in food shortages; and debt and export-oriented agriculture, which undermine local, rural economies.

The corporate-controlled green revolution ushered in by the oil-rich Rockefeller clan and its associates was aimed at uprooting indigenous agriculture. The ultimate beneficiaries have been powerful oil, financial and agribusiness players. All of this to fuel a ‘nine-day wonder’ (Gandhi’s term) unsustainable model of economic and social ‘development’ and an urban-centic model of agriculture based on destroying livelihoods in the Global South, as is currently happening in India.

The solution must be for policy-makers to prioritise a shift towards organic-based systems of agriculture and, importantly, to restore soils back to a healthy level. This would involve providing support to an agro-ecology movement that is empowering to people politically, socially and economically, and implementing an economic system that is based on local self-reliance and a commitment to rejecting meaningless over-consumption that strips the environment bare.

When Raj Patel discusses the perceived successes of the green revolution, he urges us to consider what could have happened if we had invested in and prioritised alternative approaches to agriculture – if we had pursued a different route than that of the green revolution. It is only then that we could genuinely measure its efficacy.

However, such a consideration is to be side-lined by pro-GM lobbyists like Shanthu Shantharam or former UK environment minister Owen Paterson, who claims “billions” will be condemned to hunger and poverty if we do not keep with green revolution technology and extend it by adopting GM. For like all good neo-liberal GMO corporate evangellists, Paterson’s mantra of TINA (there is no alternative) is the kind of rhetoric that is designed to stop thinking and informed analysis dead in its tracks.

But ultimately, as alluded to in this piece and something that the likes of Shantharam, Trewvavas or Paterson do not want to hear, the real issue isn’t about whether or not organic can feed the world, it is that global capitalism is preventing us from doing so and will continue to do so if its structures and impacts remain unchallenged.

Pledging aid is one thing, delivering it another. Past experience shows suffering people in conflict theaters and natural disaster areas treated dismissively, given short shrift – most or all so-called aid diverted for profit-making purposes.

Months after Haiti’s devastating January 2010 earthquake, a donor’s conference pledged over $5 billion to help victims rebuild and recover – virtually all funds earmarked exclusively for profit-making ventures, US companies getting the lion’s share, desperate people entirely ignored, still on their own six years later.

Post-Katrina New Orleans became a metaphor for disaster capitalism, exploiting natural disasters for profit, people needs treated dismissively.

Sri Lankan survivors following the devastating December 2004 tsunami were left homeless, forbidden to rebuild homes in destroyed coastal areas, earmarked for corporate development – benefitting state tourism and business interests at the expense of vital people needs.

A post-2014 Gaza war Cairo conference pledged $5.4 billion for reconstruction. Israel was the main beneficiary.

Corrupt PA officials got their share (for so-called unspecified budget purposes), none delivered to needy people – still on their own, rebuilding largely blocked under siege, UN officials complicit with Israel preventing it.

Expect most aid pledged for desperate Syrians to be diverted like earlier thinly veiled profit-making schemes.

Last Thursday, donor countries meeting in London pledged $10.7 billion in aid for Syrians over the next four years. Will any or enough arrive to make a difference – about as likely as the above examples.

Obama’s war left half the population internally or externally displaced, struggling to survive, getting little help.

Refugees arriving in neighboring countries and European ones are mistreated, exploited, their rights and needs ignored, confined under deplorable slum conditions, in some cases like the notorious Calais, France “jungle,” unfit to live in.

John Kerry addressed donor country representatives, saying Syrians struggling to survive “should tear at the conscience of all civilized people, and we have a responsibility to respond to it.”

He entirely ignored Obama’s war, his complicity as a US senator and secretary of state. Washington bears full responsibility for raping Syria.

Complicit NATO and regional regimes share blame, responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands, transforming the country into dystopian hell.

Imperial objectives alone matter, millions killed, injured or uprooted, along with vast destruction, are a small price to pay by US standards.

Aggressors pledging aid for victims show appalling hypocrisy – especially when most funds raised are earmarked for disaster capitalism purposes, profiting from human misery like earlier, people needs at best given short shrift.

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 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

UK Column News Special:

Mike Robinson speaks to Mother Agnes Mariam about the situation in Syria, the media coverage of it and both the political peace process and her own Reconciliation Initiative.

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On January 30th the United States committed a deliberate act of aggression against China when it sent the guided missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur within the 12 nautical mile territorial limit of one of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. The islands are claimed historically by China, though Vietnam also has filed claims to the islands under the Law of the Sea Convention. The Americans state that Taiwan also claims the islands but since Taiwan is just a province of China I will ignore that claim here.

The Chinese have the superior historical and present claim and the islands have long been administered by China. Chinese forces, either Kuomintang or communist, have occupied them since 1946. The Chinese have both civilian and military facilities located on the largest of them, Woody Island, including a hospital, a bank schools, an airport, a seaport and a town hall and have built a large sea port on Duncan Island. The islands are also popular with Chinese tourists.

The territorial disputes were settled long ago when the French tried to incorporate the islands into their Vietnamese territories but after the Sino-French War of 1884-85 France recognised the islands, as well as the Spratly Islands, as Chinese territories. In 1933 the French stabbed China in the back and seized the islands but were then displaced by the Japanese in 1938.

The islands reverted to Chinese control at the end of the Second World War. There was a brief war between Vietnam and China over the islands in 1974 but the Chinese succeeded in maintaining their control of the islands. The Vietnamese still contest this but the fact is that China’s historical claim and influence on the islands dates as far back as the 7th century A.D. and has been continuous since that time.

The law that applies in this situation is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which was negotiated between 1973 and 1982 and came into full force in 1994. Almost every country in the world has become a party to the Convention except for the United States which has refused to sign due to concerns it has about certain sections dealing with deep sea mineral mining. However, the United States has always recognised the Convention as a codification of customary international law and therefore has accepted the 12 nautical mile territorial limit, allowed all nations, including itself, as the law.

It is well to keep in mind that in 1988, President Reagan issued a proclamation extending American territorial waters to 12 nautical miles for national security purposes. Further, the United States was a party to the negotiations regarding modifications to the treaty that were made in 1994 and once again affirmed, at that time, that it recognised the Convention as general international law.

In May 2007, President Bush recommended that the US Senate ratify the Convention. In January 2009 at her senate confirmation hearing, Hillary Clinton argued, before the Senate, that the Convention be ratified. She argued for it again before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2012 and both the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey and the Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta, joined her in urging a quick ratification of the Convention, as did several senior generals and admirals. However, the Republicans succeeded in blocking ratification until today, on the grounds that any law that limits the ability of the United States to do what it wants in the world is against American “interests.”

Nonetheless, the point is that the United States recognises that all nations are entitled to claim a 12 nautical mile territorial limit as China claims over the Paracel Islands. Even if the competing claim by Vietnam was valid the limit still applies. Yet the Americans now arrogantly claim that they can go where they please and do as they like and that these limits do not apply with respect to these islands, or, in fact, to any Chinese borders.

The American government, as reported by CNN, stated that it sent its war ship into the 12-mile limit to challenge “excessive maritime claims that restrict the rights and freedoms of the US and others.” Who the others are was not stated. The statement was absurd on its face since no nation can send its war ships into another nations 12-mile limit without permission of that nation. To do so is considered a hostile act, an act of war.

An American military spokesman for the US government, Commander Bill Urban, told CNN, “This operation demonstrates, as President Obama and Secretary Carter have stated, the United States will fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows. That is true in the South China Sea, as in other places around the globe.” The absurdity of his statement and the American position lies in the fact that international law does not permit them to send their warships inside any other nations 12 mile limit without permission of that nation and they know it. Once again, the Americans display a contempt for international law, and an arrogance towards the rest of the world, that seem to be without limit.

The American government and media bragged about the fact that “neither China, nor Vietnam was notified of their (US) intention to send their war ship inside the 12 mile limit.” The only right foreign ships, and in particular foreign military vessels, have to pass inside the 12 mile limit is in a case of “innocent passage” that is when a ship is merely transiting the area and it must be with the permission of that nation. But no war ship can pass inside territorial waters in a show of power or for any hostile reason whatsoever. But this is exactly what the American ship did, crossed into Chinese territory with hostile intent.

So, while the Americans blow hard about complying with international law it is they who, once again, vigorously violate it. The Chinese government has rightly and strongly protested this hostile act. Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, stated the next day that the “United States is …pursuing maritime hegemony in the name of “freedom,” which was opposed by all developing countries and added that the American action was “both dangerous and irresponsible.”

The United States is pushing China to respond to its aggression but the Chinese have exercised a great deal of restraint over the years in the face of a series of American provocations from spy planes over-flying its air space to a series of naval exercises in the Pacific and South China Sea that are clearly aimed at China and are all part of America’s “pivot to the Pacific,” a shifting of the concentration of its military forces to confront China, in fact a preparation for war on China. The question is how far the Americans are willing to push.

But they are pushing everywhere, like bullies on a drunk, roaming down a street beating and shoving aside anyone they meet. Recently the Iranians detained two small American patrol craft attached to the American fleet in the Persian Gulf that entered Iranian waters. The presence of those boats in those waters at that time has given rise to a lot of speculation about their purpose but no answers, except the obvious one of preparing for hostilities of one type or another. The Americans continue to press Russia in the Black Sea using both naval and air forces and are openly committing aggression against Syria by sending their military units into Syria, allegedly to fight ISIS, without the permission of the Syrian government. And, at the same time as their ship violated Chinese territorial waters, the Americans blasted Russia by claiming Russian planes had violated Turkish airspace, a claim the Russians vehemently denied and labelled the claim what it was, a provocation.

The double standards, the hypocrisy, the constant barrage of absurd statements by American officials about international law as they ravage it, are enough to make anyone doubt their sanity. But unless we can talk about a national psychopathy with respect to the United States and the elite that governs it, and there is a lot of evidence that we can, we are forced to realise that the world is faced by the threat of a gangster nation, a nation that lives for one purpose only, conquest and domination of the planet.

Once again the United Nations proves itself either a useful tool of the United States and its dependencies or completely irrelevant to what is going on. Once again democracy is shown to be an illusion as the desire of all the peoples of the world for peace and cooperation among nations is ignored and worse, the desire for peace is called unpatriotic or treasonous; and the puppets in the mass media are as guilty as their puppet masters as they manipulate the minds of the citizens they claim to inform and stir up the hot blood of war.

And so we wait, sweat dripping off our brows, our faces grim, our muscles tensed wondering where the next blow will fall, when the next provocation will take place, when the fuse will finally blow and annihilate us all.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On January 30th the United States committed a deliberate act of aggression against China when it sent the guided missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur within the 12 nautical mile territorial limit of one of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. The islands are claimed historically by China, though Vietnam also has filed claims to the islands under the Law of the Sea Convention. The Americans state that Taiwan also claims the islands but since Taiwan is just a province of China I will ignore that claim here.

The Chinese have the superior historical and present claim and the islands have long been administered by China. Chinese forces, either Kuomintang or communist, have occupied them since 1946. The Chinese have both civilian and military facilities located on the largest of them, Woody Island, including a hospital, a bank schools, an airport, a seaport and a town hall and have built a large sea port on Duncan Island. The islands are also popular with Chinese tourists.

The territorial disputes were settled long ago when the French tried to incorporate the islands into their Vietnamese territories but after the Sino-French War of 1884-85 France recognised the islands, as well as the Spratly Islands, as Chinese territories. In 1933 the French stabbed China in the back and seized the islands but were then displaced by the Japanese in 1938.

The islands reverted to Chinese control at the end of the Second World War. There was a brief war between Vietnam and China over the islands in 1974 but the Chinese succeeded in maintaining their control of the islands. The Vietnamese still contest this but the fact is that China’s historical claim and influence on the islands dates as far back as the 7th century A.D. and has been continuous since that time.

The law that applies in this situation is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which was negotiated between 1973 and 1982 and came into full force in 1994. Almost every country in the world has become a party to the Convention except for the United States which has refused to sign due to concerns it has about certain sections dealing with deep sea mineral mining. However, the United States has always recognised the Convention as a codification of customary international law and therefore has accepted the 12 nautical mile territorial limit, allowed all nations, including itself, as the law.

It is well to keep in mind that in 1988, President Reagan issued a proclamation extending American territorial waters to 12 nautical miles for national security purposes. Further, the United States was a party to the negotiations regarding modifications to the treaty that were made in 1994 and once again affirmed, at that time, that it recognised the Convention as general international law.

In May 2007, President Bush recommended that the US Senate ratify the Convention. In January 2009 at her senate confirmation hearing, Hillary Clinton argued, before the Senate, that the Convention be ratified. She argued for it again before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2012 and both the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey and the Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta, joined her in urging a quick ratification of the Convention, as did several senior generals and admirals. However, the Republicans succeeded in blocking ratification until today, on the grounds that any law that limits the ability of the United States to do what it wants in the world is against American “interests.”

Nonetheless, the point is that the United States recognises that all nations are entitled to claim a 12 nautical mile territorial limit as China claims over the Paracel Islands. Even if the competing claim by Vietnam was valid the limit still applies. Yet the Americans now arrogantly claim that they can go where they please and do as they like and that these limits do not apply with respect to these islands, or, in fact, to any Chinese borders.

The American government, as reported by CNN, stated that it sent its war ship into the 12-mile limit to challenge “excessive maritime claims that restrict the rights and freedoms of the US and others.” Who the others are was not stated. The statement was absurd on its face since no nation can send its war ships into another nations 12-mile limit without permission of that nation. To do so is considered a hostile act, an act of war.

An American military spokesman for the US government, Commander Bill Urban, told CNN, “This operation demonstrates, as President Obama and Secretary Carter have stated, the United States will fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows. That is true in the South China Sea, as in other places around the globe.” The absurdity of his statement and the American position lies in the fact that international law does not permit them to send their warships inside any other nations 12 mile limit without permission of that nation and they know it. Once again, the Americans display a contempt for international law, and an arrogance towards the rest of the world, that seem to be without limit.

The American government and media bragged about the fact that “neither China, nor Vietnam was notified of their (US) intention to send their war ship inside the 12 mile limit.” The only right foreign ships, and in particular foreign military vessels, have to pass inside the 12 mile limit is in a case of “innocent passage” that is when a ship is merely transiting the area and it must be with the permission of that nation. But no war ship can pass inside territorial waters in a show of power or for any hostile reason whatsoever. But this is exactly what the American ship did, crossed into Chinese territory with hostile intent.

So, while the Americans blow hard about complying with international law it is they who, once again, vigorously violate it. The Chinese government has rightly and strongly protested this hostile act. Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, stated the next day that the “United States is …pursuing maritime hegemony in the name of “freedom,” which was opposed by all developing countries and added that the American action was “both dangerous and irresponsible.”

The United States is pushing China to respond to its aggression but the Chinese have exercised a great deal of restraint over the years in the face of a series of American provocations from spy planes over-flying its air space to a series of naval exercises in the Pacific and South China Sea that are clearly aimed at China and are all part of America’s “pivot to the Pacific,” a shifting of the concentration of its military forces to confront China, in fact a preparation for war on China. The question is how far the Americans are willing to push.

But they are pushing everywhere, like bullies on a drunk, roaming down a street beating and shoving aside anyone they meet. Recently the Iranians detained two small American patrol craft attached to the American fleet in the Persian Gulf that entered Iranian waters. The presence of those boats in those waters at that time has given rise to a lot of speculation about their purpose but no answers, except the obvious one of preparing for hostilities of one type or another. The Americans continue to press Russia in the Black Sea using both naval and air forces and are openly committing aggression against Syria by sending their military units into Syria, allegedly to fight ISIS, without the permission of the Syrian government. And, at the same time as their ship violated Chinese territorial waters, the Americans blasted Russia by claiming Russian planes had violated Turkish airspace, a claim the Russians vehemently denied and labelled the claim what it was, a provocation.

The double standards, the hypocrisy, the constant barrage of absurd statements by American officials about international law as they ravage it, are enough to make anyone doubt their sanity. But unless we can talk about a national psychopathy with respect to the United States and the elite that governs it, and there is a lot of evidence that we can, we are forced to realise that the world is faced by the threat of a gangster nation, a nation that lives for one purpose only, conquest and domination of the planet.

Once again the United Nations proves itself either a useful tool of the United States and its dependencies or completely irrelevant to what is going on. Once again democracy is shown to be an illusion as the desire of all the peoples of the world for peace and cooperation among nations is ignored and worse, the desire for peace is called unpatriotic or treasonous; and the puppets in the mass media are as guilty as their puppet masters as they manipulate the minds of the citizens they claim to inform and stir up the hot blood of war.

And so we wait, sweat dripping off our brows, our faces grim, our muscles tensed wondering where the next blow will fall, when the next provocation will take place, when the fuse will finally blow and annihilate us all.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Michael Hudson is the best economist in the world. Indeed, I could almost say that he is the only economist in the world. Almost all of the rest are neoliberals, who are not economists but shills for financial interests.

If you have not heard of Michael Hudson it merely shows the power of the Matrix. Hudson should have won several Nobel prizes in economics, but he will never get one.

Hudson did not intend to be an economist. At the University of Chicago, which had a leading economics faculty, Hudson studied music and cultural history. He went to New York City to work in publishing. He thought he could set out on his own when he was assigned rights to the writings and archives of George Lukacs and Leon Trotsky, but publishing houses were not interested in the work of two Jewish Marxists who had a significant impact on the 20th century.

Michael Hudson

Friendships connected Hudson to a former economist for General Electric who taught him the flow of funds through the economic system and explained how crises develop when debt outgrows the economy. Hooked, Hudson enrolled in the economics graduate program at NYU and took a job in the financial sector calculating how savings were recycled into new mortgage loans.

Hudson learned more economics from his work experience than from his Ph.D. courses. On Wall Street he learned how bank lending inflates land prices and, thereby, interest payments to the financial sector. The more banks lend, the higher real estate prices rise, thus encouraging more bank lending. As mortgage debt service rises, more of household income and more of the rental value of real estate are paid to the financial sector. When the imbalance becomes too large, the bubble bursts. Despite its importance, the analysis of land rent and property valuation was not part of his Ph.D. studies in economics.

Hudson’s next job was with Chase Manhattan, where he used the export earnings of South American countries to calculate how much debt service the countries could afford to pay to US banks. Hudson learned that just as mortgage lenders regard the rental income from property as a flow of money that can be diverted to interest payments, international banks regard the export earnings of foreign countries as revenues that can be used to pay interest on foreign loans. Hudson learned that the goal of creditors is to capture the entire economic surplus of a country into payments of debt service.

Soon the American creditors and the IMF were lending indebted countries money with which to pay interest. This caused the countries’ foreign debts to rise at compound interest. Hudson predicted that the indebted countries would not be able to pay their debts, an unwelcome prediction that was confirmed when Mexico announced it could not pay. This crisis was resolved with “Brady bonds” named after the US Treasury Secretary, but when the 2008 US mortgage crisis hit, just as Hudson predicted, nothing was done for the American homeowners. If you are not a mega-bank, your problems are not a focus of US economic policy.

Chase Manhattan next had Hudson develop an accounting format to analyze the US oil industry balance of payments. Here Hudson learned another lesson about the difference between official statistics and reality. Using “transfer pricing,” oil companies managed to avoid paying taxes by creating the illusion of zero profits. Oil company affiliates in tax avoidance locations buy oil at low prices from producers. From these flags of convenience locations, which have no tax on profits, the oil was then sold to Western refineries at prices marked up to eliminate profits. The profits were recorded by the oil companies’ affiliates in non-tax jurisdictions. (Tax authorities have cracked down to some extent on the use of transfer pricing to escape taxation.)

Hudson’s next task was to estimate the amount of money from crime going into Switzerland’s secret banking system. In this investigation, his last for Chase, Hudson discovered that under US State Department direction Chase and other large banks had established banks in the Caribbean for the purpose of attracting money into dollar holdings from drug dealers in order to support the dollar (by raising the demand for dollars by criminals) in order to balance or offset Washington’s foreign military outflows of dollars. If dollars flowed out of the US, but demand did not rise to absorb the larger supply of dollars, the dollar’s exchange rate would fall, thus threatenting the basis of US power. By providing offshore banks in which criminals could deposit illicit dollars, the US government supported the dollar’s exchange value.

Hudson discovered that the US balance of payments deficit, a source of pressure on the value of the US dollar, was entirely military in character. The US Treasury and State Department supported the Caribbean safe haven for illegal profits in order to offset the negative impact on the US balance of payments of US military operations abroad. In other words, if criminality can be used in support of the US dollar, the US government is all for criminality.

When it came to the economics of the situation, economic theory had not a clue. Neither trade flows nor direct investments were important in determining exchange rates. What was important was “errors and omissions,” which Hudson discovered was an euphemism for the hot, liquid money of drug dealers and government officials embezzling the export earnings of their countries.

The problem for Americans is that both political parties regard the needs of the American people as a liability and as an obstacle to the profits of the military/security complex, Wall Street and the mega-banks, and Washington’s world hegemony. The government in Washington represents powerful interest groups, not American citizens. This is why the 21st century consists of an attack on the constitutional protections of citizens so that citizens can be moved out of the way of the needs of the Empire and its beneficiaries.

Hudson learned that economic theory is really a device for ripping off the untermenschen. International trade theory concludes that countries can service huge debts simply by lowering domestic wages in order to pay creditors. This is the policy currently being applied to Greece today, and it has been the basis of the IMF’s structural adjustment or austerity programs imposed on debtor countries, essentially a form of looting that turns over national resources to foreign lenders.

Hudson learned that monetary theory concerns itself only with wages and consumer prices, not with the inflation of asset prices such as real estate and stocks. He saw that economic theory serves as a cover for the polarization of the world economy between rich and poor. The promises of globalism are a myth. Even left-wing and Marxist economists think of exploitation in terms of wages and are unaware that the main instrument of exploitation is the financial system’s extraction of value into interest payments.

Economic theory’s neglect of debt as an instrument of exploitation caused Hudson to look into the history of how earlier civilizations handled the build up of debt. His research was so ground-breaking that Harvard University appointed him Research Fellow in Babylonian economic history in the Peabody Museum.

Meanwhile he continued to be sought after by financial firms. He was hired to calculate the number of years that Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico would be able to pay the extremely high interest rates on their bonds. On the basis of Hudson’s work, the Scudder Fund achieved the second highest rate of return in the world in 1990.

Hudson’s investigations into the problems of our time took him through the history of economic thought. He discovered that 18th and 19th century economists understood the disabling power of debt far better than today’s neoliberal economists who essentially neglect it in order to better cater to the interest of the financial sector.

Hudson shows that Western economies have been financialized in a predatory way that sacrifices the public interest to the interests of the financial sector. That is why the economy no longer works for ordinary people. Finance is no longer productive. It has become a parasite on the economy. Hudson tells this story in his recent book, Killing the Host (2015).

Readers often ask me how they can learn economics. My answer is to spend many hours with Hudson’s book. First, read the book through once or twice in order to get an idea of what is covered. Then study it closely section by section. When you understand the book, you will understand economics better than any Nobel prize-winning economist.

Treat this column as an introduction to the book. I will be writing more about it as current events and time permit. As far as I am concerned, many current events cannot be understood independently of Hudson’s explanation of the financialized Western economy. Indeed, as most Russian and Chinese economists are themselves trained in neoliberal economics, these two countries might follow the same downward path as the West.

If you put Hudson’s analysis of financialization together with my analysis of the adverse impact of jobs offshoring, you will understand that the present economic path of the Western world is the road to destruction.

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.

Washington must be getting nervous with the latest announcement from Iran’s state-owned oil company, the National Iranian Oil CO (NIOC) which declared that Iran will replace US dollars with Euros for its oil trades according to a Reuter’s news article titled ‘Exclusive: Iran wants euro payment for new and outstanding oil sales – source’. Iran wants something (well almost anything) to bypass the US dollar with other currencies because of Washington’s willingness to impose sanctions whenever it wants on the Iranian republic.

“Iran wants to recover tens of billions of dollars it is owed by India and other buyers of its oil in euros and is billing new crude sales in euros, too, looking to reduce its dependence on the U.S. dollar following last month’s sanctions relief” the report said. Watch for AIPAC’s “bought and paid for” politicians in Washington call for more sanctions on Iran because they will find something to blame the Iranian government even global warming if they can get away with it. Reuters said:

A source at state-owned National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) told Reuters that Iran will charge in euros for its recently signed oil contracts with firms including French oil and gas major Total, Spanish refiner Cepsa and Litasco, the trading arm of Russia’s Lukoil

Iran has close ties to Russia and China political and economically and can now strategically pivot to other currencies without the threat of war by the US and of course, Israel. “In our invoices we mention a clause that buyers of our oil will have to pay in euros, considering the exchange rate versus the dollar around the time of delivery,” the NIOC source said.   It is important to note that Reuters also said that “Switching oil sales to euros makes sense as Europe is now one of Iran’s biggest trading partners”.  This brings us back to the Iraq War when the main-stream media (Judith Miller and the New York Times in particular) lied to the world about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). One of the main reasons that Washington decided to declare war on Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s decision to accept Euros in November 2000 for oil trades instead of US dollars. Remember, the Bush regime and his “Neocon” gang members also blamed the Iraqi government for the September 11th attacks, so what does Washington have up its sleeves regarding Iran’s latest announcement?

Can a new call for sanctions against Iran take center stage in congress if Iran were to test new missiles or conduct Naval exercises within their territory in the future? Many in congress including Senators John McCain and Charles Schumer would vote for new sanctions so that the Obama administration can slap on additional sanctions on top of the sanctions already in place for Iran’s recent missile tests. The latest sanctions prevent several entities and individuals linked to the Iranian missile program from using any US banking system for their transactions. So which currency does the U.S. banking system use for its transactions? US dollars and that’s exactly the point and that is why Iran wants all of its past and future payments in Euros to avoid sanctions which has caused economic hardships for the Iranian people for decades.

US hegemony in the Middle East is fueled by the power of the petrodollar. The US dollar still represents at least 60% of the world’s reserve currencies. So do the recent moves to replace the US dollar by Iran, Russia and China dethrone the world’s most used currency anytime soon? No. But the world is gradually making moves to transition away from the US dollar without causing any major disruptions in the world economy and that is what makes Washington very nervous.

War can sneak up on you. And now unions are scrambling desperately for shelter, realizing they were in the crosshairs just as the Supreme Court was about to pull the trigger. After dreamily sleepwalking in denial, unions were shocked and awed awake by the Supreme Court’s hearing of “Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association.”

If unions lose Friedrichs, the nuclear fallout might ruin unions for a generation, or more. Some unions seem shell shocked by the existential threat posed by Friedrichs, paralyzed by the Court’s intention to declare total class war. But war demands either surrender or a fight.

A red alert should be broadcasted across every union hall in the country and to the broader public, since Friedrichs is an attack on all working people. Union memberships must be educated about the dire urgency of Friedrichs, and be engaged in creating and implementing the strategy to defeat the enemy. By directly engaging members and publicly mobilizing BEFORE the decision in June, Friedrichs can be defeated.

Staying quiet about Friedrichs is a form of surrender. Some union leaders have already publicly surrendered, such as SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, who told David Axelrod in an interview that “by next summer, we’re [the labor movement ] going to lose another 2 million [members] because of a Supreme Court case…that means another chunk of the movement will be gone.”

Ms. Henry surely knows the Supreme Court is a political institution that is affected by political pressure. And SEIU members deserve a leadership willing to apply massive pressure, by any means necessary. An anti union Friedrichs decision is not inevitable.

The AFL-CIO leadership seems equally frozen by inaction. The AFL-CIO President, Richard Trumka, also went AWOL in the Friedrichs fight. Trumka released a short video of him denouncing Friedrichs and telling people that they could learn how to “fight back” by visiting the website “America Works Together” (apparently he didn’t have the time to explain the strategy in the video).

The America Works Together website is bare bones, and uninspiring. The only thing resembling “fighting back” is a petition, directed against the anti-union group The Center For Individual Rights, which is providing the legal support for the Friedrichs case against the unions.

Of course, petitioning your enemy to stop attacking you isn’t very effective. And If the AFL-CIO is only using this tactic in the face of an advancing Friedrichs, their petition will be as useful a weapon as a white flag.

On the other side of the fight is the plaintiff, Rebecca Friedrichs, who has been 100 times more vocal in publicly opposing unions than the unions have been in publicly defending themselves. Ms. Friedrichs is all over the TV blasting away at unions, who steadfastly refuse to return fire.

Sure, Ms. Friedrichs uses half truths and lies in her attacks on unions, and yes she is backed by large corporate groups, but her tenacity is exactly what the union leaders are missing. While Ms. Friedrichs boldly denounces unions the union leaders seem ashamed to show their face in public to defend themselves, let alone lead a counter-attack.

Luckily, there is more to the union movement than its semi-celebrity leadership. The de-facto leaders of the national union movement are now the Chicago Teachers Union, and the various teacher unions who’ve copied the CTU model of engaging rank and file members and fighting back publicly against the attacks on teachers and public services.

This is the way forward. The example of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) should be mimicked by every union, and the book, “How to Jump Start Your Union,” about their organizing tactics should be required reading for every union officer, activist, and staff member.

The Chicago teachers rebuilt the union with member engagement and participation, while successfully appealing to the broader public for support. Because of their successes, the CTU is less vulnerable to Friedrichs than other unions.

After a very public teachers’ strike in 2012 that shut down the Mayor’s anti-union proposals, the union is mobilizing again for another strike, expressing the latent strength of all unions, as the Supreme Court is testing this strength with Friedrichs.

The twin strategy of building a fighting membership by defending their interests and rallying the public by defending their interests as well is the recipe for a strong union movement, while the top down, business as usual unionism is dead, since the disengaged membership it creates weakens unions, making them vulnerable to the Friedrichs assault.

Strong unions demand an active and engaged membership, where members play a significant role, have a strong voice, and are meaningfully engaged in other ways. This also requires a return to participatory democracy, where members actually feel that they are the union, instead of a small clique making all the decisions.

Long time labor organizer Jane McAlevey has been reinforcing the “member first” approach to union rejuvenation:

“The key strategic pivot we have to make is having a ton of faith in the capacities of ordinary rank-and-file workers and in the ordinary intelligence of workers. We have to prioritize our strategy on teaching, skilling up, and training tens of thousands of workers how to fight.”

This is what the Chicago teachers did; they engaged their members as part of a fight back; they put the important decision-making in the hands of the membership, while re-educating the labor movement about a critical lesson in power: “no justice, no peace.”

The teachers responded to injustice by shutting down the school system; the threats of the Chicago Mayor were trumped by the actions of the teachers. People thought the mayor’s attacks were “inevitable,” until the CTU mobilized and rallied the public. Friedrichs must be fought in the same manner.

Every historic victory of organized labor was won with “no justice, no peace” at its foundation, and every other organized group of oppressed people used the same approach to win power; women’s rights, civil rights, and LGBTQ rights required militant organizing that threatened “social peace” if justice wasn’t delivered.

This is the only way to fight Friedrich’s, since it was how unions won the decision that Friedrichs seeks to destroy. When unions won “Abood vs Detroit” in 1977, it was the culmination of years of mass strikes in the public sector, where public transportation grinded to a halt and teachers shut down school districts, demanding the dignity that comes with strong unions.

The pro-union Abood decision wasn’t a gift from the Court, but a recognition of the existing power that unions were actively expressing. The 1977 Supreme Court said publicly that the Abood decision was, in large part, motivated in order to deliver “social peace.” And after the Court gave the unions justice, the unions gave the government peace.

Unions are under attack now precisely because they aren’t viewed as a potential threat. But there is still time to show that the Court has misjudged union power. The Court will not decide Friedrichs till June, and until then labor remains on the battlefield; if unions engage and mobilize their memberships to strike preemptively, it may lessen the blow of Friedrichs, while a powerful strike could avoid the blow completely.

Such a preemptive strike was called for by The San Francisco Labor Council, which called on the AFL-CIO to organize “massive marches in Washington D.C. and on the west coast to defend public services and to call on the Supreme Court to rule against the plaintiffs in Friedrichs v. CTA…”

In Oregon SEIU 49 and Portland Jobs With Justice passed a similar resolution, as did the Northwest Oregon Labor Council, which specially called for May 1st to be the day of national action.

An “open letter to the labor movement” is now being circulated that calls for May 1st to be a national day of action against Friedrichs.

Mass mobilizations on May Day is entirely possible, if unions join with the immigrant rights groups and others who already are planning these rallies in most major cities. A massive show of force is possible before the Supreme Court decides Friedrichs. And if unions show up in force on May Day, they can use the platform to threaten even more aggressive actions if the Supreme Court decides against them.

Doing nothing, however, can have devastating effects. An army that loses a decisive battle without firing a shot can be permanently demoralized, since basic human dignity demands action in the face of injustice. If the union is projecting weakness, members will internalize these weaknesses. And nothing screams “weak” such as sitting idle while someone kicks your teeth in.

When the union acts powerfully, the members feel powerful; strong unions defend themselves. And they defend their community against corporate attacks. Just as the Chicago Teachers Union has been a powerful voice against the privatization and defunding of public education, so should all unions be a voice for the community in the ongoing fight against low wages, high rents, the poisoning of Flint’s water, and other issues that are devastating working class people across the country.

Ultimately, unions must be transformed back into the mobilizing and fighting organizations that earned them the rights the Court is now attempting to take away. May 1st could be known as the rebirth of the labor movement, or the Court’s decision in June may mark its terminal decline.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at [email protected]

“Rather than (irrationally) calling for a fast-tracked Zika virus vaccine program against a benign mosquito virus that is the least likely causative agent for congenital defects like microcephaly, these authorities have chosen to keep quiet about the really logical thing to do until more is known: warn the pregnant targets of the new vaccination policy and immediately stop inoculating pregnant women with neurotoxic, aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines! Doing otherwise might meet the definition of reckless child endangerment or even crimes against humanity.” – GGK

Today (2/2/16), investigative reporter Jon Rappaport of nomorefakenews.com/ wrote:

“AP: ‘Brazilian officials said the babies with the defect [microcephaly] and their mothers are being tested to see if they had been infected. Six of the 270 confirmed microcephaly cases were found to have the [Zika] virus.’ Out of all the microcephaly cases re-examined in Brazil, only six have the Zika virus!That constitutes zero proof that Zika has anything to do with microcephaly.”

A glossary of terms for this column:

“The Elephant in the Room”: A situation where there is an obvious root cause of a problem but those falsely claiming to try to solve the problem totally ignore the root cause that is staring them in the face. (Author Upton Sinclair’s incisive comment applies here, when he said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”.)

“Cognitive Dissonance”: The psychological discomfort felt when one is confronted with new information or a new reality that contradicts one’s deeply held beliefs. (As in seeing the sudden explosive collapse (on 9/11/01) of the three WTC towers into fine powder within seconds and the struggling with the desire to stick with the contradictory official White House theory that simple office fires made it happen.)

“Iatrogenic”: A condition, usually inadvertent, resulting from the activity of a physician, such as an adverse reaction to a prescription drug, surgery or vaccine.

“Correlation does not imply Causation”: A example of a logical fallacy in that two events occurring together do not necessarily have a cause-and-effect relationship.

“False Flag Operation”: A covert operation carried out by a government agency, a corporation or some other secret organization in order to deceive its own people into falsely believing the operation was carried out by enemy “others” – usually for political or economic gain. (Ex. Operation Northwoods, Operation Gladio, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 9/11/01, the Reichstag Fire, Operation Himmler, etc. (Google “False Flag Ops What Really Happened” for dozens more.)

“Conflict of Interest”: A situation in which a person or group is in a position to derive personal or collective benefit (financial or professional) from actions or decisions made in their official capacity.

Most of us are by now aware of the furor over the mosquito-borne Zika virus in Brazil. Seemingly every pro-corporate vaccinologist, academic pediatrician, infectious disease “expert”, and even the World Health Organization have been blanketing the media and agreeing with the unproven notion that this usually asymptomatic, very mild viral illness somehow caused an “epidemic” of thousands of microcephalic (“shrunken brain”) newborns in , an outbreak that made its appearance out of nowhere in November 2015.

Ignored is the fact that there are 35 other countries across the globe that have confirmed cases of Zika virus illness, but none are having any microcephaly reports (although some public health organizations are searching hard for other cases of microcephaly to support the current conventional “wisdom”).

(See the list of 35 at: http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/healthtopics/zika_virus_infection/zika-outbreak/Pages/Zika-countries-with-transmission.aspx)

The public radio stations (NPR, MPR and WPR) that I pay attention to – and usually try hard to trust – have trotted out an assortment of “experts” who have been eager to pontificate on the subject, but none of them have looked at the “elephant in the room”, which is discussed further below. The so-called health professionals from the CDC, the WHO, the NIH and the FDA were academics (or bureaucrats heading up professional organizations) who were specialists in infectious disease, virology, pediatrics, vaccinology and OB-GYN, all professions that have been well indoctrinated in the safety of all vaccines.

All of them were naturally quite willing to fan the flames of fear and paranoia among us lay listeners, and most of us were naturally alarmed to hear about the thousands of mutant  being born with underdeveloped brains.

The Elephant in the Room

But in the whole week of reports that I heard or read about, not a single interviewer asked about – and not a single “expert” or mainstream journalists ever mentioned the most likely triggering cause of the epidemic, and that is the neurotoxic, cytotoxic, genotoxic, aluminum that was in every DTaP shot, a vaccine that had been recently mandated (early in 2015) by the Brazilian government to be injected into pregnant women – and therefore into their fetuses.d by froontinur,he invitations to be interviewed – even he belief that all vaccines and both safe and effective.

Suspecting that some of the “experts” on the radio may have had professional or economic conflicts of interest in this story, I decided to do some independent research into what else might be behind last week’s three hysteria-provoking, media-hyped stories. Besides

(1) the Zika virus/microcephaly story, there were two other paranoia-inducing reports in the news that I noticed, including

(2) a report about a new kind of dog influenza virus that allegedly made somebody’s cute little Jack Russell terrier very sick with a cough (for which your local veterinarian apparently has a vaccine) and

(3) a preventive medical services “blue ribbon” panel that was recommended that every person in America henceforth should be screened for so-called “mental illnesses” (and then referred to physicians who are quick to prescribe unaffordable, brain-altering psychotropic medications, of course).

We all know how pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers (as well as clinics, hospitals and physician trade associations) are constantly trying to grow their businesses and enrich themselves and their stakeholders (by expanding market share whenever and wherever they can). So naturally I couldn’t help but speculate on which financial investment sectors and corporations were benefitting from the latest freak-out news this time around.

Cognitive Dissonance (or is it Willful Ignorance) in the Healthcare Industries?

It’s important to be aware of the unshakable faith that Big Medicine has in Big Pharma’s vaccines. As a family physician, I was likewise indoctrinated in medical school and beyond to believe that all mercury-containing or aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines are safe and effective and that both mercury and aluminum were non-toxic. (Both now are well-known to be serious poisons to every living cell in the universe, not just babies brains.) Generations of brain-washing of the medical profession by corporate-controlled or corporate-influenced professionals – has worked wonders for the vaccine industry, and it starts in medical school. And what physicians believe firmly extends to their patients, even in the face of powerful neuroscientific evidence to the contrary.

Even the Brazilian women who have been delivering their microcephalic babies (or autistic, learning impaired, hyperactive, antisocial, autoimmune, or otherwise neurologically-impaired later in childhood) are probably unaware that they and their fetuses had been exposed to injected neurotoxins (without their fully informed consent being given) when their fetuses were developing their brains, nerves and synapses.

And I’ll even be willing to bet that those healthcare workers who were delivering those babies had no clue either.

Significantly, it is even possible that some of those women were also receiving the mercury-containing flu shots during their pregnancy as well. Knowing that both toxic heavy metals are capable of crossing both the placental barrier and the immature blood-brain barrier of the fetus, those chemicals should have been contraindicated in pregnancy.

At this point, it must be recognized that those Brazilian mothers – usually living in poverty, malnutrition and in carcinogenic areas of the nation – have been chronically exposed also to Monsanto’s Round-up (a known neurotoxin that has shown brain toxicity and small brains in experimental animal testing), Syngenta’s Atrazine (another neurotoxic and genotoxic herbicide widely used in Brazil), mosquito repellants and fumigation with neurotoxins).

Brazil is notorious for the widespread use of toxic chemicals because of their burgeoning agricultural economy. It is the largest user of agribusiness poisons in the world. (Be careful about eating food from Brazil, which will be hard if Big Agribusiness and the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) succeed in banning the labeling of food products as to country of origin.)

I know of no pediatrician and very few family physicians that show any sign of recognition whenever the darling of Big Vaccine, Dr Paul Offit speaks. (Offit is the multi-millionaire inventor of a CDC-mandated rotavirus vaccine whose contagious live viruses are shed for weeks following the oral administration of the vaccine.) Offit, an academic pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he is the director of the Vaccine Education Center, once made the ridiculous assertion that “infants can theoretically receive 10,000 vaccine (antigens) at once without overloading their immune systems.” Despite that outrageous belief, he seems to have open invitations to be interviewed on radio or TV anytime there is an outbreak of whooping cough or measles-like rashes among fully vaccinated populations of children.

(For more on Dr Offit and a list of a multitude of great reference articles, click on: http://jameslyonsweiler.com/2015/11/16/paging-dr-offit-your-aluminum-neurotoxicity-reading-assignments-are-ready/)

Those of you who are also smelling a rat will agree that big multinational Agribusiness corporations that manufacture insecticides and insect repellants will profit from the story, and the vaccine, medical and veterinarian industries will profit from the first two hyped-up stories, and that Big Pharma and the psychiatric and medical industries (and their lobbyists) will benefit from the third.

The remainder of this article will deal only with the very weak Zika/microcephaly theory.

A good example of a corporation that is already profiteering from the Zika virus story is the biotech company Oxitec. Oxitec developed the technology to genetically alter male Aedes aegypti mosquitos so that no offspring would be able to reproduce. Note that there is no proof that this will do anything to contain the widespread Aedes aegypti mosquito population, but for proof of how cunning these folks are, check out the headline that I saw last week from a financial services firm. It said: “Intrexon Stock Price Spikes 20%; Oxitec Subsidiary Working To Control Zika Virus Outbreak”

That headline concerned me, but what really piqued my interest was the totally irrational microcephaly part of the mosquito story and my understanding about the serious neurotoxicity of aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines. My information comes from my extensive reading of many honorable researchers into aluminum adjuvants across the world (in Israel, Canada, France, Japan, but not many in America – or in Brazil).

False Flag Op: Blaming a Mosquito Instead of the Real Villains

The Zika virus has been around semitropical and tropical countries since 1948 with no connection to fetal anomalies for the last 70 years, so my bul…it detectors screamed loudly when the mosquito carrier of the virus was blamed as the prime suspect in causing large numbers of congenital mutations as dramatic as microcephaly. A few others besides myself smelled the strong stench of another false flag operation, and I realized that I needed do my own research.

So, partly clued in (or inspired) by the essays of Jon Rappaport (Google “Jon Rappaport and the Zika Hoax”) I started to do my independent research into this story. What I found out is disturbing, but not surprising.

Starting at the beginning, one can report that the megacorporate vaccine industry, along with many co-opted public health experts, have long been concerned about the relative lack of efficacy of the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine (the “P” in the trivalent DPT or TDaP) in actually preventing the disease even in fully vaccinated children. That reality has been effectively covered-up by the industry – with the help of the media.

In every one of the periodic outbreaks of whooping cough that we hear about from time to time (ad nauseum), large percentages, sometimes even majorities, of the sick children have been found to have been fully vaccinated with the recommended series of three shots, which should have, theoretically, protected them. In very young infants (whose immune system, blood-brain barriers and upper windpipes are at their most immature), whooping cough is much more likely to be lethal, the mortality rate varying from less than 1% to as much as 5% (in impoverished, malnourished, neglected and/or chemically poisoned populations).

Making the Mistake of Trying to “Keep up With the Joneses” in Brazil

In Brazil, public health officials have been concerned with the nation’s rising incidence of whooping cough (it was approximately double that of its neighboring countries). Between January 2007 and December 2014, there were 24,612 confirmed cases of whooping cough (averaging 3000 per year, with only small numbers of microcephalic newborns spontaneously occurring).

The actual annual incidence rates of whooping cough in Brazil between 2007 and 2010 ranged from a low of 0.32 cases per 100,000 to 0.75 per 100,000. Then, starting in 2011, there occurred increases, reaching 1.17 cases per 100,000 in 2011, 2.81 per 100,000 in 2012, 3.2 per 100,000 in 2013, and 3.25 per 100,000 in 2014 (which means that in the peak year, 2014, over 99,996 Brazilians out of every 100,000 didn’t contract whooping cough!)

