Global Research

The latest New Hampshire Democratic primary poll indicates not only a current reality in that state, but an underlying and far more important national trend, a trend exhibited in N.H. that has bearing more broadly throughout the country, and that shows U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders already well on the road toward locking up the Democratic nomination, barring any future game-changing disclosures about one or both candidates, which are always possibilities in any political contest, and can never be ruled out. The same poll also shows Sanders performing more strongly against any Republican than Hillary Clinton would. This is not the way things looked to most prognosticators back on April 30th when Sanders started his campaign.

On June 1st, I bannered, “My Prediction: Bernie Sanders Will Win the White House,” based upon the early indications being clear, even then, that he would have a higher net-favorability rating from likely Democratic Presidential primary voters than Hillary Clinton. (The same analysis, from many polls, indicated also that Sanders would likely beat any Republican candidate in the general election.)

Whereas far more Democrats at that time were familiar with Clinton than with Sanders, and therefore Clinton scored far higher in the national polls then than he did (and so she was presumed to be the contest’s front-runner), the determinant of the future trendline  for any candidate is net-favorability ratings, especially comparing “strongly approve” versus “strongly disapprove,” which ratios tend to be, especially at such an early stage in a contest, a far better predictor of the contest’s ultimate winner than are the sheer poll-numbers at such a time. What the latest New Hampshire poll, taken now near the end of the contest in N.H., shows, is that the campaign in New Hampshire, as it is nearing its end, is increasingly displaying a strong edge over Clinton that Sanders has on this most crucial of all ratios, which is propelling him toward a substantial margin of victory in this, the first, primary state.

The CNN/WMUR New Hampshire Primary Poll, sponsored by WMUR-TV and CNN, and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, randomly surveyed New Hampshire adults and found 420 who indicated that they intended to vote in the Democratic Presidential primary on February 9th. Here are the results:

More than nine in ten (91%) likely Democratic Primary voters have a favorable opinion of Sanders, only 7% have an unfavorable opinion of him, 2% are neutral, and 1% don’t know enough about him to say. Sanders’ net favorability rating is an almost unheard of +84%.

Former Secretary of State and 2008 New Hampshire Primary winner Hillary Clinton also continues to be popular in the state – 65% of likely Democratic Primary voters have a favorable opinion of Clinton, 26% have an unfavorable opinion of her, 9% are neutral, and 1% don’t know enough about her to say. Clinton’s net favorability rating is +39%.

Sanders’ net favorability rating has steadily increased over 2015 from +34% in February to +67% in September to +84% in the most recent poll. Clinton’s has eroded through the same period, from +74% in February to +44% in September, and remaining at +39% in the latest CNN/WMUR poll.

The trendlines are starkly indicated in the following, from this N.H. poll:

“Sanders is the most electable Democrat as measured by net electability, the percentage who support a candidate minus the percentage who would not vote for that candidate under any circumstances. Sanders net electability score is +56%, while Clinton’s net electability score is +19%, and O’Malley’s is -26%. Clinton’s net electability rating has been declining over the past year while Sanders’ has continued to increase.”

What this crucial fact means is: the more that voters get to know about Sanders, the more they approve of him, whereas the more that they get to know about Clinton, the less they approve of her. (As regards O’Malley, voters still can’t see any reason for him to be running, other than self-aggrandizement.)

Regarding the general-election contest in N.H., a later headline that same day, January 20th, was based upon the same poll, but included the results also from Republican voters, the 413 who were planning to vote on February 9th in the Republican primary, and the headline was “WMUR poll: Sanders is New Hampshire’s favorite general election candidate: Vermont Democrat fares better against top Republicans than Hillary Clinton.” That result showed:

In a match-up of the current New Hampshire frontrunners in each party, Sanders leads Republican businessman Donald Trump, 57 percent to 34 percent, with 6 percent favoring another candidate and 3 percent undecided. Independents favor Sanders, 55 percent to 33 percent.

Clinton leads Trump, 48 percent to 39 percent, with 10 percent supporting another candidate and 3 percent undecided. Independents favor Clinton 43 percent to 34 percent.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who jumped to second place in the latest WMUR/CNN New Hampshire Primary Poll of Republican candidates, trails Sanders, 56 percent to 33 percent, with independents favoring Sanders, 56 percent to 24 percent.

Clinton has a much smaller lead over Cruz, 47 percent to 41 percent, with independents slightly favoring Cruz, 39 percent to 33 percent.

