Global Research

We hear about the hazards of lead. We know that lead poisoning can cause severe mental retardation.

Lead has been clearly linked with Alzheimer’s disease. We have been told to avoid lead in our homes and in our water, and to clean up lead pollution of our environment. But we have not been told how to remove it from our bodies. Vitamin C megadoses may be the answer.

Dr. Erik Paterson, of British Columbia, reports:

When I was a consulting physician for a center for the mentally challenged, a patient showing behavioral changes was found to have blood lead levels some ten times higher than the acceptable levels. I administered vitamin C at a dose of 4,000 mg/day. I anticipated a slow response. The following year I rechecked his blood lead level. It had gone up, much to my initial dismay. But then I thought that perhaps what was happening was that the vitamin C was mobilizing the lead from his tissues. So we persisted. The next year, on rechecking, the lead levels had markedly dropped to well below the initial result. As the years went by, the levels became almost undetectable, and his behavior was markedly improved.

How much vitamin C?

Frederick Robert Klenner, M.D., insisted that large amounts of vitamin C are needed to do the job. One old (1940) paper got it wrong, and Dr. Klenner comments:

The report by Dannenberg that high doses of ascorbic acid were without effect in treating lead intoxication in a child must be ignored, since his extremely high dose was 25 mg by mouth four times a day and one single daily injection of 250 mg of C. Had he administered 350 mg/kg body weight every two hours, he would have seen the other side of the coin.

Here is what 350 milligrams of vitamin C per kilogram body weight works out to in pounds, approximately:

 

Milligrams Vitamin C	Body Weight
35,000 mg	220 pounds
18,000	110 lb
9,000	55 lb
4,500	28 lb
2,300	14-15 lb
1,200	7-8 lb

 

Although these quantities may seem high, it must be pointed out that Dr. Klenner administered such amounts every two hours.

Vitamin C may be given intravenously if necessary. Oral vitamin C may be given as liquid, powder, tablet or chewable tablet. Toddlers often accept powdered, naturally sweetened chewable tablets, which may be crushed up between two spoons and added to a favorite food. Infants do well with liquid vitamin C. You can make this yourself by daily dissolving ascorbic acid powder in a small dropper bottle and adding it to fruit juice. Dr. Klenner recommended daily preventive doses, which he described as one thousand milligrams of C per year of a child’s age, plateauing at 10,000 mg/day for teens and adults.

“Vitamin C? But . . .”

Common questions from readers are likely to include these, to which we have provided the briefest of answers.

“Why so much?” Because too little will not be effective. Dr. Klenner, as well as Robert F. Cathcart, M.D., Hugh D. Riordan, M.D., Abram Hoffer, M.D. and many other highly experienced nutritional physicians have all emphasized this.

“Is it safe?” Year after year, decade after decade, national data shows no deaths at all from vitamin C. Vitamin C does not cause kidney stones, either. Read up so you know what you are doing. Work with your doctor. And make sure your doctor has read what you’ve read.

“Is ascorbic acid really vitamin C?” Yes. Linus Pauling, double Nobel-prize winning chemist, said so. He ought to know. Almost all successful medical research on vitamin C therapy has used plain, cheap, you-can-buy-it-anywhere ascorbic acid. Other forms of C will also work well.

“That’s it?” Certainly not. All sources of lead contamination must be addressed and eliminated. Vitamin C has an important role to play in so doing, and should be publicly advocated by the medical professions, government, and the media.

Immediately.

 

To learn more:

Dr. Klenner’s quote is from “The Significance of High Daily Intake of Ascorbic Acid in Preventive Medicine,” p. 51-59, Physician’s Handbook on Orthomolecular Medicine, Third Edition, Roger Williams, PhD, ed.) 
http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/197x/klenner-fr-j_int_assn_prev_med-1974-v1-n1-p45.htm

You can read Dr. Klenner’s Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C free of charge. It is posted in its entirety at http://www.whale.to/a/smith1988.html and also athttp://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/198x/smith-lh-clinical_guide_1988.htm

Many free-access papers on vitamin C therapy are posted at http://www.whale.to/v/c/index.html

“Vitamin supplements help protect children from heavy metals, reduce behavioral disorders.” Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Oct 8, 2007.http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v03n07.shtml

All OMNS articles are archived here: http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml Many discuss the most frequently asked questions about vitamin dosages, safety, forms, and proper administration.

Dannenberg’s paper, mentioned by Klenner: 
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1160080 
Only part appears to be free access. [Dannenburg, A.M., et al (1940) Ascorbic acid in the treatment of chronic lead poisoning. JAMA. 114: 1439-1440.]

Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D. (USA), Editor and contact person. Email:[email protected] This is a comments-only address; OMNS is unable to respond to individual reader emails. However, readers are encouraged to write in with their viewpoints. Reader comments become the property of OMNS and may or may not be used for publication.

From June 2008 to the depth of the Wall Street financial crash in early 2009, U.S. domestic crude oil lost 70 percent of its value, falling from over $140 to the low $40s. But then a strange thing happened. Despite weak global economic growth, oil went back to over $100 by 2011 and traded between the $80s and a little over $100 until June 2014. Since then, it has plunged by 72 percent – a bigger crash than when Wall Street was collapsing.

The chart of crude oil has the distinct feel of a pump and dump scheme, a technique that Wall Street has turned into an art form in the past. Think limited partnerships priced at par on client statements as they disintegrated in price in the real world; rigged research leading to the dot.com bust and a $4 trillion stock wipeout; and the securitization of AAA-rated toxic waste creating the subprime mortgage meltdown that cratered the U.S. housing market along with century-old firms on Wall Street.

Pretty much everything that’s done on Wall Street is some variation of pump and dump. Here’s why we’re particularly suspicious of the oil price action.

Americans know far too little about what was actually happening on Wall Street leading up to the crash of 2008. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its detailed final report in January 2011. But by July 2013, Senator Sherrod Brown, Chair of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection had learned that Wall Street banks had amassed unprecedented amounts of physical crude oil, metals and other commodity assets in the period leading up to the crash. This came as a complete shock to Congress despite endless hearings that had been held on the crash.

On July 23, 2013, Senator Brown opened a hearing on this opaque perversion of banking law, comparing today’s Wall Street banks to the Wall Street trusts that had a stranglehold on the country in the early 1900s. Senator Brown remarked:

There has been little public awareness of or debate about the massive expansion of our largest financial institutions into new areas of the economy. That is in part because regulators, our regulators, have been less than transparent about basic facts, about their regulatory philosophy, about their future plans in regards to these entities.

Most of the information that we have has been acquired by combing through company statements in SEC filings, news reports, and direct conversations with industry. It is also because these institutions are so complex, so dense, so opaque that they are impossible to fully understand. The six largest U.S. bank holding companies have 14,420 subsidiaries, only 19 of which are traditional banks.

Their physical commodities activities are not comprehensively or understandably reported. They are very deep within various subsidiaries, like their fixed-income currency and commodities units, Asset Management Divisions, and other business lines. Their specific activities are not transparent. They are not subject to transparency in any way. They are often buried in arcane regulatory filings.

Taxpayers have a right to know what is happening and to have a say in our financial system because taxpayers, as we know, are the ones who will be asked to rescue these mega banks yet again, possibly as a result of activities that are unrelated to banking.

The findings of this hearing were so troubling that the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations commenced an in-depth investigation. The Subcommittee, then chaired by Senator Carl Levin, held a two-day hearing on the matter in November  2014, which included a 400-page report of hair-raising findings.

Read complete article

 

The world is undergoing a populist revival. From the revolt against austerity led by the Syriza Party in Greece and the Podemos Party in Spain, to Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise victory as Labour leader in the UK, to Donald Trump’s ascendancy in the Republican polls, to Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton – contenders with their fingers on the popular pulse are surging ahead of their establishment rivals.

Today’s populist revolt mimics an earlier one that reached its peak in the US in the 1890s. Then it was all about challenging Wall Street, reclaiming the government’s power to create money, curing rampant deflation with US Notes (Greenbacks) or silver coins (then considered the money of the people), nationalizing the banks, and establishing a central bank that actually responded to the will of the people.

Over a century later, Occupy Wall Street revived the populist challenge, armed this time with the Internet and mass media to spread the word. The Occupy movement shined a spotlight on the corrupt culture of greed unleashed by deregulating Wall Street, widening the yawning gap between the 1% and the 99% and destroying jobs, households and the economy.

Donald Trump’s populist campaign has not focused much on Wall Street; but Bernie Sanders’ has, in spades. Sanders has picked up the baton where Occupy left off, and the disenfranchised Millennials who composed that movement have flocked behind him.

The Failure of Regulation 

Sanders’ focus on Wall Street has forced his opponent Hillary Clinton to respond to the challenge. Clinton maintains that Sanders’ proposals sound good but “will never make it in real life.” Her solution is largely to preserve the status quo while imposing more bank regulation.

That approach, however, was already tried with the Dodd-Frank Act, which has not solved the problem although it is currently the longest and most complicated bill ever passed by the US legislature. Dodd-Frank purported to eliminate bailouts, but it did this by replacing them with “bail-ins” – confiscating the funds of bank creditors, including depositors, to keep too-big-to-fail banks afloat. The costs were merely shifted from the people-as-taxpayers to the people-as-creditors.

Worse, the massive tangle of new regulations has hamstrung the smaller community banks that make the majority of loans to small and medium sized businesses, which in turn create most of the jobs. More regulation would simply force more community banks to sell out to their larger competitors, making the too-bigs even bigger.

In any case, regulatory tweaking has proved to be an inadequate response. Banks backed by an army of lobbyists simply get the laws changed, so that what was formerly criminal behavior becomes legal. (See, e.g., CitiGroup’s redrafting of the “push out” rulein December 2015 that completely vitiated the legislative intent.)

What Sanders is proposing, by contrast, is a real financial revolution, a fundamental change in the system itself. His proposals include eliminating Too Big to Fail by breaking up the biggest banks; protecting consumer deposits by reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act (separating investment from depository banking); reviving postal banks as safe depository alternatives; and reforming the Federal Reserve, enlisting it in the service of the people.

Time to Revive the Original Populist Agenda?

Sanders’ proposals are a good start. But critics counter that breaking up the biggest banks would be costly, disruptive and destabilizing; and it would not eliminate Wall Street corruption and mismanagement.

Banks today have usurped the power to create the national money supply. As the Bank of England recently acknowledged, banks create money whenever they make loans. Banks determine who gets the money and on what terms. Reducing the biggest banks to less than $50 billion in assets (the Dodd-Frank limit for “too big to fail”) would not make them more trustworthy stewards of that power and privilege.

How can banking be made to serve the needs of the people and the economy, while preserving the more functional aspects of today’s highly sophisticated global banking system? Perhaps it is time to reconsider the proposals of the early populists. The direct approach to “occupying” the banks is to simply step into their shoes and make them public utilities. Insolvent megabanks can be nationalized – as they were before 2008. (More on that shortly.)

Making banks public utilities can happen on a local level as well. States and cities can establish publicly-owned depository banks on the highly profitable and efficient model of the Bank of North Dakota. Public banks can partner with community banks to direct credit where it is needed locally; and they can reduce the costs of government by recycling bank profits for public use, eliminating outsized Wall Street fees and obviating the need for derivatives to mitigate risk.

At the federal level, not only can postal banks serve as safe depositories and affordable credit alternatives, but the central bank can provide is it just a source of interest-free credit for the nation – as was done, for example, with Canada’s central bank from 1939 to 1974. The U.S. Treasury could also reclaim the power to issue, not just pocket change, but a major portion of the money supply – as was done by the American colonists in the 18^th century and by President Abraham Lincoln in the 19^th century.

Nationalization: Not As Radical As It Sounds

Radical as it sounds today, nationalizing failed megabanks was actually standard operating procedure before 2008. Nationalization was one of three options open to the FDIC when a bank failed. The other two were (1) closure and liquidation, and (2) merger with a healthy bank. Most failures were resolved using the merger option, but for very large banks, nationalization was sometimes considered the best choice for taxpayers.  The leading U.S. example was Continental Illinois, the seventh-largest bank in the country when it failed in 1984.  The FDIC wiped out existing shareholders, infused capital, took over bad assets, replaced senior management, and owned the bank for about a decade, running it as a commercial enterprise.

What was a truly radical departure from accepted practice was the unprecedented wave of government bailouts after the 2008 banking crisis. The taxpayers bore the losses, while culpable bank management not only escaped civil and criminal penalties but made off with record bonuses.

In a July 2012 article in The New York Times titled “Wall Street Is Too Big to Regulate,” Gar Alperovitz noted that the five biggest banks—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs—then had combined assets amounting to more than half the nation’s economy. He wrote:

With high-paid lobbyists contesting every proposed regulation, it is increasingly clear that big banks can never be effectively controlled as private businesses.  If an enterprise (or five of them) is so large and so concentrated that competition and regulation are impossible, the most market-friendly step is to nationalize its functions. . . .

Nationalization isn’t as difficult as it sounds.  We tend to forget that we did, in fact, nationalize General Motors in 2009; the government still owns a controlling share of its stock.  We also essentially nationalized the American International Group, one of the largest insurance companies in the world, and the government still owns roughly 60 percent of its stock.

A more market-friendly term than nationalization is “receivership” – taking over insolvent banks and cleaning them up. But as Dr. Michael Hudson observed in a 2009 article, real nationalization does not mean simply imposing losses on the government and then selling the asset back to the private sector. He wrote:

Real nationalization occurs when governments act in the public interest to take over private property. . . . Nationalizing the banks along these lines would mean that the government would supply the nation’s credit needs. The Treasury would become the source of new money, replacing commercial bank credit. Presumably this credit would be lent out for economically and socially productive purposes, not merely to inflate asset prices while loading down households and business with debt as has occurred under today’s commercial bank lending policies.

A Network of Locally-Controlled Public Banks

“Nationalizing” the banks implies top-down federal control, but this need not be the result. We could have a system of publicly-owned banks that were locally controlled, operating independently to serve the needs of their own communities.

As noted earlier, banks create the money they lend simply by writing it into accounts. Money comes into existence as a debit in the borrower’s account, and it is extinguished when the debt is repaid. This happens at a grassroots level through local banks, creating and destroying money organically according to the demands of the community. Making these banks public institutions would differ from the current system only in that the banks would have a mandate to serve the public interest, and the profits would be returned to the local government for public use.

Although most of the money supply would continue to be created and destroyed locally as loans, there would still be a need for the government-issued currency envisioned by the early populists, to fill gaps in demand as needed to keep supply and demand in balance. This could be achieved with a national dividend issued by the federal Treasury to all citizens, or by “quantitative easing for the people” as envisioned by Jeremy Corbyn, or by quantitative easing targeted at infrastructure.

For decades, private sector banking has been left to its own devices. The private-only banking model has been thoroughly tested, and it has proven to be a disastrous failure. We need a banking system that truly serves the needs of the people, and that objective can best be achieved with banks that are owned and operated by and for the people.

Having written about the Egyptian revolution and the ensuing political twists and turns since the 2011 uprisings, five years later I look on and wonder about the sum gains and costs. In 2011 I wrote about the importance of coupling any type of street protests and reactionary political momentum with behind the scenes, long term strategic and ideological planning for what comes after the “revolutionary moment.”

While numbers and street protests play a part in popular uprisings, without strategic planning for what comes next (i.e., plans and alternatives for the post-revolutionary trajectory) people’s uprisings can be easily co-opted and revolutionary hopes thwarted. As I noted in an article last year, “the Egyptian revolution originally began with calls for ‘bread, freedom, social justice and human dignity.’ Nowhere in this popular discourse were there demands for greater religiosity or increased state force” [1]. Yet this is the trajectory that the revolution took, with the Muslim Brotherhood co-opting the people’s uprising and coming to power in 2012, to later be ousted by the Mubarak-esque military regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, which, for many, has thus far been as draconian as that of former president Hosni Mubarak. 

While, from an anti-imperialist perspective, Egypt’s current president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi may have a better foreign policy— seemingly less acquiescent to western imperial interests and the US than both Mubarak and Morsi—to many Egyptians his regime means more of the same. Internally many Egyptians, especially dissidents and journalists, fear the police state tactics, such as repressing and preemptively preventing dissent and government criticism, that Sisi’s government has been accused of, especially in the lead up to the 2016 anniversary of the uprisings [2]. Perhaps worse than the internal situation, has been the broader picture for Egypt and the region in the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring. Taken as a whole, the region is far more violent, polarized and destabilized than before the Arab Spring phenomena.

One unfortunate and bizarre general outcome of the Arab Spring was the rise to power—albeit only briefly in some states—of Islamist groups and governments. This is very strange given that religious extremism and/or a lapse into religious orthodoxy is arguably the opposite of progressive or forward moving change.  Despite hopes for change and democracy in the region, the Arab Spring seemed to usher in religious extremism and orthodoxy—sewing the seeds of violent division and sectarianism—in countries that were once secular, diverse and relatively peacefully integrated.

Oddly, the same can be said for the global war on terrorism as well as certain western humanitarian interventions. While the war on terror was sold as a mission against global Islamic terrorism, it has done much to—directly or indirectly—take down or attempt to undermine secular regimes and leaders such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Similarly, humanitarian intervention in the region has often led to the ouster or attempted ouster of secular leaders, such Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and, more recently, Syria’s Bashar al Assad.

Secular regimes tend to mean less Islamic terrorism, simply for the reason that they generally display less socio-political tolerance for sectarian division and radical extremism. Ironically, both the war on terror and the Arab Spring have ushered in less secularization, more sectarian conflict and an increase in terrorism, globally.

With respect to Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s short stint in power—which was applauded by western governments and predatory capitalist imperialist institutions like the IMF and World Bank—created conditions that helped to usher in regional terrorist groups like Daesh (ISIS), and the associated violence and destabilization of the area. This is in addition to the exponential economic costs and loss of infrastructure that came out of the Arab Spring uprisings and related conflicts. The same is true for certain neighbouring countries that saw Islamists rise to power.

All of this raises the question: are the sum costs greater than the sum gains? On whole, for the people of Egypt and the region, it appears to be a loss. But for certain other parties and interests the situation may unsurprisingly prove to be a benefit. This question will be explored in greater depth and detail in future articles.

Ghada Chehade is a writer and performance poet. She holds a PhD from McGill University. She expresses her views and opinions through spoken word poetry and written commentaries. 

 

Notes

[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/something-is-wrong-in-the-cradel-of-the-arab-spring-reflections-on-egypts-revolution-three-years-later/5366218

[2] http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/25/five-years-after-tahrir-square-egypts-police-state-worse-ever

Saudi Arabia, one year after king Salman acceded to the throne and 9-months after appointing his favourite – young and inexperienced – son, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) Deputy Crown Prince (DCP), is grappling with not merely an increasingly relentless power struggle, compounded by an unprecedented devastating plunge in oil prices,  but far more ominously the ruinous implications of a highly aggressive foreign policy that has ultimately led to a full-blown costly yet futile war against the Houthi-rebels in Yemen, and has increasingly fuelled proxy sectarian wars in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

The Saudi regime has made no secret that the overarching goal of its newly adopted muscular foreign policy, which is aggressively spearheaded by MbS, is to counter what it perceives as Iran’s growing yet highly perilous influence. Surprisingly, however, the German Foreign Intelligence BND publically acknowledged, on Dec 2, that Saudi Arabia at the behest of MbS – who is frantically accumulating more powers as he resolutely strives to become the next King – is increasingly shifting to an impulsive and interventionist foreign policy, swiftly turning Riyadh into a major destabilising force in the Middle East. Amid the mounting fear of further terrorist atrocities in European cities by ISIL, following the Nov 13 Paris terrorist attacks, the German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, on Dec 6, scathingly scolded the Saudi regime for funding extremists in the West and around the world by building and funding radical Wahhabi Mosques.

The Head of the SPD group in the German Parliament Thomas Oppermann, went even further, forcefully emphasizing that Wahhabism the formal religion of Saudi Arabia has offered a comprehensive ideology for ISIL and Al Qiada. Although the German Government rapidly scrambled to distance itself from the report, however, the BND’s assessment has unquestionably gained added weight by MbS’s highly impulsive declaration, on Dec 15, of forming a 34-nation anti-terror Islamic military coalition – which strikingly resembles the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen in terms of its starkly anti-Shia sectarian nature and the way it was introduced by MbS in March 2015 – without consulting the overwhelming majority of countries mentioned. MbS’s highly controversial declaration came, a day after Obama’s call – at the U.S. National Security Council – on Saudi Arabia to focus more on confronting ISIL rather than on Yemen.

Saudi Arabia ushered out 2015 with 157 executions, breaking all records since 1995. It herald the beginning of 2016 by executing a record number of 47 people, sending out a chillingly barbarous message to the people of Saudi Arabia: All those who dare to defy, oppose or merely demand an end to Riyadh’s medieval dictatorship, whether through terrorism like Al Qaida and ISIL or via peaceful nonviolent protests like Shiekh Nimr Baquer Al-Nimr – who was undeniably the driving force behind the 2011 popular uprising, clamouring for democracy and an end to virulently sectarian discrimination against the Shia – would beyond doubt have their heads chopped off and their dead bodies crucified as they would at the hands of ISIL.  But, even more menacingly is the inescapable reality that such monstrous punishments are issued, in both Saudi Arabia and under ISIL rule, by religious courts adhering to the extremist hard-line Wahhabi Salafi idiology, propagated and exported by Saudi Arabia’s government-funded Wahhabi Salafi Religious Establishment.

The Saudi regime’s highly unusual step of executing a prominent religious leader like Al-Nimr was deliberately intended to spark spontaneous outrage and thereby provoke an uncalculated retaliation, from above all Iran. Hence, effectively turning Riyadh into the main victim of the crisis. As such, the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran was music to the Saudi ears, prompting it, on Jan 3, to cut off not only diplomatic and economic ties, but more significantly to the Saudi regime, preventing its Shia citizens from travelling to Iran.

As Salman acceded to the throne, on Jan 23, after the death of his half-brother King Abdullah, he swiftly scrambled to shore up his position by:

First, ripping the power base of Abdullah’s son – Metab – apart by dismissing his father’s chief of the Royal Court and his two brothers.

Second, elevating Muqrin from DCP to Crown Prince (CP), despite his knowledge that Muqrin was specifically appointed DCP by Abdullah to ensure that he returns the throne to Metab. In essence, Salman’s decision was driven by fear that ousting Muqrin would rock the boat.

Third, securing the internal front while also appeasing the U.S. by determining that Mohammed bin Nayef ( MbN ), who is the Interior Minister and also considered U.S.’s most trusted ally, should be the first among the Grandsons of Abdulaziz – usually called Ibn Saud – in line to the throne. Fourth, bolstering his young son’s MbS power, by appointing him Defence Minister and Head of the Economic and Development Council.

But as It became increasingly evident that the war unleashed by MbS, in Mar 2015, in Yemen, which was partly aimed at rapidly propelling him to prominence, was a spectacular failure, and amid MbS’s profound worries that his father’s – who is in poor health – death would terminate his ambitions. Consequently, on Apr 29, Salman ousted Muqrin, while promoting MbN to become CP and defiantly promoting MbS to DCP. Yet, paradoxically, Salman’s move has not only irrefutably amplified MbS’s vulnerability by practically demonstrating that a new king does not have to stick with his predecessor’s choice of DCP, but far more critically, deepening the distrust between MbS and MbN and thereby injecting new urgency to MbS’s strenuous drive to dislodge MbN.

And although Salman’s highly divisive declaration  infuriated the royal family, it was however incontestably, his first formal visit, in early Sept 2015, to the U.S. accompanied by his son MbS – who was fervently welcomed by Obama and top U.S. officials – that pushed the long-simmering power struggle to perilously destabilising levels, prompting senior members of the royal family, on Sept 28, to uncharacteristically throw caution to the wind, forcefully calling for a palace coup to depose Salman, MbN and MbS. To make matters worse, this coincided with a double disaster at Mecca, essentially exacerbating an increasingly pervading atmosphere of an inherently incompetent leadership that is conspicuously incapable of adequately managing the hajj pilgrimage, from which it draws its ultimate legitimacy in leading the Islamic world.

Riyadh’s decision to push the sectarian tension to boiling point was internally intended to: First, stave off an internal uprising in the Sunni heartland by trumpeting the patently deceitful myth that Saudi Arabia is still the guardian of Sunni Islam and above all, is heavily engaged in combating an existential threat posed by the Shia, namely Iran. Second, with tumbling oil prices and an unimaginable budget deficit, compelling Riyadh to raise taxes and also to compensate for its inability to rely heavily – as both King Abdullah during the Arab Spring and King Salman when acceding to the throne – on its most potent weapon to head off and curb popular dissent: vast oil revenue. Third, lending credence to its claims of facing an immensely serious national security threat, enabling Salman and MbS to call into question the very patriotism of those challenging their authority and therefore severely undermine the growing campaign, spearheaded by senior members of the younger generation of the royal family, to replace Salman with his full Sudairi brother, 73-years-old Ahmed.

While externally Riyadh aimed to: First, sabotage, or at the very least, discredit the Nuclear deal signed, on Jul 14, between Iran and the P 5+1, – which Riyadh has tenaciously resisted every inch of the way, insisting that the U.S.’s overriding priority should persistently be isolating and containing Iran – by practically highlighting to the U.S. and its allies that Iran is utterly unreliable. Indeed, the lifting of sanctions imposed on Iran, on Jan 16, was by far the most devastating blow to the Saudi regime. But, to add insult to injury, even Riyadh’s staunchest allies in the GCC -except Bahrain which was invaded and still occupied by Saudi Arabia since the Arab Spring – and among Arab countries – except Sudan and Jeboty – have fiercely resisted severing diplomatic ties. Second, resurrect MbS’s 34-nation Islamic alliance – which has so far failed to materialise – and also reviving MbS’s faltering Arab alliance in Yemen, by employing the highly incendiary sectarian confrontation as the perfect pretext to rally sectarian support for such emphatically anti-Shia coalitions. Third, critically undermine the painstakingly negotiated Russian-U.S. roadmap, unanimously endorsed, on Dec 18, by UN-Security Council resolution number 2254, explicitly stressing that Syria’s president Bashar Al Assad’s future must be exclusively decided by the Syrian people.

In the eyes of Riyadh this clearly marked a severe blow to its implacable campaign to topple Assad. Riyadh’s invitation to Syrian opposition groups, on Dec 8, was designed to thwart resolution 2254, by signalling that it is the one calling the shots by forming, monopolising and incorporating representatives of terrorist organisations within the opposition’s negotiating team. Indeed, Riyadh has consistently been blaming Obama’s administration for its indecisive leadership while also furiously lashing out against the highly effective Russian air-campaign backed up by unflinching Iranian support, which has decisively turned the tide against terrorist organisations like ISIL, JN, Ahrar Al Sham and Jaish Al Islam, all of which have shamelessly been armed and financed by Saudi Arabia, according to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s assertion, in Oct 2014.

As ISIL dramatically broadens its strategy from being a regional to an increasingly international threat, targeting US and western citizens around the world. It is high time for the American people to cast their decisive vote on whether the best way of promoting U.S.’s interests is by covering up Saudi Arabia’s abhorrent record of escalating human rights violations, of exporting its extremist Wahhabi Salafi ideology and bloodthirsty jihadists, of promoting radical preachers of death giving religious legitimacy to monstrous atrocities against Shias, Christians, Jews and moderate Sunnis, of arming and funding ISIS, JN, and Taliban and of spreading tyranny and dictatorship in the Middle East.

Both politicians kept in power by huge transfers of money: one from the Saudi Arabian royal family, the other from the AIPAC lobby-led, US congress. Neither has apparently committed any crime by the acceptance of these sums but to call such activity ‘democratic’ is to call a pork chop, kosher.

Such sums are routinely used to irrevocably damage the democratic principle of ‘government by the people, of the people and for the people’. In these two instances, it is government by the people but for Riyadh and Washington respectively. That is not democracy but a travesty of the democratic process perpetrated by vested business and political interests.

For one state, or a cabal within a state, to seek to influence the choice of government of another state by the direct transfer of funds calculated to direct the result of a national election, should be designated a criminal activity. It is banned in European democratic elections – but neither Malaysia nor Israel are in Europe and nor, of course, is Saudi Arabia or America. More’s the pity. Then the world would not have had to deal with the ineptitude of the pathetic US president, George Bush, and similar results of corrupted democratic process.

Both politicians kept in power by huge transfers of money: one from the Saudi Arabian royal family, the other from the AIPAC lobby-led, US congress. Neither has apparently committed any crime by the acceptance of these sums but to call such activity ‘democratic’ is to call a pork chop, kosher. Such sums are routinely used to irrevocably damage the democratic principle of ‘government by the people, of the people and for the people’. In these two instances, it is government by the people but for Riyadh and Washington respectively.

That is not democracy but a travesty of the democratic process perpetrated by vested business and political interests. For one state, or a cabal within a state, to seek to influence the choice of government of another state by the direct transfer of funds calculated to direct the result of a national election, should be designated a criminal activity. It is banned in European democratic elections – but neither Malaysia nor Israel are in Europe and nor, of course, is Saudi Arabia or America. More’s the pity. Then the world would not have had to deal with the ineptitude of the pathetic US president, George Bush, and similar results of corrupted democratic process.

On January 25th, which was the date when peace talks on Syria were to start, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that the organization founded by Osama bin Laden admirer, Zahran Alloush, represent the anti-Assad forces in the upcoming Syrian peace talks, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov very reluctantly accepted.

Alloush had founded and led the jihadist organization, Jaysh al-Islam.

“Jaysh al-Islam ex-leader Zahran Alloush gave a speech on the merits of Hajj in 2013 and praised Usama bin Laden, addressing him by the honorific ‘Sheikh’ and the honorific ‘rahimahu Allah. … Alloush addressed the Al-Qaeda organization Jabhat al-Nusra as ‘our brothers’.”Wikipedia

Al-Nusra had helped in carrying out a U.S.-Turkish-Saudi-Qatari arranged sarin gas attack in August 2013 that President Obama blamed on Assad and that Obama still cites as his reason and justification for bombing Assad’s army. Even when Obama entered the White House in 2009, he was aiming to find a way to remove Syria’s President, Assad, from power. Setting up this gas-attack (and blaming it on Assad) turned out to be the way to make that possible.

Al Jazeera announced on 25 December 2015 that “Russian Air Raids Kill Prominent Rebel Commander” Alloush. Both Russia and Assad now will have to negotiate with Mohammad Alloush, his survivor. Even French leader Francois Hollande supports Alloush — despite the recent jihadist attacks in France. Apparently, anything to get rid of Russia’s ally Assad is okay with Western leaders.

The Saud family actually required Alloush to head the anti-Assad delegation. The Sauds were insisting on it even back in early December 2015. Kerry and the rest of the West weren’t entirely comfortable with that demand. A ‘compromise’ was reached: there will be two heads: Alloush, and another figure supported by the Sauds: Asad al-Zoubi. This is yet another example of the Saud family’s leadership of the Western alliance against Russia and its allies.

Thus, on the one side of these peace talks will be Assad (the non-sectarian Shiite leader who is supported by the vast majority of Syrians and is also supported by Russia and by Iran); and, on the other side will be Zaroush and al-Zubi, two favorites of the Saud family (supported by the West, which is led by the Saud family, who financed Al Qaeda).

Lavrov faced a bad choice: either take the blame for preventing the peace talks, or else accept the Saud family’s ‘compromise’ position; and he chose the latter.

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

On Jan. 3, 1966, a 21-year-old activist from Tuskegee, Alabama, Samuel Leamon “Sammy” Younge, Jr. [pictured left] was shot and killed at a gas station for attempting to use a white only restroom.

During the period in the southern United States prior to the late 1960s, African Americans were by law denied equal access to public and private accommodations. It was not only until the summer of 1964 that a comprehensive Civil Rights bill was passed aimed at ending the Jim Crow system of strict racial segregation.

In August 1965, a Voting Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the aftermath of the repression meted out against the people of Alabama, who were merely attempting to enforce previous legislation and the 14^th and 15^th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution ostensibly guaranteeing due process and the franchise to all who were born and naturalized citizens of the country.

Lynch Law Still Prevalent in the 1960s

The blatant character of the killing of Sammy Younge, Jr. prompted the historic statement of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) against the war in Vietnam issued on January 6, becoming the first major Civil Rights organization to do so. Younge had worked with SNCC and the University-based Tuskegee Institute Advancement League (TIAL), which led many of the campaigns in the state during 1965 aimed at voting rights and independent political organization.

Prior to Younge’s intervention in the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Past website said of his origins that “Between September 1957 and January 1960 Younge attended Cornwall Academy, a college preparatory school for boys in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a town famous as the birthplace of W.E.B. DuBois. Younge graduated from Tuskegee Institute High School in 1962 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy.” (blackpast.org)

This website goes on to say “Soon after his enlistment Younge served on the aircraft carrier USS Independence during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the vessel participated in the United States blockade of Cuba.  After a year in the Navy, Young developed a failing kidney that had to be surgically removed.  He was given a medical discharge from the Navy in July 1964.”

After the Selma Campaign of early 1965, an area where SNCC had worked since 1962, organizers spread out to neighboring Lowndes County where the first Black Panther organization was formed by the soon-to-be SNCC Chairman Stokely Carmichael (after 1979 known as Kwame Ture) and his comrades, working in close collaboration with local activists in the area. Younge, whose parents were professional African Americans connected with Tuskegee Institute and the segregated public school system, saw SNCC and TIAL as avenues of expression designed to win full equality and self-determination for the African American people.

After returning from the U.S. Navy, Younge enrolled in Tuskegee Institute and joined both SNCC and TIAL. He participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery March held during March 21-26, 1965.

Both organizations were engaged in voter registration efforts as well as challenging segregated facilities which proliferated even after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65.

Martyrdom Sparked Heightened Resistance

Younge’s racist murder at a Standard Oil Gas Station run by its elderly white night attendant, Marvin Segrest, came as he was working as a volunteer in a voter registration campaign in Macon County.

The murder led to a variety of protests.  Younge’s death served as a symbol of why people had to intensify the struggle to expose the false notions of fighting for freedoms abroad that were routinely denied in the U.S.

Student protests erupted in Tuskegee when white county officials initially declined to indict Segrest and even later after the all-white jury, in a majority African American county, deliberated only one hour and ten minutes delivering a verdict of not-guilty for Segrest in his December 1966 show trial.

SNCC was in the process of transitioning its program to Black Power and revolutionary nationalism in 1965-66 and its views on the war drew widespread attacks on its activists across the South. The statement issued by the organization drew the ire of the administration of the-then President Lyndon B. Johnson along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a wide spectrum of politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties.

This statement by SNCC read in part as follows:

“The murder of Samuel Younge in Tuskegee, Alabama, is no different than the murder of peasants in Vietnam. For both Younge and the Vietnamese sought and are seeking to secure the rights guaranteed them by law. In each case, the United States government bears a great part of the responsibility for these deaths. Samuel Younge was murdered because United States law is not being enforced. Vietnamese are murdered because the United States is pursuing an aggressive policy in violation of international law. The United States is no respecter of persons or law when such persons or laws run counter to its needs or desires.”

SNCC activist Julian Bond was elected to the Georgia state legislature in late 1965 and was slated to take office in early 1966. He was denied his seat for two years because he refused to distance himself from the SNCC position on the war.

SNCC called for not only the end of the U.S. war against Vietnam but the abolition of the draft. Their stance sent shock waves through the ruling class particularly with the dozens of urban rebellions which erupted during the spring and summer of 1966.

In June 1966 during the “March Against Fear” through the state of Mississippi, the slogan Black Power was advanced by SNCC field secretary Willie Ricks (now known as Mukasa Dada) and Carmichael who was elected chairman of SNCC just the month before. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), left the emerging Chicago Freedom Movement to march alongside SNCC, Floyd McKissick, the-then executive secretary of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), which had also adopted the Black Power slogan, in solidarity with the youth and farmers of Mississippi to the capital of the state in Jackson.

Civil Rights, Black Power and Opposition to the Vietnam War

SCLC had not taken a formal position against the war even after the statement issued by SNCC in early January. Nonetheless, King later admitted in March and April of 1967 that he was no longer prepared to refrain from speaking against what the Johnson administration was doing to the people of Vietnam and its relationship to the failure of Washington to adequately address poverty and racism in the U.S.

On March 25, 1967 in Chicago, King and other anti-war activists including Dr. Benjamin Spock, the noted pediatrician and author, led a demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people calling for a comprehensive halt to hostilities against North Vietnam and the revolutionaries fighting for the national liberation of the south of the country. Just ten days later, the SCLC leader would deliver his historic speech labelled “Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam” at Riverside Church in New York City.

A cacophony of condemnation poured in against King’s views on Vietnam. On April 15 he would participate in another march from Central Park to the United Nations in New York condemning the bombing of Hanoi and the need to withdraw U.S. forces from the country.

Just one year later King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 while he was assisting an African American sanitation workers’ strike seeking recognition as a labor organization under AFSCME. His combined efforts in the areas of Civil Rights, opposition to U.S. militarism and imperialism as well as the demand for the elimination of poverty sealed his fate with the ruling class.

 Author’s note: For more detailed information on the life and times of Sammy Younge, Jr. see the book “Sammy Younge, Jr.: The First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement”, by James Foreman, 1968.

Abayomi Azikiwe edits the Pan-African News Wire

British Prime Minister David Cameron is all pent up about another crusade, this time about rescuing Muslim women.  The latest idea is a £20m language-learning scheme suggesting that a lack of competence in English and extremism are somehow linked. (The PM has obviously not been keeping up with the radical recruits for ISIS.)

Women are the primary focus, with Cameron claiming that 190,000 British Muslim women, or 22 percent, speak little or no English.  Muslim men were ever in the background spreading “backward attitudes” and exercising “damaging control” over their female relatives.[1] Such a view prompted Baroness Sayeeda Warsi to make the point that, “Women should have the opportunity to learn English full stop. Why link it to radicalisation/extremism?”[2]

Western advocates from various parts of the political spectrum simply cannot leave them alone.  Liberating the down trodden Muslim woman is a condition of Western consciousness, one of those obsessive imperatives that occupies mission and purpose.  Cameron’s funding policy provides, as Madeleine Bunting scoffed, “a new twist on an old colonial story.”[3]

From a political perspective, Islamic women make excellent public relations opportunities, equipping the messianically inclined with gendered themes for liberation that can be slotted in for the next invasion, or reform program.  They supply the basis for purported change as capably as any lethal weapon.

The US First Lady Laura Bush chose to do exactly that on November 17, 2001.  The country was giddy with war fervour a few months after the attacks on US soil by al-Qaeda, and the flag of emancipation had been woven.  Taliban-governed Afghanistan was the first choice, obvious only because of some flexible reasoning on the part of the White House.  “Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan,” suggested the First Lady, “women are no longer imprisoned in their homes.  They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment.”

The radio address had one overarching tendency: obliterating concepts, mashing terms.  The Taliban and terrorists became, as anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod noted, “a kind of hyphenated monster identity”.[4]  And this was not all. Women’s causes were bound together with the broader mission against the Taliban, be it malnutrition, poverty, and ill-health on the one hand, and their employment, schooling and “joys of wearing nail polish” on the other.  As Laura Bush explained, “The fight against terrorism is also the fight for the rights and dignity of women.”

This appropriated theme – whether Muslim women need saving – is an old one indeed. It tends to bubble to the surface as a matter of strategic interest rather than genuine concern, though there is little doubt that some people have believed it.  When the Taliban was in the US State Department’s good books, and the treasury was readily forking out to the theocratic opium opportunists, down trodden women, segregation, and limited schooling, were of little interest.

Such precedents of manipulation stack the annals of misguided history.  Sociologist Marnia Lazreg had also noted that French colonialism made use of women towards such ends.  Muslim women were unveiled in choreographed ceremonies, one which took place on May 16, 1958 in Algeria.  The event had been organised by French generals steadfastly opposed to the country’s liberation, a spectacle which involved a few thousand local men been taken by bus from nearby villages, and various women set for the unveiling.  They were suitable bodies, strategically used and deployed in the broader story about French freedom.