During the so-called “epidemic” period [2012 – 2014], the mean annual incidence rate for whooping cough was 2.6 cases per 100,000 population, compared with 0.51 per 100,000 in the period from 2007 through 2010, but the relative rate of increase was calculated to be a pseudo-alarming 500% rise (2.6/0.51 X 100% = 520% [!])  The overall case fatality rate among confirmed cases during the eight years of the study was 2.1 % (528 deaths in the 8 years studied out of the 24,612 confirmed cases).(Statistics above were taken from a medical journal article that was titled “Increasing Incidence of Pertussis in Brazil” (BMC Infect Dis. Oct 2015). Ironically, the article was published online the month before the microcephaly outbreak occurred! (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4619034/)

Prior to the disastrous microcephaly outbreak that began in November 2015, the embarrassed Brazilian public health experts knew that Brazil’s high 90 – 95% infant vaccination rates among its infants were failing to eliminate, as promised, the occasional case of whooping cough (which, admittedly, can be fatal in very tiny infants, usually with pneumonia, encephalitis, dehydration, otitis, and malnutrition listed as contributory causes of death).

So they decided on a drastic plan: inoculate all pregnant women with the DTaP vaccine, hoping that by doing so, the babies would come out of the womb automatically immunized to whooping cough – a scientifically absurd notion.

The plan may have sounded plausible to the layperson. It may even have sounded plausible to a health science-oriented bureaucrat or perhaps even to an academic neuroscientist who might have financial conflicts of interest in not revealing what were the real villains in the outbreak. And of course, the plan looked like pure gold to Sanofi Pasteur (the largest corporation in the world devoted entirely to manufacturing and marketing vaccines) and to GlaxoSmithKline (the British mega-pharmaceutical corporation that would be getting the contract for the tens of millions of doses of aluminum-containing DTaP).

No well-designed experimental studies were done beforehand to prove that such a strategy would work, much less be safe. But I suspect that there was an uncomfortable minority of (enlightened) Brazilian strategists who were aware of the known neuroscience concerning the emerging epidemic of vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders. However, being out-numbered, I suspect that they had to resort to crossing their fingers that this high-risk plan would work out.

Crossing one’s fingers is lousy science.

Anyway, in the spring of 2015, public health officials mandated DTaP vaccinations for all pregnant Brazilian women. The vaccine contained, not just the whooping cough antigen and aluminum, but also two totally unnecessary antigens that are supposed to (allegedly) prevent diphtheria and tetanus, two illnesses that, compared to whooping cough, are so rare in first world countries as to be non-existent.

So since last year, clinics all over Brazil were injecting some form of DPT shots into pregnant women, despite the warnings from independent neuroscientists that such vaccines were known to be neurotoxic (poisonous to brain and nerve tissue), genotoxic (poisonous to DNA), mutagenic (capable of causing mutations) and generally fetotoxic (capable of poisoning fetuses, especially their brains and bones).

Conflicts of Interest (and CYA) Keep Big Lies Going, But at What Cost?

Quite often the need to preserve the reputations or wealth of powerful people or powerful industries takes precedence over the basic human needs of innocent people that may have been their victims.  So when those entities are at risk of being humiliated when their greed and  powerstious or guilty actions of the powerfulconflicts of interest are exposed, bad outcomes happen. This is true of Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Vaccine, Big Agribusiness, Big Chemistry, Big Food, Big Finance, Wall Street and the Pentagon.

And, after understanding the facts as revealed above, Brazilian women of child-bearing age – as are all of us – are being kept in the dark about all the facts about what Jon Rappaport calls the Zika virus hoax. The perpetrators of the hoax include officials at the WHO, the CDC, the NIH, the FDA and every major news outlet that has a paid medical doctor doing such stories. They should be ashamed of themselves for missing the essential ingredients of this story and mis-leading everybody with either their willful ignorance or their bald-faced promulgation of the Big Lie.

Rather than (irrationally) calling for a fast-tracked Zika virus vaccine against a benign mosquito virus that is the least likely to be the causative agent, these authorities have kept quiet about the really sensible thing to do until more is known: immediately stop vaccinating pregnant women with neurotoxic substances!

Dr Kohls is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, 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. Many of Dr Kohls’ columns are archived at

http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn.

Are The Payroll Jobs Reports Merely Propaganda Statements?

US economics statistics are so screwed up that they do not provide an accurate picture.

Consider the latest monthly payroll jobs report. According to the report, in January 151,000 new jobs were created. Where are these jobs? According to the report, 69% of the new jobs are accounted for by retail employment and waitresses and bartenders. If we add in health care and social assistance, the entirety of the new jobs are accounted for. This is not the employment picture of a First World economy.

According to the report, in January the retail sector added 57,700 jobs. Considering that January is the month that followed a disappointing Christmas December, do you think retailers added 57,700 employees? Such a large increase in retail employment suggests an expected rise in sales, but transportation and warehousing lost 20,300 jobs and wholesale trade added only 8,800.

Perhaps it is mistaken to think that employment in these sectors should move together. Possibly the retail jobs, if they are real, are part-time jobs replacing a smaller number of terminated full-time jobs in order that employers can avoid benefits costs. If this is the case, then the retail jobs are bad news, not good news.

The reported unemployment rate of 4.9% is misleading as it does not count discouraged workers. When discouraged workers are added, the actual rate of US unemployment is about 23%, a number more consistent with the decline in the labor force participation rate. In January 2006 the labor force participation rate was 66%. In January 2016 the labor force participation rate is 62.7%.

The government has a second official unemployment rate that counts short-term discouraged workers (discouraged for less than one year). That rate, known as U-6, is 10%, twice the “headline rate” which is always the U-3 measure that excludes all discouraged workers not currently looking for a job.

In his reports John Williams (shadowstats.com) explains that the jobs reported can be an artifact of seasonal adjustments. Perhaps a simple way of seeing the influence of seasonal adjustments is to compare the not seasonally adjusted jobs numbers for December 2015 and January 2016. These numbers are 144,112,000 jobs in December and 141,123,000 jobs in January, a decline of 2,989,000. However, with seasonal adjustments the January number rises to 143,288,000 and the December number falls to 143,137,000, producing a January jobs gain of 151,000.

Payroll jobs are the number of jobs, not the number of employed people. Many of the payroll jobs are part-time. In order to make ends meet, some people hold two or more part-time jobs. In contrast to the 143,288,000 reported payroll jobs, civilian full-time employment is about 123,000,000.

Another factor that distorts the jobs reports is the birth-death model. Based on John Williams’ expertise, I have often reported on this effort by the BLS to estimate the net of unreported jobs losses from business closures and the unreported jobs gains of new start-ups. Here is John Williams in his latest report on the January payroll jobs:

“Historically, an upside-bias process was created for payroll-employment reporting simply by adding in a monthly “bias factor,” so as to prevent the otherwise potential political embarrassment to the BLS of understating monthly jobs growth. The “bias factor” process resulted from such an actual reporting embarrassment, with the underestimation of jobs growth coming out of the 1983 recession.

“That process eventually was recast as the now infamous Birth-Death Model (BDM), which purportedly models the relative effects on payroll employment of jobs creation due to new businesses starting up, versus jobs lost due to bankruptcies or closings of existing businesses.

Separately there is a preset upside bias, plus a presumed net additional “surplus” of jobs added on to the payroll estimates each month as a special add-factor. In current reporting, the aggregate average overstatement of monthly employment change easily exceeds 200,000 jobs per month. These details and section shall be updated fully in the pending Supplement.

The assertion that the US economy has been in recovery since June of 2009 is not consistent with the quantity and quality of the jobs reflected in the payroll jobs reports. The number of new jobs is not sufficient to prevent the labor force participation rate from declining, and the pay associated with the jobs is not sufficient to leave consumers with enough discretionary income to drive an economy based on consumption.

The financial presstitutes do not explore these issues. They merely report the numbers that the official releases emphasize and ask no questions about them. Therefore, the decline in American economic prospects receives no attention. The Federal Reserve can even report that half of American 25 year-olds live at home with their parents without causing alarm. They do this not from choice but from necessity. They simply cannot find jobs that pay enough to support an independent existence. You would think that this would be an issue of national concern.

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 areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

North Korean military related activities are solely for self-defense – given longstanding US-led Western hostility and forced isolation.

Throughout its history, North Korea never attacked another nation. It remains justifiably concerned since Harry Truman launched naked aggression in June 1950. A shaky, unprecedented in length, July 1953 armistice excluded a peace treaty. A state of war persists. Washington misportrays North Korea as a belligerent threat.

Any military related activity it undertakes is automatically called hostile, irresponsibly considered a threat to neighboring countries and America – despite no evidence proving it.

Longstanding US-led Western hypocrisy is notorious. Do what we say, not what we do is official policy. Pyongyang seeks normalized relations with all nations.

Washington wants its government used as a punching bag, a convenient enemy the way it treats all independent nations.

On Sunday, Pyongyang announced the successful launching of a long-range rocket, deploying a Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite (named after the late Kim Jong Il) into space, orbiting the earth every 94 minutes.

At the request of Washington, Japan and South Korea, an emergency Security Council session will be held later on Sunday, discussing a nonexistent threat, solely to beat up on Pyongyang like always.

Banning its use of ballistic missile technology is wholly unjustified. Western and regional nations feature it. North Korea’s rights are no less than theirs.

Instead, its victimized by consistent US-led bashing. John Kerry duplicitously responded to Sunday’slaunch as expected.

He lied, calling it “major provocation,” absurdly claiming it threaten(s) not only the security of the Korean peninsula, but that of the region and the United States as well.”

Pentagon officials confirmed the launch posed no threat to North America. Pyongyang  said it’s “legitimately exercising the right to use space for independent and peaceful purposes.” It intends launching more satellites, what Western and many other nations do routinely, no criticisms heard about their activities, only against independent nations like North Korea – bashed for doing the same thing, with no evidence suggesting its space program threatens any nation.

Security Council resolutions unjustifiably prohibit Pyongyang from using ballistic missile technology. No such ban exists against Western and numerous other countries – a notorious double standard.

Sunday’s launch was North Korea’s sixth. Last month, it announced its fourth underground nuclear test, claiming it successfully detonated a small thermonuclear bomb, whether true or not isn’t clear.

US-imposed sanctions on North Korea are longstanding. Congress is moving to impose new ones, including against Chinese companies doing business with Pyongyang, intensifying Washington/Beijing tensions.  The double standard is glaring.

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.

1. Netanyahu heads the only undeclared nuclear weapons entity on the planet yet still ludicrously alleges that non­ nuclear Iran is trying to exterminate the state of Israel with its 100s of warheads in its Dimona secret arsenal, (all of which are outside the inspection of the IAEA), in an abortive effort to damage the agreed Iran peace deal, painstakingly negotiated by the UN Security Council members and the EU. His convoluted political machinations, in Washington and Europe, have resulted in ignominious failure as Iran rejoins the international community.

2. His government also refuses to be a party to both the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions (CWC / BWC) to which all EU members and most other UN states are signatories

3. His right­wing, extremist government supports the continued illegal occupation and settlement of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in violation of international law, in addition to continuing a blockade of essential materials to 1.8 million in Gaza that has received global condemnation.

4. He exerts a wholly undemocratic influence over the Republican­ AIPAC dominated US congress in Washington thereby disproportionately skewing American foreign policy in favour of Israel

5. His family background includes a documented association with terrorist organisations notably the Irgun Zvai Leumi paramilitaries

6. His government is in continued breach of the human rights provisions of the EU Association Agreement that affords Israel free trade access to the European single market

7. He allows the so­called ‘pricetag’ terrorists to continue to persecute Arab residents in the Occupied Territories by the burning and destruction of olive groves and businesses in a program of uncontrolled intimidation and violence

8. He continually threatens to restrict access to Jerusalem’s Al­ Aqsa mosque as did his failed predecessor, Ariel Sharon, apparently in a bid to provoke violence and dissent

9. He is the leader of a party whose published charter requires the ethnic cleansing of all indigenous Palestinians in order to establish a Greater Israel in all of former Palestine

10. Likud’s official agenda to establish the so­called ‘facts on the ground’ is a blatant attempt to abort the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. This illegal program has recently been condemned by China as well as by the EU, Russia and the US and is now expected to lead to economic, political and sporting sanctions.

Note: all the above facts are verifiable in the public domain

The idea that there is anything questionable about coating a sporting event in military promotion is the furthest thing from the minds of most viewers.

Super Bowl 50 will be the first National Football League championship to happen since it was reported that much of the pro-military hoopla at football games, the honoring of troops and glorifying of wars that most people had assumed was voluntary or part of a marketing scheme for the NFL, has actually been a money-making scheme for the NFL. The U.S. military has been dumping millions of our dollars, part of a recruitment and advertising budget that’s in the billions, into paying the NFL to publicly display love for soldiers and weaponry.

Of course, the NFL may in fact really truly love the military, just as it may love the singers it permits to sing at the Super Bowl halftime show, but it makes thempay for the privilege too. And why shouldn’t the military pay the football league to hype its heroism? It pays damn near everybody else. At $2.8 billion a year on recruiting some 240,000 “volunteers,” that’s roughly $11,600 per recruit. That’s not, of course, the trillion with a T kind of spending it takes to run the military for a year; that’s just the spending to gently persuade each “volunteer” to join up. The biggest military “service” ad buyer in the sports world is the National Guard. The ads often depict humanitarian rescue missions. Recruiters often tell tall tales of “non-deployment” positions followed by free college. But it seems to me that the $11,600 would have gone a long way toward paying for a year in college! And, in fact, people who have that money for college are far less likely to be recruited.

The military routinely endorses and promotes the NFL. | Photo: WikiMedia Commons

Despite showing zero interest in signing up for wars, and despite the permanent presence of wars to sign up for, 44 percent of U.S. Americans tell the Gallup polling company that they “would” fight in a war, yet don’t. That’s at least 100 million new recruits. Luckily for them and the world, telling a pollster something doesn’t require follow through, but it might suggest why football fans tolerate and even celebrate military national anthems and troop-hyping hoopla at every turn. They think of themselves as willing warriors who just happen to be too busy at the moment. As they identify with their NFL team, making remarks such as “We just scored,” while firmly seated on their most precious assets, football fans also identify with their team on the imagined battlefield of war.

The NFL website says:

“For decades the NFL and the military have had a close relationship at the Super Bowl, the most watched program year-to-year throughout the United States. In front of more than 160 million viewers, the NFL salutes the military with a unique array of in-game celebrations including the presentation of colors, on-field guests, pre-game ceremonies and stadium flyovers. During Super BowlXLIX week [last year], the Pat Tillman Foundation and the Wounded Warriors Project invited veterans to attend the Salute to Service: Officiating 101 Clinic at NFL Experience Engineered by GMC [double payment? ka-ching!] in Arizona.”

Pat Tillman, still promoted on the NFL website, and eponym of the Pat Tillman Foundation, is of course the one NFL player who gave up a giant football contract to join the military. What the Foundation won’t tell you is that Tillman, as is quite common, ceased believing what the ads and recruiters had told him. On September 25, 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Tillman had become critical of the Iraq war and had scheduled a meeting with the prominent war critic Noam Chomsky to take place when he returned from Afghanistan, all information that Tillman’s mother and Chomsky later confirmed.

Tillman couldn’t confirm it because he had died in Afghanistan in 2004 from three bullets to the forehead at short range, bullets shot by an American. The White House and the military knew Tillman had died from so-called friendly fire, but they falsely told the media he’d died in a hostile exchange. Senior Army commanders knew the facts and yet approved awarding Tillman a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and a posthumous promotion, all based on his having died fighting the “enemy.” Clearly the military wants a connection to football and is willing to lie as well as to pay for it. The Pat Tillman Foundation mis-uses a dead man’s name to play on and prey on the mutual interest of football and the military in being connected to each other.

Those on whom the military’s advertising succeeds will not typically die from friendly fire. Nor will they die from enemy fire. The number one killer of members of the U.S. military, reported yet again for another year this week, is suicide. And that’s not even counting later suicides by veterans. Every TV pundit and presidential debate moderator, and perhaps even a Super Bowl 50 announcer or two, tends to talk about the military’s answer for ISIS. What is its answer for people being stupidly ordered into such horrific hell that they won’t want to live anymore?

It’s in the ads

At least as big a focus of the Super Bowl as the game itself is the advertising. One particularly disturbing ad planned for Super Bowl 50 is an ad for a war video game. The U.S. military has long funded war video games and viewed them as recruiting tools. In this ad Arnold Schwarzenegger shows what fun it is to shoot people and blow up buildings on the game, while outside of the game people are tackling him more or less as in a football game. Nothing here is remotely warlike in a realistic sense. For that I recommend playing with PTSD Action Maninstead. But it does advance the equation of sport with war – something both the NFL and the military clearly desire.

An ad last year from Northrop Grumman, which has its own “Military Bowl,” was no less disturbing. Two years ago an ad that appeared to be for the military until the final seconds turned out to be for Jeeps. There was another ad that year for Budweiser beer with which one commentator found legal concerns:

“First, there’s a violation of the military’s ethics regulations, which explicitly state that Department of Defense personnel cannot ‘suggest official endorsement or preferential treatment’ of any ‘non-Federal entity, event, product, service, or enterprise. … Under this regulation, the Army cannot legally endorse Budweiser, nor allow its active-duty personnel to participate in their ads (let alone wear their uniforms), any more than the Army can endorse Gatorade or Nike.”

Two serious issues with this. First, the military routinely endorses and promotes the NFL. Second, despite my deep-seated opposition to the very existence of an institution of mass murder, and my clear understanding of what it wants out of advertisements (whether by itself or by a car or beer company), I can’t help getting sucked into the emotion. The technique of this sort of propaganda (here’s another ad) is very high level. The rising music. The facial expressions. The gestures. The buildup of tension. The outpouring of simulated love. You’d have to be a monster not to fall for this poison. And it permeates the world of millions of wonderful young people who deserve better.

It’s in the stadium

If you get past the commercials, there’s the problem of the stadium for Super Bowl 50, unlike most stadiums for most sports events, being conspicuously “protected” by the military and militarized police, including with militaryhelicopters and jets that will shoot down any drones and “intercept” any planes. Ruining the pretense that this is actually for the purpose of protecting anyone, military jets will show off by flying over the stadium, as in past years, when they have even done it over stadiums covered by domes.

The idea that there is anything questionable about coating a sporting event in military promotion is the furthest thing from the minds of most viewers of the Super Bowl. That the military’s purpose is to kill and destroy, that it’s recent major wars have eventually been opposed as bad decisions from the start by a majority of Americans, just doesn’t enter into it. On the contrary, the military publicly questions whether it should be associating with a sports league whose players hit their wives and girlfriends too much.

My point is not that assault is acceptable, but that murder isn’t. The progressive view of the Super Bowl in the United States will question the racism directed at a black quarterback, the concussions of a violent sport that damages the brains of too many of its players (and perhaps even the recruitment of new players from the far reaches of the empire to take their place), sexist treatment of cheerleaders or women in commercials, and perhaps even the disgusting materialism of some of the commercials. But not the militarism. The announcers will thank “the troops” for watching from “over 175 countries” and nobody will pause, set down their beer and dead animal flesh and ask whether 174 countries might not be enough to have U.S. troops in right now.

The idea that the Super Bowl promotes is that war is more or less like football, only better. I was happy to help get a TV show canceled that turned war into a reality game. There is still some resistance to that idea that can be tapped in the U.S. public. But I suspect it is eroding.

The NFL doesn’t just want the military’s (our) money. It wants the patriotism, the nationalism, the fervent blind loyalty, the unthinking passion, the personal identification, a love for the players to match love of troops — and with similar willingness to throw them under a bus.

The military doesn’t just want the sheer numbers of viewers attracted to the Super Bowl. It wants wars imagined as sporting events between teams, rather than horrific crimes perpetrated on people in their homes and villages. It wants us thinking of Afghanistan not as a 15-year disaster, murder-spree, and counter-productive SNAFU, but as a competition gone into double quadruple overtime despite the visiting team being down 84 points and attempting an impossible comeback. The military wants chants of “USA!” that fill a stadium. It wants role models and heroes and local connections to potential recruits. It wants kids who can’t make it to the pros in football or another sport to think they’ve got the inside track to something even better and more meaningful.

I really wish they did.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director ofWorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

The question of the Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands) remains one of those unresolved disputes in international politics which seldom receives much attention from the world community. This is a pity since the United Nations has for the last 50 years called upon the two parties to the dispute — Argentina and Britain — to negotiate a peaceful solution through bilateral negotiations.

The call from the UN is embodied in a General Assembly Resolution — Resolution 2065 (XX) — adopted on the 16th of December 1965. It invites the Governments of Argentina and Britain “to proceed without delay with the negotiations recommended by the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples with a view to finding a peaceful solution to the problem, bearing in mind the provisions and objectives of the Charter of the United Nations and of General Assembly resolution 1514(XV) and the interests of the population of the Falkland Islands ( Malvinas).”

Argentina has all along expressed a readiness to negotiate. Initially, Britain had also agreed to open talks on the dispute. Its Foreign Secretary, on a visit to Argentina in January 1966, expressed this view. In paving the way for bilateral negotiations the two governments agreed to cooperate on specific matters related to air and maritime services, and postal and telegraphic communications.

However, London made negotiations on the dispute difficult when it embarked upon exploration of natural resources in the Malvinas, thus contravening the spirit of the UN Resolution. This forced the UN General Assembly to adopt yet another Resolution — Resolution 31/49 — in December 1976 requesting both parties to the dispute “to refrain from adopting decisions that entail the introduction of unilateral modifications to the situation while the islands are going through the process recommended” by UN Resolutions. 102 states voted in favour of the Resolution, 1 (Britain) voted against it while 32 abstained. Britain ignored the stand of the vast majority of nation-states.

It was partly because of British intransigence that the military junta ruling Argentina at that time decided to invade the Malvinas in April 1982 to re-assert Argentinian sovereignty over the islands. It is of course true that the transfer of power from one military dictator to another, economic stagnation and a degree of civil unrest in Argentina were even more prominent factors in the decision to go to war. Argentina’s defeat in the 10 week war emboldened the British elite to strengthen its grip upon the Malvinas. London was even less prepared now to negotiate with Buenos Aries.

But the UN has stood by its decision that there must be direct bilateral negotiations between the two countries to find a peaceful solution to the territorial dispute. The UN does not recognize any British claim to suzerainty over the Malvinas and the surrounding islands. Regional groupings in Latin America and the Caribbean such as ALBA and CELAC also support the Argentinian position. So do most of the non-aligned nations who regard British control over the Malvinas as a vestige of the colonial era. Argentina for its part has since 1994 incorporated its claim of sovereignty over the Malvinas into its national constitution.

What civil society should do is to endorse the UN call for negotiations. Many more civil society voices should be raised on behalf of bilateral talks as the only feasible way of finding a peaceful solution to a dispute that goes back to the early decades of the 18th century. Civil society groups in Britain in particular should speak up. They have a moral responsibility to do so.

As the World Health Organization prepares to convene an emergency committee under international health regulations on Monday February 1, many are now wondering exactly where the Zika virus came from.

Seemingly coming out of nowhere, Zika went from its first discovered case in 1947 and sporadic appearances up until last year, the virus is now in outbreak stage with WHO officials concerned that it may become a pandemic. World health researchers seem perplexed as to the genesis of the virus or at least, the sudden appearance and rapid spread of it in 2015.

Claire Bernish of The Anti-Media points out one possibility:

When examining a rapidly expanding potential pandemic, it’s necessary to leave no stone unturned so possible solutions, as well as future prevention, will be as effective as possible. In that vein, there was another significant development in 2015.

Oxitec first unveiled its large-scale, genetically-modified mosquito farm in Brazil in July 2012, with the goal of reducing “the incidence of dengue fever,” as The Disease Daily reported. Dengue fever is spread by the same Aedes mosquitoes which spread the Zika virus — and though they “cannot fly more than 400 meters,”WHO stated, “it may inadvertently be transported by humans from one place to another.” By July 2015, shortly after the GM mosquitoes were first released into the wild in Juazeiro, Brazil, Oxitec proudly announced they had“successfully controlled the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads dengue fever, chikungunya and zika virus, by reducing the target population by more than 90%.”

Though that might sound like an astounding success — and, arguably, it was — there is an alarming possibility to consider.

Nature, as one Redditor keenly pointed out, finds a way — and the effort to control dengue, zika, and other viruses, appears to have backfired dramatically.

The mosquitoes that were released by Oxitec OX513A, were genetically engineered to need the presence of tetracycline in order to survive to maturity. Outside of the presence of tetracycline, they die. The idea behind the GM mosquitoes, was that they would be released into the wild and would mate with the natural female mosquitoes (only males were modified). The offspring that result are also supposed to die without the presence of tetracycline in their system. The GM mosquito program was introduced under the guise of controlling disease-carrying mosquito populations to reduce the amount of diseases in humans that were spread by mosquitoes.

There is a massive problem with this program, however, most notably, the fact that the presence of tetracycline in the environment is not as rare as one might suspect. Particularly in a place like Brazil.

As Claire Bernish writes:

According to an unclassified document from the Trade and Agriculture Directorate Committee for Agriculture dated February 2015, Brazil is the third largest in “global antimicrobial consumption in food animal production”— meaning, Brazil is third in the world for its use of tetracycline in its food animals. As a study by the American Society of Agronomy, et. al., explained,“It is estimated that approximately 75% of antibiotics are not absorbed by animals and are excreted in waste.”One of the antibiotics (or antimicrobials) specifically named in that report for its environmental persistence is tetracycline.

Back in September 2010, Dr. Ricarda A. Steinbrecher wrote a report in which he stated that there is a known survival rate of 3-4 percent of the GM mosquitoes. He suggested that further studies should be conducted before they’re released in the environment.

Claire Bernish points out that the survival rate might actually be much higher than what Steinbrecher suggested.

In fact, as a confidential internal Oxitec document divulged in 2012, that survival rate could be as high as 15% — even with low levels of tetracycline present. “Even small amounts of tetracycline can repress”the engineered lethality. Indeed, that 15% survival rate was described by Oxitec:

“After a lot of testing and comparing experimental design, it was found that [researchers] had used a cat food to feed the [OX513A] larvae and this cat food contained chicken. It is known that tetracycline is routinely used to prevent infections in chickens, especially in the cheap, mass produced, chicken used for animal food. The chicken is heat-treated before being used, but this does not remove all the tetracycline. This meant that a small amount of tetracycline was being added from the food to the larvae and repressing the [designed] lethal system.”

Even absent this tetracycline, as Steinbrecher explained, a “sub-population” of genetically-modified Aedes mosquitoes could theoretically develop and thrive, in theory, “capable of surviving and flourishing despite any further”releases of ‘pure’ GM mosquitoes which still have that gene intact. She added, “the effectiveness of the system also depends on the [genetically-designed] late onset of the lethality. If the time of onset is altered due to environmental conditions … then a 3-4% [survival rate] represents a much bigger problem…”

Yet there are still more problems with the process of releasing GM mosquitoes into the environment.

Another risk associated with the Oxitec experiment is the potential for the release of genetically engineered biting females into the environment. Since female mosquitoes are the mosquitoes which bite humans, Oxitec claims that its GE mosquito population is an all-boys club. However, due to the method by which the mosquitoes are sorted, the potential for release of female mosquitoes is very real.

As Eric Hoffman writes, “The sorting is conducted by hand and could result in up to 0.5 percent of the released insects being female. This would raise new human health concerns as people could be bit by GE mosquitoes. It could also hamper efforts to limit the spread of dengue fever.”

It should also be noted that eradicating the Aedes aegypti type of mosquito might well leave the area open to invasion by other species who may, in fact, be much more dangerous to human health. For instance, the Asian Tiger mosquito, considered one of the most invasive species in the world, is known to be a carrier of both Dengue fever and the West Nile Virus. What would be the result of an Asian Tiger invasion into South Florida? An eradication of Aedes aegypti might well provide us with an answer.

While many might be concerned about the spread of the Zika virus, from places like Africa and Brazil to the Western world and beyond, or that the virus will become an epidemic in the places it currently resides, many Americans might be surprised to learn that the Oxitec GM mosquitoes are slated to be released inside the United States.

In December 2011, I wrote an article entitled “Releasing Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Poses Unknown Risks to Florida” where I documented the Oxitec plans to release 5-10,000 GM mosquitoes near the Florida Keys. This program was presented to the public under the guise of an attempt to eradicate Dengue fever and is still awaiting approval from regulatory agencies despite widespread opposition from the public. So if it is true that there is a link between the GM mosquitoes and Zika virus, then Florida may soon be covered in ticking time bombs over its swamps, waiting to provide us with yet another public health emergency.

Yet the program itself is actually older than that. In 2009, also under the guise of preventing the spread of Dengue fever, GM mosquitoes were released by Oxitec in the Cayman Islands. In fact, it is this release that has many questioning whether or not the GM mosquitoes actually have a link to increased rates of Dengue fever. After all, shortly after the release of the GM mosquitoes in the Caymans, cases of Dengue fever in Florida doubled. Is it merely a coincidence that cases of Dengue increased shortly after millions of mosquitoes capable of carrying the fever were released miles away in the Cayman Islands?

While Dengue fever had been eradicated in terms of naturally occurring outbreaks in the United States, cases that were research-related and laboratory-generated have occurred in the country for many years. This is because Dengue fever has been of particular interest to the United States government, US Army, and CIA since at least the middle part of the 20th century. There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that the biochemical research facilities at Fort Detrick were conducting tests on Dengue fever as a bio-weapon as far back as 1942. It is generally known that in the 1950s the CIA partnered with Ft. Detrick to study Dengue fever and other exotic diseases for use as biological weapons.

It is also interesting to note that, according to CIA documents as well as a 1975 congressional committee, the three locations of Key West, Panama City, and Avon Park (and two other locations in central Florida) were testing sites for Dengue fever research.

As is generally the case, the experiments in Avon Park were concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, in areas that were predominantly black with newly constructed housing projects. According to H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Zoe Martell of Truthout, CIA documents related to the MK/NAOMI program revealed that the agency was using the Aedes aegypti type of mosquito in these experiments as well. In one of these experiments, 600,000 mosquitoes were released over Avon Park and in another 150,000 insects were released in specially designed paper bags that were designed to open up when they hit the ground.

Truthout interviewed residents (or test subjects) of Avon Park still living in the area who related that there were at least 6 or 7 deaths resulting from the experiments. As quoted by Truthout, one resident said, “Nobody knew about what had gone on here for years, maybe over 20 years, but in looking back it explained why a bunch of healthy people got sick quick and died at the time of those experiments.”  Truthout goes on to point out that around the same time of the Avon Park experiments “there were at least two cases of Dengue fever reported among civilian researchers at Fort Detrick in Maryland.”

In 1978, a Pentagon document titled, “Biological Warfare: Secret Testing & Volunteers” revealed that similar experiments were conducted in Key West by the Army Chemical Corps and Special Operations and Projects Divisions at Fort Detrick.

Like the current situation, U.S. government agencies teamed with NGOs, academia, and other organizations to conduct mosquito-related projects. Operation Bellweather, a 1959 experiment consisting of over 50 field tests, was conducted over several states including Georgia, Maryland, Utah, and Arizona, and Florida. Operation Bellweather was coordinated with the Rockefeller Institute in New York; the facility that actually bred the mosquitoes. What’s more, the experiment was aided by the Armour Research Foundation, the Battelle Memorial Institute, Ben Venue Labs, Inc., the University of Florida, Florida State University, and the Lovell Chemical Company.

The military and CIA connections to Dengue fever outbreaks do not end with these experiments, however. It is widely believed that the 1981 outbreak in Cuba was a result of CIA and U.S. military covert biological attacks. This outbreak occurred essentially out of nowhere and resulted in over one hundred thousand cases of infection. Albarelli and Martell write:

American researcher William H. Schaap, an editor of Covert Actionmagazine, claims the Cuba Dengue outbreak was the result of CIA activities. Former Fort Detrick researchers, all of whom refused to have their names used for this article, say they performed ‘advance work’ on the Cuba outbreak and that it was ‘man made.’

In 1982 the CIA was accused by the Soviet media of sending operatives into Pakistan and Afghanistan for the purposes of creating a Dengue epidemic. Likewise, in 1985 and 1986, authorities in Nicaragua made similar claims against the CIA, also suggesting that they were attempting to start a Dengue outbreak.

While the CIA has characteristically denied involvement in all of these instances, army researchers have admitted to having worked intensely with “arthropod vectors for offensive biological warfare objectives” and that such work was conducted at Fort Detrick in the 1980s. Not only that, but researchers have also admitted that large mosquito colonies, which were infected with both yellow fever and Dengue fever, were being maintained at the Frederick, Maryland facility.

There is also evidence of experimentation with federal prisoners without their knowledge. As Truthout reports:

Several redacted Camp Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal reports indicate that experiments were conducted on state and federal prisoners who were unwittingly exposed to Dengue fever, as well as other viruses, some possibly lethal.

With all of the evidence that CIA and military tests have been conducted regarding Dengue fever, there is ample reason to be concerned when one sees a connection like the recent release of mosquitoes and the subsequent outbreak of Dengue fever in Florida, a traditional testing site for these organizations.

The response to the Dengue outbreak should also be questioned as aerial spraying campaigns were intensified. While these sprayings were claimed to be for the eradication of the Dengue-carrying mosquitoes, the number of people who contracted the illness actually rose.

While it was painfully obvious from the very beginning, that releasing genetically modified mosquitoes was a very bad idea, the possible connection to the mosquitoes and the increase of previously eradicated or extremely rare diseases should be a dramatic wake-up call to everyone.

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

With the news that an American rights group has succeeded in forcing the Pentagon to release more photos of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, while the UK government is trying to prevent lawyers from taking them to court over the abuse that Iraqis suffered at the hands of British soldiers, it is worth revisiting the sorry history of Britain where torture is concerned.

UN Convention Against Torture – Article 10

1. Each State Party shall ensure that education and information regarding the prohibition against torture are fully included in the training of law enforcement personnel, civil or military, medical personnel, public officials and other persons who may be involved in the custody, interrogation or treatment of any individual subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment.
2. Each State Party shall include this prohibition in the rules or instructions issued in regard to the duties and functions of any such persons.

During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British Armed Forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary were using the ‘five techniques’ (wall standing, hooding, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation and food and drink deprivation) as a precursor to interrogation of suspected terrorists.  Following complaints and an inquiry, Lord Chief Justice Lord Parker’s report, published 2nd March 1972 stated that such practices were illegal under both the Geneva Conventions and domestic law.  This being so, ‘no Army Directive and no Minister could lawfully or validly authorise the use of the procedures.  Only Parliament can alter the law.  The procedures were and are illegal.’

That same day Prime Minister Edward Heath made a statement to Parliament: ‘The Government, having reviewed the whole matter with great care and with reference to any future operations, have decided that the techniques…  will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation… The statement I have made covers all future circumstances’ (my emphasis).

Directives expressly prohibiting the use of the techniques, whether singly or in combination, were then issued to the security forces by the Government.  And note Lord Parker’s judgment.  Putting international law aside, no Minister or Army Directive can legally order the use of procedures that our own laws regard as illegal, and only Parliament has the power to make those procedures legal.  It has never done so.

But the abuse continued. In 1978 Amnesty reported on RUC abuse of prisoners at Castlereagh.  Another inquiry followed, and Harry Bennett, an English circuit judge, examined ‘police procedures and practice’ in Northern Ireland.  His main recommendation, installing CCTV to record interrogations, had not been implemented by the time  the new Chief Constable Jack Hermon was appointed in 1980.  Under Hermon the abuse decreased but within ten years – after his retirement and the UK’s ratification of the Convention on Torture, allegations of severe beatings had become common again.

Also in 1978, Ireland having taken the UK to the European Court of Human Rights over the abuse of prisoners, the Court produced a judgement: that the 5 techniques, while not amounting to torture, were inhumane and degrading.  In 2014, following an RTÉ documentary The Torture Files, Ireland was intending to ask for the 1978 decision to be reviewed, as the British had withheld evidence proving the level of abuse from the original case.

Since the 1978 judgement, the UK has added the Human Rights Act to its body of law protecting humans from abuse.  The armed forces and intelligence services should be governed by the constraints of those laws yet, following the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, reports, photos and videos started to circulate showing that, along with a shocking level of abuse and violent behaviour towards detainees, the ‘five techniques’, so expressly prohibited in 1972, were back in full force, if indeed they had ever fallen out of use.

In the case of Iraqi hotel worker Baha Mousa, killed while in the custody of British soldiers, only one of the soldiers involved, Corporal Donald Payne, admitted the charge of inhuman treatment of civilians, and was convicted – for that offence only.  In his evidence to the Baha Mousa Inquiry he said that as a recruit in 1988 he was taught that the hooding of all prisoners was ‘Standard Operating Procedure’.

Ministers and military insist that all personnel as part of their training are taught their responsibilities towards prisoners under the Geneva Conventions.  They are obliged to carry an ‘aide memoire’ card on the law of armed conflict, though how many of the cards produced were actually given to the soldiers is unknown, nor whether any would bother to read it.  For many soldiers giving evidence to the Inquiry, the cards were a distant rumour.  Payne himself had not seen one, been supplied with one or read one.  And as he testified, a full copy of the rules governing the humane treatment of prisoners kept in the guard room was not there to be read, studied or referred to, but simply because: ‘You had to have a copy of JSP 469 as well as the standing orders for your battalion in your guard room.’

Another soldier said that the only training given to soldiers on how to treat prisoners humanely ‘involved watching a very old video followed by a briefing and a short test.’

Colonel Simon Wilson testified that basic training in the 1980’s permitted hooding, although he later ‘became aware that hooding was now no longer permitted.’  Captain Neil Wilson testifiedon an exercise on POW handling in 2002, he had come across soldiers hooding ‘prisoners’ as a matter of course.  He was also told that sandbagging of detainees had been taught at the infantry school at Brecon.

Prior to and during the invasion, troops were briefed on the fact that ‘sandbagging’ was banned.  In a report he produced in October 2003 he said that by the previous February it was clear the training for handling prisoners was ‘out of date’ (rather an understatement). But despite some effort to ensure that hooding was stopped, directives arrived from much higher up the chain of command allowing the hooding of Category A prisoners.

Lt General Brims said he had seen troops using blindfolds and stress positions as part of their training on how to resist enemy interrogation.  He added, somewhat optimistically, that it was never suggested these techniques were to be used by the troops themselves.

Captain Rogers said that hooding was permissible for security reasons, and that British forces policy covered stress positions, although he ‘couldn’t recall’ whether that instruction came in an operational order shortly before the invasion or once he was in Iraq.  Although he was not pressed on this, he was stating, not implying, that they received orders to treat detainees this way.

Witness SO17, a part-time instructor on Prisoner Handling and Tactical Questioning (PHTQ) courses, stated that hooding, stress positions etc. were prohibited for ‘conditioning or any other purposes’.  Anything placed over the nose and mouth (as in hooding with sandbags) was also prohibited because of the dangers of restricting breathing.  Blindfolds were allowed, but if none were available, the courses taught that clean sandbags could be torn into strips and used as blindfolds.

Yet some witnesses, including Donald Payne, said that the TQers (Tactical Questioners) ordered that the prisoners were to be conditioned for interrogation by hooding, stress positions etc. even though interrogators’ instruction manuals barred the practice.  Did they hope, as proved correct, that the soldiers handling detainees were happily ignorant of their responsibilities regarding human rights?

Army lawyer Lt Colonel Nick Mercer tried to correct the situation.  Witnessing the abuse of prisoners, he had repeatedly warned senior officers; had a ‘massive row’ with the commander of the Queens Dragoon Guards about the army’s legal obligations under the Conventions; had walked out of a meeting between British officials and the International Committee of the Red Cross after being told by a ‘political adviser’ to keep his mouth shut.  His repeated protests about the unlawful treatment of Iraqis in British custody was so unwelcome within the Ministry of Defence that the head of its legal service threatened to report him to the Law Society.

And the UK’s most senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel Ewan Duncan, told the inquiry that the US had been concerned that British interrogation techniques were ineffective, and asked for harsher methods to be used, even though British soldiers were already acting illegally.

To sum up – hooding and other practices were banned by Lt General Brims at the beginning of April 2003, seen to be still in use in July 2003, clearly in use in September 2003 when Baha Mousa died, banned again by Lt Gen Sir John Reith in October 2003, and in May 2004 the order banning hooding was extended to other theatres in which UK forces were operating.  And having put the ban in place – again – in 2004 new operating guidelines were issued, not that anyone knew what those guidelines were.  The Human Rights Joint Committee tried and failed to get a copy from the government.

The Intelligence and Security Committee also had trouble.  The Prime Minister had promised to publish the Draft Guidance on Handling Detainees.  As the ISC oversees MI5 and MI6, it repeatedly asked before finally being given a copy of the guidance.  Having got one it was due to publish its findings in March 2010 but publication was delayed again after it emerged that the ISC had made significant criticisms of the guidelines.

Finally in July 2010 the government published the current guidelines and one wonders what was taken out.  What did the ISC object to?  And although it emphasises that the United Kingdom is, was, and will forever be,  against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (CIDT), it says there is no agreed or exhaustive definition of what constitutes CIDT.  Many victims of the ‘war on terror’ could tell them, in disgusting detail.  So, while it gives a list of those practices that it does consider to come under CIDT, government lawyers have wriggle room to argue about any other practices that could be used.

The trouble is – we’ve been here before, on more than one occasion.  As the above record shows, the United Kingdom has not only been complicit in other states’ practice of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, it has practiced these illegal actions itself.  And while some of the international laws we have signed up to have not yet been enacted into domestic law, all of the practices used by British soldiers and intelligence officers in Iraq were judged, by Lord Parker in 1972, to be illegal, and punishable, under British law.  Yet they went on being used, unpunished and, despite the fine words in support of humanitarian law, may still be in use.  Somewhere.  Out of sight.

So when will the United Kingdom obey its own laws? 

Clinton is a Wall Street favorite. War profiteers love her. Dirty deep-pocketed corporate money funds her campaign.

Binding strings are attached, donors expecting and getting multifold benefits for every dollar contributed, investments earning surefire huge returns.

Corporate America shuns Sanders. His support is largely grassroots, from organized labor and individual donors.

It’s a long time from now to November. Momentum can swing back and forth numerous times. Early frontrunners can become also-rans.

Upstarts rarely surprise. Will Sanders prove the exception to the rule? Quinnipiac’s Polling Institute is nationally recognized for its independent political and public policy surveys.

Its polls are highly rated for accuracy in predicting primary and general election results. In December, it had Clinton leading Sanders by a two-to-one margin nationwide (61 – 30%).

Its latest poll results released on February 5 shows a nearly dead heat – Clinton ahead nationwide by a 2% margin (44 to 42%) with 11% undecided.

Assistant poll director Tim Malloy highlighted the remarkable short-term turnaround, saying “Democrats nationwide are feeling the Bern as Sen. Bernie Sanders closes a 31-point gap” in weeks.

Poll results show he’ll fare better against leading Republican candidates than Clinton, growing increasingly unpopular, her disturbing past catching up with her.

Her net nationwide favorability rating is a negative 17. Sanders scored 9-points positive, the highest rating among top candidates.

Trump remains way out-in-front among Republican aspirants – getting 31% support to Ted Cruz’s 22%, Marco Rubio’s 19% and Ben Carson’s 6%.

No other Republican aspirant scored better than 3%, 9% remaining undecided.

It’s way too early to draw conclusions from current polls. Two things are clear so far. Trump remains way out in front as the Republican favorite, maintaining a substantial lead for months.

Sanders closed a big gap, now running virtually even with Clinton. Each primary shifts momentum. A clearer picture may emerge by summer.

It bears repeating what other articles stressed. America’s sham political process is too corrupted to fix.

Big money-controlled duopoly power runs things, both parties replicating each other on issues mattering most.

Names and faces change. Policies stay the same. Dirty business as usual always wins, peace, equity and justice be damned.

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. 

When we think of national security, we think of tanks, jets, missile defense systems and more recently, information space. But what about the realm of the microscopic, the biological or the genetic?

Whether you think biotechnology, genetics and microbes constitute another plane upon the modern battlefield or not is irrelevant. Someone else already does, and they have a head start on the rest of the world.

Genotype Specific Bioweapons

The Project for a New American Century or PNAC for short, penned a particularly unhinged policy paper in 2000 titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century.”

In it, among many other things, it specifically writes:

Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and “combat” likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes.

…advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.

Advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes sound like the stuff of science fiction, and even if it were developed, it would be by the “bad guys,” right?

Wrong. As a matter of fact, the Western-backed apartheid government in South Africa in the 1980’s under Project Coast, attempted to create genotype specific bioweapons aimed at sterilizing the nation’s black women. PBS Frontline’s article, “What Happened in South Africa?” would recount:

In 1998 South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission held hearings investigating activities of the apartheid-era government. Toward the end of the hearings, the Commission looked into the apartheid regime’s Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) program and allegations that it developed a sterility vaccine to use on black South Africans, employed toxic and chemical poison weapons for political asssassination, and in the late 1970s provided anthrax and cholera to Rhodesian troops for use against guerrilla rebels in their war to overthrow Rhodesia’s white minority rule.

While South Africa’s entire CBW program was abhorrent, what is particularly frightening is the use of South Africa’s national vaccination program as a vector for infecting black women with viruses meant to sterilize them. Now that vaccination programs are being pushed globally, there lies the danger that such weapons could be used against entire regions of the planet.