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.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) mobilized tanks and other heavy weaponry from military bases in al Mukalla, Hadramawt, to other fronts in Yemen. It could indicate a possible launch of a renewed campaign in al Bayda or southern Yemen or of a new campaign contesting control in Wadi Hadramawt. The group moved resources northward along the road that runs east of al Mukalla through the Abdullah Gharib pass, which leads to a juncture at al Adwas, where there is also a military base. AQAP may either divert resources westward to Shabwah governorate or continue northward into Wadi Hadramawt.

Ansar al Sharia, AQAP’s insurgent arm, continues to support the Saudi-led coalition. The group have been credited for 11 attacks on the Houti alliance targets in al Bayda and Ibb governorates since January 7.

According to the reports, the Director of Logistics for the Yemeni Army has been assassinated in the Sana’a on Sunday. Colonel Mohammad Radwan was reported dead after unknown gunmen opened fire on his convoy inside the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.

On Jan.18, the Yemeni Army’s Republican Guard and the Houthis launched an offensive inside the Al-Jawf Governorate, capturing the Koula Mountains after a violent battle with the Saudi-led coalition’s troops. The Koula Mountains in the Al-Jawf Governorate overlook the Mar’eb Governorate’s northern countryside.

On Jan.19, a Saudi airstrike left nine students and a woman dead in an area in Ta’izz Province. Nearly ten others were also injured. More than a dozen civilians were killed and five others wounded in similar attacks in the town of Haydan in Sa’ada. Saudi warplanes also carried out airstrikes on Sana’a.

The Houthi alliance’s missile attack on a Saudi-led command center in Ma’rib killed over 120 mercenaries, including the Saudi, UAE and US officers, Ali al-Houthi, an Ansarullah Movement Leader, told on Jan.19. 46 Saudi mercenaries, 11 UAE and 9 Saudi officers and 11 foreign commanders of the US Blackwater company were among those killed in the attack. Houthi said that 6 Apache and 4 Black Hawk helicopters and 4 drones armed with missiles were also destroyed.

 

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Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman [pictured left] was on guard at the Cuban prison camp on the night they died, and calls the official version of events “impossible”.

“They would have had to all three tie their hands and feet together, shove rags down their throats, put a mask over their face, made a noose, hung it from the ceiling on the side of the cellblock, jumped into the noose and hung themselves simultaneously,” the ex-Marine told Vice News in an explosive video interview.

“In a cellblock where guards are ordered to check on detainees every four minutes.”

There had also been an inspection of the cellblock only a few hours earlier, Hickman said, and guards had found nothing detainees might use to make the nooses and rags.

Hickman tried for years to put the nightmare of his time at Guantanamo behind him, but eventually he was forced to confront his past.

He has now written a book, Murder at Camp Delta, which he hopes will be a step towards finding out the truth.

“I was trying to put Guantanamo behind me. I didn’t want to remember it. It was like a bad dream I was trying to put in the past,” he said.

“Then I saw in news that another detainee had hung themself. I had to face it and see what really happened.”

On the night of June 9, 2006, Hickman was on guard at Camp Delta when he says he saw a paddywagon return to high-security Alpha Block three separate times, each time picking up a prisoner and taking them out of the camp.

He claims he watched the paddywagon take a left outside the checkpoint ACP Roosevelt, which he said would only lead to one of two places — the beach or Camp No, which we now know was a secret CIA holding facility.

“Between 11pm and 11.30pm I witnessed the paddywagon come back to Camp Delta,” he said.

“Instead of Camp 1, it went to the medical detainee clinic. About 10 minutes later, all the lights come on, like a stadium, and sirens are going off — it’s chaos.”

The prisoners were dead.

The three men were Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, 37, from Yemen, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, 30, from Saudi Arabia, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, 22, also from Saudi Arabia.

Al-Zahrani had been imprisoned at Guantanamo since he was captured at 17. None of the men had been charged with a crime.

After their deaths, Rear Admiral Harry Harris took the unusual step of attacking them in his announcement of their apparent suicide.

“They have no regard for life, either ours or their own,” he told Reuters. “I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

But why would the authorities want to kill these men and make their deaths look like suicide?

Hickman says it’s because the three were regular hunger strikers, who incited others to do the same.

“They had a policy that if a detainee is hunger-striking, he cannot be interrogated,” said Hickman. “In 2006, they were doing roughly 200 interrogations a week, so any massive hunger-strike would, what they consider, cripple the intelligence value.