Afghanistan provided a similar battleground five decades later.  The US Central Intelligence Agency’s public relations boffins felt that oppressed women in the Islamic faith would provide excellent material for the US-led cause.  WikiLeaks, ever useful, provided material to that end.  A classified document shows that, when interest in Afghanistan was flagging in 2010 on the part of various contributing countries, notably France and Germany, the motif of oppressed women would come to the rescue. This was particularly the case with France.

The CIA Red Cell memorandum (“Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission – Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough”, 11 March 2010), stemming from a section charged by the Director to “provoke out-of-the-box” approaches, is a deliciously cynical piece of advice.[5]

Far from being out-of-the-box, the memorandum is distinctly within it, noting how leaders have used public apathy “to ignore voters” and drive up commitments to the conflict.  French and German respondents did not see Afghanistan as necessarily a primary issue; politicians had capitalised, sending more troops and supplies to the ISAF mission.  For all that, “Casualties Could Precipitate Backlash.”

The response, then, would be to massage, or “leverage” guilt, noting the “adverse consequences of an ISAF defeat for Afghan civilians” to French (and other European) states.  Girl’s education, for instance, “could provoke French indignation, and become a rallying point for France’s largely secular public”.

The authors of the memorandum make the blatant suggestion that, “Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s inability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory.”  Media opportunities would be made available for articulating the cause.

This was bound to smack of imperialist reflection – noble native women, incapable of articulating their plight, used to idealise an invasion against obscurantist forces. It ended up playing out what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak would suggest during a moment of unusual coherence in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak’?”: a story of white men saving brown women from brown men.[6]

While the Washington snowstorm dominated news coverage this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was operating behind the scenes to rush through the Senate what may be the most massive transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch in our history. The senior Senator from Kentucky is scheming, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bypass normal Senate procedure to fast-track legislation to grant the president the authority to wage unlimited war for as long as he or his successors may wish.

The legislation makes the unconstitutional Iraq War authorization of 2002 look like a walk in the park. It will allow this president and future presidents to wage war against ISIS without restrictions on time, geographic scope, or the use of ground troops. It is a completely open-ended authorization for the president to use the military as he wishes for as long as he (or she) wishes. Even President Obama has expressed concern over how willing Congress is to hand him unlimited power to wage war.

President Obama has already far surpassed even his predecessor, George W. Bush, in taking the country to war without even the fig leaf of an authorization. In 2011 the president invaded Libya, overthrew its government, and oversaw the assassination of its leader, without even bothering to ask for Congressional approval. Instead of impeachment, which he deserved for the disastrous Libya invasion, Congress said nothing. House Republicans only managed to bring the subject up when they thought they might gain political points exploiting the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.

It is becoming more clear that Washington plans to expand its war in the Middle East. Last week the media reported that the US military had taken over an air base in eastern Syria, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the US would send in the 101st Airborne Division to retake Mosul in Iraq and to attack ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Then on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden said that if the upcoming peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the US is prepared for a massive military intervention in Syria. Such an action would likely place the US military face to face with the Russian military, whose assistance was requested by the Syrian government. In contrast, we must remember that the US military is operating in Syria in violation of international law.

The prospects of such an escalation are not all that far-fetched. At the insistence of Saudi Arabia and with US backing, the representatives of the Syrian opposition at the Geneva peace talks will include members of the Army of Islam, which has fought with al-Qaeda in Syria. Does anyone expect these kinds of people to compromise? Isn’t al-Qaeda supposed to be our enemy?

The purpose of the Legislative branch of our government is to restrict the Executive branch’s power. The Founders understood that an all-powerful king who could wage war at will was the greatest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why they created a people’s branch, the Congress, to prevent the emergence of an all-powerful autocrat to drag the country to endless war. Sadly, Congress is surrendering its power to declare war.

Let’s be clear: If Senate Majority Leader McConnell succeeds in passing this open-ended war authorization, the US Constitution will be all but a dead letter.

“WHAT ARE YOU doing? Why are you here?”  The soldier asks. “I’m keeping an eye on the children getting to and from school” I replied. The soldier blinks in disbelief.  “Do children not go to school in Ireland?”. “Of course they do” I replied, “But not in the presence of an army. Not in the presence of tear-gas, rifles and jeeps”.

“Ah”. A smile crept across his face as he looked down, shaking his head. “So you’re watching me”.

I’ve been in the West Bank for nearly 40 days, travelling from Ireland as an ecumenical accompanier (human rights monitor) with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). In this piece of land, smaller than Galway, the abnormal has become normal, the wrong has become right, and the profound beauty of the land has been muted by sirens, demolitions, stabbings and shootings.

My days are filled with travel and sweet tea.  I accompany children to school, and collect stories of military incursions, night raids, and settler attacks – filling report after report, which are shared with UN bodies, and others needing such testimonies.

Soldier stands at the entrance to As-Sawiya School.

Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank is more than 40 years old and continues to hurt both Palestinians and Israelis to this day. EAPPI believes it is the keystone to the long-term resolution of conflict in the region.

The Oslo Accords of the early 1990’s, an interim agreement for the establishment of a Palestinian state, are now 23 years old and 17 years overdue, and are seen by many Palestinians as the second occupation. With the Accords’ establishment of Areas A, B and C, the hope of achieving a functioning contiguous Palestinian state has never seemed further from reality.

Israeli soldiers establish checkpoint for the children collecting exam results, As-Sawiya School, West Bank.

Since 1993, the number of Israelis living in settlements in the West Bank, has more than tripled from just over 200,000 at the beginning of the 1990’s to over 650,000 today. Settlements are Israeli-only towns and villages and are illegal under international law. Land continues to be seized for the expansion of these settlements and the more fundamentalist, ideological settlers have raised their profile within society, assuming top positions of power in Israel’s government.

EAPPI is committed to supporting all those working nonviolently for peace and one of the difficult things to witness is the distress many Israeli peace organisations and activists are feeling under the policies of their government. These Israelis know that their country’s future relies on a lasting peace and a just end to the occupation.

The more these organisations work for peace from within Israel, the more that their government tries to stimmy their efforts. This can be seen in the Bill currently before the Israeli Knesset (parliament) that seeks to curtail the access and viability of international and national NGOs operating within Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territory.

Palestinians I meet in the West Bank, all insist that their problem is not with Israelis, or even the state of Israel. Their issue is with being under a military occupation:  restrictions to movement through a series of checkpoints (solely within the occupied West Bank, not within Israel); a separation barrier  that is not built on the internationally agreed Armistice Line but one that snakes into and annexes private Palestinian land; and almost daily harassment and humiliation.

Take for example, the use of collective punishment procedures that see the family homes of Palestinian attackers being demolished and the family sent the bill.

Mosque, Huwwara Village, West Bank.

It’s no wonder that many young people here ask me: “For a Palestinian in the West Bank, what’s the difference between being dead and being alive?”

In stark contrast, many of the young people I speak with in West Jerusalem or Tel Aviv shy away from the subject of the occupation – slipping through the conversational trap door of: “I’m not interested in politics” or “You’d understand if you lived here”.

Maybe now, in our centenary year, whilst we’re spending time with our own history in a way we haven’t done before, we may meaningfully seek an end to the occupation in the West Bank.

It’s now 13 months since both houses of the Oireachtas called upon the government in an unopposed private members bill to recognise the State of Palestine along the UN’s 1967 borders. Recognition is not a radical step. We’ll be joining a club that has over 130 members, some of which are close neighbours.

Perhaps now, more than ever, is the time to act on recognition, supporting the campaign of SADAKA in Ireland, pursuing an end to the occupation and a just peace for all.

Alex J Dunne is currently serving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a human rights observer with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programe in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). Instagram: alex.j.dunne

With Syria “peace talks” ostensibly set to begin in Geneva today, Washington has ratcheted up threats of US military escalation throughout the region. In the past few days, top US civilian and military officials have declared that they are prepared to seek a “military solution” in Syria, put “boots on the ground” in Iraq and launch another US-NATO war in Libya.

The talks themselves, which are being convened under the auspices of the United Nations, are not expected to begin as scheduled because of continuing sharp differences over what forces will be invited to attend and how the proposed agenda for a “political transition” will affect the future of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad.

The US and its regional allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are insisting that the delegation representing the Syrian opposition be limited to a so-called High Negotiations Committee, an alliance dominated by Islamist militias that was formed under the auspices of the Saudi monarchy.

Russia has opposed the participation in the talks of Salafist militias linked to Al Qaeda, which Washington and its allies have attempted to pass off as “moderate rebels.” It has also backed the participation of the Kurdish YPG militia that has seized substantial territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which all sides claim to be fighting.

Meanwhile, Turkey has indicated that it will boycott the talks if the Kurds are allowed to participate.

Underlying the bitter disputes over who will attend the so-called peace talks are the sharply divergent interests of the US, which, together with its regional allies, has backed the Islamist militias with arms and funding in a bid to topple the Assad government, and Russia, which counts this government as its principal ally in the Middle East. For its part, Turkey, while claiming to oppose ISIS, is principally concerned with overthrowing Assad and quelling the rise of a Kurdish territory on its southern border.

The Obama administration is determined to use the talks as an instrument for furthering its goal of regime change in Syria and, more broadly, the assertion of US imperialist hegemony throughout the Middle East. It insists that any political transition must include the speedy removal of Assad.

It faces being thwarted in these efforts, however, by Russia’s military intervention. The bombing campaign initiated by Moscow has begun to produce significant military gains by the Syrian army and allied militias against the Islamist forces backed by the US and its allies.

Backed by Russian airstrikes, Syrian government troops and local militias Sunday took back the strategic city of Rabia in western Latakia province, which had been under control of so-called “rebels,” including the Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, since 2012. The Syrian army has been making major gains as well in the north of Latakia, near the Turkish border, where Turkey staged its shoot-down of a Russian warplane. These advances threaten to cut off a principal supply route for the Western-backed Islamists.

The US has responded to the events in Syria with a flurry of visits to its closest regional allies and key sponsors of the Al Qaeda-linked militias in Syria, along with a steady drumbeat of threats.

Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Riyadh over the weekend, barely three weeks after the Saudi monarchy sparked international outrage and revulsion with the mass beheadings of 47 prisoners, including Nimr al-Nimr, a Muslim cleric and leading spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s oppressed Shiite minority. Uttering not a word of criticism of the savagely repressive and viciously sectarian absolute monarchy, Kerry declared that the US maintained “as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance and as strong a friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had.”

Vice President Joseph Biden, meanwhile, visited Turkey where he solidarized himself with the brutal crackdown by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the country’s Kurdish minority that has seen tanks firing on neighborhoods and has cost the lives of hundreds of civilians.

Biden declared that Washington and Ankara were engaged in a “shared mission on the extermination of” ISIS. In reality, the Turkish government has been one of the main pillars of support for ISIS and other Islamist militias. It has directed its fire principally at Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria, the same forces that the US has employed as proxy ground troops in its air war.

Biden said that Washington was determined to press ahead with the talks in Geneva, adding, “But we are prepared if that is not possible to having a military solution to this operation.”

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter indicated that the Pentagon is also preparing an escalation of its military intervention in Iraq, declaring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that the US is “looking for opportunities to do more, and there will be boots on the ground—I want to be clear about that—but it’s a strategic question, whether you are enabling local forces to take the hold, rather than trying to substitute for them.”

The Obama administration had repeatedly foresworn US “boots on the ground” in the region, referring to the deployment of large numbers of combat troops. Now it is deliberately employing the same phrase to justify the steady escalation of the deployment of “advisers” and “trainers” who are becoming ever more directly involved in combat operations.

At the same time, the US military is preparing to invoke the spread of ISIS as the pretext for intervening for the second time in less than five years in Libya.

“It’s fair to say that we’re looking to take decisive military action against ISIL in conjunction with the political process” in Libya, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday. “The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.”

In other words, President Barack Obama, has, without a word of warning to the American people, handed the Pentagon brass authorization to launch “decisive military action,” i.e., yet another war, whenever it sees fit.

The growth of ISIS in Libya, as in Iraq and Syria, is a direct product of US imperialist interventions in the region that have claimed over a million lives and turned millions more into refugees.

The US-NATO war in Libya toppled and murdered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, smashed the country’s governmental and social infrastructure, and triggered a protracted civil war between the various Islamist militias—including those now affiliated to ISIS—that the US used as proxy forces in the 2011 war.

These same Libyan Islamist elements were funneled, together with large Libyan arms stockpiles, into Syria to wage the US-orchestrated war for regime change in that country. Now many of them have returned, bringing with them thousands of so-called foreign fighters.

Another war by the US and the European powers in Libya will not be aimed at smashing ISIS, any more than the last one was directed at defending “human rights” and “democracy.” Its principal objective will be the imposition of a puppet regime that will place the country’s huge oil reserves firmly under Western control.

Behind this region-wide eruption of American militarism there exist sharp differences within the US ruling establishment and Washington’s sprawling military-intelligence apparatus. The conflict is between those demanding a major new escalation in the Middle East and those opposing a large commitment of troops and materiel, insisting instead on a “pivot” to confront US imperialism’s major strategic rivals, principally China and Russia.

In the end, however, American imperialism is driven by its crisis to attempt to assert its control over the entire planet, and the so-called war against ISIS in the Middle East and North Africa becomes indissolubly linked with the buildup toward war with Russia and China. The increasingly frenetic interventions in Syria, Iraq and Libya could provide the spark for a global conflagration.

Over the past several decades, China has risen to become a prominent player on the world stage with global operations and interests far from its shores. The People’s Liberation Army reorients itself toward China’s evolving priorities in all spheres from weapons acquisitions to the army organization. The growing competition in the Indo-Asia-Pacific with the United States and its allies means that it is urgent for China to increase its military’s ability to conduct seamless joint operations.

The PLA has already upgraded its hardware and devoted an increasing share of resources to the navy, air force and the Rocket Force. The recent round of China’s military reforms was launched in 2016 and aimed to design military structures that can coordinate combined arms on the battlefield and to increase command and control, situational awareness and precision. Implementation of technological networking should raise China’s People’s Liberation Army to conduct successfully joint and  operations and to protect Chinese interests in a complex environment of the modern world.

Following the current wave of reform, the Central Military Commission will be in charge of setting and executing the overall policies of the military while the commanders of unified battle zones will be charged with combat. The service headquarters will focus mainly on force development.

This has to improve the PLA’s ability to function as a joint force and avoid the confusion caused by the convoluted command chain. The very same time,  the commanders of the reformed battle zones should accept additional authority if they are to be effective. These improvements will allow the PLA to become a force truly capable to meet the challenges of modern warfare from organizational side. Still, the reforms alone won’t be sufficient to fully meet the Chinese goals. Despite the increasingly large joint training exercises, the PLA still has a lack of real experience. However, this would be solved with expected growth of Chinese involvement in humanitarian, anti-terrorist and other missions over the world.

 

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Washington tolerates no governments it doesn’t control, wanting pro-Western vassal states replacing sovereign independent ones – notably Russia and China, both countries targeted for regime change.

Neocon/super-hawk former US Deputy Defense Secretary and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz [pictured left] earlier explained Washington’s “first objective is prevent(ing) the re-emergence of (rival states), either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere.”

America seeks unipolar/New World Order dominance, pursuing a policy of state terrorism globally, wanting control over all other nations, threatening world peace, stability and security.

Russia knows what it’s up against. America is not “ally” or “partner”. On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was notably frank, saying:

“The policy of restraining Russia continues, though it is high time to drop this policy and file it in the historical archives.”

Washington remains intractably hostile, wanting all nations operating under its rules, serving its interests exclusively, posing no challenge to its hegemonic aims.

US administrations “attempted to impose agreements on us, respecting the interests of either the European Union or (America) in the first place, trying to convince us that they will not damage our interests. That’s over now,” said Lavrov.

Moscow seeks “close, constructive cooperation” with all nations, based on mutual solidarity and trust – “without interference (in any country’s) internal affairs,” respecting their sovereign independence.

Washington imposes its will on other nations politically, economically and militarily, seeking “one-sided benefits, (attempting) to punish us for conducting an independent international policy,” Lavrov explained.

Russia responds appropriately, prioritizing its interests and national security. Lavrov highlighted Washington’s “counterproductive and dangerous policy…”

“(B)uilding up (US-dominated NATO’s) military (presence) near our borders and the creation of global European and Asian segments of a global US missile system” threatens world peace and security.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday clock stands at three minutes to midnight, reflecting the “high” probability of “global catastrophe.”

Last January, BAS said “unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity.”

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

Since established in 1947, the clock was adjusted 18 times, ranging from two minutes to midnight in 1953 after America and Russia tested thermonuclear bombs to 17 minutes in 1991 – following Washington and Moscow’s Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and Soviet Russia’s yearend dissolution.

On Tuesday, BAS will announce whether its Doomsday Clock is closer, further distant from or unchanged from potential disaster.

 

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.

Note from the editor of Tikkun.org: Rabbi Arik Ascherman [pictured left] is one of our great contemporary heroes. His work to save the Israeli Bedouins from being obliterated by the Israeil government deserves your fuill support.

Please read his call to you below! Standing up for the humanity of everyone on the planet is part of the goal of Tikkun magazine and our interfaith and secular-humanist welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives. To keep up with developments in the US and around the world, you are invited to receive (for FREE) updates through our Tikkun Daily Blog at www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/join-tikkun-daily/— Rabbi Michael Lerner

As you read this, JNF bulldozers are preparing the first stage of building the Jewish community of “Hiran” on the rubble of the Israeli Negev Bedouin community of “Umm Al-Hiran.”  The government plans to expand the Yatir forest to overrun Atir.  A week ago, the Israeli High Court removed the last legal hurdle preventing the immediate expulsion of over 1,000 men, women and children from their homes. The mayor of the artificial Bedouin township of Hura, where the Israeli government wishes to move them, says he has that Hura’s inadequate zoning plan leaves no place to put them. 

You can act, and also read more background regarding Umm Al-Hiran and Atir, at www.dontdemolish.com.  Here is some more general background about the Negev Bedouin.

While the world focuses on the Occupied Territories, the plight of Israel’s Bedouin citizens goes unnoticed, or is deemed an “internal matter.”  For people of conscience, there can be no “internal matter,” and these approximately 250,000 Israeli citizens are also created in God’s Image.

Until 1948 the Negev served as home to 65,000-100,000 Bedouin who inhabited, worked and claimed ownership to somewhere between 2 and 3 million dunams of land (four dunam to an acre), as documented by the pre-State Zionist movement in 1920 In almost every case, the proofs of ownership cited were traditional Bedouin documents based on their internal system of land ownership. Although the Ottomans, British, pre-State Zionist movement and the early State recognized these claims, today the State does not. Israeli courts do not accept Bedouin documents as proof of ownership. Whether one chooses to view this dispute as a boldfaced attempt to take over Bedouin lands, and/or as cultural imperialism unwilling to recognize the land ownership system of a traditional culture, the end result has been massive dispossession.

When I am in the Negev, I often reflect upon the Biblical story of Abraham and his nephew Lot recounted in Genesis 13: 5-12. A conflict arises between Abraham’s shepherds and Lot’s shepherds because they were living together and there wasn’t enough pasture. Abraham is the senior, and can clearly lay down the law.  He doesn’t.  Rather, he bends over backwards to avoid conflict within the family.  “Let there be no strife between you and me, between my shepherds and ours, for we are brothers.  Is not the whole land before you? Let us separate if you go north, I will go south, and if you go south, I will go north.” We, the descendents of Abraham struggle mightily to claim the land he bequeathed us. Were we to exert a fraction of the efforts we invest in fighting over that physical inheritance in living up to the moral example Abraham bequeathed us, Israel/Palestine would look much different than it does today.

After the 1948 War only about 10% of the Bedouin population remained, living under a military regime unti 1966. The Bedouin were moved out of the Western Negev in the 1950’s, and into a triangle between Beersheva, Arad and Yeroham.  In the 1960’s-1980’s Israel created 7 townships that radically alter the Bedouin lifestyle and destroy their social fabric.  These townships have become magnets for poverty, crime, drugs and despair.

In the 1970’s the State of Israel allowed the Bedouin to submit claims of land ownership. Perhaps there were those who thought that Bedouin know nothing about land ownership, and that the results would be so jumbled that it would be easy to dismiss them.  The some 3,100 claims submitted fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The Bedouin asserted they owned about 1,250,000 dunams of land. Of those, about 500,000 dunams of communal pastureland were immediately taken off the table. Subsequently somewhere between 200,000 to 350,000 dunams have been resolved in court or through arbitration. They Bedouin have always lost because their proofs of ownership aren’t recognized.  About 650,000 dunams of land remain unresolved.

Today  approximately  120,000 live in the seven Bedouin townships. The rest of the community lives in 11 “recognized” villages and 35 “unrecognized” villages.  While most of the unrecognized villages existed before the State of Israel, and the remainder are located where the State moved them, they are literally not on the map.  For the most part they have no water, electricity, schools or master building plans allowing them to build legally.  Over 1,000 homes are demolished every year. Crops are destroyed.  When the village Khassim Zannih went to court to stop a planned highway from destroying it, the State’s response was “What village? There is no village there.”

A series of plans of how to deal with the Bedouin have been promulgated since 2008.  The latest was the Begin Bill,  that we believe would have led to the demolition of tens of villages, the transfer of some 40,000 additional Bedouin into the townships, and the loss of most of their remaining lands. It was frozen in 2013 not only because the Bedouin and their supporters opposed it, but because the Israeli right thought it to be too generous!

Subsequently, the Israeli government has been implementing elements of the Begin Bill without legislation. Over 1,000 Bedouin homes are demolished yearly, even as the State plans tens of new Jewish communities in the Negev and intends to move most of Israel’s army bases there.

“Hiran” is one of ten new planned Jewish communities that are part of the “Arad Area Development Plan.’ It is the first that was literally planned on the rubble of an existing Bedouin community, but not the only one. Again, you can find more information about Umm Al-Hiran and Atir, and send a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, at www.dontdemolish.com.

The tensions created by this injustice are harmful to both the Jewish and Bedouin residents of the Negev. Mistreatment also sends a message to Palestinians that they have nothing to expect from Israel if this is the way Israel treats her own citizens.  There is another way. An Israeli television movie documented the identification of Bedouin with the State in the mostly recognized villages in northern Israel, versus the anger and rage in the Negev.  You can click here for a brief clip from the movie with subtitles

In 2013, Rabbis For Human Rights conducted a poll demonstrating showing that 90% of Israeli Jews subscribe to the statement that “The Bedouin are taking over the Negev.” Some 70% believed that the Bedouin claimed at least 25% of the Negev. The median was 43/9%.  When informed that if remaining Bedouin land claims were recognized and honored, they come to only 5.4% of the Negev, the majority said, “We are not sure we believe you, because that is not what we have heard in the media.  However, if that is the case, that sounds fair.”

Have we Israelis all too often in our short history been oppressors, transferors and dispossessors? Sadly, yes.  Is it who we are in our souls? No.  This poll is one of the pieces of evidence that gives me hope, and allows me to maintain my faith in the goodness and decency of my fellow Israelis, even as my job is to deal on a daily basis with the darkest corners of the society I am a part of and the people I love.  It teaches me that our job is not to rub the nose of the naughty puppy in the mess they have made, but to hold up a mirror and say, “We know that you are good and decent people striving to do justly. However, you need to look in the mirror, in order to get back on track.” Our word in Hebrew for prayer is “tefillah,” a reflexive verb meaning to “judge one’s self.” Created in God’s Image, God is in the mirror into which we gaze in order to look deeply into ourselves, and understand what we must do in order to return to our highest and truest selves.  Tikkun Olam is partnering with God by helping to hold up the mirror.

Please help hold up the mirror by sending a letter now. You can use the letter we’ve prepared at www.dontdemolish.com

For more information, please go to the Bedouin section on the RHR website

Or to the website of the Negev Coexistence Forum

Rabbi Arik Ascherman is the President and Senior Rabbi of Rabbis For Human Rights.  He is currently on trial for standing with the “unrecognized” village of El-Araqib when Israeli forces the demolished structures built inside their cemetery fence in June 2014, because the cemetery perimeter had been sacrosanct during the tens of previous demolitions.

Nome de código “Timber Sycamore”: assim se denomina a operação de armamento e treinamento dos “rebeldes” na Síria, “autorizada secretamente pelo presidente Obama em 2013”. É o que documenta uma investigação publicada no domingo (24) pelo New York Times.

Quando foi encarregada pelo presidente de efetuar esta operação encoberta, “a CIA já sabia que tinha um parceiro disposto a financiá-la: a Arábia Saudita”. Com o Catar, “esta forneceu armas e bilhões de dólares, ao passo que a CIA dirigiu o treinamento dos rebeldes”. O fornecimento de armas aos “rebeldes”, inclusive os “grupos radicais como Al Qaeda”, tinha começado no verão de 2012 quando, através de uma rede disposta pela CIA, agentes secretos sauditas tinham comprado na Croácia, na Europa Oriental, milhares de fuzis de assalto AK-47 com milhões de projéteis, e quando os catarianos infiltraram na Síria, através da Turquia, mísseis portáteis chineses FN-6 comprados no mercado internacional. Como o fornecimento de armas era feito livremente, no fim de 2012 o diretor da CIA David Petraeus convocou os aliados na Jordânia, impondo-lhes um controle mais estrito por parte da Agência sobre o conjunto da operação. Alguns meses mais tarde, na primavera de 2013, Obama autorizou a CIA a treinar os “rebeldes” em uma base na Jordânia, e em outra no Catar, e a lhes fornecer armas incluindo mísseis antitanques TOW. Sempre com os bilhões do “maior contribuinte”, a Arábia Saudita. Nenhuma novidade nesse tipo de operações.

Nos anos 1970 e 1980, esta ajudou a CIA em uma série de operações secretas. Na África, notadamente em Angola, onde, com financiamento saudita, a CIA apoiou os rebeldes contra o governo aliado à URSS. No Afeganistão, onde “para armar os moudjaedins contra os soviéticos, os Estados Unidos lançaram uma operação ao custo anual de milhões de dólares, que os sauditas pagaram dólar por dólar em uma conta da CIA num banco suíço”. Na Nicarágua, quando a administração Reagan lança o plano secreto para ajudar os contras, os sauditas financiaram a operação da CIA com 32 milhões de dólares por intermédio de um banco nas Ilhas Cayman. Com essas operações e algumas outras, secretas, até a atual na Síria, cimentou-se a “longa reação entre os serviços secretos dos Estados Unidos e da Arábia Saudita”. Apesar da “reaproximação diplomática” de Washington com o Irã, não apreciada em Riad, “ a aliança persiste, mantida à tona sobre um mar de dinheiro saudita e sobre o reconhecimento de seus interesses mútuos”. Isto explica por que “os Estados Unidos são reticentes em criticar a Arábia Saudita sobre a violação dos direitos humanos, o tratamento às mulheres e o apoio à ala extremista do Islã, o wahabismo, que inspira numerosos grupos terroristas”, e por que “Obama não condenou a Arábia Saudita pela decapitação do Sheik Nimr al-Nimr, o dissidente religioso xiita que tinha desafiado a família real”.

Acrescenta-se o fato, sobre o qual o New York Times não fala, de que o secretário de Estado John Kerry, em visita a Riad em 23 de janeiro, reafirmou que “no Iêmen onde a insurreição Houthi ameaça a Arábia Saudita, os EUA estão do lado de seus amigos sauditas”. Os amigos que desde há quase um ano massacram civis no Iêmen, bombardeando até mesmo hospitais, com a ajuda dos EUA que lhes fornecem indicações (ou seja, mostrando os alvos a atingir), armas (inclusive bombas de fragmentação) e um apoio logístico (incluindo abastecimento em voo dos caças-bombardeiros sauditas). Esses mesmos amigos que o primeiro–ministro italiano Renzi encontrou oficialmente em novembro último em Riad, garantindo-lhe o apoio e as bombas da Itália na “luta comum contra o terrorismo”.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Fonte: Il Manifesto

http://ilmanifesto.info/lasse-segreto-usa-arabia-saudita/

Traduzido por José Reinaldo Carvalho para o Blog da Resistência

Manlio Dinucci é jornalista e geógrafo.

Writing in India’s Deccan Herald newspaper on 26 January 2016, Kalyan Ray places great store in a flawed year-old British Parliament document to promote a pro-GM agenda. According to Ray, the document ‘Advanced Genetic Techniquesfor Crop Improvement: Regulation, risks and precaution’ from the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee reflects several arguments in favour of GM crops that certain Indian scientists have been voicing for years.

He asserts that the weight of peer-reviewed scientific evidence has shown the EU-adopted ‘precautionary principle’ towards GM to be misguided. In his view, where genetically modified crops have been shown to pose a risk, this has invariably been a result of the trait displayed — for example, herbicide tolerance — rather than the technology itself. Ray adds that no inherent risks have so far been identified to human or animal health from this consumption or to the environment from their cultivation. 

Rays seems to concur with the report’s conclusion that Europe’s precautionary GMO regulation is preventing the adoption of GM crops in the UK, Europe and the developing world.

He says:

“Worldwide, over 175 million hectares are dedicated to GM crop, accounting for 12 per cent of arable land. No inherent risks have so far been identified to human or animal health from this consumption or to the environment from their cultivation.”

Implicit in this claim is a common tactic: the industry does not have to prove safety (in its view), but now GM has been fraudulently (see Steven Druker’s book) released onto the market, the onus is placed on everyone else to prove it is unsafe  – regardless of the fact that clear, serious safety issues were downplayed or silenced back in the 1990s when GM was being forced onto the US public (again, see Druker).

Moreover, the implication of the above quote is that farmers are freely choosing to plant GM. This is based more on free-market ideology than actual fact. Aside from employing coercive tactics to try to get GM into countries, the closing off of alternatives plays a major role in influencing adoption of certain technology (see this for how the Gates Foundation is supporting agro dealer networks to push chemical intensive agriculture in Africa, this on Bt cotton in India and this on Monsanto’s game plan in Ukraine).

Ray’s claim about GM technology not posing unique risks to health or the environment is not only wrong (for example, see this and this), but any implications derived from this claim that GM is no different from conventional breeding techniques is also incorrect and needs to be challenged. Furthermore, it is conventional breeding techniques that are delivering on the promises that GM has thus far failed to deliver on (see page 8 of this document) and which the GM industry often attempts to pass off as its own successes.

However, Ray’s biggest mistake is relying on a seriously flawed report to try to make a case for GM.

“Shocking ignorance” being use to promote GM

Dr Rupert Read, reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia, condemned the report’s “shocking ignorance of scientific logic and the nature of risk” and said it confused “inconclusive evidence of harm from GMOs with conclusive evidence of safety.” The prominent risk expert Nassim Nicholas Taleb called the report “an insult to science.”

The Select Committee report claims that scientific evidence supporting the safety of genetically modified crops is very strong. But, as Claire Robinson from GMWatch says, the evidence cited is the EU Commission report, ‘A decade of EU-funded GMO research’. Although this EU report did conclude that GMOs were “not, per se, more risky than… conventional plant breeding technologies,” she argues it is a baseless conclusion because it presents no data that could provide evidence to support that conclusion – for example, from long-term feeding studies in animals.

Robinson notes that of the small handful of animal feeding studies carried out under the project, none tested a commercialised GM food; none tested the GM food for long-term effects; all found worrying differences in the GM-fed animals, including alterations in blood biochemistry and immune responses; and none were able to conclude on the safety of the GM food tested, let alone on the safety of GM foods in general. Indeed, the purpose of the EU report was not to test any GMO food for safety but to focus on developing safety assessment “approaches.”

The resulting report provides only a few references to published papers, which are listed randomly on some pages, with no clue provided as to which of the report’s claims they are supposed to support.

What’s more, the Select Committee displays an uncritical reliance on a published meta-analysis by Klümper and Qaim, which claims that GM crops have “reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%.”

This meta-analysis is being widely cited by lobbyists who want to push Europe down the GMO path, according to Robinson. But it relies on outdated data from the early 2000s – before herbicide-resistant superweeds and Bt resistant pests made GM herbicide-tolerant and Bt insecticidal traits less effective and caused higher costs and inconvenience to farmers. Charles Benbrook’s analysis is based on more up-to-date USDA data and shows that GM crops in North America have increased overall pesticide use by 7%.

Robinson further notes that Klümper and Qaim’s meta-analysis also ignores the fact that Bt crops are in themselves pesticides, with the total pesticide content in the plants’ cells often being many times greater than the volume of chemical spray pesticides that are supposed to be replaced. Also, the Bt toxins in GM crops are not the same as the natural Bt long used as an insecticide spray by organic and conventional farmers – they are structurally different and have a different mode of action, which could explain why they have been found to be toxic to non-target insects and mammals in some studies.

Regarding yields, Klümper and Qaim’s meta-analysis uses suspect data collected from Monsanto field trials. The real picture on GMO yields comes from a study published in 2013 by Jack Heinemann and his team. It looked at 50 years’ worth of data from the US and Europe, before and after GM was introduced in the US. It found that yields for staple crops in the US – which are largely GM – have declined since GM has been adopted, and are lagging behind those of Europe, where production is mostly non-GM. Europe also uses less pesticides.

GM traits do not confer higher yields but tolerance to herbicides or an insecticidal toxin trait. A high-yielding GM crop is a crop with high-yielding background genetics achieved by conventional breeding, into which GM traits for herbicide tolerance or insecticidal proteins have been inserted.

In conclusion, Robinson states that the Select Committee relies on outdated and discredited data to paint a fantasy picture of the success of GM crops, while ignoring more up-to-date and relevant data that threaten that picture.

GM unwanted and not needed in India

According to Kalyan Ray, good risk management requires the potential benefits of an action to be thoroughly considered alongside the risks. It also requires a consideration of the risk of failing to act. He implies that hold-ups in allowing GM crops into India is preventing Indian agriculture from progressing.

In what way is India’s agriculture not progressing one might wonder. Indian farmers already produce bumper harvests (despite policies that make it difficult to operate and cause them economic distress), have achieved self-sufficiency in a number of food staples and use traditional, indigenous varieties of crops that seem to be more resilient in the face of pest management or climate change.

Ray quotes the UK Select Committee report that says:

“We are convinced by the evidence provided to us that this suite of technologies is a potentially important tool, particularly in the developing world, which should not be rejected unless there are solid scientific evidence those technologies may cause harm.”

Of course, the report’s opinion is in sharp contrast to report after report recommending support for conventional agriculture, agroecology and local economies, especially in the global south. Critics of GM therefore want to know where is the advantage in India adopting GM and why the government is experimenting given all the attendant risks.

To make the case for non-GM agriculture, campaigner Aruna Rodrigues cites the World Bank-funded International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report, which India signed in 2008. That report is the work of over 400 scientists, took four years to complete and was twice peer reviewed. The report states we must look to small-holder, traditional farming (not GMOs) to deliver food security in the global south through agri-ecological systems which are sustainable.

Despite this, based on a flawed UK select committee report, Ray advocates regulatory reforms to smooth the entry of GM to India are essential.

There is a credible body of evidence that GMOs were placed on the US market due to fraud and the bypassing of scientific procedures and ignoring evidence pertaining to risk, as described in Steven Druker’s book ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’. It thus might appear strange that someone would rely on a seriously questionable report to try to make a case for GM, especially when a series of official reports in India have come out against the introduction of GM to India: the ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal, overturning the apex Regulator’s approval to commercialise it; the Sopory Committee Report (August 2012); the Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012) and the TEC Final Report (June-July 2013).

What supporters of GM technology like to ignore is that it is an extension of the overhyped  ‘green revolution’, which has arguably been a disaster for India (see Bhaskar Save’s views and Raj Patel’s analysis). They also like to overlook the fact there is no scientific consensus on the safety or efficacy GM (contrary to the much-publicised pro-GM public relations machine that claims otherwise).

But while side-lining these concerns, they like to promote GM as the answer to hunger. But, as Viva Kermani says:

“When our people go hungry, or suffer from malnutrition, it is because their right to safe and nutritious food that is culturally connected is blocked. That is why it is not a technological fix problem and GM has no place in it.”

Too often, supporters of GM promote the technology as a proxy for deep-seated social, political and economic factors that are responsible for poverty and hunger.

What they also choose to sideline is false claims concerning yields pertaining to GM mustard (any improvement in yield is due to hybridisation, not GM technology), which could soon be the first food crop to be officially sanctioned in India. They also put forward fallacious justifications for embracing GM mustard (to reduce over-reliance on imports) that conveniently ignore the impact of trade policies that seriously undermined the indigenous mustard industry and India’s inability to attain self-sufficiency in this foodstuff.

If we want science and objectivity to guide us where GM is concerned, surely it would be best to adhere to proper procedures that are open and transparent rather than engage in “unremitting fraud” and secrecy in order to force GM onto the commercial market in India And surely it would be better to root out and call to account the conflicts of interest that are fuelling the pro-GM agenda in India.

When so much faith is placed in a patently flawed report to make a case for smoothing the progress of GM in India, are we to conclude that what we are reading is just an example of poorly researched journalism?

Or should we conclude what we see is a case of more pro-GM spin?

Europe is firmly in the grip of winter, and the Balkans are covered in snow with temperatures below freezing. Nonetheless, one government after another is closing its borders and sending hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees back to war zones that they have risked their lives to flee.

The Austrian government closed its borders last Wednesday. Already at the beginning of the week, it made clear its intention to send more refugees back to Slovenia. Then on Wednesday, a conference was held on refugees between leading Social Democrat (SPÖ) and conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) politicians to impose an upper limit for refugees. Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) justified the decision by stating, “A joint European answer cannot be expected”.

Austria is the first European Union (EU) country to impose an upper limit for refugees. This was in no small part a response to measures taken by Germany. Also on Wednesday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democrats, CDU) extended border controls for an undetermined period of time. Germany has already refused entry to 2,000 refugees this month at its border with Austria.

In Vienna, Austrian Chancellor Werner Feymann (SPÖ) told the press that in 2016, Austria would only accept 37,500 asylum seekers. Including the 90,000 refugees who remained in the country last year, an upper limit of 1.5 percent of the population would be reached.

The Social Democratic chancellor embraced the arguments of the notorious anti-immigrant ÖVP interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, announcing a strict review procedure at the border.

“If we undertake more controls, we will find out more”, Feymann bluntly told Austrian broadcaster ORF. If people cannot credibly explain why they want to come into the country, they would not be allowed in. Feymann had ordered a report by the foreign, interior and defence ministries to determine “everything that is legally possible” at the border.

At the Spielfeld crossing on the Austrian-Slovenian border, a 4-kilometre-long border fence is being constructed. Last Sunday, the government deployed 200 soldiers to the Slovenian border. Their task is to examine the refugees and their luggage and deport all of those unable to provide valid travel documents. In the first three weeks of the year, Austria has already deported over 1,000 refugees.

Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia are also in the process of closing their borders. In a rapid domino effect, one country after another is re-establishing posts at its borders. Slovenia closed its borders at the beginning of last week and also announced the introduction of an upper limit for immigrants.

The Serbian government immediately adopted measures to make it more difficult for immigrants to enter the country. A government spokesman stated that Serbia would in the future accept refugees on its territory only if they were seeking to claim asylum in Germany or Austria. “From today onwards … no more migrants can travel through Serbia unless they explicitly state an intention to claim asylum in the territory of Austria or Germany”, Prime Minister Alexander Vulin toold Serbian news agency Tanjug.

Croatia’s interior minister also announced that his country would from now on ask every refugee if they intended to apply for asylum in Germany or Austria. In the Balkan country, the government of Tihomir Orešković has just begun its period in office. Since the highly indebted country is heavily dependent on the EU, it will seek to do everything demanded by the EU, including stricter measures targeting refugees.

Macedonia responded on Wednesday morning by rejecting 600 refugees at the Greek border, including many children. The AFP news agency cited a police spokesman in Skopje, who said that Macedonia was reacting to a request from Slovenia. The blockade was lifted again on Thursday evening, but not for all refugees.

Those people arriving at the border already have behind them the grueling journey of crossing the Mediterranean through Turkey and Greece during the winter. The Greek coastguard reported that on Thursday alone, it had saved 73 refugees from the Aegean Sea. For one young child, help came too late: the child died a few hours after arrival on the island of Lesbos. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 87 people have already drowned in the Mediterranean this year.