PBS would elaborate further on the CBW program, stating that the South African government:

Developed lethal chemical and biological weapons that targeted ANC [African National Congress] political leaders and their supporters as well as populations living in the black townships. These weapons included an infertility toxin to secretly sterilize the black population; skin-absorbing poisons that could be applied to the clothing of targets; and poison concealed in products such as chocolates and cigarettes.   

PNAC’s dream of genotype specific bioweapons then, is not some far-off science fiction future, it is something that has been pursued in earnest for decades, and apparently by interests aligned to the West, not enemies of it.

Zika and GM Mosquitoes 

Though it is so far impossible to confirm a link between the two, it is troubling nonetheless to see the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus spreading in Brazil precisely from where GM (genetically modified) mosquitoes were released several years ago.

A 2012 entry in Nature titled, “Brazil tests GM mosquitoes to fight Dengue,” would report:

Scientists in Brazil say an experiment to reduce populations of the dengue-carrying Aedes aegyptimosquito, by releasing millions of genetically modified (GM) insects into the wild, is working.

More than ten million modified male mosquitoes were released in the city of Juazeiro, a city of 288,000 people, over a period of time starting a year ago.

The US CDC (Center for Disease Control) would report that Zika virus cases in northeast Brazil were first officially recognized in early 2015, with international hysteria finally reached early this year. The cases seem most concentrated in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, upon the borders of which the city of Juazeiro lies.

What could have happened between 2011 and 2016 that might have led to this development? Could the GM mosquitoes designed to stamp out dengue have mutated in some unpredictable way? And could this experiment have caused the Zika virus itself to mutate in an unpredictable way? It already has mutated once, allowing it to spread among humans more prolifically.

Or what if GM mosquitoes supposedly meant to wipe out dengue were serving as a vector for something else entirely? We can only imagine the sort of stories, excuses and feigned ignorance the South African government would have conjured had its genotype specific bioweapons worked, and black women began turning up sterilized in huge numbers after receiving their “vaccines.”

Mosquitoes as a Vaccine Vector 

Using mosquitoes as a vector to deliver engineered genetic material to humans as a sort of involuntary, inescapable “vaccine” is already a reality. The London Telegraph in its article, “Genetically modified mosquitos could be used to spread vaccine for malaria,” reported in 2010 that:

Experts believe “flying vaccinators” could eventually be a radical new way of tackling malaria.

The new approach targets the salivary gland of the Anopheles mosquito.

Scientists in Japan have engineered an insect producing a natural vaccine protein in its saliva which is injected into the bloodstream when it bites.

The “prototype” mosquito carries a vaccine against Leishmania, another potentially fatal parasite disease spread by sand flies.

And if mosquitoes can naturally deliver viruses, and scientists can alter what mosquitoes carry and infect hosts with, it is possible to engineer viruses to deliver virtually anything into targeted populations much in the same way viruses are re-engineered into vectors in labs today through a process called gene therapy. In the wrong hands, this technology and these techniques could become terrifying weapons.

For those in the middle of the Zika virus hysteria, perhaps it already has.

How Could They? Why Would They?

To answer “how could they possibly do something so diabolical?” we need only think back to 2003 and recall how the United States intentionally lied to the world, then between its initial invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, killed upward to a million people. This includes several thousand of its own soldiers and civilians, many of whom it appears were killed by militants armed and funneled into the country by the United States’ closest regional allies, with the US’ resolute backing.

To answer “why” American and European special interests seek to render any particular population sick, weak and they and/or their offspring incapable of  perpetuating a viable civilization, PNAC itself sums it up quite clearly:

The United States is the world’s only superpower, combining preeminent military power, global technological leadership, and the world’s largest economy. Moreover, America stands at the head of a system of alliances which includes the world’s other leading democratic powers. At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.

A population racked with birth defects, diminishing health and IQs and a lack of physical vitality constitutes the enemy every hegemon throughout history has dreamt of facing both on the battlefield and upon the grand chessboard of geopolitics.

Whether the Zika outbreak is linked to some insidious biowarefare program, an experiment gone wrong or simply the forces of nature, it showcases the danger biology can pose and reminds us of what greater dangers may yet await us if we do not properly prepare and protect ourselves.

Domestic Biotech is Imperative to National Defense 

It has been almost painful to watch the rest of the world attempt to catch up to the United States and Europe in the information war. For decades the West dominated information warfare without contest.

Only now have nations like Russia, China, Iran and others finally caught up and in some cases exceeded Western capabilities. Only now are nations finally investing seriously in information and cyber warfare capabilities. Only now does it seem that nations realize the folly of depending on others for both information, and information technology.

Russia recently decided to switch to local computer processor manufacturers to run on all computers used for official business. This is because foreign corporations making processors imported into the Russian Federation had been apparently compromised on the factory floor with the cooperation of these foreign corporations by US intelligence agencies.

We can easily imagine the danger of having US intelligence agencies getting into Russia’s IT infrastructure through these backdoor passes. It doesn’t take much imagination to think about the trouble US intelligence agencies could cause if they could get inside Russia’s human, natural and agricultural genomes.

Developing a viable domestic biotech industry is not only a matter of economic prosperity, but clearly also a matter of vital national security. Foreign corporations should no better be able to access a nation’s “genetic code and files” than it can its computer code and files. After all, genetic information is not entirely unlike digital information.
Brazil and other nations that have invited foreign biotech corporations to meddle with their human, natural and agricultural genomes are likened to those nations who hand their vital infrastructure over to foreign interests only to find out through Wikileaks years later the sort of invasive spying, abuses and other means of self-serving treachery this access has been exploited for.

Let’s not wait for Wikileaks to tell us 10 years from now just how bad the nations of the world had been infiltrated and exploited through biotechnology before we recognize this industry as absolutely vital to national security and begin investing in it domestically, rather than outsourcing it overseas.

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

Israel and the US are to hold a joint military exercise later in February with the focus on training in ballistic missile warfare, the Israeli military says.

Dubbed Juniper Cobra, the war games are also aimed at improving cooperation between the two militaries, the Times of Israel online newspaper reported on Saturday.

The drill, staged every two years, is said to be in the works since 2014, when thousands of soldiers from both armies took part in a five-day event that included simulations of a missile attack.

The file photo shows US Army officers during a joint Israeli American military training at a patriot battery site in Tel Aviv. ©AP

“This exercise is designed to improve cooperation and coordination between militaries,” the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that it is to be staged “in the context of a long-standing strategic partnership.”

The development comes as reports say Israeli officials have asked Washington to increase its annual military assistance by 60 percent to an average of USD 5 billion a year over the 2018-2028 period.

Under the existing agreement that was signed in 2007 and expires in 2017, annual military aid to Israel grew to more than USD 3 billion a year. That deal was negotiated during the administration of the previous US president, George W. Bush.

US President Barack Obama had reportedly agreed in principle with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in one meeting to increase the aid package to between USD 4.2 billion and USD 4.5 billion.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at
the National Building Museum on November 9, 2015 in Washington, DC. ©AFP

The money is separate from the nearly USD 500 million in annual US funding for Israel’s missile system programs in recent years. It is also on top of the US war-fighting material held in Israel, which is valued at USD 1.2 billion.

US military assistance to Israel has amounted to USD 124.3 billion since it began in 1962, according to a recent congressional report.

Washington serves Israel’s interests due to the influence of the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States. The pro-Israel pressure groups actively work to steer US foreign policy in favor of Israel.

Leith Fadel

Editor-in-Chief Specializing in Near Eastern Affairs and Economics. Al-Masdar News

Stealing Elections Is Easier Than You Can Imagine

Princeton University scientists showed how easy it is to steal elections by tampering with voting machines:

Here’s a summary:

So did University of California at Santa Barbara computer scientists:

So did a documentary filmmaker, to the shock of an election official and poll worker:

Indeed, a computer programmer admitted under oath to creating such a vote-switching program:

Argonne National Laboratories showed that voting machines can be hacked without any programming knowledge whatsoever … using around $20 worth of hardware:

Many videos have also been shot showing votes being switched in real-time:

Note how this machine switches votes even after being “recalibrated”:

Vote fraud doesn’t occur just through electronic shenanigans…

Last week local Iowa poll officials were caught on video changing vote tallies:

A quick explanation of what you’re watching (voter fraud):

The important problem is that the Bernie counters recounted everyone, while the Hillary counter was literally recorded telling someone else that she only added newcomers to the count she had before, and then when asked if she recounted everyone, she lied to the organizer and said “Yes”. This means that if anyone left the caucus site who was supporting Bernie, then they were removed by Bernie’s recounters, but any Hillary supporter who left the caucus site was treated as though they were still there for the purposes of the recount. Thus, artificial inflation of her numbers occurred unless everyone who left was a Bernie delegate, on top of the Hillary campaign surrogate lying to an election official to cover up her (negligent at best, malicious at worst) mistake.

And they left the recount up to a Yea Nay vote, which is just ridiculous.

The Des Moines Register noted “something smells” in the primaries.

Something similar happened in 2012:

The Wall Street Journal wrote in a 2008 article entitled “Will This Election Be Stolen?“:

Since early voting started recently, worried voters have reported seeing their votes flipped from Barack Obama to Mr. McCain in West Virginia and Texas.

We reported in 2006:

The non-partisan and highly-respected government agency, the Government Accountability Office, verified that the electronic voting machines used in 2004 were wide open to fraud, and that fraud likely occured in Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, and other states.

The security flaws in electronic voting machines are so complete that anyone caninstantaneously install software which will change the vote counts. See this New York Times’ Magazine analysis, and also E-Voting Machine an Easy Hack from Wired Magazine.

Exit polling data shows that there was vote fraud.

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and leading reporter Greg Palast have shown that the emperor’s cronies intentionally spoiled, rejected, purged and otherwise refused to count enough ballots to take the election away from Kerry (not that I like Kerry). See also this article.

And spend 10 minutes at this website and you’ll realize that electronic vote fraud is not some raving conspiracy theory, but is real.

Indeed, the following headlines from the last two weeks hint at the magnitude of the fraud:

• Ohio Election Workers Sentenced to 18 Months for Rigging 2004 Presidential Recount; Judge Says He Believes the Conspiracy Goes Higher…

• Ohio Secretary of State confirms 2004 election could have been Stolen

• CNN gives e-voting an ‘F’ Grade

• Black Box Voting – one of the most credible organizations investigating voting issues – has received unofficial reports that political operatives have urged citizens NOT to ask too many questions and NOT to take photos or video of precinct caucus results, warning them that only “conspiracy theorists” would want to independently confirm the announced results.

And President Carter said that the 2000 election was stolen.

It’s not just skulduggery by one particular party …

Sonoma State University professor and Project Censored Director Peter Phillips noted in 2005:

There is little doubt key Democrats know that votes in 2004 and earlier elections were stolen. The fact that few in Congress are complaining about fraud is an indication of the totality to which both parties accept the status quo of a money based elections system. Neither party wants to further undermine public confidence in the American “democratic” process (over 80 millions eligible voters refused to vote in 2004)…. Future elections in the US will continue as an equal opportunity for both parties to maintain a national democratic charade in which money counts more than truth.

Some voting machine companies are partisan Republicans, and other partisan Democrats.

But some aren’t even American.  For example, a global internet voting company headquartered in Spainpurchased America’s dominant election results reporting company in 2012.

“It’s All Over But the Counting.  And We’ll Take Care of the Counting”

Stalin said:

The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.”

Before the 2004 election, U.S. Congressman Peter King said, “The election is over. We won.”

When a reporter asked, “How do you know that?”, King replied:

It’s all over, but the counting. And we’ll take care of the counting.

Indeed, both the Democrats and Republicans rig votes at their own conventions.

As Mark Twain said:

If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.

The rise of neoliberalism across the globe for decades, and its continued resilience since the 2007-2008 financial crisis in particular, forces us to ask why there has not been a more successful resistance against it.

We might start with the changing structure of the working class, especially in the West, and that would be worthwhile, but it is not as though neoliberalism has abolished working class resistance entirely. It is not as though there have not been multiple general strikes in Greece, for example. Additionally, the United States just recently saw a series of urban rebellions against police killing Black people, with buildings set on fire and police cars destroyed in revolt against the conditions imposed upon them by the state. Many of the participants have since been convicted of arson and other crimes and are now serving out years-long prison terms.

The problem is not that militancy is not possible or even at times imminent. Working class people in the US have shown great courage against police terrorism, and in Greece refused to accept yet another round of austerity even with European capital holding their economy hostage.

The alternate question to ask, then, is why has the Left specifically failed to resist neoliberalism?

We might answer this question in dozens of ways, one answer for each Left that exists. But the failure of SYRIZA in Greece to resist yet another wave of austerity measures–in fact to embrace austerity–sharpens and clarifies the problem, posing uncomfortable truths.

That is, perhaps the Left hasn’t failed to resist neoliberalism. Perhaps it has not even tried.

Wasn’t SYRIZA a decade-long project to build up an alliance of radicals in response to the collapse of social democracy into neoliberalism? It certainly seemed so at the time, probably to its participants most of all. And yet the entire project collapsed so immediately and so spectacularly, going from the cutting edge of the international Left to the symbol of all that is wrong with it, in less than a week.

The defining moment of SYRIZA and of the international Left of the current generation occurred in the early morning hours of July 11, 2015. Many histories will forget this detail as just one of many parliamentary sessions, yet this was by far the most significant. In this moment, just days after the spectacular “Oxi” vote by the Greek people rejecting austerity, their parliamentary representatives chose to embrace it. With 149 seats in parliament, only two members of the radical coalition of the Left dedicated to ending austerity found themselves voting “Oxi” along with the people they claimed to represent. It was a stunning moment that no radical should forget for the rest of their life, unless they simply want to repeat these exciting failures over and over indefinitely.

Certainly, the votes improved later in the month, but the collapse of July 11 should not be so easily forgotten. For a brief moment we saw the crux–or one of the cruxes–of the problem of the international Left.

In short, these members of SYRIZA were more committed to the image of SYRIZA as a united coalition of the radical Left than they were in actually opposing austerity when the opportunity to do so was right in front of them. They recoiled from reality and its consequences and embraced the image of what they had built instead. This is the Postmodern Left in practice.

In the face of unrelenting neoliberalism, the international Left has embraced postmodernism, not in theory but in practice, putting style over substance and feel good moments and flashy leaders over the brute reality of resisting capitalist exploitation. The Postmodern Left does not reject metanarratives or objective reality in theory. In fact it embraces the metanarrative of its own centrality to altering the course of history, but when it finds itself at the center of historical development, then history is treated like an ethereal, formless blob that nobody can make any sense of. It simply happens, and no options are possibly available that can shape it. Once the Left is placed in the driver seat, there is no alternative other than to passively participate in the machinations of the system. Anything else is just too difficult

The Postmodern Left avoids building actual power among the poor and the oppressed, instead focusing on self-promotional spectacles which feel like struggle and power but are entirely empty.

The Postmodern Left talks about “class struggle unionism” then carries out pension reform in the name of a balancing the budget and then insist that they never supported any such thing because words are meaningless and have no relationship to objective reality.

The Postmodern Left is detached from reality because it makes its own reality.

The Postmodern Left does not believe in postmodernism. The Postmodern Left is postmodernism.

The material roots of Postmodern Leftism

The Postmodern Left is not the result of the declining relevance of objective reality. On the contrary, it has a solid material base from which it arises, and to which it is shackled, specifically in the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) form. Under neoliberalism, the destruction of social welfare programs and other sources of stability for working class people have been replaced by services granted by NGOs, funded by foundations and governmental grants as well as directly from corporations. This organizational form has extended beyond the service sector and into the Left itself, where protest movement organizations can build up an infrastructure of full-time staff members through many of these same grants. The problem for NGOs, then, is to challenge the status quo without challenging the elite sources which fund the operation. This has proven to be an impossible problem to solve, and instead NGOs have served to reproduce neoliberalism rather than challenge it.

A few examples will illustrate this.

The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung is a global network of organizations based in Berlin and New York that celebrates the life of Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish revolutionary best known for her role in the German socialist movement as a critic of its support of electoral reformism and imperialism. She was later killed by her reformist comrades when they came to power. Meanwhile, the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung has taken her name while supporting the the United Nations and hailing the electoral victory of Alexis Tsipras after he embraced austerity. Her name has become little more than a tool for garnering funding.

DeRay McKesson is an activist who rose to prominence during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, especially in Ferguson, MIssouri. While he is known as an activist, few people can point to what he has accomplished beyond amassing an enormous Twitter following and gaining the accolades of the corporate media. McKesson was also a school administrator associated with Teach For America, a pro-corporate school “reform” organization which weakens teachers’ unions by supplying schools with inexperienced, low-cost and temporary teachers fresh out of college. More recently, McKesson quit his job to become a “full-time activist” working with the Democratic and Republican parties, Twitter and other corporate sponsors to host presidential debates. In short, DeRay McKesson is not really a left-wing militant, but at times he sure looks like one. The problem is, there are so many McKesson’s on the activist scene, typically much less tied to corporate interests than he is, that it can be difficult to discern the difference between a “real” militant and “fake” one.

A group of non-profit organizations recently held a housing and tenants rights conference in Oakland, California. This is a city where two-bedroom apartments regularly rent for $2,000 or more and the Black and Latino working class is rapidly being displaced. One of the sponsoring organizations was recently bargaining with the City of Oakland over a $320,000 contract to oversee Oakland’s Day Laborer Program, which supplies low wage immigrant labor to various employers. Meanwhile, one of the speakers at the conference plenary session declared the enemy to be no less than the capitalist system itself. Recently deposed mayor Jean Quan, who was sitting in the audience and maintains a close alliance with many of the organizers, did not bat an eye at such a statement, and neither will anybody in Oakland City Hall, because this is all just window dressing to create the illusion of radicalism. Nobody who takes $320,000 from the city is going to threaten the political alliances that helped them garner it, no matter how loudly they proclaim their opposition to capitalism.

The Left exists in the general milieu of NGO activism created by such organizations. That is, not all radicals have to succumb to the NGO form, they merely need to adapt to the activism led by NGOs, which is the appearance of militancy, in order to build up a base of support and win reforms, without the substance of militancy, in order to avoid embarrassing important funding sources and allies. In short, the image of something that seems fundamentally revolutionary–Rosa Luxemburg, and the urban rebellions against police terror–can be used by people whose aims are totally compatible with neoliberalism.

The Postmodern Left does not need to take money from the City of Oakland, or even have a tax-free status. It merely needs to confuse such activism as a challenge to the system without identifying its severe limitations. And why would anybody do that? Because this sort of activism is so exciting! And everybody else is doing it. And being the sole figure in the room who says there is something wrong here is a terribly lonely place to be, especially when you are attempting to build a base or recruit people or just mobilize people around anything at all in the hopes that something will be a basis for future struggle. But instead of struggle we get the performance of struggle.

Anybody who attended one of the larger meetings of the British Socialist Workers Party in the past will be aware of the performative aspects of this organization. Having failed to build a workers party during its decades of existence, it must create a performance as though it is a workers’ party, otherwise workers won’t join it, capped off with chanting “The workers united will never be defeated!” Who they are chanting to is unclear. There are no bosses nearby, so it is more likely directed to the workers in attendance, or perhaps just to the party faithful to remind themselves of their commitment to the working class. It is not as though they are not committed–they certainly believe they are–rather the problem is that their commitment is a performance. Rather than build a workers party, they simulate one in the hopes that the workers will join it.

The Postmodern Left is the simulation of a Left, with all of the chants, banners and other paraphernalia of a militant Left with few to none of the acts of resistance. It simulates struggle, basks in the glorious imagery, then wonders why it never achieves victory, which is impossible unless there is an actual battle. Most of the time these battles will end in defeat, so the Postmodern Left accepts the happy illusion over the sad reality. Of course, working class people cannot ignore the bitterness of their own lived reality, but the Postmodern Left generally does not inhabit this world so it is not a problem for them.

On the one hand, Postmodern Leftism has completely failed to challenge neoliberal austerity measures. On the other hand, we can see that full-time staff of the Postmodern Left has done a spectacular job of staving off austerity once we realize that the only jobs they are committed to protecting are their own.

Postmodern social movements

Arun Gupta discussed the postmodern method behind many social movements, describing the People’s Climate March in 2014, a stunning victory of style over substance. He noted that there were “no demands, no targets,and no enemy. Organizers admitted encouraging bankers to march was like saying Blackwater mercenaries should join an antiwar protest. There is no unity other than money.”

How could a march of hundreds of thousands be made so powerless? Because it was run by NGOs committed most of all to continuing their own stream of revenue. All that was necessary was the image of a mass march, the feeling that we are doing something. That this was entirely inadequate to the problem at hand–saving the planet from destruction by capitalism–is not so much a problem if your real goal is to get donations, sell books and set up speaking engagements. In other words, this is not struggle but merely marketing in the form of struggle. It is merely a simulation.

Or, as Gupta described the logic:

Branding. That’s how the climate crisis is going to be solved. We are in an era or postmodern social movements. The image (not ideology) comes first and shapes the reality. The P.R. and marketing determines the tactics, the messaging, the organizing, and the strategy.

One of the most blatant current examples of illusory struggle is the Fight for Fifteen campaign, particularly at the national level, which has led thousands of low-wage workers in strikes against fast food employers. Or have they? One participant describes her experience: “In Miami, I’ve attended Fight for $15 demonstrations in which the vast majority of participants were paid activists, employees of NGOs, CBOs (Community Based Organizations), and union staff seeking potential members.” In fact, many people who have attended these actions will look around and ask, who is really on strike here? There are certainly people who risk their jobs to participate, but in many cases the hundreds of people who attend one of these “strikes” are simply supporters of the idea of low-wage workers striking. The striking workers are far and few between, with a small handful designated as media spokespeople and none others identified at all.

Jane Macalevy is a former staffer with the Service Employee’s International Union (SEIU), the union which runs the Fight for Fifteen in the background, but quietly in order to maintain the image of a worker-led campaign. She has described how illusory this campaign really is: “The problem is that there isn’t any depth to the Fight for 15 campaign. We call it the Berlin Rosen campaign: one hot-shot media firm that’s gotten something like $50 to 70 million from SEIU to paint, through social media, the illusion of a huge movement.”

Berlin Rosen is a public relations firm employed not only by SEIU but also by the current Mayor of New York City and was involved in the bankruptcy of Detroit, the belly of the beast of neoliberalism. They were also employed by the leadership of the United Auto Workers to convince Chrysler employees to accept a contract after these same employees rejected an earlier one that did not go far enough in cancelling the two-tier wage system. In this case, postmodern activism and neoliberalism are one and the same. Berlin Rosen proves, if nothing else, that there is good money to be made in postmodern social movements.

SEIU has since endorsed Hillary Clinton, who does not support a $15 per hour minimum wage. Meanwhile, the most recent Fight for $15 strike ended with appeals to get out the vote in 2016–we can imagine for whom–and has shifted its campaign slogan to “Come Get My Vote.” That is, the movement is being openly positioned to being co-opted by the Democratic Party. This is not usually how a national workers’ rebellion plays out, but might be how a simulated one could be directed.

Richard Seymour described the empty, feel good activism, in which the good feelings of people finally able to express their opposition to the horrors of neoliberalism overcomes the question of what can we do to actually stop these things. Why ask these difficult questions when it feels so good just to finally be marching?

It was, indeed, a joyous occasion [Seymour writes of a march against austerity]. The people thronged into streets barely big enough to contain them, and chanted and sang in notes of cheerful defiance. Those who claim that such events are ‘boring’ are wrong in point of fact, and give the impression of political thrill-seeking. We all had a lovely time. And this was precisely the problem.

A minimum condition for sentience on the left is an awareness that this protest is itself evidence of at least five years of catastrophic failure. There is something powerfully and stunningly incongruous in the subjectivity of a left marching as if in recreation, when we know we are also mourning for the casualties and the dead. It suggests that we don’t really mean business. It suggests that, rather than wanting to shake the walls and pillars to the earth, we want to grab some ice cream and go home.

What Seymour describes is the problem posed by February 15, 2003, the high point of postmodern activism, when millions around the globe marched against the war in Iraq in possibly the largest day of demonstrations in world history. Millions of people flooded the streets and for many it felt like the most empowering moment of their lives, and yet how little power we actually had. Of course, millions of people have an enormous amount of power, but not when they just stand there on the street, even if they are carrying a banner or wearing a political t-shirt. The Postmodern Left can still be heard, from time to time, saying how we nearly stopped the war in Iraq. Nothing could be further from reality, but reality does not bother the Postmodern Left.

“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living,” wrote Marx in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In this case, it’s more like a daydream, a fantasy of struggle with all the imagery of resistance and none of its substance. If this is all we can do, and no more, then we are utterly lost.

Some people have been grappling with the problem posed by February 15 for the last decade. Others are perfectly content to repeat this same process over and over again, as it allows them to continue selling books, booking speaking engagements, recruiting people to their organizations and funding their non-profit organizations. These machinations can continue indefinitely and are entirely compatible with the capitalist system. One can make can make quite a satisfying career and lifestyle as a revolutionary of sorts, so long as it is all within the confines of the Postmodern Left.

SYRIZA’s Postmodern Neoliberalism

If this is the age of illusions, then the rise of SYRIZA in Greece must be the penultimate illusion. Sadly, but predictably, the SYRIZA bubble has been popped and we have all been forced back down to reality. Since SYRIZA’s acceptance of austerity, former SYRIZA Central Committee member Stathis Kouvelakis has written a number of autopsies of what was once the SYRIZA dream. In one especially revealing statement, he notes how so many moves by SYRIZA were so contrary to what any radical Leftist would accept.

For example, he notes the acceptance of an early agreement on February 20, 2015, to extend the bailout, well before the July capitulation:

Its first and most immediate consequence was to paralyze the mobilization and destroy the optimism and militancy that prevailed in the first weeks after the January 25 electoral victory. Of course, this downgrading of popular mobilization is not something that started on January 25 or February 20, as a consequence of a particular governmental tactic. It is something that was preexistent in Syriza’s strategy.

This is the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen, but the facade had to be maintained. Kouvelakis then notes the rapid decline of internal democracy in SYRIZA in the last few years.

What we saw being constructed after June 2012 — step by step but systematically — was a party form increasingly leader-centered, centralized, and detached from the actions and the will of the membership. The process went entirely out of control when Syriza went into government.

None of this should be unexpected. These are the well known consequences of electoral strategies, which Marxists have been aware of for a century, since the capitulation of European Social Democracy to World War One and repeated many times since. Yet, eager Marxists the world over looked to SYRIZA as something different, but it was merely the illusion of something different. In the end, it was exactly the same sort of radical electoral strategies of the past, but the appeal that these plucky Marxist intellectuals and activists could take on the European powers was far too seductive. In SYRIZA, the international Left saw itself, and could not imagine that it, too, might collapse in much the same way under similar circumstances.

The problem is that these strategies appeal to a certain brand of Leftist occupying a certain social position–specifically, intellectuals and NGO leaders–including those who have spent their careers explaining the limitations of electoralism. The appeal of electoral glory is simply too great for these people to be withstood against a rock-solid critique of reformism.

After July 11, no serious Leftists can ever, for the rest of their lives, look a prominent left-wing figure in the eye and take their promises at face value. We just cannot take ourselves seriously if we continue to pretend that lofty promises from self-important, self-selected leaders can be trusted. And yet, this is precisely what the Postmodern Left will continue to do, assuring everybody that no, this next project is not an other SYRIZA, even though they almost certainly said the some sort of thing about SYRIZA itself.

Greece has had dozens of general strikes over the last few years and some even predicted that the working class might rise up in response to SYRIZA’s capitulation. There was even a one-day general strike of public sector workers carried out the day that the first round of austerity was approved by the Greek parliament on July 15. Surprisingly, this general strike seemed to have no impact whatsoever on parliament. “The fight is now on,” heralded one breathless commentary announcing the impending strike. “It is not off: it’s the period of shadow boxing that is over.” The strike came and went, but the mere shadow boxing continued.

We are left to wonder whether or not working people can challenge their own governments if even a general strike cannot alter the course of history. There is, of course, an alternate explanation, which is that at least some of these may have been mere simulations of general strikes, turned on and then turned off by the union leadership with little threat of disrupting much beyond halting a days’ work, after which order was fully restored, if it was ever even threatened in the first place.

If we cannot tell the difference between simulation and reality, we risk descending from a healthy pessimism over the current state of affairs into believing that working class struggles can have no impact simply because it deceptively appears that they don’t.

Simulation hits reality

SYRIZA played out like a simulation of Marxist theory. The collapse of social democracy required a new electoral force to take its place. In stepped SYRIZA, an electoral alliance that assured everyone that they were actually going to take on the financial powers in Europe. Marxists around the world who have documented in detail how social democracy has flailed and decayed for decades suddenly believed that yes, this electoral reform project would succeed, and no, there was no reason why it was any different than the failures of the past. Without a “fake” Marxist Left–the Stalinists, reformists and other revisionists of the past–the “real” Marxist Left stepped in to take its place, heralding the dawn of a new age in Europe, for a few exciting months anyway.

It can seem impossible at times to tell the difference between the real and the fake, the simulation and reality, but ultimately we do not live in a postmodern world. We simply live in a world where so many on the Left act as though it is. Nonetheless, all of these simulations do eventually confront the brute material forces of reality, and suddenly the complete inadequacy of the simulated Left–not just in SYRIZA but across the board–is laid bare for all to see. Eventually, a Ferguson or a Baltimore revolts and the irrelevance of the Postmodern Left to the project of organizing working class resistance is made completely clear.

If there is any way out of this rut, it is to reject the spectacle and the simulation in favor of substantive material resistance. The feel good moment of triumph with a hollow center, the exuberant meetings and chants that people remember for the rest of their lives, just might be an obstacle toward building something with actual power. The image of revolt, and even talk of socialism and–hold onto your seats!–“political revolution” coming from the Bernie Sanders campaign for President will go nowhere. It is the courageous act of resistance and the rein of terror that it must face in response from the neoliberal state that transforms a class into a force for rebellion.

In short, if social movements do not directly hurt the people in power–and not just mildly embarrass them–or empower the exploited and oppressed–and not just temporarily mobilize them–then it may not be a worthwhile strategy. It may simply feel like one.

In other words, if it feels good, don’t do it.

We may struggle to see past the illusions from our current vantage point. No doubt, we will find ourselves in the trenches of class war, only to look outside and realize that the entire spectacle has been constructed by a charlatan. This will continue to happen, so long as neoliberal capitalism provides career opportunities for charlatans, as it no doubt will.

There is a great need, then, to breakdown the facade, to no longer allow the false images of resistance that surreptitiously enable neoliberalism and distract from the fundamental project of resistance. The SYRIZAs of the world will insist that this is counterproductive to their project. And that is exactly the point.

As Syrian forces and their allies complete the encirclement of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, the United States and its regional allies have signaled a sudden increased interest in ground operations in Syria, including US airpower backing Turkish-Saudi ground forces.

While it is obvious the US and its allies are responding directly to the collapse of their proxy forces across the country, their most recent threats to further escalate the conflict in Syria are tenuously predicated on “fighting ISIS.”

The Guardian in its article, “Saudi Arabia offers to send ground troops to Syria to fight Isis,” would report:

Saudi Arabia has offered for the first time to send ground troops to Syria to fight Islamic State, its defence ministry said on Thursday.

“The kingdom is ready to participate in any ground operations that the coalition (against Isis) may agree to carry out in Syria,” said military spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asiri during an interview with al-Arabiya TV news.

Saudi sources told the Guardian that thousands of special forces could be deployed, probably in coordination with Turkey.

In reality, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have played a central role in both the intentional creation of ISIS and the logistical and financial perpetuation of its activities within Syria and Iraq. This is not according only to enemies of Ankara and Riyadh, but according to their central most ally, the United States.

As early as 2012, a Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) document (.pdf) admitted in regards to the Syrian conflict and the rise of ISIS that:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

Latest development in multiyear battle leaves 60 children, 18 adults without dwellings.

The Civil Administration in the West Bank on Tuesday demolished 23 homes and three outhouses in the southern Hebron hills villages of Jinba and Halawa. According to Israeli activists who reached Jinba by midday, shortly after the demolitions, 78 people had been living in the newly-built homes, including 60 children.

These are two of the 12 villages in the area that have been waging a legal battle for 17 years in an attempt to prevent their evacuation and demolition so they can be used as army training areas. The European Union has been closely following the villagers’ campaign, and has repeatedly stated it would view their evacuation as a coerced uprooting of a protected population, a contravention of international law.

Palestinian children search for toys in the remains of their home after it was demolished by Israeli bulldozers, Musafir Jenbah, south of the West Bank town of Hebron on February 2, 2016.

On Monday morning, the State Prosecution and lawyers for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), as well as the villagers’ attorney Shlomo Lecker, announced that a bridging process started in October 2013 had failed. To the shocked surprise of residents and lawyers, within hours of informing the High Court of Justice of this development, Civil Administration officials arrived in these two villages and marked 40 dwellings for demolition. Less than 24 hours later they returned, accompanied by the army, and started destroying these structures. They also temporarily blocked a road leading to Jinba and confiscated vehicles and five solar panels.

The bridging procedure, mediated by law professor Yitzhak Zamir, was suggested by the High Court of Justice. The two sides were sworn to secrecy during this process. However, the Society of St. Yves learned that during the procedure the army demanded that residents leave their homes for a few days each month so that military exercises could be held in the area. The residents objected, leading to the termination of the bridging process.

Read complete article by Amira Hass

“In a way, their interest is served by it being known that he was flat-out railroaded, falsely convicted, that they orchestrated this as a consequence for basically standing on his rights and not equivocating. And the message is… “if you make yourself aware of your rights and you refuse to relinquish them when you’re instructed to do so, there are consequences….if you don’t want to end up like Leonard Peltier, do what you’re told.” -Ward Churchill (from this week’s interview)

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Saturday February 6 marks the fortieth year of Leonard Peltier’s imprisonment on the charge of murdering two FBI agents.

Peltier was an activist with the American Indian Movement in the mid-1970s. He had been called into a community to try to restore peace and security on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota at a time when politically motivated violence on the territory was in proportionate terms rivalling the death count in post-Allende Chile. A firefight which erupted on the Jumping Bull ranch claimed the lives of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams as well as a young native man named Joe Stuntz.

The FBI set about trying to implicate Peltier and two other AIM members by fair means or foul. Despite a number of legal irregularities and demonstrably fabricated evidence, Leonard Peltier was charged with the murder and continues to serve two consecutive life sentences.

Numerous individuals and groups have rallied to the cause of justice for Peltier. These include Nobel Laureates Jose Ramos Horta, the late Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Angela Davis, Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, The National Association of Criminal Justice Lawyers, the National lAwyers Guild, the Parliaments of Belgium, Europe and Italy, Jane Fonda, Peter Coyote, Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, and Robert Redford and dozens of Native American and Tribal leaders, representatives of the religious and faith communities, civil rights organizations, scholars, artists and celebrities.

It is widely believed that the arrest and lengthy incarceration of Peltier had to do with the desire of US authorities to contain the burgeoning American Indian Movement. The central instrument used against the AIM leadership was a program known as COINTELPRO (COunter-INTelligence-PROgram.)

COINTELPRO was the latest variation of a strategy used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its antecedents to control popular resistance movements.

On this installment of the Global Research News Hour, the last of a trilogy of stories dedicated to American political prisoners, we speak with Ward Churchill. 

Churchill is an author, academic and political activist. He is the author of several books including Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement which he co-authored with Jim Vander Wall, as well as his controversial 2003 work  On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U. S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality

In this interview, Churchill discusses the history of Counterintelligence activities in the United States leading up to the COINTELPRO program of the 1960s, the involvement of the American Indian Movement in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and the case of Leonard Peltier who he argues has been unjustly arrested and incarcerated.

Peltier has been diagnosed recently with Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm which is posing a threat to his life. For more details and updates please visit www.whoisleonardpeltier.info

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The  show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CFUV 101. 9 FM in Victoria. Airing Sundays from 7-8am PT.

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

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

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

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the  North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Russia’s Northern Fleet’s sphere of responsibility includes the protection of the country’s sovereignty and of its economic interests in the Arctic Ocean zone. To this end the fleet has at its disposal not only powerful surface ships, submarines, and aircraft, which make it the most powerful of Russia’s four fleets, but also a sizable land component in the form of two motorized rifle brigades.

Recent conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen have demonstrated that land forces are the ultimate guarantee of military success, and even though any conflict in the Arctic would be fought mainly by naval and air forces, the decisive role would still fall to the land component. Which is why the Northern Fleet has a sizable land force at its disposal.

The 200th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade is a conventional unit of one tank and three motorized rifle battalions with extensive artillery, air defense, and combat engineer support intended mainly for operations on Russia’s mainland, with the objective of protecting the fleet’s naval and air bases against a NATO attack. In the Far North, Russia borders a NATO country, Norway, which hosts frequent international exercises by the alliance’s Arctic-specialized units, including British Royal Marines. Further raising the level of tensions, Swedish officials have recently declared they are expecting to be engaged in a major conventional conflict in a matter of only a few years and are interested in expanding their cooperation with NATO and perhaps in joining the alliance, and even the neutral Finland has contemplated NATO membership in recent years. In the worst-case scenario, the balance of forces in the North could rapidly shift against Russia.

Defending Russia’s soil against conventional NATO attack is not the only concern. It is becoming clear that the Arctic will soon become the arena of a power struggle for control of this resource-rich region, just as the Middle East has become in recent years. Therefore, Russia’s armed forces are preparing to play their part in the looming conflict. The 80th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade which was activated in January 2015 and which is based in the town of Alakurtti, can also be used for the same purpose as the 200th Brigade, but its organization, equipment, and training exercises indicate a somewhat different main mission. The 80th Brigade is also intended to fulfill the role of force projection alongside the Northern Fleet’s Naval Infantry units. While the Naval Infantry’s main mission is amphibious assault against a defended enemy coastline, the 80th Brigade is equipped and trained not for forced entry, but for extended independent operations far away from friendly bases on the many islands and archipelagoes of the Arctic theater of operation, such as Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, and Spitsbergen, and relying mainly on air and sea resupply. It could play both a defensive role, protecting key Russian military infrastructure such as airfields and early warning radar stations against NATO special operations raids, and an offensive one by pre-empting NATO landings on any contested land areas of the Arctic.

The Brigade’s recent exercises included close cooperation with Northern Fleet’s amphibious assault ships, which were used for transporting its units to their distant exercise areas. The strategic mobility requirement and the need to operate in extreme conditions with limited logistical support means that the 80th Brigade is more lightly equipped than conventional motorized rifle units. It does not have a tank battalion, and its rifle battalions are mounted on MTLB tracked APCs which have good mobility over snow and tundra. It is currently testing a wide range of specialized equipment, including winter uniforms suitable for extended operations in extremely cold conditions of the polar night, snowmobiles, 4-by-4 all terrain vehicles, articulated tracked carriers specially designed for over-snow operations, and other gear specifically adapted for Arctic conditions. Its personnel, which contain a high proportion of contract soldiers, is also receiving specialized training in Arctic warfare. A recent exercise included its reconnaissance company soldiers utilizing dogs and reindeer as a means of transport during a simulated operation behind enemy lines, indicating the brigade has considerable special operations capability.

This highly specialized unit represents an important military capability which contributes to Russia’s conventional deterrence. The ultimate measure of its success in that role may be that it will never have to be used to fulfill its assigned combat role against a real adversary, who will instead be persuaded to address Arctic-related issues through a normal negotiating process.

Desde hace  un cuarto de siglo, el mundo árabe vive al ritmo  de las las coaliciones.

Y de coalición en coalición, este mundo se hunde más profundamente en la regresión, el caos y la desolación.  De coalición en coalición, este mundo no ha conocido más que las masacres, las violaciones, los éxodos y las ruinas. De  coalición en coalición, la sangre de cientos de miles de árabes ha fluido,  regando no sólo el odio de los árabes entre sí, sino también entre los árabes y los occidentales.

Sin embargo, de coalición en coalición, estos mismos occidentales nos habían prometido sembrar, gracias a sus armas sofisticadas y sus bombas inteligentes,  la Democracia, la Paz y la Prosperidad  así como  los derechos humanos y la libertad de expresión.

Muy por el contrario, de coalición en coalición,  todos los países árabes se han derrumbado, y la Democracia, tal y como se esperaba, ha sido sustituida por una doctrina que promueve el arte de comer corazones y cortar cabezas.

Sin embargo, de coalición en coalición, los bien-pensantes nos habían prometido luchar contra el “Eje del Mal”, el sangrante yihadismo y el horrible terrorismo.

Aunque,  de coalición en coalición, de 2002 a 2014, el número de muertes causadas por ataques terroristas aumentó un … 4500%!

Pero,  de coalición en coalición, los Grandes de este mundo nos habían garatizado un porvenir mejor, un florecimiento cultural y una prosperidad económica.

Muy por el contrario, de coalición en coalición, el único porvenir palpable ha sido el del éxodo,  la única cultura implantada ha sido la de los atentados suicidas, y la única prosperidad la de los campos de refugiados y la destrucción del patrimonio ancestral.

De coalición en coalición,  sí que han tenido éxito  para ofrecer  al mundo árabe una nueva estación,  que  ha sido envuelta en papel de flores para hacerla joven, para hacerla bella, para hacerla  ” primavera”.

Refugiados sirios en el cruce Pesh Khabur en Dohuk (430 km al noroeste de Bagdad, Irak), Martes, 20 de agosto 2013

(AP / Hadi Mizban)

Muy al contrario,  ninguna estación de la historia  ha sido tan funesta: 1,4 millones de víctimas (muertos y heridos), 833 mil millones de dólares en pérdidas y un número astronómico de secuelas para siempre grabadas en los cuerpos, en las mentes y en los ideales.

De coalición en coalición, hemos visto a los coaligados aplicarse en financiar el terrorismo, promover el yihadismo y armar la disidencia.

De coalición en coalición,  hemos visto a los coaligados participar en el bombeo del petróleo, en el saqueo de los tesoros arqueológicos  y en la destrucción de las infraestructuras del mundo árabe.

De coalición en coalición, las guerras religiosas han sido fomentadas,  los cismas han sido exacerbados, El Islám ha sido profanado y los musulmanes diabolizados.

De coalición en coalición,  los caminos de la trashumancia humana han sido abiertos a través de la tierra, hasta fronteras erizadas de alambres de púas  y a través del mar hasta una playa  en la que un pequeño niño de chandal rojo se ha dormido, mirando la arena mojada, para no ver la crueldad de los humanos.

En los tiempos benditos de las coaliciones, el mundo árabe no  para de sangrar, no deja de llorar, no acaba de colapsar.

Ahmed Bensaada

Versión original en francés: Au temps béni des coalitions

Traducción: Purificación González de la Blanca

Analisi, dicembre 2015 – Ai bei tempi delle coalizioni, per il mondo arabo è un continuo sanguinare, un continuo piangere, una rovina senza fine (nella foto, rifugiati siriani in Iraq)

Rifugiati siriani al posto di frontiera di Peshkhabour a Dahuk (430 km a nord-ovest di Baghdad, Iraq), il 20 agosto 2013 

(AP / Hadi Mizban)

http://ossin.org/uno-sguardo-al-mondo/analisi/1882-ai-bei-tempi-delle-coalizioni

Secondo Martti Ahtisaari, nessun seguito ha avuto la presentazione di questa proposta ai rappresentati statunitense, britannico e francese.

Muy interesante entrevista de Nordine Azzouz, publicada en el periódico argelino Reporters, a nuestro compañero Ahmed Bensaada,  sobre sus libros: Arabesco Americano y Arabescos$,   y concretamente sobre las llamadas “primaveras árabes”, que “solo han generado el caos, la muerte, el odio, el exilio y la desolación”. Importante leerla para conocerlo todo sobre las  más que orquestadas “Primaveras”.

Purificación González de la Blanca
Ojos para la Paz

Ahmed Bensaada, universitario argelino instalado en Canadá desde hace muchos años, sigue atentamente las mutaciones y trastornos en el Magreb y en Oriente Medio, a los cuales ha consagrado numerosos escritos, coloquios y conferencias…Sobre las Primaveras árabes él ha mantenido desde el principio una mirada muy crítica, que ha sintetizado en un libro, Arabesco Americano, y luego Arabesco$, una nueva versión corregida y enriquecida, de una actualidad ardiente más que nunca.Cinco años después! 

ENTREVISTA REALIZADA POR NORDINE AZZOUZ

Traducción: Purificación González de la Blanca

Las ruinas de la ciudad siria de Homs – 10 de mayo 2014 – (Ghassan Najjar/Reuters)

Periodista: Cinco años han pasado desde lo que se ha llamado  las “primaveras árabes”. El balance de la situación, vemos, no es muy satisfactorio, incluso catastrófico en muchos de los países concernidos . ¿Por qué, a su parecer?

Ahmed Bensaada: “No es muy satisfactorio”, dice usted? Estos grandes  trastornos  que el bien pensante Occidente  ha precipitadamente y falaciosamente bautizado como “Primavera” no ha  generado más que el caos, la muerte, el odio, el exilio y la desolación en numerosos  países árabes.   Sería preciso tal vez  preguntar a los ciudadanos de los países árabes “primaverizados” si la desastrosa situación en la que ello viven  puede ser calificada de primaveral.