“I believe the number-one mission in JTF-GTMO (Joint Task Force Guantanamo) at the time was, stop the hunger strikes at all costs.

“I think you get rid of the people that provoked the hunger strikes and you get rid of the problem.

“After the deaths there were no hunger strikes for a long period of time.”

The ex-sergeant has spent the years since his time at the prison camp independently investigating what happened that night, and first approached the US Justice Department in 2009.

His claims, and that of others from his team, were first reported by Harper’s Magazine in 2010, provoking a major backlash, in which authorities said Hickman would have been outside the perimeter and not even able to see the entrance to Alpha Block.

There are many questions over what has gone on at the controversial facility, which still holds about 150 prisoners.

It is considered illegal under human rights law to detain people without charge, and many people say the reality of Guantanamo is the opposite of its motto: “Safe, humane, legal, transparent.”

Former inmates say the CIA regularly used torture techniques described in the recent Senate report when questioning them. They have alleged systematic abuse and former guard Brandon Neely said violence and degrading treatment was commonplace.

Hickman rejoined the army after September 11, believing it was his duty to help. “I thought Guantanamo was needed, warfare was changing and we needed a safe place to hold and interrogate them.”

The reality he discovered was very different.

“They scare you when you get there; they tell you you can never talk about this, it’s a classified facility. Everyone’s afraid they’re going to get in trouble.”

While Hickman has not named any alleged murderers in his book, he hopes that it will trigger a close investigation into what really went on.

“I can’t name names. I keep it vague at the end for that reason,” he says. “I say it was murder, this is the reason why.”

British doctors have submitted a request to the World Medical Association to have the Israel Medical Association expelled, Israeli news website nrg reported on Wednesday.

Dr. Ze’ev Feldman, a representative of the Israel Medical Association, said 71 British doctors had reached out to the WMA asking for Israel’s membership to be revoked. He said British medical journals have published letters to the editor carrying accusations against Israeli doctors, including malpractice against Palestinian patients.

The information was brought to light during a hearing for the Knesset Science and Technology Committee, which discussed the academic boycott initiatives adopted by the American Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association and those considered by other groups.

(…)

Read the rest of this article here

Featured image: source

On Tuesday, a New York grandmother returned to jail on previous charges filed against her for protesting U.S. drone warfare in 2013. Mary Anne Grady Flores, 58, was photographing other activists as they peacefully protested armed drones at the Syracuse Hancock Air Base in February 2013.

Judges in the town of DeWitt, where the base is located, had issued “orders of protection” to activists in order to keep them away from the base. Under these orders, often issued by courts to protect victims of domestic violence, Col. Earl A. Evans, a commander at the base, was construed as a “victim” of the protests.

In spite of these orders, Grady Flores and her fellow anti-war protesters continued to assemble to voice opposition to the drone program. Grady Flores is a member of The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, a group that has protested drone warfare since 2011.

Though orders of protection were issued to multiple demonstrators prior to the February protest, Grady Flores was the first to be prosecuted for violating one. The other eight activists arrested that day for protesting were acquitted of their charges. Grady Flores, however, was prosecuted for unknowingly moving “beyond what she believed was the base’s boundary” while photographing her fellow activists. “She was later told the base’s property extended into the road,” Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reported at the time. Grady Flores was charged with second-degree criminal contempt for violating the order of protection.

“This has got to stop,” Judge David Gideon said of the activists’ ongoing protests before sentencing Grady Flores in July of 2014.

Grady Flores had also refused to pay previous fees and fines imposed by the court. “I find this to be serious because of the continued violations of the orders of this court,” Judge Gideon said.

The courtroom was filled with about 100 protesters who came to support Grady Flores. They “walked six miles from the drone base to the courtroom carrying a coffin bearing the words, ‘First Amendment,’” Democracy Now! reported.

Though prosecutors in the case did not seek jail time due to Grady Flores’ responsibilities caring for her elderly mother, Judge Gideon forced the punishment, perhaps to make an example of her. He sentenced her to one year in jail — the maximum sentence. She was also fined $1,000.

“Mary Anne’s sentence is big news,” said Brian Terrell, an anti-drone organizer with Voices for Creative Nonviolence, following her conviction. “The drone program is so blatantly illegal that the authorities have to go to absurd lengths to justify and protect it. They need to redefine words like ‘imminent threat’ and ‘due process’ to cover up the criminality. Here, they have to redefine the meaning of an Order of Protection.”