The chain reaction of border closures has completely undermined the Schengen agreement between EU states. Introduced in 1985, Schengen is a key element of the European Union and meant that border controls between European countries were eliminated. On Monday, EU interior ministers met in Amsterdam to discuss extending border controls for two years.

EU Council President Donald Tusk warned last Tuesday that the Schengen agreement could fail entirely. He called upon all heads of government to back a joint EU concept before the Brussels conference scheduled for March 16-17. The content of this concept would be negotiations with African states about “repatriation”, military action against so-called smuggler bands, and better securing of the EU’s external borders—all measures that will put the lives of refugees at greater risk.

In addition, “combatting the causes of flight” is being used as a justification for military interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, and the expansion of wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and North African states.

What is to happen to the refugees shut out because of the new upper limits is unclear. The EU has already announced plans to build detention centres and so-called hot spots along the Balkan route and distribute refugees across all EU countries. But Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary have firmly opposed the quota system, and many other countries have silently boycotted it.

The plans are equally bureaucratic as they are inhumane, since refugees often try to travel to countries where they have relatives or friends. They are not only denied this option on organisational grounds: the EU countries, led by Germany, are creating miserable conditions to deter refugees from coming.

On Thursday it was revealed that not only Denmark and Switzerland, but the German states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, would search refugees arriving at the border and confiscate money and valuables. This was confirmed by Bavaria’s interior minister Joachim Hermann (Christian Social Union, CSU) to the Bild newspaper, who said, “Cash and valuables can be secured if … a claim for reimbursement exists or is expected against the person”.

In Bavaria, refugees will be permitted to retain €750, and in Baden-Württemberg only €350. Such measures recall the Nazi era, when the National Socialist regime robbed the Jewish population of all their possessions.

On Friday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls reaffirmed initial Socialist Party (PS) statements after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris carried out by the Islamist State (IS, or Daesh), that the current state of emergency in France must be made permanent.

In an interview with the BBC while attending the economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, Valls proclaimed that France is waging all-out war with IS. “As long as the threat is there, we must use all available means,” he said, adding that the state of emergency must stay in place “until we can get rid of Daesh”.

He continued,

“In Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia we must eradicate, eliminate Daesh, it is a total and global war that we face with terrorism. … We will have to live for decades or for many years with this menace or this threat and that’s why it’s a war. There are many generations that will have to live with this and the crisis will have to be managed in north Africa and the Middle East.”

The implications of Valls’ statements are staggering. Like Egypt, now ruled as a military dictatorship by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a personal friend of President François Hollande, France is to be run under a permanent state of emergency lasting generations, perhaps forever. According to Valls’ statement, the French people have effectively lost fundamental social and democratic rights guaranteed to them by the French Constitution.

As if in a slow-motion coup d’état, the ruling elite is moving to transform political life in France, creating an authoritarian regime. Under the state of emergency, public protests are banned, there is no guarantee of freedom of the press or freedom of assembly, and no judicial oversight of arbitrary searches and seizures carried out by police. Already, the government banned protests against the COP21 ecological summit in Paris after the November 13 attacks and put the organizers under house arrest.

Police can enter anyone’s house, search without warrants, and arrest people on mere suspicion that they are a threat to public order. The state has sentenced Goodyear workers to prison for striking and struggling to defend their jobs, even after Goodyear itself dropped all charges against them.

The arguments provided by Valls to justify the indefinite suspension of democratic rights are a pack of lies. IS (Daesh) is not an unstoppable foe that poses an existential threat to the French Republic and to the French people, leaving the French state no choice but to suspend democratic rights in order to safeguard the very survival of the French people.

IS is, in fact, a political asset of the ruling class of France and of all the major NATO countries. It is a militia operating in Iraq and Syria, financed and backed by key French allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as part of the regime change operation to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

This organisation emerged from wars launched under Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who played a central role in pressing for a war, ultimately led by all the NATO powers, against Libya. The NATO powers, led by the United States, France and Britain, encouraged Islamist fighters to come to Libya to act as proxy ground forces whilst they provided aerial bombardments. Many of these Islamist forces were then dispatched from Libya to Syria, as the spearhead of the NATO war for regime in Syria.

Valls’ claim that France and its allies are engaged in total, global war with IS does not hold water. Rather, IS and the reactionary attacks it has carried out in France are being invoked as a pretext to push through vast attacks.

As late as last year, Hollande insisted that France would only attack IS in Iraq—where Paris had joined Washington in bombing IS in 2013 to prevent IS from toppling the US puppet regime in Baghdad—so as to avoid weakening opposition to Assad by attacking IS in Syria.

In his February 5, 2015 press conference after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Hollande explained that France would not bomb IS forces in Syria, but only Iraq. He said, “It is in Iraq that we direct our efforts. Why? Because it is in Iraq that there is a state, sovereignty, and army that can struggle against IS and ensure the reconquest of lost territory.”

That is, Hollande was willing to shield and rely upon IS as a tool of various twists and turns of French and NATO policy against Assad. When IS emerges as a domestic policy issue, however, the PS suddenly insists France is engaged in an all-out war on IS in which no democratic right can be allowed to stand in the way of the assertion of state power.

The claim that the assault on democratic rights is primarily a response to the IS’ terror attacks is a political fraud. This assault is the response of the French ruling class to the worsening class and geo-strategic contradictions of international capitalism, preparing above all for war against the working class.

As a presidential candidate, Hollande said his enemy was “finance”, but once in power, he has pushed for austerity and war on every front. While collaborating with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to impose deeper austerity on the Greek people, he launched wars across Africa and the Middle East and worked closely with the Obama administration to threaten Russia. Social inequality is reaching explosive levels, and Hollande had to admit last year that France now found itself on the brink of “total war” with Russia.

Besides the danger of a major international war waged with nuclear weapons, Hollande fears social anger developing in the working class under conditions where the PS and its political and trade union satellites are thoroughly discredited. The response of the PS has been to dub Hollande a “war president” and a conscious turn towards military and authoritarian forms of rule within France.

During the French invasion of Mali in 2013, French presidential advisors at the Elysée told Le Point that they were hoping for a “Falklands effect.” While the war was presented to the public as part of a struggle against Islamist terrorism, the PS’ main concern was to shift official public opinion far to the right, so as to be able to impose a drastic austerity program.

Pointing to the similarities between the Falkland Island (Malvinas) war and French imperialism’s wars today, Le Point journalist Anna Cabana wrote:

“When the Argentine troops landed on the Falklands in 1982, Margaret Thatcher decided to reply militarily. The Iron Lady [Margaret Thatcher], deeply unpopular at the time due to her drastic free-market reform policies, embarked Britain on a military adventure that ensured her re-election in 1983.”

The PS’ incendiary and politically criminal policy of launching wars of aggression in an attempt to anti-democratically impose anti-working class policies at home has failed, however. The looting of much of Africa and the Middle East did not make PS austerity any more popular, and social and international tensions have only grown since 2013.

Unable to win over the masses of working people, the French ruling class is preparing to stake everything on a ruthless attempt to repress them.

The following is the text of a complaint filed with the BBC.

Submitted via BBC Complaints webform

Dear Sir / Madam

Syrian government ‘to let aid into besieged Madaya’ – BBC News, 7 January 2016

As evidenced by the copy below [1], at 50 seconds in the original version of the above BBC report a young man is shown passionately addressing cameras as Jim Muir’s narration states:

“Back in October when the last food got in things were already bad enough.”

However the scenes of the young man date from at least July 2014, when the You Tube video below was uploaded. Further, the title of this video claims that the scenes were shot in Yarmouk refugee camp, not Madaya.

Screengrab showing date of upload to You Tube of scenes featuring young man

I note that some scenes, including those of the young man, have been removed from the version of the report which is now available on the BBC website.

Please can you explain how the scenes of the young man came to accompany narration describing the situation in Madaya in October 2015 and why the subsequent re-editing of the report has not been acknowledged on the BBC website.

Yours faithfully

Robert Stuart

https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/

Note

[1] A copy of the original report is also saved here.

If you have been watching the news this week you will have seen one story which has been gaining traction in western media coverage, that of the mosquito-borne illness known as the Zika Virus, which authorities are saying will cause birth defects for expecting mothers.

While there are certainly many health risks apparent with this particular pathogen, media outlets and government agencies appear to be pushing one incredible talking point now – asking women‘not to get pregnant until 2018.‘

Latin American officials, led by El Salvador are now urging women not to get pregnant for “up to two years.”

Latin American governments, in conjunction with the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), are claiming that over the past four months, they have ‘received reports’ of nearly 4,000 cases ofmicrocephaly in newborns – and they are claiming these are all linked to the Zika Virus. This information has served as the chief catalyst for the current wave of fear.

The Washington Post stated this week that:

The World Health Organization says at least 20 countries or territories in the region, including Barbados and Bolivia, Guadeloupe and Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Panama, have registered transmission of the virus.

Although the Zika virus has been documented since the 1940s, it began its assault on Latin America in the past several months. The hardest-hit country has been Brazil, where more than 1 million people have contracted the virus. In the past four months, authorities have received reports of nearly 4,000 cases in which Zika may have caused microcephaly in newborns. The condition results in an abnormally small head and is associated with incomplete brain development. Colombia, which shares an Amazonian border with Brazil, reacted to its own Zika outbreak, numbering more than 13,000 cases, by urging women not to get pregnant in the next several months. Other countries, including Jamaica and Honduras, also have urged women to delay having babies.

Zika ‘Threat’ Goes Global

If contracted, the Zika Virus is said to have an incubation period of only 5 to 10 days, and authorities are claiming that it’s within this window that mothers are at risk. Some common symptoms include red spots on the skin, intermittent fever, spots on the eyes and later on with persistent pains in muscles, joints and head.

Clearly though, the alarm for a Zika epidemic is already being sounded internationally. This has tremendous potential implications on society.

In the US, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is warning that pregnant women not to travel to 14 countries in Latin America. We were also told that last week, the US recorded the first case of microcephaly “linked to Zika” virus in Hawaii. According to The New York Times, the baby’s mother “might have” been infected when she traveled to Brazil in May last year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also warned today that the virus will spread to both North America and South America. Based on how easily the US population was whipped into a hysterical haze during the Ebola scare in 2014, it goes without saying that if Zika ‘reproductive’ fears hit the US in a big way it would be a political circus of fear and media manipulation.

It’s not clear exactly how they have come to the conclusion that this apparent epidemic is a result of the Zika Virus, and not through some other combination of factors. Neither journalists nor the world’s scientific community are questioning the current course of public policy on this issue. Why? No one is addressing that it is nearly impossible to make a scientific ruling on these issues in such a short space of time, much less institute government guidelines on reproduction.

Why is Latin America and El Salvador so significant? Social engineers appear to locking horns with the Catholic Church on this issue. The Post adds here:

Morality says that people shouldn’t have that control” over procreation, Figueroa said. “But the church also isn’t going to say something that runs contrary to life and health.

This is a first in human history – central government advocating for a universal ban on procreation, and probably the most significant development in social engineering since the outbreak of the AIDs virus in the early 1980’s.

‘No Child Policy’

The public should not underestimate the significance of this latest story. Again, while there are definitely real risks associated with Zika and other related viruses to health and women’s prenatal health, is it premature to call for what amounts to a ‘no child policy’?

How this story has escaped critical analysis in the mainstream media and discourse is a testament as to how well the establishment has done in conditioning the public to accept a range of modern eugenics-based ‘population reduction’ policies.

Last week saw the first strike by junior doctors in four decades, as thousands of healthcare professionals took action against the attacks on their terms and conditions. The popularly-supported struggle is set to continue next week, as medics carry on the fight against the Tories and their attempts to dismantle the NHS. Dr Tomasz Pierscionek of the BMA reports (personal capacity).

On Tuesday 12th January, over 30,000 junior doctors went on strike for the first time in their lives. The fact that junior doctors have not taken strike action for 40 years adds emphasis to the fact that this is a last resort; a necessary evil to avoid the future consequences – for us and for our patients – that acquiescence to Jeremy Hunt’s proposals would involve. We did it for our patients: past, current and future; we did it for the NHS.

The reality is rapidly dawning on many working within the NHS that the Conservatives’ aim is to demoralise healthcare professionals, demand that these same healthcare workers do more with less funding, and allow the NHS to fall apart, in order to justify opening it up to privatisation.

On the first day of strike action, I attended my local picket line to join a few dozen colleagues on strike, some of whom had arrived before 8am. Despite the biting cold, morale was high and the support we received from the public, as well as solidarity visits from the Fire Brigade Union and the National Pensioners Convention, was greatly appreciated. Drivers hooted their horns in support and a local councillor attended our picket to underline her support for our actions. Colleagues across England reported similar experiences. Whereas Jeremy Hunt kept a low profile that morning, support from the public, as well as from fellow trade unionists and consultant colleagues, was highly visible. One medic not sharing this optimistic mood was Hunt’s advisor, Professor Norman Williams, who was forced to explain his boss’ media absence.

Later that day, my colleagues and I collected petition signatures and spoke with members of the public about our rationale for taking industrial action in one of the many Meet the Doctors events across the country. Public support was again on our side and my only challenge to collecting signatures was the heavy rain wetting the paper and smudging the ink. The day concluded with a rally in central Newcastle where I estimate, despite the now heavy rain and lack of umbrellas, several hundred doctors and our supporters stood undeterred.

Despite polls showing overwhelming public support for the first doctors’ strike to take place in four decades, with 66% in support, the usual suspects in the Tory press worked overtime to smear those on strike.

First up was the Daily Mail, who tried to launch a red scare by claiming that the “BMA’s senior ranks are stuffed with left-wing anti- austerity campaigners”, naming and shaming several BMA activists whose ‘militancy’ and ‘radical’ actions included: “[signing] a letter stating Mr Corbyn was the only Labour leadership candidate who could ‘resist the Conservative consensus”; donating to the National Health Action Party; speaking at “a fundraiser for Corbyn”; and signing the ‘Defend the Link’ petition. The Daily Mail propaganda piece sought to paint the picture that the BMA is stuffed with Jeremy Corbyn supporters – a claim that is, unfortunately, not true!

The Sun joined in the attacks too by claiming that “Junior doctors leading Tuesday’s NHS strike over new contracts are champagne-swilling socialists”, trying to prove their hysterical smears by showing pictures of doctors on holiday. This intrusion into medics’ private lives was met by a successful satirical response on social media by junior doctors, ridiculing the Sun’s crude and desperate propaganda.

At the same time, Hunt’s clumsy deceptions about increased morality on weekends continue to be exposed.

Such media lies and slander by the right-wing press reflect the desperation of a Tory Party facing ever increasing opposition to their attacks on working people. Rumours are now circulating that Hunt may return to the backbenches and that the ‘poisoned chalice’ of crushing ‘radical doctors’ may be handed to Boris Johnson.

The Tory press’ attacks also demonstrate the ruling class’ fear that the struggle of the junior doctors will inspire other workers and youth, who realise that they share a common cause in the struggle against Tory austerity – the result of capitalism’s continuing crisis.

Doctors and others within the NHS are increasingly seeing the link between the attacks on the national health care system and the wider austerity programme being implemented by Cameron’s government.

However, due to the logic of capitalism in crisis and the levels of austerity required, the Tories have no option but to attack the NHS and its staff. As a result, in the coming weeks, Cameron and co. are likely to up the ante with their spin, supported by the most reactionary elements of the media, whose attacks against doctors will become even more vitriolic and ridiculous.

The massive support we received from the public, trade unions and other health professionals shall not be forgotten. Tellingly, a union whose members had no experience of mounting strike action -many of whom only became politicised in a baptism of fire over the past several months – managed to stand up to the Tories and put them on the back foot.

The struggle of the junior doctors has shown that the Tories, the most reliable parliamentary representatives of the ruling class, are vulnerable to organised action. But junior doctors are only the first group in the firing line. Consultants also face the imposition of a new unfavourable contract andstudent nurses and midwives face losing bursaries.

Now, junior doctors, along with the rest of the labour movement, must support our consultant and nursing colleagues in their own battles, as part of a wider fight against the Tories, against austerity, and for a socialist alternative.

On Monday, Arab League/UN envoy to Syria Steffan de Mistura announced the date without indicating who’ll participate.

From what’s known, US/Saudi-backed terrorist groups will be involved, including Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam).

It operates like ISIS, equally ruthless, responsible for the August 2013 Ghouta, Syria chemical weapons attack, killing scores, injuring numerous others, Assad wrongfully blamed for its high crime.

What other US/Saudi-backed terrorist groups will participate remains for de Mistura to name them, begging the question.

How can peace talks be legitimate when one side is committed to Syria’s destruction, its popularly elected government replaced by one decided by outside forces – Syrians having no say over who’ll lead them?

How can they succeed when Obama and rogue allies want endless war until achieving regime change – using ISIS and other terrorist groups as imperial foot soldiers?

Geneva I and II talks failed. Expect this round to fare no better, de Mistura admitting things will be “uphill” at best, mission impossible most likely.

Proximity talks are planned, shuttle diplomacy, mediated by Western-controlled UN negotiators, not both sides meeting face-to-face – a process to last at least six months, maybe much less if intractable deadlock occurs.

Initial talks for several weeks will focus on increasing humanitarian aid, combating ISIS, and negotiating a ceasefire with selected opposition terrorist groups – committed to continue fighting.

Anti-Assad moderate combatants don’t exist. Perpetuating the myth otherwise persists. De Mistura claiming “suspensions of fighting” can be negotiated with US/Saudi-backed terrorists is pure fantasy.

Nearly five years of Obama’s terror war with no foreseeable end speaks for itself. Syrian UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari will head his government’s delegation.

A so-called High Negotiations Committee opposition coalition named serial killer Mohammed Alloush to head its side, a key Army of Islam terrorist, drawing sharp criticism, perhaps rendering peace talks dead-on-arrival.

Who can negotiate with someone holding a knife to his throat, guilty of gruesome atrocities, showing no signs of ending them, enjoying full US/Saudi support?

It bears repeating what earlier articles stressed. Chances for restoring peace and stability to war-ravaged Syria any time soon are virtually nil.

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.

Reports abound of foreign troops presence and plans for major western deployment

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted recently as saying that the United States is preparing in conjunction with its imperialist allies a renewed military campaign in Libya.

Speaking as if the U.S. had a limited or even non-existent role in the current military and security crisis in the North African state, Pentagon officials along with other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) including France, Britain and Italy are saying they are motivated by the instability and threat of terrorism posed by the situation particularly the seizure of territory along the western Mediterranean coast by the so-called “Islamic State.”

Gen. Dunford said with reference to a deepening interventionist policy toward Libya, “You want to take decisive military action to check ISIL’s expansion and at the same time you want to do it in such a way that’s supportive of a long-term political process…. I think it’s pretty clear to all of us — French, U.S. alike — that whatever we do is going to be in conjunction with the new government,” referring to the neo-colonial dominated regime that United Nations Libyan envoy Martin Kobler has been attempting to mold together.

There are two rival regimes stemming from a split within the political forces which were installed in the aftermath of the war of regime change carried out in 2011. Rebel organizations, including many who had been labelled as “terrorists”, were funded, armed, given diplomatic support and media acceptance by the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Office and others in an effort to impose them as “legitimate’ leaders of the oil-rich country.

At present the Pentagon and State Department efforts are ostensibly being carried out against the growing influence of the so-called Islamic State which has taken control of several cities and towns on the Mediterranean coast. Washington has been fighting a low-level war against IS in Iraq, Syria and now Libya. Nonetheless, the intervention of the Russian Federation during concluding months of 2015 has been rejected by the administration of President Barack Obama as unwarranted interference designed to bolster the internationally-recognized government of President Bahsar al-Assad in Damascus.

However, with specific reference to Libya, Gen. Dunford stresses that action needs to be taken soon, perhaps not days but weeks, he has emphasized in statement to the press. “My perspective is we need to do more. Quickly is weeks not hours” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff noted.

Unity Under Neo-colonialism

Setting the stage for such an intervention has been politically dependent upon the securing of a purported unity accord between the two rival factions claiming “legitimacy” in the North African state. Although there have been numerous announcements of an agreement, most ranking elements within the General National Congress in Tripoli and the House of Representatives in Tobruk have rejected the terms of the peace treaty.

In addition to problems between both Libyan camps, some have rejected the notion of a foreign military occupation. If the elements opposed to imperialist intervention maintain their position, it could easily signal a much more complicated and contentious tenure for the proposed force of 6,000 troops which will ostensibly be led by Italy, the former colonial power in Libya prior to independence in 1951.

An article published by Colin Freeman on January 21 said “A senior figure in Libya’s new unity government has warned that the country may be unwilling to accept British troops in its fight against Isil’s growing presence. Ahmed Mateeq, the newly appointed deputy prime minister, said that Libya ‘did not need’ to take up the offer from Britain of 1,000 soldiers to train Libyan troops.” (Telegraph, UK)

Such a statement delivered only a few days after the announcement of a unity accord aimed at ending a year-and-a-half of civil war between the U.S.-backed forces installed by Washington and Brussels, could signal the unravelling of the entire scheme. If imperialist forces are fired on by Libyan political groups who are supposedly party to the UN-brokered agreement, this could bring an even higher degree of instability to the country and the region.

Freeman in the same above-mentioned article pointed out that “Mr Mateeq said that while Western help was welcome in terms of ‘logistical and technical support’, most Libyans would not accept the presence of foreign troops on their soil. ’This is highly sensitive for Libyans and we prefer to look after the Libyan soil ourselves. At the moment I don’t think we could accept that, although we do view the British as our friends and allies.”

Mateeq is a member of the 32-member ministerial regime established in late January capping off more than 18 months of heated talks mediated by Kobler, a career German diplomat who has been involved in other imperialist war scenarios including Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Even if Kobler and his western backers can strong arm the divided rival regimes into accepting the unity accord this does not take into consideration the hundreds of other armed militias which are roaming the country acting in many cases as the law unto themselves.

The Telegraph correspondent Freeman emphasized that “Contrary to Mr Mateeq’s remarks, diplomats close to the UN negotiations on the new unity government said last weekend that they thought the new unity government was likely to accept the British offer [of indefinite foreign occupation], as long as the troops were confined to a training role.”

Nonetheless, he continues, “A previous British training arrangement for Libyan troops ended in chaos two years ago when Libyan soldiers stationed at Bassingbourn Barracks were accused of sexual assault. Diplomats say that with hindsight, the mission should have been carried out on Libyan rather than UK soil.”

Moreover, a report by the Al-Arabiya news website on January 23 claimed that Russian troops were also present in Libya purportedly in support of the unity accord negotiated by the UN envoy Kobler. This article says “Dozens of British, Russia and American troops have arrived in Libya in support for the weak internationally-recognized government in Tobruk, London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat reported. The daily also said French troops are expected to arrive soon for the same purpose.”

This article also says “The officers and soldiers are currently stationed in Jamal Abdulnasir military base south of Tobruk where the parliament is holding its sessions in the city. Witnesses in the base, meanwhile, said the number of foreign troops has grown to 500 in the past three weeks, but a security official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said they are just dozens.”

The claims of Russian involvement remain to be verified. Russia has played a critical role in defending the Syria government by assisting the national military in retaking large swaths of territory inside the embattled state.

Libya and the presidential elections for 2016

These discussions are taking place amid the presidential primary campaigns where one leading Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, played a key role in the blockades, massive bombing and rebel ground war against the Jamahiriya government led by Col. Muammar Gaddafi five years ago. Apart from the Congressional hearings held last year over the attacks on the Benghazi compound occupied by Ambassador Christopher Stevens along with diplomatic personnel and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel in September 2012, the question of the role of Clinton in the Libyan destabilization, bombing and subsequent chaotic security situation which has fostered instability across North and West Africa has not been brought to the debates or evoked by the corporate media.

The region is far more unstable than at any time in over four decades when a war was fought between Egypt and Israel in 1973, prompting an oil embargo and the consequent economic crisis inside the U.S. during this period. Later on in 1978-79, the Egyptian government of the-then President Anwar Sadat, under tremendous pressure from Washington, signed a separate peace agreement with Tel Aviv.

This agreement with Israel effectively neutralized the role of Cairo in the struggle for the independence of Palestine. At present the bulk of discussion centering around North African and Middle Eastern affairs focuses on the role of IS, al-Qaeda and other so-called “Islamist extremist organizations.”

This narrative provides a rationale and political justification for a permanent imperialist occupation of the regions negating the right to self-determination for the states involved.

Multi-billionaire/former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly has advisors preparing plans for a possible independent presidential bid.

He’s unhappy about Trump’s likely Republican nomination and both Democrat contenders. Earlier, he considered a third-party run, deciding he couldn’t win.

What makes him think now is different, he’ll have to explain. Forbes reported his net worth at $38.1 billion as of October 2015. He indicated willingness to spend a billion dollars or more for a presidential bid.

Reportedly he’ll decide by early March, enough time to be on ballots in all 50 states. He commissioned a poll last month to see how he’d fare against Trump and Clinton. He plans another in early February.

His strategy appears to be to convince voters that a self-made, problem-solving (super-rich) businessman is America right choice today – much like Trump’s game plan, with a huge leg up on a potential late-to-the game challenger.

Bloomberg’s challenges are daunting. No independent candidate ever became president. America’s duopoly power system prevents it, assuring one-party rule.

Republicans and Democrats take turns, marching in lockstep on all major issues, serving wealth and power interests exclusively.

Bloomberg ideologically is no different. He didn’t become super-rich by being a nice guy. As mayor, he ignored public needs.

New York is one of America’s poorest large cities. Unemployment and underemployment are among the highest.

Most city workers lack pensions. Many earn sub-subsistence wages. Poverty is extremely high. It rose annually during Bloomberg’s tenure. City homelessness more than doubled on his watch.

Many others live in overcrowded substandard dwellings. Hard times getting harder forced large numbers to live with families or friends. Unaffordable rental prices created crisis conditions.

Bloomberg did nothing to address them. Unprecedented social polarization worsened on his watch. New York’s top 20% earns 40 times more than the bottom one-fifth. It’s top 1% earns infinitely more.

Bloomberg waged war on labor. Onerous tax burdens were imposed. Over $1 billion in public worker concessions were demanded.

Massive layoffs affected thousand of teachers, hundreds of firefighters and many other city workers. Dozens of senior centers and day care ones were closed.

Public wages were frozen or minimally increased. Benefits were cut. At the same time, Wall Street got generous ones on top of trillions of dollars of federal bailout funding.

Throughout his tenure, Bloomberg implemented numerous financial sector tax giveaways. Ordinary city residents got tax increases.

He and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly persecuted city Blacks and Latinos, intensifying racist stop and frisk practices.

He won elections the old-fashioned way, anointed by party bosses and Wall Street, outspending challengers multiple times over, drowning out opposition voices.

 

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.

The Black Sea Fleet is an operational-strategic command of the Russian Navy located on the Black Sea which also includes the ships harbored in the Azov Sea. The history of the fleet begins in the late 18^th century in the city of Sevastopol. At that time Russia struggled with its main adversary in that region for naval superiority in the Black Sea – the Ottoman Empire.

The most notable engagements of the fleet include the Battle for the Kerch Strait in 1790 against Ottoman Empire, the Crimean War in the mid 19^th century, both World Wars and the Georgian conflict in 2008. The Black Sea Fleet has an immense political and military significance for the Russian government. This has been proven throughout history and also during the most recent Crimean Crisis. The geostrategic significance of the Black Sea Fleet is further increased by the possibility of accessing the Mediterranean Sea by the Bosphorus and Dardanelle straits, which allows Russia to send its naval force into a warm-water sea. This fact is one of the most important traits of the Black Sea Fleet which explains how and why this fleet survived since the 18^th century and why the Crimean Peninsula is so important to Russian.

Strategic Role

Beside Russia, the other countries that have coastlines on the Black Sea are Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia and Turkey. The Ukrainian Navy has around 6,000-7,000 servicemen with HQ in Odessa (before the coup the Navy had more than 13,000), the Romanian Navy numbers around 7,000 servicemen (one part of the navy operates on the Black Sea coast the other on the Danube river), the Bulgarian Navy has around 3,500 servicemen with HQ in Varna, Georgia whose Navy was merged with the Coast Guard in 2009 under the jurisdiction of the Border Guard and the Ministry of Interior Affairs has 5,000 servicemen and HQ in Poti. And finally, Turkey which has the longest coastline and is also the country which controls the Bosphorus and the Dardanelle straits.

The Turkish Navy has around 50,000 servicemen (~15,000 active and ~35,000 conscripts) with its Northern Sea Area Command in Istanbul and Southern Sea Area Command in Izmir. Although the country has the largest coastline on the Black Sea, Turkey’s primary naval objectives are focused on the two straits connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. These two straits have an enormous impact on all naval forces in the Black Sea as well as on the commerce of Turkey and other countries in that region. The significance of these straits can be seen in the daily transportation of oil which reaches more than 2.9 million barrels per day transported by 5,500 oil tankers. Though Turkey has sovereignty over the Bosphorus and the Dardanelle, closing these straits for whichever navy would mean an open act of aggression, exceeding the incident with the SU-24 downing. Recently there have been concerns of imposing some kind of restrictions to the Russian ships passing these straits, especially since the incident in Syria, but these restrictions are farfetched.

The Black Sea Fleet is truly a major asset for Russia, especially since the unification of Crimea. Also, the power of this fleet can be further boosted by the Caspian Flotilla which is connected to the Black Sea via the Volga-Don canal. In the recent years this fleet has proven to be very important for the Syrian forces. Since the autumn of 2015 for the Russian forces as well – transporting and delivering supplies, and also providing military support against the potential external threats for Syria.

Though this fleet is heavily dependent on the two Turkish straits in order to access the Mediterranean Sea, successful operations in Syria and a possible ending of the conflict could provide Russia with two important naval bases in the Mediterranean. The Russian navy already has some military installations and facilities in Tartus which could be expanded, and in the future we could see similar naval activities taking place in Latakia. As always, the financial aspect determines the state, as well as, the military policy. If Russia decides to expand its navy in the future, it must be cost-effective and efficient.

Igor Pejic graduated Political Science Foreign Affairs Department at the Faculty of Political Science and now he is a postgraduate student on the MA Terrorism, Security and Organised Crime at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

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ANNEX

Structure

Black Sea Fleet ~11,000 servicemen (including marines)

30^th Surface Ship Division

• Missile Cruiser – Moskva ♦ Missiles: 16 x P-500/SS-N-12 Bazalt/Sandbox SSM; 8 x B303A VLS systems; 2 x Osa-MA Sam Systems ♦ Guns: 1 – Twin 130 mm / 70 cal. AK 130. DP; 6 – AK-630 CIWS Gatling Guns; 2 – 45 mm / 85 cal Gun
• Large Antisubmarine Ship – Kerch ♦ Missiles: 2 x 4 URK-5/SS-N-14 Rastrub/Silex SSM/ASW missiles; 2 Shtorm SAM systems; 2 Osa-M SAM systems ♦ Guns: 2 x 2 76.2 mm/59cal AK-726 DP; 4 x 6 30 mm AK-630 AA
• Patrol Ship – Smetlivyy ♦ Missiles: 2 x Uran; 2 Volna-M SAM systems ♦ Guns: 1 x 2 76.2 mm/59 cal DP AK-726
• Patrol Ship – Ladnyy ♦ Missiles: 4 URK-5/SS-N-14 Rasturb/Silex SSM/ASW missiles; 2 Osa-MA-2 SAM systems ♦ Guns: 2 dual 76.2 mm/59cal DP AK-726
• Patrol Ship – Pytlivyy ♦ Missiles: 4 URPK-5 Rasturb/SS-N-14 Siles SSM/ASW missiles; 2 Osa-MA-2 SAM systems ♦ Guns: 2 x 1 100 mm DP AK-100

197^th Assault Ship Brigade

• Large Landing Ship – Nikolay Filchenkov ♦ Missiles: 3 SA-N-5 Grail launchers manual aiming; 122 mm UMS-73 Grad-M bombardment ♦ Guns: 1 dual 57 mm/70 DP; 2 dual 25 mm AA
• Large Landing Ship – Orsk ♦ Missiles: 3 SA-N-5 Grail launchers manual aiming ♦ Guns: 1 dual 57 mm/70 DP
• Large Landing Ship – Saratov ♦ Missiles: 3 SA-N-5 Grail launchers manual aiming ♦ Guns: 1 dual 57 mm/70DP
• Large Landing Ship – Azov ♦ Missiles: 4 x 8 Strela (SS-N-3); 2 122 mm UMS-73 Grad-M bombardment ♦ Guns: 1 AK-726 DP (1 x 76.2 mm); 2 x 6 – AK-630 CIWS Gatling Guns
• Large Landing Ship – Novocherkassk ♦ Missiles: 4 x 8 Strela (SS-N-3); 2 122 mm UMS-73 Grad-M bombardment ♦ Guns:2 x 2 AK-725 DP (2 x 57 mm)
• Large Landing Ship – Tsesar Kunikov ♦ Missiles: 4 x 8 Strela (SS-N-3); 2 122 mm UMS-73 Grad-M bombardment ♦ Guns: 2 x 2 AK-725 DP (2 x 57 mm)
• Large Landing Ship – Yamal ♦ Missiles: 4 x 8 Strela (SS-N-3); 2 122 mm UMS-73 Grad-M bombardment ♦ Guns: 2 x 2 AK-725 DP (2 x 57 mm)

4^th Independent Submarine Brigade

• Diesel-Electric Submarine B-871 – Alrosa ♦ Armament: 6 x 21 inch torpedo tubes; 8 Strela-3 (SA-N-8 Gremlin) or 8 Igla (SA-N-10 Gimlet) missiles
• Diesel-Electric Submarine – B-380 ♦ Armament: 6 x 21 inch torpedo tubes; 24 x 21 inch anti-submarine or anti-ship torpedoes
• Diesel-Electric Submarine B-261 – Novorossiysk ♦ Armament: 6 x 21 inch torpedo tubes; 8 Strela-3 (SA-N-8 Gremlin) or 8 Igla (SA-N-10 Gimlet) missiles
• Diesel-Electric Submarine B-237 – Rostov on Don ♦ Armament: 6 x 21 inch torpedo tubes; 8 Strela-3 (SA-N-8 Gremlin) or 8 Igla (SA-N-10 Gimlet) missiles
• Diesel-Electric Submarine B-435 – former Zaporizhzhia ♦ Armament: 10 x 21 inch torpedo tubes

68^th Coastal Defense Ship Brigade

149^th Antisubmarine Ships Tactical group:

• Small Missile Ship – Alexandrovets ♦ Missiles: 1 Osa-M SAM system; 2 SA-N-8 SAM positions ♦ Guns: 1 dual 57 mm/70cal DP; 1 30 mm AA
• Small Missile Ship – Suzdalets ♦ Missiles: 1 Osa-M SAM system; 2 SA-N-8 SAM positions ♦ Guns: 1 dual 57 mm/70cal DP; 1 30 mm AA
• Small Missile Ship – Muromets ♦ ♦ Missiles: 1 Osa-M SAM system; 2 SA-N-8 SAM positions ♦ Guns: 1 dual 57 mm/70cal DP; 1 30 mm AA

150^th Minesweepers Tactical Group:

• Seagoing Minesweeper – Kovrovets ♦ Missiles: 2 x Twin Grail Launchers (10x Grail SAM) ♦ Guns: 2 x 2 30 mm AK-230 guns in twin turrets; 2 x 2 25 mm 2M-3M-230 guns in twin turrets
• Seagoing Minesweeper – Ivan Golubets ♦ Missiles: 2 x Twin Grail Launchers (10x Grail SAM) ♦ Guns: 2 x 2 30 mm AK-230 guns in twin turrets; 2 x 2 25 mm 2M-3M-230 guns in twin turrets
• Seagoing Minesweeper – Turbinist ♦ Missiles: 2 x Twin Grail Launchers (10x Grail SAM) ♦ Guns: 2 x 2 30 mm AK-230 guns in twin turrets; 2 x 2 25 mm 2M-3M-230 guns in twin turrets
• Seagoing Minesweeper – Vice Admiral Zhukov ♦ Missiles: 2 x Twin Grail Launchers (10x Grail SAM) ♦ Guns: 2 x 2 30 mm AK-230 guns in twin turrets; 2 x 2 25 mm 2M-3M-230 guns in twin turrets

41^th Missile Boat Brigade

166^th Novorossiysky Small Missile Ships Battalion:

• Surface Effect Warfare Corvette – Bora ♦ Missiles: 2 x 4 3M-80/SS-N-22 Moskit/Sunburn SSM; 1 Osa-MA SAM system ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic; 2 AK-630 Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm
• Surface Effect Warfare Corvette – Samum ♦ Missiles: 2 x 4 3M-80/SS-N-22 Moskit/Sunburn SSM; 1 Osa-MA SAM system ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic; 2 AK-630 Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm
• Small Antisubmarine Ship – Shtil ♦ Missiles: 6 P-120/SS-N-9 Malakhit/Siren SSM; 1 Osa-M SAM system ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal full automatic; 2 AK-630 Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm
• Small Antisubmarine Ship – Mirazh ♦ Missiles: 6 P-120/SS-N-9 Malakhit/Siren SSM; 1 Osa-M SAM system ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal full automatic; 2 AK-630 Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm
• Small Antisubmarine Ship – Zelenyy Dol ♦ Missile: 1 x 40 retractable A-215 Grad-M; 2 x 4 UKSK VLC Cells Kalibar-NK; 1 x 4 3M47 Gibka; 2 x 4 Komar ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic; 2 AK-630 Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm
• Small Antisubmarine Ship – Serpuhkov ♦ 1 x 40 retractable A-215 Grad-M; 2 x 4 UKSK VLC Cells Kalibar-NK; 1 x 4 3M47 Gibka; 2 x 4 Komar ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic; 2 AK-630 Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm

295^th Sulinsky Missile Boats Battalion:

• Missile Boat – R-60 ♦ Missiles: 4 SS-N-22 Sunburn (2 twin) launchers; SAM – SA-N-5 Grail quad launcher ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic; 1 Palash CIWS 2 x 6 30 mm
• Missile Boat – R-71 ♦ Missiles: 4 SS-N-2 Styx (2 twin) launchers ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic.
• Missile Boat – R-109 ♦ Missiles: 4 SS-N-22 Sunburn (2 twin) launchers; SAM – SA-N-5 Grail quad launcher ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic; 2 AK-630M Gatling gun AA 6 x 30 mm
• Missile Boat – R-239 ♦ Missiles: : 4 SS-N-22 Sunburn (2 twin) launchers; SAM – SA-N-5 Grail quad launcher ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic; 2 AK-630M Gatling gun AA 6 x 30 mm
• Missile Boat – Ivanovetc ♦ Missiles: : 4 SS-N-22 Sunburn (2 twin) launchers; SAM – SA-N-5 Grail quad launcher ♦ Guns: 1 AK-176 76.2 mm/59cal DP full automatic; 2 AK-630M Gatling gun AA 6 x 30 mm

184^th Coastal Ship Brigade

• Small Antisubmarine Ship – Povorino ♦ Missiles: 1 Osa-M SAM system; 2 SA-N-8 SAM positions ♦ Guns: 1 76.2 mm/59cal DP; 1 30 mm AA
• Small Antisubmarine Ship – Eysk ♦ Missiles: 1 Osa-M SAM system; 2 SA-N-8 SAM positions ♦ Guns: 1 76.2 mm/59cal DP; 1 30 mm AA
• Small Antisubmarine Ship – Kasimov ♦ Missiles: 1 Osa-M SAM system; 2 SA-N-8 SAM positions ♦ Guns: 1 76.2 mm/59cal DP; 1 30 mm AA
• Seagoing Minesweeper – Velentin Pikul ♦ Missiles: 18 x sets of MANPAD Igla; 2 x anti-submarine RBU-1200 ♦ Guns: 2 AK-630M Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm
• Seagoing Minesweeper – Zheleznyakov ♦ Missiles: 18 x sets of MANPAD Igla; 2 x anti-submarine RBU-1200 ♦ Guns: 2 AK-630M Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm 
• Seagoing Minesweeper – Vice Admiral Zakharyin ♦ Missiles: 18 x sets of MANPAD Igla; 2 x anti-submarine RBU-1200 ♦ Guns: 2 AK-630M Gatling Gun AA 6 x 30 mm 
• Base Minesweeper – Mineralnie Vodi ♦ Armament: 2 x 30 mm guns; 2 x 25 mm guns
• Base Minesweeper – Leytenant Ilyin ♦ Armament: 2 x 30 mm guns; 2 x 25 mm guns
• Harbour Minesweeper – RT-46 ♦ Armament: 2 x 14.5 mm machine guns
• Harbour Minesweeper – RT-278 ♦ Armament: 2 x 14.5 mm machine guns

Black Sea Naval Infantry:

• 810^th Naval Infantry Brigade
• 382^nd Independent Naval Infantry Battalion

Black Sea Fleet Naval Air Force HQ Sevastopol:

• 25^th Independent Anti-submarine Helicopter Regiment ~20 helicopters Ka-27 Mi-14
• 917^th Independent Composite Air Regiment ~10 Antonov; 4 Be-12; ~10 Mi-8
• 43^rd Independent Naval Assault Squad 18 Su-24M; 4 Su-24MR

The United States is expanding its presence in Syria. Satellite imagery taken Dec. 28 shows construction underway to extend the runway at an airfield in Rmeilan, al-Hasaka province, which would prepare the site to accommodate larger aircraft.