Y las cifras son elocuentes al respecto. Un estudio reciente ha mostrado  que esta funesta estación  ha causado, en cinco años, más de 1,4 millones de víctimas (muertos y heridos),  a los que hay que sumar más de 14 millones de refugiados. Esta “primavera”  ha costado a los países árabes sobre 833 mil millones,  de los cuales  461 mil millones corresponden a párdidas en infraestructuras deestruidas y lugares históricos devastados.  Por otra parte, la región MENA (Oriente Medio y Norte de África ) ha perdido más de 103 millones de turistas, una verdadera calamidad   para la economía.

Con  la publicación de la primera versión de mi libro “Arabesco Americano” (abril de 2011),  he puesto en evidencia  la injerencia extranjera en estas revueltas que han afectado a la calle árabe y la no espontaneidad de estos movimientos. Es cierto que  los países árabes estaban antes de estos acontecimientos, en un cierto estado de decrepitud: ausencia de alternancia política,  alto desempleo, democracia embrionaria, la infelicidad, derechos fundaentales vulnerados,  falta de libertad de expresión, la corrupción a todos los niveles, el favoritismo,  fuga de cerebros, etc. Todo esto representa un “caldo de cultivo” para la desestabilización. Pero aunque  las reivindicaciones de la calle árabe son reales, las investigaciones llevadas a cabo han demostrado que los jóvenes  manifestantes y ciberactivistas árabes  habían sido instruidos y financiados  por organizaciones estadounidenses especializadas en la “exportación” de la democracia, como la USAID, la  NED, Freedom House  o la Open Society del  multimillonario George Soros.  Y todo esto, años antes de la auto-inmolación de Mohamed Bouazizi.

Estos manifestantes que han paralizado las ciudades árabes y que han desacreditado a los viejos autócratas árabes que se sientan en el poder  desde hace décadas, sin embargo, representan sin embargo  una juventud llena de pasión y de promesas.

Una juventud educada,  empuñando con brío las técnicas de resistencia no violenta y sus consignas. Estas mismas técnicas que han sido teorizadas por el filósofo estadounidense Gene Sharp y  puestas en práctica por los activistas serbios de Otpor  en las revoluciones de colores. Estas mismas técnicas enseñadas  a los jóvenes  manifestantes árabes por los fundadores de Otpor en su centro CANVAS (Center for Applied Acción Noviolenta y Estrategias) diseñadas especialmente para la formación de los disidentes en ciernes.

Una juventud  entusiasta de las  nuevas tecnologías cuyos líderes han sido puestos en el blanco, formados, entrenados en la red y sostenidos por los gigantes  estadounidenses del Net, con la mediación de organismos de Estados Unidos como AYM (Alianza de Movimientos Juveniles).

Pero así como los activistas de las revoluciones de colores, los ciberdisidentes árabes no son entrenados nada más que para descabezar  los regímenes. Ellos son en realidad – probablemente sin darse cuenta –  comandados  para llevar a cabo la caída de la cima de la pirámide del poder. Ellos no tienen competencia  alguna sobre el camino  a seguir cuando los autócratas son cazados y el poder queda vacante. Ellos no tienen ninguna capacidad política para conducir esta transición democrática que debiera seguir,  este importante cambio.

En un artículo sobre las revoluciones de colores escrrito en 2007 por el periodista Hernando Calvo Ospina en las columnas de Le Monde diplomatique, leemos: “la distancia entre gobernantes y gobernados facilita la tarea del NED y de su red de organizaciones, que fabrican miles de “disidentes” gracias a los dólares y a la  publicidad.  Una vez logrado el cambio, la mayor parte de entre ellos, así como sus organizaciones de todo tipo,  desaparecen sin gloria de la circulación”.

Por lo tanto, una vez que el papel atribuido a los ciberactivistas  se acaba,  son las fuerzas políticas en el lugar, al acecho de cualquier cambio importante, las que ocupan el vacío creado por la desaparición del antiguo régimen. En el caso de Túnez y Egipto, fueron los movimientos islamistas los que aprovecharon en un primer momento la situación,  evidentemente  ayudados por sus aliados tales como Estados Unidos, algunos  países occidentales y   árabes, y Turquía, que debía servir de modelo.

Está claro que esta “primavera” no tiene nada que ver con las consignas coreadas por los jóvenes ciberactivistas activistas en las calles árabes y que la democracia no es más que un señuelo. En efecto, ¿cómo no plantearse preguntas serias sobre esta  “la primavera” cuando se constata que los únicos países árabes que han sufrido esta estación  son las repúblicas? ¿Es una casualidad que ninguna monarquía árabe haya sido visto tocada por este tsunami “primaveral”, como si estos países fueran santuarios de la democracia, de la libertad y de los derechos humanos? La única tentativa de sublevación anti-monárquica, la de Bahrein,  ha sido violentamente reprimida por la colaboración militar del Consejo de Cooperación del Golfo (CCG), el silencio cómplice de los grandes medios de comunicación y la connivencia de los políticos sin embargo, tan locuaces cuando eventos similares han tocado algunas repúblicas árabes.

Esta “primavera” tiende a la desestabilización de algunos países árabes en el objetivo en un marco geopolítico  mucho más grande, muy ciertamente el del   “Gran Medio Oriente”. Esta doctrina preconiza  la remodelación de las fronteras de una región geográfica, reagrupando a los países árabes  y a algunos países del entorno,  poniendo así  fin a las herencias  de los Acuerdos Sykes-Picot. Lanzada bajo el liderazgo del presidenteG.W. Bush y sus halcones neoconservadores, este proyecto se basa en una idea teorizado en 1982 por Oded Yinon, un alto funcionario del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Israel. El “Plan Yinon” como se le llama, tenía nicialmente como objetivo  “deshacer todos los estados árabes existentes y reorganizar el conjunto de la región  en pequeñas entidades frágiles, más  maleables e incapaces de hacer frente a los Israelíes”.

Y la partición desgraciadamente está en curso…

A propósito del “Plan Yinon”

En ese marco, Túnez sigue siendo una excepción. ¿Cómo se puede explicar?

Ciertamente, en comparación con Libia, Siria o Yemen, la situación en Túnez puede parecer interesante.  Pero no lo es en absoluto, Túnez no es un modelo exitoso tal y como quieren hacernos creer  los grandes medios de comunicación.

Y este no es el Premio Nobel otorgado recientemente a Túnez  el que ha cambiado algo allí. Cuando vemos a los que fueron  galardonados en los últimos años, uno se pregunta seriamente a quien sirve este premio. Y los  tunecinos que ellos mismos viven  desde hace cinco años la “primaverización” de su país saben algo. Comentando este quinto aniversario, algunos bloggers no han sido suaves. “Único paíes democrático del Magreb democrático + Premio Nobel, todo lo demás es peor que el período ZABA (Zine El Abidine Ben Ali).” O, con un toque de humor: “Injusticia social, tortura, impunidad, no  importa somos premios  Nobel.”

En una reciente entrevista con Le Figaro, mi amigo de Túnez, filósofo Mezri Haddad, he declarado: “En todas partes, comprendido Túnez que se presenta como el buen paradigma revolucionario y que ha recibido  el Premio Nobel de la Paz falta  borrar su deuda externa que se ha vulto vertiginosa  en menos de  5 años, y apoyar su economía,  hoy agonizante, la “primavera árabe” ha destruido más de lo que se ha construido”.

Antes de agregar:   “Desde 2011, Túnez se ha convertido en el primer país exportador  de mano de obra islámo-terrorista, tanto en Libia como en Siria. Los Informes de las Naciones Unidas  son abrumadores para el Túnez que yo conozco.  El autor del  último atentado suicida en  Zliten, en Libia,  es un tunecino, como el que ha atacado la mezquita de Valence, o el que acaba de ser abatido ante la Comisaría del XVIIIe   distrito de París”.

En efecto, Túnez sigue siendo, con mucho, el mayor proveedor del mundo de jihadistas del Daesh en Siria. Triste récord para un país que quiere pasar por la excepción que justifica la terminología primaveral.

Y esto, sin contar los asesinatos políticos, los atentados terroristas indiscriminados que han eclipsado el país y las historias sórdidas de “Jihad al-nikah” popularizada por los jóvenes tunecinos  radicalizados.

Y no es el traslado de la familia de Goncourt al Museo del Bardo todavía marcado por las cicatrices del atentado del 18 de marzo 2015 el que le dará el sello de un país que tiene una transición democrática exitosa. Este “impulso” francés no borará de ninguna manera la equivocación de la ministra francesa, Michèle Alliot-Marie, que había propuesto el  modelo francés a  la policía de Ben Ali  “para resolver la situación de seguridad”,   la historia era  poner fin a la impertinencia de los manifestantes  que habían invadido la Avenida Bourguiba.

Y esos manifestantes que enarbolaban su juventud como bandera  de un futuro radiante, qué  piensan, después de haber empujado al presidente Ben Ali en la salida, de la edad de estos “dinosaurios” políticos que lo han sustituido? Juzgue usted mismo: Moncef Marzouki (71 años), Rached Ghannouchi (75 años) y, especialmente, el actual Presidente, Beji Caid Essebsi (90 años). ¿Se puede realmente  creer que   una revuelta joven, calificada como “faceboukiana”  puede ser representado por gerontócratas, antiguos caciques de  regímenes vilipendiados,  islamistas belicosos que confunden el interés del país con el de ellos,   supranacional, de su hermandad?

Pensaban que un día una ley electoral sería votada para rehabilitar a los antiguos partidarios de Ben Ali que lucharon ferozmente?

¿Habrían imaginado que cinco años – casi día a día  – después de la salida de Ben Ali,  Ridha Yahyaoui, un joven diplomado y desempleado tunecino, se provocaría la mure  en Kasserine para protestar contra el favoritismo en la contratación,  flagelo que ellos habían denunciado y contra el cual luchaban? Y los disturbios que siguieron a esta tragedia duramente  reprimidos ?

¿Qué ha tenido de positivo en esta “primavera” tunecina si, cinco años más tarde, Yahyaoui imita a Bouazizi por las mismas razones?

Los disturbios en Kasserine (enero de 2016)

¿Qué diferencia o matiz analítico se debe tener, en su opinión, en el análisis de las realidades actuales en países como Siria o Libia, países que nos preocupan principalmente por su vecindad y proximidad?

La guerra civil que se está librando actualmente en Siria tiene curiosas  similitudes con la que se ha mantenido en Libia: a) el epicentro inicial de la revuelta siria no estaba situado en la capital, sino en una región fronteriza (a diferencia de Túnez y Egipto); b) una “nueva edad” bandera apareció como estndarte  de los insurgentes; c) la fase no violenta de la revuelta fue muy corta; d) la implicación militar extranjera (directa o indirecta) ha transformado  rápidamente los disturbios no violentos en una sangrienta guerra civil.

En efecto,   cuando la teoría de Gene Sharp no funciona  y  las enseñanzas de la CANVAS  no tienen éxito como en el caso de Libia y de  Siria, las manifestaciones  se convierten rápidamente en una guerra civil. Esta metamorfosis se opera gracias a una ostensible  injerencia extranjera incluso de  los mismos países mencionados anteriormente a través de la OTAN (como en Libia) o de coaliciones heterogéneas (como en Siria).

Así, los países occidentales (con la ayuda de sus aliados árabes y regionales) pueden pasar, sin escrúpulos, de un enfoque no violento a lo Gene Sharp en una guerra abierta, sangrienta y asesina donde  fluye la sangre árabe.

La efímera fase sharpiana de las manifestaciones populares ha sido incluso utilizada para justificar la intervención militar de la OTAN en Libia o de la coalición  anti-Bashar en Siria. La Resolución 1973 que permitió la destrucción de Libia fue justificada por la falsa acusación según la cual las fuerzas leales a Gaddafi habrían provocado  no menos de 6.000 muertes en la población civil. Numerosos países también han estimado que los Estados Unidos, Francia, Gran Bretaña y sus aliados han desvirtuado y abusado de esta resolución permitiendo a  la OTAN  sobrepasar el mandato del Consejo de Seguridad. Se trata en particular de Rusia y de  China, que comprendiendo  ” la lección de la Resolución 1973″, oponen sus vetos a cualquier resolución de la ONU de condena  a Siria  o a su   presidente,  Bashar Al-Assad. Si no uera por esto, las principales cadenas de televisión del mundo entero nos habrían mostrado las  imágenes del presidente Bashar, con el corazón devorado o la cabeza arrancada  por  los yihadistas especializados en la materia que pululan en Siria gracias a la colaboración activa de los Occidentales  y sus aliados.

Por otra parte, el estudio de los correos electrónicos de la señora  Hillary Clinton ha mostrado que los motivos de la eliminación de Kadhafi no tenían nada que ver con cualquier voluntad de democratización  de Libia, sino que ponían de relevancia intereses estratégicos, económicos, políticos y un famoso tesoro en oro. Lo mismo sucede en el caso del  presidente sirio.

También es interesante anotar que las investigaciones muy serias llevadas a cabo por expertos de Estados Unidos han mostrado  que la guerra en Libia no era necesaria, que habría podido ser evitada  si los Estados Unidos lo hubieran permitido,  y que la administración  norteamericana facilitó  el suministro de armas y apoyo militar a los rebeldes vinculados a Al Qaeda.

Por otra parte, el Contralmirante de  los EE.UU. retirado,  Charles R. Kubic  ha revelado  que Gadafi estaba dispuesto a partir  para permitir el establecimiento de un gobierno de transición con dos condiciones. La primera era  la de asegurarse, después de su partida, que iba a quedar una  fuerza militar  para acabar con Al Qaeda,  y, la segunda,  pedía un salvoconducto así como el levantamiento de sanciones  contra él, su familia y sus seguidores.

Grabaciones secretas acusan a Hillary Clinton en el caso de Libia

Por su parte, el ex presidente de Finlandia (1994-2000) y Premio Nobel de la Paz (2008), Martti Ahtisaari, reconoció haber sido mandatado por la administración rusa  para encontrar una solución pacífica al conflicto sirio y esto desde principios  del año 2012.

El plan de resolución del conflicto sirio propuesto a los representantes de los cinco países miembros permanentes del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas comprendía  tres puntos: 1) no armar a la oposición; 2) organizar un diálogo entre la oposición y Bashar Al-Assad; 3) permitir a Bashar Al-Assad  retirarse elegantemente.

Según Martti Ahtisaari, ninguna opción fue tomada después de la presentación de esta propuesta a los representantes  estadounidense, británico y francés.

Parece por lo tanto claro que el objetivo de esta “primavera” no tiene nada que ver con la democracia y los derechos humanos en Libia y Siiria (y en otros lugares de la región MENA), sino  la eliminación física de los presidentes Gadafi y Bashar Al Assad, incluso destruir a  estos dos países y  liquidar a miles de árabes,  y financiar a jihadistas  comedores de corazones y cortadores de  cabezas.  Y   se ofenden  cuando ellos vuelven sus armas  contra sus creadores.

Muy por el contrario, lo que se llama “primavera” en los casos de Libia y Siria son ejemplos pedagógicos  de guerras civiles fomentadas desde el extranjero en virtud de razones de derecho de los derechistas.

Actualmente, ambos países son tierras de inestabilidad  geopolítica y guaridas de jihadistas daeschianos,  abiertamente financiados  por los países occidentales, los países árabes y  potencias regionales.

En el marco de esta fuerte turbulencia política y de injerencia  exterior agresiva, Argelia ha sido un blanco de elección y queda  siempre. Recordemos que los jóvenes argelinos han también participado en la formación de Serbes de CANVAS y quenumerosos  países han apostado por la  “primaverización” (violenta o no) de Argelia. Los malos recuerdos del decenio negro  y lo efímero de la  CNCD  (Coordinación Nacional para el Cambio y la Democracia) han decidido lo contrario.

Actualmente, la situación de Libia es evidentemente muy preocupante para la seguridad y estabilidad de Argelia. Algunos observadores estiman en 300 el número de milicias armadas en Libia y advierten   de que están fuertemente relacionados con sus homólogos tunecinos. En efecto,  de acuerdo con un informe de la Comisión de Asuntos Exteriores de la Asamblea Nacional francesa  fechado en noviembre último, ” el conjunto  de los atentados recientes en Túnez  han sido organizados y planificados desde Libia”

Así, y contrariamente a las declaraciones belicosas y malintencionadas de  Nicolas Sarkozy, – uno de los mayores responsables de la destrucción de Libia – es más bien  Argelia  quien ahora  debería quejarse de su “emplazamiento geografíco” fronterizo  con Túnez y Libia. Esto es aún más verdad que la colaboración entre Daech en Libia y los movimientos terroristas del Sahel es cada vez más evidente, lo que plantea todavía más dificultades  a Argelia para asegurar su Sur.

Se ve por tanto, bien  que incluso si Argelia no  ha sido directamente tocada por esta lúgubre estación, la “primaverización”  de sus vecinos le plantea desafíos mayores.

La declaración incendiaria de Nicolas Sarkozy contra Argelia

En su libro “Arabesque$*” que se acaba de apreciar una nueva edición revisada y enriquecida,  la tesis que defiende  es la de una gran implicación y compromiso norteamericano que usted identifica ni más ni menos que con la desestabilización de los estados y regímenes en el mundo árabe. ¿Hasta qué punto, más allá de la tesis, y sobre las cuestiones de hecho concretas, continúa  defendiendo este análisis?

Cuando fue publicada  la primera versión de mi libro titulado “Arabesco Americano”  en abril de 2011, fue recibida con mucho escepticismo porque la tesis  que allí desarrollaba se oponía a la euforia  “primaveral” ambiente y venía a poner  un bemol a una unanimida estática. Esta beatitud  frente a una  “revolución” árabe  inmaculada, orquestada por una hermosa juventud educada e impetuosa no debía en ningún caso  ser manchada por  acusaciones que, en cualquier caso, no podían más que ser calumniosas. Este discurso ha sido mantenido por los grandes medios de comunicación y muchos expertos “catódicos”  donde subsisten todavía algunos especímenes reticentes.

Hay que reconocer que oponerse al romanticismo  revolucionario que llegó a su paroxismo, apenas unas semanas después de la caída de Ben Alí y de Moubarak,  revestía ciertamente una inconsciente temeridad.

Sin embargo, la tesis presentada en este libro – que contiene más de 260 referencias fácilmente verificables –  ha sido meticulosamente elaborada gracias al análisis de numerosos libros, documentos oficiales, informes de actividades,  cables de Wikileaks, etc.

Es evidente que no son los Estados Unidos quienes han provocado directamente  la “primavera” árabe. Como se explicó anteriormente, la situación política y socioeconómica de los países árabes es un terreno fértil para la disidencia y rebeldía. Sin embargo, la implicación norteamericana  en este proceso no es trivial, ni mucho menos.  El papel principal de los organismos  especializados en la “exportación” de la democracia y mayoritariamente   financiados por el gobierno de los Estados Unidos, las formaciones teóricas y prácticas en la resistencia no violenta proporcionada por CANVAS, la constitución de una  “Liga Árabe del  Net” para el  dominio de  las nuevas tecnologías, el desarrollo de herramientas de navegación anónimos, gratuitamente   distribuidos a los ciberactivistas, la estrecha colaboración entre los ciberdisidentes y las embajadas de Estados Unidos en los países árabes, las sumas de dinero que se han invertido, el compromiso militar y las gesticuaciones diplomáticas de alto nivel lo confirman. Y como la política exterior de los Estados Unidos jamás  ha sido un modelo de filantropía, hay que rendirse a la evidencia de que los estadounidenses han influido de manera significativa el curso de los acontecimientos. Por no hablar de que todas estas acciones han sido emprendidas desde años antes del inicio de la  “primavera” árabe.

A medida que el tiempo avanzaba, la naturaleza pérfida  de estas “revoluciones” ha sido revelada, las lenguas se han soltado  y  han salido a la superficie  nuevos documentos. No solamente nada ha venido a desmentir mi tesis sino que ésta ha sido notablemente confirmada.  Esto es lo que justifica la elaboración de una nueva versión del libro, titulado  “Arabesque$-   Informe sobre el papel de los EE.UU. en las revueltas árabes” y editado en septiembre de 2015. En comparación con el anterior trabajo, el nuevo aporta  más de 600 referencias y el número de páginas  casi se ha  triplicado.

Entre los documentos  explícitos citamos, por ejemplo, el estudio realizado en 2008 por la RAND Corporation (Oficina de Estudios del Ejército de Estados Unidos), que ha servido de base  para  una política estadounidense de  “exportación” de la democracia  hacia los  países árabes basada sobre  la  formación, el apoyo y la creación de redes de activistas provenientes de estos países.

Otro documento merece también ser mencionado. Se trata de un informe proveniente del Departamento de Estado norteamericano, redactado en 2010 y obtenido en 2014 gracias a la ley de libertad de información.

Este informe explica claramente “la elaborada estructura de los programas del Departamento de Estado con miras a crear organizaciones de la” sociedad civil “, en particular las organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG), con el objetivo  de modificar la política interna de los países destinatarios a favor  de la política exterior de los Estados Unidos y sus objetivos de seguridad nacional.  Siempre utilizando un lenguaje diplomático, el documento – precisa que  el objetivo es la promoción y el seguimiento de los cambios de política en los países en el objetivo”.

La implicación de los Estados Unidos en la “primavera” árabe no es pues un mero producto de la imaginación. Su existencia es reconocida abiertamente por la misma administración americana. Esto es lo que se explica con  gran detalle en el libro ” Arabesque$”

¿Está de acuerdo con la afirmación según la cual “las primaveras árabes, se acabaron! “? ¿Qué escenarios posibles  ves en Siria y sobre todo en Libia, países cuyos actores están luchando para ponerse de acuerdo sobre una solución política y para los cuales existen  previsiones en  Europa concretamente de compromiso militar?

Corra la voz: la “primavera” árabe nunca ha sido una primavera  vistas  sus desastrosas consecuencias sobre las poblaciones, ni intrínsecamente  árabe porque los movimientos de contestación han sido ampliamente infiltrados por organismos extranjeros, esencialmente estadounidenses.

¿Está llegando a su fin el proceso de “primaverización” del mundo árabe?  Ciertamente. Los pueblos árabes no se deja engañar. Los ejemplos de la salvaje destrucción de Libia, Siria y Yemen son suficientes para convencer a los más recalcitrantes.

El mundo árabe necesita imperativamente  realizar cambios importantes en diferentes ámbitos de la sociedad: político, socioeconómico, cultural, la libertad de expresión, los derechos humanos, etc. Pero debemos realizar estos cambios destruyendo los paises y permitir el resurgimiento de prácticas medievales sembrando la muerte, el odio y la desolación? Por supuesto que no.

Por otra parte, estos cambios no deben en modo alguno obedecer ni beneficiar  a agendas extranjeras,  y  los países árabes no deben prestarse a que sus territorios  se conviertan en el terreno de juego de las potencias sobre el que orquestan las guerras  “low cost”  donde  sólo se vierte la sangre árabe.

Este es el caso de Siria, en la medida en que este país es actualmente el escenario de confrontación (directo o indirecto) de numerosos beligerantes, cada uno con su propia ambición, lejos de la de los propios sirios.

En cuanto a Libia, cualquier nueva intervención militar occidental en ese país puede tener consecuencias indeseables sobre el territorio argelino. Es por esta razón que Argelia se opone firmemente a esta posibilidad y no escatima ningún  esfuerzo para encontrar una solución política a este conflicto y  hacer sentarse  en la misma mesa las distintas facciones en conflicto.

Porque solo  permitiendo  a  los ciudadanos de un mismo país discutir juntos, de buena fe, teniendo en cuenta sus intereses nacionales y no los de los demás,  el mundo árabe logrará salir da la situación  de decadencia avanzada hacia la que se ha encaminado.

Texto original en francés :

Traducción : Ojos para la Paz

_____________________

* Ahmed Bensaada, « Arabesque$ – Enquête sur le rôle des États-Unis dans les révoltes arabes », Editions Investig’Action, Bruxelles, septembre 2015, http://www.michelcollon.info

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on February 2nd that he approves of US ‘Defense’ Secretary Ash Carter’s proposal to quadruple US armaments and troops in Europe, against ‘Russian aggression’.

Secretary Carter said earlier that same day, in his announcement of America’s arming for war against Russia:

We are reinforcing our posture in Europe to support our NATO allies in the face of Russia’s aggression. In Pentagon parlance, this is called the European Reassurance Initiative and after requesting about $800 million for last year, this year we’re more than quadrupling it for a total of $3.4 billion in 2017.

That will fund a lot of things: more rotational US forces in Europe, more training and exercising with our allies, more preposition and war-fighting gear and infrastructure improvements to support all this.

And when combined with US forces already in and assigned to Europe – which are also substantial – all of this together by the end of 2017 will let us rapidly form a highly capable combined arms ground force that can respond across that theater, if necessary.

The US is preparing for an invasion of Russia.

«By the end of 2017» the US will be prepared to invade Russia.

Secretary Carter went on to say:

Russia and China are our most stressing competitors. They have developed and are continuing to advance military system[s] that seek to threaten our advantages in specific areas. And in some case[s], they are developing weapons and ways of wars that seek to achieve their objectives rapidly, before they hope, we can respond.

Because of this and because of their actions to date, from Ukraine to the South China Sea, DOD has elevated their importance in our defense planning and budgeting.

Since he is a Secretary of ‘Defense’ instead of a Secretary of Offense, he immediately added:

While we do not desire conflict of any kind with either of these nations – and let me be clear.

That’s all there was to the assertion there; he didn’t finish the sentence, nor even the thought. But in this offhanded way, he did at least try to give the impression that the US is never an aggressor – for example: that, though the US is expanding NATO right up to Russia’s borders, Russia is being the ‘aggressor’ to move troops and weapons up to those borders – up to Russia’s own borders (to counter the US & NATO invasion-threat, of course; but, no: it’s to threaten NATO, if you believe the West).

In the statements by Ash Carter, Barack Obama, and Jens Stoltenberg, that’s ‘Russian aggression’. In the allegory by George Orwell, 1984, America’s rhetoric is called simply «Newspeak».

It’s as if during the Soviet Union (i.e., before 1991), when Nikita Khrushchev was the aggressor in 1962 and John Kennedy was the defender (against Soviet missiles in Cuba), Khrushchev had refused to yield and said that Soviet nuclear missiles near the US had only a defensive, not offensive, purpose (no purpose for a blitz nuclear attack against the US too fast for the US to be able to get its missiles launched in retaliation). Kennedy said no to that idea then, and Putin says no to that idea (right on Russia’s very borders) now. The US, in post-Soviet, post-communist, Russia, has turned around and become the aggressor – against the now democratic nation of Russia. (And Putin’s approval-rating from the Russian people is at least 80%, whereas Obama’s approval-rating from the American people is near 50%.)

We’ve switched roles. The US has turned to dictatorship, while Russia has turned to democracy. It’s a super-switcheroo. ‘Democracy’ in the US has become, during recent decades, the election of Presidents and congresspersons who were campaigning on lies, and who then actually delivered more like the opposite, as their actual governmental policies.

A good example of this is that when Mr Obama was campaigning for re-election to the Presidency in 2012, he outright mocked his opponent Mitt Romney’s asserting (2:22 on the video) that, «Russia, this is without question our number one geopolitical foe». But the moment that Obama became re-elected, Obama activated a 1957 CIA plan to overthrow Russia’s ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and a more-recent CIA and State Department plan to overthrow the actually neutralist Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine and replace him with a rabidly anti-Russian government. The head of Stratfor called it «the most blatant coup in history,» and it was an extremely bloody coup, followed by a civil war – and economic collapse, and even more corruption there. In addition, Obama carried out a French plan to overthrow Russia’s ally Muammar Gaddafi in Syria.

All of these plans were strongly welcomed by Russia’s main oil-market competitors, all of them fundamentalist Sunni Arab financial backers of jihadists: the Saud royal family of Saudi Arabia, and the Thani royal family of Qatar, as well as the Sabah royal family of Kuwait, and the six royal families of the UAE. Those royals own most of the world’s oil, and only Russia and its ally Iran are even in that league. All of those Sunni Arab royal families (especially the Sauds) are the main financial backers of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other jihadist groups, all of which are fundamentalist Sunni terrorist groups, which especially aim to exterminate all Shiites – and Shiites just happen to be supported by Russia. (The US overthrew the democratically elected progressive President of Iran and installed the tyrannous Shah, back in 1953, and Iranians have loathed the US government ever since.)

President Obama, in his second Administration, ceased his previous focus against the Sunni group al-Qaeda, and refocused US policy to be against Russia, even to the extent of supporting al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other rabidly anti-Russian Sunni groups, who are driving millions of refugees from Syria, Libya, etc., into Europe. (Of course, Obama’s rhetoric remains against those Sunni extremists – just as his rhetoric was against Romney’s policies that Obama ended up imposing in his second term.) All of those terrorist groups are allied with the Sunni Arab royal families against Shiite-led Iran, and Shiite-allied Syria.

The fundamentalist Sunni beliefs of the Arab royal families have, since at least 1744, been committed to exterminating all Shiites. Now that Shiite and Shiite-allied nations are supported by Russia, the United States is more overtly than ever preparing to conquer Russia, for the benefit of the aristocracies of America, and of Arabia.

And there are many other examples of President Obama’s policies exposing him to be an example of «the election of Presidents and congresspersons who were campaigning on lies, and who then actually delivered more like the opposite, as policies», such as his claiming to champion democracy in Syria when his actual demand regarding Syria is to block democracy there because all the evidence shows that it would result in an overwhelming electoral victory for Bashar al-Assad. And another example is Obama’s support of the right of self-determination of peoples regarding Scotland and Catalonia, but not in Crimea, nor in Donbas, nor in Abkhazia. The United Nations supports the right of self-determination of peoples everywhere, and Ban Ki-moon has clearly stated that America’s demand for the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power is alien to the principles upon which the United Nations was founded.

So: the US regime is moving toward a nuclear confrontation against Russia, as a ‘defensive’ measure against ‘Russian aggression’.

Obama had previously used ‘The Iran Threat’ as his basis for placing anti-ballistic missiles in European countries near and bordering Russia, but he can’t do that anymore and so he’s now doing it with what had been his actual motive all along: to ‘protect’ Europe from ‘Russian aggression’.

What had led up to Romney’s assertion that Russia «is without question our number one geopolitical foe» was his having been baited by CNN to comment upon a private statement that Obama had made to Dmitry Medvedev, saying that, «This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility». CNN didn’t say what that matter was about, but simply baited Romney with it for Romney to play the Red-scare Joseph R. McCarthy role, which Romney did (McCarthy, of the anti-communist witch-hunts, being a Republican hero). Reuters explained what the context was, what Obama had been replying to there: Putin’s concern was that placing anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) in Europe to strip Russia of its ability to retaliate against a first-strike from NATO forces in Europe, was unacceptable. Obama was telling that he would «have more flexibility» against Republican hate-mongers against Russia, after he’d win re-election. It was just another lie from him. He won re-election and turned out to be actually a black Mitt Romney. In fact, Obama had spent his entire first term deceiving the entire world to think that he rejected Republicans being «stuck in a Cold War mind warp», as he put it. It was all merely an act for him. He should be in Hollywood, not in the White House.

If this cat gets much farther out of the bag, it’s not just the cat but the whole world that will be lost.

The first priority for a President Bernie Sanders, or for a President Donald Trump, must be to undo the Bush-Obama foreign policy, because it certainly won’t be undone by a President Hillary Clinton, nor by a President Ted Cruz, nor by a President Marco Rubio – and this is the main thing that’s at stake in the current US Presidential contest. What’s at stake here is nothing less than whether civilization even survives another few decades. That’s now seriously at question, and trillions are being spent right now to bring it to an end.

This isn’t kid’s stuff. And it’s not really rocket science, either. It’s instead a fundamental and stark moral issue, that’s staring the entire world in the face right now. And it hasn’t got a thing to do with religion, but it has a lot to do with restoring democracy where it has been eroded down to virtually nothing.

Democracy requires a truthfully informed public. And that’s the truth. Let’s get with it, before it’s too late to do so.

The likelihood of a nuclear war has never been higher than it is now, except perhaps for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the entire world was being informed about that then, and what about the situation now? This time around, the situation is perhaps even more serious. The urgency of the situation is critical.

Is this the type of ‘news’ coverage we’ll continue to get on the world’s top matter – that Russia is invading our territory, when we’re actually constantly invading (and perpetrating coups) in theirs, and they’re actually doing what they must do in order to defend the Russian people themselves from NATO?

End NATO now. Or else it (and its cooperative ‘news’ media in the West) will end us all. The whole expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders has been based upon US President George Herbert Walker Bush’s lie to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, which induced Gorbachev to end not just the Soviet Union but their equivalent of NATO, the Warsaw Pact – all of which Russia did do in 1991. Russia has consistently fulfilled its part of the bargain, but GHWB’s vicious violation of his promise has been consistently followed, adhered to, by American Presidents ever since. The deceit goes on, and the US is now heading towards culminating the most dangerous lie in world history.

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

(This article was originally published by Global Research in 2002. It does not include a review of war crimes committed in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen)

The issue of War Crimes emerged after World War I at the Versailles Conference, but it was not until the end of World War II that a more comprehensive definition of what constitutes war crimes was developed. First among new international conventions addressing war crimes was the 1950 Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Its fundamental premise was that the conduct of war in violation of international treaties was a crime against peace. Ill treatment of prisoners of war, killing hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages was a war crime. Crimes against humanity include murder, extermination, deportation, and prosecution based on political, racial or religious grounds.

The 1949 Geneva Convention gave recognition to the development of new technologies which exposed civilian life to greater threats of destruction. A 1977 addendum further emphasized the right of civilians to be protected against military operations. This included the protection of civilians against starvation as a method of warfare. Article II of the Geneva Convention addressed the issue of genocide, defined as killing or causing serious bodily harm to individuals based on their nationality, ethnic, racial or religious group and with the intent to destroy that group.

Since the Geneva Convention, a number of other significant international treaties addressing war and human rights have been drafted, but the United States has rejected almost all of them. Among the treaties that the United States has refused to sign are the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (1966); the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (1966), and the American Convention on Human Rights (1965).

The United States has been particularly reluctant to sign treaties addressing the “laws of war”. It has refused to sign The Declaration on the Prohibition of the Use of Thermo-Nuclear Weapons (1961); The Resolution on the Non-Use of Force in International Relations and Permanent Ban on the Use of Nuclear Weapons (1972); The Resolution on the Definition of Aggression (1974); Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Convention (1977); and the Declaration on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(1989).1

Equally disturbing was the U.S. refusal to sign the Convention on Rights of the Child, introduced into the United Nations General assembly on November 20, 1989 and subsequently ratified by 191 countries.

The first use of atomic weapons against human beings occurred on August 6-9 1945, when the United States incinerated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, killing an estimated 110,000 Japanese citizens and injuring another 130,000. By 1950 another 230,000 died from injuries and radiation. Earlier in 1945 two fire bombing raids on Tokyo killed 140,000 citizens and injured a million more.

Since World War II the US has bombed twenty-three nations. Author William Blum notes: “It is sobering to reflect that in our era of instant world wide communications, the United States has, on many occasions, been able to mount a large or small scale military operation or undertake other equally blatant forms of intervention without the American public being aware of it until years later if ever.”2

The growing primacy or aerial bombardment in the conduct of war has inevitably defined non-combatants as the preferred target of war. Indeed, the combination of American air power and occupation ground forces has resulted in massive civilian casualties around the world.

Korea:1943-1953

On August 15,1945, the Korean people, devastated and impoverished by years of brutality from Japanese occupation forces, openly celebrated their liberation and immediately formed the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence (CKPI). By August 28, 1945, all Korean provinces on the entire Peninsula had established local people’s democratic committees, and on September 6, delegates from throughout Korea, north and south, created the Korean People’s Republic (KPR). On September 7, the day after the creation of the KPR, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the victorious Allied powers in the Pacific, formally issued a proclamation addressed “To the People of Korea.” The proclamation announced that forces under his command “will today occupy the Territory of Korea south of 38 degrees north latitude.”

The first advance party of U.S. units, the 17th Regiment of the 7th Infantry Division, actually began arriving at Inchon on September 5th, two days before MacArthur’s occupation declaration. The bulk of the US occupation forces began unloading from twenty-one Navy ships (including five destroyers) on September 8 through the port at Inchon under the command of Lieutenant General John Reed Hodge. Hundreds of black-coated armed Japanese police on horseback, still under the direction of Japanese Governor-General Abe Noabuyki, kept angry Korean crowds away from the disembarking US soldiers.

On the morning of September 9, General Hodge announced that Governor-General Abe would continue to function with all his Japanese and Korean personnel. Within a few weeks there were 25,000 American troops and members of “civil service teams” in the country. Ultimately the number of US troops in southern Korea reached 72,000. Though the Koreans were officially characterized as a “semi-friendly, liberated” people, General Hodge regrettably instructed his own officers that Korea “was an enemy of the United States…subject to the provisions and the terms of the surrender.”

Tragically and ironically, the Korean people, citizens of the victim-nation, had become enemies, while the defeated Japanese, who had been the illegal aggressors, served as occupiers in alliance with the United States. Indeed, Korea was burdened with the very occupation originally intended for Japan, which became the recipient of massive U.S. aid and reconstruction in the post-war period. Japan remains, to this day, America=s forward military base affording protection and intelligence for its “interests” in the Asia-Pacific region.

Seventy-three-year-old Syngman Rhee was elected President of ASouth Korea@ on May 10,1948 in an election boycotted by virtually all Koreans except the elite KDP and Rhee’s own right -wing political groups. This event, historically sealing a politically divided Korea, provoked what became known at the Cheju massacre, in which as many as 70,000 residents of the southern island of Cheju were ruthlessly murdered during a single year by Rhee’s paramilitary forces under the oversight of U.S. officers. Rhee took office as President on August 15 and the Republic of Korea (ROK) was formally declared. In response, three-and -a-half weeks later (on September 9, 1948), the people of northern Korea grudgingly created their own separate government, the Democratic People’s’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), with Kim II Sung as its premier.

Korea was now clearly and tragically split in two. Kim Il Sung had survived as a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese occupation in both China and Korea since 1932 when he was twenty years old. He was thirty-three when he returned to Pyongyang in October 1945 to begin the hoped-for era of rebuilding a united Korea free of foreign domination, and three years later, on September 9, 1948, he became North Korea’s first premier. The Rhee/U.S. forces escalated their ruthless campaign of cleansing the south of dissidents, identifying as a suspected “communist” anyone who opposed the Rhee regime, publicly or privately. In reality, most participants or believers in the popular movement in the south were socialists unaffiliated with outside “communist” organizations.

As the repression intensified, however, alliances with popular movements in the north, including communist organizations, increased. The Cheju insurgency was crushed by August 1949, but on the mainland, guerrilla warfare continued in most provinces until 1959-51. In the eyes of the commander of US military forces in Korea, General Hodge, and new “President” Syngman Rhee, virtually any Korean who had not publicly professed his allegiance to Rhee was considered a “communist” traitor. As a result, massive numbers of farmers, villagers and urban residents were systematically rounded up in rural areas, villages and cities throughout South Korea. Captives were regularly tortured to extract names of others. Thousands were imprisoned and even more thousands forced to dig mass graves before being ordered into them and shot by fellow Koreans, often under the watch of U.S. troops.

The introduction of U.S./UN military forces on June 26,1950 occurred with no American understanding (except by a few astute observers such as journalist I.F Stone) that in fact they were entering an ongoing revolutionary civil war waged by indigenous Koreans seeking genuine independence after five years of U.S. interference. The American occupation simply fueled Korean passions even more while creating further divisions among them.

In the Autumn of 1950, when U.S. forces were in retreat in North Korea, General Douglas MacArthur offered all air forces under his command to destroy “every means of communication, every installation, factory, city and village ” from the Yalu River, forming the border between North Korea and China, south to the battle line. The massive saturation bombing conducted throughout the war, including napalm, incendiary, and fragmentation bombs, left scorched cities and villages in total ruins. As in World War II, the U.S. strategic bombing campaign brought mass destruction and shockingly heavy civilian casualties. Such tactics were in clear violation of the Nuremburg Charter, which had, ironically, been created after World War II, largely due to pressure from the U.S. The Nuremburg Tribunal defined “the wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages” to be a war crime and declared that Ainhumane acts against any civilian population” were a crime against humanity.

From that fateful day on September 8, 1945 to the present, a period of 56 years, U.S. military forces (currently numbering 37,000 positioned at 100 installations) have maintained a continuous occupation in the south supporting de facto U.S. rule over the political, economic and military life of a needlessly divided Korea. This often brutal occupation and the persistent U.S. support for the repressive policies of dictatorial puppets continues to be the single greatest obstacle to peace in Korea, preventing the inevitable reunification of the Korean Peninsula.

Until 1994, all of the hundreds of thousands of South Korean defense forces operated under direct U.S. command. Even today, although integrated into the Combined Forces Command (CFC), these forces automatically revert to direct US control when the US military commander in Korea determines that there is a state of war.

Indonesia: (1958-1965)

After 350 years of colonialism, President Sukarno, with the cooperation of the communist party (PKI), sought to make Indonesia an independent socialist democracy. Sukarno’s working relationship with the PKI would not be tolerated by Washington. Under the direction of the CIA, rebels in the Indonesian army were armed, trained and equipped in preparation for a military coup. The Indonesian army=s campaign against the PKI in 1965-66 brought the dictator Suharto to power. Under his rule, teachers, students, civil servants and peasants were systematically executed. In Central and East Java alone, 60,000 were killed. In Bali, some 50,000 people were executed, and thousands more died in remote Indonesian villages. In some areas citizens were confined in Navy vessels which were then sunk to the bottom of the sea.

The most extensive killing were committed against suspected PKI supporters identified by U.S. intelligence. Historian Gabriel Kollo states that the slaughter in Indonesia “ranks as a crime of the same type as the Nazi perpetrated.”3

Recent revealed documents at George Washington University’s National Security Achive confirmed how effectively the Indonesian army used the U.S.-prepared hit list against the Indonesian communist party in 1965-66. Among the documents cited is a 1966 airgram to Washington sent by U.S. ambassador Marshall Green stating that a list from the Embassy identifying top communist leaders was being used by the Indonesian security authorities in their extermination campaign.

For example, the US Embassy reported on November 13,1965 that information sent to Suharto resulted in the killing of between 50 to 100 PKI members every night in East and Central Java. The Embassy admitted in an April 15, 1966 airgram to Washington: “We frankly do not know whether the real figure for the PKI killed is closer to 100,000 or 1,000,000.”4

The Indonesian military became the instrument of another counter revolutionary offensive in 1975 when it invaded East Timor. On September 7,1975, just 24 hours after the highest officials of the United States government, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, had been in Djakarta on a state visit, 30,000 Indonesian troops landed in East Timor. Napalm, phosphorus bombs and chemical defoliants were delivered from US supplied planes and helicopters, resulting in the killing of tens of thousands of people, and the conflict continues to simmer.5

Vietnam: (1954-1965)

President Harry Truman began granting material aid to the French colonial forces in Indochina as early s 1946, and the aid was dramatically increased after the successful Chinese revolution in 1949 and the start of the “hot” Korean War in June 1950. By the time of the French army was defeated in 1954, the U.S. was paying nearly 80 percent of the French military expenditures and providing extensive air and logistical support.

The unilateral U.S. military intervention in Vietnam began in 1954, immediately following the humiliating French defeat in early May 1954. The July 21, 1954 Geneva Agreement concluded the French war against the Vietnamese and promised them a unifying election, mandated for July 1956. The U.S. government knew that fair elections would, in effect, ensure a genuine democratic victory for revered Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. This was unacceptable. In June 1954, prior to the signing of the historic Geneva agreement, the U.S. began CIA-directed internal sabotage operations against the Vietnamese while setting up the puppet Ngo Dinh Diem (brought to Vietnam from the U.S.) as “our” political leader. No electrons were ever held. This set the stage for yet another war for Vietnamese independence — this time against U.S. forces and their South Vietnamese puppets.

The significance of U.S. intentions to interfere with independence movements in Asia cannot be underestimated. U.S. National Security Council documents from 1956 declared that our national security would be endangered by communist domination of mainland Southeast Asia. Secret military plans stated that nuclear weapons will be used in general war and even in military operations short of general war. By March 1961, the Pentagon brass had recommended sending 60,000 soldiers to western Laos supported by air power that would include, if necessary, nuclear weapons, to assure that the Royal Laotian government would prevail against the popular insurgency being waged against it. For the next ten years the U.S. unleashed forces that caused (and continue to cause ) an incomprehensible amount of devastation in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia.

Eight million tons of bombs (four times the amount used by the U.S. in all of World War II) were dropped indiscriminately, leaving destruction which, if laid crater to crater, would cover an area the size of the state of Maine. Eighty percent of the bombs fell on rural areas rather than military targets, leaving ten million craters. Nearly 400,000 tons of napalm was dropped on Vietnamese villages. There was no pretense of distinguishing between combatants and civilians.