After she was sentenced, Grady Flores asked the judge:

“… who is the real victim here: the commander of a military base whose drones kill innocent people halfway around the world, or those innocent people themselves who are the real ones in need of protection from the terror of US drone attacks?”

She vowed to appeal, and was released from jail shortly after on a “stay of sentence” after her supporters raised $5,000 to bail her out. That same month, between seven and eight protesters — one of whom was Grady Flores’ younger sister, Clare — were arrested for again protesting at the Hancock base. They demanded the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard, located there, “stay away from the Children of the World and their families, including their homes, schools, places of play and work.” The demonstrators delivered a “People’s War Crimes Indictment,” posting it to a fence after employees on the base refused to take it. In September of 2015, five more protesters — all over the age of 55 — were arrested for trespassing while protesting drones at the Hancock base.

Last Tuesday, Grady Flores learned by mail that she was ordered back to jail for her 2013 violation. It happened to be the National Day of Action to Stop Killer Drones.

Onondaga County Court Judge Miller had ruled to uphold Judge Gideon’s conviction, and Grady Flores was ordered to return to jail on Tuesday, January 19.

She was scheduled to appear for a court hearing on January 22, but her supporters suspect she was re-sentenced by mail to avoid a scene reminiscent of her earlier conviction. As Alternet reported, “Her supporters speculate that this may have been an attempt to prevent a courtroom and media frenzy such as that which happened when she was originally sentenced.”

Grady Flores is ordered to spend six months at the Jamesville Correctional Facility in East Syracuse NY.

The United States’ drone program has faced ongoing criticism for its often imprecise bombings, launched by drone operators far removed from the areas being attacked. A recent investigative report by The Intercept found 90% of casualties from drone strikes were not the intended targets. The Obama administration has previously been accused of and investigated for war crimes for civilian casualties caused by drone attacks. Though the civilian casualty rate is high, a majority of Americans continue to support drone warfare.

In the meantime, nonviolent activists are consistently arrested for demonstrating against drones at air force bases across the country.

As Grady Flores said after her 2014 conviction:

“As I, a nonviolent grandmother of three and caregiver for my mother, prepare for jail — itself a perversion — I stand before you remorseful, less for what I have done than for what I have not yet done to keep my own country from perpetrating its ongoing acts of violence and injustice.”

 Iraqi security forces on streets of Baghdad Monday searching for three Americans reported kidnapped by Shiite militia  (Photo: AP)

Two of three missing US civilians kidnapped by Shiite militia forces in Baghdad at the weekend are believed to have been working on a “critical” multimillion dollar deal to train Iraq’s counter-terrorism forces in the fight against the so-called Islamic State.

The Bureau has learned that a contract for US defence giant General Dynamics to provide services to Iraq’s government was quietly renewed by Washington without any formal tendering process towards the end of last year.

The deal had to be rushed through, according to a Federal procurement document, which stated:

“Time is critically short due to the nature and complexity of international negotiations and agreement.”

The value of the renewed contract, which started last month, is not yet known but the previous 12-month deal that expired in November was worth $4.4million.

The question of using American contractors to train Iraq’s special forces has now been thrown into sharp focus.

A senior Iraqi military official told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that two of the three contractors kidnapped by Iran-backed forces from a private home in Baghdad over the weekend were military trainers working for General Dynamics.

The Journal reported their names as Amro Mohammed, an Egyptian-American, and Wael al-Mahdawy, an Iraqi-American. It also cited a police official naming the third as Russel Furat, an Iraqi-American woman.

It is not known whether she also works for General Dynamics, which is headquartered in Virginia. The US State Department has confirmed the abductions as searches continue.

General Dynamics had not at the time of publication responded to the Bureau’s request for comment.

The rise of Islamic State has undermined confidence in Iraq’s police and security system, with Shiite militias becoming increasingly aggressive in an unstable environment.

It was this fragile situation which formed the backdrop to negotiations about the special forces training contract last year.

Iraq’s Special Operations Force (ISOF) is part of the country’s Counter Terrorism Service, and it was Baghdad which asked Washington to help arrange a training provider.

The company’s 2014 contract was due to expire at the end of November 2015, but delays by Baghdad in requesting a new deal meant the Pentagon had to scramble to avoid a period in which there would be no cover.

The procurement document unearthed by the Bureau said General Dynamics “possesses both the manpower and resources to continue providing critical sustainment training to the ISOF to improve their capacity deter, prevent, disrupt, capture and prosecute known terrorists and terrorist organisations in Iraq”.