Separate reports of the U.S. preparing deployment of aircraft to Rmeilan have been circulating since early December. The images confirm that at least some of those reports are true.

Before the war, the airfield’s runway was only 700 meters long, a length that appears to be doubling. The airfield has since been captured by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which has controlled the airport for more than two years.

The confirmation of the expanding US presence in Syria arisen amid militaristic statements of Vice President Joseph Biden who claimed that the US is ready for military solution in Syria during a speech at a press conference with the Turkish premier Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul.

A day before a ground operation in Iraq and Syria was also announced by the US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. It’s stated that 101st Airborne Division will soon deploy 1,800 troops to Iraq. The plans for Syria are unknown yet. The US-led military block is with no doubt surprised by the success of the Syrian Arab Army supported by the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces and allegedly Russian military advisors.

There are also reports that Russia uses a civilian airport in Syrian city Qamishli which is currently controlled by the Kurds. The airport is located in the province of al-Hasaka and the Turkish media claim that it has been visited by about 100 Russian officers and military experts who thoroughly checked the airport. We remember since the Russian missile systems S-400 appeared in Syria – Turkish warplanes no longer violate the air space of the country.

As SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence predicted a month ago that NATO allies are urgently trying to implement a new plan to hold control at least of the northern oil corridor from Iraq and try to take advantage of this opportunity to involve Russia in a long expensive war. This plan includes an occupation of the crucial infrastructure including oilfields by the NATO contingent and establishment of anti-government, meaning anti-Russian and anti-Iranian, forces in parts of divided Syria.

Implementing of this plan could easily lead to a global war launched by military escalation over the Syrian crisis. The stakes of the global geopolitical standoff have been raised again.

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To those of us who grew up during the cold war years, it’s just like old times again: Russian plots to subvert the West and poison our precious bodily fluids are apparently everywhere. Speaking of poisoning plots: the latest Russkie conspiracy – and the most imaginative by far – was the alleged assassination by poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko [pictured left], a former agent of the Russian intelligence services who fled to the West to become a professional anti-Russian propagandist and conspiracy theorist with a talent for the improbable. According to his fantastic worldview, the many terrorist attacks that have occurred in Russia have all been committed by … Vladimir Putin.

Aside from championing the Chechen Islamo-terrorists who actually committed these crimes, Litvinenko’s stock-in-trade was an elaborate conspiracy theory in which he regularly accused Putin of blowing up Russian apartment buildings and murdering schoolchildren and then diverting attention from his own nefarious plots by blaming those lovable Chechens. Not very believable – unless one is predisposed to believe anything, so long as it casts discredit on those satanic Russians.

The conspiracy theory promulgated by the British government – and now memorialized in this official report – surpasses anything the deceased fantasist might have come up with. According to the Brits, Litvinenko was poisoned on British soil whilst imbibing a cup of tea spiked with a massive dose of radioactive polonium-210 – and, since Russia is a prime source of this rare substance, and since the Russians were supposedly out to get Litvinenko, the FSB – successor to the KGB – is named as the “probable” culprit.

Looking at the report, one has to conclude that they don’t make propaganda the way they used to: the certitude of, say, a J. Edgar Hoover or a Robert Welch has given way to the tepid ambiguity of Lord Robert Owen, the author of this report, whose verdict of “probably” merely underscores the paucity of what passes for evidence in this case.

To begin with, if the Russians wanted to off Litvinenko, why would they poison him with a substance that left a radioactive trail traceable from Germany to Heathrow airport – and, in the process, contaminating scores of hotel rooms, offices, planes, restaurants, and homes?  Why not just put a bullet through his head? It makes no sense.

But then conspiracy theories don’t have to make sense: they just have to take certain assumptions all the way to their implausible conclusions. If one starts with the premise that Putin and the Russians are a Satanic force capable of anything, and incompetent to boot, then it’s all perfectly “logical” – in the Bizarro World, at any rate.

The idea that Litvinenko was a dangerous opponent of the Russian government who had to be killed because he posed a credible threat to the existence of the regime is laughable: practically no one inside Russia knew anything about him, and as for his crackpot “truther” theories about how Putin was behind every terrorist attack ever carried out within Russia’s borders – to assert that they had any credence outside of the Western media echo chamber is a joke. So there was no real motive for the FSB to assassinate him, just as there is none for the FBI to go after David Ray Griffin.

The British report doesn’t bother presenting any real evidence: instead, we are given a detailed account of the lives of the alleged killers – Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy – that reads like a Daily Mail article. Included in this compendium of character assassination and gossip is the testimony of one of Kovtun’s ex-wives that he “wanted to be a porno star.” That this factoid would find its way into an official report of the United Kingdom is extraordinary – but not, I fear, unexpected. Salaciousness has its place in contemporary fiction, particularly the pulp-thriller genre, of which this report is a prime (if pedestrian) example.

The rest of the report is a complicated account of every move Kovtun, Lugovoy, and Litvinenko made in the days leading up to Litvinenko’s poisoning. It neither compromises nor exonerates the accused: presumably it was included to give the report the appearance of substance. The meat of the matter – the real “evidence” – is hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Lord Owen’s inquiry was for the most part conducted in secret closed  hearings, with testimony given by anonymous witnesses, and this is central to the “evidence” that is supposed to convict Kovtun, Lugovoy, and the Russian government. Lord Owen, explains it this way:

“Put very shortly, the closed evidence consists of evidence that is relevant to the Inquiry, but which has been assessed as being too sensitive to put into the public domain. The assessment that the material is sufficiently sensitive to warrant being treated as closed evidence in these proceedings has been made not by me, but by the Home Secretary. She has given effect to this decision by issuing a number of Restriction Notices, which is a procedure specified in section 19 of the Inquiries Act 2005. The Restriction Notices themselves, although not, of course, the sensitive documents appended to them, are public documents. They have been published on the Inquiry website and are also to be found at Appendix 7 to this Report.”

In other words, the “evidence” is not for us ordinary mortals to see. We just have to take His Lordship’s word for it that the Russian government embarked on an improbable assassination mission against a marginal figure that reads like something Ian Fleming might have written under a pseudonym.

Yes, you might say, but Litvinenko was poisoned. So who killed him?

As I pointed out here:

“Litvinenko was an employee of exiled Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky – whose ill-gotten empire included a Russian syndicate of car-dealerships that had more than a nodding acquaintance with the Chechen Mafia – but was being slowly cut out of the money pipeline. Big-hearted Boris, who had initially put him on the payroll as anti-Putin propagandist, was evidently getting sick of him, and the out-of-work “dissident” was reportedly desperate for money. Litvinenko had several “ business meetings ” with Lugovoi in the months prior to his death, and, according to this report , he hatched a blackmail scheme targeting several well-known Russian tycoons and government officials.”

Indeed, Litvinenko, in the months before his death, had targeted several well-known members of the Russian Mafia with his blackmail scheme. That they would take umbrage at this is hardly shocking.

Furthermore, there are indications that Litvinenko was engaged in the smuggling of nuclear materials. That he wound up being contaminated by the goods he was peddling on the black market seems far more credible than the cock-and-bull story about a vast Russian plot originating in the Kremlin,. Apparently Lord Owen has never heard of Occam’s Razor.

You can check out Justin Raimondo‘s Twitter feed by going here. He’s written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of his 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), his biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

La demanda tiene por objeto que no se agregue el herbicida a la lista de cancerígenos bajo la Proposición 65, que obliga al Estado a publicar una lista de los productos químicos que se sabe que causan cáncer, defectos de nacimiento u otros daños reproductivos. El anuncio se produjo el 4 de septiembre de 2015.

Reuters informó que la empresa presentó la demanda contra la Oficina del Estado de Evaluación de Riesgos de Salud Ambiental (OEHHA) en los tribunales del estado de California para evitar que se informe a  los residentes sobre los riesgos de los diferentes productos químicos, y sustancias que causan cpáncer. OEHHA hizo el anuncio, después de que la Agencia Internacional de la Organización Mundial de la Salud para la Investigación sobre el Cáncer (IARC) anunció su probable vínculo con el cáncer en marzo de 2015.

Si el glifosato es añadido a la lista, Monsanto estaría obligado a proporcionar una advertencia en los marbetes a los consumidores, de que el producto químico es un reconocido carcinógeno.Monsanto afirma que esto es una violación de sus derechos de la Primera Enmienda y, de acuerdo con la denuncia presentada, “causaría un daño irreparable a Monsanto y el público y que afectaría negativamente a la reputación de Monsanto para la fabricación de herbicidas seguros y confiables; sería potencialmente una pérdida de ventas y obligaría a la empresa a gastar importantes sumas de dinero para volver a etiquetar sus productos “.

Si esto no fuera suficiente el Environmental Working Group, una organización de vigilancia de la industria que publica periódicamente informes sobre la seguridad de todo, desde productos de alimentos procesados y productos de cuidado personal, acaba de publicar una lista de los productos químicos más potentes, que causan cáncer , en su conocida lista “Dirty Dozen “(docena sucia).Otros estudios afirman que el glifosato no merece su lugar en la lista de los productos químicos que causan cáncer e incluyen una revisión completa hecha en 2015 por la Autoridad Europea de Seguridad Alimentaria. La conclusión de la EFSA que el glifosato era seguro fue criticado tanto por la IARC y casi 100 científicos de alto nivel en Europa, que firmaron una carta abierta al comisario europeo de la salud Vitenis Andriukaitis en noviembre de 2015, acusando a las autoridades de la UE de ignorar esta opinión al hacer regulaciones de glifosato para Europa.

El Director de negocios de Monsanto, Gary Philpotts  dijo que, “La opinión de la IARC es un caso atípico en este cuerpo de evidencia científica. Sin embargo, la opinión de la IARC encaja con los reclamos activistas contra los químicos y  que estos grupos continúan invirtiendo en comunicaciones que tratan de poner en duda el consenso científico acerca de la seguridad del glifosato “.

Además, Phil Miller, vicepresidente de Monsanto de asuntos regulatorios, sostiene que la clasificación de la IARC es incoherente con otras investigaciones y “no es una base sólida para cualquier acción reguladora.

Pamela Coleman, PhD de Farm and Food Policy y un analista del Instituto Cornucopia no está de acuerdo :- “Contrariamente a la actual concepción errónea generalizada de que el glifosato es relativamente inofensivo para los seres humanos, la evidencia disponible muestra que el glifosato puede más bien ser el factor más importante en el desarrollo de múltiples enfermedades y condiciones crónicas que han llegado a ser frecuente en las sociedades occidentalizadas.” Relacionado con la disfunción generalizada mitocondrial en las células, un problema más de una larga lista de problemas de salud como la enfermedad de Alzheimer, la diabetes tipo 2, el Parkinson y la obesidad, según el Centro Canadiense para la Investigación sobre la Globalización.

En octubre pasado la OEHHA de California, aceptaba comentarios públicos acerca de su intención de agregar al glifosato en el listado, de acuerdo con la Proposición 65, y recibió cerca de 8.000 comentarios con respecto a esta decisión, incluyendo los comentarios de Monsanto.

California es un ejemplo a seguir en todo el mundo, lamentablemente Argentina sería incapaz de tomar una decisión análoga para protegernos del tóxico del siglo, con un Senasa estéril, menos aún en Buenos Aires, con un Ministro de Asuntos Agrarios ex empleado de Monsanto y con un Ministerio de Agricultura de la Nación,  manejado por Aacrea, Aapresid y la sede oficial de la empresa al mando de Lino Barañao.Ser PROtransgénicos y PROvenenos es parte del Cambio, para desgracia de los argentinos. Como respuesta, el latiguillo es que la culpa la tiene el que se fué, no del que llega a incentivar y a perpeturar el genocidio silencioso.

Graciela Vizcay Gomez

Originally published in February, 2011:

Fast on the heels of the regime change in Tunisia came a popular-based protest movement launched on January 25 against the entrenched order of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Contrary to the carefully-cultivated impression that the Obama Administration is trying to retain the present regime of Mubarak, Washington in fact is orchestrating the Egyptian as well as other regional regime changes from Syria to Yemen to Jordan and well beyond in a process some refer to as “creative destruction.”

The template for such covert regime change has been developed by the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies and various think-tanks such as RAND Corporation over decades, beginning with the May 1968 destabilization of the de Gaulle presidency in France. This is the first time since the US-backed regime changes in Eastern Europe some two decades back that Washington has initiated simultaneous operations in many countries in a region. It is a strategy born of a certain desperation and one not without significant risk for the Pentagon and for the long-term Wall Street agenda. What the outcome will be for the peoples of the region and for the world is as yet unclear.

Yet while the ultimate outcome of defiant street protests in Cairo and across Egypt and the Islamic world remains unclear, the broad outlines of a US covert strategy are already clear.

No one can dispute the genuine grievances motivating millions to take to the streets at risk of life. No one can defend atrocities of the Mubarak regime and its torture and repression of dissent. No one can dispute the explosive rise in food prices as Chicago and Wall Street commodity speculators, and the conversion of American farmland to the insane cultivation of corn for ethanol fuel drive grain prices through the roof. Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer, much of it from the USA. Chicago wheat futures rose by a staggering 74% between June and November 2010 leading to an Egyptian food price inflation of some 30% despite government subsidies.

What is widely ignored in the CNN and BBC and other Western media coverage of the Egypt events is the fact that whatever his excesses at home, Egypt’s Mubarak represented a major obstacle within the region to the larger US agenda.

To say relations between Obama and Mubarak were ice cold from the outset would be no exaggeration. Mubarak was staunchly opposed to Obama policies on Iran and how to deal with its nuclear program, on Obama policies towards the Persian Gulf states, to Syria and to Lebanon as well as to the Palestinians.[1] He was a formidable thorn in the larger Washington agenda for the entire region, Washington’s Greater Middle East Project, more recently redubbed the milder-sounding “New Middle East.”

As real as the factors are that are driving millions into the streets across North Africa and the Middle East, what cannot be ignored is the fact that Washington is deciding the timing and as they see it, trying to shape the ultimate outcome of comprehensive regime change destabilizations across the Islamic world. The day of the remarkably well-coordinated popular demonstrations demanding Mubarak step down, key members of the Egyptian military command including Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan were all in Washington as guests of the Pentagon. That conveniently neutralized the decisive force of the Army to stop the anti-Mubarak protests from growing in the critical early days.[2]

The strategy had been in various State Department and Pentagon files since at least a decade or longer. After George W. Bush declared a War on Terror in 2001 it was called the Greater Middle East Project. Today it is known as the less threatening-sounding “New Middle East” project. It is a strategy to break open the states of the region from Morocco to Afghanistan, the region defined by David Rockefeller’s friend Samuel Huntington in his infamous Clash of Civilizations essay in Foreign Affairs.

Egypt rising?

The current Pentagon scenario for Egypt reads like a Cecil B. DeMille Hollywood spectacular, only this one with a cast of millions of Twitter-savvy well-trained youth, networks of Muslim Brotherhood operatives, working with a US-trained military. In the starring role of the new production at the moment is none other than a Nobel Peace Prize winner who conveniently appears to pull all the threads of opposition to the ancien regime into what appears as a seamless transition into a New Egypt under a self-proclaimed liberal democratic revolution.

Some background on the actors on the ground is useful before looking at what Washington’s long-term strategic plan might be for the Islamic world from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and ultimately into the Islamic populations of Central Asia, to the borders of China and Russia.

Washington ‘soft’ revolutions

The protests that led to the abrupt firing of the entire Egyptian government by President Mubarak on the heels of the panicked flight of Tunisia’s Ben Ali into a Saudi exile are not at all as “spontaneous” as the Obama White House, Clinton State Department or CNN, BBC and other major media in the West make them to be.

They are being organized in a Ukrainian-style high-tech electronic fashion with large internet-linked networks of youth tied to Mohammed ElBaradei and the banned and murky secret Muslim Brotherhood, whose links to British and American intelligence and freemasonry are widely reported.[3]

At this point the anti-Mubarak movement looks like anything but a threat to US influence in the region, quite the opposite. It has all the footprints of another US-backed regime change along the model of the 2003-2004 Color Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and the failed Green Revolution against Iran’s Ahmedinejad in 2009.

The call for an Egyptian general strike and a January 25 Day of Anger that sparked the mass protests demanding Mubarak resign was issued by a Facebook-based organization calling itself the April 6 Movement. The protests were so substantial and well-organized that it forced Mubarak to ask his cabinet to resign and appoint a new vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman, former Minister of Intelligence.

April 6 is headed by one Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, a 29-year-old civil engineer, who set up the Facebook site to support a workers’ call for a strike on April 6, 2008.

According to a New York Times account from 2009, some 800,000 Egyptians, most youth, were already then Facebook or Twitter members. In an interview with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, April 6 Movement head Maher stated, “Being the first youth movement in Egypt to use internet-based modes of communication like Facebook and Twitter, we aim to promote democracy by encouraging public involvement in the political process.” [4]

Maher also announced that his April 6 Movement backs former UN International Atomic Energy Aagency (IAEA) head and declared Egyptian Presidential candidate, ElBaradei along with ElBaradei’s National Association for Change (NAC) coalition. The NAC includes among others George Ishak, a leader in Kefaya Movement, and Mohamed Saad El-Katatni, president of the parliamentary bloc of the controversial Ikhwan or Muslim Brotherhood.[5]

Today Kefaya is at the center of the unfolding Egyptian events. Not far in the background is the more discreet Muslim Brotherhood.

ElBaradei at this point is being projected as the central figure in a future Egyptian parliamentary democratic change. Curiously, though he has not lived in Egypt for the past thirty years, he has won the backing of every imaginable part of the Eyptian political spectrum from communists to Muslim Brotherhood to Kefaya and April 6 young activists.[6] Judging from the calm demeanour ElBaradei presents these days to CNN interviewers, he also likely has the backing of leading Egyptian generals opposed to the Mubarak rule for whatever reasons as well as some very influential persons in Washington.

Kefaya—Pentagon ‘non-violent warfare’

Kefaya is at the heart of mobilizing the Egyptian protest demonstrations that back ElBaradei’s candidacy. The word Kefaya translates to “enough!”

Curiously, the planners at the Washington National Endowment for Democracy (NED) [7] and related color revolution NGOs apparently were bereft of creative new catchy names for their Egyptian Color Revolution. In their November 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the US-financed NGOs chose the catch word, Kmara! In order to identify the youth-based regime change movement. Kmara in Georgian also means “enough!”

Like Kefaya, Kmara in Georgia was also built by the Washington-financed trainers from the NED and other groups such as Gene Sharp’s misleadingly-named Albert Einstein Institution which uses what Sharp once identified as “non-violence as a method of warfare.” [8]

The various youth networks in Georgia as in Kefaya were carefully trained as a loose, decentralized network of cells, deliberately avoiding a central organization that could be broken and could have brought the movement to a halt. Training of activists in techniques of non-violent resistance was done at sports facilities, making it appear innocuous. Activists were also given training in political marketing, media relations, mobilization and recruiting skills.

The formal name of Kefaya is Egyptian Movement for Change. It was founded in 2004 by select Egyptian intellectuals at the home of Abu ‘l-Ala Madi, leader of the al-Wasat party, a party reportedly created by the Muslim Brotherhood. [9] Kefaya was created as a coalition movement united only by the call for an end Mubarak’s rule.

Kefaya as part of the amorphous April 6 Movement capitalized early on new social media and digital technology as its main means of mobilization. In particular, political blogging, posting uncensored youtube shorts and photographic images were skillfully and extremely professionally used. At a rally already back in December 2009 Kefaya had announced support for the candidacy of Mohammed ElBaradei for the 2011 Egyptian elections.[10]

RAND and Kefaya

No less a US defense establishment think-tank than the RAND Corporation has conducted a detailed study of Kefaya. The Kefaya study as RAND themselves note, was “sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community.” [11]

A nicer bunch of democratically-oriented gentlemen and women could hardly be found.

In their 2008 report to the Pentagon, the RAND researchers noted the following in relation to Egypt’s Kefaya:

“The United States has professed an interest in greater democratization in the Arab world, particularly since the September 2001 attacks by terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon. This interest has been part of an effort to reduce destabilizing political violence and terrorism. As President George W. Bush noted in a 2003 address to the National Endowment for Democracy, “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export” (The White House, 2003). The United States has used varying means to pursue democratization, including a military intervention that, though launched for other reasons, had the installation of a democratic government as one of its end goals.

However, indigenous reform movements are best positioned to advance democratization in their own country.” [12]

RAND researchers have spent years perfecting techniques of unconventional regime change under the name “swarming,” the method of deploying mass mobs of digitally-linked youth in hit-and-run protest formations moving like swarms of bees.[13]

Washington and the stable of “human rights” and “democracy” and “non-violence” NGOs it oversees, over the past decade or more has increasingly relied on sophisticated “spontaneous” nurturing of local indigenous protest movements to create pro-Washington regime change and to advance the Pentagon agenda of global Full Spectrum Dominance. As the RAND study of Kefaya states in its concluding recommendations to the Pentagon:

“The US government already supports reform efforts through organizations such as the US Agency for International Development and the United Nations Development Programme. Given the current negative popular standing of the United States in the region, US support for reform initiatives is best carried out through nongovernmental and nonprofit institutions.” [14]

The RAND 2008 study was even more concrete about future US Government support for Egyptian and other “reform” movements:

“The US government should encourage nongovernmental organizations to offer training to reformers, including guidance on coalition building and how to deal with internal differences in pursuit of democratic reform. Academic institutions (or even nongovernmental organizations associated with US political parties, such as the International Republican Institute or the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs) could carry out such training, which would equip reform leaders to reconcile their differences peacefully and democratically.

“Fourth, the United States should help reformers obtain and use information technology, perhaps by offering incentives for US companies to invest in the region’s communications infrastructure and information technology. US information technology companies could also help ensure that the Web sites of reformers can remain in operation and could invest in technologies such as anonymizers that could offer some shelter from government scrutiny. This could also be accomplished by employing technological safegaurds to prevent regimes from sabotaging the Web sites of reformers. ” [15]

As their Kefaya monograph states, it was prepared in 2008 by the “RAND National Security Research Division’s Alternative Strategy Initiative, sponsored by the Rapid Reaction Technology Office in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.

The Alternative Strategy Initiative, just to underscore the point, includes “research on creative use of the media, radicalization of youth, civic involvement to stem sectarian violence, the provision of social services to mobilize aggrieved sectors of indigenous populations, and the topic of this volume, alternative movements.” [16]

In May 2009 just before Obama’s Cairo trip to meet Mubarak, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted a number of the young Egyptian activists in Washington under the auspices of Freedom House, another “human rights” Washington-based NGO with a long history of involvement in US-sponsored regime change from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine and other Color Revolutions. Clinton and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman met the sixteen activists at the end of a two-month “fellowship” organized by Freedom House’s New Generation program.[17]

Freedom House and Washington’s government-funded regime change NGO, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are at the heart of the uprisings now sweeping across the Islamic world. They fit the geographic context of what George W. Bush proclaimed after 2001 as his Greater Middle East Project to bring “democracy” and “liberal free market” economic reform to the Islamic countries from Afghanistan to Morocco. When Washington talks about introducing “liberal free market reform” people should watch out. It is little more than code for bringing those economies under the yoke of the dollar system and all that implies.

Washington’s NED in a larger agenda

If we make a list of the countries in the region which are undergoing mass-based protest movements since the Tunisian and Egyptian events and overlay them onto a map, we find an almost perfect convergence between the protest countries today and the original map of the Washington Greater Middle East Project that was first unveiled during the George W. Bush Presidency after 2001.

Washington’s NED has been quietly engaged in preparing a wave of regime destabilizations across North Africa and the Middle East since the 2001-2003 US military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The list of where the NED is active is revealing. Its website lists Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Sudan as well, interestingly, as Israel. Coincidentally these countries are almost all today subject to “spontaneous” popular regime-change uprisings.

The International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs mentioned by the RAND document study of Kefaya are subsidiary organizations of the Washington-based and US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy.

The NED is the coordinating Washington agency for regime destabilization and change. It is active from Tibet to Ukraine, from Venezuela to Tunisia, from Kuwait to Morocco in reshaping the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union into what George H.W. Bush in a 1991 speech to Congress proclaimed triumphantly as the dawn of a New World Order. [18]

As the architect and first head of the NED, Allen Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991 that, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”[19]

The NED Board of Directors includes or has included former Defense Secretary and CIA Deputy head, Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group; retired General Wesley Clark of NATO; neo-conservative warhawk Zalmay Khalilzad who was architect of George W. Bush’s Afghan invasion and later ambassador to Afghanistan as well as to occupied Iraq. Another NED board member, Vin Weber, co-chaired a major independent task force on US Policy toward Reform in the Arab World with former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and was a founding member of the ultra-hawkish Project for a New American Century think-tank with Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, which advocated forced regime change in Iraq as early as 1998.[20]

The NED is supposedly a private, non-government, non-profit foundation, but it receives a yearly appropriation for its international work from the US Congress. The National Endowment for Democracy is dependent on the US taxpayer for funding, but because NED is not a government agency, it is not subject to normal Congressional oversight.

NED money is channelled into target countries through four “core foundations”—the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, linked to the Democratic Party; the International Republican Institute tied to the Republican Party; the American Center for International Labor Solidarity linked to the AFL-CIO US labor federation as well as the US State Department; and the Center for International Private Enterprise linked to the free-market US Chamber of Commerce.

The late political analyst Barbara Conry noted that,

“NED has taken advantage of its alleged private status to influence foreign elections, an activity that is beyond the scope of AID or USIA and would otherwise be possible only through a CIA covert operation. Such activities, it may also be worth noting, would be illegal for foreign groups operating in the United States.” [21]

Significantly the NED details its various projects today in Islamic countries, including in addition to Egypt, in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. In short, most every country which is presently feeling the earthquake effects of the reform protests sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa is a target of NED. [22]

In 2005 US President George W. Bush made a speech to the NED. In a long, rambling discourse which equated “Islamic radicalism” with the evils of communism as the new enemy, and using a deliberately softer term “broader Middle East” for the term Greater Middle East that had aroused much distruct in the Islamic world, Bush stated,

“The fifth element of our strategy in the war on terror is to deny the militants future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East. This is a difficult and long-term project, yet there’s no alternative to it. Our future and the future of that region are linked. If the broader Middle East is left to grow in bitterness, if countries remain in misery, while radicals stir the resentments of millions, then that part of the world will be a source of endless conflict and mounting danger, and for our generation and the next. If the peoples of that region are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow, and eventually end…We’re encouraging our friends in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to take the path of reform, to strengthen their own societies in the fight against terror by respecting the rights and choices of their own people. We’re standing with dissidents and exiles against oppressive regimes, because we know that the dissidents of today will be the democratic leaders of tomorrow…” [23]

The US Project for a ‘Greater Middle East’

The spreading regime change operations Washington from Tunisia to Sudan, from Yemen to Egypt to Syria are best viewed in the context of a long-standing Pentagon and State Department strategy for the entire Islamic world from Kabul in Afghanistan to Rabat in Morocco.

The rough outlines of the Washington strategy, based in part on their successful regime change operations in the former Warsaw Pact communist bloc of Eastern Europe, were drawn up by former Pentagon consultant and neo-conservative, Richard Perle and later Bush official Douglas Feith in a white paper they drew up for the then-new Israeli Likud regime of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996.

That policy recommendation was titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It was the first Washington think-tank paper to openly call for removing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, for an aggressive military stance toward the Palestinians, striking Syria and Syrian targets in Lebanon.[24] Reportedly, the Netanyahu government at that time buried the Perle-Feith report, as being far too risky.

By the time of the events of September 11, 2001 and the return to Washington of the arch-warhawk neoconservatives around Perle and others, the Bush Administration put highest priority on an expanded version of the Perle-Feith paper, calling it their Greater Middle East Project. Feith was named Bush’s Under Secretary of Defense.

Behind the facade of proclaiming democratic reforms of autocratic regimes in the entire region, the Greater Middle East was and is a blueprint to extend US military control and to break open the statist economies in the entire span of states from Morocco to the borders of China and Russia.

In May 2009, before the rubble from the US bombing of Baghdad had cleared, George W. Bush, a President not remembered as a great friend of democracy, proclaimed a policy of “spreading democracy” to the entire region and explicitly noted that that meant “the establishment of a US-Middle East free trade area within a decade.” [25]

Prior to the June 2004 G8 Summit on Sea Island, Georgia, Washington issued a working paper, “G8-Greater Middle East Partnership.” Under the section titled Economic Opportunities was Washington’s dramatic call for “an economic transformation similar in magnitude to that undertaken by the formerly communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.”

The US paper said that the key to this would be the strengthening of the private sector as the way to prosperity and democracy. It misleadingly claimed it would be done via the miracle of microfinance where as the paper put it, “a mere $100 million a year for five years will lift 1.2 million entrepreneurs (750,000 of them women) out of poverty, through $400 loans to each.” [26]

The US plan envisioned takeover of regional banking and financial afairs by new institutions ostensibly international but, like World Bank and IMF, de facto controlled by Washington, including WTO. The goal of Washington’s long-term project is to completely control the oil, to completely control the oil revenue flows, to completely control the entire economies of the region, from Morocco to the borders of China and all in between. It is a project as bold as it is desperate.

Once the G8 US paper was leaked in 2004 in the Arabic Al-Hayat, opposition to it spread widely across the region, with a major protest to the US definition of the Greater Middle East. As an article in the French Le Monde Diplomatique in April 2004 noted, “besides the Arab countries, it covers Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Israel, whose only common denominator is that they lie in the zone where hostility to the US is strongest, in which Islamic fundamentalism in its anti-Western form is most rife.” [27] It should be noted that the NED is also active inside Israel with a number of programs.

Notably, in 2004 it was vehement opposition from two Middle East leaders—Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and the King of Saudi Arabia—that forced the ideological zealots of the Bush Administration to temporarily put the Project for the Greater Middle East on a back burner.

Will it work?

At this writing it is unclear what the ultimate upshot of the latest US-led destabilizations across the Islamic world will bring. It is not clear what will result for Washington and the advocates of a US-dominated New World Order. Their agenda is clearly one of creating a Greater Middle East under firm US grip as a major control of the capital flows and energy flows of a future China, Russia and a European Union that might one day entertain thoughts of drifting away from that American order.

It has huge potential implications for the future of Israel as well. As one US commentator put it, “The Israeli calculation today is that if ‘Mubarak goes’ (which is usually stated as ‘If America lets Mubarak go’), Egypt goes. If Tunisia goes (same elaboration), Morocco and Algeria go. Turkey has already gone (for which the Israelis have only themselves to blame). Syria is gone (in part because Israel wanted to cut it off from Sea of Galilee water access). Gaza has gone to Hamas, and the Palestine Authority might soon be gone too (to Hamas?). That leaves Israel amid the ruins of a policy of military domination of the region.” [28]

The Washington strategy of “creative destruction” is clearly causing sleepless nights not only in the Islamic world but also reportedly in Tel Aviv, and ultimately by now also in Beijing and Moscow and across Central Asia.

F. William Engdahl is author of  Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. His book, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order has just been reissued in a new edition. He may be contacted via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Notes

[1] DEBKA, Mubarak believes a US-backed Egyptian military faction plotted his ouster, February 4, 2011, accessed in www.debka.com/weekly/480/. DEBKA is open about its good ties to Israeli intelligence and security agencies. While its writings must be read with that in mind, certain reports they publish often contain interesting leads for further investigation.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Center for Grassroots Oversight, 1954-1970: CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood ally to oppose Egyptian President Nasser, www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islamic_militancy_202700&scale=0. According to the late Miles Copeland, a CIA official stationed in Egypt during the Nasser era, the CIA allied with the Muslim Brotherhood which was opposed to Nasser’s secular regime as well as his nationalist opposition to brotherhood pan-Islamic ideology.

[4] Jijo Jacob, What is Egypt’s April 6 Movement?, February 1, 2011, accessed in http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/107387/20110201/what-is-egypt-s-april-6-movement.htm

[5] Ibid.

[6] Janine Zacharia, Opposition groups rally around Mohamed ElBaradei, Washington Post, January 31, 2011, accessed in http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/31/AR2011013103470_2.html?sid=ST2011013003319.

[7] National Endowment for Democracy, Middle East and North Africa Program Highlights 2009, accessed in http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/middle-east-and-northern-africa/middle-east-and-north-africa-highlights.

[8] Amitabh Pal, Gene Sharp: The Progressive Interview, The Progressive, March 1, 2007.

[9] Emmanuel Sivan, Why Radical Muslims Aren’t Taking over Governments, Middle East Quarterly, December 1997, pp. 3-9

[10] Carnegie Endowment, The Egyptian Movement for Change (Kifaya), accessed in http://egyptelections.carnegieendowment.org/2010/09/22/the-egyptian-movement-for-change-kifaya

[11] Nadia Oweidat, et al, The Kefaya Movement: A Case Study of a Grassroots Reform Initiative, Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Santa Monica, Ca., RAND_778.pdf, 2008, p. iv.

[12] Ibid.

[13] For a more detailed discussion of the RAND “swarming” techniques see F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, edition.engdahl, 2009, pp. 34-41.

[14] Nadia Oweidat et al, op. cit., p. 48.

[15] Ibid., p. 50.

[16] Ibid., p. iii.

[17] Michel Chossudovsky, The Protest Movement in Egypt: “Dictators” do not Dictate, They Obey Orders, January 29, 2011, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22993

[18] George Herbert Walker Bush, State of the Union Address to Congress, 29 January 1991. In the speech Bush at one point declared in a triumphant air of celebration of the collapse of the Sovoiet Union, “What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea—a new world order…”

[19] Allen Weinstein, quoted in David Ignatius, Openness is the Secret to Democracy, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September 1991, pp. 24-25.

[20] National Endowment for Democracy, Board of Directors, accessed in http://www.ned.org/about/board

[21] Barbara Conry, Loose Cannon: The National Endowment for Democracy, Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 27, November 8, 1993, accessed in http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-027.html.

[22] National Endowment for Democracy, 2009 Annual Report, Middle East and North Africa, accessed in http://www.ned.org/publications/annual-reports/2009-annual-report.

[23] George W. Bush, Speech at the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, DC, October 6, 2005, accessed in http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/10.06.05.html.

[24] Richard Perle, Douglas Feith et al, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, 1996, Washington and Tel Aviv, The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, accessed in www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

[25] George W. Bush, Remarks by the President in Commencement Address at the University of South Carolina, White House, 9 May 2003.

[26] Gilbert Achcar, Fantasy of a Region that Doesn’t Exist: Greater Middle East, the US plan, Le Monde Diplomatique, April 4, 2004, accessed in http://mondediplo.com/2004/04/04world

[27] Ibid.

[28] William Pfaff, American-Israel Policy Tested by Arab Uprisings, accessed in  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/american-israeli_policy_tested_by_arab_uprisings_20110201/

Image: Egyptian flags fly over Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the 2011 uprising. (Photo: Ramy Raoof/cc/flickr)

Five years after mass popular uprisings ousted longtime dictator Hosni Mubarek, Egyptians are again under siege. In an attempt to thwart demonstrations honoring the 2011 Arab Spring, the government of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has deployed troops, raided homes and cultural centers, and reportedly disappeared hundreds of activists in the lead-up to the anniversary on Monday, intensifying a widespread crackdown on dissent.

Over the past two weeks, security forces interrogated residents and searched more than 5,000 homes in central Cairo as a “precautionary measure” against demonstrations, which officials claim “are aimed at polarizing society and mobilizing the masses against the government.”

Meanwhile, activists estimate that between August and November more than 340 people “disappeared” into government custody. Sherif Mohie Eddin of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said the total number recently imprisoned is “not less than 1,000,” adding to the tens of thousands of journalists, religious and protest leaders, and other political detainees already held in Egyptian prisons.

Despite the climate of fear, some protesters braved the streets on Monday to honor the legacy of January 25 and call attention to the ongoing violence and suppression.

Al Jazeera reports:

Egyptians demonstrated against the military-led government in Alexandria’s Al-Qaed Ibrahim Square, which was the site of 2011 protests, as well as in Nasr City and Shubra district in the capital, Cairo.

Two Egyptians were shot dead by police in an alleged “exchange of gunfire” in Cairo’s October 6 district.  Security forces also used gas bombs to disperse protesters in Cairo’s eastern al-Matareya district as well as in Kafr Sheikh.

Residents reported that the build-up of security forces, along with recent crackdowns on activists and arbitrary raids on homes, reflected the government’s resolve to prevent marking the anniversary with popular demonstrations similar to those in 2011.

As the New York Times‘ Kareem Fahim notes, “the scale of the clampdown has baffled many people here, as has the level of official alarm, from a government that has faced no challenge from large-scale protests in years. In word and deed, Mr. Sisi and other officials have treated even the possibility of demonstrations on the anniversary as a grave threat to the nation.”

Activists say that state repression today is even worse than under Mubarak.

“This is without doubt the worst we’ve ever seen,” Hossam Bahgat, an investigative reporter who was recently detained by Egypt’s military intelligence agency, told theGuardian ahead of the anniversary.

“The level of repression now is significantly higher than it was under the Mubarak regime, and people from older generations say it is worse than even the worst periods of the 1950s and 1960s [under the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser].”

“Five years after euphoric crowds celebrated the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, the hopes that the ‘25 January Revolution’ would herald a new era of reforms and respect for human rights have been truly shattered. Egyptians have been made to watch as their country reverts back to a police state,”

said Said Boumedouha, Amnesty International’s deputy Middle East and North Africa programme director.

“Peaceful protesters, politicians and journalists have borne the brunt of a ruthless campaign against legitimate dissent by the government and state security forces,” Boumedouha continued. “Tens of thousands have been arrested and the country’s prisons are now overflowing, with widespread reports of torture and hundreds held without charge or trial.”

Without a trace of irony, in a televised speech on Sunday, al-Sisi praised the “noble principles” of those whose lives were lost during the Tahrir Square uprisings, adding:

“Egypt today is not the Egypt of yesterday. We are building together a modern, developed and civilian state that upholds the values of democracy and freedom. Democratic experiences don’t mature overnight, but rather through a continuing and accumulative process.”

The five year anniversary comes amid intensifying war in the Middle East, which has enabled the United States and other western governments to continue to support Egypt as a key ally—with aid, arms, and military “cooperation”—despite the widespread and documented human rights abuses.

For many who helped bring the revolution about, the anniversary marks a moment of reflection.

Abdel Rahman Mansour, one of the activists who helped spur the 2011 uprising, argued Monday that Egyptians are engaging in a “silent protest” against the current regime.

“I think the collective psyche of the Egyptian people is waiting for a moment, an opportunity, because you cannot achieve success twice with the same tools, and I think this is a good sign,” Mansour said.