The callous designation of as much as three-fourths of South Vietnam as a “free fire zone” justified the murder of virtually anyone in thousands of villages in those vast areas. At the time, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara cited a 1967 memo in which he estimated the number of Vietnamese civilians killed or seriously injured by U.S. forces at 1000 per week. The CIA=s Phoenix program alone killed as many as 70,000 civilians who were suspected of being part of the political leadership of the Viet Cong in the south.

There was a historically unprecedented level of chemical warfare in Vietnam, including the indiscriminate spraying of nearly 20 million gallons of defoliants on one-seventh the area of South Vietnam. The vestigial effects of chemical warfare poisoning continue to plague the health of adult Vietnamese (and ex-GIs) while causing escalated birth defects. Samples of soil, water, food and body fat of Vietnamese citizens continue to reveal dangerously elevated levels of dioxin to the present day.

Today, Vietnamese officials estimate the continued dangerous presence of 3.5 million landmines left from the war as well as 300,000 tons of unexploded ordnance. Tragically, these hidden remnants of war continue to explode when farmers plow their fields or children play in their neighborhoods, killing thousands each year. The Vietnamese report 40,000 people killed since 1975 by landmines and buried bombs. That means that each day, 4 or 5 Vietnamese civilians are killed day by U.S. ordnance.

The U.S. and its allies killed as many as 5 million Southeast Asian citizens during the active war years. The numbers of dead in Laos and Cambodia remain uncounted, but as of 1971, a congressional Research Service report prepared for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee indicated that over one million Laotians had been killed, wounded, or turned into refugees, with the figure for Cambodia estimated two million. More than a half million “secret” US bombing missions over Laos, begun in late 1964, devastated populations of ancient cultures there. Estimates indicate that around 230,000 tons of bombs were dropped over northern Laos in 1968 and 1969 alone. Increasing numbers of U.S. military personnel were added to the ground forces in Laos during 1961, preparing for major military operations to come.

The “secret” bombing of Cambodia began in March 1969, and an outright land invasion of Cambodia was conducted from late April 1970 through the end of June, causing thousand of casualties. These raging U.S. covert wars did not cease until August 14, 1973, by which time countless additional casualties were inflicted. When the bombing in Cambodia finally ceased, the U.S. Air Force had officially recorded the use of nearly 260,000 tons of bombs there. The total tonnage of bombs dropped in Laos over eight and a half years exceeded two million.

The consensus today is that more than 3 million Vietnamese were killed, with 300,000 additional missing in action and presumed dead. In the process the U.S. lost nearly 59,000 of her own men and women, with about 2,000 additional missing, while combatants from four U.S. allies lost over 6,000 more. The South Vietnamese military accounted for nearly 225,000 dead. All of this carnage was justified in order to destroy the basic rights and capacity of the Vietnamese to construct their own independent, sovereign society. None of the victims deserved to die in such a war. Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and U.S. military “grunts” were all victims.

All of these corpses were created to perpetuate an incredible lie and to serve a “cause” that had been concocted by white male plutocrats in Washington, many of whom possessed Ph.Ds from prestigious universities. Like most of their predecessors throughout U.S. history, these politicians and their appointees, along with their profit-hungry arms makers/dealers, desired to assure the destruction of people’s democratic movements in East Asia that threatened the virtually unlimited American hegemony over markets, resources, and the profits to be derived therefrom. But never did a small country suffer so much from an imperial nation as the Vietnamese did from the United States.

Iraq:1991-2001

The royal family in Kuwait was used by the United States government to justify a massive assault on Iraq in order to establish permanent dominion over the Gulf. The Gulf War was begun not to protect Kuwait but to establish US power over the region and its oil.6 In 1990, General Schwarzkopf had testified before the Senate that it was essential for the U.S. to increase its military presence in the Gulf in order to protect Saudi Arabia. However, satellite photos showed no Iraqi troops near the Saudi Border.

After Iraq announced that it was going to annex Kuwait, the United States began its air attacks on Iraq. For 42 days the US sent in 2000 sorties a day. By February 13,1991, 1,500 Iraqi citizens had been killed. President George Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian life and economic production.

The Red Crescent Society of Jordan announced at the end of the war that 113,00 civilians were dead and sixty percent were women and children. Some of the worst devastation was wrought by the US military’s use of Depleted Uranium (DU) on battlefields and in towns and cities across Iraq. It left a legacy of radioactive debris which has resulted in serious environmental contamination and health problems, particularly among Iraqi children. Child mortality rates have risen by 380 percent. Between August 1990 and August 1997 some 1.2 million children in Iraq died due to environmental devastation and the harsh economic sanctions imposed in 1991. Not satisfied with such havoc, the U.S. and Britain have recently sought to tighten the blockade against Iraq by imposing so-called :”smart sanctions.” This would continue the aggression against northern and southern Iraq and lead to the deaths of more women, children and elderly.

Yugoslavia: (1991-1999)

The United States and Germany prepared plans for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the late 1980’s and have since reconfigured Yugoslavia into mini-states, with only Serbia and Montenegro remaining in the Yugoslav federation, a situation which has opened the way to the re-colonization of the Balkans.

In 1991, the European Community, with US involvement, organized a conference on Yugoslavia that called for the separation, sovereignty and independence of the republics of Yugoslavia. President George Bush’s administration passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Act, which provided aid to the individual republics, but cut off all aid to Belgrade, the capitol of Yugoslavia. This stimulated the eventual secession of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. With secession came civil wars. Ethnic Serbs living in Croatia had been loyal to that Yugoslav republic, but great power meddling now forced them to defend their region in Croatia known as Krajina. The U.S. covertly provided arms, training, advisors, satellite intelligence and air power to the Croats in “Operation Storm” directed against the helpless Serbs in Krajina. When the bombing began, the Krajina Serbs fled to Belgrade and Bosnia. Approximately 250,000 Serbs were thus ethnically cleansed from the Krajina and all evidence of Serb habitation was systematically destroyed. Civilians were executed, livestock slaughtered and houses were burnt to the ground.7

To avoid a similar human catastrophe in Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bosnian Serbs consolidated Serb-owned lands, an area constituting about two thirds of Bosnia/Herzegovina. Germany and the U.S. quickly aided the military alliance of Bosnian Muslims and Croats against the Serbs, and , supported by American bombing and regular army forces from Croatia, the Muslim/Croat alliance soon swept the Serbs from the majority of Bosnia/Herzegovina. As in the Krajina, the conflict forced ethnic Serbs off of their lands, creating one hundred thousand Serb refugees.

Under the U.S.-brokered Dayton Agreement, Bosnia/Herzegovina was divided into two parts, a Muslim-Croat Federation and Republica Srpska. The central government today is controlled by US/NATO forces, the IMF, and international NGOs. With no history of independence, Bosnia/Herzegovina=s economic assets have been taken over by foreign investors who now own their energy facilities, water, telecommunication, media and transportation.

The effects of the Bosnian civil war on the city of Srebrenica were reported extensively in the western media. Reports claimed that 7,414 Bosnian Muslims were executed by the Serbian army. After years of searching, digging and extensive investigations, only seventy bodies were found, but the original charges of genocide are still circulated in the media.

Kosovo, an autonomous region of Serbia, is the site of the most recent, and perhaps most disastrous, U.S. military intervention. Kosovo=s problems began after World War II when immigrants from Albania flooded into the region, sparking political confrontation between Albanians and Serbs. escalated into military conflict. The “Kosovo Liberation Army, an Albanian terrorist/separatist group, escalated tensions by directing their violence against not only Serbian civilians, but Albanian who refused to join their cause. As the war intensified, a United Nations team of observers in the Kosovo village of Racak found 44 Albanian bodies. The Serbs identified them as KLA fighters killed during one of the now frequent gun battles with police. William Walker, a US diplomat, who had earlier acted as an apologist for the death squads in El Salvador, led a group of journalists to view the bodies, and their subsequent claims of Serb war crimes made world-wide headlines.8

President Clinton used this event to bring delegates form the contending forces in Bosnia to Rambouillet, and the proposed Ramboullet Accords served as a prelude to U.S. intervention in Kosovo. The accords, if accepted, would have allowed NATO forces complete access to all of Yugoslavia, a virtual foreign occupation, with all associated costs to be borne by the Yugoslav government. As the Ramboullet negotiations began to stall, U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright ordered the bombing of Yugoslavia to begin.

On March 16, 1999, twenty three thousand missiles and bombs were dropped on a country of eleven million people. Thirty five thousand cluster bombs, graphite bombs and 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium weapons were used, the latter scattering radioactive waste throughout the Yugoslav countryside.

The 78 day bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia targeted schools, hospitals, farms, bridges, roads communication centers, and waterways. Because a large number of chemical plants and oil refineries bombed by US/NATO planes were located on the banks of the Danube river, the bombing of these industrial sites polluted the Danube, a source of drinking water for ten million people in the region. The environmental damage done to the soil, water and air of Yugoslavia soon spread to Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Greece and Italy. Countries like Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, which border on the Black Sea, into which the Danube empties, also continue to face health hazards.

Afghanistan:(1979-2001)

“The Bush-Afghan war calls up memories of the Vietnam War in both actions and rhetoric, the massive use of superior arms heavily impacting civilians, deliberate food deprivation, wholesale terror allegedly combating ‘terrorism’, but always sincere regrets for collateral damages.”9

The U.S. war in Afghanistan began in 1979, ostensibly as a campaign to oust the ruling Taliban and apprehend the alleged terrorist Osama Bin Laden, who was assumed to be hiding in Afghanistan. Ironically, the Taliban had received billions of dollars worth of weapons from the CIA to help it overthrow a progressive socialist government in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden regarded himself as an important CIA asset. Indeed, the CIA had been deeply involved in Afghanistan even before the Soviet Union intervened there in 1979 to defend the revolutionary government.

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the U.S. has waged a merciless war against the Afghan people, using chemical, biological and depleted uranium (DU) weapons. The use of DU continues to spread radiation throughout large parts of Afghanistan and will affect tens of thousands of people in generations to come, causing lung cancer, leukemia and birth defects. DU was also used against Iraq and Yugoslavia, where the frequency of cancer has tripled.

The bombing of the Afghan population has forced thousands of civilians to flee to Pakistan and Iran, and seven to eight million civilians are facing starvation. UNICEF spokesman Eric Larlcke has stated, “As many as 100,000 more children will die in Afghanistan this winter unless food reaches them in sufficient quantities in the next six weeks.”10

The racist underpinnings of the American world-view allows the American press and its political leaders to be silent on the mass killing of Third World children. Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, has stated that the U.S. is not looking to negotiate peace with the Taliban and Al-Quida in Afghanistan. There is a clear indifference to the daily carnage in Afghanistan, where sixty percent of the casualties are women and children. Human rights organizations have expressed concern over reports of large-scale executions of would-be Taliban defectors in the city of Kunduz, and the United Nations has echoed human rights groups in demanding an investigation into the slaughter of prisoners at the Qala-i-Jhangi fort near Mazar-i-Sharif. With more than 500 people dead and the fort littered with bodies, allegations of war crimes against the U.S. and UK for ignoring the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war have led the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, to call for an urgent inquiry.

“Once we recognize the pattern of activity designed to simultaneously consolidate control over Middle Eastern and South Asian oil and contain and colonize the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan is exactly where they need to go to pursue that agenda.”11

In his book The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brezezinski writes that the Eurasian Balkans are a potential economic prize which hold an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil and important minerals as well as gold. Brezezinski declares that the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are “known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”12 Afghanistan will serve as a base of operations to begin the control over the South Asian Republic in order to build a pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the Asian market. This pipeline will serve as a bonanza of wealth for the US oil companies.

Conclusion:

An examination of the American conduct of its wars since World War II shows the US to be in violation of the Nuremberg Principles, the 1949 Geneva Convention relating to protection of civilian prisoners of war, the wounded and sick, and the amended Nuremberg Principles as formulated by the International Law Commission in 1950 proscribing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The massive murder and destruction of civilian infrastructure through the use of biological, chemical and depleted uranium weapons violates not only international laws but the moral and humanitarian standards expected in modern civilization.

Notes

1. Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1942 to the Present. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1977, p. 371.

2. William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Intervention Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995, p. 17.

3. Gabriel Kollo, AWar Crimes and the Nature of the Vietnam War, Bertrand Russell Foundation, http:www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/littleton/br7006gk.htm

4. George Washington University’s National Security Archive, July 27, 2001, www.Narchives.org

5. Deirdre Griswold, Indonesia: the Second Greatest Crime of the Century, 2d edition. New York: World View Publishers, 1979, p. vii.

6. Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992, p. 3.

7. Scott Taylor, INAT: Images of Serbia and the Kosovo Conflict. OttAwa, Canada: Espirit de Corps Books, 2000, p. 15.

8. Michael Parenti, To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia. New York: Verso, 2000, p. 106.

9. Edward Herman, A Genocide as Collateral Damage, but with Sincere Regrets, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) at http://globalresearch.ca , 2001

10. 100,000 Afghan Children Could Die This Winter, The Times of India, October 16, 2001.

11. Stan Goff, A September 11th Analysis, October 27, 2001, www.maisonneuvepress.com .

12. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative, New York: Harper

GR Editor’s Note: The resolution does not focus on the State sponsors terrorism. the governments which are supporting the ISIS (including US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey) are responsible for “War Crimes” and “Crimes against Humanity” (M.Ch.)

MEPs urge the international community to take urgent action to counter the systematic mass murder of religious minorities by the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Daesh, in a resolution voted on Thursday. The text wraps up a 20 January debate with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, in which many MEPs called for measures to protect all religious and minority groups against ISIS attacks.

MEPs reiterate their strong condemnation of ISIS/Daesh and its egregious human rights abuses, deliberately targeting Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen, Shi’ites, Shabak, Sabeans, Kaka’e and Sunnis who do not agree with their interpretation of Islam. These violations amount to “war crimes”, “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), they add.

The resolution, passed by show of hands, calls on the EU to establish a permanent Special Representative for Freedom of Religion and Belief and urges all countries in the international community to prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide within their territory. All EU member states should update their legal and jurisdictional systems in order to prevent their nationals and citizens travelling to join ISIS/Daesh and other terrorist organisations and also ensure that, should they do so, they face criminal court proceedings as soon as possible, adds the text.

Note to editors

ISIS has been committing systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law against members of minority groups, including Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen, Shi’ites, Shabak, Sabeans, Kaka’e and Sunnis in Iraq and Syria. According to the United Nations, “in some instances, these may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

REF. : 20160129IPR11938

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At what point do we cry foul when we witness the abuse of a political dissident, one who dares to take on mighty vested interests?

Syria’s conflict is getting increasingly dicey. Farcical peace talks collapsed. Resuming them is doubtful. Chances for diplomatic resolution are nil. 

Russia’s aerial campaign aiding Syrian ground forces continues unrelenting, Putin committed to combating all terrorist groups until defeating or reducing them to a shadow of their peak strength – enabling government troops to contain their remnants.

A previous article cited Russian evidence, indicating possible Turkish ground incursion preparations. Earlier Russian video evidence exposed Turkish shelling of Syria’s Latakia province – whether ahead of plans to invade its territory remains to be seen.

Does Riyadh have the same intention? Weeks earlier, it set up a military coordination body with Ankara. Saudi General Ahmed Asseri said “(t)he kingdom is ready to participate in any ground operations that the (US-led) coalition may agree to carry out in Syria” – on the phony pretext of combating ISIS.

Washington created ISIS, using its fighters as imperial foot soldiers – supported by other NATO nations, Gulf States including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and Jordan.

If Ankara and Riyadh invade Syria, they’ll be supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups against Assad – complicit with Washington, wanting Western-controlled puppet governance replacing Syrian sovereign independence.

That’s what Obama’s dirty war is all about (Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State helped orchestrate) – along with eliminating an Israeli rival and isolating Iran ahead of plans to transform the Islamic Republic the same way, a prescription for endless war, greater destruction than already, and possibly millions more lives lost.

Asseri indicated what perhaps Washington supports and  intends – countering Russian/Syrian aerial and ground operations with its own, using US and “coalition” ground forces, raising the stakes hugely, making Syria a more dangerous flashpoint than already, US/Russian direct confrontation increasingly possible, a nightmarish scenario risking global war.

Exactly what Washington intends remains to be seen. Turkey and/or Saudi Arabia would never act unilaterally on their own against Syria without US approval or complicity.

Endless US wars and rage for unchallenged global dominance represent the greatest threat to world peace.

Daily events should scare everyone. When wars are prioritized over peace, human life hangs in the balance.

A Final Comment

On Friday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter welcomed Riyadh’s willingness to send combat troops to Syria, saying:

“That kind of new is very welcome. I look forward to discussing (it) with…Saudi defense minister (Mohammad bin Salman) next week – that and other kinds of contributions that Saudi Arabia can make.”

Is the die cast? Carter said nothing about possible Turkish troops invading Syria.

Will Riyadh and Ankara join announced US combat force deployments, intended to aid ISIS and other terrorist groups, continuing endless war, aiming to topple Assad and destroy Syrian sovereignty.

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. 

In our last post, we explained why we did not want the Senate president to convene the national assembly. ( Haiti’s David and Goliath Battle for Democracy Against U.S.-supported Dictatorship and Monopoly Capitalism .) This European Parliamentary format historically is the regency that maintains the monarchy and the Bank of International Settlements, not the majority voices. 

Yesterday the Senate head, Jocelerme Privert tried to cut the people’s throat. He convened the illegally elected Parliament, seating wrongfully elected Deputies and Senators, together as one. This attempts to erase the protester’s gains against the fraudulent presidential, local and parliamentary elections on August 9 and October 25th. Now the talk is of either Privert or the head of the Supreme Court (Cantave) being appointed as provisional president who will name a consensus provisional PM until elections are held.

Here’s the rub: the Euros kept their illegal, fraudulently elected parliament to use over the people’s wishes. Pierre Opont, the corrupt electoral council president’s last piece of garbage thrown at Haiti will hurt like hell and for more than five years no matter who becomes president, unless this fraudulent parliament is neutralize, goes unrecognized.

The Ezili Network/Free Haiti are made up of the finest Haiti minds. What’s our next play folks to help neutralize this illegal Parliament? To help give the pro-democracy sectors room to set up a proper transitional government that will sort out the Parliamentary and presidential vote and elections? Keep Empire’s violences, fostering corruption, stealing and plundering at bay?? (See the G8 proposition HLLN endorses at

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tout-haiti/U2Abqy7gfyI)

Synthetic biology also appears likely to open up opportunities in the human performance modification field through the potential to make regulatory molecules in laboratories or, more directly, inside the body. For example, bacteria that live in the human digestive system already convert food into neurotransmitters and other molecules that influence performance; by engineering these organisms to sense the levels of compounds in the body and to supplement or counteract them when needed, it may be possible to enhance physical, cognitive, and socioemotional (or interpersonal) performance. -DoD Office of Technical Intelligence

The mainstream media, the public and financiers are agog over the Zika virus (Zika) which is wreaking havoc on thousands of families and newborns in the vicinity of Piracicaba, Northeast Brazil. Zika cases have already been reported in Texas, Florida and Virginia.

According to the US Center for Disease Control, “In May 2015, the public health authorities of Brazil confirmed the transmission of Zika virus in the northeast of the country. Since October 2015, other countries and territories of the Americas have reported the presence of the virus.”

Opportunistic Zika is being presented by the mainstream media and some government agencies in the same manner as the beheading of an ISIL/Daesh prisoner, and with all the drama, color commentary and propaganda of the War on Terror, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, the Cyber War, and the reemerging War against the twin Red—though capitalist—Menaces Russia and China.

Is it possible for the United States of America to do anything other than wage war?

At any rate, Piracicaba, Brazil, according to an Intrexon briefing at a JP Morgan sponsored conference, was the site of the “world’s first municipality to release Oxitec organisms [genetically modified organisms (GMO’s)] into the wild. The organisms were genetically tricked-out male mosquitoes and the release of the flying critters took place in April of 2015. Oxitec is a subsidiary of Intrexon.

The is no established link between Intrexon’s release of genetically modified mosquitoes and Zika or the birth defects attributed to Zika that are ravaging the families and children of northeast Brazil. But there is a link, however, between Intrexon’s timely purchase of Oxitec in August 2015 for $160 million, and the windfall that Intrexon expects to gain from its genetically modified killer mosquitoes. Already, Wall Street investors, business publications and media outlets are praising the use of GMO’s like those of Intrexon’s to wipe out malaria, dengue and other diseases even though there remains much scientific uncertainty over the long term effects of inserting GMO’s into the ecosystems into which human animals are embedded.

GMO’s Taste Great!

Science writer Phillip Ball writes that

“If the idea of introducing a turbo-boosted method of genetic modification into the wild sounds alarming, it should. In 2014, before it was even clear whether gene drives would work in insects, a group of US researchers recommended some safety guidelines and called for regulation and extreme caution before unleashing such a powerful technique in a natural ecosystem. The subsequent publication of a gene-drive system in flies led the same researchers (including those who did that work) to recommend lab containment procedures.

In similar fashion, another of Intrexon’s business units, AquaBounty’s AquaAdvantage Salmon, received approval in 2015 from the US Food and Drug Administration to produce and harvest genetically engineered salmon and sell it in the US without warning labels. The GM salmon will be produced in Panama and Canada. However, the US Congress stepped in and indicated that it would not allow the sale of GM salmon in the US without a labeling regime. According to the National Law Review, “Reversing course from the end of 2015, FDA recently announced an import ban on genetically engineered (GE) salmon until such a time as comprehensive labeling guidelines are introduced. Despite FDA’s approval of GE salmon in November 2015, the agency appears to have bowed to congressional pressure and placed a hold on the importation of the AquAdvantage Salmon pending resolution of the labeling guideline controversy.”

Further, documents received by foodandwaterwatch.org through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that some staff at the US Fish and Wildlife Service expressed reservations about Intrexon’s GE salmon and the impact on native salmon:

“…I think the idea of genetically engineered animals that will be consumed is a bad idea anyway but it is done all the time. I think the uncertainty of what will eventually happen to a species if genetically altered animals mix with native stocks is reason enough to oppose this at least until such times as that controlled experimentation takes place…no matter what precautions you take fish escape and once they do, there is no closing that door. So that being said, I think it is a bad precedent to set.”

Lobbyists, Genes, Investments and Defense

Sitting on Intrexon’s board of directors is Cesar Alvarez of Greenberg Traurig (GT). His biography indicates that

“Mr. Alvarez has served since February 2010 as the Executive Chairman of the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, and previously served as its Chief Executive Officer from 1997 until his election as Executive Chairman.”

If the name Greenberg Traurig sounds familiar, that because it was home to Jack Abramoff who brought in millions of dollars to GT while Alvarez was, ostensibly, in charge as GT’s CEO. According to GT’s website, “During his tenure as CEO, which began in 1997, he directed the firm’s growth from 325 lawyers in eight offices to approximately 1850 attorneys and government professionals…”  GT has been involved in a number of unsavory activities over the years, many of them under Alvarez’s watch.

The Pentagon and US Intelligence agencies are looking into synthetic biology in some sense the way they used to look into hallucinogenic LSD and atomic weapons: Theorize, test on humans, and then see what happens all before regulators get nosy. In January 2015 the Department of Defense’s Office of Technical Intelligence produced a report titled Synthetic Biology. The field is described as this:

“Synthetic biology is an emerging field in which scientists modify or ‘engineer’ DNA to improve their ability to understand, predict, design, and build biological systems…Thus, it is not a new field, but it is new in its approach – holistic engineering of biology – and its promise…Due to DoD’s unique missions, there are many special needs for advanced materials, and this area has low regulatory hurdles.”

Intrexon gets a few mentions in the Synthetic Biology study, always a good thing for a company looking to relieve the Pentagon’s research and engineering units of some cash. Here’s one:

“Intrexon, a synthetic biology company that designs and produces organisms for agricultural, medical, and industrial applications, conducted an initial public offering (IPO) this year that valued the company at more than $2 billion.” Here’s another: “The R&D Services group is similarly young and has received lower levels of investment, with the exception of one big winner: Intrexon, which has attracted $500 million dollars in investment, was omitted from the analysis above because of the degree to which it skews this group.”

John Stanton can be reached at [email protected] 

The Global Research community will likely agree that academic freedom and free speech are the basic tenets of free and democratic societies. On January 6, 2016 I was terminated from my tenured position as Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. The reason FAU administrators gave for this abrupt action was that I questioned university policy and failed to file paperwork in a timely manner.

I began my employment at FAU as Assistant Professor in 2002 after completing my graduate studies at The University of Iowa, and was granted tenure in 2008. In my 13-years at Florida Atlantic my record of faculty teaching, research, and service has been consistently adjudged as excellent by my colleagues.

Most observers contend that my firing stemmed from the many articles on my personal blog, Memory Hole, that have interrogated the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and similar controversial events. Beginning in early 2013 I became a target of many mainstream journalistic outlets that routinely failed to provide objective and responsible investigative coverage of these very incidents. I contend that this harassment and termination of my employment suggests a broader affront to free speech and academic freedom not only for faculty at FAU and other North American universities, but for free thinkers throughout the world.

The James Tracy Legal Defense Fund Inc. was established as a nonprofit charity by concerned scholars in January 2016. The central purpose of the Legal Defense Fund is to generate revenue toward retaining competent legal representation for researching and ascertaining the facts pertinent to my case.

For more information on how you can help please visit TracyLegalDefense.org. If you are able to assist in my legal defense a link is provided below to make a contribution to the Fund.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

James F. Tracy, Ph.D.

Richard Dolan covers false flag operations analyzed as a distinctively modern phenomena, post WWI; the planet being stolen by a transnational corporate financial class; ideological false flags including religions and nationalism; the propaganda spectrum including cultural values, educational system and news media; a war of corporate cultural control and imposition of a global police state; US Psychological Operations Manual; white, grey and black PSYOPs; regime change and color revolutions; NGOs; characteristics of a false flag.

False flag operations analyzed as a distinctively modern phenomena, post WWI; the planet being stolen by a transnational corporate financial class; ideological false flags including religions and nationalism; the propaganda spectrum including cultural values, educational system and news media; a war of corporate cultural control and imposition of a global police state; US Psychological Operations Manual; white, grey and black PSYOPs; regime change and color revolutions; NGOs; characteristics of a false flag.

This is Guns and Butter.

We have 9/11 in which the hammer comes down and beats you over the head for the rest of your life with a big national security stick so that people learn to duck their head and not speak up, because … bad idea now. You know, we now have, I think 20% of the American population is 15 or younger. I think that’s the number. These are people who grew up – they don’t know anything other than post-9/11 America. And actually, let’s say that anyone who’s under 25 doesn’t, really. They were kids. That’s probably, what, a third or more of the population. It’s all going away. The whole past of the United States, the whole idea of rule by the people, of privacy. We have an entire new generation who are growing up without any of that. It’s all gone.

I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter, Richard Dolan. Today’s show: Understanding False Flag Operations in Our Time. Richard Dolan is an author and historian. He is nearing completion of a groundbreaking book, A History of False Flag Operations, which will explain one of the most pernicious developments of our time: how clandestine agencies secretly engage in violence and destruction in order to promote their agendas. He has published four books and numerous articles on anomalous phenomena, suppressed science, secret space programs, breakaway civilizations, the intelligence community and similar subjects. He is best known as the author of two volumes of history, UFOs and The National Security State. He studied US Cold War strategy, Soviet history and international diplomacy. Today’s presentation, Understanding False Flag Operations In Our Time, is from the Architects of the New Paradigm Conference in San Rafael, California, January 16th, 2016. Richard Dolan.

* * * * *

In addition to writing books I’ve spent many, many years doing private consulting work. Basically I’m an independent writer and I would meet with individuals one on one, thousands and thousands of them. It was a great experience with me just to sit down and talk with someone about their life, about their career, about their anxieties and everything else.

What I’ve always noticed is that when you start scratching the surface of someone’s worldview you find very quickly that they, just as you, have an understanding that there’s something not right with the world around us. Not everyone has the motivation or the education or the background to kind of dive into this like a madman obsessed with getting to the truth, but they know. They feel it in their bones. There’s something wrong, desperately wrong, with the state of the world, and it involves a feeling that they’re not in control anymore.

In particular I think we can see this in the last 20 years in the United States where we’ve had severe economic dislocation. I live in the northeastern part of the United States and I’ve gotten to see really the obliteration of a company that informed the town that I live in. That’s Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, and I just watched Kodak go poof over the past decade and a half. But I think you can see this story everywhere, in many places of the US.

It accompanies a kind of loss of hope, a loss of confidence, a feeling like is the future really going to be worth something? In addition to that, those people who try to learn about their world by turning on the television and watching CNN, inevitably what they find is that they’re totally confused about what is happening. It just seems like one damn thing after another, one terrorist thing doing this and one national security thing doing that and these crazy people, why do they hate us… and there’s really no sense of understanding when you plug into the establishment news media. There doesn’t seem to be like how do we solve any of this, how do we fix this, how do we really get to a better world, why can’t these people just like freedom and democracy like we do? This is the kind of nonsense that … There doesn’t seem to be a way out of it.

I would say that all of that confusion, all of that hopelessness is by design. I believe this now. I don’t believe, as I might have years past, that the people on top, they’re trying to do their best but it’s a tough world out there. No. No. No. They want you to feel helpless. They want you to be confused. Let’s talk about why.

One reason why is that the whole planet is being stolen. You’ve got this many people who want to own every single thing that’s worth owning in this planet – all the water, all the genetically modified foods they want to shove down your throat, all the minerals in the ground. They want every single thing. And they’re getting it. They’ve got it, actually, and they just want more. That’s the way it’s happening.

It’s a transnational corporate financial theft of everything. It’s a war. When there’s a war, the people who are running that war really don’t want you to be able to react to it. They don’t want you to be cognizant of what is happening. And they want you to be quiet about it. They want you to obey and be compliant.

Therefore, they must rule by means of deception. Because if they were to out and out say to you, “Yeah, we’re going to steal all your stuff,” you might have a thing or two to say about it. So what must happen is a kind of ideological false flag or an ideological psych on you and me. This is exactly, I think, what we are seeing in the world.

Now, it’s certainly not true to say that this is a new development in a larger sense. Human history has always been informed by intense hierarchy. In that sense you could say mind control has always existed in the sense that elites have typically kind of created worldviews by which the great masses of humanity would look to the authority for guidance and for salvation. I think the obvious example of this we could see is various religions of the world but I would also include things like nationalism and other kinds of ideologies that let us say encourage and enforce compliance among the population.

I think we can agree that false problems have, since forever, since throughout human history, been kind of created in order to accommodate a pre-arranged solution to that problem, things that I would call an ideological false flag. What I mean by that is not an instance where a government or an intelligence agency in ancient times would kill people and blame it on another party and scare the heck out of people and enforce their rule. No, but by creating a mindset.

Think of something like the Inquisition. That’s a perfect example of an ideological false flag where back in, I think it was, 1487, a book called Malleus Maleficarum was published. This was a guidebook, really, on how to identify, prosecute and kill witches. That’s what that book really was. As a result of that, over the next century or so about 1 million European women were executed for witchcraft, about then. It did several things. One is it created a lot of fear among the population. “Oh, my God, witches. Get rid of those people!” It enforced the authority of the ecclesiastical Church at the time, at least for a certain while until there was a reaction against it. And it also got a lot of power and money for the Church. Families of witches would actually pay through indulgences to minimize the amount of time in Purgatory or get them out of Hell. This actually really happened. It also allowed for land grabs by the Church of the families of the witches, very much like the US government does today with people suspected – this is really the truth – of various crimes. They take your property. This is what the Church did. So that I call a false flag. The War on Terror is an ideological false flag.

That’s an old, old part of human history. I would say in our world today there is a manner in which they’re trying to get inside your head, and I call it a propaganda spectrum. There are all kind of forms of control but they get progressively more pernicious as you go down the list.

The most fundamental method by which society, that you are expected to conform to society, would be what we might call cultural values. That’s when you go to school and you learn to pledge allegiance with your hand over your heart and you go through the educational system. Even 100 years ago Bertrand Russell was talking about as a method of conformity. More recently we have really great visionaries like John Taylor Gatto who has talked very much along the same lines, of the educational system as a system of control over your head. Get inside your head and make you obey, make you an obedient worker.

So that’s the cultural values. Not all of it is necessarily evil. We can all recognize that a functioning society would require a kind of cultural consensus, but you can still see how the implementation of certain cultural values could at least provide a foundation of obedience.

Beyond that, though, I think what is a little bit more pernicious is what we might call cultural distractions. This is the phenomenon of the Kardashians and things like Dancing With The whatever they’ve got on this week or Monday Night Football, or all the stupid, meaningless stuff that is poured into everyone’s head every single day – truly, literally meaningless information that just goes right in. And we all like entertainment. I’m watching back episodes of “The Sopranos” so I’m just as guilty as anyone else. Those are my people. I’m from the Northeast. “You know what I’m talking about? Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.”

But I think when you get into a level of distraction that is so mindless as what we obviously see around us, this is a signal. It’s a signal for you to look over here, don’t look over there. There’s something important going on over here so look at this shiny little trinket. It goes on and on and on and on and it never stops, and it never will stop as long as this system is in place as it is.

Beyond that, though, there’s still always people even in what we would call the ordinary, out-there society, all the other people in this country, who still want to feel like they’re being informed, and that’s when they turn on the TV and they watch CNN or Fox or NPR. Hey, why not? Because look, NPR was run for years and years by a man who was running CIA propaganda, and that’s a fact, so NPR’s really no different. Yeah. It’s really true. People think, “Oh, I’m so educated. Fox sucks. I’m going to listen to NPR because they’re intelligent.

Well, you know, here’s the thing about that, I’ll just say as an aside. Our whole cultural narrative these days, our whole cultural discourse in politics seems to me to be on nothing more than cultural issues. Not that they don’t matter, but it’s like if you’re a liberal that means “I support transgender rights.” If you’re a conservative, “I don’t support transgender rights.” “I do support Black Lives Matter.” “I don’t support Black Lives Matter.” “I do support smoking weed in Colorado.” “I don’t support smoking” … If this is what we’ve come down to in our politics, we’re done. It’s over – over, over. Stick a fork in us, it’s done because, as I say, there’s a serious war happening. It is a war of corporate cultural control and imposition of a global police state over you and over your children, over your grandchildren, for all of time. That’s the war. If we’re not talking about that, then we’re just wasting our time. That’s my view.

Anyway, for that third level of control and spin there’s the news media, people who want to be informed, so they’ll turn on CNN and become confused forever, because really, that’s a system that is all about censorship, spin, propaganda, control. CNN … Why is it that CNN is on at every single gate at every single airport in the United States? Why? Is it like every airport manager in the country is like, “Oh, wow. I totally love CNN. I want to inform…” I don’t think so. They’re a private company owned by Time Warner – clearly there’s a nice sweetheart deal – and because they are the propaganda voice of the US State Department and CIA. That’s the only reason they’re on. That’s the only reason you see them at every gate. So that’s the third level. I would say those first three levels of propaganda account for probably 95% of the control mechanisms in place to keep you in your place. Most probably.

But then, every now and then you need a little bit more something, and that’s when we’re talking about psy-ops, psychological operations, covert ops, color revolutions, regime change down to the “Shock Doctrine” type of events, if anyone’s read Naomi Klein. I’m a big fan of that book. And then down to false flags, which I think is the most pernicious of those. I’ll talk a little bit about these in a little more detail.

With psy-ops, psychological operations, US military, this is in their playbook. This is an official thing that our military does, and other militaries do it, too. It’s not just us. It’s interesting that the Defense Department will have in this psychological operations manual three different types of ops. They call them white, grey and black psy-ops.

White psy-ops is pretty straightforward. It’s not really even a psych job on the world. It’s basically an official or a virtually official statement of the United States government just getting their message out to the world. And you know it’s from the US government and it’s relatively straightforward, even if you don’t agree with it.

Grey psy-ops is a little more interesting and very pervasive in our world today, as it’s always been. If you’re familiar with something like Operation Mockingbird, that would be a grey psy-op. That would be something like using journalists or using other voices that are not officially part of the US government but basically having them give the US government perspective, pretending it’s coming from some other voice. That’s a grey psy-op, and that’s a very, very widespread phenomenon.

The Pentagon, for example, which spends billions of dollars every single year managing their social image – they do – that includes things like not simply having close relationships with professional journalists who spin the news in their favor, but it also includes paid trolls, which I call sock puppets. This is true. Let’s say you read news articles and you look at all the comments below and you see these real whackjobs out there. Some of them really literally are sock puppets. That means you’d be a Pentagon employee and you’d be in charge of X number of profiles on the social media and on the message boards. That’s what you would do. You would disrupt, you would persuade, you would cajole, but in fact, you’re a paid employee. That would be a grey psy-op, as well.

Then there’s black psy-ops, and this is where we’re really getting into some serious stuff. This is according to the US Psychological Operations Manual: A black psy-op is something that comes from a US government source but “appears to emanate from a source hostile in nature. US government would deny responsibility.” That’s a false flag. I don’t know how else you can describe it. Something that the US government does but seems to come from one of the “bad guys.”

One of the things about black psy-ops in the manual is that – at least they state – this is not actually a function of the United States military but actually that black psy-ops are a function of the US intelligence community, and that kind of makes sense. I guess the point is that false flag black psy-ops are in the playbook of the United States. It’s just worth keeping in mind.

Something like regime change or the so-called color revolutions, these can include false flags, which I’m going to get into a false flag in just a moment in case you’re still wondering, “What the heck is a false flag?” Regime change is something that the United States has truly perfected to the extent possible over many decades. They did it back in 1953 in Iran. Essentially what that was was a CIA operation to overthrow an elected government that had the temerity to nationalize its oil, and you can’t do that, so the CIA, Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of T.R., ran an operation for the CIA to pay off people to pretend they were communists, to do horrible things to discredit that group, and to organize crowds that pushed for regime change. And it was quite successful. This was a model that has been followed ever since.

Primarily now what you find is the US does this through NGOs, non-governmental organizations, and this has been a very, very major topic of study. So again, it’s all ruled by indirection. There’s one group known as Avaaz – it’s called The Voice in many languages – and many others as well, but this one has been heavily involved in supporting efforts to destabilize and topple the governments of Libya. They were really gleeful about that one and calling for NATO intervention, which ended up essentially destroying that nation, which it is to this day, and they’re trying to do the same in Syria today.

So in other words, the US works through these and many other NGOs to push for regime change where ordinary citizens, people around the world that don’t know any better think, “Oh, well they’re a non-governmental organization. They’re obviously detached, objective, etc.” No. They’re not. They’re working for the United States government and intelligence community. And this is very, very common. That’s an image of the color revolution in Ukraine back in ’04 and it’s just a model that’s been done tried and true many times now.

Another aspect of the covert ops, getting toward false flag in cases we might call provocations, and this has happened everywhere, we’re talking about agents provocateur. We probably are all familiar with the old COINTELPRO operation from the FBI from the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s in which the FBI would infiltrate organizations that were pushing for positive social change, I would say – Students for Democratic Society, the Black Panthers. What they would do then is have their guys inside the organization fomenting violence and doing things to discredit those organizations. That’s provocation.

This is again, a highly effective tool used within the US, used in Canada, used in the UK. It’s used all through Europe. It was used very much in Ukraine in 2014, used in Iraq after the invasion in ’03, through ’04, ’05, ’06. There are a lot of provocations that we know about – I’ll be writing about them in my new book – in Syria, elsewhere. And it happened in the Occupy movement, without a doubt.

So you have covert operatives infiltrating movements for progressive change with a view to discredit it. I suspect most of you may be familiar with this or on board with it, but if you doubt it, this is a great deal of research and really excellent journalism that has gone into this and has, I think proven – not suggested, not hinted, but has proven that provocations are standard operating procedure. Some of these guys just get found out.

Another important means by which I think propaganda is used to dominate your mind and to kind of impose a corporate control kind of global revolution is what we might call the “Shock Doctrine” technique, and this was the contribution of Naomi Klein. Really, what she argues is that neoliberalism, or let’s call it globalism, as a fundamentally anti-human process, her argument is that it can only be imposed via trauma, I guess we could say. She came up with the phrase “shock doctrine” through the US military’s phrase of “shock and awe.” The military goes into a nation, we’re going to “shock and awe” them. Think about, oh, wow… what a thing to say about another group of people. You pound them into submission and traumatize them, and that’s precisely US military doctrine.

What occurred to her was that this is actually how they rule, not just abroad but they rule at home through shock. She was thinking of Katrina, she was thinking of 9/11. When some horrible, terrible thing happens in which people are just bereft and no one’s thinking clearly… Often after these horrific things happen, and that is exactly when, she says, contingency plans which had been in place since forever are rolled out and people just accept it because they’re looking for help – corporate control over New Orleans after Katrina or the whole national security apparatus rolled in after 9/11 and so on and so on.

What she suggests is that these catastrophes and the anxiety that comes about as a result of it that is played up by authorities results in what she calls learned helplessness. We’ve done science studies of rats and you create so much anxiety and loss of control, they learn helplessness, and it’s the same with people. And her argument is that this is a key method by which global control is achieved. I would totally agree with that, and I would say, let’s go one step further.

There are instances in which crises aren’t simply happening and then groups opportunistically take advantage of it. I would argue that there are a number of events in our contemporary world in which those catastrophes are intentionally created, and that is what we call a false flag – an instance in which a group, an intelligence agency usually, does something truly horrible – killing people, blowing up buildings, some other kind of horrific act that is then blamed on another party by which to justify things that could never otherwise be justified, whether it’s dastardly pernicious laws of control over a population or wars that could never have otherwise be justified to justify theft of natural resources of other countries and so on. That’s a false flag. There’s a lot of that going on around in the world these days.

I think it’s probably the single most powerful form of propaganda. I can’t think of anything that has more emotional impact than a false flag. And I also think there’s not much more that I can think of that’s more risky or audacious or bold to undertake than a true false flag. It’s not something for everyone. I think it’s something that only a very few organizations truly have the wherewithal and the power to implement. I’ll get into that in a moment.

If you scroll through the Web on the phenomenon of false flags you’ll find a lot of sites that will say that this is an ancient phenomenon going back. Some will site things like Nero burning down Rome and blaming it on the Christians to implement certain things. And when I started researching this about a year ago I was certainly inclined to accept that line of reasoning, but my own research has told me otherwise.

Actually, I would argue that false flags are not an ancient phenomenon. Now, I talked about the ideological false flags, a kind of mind control system in place, like the Inquisition and other things, but that’s different. I mean false flags as a covert op. I don’t think that’s an ancient phenomenon at all. I think it’s a distinctively modern phenomenon and, in fact, I think that’s an important thing to understand about them so that we realize why they are happening today, and I will be talking about that now.

I think to have a false flag what you need, because a false flag is a big psych job on the population, so one thing that is necessary is you have to have a kind of ostensibly – and I say ostensibly – democratic type of system. It doesn’t have to be truly democratic. The United States is not a truly democratic society. In fact, Yale university – I think it was Yale – did a study a couple of years ago that actually quantitatively I would say proved that what we have is an oligarchy. What they did is they looked at public policy and legislation that was implemented and looking at public opinion and the like, and really, I think, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the wishes of the great masses of the population have zero impact on public policy, and that public policy is, on the contrary, put into place on the wishes of those who have power and money and influence. It’s no surprise. That’s an oligarchy, and that’s what we have.

But we also have an ostensive democratic system where people still believe and we still have the remnants, let’s say, of that kind of rule of the people. It’s not just the United States. It’s in much of the world now. Kim Jong Un of North Korea doesn’t need to do false flags. Really, why? Because he’s got the people terrified. He just controls them through fear – and lies, yes, but a lie is not the same as a false flag. In fact, he can’t really do easily, in my view, a false flag against South Korea, either, because he doesn’t have control over major media globally. That’s the next thing.

For false flag you need an ostensibly democratic system because you have to corral the people into a particular point of view, and then you need control over major media. You have to have the ability to effectively propagandize without competition from other narratives – at least significant competition of that. So you dominate the narrative.

On top of that, you need decent covert op teams, people who know what they’re doing. Again, this is not the type of thing that you would really find in the ancient world. You need a lot of money to do that, and there’s a few nations in the world today who have much more money and means than others to do this. And you need motive and the capability, obviously, for what I would call geopolitical, financial or national political change. There’s got to be groups that are pushing to revolutionize their society in ways that they believe it should be. They realize they can’t do it along legal means and so they use these other means.

The other one thing I would say why false flags are not a truly ancient phenomenon is in the ancient world – and I’m an avid student of ancient history, very much so. What you find in ancient history is lots of bloodshed. I mean massacres and horrific… We think it’s bad today but in the ancient world armies would go in and just completely kill every single inhabitant in a town, my God. So there’s no shortage of bloodshed. There’s no shortage of lies that nations would tell each other, absolutely. But the idea of doing something like a false flag in the ancient world, when you look at most of the cultural values that existed in most of the societies back then, it really would be pernicious to them. As bloody-minded as most of the ancient militaries were, there was a sort of code. Let’s call it a code among thieves or a code of honor, in which the deception really would be considered a pernicious and a horrible thing to do. Also, I think it would be much more difficult to do a true false flag for those reasons and due to the lack of communication, just a harder thing to do. I think a false flag is, again, a distinctively modern phenomenon.