According to the document, General Dynamic contractors are providing “sustainment training” for ISOF’s 1st Brigade and subordinate units. They work in the ISOF compound near Baghdad International Airport but “may be required to operate at other locations on a temporary basis”.

The ISOF was a key frontline force in the recent defeat of Islamic State in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi.

Iraq’s Special Operations Forces were created by the Americans in 2003.  They were trained by the US military, but continuing this training became more complicated after the agreement granting US forces in Iraq immunity from prosecution lapsed in 2011.

The American military presence in Iraq is fraught with controversy.

Last month, Iraqi prime minister Haider al Abadi declined the White House’s offer of Apache helicopters and extra US military advisers in the fight for Ramadi.

There was much less publicity accompanying the US offer of contractors however.

As well as the General Dynamics contractors, there are 3,500 uniformed US personnel in Iraq who are reported to be in training or advisory roles.

In the absence of a formal agreement granting them immunity from prosecution, these troops are protected by an exchange of diplomatic notes.

The Bureau has been investigating the use of contractors by the US military.

De cara a la profundización de la recesión mundial, es urgente que los mandatarios de América del Sur pongan todas sus energías en la construcción de instituciones de crédito propias y el uso de instrumentos de cooperación financiera orientados a debilitar la influencia del dólar en la región. Toda vez que el Gobierno de Estados Unidos busca imponer por todos los medios posibles su dominación económica en la región, para los países sudamericanos se ha vuelto indispensable conquistar autonomía política frente a las instituciones tradicionales de crédito.

El modus operandi del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), el Banco Mundial y el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) es ya bastante conocido: la utilización de la deuda como un mecanismo de presión contra los pueblos hundidos en la insolvencia; la imposición de medidas económicas draconianas (disminución de los gastos sociales, recortes de los salarios, privatización de las empresas estatales de carácter estratégico, etc.); la asistencia financiera sin límites a Gobiernos surgidos de un golpe de Estado pero avalados por la Casa Blanca (como ocurrió en Chile a mediados de la década de 1970); etc. Por esas y muchas otras razones es necesario fortalecer los cimientos de la arquitectura financiera sudamericana.

En primer lugar, se requiere de una Unidad Monetaria Sudamericana (UMS). La UMS no es una “moneda común”como el euro, sino una canasta de referencia conformada por un conjunto de monedas (como los Derechos Especiales de Giro del FMI). En definitiva, la UMS es una referencia que goza de mayor estabilidad que el dólar, tanto para la emisión de bonos como para la comparación de precios dentro de la región. En paralelo, se debe promover que los intercambios comerciales se facturen en monedas nacionales.

Desde 2008 Argentina y Brasil pusieron en marcha el Sistema de Pagos en Monedas Locales (SML). Y en octubre de 2015, Paraguay y Uruguay implementaron un mecanismo de pagos análogo. Gracias a ello se ha evitado pasar por el dólar y los costos de transacción se han visto reducidos considerablemente entre las empresas de ambas partes. Ahora solamente falta involucrar a Bolivia y Venezuela para, de esta manera, incentivar la “desdolarización” entre todos los países que integran el Mercado Común del Sur (MERCOSUR).

En segundo lugar, los países de América del Sur están necesitados de un poderoso fondo de estabilización monetario capaz de proteger sus balanzas de pagos de las violentas fluctuaciones del dólar, más todavía luego de que el Sistema de la Reserva Federal (FED) de Estados Unidos elevó la tasa de interés de los fondos federales (‘federal funds rate’) en diciembre del año pasado. A lo largo de 2002 y 2009 el auge de los precios de las materias primas (‘commodities’) favoreció la acumulación masiva de reservas internacionales, y sin embargo, América del Sur siguió financiando a los países industrializados.

Una buena parte de los miles de millones de dólares que la región sudamericana ahorró durante los últimos años se fue a invertir en bonos del Tesoro de Estados Unidos, en lugar de canalizarse a actividades productivas mediante un Fondo del Sur de gran potencia. En estos momentos el único fondo de estabilización que existe en la región es el Fondo Latinoamericano de Reservas (FLAR), lanzado originalmente por la Comunidad Andina en 1978 bajo el nombre de Fondo Andino de Reservas, y actualmente conformado por Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Perú, Uruguay y Venezuela.