He continued:

The low turnout in the last parliamentary elections is a reflection of people’s understanding of what type of regime they are living under.  The low turnout was a silent protest on the part of the Egyptian people against the regime. When they see that the moment is ripe to defeat the police again, they will take to the streets to do so. January 25 came about because people believed in their ability to achieve victory. This moment is yet to come, and waiting for it is not a mistake. The onus is on the ordinary people who can make meaningful change.

Tahrir Square protester Omar Robert Hamilton in a column Monday suggests that the memory of the revolution will hopefully sustain another someday.

“What else do we have left to fight with? That memory of possibility is all we have,” he states. “Maybe, for now, it is enough. We know that it still scares them: the idea of revolution. January 25th will always carry a symbolic and emotional potency, and the state has shown its nervousness.”

“The question is what might come next,” Hamilton continues.

“The possibilities line up before us: decades of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi overseeing a country slowly crumbling into the sea. A series of intra-military coups. More uprisings of the hungry and dispossessed. A slow democratisation process played out between competing elites. State collapse and an Islamic State insurgency. An acceleration in climate change, the flooding of the Nile Delta and widespread famine.

“Or, something different, something none of us can see yet,” he concludes. “I can’t say that I’m optimistic. But I’m not dead and I’m not in prison so I have no right to say it’s all over.”

Let’s say you lend your brother-in-law, Pauli, 5,000-bucks so he can get his fledgling construction business off-the-ground.  Then, you find out a week later that ‘good-old Pauli’ has shot the wad playing the horses at Long-acres and buying cocktails for his loafer-friends at Matt’s Mad Dog tavern?  Would you feel like you’d been ripped off?

Sure you would. But when some slick corporate fraudster pulls the same scam, no one even raises an eyebrow.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about the way that corporate bosses are allowed to take the hard-earned money from Mom and Pop investors and divide it among their freeloading shareholder friends via stock buybacks. You see, buybacks have been driving the market higher for the better part of six years, and every year the amount of cash diverted into this swindle gets bigger and bigger. According to Research Affiliates:

“In 2013, S&P 500 companies….spent $521 billion on buybacks. In 2014 that amount rose to $634 billion and moved higher still to $696 billion when total repurchases by all publicly traded companies in the U.S. market are included.”  (“Are Buybacks an Oasis or a Mirage?“, Research Affiliates)

And, here’s more from an older article at the Wall Street Journal:

“Last year, the corporations in the Russell 3000, a broad U.S. stock index, repurchased $567.6 billion worth of their own shares—a 21% increase over 2012, calculates Rob Leiphart, an analyst at Birinyi Associates, a research firm in Westport, Conn. That brings total buybacks since the beginning of 2005 to $4.21 trillion—or nearly one-fifth of the total value of all U.S. stocks today.” (“Will Stock Buybacks Bite Back?“, Wall Street Journal)

Whatever the exact figure may be, we’re talking serious money here, something in the neighborhood of a half trillion dollars per year. And it’s all being used for the sole purpose of jacking stock price so voracious CEOs and their shareholders can make a killing. Not one dime of this money is going into expanding operations, hiring more employees, Research and Development or improving productivity.  The lone objective of this farce is to inflate stock prices to Hindenburg proportions in order to line the pockets of filthy-rich one percenters.

And that’s just the half of it. The part I’ve left out is the part about how much debt these corporations are loading onto their balance sheets in order to feather their own nests. Take a look at this from Bloomberg:

“It’s official, using proceeds from debt sales to send cash to stockholders has never been more popular.

Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies listed buybacks or dividends among the use of proceeds in $58 billion of bond deals in the past three months, the most on record, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Sundial Capital Research Inc. More than $460 billion in repurchases were announced during the first five months of 2015, on pace to top last year’s record.”  (“Debt Gone Wild” – Debt Funded Stock Buybacks Soar“, Advisor Perspectives)

$58 billion here, $58 billion there. Pretty soon you’re talking real money.

So let’s do the math: $58 billion in three months translates into $232 billion per year, which means that a heckuva a lot of the money that’s being given back to shareholders is being borrowed from–you guessed it– Mom and Pop, the suckers who’ll be left holding the bag when the whole system goes bust again in the not-too-distant future.

And why have Mom and Pop been buying all these crappy corporate bonds that are just adding to executive compensation instead of building stronger companies for a brighter future??

Because of the damn Fed, that’s why.  The Fed has been holding rates underwater for seven years to keep the money flowing to Wall Street and to force smalltime investors (who have been trying to scrape by on their withering retirements) to look for a higher return on their savings then they’re getting on their risk-free fixed-income investments. In other words, the Fed has put a gun to their heads and forced them back into the Wall Street sharktank.

It’s all a question of incentives, right? If you keep rates low enough, long enough, “they will come”….and get fleeced again for that matter. Which is exactly the way the system is designed to work. Low rates mean more pigs to the slaughter. Period. Now check this out from theFiscal Times: 

“Not only are investors willing to buy more debt, they’re also attaching fewer conditions. Rating service Moody’s tracks covenant quality, essentially a measure of standards that bond issuers must meet, and reported Thursday that the latest reading remains near record highs, which indicates weak restrictions.”

(“Why Corporate Debt Is Hitting Record Levels“, The Fiscal Times)

“Weak restrictions”, you say?

Well, that’s just great.

So, Mom and Pop got into bonds thinking, “I don’t trust stocks after the last crash, so I’ll load up on bonds cuz they’re safer”, right?  Only now they see they’ve been led into a minefield where they might not get out in one piece. Some bond funds have already suspended redemptions, which means investors can’t withdraw their money.  I’m dead serious.  It’s like the Hotel California, “You can check out, but you can’t leave.” Not with your money at least. So you can kiss that retirement “Goodbye”  and start filling out that job app for Taco Time now before the spot is taken by some other struggling graybeard.

Don’t you think companies should have to sign an oath to investors that they will NOT use their investment to divvy up among their shareholders?  I do. And, besides, if a CEO doesn’t have a plan for reinvesting profits in his own business, then he shouldn’t be the CEO, right?

No one buys a bond thinking  some corporate jerkoff is going to use the money to goose stock prices. That’s just pulling the wool over people’s eyes. Like I said earlier, no one in their right mind is going to lend brother-in-law Pauli 5K so he can blow it at the races or the tavern. Nor are they going to hand over their paltry retirement-savings to some shifty CEO who wants to use it to buy a bigger yacht or install a fountain at his palatial vacation retreat in the Hamptons.  That’s not why people invest money.

This whole stock buyback-thing shouldn’t even be an issue, mainly because we used to have rules that prohibited the practice before the Deregulator in Chief, Ronald Reagan, took office and everything went to hell in a handbasket. Check it out:

 “Prior to the Reagan era, executives avoided buybacks due to fears that they would be prosecuted for market manipulation. But under SEC Rule 10b-18, adopted in 1982, companies receive a “safe harbor” from market manipulation liability on stock buybacks if they adhere to four limitations.” (“SEC Admits It’s Not Monitoring Stock Buybacks to Prevent Market Manipulation“, Dave Dayen, Intercept)

Now, anything goes and the sky’s the limit.  Wall Street basically tells its lackey Congressmen what they want and, BAM, Congress changes the rules like that.  That’s basically how the system works.

As a result, Big Business keeps piling on more and more debt, creating more and more instability, and paving the way for another agonizing financial crisis.

Yes, I realize you’ve all heard that nonsense about “the strength of US corporations” and their “fortress balance sheets”  that are bulging with $2 trillion in excess cash. Sorry to break the news to you, but it’s all baloney. Take a look at this from Bloomberg:

“Corporate leverage is now at its highest level in a decade, according to a new analysis from Goldman Sachs….

Years of low interest rates and eager investors have encouraged Corporate America to go on a shopping spree. On its list are share buybacks and dividend hikes to reward equity investors, as well as a series of merger and acquisition deals, all funded through a generous bond market. Since cash flow has not kept up with the boom in bond sales, the splurge has left Corporate America with its highest debt load in about 10 years, according to the bank…..

“The spectre of rising rates, potential global disinflation (dare we say ‘deflation’?), declining operating profits and wider credit spreads continues to create near-term consternation for weak balance sheet stocks,” the analysts conclude.” (“Goldman Sachs Says Corporate America Has Quietly Re-levered“, Bloomberg)

Talk about understatement! Corporate America didn’t go on a “shopping spree”.  That’s ridiculous. They went on a six year debt-bender offloading zillions in bonds to credulous investors who’ll probably never see their money again. There’s no reason to dignify that sort of chicanery as a “shopping spree.”

And reread that last paragraph slowly and try to savor what the author is really saying. He’s saying that everything has changed; the Fed is taking its foot off the gas, earnings are shrinking, credit is tightening and the whole rickety infrastructure that keeps this Ponzi house of cards upright is about to collapse. Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon.

Which brings us to our final point, which is that there’s been no recovery. It’s all a big fraud. There was no restructuring of debt, no rebuilding of household wealth, no rebound in wages, incomes or employment. (excluding shitty-paying, part-time, service-sector jobs.)  The whole lie has been predicated on a failed monetary policy that has created gigantic, system-devouring asset bubbles in stocks, bonds, corporate debt, derivatives, ETFs, REITs… you-name-it, it’s inflated. The Fed has created the same mess it created last time, and the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that….

Anyway, you get the picture. What was that saying about “Old dogs and new tricks”?

That goes double for the Fed.

Introducción

A finales del siglo XIX, Estados Unidos había terminado la conquista del territorio continental con la última batalla de Wounded Knee de 1890, que desembocó en otra masacre de los indios Dakota y en otra violación del tratado de paz firmado con ese pueblo. En pleno auge industrial, la nueva potencia estadounidense se encontraba con un excedente de capitales y de productos. Washington empezó entonces a buscar nuevos mercados y organizó del 2 de octubre de 1889 al 19 de abril de 1890 la primera Conferencia Internacional Americana, que agrupó a los representantes de las naciones del continente. El objetivo era aumentar el comercio de Estados Unidos con el resto de América Latina, cuyos intercambios se realizaban sobre todo con Europa, por razones históricas evidentes, y particularmente con Inglaterra, gran potencia económica de la época. Para ello, Washington también deseaba crear una unión aduanera, establecer una red de comunicación más eficiente entre los principales puertos del continente, adoptar una moneda común basada en el patrón plata, uniformar el sistema de pesos y medidas, ajustar los criterios de la propiedad intelectual e instaurar un sistema de arbitraje internacional para solucionar los conflictos entre los países americanos.

Unos meses más tarde, del 7 de enero al 8 de abril de 1891, la Comisión Monetaria Internacional se reunió en Washington para echar las bases de una unión panamericana. Estados Unidos deseaba asentar su hegemonía económica y comercial, y por consiguiente política, en el continente e imponer la plata como moneda de cambio. Como cónsul de la República de Uruguay, José Martí participó activamente en las ocho sesiones de debate y desarrolló una intensa reflexión en las diferentes comisiones. Se afanó por informar a la opinión pública continental de los peligros de una alianza tan estrecha con Estados Unidos e intentó convencer a sus colegas latinoamericanos de que no cedieran a las propuestas de Washington, con el fin de preservar la independencia y la soberanía de América Latina.

Entre el 28 de septiembre de 1889 y el 31 de agosto de 1890, redactó once crónicas detalladas, diez para el diario argentino La Nación, uno de los más importantes de América Latina, y una para el periódico mexicano El Partido Liberal. También intercambió tres cartas al respecto con su amigo Gonzalo de Quesada entre el 29 de octubre de 1889 y febrero de 1891 y escribió un largo informe que se publicó en La Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York en mayo de 1891.

En esos escritos de vocación pedagógica, José Martí alerta a América Latina sobre los peligros de una alianza desequilibrada con Estados Unidos y expresa su pensamiento antiimperialista. Los designios hegemónicos de Washington, que empezaba a emerger como principal potencia mundial, eran patentes. Entonces era vital para las naciones hispanoamericanas presentar un frente unido ante esa amenaza.

1.     Apertura del Congreso de Washington

En su primer artículo titulado “El Congreso de Washington”, publicado el 28 de septiembre de 1889 en el diario La Nación, José Martí narra sus primeras impresiones sobre la cumbre panamericana.[1] Aunque la mayoría de las naciones latinoamericanas están presentes, 17 en total, faltan varios países. Así, a causa de un diferendo de orden territorial con Estados Unidos, Haití declinó temporalmente la invitación por las pretensiones de Washington sobre la península de San Nicolás, sitio estratégico en el extremo oeste de la isla considerado el “Gibraltar del Caribe”. El presidente haitiano Hippolyte, en pleno conflicto fratricida, dio prueba de firmeza y se negó a ceder dicho territorio al Presidente Benjamín Harrison, que deseaba construir allí una base naval. Del mismo modo la República Dominicana, también en conflicto con Estados Unidos a propósito de la Bahía de Samaná de la cual deseaba apoderarse, no asistió a la Conferencia Internacional y hubo represalias económicas por parte de Washington. Otros países, como Paraguay, estaban ausentes, sin mencionar a Cuba y Puerto Rico, entonces colonias españolas.

Antes del inicio de las sesiones de noviembre, Estados Unidos organizó un viaje de un mes a través del país para mostrar a los huéspedes la “grandeza y esplendidez de las ciudades” y las “industrias”. El objetivo era convencer a América Latina para que fuese el principal socio comercial de Estados Unidos aunque sus productos eran “más caro[s], sin ser en todo mejor[es]”. Martí denuncia las condiciones que desea imponer Washington a los pueblos del Sur y advierte a sus compatriotas de la trampa de una alianza comercial que no se basaría en la reciprocidad, el respeto mutuo y la no injerencia en los asuntos de las naciones hispanoamericanas. Así, para ser socio comercial del vecino del Norte, los países latinoamericanos tienen que someter su política exterior comercial o diplomática a la voluntad de Estados Unidos y por lo tanto renunciar a su independencia y a su soberanía. Tienen que comprometerse “a no recibir ayuda ni aceptar tratos de ningún otro pueblo del mundo”.[2]

Washington impondría ese tipo de condiciones a Cuba en 1901. Así, tras la intervención militar estadounidense en la Guerra de Independencia de Cuba en 1898, los cubanos, contra su voluntad, tuvieron que integrar la enmienda Platt a la nueva Constitución. Además de autorizar la intervención militar de Estados Unidos en los asuntos internos cubanos, ese apéndice de ocho puntos, redactado por el senador Orville H. Platt, estipulaba, entre otros, que La Habana no podía establecer relaciones económicas, comerciales, financieras o diplomáticas con otras naciones sin el consentimiento de la Casa Blanca.[3]

Desde el inicio, ese Congreso estaba condenado al fracaso, según Martí, pues sólo era la “bandera de la campaña presidencial” estadounidense y simbolizaba la lucha entre el presidente saliente Benjamín Harrison (1889-1893) y su sucesor Groover Cleveland (1893-1897). No obstante, constituirá “el recuento del honor, en que se vea quienes defienden con energía y mesura la independencia de la América española, donde está el equilibrio del mundo”.[4]

Los embajadores de las naciones latinoamericanas son representativos de todas las actitudes y todas las corrientes ideológicas, ilustrando así la falta de unidad mencionada por Martí. El espectro es amplio. Por una parte, se encuentra el lacayo “con los labios fríos como dos monedas de oro” que considera a Estados Unidos como su patria y piensa que Washington “va a poner en la riqueza y en la libertad a los pueblos que no la saben conquistar por sí propios”. Por otra parte, están “los de alma americana”, como el embajador de Honduras Jerónimo Zelaya, que celebra con “elocuente pasión beldad o fuerza su patria centroamericana”. Favorable a la unión de las naciones latinoamericanas, “es de los que quieren resucitar de la tumba de Morazán a Centroamérica”. Martí se refiere al general José Francisco Morazán Quesada, Presidente de la República de Honduras de 1827 a 1830, de Guatemala en 1829, de la República Federal de América Central de 1830 a 1834 y de 1835 a 1839, del Salvador en 1839 y 1840 y de Costa Rica en 1840. Líder del Movimiento liberal, partidario de la integración regional, Morazán fue una importante figura de la vida política centroamericana del siglo XIX y sigue siendo un símbolo de la voluntad de emancipación de los pueblos[5].

Martí no rechaza el comercio ni el mundo de los negocios. Sólo exige que sea “libre y natural”, que favorezca a todos los actores y que no sirva de herramienta para encadenar a los pueblos y saquear los recursos del continente. “La mano extranjera” no ha de atar a los pueblos del Sur con “cemento de espinas”.[6]

La mirada condescendiente y despectiva de la prensa estadounidense sobre América Latina, sea el Mail and Express de Nueva York, el Herald, el Tribune o el Sun, convencida de que “ha llegado la hora de hacer sentir [su] influencia en América”, es emblemática de la mentalidad del Congreso. No se trata de un intercambio o un diálogo basado en el entendimiento cordial y el respeto mutuo. Al revés, Washington está presente para aleccionar a América Latina, cuyo papel se limitará a aprobar, aplaudir y mostrarse reverenciosa. El cónsul de la República de Uruguay enumera los golpes bajos que da Estados Unidos. El secretario de Estado Blaine se impuso como Presidente del Congreso sin ser siquiera miembro del mismo. En vano protestó Vargas, el representante chileno: Hubo “esgrima, intriga, calumnia[7]”.

2.     La resistencia necesaria

A pesar de su deber de reserva, al que debe someterse como diplomático, José Martí no vacila en expresar claramente sus temores y en alertar a sus compatriotas. Fiel a su adagio según el cual “la palabra no es para encubrir la verdad, sino para decirla”, el cubano siente que debe informar a los pueblos del Sur:

Jamás hubo en América, de la Independencia acá, asunto que requiera más sensatez, ni obligue a más vigilancia, ni pida examen más claro y minucioso, que el convite que los Estados Unidos potentes, repletos de productos invendibles, y determinados a extender sus dominios en América, hacen a las naciones americanas de menos poder, ligadas por el comercio libre y útil con los pueblos europeos, para ajustar una liga contra Europa, y cerrar tratos con el resto del mundo. De la tiranía de España supo salvarse la América española; y ahora, después de ver con ojos judiciales los antecedentes, causas y factores del convite, urge decir, porque es la verdad, que ha llegado para la América española la hora de declarar su segunda independencia[8].

Martí llama a la vigilancia y la prevención. No hay que callar los peligros que amenazan al continente: “Lo primero en política, es aclarar y prever”. Frente a las ambiciones imperialistas de Washington hace falta “una respuesta unánime y viril”. Sin unión, América Latina caerá en la sumisión que le reserva el “Norte revuelto y brutal”. Martí no descarta la posible traición de “repúblicas venales o débiles” sometidas a Estados Unidos. Hace falta resistir a “la política secular y confesa de predominio de un vecino pujante y ambicioso” que ha extendido su influencia en todo el continente y quiere obligarlo “a comprar lo que no puede vender” y a “cortar por la intimidación sus tratos con el resto del universo, como en Colombia”. Martí alude aquí al Tratado Mallarino-Bidlack de 1846 entre la República de Nueva Granada y Estados Unidos que obligó a Bogotá a ceder el uso del canal de Panamá a Washington[9].

Firme defensor de los oprimidos, Martí se siente afligido por la realidad de la segregación racial que afecta a Estados Unidos y brinda su testimonio en una crónica publicada en noviembre de 1889. Es golpeado por el incesante ballet de los hombres de color que están al servicio de los delegados: “Los negros van y vienen, diez para cada huésped, cepillo en mano”.[10] Según él, América Latina no debe esperar nada de una nación que condena a semejante ostracismo a una parte de sus hijos y “que no vio crimen en dejar a una masa de hombres, so pretexto de la ignorancia en que la mantenían, bajo la esclavitud”.[11]

Martí recuerda la realidad histórica. Durante la epopeya independentista de América Latina, los pueblos emancipados conquistaron su libertad por sus propios esfuerzos, sin el concurso del Vecino del Norte. Aún más, Washington “exigió que los ejércitos del Sur abandonasen su proyecto de ir a redimir las islas americanas del golfo de la servidumbre de una monarquía europea”. El Apóstol alude aquí al proyecto de Gran Colombia y México de 1824 de montar una expedición bajo el liderazgo de Simón Bolívar para liberar a Cuba y Puerto Rico. Estados Unidos, con sus proyectos anexionistas para los dos archipiélagos, los cuales deseaba integrar a su Unión, había expresado con vehemencia su oposición a tal iniciativa[12].

“Acababan de unirse, con no menor dificultad que las colonias híbridas del Sur, los trece Estados del Norte y ya prohibían que se fortaleciese, como se hubiera fortalecido y puede fortalecerse aún, la unión necesaria de los pueblos meridionales, la unión posible de objeto y espíritu, con la independencia de las islas que la naturaleza les ha puesto de pórtico y guarda”. América Latina no puede confiar en una potencia que se opone a la libertad de todos los pueblos del Sur y que usurpó a México más de la mitad de su territorio. De Thomas Jefferson a John Quincy Adams, pasando por Clay o Webster, todos los expansionistas declararon su voluntad de someter al continente. Sería entonces peligroso vincular su suerte con la de “un pueblo rapaz de raíz, criado en la esperanza y certidumbre de la posesión del continente”.[13]

Estados Unidos se caracteriza por “su ambición de pueblo universal”, su “producción falsa” que incrementa sin cesar “para que no decaigan su influjo y su fausto”. Martí exhorta a América Latina a que no se deje sumergir por esa dominación y se oponga a esa forma de opresión: “Urge ponerle cuantos frenos se puedan fraguar, con el pudor de las ideas […] y la declaración de la verdad”. Hay una razón para ello: “La simpatía por los pueblos libres dura hasta que hacen traición a la libertad; o ponen en riesgo la de nuestra patria”.[14]

El discurso inaugural de Blaine estuvo marcado por la condescendencia “imperial”, según Martí. El Maestro recuerda los crímenes que cometió el secretario de Estado en América Latina, particularmente en Chile y en Perú, “quien perturbaba y debilitaba a los vencidos, con promesas que no les había de cumplir”. Ese Congreso americano que organiza Washington sólo es una cortina de humo detrás de la cual se disimulan el capital y los intereses de las multinacionales, que desean apoderarse de las riquezas del continente, controlar el comercio y encontrar nuevos mercados, con la complicidad de los políticos locales corruptos. Martí recuerda un lema de la época que repetía el mundo de los negocios respecto a la construcción de un canal en América Central: “O por Panamá, o por Nicaragua, o por los dos, porque los dos serán nuestros”.[15]

Este Congreso marca “el planteamiento desembozado de la era del predominio de los Estados Unidos sobre los pueblos de la América”, y no hay que fiarse de “la aparente mansedumbre de la convocatoria” que no es más que una “primera tentativa de dominio”. Esta reunión no puede disociarse de los planes imperiales de la Casa Blanca que desea aplastar a América Latina y ello se ve “en el exceso impropio de sus pretensiones”. Hay una realidad innegable: “Los pueblos más débiles e infelices de América […] son, fuera de México, tierra de fuerza original, los pueblos más cercanos a los Estados Unidos”. José Martí piensa claramente en la suerte de su patria, aún bajo el yugo del colonialismo español, que no deja de suscitar las apetencias de Washington.[16]

Martí llama a la reflexión. ¿Cuáles son los verdaderos intereses de los pueblos de Bolívar? Las dos Américas son distintas. ¿Acaso no valdría establecer las relaciones sobre bases libres “como amigas naturales”? Sería peligroso someterse “a un pueblo de intereses distintos, composición híbrida y problemas pavorosos, resuelto a entrar, antes de tener arreglada su casa, en desafío arrogante, y acaso pueril, con el mundo”. Los pueblos de América Latina no deben “abdicar su soberanía” en favor de una potencia que “no les ayudó jamás”. Martí exhorta a sus compatriotas a no firmar un pacto con el diablo. Al revés, hace falta “vivir en la salud de la verdad, sin alianzas innecesarias con un pueblo agresivo”, “un pueblo que comienza a mirar como privilegio suyo la libertad, que es aspiración universal y perenne del hombre, y a invocarla para privar a los pueblos de ella”.[17]

3.     El arbitraje

Para José Martí, conviene no fiarse de las apariencias exteriores, no “ver las cosas en la superficie”, sino al contrario, analizar cuidadosamente la realidad.[18] En apariencia, los objetivos buscados por el Congreso son nobles, sea la cuestión de la unión aduanera, la creación de una red de comunicación eficiente entre los puertos americanos, la adopción de una moneda común, la uniformidad del sistema de pesos y medidas, la extradición de criminales o el arbitraje de los diferendos.

Pero la realidad es otra y un abismo separa la retórica de Estados Unidos y su acción. Martí cita como ejemplo la actuación de Washington en Haití que, en vez de intervenir como mediador pacífico en plena guerra civil, eligió “proveer de armas al bando que le ha ofrecido cederle la península de San Nicolás, para echar del país al gobierno legítimo, que no se la quiso ceder”. El diplomático Martí deja de lado las conveniencias para expresar su pensamiento. Conviene desconfiar de ese pueblo que se autoproclama rey, en nombre de una “moralidad geográfica” y que intenta apoderarse de la isla de Cuba. “¿Y han de poner sus negocios los pueblos de América en manos de su único enemigo?”, pregunta Martí. Para él, la respuesta es evidente. América Latina debe resistir, unirse “y merecer definitivamente el crédito y respeto de naciones”.[19]

No hay diferencias entre Demócratas y Republicanos. En el caso de Haití, los Demócratas, a pesar de su fama de moderados, “iniciaron la misma política de conquista que los Republicanos”. Martí recuerda que los Demócratas de Thomas Jefferson lanzaron la política de expansión con la adquisición de la Luisiana (2 millones de km²) en 1803, vendida por Francia por la irrisoria suma de 15 millones de dólares.[20]

América Latina no puede aliarse conscientemente con una nación que intenta transformar a Haití y la República Dominicana en protectorados, que se obsesiona por adueñarse de Cuba para integrarla en su seno, que se apoderó de las riquezas de América Central, que quiere tomar el control de Nicaragua para construir allí un canal, que fomenta la discordia entre países hermanos (México, Costa Rica, Colombia) y que se extendió en Alaska desde 1867, comprada a Rusia.

Martí fustiga las complicidades locales en referencia a “un pretendiente a la presidencia en Costa Rica, que prefiere a la unión de Centroamérica la anexión a los Estados Unidos”. El Maestro alerta contra “la admiración ciega, por pasión de novicio o por falta de estudio” por Estados Unidos, pues “es la fuerza mayor” sobre la cual cuenta Washington para imponer su dominio. “La admiración justa por la prosperidad de los hombres liberales y enérgicos” no puede justificar los crímenes y los atentados contra la libertad de los demás pueblos. “¿O son los pueblos de América estatuas de ceguedad” incapaces de ver las maniobras del poderoso vecino? “¿A qué ir de aliados, en lo mejor de la juventud, en la batalla que los Estados Unidos se preparan a librar con el resto del mundo?”. Conviene resistir a la empresa hegemónica de Estados Unidos en todo el continente y oponerle una “política de la dignidad”.[21]

En su reflexión del 31 de marzo de 1890 en el diario La Nación, José Martí se congratula de la unión que mostraron los delegados latinoamericanos frente a las pretensiones de Estados Unidos, particularmente sobre la cuestión del arbitraje, en la cual Washington deseaba imponer su tutela. Los intentos de Blaine de conseguir el apoyo de algunas naciones fracasaron y la condescendencia y la prepotencia de la delegación estadounidense irritaron fuertemente a los embajadores del Sur.[22] La prensa estadounidense reconoció la prevalencia latinoamericana subrayando “la victoria patente y completa del pensamiento hispanoamericano sobre arbitraje, marcadamente opuesto al pensamiento de los Estados Unidos”.[23]

Martí indica a sus compatriotas la vía a seguir: “Los pueblos castellanos de América han de volverse a juntar pronto […]. El corazón se lo pide”. La expresión de resistencia frente a los intentos de división que orquestó Washington conforta a Martí en su misión de precursor y de pedagogo. “Vale más resguardarse juntos de los peligros de afuera, y unirse antes de que el peligro exceda a la capacidad de sujetarlo”.[24] Los esfuerzos tuvieron éxito y Martí relata la victoria de los pueblos del Sur: “La unión de los pueblos cautos y decorosos de Hispanoamérica, derrotó el plan norteamericano de arbitraje continental y compulsorio sobre las repúblicas de América, con tribunal continuo e inapelable residente en Washington”.[25]

Martí se felicita de la resistencia de las naciones latinoamericanas: “La conferencia de naciones pudo ser, a valer los pueblos de América menos de lo que valen, la sumisión humillante y definitiva de una familia de repúblicas libres […] a un poder temible e indiferente, de apetitos gigantescos y objetos distintos. Pero ha sido, ya por el clamor del corazón, ya por el aviso del juicio […] la antesala de una gran concordia”. Las ambiciones de las dos Américas son disímiles. Mientras que la América sajona “quiere ponerse sobre el mundo”, América Latina “le quiere abrir los brazos”.[26]

4.     La unión aduanera

Para eliminar a Inglaterra, su rival comercial, e imponer su dominio en el continente, Estados Unidos lanzó la idea de una unión aduanera panamericana. José Martí expresó inmediatamente su oposición al proyecto. En efecto, la unión aduanera tenía como objetivo inundar a América Latina de excedentes de producción de Estados Unidos y arruinaría las economías locales. El único objetivo que buscaba el poderoso vecino era encontrar “acomodo a los sobrantes” y deseaba que sus “vecinos se priv[as]en de todo, o de casi todo”, particularmente de las rentas aduaneras en su propio beneficio.[27]

Martí señala que sólo se pide sacrificios a América Latina a la que se intimida para que baje sus aranceles mientras Washington los aumenta para los productos de América Latina como la lana suramericana, el cobre chileno, el plomo mexicano o el azúcar cubano. Así, Estados Unidos “exige además la sumisión” imponiendo sus productos y excluyendo los del Sur. Se requiere a los países de América Latina que liberalicen su comercio cuando la Casa Blanca impone medidas proteccionistas para preservar su producción[28] –impuestos de un 60% a la lana argentina– y esa ausencia de reciprocidad por parte de los Estados Unidos “pletóricos y desdeñosos” es inaceptable.[29]

Según Martí, Washington hace un regalo envenenado a América Latina. La unión comercial que propone el poderoso vecino del Norte es un mal negocio. Está destinada a someter a las naciones del Sur, atando sus economías a la de Estados Unidos, privándolas de todo margen de maniobra y reduciendo singularmente su independencia económica. El continente no debe limitarse al papel de simple suministrador de materias primas baratas y constituir un mercado seguro para los productos manufacturados estadounidenses. Resulta vital preservar las relaciones comerciales, basadas en la reciprocidad y el beneficio mutuo, con Europa y el resto del mundo. En caso contrario, al atar su suerte a la de la economía estadounidense, América Latina volverá a la esclavitud y la dependencia.

La unión aduanera y la eliminación eventual de las barreras al comercio y de los impuestos sobre las importaciones privarían los países latinoamericanos de una importante fuente de ingresos y de divisas necesarias para la adquisición de bienes y servicios y el desarrollo nacional. Del mismo modo, la penetración masiva de productos estadounidenses arruinaría la industria local, que no podría resistir a la competencia desleal de las mercancías importadas. Por otra parte, semejante unión ocasionaría la llegada masiva de capitales extranjeros que se apoderarían de todos los sectores de la economía nacional.

Washington no conseguiría imponer la unión aduanera pero lograría establecer años más tarde con América Latina los famosos tratados de reciprocidad, tan defendidos por Blaine, que materializarían los temores de José Martí y los cuales Cuba sufriría a partir de 1903. Luego los tratados de libre cambio firmados de modo bilateral entre Estados Unidos y las naciones latinoamericanas inaugurarían la era del neocolonialismo estadounidense y tendrían consecuencias catastróficas para las economías del Nuevo Mundo. La entrada en vigor de la ALENA en 1994 entre Canadá, Estados Unidos y México sería emblemática. La economía mexicana, sea el sector agrícola, industrial o de los servicios, ha sido totalmente devastada y no ha podido resistir a la competencia de los productos estadounidenses. Las consecuencias sociales han sido trágicas con el aumento del desempleo, la precariedad y la pobreza.

Al respecto, Martí recordaría que el deber de todo hombre libre es ubicarse al lado de los marginados, los aplastados y los humillados: “¡Malhaya el que teme verse solo, o acompañado de los humildes, cuando tiene una idea noble que defender, y los de cuenta de banco y botín de charol están del lado de los que la sofocan o abandonan!”[30] Martí se refería al proyecto de ley debatido en el Senado cuyo objetivo era deportar a las poblaciones negras de Estados Unidos a África o a América Latina y subraya la decadencia de la sociedad estadounidense: “convida a los norteamericanos negros a expatriarse, a salir de su patria para siempre, para que no tengan que tratarlos como hombres, y sentarse a su lado en los carros, los norteamericanos blancos”.[31]

5.     Prohibición de la guerra de conquista

Durante la sesión de abril de 1890, los países del Sur propusieron un proyecto de resolución que condenaba las guerras de conquista. Ésas “serían actos injustificables de violencia y despojo” y “la inseguridad del territorio nacional conduciría fatalmente al sistema ruinoso de la paz armada”. Entonces, “la conferencia acuerda resolver: Que la conquista quede eliminada para siempre del derecho público americano: Que las cesiones territoriales serán insanablemente nulas si fuesen hechas bajo la amenaza de la guerra o la presión de la fuerza armada: Que la nación que las hiciese, podrá siempre recurrir al arbitraje para invalidarlas: Que la renuncia del derecho de recurrir al arbitraje carecerá de valor y eficacia, cualesquiera que fuesen la época, circunstancias y condiciones en que hubiere sido hecha”.[32]

Sin sorpresa, la delegación estadounidense expresó su firme oposición a la adopción de la resolución, que contradecía sus designios expansionistas. Washington no dio explicaciones a los embajadores latinoamericanos. El senador Ingalls mostró más franqueza en una entrevista al diario World: “Dentro de poco todo el continente será nuestro, y luego todo el hemisferio”.[33]

Quintana, representante de Argentina y autor del proyecto, recibió las felicitaciones de todas las delegaciones por defender con vehemencia y pasión el derecho a la paz. Martí, “americano sin patria, hijo infeliz de una tierra que no ha sabido aún inspirar compasión a las repúblicas de que es centinela natural, y parte indispensable”, resultó conmovido por “aquel arrebato de nobleza”. Todas las delegaciones latinoamericanas, con la excepción de Chile que eligió la abstención, por su conquista de una parte de Bolivia, aprobaron la resolución. “¿Por qué los Estados Unidos son los únicos en oponerse?”, pregunta Martí.[34] La respuesta resulta evidente. En un último esfuerzo, Washington propuso limitar la vigencia de la resolución a veinte años, petición que las distintas delegaciones aceptaron en nombre del consenso, algo que lamentó el Maestro.

La historia mostraría rápidamente que Estados Unidos no respetaría ni siquiera ese compromiso de veinte años ya que menos de una década después se apoderaría por la fuerza de la isla de Cuba y de Puerto Rico durante su intervención en la Guerra de Independencia contra España.

6.     Un ineludible fracaso

El Congreso llegó a su término con una constatación de fracaso.[35] Los delegados latinoamericanos se dieron cuenta de que sólo se trataba de un “ardid electoral” en la lucha que oponía a los dos candidatos a la presidencia. José Martí se alegró de la lucidez de sus compatriotas. Ese encuentro permitió por lo menos que todos tomaran conciencia de los verdaderos objetivos de Washington y acercase a los pueblos. Así, los embajadores “vuelven a Centro América, los de los cinco países, más centroamericanos de lo que vinieron, porque al venir se veían de soslayo unos a otros, y ahora se van juntos como si comprendieran que este modo de andar les va mejor”.[36]

El desdén del Norte hacia las repúblicas latinoamericanas se expresó en la revista militar en la Casa Blanca antes del regreso de las delegaciones a sus respectivos países. Martí apuntó en su crónica del 5 de mayo de 1890 que no se autorizó a las esposas de los embajadores a entrar en el recinto presidencial. Fueron abandonadas “al fuego del sol en los carruajes descubiertos, ni les llevaron a los coches la limonada republicana, ni salió a recibir a sus huéspedes la esposa del Presidente, que miraba de atrás de una cortina, ni saludó el Presidente a las señoras”.[37]

7.     Intercambios epistolares con Gonzalo de Quesada

José Martí había previsto hacer del Congreso una tribuna a favor de la independencia de Cuba. Es lo que refleja el intercambio epistolar con su amigo Gonzalo de Quesada. En una carta del 29 de octubre de 1889, Martí hizo una constatación lúcida de los resultados del encuentro de Washington y no se hace ilusiones: “ésta del congreso, de donde nada práctico puede salir, a no ser lo que convenga a los intereses norteamericanos, que no son, por de contado, los nuestros”. Puso en guardia contra las artimañas tramadas por “el vecino codicioso”: “Creo, en redondo, peligroso para nuestra América o por lo menos inútil, el Congreso Internacional”.[38]

La única resolución aceptable para los patriotas sería una que garantizaría “a Cuba su absoluta independencia”. El principal opositor a semejante texto sería desde luego Estados Unidos que deseaba apoderarse de la Perla de las Antillas y sólo esperaba la descomposición de la isla: “Eso espera este país, y a eso debemos oponernos nosotros” pues “una vez en Cuba los Estados Unidos ¿quién los saca de ella?”[39]

En otra misiva, de diciembre de 1889, Martí denunció de modo profético el proyecto de intervención militar de Estados Unidos en Cuba, que se realizaría en 1898: “Sobre nuestra tierra, Gonzalo, hay otro plan más tenebroso que lo que hasta ahora conocemos y es el inicuo de forzar a la Isla, de precipitarla a la guerra para tener pretexto de intervenir en ella, y con el crédito de mediador y de garantizador, quedarse con ella. Cosa más cobarde no hay en los anales de los pueblos libres: Ni maldad más fría”.[40]

8.     Informe para La Revista Ilustrada

En mayo de 1891, en La Revista Ilustrada  de Nueva York, José Martí publicó un largo informe sobre la Conferencia Internacional y las conclusiones que adoptó la Comisión Monetaria Internacional que nació del primer encuentro. Martí recordó el génesis. En mayo de 1888, el Presidente de Estados Unidos convidó a todas las naciones de América Latina y al reino de Hawái a una Conferencia Internacional en Washington para establecer una moneda común basada en el patrón plata que tendría un “uso forzoso en las transacciones comerciales recíprocas de los ciudadanos de todos los Estados de América[41]”.

Desde 1873, el valor del metal plata se había depreciado de modo sustancial tras la decisión de Washington de suprimir el dólar plata. En vísperas de las elecciones presidenciales estadounidenses, los lobbies mineros presionaron a los dirigentes para revalorizar dicho metal. En abril de 1890, la Conferencia Internacional Monetaria crea una Comisión Monetaria encargada de estudiar las modalidades de la elaboración de esa moneda plata (cantidad, valor, relación entre los patrones oro/plata). En 1891, Estados Unidos se encontraba en plena lucha entre los lobbies del Oeste ligados al sector minero, favorables al bimetalismo, y los del Este que representaban al sector financiero vinculado al comercio, la industria y la banca, partidarios de la paridad dólar/oro. Washington propuso no obstante a la Comisión, que vino “a cumplir lo que se había recomendado”, estudiar las posibilidades durante las ocho sesiones de trabajo que se desarrollaron entre enero y abril de 1891.

Martí declaró su escepticismo, pues durante los debates de la Comisión, “lo uniforme no era allí la moneda, sino la duda”, para ilustrar la justificada desconfianza de los países del Sur. Si el proyecto era loable pues “La América ha de promover todo lo que acerque a los pueblos, y de abominar todo lo que los aparte”, la elaboración del bimetalismo no suscita la unanimidad entre las repúblicas latinoamericanas, a causa de la oposición de algunas potencias europeas que son importantes socios comerciales del Nuevo Mundo. Así Argentina, cuyo principal socio comercial era Inglaterra, favorable al monometalismo oro, se opuso al proyecto. Conviene recordar que hasta los años de 1920 Inglaterra era el principal inversionista en América Latina. Personalmente, Martí estaba favorable con tal de que se estableciera una relación fija entre el oro y la plata, que se controlara la producción para evitar una depreciación de la plata y que hubiera un consenso entre las naciones. Dado que no estaban reunidas dichas condiciones, no había llegado la hora de semejante unificación.