To do a false flag internationally or even domestically and have it fly internationally, you need power in the world today. You’ve got to be able, especially for something international, to dominate global media, at least sufficiently so that you can sort of push aside alternative narratives and explanations. You also have to have the ability to intimidate other nations into silence if you’re going to do this, and there are very few nations that have that ability in the world today.

I’m going to do a little bit and there’s no way that I’m going to be able to go over every single thing that I think has been a false flag in the last 100 years – there’s a lot of things – but I do want to give a sense of how the phenomenon has evolved. False flags have evolved.

My own research at this point is telling me that the true phenomenon really takes off following the First World War. Again, there are isolated events possibly, maybe probably, from prior to World War I but not many. Even talking about the sinking of the Maine, I’ve looked into that and I’m not really sure that I would classify that as a true false flag. It can go either way. But we start seeing them now for sure in the 1930s and, really, the main nations that were doing them, Japan, Germany, Soviet Union. They did some very prominent ones and I think many of us are familiar with some of these.

Everyone’s heard of the Reichstag Fire. The German invasion of Poland is maybe one of the classic international false flags of all time. Essentially, Germans took a bunch of political prisoners who were rotting away in their prison system, dressed them in Polish military uniforms, took over a radio station at the border, shot all of the prisoners, posed one of them at a microphone and then went on the air and pretended that Poland had attacked Germany and was inciting Poles in Germany to resist Hitler. This was an absolute false flag. The German people, as far as we can tell, more or less accepted it. International politicians were not particularly impressed by it, to say the least, but it worked enough for the Germans to justify to themselves that they invaded. False flag. That’s the Reichstag, by the way, burning. That’s their 9/11.

The thing that they all have in common, those false flags of that decade, is that those were nations with state control over the media. That’s a very important thing to keep in mind. And they also had very sophisticated military intelligence groups for their time, without a doubt. So they had the control over the media and they had the teams. They were militarized and this is, I think, why after World War I we start seeing it. World War I militarized all of Europe and the United States, and really transformed those cultures to that extent so that there was a very strong militarization in the aftermath of that, and I think that was part of it.

What you find after the Cold War is that the United States wins the False Flag Olympics hands down, and it’s really been every since. I would say that the US and its vassal states essentially run the false flag universe. It’s basically US, Israel, the UK, I would say are the big three. There are certainly other nations that have been involved in this, without a doubt. Particularly since 9/11 a lot of nations have jumped on board.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 a lot of them did it in order to get US terror funding. There was a case I think in ’02 that was found out, this one, the nation of Macedonia – found out that they had murdered seven illegal immigrants from Pakistan and said that these are al Qaeda terrorists. They were not al Qaeda terrorists. They were illegals but they were innocent people. They were killed and Macedonian authorities played it up as al Qaeda specifically in order to get US funding and they aren’t the only example of that type of shenanigans, kind of a piling-on effect after 9/11.

But back to the Cold War, what you see is a transformation of the false flags in the sense that they start becoming domestic. There are still international incidents that are false flags, absolutely. There was one that was found out by the Israelis in 1954 where Mossad was basically finding Egyptian Jews who were going to blow up certain buildings and blame it on the Muslim Brotherhood and it was found out. It was called the Lavon Affair, after the Israeli Defense Minister. The parties involved confessed and all that. That was an international type of false flag. They did that, incidentally, to encourage the British not to leave and abandon the Suez Canal.

But primarily what you see are domestic false flags specifically for political control. COINTELPRO in the US is maybe a classic example of that, the FBI doing what they call black-bag jobs and the like, to dirty tricks, smearing people, doing events and blaming it on other organizations and so on.

In Europe, probably the most pernicious was known as Operation Gladio, which was a NATO/CIA operation. Essentially, when World War II concluded there was the fear among Allied nations that the Russians would roll over Europe, and so there were teams put in place in Europe to act as kind of a resistance if this were to happen. Well, the Russians did not roll over Western Europe and these teams are still sitting there. In Italy, they got the bright idea of killing people and blowing up buildings and train stations and blaming it on the communists, which they did for years – years and years. This has been found out. And in fact, one of the Gladio operatives, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who is serving life in prison for his part in Gladio, in an interview was very specific. He said, “The point of what we were doing was to force these people” the Italian people in this case, “to turn to the state and ask for greater security.” They’re very up-front about it. These were NATO operatives, with the knowledge of the higher-up authorities, and they were just doing this and blamed their murders on the Red Brigade and blamed them on other leftwing groups.

There’s a long proven history. This is another list of the ‘60s, and in the ‘70s and ‘80s and I’m not going to go over all of it. It includes the Gulf of Tonkin, it includes some really nasty Mossad operations, some of which looked exactly like Charlie Hebdo, one of which occurred in 1982, a bombing of a Jewish delicatessen in Paris. Sound familiar? But it was in 1982. When French intelligence investigated far enough they kind of ran into a brick wall and everything stopped, and it did get some very good international analysis at the time.

One of the more pernicious ones would be during the ramp-up to the Persian Gulf War. Do you remember this? I bet some of you do. The Incubator Hoax. This woman was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States but she was pretending to be a nurse on TV, and to Congress. What she said was that the Iraqi troops, once they had gone into Kuwait – remember that? – were looting incubators from a Kuwaiti hospital, leaving the premature babies to die on the floor. And it was such a horrific image, this went on all the news. Everyone promoted this from NPR to Fox and everyone in between. It was a total lie and she was a total lie, but this is how it works. In fact, by the ‘80s and ‘90s, the United States military was officially hiring public relations firms in a very effective way. The Persian Gulf War was kind of a watershed in that effort.

Let’s keep going here. Through the ‘90s you’ve got quite a few of these. The Oklahoma City bombing’s probably the most prominent one there. I’ll talk about some of the problems of how to identify these types of false flags when I close.

As we get to the 21st century I think we hit the era of true false flags. I’m not going to go into the specifics; there’s just too much. I want to talk about the geopolitics and help us understand why this is happening. I think one of the key things has to do with globalization. With globalization you get economic disruption and the loss of jobs. This is Seattle 1999. I think Seattle is a great indicator. These are the WTO riots, or protests, November 30th. This went for four days, into early December. This is significant.

Back in 1999 Americans still believed they had rights. I remember those days. The WTO, the World Trade organization, was convening in Seattle at that time, and for several months protestors planned this out, and when that convention happened these protestors, at minimum 40,000, probably much more – shut that city down. They shut it down. They were so effective the delegates were not able to enter the premises for the longest time. Police teargas didn’t work, pepper spray didn’t work. The police were overwhelmed by an incredibly powerful public reaction, and this is what happens when the public feels empowered. The WTO was really initiating some very nasty decisions that, in fact, they ended up doing, that just accelerated the process of the de-industrialization of the United States.

This is when people were saying, “No. Were not going to put up with it.” Of course, 18 months later we have 9/11, in which the hammer comes down and beats you over your head for the rest of your life with a big national security stick, so that people learn to duck their head and not speak up because … bad idea now. You know, we now have, I think, 20% of the American population is 15 or younger. I think that’s the number. These are people who grew up – they don’t know anything other than post-9/11 America. And actually, let’s say that anyone who’s under 25 really doesn’t. They were kids. So that’s, what, a third or more of the population. It’s all going away. The whole past of the United States, the whole idea of rule by the people, of privacy. We have an entire new generation who are growing up without any of that. It’s all gone.

For some of these young people, I hate to say it, but it almost seems meaningless. I have two brilliant young teenagers, 19 and 17, and I know a lot of their friends. They’re a little different; they’re kind of plugged in, but I know about a lot of young people and they just live, post their stuff on Facebook … They don’t care about privacy. They don’t expect it. It’s a different world. I think this type of thing is a threat to the globalist process and is a trigger for false flags.

The other major geopolitical thing behind false flags, I would suggest to you, is the petrodollar system. I can’t go over the whole thing here but essentially, this is the deal worked out between Henry Kissinger and the king of Saudi Arabia in the early-‘70s to keep the dollar in place as the world reserve currency. The dollar had just gone off the gold standard – whole story behind that – and now they wanted to hook the dollar to petroleum. And really, what Kissinger was able to agree was to have all the OPEC nations sell their oil only in dollars, and that’s the foundation of American policy to this day. All of the nations would get their oil pegged in dollars.

It’s great for the US because it allows that there’s a global demand for our currency, which allows for all kinds of things that the US can do printing up trillions of dollars and basically holding the world hostage as a result. No other nation could afford to do what the US is doing, to prosecute all of its wars and the like, because of the petrodollar system. And it is a foundation of America’s empire. It’s really never discussed, never, ever discussed in mainstream media. But the petrodollar system forces, these geopolitics force US neoconservatives – which is simply another world for empire-builder – neoconservative.

Think about that word. Old conservative. What would be an old conservative? Someone who I would think would want to conserve the traditional republican values and institutions of this country. That’s not the worst thing in the world. A neoconservative is the new conservative. They’re preserving not the republic, my friends; they’re conserving the empire. That’s what a neoconservative is. They are building and conserving empire. You can be a Republican like Dick Cheney, and you can be a Democrat like Hillary Clinton, and you can be a neoconservative. They’re twins. They’re brother and sister twins, politically, in my opinion. They both are as equally intent on domination and preservation of the United States empire, and that forces the neocons, the whole petrodollar system, to demonize any of these people who are not on board with that system. This is why Saddam went away, because he started selling his oil in euros in 2000. And Kaddafi, with the gold-based dinar system, he was about to introduce, which was a threat to the dollar. And Putin, of course, who is simply … Well, long story about Vlad. We’ll have to skip that for another time. I’m fascinated by Russian politics, always have been.

It forces the United States to feel the need to physically control the sources of energy that exist, basically the hydrocarbons that go from basically Western Africa across the continent to the Middle East and to western Asia. That’s two-thirds of the world’s oil and natural gas right there, and the US wants it all. They want to control it physically.

These are the geopolitical reasons, I would argue, that are directly behind 9/11. To steal, say, $30 trillion worth of oil under the ground in Iraq, which they did and then sold off to multinationals, and to steal all the nice mineral wealth under the ground in Afghanistan as a nice little bonus. So theft, of course, is always important for this, and then to control the population.

I would suggest, too, that the petrodollar and all of this is all part of a hierarchical-based and scarcity-driven system. That is, energy scarcity – Energy in our world today is based on physical control over a particular commodity, oil and natural gas primarily, and if you control those locations, you control the distribution, you have the power. That’s a strength and a power of the system, but it’s also the weakness of the system, because if we develop an alternative energy paradigm, this is very much in danger. And that’s a good thing. So this whole system is vulnerable to emerging technologies, and that means that the false flag phenomenon itself would be vulnerable to that.

I’m going to give you a quick profile. You know how we talk about racial profiling by the police; let’s talk about false flag profiling. There’s certain things that by themselves or even collectively don’t prove that something is a false flag but they give you an idea that you want to look carefully at it. The only way to prove one thing or another is through good investigative journalism but, nonetheless, let’s just take a quick look at some of these things.

One thing to look for is that it’s a sensational event that gets a lot of major media attention, boom, immediately. That’s pretty obvious. But what you really want to look for are changing narratives. In other words, particularly in the beginning, in the first day or two of an event, you will always find competing narratives of what exactly happened. You really want to look for that because after a few days, that goes away and the major media, particularly, are on board with, boom, this story, and this is the only story.

San Bernardino’s a great case. This happened not long ago and there were several witnesses – several – who said, “I saw three big white guys come in with guns.” Now, I don’t know if that’s the case or not but that’s a fact. These witnesses said this. That’s just one example. With 9/11 there’s all kinds of alternative narratives. You have the case of Rumsfeld talking about the plane that got shot down over Pennsylvania. Woops, maybe I didn’t mean to say that. And on and on and on. There’s all of these competing different statements that get leaked out and then just go away. You want to look for that.

You also want to look for the fact that the case is quickly closed, that a patsy or the “evil-doer” is quickly found and usually is either killed immediately or if he’s not killed, he just disappears and then the trial is always a kangaroo court and you’ll never even hear what’s going on. Boston was a great example of that.

Another thing you want to look for is that these suspects are connected to intelligence groups, whether US or non-US, but frequently US. I would say this. If you are approached by the FBI, ever in your life, and your skin color’s maybe a shade or two darker than mine, you’d better run far and fast. I’m not kidding. Because what they do, the FBI goes after foreign nationals who look foreign – that is, i.e., they’re a little darker – and they love to set these people up. More than have of all the terrorist arrests post-9/11 that have to do with federal terrorism charges, they’re FBI set-up jobs.

So the FBI will approach you, they’ll convince you, “Oh, yeah, the US government, they suck. Let’s go get them.” And in particular, if you’re not that bright, if you’re very easily impressionable … This happened in my town of Rochester just a couple weeks ago. They got another one there. They will bring you to the store to get your terrorist equipment, like a knife or a ski mask – I’m serious – and then they’ll arrest you and you’ll never see daylight ever again. These people on their own would almost never have committed any of these crimes, so this is provocation. This is what our government does to us. So if the FBI comes up to you, no matter what you look like, run. Go away from these people. What you find is that these suspects, there’s often a connection to intelligence organizations.

Typically the suspects that are promoted in the media have some kind of connection, sociologically, demographically, to whatever group is to be demonized. Back in the ‘90s it was typically rightwing militias, gun nuts, that type of thing. Timothy McVeigh comes to mind. In our century it’s more Muslims. They seem to be the group they’re going after, but there’s others. The LAX shooting was a so-called rightwing conspiracy theorist. That’s how he was portrayed in the media. And so on and so on, so look for these.

One thing you really want to look for are unanswered questions, and just problems associated with the official explanation of the event. There’s often gaping holes in these things, that the media – the establishment media, that is – never ask, how did these guys get out of Charlie Hebdo shooting so easily? There’s a car, no one bothered them. How is it they talked about a pristine passport being found after 9/11 and then also after the Paris murders just a few months ago. Really? A pristine passport? In the case of the Paris shooting, this perfect Syrian passport was left behind. What? Really? Then that story kind of went away and is not talked about … changing narratives. These are very suspicious things and whatever the truth is behind these – maybe we’ll never find the truth to some of these incidents because who knows why? But we certainly ought to be asking the questions.

Multiple drills is important. This is a key thing. When the events happen you typically find there are multiple drills happening that portray the exact same thing. With 9/11, there was a drill going on that day to protect America against the attack by terrorists using airplanes to crash into us. I’m not kidding. And there are a number of these multiple drills with the shootings and other things.

Why would that be? Here’s why. In the intelligence community, when you’re planning this thing out, there are always people who are not in with the in crowd. They’re not on board. The idea of the multiple drills is to provide cover, so if someone sees that this is happening the answer is, “Oh, no, no, no, no. We’re doing a drill. We’re doing a drill.” But then it happens. The other thing is that the existence of the drills also provides confusion during the day when the false flag occurs and that is very helpful for the operation.

The other thing you just see is a media narrative that jumps right on top because there’s intimate collaboration. The discussion’s inevitably focus on do we need more police protection, greater police state measures? What about our privacy? Yeah, but we have to have security. That whole discussion just goes on and on and so the public conversation inevitably creeps toward fascism, always does, and war – fascism and war.

Finally, you find the government taking action and doing things, again, that could never be justified, whether it’s invading Iraq or whether it’s rolling out the naked-body scanners owned by Michael Chertoff’s company after the Underwear Bomber – Ooh … Underwear! Bomber! – and sweetheart deals that happened that would never have happened otherwise.

Now, it’s true. Some of these events may not be always false flags. They might be devious, evil opportunism run amok. Would not rule that out, but a lot of these I think are indeed false flags absolutely, and we need to look at it.

Finally, in concluding, I would say that a lot of these false flags are not necessarily going to be military operations, especially moving forward. I think we need to look for corporate and financial false flags. In fact, there have been financial false flags in the past. I’ll write about the 1907 financial crisis that led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve, and I think that we have financial false flags that are going on in our own era. We have corporate false flags, if everyone remembers the Sony North Korea hack – absolute corporate/intel false flag – the flu scares, the pharmaceutical. All of these I think are a big part of our world today. Keep in mind, too, not every false flag – in fact, no false flag, likely, is going to be on the magnitude of something like 9/11. That’s the granddaddy, the big one. Most other false flags will have varying levels of impact on the world. Think of them as different types of different size weapons to target different types of things that they want to get done.

I just want to wrap up. I think there is a way out. What we’re seeing, the false flag phenomenon is important right now because you have groups that are trying right now to establish a global, totalitarian system, and they are trying very, very hard using false flags as a way to psych us out, terrify us, make us feel helpless so that we run to the state for protection. You can see it happening. This is exactly what they’re moving toward, and they’re being very successful at it right now.

In that war, we have to expect all forms of propaganda to be ramped up and to be in place, including the false flag but not exclusively false flags. All the tricks of the trade are coming out.

The way out for us, obviously, educate ourselves. Be unafraid to be an activist. I keep thinking, find out what you’re willing to go to jail for. Think about this. What are the things that you personally are willing, would be willing, to be arrested for? Because we’re getting to that point, what will we support? Organizations like WikiLeaks, which technically do things that are illegal but we need them because we’re not living in a democratic system. We’re living in an authoritarian system masking as a democratic system.

Fascism today is not going to look like Hitler. That was 80 years ago. This isn’t the world of the 1930s. Fascism’s not going to look like Brownshirts raising their right hand. That’s not how it is. Fascism’s going to look a lot sexier. It’ll look like Monday Night Football and it’ll look like Dancing With the Stars and it’ll look like all those nice things that people like to look at, the glitter. And it’ll call itself democracy. But it’s not going to call itself fascism. Of course it won’t. So we have to be aware.

The other thing that researchers should be doing, and they are doing this, we’re seeing this with the Web – is they’re calling out false flag opportunities now when they happen. This was not the case 20 years ago. It’s happening now. When any big event happens you see it. Now, sometimes people just jump on and say “False flag!” and maybe not always with evidence, but researchers are very, very aware now and so it’s becoming a little more difficult.

The main thing I feel we need to do, though, is to break out of this hierarchical control system. I was talking about energy earlier. I think there are ways for us moving forward technologically and in terms of our own thinking, to break ourselves out of this system of energy control. We’re talking about things like energy harvesting devices, free energy and the like. I think this is important.

The other thing, I do write about UFOs and let’s call it the ET phenomenon. I do consider that probably the greatest and most deep, dark secret that we have in our world today. It represents an infrastructure that is so vastly beyond the infrastructure we’re looking at here, and I do think that the opening of that secret as well as other secrets would cause an effect for people to be peering into the structures of power and allow them to take or at least begin the process of taking back the power, taking back our own sovereignty so that we can live actually as we always wanted to – as free, independent citizens of a society that believes in rule by the people.

You’ve been listening to Richard Dolan. Today’s show has been: Understanding False Flag Operations In Our Time.

Richard Dolan is an author and historian. He is nearing completion of a groundbreaking book, A History of False Flag Operations, which will explain one of the most pernicious developments of our time: how clandestine agencies secretly engage in violence and destruction in order to promote their agendas. He is best known as the author of two volumes of history, UFOs and the National Security State. He is widely regarded as a leading researcher and historian on the topic of the UFO cover-up. He studied US Cold War strategy, Soviet history and international diplomacy. Since 2012, he has hosted The Richard Dolan Show, airing on KGRA Radio every Monday evening, from 8-10 pm Eastern. In addition to his research, his company, Richard Dolan Press, actively publishes innovative books by authors from around the world. Visit his website at richarddolanpress.com.

Guns and Butter is produced by Bonnie Faulkner, Yarrow Mahko and Tony Rango. To leave comments or order copies of shows, email us at [email protected].

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Friends and Comrades, it is a great honor to be standing here – at the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament.

One year ago I was driving through the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, monitoring the situation in the refugee camps there. Winter was approaching and the mountains on the Lebanese–Syrian border were covered by snow. It was cold, very cold.

Some 20 minutes, after leaving Baalbek, I spotted an extremely humble makeshift refugee camp, growing literally from the road, in the middle of nowhere.

I stopped. Together with my interpreter, I walked inside and engaged several people in conversation.

The situation was desperate. Children were hungry and could not register for schools through the UNHCR or through the Lebanese government, which, by that time, had almost collapsed. Many electronic food cards that were issued to the migrants did not function. Work permits were not offered, and without proper paperwork, local social services could not be used. In brief: a total disaster.

I was told that in this area, some Syrian migrants had already been starving.

This was Bekaa Valley, a tough place to start with, and full of ancient traditions, clans, gangs and narcotic-business. Refugees were expected to keep their heads down, or else…

Before I left, two little girls, two sisters, approached me. Both had swollen bellies, suffering from malnutrition. Both were dressed in rugs. Both looked deprived.

But after spotting my cameras, they were mesmerized, smiling at me, showing tongues, laughing.

Their country was in ruins, their future uncertain.

But these were just two little girls in the middle of the mountains, two girls excited about each and every little detail of life. Such innocence! Such hope! People are people, and children are children, everywhere, even during wars.

Unfortunately, I have witnessed too many of them; too many wars. Too many barbarities performed by NATO, by the Empire, by the United States and Europe.

Later, working on the Greek island of Kos and in Calais in France, I kept thinking about those two girls, again and again.

The West (or call it NATO, or anything you like – we all know what I mean!) has, in the most cynical manner, destabilized and destroyed the entire Middle East. As it has in virtually all the continents of the world, it ruined tremendous cultures, plundered all it could put its hands on, turned proud people into slaves. Libya and Iraq are no more! I can testify, as I work all over the Middle East.

And then the West enclosed itself into its gold-plated bunker, slowly and disgustingly digesting its booty!

How many refugees are there that Europe says: “it cannot accept”? 1 million? Tiny, miniscule Lebanon has 2 million, and it is coping; badly but coping!

And Lebanon did not destroy Syria, Libya, Afghanistan or Iraq.

You know how it all feels like? Like observing a woman who was gang-raped, whose husband was murdered in front of her own eyes, and whose beautiful house was looted. Now this woman, just in order to save her starving children from the rubbles, is forced to go to Europe, to the rapists and thieves who destroyed her life, asking for shelter and food. And they spit into her face! They say: “It is too much for us, too difficult to accommodate you and others like you! Woman, you came to take advantage of us. You came to have a better life at our expense!”

This is how it looks from the outside. This is how I see it.

And I want to puke. But there is no time… One has to work, day and night, to stop this madness.

The West, of course including Europe, is too hardened by its own crimes, too cynical, and too unrepentant.

It remains blind, because it simply does not pay to see!

***

There is no Left Wing in Europe, anymore. Not the Left as we understand the term in Cuba and other revolutionary nations.

To us, true left means “Internationalism”, solidarity!

True left is global, egalitarian, and color-blind.

European so-called Left is only concerned with the benefits of its own citizens. It does not care at all where the funds are coming from.

As long as French, Greek, Spanish or Italian farmers get their subsidies and perks, who cares that agriculture in Africa or Asia gets thoroughly ruined. The most important is that European farmers could drive their latest BMW’s, for producing something or not producing anything at all.

I saw absolutely grotesque concepts implemented in countries like Senegal, and other former French colonies: heavily subsidized French food produce flooded West Africa, supermarkets opened, local production collapsed. Then the prices spiked to 2-3 times higher levels than those in Paris. And so, in Senegal where incomes are perhaps only 10% of those in France, a yoghurt costs 3 times more than in Monoprix.

Who pays for those 35-hour workweeks? Who pays for socialized medical care and free education in the European Union? Definitely not the Europeans themselves! Most of the funds used to come from the colonies, from that unimaginable plunder of the world performed by the West.

Colonialism and imperialism are still there, but they often changed forms, although the toll on people in non-white countries continues to be the same.

The Belgian King Leopold II and his cohorts, in what is now Congo, massacred 10 million people, at the beginning of the 20th Century. Between 1995 and now, the West plundered the Democratic Republic of Congo once again, mercilessly, by using its closest allies in Africa – Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. Again, between 7 and 10 million people died there, in just 20 years, and these are not some inflated numbers, these are numbers provided by the United Nations and its reports, including the so-called “Mapping Report”. All that horror, only so the West could have access to coltan (used in our mobile phones), to uranium, and other strategic materials. I compiled the evidence in my feature documentary film “Rwanda Gambit”.

All those ruined lives and countries, so that European citizens could have their benefits, long vacations, and social services.

When I discussed the issue with my friend, an Italian filmmaker from Naples, he snapped at me: “We don’t want to be like the Chinese. We don’t want to work hard like them!”

I replied: “Then live within your means! Do not allow your corporations and governments to massacre tens of millions of people, so that the companies could have their insane profits, and citizens those outrageous benefits.”

Recently, in Thailand, I overheard a group of unemployed Spaniards laughing about having a vacation in Southeast Asia, paid for by their unemployment benefits.

I know many countries, dependencies of the West, where losing one’s job is synonymous to a death sentence! But we are asked to feel sorry for Spaniards, Italians and Greeks. We are expected to see them as victims.

***

I am saddened to say, but it is not only the United States, but also Europe, which is totally, blissfully ignorant about its role in the world, and about the harm, about the horrors that it is spreading all over our Planet.

This discovery shocked me so much, that I spent 4 years crisscrossing the world, compiling the evidence and testimonies that illustrate the colonialist, neo-colonialist and imperialist legacy of the West, as well as the current neo-colonialist barbarities. The book is 840-pages long and it is called “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. I hope, one day, it will be available in the Italian language!

The book has been receiving enthusiastic reception, but for me, this thick volume is not the end. Now I am compiling the second installment. The topic is just too enormous. The crimes, genocides, holocausts committed by the West on the people of our Planet, are too enormous.

Everything is linked to them! The entire arrangement of the world uses them as pillars.

In our book “On Western Terrorism – From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare”, written together with my friend Noam Chomsky, I was asked whether the Europeans actually realize what they have done to the world, during the last centuries.

(Just a side note – this book is now available in the Italian language “Terrorismo Occidentale”).

I replied to Noam: “They definitely don’t!”

And I repeat here, again: most of them, the great majority of them, do not realize it! They don’t want to see, to admit, that their opera houses, hospitals, museums, parks and promenades, are all constructed on the corpses of those who were robbed of everything: from Latin America and its open veins, to Asia and Africa. Slavery, unimaginable extermination campaigns, tremendous lists of horrors!

Before Noam and I began our discussion, I spent some time with several top statisticians, and our conclusion was chilling: directly or indirectly, the West massacred between 40 and 50 million people, between the Hiroshima A-bomb explosion, and the time of my long dialogue with Noam – in 2012.

The number of people, who were murdered throughout history, directly or indirectly, by European empires, all over the world, can only be calculated in hundreds of millions, and one of my statistician friends believes that the total accumulative number actually exceeds 1 billion.

***

When I was recently speaking at the China Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, and later in Moscow, having been invited by Russian philosophers and by several members of the Russian Academy of Science, I publicly declared that I am fundamentally against “free medical care and free education in Europe”.

When asked “why?” I explained that the cost is too high, and those robbed and destroyed people, all over the world, are almost exclusively expected to cover it.

But I continued: “I am totally, decisively, supportive of universal free medical care, education and essential social benefits. Or as we say in Cuba: everyone dances, or nobody does!”

Of course I also can tolerate and support free medical care, education and benefits in those countries that do not plunder the world, like Cuba, China, Venezuela, Bolivia, South Africa or Ecuador.

***

Not only the West refuses to face its responsibility for, by now, the almost absolute total destruction of the world, it is also using all sorts of smoke screens and propaganda tactics to divert the attention of the people; it is spreading nihilist economic concepts, propaganda and outright lies.

It is using education as a weapon, offering scholarships to children of elites in the countries it is robbing and controlling. After being indoctrinated, they return home and continue violating their own countries on behalf of the United States and Europe.

And so the vicious cycle continues!

I encountered so many grotesque moments, when for instance, an Indonesian upper class family returning from its vacation in Holland, begins a long litany, about how great are the theaters, trains, museums and public spaces in Netherlands, compared to those in Indonesia.

Of course they are! All built from centuries of Dutch plunder of Indonesia, like those Spanish cathedrals stuffed with gold, growing from corpses.

As Noam Chomsky often says: “not to see all this truly takes great discipline!”

***

The brutality of the Western Empire is unmatchable. Its cynicism is monumental!

Look at those so-called “terrorists” in Muslim countries, scarecrows that Western governments and media keep waving in front of our eyes!

Islamic culture is greatly socialist and socially oriented. After World War II, secular, socialist, revolutionary and anti-Western governments ruled the most important Muslim nations: Egypt, Iran and Indonesia.

Within two decades, the West overthrew them all, implementing fascist regimes.

It then invented the Mujahideen and injected them into Afghanistan, in order to finish with the Soviet Union.

And once it felt the need for some monumental enemy to replace Communism, it manufactured and then armed, trained and educated groups like al-Qaida, al-Nusra and ISIS.

This move served two important goals: to justify astronomical military and intelligence budgets, and to portray the Western/Christian civilization as “culturally superior”, fighting “Arab terrorist monsters”.

Of course, the great majority of the people in Europe and North America are so indoctrinated, intellectually self-righteous and defunct, that they remain blind when faced with those Machiavellian pirouettes.

For the European public, there are plenty of “good reasons” to stick to those inherently racist beliefs, and to protectionism. There are even better reasons for hiding those millions of heads in the sand!

And so it goes.

***

I am here, in Italy, and today I do not want to discuss the United States, Israel, or other colonies and client states of the West. We can do it some other time, if I am invited back.

I spoke about Europe.

And I spoke about those two Syrian girls I met in Lebanon.

They are your responsibility, too, Italy! They suffer from malnutrition because your part of the world is ruining their country. It is because your country is a member of NATO, and NATO is behaving like a fascist thug with some clear mafia behavioral patterns.

I know you have heart!

I grew up on you films, on Fellini and de Sica, Rossellini, Antonioni and others. I greatly admire your poetry and music. They had tremendous influence on my work, and on how I see the world.

But your heart, it seems, lately goes only to your own people. It is not an internationalist heart. It does not believe that all people are equal.

I came here to say this, because not too many people dare to.

I came here because I still care for your country.

But as a determined socialist realist, I care about Italy as it “could and should be”, not “as it is” at this moment.

Thank you!

“Should the UN announce tomorrow that I have lost my case against the United Kingdom and Sweden I shall exist the embassy at noon on Friday to accept arrest by British police as there is no meaningful prospect of further appeal.”- Julian Assange, Twitter, Feb 4, 2016.

The UN is a funny old thing. It has provided, historically, the strangest collective of bedfellows, fed on a good staple diet of hypocrisy and political jousting.  It has more panels than Italian pasta varieties, more working committees than French cheese.  At times, its workings reek of private school understandings and diplomatic niceties.  That said, the body has provided a host of relevant decisions on the subject of human rights that are hard to dismiss.  Out of understandings come that most curious of beasts known as international law. 

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found for Assange on Friday, citing “different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorean embassy.”  Such detention, initially commenced to answer allegations of sexual abuse in Sweden, was arbitrary as he was held in isolation during the first stage, and also “because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr. Assange.”

The Working Group has argued that Assange’s “safety and physical integrity” be assured, that “his right to freedom of movement” be respected, and that he enjoy the full gamut of “rights guaranteed by the international norms on detention.”  Compensation has also been suggested.

The press conference, in which panel member Christophe Peschoux fielded a range of often baffling, even hostile questions, suggested vast confusions about the nature of detention and the status of the panel.  One French journalist insisted that all Assange needed to do was step outside the Ecuadorean embassy to “answer a few questions” about alleged sexual naughties.  Others suggested that the findings would open the floodgates to “criminals” claiming to be arbitrarily detained.  Such belittling naïveté was only matched by the colossal ignorance of those present about the “arbitrary” nature of the detention.

No where in the question session for Peschoux in Geneva was there the contextual background, the fact that this individual is wanted by a score of states keen on nabbing the spiller of state secrets. Law by itself is a sterile and dead thing. It needs background animation to give it purpose, nefarious or otherwise.

Instead, editorials and some legal authorities have decided on a micro-perspective jaunt, insisting that the UN panel had erred.  The Guardian editorial felt that the entire view was wrong.  “He is not being detained arbitrarily.”  The defying Australian had simply wanted to avoid extradition to Sweden “to face allegations of sex offences.”  Showing how tense its relationship with Assange has been over the years, the paper decided that he was only interested in a “publicity stunt”.[1]

Other lawyers also took to the barricades of the status quo, failing to find arbitrary detention anywhere.  International law authority Philippe Sands considered the report “poorly reasoned and unpersuasive”.[2]  The Daily Mash also wished to have its satirical poke at Assange, chuckling that, “A Man who has been waiting for his Argos purchase for more than 15 minutes is being detained in violation of his human rights, the UN has ruled.”

Both the UK and Sweden have combined, through a spurious case against Assange, to use the pretext of his refusal to accept a “benign” questioning session – to be held outside the safety of the embassy – as a point of condemnation. Never mind that the Swedish preliminary case has now lasted for over five years without charges; or that two of the three initial points of query on molestation have been dropped, leaving the rape allegation standing.

A hunt for the legal status of the Working Group’s finding has also done the rounds, again suggesting a fundamental legal illiteracy running the media cohorts.  “We, the Working Group,” according to Peschoux, “conclude that in case X or Y, this person is deprived because his internationally recognised rights have been violated, then the decision is indirectly, but still legally binding on the relevant authorities.”

The reality is that this decision is not a ruling but a finding. It is on that basis, saddled to international law, that its legitimacy lies.  Arbitrary detention, compensation for a loss of liberty, are all recognised in international law.  The mechanism for enforcement, however, requires will.  Moral, normative force, is hard to ignore.

As with everything that seems to touch Assange, disagreement was bound to happen even within the body assessing his claims. The panel, consisting of five independent members, fell one short because of perceived conflict of interest from an Australian member.  This left four to hand down findings, of which one was in disagreement.  Usually, such panels operate on consensus. The Ukrainian member though otherwise, leaving three to agree with Assange’s arguments.

The response from a Downing Street spokesman has been dismissive.  Such UN determinations have no truck in England’s green land.  “We have been consistently clear that Mr Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK but is, in fact, voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy.”[3]  Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was more direct, calling the findings “ridiculous”.

Swedish prosecutors were already making their view clear in advance – the UN panel’s decision would have “no formal impact” on its investigation, if it even warrants that designation.  Having already dropped two sexual assault claims, the only, and very serious one of rape, remains in the prosecution armoury.

Assange, as he has done for years, continues to intrigue. Some of this is play, a courtship with publicity exacerbated by circumstances.  Some of it is the tease of desperation, the impulse to be heard.  There is little doubt that he is suffering under the strain of acute physical isolation, something that is only alleviated in minor doses by visits, and moments like the UN panel finding.

Connected as he is to the virtual globe, accessible as he is to hundreds of news studios and forums, tapped into the latest movements and theories about information, his body remains confined.  Bound in, or more accurately to, the earthly Ecuadorean temple in London, he is still contending with the idea of being a king of infinite digital space.

Such is the nature of modern confinement for the technological dissident, a form of de facto incarceration that relies on innuendo and threat, rather than concrete charges and suggestions.  To be confined on the basis of rumour and innuendo rather than formal charge is a rather dire state of affairs.  That, however, is simply one technique adopted by authorities.  It has seen a range of whistleblowers and digital activists confined, convicted or exiled.

WikiLeaks remains an organisation that is rhetorically condemned as criminal but remains entirely functional and legitimate as a publisher.  Its continued relevance is defined by the sheer trauma caused to traditional organisations that have lost sight of what confidentially actually means.  This has been the nature of the Assange information war with his detractors from the start: how such material is controlled, released and used. It has extended from the tissue of his every existence, to the functioning of the US State Department.

Sex, illegal or otherwise, is politics; as are allegations, questionable or otherwise. When these are bound up in some of the most controversial disclosures of classified data in history, Assange has shown how such distinctions become meaningless.  If they want to get you, they will.

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

Notes:

Anyone who’s watched football games, especially NFL ones the way they’re played today, close to the action, understands their extreme violence, what television doesn’t show – or discuss longterm physical damage to many players.

Some end up with permanent disabling injuries. Traumatic head ones caused by concussions and powerful bodies smashing into each other disrupt normal brain functioning, affecting learning, thinking and other cognitive abilities.

Affected players are at greater risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia, devastating their lives, shortening them.

Short-term high pay is poor compensation for spending later years dependent on others for care – a deplorable state. Anyone experiencing it knows how awful.

On January 15, 1967, Super Bowl I was played, this year its 50th contest scheduled for February 7. Annual games are America’s most watched television programs, attracting over 100 million US viewers alone.

Security this year will make wide areas around Santa Clara, CA’s Levi Stadium, including the San Francisco Bay Area, resemble a war zone.

It includes patrolling F-15 warplanes, refueling tanker planes, police sharpshooters, bomb-sniffing dogs, helicopters overhead able to evacuate players and staff in case of trouble, metal detectors and routine bag searches, as well as high-tech cameras and sensor equipment able to monitor public transportation.

An FAA-no-fly zone will be implemented throughout much of the bay area, enforced by Pentagon and California Air National Guard pilots manning warplanes.Major General Joe Vazquez heads the US Air Force’s Civil Air Patrol (CAP). “The opportunity to ensure safe skies around Levi’s Stadium is a mission CAP takes very seriously,” he said.

Our aircrews are trained to simulate either threats or duress flights that inadvertently or purposely enter into restricted airspace.

On game day, extensive flight restrictions will be implemented over a wide area around the stadium, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

All this for a football game. The cost of security, including months of preparations, training, and thousands of personnel involved isn’t publicly known.

It’s likely hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions – federal, state and local taxpayers assessed, at the expense of vital public needs gone begging.

America has unlimited resources for endless imperial wars, homeland ones against its most disadvantaged citizens, the world’s largest domestic gulag by far – and public funding of security for sports extravaganzas.

What matters most is ignored – peace, stability, equity and justice.

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.

Dr. Hudson discusses his paper, The IMF Changes Its Rules To Isolate China and Russia; implications of the four policy changes at the International Monetary Fund in its role as enforcer of inter-government debts; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative military alliance to NATO; the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank; the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty; the China International Payments System (CIPS); WTO investment treaties; Ukraine and Greece; different philosophies of development between east and west; break up of the post WWII dollarized global financial system; the world dividing into two camps.

A nightmare scenario of U.S. geopolitical strategists is coming true: foreign independence from U.S.-centered financial and diplomatic control. China and Russia are investing in neighboring economies on terms that cement Eurasian integration on the basis of financing in their own currencies and favoring their own exports. They also have created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative military alliance to NATO.[1]And the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank tandem in which the United States holds unique veto power.

More than just a disparity of voting rights in the IMF and World Bank is at stake. At issue is a philosophy of development. U.S. and other foreign investment in infrastructure (or buyouts and takeovers on credit) adds interest rates and other financial charges to the cost structure, while charging prices as high as the market can bear (think of Carlos Slim’s telephone monopoly in Mexico, or the high costs of America’s health care system), and making their profits and monopoly rents tax-exempt by paying them out as interest.

By contrast, government-owned infrastructure provides basic services at low cost, on a subsidized basis, or freely. That is what has made the United States, Germany and other industrial lead nations so competitive over the past few centuries. But this positive role of government is no longer possible under World Bank/IMF policy. The U.S. promotion of neoliberalism and austerity is a major reason propelling China, Russia and other nations out of the U.S. diplomatic and banking orbit.

On December 3, 2015, Prime Minister Putin proposed that Russia “and other Eurasian Economic Union countries should kick-off consultations with members of the SCO and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on a possible economic partnership.”[2]Russia also is seeking to build pipelines to Europe through friendly secular countries instead of Sunni jihadist U.S.-backed countries locked into America’s increasingly confrontational orbit.

Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov points out that when Russia’s 2013 loan to Ukraine was made, at the request of Ukraine’s elected government, Ukraine’s “international reserves were barely enough to cover three months’ imports, and no other creditor was prepared to lend on terms acceptable to Kiev. Yet Russia provided $3 billion of much-needed funding at a 5 per cent interest rate, when Ukraine’s bonds were yielding nearly 12 per cent.”[3]

What especially annoys U.S. financial strategists is that this loan by Russia’s National Wealth Fund was protected by IMF lending practice, which at that time ensured collectability by withholding credit from countries in default of foreign official debts, or at least not bargaining in good faith to pay. To cap matters, the bonds are registered under London’s creditor-oriented rules and courts.

Most worrisome to U.S. strategists is that China and Russia are denominating their trade and investment in their own currencies instead of dollars. After U.S. officials threatened to derange Russia’s banking linkages by cutting it off from the SWIFT interbank clearing system, China accelerated its creation of the alternative China International Payments System (CIPS), and its own credit card system to protect Eurasian economies from the threats made by U.S. unilateralists.

Russia and China are simply doing what the United States has long done: using trade and credit linkages to cement their diplomacy. This tectonic geopolitical shift is a Copernican threat to New Cold War ideology: Instead of the world economy revolving around the United States (the Ptolemaic idea of America as “the indispensible nation”), it may revolve around Eurasia. As long as global financial control remains grounded in Washington at the offices of the IMF and World Bank, such a shift in the center of gravity will be fought with all the power of an American Century (and would-be American Millennium) inquisition.

Any inquisition needs a court system and enforcement vehicles. So does resistance to such a system. That is what today’s global financial, legal and trade maneuvering is all about. And that is why today’s world system is in the process of breaking apart. Differences in economic philosophy call for different institutions.

To U.S. neocons the specter of AIIB government-to-government investment creates fear of nations minting their own money and holding each other’s debt in their international reserves instead of borrowing dollars, paying interest in dollars and subordinating their financial planning to the U.S. Treasury and IMF. Foreign governments would have less need to finance their budget deficits by selling off key infrastructure. And instead of dismantling public spending, a broad Eurasian economic union would do what the United States itself practices, and seek self-sufficiency in banking and monetary policy.

Imagine the following scenario five years from now. China will have spent half a decade building high-speed railroads, ports, power systems and other construction for Asian and African countries, enabling them to grow and export more. These exports will be coming online to repay the infrastructure loans. Also, suppose that Russia has been supplying the oil and gas energy for these projects on credit.

To avert this prospect, suppose an American diplomat makes the following proposal to the leaders of countries in debt to China, Russia and the AIIB: “Now that you’ve got your increased production in place, why repay? We’ll make you rich if you stiff our adversaries and turn back to the West. We and our European allies will support your assigning your nations’ public infrastructure to yourselves and your supporters at insider prices, and then give these assets market value by selling shares in New York and London. Then, you can keep the money and spend it in the West.”

How can China or Russia collect in such a situation? They can sue. But what court in the West will accept their jurisdiction?

That is the kind of scenario U.S. State Department and Treasury officials have been discussing for more than a year. Implementing it became more pressing in light of Ukraine’s $3 billion debt to Russia falling due by December 20, 2015. Ukraine’s U.S.-backed regime has announced its intention to default. To support their position, the IMF has just changed its rules to remove a critical lever on which Russia and other governments have long relied to ensure payment of their loans.

The IMF’s role as enforcer of inter-government debts

When it comes to enforcing nations to pay inter-government debts, the IMF is able to withhold not only its own credit but also that of governments and global bank consortia participating when debtor countries need “stabilization” loans (the neoliberal euphemism for imposing austerity and destabilizing debtor economies, as in Greece this year). Countries that do not privatize their infrastructure and sell it to Western buyers are threatened with sanctions, backed by U.S.-sponsored “regime change” and “democracy promotion” Maidan-style. The Fund’s creditor leverage has been that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan – and hence, for packages involving other governments. That is how the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. But until now, the beneficiaries have been U.S. and NATO lenders, not been China or Russia.

The focus on a mixed public/private economy sets the AIIB at odds with the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s aim of relinquishing government planning power to the financial and corporate sector, and the neoliberal aim of blocking governments from creating their own money and implementing their own financial, economic and environmental regulation. Chief Nomura economist Richard Koo, explained the logic of viewing the AIIB as a threat to the U.S.-controlled IMF: “If the IMF’s rival is heavily under China’s influence, countries receiving its support will rebuild their economies under what is effectively Chinese guidance, increasing the likelihood they will fall directly or indirectly under that country’s influence.”[4]

This was the setting on December 8, when Chief IMF Spokesman Gerry Rice announced: “The IMF’s Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors.” Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov accused the IMF decision of being “hasty and biased.”[5] But it had been discussed all year long, calculating a range of scenarios for a sea change in international law. Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the NATO-oriented Atlantic Council, points out:

The IMF staff started contemplating a rule change in the spring of 2013 because nontraditional creditors, such as China, had started providing developing countries with large loans. One issue was that these loans were issued on conditions out of line with IMF practice. China wasn’t a member of the Paris Club, where loan restructuring is usually discussed, so it was time to update the rules.
The IMF intended to adopt a new policy in the spring of 2016, but the dispute over Russia’s $3 billion loan to Ukraine has accelerated an otherwise slow decision-making process.[6]

The target was not only Russia and its ability to collect on its sovereign loan to Ukraine, but China even more, in its prospective role as creditor to African countries and prospective AIIB borrowers, planning for a New Silk Road to integrate a Eurasian economy independent of U.S. financial and trade control. The Wall Street Journal concurred that the main motive for changing the rules was the threat that China would provide an alternative to IMF lending and its demands for crushing austerity. “IMF-watchers said the fund was originally thinking of ensuring China wouldn’t be able to foil IMF lending to member countries seeking bailouts as Beijing ramped up loans to developing economies around the world.”[7] So U.S. officials walked into the IMF headquarters in Washington with the legal equivalent of suicide vests. Their aim was a last-ditch attempt to block trade and financial agreements organized outside of U.S. control and that of the IMF and World Bank.