Por otra parte, Martí desconfiaba de las verdaderas intenciones de Washington. No había que fiarse de las apariencias pues “en la política, lo real es lo que no se ve”. Así, “a todo convite entre pueblos hay que buscarle las razones ocultas”. La unión sólo puede realizarse sobre bases de una comunidad de intereses y “los pueblos menores, que están aún en los vuelcos de la gestación, no pueden unirse sin peligro con los que buscan un remedio al exceso de productos de una población compacta y agresiva”. “En la vida común, las ideas y los hábitos han de ser comunes”. Ahora bien, todo separa las dos Américas y un cordero no puede aliarse a un cóndor sin peligro. ¿Cómo América Latina puede echar su suerte con la nación que “consumió la raza nativa, fomentó y vivió de la esclavitud de otra raza y redujo o robó los países vecinos?”

Martí se muestra implacable con Estados Unidos de quien fustiga los abusos, la condescendencia y la arrogancia: “Creen en la necesidad, en el derecho bárbaro, como único derecho: ‘esto será nuestro, porque lo necesitamos’. Creen en la superioridad incontrastable de ‘la raza anglosajona contra la raza latina’. Creen en la bajeza de la raza negra, que esclavizaron ayer y vejan hoy, y de la india, que exterminan”.

Mientras Estados Unidos muestre su ignorancia verificada sobre las realidades latinoamericanas, sólo sentirá desprecio para con los pueblos del Sur. Con tales condiciones, “¿pueden los Estados Unidos convidar a Hispanoamérica a una unión sincera y útil para Hispanoamérica? ¿Conviene a Hispanoamérica la unión política y económica con los Estados Unidos?” Para Martí, la respuesta es categóricamente negativa. Hay una razón para ello: “Quien dice unión económica, dice unión política. El pueblo que compra, manda. El pueblo que vende, sirve. Hay que equilibrar el comercio, para asegurar la libertad. El pueblo que quiere morir, vende a un solo pueblo, y el que quiere salvarse, vende a más de uno. El influjo excesivo de un país en el comercio de otro, se convierte en influjo político. […] Cuando un pueblo fuerte da de comer a otro, se hace servir de él”.

Por consiguiente, América Latina debe imperativamente emanciparse de la tutela comercial de Estados Unidos si no quiere encontrarse irremediablemente sumisa. Debe hacer alarde de una unión sagrada pues “lo primero que hace un pueblo para llegar a dominar a otro, es separarlo de los demás pueblos”. La dependencia, sea económica o comercial, es irreparablemente sinónimo de subordinación: “El pueblo que quiera ser libre, sea libre en negocios. Distribuya sus negocios entre países igualmente fuertes. Si ha de preferir a alguno, prefiera al que lo necesite menos, al que lo desdeñe menos”. De ningún modo puede ser “el Norte revuelto y brutal que los desprecia”. La cercanía geográfica no obliga para nada a una unión comercial, es decir a una unión política.

América debe preservar su relación comercial con Europa y diversificarla para no caer en la trampa de la dependencia del “vecino codicioso”. La unificación monetaria mediante el patrón plata es deseable si el objetivo es llegar a “la paz igual y culta” entre los pueblos, si es que “acerque a los hombres y les haga la vida más moral y llevadera”. Pero, de ninguna forma, debe ser una herramienta de dominación ni de guerra comercial contra Europa. Debe conseguir la unanimidad entre socios comerciales y no imponerse por la fuerza: “Si los países de Hispanoamérica venden principalmente, cuando no exclusivamente, sus frutos en Europa, y reciben de Europa empréstitos y créditos, ¿qué conveniencia puede haber en entrar, por un sistema que quiere violentar al europeo, en un sistema de moneda que no se recibiría, o se recibiría depreciada, en Europa?” Para Martí, el sistema debe servir el interés de la comunidad internacional y no sólo de los productores de plata estadounidenses.

Conclusión

Las dos conferencias que convocó Estados Unidos estuvieron condenadas al fracaso. Nada salió salvo la constitución formal de una Unión Internacional de Repúblicas Americanas. Las reflexiones de José Martí, intelectual infalible capaz de adivinar los peligros relacionados con una dependencia demasiado estrecha con Estados Unidos, sobre esas reuniones son emblemáticas de su pensamiento antiimperialista. Usando su talento pedagógico, su manifiesta lucidez y su capacidad de persuasión, el revolucionario incorruptible logró desvelar los planes maquiavélicos del “vecino codicioso” y consiguió una victoria política simbólica sobre Estados Unidos. Aunque actuó como representante de la República de Uruguay, no dejó de defender “los derechos patentes de [los] países americanos”.[42]

La historia ha dado razón al precursor de la unión continental y se justifican sus advertencias. Así hoy, las multinacionales estadounidenses controlan una gran parte del mercado mundial y ejercen una fuerte influencia en la vida política de muchos países de América Latina y del Tercer Mundo, e incluso de los países desarrollados. Esa innegable injerencia tiene una fuerte incidencia en la soberanía de las naciones del mundo. El capital financiero estadounidense está implicado en la inmensa mayoría de los golpes de Estado que derrocaron gobiernos democráticos, populares y reformistas en América Latina e impuso sangrientas y represivas dictaduras en el siglo XX.

Aunque Estados Unidos no logró imponer el patrón plata como moneda única a finales del siglo XIX, el fracaso sólo fue temporal y la futura victoria superó todas las esperanzas. En efecto, desde 1944 y los acuerdos de Bretton Woods, Washington logró imponer el dólar como moneda de referencia en el mercado mundial con una relación nominal con el oro. Así, la masa monetaria en circulación en el mundo se garantizaba con reservas en oro. Estados Unidos dibujó así el nuevo sistema financiero internacional que le permite una dominación total sobre el resto del mundo. La suspensión de la convertibilidad dólar/oro en 1971, a causa de la falta de reservas suficientes, confirmó la hegemonía estadounidense en el campo financiero y monetario, indiscutida hasta hoy a pesar de la emergencia de otras monedas como el euro o el yuan. Así, gracias a la imposición de su sistema monetario, Estados Unidos ejerce un control sobre las economías de los países del Sur y sanciona a las naciones díscolas, como lo ilustra el caso de Cuba hoy.

 Salim Lamrani

 

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

A major new report by the Washington-based Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS) has laid out detailed plans for the Pentagon’s preparations for war in Asia. The report, entitled “Asia-Pacific Rebalance 2025: Capabilities, Presence, and Partnerships,” examines the range of threats to US dominance in Asia, but there is no doubt that its chief preoccupation and target is China.

The CSIS document, released last week, has a semi-official status. It was commissioned by the US Department of Defence at the instigation of Congress under the 2015 National Defence Authorisation Act. The report is a follow-up to a similar CSIS study conducted for the Pentagon in 2012 following President Obama’s formal announcement of the “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia in November 2011.

Since 2012, last week’s report declares, “the international security environment has become significantly more complicated. China has accelerated the frequency of its coercive activities and the pace of its island building in the East and South China Seas.” After noting that US military interventions in Eastern Europe against Russia and in the Middle East have “competed with the Asia Pacific for attention and resources,” it stresses the importance of countering China. “Militarily, the Pacific Command has fully embraced the rebalance, but the [Chinese] anti-access challenge is worsening and China’s tolerance for risk has exceeded most expectations,” it states.

The very terms used in the report are designed to present China as an aggressive, expansionist power and obscure the dramatic US military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific over the past three years as part of the pivot. The phrase “China’s tolerance of risk” really means China’s failure to bow to sustained US pressure and provocations in the region and accept Washington’s demands.

The Pentagon’s overall strategy for war against China, known as AirSea Battle, involves massive air and missile strikes on the Chinese mainland aimed at destroying key military assets, bases and infrastructure, as well as disrupting the country’s communications, economy and political leadership. It also involves an economic blockade of the country by cutting off shipping lanes, particularly those bringing vital supplies of energy and raw materials from the Middle East and Africa via the Indian Ocean and South East Asia.

These operations are premised on US control of the air and seas near the Chinese mainland from US military bases in South Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia, as well as the ability to launch strikes from aircraft carriers and submarines. The report’s summary of the current US force posture in the Asia-Pacific underscores these aims:

“Current US capabilities resident or routinely deployed in the Asia-Pacific include power projection from carrier strike groups, strategic bombers, and guided-missile submarines; ballistic missile defence from a network of installations and platforms in Japan, Korea, Guam, and forward-deployed Aegis-equipped navy ships; anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability resident in ships, submarines, and patrol aircraft operating throughout the Asia-Pacific theatre; air superiority from fourth- and fifth-generation fighters deployed to Japan and Korea; and ISR [Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capabilities from space-based to tactical systems to provide early warning and support to warfighters.”

If China were to “forward-deploy” military forces on this scale permanently to waters off the Californian coast and openly discuss plans to annihilate forces on the American mainland, it is not difficult to imagine the belligerent and aggressive US response. Yet that is exactly what Washington is doing in the Western Pacific and more broadly in Asia.

Not surprisingly, Beijing is seeking the means to counter the US threat through what is referred to as “anti-access/area denial” or A2/AD—that is, the military capacity to restrict or deny access to US naval and air forces to sensitive waters off the Chinese mainland and to attack US bases, particularly in South Korea and Japan. The CSIS report reflects concerns in the Pentagon that China might be able to disrupt US plans to devastate Chinese bases and cities and “at the current rate of US capability development, the balance of military power in the region is shifting against the United States.”

After assessing the potential threats, primarily from China, as well as Russia and North Korea, the report bluntly declares:

“We reject the option of withdrawal from the Western Pacific because of these new challenges. Such a withdrawal would lead to rapid deterioration of the security environment and render operations more difficult rather than easier.”

The 275-page CSIS study is devoted to a detailed and comprehensive analysis of what is required to speed up the US military build-up in Asia, to ensure maximum military support from regional allies and strategic partners, and to research and build new weapons systems to neutralise Chinese defence capacities.

The report is nothing less than a master plan for an accelerating arms race in Asia in preparation for a conflict that would inevitably draw in the entire region and the world. It is critical of the Obama administration for failing to articulate “a clear, coherent or consistent strategy for the region, particularly when it comes to managing China’s rise,” and for making cuts to the defence budget that have “limited the Defence Department’s ability to pursue the rebalance.”

One element of the CSIS’s solution to the budgetary difficulties is to place new demands on other countries. The study examines in detail and in turn the role that each of the US allies and partners would be required to play, as well as the necessary expansion of their military forces and facilities. While focusing considerable attention on Japan, South Korea and Australia, it appraises a long list of countries, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as the potential for political resistance and opposition to US plans. Its recommendations include mechanisms to ensure the interoperability and integration of the various military forces into a US-led conflict against China.

At the same time, the CSIS study foreshadows a huge expansion of US military spending, involving trillions of dollars, to fund its recommendations. These recommendations include:

* Restructuring and consolidating US military forces in Japan and South Korea, including the completion of new bases, a major extension of military facilities on Guam, and the expansion of the American Marine, air and naval presence in Australia.

* Stationing a second aircraft carrier strike group to complement one already permanently stationed in Japan, as well as “additional surface force presence,” such as Littoral Combat Ships, four of which are due to be stationed in Singapore.

* Improving “undersea capacity,” such as the “near-term” stationing of two additional nuclear attack submarines in Guam and the future basing of advanced Virginia class nuclear submarines elsewhere in the region, including at Stirling naval base in Western Australia and the Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia.

* Expanding and reorganising the US Marine and Army forces throughout the region.

* Diversifying air bases to counter potential Chinese attacks, including to “the Philippines, Australia and others.”

* Boosting anti-missile systems throughout the region to neutralise China’s ability to respond to a US attack—nuclear or non-nuclear.

* Stockpiling “critical precision munitions” in secure locations to ensure the US military’s ability to engage in “large-scale and high-intensity conflicts.”

* Undertaking major research aimed at countering any potential Chinese military response to US attack, such as a new generation of advanced, long range anti-ship, anti-surface and anti-air missiles, and the development of new weapons, including “three promising options”—railgun, directed-energy and upgraded conventional guns. Other projects include a new long range strike bomber, greater payload capacity for nuclear submarines, and augmented space, cyber and electronic warfare capabilities.

The Pentagon’s watchword is that US forces must have the ability to “fight tonight.” In other words, the military must be able to launch a major war against China within hours and sustain it for whatever time is necessary.

The massive expansion of the military budget required for this arms race will necessarily take place at the expense of the working class. This means the gutting of what remains of social programs and infrastructure and the further impoverishment of the working class. Both in the US and in each of its allies and partners, the turn to militarism will only intensify the class struggle. While the CSIS study makes no mention of the political consequences of its proposals, the boosting of the military abroad takes place alongside the build-up of the police-military apparatus, and police-state measures at home aimed against the eruption of social unrest.

They are returning, Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully looking somewhat well preserved, and a greyish David Duchovny as Fox Mulder.  The FBI duo, dynamic or otherwise, mining the consciousness of conspiranoia, tapping into the perennial scepticism about official accounts, standard narratives, the truth dictated as gospel from the powers that be. They were always meant to know better, even if more questions than answers were found.

Chris Carter was eager to draw from the well of X-File mania to give the series a new six-episode run.  But the supplementary soil, in terms of events, has been fertile.  “We deal with fear in a lot of different ways… The fact that we’re being spied on and don’t seem to be raising any protest is a frightening prospect for me.”  Carter’s points of reference? WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, and whistleblower Edward Snowden.[1]

Carter is by no means the only one to share this view.  According to Evan Valentine, “Honestly, our present society and time is probably a much better fit for the X-Files than it was during the era when it first debuted.”  Why? “Questioning authority has become part of the course,” a point the creators took to heart in resurrecting Mulder and Scully.[2]

The America of the 1990s from which the X-Files issued forth was, tritely put, another country.  But it did have its weekly digest of tabloid alien abductions, unexplained sightings, and millenarian terrors.  Given the absence of a politicised global Yeti or Big Foot in the form of the Soviet Union, people just had to make do with other backyard, paranormal findings.

Even as the series limped into oblivion in 2002, the arsenals of delusion were being readied for their catastrophic release in 2003.  Call them aliens, weapons of mass destruction, terrorists – everyone had to have something to believe, their conspiracy to treasure.  The events of September 11, 2001 were already sowing seeds of suspicion; the invasion of Iraq on specious, concocted grounds (the WMD conspiracy) added to the ledger of speculations.  The tree of conspiracy began to flower; there were false flags everywhere.  The “truthers” had arrived in numbers.

These days, it would fair to say that the truther pedigree has become so distorted the very idea of seeking something remotely factual, history exactly as it was, is becoming a challenge.  There are Ted O’Malley (the host of the Conservative talk show “Truth Squad with Ted O’Malley”) types in abundance.  The conspiracy market is teeming with contenders, and even presidential candidates of varying quality have decided to purchase a share of it. This is the were-monster as invisible hand, haunting the US electoral landscape.

Duchovny hazarded his own view about the X-Files’ spawning legacy.  Without the Carter’s creation, “you don’t have shows like ‘Lost’ or ‘Heroes’ or even ‘Bones’.”  Out of the river that was the X-Files came “tributaries”, a veritable “Cosmic Con-ization of the world.”[3]

The guardians of quality assurance – or discouragement – were already out warning eager viewers that the return of such a program from the “televisual mausoleum” would not end happily.  Carter’s efforts in the filmic versions – The X-Files from 1998 and 2008’s The X-Files: I Want To Believe – were hardly stonking successes.    The sense that the series was working on a tired autopilot of dreary seriousness, with an actor such as Anderson obviously more talented than her FBI cut-out would permit her to be, was hard to avoid.  The air had gone out of the balloon.

The new series embraces the old themes with gusto, though with current twists.  Human-alien hybridisation nods to previous episodes, but there are nuclear weapons, weather distortions, the use of the Patriot Act, and the muscular actions of the police state.  Reviewers tend to confine themselves to familiar terrain. Kaly Soto prefers those “stand-alone story lines as opposed to the mythology arcs” (New York Times, Jan 25). Some people just love their monsters.

Series with the X Files profile would have little purchase were it not for the fact that secrecy accompanies government functions, lacing it with a covering deemed necessary for public order.  Do they govern for us, or in their own name and interest?

All shades of government seem to endorse that view: secrecy is essential; transparency, an unfortunate wickedness that can be managed carefully through limited freedom of information regimes. Governments do conceal, deceive and dissimulate. The public’s continued response to that approach bears all kinds of fruit – and they continue to vary in taste and colour.  “Conspiracy sells,” Mulder suggests regarding O’Malley’s credibility. “It pays for bulletproof limousines.”

If anything, the X Files risks diminishing that brand of deception, propelling officialdom’s mendacity, and own conspiracies, into the realm of ET.  The supernatural dimension detracts from, in Ed Power’s words, “real government skulduggery”, a point that is transcendent of the “extra-terrestrials-in-the-warehouse” notion.[4]  Whether it is hybrid alien projects or the XKeyscore surveillance program, the point is clear enough, though the latter poses a far greater problem than the former.

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

Notes:

[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1fb1945d9fca41d692dfe0b285ab947a/scully-mulder-paranoia-return-x-files-reboot

[2] http://collider.com/x-files-reboot-review-new-york-comic-con-2015/

[3] http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/tv/article56331960.html

The British government, whose foreign policy is overtly hostile to their Russian counterpart, declared last week that their investigation into the killing of a former Russian intelligence agent in London nearly a decade ago concluded there is a “strong probability” the Russian FSB security agency was responsible for poisoning Alexander Litivenko with plutonium.

They further declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin “probably approved” of the act. The British investigation, which was likely politically motivated, seemingly raised more questions than it answered. But American corporate media were quick to use the accusations against Putin to demonize him, casting him as a pariah brazenly flaunting his disregard for international conventions.

The Washington Post (1/23/16) editorial board wrote that:

“Robert Owen, a retired British judge, has carefully and comprehensively documented what can only be called an assassination… Mr. Owen found (Andrei) Lugovoi was acting ‘under the direction’ of the FSB in an operation to kill Mr. Litivenko – one that was ‘probably approved’ by the director of the FSB and by Mr. Putin.”

Actually, Owen did not find that former KGB operative Lugovoi was acting under the direction of the FSB to kill Litivenko. He found there was a “strong probability” this was the case. This means that even in Owens’s view, there is not near certainty, which would meet the legal standard of reasonable doubt that would preclude a guilty judgement. There is even more doubt that even if it were the case the FSB ordered the murder, they did so on Putin’s orders.

The New York Times editorial board (1/21/16) finds the investigation’s results “shocking.” For the Times, this confirms a pattern of Putin’s rogue behavior. They claim Putin’s “deserved reputation as an autocrat willing to flirt with lawlessness in his global ventures has taken on a startling new aspect.”

Both of the prestigious and influential American newspapers argue that the British findings impugn Putin’s respectability in international affairs. The Times says:

Mr. Putin has built a sordid record on justice and human rights, which naturally reinforces suspicion that he could easily have been involved in the murder. At the very least, the London inquiry, however much it is denied at the Kremlin, should serve as a caution to the Russian leader to repair his reputation for notorious intrigues abroad.

The more hawkish Post says: “This raises a serious question for President Obama and other world leaders whose governments do not traffic in contract murder. Should they continue to meet with Mr. Putin as if he is just another head of state?”

Putin’s alleged “sordid record on justice and human rights,” which is taken for granted without providing any examples, is seen as bolstering the case for his guilt in the case of the poisoning death of Litivenko. This, in turn, adds to his “notorious” reputation as a violator of human rights.

The Post draws a line between the lawless Putin and the respectable Western heads of state, such as Obama. Though they frame their call to treat Putin as an outcast as a question, it is clearly intended as a rhetorical question.

It is curious that The Post draws a contrast between Putin and Obama, whose government is supposedly above such criminality. The newspaper does not mention the U.S. government’s drone assassination program, which as of last year had killed nearly 2,500 people in at least three countries outside of declared military battlefields. Estimates have shown that at least 90 percent of those killed were not intended targets. None of those killed have been charged with any crimes. And at least two – Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdul Rahman – were Americans.

Obama himself is personally responsible for those killed by missiles launched from unmanned aircraft over the skies of sovereign countries. Several news reports have indicated that Obama is presented in meetings each week by military and national security officials with a list of potential targets for assassination. Obama must personally approve each target, at which point they are added to the state-sanctioned “kill list.”

The British government has also assumed for itself the power to assassinate its own citizens outside a declared battlefield. Last fall, Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the deaths of two British citizens in Syria, who were subsequently disposed of in a lethal drone strike.

The Washington Post editorial board (3/24/12) claimed that Obama was justified in carrying out lethal drone strokes that kill American citizens “to protect the country against attack.” Their lone criticism was that “an extra level of review of some sort is warranted.”

After it was revealed that an American hostage was inadvertently killed in a drone strike in Pakistan, The Post (5/1/15) said that the issue of whether the American government continues to conduct drone strikes should not be up for debate. “(T)here is little question that drones are the least costly means of eliminating militants whose first aim is to kill Americans,” they wrote.

While they tacitly accept the legal rationale for Obama’s assassination program, the New York Times editorial board at least demonstrated some skepticism. In “A Thin Rationale for Drone Killings” (6/23/14), they called the memo “a slapdash pastiche of legal theories – some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law – that was clearly tailored to the desired result.” They say that “the rationale provides little confidence that the lethal action was taken with real care.”

Yet they do not chastise Obama for his “intrigues abroad” nor do they condemn this as an example of his “sordid record on justice and human rights,” language they used for Putin. The idea that relying on what are transparently inadequate legal justifications for killing an American citizen without due process would merit prosecution is clearly beyond the limits of discussion for the Times.

Recently Faheem Qureshi, a victim of the first drone strike ordered by Obama in 2009 (three days after his induction as President), who lost multiple family members and his own eye, told The Guardian that Obama’s actions in his native lands are “an act of tyranny. If there is a list of tyrants in the world, to me, Obama will be put on that list by his drone program.”

Surely both The New York Times and Washington Post disagree with Qureshi, because they believe the U.S. government is inherently benevolent and its motives are beyond reproach. But based on their editorials about the British investigation of the Litivenko poisoning, if Putin was responsible and was described by Qureshi in the same way, they would wholeheartedly agree.

The U.S. government and its allies in NATO, like Great Britain, have a clear agenda in vilifying Russia and its President. The US-NATO alliance supported the government that came to power in Ukraine in 2014 through a coup. After provinces in Eastern Ukraine – the vast majority of whose population is ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking – refused to recognize the NATO-backed coup government in Kiev, the Russian government supported them.

It should be easy to see how, from Russia’s perspective, the Ukranian conflict can be understood as an extension of NATO encroachment towards Russia’s borders that has continued unabated since James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 NATO would move “not an inch east.”

“We’re in a new Cold War,” Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies and politics, told Salon.

“The epicenter is not in Berlin this time but in Ukraine, on Russia’s borders, within its own civilization: That’s dangerous. Over the 40-year history of the old Cold War, rules of behavior and recognition of red lines, in addition to the red hotline, were worked out. Now there are no rules.”

Additionally, Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011 throughout that country’s civil war, and more recently its direct military intervention in the conflict that has turned the tide against US-backed rebels, has strongly rankled Washington.

The language used by top government officials to describe Russia has been astoundingly combative. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the man in charge of the entire US military, claimed Russia is responsible for aggression and is “endangering world order.”

The U.S. government’s hyping of the Russian “threat” has been used to justify massive spending on the U.S. space program and other military expenditures, such as the $1 trillion to upgrade nuclear weapons,

One could even argue that the narrative of an aggressive and belligerent Russia is the principal justification for the continued existence of the NATO itself, two and a half decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The alliance allows the US military to be stationed in hundreds of bases throughout Europe under the guise of a purely defensive organization.

The U.S.’s most prominent media organizations should demonstrate the strongest skepticism towards the policies and actions of their own government. At the very least, they should hold their own country’s leaders to the same standards as they do others. But time and again, the media choose to act as a mouthpiece to echo and amplify Washington’s propaganda. They do the government’s bidding, creating an enemy and rallying the public towards a confrontation they would otherwise have no interest in, while allowing the government to avoid accountability for its own misdeeds.

With Syria “peace talks” ostensibly set to begin in Geneva today, Washington has ratcheted up threats of US military escalation throughout the region. In the past few days, top US civilian and military officials have declared that they are prepared to seek a “military solution” in Syria, put “boots on the ground” in Iraq and launch another US-NATO war in Libya.

The talks themselves, which are being convened under the auspices of the United Nations, are not expected to begin as scheduled because of continuing sharp differences over what forces will be invited to attend and how the proposed agenda for a “political transition” will affect the future of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad.

The US and its regional allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are insisting that the delegation representing the Syrian opposition be limited to a so-called High Negotiations Committee, an alliance dominated by Islamist militias that was formed under the auspices of the Saudi monarchy.

Russia has opposed the participation in the talks of Salafist militias linked to Al Qaeda, which Washington and its allies have attempted to pass off as “moderate rebels.” It has also backed the participation of the Kurdish YPG militia that has seized substantial territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which all sides claim to be fighting.

Meanwhile, Turkey has indicated that it will boycott the talks if the Kurds are allowed to participate.

Underlying the bitter disputes over who will attend the so-called peace talks are the sharply divergent interests of the US, which, together with its regional allies, has backed the Islamist militias with arms and funding in a bid to topple the Assad government, and Russia, which counts this government as its principal ally in the Middle East. For its part, Turkey, while claiming to oppose ISIS, is principally concerned with overthrowing Assad and quelling the rise of a Kurdish territory on its southern border.

The Obama administration is determined to use the talks as an instrument for furthering its goal of regime change in Syria and, more broadly, the assertion of US imperialist hegemony throughout the Middle East. It insists that any political transition must include the speedy removal of Assad.

It faces being thwarted in these efforts, however, by Russia’s military intervention. The bombing campaign initiated by Moscow has begun to produce significant military gains by the Syrian army and allied militias against the Islamist forces backed by the US and its allies.

Backed by Russian airstrikes, Syrian government troops and local militias Sunday took back the strategic city of Rabia in western Latakia province, which had been under control of so-called “rebels,” including the Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, since 2012. The Syrian army has been making major gains as well in the north of Latakia, near the Turkish border, where Turkey staged its shoot-down of a Russian warplane. These advances threaten to cut off a principal supply route for the Western-backed Islamists.

The US has responded to the events in Syria with a flurry of visits to its closest regional allies and key sponsors of the Al Qaeda-linked militias in Syria, along with a steady drumbeat of threats.

Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Riyadh over the weekend, barely three weeks after the Saudi monarchy sparked international outrage and revulsion with the mass beheadings of 47 prisoners, including Nimr al-Nimr, a Muslim cleric and leading spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s oppressed Shiite minority. Uttering not a word of criticism of the savagely repressive and viciously sectarian absolute monarchy, Kerry declared that the US maintained “as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance and as strong a friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had.”

Vice President Joseph Biden, meanwhile, visited Turkey where he solidarized himself with the brutal crackdown by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the country’s Kurdish minority that has seen tanks firing on neighborhoods and has cost the lives of hundreds of civilians.

Biden declared that Washington and Ankara were engaged in a “shared mission on the extermination of” ISIS. In reality, the Turkish government has been one of the main pillars of support for ISIS and other Islamist militias. It has directed its fire principally at Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria, the same forces that the US has employed as proxy ground troops in its air war.

Biden said that Washington was determined to press ahead with the talks in Geneva, adding, “But we are prepared if that is not possible to having a military solution to this operation.”

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter indicated that the Pentagon is also preparing an escalation of its military intervention in Iraq, declaring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that the US is “looking for opportunities to do more, and there will be boots on the ground—I want to be clear about that—but it’s a strategic question, whether you are enabling local forces to take the hold, rather than trying to substitute for them.”

The Obama administration had repeatedly foresworn US “boots on the ground” in the region, referring to the deployment of large numbers of combat troops. Now it is deliberately employing the same phrase to justify the steady escalation of the deployment of “advisers” and “trainers” who are becoming ever more directly involved in combat operations.

At the same time, the US military is preparing to invoke the spread of ISIS as the pretext for intervening for the second time in less than five years in Libya.

“It’s fair to say that we’re looking to take decisive military action against ISIL in conjunction with the political process” in Libya, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday. “The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.”

In other words, President Barack Obama, has, without a word of warning to the American people, handed the Pentagon brass authorization to launch “decisive military action,” i.e., yet another war, whenever it sees fit.

The growth of ISIS in Libya, as in Iraq and Syria, is a direct product of US imperialist interventions in the region that have claimed over a million lives and turned millions more into refugees.

The US-NATO war in Libya toppled and murdered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, smashed the country’s governmental and social infrastructure, and triggered a protracted civil war between the various Islamist militias—including those now affiliated to ISIS—that the US used as proxy forces in the 2011 war.

These same Libyan Islamist elements were funneled, together with large Libyan arms stockpiles, into Syria to wage the US-orchestrated war for regime change in that country. Now many of them have returned, bringing with them thousands of so-called foreign fighters.

Another war by the US and the European powers in Libya will not be aimed at smashing ISIS, any more than the last one was directed at defending “human rights” and “democracy.” Its principal objective will be the imposition of a puppet regime that will place the country’s huge oil reserves firmly under Western control.

Behind this region-wide eruption of American militarism there exist sharp differences within the US ruling establishment and Washington’s sprawling military-intelligence apparatus. The conflict is between those demanding a major new escalation in the Middle East and those opposing a large commitment of troops and materiel, insisting instead on a “pivot” to confront US imperialism’s major strategic rivals, principally China and Russia.

In the end, however, American imperialism is driven by its crisis to attempt to assert its control over the entire planet, and the so-called war against ISIS in the Middle East and North Africa becomes indissolubly linked with the buildup toward war with Russia and China. The increasingly frenetic interventions in Syria, Iraq and Libya could provide the spark for a global conflagration.

Seventeen years after Hugo Chávez was elected Venezuela’s President for the first time, the supporters of his Bolivarian Revolution, now led by President Nicolás Maduro, suffered their first major defeat in a national election in the December 6 elections to the country’s parliament, the National Assembly.

Coming only two weeks after the victory of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina’s presidential election, it was a stunning setback to the “process of change” in Latin America that Chávez had spearheaded until his premature death from cancer in 2013. The opposition majority in the new parliament threatens to undo some of the country’s major social and economic advances of recent years as well as Venezuela’s vital support to revolutionary Cuba and other neighboring countries through innovative solidarity programs like PetroCaribe and the ALBA fair-trade alliance.

The election result is an important gain for Washington as it mounts renewed efforts to restore neoliberal hegemony in Latin America and fracture the new continental alliances (UNASUR, CELAC) that Chávez was instrumental in initiating as alternatives to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS).

A Decisive Majority for the Opposition Rightists

Under Venezuela’s mixed electoral system, which combines direct election of deputies with proportional representation of parties, the right-wing opposition coalition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD, by its Spanish acronym), with 56.2% of the popular vote, won 109 seats. With the support of three indigenous deputies, elected separately, the MUD could have a two-thirds majority in the 167-seat unicameral Assembly.

The vote for President Maduro’s United Socialist Party (PSUV), which campaigned in alliance with smaller parties in the Gran Polo Patriótico Simón Bolívar (GPP), was 5,622,844, just under 41% of the total. The GPP won a total of 55 seats: 52 for the PSUV plus 3 for its allies, including 2 for the Communist party.[1] (After the election, Venezuela’s Supreme Court (TSJ) suspended the swearing in of four incoming legislators – three opposition, one PSUV – pending investigations of voting irregularities in Amazonas state. More on this below.)

With a “super majority” of two-thirds of the seats, the opposition MUD has the constitutional and legislative power to, among other things:

• Block government spending and ministerial appointments;
• Unseat Supreme Court justices;
• Remove the Vice-President;
• Convene a National Constituent Assembly, and initiate a recall referendum for President Maduro (although under article 72 of the Constitution, a call for a referendum to remove a public official from office requires the signatures of 20 per cent of the electorate);
• Submit international treaties, conventions or agreements to referendums; and
• Pass or modify any draft organic law (laws enacted to develop constitutional rights, which serve as a normative framework for other laws, or which are identified as such by the Constitution).

In short, writes Lucas Koerner in Venezuelanalysis.com,

“a two-thirds majority gives the opposition all of the institutional weapons necessary to reverse many of the key transformations of the Venezuelan state achieved by the Bolivarian Revolution over the last seventeen years.”

They will now be empowered to revoke critical revolutionary legislation such as the Organic Law of Communes, the Organic Work and Workers’ Law (LOTTT), among numerous others, repeal international treaties such as the ALBA-TP and PetroCaribe, as well as pack the Supreme Court with an eye toward impeaching President Nicolás Maduro.

Why the Opposition Victory?

Whether the MUD will do all or any of these things, of course, depends on a number of factors that are not necessarily within its control – above all, how the social and class forces in Venezuela react in the changed political landscape. The MUD itself is not a cohesive political party, and has many divisions among its components. It is composed of 18 parties, 13 of which are now represented in the National Assembly! They are united primarily by their opposition to Chavismo, the spirit and program of the Bolivarian Revolution championed by Hugo Chávez and his successors. But can the election result be interpreted as a vote against Chavismo as such?

With a voter turnout of 74.5% (up from 66.4% registered in the previous legislative election, in 2010), the PSUV gained more than 350,000 votes over its result in 2010. However, it lost almost 2 million votes from the more than 7.5 million for Nicolás Maduro, the PSUV candidate in the 2013 presidential election. Where were those losses registered? Gabriel Hetland, a U.S. professor specializing in Venezuelan politics and a first-hand observer of the election, notes that the opposition vote in affluent districts “was nearly identical to what it was in the 2010 National Assembly election.” It is clear, he writes in The Nation,

“that the MUD’s overwhelming victory was due to widespread support among popular sectors that have traditionally favored Chavismo. The MUD won 18 of 24 states, including Hugo Chávez’s home state of Barinas and erstwhile Chavista strongholds in Caracas such as 23 de Enero, Catia, and Caucaguita, a very poor district that abuts Petare, one of the largest barrios in Latin America.”[2]

Hetland reports on his conversations with voters on election day:

“In the popular-sector voting centers I visited I encountered numerous people planning to vote for the opposition. In one barrio in the city of Porlamar… only two of the 18 people I spoke with planned to vote for the PSUV. None of the voters supporting the opposition mentioned liberty or democracy as a reason for doing so. All of them said they were supporting the opposition because of the material difficulties they faced. ‘I want change,’ a woman told me. Pointing to the baby she was holding she said, ‘I can’t buy formula, and my father, who is 60 years old, had to go to another country for medical treatment’ because the medicine he needed was unavailable in Venezuela. Over and over I was told of people’s frustrations with long lines and shortages of food and basic goods. Another young woman holding a baby said, ‘I get up at 4 am to stand in line and I can’t even buy food. I want change.’ As she said this, the women standing next to her nodded their heads vigorously.”

Hetland concludes:

“The sentiments expressed by these voters suggest that it’s more accurate to think of the election result less as a victory for the opposition and more as a rejection of the government.”

As Hetland indicates, voter disaffection with the PSUV reflected the harsh effects of the country’s current economic crisis on the conditions of ordinary Venezuelans, including many who in the past have voted by large majorities in support of the Chavista government. It was a “voto castigo,” a punishment vote.

Economic Crisis

The shortages of basic goods, the high inflation, and the currency devaluation now afflicting millions of Venezuelans are directly linked in one way or another to the country’s dependency on hydrocarbons production. Oil accounts for more than 95 per cent of Venezuelan exports, and almost half of its fiscal income. High oil prices made it possible for the government to invest heavily in social programs, education and efforts to diversify the economy.

However, the international price of oil has dropped precipitously in recent years with the outbreak of the global capitalist crisis in 2008 and the recent exponential increase in North American production as a result of new, environmentally disastrous techniques like fracking and tar sands production. The increase in U.S. production alone has drastically cut the demand for foreign oil by the world’s biggest consumer – and now biggest producer – of petroleum. The dependent oil-producing countries have failed to develop a common strategy in response – Saudi Arabia, fearful of losing market share, has rejected pressure from Venezuela and others to raise prices – and OPEC, revived in 1999 by Hugo Chávez, has ceased to be a serious player in international markets.

The drop in the international price – from $100 (U.S.) or more per barrel to less than $30 today – has cut deeply into Venezuelan state revenues. Although the government has maintained spending on social programs and continued to provide inexpensive oil to its Caribbean neighbors, it has had to borrow to cover budget deficits; its total foreign debt increased from 10% of GDP in 2006 to 25% of GDP in 2014 (although this is still a relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the rest of Latin America).

When the government curtailed access to dollars at the official exchange rate,[3] the black market exchange rate shot up, increasing exponentially in 2014-15. While the official rate has been fixed at 6.3 bolivars to the dollar since 2013, by the end of 2015 the black market was offering 800 bolivars to the dollar. This in turn played havoc with the price controls the government had imposed for most essential goods in order to counter retailers’ tendency to sell at the black market rate instead of the official rate. This meant that over time more and more products were priced far below the price they could obtain in neighboring countries.

More and more Venezuelans will acquire dollars at the official rate, purchase goods at the subsidized prices for many necessary products, then export them across the border for an enormous profit. Some major companies, writes Telesur correspondent Gregory Wilpert,[4] are involved in this process too, “claiming that they need to import essential goods, and then either not importing these or re-exporting them to acquire dollars. In mid-2014 Maduro estimated that up to 40 per cent of all goods imported into Venezuela (at the official exchange rate) were smuggled right back out again.”

The state has found itself forced to use its dollar currency reserves to import massive amounts of basic products, which it then sells at subsidized prices through state-owned distribution channels. This allows Venezuelans access to a limited amount of basic foodstuffs at low prices. But since these products are scarce, the black market increases exponentially and prices reach many times the regulated price.

“The situation has now become truly untenable,” writes Jorge Martin. “Ordinary working people are forced to queue for hours on end to be able to access small amounts of products at regulated prices in the state-owned supermarkets and distribution chains, and then pay extortionate prices to cover the rest of their basic needs.”

Martin notes that Venezuela’s GDP contracted 4% in 2014, and is forecast to fall by a further 7% to 10% in 2015. “President Maduro has said that inflation this year will be 85%, but many basic products have already risen by an annual inflation rate of over 100%. The IMF forecasts an inflation rate of 159% for the whole year in 2015.”

Corruption and Inaction

While oil income from royalties and taxes has until recently brought extraordinary state revenues, also extraordinary are the amounts that are effectively embezzled through the joint collaboration of corrupt Venezuelan capitalists and a section of the state bureaucracy, often linked together through interlocking directorships in banks, insurance companies, firms that contract with the state, and even family members located abroad, using a variety of techniques: import fraud, speculative manoeuvres with sovereign debt certificates, negotiation in marginal markets of currencies and debt certificates of the state oil corporation PDVSA, etc.

In one of a series of in-depth exposés of this process, which it describes as a “mafia-like accumulation of capital,” the left pro-Chavista tendency Marea Socialista has documented net capital flight by the “Boliburgesía” (the new “Bolivarian” bourgeoisie) of almost $260-billion (U.S.) between 1998 and 2013 alone. This, it notes, is equivalent to 25 times the cost of Brazil’s World Cup expenditures, 10 times the fall in state income caused by the anti-Chávez oil industry shutdown in 2002-03, the construction of 6 million new homes under the government’s current housing mission, or 37 times the difference between subsidized gasoline sales prices and the cost of production.[5]

There were of course other reasons for the government defeat, as TeleSUR correspondent Tamara Pearson explains: among them, disinformation by the opposition media (still predominant in Venezuela); recent setbacks for the left elsewhere in Latin America themselves linked to the global capitalist crisis; and the alienation of many younger voters who “don’t remember what it was like in Venezuela before Chávez was elected in 1998.” But she notes as well that

“while the opposition has attracted some of the less politically aware social sectors to its anti-Chavismo discourse, the government has also lost some ground from conscientious and solid revolutionaries, partly due to its lack of a solid response to the opposition’s ‘economic war.’ Although it’s easier said than done to combat a rentier state, capitalist system, historical corruption, and big business’s campaign of economic sabotage, Maduro has only announced things like national commissions to deal with the situation.

“While people spend up to seven hours a week lining up for food, and while many of them understand that the government isn’t directly responsible for the situation, the lack of a serious response and significant measures hasn’t helped support for the government.”

Further, says Pearson,

“while the government clearly sides with the poor, for multiple reasons including more right-wing attacks, it has becoming increasingly distanced from the organized grassroots…. [W]ith the way the government communicates with the people, the way it gets information out and involves people in serious decision making – there has been a step back in recent times. This aspect of the Bolivarian revolution is perhaps the most important, so the significance of it and its impact on people shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Some Immediate Responses to Election Verdict

President Maduro promptly accepted the official election results but pledged to continue defending the progressive laws and social programs adopted and implemented during the last decade and a half. A new stage is opening in the Bolivarian Revolution, he said in his election night address, a stage in which the central task is to deepen the revolution by building the country’s productive capacity at all levels – “communal, communitarian, industrial and regional.” Venezuelans, he added, should see the current difficulties in the oil industry as “warnings… and as opportunities to replace the rentist petroleum system with a self-sustaining, self-sustainable productive economic system.”

(This would require some major changes in the present program of the PSUV, the Plan de la Patria or Plan for the Fatherland. Although it lists as one of its five major historical objectives “going beyond the capitalist petroleum rentist model,” it also calls for doubling Venezuelan oil production from 3.3 million barrels per day in 2014 to 6 million in 2019.)

Following Maduro’s election night speech, hundreds of Chavista activists from various popular movements marched in solidarity the next morning through the streets of Caracas to the presidential palace (Miraflores). Maduro invited the crowd to send in representatives to meet with him to discuss the next steps. In this and two subsequent meetings, 185 voceros or spokespersons of communes, commandos, brigades, etc. hammered out some lengthy documents outlining what they considered key objectives to be pursued in the coming months.[6] In addition to proposals for greater government control over foreign trade, banking and finance, more effective tax collection and a sustained fight against bureaucracy and corruption, a central theme was the need to strengthen the role and productive capacities of the communal councils and communes, the territorially based grassroots organizations that the Chavistas see as the foundational units for the eventual creation of a “communal state” of direct democracy “from below” to replace the top-down bureaucratic administration of the capitalist state.[7]

A theme heard more and more in the extensive public debate now underway in radio and TV, on web sites and in the social media is the need to move toward nationalization of the major banks and financial institutions, and possibly to establish a state monopoly over foreign trade – essential measures, in my view, if Venezuela is to establish public control over the speculators and protect itself from the worst vagaries of uncontrollable world prices.

Maduro has established work teams to systematize these and other such grassroots proposals in a “central document of the Bolivarian Revolution” as a guide to action in its new stage. And he has convened an organizing committee to meet January 23 to prepare a “Congress of the Fatherland,” although providing few details on what he has in mind.

Communal Parliament

On December 15 Diosdado Cabello, PSUV deputy leader and president of the outgoing National Assembly, presided over the first gathering of the National Communal Parliament. This legislative body was provided for in the Organic Law of Communes, adopted in 2012, but it was only recently that there was a sufficient critical mass of municipal and regional communes to convene it. The communes had begun electing delegates (voceros) to this body in August 2015. It was originally intended that it would function as an adjunct to the National Assembly. “Now it’s up to you in the National Communal Parliament, to discuss and present proposals that you consider necessary to help President Nicolas Maduro,” Cabello told the delegates. He said this grassroots parliament would help to shield the country’s laws of Popular Power from right-wing attempts to rescind them in the new National Assembly.

The Communal Parliament has met several times since, and in early January announced that its voceros from Venezuela’s 24 states would meet February 4 to adopt their internal rules of functioning, which will then be published in a new monthly publication, the Gacetas Comunales.

In a parallel development, the outgoing National Assembly hastily adopted in late December a spate of pending legislation that was promptly ratified by Maduro in accordance with the Constitution. A major one, the Law of Presidential Councils of the People’s Power, will provide a means for direct citizen input in decision-making by the government (in this case, the President). The purpose, as the introduction to the law proclaims, is “to strengthen the System of Popular Government” by establishing a basic network that “addresses in a profound way the concrete problems of the population through policies, plans, programs and projects for sectoral development… based on the principles and values enshrined in the Constitution….”

Also adopted was a ground-breaking Anti-GMO and Anti-Patenting Seed Law, the result of an ongoing grassroots campaign by environmental and campesino social movements over the past two years. “The law is a victory for the international movements for agroecology and food sovereignty,” write the authors of the linked article, “because it bans transgenic (GMO) seed while protecting local seed from privatization.

“The law is also a product of direct participatory democracy – the people as legislator – in Venezuela, because it was hammered out through a deliberative partnership between members of the country’s National Assembly and a broad-based grassroots coalition of eco-socialist, peasant, and agroecological oriented organizations and institutions.”

The new opposition-dominated National Assembly may very well attempt to reverse some or all of these legislative gains, of course. However, PSUV deputy Diosdado Cabello, the former Assembly president, notes that the Constitutional Division of the Supreme Court may disallow national laws “which are in conflict with this Constitution, including omissions… in failing to promulgate rules or measures essential to guaranteeing compliance with the Constitution.”[8]

On January 6 President Maduro reshuffled his cabinet and created several new ministerial departments as part of an “economic counter-offensive.” He said the new leadership team would prioritize agricultural production as part of a plan for economic recovery.

MUD Aims for Destabilization – and Overthrow of Maduro

Maduro was scheduled to present a detailed report on his plans to the new National Assembly on January 12, although he acknowledged that there was no assurance it would accept them.

However, on January 12 the Assembly session was adjourned in confusion, followed soon after by a humiliating backdown by the MUD majority. As mentioned earlier, three of the MUD deputies had been suspended by the Supreme Court for alleged irregularities in their election. However, when the new Assembly first met, the MUD swore in the three, in defiance of the Court. The Court responded by declaring that the Assembly proceedings would then be of no force or effect. Now, with the PSUV absent and only a handful of MUD deputies present, the Assembly president Henry Ramos Allup (himself an old-line politician[9] elected president in a private session of the MUD, contrary to Assembly rules) then found there was no quorum and adjourned the proceedings.

However, amidst the ensuing public outcry at these shenanigans, the three suspended deputies wrote to the leadership of the Assembly asking that their swearing-in be reversed. The next day, Ramos Allup called the Assembly to order, had the Supreme Court ruling read aloud, then stated that the Assembly leaders would “abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court.” But Maduro has yet to give his promised report.

The opposition’s climbdown probably reflects strategic divisions within their ranks between a relatively moderate faction led by Henrique Capriles, which is said to favour posing as a credible alternative to the government with proposals to solve the economic crisis, and a more confrontationist faction, apparently dominant, which is led by virulent opponents of the government. Its main leader is Leopoldo López, currently serving a 13-year prison sentence for his involvement in the guarimba street protests in 2014 that resulted in 43 deaths, as well as other violent actions. Both Capriles and López have links to the coup plotters of 2002.

The opposition’s initial defiance of the Supreme Court underscored its determination to steer toward an outright confrontation with President Maduro, with the goal of destabilizing his government as much as possible. Ramos Allup says he hopes to prepare Maduro’s ouster within the next six months. Another primary goal is passage of an amnesty law to free what the opposition terms “political prisoners,” that is, all those who have been involved in violent protests (including Leopoldo López).

Among other promised or rumoured measures favoured by the anti-government majority in the Assembly, writes Greg Wilpert, are a law

“to give ownership titles to the beneficiaries of the housing mission. Over the past five years the government has constructed one million public homes, which it has essentially leased to families in perpetuity, but without giving them a title that can be bought and sold. The reasoning behind this is to avoid the development of a speculative housing market of homes built with public funds. The opposition is betting that most public housing beneficiaries would prefer a saleable ownership title, so that they can sell the home and thereby possibly make a profit from it.

“… a rumored project to dollarize the economy. It is obvious to everyone in Venezuela that the current economic situation of high inflation, frequent shortages of basic goods, long lines at supermarkets, and a massive black market for price-controlled products, is not sustainable. One ‘solution’ to these problems that some opposition leaders have favored it to simply get rid of the local currency, the bolivar, and base the entire economy on dollars, just as Ecuador did in 2001. Aside from undermining the country’s economic sovereignty, such a move would also almost definitely mean major painful displacements for economy, leading to increased inequality and unemployment. …

“Other major projects on the opposition docket,” reports Wilpert, “include the repeal of a wide variety of progressive laws that were passed during the Chavez and Maduro presidencies, beginning with the land reform, [and including] re-privatization of key industries and the dismantling of price controls, among other things.”

Capriles has also proposed a “padlock law” to “put an end to oil diplomacy” and “stop the government from giving away and wasting the country’s resources” – a threat clearly aimed at the PetroCaribe initiative that has provided Caribbean countries including Cuba with much-needed oil at preferential repayment rates.

Needless to say, little of this was mentioned in the MUD election platform.

Basically, the virulence of the opposition majority in the legislature – they have even removed portraits of Hugo Chávez (and Simón Bolívar!) from the Assembly precincts – reflects the visceral determination of the class they represent to avenge and reverse not only the laws but the very foundations of the Bolivarian regime initiated by Chávez and his original Movement for the Fifth Republic. No wonder this opposition holds the 1999 Constitution and its institutions in such contempt. That Constitution effectively terminated the institutional setup underlying the rule of the bourgeois elites who had monopolized political power for generations, characterized by the sham alternance of two similar capitalist parties cemented in the infamous “Punto Fijo” accord. In its place the new Constitution outlined the creation of a real sovereign democracy in which the great mass of the population were to be the “protagonists,” the living actors, of their destiny as implemented through a variety of grassroots-operated institutional forms that are only now beginning to become reality.

A New Stage – and a Challenge

Apart from the role of the Supreme Court (itself threatened by the opposition-dominated National Assembly) in trying to restrain the Assembly within constitutional limits, there are now three powers contending in this conflictual context: the President, head of state and supported by the military, who have confirmed their loyalty to the Constitution and the Bolivarian Revolution; the National Assembly, at loggerheads with the President and determined to replace him and all he stands for as soon as possible; and what is commonly referred to as the People’s Power, the grassroots mobilizations of ordinary citizens organized territorially in communal councils and communes or politically in support of the “process of change” – a force that is diffuse and still lacking a coherent structured national leadership. It is unclear at this point what role this relatively new force can play in helping to overcome the current economic and political crisis. The governing party, the PSUV, is largely an electoral machine and somewhat discredited by the implication of some leaders in corruption and bureaucratic manoeuvres. It needs a fundamental overhaul.

There is much talk among Chavistas of answering the crisis by “deepening the revolution,” taking a “qualitative leap” as Chávez himself advocated in his Golpe de Timón speech.

In a remarkable essay, Venezuelan militant José Roberto Duque of Misión Verdad issues a challenge. If, he says, the Presidency and the Assembly are determined to prevent each other from fulfilling its role, “then it will be technically and procedurally impossible to to legislate (the Assembly’s mission) or to govern (the executive’s mission) in Venezuela.

“As such, we will be on the threshold of a situation in which a third actor, the most important and decisive amongst state subjects (popular power, citizens, you and I) must take a position with respect to the legitimacy of the actions of our representatives….

“Today we Chavistas unanimously support the ‘Communal State’ project proposed by Chávez. How many of us are prepared to keep building that Communal State even when the National Assembly eliminates the Law of Communal Councils and the Law of the Communes in one foul stroke? Will we have the stamina to keep building the other society clandestinely and illegally? Or will we submit to bourgeois laws that order us to give the entire productive apparatus up to private business?”

Duque explores these and related questions and concludes:

“The communes should be structures that are capable of surviving at the margins of the state and government, even functioning as areas of rearguard and resistance at the moment of an institutional collapse – when the Bolivarian government ceases its functions because of either legal or illegal means.

“We must be capable then of creating and consolidating self-sustainable and self-sufficient structures. We are in a very early stage of our communard history, and that is the reason why a ministry still exists that is in charge of financing the launch of productive projects in the communes. But in the future it would be an aberration for the communes and other organisations and means of production to continue to be dependent on state financing and other entities.”

I think this is the fundamental challenge facing the Bolivarian Revolution in the coming period. But it must be accompanied by measures at the level of the existing state to overcome the economic crisis – through implementation of an emergency program that can provide immediate relief to the masses of Venezuelan workers and campesinos. •

Richard Fidler is an Ottawa member of the Socialist Project. This article first appeared on his blog Life on the Left.

Notes:

1. Elecciones parlamentarias de Venezuela de 2015, Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre.

2. The End of Chavismo? Why Venezuela’s Ruling Party Lost Big, and What Comes Next, The Nation, December 10, 2015.

3. Capital controls were first imposed in 2002-03 in order to stabilize the currency and stop a flight of capital resulting from a bosses’ shutdown of the oil industry in the wake of their failed attempt to oust Chávez in a coup.

4. Wilpert is the author of an excellent book on the Chávez years: Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (Verso, 2007).

5. See, for example, Sinfonía de un Desfalco a la Nación: Tocata y fuga… de Capitales.

6. See El sacudón electoral del 6D como crisis revolucionaria y motor de saltos cualitativos hacia el Socialismo Bolivariano, www.aporrea.org/poderpopular/n283366.html and www.aporrea.org/poderpopular/n283410.html.

7. There are now more than 45,000 communal councils and 1,430 communes established throughout Venezuela. Most of the communes have been established since Hugo Chávez’s famous speech to his cabinet El Golpe de Timón just after his election in 2012 and shortly before his death in March 2013, in which he urged his ministers to prioritize the construction of communal democracy.

8. Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, art. 336. Here is an English translation.

9. A leader of Acción Democrática, he is also vice president of the Socialist International!

A recent bribery conviction may lead to the U.S. Supreme Court further corrupting the U.S. political system.

How does one even get convicted of bribery in a system that has legalized it to the extent that ours has? Look at Congress members’ and other federal office holders’ actions and their sources of funding. There is debate only over whether they are bribed to act or rewarded for having acted, but the correlation between action and funding is undisputed, and the sources of funding unrestricted. A headline like “Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton’s State Department” raises a few eyebrows but no indictments.

The correlation is even more strongly documented between funding and gaining access to Congress members, and the general trend so clear that an academic study has identified the U.S. form of government as an oligarchy. Many political observers now think of elections as a corrupting influence, which no doubt fuels a taste for pseudo-solutions like term limits and billionaire politicians who don’t have to sell out.

And yet, two U.S. state governors have recently been convicted of taking bribes: Alabama’s Don Siegelman and Virginia’s Bob McDonnell. Siegelman has been in prison for over four years though he was targeted by politically motivated prosecutors and was never accused of any personal gain. McDonnell was bribed with a Rolex watch, plane tickets, dinners, trips, loans, catering, golf bags, and iPhones, and, according to his successful prosecutors took official actions in his capacity as governor to benefit the person bribing him within minutes of receiving various loot. The U.S. Supreme Court has kept McDonnell and his wife (also convicted) out of prison as it considers his case. A bipartisan collection of 113 current and former state Attorneys General urged the Supreme Court to correct the injustice to Siegelman, and it declined to consider it.

The U.S. Supreme Court was uninterested in a bribery case like Siegelman’s that involved no bribery. What’s frightening is its interest in a case like McDonnell’s. His lawyers will argue that while he and his wife clearly benefitted, he didn’t know everything his wife had promised in return for the bribes, nor did he agree to it, nor did he deliver on it. There is clearly the potential that the new standard in U.S. politics going forward will be that you can give luxury toys and personal bribes directly to an office holder, as long as he or she fails to deliver the public policy you asked for, or as long as he or she doesn’t try very hard to deliver it.

Such a standard would open the door to direct bribery of politicians in a new way not achieved by Citizens United and related rulings that facilitate bribery through campaigns and PACs and foundations. As long as the two parties are discreet, who will be able to prove that the favor your politician did your corporation was actually in response to the Mercedes you gave him?

If you imagine the Supreme Court’s interest is in correcting injustice, as opposed to expanding the legalization of bribery, have another look at the Don Siegelman case. Siegelman was by far the most successful Democratic politician in an overwhelmingly Republican government in Alabama. When he won reelection as governor in 2002, the election result was reversed after Republican officials in a single county waited until the Democratic officials had gone home, then recounted the votes and determined that there had been an error. Despite Democrats’ objections of impropriety and pointing out that the voters whose votes were switched away from Siegelman didn’t — as one would have expected — have their votes similarly “corrected” in other races, the Republican Attorney General of Alabama upheld the result and forbid any manual recount to verify it.

Republican lawyer Jill Simpson describes “a five-year secret campaign to ruin the governor,” during which Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s senior political advisor, asked her to “try to catch Siegelman cheating on his wife.” Rove associate Bill Canary, she says, told her that his wife Leura and friend Alice Martin, both federal prosecutors, would “take care of” Siegelman. When Siegelman began running to win his office back two years after losing it, the U.S. Justice Department took him to trial alleging a Medicaid scam, but the judge listened to the opening argument and then threw out the case as worthless.

The “Justice” Department kept trying, and finally got Siegelman on bribery. His offense? He was not alleged to have pocketed a dime or to have received any support through any foundation or committee. Rather, he re-appointed a man to a board who had been appointed to the same position by the previous three governors, a man who made contributions to a state lottery to pay for college scholarships for poor kids. Yes, Siegelman’s idea to help poor people with a lottery seems to have missed the fact that lotteries are taxes on poor people. But does that make him guilty of bribery or justify prosecutors targeting him?

The star witness in the Siegelman case claimed that Siegelman met with this man and emerged from the meeting with a check in hand talking openly about the quid pro quo. In reality, the check was written days after that meeting, and the star witness was facing 10 years in prison and had cut a deal with the prosecutors to reduce his sentence.

A U.S. House Committee investigated the Siegelman case and asked Karl Rove to testify. He declined. And the committee declined to hold him in contempt or to use inherent contempt. He was simply allowed to refuse. Now Siegelman’s son, attorney Joseph Siegelman, has filed suit seeking documents from the U.S. government. I asked him what he hopes to find.

“Every stone that gets overturned ends up showing something negative,” he said. As an example he pointed to the Justice Department’s description of an email from a prosecutor of Siegelman to the campaign manager of his main Republican opponent, a description of an email that didn’t become public until years after Siegelman’s trial. “We don’t know what else they have to hide,” said Joseph Siegelman.

I asked Joseph Siegelman about the Supreme Court’s decision to hear McDonnell’s case and not his father’s, and he exclaimed, “How can our system of justice be so skewed?”

The worst of it may be that a ruling in favor of McDonnell and the inherent right to accept Rolexes from lobbyists could leave Siegelman sitting in prison. He never accepted any Rolex. And he did re-appoint that healthcare professional to that healthcare board.

Should the Supreme Court further legalize bribery, the people of the United States should send Benjamin Franklin a note informing him that we were not able to keep a republic after all. Or they should rise up and compel the Congress, or compel the states to go around the Congress in amending the Constitution, to end all forms of bribery, ban all private election spending, create free and equal media air time on our airwaves for all qualified candidates, provide public financing for campaigns, and for god sake free Don Siegelman.

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 16^th 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 18^th century. Civil society groups in Britain in particular should speak up.  They have a moral responsibility to do so.

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

Deflation Threatens to Swallow the World

Many high-powered people and institutions say that deflation is threatening much of the world’s economy …

China may export deflation to the rest of the world.

Japan is mired in deflation.

Economists are afraid that deflation will hit Hong Kong.

The Telegraph reported last week:

RBS has advised clients to brace for a “cataclysmic year” and a global deflationary crisis, warning that major stock markets could fall by a fifth and oil may plummet to $16 a barrel.

***

Andrew Roberts, the bank’s research chief for European economics and rates, said that global trade and loans are contracting, a nasty cocktail for corporate balance sheets and equity earnings.

The Independent notes:

Lower oil prices could push leading economies into deflation. Just look at the latest inflation rates – calculated before oil fell below $30 a barrel. In the UK and France, inflation is running at an almost invisible 0.2 per cent per annum; Germany is at 0.3 per cent and the US at 0.5 per cent.

Almost certainly these annual rates will soon fall below zero and so, at the very least, we shall be experiencing ‘technical’ deflation. Technical deflation is a short period of gently falling prices that does no harm. The real thing works like a doomsday machine and engenders a downward spiral that is difficult to stop and brings about a 1930s style slump.

Referring to the risk of deflation, two American central bankers indicated their worries last week. James Bullard, the head of the St Louis Federal Reserve, said falling inflation expectations were “worrisome”, while Charles Evans of the Chicago Fed, said the situation was “troubling”.

Deflation will likely nail Europe:

Research Team at TDS suggests that the euro area looks set to endure five consecutive months of deflation, starting in February.

***

The further collapse in oil prices and what is likely spillover into core prices means the ECB’s 2016 inflation tracking is likely to be almost a full percentage point below their forecast of just six weeks ago.

(Indeed, many say that Europe is stuck in a depression.)

The U.S. might seem better, but a top analyst said last year: “Core inflation in the US would be just as low as in the Eurozone if measured on the same basis”.

The National Center for Policy Analysis reported last week:

Medical prices grew 0.1 percent, versus a decrease of 0.1 percent for all other items, in December’s Consumer Price Index.

In addition:

Trucking freight in the U.S. is in steep decline, with freight companies pointing to a “glut in inventories” and a fall in demand as the culprit.

Morgan Stanley’s freight transportation update indicates a collapse in freight demand worse than that seen during 2009.

The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of global freight rates and thus a measure of global demand for shipping of raw materials, has collapsed to even more dismal historic lows. Hucksters in the mainstream continue to push the lie that the fall in the BDI is due to an “overabundance of new ships.” However, the CEO of A.P. Moeller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, put that nonsense to rest when he admitted in November that “global growth is slowing down” and “[t]rade is currently significantly weaker than it normally would be under the growth forecasts we see.”

Indeed, shipping seems to have totally collapsed, and Bloomberg notes that “hiring a 1,100-foot merchant vessel would set you back less than the price of renting a Ferrari for a day.”

And the velocity of money has crashed far worse than during the Great Depression.

And see this.

Why Didn’t the Central Banks’ Pumping Trillions Into the Economy Prevent Deflation?

But how could deflation be threatening the globe when the central banks have pumped many trillions into the world economy?

Initially, quantitative easing (QE) – instituted by most central banks worldwide – actually causesDEFLATION.

In addition, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have encouraged bank manipulation and fraud to try to paper over their problems.

Why’s this a problem?

Because fraud was one of the main causes of the Great Depression and the Great Recession, but nothinghas been done to rein in fraud today. And governments have virtually made it official policy not to prosecute fraud.

Fraud is an economy-killer, and trying to prevent deflation while allowing a breakdown in the rule of law is like pumping blood into a patient without suturing his gaping wounds.

The government also chose to artificially prop up asset prices … while letting the Main Street economy tank.

Governments also pretended that massive amounts of public and private debt are healthy and sustainable … but they are not.

And the trillions in central bank money never really made into the real economy, but were handed under the table to the fatcats. For example:

• The Fed threw money at “several billionaires and tens of multi-millionaires”, including billionaire businessman H. Wayne Huizenga, billionaire Michael Dell of Dell computer, billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, billionaire private equity honcho J. Christopher Flowers, and the wife of Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack

• The Fed also bailed out wealthy corporations, including hedge funds, McDonald’s and Harley-Davidson

• The Fed has been bailing out foreign banks … more than Main Street or the American people.  The foreign banks bailed out by the Fed include Gaddafi’s Libyan bank, the Arab Banking Corp. of Bahrain, and the Banks of Bavaria, Korea and Mexico

•  The Fed has intentionally discouraged banks from lending to Main Street, in a misguided attempt to curb inflation

By choosing the big banks over the little guy, the government has doomed BOTH.

In addition, bad government policy has created the worst inequality on record … and inequality is aneconomy-killer.

What Do the Economists Say?

We asked three outstanding economists why central banks pumping trillions into the world economy hasn’t worked to prevent deflation.

Professor Michael Hudson – Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and economic advisor to governments worldwide – told Washington’s Blog:

The debts were left in place in 2008 instead of being written down. So the economy is now in a classic debt deflation. QE seeks to inflate asset markets, not the real economy. The choice in 2008 was whether to bail out the banks or the economy — and the former were bailed out — the political Donor Class.

Economics professor Steve Keen – the  Head Of School Of Economics, History & Politics at Kingston University in London – has previously agreed, saying:  we’ll have “a never-ending depression unless we repudiate the debt, which never should have been extended in the first place”.

Professor Keen tells Washington’s Blog:

The simple reason is that, with the possible exception of the Bank of England, none of the Central Banks (and very few of the private banks themselves) understand how money is created. To create money, you have to put money into bank deposit accounts–thus increasing bank liabilities–at the same time as you expand the assets of the banks. [Background.]

QE hasn’t done that.

In the USA, they’ve simply bought privately created bonds–normally MBSs–off the banks. This shuffles the asset side of the banks’s ledgers (by exchanging government-created money for overvalued private bonds) but doesn’t change the liability side directly–so no money is necessarily created.

In the UK, the CB buys those bonds off pension and insurance funds, which does create money–but it creates it in the deposit accounts of companies who are legally obliged to buy assets with that money (shares and other bonds) rather than goods and services produced by the real economy.

So QE as practised has been irrelevant to the real economy, leaving the deflationary forces created by the huge private debt bubble to rage on free.

And Professor Bill Black – Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri,  America’s top expert on white collar fraud, and the senior S&L prosecutor who put more than 1,000 top executives in jail for fraud – tells Washington’s Blog:

Everything that criminology and economics teaches is that if financial elites are allowed to cheat with impunity they will make themselves rich at the people’s expense and corrupt democratic government.

Black previously explained that we’ve known for “hundreds of years” that failure to punish white collar criminals creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future.

Endless war largely affecting Syrian civilians rages, ongoing for nearly five years, launched by Obama for regime change, wanting the Syrian Arab Republic transformed into another US vassal state.

Washington’s policy remains firm. Earlier peace talks achieved nothing. Whatever comes out of Geneva negotiations, US support for ISIS and other terrorist groups assures continued violence and chaos.

Expect Russia’s best conflict resolution efforts to fail again. Reports indicate Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry agreed on inviting two separate opposition groups to Geneva, including Saudi-backed terrorist organizations – notably Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), operating like ISIS.

It’s an extremist salafist umbrella group, representing thousands of terrorist fighters, operating in the eastern Ghouta area of Damascus – responsible for the 2013 chemical weapons attack, killing scores, injuring many others, Assad still wrongfully blamed for its high crime.

In December, Syrian airstrikes killed its leader, Zahran Alloush, an extremist wanting all Syrian Shiites and Alawites eliminated – genocide by any standard. Expect no change in the group’s hardline views in Geneva.

In return for letting it and other US-led Western/Saudi-backed extremist groups participate in Geneva talks, reports indicate Washington agreed on inviting a separate Syrian opposition delegation.

On Saturday from Riyadh, meeting with his Saudi and other rogue Gulf States’ counterparts, John Kerry said “(w)e are confident that with good initiative in the next day or so, those (Syrian peace) talks can get going.”

UN/Arab League envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura is expected to brief reporters in Geneva on Monday, providing details on upcoming talks, according to his spokeswoman Jessy Chahine.

Some issues may remain unresolved. Russia’s Foreign Ministry hasn’t yet commented on what opposition groups will attend Geneva talks, saying only the following on Saturday:

The heads of the foreign policy authorities continued discussing the Syrian topic, and confirmed support for the efforts of the UN secretary general’s envoy for the Syrian crisis Staffan de Mistura to organise next week in Geneva, the talks featuring representatives of the Syrian government and of the opposition with the purpose to achieve political settlement in that country.

They paid special attention…to form(ing a) truly representat(ive) delegation of the opposition and to have the agenda comply with requirements of the UN Security Council’s resolution 2254, including fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, as well as respect for the right of Syrians to determine themselves the future of their country.

They have expressed the common view that in the interests of effective outer supervision of the inter-Syrian political process, it would be reasonable to continue using the format of the International Syria Support Group led by Russia, the US and UN.

We’ll learn more during Mistura’s Monday press conference. Nothing in prospect holds hope for peace in Syria any time soon.

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.

 

advisory to GR readers and members in Malaysia: due to a family emergency, Professor Chossudovsky will not be able to travel to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately the event is postponed/cancelled. Our apologies. We thank you for your understanding.

America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.

This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history.

It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.

The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of “human rights” and “Western democracy”.

 

It seems that Saudi Arabia has started to undergo the transformation various experts predicted. Those became obvious when the sitting king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud replaced his deceased elder brother Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in January 2015, and made a number of quite unusual arrangements within the ruling elite, appointing the head of the Ministry of Interior Muhammad bin Nayef from Abdullah’s clan the Crown Prince, while his 33-year-old son Mohammad bin Salman Al Saudfrom the Sudairy clan received the appointment of Deputy Crown Prince.

Even back then it was clear that within a short period of time the king would try to hand over all power in the country to his own son by sidestepping Muhammad bin Nayef, while he himself would retire due to Alzheimer’s disease, becoming sort of a “king-father” with no real power, but with the right to an advisory vote on important decisions. Needless to say, it’s a direct violation of the tradition of succession to the throne from brother to brother that has been in place in Saudi Arabia, that is going to be replaced by the father-to-son succession. To make such a transition one should be able to carry out a coup d’etat or win the approval of the succession board, which is formed according to different sources by 7 or 11 members of the Al Saud dynasty.

Now it seems that the wheels of the political machine are moving again.

Last week reports from Riyadh indicated that his disease is taking a toll on the king and he wants to renounce his reign in favor of the Crown Prince. But then neighboring states, especially Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, started hinting that the members of the Saudi royal family along with the sheikhs of the strongest tribes, which are the foundation of Al Saud’s rule, are extremely dissatisfied with the sharp deterioration of the economic and social situation in the country, leading to a major drop in their personal incomes.

It is no secret that Riyadh increased the volume of oil production to weaken the positions of its main competitors – Russia, Iran and Venezuela. But the kingdom had to take a punch as well, it was forced to unseal its reserve fund and cut the funding of numerous social programs.

And then came the execution of 47 Shia public figures, including the popular human rights activist Nimr Baqir al-Nimr. The executions were designed as a form of retaliation to Iran and Hezbollah for the help they have provided to the Syrian people in the fight against pro-Saudi militants. This step provoked massive unrest in the Shia areas of the kingdom, the areas that produce the better part of all Saudi oil.

The country has found itself on the brink of a civil war and a military conflict with Iran at the same time, which has also provoked major discontent in the West. After all, the West needs a politically loyal Iran, a country in which huge investments can be made, especially in oil and gas sectors, in order to push Russian out of the European gas market and the international oil markets at the same time. In this context Tehran is forced to carry on relying on Moscow in the confrontation with Saudi Arabia to ensure its safety and continue providing military assistance to Syria, Iraq and Shia rebels in Yemen.

Now the highly respected Institute for Gulf Affairs is stating that the king of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is preparing to renounce the throne in favor of his son Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, and has since brought his country to the brink of a disaster.

It means that the 80-year-old Salman is trying desperately hard to persuade his brothers on the succession board to allow him to change the principle of succession of the Saudi throne, since he’s ready to leave, but not so ready for his nephew Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud to rule the country. What the king has been doing is allegedly done “only for the sake of the stability of the kingdom.” Although the reality of the situation is clear – should Salman retain his position, the disintegration of the kingdom is imminent, with certain Shia areas breaking away, while the regions on the border with Yemen which are mostly populated by Yemeni tribes, more than happy to return home. Moreover, the Minister of Interior used to be a habitual cocaine user, so he was only able to “produce” two daughters, and now he’s somewhat incapable of producing more children. Should the king manage to carry out the above described scheme, he will become the first Saudi monarch to leave the throne to his son.

And the fact that there’s a growing crisis in Saudi Arabia was evident from the cuts in subsidies and bonuses that king Salman started at the beginning of this year to reduce the country’s total dependence on oil. After decades of extensive use of oil revenues to subsidize companies’ payment of generous salaries and providing enormous social benefits, falling oil prices struck Saudi Arabia at its heart.

It’s enough to say that revenues from oil exports in 2015 alone dropped by half. Ultimately it’s hard to say which country suffers the most from these oil wars – Russia or Saudi Arabia, since the latter has virtually no other sectors to support the economy. Saudi economist Turki Fadaak believes that Saudi Arabia is exiting the policy of “universal welfare”, so there’s an ongoing psychological shift in the minds of the ruling elite of the state. Fadaak is convinced that the ultimate aim of king Salman’s measures is to eliminate the Saudi dependency on oil. But is it really? According to leading international experts – the answer is a resounding “no”, with all the arguments to the contrary nothing more than fantasy.

Although initially it seemed that Salman, who came to power after the death of his brother, King Abdullah, will continue his course, after assuming the throne Salman generously spent over 30 billion dollars from the budget on bonuses for civil servants, military personnel, and students. Additionally, prices for basic goods and services, including fuel, electricity and water prices were kept at extremely low levels due to government subsidies from oil revenues. However, due to falling oil prices, under the pressure of such costs the budget started to rupture.

The most important thing now for the kingdom is to execute the transition from the extremely lavish social security system to a productive economy, but then the subjects of the king will be forced to cut their costs, and it looks that they do not agree with this notion. And accusations in the imminent economic collapse will go Salman’s way, so it is better for him to leave now, before protests even start.

It is curious that Saudi Arabia has been rather realistic about its budget for the year 2016, since it was based on the average price of oil keeping at the level 29 dollars per barrel. Last year, the Saudi budget deficit amounted to almost 98 billion dollars and the costs were considerably higher than it was originally planed due to bonuses for civil servants, military personnel and retirees. In 2016 the authorities decided to put up to 49 billion dollars into a special fund to provide funding for the most important projects in case oil prices drop even further. But it was Saudi Arabia back in 2014 that proposed new tactics for OPEC, that implied that there would be no cuts in the level of production, the tactics that drove oil prices to today’s levels.

So we are to learn pretty soon should Riyadh choose the path of the utter and complete collapse of the kingdom, or the path of giving power to the young and pragmatic technocrats who are going to pursue a comprehensive oil policy. Either way, Saudi Arabia will be forced to put an end to the costly military adventures in Syria and Yemen as well as its confrontations with Russia and Iran.

Peter Lvov, Ph.D in political science, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is quite addicted to lying. However, what makes this conduct on his part especially malicious is that he lies quite knowingly, without a twinge of conscience or feeling of regret.

During his visit to a small settlement in the southern Hebron hills Monday, the Israeli premier claimed that Palestinians were revolting against Israel because they wanted to kill Jews.

As usual, Netanyahu completely ignored the decades-old military occupation by Israel of Palestine and the conspicuously criminal treatment meted out  to millions of Palestinians whose only “guilt” is their being born non-Jewish.

Netanyahu, who arrived at the settlement to show solidarity with the family of a settler woman who was killed a few days ago, allegedly by a Palestinian youngster, took advantage of the tragedy to hurl lies right and left in order to justify his intransigence and anti-peace discourse.

He overlooked the fact that since the beginning of October, trigger-happy Israeli soldiers and settlers killed more than 160 Palestinians, many in an execution style and without the slightest provocation.

According to eye-witness testimonies, Israeli soldiers and settlers on several occasions placed a knife or sharp object next to the Palestinian victim to give the impression that he was trying to stab Israelis.

More to the point, Israeli security forces made sure that Palestinians shot were left to bleed to death.

The murderous executions prompted the Foreign Minister of Sweden Krister Wickman to demand an inquiry into these crimes.

Israel, which always adopts a holier-than-thou attitude toward international criticisms, rejected the Swedish call, arguing that Israel has the right to self-defense.

Killing the two-state solution

The truth of the matter is that Israel has effectively killed any remaining prospects for a viable peace with the Palestinians by decapitating -once and for all- any remaining chances for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, thanks to the ubiquitous metastasizing of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, especially East Jerusalem.

I think all honest observers, Palestinian, Israeli and international, agree on this prognosis. Hence, it would be an expression of dishonesty or utter ignorance and naïveté to deny the obvious.

This is unless what Israel, its guardian ally, the US, and the rest of the international community have in mind for the Palestinians is an insignificant state not worthy of the name, e.g.  a state without Jerusalem, without demographic and territorial contiguity, without the right of return for the refugees, and without an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders.

Needless to say, the vast majority of Palestinians would utterly reject such a deformed entity even if the entire world sang the hymns of praise for such misshapen creature.

Now Israel is facing a real dilemma, which makes Netanyahu and his ministers make nervous and totally mendacious statements almost on a daily basis.

Indeed, with the two-state solution now effectively in the belly of earth, Israel has only two alternatives left: Either one state for all- from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean-or an open-ended conflict.

But one state is impossible since it constitutes the antithesis of Zionism, and an open-ended conflict is a nightmarish scenario with unpredictable consequences.

Facing this increasingly stark dilemma (stark because there are today in mandatory Palestine as many Palestinians as there are Jews and the Palestinian population is forecast to exceed the Jewish population in a few years), Israel is now trying to effect more ghoulish tactics in the hope that more pressure on Palestinians would force them or many of them to leave their ancestral homeland.

One Israeli commentator remarked last week that if Bashar Assad could banish millions of Syrians around the world with total impunity and without incurring the wrath of the world, Israel should be able to oust some Palestinians without creating a huge international crisis.

In fact, Israel is already trying this ghoulish scenario.

Last week, it was reported that poverty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has reached unprecedented levels, with many Palestinians selling their assets to remain afloat.

One Palestinian economist was quoted as saying that “I wouldn’t be surprised to see starvation in some parts of the West Bank.”

Hence the alarming question: Would the loaf of bread be used as Israel’s ultimate weapon to force the Palestinians to leave their homeland, thus enabling Israel to succeed  in liquidating the Palestinian cause once and for all?
 
Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist based in Dura in Occupied Palestine

Netanyahu is well aware that although Europe is Israel’s primary trading partner, he treats the human rights provisions of the EU Association Agreement with contempt, secure in the knowledge that he can easily switch his export market to either the US or China – or so he thought until last week!

His rationale was simple: an all-powerful Zionist lobby in Washington will continue to enable him to dictate foreign policy to Congress (as well as obtaining US$6 billion annually from the US taxpayer). As for China, Israeli bilateral trade has been increasing in a market where there has never been any history of anti-Semitism.

And therein lies Netanyahu’s fatal error because although the Chinese have long admired and respected Jewish innovation and technical expertise, they refuse to subscribe to Likud’s persecution of five million Palestinians. The Chinese premier made that point crystal clear to Netanyahu last week. There must, he said, be an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

And that announcement effectively marks the end of Netanyahu’s political career and the demise of Likud’s philosophy based on the discredited colonial agenda of Revisionist Zionism.

The Israeli kid is older now and since last week, belatedly somewhat wiser as he starts to think about looking for a new job, perhaps as a travelling salesman for German-built submarines now armed with nuclear warheads?

Note

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-backs-establishment-of-independent-state-of-palestine-with-jerusalem-as-its-capital/ 5502997

Iran nuclear talks drew to a close and a historic agreement was reached between Iran and P5+1 and the deal was implemented, but the opponents, from the Israeli Prime Minister and Saudi Arabia to Iran hawks in US congress to the Iranian terrorist groups functioning unhindered in the West, went out of their ways to sabotage the agreement from the very beginning.

A Beirut-based commentator and analyst covering Middle East geopolitics says Saudi Arabia and Israel were desperate to strike a blow at Iran’s further international ‘rehabilitation’. Sharmin Narwani says the deal was also struck as the US and its allies “desperately needed the support of rational, capable parties within the Middle East to help disentangle from their Syrian misadventures.”

In the following interview with Habilian Association, Narwani speaks about those who’ve failed to influence the deal. Having a great knowledge of Iranian society, she also touches upon the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, a.k.a. MKO) and describes them as “useful to the deal spoilers” who lacks any kind of support in Iran.