The plan is simple enough. Trade follows finance, and the creditor usually calls the tune. That is how the United States has used the Dollar Standard to steer Third World trade and investment since World War II along lines benefiting the U.S. economy. The cement of trade credit and bank lending is the ability of creditors to collect on the international debts being negotiated. That is why the United States and other creditor nations have used the IMF as an intermediary to act as “honest broker” for loan consortia. (“Honest broker” means being subject to U.S. veto power.) To enforce its financial leverage, the IMF has long followed the rule that it will not sponsor any loan agreement or refinancing for governments that are in default of debts owed to other governments. However, as the afore-mentioned Aslund explains, the IMF could easily

change its practice of not lending into [countries in official] arrears … because it is not incorporated into the IMF Articles of Agreement, that is, the IMF statutes. The IMF Executive Board can decide to change this policy with a simple board majority. The IMF has lent to Afghanistan, Georgia, and Iraq in the midst of war, and Russia has no veto right, holding only 2.39 percent of the votes in the IMF. When the IMF has lent to Georgia and Ukraine, the other members of its Executive Board have overruled Russia.[8]

After the rules change, Aslund later noted, “the IMF can continue to give Ukraine loans regardless of what Ukraine does about its credit from Russia, which falls due on December 20.[9]

The IMF rule that no country can borrow if it is in default to a foreign government was created in the post-1945 world. Since then, the U.S. Government, Treasury and/or U.S. bank consortia have been party to nearly every major loan agreement. But inasmuch as Ukraine’s official debt to Russia’s National Wealth Fund was not to the U.S. Government, the IMF announced its rules change simply as a “clarification.” What its rule really meant was that it would not provide credit to countries in arrears to the U.S. government, not that of Russia or China.

It remains up to the IMF board – and in the end, its managing director – whether or not to deem a country creditworthy. The U.S. representative can block any foreign leaders not beholden to the United States. Mikhail Delyagin, Director of the Institute of Globalization Problems, explained the double standard at work: “The Fund will give Kiev a new loan tranche on one condition: that Ukraine should not pay Russia a dollar under its $3 billion debt. … they will oblige Ukraine to pay only to western creditors for political reasons.”[10]

The post-2010 loan packages to Greece are a case in point. The IMF staff saw that Greece could not possibly pay the sums needed to bail out French, German and other foreign banks and bondholders. Many Board members agreed, and have gone public with their whistle blowing. Their protests didn’t matter. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pointed out that U.S. banks had written credit default swaps betting that Greece could pay, and would lose money if there were a debt writedown). Dominique Strauss-Kahn backed the hard line US- European Central Bank position. So did Christine Lagarde in 2015, overriding staff protests.[11]

Regarding Ukraine, IMF executive board member Otaviano Canuto, representing Brazil, noted that the logic that “conditions on IMF lending to a country that fell behind on payments [was to] make sure it kept negotiating in good faith to reach agreement with creditors.”[12] Dropping this condition, he said, would open the door for other countries to insist on a similar waiver and avoid making serious and sincere efforts to reach payment agreement with creditor governments.

A more binding IMF rule is Article I of its 1944-45 founding charter, prohibiting the Fund from lending to a member state engaged in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes in general. But when IMF head Lagarde made the last loan to Ukraine, in spring 2015, she merely expressed a vapid token hope there might be peace. Withholding IMF credit could have been a lever to force peace and adherence to the Minsk agreements, but U.S. diplomatic pressure led that opportunity to be rejected. President Porochenko immediately announced that he would step up the civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the eastern Donbass region.

The most important IMF condition being violated is that continued warfare with the East prevents a realistic prospect of Ukraine paying back new loans. The Donbas is where most Ukrainian exports were made, mainly to Russia. That market is being lost by the junta’s belligerence toward Russia. This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving IMF aid. Aslund himself points to the internal contradiction at work: Ukraine has achieved budget balance because the inflation and steep currency depreciation has drastically eroded its pension costs. But the resulting decline in the purchasing power of pension benefits has led to growing opposition to Ukraine’s post-Maidan junta. So how can the IMF’s austerity budget be followed without a political backlash? “Leading representatives from President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc are insisting on massive tax cuts, but no more expenditure cuts; that would cause a vast budget deficit that the IMF assesses at 9-10 percent of GDP, that could not possibly be financed.”[13]

By welcoming and financing Ukraine instead of treating as an outcast, the IMF thus is breaking four of its rules:

1. Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan. This breaks the “No More Argentinas” rule, adopted after the IMF’s disastrous 2001 loan.
2. Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors. This goes against the IMF’s role as enforcer for the global creditor cartel.
3. Not to lend to a borrower at war – and indeed, to one that is destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan.
4. Finally, not to lend to a country that is not likely to carry out the IMF’s austerity “conditionalities,” at least without crushing democratic opposition in a totalitarian manner.

The upshot – and new basic guideline for IMF lending – is to split the world into pro-U.S. economies going neoliberal, and economies maintaining public investment in infrastructure n and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. Russia and China may lend as much as they want to other governments, but there is no global vehicle to help secure their ability to be paid back under international law. Having refused to roll back its own (and ECB) claims on Greece, the IMF is willing to see countries not on the list approved by U.S. neocons repudiate their official debts to Russia or China. Changing its rules to clear the path for making loans to Ukraine is rightly seen as an escalation of America’s New Cold War against Russia and China.

Timing is everything in such ploys. Georgetown University Law professor and Treasury consultant Anna Gelpern warned that before the “IMF staff and executive board [had] enough time to change the policy on arrears to official creditors,” Russia might use “its notorious debt/GDP clause to accelerate the bonds at any time before December, or simply gum up the process of reforming the IMF’s arrears policy.”[14] According to this clause, if Ukraine’s foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP, Russia’s government would have the right to demand immediate payment. But President Putin, no doubt anticipating the bitter fight to come over its attempts to collect on its loan, refrained from exercising this option. He is playing the long game, bending over backward to behave in a way that cannot be criticized as “odious.”

A more immediate reason deterring the United States from pressing earlier to change IMF rules was the need to use the old set of rules against Greece before changing them for Ukraine. A waiver for Ukraine would have provided a precedent for Greece to ask for a similar waiver on paying the “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), EU commission and the IMF itself – for the post-2010 loans that have pushed it into a worse depression than the 1930s. Only after Greece capitulated to eurozone austerity was the path clear for U.S. officials to change the IMF rules to isolate Russia. But their victory has come at the cost of changing the IMF’s rules and those of the global financial system irreversibly. Other countries henceforth may reject conditionalities, as Ukraine has done, as well as asking for write-downs on foreign official debts.

That was the great fear of neoliberal U.S. and Eurozone strategists last summer, after all. The reason for smashing Greece’s economy was to deter Podemos in Spain and similar movements in Italy and Portugal from pursuing national prosperity instead of eurozone austerity. “Imagine the Greek government had insisted that EU institutions accept the same haircut as the country’s private creditors,” Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov asked. “The reaction in European capitals would have been frosty. Yet this is the position now taken by Kiev with respect to Ukraine’s $3 billion eurobond held by Russia.”[15]

The consequences of America’s tactics to make a financial hit on Russia while its balance of payments is down (as a result of collapsing oil and gas prices) go far beyond just the IMF. These tactics are driving other countries to defend their own economies in the legal and political spheres, in ways that are breaking apart the post-1945 global order.

Countering Russia’s ability to collect in Britain’s law courts

Over the past year the U.S. Treasury and State Departments have discussed ploys to block Russia from collecting by suing in the London Court of International Arbitration, under whose rules Russia’s bonds issued to Ukraine are registered. Reviewing the excuses Ukraine might use to avoid paying Russia, Prof. Gelpern noted that it might declare the debt “odious,” made under duress or corruptly. In a paper for the Peterson Institute of International Economics (the banking lobby in Washington) she suggested that Britain should deny Russia the use of its courts as a means of reinforcing the financial, energy and trade sanctions passed after Crimea voted to join Russia as protection against the ethnic cleansing from the Right Sector, Azov Battalion and other paramilitary groups descending on the region.[16]

A kindred ploy might be for Ukraine to countersue Russia for reparations for “invading” it and taking Crimea. Such a claim would seem to have little chance of success (without showing the court to be an arm of NATO politics), but it might delay Russia’ ability to collect by tying the loan up in a long nuisance lawsuit. But the British court would lose credibility if it permits frivolous legal claims (called barratry in English) such as President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk have threatened.

To claim that Ukraine’s debt to Russia was “odious” or otherwise illegitimate, “President Petro Poroshenko said the money was intended to ensure Yanukovych’s loyalty to Moscow, and called the payment a ‘bribe,’ according to an interview with Bloomberg in June this year.”[17] The legal and moral problem with such arguments is that they would apply equally to IMF and U.S. loans. They would open the floodgates for other countries to repudiate debts taken on by dictatorships supported by IMF and U.S. lenders.

As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted, the IMF’s change of rules, “designed to suit Ukraine only, could plant a time bomb under all other IMF programs.” The new rules showed the extent to which the IMF is subordinate to U.S. aggressive New Cold Warriors: “since Ukraine is politically important – and it is only important because it is opposed to Russia – the IMF is ready to do for Ukraine everything it has not done for anyone else.”[18]

In a similar vein, Andrei Klimov, deputy chairman of the Committee for International Affairs at the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament) accused the United States of playing “the role of the main violin in the IMF while the role of the second violin is played by the European Union, [the] two basic sponsors of the Maidan – the … coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.”[19]

Putin’s counter-strategy and the blowback on U.S.-European relations

Having anticipated that Ukraine would seek excuses to not pay Russia, President Putin refrained from exercising Russia’s right to demand immediate payment when Ukraine’s foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP. In November he even offered to defer any payment at all this year, stretching payments out to “$1 billion next year, $1 billion in 2017, and $1 billion in 2018,” if “the United States government, the European Union, or one of the big international financial institutions” guaranteed payment.[20] Based on their assurances “that Ukraine’s solvency will grow,” he added, they should be willing to put their money where their mouth was. If they did not provide guarantees, Putin pointed out, “this means that they do not believe in the Ukrainian economy’s future.”

Implicit was that if the West continued encouraging Ukraine to fight against the East, its government would not be in a position to pay. The Minsk agreement was expiring and Ukraine was receiving new arms support from the United States, Canada and other NATO members to intensify hostilities against Donbas and Crimea.

But the IMF, European Union and United States refused to back up the Fund’s optimistic forecast of Ukraine’s ability to pay in the face of its continued civil war against the East. Foreign Minister Lavrov concluded that, “By having refused to guarantee Ukraine’s debt as part of Russia’s proposal to restructure it, the United States effectively admitted the absence of prospects of restoring its solvency.”[21]

In an exasperated tone, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Russian television: “I have a feeling that they won’t give us the money back because they are crooks … and our Western partners not only refuse to help, but they also make it difficult for us.” Accusing that “the international financial system is unjustly structured,” he nonetheless promised to “go to court. We’ll push for default on the loan and we’ll push for default on all Ukrainian debts,” based on the fact that the loan was a request from the Ukrainian Government to the Russian Government. If two governments reach an agreement this is obviously a sovereign loan…. Surprisingly, however, international financial organisations started saying that this is not exactly a sovereign loan. This is utter bull. Evidently, it’s just an absolutely brazen, cynical lie. … This seriously erodes trust in IMF decisions. I believe that now there will be a lot of pleas from different borrower states to the IMF to grant them the same terms as Ukraine. How will the IMF possibly refuse them?[22]

And there the matter stands. On December 16, 2015, the IMF’s Executive Board ruled that “the bond should be treated as official debt, rather than a commercial bond.”[23] Forbes quipped: “Russia apparently is not always blowing smoke. Sometimes they’re actually telling it like it is.”[24]

Reflecting the degree of hatred fanned by U.S. diplomacy, U.S.-backed Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie A. Jaresko expressed an arrogant confidence that the IMF would back the Ukrainian cabinet’s announcement on Friday, December 18, of its intention to default on the debt to Russia falling due two days later. “If we were to repay this bond in full, it would mean we failed to meet the terms of the I.M.F. and the obligations we made under our restructuring.”[25]

Adding his own bluster, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk announced his intention to tie up Russia’s claim for payment by filing a multibillion-dollar counter claim “over Russia’s occupation of Crimea and intervention in east Ukraine.” To cap matters, he added that “several hundred million dollars of debt owed by two state enterprises to Russian banks would also not be paid.”[26] This makes trade between Ukraine and Russia impossible to continue. Evidently Ukraine’s authorities had received assurance from IMF and U.S. officials that no real “good faith” bargaining would be required to gain ongoing support. Ukraine’s Parliament did not even find it necessary to enact the new tax code and Michael Hudson: U.S. admits lack of prospects of restoring Ukrainian solvency,” November 7, 2015, translated on Johnson’s Russia List, December 7, 2015, #38.

Notes

[21] “In Conversation with Dmitry Medvedev: Interview with five television channels,” Government.ru, December 9, 2015, from Johnson’s Russia List, December 10, 2015,  #2[22]

[23] Andrew Mayeda, “IMF Says Ukraine Bond Owned by Russia Is Official Sovereign Debt,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2015.

[24] Kenneth Rapoza, “IMF Says Russia Right About Ukraine $3 Billion Loan,” Forbes.com, December 16, 2015. The article added: “the Russian government confirmed to Euroclear, at the request of the Ukrainian authorities at the time, that the Eurobond was fully owned by the Russian government.”

[25] Andrew E. Kramer, “Ukraine Halts Repayments on $3.5 Billion It Owes Russia,” The New York Times, December 19, 2015.

[26] Roman Olearchyk, “Ukraine tensions with Russia mount after debt moratorium,” Financial Times, December 19, 2015.

[27] “Violence instead of democracy: Putin slams ‘policies of exceptionalism and impunity’ in UN speech,” www.rt.com, September 29, 2015. From Johnson’s Russia List, September 29, 2015, #2.

The following text is the introduction to Jack Rasmus’ Book

Half way through the second decade of the 21st century, evidence is growing that the global economy is becoming increasingly fragile. Not just in fact, but in potential as well. And not just in the financial sector but in the non-financial sector—i.e. in the ‘real’ economy.

The notion that the global crash of 2008-09 is over, and that the conditions that led to that severe bout of financial instability and epic contraction of the real economy, are somehow behind us is simply incorrect. The global economic crisis that erupted in 2008-09 is not over; it is merely morphing into new forms and shifting in terms of its primary locus. Initially centered in the USA-UK economies, it shifted to the weak links in the advanced economies between 2010-2014—the Eurozone and Japan. Beginning in 2014, it shifted again, a third time, to China and emerging markets where it has continued to deepen and evolve.

It is true that the main sources of instability today are not located in the real estate sector—the subprime mortgage market—or the credit and derivatives markets that were deeply integrated with that market. Nor is the real economy in a rapid economic contraction. The problem in the real economy is the drift toward economic stagnation, with global trade and real investment slowing, deflation emerging, and more economies slipping in and out of recession—from Japan to Brazil to Russia, to South Asia and Europe’s periphery, even to Canada and beyond. On the financial side, it’s the continued rise of excess liquidity and debt—corporate, government, and household—that is fueling new financial bubbles—in stocks in China, corporate junk bonds, leveraged loans, and exchange traded funds in the US, government bonds in Europe, in currency exchange and financial derivatives everywhere.

Order “Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy” here

Financial instability events and crashes, and the real economic devastation that is typically wrought in their wake, do not necessarily occur in repeat fashion like some pre-recorded video rerun. The particulars and details are always different from one crisis to another. At times it’s real estate and property markets (USA 1980s, Japan 1990s, global 2007). Other times stock markets (tech bust of 2000, China 2015). Or currency markets (Asian Meltdown 1997-98) or government bonds (Europe 2012). But the fundamentals are almost always the same.

What then are those fundamentals? How do they originate and develop, then interact and feed back on each other, creating the fragility in the global economic system that makes that system highly predisposed to the eruption of financial crises and subsequent contraction? What are the fundamentals that ensure, when some precipitating event occurs, that the financial instability and real contraction that follows occurs faster, descends deeper, and has a longer duration than some other more ‘normal’ financial event or normal recession? What are the transmission mechanisms that enable the feedbacks, intensify the instability, and exacerbate the crisis? And how do the fundamentals negate and limit the effectiveness of fiscal-monetary counter measures attempting to restore financial stability and real recovery? Indeed, what is meant by ‘systemic fragility’, why is it important, and why do most economists not address or consider it in their forecasts and analyses?

Fundamental Trends & Determinants

The book will argue there are 9 key fundamental trends underlying the growing fragility in the global economy include:

• the decades-long massive infusion of liquidity by central banks worldwide, especially the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, along with the increasing availability of ‘inside credit’ from the private banking system;

• the corresponding increase in private sector debt as investors leverage that massive liquidity injection and credit for purposes of investment;

• the relative redirection of total investment, from real investment to more profitable financial asset investment;

• a resultant slowing of investment into the real economy, as a shift to financial securities investment diverts and distorts normal investment flows;

• growing volatility in financial asset prices as excess liquidity, debt, and the shift to financial asset investing produces asset bubbles, asset inflation, and then deflation;

• a long run drift from inflation to disinflation of goods and services prices, and subsequently to deflation, as real investment flows are disrupted and real growth slows;

• a basic change in the structure of financial markets as new global financial institutions and new financial markets and securities are created, and an emerging new global finance capital elite arises, to accommodate the rising liquidity, debt, and shift to financial asset investment;

• parallel basic changes in labor markets resulting in stagnation and decline of wage incomes and rising household debt;

• growing ineffectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies as debt and incomes from financial assets rise, incomes from wages and salaries stagnate and household debt rises, and debt on government balance sheets increases while government income (taxes) slows—which together reduce the elasticities of response of investment and consumption to interest rates and multiplier effects from government fiscal policies.

Key Variables and Forms of Fragility

A main theme that emerges is that the preceding nine fundamental trends evolve and develop dynamically over time. Those nine trends also mutually determine each other, in the process contributing to a general condition of fragility in the economy. Systemic Fragility is therefore a dynamic condition that is first and foremost the consequence of the interaction of the above 9 key real factors or trends. In turn, those nine forces act upon three key variables to produce Systemic Fragility: debt, income required to service debt, and the ‘terms and conditions of debt’ (T&C).

Debt, income and T&C dynamically interact to raise fragility within the three main economic sectors—business financial, household consumption, and government balance sheet. However, systemic fragility is dynamic not only within a given form—i.e. the financial, consumption, and government—but also between them. Not only may the level of fragility grow as real trends raise the magnitudes of debt, income and T&C within a sector or form, but the interactions between the three variables within a sector may exacerbate the level of fragility as well. Moreover, the feedback effects between the financial, consumption, and government balance sheet forms of fragility can further exacerbate the intensity of fragility on a systemic level.

Fragility is therefore not a linear process, proceeding from one level to the next higher as debt or income rise and/or fall, respectively, as some have described it. It is a very dynamic process, with multiple feedback effects within and between its primary sectors or forms. Systemic fragility is not a simple adding up of levels of fragility that develop within financial, household, and government sectors of the economy. How fragility between those sectors mutually determine each other and raise fragility at a systemic level is equally important.

This focus on dynamic interactions requires identifying and explaining the ‘transmission mechanisms’ within and between the three fragility forms. Some of the more important ‘transmission mechanisms’ include the price systems associated with both financial assets and real goods, government policy shifts and changes, as well as the psychological expectations of various agents—in particular the investor-finance capital elite, households as consumers, and government policy makers at central banks, legislatures, and executive agencies. Emphasis is placed on the price systems as especially important transmission mechanisms for the development of fragility.

The dynamic interactions—i.e. the feedback effects and the enabling transmission mechanisms — intensify the overall fragility effect. Moreover, the intensity due to interactions or ‘feedback effects’ varies with the phase and condition of the business cycle.

Fragility is therefore more than just the sum of its three parts. It is a dynamic process and that process has a historical trajectory based on real conditions as well as subjective, psychological expectations of real actor-agents. Because fragility is the product of internal trends and variables, it develops and grows endogenously, as economists say.

Another important characteristic is that rising systemic fragility renders the global economy more prone to eruptions of financial instability, on the one hand, and further contributes to accelerated contractions of the real economy in the wake of the instability events when they occur. That acceleration leads to a deeper and therefore often longer duration of real contractions.

Two important corollary themes follow from the general analysis of Systemic Fragility in this book. Both challenge prevailing economic orthodoxy. Both reject the notion that the global capitalist economy, in national or global form, tends to be long run stable and returns to equilibrium due to market forces and/or government policy intervention when unstable.

The first challenged orthodox assumption is that the capitalist price system will work its supply and demand ‘magic’ at the level of markets to restore equilibrium and stability. Contrary to contemporary economic analysis, the analysis of Systemic Fragility that follows maintains the price system is not a force for stabilization. Rather, in the 21st century it has increasingly become a force for destabilizing the system. That is particularly true of the role played by financial asset prices. Not all price systems are the same. There is no ‘one price system’ that fits all, where supply and demand together work to moderate instability, which is a major tenet of mainstream economic analysis. There are instead several price systems. More volatile financial asset prices behave differently and appear increasingly to drive goods (products), factor (wage or labor prices) and even money prices (interest rates) in the 21st century as financial asset investing becomes increasingly dominant within global capitalism and real asset investment in turn declines.

A second challenged orthodox assumption is that government fiscal-monetary policies can stabilize the system when such policy action is used to complement pure market forces and the one price system. However, as the analysis of Systemic Fragility will argue, this is increasingly less the case as fragility builds within the global system. Systemic fragility blunts and reduces fiscal-monetary policies aimed at generating a recovery by negating in part the effects of elasticities of monetary policy and interest rate changes and multiplier effects on government spending and tax policies. Weaker and unsustainable recoveries are the result of the growing ineffectiveness of fiscal-monetary policies in attempts to stabilize the system, whether financially or in real terms. The failure of such policies is manifested in economic growth ‘relapses’ (sharp slowing or negative growth for single quarters) or short and shallow repeated descents into recessions. Those subpar recoveries may also, under certain conditions, descend into bona fide economic depressions.

Instability in the Real Economy

As chapters 1 and 2 that follow will address in more detail, the real side of the global economy is slowing. That slowdown was temporarily masked by the brief surge in China and emerging market economies’ (EMEs) growth that occurred between 2010-13 for specific, but temporary, reasons. Initial signs that regional growth in China-EMEs was beginning to dissipate emerged in late 2013. Since then the forces underpinning that growth have weakened further, and now in 2015 growth is slowing in that region more rapidly.

Globally the real goods producing economy is likely already in a global recession. Industrial production is falling, durable goods and factory output is slowing or declining in many countries. Investment in real assets is down sharply, incomes associated with production are stagnating or declining, productivity is almost stagnant, and a general drift toward disinflation and deflation has been underway for some time.

Perhaps the best indicators of this real slowdown is the collapse of world commodity and oil prices. Key industrial commodity prices like iron ore, copper and other key metals have collapsed by more than half, and crude oil by two-thirds from levels just a few years ago. Non-metal commodity prices have fared little better. Country economies highly dependent on such production and export are nearly all in recession, or quickly approaching it: Brazil, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, South Africa, and even Australia and Canada. China’s economy is undoubtedly growing at no more than 5% annually, much less than the officially reported 7%, and well below the 10%-12% of just a few years ago. And as China slows, so too do various South Asia economies, highly integrated and dependent upon China’s economic performance.

Europe has been oscillating at an historical, sub-par rate of growth between -1% to 1%, after having experienced a double-dip recession in 2011-13, and an historic weak recovery in some of its strongest economies thereafter—including France, Italy and even Germany. Today those same economies continue to struggle to fully recover. Meanwhile Europe’s periphery languishes in continued recession, not just the southern but now the northern, Scandinavian and Baltic regions as well.

At the same time, the world’s fourth largest geographic unit, Japan, lapses in and out of recessions—four since the 2008-09 crash, despite having introduced a multi-trillion dollar quantitative easing central bank monetary injection since 2013. That injection produced a brief stock market surge but no substantial effect on its real economy or growth, which is slipping into recession yet again.

The much-hyped ‘healthy recovery’ of the US economy is, moreover, mostly media and politician spin. The US economy has experienced four ‘relapses’ in its real growth since 2010, where growth collapses for a quarter or turns negative. To the extent that real growth has occurred it has been in the shale-oil patch and associated transport and industrial production activity. That has been coming rapidly to an end, however, as global oil prices in 2015 have collapsed a second time, and may fall to as low as $30 a barrel by some estimates. US real unemployment is still around 12%, masked by gains in low pay, part time and temp jobs in the service sector. US exports and manufacturing are slowing, as the dollar rises from long term interest rate upward drift, and soon rises further due to short term rate increases by central bank action expected in late 2015. Construction remains stagnant at levels well below 2006-07’s previous peak, as only high end income households can afford housing purchases. Household consumption remains mostly debt-financed as median incomes decline and wage growth seven years after the 2008 crash still fails to appear. Meanwhile, government agencies redefine what constitutes US GDP and growth as a means of boosting growth figures.

After the weakest recovery in more than a half century itself disappears, growing desperation with the slowing real economy, has led government policy makers to try to obtain for their corporations a slightly higher share of the slowing world trade and production pie. In Europe and Japan, the response has been to de facto devalue their currencies by means of QE and massive money injections in order to lower production costs and stimulate exports. An accompanying hope is that the currency devaluation will also stimulate stock and bond investments that might in turn raise domestic real investment. But neither has succeeded in either economy. So Europe has already begun, and Japan plans, to press for more cost reduction through ‘labor market reforms’ that reduce wage costs—the alternative option.

Dueling QEs and de facto currency devaluations have only set off currency wars. European and Japanese efforts to in effect ‘export’ their slow growth, have only resulted in China, Asia, and EMEs also devaluing their currencies to boost their exports, setting in motion a ‘race to the bottom’—with Europe and Japan almost certain to introduce yet more rounds of QE in 2016 in response.

Unlike in 2010-12 there is no China-EME growth surge mitigating the failed recoveries in Europe, US, and Japan. Now the former are leading the global real economic slowdown. And there is no evidence the advanced economies of US, Europe and Japan will assume the bolstering role previously played by China-EME in turn. In fact, as the China-EME slowdown accelerates, Europe and Japan will be further affected. And US manufacturing and industrial production will slow further as well, as long term interest rates and the value of the US dollar continue to drift upward regardless what the Federal Reserve does with short term rates in 2015 and beyond.

Financial Instability in the Global Economy

No less evident is a growing financial instability in the global economy at mid-year 2015. At the top of that list are the events unfolding in China’s equity markets, and, behind that, continuing instability in financing for local government infrastructure, residential and commercial housing, in asset management financial products, and in the financing of old line industrial companies many of which are now technically bankrupt.

A classic bubble in China’s major stock markets began in 2014, resulting in a 120% increase in stock values in just one year. Implementing government policies intended to redirect excess liquidity and financial speculation away from out of control shadow bank financing in local government infrastructure and housing, China in effect redirected excess liquidity and capital into its equity markets. The strategy had the added objective of finding a way to stimulate real investment from private sources by means of engineering an escalation in financial equity assets. It was hoped the wealth effect from equities inflation would also stimulate private consumption. The increased reliance on private investment and consumption would in turn reduce the need for the Chinese government to generate economic growth by means of the prior strategy: increased government direct investment, with massive central bank and foreign capital money inflows in support, and manufacturing exports growth as well. That prior strategy had run its course by 2012-13 and China began to shift to the new private sector driven strategy. But China central bank money injection, foreign money inflows, and redirection of money capital from China’s bubbles in real estate to China’s equity markets did not produce real economy investment any more than money injection via QEs did in Europe, Japan or the US-UK. Instead, it set off a financial bubble in China stocks.

The China stock bubble then began to unwind in June 2015 with a loss of more than $4 trillion, the consequences of which are still unfolding in global financial markets.

One such consequence has been the intensification of competitive devaluations and a ratcheting up of currency wars in the $5.7 trillion global currency exchange markets. Already festering with the introduction of $1.7 trillion and $1.3 trillion in dueling QEs by Japan in 2014 and the Eurozone in 2015, currency wars have clearly accelerated further with yet unclear consequences for both financial, and real, instability in the global economy. With its stock markets unwinding, China subsequently returned in part to an export driven strategy to boost its already rapidly slowing real economy. That has taken the form of initially a 2%-4% decline in its currency, the Renminbi-Yuan. Currencies quickly responded in Asia and beyond to the China stock decline, currency devaluation, and the likelihood of more of the same as China’s real economy slows.

China events have accelerated the already sharp declines in currency exchange rates, with the Euro and Japanese Yen already down by 30% since 2014, and now major Asian currencies rapidly declining as well from Indonesia to Thailand to Singapore, Taiwan, and even Australia and South Korea.

The obvious spillover and contagion underway by late summer 2015 has been increasing volatility and contraction in stock market prices globally. Collapsing currencies and stock markets mean accelerating capital flight from EMEs and even China. To try to slow the outflow, EMEs raise their domestic interest rates, which slows their domestic real economies further, producing more stock price collapse.

Growing financial instability in stock and currency markets subsequently begin to feed off of each other at some point, a condition which the global economy may have already entered.

Financial instability may be reflected in escalating financial asset price bubbles, or the unwinding and collapse of those bubbles. The collapse of world oil and commodity prices that have been underway since 2013-14, and now appear accelerating once again in summer 2015, are another strong indicator of growing financial instability in the global economy.

Continuing economic stagnation in Europe, Japan, and to a lesser extent in the US economies has resulted in world commodity and oil price weakness. China’s real economic retreat since 2014 has exacerbated that weakness. And in crude oil markets, the intensifying competition between capitalist energy producers in the US shale-oil fields and the Saudi-Gulf led producers has driven oil price decline still further. Collapsing in 2014 from $120 a barrel to $50 in early 2015, crude prices have again begun to descend further and could go as low as $30 a barrel according to some estimates. The collapse of world oil prices—a financial asset as well as a natural resource—will have further negative effects on financial markets no doubt, especially when combined with general commodity price deflation that continues without relief.

Thus at the top of the list of financial instability today are fragile and collapsing equity markets, extreme volatility in currency markets, and the continued collapse of global commodity prices and oil.

But other financial assets are also in bubble ‘range’ in 2015, as a result of the massive excess liquidity injected into the world economy since 2008 and the resulting escalation of debt, especially on the corporate and banking side of total debt.

Record low central bank engineered rates since 2008, virtually zero for bank borrowers, has injected at minimum $15 trillion into the global economy. That’s in addition to the nearly $10 trillion in central bank QE injections. Moreover, both forms of liquidity creation are still continuing. Liquidity has generated record financial asset prices—from stocks, corporate bonds, and sovereign bonds to derivatives, exchange rate speculation, and other forms of financial assets.

Bubbles in corporate bonds are also at a peak, not yet as obvious a problem as stock prices, commodity prices, or currency exchange rates. But they will be. At high risk are corporate junk bonds, which may yet be impacted by collapsing oil prices and corporate defaults in the US shale-oil sector spilling over to other corporations. Less unstable, but no less a ‘bubble’, are corporate investment grade bonds. Global issuance averaged less than $1.5 trillion a year in the half decade leading up to the 2008 crash. In the past five years since 2010, that annual average issuance is more than $2.5 trillion—i.e. more than $5 trillion additional issued compared to historical averages.

Government bonds have entered unknown territory as well, especially in Europe, where they increasingly sell at negative rates. That is, buyers pay governments interest to buy their sovereign bonds, instead of vice-versa, in order to find a temporary safe haven for their excess liquidity. The bond world is turned on its head, with yet unknown consequences for future financial instability, witness the bond ‘flash crash’ of a few years ago, the causes of which are still unknown. There is a growing problem of disappearing liquidity in the bond trader market, as banks exit and more risk taking shadow banks assume their role, amid warnings of the possibility of an even faster collapse of bond prices due to lack of liquidity in the bond trading sector. It is unlikely that a new financial instability event will involve subprime mortgages. A classic stock market crash may prove the precipitating event. Or perhaps a bond market crash. Should the latter happen in the much larger bond sectors of the global economy, it will make a subprime mortgage or even stock market crash appear mild in comparison.

Behind the more obvious stock, bond, commodity, oil, and currency instability—all of which are now rising as of late 2015, there are numerous smaller but perhaps even potentially more unstable financial asset markets globally.

There are leveraged loans and debt markets now helping to fuel a record mergers and acquisition boom. There are exchange traded funds (ETFs) in which retail investors are over-exposed as they desperately search for ‘yield’ (higher returns) on increasingly risky investments. There are localized real estate bubbles in London, US, Scandinavia, Paris, and Australia as wealthy investors flee with their capital from China and emerging markets to invest in preferred high end properties in the advanced economies. There are bank to bank ‘repo’ markets in the US where liquidity appears insufficient and shadow bankers are allowed to play a larger role. And then there are the various unknown conditions in global derivatives trading, where much of the pure ‘betting’ and speculating on financial securities remains still very opaque seven years after the 2008 crash when derivatives played a strategic role in the rapid spread of financial contagion from the subprime bust.

In short, there are any number of growing sources of financial instability in the global economy today. And the direction in nearly all appears to be a continuing drift toward more fragility and instability, not less.

In the book that follows, fragility is viewed as a key condition that leads to financial instability and may itself even precipitate a financial instability event— banking crashes, stock market collapses, credit crises, widespread liquidity and even solvency crises across sectors or major institutions, plunging currency exchange rates and money capital flight, a collapse of financial asset values, and/or defaults and bankruptcies—to name the most obvious. Depending on the scope and severity of the financial instability events, the real economic downturn that follows a financial crisis-precipitated contraction is qualitatively and quantitatively different from what might be called a ‘normal’ recession. Some economists have called this a ‘great recession’. Having taken issue with that term, this writer has referred to it as an ‘epic’ recession—i.e. a kind of muted depression.

Whichever the term chosen, it appears a drift toward another more serious instability event is underway in the global economy. Fragility is growing system-wide, and fragility leads to, and indeed may precipitate, financial instability on a scale sufficient to generate another contraction in the real economy. And while fragility leads to financial instability, which may precipitate and then exacerbate a subsequent contraction in the real economy, the latter contraction in turn tends to exacerbate systemic fragility as well. A self-sustaining negative cycle of financial and real instability can occur. And policy makers today are far less prepared or able to deal with it than previously

Outline of the Book

Following a brief overview addressing the consistently over-optimistic forecasts of global growth by business and international economic bodies in chapters 1-2, recent key global developments are highlighted in chapters 3-6 that reveal the global economy in 2015 is experiencing greater potential for financial instability than ever since 2007-08.

Chapters 3-6 provide selected cases reflecting today’s growing instability in global oil and commodity markets; the steadily intensifying commodity price deflation; Emerging Market Economies’ collapsing currencies, capital flight, growing local financial market instability, rising import inflation, and declining export income necessary to finance dangerously accelerating external debt; the growing desperation of policy makers and central bankers in Europe and Japan to jump start their economies, as they introduce ‘dueling QEs’ and ‘internal devaluations’ designed to reduce labor costs in an effort to drive down their currencies in order to capture a larger share of exports amidst a slowing of total world trade; and the growing financial asset bubbles in China which policy makers there have been unable to contain or reduce. Whether China, Europe-Japan, Emerging Markets, or Global Oil-Commodities—all reflect financial instabilities in the global economy at a time when a growing number of real economies continue to weaken as well. These developments and events serve, one might argue, as the ‘canaries in the global financial coal mine’.

In Part Two of the book, chapters 7 through 15, the discussion moves from selected case narratives highlighting the most obvious contemporary evidence of global instability—in emerging markets, Europe and Japan, and China—to a deeper level discussion focusing on 9 key variables behind the next financial crisis now developing endogenously within the global financial system today. Here discussion focuses on the real, material conditions and forces that underlie the appearances of the crisis.

Part Two provides a transition to the all important need for theory to understand where the global economic has been, is now, and, most important, where it may be going in the coming years. Without the projections enabled by theory, only empirical narratives remain. Without coming to grips with the most important information of the past, descriptions of the present can provide no accurate forecast of the future. Unfortunately, this is the state of much of contemporary economic analysis today.

But what are the limitations of contemporary economic analysis on the subjects of financial instability, investment, and the relationships between financial cycles and real cycles? That is the subject of Part Three and chapters 16-18 of this book. Chapter 16 critiques in detail the two major wings of contemporary mainstream economic analysts—what this writer has termed ‘Hybrid Keynesians’ and ‘Retro-Classicalists’. It is argued that neither wing sufficiently understands the relationships between financial asset investment, real asset investment, and what this book views as the accelerating ‘speculative investment shift’ that is the consequence of those new relationships. Nor does either sufficiently understand how debt and incomes have grown increasingly mutually interdependent in a negative way, instead of functioning individually as positive sources of economic growth. Both misunderstand how financial asset prices destabilize the system. And both have an overly optimistic assessment of the role of traditional policies—the one monetary and the other fiscal. Their largely shared conceptual apparatus thus serves as an obstacle to understanding the new characteristics of the 21st century capitalist economy.

Chapter 17 challenges the dominant wing of Marxist economic analysis today that argues the falling rate of profit from production of real goods (by what Marxists define as productive labor) is the key (and virtually only) driver of the slowing of the global economy and in turn is responsible for the shift to financialization of the economy. This book will argue that this is a kind of ‘mechanical’ application of Marxism that ignores and misunderstands the exchange side of the circuit of capital that Marx himself never fully developed. The falling rate of profit approach (FROP) represents a ‘glass half filled’ theory. It views all instability as determined by the production of real goods by only productive labor—i.e. those workers who produce real goods and related support services. Causation between the real and financial sides of the economy are viewed as a ‘one way street’ only, from production to financial, instead of a more likely mutual interaction between the two sectors. What the falling rate of profit theorists fundamentally fail to understand, it will be argued, is that it is investment that drives the economy—not a particular form of financing—i.e. profits—that drive investment.

Like the two wings of mainstream economists, the FROP wing of Marxist economic analysis thus lacks an adequate conceptual apparatus for properly understanding the relationships between financial asset and real asset investing in the 21st century global economy. In important ways, none of the three wings accurately reflect the richer views and ideas of those economists with whom they are associated. The ‘Hybrid’ Keynesians distort Keynes; the ‘Retro-Classicalists’ also misrepresent Keynes and others in their effort to restore classical economic analysis of the 18th-19th century, and the ‘Mechanical Marxists’ fail to understand Marx’s own method and to recognize where Marx was going in his final thoughts on banking, finance, and new forms of exploitation only beginning to emerge in late 19th century capitalism.

Chapter 18 addresses the major contributions by the economist, Hyman Minsky, whose work is most associated with the idea of what he called financial fragility. Writing mostly in the 1980s and 1990s, Minsky broke new ground in a number of ways on the subject of how financial cycles and real cycles mutually impact. His key contributions are noted. However, much was left unsaid by Minsky, who did not get to see the 21st century’s full manifestation of his initial observations. While noting his contributions, this chapter describes in detail the limits of his theory as of the mid-1990s, suggesting where it might have had to go in order to more fully explain how fragility in general is a major determinant of both financial and real instability of the global economy in the 21st century.

Part Four of this book provides this writer’s own analysis and theory of where the global economic crisis has been, and where it may be headed. That analysis is subsumed under the conceptual notion of ‘Systemic Fragility’, that has been referenced and raised in part in the preceding chapters, and which is summarized in more detail in this final chapter 19, ‘A Theory of Systemic Fragility’. Accompanying this summary chapter is an addendum, consisting of equations that represent the main arguments of chapter 19.

The concluding chapter’s preliminary statement of a theory of Systemic Fragility is envisioned as an effort to begin to develop a new conceptual framework for the analysis of financial and real cycle interactions that represent the dominant characteristics of the capitalist global economy in the 21st century. It is viewed as merely a first step.”

Dr. Jack Rasmus is the author of several books on the USA and global economy, including Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression, 2010, Obama’s Economy, 2012, and An Alternative Program for Economic Recovery, 2012. He hosts the weekly New York radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio network; is shadow Federal Reserve Bank chair of the ‘Green Shadow Cabinet’ and economic advisor to the USA Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein. He writes bi-weekly for Latin America’s teleSUR TV, for Z magazine, Znet, and other print & electronic publications.  Dr. Rasmus currently teaches economics and politics at St. Marys College in California.

Order “Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy” here

Mercurial: “Subject to sudden or unpredictable changes of mood or mind.”

In a woefully belated but welcome initiative the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee, the influential cross party oversight body which scrutinizes the Department for International Development, has called for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

In context, the reason for the Committee’s stance is related to the black farce of one arm of the UK government providing aid to Yemen, as other arms are providing the advice, aircraft and weaponry to Saudi Arabia to assist in the destruction of the ancient nation whose shores are lapped by the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.

Saudi Arabia has been decimating southern neighbor, Yemen, since March 2015, inflicting devastating destruction. By September last year, former UN Assistant Secretary General, Nigel Fisher wrote that 93% of the deaths and injuries were civilian. (1)

Moreover, quoting from the Report “State of Crisis: Explosive Weapons in Yemen”, he pointed out that:

“The intensity of explosive violence in the country has meant that more civilian deaths and injuries from explosive weapons were recorded … during the first seven months of 2015 than in any other country in the world.”

Given the Western generated carnage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria alone, it is a chilling record.

In spite of this, according to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) which is currently threatening the government with legal action over arms sales (2):

“The UK government has licensed £6.7 billion of arms to Saudi Arabia since David Cameron took office in 2010, including £2.8 billion since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015.”

CAAT has welcomed the International Development Committee’s stance on arms sales with the fact that it has now also ended opposition to an international inquiry into allegations of alleged abuses of international law in Yemen. (3)

 “The humanitarian situation is getting worse and the UK government has been complicit in it. We agree that arms sales need to stop, but they should never have been allowed in the first place. Saudi Arabia has a terrible human rights record and has been supported by governments of all political colours for far too long”, commented CAAT’s Andrew Smith.

In January 2016, London Law firm Leigh Day, representing CAAT, issued a pre-action protocol letter for judicial review challenging the government’s decision to export arms to Saudi Arabia despite increasing evidence that Saudi forces are violating international humanitarian law (IHL) in Yemen. At the time of writing the government is yet to respond.

Mr Smith added: “The government is always telling us how rigorous and robust its arms export system is. This is further evidence that nothing could be further from the truth. The UK has continuously armed some of the most abusive regimes in the world.”

Nigel Fisher pondered on the “horrifying trend in twentieth and twenty first century warfare” with “massive air force bombings of a defenceless civilian population.”

He cites Guernica, the incendiary bombings of Dresden (Hamburg must also never be forgotten) those of Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka and of course the nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, rather than these unimaginable horrors acting as an absolute “never again” commitment, in defiance of a swathe of international laws, the fine founding words of the UN, the International Declaration of Human rights, the Geneva Convention, they might all never have been written, signed, ratified.

Each unimaginable crime has simply been a siren call for bigger, more apocalyptic, humanity incinerating, scorched earth policy weaponry, created, ordered, and sold for use against countries posing no threat to the decimators but which have oil, gas, minerals which they wish to steal, not buy. Policies equivalent to thieves in the night, murdering their victims to steal the car, television and jewellery box. Simply criminality on a massively larger scale.

Fisher writes of the “willful brutality of our world” and asks: “Is it only occasionally that photos of young children like Alan Kurdi will rouse us to action? I hope not. Our fellow citizens caught up in the horror of armed conflict deserve better.” Indeed. But Britain’s approach under the Cameron regime is not only evil, but schizophrenic.

Last September, ironically on 11^th September, Oxfam stated on an anniversary bringing Yemen, as other countries attacked since, it’s own ongoing 9/11s:

“There is a paradox at the heart of the government’s approach to Yemen. On the one hand the Department for International Development is funding efforts to help civilians caught up in the conflict, while on the other the Government is fuelling the conflict that is causing unbearable human suffering.

“The UK successfully lobbied hard over many years for a UN Arms Trade Treaty to regulate the arms trade which came into being last year. This Government has incorporated the treaty into national law, yet at the first test of the new law it has turned a blind eye to mounting evidence of potential misuse of its weapons and support.”

“In 2013, David Cameron hailed the Arms Trade Treaty as a landmark agreement that would ‘save lives and ease the immense human suffering caused by armed conflict around the world.’ He said Britain should be proud of the role it had played in securing an agreement that would make the world safer for all.” (4)

It can only be hope that the International Development Committee’s initiative bears fruit, that other countries follow and that it also results in David Cameron’s mercurial mind shifts transforming in to the responsible, steady gravitas which should be a given for one of his position.