1. What is your take on the opponents of Iran nuclear deal before the agreement was reached between Iran and P5+1?

The primary opponents of the P5+1-Iran negotiations were Saudi Arabia and Israel – these two states were on the forefront of a large-scale propaganda campaign intended to derail the talks and prevent a deal from being struck. Their motivations were entirely political as both states actively seek to undermine Iranian influence in the Middle East and beyond. Both states view growing Iranian clout as a direct and existential threat to their nations, and to their ability to manipulate the region to advantage. During the one and a half years of negotiations, the Islamic Republic was in ascendency in the region, while Saudi Arabia and Israel were hemorrhaging credibility – even with their western allies. Their desperation to therefore strike a blow at Iran’s further international ‘rehabilitation’ was even more urgent than usual, and they were successful, on the surface at least, of gaining public support from at least one P5 member state, France. The French took some very hardline public postures – they managed to secure some large weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and Qatar during this period – but behind the scenes and at the actual negotiating table, I am told they barely made a peep.

2. How do you assess such activities after the agreement was reached? What are their post-Iran-deal plans?

Of course the French came into line immediately post-deal, mainly to try to gain a piece of the Iranian post-sanctions-relief economic pie. I believe France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius may have even been the first P5+1 official to visit Iran. You can see from the slew of western officials and business delegations making pilgrimages to Tehran in the immediate aftermath of the Vienna deal, that commerce is of paramount importance to these states suffering from stagnant economies.

Economic considerations aside, this deal was also struck because the US and its allies desperately needed the support of rational, capable parties within the Middle East to help disentangle from their Syrian misadventures. By mid-2012, the US and its western allies suddenly realized that Syria would not be a quick ‘regime-change’ operation and were starting to grow concerned about the proliferation of jihadis and other extremists outside of their control, most of them armed, funded and supported by western allies in the Persian Gulf and Turkey. That’s when the US reached out to Iran in a secret meeting in Oman. So I think another consideration for the P5+1 is definitely to gain Iran’s assistance in helping to put out some of these fires. Iran will help, in the sense that eradicating political violence, re-stabilizing states and halting extremism is high on its priority list, but it is important to understand that western goals are not the same. The west is perfectly happy with weakened Mideast states – it just doesn’t want the extremism it has spawned to breach its own borders. At the present moment, the nuclear deal has been helpful in that the US can openly work in the same military theaters (Syria, Iraq) with Iran without a confrontation breaking out between the two. This is a direct result of Vienna.

3. Please tell me what do you think of Netanyahu’s March 2015 address to the US Congress over Iran accord?

I didn’t watch the speech – Netanyahu never has anything interesting or truthful to say. I did, however, watch the circus around it, and I have to say that if I was an American I would be seriously appalled at the pandering of my elected officials to a foreign official. I do think Netanyahu was a net loser by giving that speech. He created a contentious split in the American body politic and gained acrimony instead of galvanizing support. Clearly he lost, as the Iran nuclear agreement is a reality today. But it would be a mistake to write off Netanyahu. He – and his allies in the US and elsewhere – intend to exploit every opportunity, at every turn of this agreement, to put a wrench in the works. One way to do this is to undermine the ‘spirit’ of this deal, which we are seeing at the moment with further sanctions talk, threats about Iran’s missile program, and the ridiculous visa restriction measure that was signed into law by Obama a few weeks ago…

4. What is your opinion about the activities of Iranian groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, aka MKO) against this agreement?

I was in Vienna covering the final round of talks and there were some MEK people around with their usual stunts. I don’t really see this group as significant in any way. They are useful to the deal spoilers only insofar as they provide them with token ‘Iranians’ to parrot more anti-Iran propaganda. The MEK’s main interest is in constant demonization of the Iranian government because it enhances their funding opportunities and gives them access to some rather shifty ‘policymaking’ rooms in the west. So Vienna was a valuable platform for them – it probably earned them a few extra dollars. They make good parrots, but nothing more.

5. What is your take on the MEK which was until recently listed as a foreign terrorist organization in the US and is now functioning unhindered in the US and European countries?

Look, the MEK doesn’t really figure into any serious analyst’s calculations on anything to do with Iran. They are an extremely marginalized group within Iran – in all my visits to the country over the years, I have never heard a supportive word for the MEK from a single Iranian. On the contrary, Iranians tend to view them as traitors for fighting alongside Saddam Hussein’s military in an aggressive 8-year war that saw hundreds of thousands of Iranians die. So there is no love lost for the MEK inside Iran. Furthermore, the group’s support comes almost exclusively from foreign adversaries of Iran, which adds to the perception of MEK treachery.

Even when the organization was listed as a terrorist group in the west, it continued to function under different aliases, with the tacit approval of its western hosts. It has only ever been used as a tool by the west, to be pulled out when these states want a ‘lever’ against Iran. Look at the delisting in the US…it took place in late 2012, a few months after Washington had initiated quiet meetings in Oman with Ahmadinejad’s government which ultimately was the ‘opening’ that led to this nuclear deal. The Americans delisted MEK so they could have a pressure ‘card’ in their hand – to show the Iranians the US was willing to escalate if the Iranians didn’t fall into line. But Iran is well-versed in US tactics. I can’t imagine this bothered them much – though it did make the Americans look extremely hypocritical on their “War on Terror.” After all, the MEK had killed US citizens in Iran in the 1970s, attacked US soil in 1992, and continues to abuse its own members. This was the State Department’s very language when they delisted the group.

Listed or delisted, the MEK remains exactly the same. It always enjoyed western cover of sorts. Like many other western-groomed ‘opposition’ groups based outside the Middle East, it will be employed opportunistically by its hosts, and cut off when it is no longer of use.

China is Iran’s largest trading partner, including oil and gas, along with billions of dollars in other products and services.

On Friday, President Xi Jinping arrived in Tehran, officially welcomed by Iranian President Hassan Rohani.

The visit was the first by a Chinese head of state in 14 years, Jiang Zemin the last one in 2002, early in the post-9/11 era, featuring endless US imperial wars, along with hostile anti-Russian/anti-Chinese policies.

Presidents Xi and Rohani seek closer ties, Xi signalizing a new chapter in bilateral relations. Iran’s IRNA news agency quoted him saying:

China is seeking to improve bilateral ties with Iran to start a new chapter of comprehensive, long-term and sustainable relations with the Islamic Republic.

Notably, Xi is the first head of state to visit Iran since international sanctions were lifted on January 16. Putin visited Tehran last November, discussing enhanced bilateral ties going forward.

Accompanying Xi on his visit were three deputy prime ministers and six other ministers, along with a large delegation of Chinese business officials

He and Rohani signed 17 documents, involving mutual cooperation in economic, commercial, industrial, transportation, environmental, cultural and judicial relations, including oil and gas, peaceful nuclear energy, financing a bullet train and banking, Xi saying:

In this visit, we have struck an agreement on planning for 25-year-long strategic cooperation and are ready to develop and deepen cooperation in all the various cultural, educational, technological, military and security fields at the level of strategic partners.

Xi criticized Western powers without naming them, saying they seek hegemonic rule – calling George Bush’s “you are either with us or against us” policy “jungle rule.”

Developing economies left Western ones “bereft of their monopolized power…pav(ing) the way for the practice of independent states’ policies.”

He stressed the eagerness of China to enhance ties and cooperation with Iran. Chinese Academy of Social Science Middle East expert Yin Gang called his visit historically significant, signaling enhanced bilateral relations.

“Iran is the place to prove China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy,” said Yin. Its potential is huge.

Renmin University Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies dean Wang Wen called Iran a hub along the “New Silk Road” route – giving China’s “one Belt, One Road” strategy “solid underpin(ning).”

According to Beijing Ministry of Commerce researcher Mei Xinyu, “Iran is one of the most important players in the region and a key Chinese partner in the Middle East. (It’s) vital for China’s strategies in West Africa and North Asia.”

Besides its huge energy needs vital to its economy, Iran’s large population (nearly 80 million) offers attractive potential for Chinese exports.

In 2014, bilateral trade exceeded $50, Iranian exports totaling $27.5 billion in energy and other products. Chinese oil imports from Iran account for around 12% of its domestic needs, likely increasing ahead with international sanctions lifted.

On Saturday, Xi met with Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khomenei. “Westerners have never obtained the trust of the Iranian nation,” he said.

The government and nation of Iran have always sought expanding relations with independent and trustful countries like China.

Tehran intends increasing ties with the “East.” He praised Beijing’s “independent” stance on global issues, saying “China has always stood by the side of the Iranian nation during hard days.”

America’s approach is “dishonest” on all geopolitical issues, he stressed. Closer Iranian Eastern ties makes it less vulnerable to US-led Western hostility.

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.

 

On January 20th a cabal of dependencies of the United States of America, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy, met in Paris to discuss war on Syria. One of a series of such meetings with a changing list of participants, it included the defence ministers of the countries supporting various proxy forces attacking Syria, either posing as “rebels” or allied with the American created and supported force ISIS. It was in fact a meeting of conspirators planning a war of aggression. There is no other way to put it. This was a criminal act under international law and another dramatic repudiation of the United Nations and everything the United Nations Charter stands for.

One nation that was not invited was Canada, a snub that has caused consternation among the war party in Canada, but is likely the result of the new prime minister’s pledge to withdraw Canadian forces from action in Syria and Iraq. The new Canadian government has not in fact withdrawn its small forces as promised but no doubt the Americans are doubtful of the new government’s reliability as a partner in crime and wanted to slap down the new government for daring to make even a mild move towards peace in our time.

The Canadian government’s pledge to withdraw its forces was a result of campaign promises made during the October elections in Canada where these military adventures are unpopular with large sections of the population which sees them as wasting their tax money fighting wars for American interests and domination of the world. The fact that such operations are not only illegal under international law but also under Canadian law as set out in the National Defence Act, and, therefore, should never have been conducted in the first place, is, inexplicably, never mentioned by any Canadian government figure, major political party or any of the tightly controlled and coordinated media, because, of course, law means nothing to criminals.

The Paris meeting was a criminal act, a war crime in fact, since the only international body that has the right to determine if, when and how military forces is to be applied in any situation is the United Nations Security Council. Any military action taken outside the mandate of the Security Council is prohibited and the Rome Statute, the statute that governs the International Criminal Court, defines such a meeting as a conspiracy to commit aggression, the worst of all war crimes, because it leads to all other war crimes that necessarily follow an act of aggression.

But the Paris meeting is not the first step in furthering this conspiracy to commit acts of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria. The first act was the attack made on Syria by the United States in 2011 after it and its co-conspirators attacked and destroyed Libya using the same proxy forces, the same techniques, and the same propaganda to mislead the public. Many of the same mercenaries, and thugs that they used against Libya were quickly reassigned and sent into Syria through Turkey, and Jordan where they soon linked up with armed groups from Iraq now known as ISIS. The United States, Turkey, Britain, France, and Saudi Arabia, brag about their open support for these groups, and have confessed that they have sent in their own special forces to “train” them. This act of aggression against Syria continues to escalate and came close to succeeding until Russia, at the request of the besieged government of Syria, decided to deploy its air forces in Syria in order to crush these American and allied proxy forces.

The reaction here in the west since September when the Russians began their very effective air operations has been a seething anger from Washington, to London, from Paris to Berlin, from Riyadh to Istanbul. The failure of the American attempt to conquer Syria will mean the failure of the American plan to kick Russia out of the Mediterranean, a failure to control the land routes from there to Iran for an eventual attack on Iran itself, an operation that cannot be mounted from the Persian Gulf, and a failure to place its forces on the southern flank of Russia in preparation for a pincer thrust into Russia from the south and the western plains of Poland and Ukraine. Others cite gas pipelines and war profits as reasons, but these are secondary to the principal strategy of the domination of Eurasia by the United States and those hoping to be thrown some scraps from the spoils, like the jackals they are.

None of these countries have any legal or moral right to attack Syria under the guise of going after ISIS, or Islamic State as they now call it. To obtain that right they would first have to be asked by the Syrian government for their assistance. The Syrian government does not want their “assistance”. They do not want their war. But these criminal nations refuse to talk to the Syrian government and insist on its overthrow and they refuse to take their case before the Security Council because they know they have no case and Russia and China will oppose their criminal plans. So they evade the United Nations and once again, create ad hoc “coalitions” of the criminal minded, who have no respect for international law, their own laws, the sovereign rights of the Syrian nation, or their own platitudes about peace and “human rights.”

The criminal nature and intent of the meeting was openly declared in the press conference after the meeting by the US Defense Secretary Carter who called for more forces to be gathered to “eject jihadist fighters from their headquarters in Raqqa, Syria and Mosul, Iraq and to maintain that planned defeat.” The latter phrase must be interpreted as meaning a permanent occupation of the region by American and allied forces. To back this up the America Army’s 101st Airborne Division has been assigned the role of re-entering Iraq. It seems Iraq will have no choice in the matter as the Americans continue their drive to establish a new protectorate out of western Iraq and eastern Syria which they can then use to control the region and attack Iran. Further meetings are to be held in Brussels in a few weeks.

In the meantime Russia continues to try to achieve a negotiated resolution of the war in compliance with international law and a further meeting of the Russian and American foreign ministers will be held in Geneva to discuss it but there is little hope of those talks going anywhere since the two countries approach the problem from completely opposite positions; the Russians on the basis of the national sovereignty of Syria and the recognition of the existing government as the only legitimate government, the Americans on the basis that might makes right and Syria must submit to its will. For them, international law and national sovereignty are phrases empty of all meaning.

And once again, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court remains in her office in The Hague, completely inert as nations that are within her jurisdiction plan these crimes. She has charged several African leaders for much less but then those prosecutions serve the interests of the same powers she should be prosecuting. She doesn’t even hold a press conference condemning these meetings, actions and plans for more war and insisting that these criminals adhere to international law. Nothing is said. Nothing is done. The ICC is shown to be as useless as the Security Council.

It is the Americans and their allies who are responsible for all the dead and dying in Syria, and it is they who “brought forth the monstrous mass of earthly slime, puft up with empty wind and filled with sinful crime” that is ISIS and it is clear that they will continue to use this monster of their creation as a device to escalate the war against Syria and increase their crimes but who, aside from the Syrian people, Russia and Iran can stop them? And so, the war will continue, the misery it brings will continue, and those responsible will continue to meet in beautiful settings, enjoying the fine things their crimes bring, bragging that they are saving the people from the very “terrorists” they created and control.

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 the basis of secret evidence, a UK inquiry under orders from Washington decided that the death ten years ago of a low level spy was “probably” ordered by President Putin of Russia. There is no motive whatsoever for Putin to have been concerned with the dead spy, Litvinenko. He was of no consequence or threat to Russia.

Probably, Litvinenko’s death was due to the fact that he was engaged in the smuggling of nuclear materials and accidently poisoned himself.

What these unsubstantiated attacks on the President of Russia are doing is elevating Russia. The non Anglo-Zionist world, which is the largest part of humanity, has lost confidence in the veracity of the West. The Western media, a collection of prostitutes, is in such lock-step mindless compliance with the anti-Russian agenda that the most implausible accusations against President Putin are reported as if they were proven fact.

Western news organizations, such as the BBC and the New York Times, once respected news organizations, are now widely regarded as government propaganda organizations that lie for their living.

Here is the report of a person who used to believe the lie until he looked into the case.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/today-assumed-putins-russia-killed-litvinenko-looked.html

As I wrote recently, all they do is to lie to us. Lies are the West’s principle weapon. As the lies wear out, the West is exposed as a liar that never can be believed about anything.

A few decades from now, will it be common knowledge that using microwave radiation to heat food is harmful to human health? It’s certainly a possibility, and information is already emerging which shows cause for concern.

Microwaves work by causing water molecules to resonate at very high frequencies, converting them into steam and thereby heating your food. While this might be a convenient way to prepare your food, using microwave radiation in this way actually changes the chemical structure of that food.

The fact that they are approved as safe doesn’t mean much these days, as we’ve seen with several other examples from Tobacco, PCBs and Asbestos and Glyphosate. Just because a government agency, like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or a government health agency approves something as safe, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe.

You might be wondering how this is any different from heating your food on the stove or steaming it, and that’s a fair question. The difference is that microwaves deform and distort the molecules in food, while conventional heating methods do not.

This is problematic in the medical field as well. We know, for example, that during blood transfusions, microwaves are often used to heat the blood before it is transferred to the patient. But using microwave radiation to this actually damages components found in blood. In fact, one woman even died after receiving a blood transfusion of microwaved blood. (source)

It is starting to look like microwaving can completely rid your food of most essential nutrients, but more research on this phenomenon needs to be done. That being said, there are some publications we can refer to if you’d like to find out more information regarding the harmful effects of microwaves on nutrients.

One example comes from 2003. A study published in The Journal of the Science of Food and Agricultureexamined what microwaves do to broccoli, finding that broccoli, after being microwaved, lost up to 97 percent of its beneficial antioxidants. By comparison, when researchers steamed broccoli, they discovered that it only lost 11 percent or fewer of its antioxidants. (source)

A study out of Australia showed that microwaves cause a greater level of “protein unfolding” than conventional heating. It found that “microwaves cause a significantly higher degree of unfolding  then conventional thermal stress for protein solutions heating to the same maximum temperature.” (source)

A study using garlic found that just 60 seconds in a microwave can render its principle active ingredient (alliinase) as useless. Microwaves have also been found to destroy immune-boosting agents that are found in breast milk. These are disease fighting nutrients which are essential to the health and development of the child. For example, one study found that microwaving breast milk caused a decrease in lysozyme activity and antibodies, and aided the growth of more pathogenic bacteria. (source) The interesting thing about this study is that the researchers found that more damage was done to the milk from microwaving compared to any other method of heating.

Microwaving appears to be contraindicated at high-temperatures, and questions regarding its safety even exist at low temperatures. (source)

A Japanese study found that only 6 minutes of microwave heating turned approximately 40 percent of the B12 found in milk dead and completely void of any nutritional value. (source)

Three recent studies of historical food composition have shown up to 40 percent declines in some of the minerals commonly found in fresh produce, and another one found the same thing for their protein source. (source)

A Scandinavian study conducted in 1999 also found that cooking asparagus in the microwave results in a reduction in vitamins. (Kidmose U and Kaack K. Acta. Agriculturae Scandinavica B1999:49(2).110-117.)

What Type of Container Are You Using To Microwave Your Food?

Not heating your food in plastic containers should be a no brainer at this point. This is precisely why the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that any plastic containers should be labelled for microwave use, but even if they are labeled as safe, it’s still probably not a good idea. For more more information on what happens when you microwave your food in plastic containers, you can check out thisarticle.

Many studies have shown that multiple plastic products contain various hormone disrupting chemicals, and heat is the worst culprit when it comes to increasing the rate of chemical transfer from the container to your food.

As written in the journal Toxicology Letters:

Using a sensitive and quantitative competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, BPA was found to migrate from polycarbonate water bottle at rates ranging from 0.20 ng/h to 0.79/h. . . . At room temperature the migration of BPA was independent of whether or not the bottle had been perviously used. Exposure to boiling water increased the rate of BPA migration by up to 55-fold.

Again, heat increases chemical leaching, so be cautious of what you use to heat your food. Even plastic containers which are labelled as microwave safe (or even BPA free, which does not account for other worrisome chemicals) are still dangerous.  According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), “what the term ‘microwave-safe’ basically means is that any chemicals leaching from the container into food do so at levels far below those shown to have any health effects.  There is cause to be wary of this claim, however. In particular, #7 polycarbonate plastic should not be used in a microwave, even if it is labeled ‘microwave-safe,’ because it leaches hormone-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA), especially when heated.” (source)

This may be frightening to consider, but examining the products we choose to use on a daily basis is important. We have seen many examples in recent human history of information coming to light about a product or drug which completely changes our understanding and attitude towards it. We only have to look at cigarettes to see the proof of that.

 

The historian Heinrich August Winkler has described the history of Germany as a “long road to the West.” By “West,” the Social Democrat means parliamentary democracy, human and civil rights—as they were defined by the American and French revolutions— class compromise and social balance.

After a long Sonderweg (special path), according to Winkler’s interpretation, Germany had finally arrived in the “West” through the Constitution of 1949, the nonviolent reunification of 1991 and the integration into the European Union, which finally led the European continent to peace.

Winkler’s conception of the “West” was always ideologically driven and involved a significant glossing over of reality. However, if recent events are assessed on the basis of his criterion, then Germany and Europe have rapidly travelled the “road to the West” in reverse over recent months. Almost overnight, the political culture has been violently transformed. The social democratic and liberal Europe has collapsed.

Everywhere, the ruling elites are moving sharply to the right. Chauvinism, xenophobia, militarism and the call for a strong state are on the rise. This applies not only to the emerging ultra-right-wing parties such as the French National Front, the Alternative for Germany, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Hungarian Fidesz and the Polish PiS, but also for every establishment party, including those supposedly on the left.

Pseudo-left publications such as the Pabloite United Secretariat’s International Viewpoint are among the leading voices in the chorus calling for state intervention and imperialist war in the name of allegedly defending women’s rights.

In Germany, political parties and the media have sparked a campaign of racist incitement against refugees following the wildly hyped events in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, reminiscent of the anti-Semitic campaigns of the Nazis. Government and opposition parties try to outdo each other in the call for more police and tougher laws, with the Left Party excelling in this regard.

In France, the Socialist Party government has imposed a permanent state of emergency and threatened to deprive convicted criminals of foreign origin of their citizenship, in the tradition of the Vichy regime.

Everywhere in Europe the borders are being imposed, and the Schengen system is as good as dead. Conflicts between EU members are escalating. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the EU “could very well break up in a very short time.” His Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte spoke of “six to eight weeks” remaining for the EU to resolve the refugee crisis. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungwrote, “Never before was the end of the EU as realistic as it is today.”

Europe’s ruling elites are agreed when it comes to increasing military capacity, waging war in the Middle East and Africa and deploying the military at home. But even here, the unity of Europe should not be taken for granted. With the growth of national antagonisms, it is only a matter of time before tanks are deployed to the borders between EU member states. Seventy years after the end of World War II, the threat of war in the heart of Europe has reemerged.

The approximately 1 million refugees who have entered Europe in the past year, about 0.2 percent of the total EU population of 508 million, are the pretext and not the cause of the political shift to the right. This shift is not the result of widespread sentiments in the general population, as the media seeks to present it, but the expression of a rebellion of the ruling elites. They are systematically fanning reactionary moods, using the media and the official parties.

The real reason for this rebellion from above is the explosive social, economic and political contradictions that have been building up since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wider Soviet bloc 25 years ago, and especially since the international financial crisis of 2008. German imperialism has played a crucial role in these developments.

Germany has ruthlessly exploited its economic predominance to force its rivals to the wall and to gain hegemony over Europe. It has used the euro in order to impose merciless austerity measures on weaker southern and eastern European countries–measures that have ruined their economies, plunged millions into misery and robbed the youth of any future.

A cursory glance at European economic statistics is sufficient to show the illusory character of the idea that Europe could be united harmoniously and peacefully on a capitalist basis.

For example, Germany’s gross domestic product, just short of €3 trillion in 2014, was more than seven times as high as that of neighboring Poland, which has nearly half as many inhabitants. Germany’s exports were seven times larger than those of Poland; the German export surplus of €220 billion alone was higher than total Polish exports of €163 billion.

Even France, which exported less than half as much as Germany in 2014 and had a trade deficit of €71 billion, and the United Kingdom, with a trade deficit of €134 billion, were cast in the shadow of Germany.

The contrast in the social statistics is even more blatant. The average monthly gross earnings of full-time workers within the EU varies between €306 in Bulgaria, €902 in Poland, €3,106 in Germany and €4,217 in Denmark.

These averages mask the huge social gulf that has opened up within the individual countries. For example, Germany owes its economic supremacy not least to its extensive low-wage sector, which resulted from the Agenda 2010 “reforms” introduced by the Social Democratic Party-Green Party government of Gerhard Schröder. Millions of workers are living on the edge of subsistence and often need two or three jobs to make ends meet.

These sharp social contradictions are the real reason for the shift to the right by the European elites. They know that below the surface, a massive social explosion is brewing and that they have little time to prepare for it. As in the 1930s, they are stirring up chauvinism and xenophobia to divert social tensions into right-wing channels, build up the police apparatus, and establish a right-wing movement to use against social protests in the same manner as they did in the 1930s with the Nazi stormtroopers (SA).

The growth of militarism serves the same purpose. There has hardly been a war in recent history that has not in part served to direct internal tensions outwards. At the same time, the conflicts between the great powers are very real. In Germany’s ruling class, the belief has long prevailed that its global economic interests can be secured only by military means. For two years, it has agitated intensively for an aggressive foreign policy under the slogan, “New power, new responsibilities.”

Currently, these missions take place in the framework of international alliances, primarily NATO. But this will not last. The conflicts of interest between the great powers are so deep that due to the crisis of the world capitalist economy they are being driven inevitably toward a Third World War.

Only the political intervention of the working class can prevent such a catastrophe. In contrast to the ruling elites, the mood among the masses is predominantly left-wing. But this sentiment finds no expression in official politics. The experiences of the past year–from Syriza’s betrayal in Greece to Germany’s Left Party supporting the call for increased state powers—have powerfully demonstrated that no opposition can be expected from the ranks of the official parties.

The fight against war, racism and social cuts, as well as the defense of refugees and democratic rights, is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism and the building of an international socialist workers’ party. This requires the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Europe.

The Fourth International is the only political tendency that has warned that Europe cannot be unified on a capitalist basis, and that new wars are inevitable if capitalism is not overthrown.

Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Fourth International, explained at the end of the First World War, “a halfway complete and consistent economic union of Europe coming from the top by means of an agreement of the capitalist governments is sheer utopia.” That analysis is being confirmed today. The only possibility of uniting Europe in the interests of its peoples is in the United Socialist States of Europe.

Twenty-five years ago, David North, now the chairman of the WSWS International Editorial Board, warned in a speech on the eve of the launching of the first Gulf War by the US against Iraq, “just as World War I and World War II were preceded by bitter inter-imperialist rivalries, the ground is being prepared for World War III. The weapons which are now being used against the Iraqi people will in the future be used in even more bloody and horrific conflicts.” (1)

Since then, US imperialism and its European allies have destroyed a great part of the Middle East, which now threatens to become the source of a new world conflagration.

Note

1) “One of the great crimes of the twentieth century,” speech by David North, January 20, 1991 in New York City, in: “Desert Slaughter. The Imperialist War Against Iraq,” Detroit 1991, p. 246

Yemeni army spokesman Brig. Gen. Sharaf Ghalib Luqman said that the Saudi-led coalition hire people from around the world to fight in Yemen, among contractors there are 400 persons from US private security firm Blackwater.

CAIRO (Sputnik) — Around 400 persons from US private security firm Blackwater are fighting for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in Yemen, Yemeni army spokesman Brig. Gen. Sharaf Ghalib Luqman said Tuesday.

“They hire poor people from around the world to take part in the hostilities. Among them are Somalis and people from Sudanese tribes. However, there are also Europeans, Americans, Colombians. These are contractors from a structure known as Blackwater. This division includes around 400 people,” Luqman told RIA Novosti.

Sharaf Luqman represents Yemeni loyalists of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who are fighting alongside Houthis against the supporters of internationally-recognized President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Blackwater Security Consulting gained notoriety in 2007 after its employees gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounded 20 in Baghdad during the US deployment. The incident became known as the Nisour Square massacre.

If there is any single price of any commodity that determines the growth or slowdown of our economy, it is the price of crude oil. Too many things don’t calculate today in regard to the dramatic fall in the world oil price. In June 2014 major oil traded at $103 a barrel. With some experience following the geopolitics of oil and oil markets, I smell a big skunk. Let me share some things that for me don’t add up.

On January 15 the US benchmark oil price, WTI (West Texas Intermediate), closed trading at $29, the lowest since 2004. True, there’s a glut of at least some 1 million barrels a day overproduction in the world and that’s been the case for over a year.

True, the lifting of Iran sanctions will bring new oil on to a glutted market, adding to the downward price pressure of the present market.

However, days before US and EU sanctions were lifted on Iran on January 17, Seyyid Mohsen Ghamsari, the head of international affairs at National Iranian Oil Company stated that Iran, “…will try to enter the market in a way to make sure the boosted production will not cause a further drop in prices…We will be producing as much as the market can absorb.”  So the new entry of Iran post-sanctions onto world oil markets is not the cause for the sharp oil fall since January 1.

Also not true is that oil import demand from China has collapsed with a supposed collapse of China’s economy. In the year to November 2015 China imported more, significantly more, 8.9% more, year on year, to 6.6 million barrels a day to become the world’s largest oil importer.

Add to the boiling cauldron that constitutes today’s world oil market the political risk that has been building dramatically since September, 2015 and the Russian decision to come to the call of Syria’s legitimately elected President, Bashar al Assad with formidable airstrikes against terrorist infrastructure. Add as well the dramatic break in relations between Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey and Moscow since Turkey, a NATO member, committed a brazen act of war by shooting down a Russian fighter jet over Syrian airspace. All of this would suggest prices of oil should be going up, not down.

Saudi’s Strategic Eastern Province

Then, for good measure, throw in the insanely provocative decision by Saudi Defense Minister and de facto king, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to execute Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Saudi citizen. Al-Nimr, a respected Shi’ite religious leader was charged with terrorism for calling in 2011 for more rights for Saudi Shi’ites. There are approximately 8 million Saudi Muslims loyal to Shi’ite teachings rather that the ultra-strict Wahhabi Sunni strain. His crime was to support protests calling for more rights for the oppressed Shia minority, perhaps some 25% of the Saudi population. The Shi’ite population of Saudis is overwhelmingly concentrated in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province.

The Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is perhaps the most valuable piece of real estate on the planet, double the area of the Federal Republic of Germany but with a mere 4 million people. Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company is based in Dhahran in the Eastern Province.

The main Saudi oil and gas fields are mostly in the Eastern Province, onshore and offshore, including the world’s largest oil field, Ghawar. Petroleum from the Saudi fields, including Ghawar, is shipped to dozens of countries from the oil port terminal of the the Ras Tanura complex, the world’s biggest crude oil terminal. Some 80% of the near 10 million barrels of oil a day pumped out by Saudi goes to Ras Tanura in the Persian Gulf where it is loaded on to supertankers bound for the west.

The Eastern Province is also home to Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq Plants facility, their biggest oil processing and crude stabilization facility with a capacity of 7 million barrels per day. It’s the primary oil processing site for Arabian extra light and Arabian light crude oils, and handles crude oil pumped from Ghawar field.

And it also happens that the majority of oil field and refinery blue collar workers in of the Eastern Province are…Shi’ite. They are said also to be sympathetic to the just-executed Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. In the late 1980’s the Saudi Hezbollah Al-Hejaz, led several attacks on oil infrastructure and also murdered Saudi diplomats. They were allegedly trained in Iran.

And now there is a new destabilizing element to add to the political tensions building between Saudi Arabia and Erdogan’s Turkey on the one side, flanked by servile Arab Gulf Cooperation Council states, and on the other Assad’s Syria, Iraq with a 60% Shi’ite population and neighboring Iran, aided presently militarily by Russia. Reports are that the instable 30-year old Prince bin Salman is about to me named King.

On January 13, the Gulf Institute, a Middle East think tank, in an exclusive report, wrote that 80-year old Saudi King Salman Al-Saud plans to abdicate his throne and install his son Mohammed as king. They report that the present King “has been making the rounds visiting his brothers seeking support for the move that will also remove the current crown prince and American favorite, the hardline Mohammed bin Naif, from his positions as the crown prince and the minister of interior. According to sources familiar with the proceedings, Salman told his brothers that the stability of the Saudi monarchy requires a change of the succession from lateral or diagonal lines to a vertical order under which the king hands power to his most eligible son.”

On December 3, 2015, the German BND intelligence service leaked a memo to the press warning of the increasing power being acquired by Prince Salman, someone they characterized as unpredictable and emotional. Citing the kingdom’s involvement in Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq and Yemen, the BND stated, referring to Prince Salman, “The previous cautious diplomatic stance of older leaders within the royal family is being replaced by a new impulsive policy of intervention.”

Yet oil prices fall?

The ominous element in this more than ominous situation revolving around the center of world petroleum and natural gas reserves, the Middle East, is the fact that in the recent weeks oil prices, which had temporarily stabilized at an already low $40 range in December, now have plunged another 25% to around $29, outlook grim. Citigroup has forecast $20 oil is possible. Goldman Sachs recently came out saying that it may take lows of $20 a barrel to restabilize world oil markets and get rid of the glut of supply.

Now I have a strong gut feeling that there is something very big, very dramatic building in world oil markets over the coming several months, something most of the world doesn’t expect.

The last time Goldman Sachs and their Wall Street cronies made a dramatic prediction in oil prices was in summer 2008. At that time, amid the growing pressures on Wall Street banks of the spreading US sub-prime real estate meltdown, just before the Lehman Brothers collapse of September that year, Goldman Sachs wrote that oil was headed for $200 a barrel. It had just hit a high of $147.

At that time I wrote an analysis saying just the opposite was likely, based on the fact that there was a huge oversupply in world oil markets that curiously, was only being identified by Lehman Brothers. I was told by an informed Chinese source that Wall Street banks like JP Morgan Chase were hyping the $200 price to convince Air China and other big China state oil buyers to buy every drop of oil at $147 it could before it hit $200, an advice that fed the rising price.

Then by December, 2008 the Brent benchmark oil price was down to $47 a barrel. The Lehman Crisis, a deliberate political decision of US Treasury Secretary a former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulsen, in September 2008, plunged the world into financial crisis and deep recession in the meantime. Did Paulsen’s cronies at Goldman Sachs and other key Wall Street mega-banks such as Citigroup or JP Morgan Chase know in advance that Paulsen was planning the Lehman crisis to force Congress to give him carte blanche bailout powers with the unprecedented TARP funds of $700 billion? In the event, Goldman Sachs and friends reportedly made a gigantic profit betting against their own $200 predictions using leveraged derivatives in oil futures.

Killing the shale oil ‘cowboys’ first

Today the US shale oil industry, the largest source of risíng US oil output since 2009 or so, is hanging by its fingernails on the edge of a cliff of massive bankruptcies. In recent months shale oil production has barely begun to decline, some 93,000 barrels in November, 2015.

The Big Oil cartel–ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell–began dumping their shale leases onto the market two years ago. The shale oil industry in the US today is dominated by what BP or Exxon refer to as “the cowboys,” mid-sized aggressive oil companies, not the majors. Wall Street banks like JP Morgan Chase or Citigroup who historically finance Big Oil, as well as Big Oil itself, clearly would shed no tears at this point were the shale boom to bust, leaving them again in control of the world’s most important market. The financial institutions who lent hundreds of billions of dollars to the shale “cowboys” in the past five years have their next semi-annual loan review in April. With prices hovering at or near the $20 range, we can expect a new, far more serious wave of actual shale oil company bankruptcies. Unconventional oil, including Canada’s huge Alberta Tar Sands oil will soon be a thing of the past, if so.

That alone will not restore oil to the $70-90 levels that the big oil industry players and their Wall Street banks would find comfortable. The glut coming out of the Middle East from Saudi Arabia and her Gulf Arab allies has to be dramatically cut. Yet Saudis show no sign of doing so. This is what disturbs me about the entire picture.

Is something very ugly brewing in the Persian Gulf that will dramatically push oil prices up later this year? Is a real shooting war between Shi’ite and Saudi Wahhabi oil states brewing? Until now it has been a proxy war in Syria primarily. Since the execution of the Shi’ite cleric and Iranian storming of the Saudi Embassy in Teheran, leading to a break in diplomatic ties by Saudi and other Sunni Gulf Arab states, the confrontation has become far more direct. Dr. Hossein Askari, former adviser to the Saudi Finance Ministry, stated, “If there is a war confronting Iran and Saudi Arabia, oil could overnight go to above $250, but decline back down to the $100 level. If they attack each other’s loading facilities, then we could see oil spike to over $500 and stay around there for some time depending on the extent of the damage.”

Everything tells me that the world is in for another big oil shock. It seems it’s almost always about oil. As Henry Kissinger reportedly said back during another oil shock in the mid-1970’s when Europe and the US faced an OPEC oil embargo and long lines at the gas pumps, “If you control the oil, you control entire nations.” That obsession with control is rapidly destroying our civilization. It’s time to focus on peace and development, not on competing to be the biggest oil mogul on the planet.

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

A senior Israeli rabbi says Tel Aviv should execute Palestinians instead of arresting them and “leave no one alive” in order to establish safety in the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinian media report.

“Israeli army has to stop arresting Palestinians,” Shmuel Eliyahu said in a message posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday, adding, “but, it must execute them and leave no one alive,” Palestine News Network reported.

As chief rabbi of the city of Safed, Eliyahu is known for his racist behavior and remarks about Arabs and Muslims. He had earlier urged the Israeli regime to take “revenge” against Arabs in order to restore what he called Israel’s deterrence.

He also described Palestinians as the enemy of Israel and claimed that they “must be destroyed and crushed in order to end violence.”

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million,” the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying in 2007.

In 2012, he was charged for making racist statements as he called the Arab culture “cruel” and accused Arabs of having “violent norms” which “have turned into ideology.”

Eliyahu alleged that Arabs steal farm equipment belonging to Jews and blackmail farmers.

“The minute you make room for Arabs among Jews, it takes five minutes before they start to do whatever they want,” he purportedly said.

However, the Israeli Justice Ministry dropped the charges against him, claiming that reporters ‘may’ have changed his statements.

Back in December, the Jerusalem Post quoted Eliyahu as saying,

“Should we leave them (Palestinians) alive in order to then free them in another gesture to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas? The fact that they still have a desire to commit … attacks shows that we are not operating strongly enough.”

On his Facebook page, he also called for the prosecution of those Israeli forces that keep Palestinians alive, saying, “We must not allow a Palestinian to survive after he was arrested. If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people… We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”

The comments come as tensions have been running high across the occupied Palestinian lands in recent months over Tel Aviv’s imposition of restrictions on Palestinian worshipers’ entry into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in August last year.

More than 160 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of last October.

In just three days, an online letter endorsing the academic boycott of Israeli institutions, circulated by Brazilian intellectuals, received 200 signatories from faculty across Brazilian universities.

According to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the letter was signed by well-known academics, including Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a popular Brazilian diplomat who served on the country’s Truth Commission on human rights abuses that took place during the era of Brazil’s military dictatorship and was the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar as well as B. Boris Vargaftig, physician, pharmacologist, and one of the most internationally quoted Brazilian academics.

According to the PNN, this campaign came right after extremely popular Brazilian congressman Jean Wyllys accepted to participate in a conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which has deep ties to human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Most of the University campus is built in the occupied East Jerusalem and, for that reason, was recently the subject of a new and influential boycott.

A letter signed by 351 international academics explains that “while all Israeli universities are deeply complicit in the occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is particularly noteworthy.”

It goes on to highlight how “the university is complicit in the unequal treatment of Palestinians, including those who are citizens of Israel”; “restricts the freedom of speech and protest of its few Palestinian students”; and is affiliated with Ariel University in the occupied West Bank, while refusing to recognize academic credentials from the Palestinian Al Quds University.

According to The Intercept, numerous critics expressed shock and outrage that a standard-bearer of Brazil’s progressive movement would so completely break with his party’s official position in support of the BDS movement.

But Wyllys further inflamed the outrage over the next several days with a series of self-defenses, and speaking about building bridges, dialogues and expressing his position against the academic boycott of Israel.

In a video message posted on Facebook, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (one among the 200 signatories of the academic boycott), harshly criticized the congressman.

“Lamentable and deplorable, congressman Jean Wyllys’ comments about his visit to Israel reveal a crass ignorance of and total misinformation about Israel’s current human rights policies,” he said.

One example of his lack of knowledge appeared when he characterized the apartheid wall as being “constructed by Israel to impede terrorist attacks”.

Wyllys’ controversial visit to the Hebrew University and his defense of Israeli policies came at a particularly tense moment in bilateral relations between the two governments.

Brazil’s nominally leftist Worker’s Party (PT) government, led by embattled President Dilma Rousseff, has refused to accept the appointment of Dani Dayan as Israel’s ambassador to Brazil on the grounds that he is a proponent of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Under both Rousseff and her predecessor, PT’s Lula da Silva, their party has been vocally supportive of Palestinians.

PSOL positions itself as the left-wing alternative to the more moderately left PT, making Wyllys’ statements particularly surprising and shocking.