Notes:

1. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/oct/27/yemen-deaths-93-civilian-this-must-change

2. http://www.globalresearch.ca/britain-and-saudi-arabia-collusion-in-barbarism/5500661

3. http://www.globalresearch.ca/as-yemen-bleeds-british-profits-from-weapons-sales-bury-human-rights/5505461

4. http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2015/09/uk-arms-sales-fuelling-yemen-crisis-in-potential-breach-of-law-says-oxfam

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled that Wikileaks’ Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained by the “democratic” governments of Sweden and the UK and is entitled to his freedom and compensation for detention by the two “democratic” governments. 

At the beginning of Assange’s arbitary detention, I said that the detention was in violation of the rights of asylum and is akin to the Soviet Government’s refusal to allow Cardinal Mindszenty free passage from the US Embassy in Hungary when he was granted political asylum by the US government. I pointed out that in our time Washington now behaves like the Soviet dictatorship half a century ago.

The illegal actions of the Swedish and UK governments were on the orders of Washington, the corrupt government of which is determined to get Assange for publishing leaked documents revealing the criminality and mendacity of the US government.

Washington and its UK vassal claim to be defenders of the rule of law, but, of course, both governments are lawless. We will see if the rulihg has any effect on the behavior of “the two great champions of liberty.” My prediction is that the gang of criminals in Washington will not allow its vassal governments to abide by the UN decision. I hope that I am wrong.

As Aleppo is finally encircled and begins the process of liberation from NATO-backed terrorists who have besieged and occupied parts of the city since 2012, and as Syrian forces backed by its allies overwhelm enemy fronts across the rest of Syria, desperation across the West is palpable.

“Peace talks” in Geneva have all but collapsed with the West and its collection of terrorists and client political fronts coming to the negotiation table with absolutely nothing to bargain with. The political component of the West’s proxy war has been ineffective and impotent almost from the beginning of the conflict in 2011. The militant component has been waning and upon Russia’s entry into the conflict, folded over and sent on the run.

Image: NATO-armed and funded terrorists encircled, starved and besieged Libyan cities like Sirte and Bani Walid on the ground as NATO airpower pounded them from above. The result was not humanitarian salvation, but absolute and enduring devastation.

This tenuous position has caused the West to once again dust-off its plans to invade and occupy Syrian territory along the Turkish-Syrian border – in the last remaining Islamic State-Al Qaeda supply corridor yet to be cut off by Syrian and Kurdish forces.

The call has manifested itself in both Turkish and Saudi military preparations, and now in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

Titled, “The diplomatic case for America to create a safe zone in Syria,” Nicholas Burns – U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2005 to 2008 – and James Jeffrey – U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2010 to 2012 – proposed:

As the talks proceed, Obama and Kerry must also consider stronger measures to protect millions of civilians at risk, including establishing humanitarian corridors to reach those subjected to air assaults by the government and attacks by terrorist groups on the ground. Most important, we believe the Obama team will have to reconsider what it has rejected in the past: the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria to protect civilians, along with a no-fly zone to enforce it.

Of course, between this measure, and calls for the US to dump further resources into the defeated proxy terrorists on the ground in Syria, all Burns and Jeffery are proposing is the transformation of Syria into the “Libya of the Levant.”

Readers should recall that precisely the same prescription was applied to Libya in 2011. “Moderate rebels” were also armed, funded, and given aircover amid a NATO-enforced no-fly zone in order to overthrow the government. What resulted was an orgy of genocidal mass murder and  then the subsequent fracturing and destruction of the nation-state that was Libya.

Today, the Islamic State has carved out a stronghold within Libyan territory, while two Frankenstein governments wage war against each other and a myriad of warlords across an apocalyptic, war-torn wasteland.

Images: Libya’s so-called freedom-fighting “moderates” literally just repainted their trucks after NATO’s 2011 intervention, becoming ISIS’ Libyan branch. The US now finds itself justifying yet another military intervention in Libya to fight the very terrorists it helped arm and put into power in 2011.

 Far from protecting civilians or addressing humanitarian concerns, the United States’ actions in Libya devastated an entire nation and has left it in what will likely be decades of deadly, disruptive conflict. So poor are the prospects of the Libyan people, many have fled to neighboring states as well as across the Mediterranean to Europe – hence a contributing factor to the ongoing “migrant crisis.”

America’s last option in Syria will likewise divide and destroy the country should it succeed. It will condemn tens of thousands of civilians to violent sectarian-driven deaths and drive hundreds of thousands more out of Syria into neighboring countries and onward to Europe to escape the predictable chaos.

The only “safe haven” that will exist will be for terrorist factions ranging from the “moderate” Al Qaeda groups the US and its allies openly back, to the Islamic State which the West more covertly backs. As Libya has been used to destabilize and launch operations against its neighbors, so too will Syria – being aimed at the remnants of the Iraqi government, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and of course Iran itself.

Image: For those complaining ceaselessly about the migrants produced from the West’s global meddling and warmongering, now would be a good time to speak up against attempted intervention in Syria by the West in a last ditch effort to collapse the government in Damascus and create division and destruction that will turn a steady stream of refugees into a cataclysmic flood.

For the US, in its attempts to sell intervention in Syria, we have Libya to serve as a showcase of what will result. With the US and its European allies poised to re-invade Libya to fight the various militant groups they themselves put into power in 2011, how could the world possibly stand by and allow this axis of aggression to do likewise in Syria?

For Syria and its allies, they are already bleeding upon the battlefield to prevent this fate from passing. For Europeans and North Americans wringing their hands over the ongoing migrant crisis, now is an opportunity to speak up before it is intentionally, premeditatively compounded further still.

“Self-described socialist” … How many times have we all read that term in regard to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders? But is he really a socialist? Or is he a “social democrat”, which is what he’d be called in Europe? Or is he a “democratic socialist”, which is the American party he has been a member of (DSA – Democratic Socialists of America)? And does it really matter which one he is? They’re all socialists, are they not?

Why does a person raised in a capitalist society become a socialist? It could be because of a parent or parents who are committed socialists and raise their children that way. But it’s usually because the person has seen capitalism up close for many years, is turned off by it, and is thus receptive to an alternative. All of us know what the ugly side of capitalism looks like. Here are but a few of the countless examples taken from real life:

• Following an earthquake or other natural disaster, businesses raise their prices for basic necessities such as batteries, generators, water pumps, tree-removal services, etc.
• In the face of widespread medical needs, drug and health-care prices soar, while new surgical and medical procedures are patented.
• The cost of rent increases inexorably regardless of tenants’ income.
• Ten thousand types of deception to part the citizens from their hard-earned wages.

What do these examples have in common? It’s their driving force – the profit motive; the desire to maximize profit. Any improvement in the system has to begin with a strong commitment to radically restraining, if not completely eliminating, the profit motive. Otherwise nothing of any significance will change in society, and the capitalists who own the society – and their liberal apologists – can mouth one progressive-sounding platitude after another as their chauffeur drives them to the bank.

But social democrats and democratic socialists have no desire to get rid of the profit motive. Last November, Sanders gave a speech at Georgetown University in Washington about his positive view of democratic socialism, including its place in the policies of presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. In defining what democratic socialism means to him, Sanders said: “I don’t believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production.”

I personally could live with the neighborhood grocery store remaining in private hands, but larger institutions are always a threat; the larger and richer they are the more tempting and easier it is for them to put profit ahead of the public’s welfare, and to purchase politicians. The question of socialism is inseparable from the question of public ownership of the means of production.

The question thus facing “socialists” like Sanders is this: When all your idealistic visions for a more humane, more just, more equitable, and more rational society run head-first into the stone wall of the profit motive … which of the two gives way?

The most commonly proposed alternative to both government or private control is worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Sanders has expressed his support for such systems and there is indeed much to be said about them. But the problem I find is that they will still operate within a capitalist society, which means competition, survival of the fittest; which means that if you can’t sell more than your competitors, if you can’t make a sufficient net profit on your sales, you will likely be forced to go out of business; and to prevent such a fate, at some point you may very well be forced to do illegal or immoral things against the public; which means back to the present.

Eliminating the profit motive in American society would run into a lot less opposition than one might expect. Consciously or unconsciously it’s already looked down upon to a great extent by numerous individuals and institutions of influence. For example, judges frequently impose lighter sentences upon lawbreakers if they haven’t actually profited monetarily from their acts. And they forbid others from making a profit from their crimes by selling book or film rights, or interviews. The California Senate enshrined this into law in 1994, one which directs that any such income of criminals convicted of serious crimes be placed into a trust fund for the benefit of the victims of their crimes. It must further be kept in mind that the great majority of Americans, like people everywhere, do not labor for profit, but for a salary.

The citizenry may have drifted even further away from the system than all this indicates, for American society seems to have more trust and respect for “non-profit” organizations than for the profit-seeking kind. Would the public be so generous with disaster relief if the Red Cross were a regular profit-making business? Would the Internal Revenue Service allow it to be tax-exempt? Why does the Post Office give cheaper rates to non-profits and lower rates for books and magazines which don’t contain advertising? For an AIDS test, do people feel more confident going to the Public Health Service or to a commercial laboratory? Why does “educational” or “public” television not have regular commercials? What would Americans think of peace-corps volunteers, elementary and high-school teachers, clergy, nurses, and social workers who demanded well in excess of $100 thousand per year? Would the public like to see churches competing with each other, complete with ad campaigns selling a New and Improved God?

Pervading all these attitudes, and frequently voiced, is a strong disapproval of greed and selfishness, in glaring contradiction to the reality that greed and selfishness form the official and ideological basis of our system. It’s almost as if no one remembers how the system is supposed to work any more, or they prefer not to dwell on it.

It would appear that, at least on a gut level, Americans have had it up to here with free enterprise. The great irony of it all is that the mass of the American people are not aware that their sundry attitudes constitute an anti-free-enterprise philosophy, and thus tend to go on believing the conventional wisdom that government is the problem, that big government is the biggest problem, and that their salvation cometh from the private sector, thereby feeding directly into pro-free-enterprise ideology.

Thus it is that those activists for social change who believe that American society is faced with problems so daunting that no corporation or entrepreneur is ever going to solve them at a profit carry the burden of convincing the American people that they don’t really believe what they think they believe; and that the public’s complementary mindset – that the government is no match for the private sector in efficiently getting large and important things done – is equally fallacious, for the government has built up an incredible military machine (ignoring for the moment what it’s used for), landed men on the moon, created great dams, marvelous national parks, an interstate highway system, the peace corps, social security, insurance for bank deposits, protection of pension funds against corporate misuse, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Smithsonian, the G.I. Bill, and much, much more. In short, the government has been quite good at doing what it wanted to do, or what labor and other movements have made it do, like establishing worker health and safety standards and requiring food manufacturers to list detailed information about ingredients.

Activists have to remind the American people of what they’ve already learned but seem to have forgotten: that they don’t want more government, or less government; they don’t want big government, or small government; they want government on their side. Period.

Sanders has to clarify his views. What exactly does he mean by “socialism”? What exactly is the role the profit motive will play in his future society”?

Mark Brzezinski, son of Zbigniew, was a post-Cold War Fulbright Scholar in Warsaw:

“I asked my students to define democracy. Expecting a discussion on individual liberties and authentically elected institutions, I was surprised to hear my students respond that to them, democracy means a government obligation to maintain a certain standard of living and to provide health care, education and housing for all. In other words, socialism.”

We should never forget

The modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a virtual failed state … the United States, beginning in 1991, bombed for much of the following 12 years, with one dubious excuse after another; then, in 2003, invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly … the people of that unhappy land lost everything – their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again … “It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis,” reported the Washington Post in 2007, that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.”

The United States has not paid any compensation to Iraq.

The United States has not made any apology to Iraq.

Foreign policy is even more sensitive a subject in the United States than slavery of the black people and genocide of the Native Americans. The US has apologized for these many times, but virtually never for the crimes of American foreign policy.

In 2014, George W. Bush, the man most responsible for this holocaust, was living a quiet life in Texas, with a focus on his paintings. “I’m trying to leave something behind”, he said.

Yes, he has certainly done that – mountains of rubble for one thing; rubble that once was cities and towns. His legacy also includes the charming Islamic State. Ah, but Georgie Boy is an artiste.

We need a trial to judge all those who bear significant responsibility for the past century – the most murderous and ecologically destructive in human history. We could call it the war, air and fiscal crimes tribunal and we could put politicians and CEOs and major media owners in the dock with earphones like Eichmann and make them listen to the evidence of how they killed millions of people and almost murdered the planet and made most of us far more miserable than we needed to be. Of course, we wouldn’t have time to go after them one by one. We’d have to lump Wall Street investment bankers in one trial, the Council on Foreign Relations in another, and any remaining Harvard Business School or Yale Law graduates in a third. We don’t need this for retribution, only for edification. So there would be no capital punishment, but rather banishment to an overseas Nike factory with a vow of perpetual silence. – Sam Smith

On March 2, 2014 US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned Russia’s “incredible act of aggression” in Ukraine. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.”

Iraq 2003 was in the 21st century. The pretext was completely trumped up. Senator John Kerry voted for it. Nice moral authority you have there, John.

On the same occasion, concerning Ukraine, President Obama spoke of “the principle that no country has the right to send in troops to another country unprovoked”.Do our leaders have no memory or do they think we’ve all lost ours?

Does Obama avoid prosecuting the Bush-Cheney gang because he wants to have the same rights to commit war crimes? The excuse he gives for his inaction is so lame that if George W. had used it people would not hesitate to laugh. On about five occasions, in reply to questions about why his administration has not prosecuted the like of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. for mass murder, torture and other war crimes, former law professor Obama has stated: “I prefer to look forward rather than backwards.” Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found innocent on such grounds. It simply makes laws, law enforcement, crime, justice, and facts irrelevant. Picture Chelsea Manning and other whistleblowers using this argument. Picture the reaction to this by Barack Obama, who has become the leading persecutor of whistleblowers in American history.

Noam Chomsky has observed: “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”

It appears that the German and Japanese people only relinquished their imperial culture and mindset when they were bombed back to the stone age during World War II. Something similar may be the only cure for the same pathology that is embedded into the very social fabric of the United States. The US is now a full-blown pathological society. There is no other wonder drug to deal with American-exceptionalism-itis.

Notes

1. Senator Bernie Sanders on Democratic Socialism in the United States, November 19, 2015
2. Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1994
3. Washington Post, May 5, 2007
4. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, chapter 25
5. New York Times, September 16, 2014
6. Sam Smith of Maine, formerly of Washington, DC
7. Reuters, March 3, 2014

Over last three days, on February 1-4, the Russian Aerospace Forces have performed 237 combat sorties destroying 875 terrorists’ targets in Syria. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) jointly with local militias are continuing to advance in the country’s northern part.

The Kurdish YPG have captured the villages of Khuraybah and Shatal az Ziyarah in the Aleppo province. Meanwhile, Kurdish fighters have advanced on the town of Dayr al-Jamal capturing its southern district. A mid-term goal of the YPG is to capture the cities of Azaz and Jarablus. This will expand the group’s control on the border with Turkish and cut some supply lines through it.

We remember, with lifting the siege from the towns of Nubbul and al-Zahraa, the SAA and its allies have cut a crucial terrorists’ supply line linking western Idlib with ISIS territory northeast of Aleppo city. Now, the Idlib terrorists are cut from their main fuel supplier.

The local sources report that in the north of the country the terrorists are leaving their positions and retreating to the Syrian-Turkish border closer to their supply lines. Thus, they expect to keep the combat capability of their formations.

The SAA and its allies are continuing to conduct military operations around Daraa to secure the strategic Damascus-Quneitra-Daraa triangle. The army is now exercising an offensive south of Daraa as well as northwest in the direction of Al-Quneitra. Clashes are also ongoing near Athman.

According to the reports, al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham militants have organized a unit of teenagers who had finished a special training courses in the Idlib province. The oldest “cadet” is only 16 years old. This unit is designed to conduct terrorist attacks against civilians in Damascus, Homs and Latakia provinces.

On Feb.4, Russian Defense Ministry reported that the current activity at the Turkish-Syrian border suggest that Turkey prepares to invade Syria. According to Russian MoD, Turkey’s refusal to allow a Russian inspection flight over its territory is an attempt to conceal Ankara’s illegal military activity.

Turkey also intensified supplies of weapons and recruits to the terrorists in the northeastern regions of Syria.

The Obama Administration will hold the dubious distinction as the most hostile presidency towards whistleblowers in the history of the US. The administration’s unprecedented enmity towards individuals, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, who were courageous enough to expose US war crimes, fraud and corruption was met with aggressive retaliation, imprisonment, exile and ham-fisted punishment.

Since 2009, the Administration has invoked the WWI-era Espionage Act that carries not only the possibility of life imprisonment but also the death penalty. The administration has sent a clear message that individuals who expose crimes will be severely punished while the perpetrators of the crimes will receive immunity.

Such is the situation that we find with Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton who has admitted, under threat of derailing her campaign, of using a private server to receive and respond to over 1,300 sensitive emails while she was Secretary of State. Had Clinton been deemed a whistleblower or not a member of the 1% club she would have joined Manning in federal prison or perhaps Snowden in exile.  Instructively, Clinton severely criticized Edward Snowden for exposing state crimes:

“’If he wishes to return knowing he would be held accountable and also able to present a defense, that is his decision to make,’ the former secretary of state said in an interview with the Guardian. Clinton has called Snowden an ‘imperfect messenger’ who could have gone about his whistleblowing in a way that would have been less damaging to national security.”

Clinton later commented that it was “sort of odd” that Snowden fled to China and Russia, countries that have restrictive cyberpolicies. Furthermore, she said that his leaks helped certain terrorist networks.

But contradictions abound and fault lines are drawn regarding who the government prosecutes or who is allowed to run for the highest office in the land.  It was reported that a hacker in Serbia “had scanned Clinton’s Chappaqua server at least twice, in August and in December 2012. It was unclear from the reports whether the hacker knew the server belonged to Clinton, although it did identify itself as providing email services for clintonemail.com.” The domain names for Clinton’s e-mail address were clintonemail.com, wjcoffice.com, and presidentclinton.com. Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton, managed the e-mail system but did not possess a security clearance [emphasis added] although her e-mails contained highly classified and security information.”

To make matters worse, a cybersecurity expert determined “that the [Clinton] server had amateur hour vulnerabilities.”

The State Department announced Friday (1/30/16) that it will not release 22 emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because they contain “top secret” information. This information comes three days before the critical Iowa caucuses. The State Department noted that 37 pages are now classified at the highest level of government classification.

Nevertheless, Chelsea Manning sits in a federal prison because she exposed war crimes against unarmed civilians in Iraq.

According to a recent Information Clearinghouse report:

“One of the top-secret emails she [Clinton] received and forwarded contained a photo taken from an American satellite of the North Korean nuclear facility that detonated a device just last week. Because Clinton failed to safeguard that email, she exposed to hackers and thus to the North Koreans the time, place and manner of American surveillance of them.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the former secretary of state, senator, and Yale-trained lawyer had to know what she was dealing with:

“There is no way that someone, a senior government official who has been handling classified information for a good chunk of their adult life, could not have known that this information ought to be classified, whether it was marked or not,”

he said.

“Anyone with the capacity to read and an understanding of American national security, an 8th grade reading level or above, would understand that the release of this information or the potential breach of a non-secure system presented risk to American national security.”

Pompeo suggested that the military and intelligence communities have had to change operations, because the Clinton server could have been compromised by a third party:

“Anytime our national security team determines that there’s a potential breach, that is information that might potentially have fallen into the hands of the Iranians, or the Russians, or the Chinese, or just hackers, that they begin to operate in a manner that assumes that information has in fact gotten out.”

On ABC’s “This Week” on (1/31/16), one day before the Iowa caucuses, Clinton claimed ignorance on the sensitivity of the materials and stressed that they weren’t marked. “There is no classified marked information on those emails sent or received by me,” she said. Clinton was pressed during the interview on her signed 2009 non-disclosure agreement which asserts that markings are “irrelevant… marked or unmarked … including oral communications.”

Another example of government benevolence towards their disciples is the case of General David Petraeus.  US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, signaling the encircling of the wagons around David Petraeus, announced this week that the US government has decided not to “impose further punishment” on the former US military commander and CIA Director for espionage for keeping secret and top-secret documents in an unlocked drawer in his desk inside his home. Petraeus allegedly shared those documents with a female “friend” who was writing his memoir. Unlike Manning, who is serving a 35 year sentence in Leavenworth, and Snowden, forced into exile in Russia, a year outside the familiar walls and perks of the federal executive club was deemed by political insiders as excessive “punishment” for Petraeus. Excessive punishment? Manning is serving 35 years in military prison and Snowden an undetermined amount of time in exile – that’s excessive punishment.

It is perhaps noteworthy to mention that Petraeus has recovered from his bout in federal service. He now serves as chairman of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts of theKKR Global Institute.

What is remarkable about American democracy is the consistent and perpetual benevolence of the ruling class towards its loyal disciples. Many of these disciples belong to the 99% but characteristically identify and would literally kill on command for the 1%. The reward for their loyalty is straightforward: there is rarely a crime committed by these 1% wannabes that command punishment or rebuke. Police, as agents of the state are granted immunity and rewarded for killing young unarmed Black men and women, investment bankers who nearly tanked the US economy are rewarded with White House cabinet-level positions and generous bailouts from the pockets of working-class communities. Federal employees complaining of racism are eviscerated while their managers receive promotions. The message is clear, there are two America’s – one immune from any accountability and the other living in a political and economic purgatory.

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated: No FEAR: A Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA. She worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the whistle on a US multinational corporation that endangered South African vanadium mine workers. Marsha’s successful lawsuit led to the introduction and passage of the first civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century: the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). She is Director of Transparency and Accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet, serves on the Advisory Board of ExposeFacts.com and coordinates the Hands Up Coalition, DC.

Despite the fact the official U.S. strategy towards China ignoring Taiwan issue, the island may easily become a flash point of the ongoing confrontation. The main stream media constantly disseminate reports that the Chinese military prepares to invade the island or, in light versions, conducts provocative military drills. In case of the further US-China confrontation in the Indo-Pacific regions, it’s possible to expect an attempt to use the island for strengthening of U.S military presence in the region. An aggressive activity of U.S. special services through Taiwan is also expected.

Beijing would much prefer to reintegrate Taiwan without having to resort to force, but by cultural, economic and political tools. Moreover, it already has a successful experience of lost territories reintegration: Macau and Hong Kong. However, it will be thoughtlessly to ignore the possible crisis in the China-Taiwan relations.

Taiwan Military

The Republic of China Armed Forces (ROC Armed Forces or Taiwan Armed Forces), with 290,000 active personnel, ranks at number 16 for the world’s largest number of active personnel, with 1,657,000 personnel in reserve. The Republic of China or Taiwan, with a population of over 23 million people, is a sovereign island state close to Mainland China. There have been many political status disputes going on for decades between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China. Both parties were engaged in a civil war since some time during the middle of the second Sino-Japanese War (1937). In the year 2015, the ROC Armed Forces increased their military budget from US$10.5 billion in 2012 to $10.7 billion, with an ever-growing military threat from the PRC ; the latter having over 2.3 million active military personnel as of 2012. Chairman Xi Jinping announced in 2015 that the PLA will be re-organized and downsized to 300,000 personnel, however, despite a military budget of US$141 billion ranking at number 2 in the world and out spending Taiwan 13 to 1 in terms of military budget.

The ROC Armed Forces encompass the Army, Navy (including the Marine Corps), Air Force, and the Military Police. It was founded in 1924 while it was based in mainland China and was the successor of the National Revolution Army or KMT Army/Kuomintang Army ; literally ‘The People’s Party Army’, which played a big role in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty with the help of Sun Zhong-Shan (Sun Yat-Sen), which ended China’s millenniums of autocratic rule. They also fought against the Imperial Japanese military during the second Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 1945). By the year 1947, with the introduction of the Constitution of the Republic of China, the nationalization of the army took place and the KMT party no longer had control of the military; hence, it became the National Revolutionary Army. It was soon renamed to the Republic of China Armed Forces; however, still retained similar insignia. With the end of the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1945, the ROC Armed Forces resumed hostilities with the Chinese Communist forces or the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), with the PLA later forcing the ROC Armed Forces and its political elites and allies to withdraw into exile to the island of Taiwan.

Much of Taiwan’s military equipment was procured from the United States of America, with many other western nations supplying military equipment. The ROC military is styled after western military forces, but most closely the U.S. military. Internally, the ROC military has a political warfare branch/department that tightly controls and monitors each level of the ROC military, reports directly to the General Headquarters of the ROC military and, if necessary, directly to the President of the ROC. This is a carry-over from the pre-1949 era, when the KMT and its army were penetrated by Communist agents repeatedly, which led to front line units defecting to Communist China. To strengthen their control over the military and prevent massive defection after retreating to Taiwan in 1949, Chiang Kai-Shek and Chiang Ching-Kuo (his son) employed tight control over the military, by installing political officers and commissioners down to the company level in order to ensure political correctness in the military and loyalty toward ROC leadership. This gave the political officers/commissars a great deal of power, allowing them to overrule the unit commander and take over command of the unit. Only in recent years has the political warfare department (due to cutbacks) reduced its power within the ROC military.

Army

Estimated 130,000 active duty personnel serve with the Republic of China Army (ROC)

Forces by role:

Aviation and Special Forces Command (航空特戰指揮部)

• 101st Reconnaissance Battalion (better known as Sea Dragon Frogman, has a company station in Kinmen, Matsu, 3 in Penghu, and other frontline islands)
• Special Forces Command (特戰指揮部) in charge of 3 training centers

Special Operation Command

• 862 Special Operation Group (originally 862nd Special Operation Brigade, with 3rd, 4th, and 6th battalion that transferred back from aviation brigades)
• 871 Special Operation Group (units’ unknown)

6th Army Corps (第六軍團指揮部): Northern Taiwan

• 269 Mechanized Infantry Brigade
• 542 Armor Brigade
• 584 Armor Brigade
• 21 Artillery Command
• 53 Engineer Group
• 73 Signals Group
• 33 Chemical Warfare Group

8th Army Corps (第八軍團指揮部): Southern Taiwan

• 333 Mechanized Infantry Brigade
• 564 Armor Brigade
• 43 Artillery Command
• 54 Engineer Group
• 75 Signals Group
• 39 Chemical Warfare Group

10th Army Corps (第十軍團指揮部): Central Taiwan

• 234 Mechanized Infantry Brigade
• 586 Armor Brigade
• 58 Artillery Command
• 52 Engineer Group
• 36 Chemical Warfare Group
• 74 Signals Group
• Artillery Group

Penghu Defense Command (澎湖防衛指揮部)

• 1 Armored Battalion, 1 Armored Infantry Battalion, 1 Armored Cav Battalion, 1 mixed Artillery Battalion.
• 9 active infantry brigades, 24 Reserve brigades (Activated only in time of war)

ROC Army’s former Army Missile Command was transferred to ROC Air Force in 2006.

Equipment by type:

MBTs 810: 460 M60A3 TTS (US-made upgraded M60 Patton); 450 CM-11(Taiwanese assembled M48 Patton)

MTs 150: 100 CM-12; 50 M48A3

LTs 50: M41 Walker Bulldog

APCs over 1000: CM-21, M113, V-150S

Light utility vehicles 2000 – 2500: Humvee

Arty (SPG and TOWED) 1665+: 75 M110A2, M109A2/A5, M108, M1, M115, M59 “Long Tom”, M101, M712 Copperhead, Kungfung VI, RT/LT-2000

Helicopters 233+: AH-64E Apache, AH-1W SuperCobra, Bell OH-58D Kiowa, OH-6A Cayuse, Bell TH-67A Creek, Boeing CH-47SD Chinook, UH-60M Black Hawk, AIDC UH-1H Iroquois

UAV 32: Chung Shyang II UAV

AA (Air to Air) 473: AIM-9 Sidewinder & AIM-92 Stinger

AA (Surface to Air) 230+: Sky Sword II, MIM-72/M48 Chaparral, Sky Sword I, M-1097 Avenger, Dual Mounted Stinger & FIM-92 Stinger

Anti-Ship weapons (numbers not known) Hsiung Feng III, Hsiung Feng II

AT 3896+: Hellfire AGM-114L, Hellfire AGM-114K3, Hellfire AGM-114C, Hellfire AGM-114M3, BGM-71 TOW-2A/B, FGM-148 Javelin, APILAS, M136, M72 LAW & Hydra 70

Cruiser Missiles (Future production): Yun Feng & Hsiung Feng IIIE

Navy

38,000 personnel serve with the ROC Navy (9000 of which are Marines) with 117 ships

Equipment by type:

Principal surface attack combatants 28:

Destroyer 4: Kee Lung Class

Frigate 24: 8 Cheng Kung class; 6 Chi Yang Class; 6 Kang Ding class; 4 Oliver Hazard Perry class

Submarines 2: 2 Chien Lung Class

Patrol and Coastal Combatants 44:

Fast Attack Missile and Patrol ship: 12 Ching Chiang-class patrol ship; 31 Kuang Hua VI-class missile boat; 1 Tuo Chiang-class Corvette

Marine Corps:

Brigades (formerly divisions)

• 66th Marine Brigade ‘Vanguard’ ( 陸戰六六旅「先鋒部隊」 ), Taipei area, receiving M60A3TTS to replace M41 tanks [1]
• 77th Marine Brigade ‘Iron Guards’ ( 陸戰七七旅「鐵衛部隊」 ), Garrison brigade, CCK and other area all over Taiwan
• 99th Marine Brigade ‘Iron Force’ ( 陸戰九九旅「鐵軍部隊」 ), Kaohsiung

Groups

• Amphibious Armor Group ( 登陸戰車大隊 );
• 4 Amphibious Transport Squadrons ( 運輸中隊 ), 24+ tracks per squadron. 1st(AAV-7), 2nd(AAV-7), 3rd(LVT-5), 4th(LVT-5);
• 2 Amphibious Artillery Squadrons ( 砲兵中隊 ), mortars, 1st(LVT-5) and 2nd(LVT-5).

Equipment includes (not including small arms):

Tanks: M60A3 TTS; M41 Walker Bulldog; AAV-P7A1 Amphibious assault vehicles; LVPT 5A1 Amphibious assault vehicles; CM-25 AFV (CM-21 with 1 x TOW launcher); M101 Howitzer; M109 Howitzer; BGM-71 TOW-2A/B; MK-153 SMAW; FGM-148 Javelin; M40A1 recoilless rifle; Stinger DMS; MIM-72/M48 Chaparral; Hughes OH-6 Cayuse

Air Force

Estimated 35,000 personnel serves with the ROCAF with 523 aircraft

Main Combat equipment by type:

• Multi-role: 116 F-16A’s; 47 Mirage 2000s
• Fighters: 23 F-5E/RF-5Es; 102 F-CK-1
• Early Warning and Control: 6 E-2 Hawkeye
• ELINT (Covert Electronic intelligence gathering): 1 C-130 HE
• Maritime Patrol: 3 P-3C; 11 S-2
• Reconnaissance: 2 Beech 1900

Air Defense

SAM: 3(7 orders coming) Patriot PAC-2; 6 Skybow; 19 MIM-23 HAWK

AD: 24 Skyguard

Forces by role:

Air Force Combatant Command

• Weather Wing: Tamsui, New Taipei City
• Communications, Air Traffic Control & Information Wing: Taipei City
• Air Tactical Control Wing

Ground fixed and mobile long-range air search radar sites, consist of various TPS-117, TPS-75V, FPS-117, GE-592 and HADR radars, plus 1 PAVE PAWS (Phased Array Warning System) early warning radar site in northern Taiwan entered service late 2012.

Air Defense Artillery Command

• 4 Air Defense Missile & Artillery brigades, 951st (Taipei), 952nd (Taichung), 953rd (Kaohsiung), 954th (Hualien)
• 4 Air Defense Missile I-HAWK battalions, 621st, 622nd, 662nd, and 664th battalions, with Phase III and 7 Phase I batteries.
• 1 TK-1/2 Air Defense Missile battalion, 951st Brigade, 611st battalion with 6 companies/batteries.
• 1 Patriot PAC-2+ GEM/PAC-3 Air Defense/Anti-Ballistic Missile battalion, with 3 mixed companies/batteries that are all upgrading to PAC-3 standard, with 7 more PAC 3 companies/batteries on order.
• 1 Skyguard Short Range Airbase Air Defense battalion, with 6 companies/batteries and radar sub units with OTO 35mm AAA
• 2 Antelope Short Range Airbase Air Defense battalions, with unknown companies/batteries.
• At least 2 AAA Air Defense Artillery battalions, with 40mm/L60 and 12.7mm AAA guns.

Air Defense Artillery Training Center: Pingtung

• Target Service Squadron
• Education Service Support Company
• First training company
• Second training company
• Third training company
• Education, Training & Doctrine Command

Military Police

Estimated 16,000 personnel serve with the ROCMP

From the 2006 National Defense Report, Republic of China Military Police performs:

Military functions:

• Special security duties, including presidential protection,
• Counter-terrorism operations,
• Garrison security,
• Enforce military discipline,
• Support military operations,
• Supportive functions in civilian affairs:
• Execute military justice and law enforcement missions,
• Maintain public security,
• Adequately support regional disaster prevention,
• Response, and ensure social stability and national security.

The ROCMP is responsible for enforcing military law, maintaining military discipline, providing manpower and support for the civilian police force, performing combat duty in times of emergency, providing security for certain governmental facilities such as the Presidential Palace, and performing counter-terrorism and VIP Protection Operations. In an event of a military conflict the ROCMP is responsible for the defense of Taipei, the capital city and political and financial hub of Taiwan.

ROC Armed Forces Strategy

Hypothetically speaking, the adversary for the ROC Armed Forces would be of the Peoples Liberation Army, and it goes without saying that the size of the PLA outnumbers the ROC Armed Forces in terms of military expenditure and size, and that would definitely put the ROC Armed Forces at a disadvantage in any possible conflict. However, mainland China does not actively seek to invade Taiwan. The Chinese military buildup is useful for intimidating Taiwan and would be necessary if a decision was made to invade. Military power could also be used in situations short of all-out war, such as a blockade or some other demonstration of strength. Taiwan’s defenses are different from most countries because of the nature of its strategic position. Few countries see the need for surface-to-air missiles in land-based silos, nearly four-dozen fast missile boats, and a mountain hollowed out to shelter fighter aircraft. Mainland China sees the island 110 miles away as a rogue province — one that is only separated temporarily. China has not only oriented a considerable amount of military force against Taiwan, but has also politically isolated the island internationally.

Most Taiwanese locals would jokingly reveal to you that China has already invaded them with their hundreds and thousands of tourists and through countless aspects of commerce; however, one cannot avoid how Taiwan figures in China’s long-term strategic planning being part of the “First Island Chain”, the innermost defensive ring of islands that China considers essential for national defense. In the long term, controlling Taiwan is in China’s interests both to shield mainland China hypothetically from South Korea, Japan and the United States and as a springboard to operate into the “Second Island Chain”.

In an event of an invasion from the PLA, the ROC Armed Forces will be deploying a two-prong Naval and Air strategy:

Naval

The ROCN (Republic of China Navy), which had been the most neglected branch of the Taiwanese military, has been transformed into one of the most important due to the fact that there is a very high likelihood that the PLA would launch a Naval attack and lead an amphibious landing through the Taiwan Strait or perhaps from South China or East China Sea in any future conflict. With that in mind, the ROCN plays a major role in the overall defense strategy of Taiwan, because the ROCN  with support from the ROCAF can defeat an invasion fleet at sea. The sinking of a large portion of amphibious transports not only takes a large percentage of ground force out of action, but also permanently degrades the enemy’s amphibious capability.

The ROCN has 28 main surface combatant ships armed with capable and potent anti-ship weaponry. The largest ships in the fleet are the four 10,000 ton Kee Lung-class guided-missile destroyers which sport two Mk.26 twin surface to air missile (SAM) launch systems armed with Standard SM-2 Block IIIA surface-to-air missiles, two Mk. 45 127mm guns, four Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles and have a helicopter flight deck and hangar.

The eight Cheung Kung class guided missile frigates are a modified version of the long-hull Oliver Hazard Perry class. The class is armed with a Mk.13 missile launcher forward, capable of firing SM-1MR surface-to-air and Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and a 76mm Oto Melara gun amidships.

The frigates also carry eight Hsiung Feng II anti-ship missiles, giving the small ships a powerful anti-ship capability. Each carries an S-70 Thunderhawk helicopter, an export variant of the SH-60B Seahawk.

Taiwan has eight destroyers of the former U.S. Knox class destroyer, now the Chi Yang class. The ships mount the original armament of one Mk. 45 127mm gun and one ASROC launcher. The Chi Yang class has also been retrofitted with ten SM-1MR surface-to-air missiles in external canister launchers. The ships each carry one MD-500 ASW helicopter.

Rounding out the large surface combatants are the Kang Ting-class frigates. A modification of the La Fayette design, the Kang Ting frigates mount one 76mm gun and a naval Chaparral missile launcher for air defense. Eight Hsiung Feng anti-ship missiles are carried, and typically one S-70 Thunderhawk helicopter.

Taiwan has made a significant investment in small, fast missile patrol craft designed to take on much larger Chinese surface and amphibious ships. Twelve missile patrol combatants of the Jing Chiang class were built , each one of 680 tons displacement fully loaded with a 76mm gun and mine-laying racks.

There are also 34 smaller ships of the 150 ton displacement Kung Hua VI project class. Ships of both classes are each equipped with four Hsiung Feng anti-ship missiles. This diminutive fleet collectively weighs just over 13,000 tons combined displacement, but altogether packs a total of 184 anti-ship missiles.

The ROCN’s submarine fleet consists of just four aging submarines. Two are of the U.S. Navy Tench class, the Hai Shih and Hai Pao. Both were launched toward the end of the World War II and are used as training vessels. The other two submarines, Hai Hung and Hai Hu, are a Dutch design of mid-1980s vintage. Displacing 2,600 tons submerged, they were upgraded in 2013 with Harpoon II anti-ship missiles.

Taiwan has a modest-sized amphibious force designed to move army and marine units by sea during wartime. Equipped with one Hsu Hai Class Dock Landing Ship (LSD), formerly the USS Pensacola, one Chung Cheng class LSD, formerly the USS Comstock, seven Chung Hai class Landing Ship Tank (LST-1), four Mei Chin class Landing Ship Medium(LSM-1) and twelve Ho Chin class Landing Craft Utility (LCU). The force can land up to four companies of ROC Marine Corps AAV-7A1 amphibious assault vehicles or main battle tanks, and two companies of infantry.

Air

Simultaneously, the ROCAF also plays a huge role in maintaining air superiority and in deterring PLA efforts to gain air superiority over Taiwan. Most ROCAF aircraft were state of the art when they were purchased in the 1990s; however, time and China’s air power buildup have eroded their technological edge, opening up the possibility that China could successfully contest air superiority over the island.

The ROCAF has 116 F-16 A/B Block 20 multirole fighters currently upgrading to F-16V with the AN/APG-83 radar, armed with AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. It also operates 47 Mirage 2000 multirole fighters, armed with Magic air-to-air missiles, and 23 F5-E/RF-5E fighters that are slowly being phased out of front line service. Taiwan’s main fighter inventory consists of 102 Ching-Kuo Indigenous Fighters, armed with locally developed Sky Sword II air-to-air missiles.

Taiwan’s fleet of support aircraft includes six E-2 Hawkeye airborne early-warning and air-control aircraft, upgraded with APS-145 radars. One C-130 Hercules transport was converted into an electronic warfare platform, while two ROCN S-70 Thunderhawks have been configured as signals intelligence collection aircraft.

The ROCN operates 20 S-2 Trackers as maritime patrol aircraft. Procured in the 1990s, these aircraft are to be replaced by a dozen P-3C Orions. The ROCN currently has 4 out of the dozen P-3C Orions on order, which will possibly be completed in the current year of 2016.

In the event of war, the ROCAF’s air bases will come under heavy air attack, both by aircraft and missiles. China’s Second Artillery Corps has an estimated 1,500 conventionally armed short range ballistic missiles, many of which will likely be used in the counter-air role. Estimates are that it would take 50 direct hits to close a ROCAF air base to air operations. The ROCAF is prepared to keep air bases open while under attack. Taiwan has the Rapid Runway Repair System, used by the U.S. Air Force, to repair runways damaged by enemy attack. The ROCAF also has the Port Arrest P-IV mobile aircraft arresting system for landing aircraft on damaged runways.

The ROCAF has invested considerable resources in hardening base facilities. Chiashan Air Base, on the island’s eastern coast, includes a hollowed-out mountain that serves as a refuge for up to 100 Mirage 2000-5 and F-16 fighters. Two airfields serving the base are both at least 7,500 feet long. Chiashan is also a designated command post for counterattacks mounted by Taiwan against invading forces.

A second facility buried inside a mountain is Hengshan Command Center. Located on the outskirts of Taipei, Hengshan was completed in 1982 and serves as the national military command center in both peace and war. In wartime, it serves as the seat of Taiwan’s civilian government.

The air force also operates the nationwide air defense network, with 11 early warning sites overall. Main air defense is provided by Taiwan’s indigenously produced Tien Kung II surface-to-air missiles. Radar guided, the Tien Kung II has a range of 125 miles and is deployed at six bases, four on Taiwan and two on nearby island groups.Each base includes 80 missiles in underground silos and two target illumination radars. A range of 125 miles means Tien Kung missiles could theoretically engage targets over the mainland. Taiwan also has seven Patriot missile batteries, which are converting from PAC-2 to PAC-3 status. Patriot missiles are concentrated around the cities of Taipei, Greater Taichung and Greater Kaohsiung.

Asymmetrical Forces

Smaller defense budgets and an overwhelming Chinese conventional force have moved Taiwan toward asymmetrical systems and an anti-access, area denial capability all its own. Rather than matching China ship for ship and plane for plane, Taiwan is fielding systems that imperil China’s ability to operate in the Taiwan Strait.One such example is the Hsun Hai, or “Swift Sea” program of small missile corvettes. The catamarans are capable of 38 knots and designed to have a minimal radar signature. Armed with eight Hsiung Feng II and Hsuing Feng III anti-ship missiles, the Corvettes have been dubbed “Carrier Killers” by the local Taiwanese media. The first, Tuo Chiang is currently in service with 12 more ships planned.

Submarines stand to be a key pillar of Taiwan’s asymmetrical approach. “After Taiwan has lost air and sea control, it’s the subs that will still be able to attack groups of amphibious landing aircraft,” Wang Jyh-perng, ROCN Reserve Captain told the Asia Times in 2011. However, no diesel-electric submarine builder will sell Taiwan new submarines, as they face a great deal of pressure from the Chinese government.

In January of 2014, ROCN headquarters announced a 15-year upgrade plan for naval forces. Under the plan, a local shipbuilder has been directed to determine the feasibility of locally built submarines. As of 2015, many Taiwanese officials have spoken of their intent to secure international assistance before developing an indigenous submarine. However, the U.S. has not constructed a diesel electric submarine since the late 1950’s, but could provide design engineers.  Additionally, they could work with Japanese shipbuilders who make excellent diesel electric submarines.  The U.S. could also relax export controls on items needed to build the submarines. Several U.S. defense contractors have solid working relationships with Taiwan. In 2002, when the U.S. Navy discussed options with the ROCN, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon all expressed interest in being the prime contractor. All of these companies have maintained interest in Taiwanese defensive capabilities. Working with a U.S. company to design an ROCN submarine could set Taiwan on an accelerated path towards development while giving Taiwan control over production and manufacturing.

Another option is to use the blueprints of an existing model and customize it to fit the ROCN’s requirements. Japan is both capable and possibly willing, with the right encouragement, to assist Taiwan in constructing diesel-electric submarines. A transnational industrial cooperation with Japan could help strengthen the security partnership between defense ministries that face the same threat.

Enlistement

Another trend that is complicating Taiwan’s defense strategy is the planned transition from a conscript military to an all-volunteer military. Social trends are undermining the existing draft system, as the system is growing unpopular and demographics are lowering the pool of potential manpower. All volunteer forces have dramatically higher personnel costs, and Taiwan’s defense budget has remained low. If Taiwan cannot offset these costs with additional defense spending, it seems inevitable that the military will face a new round of reductions.

Conclusion

The eyes of the Chinese world are on Taiwan’s recently elected, first female President Cai Yingwen, who will take office on 20th May, 2016 and as to how she will be handling cross-strait affairs. Regardless, Taiwan is playing a difficult hand. Seceding from the mainland outright would likely invoke a military response and anger its strongest ally and supplier, the United States of America. Matching China militarily is no longer possible, as China out-spends Taiwan in military budget by a factor of 13 to 1. A hardline stance is increasingly looking unviable.

On the other hand, strong ideological differences make reunifying with China to be unpalatable for most Taiwanese. Taiwan is taking the middle ground of trying to maintain its economic position and higher standard of living relative to China, while deterring invasion by tailoring its military to specific threats and through other diplomatic negotiations with China. Taiwan may not be spending as much on defense as it should, but it has accepted the strategic realities.