Sin embargo, los recursos a disposición del FLAR son insuficientes para contener estampidas de capitales en coyunturas críticas: su capital suscrito es de apenas 3.609 millones de dólares, un monto que representa menos de un 15% de las reservas almacenadas por el Banco Central de Bolivia. El mercado mundial de crédito se ha vuelto demasiado volátil. Tan sólo en 2015 se fugaron más de 98.000 millones de dólares de inversiones financieras de los países emergentes, según las estimaciones del Instituto de Finanzas Internacionales (IIF, por sus siglas en inglés).

Por lo tanto, es urgente poner manos a la obra ante esta peligrosa vulnerabilidad. Los países del MERCOSUR necesitan un fondo de estabilización propio que, dado el alto grado de integración financiera de Brasil con el resto del mundo, cuente con por lo menos 100.000 millones de dólares de capital suscrito, que es el volumen de recursos con el que comenzará a funcionar el Acuerdo de Reservas de Contingencia del BRICS (acrónimo de Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica).

Y en tercer lugar, los países sudamericanos deben sacar el Banco del Sur del atasco burocrático en que se encuentra para que emita por fin sus primeros préstamos. Los detalles técnicos están prácticamente listos: el capital inicial será de 7.000 millones de dólares y el capital autorizado de 20.000 millones de dólares; la sede principal estará en Venezuela; Argentina y Bolivia acogerán otras dos sucursales. Con todo, su puesta en funcionamiento se ha postergado una y otra vez, tanto así que después de más de ocho años de haberse firmado su acta fundacional en la ciudad de Buenos Aires, el Banco del Sur aún no consigue abrir sus puertas.

Es que existen poderosos intereses económicos que obstaculizan quebrar con el statu quo, tanto dentro como fuera de la región. Aunque en un primer momento se contempló que el Banco del Sur iba a aglutinar a todos los países de la Unión de Naciones Sudamericanas (UNASUR), esto parece imposible; Surinam y Guyana no tienen interés, mientras que Chile, Colombia y Perú están obcecados en respaldar los proyectos de integración impulsados por Washington, tanto la Alianza del Pacífico como el Acuerdo de Asociación Transpacífico (TPP, por sus siglas en inglés).

En consecuencia, los miembros del Banco del Sur han quedado reducidos a los países del MERCOSUR más Ecuador. Por otra parte, las resistencias dentro del bloque vienen sobre todo de Itamaraty, el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Brasil. En América del Sur la influencia del Banco Nacional de Desarrollo Económico y Social (BNDES, por sus siglas en portugués) de Brasil es aplastante, a tal grado que en varios años ha conseguido superar los montos de crédito provistos por el FMI, el Banco Mundial y el BID.

El BNDES no tiene interés en hacer avanzar la integración latinoamericana, en realidad su misión es garantizar el suministro de materias primas (‘commodities’) a las empresas brasileñas. Los recursos del BNDES están orientados a megaproyectos que reproducen la dependencia primario-exportadora de los países sudamericanos, como la Iniciativa para la Integración de la Infraestructura Regional (IIRSA), una red de carreteras de dimensiones continentales que únicamente beneficiará a un puñado de corporaciones.

En contraste, el dinero del Banco del Sur no se dirigirá únicamente a obras de infraestructura, sino que también estará orientado a un amplio abanico de programas de inversión vinculados con la educación, la salud, la vivienda, etc. El Banco del Sur desechará por completo los criterios del “Consenso de Washington” que tanta miseria trajeron a Nuestra América; otorgará préstamos a tasas de interés muy bajas, pues su objetivo es impulsar el desarrollo económico integral de los pueblos.

Es indudable, el Banco del Sur constituye una gran esperanza en tiempos de crisis. Por un lado, servirá como un poderoso mecanismo de alivio económico para los países de América del Sur que son víctimas de severas contracciones. Por otro lado, será un soporte decisivo para financiar las metas más ambiciosas de la integración sudamericana: proyectos científicos y tecnológicos conjuntos, una red de ferrocarriles, y otra energética, etc.

En conclusión, los Gobiernos sudamericanos necesitan tomar medidas concretas que pongan un alto a la restauración conservadora que está en curso, de lo contrario precipitarán su debacle. Es evidente que el Gobierno de Brasil tiene la mayor responsabilidad de salvaguardar la soberanía continental. De los altos funcionarios de Itamaraty dependerá en última instancia romper la parálisis del Banco del Sur…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

On Jan. 20, Russian warplanes have carried out 16 sorties and destroyed 57 terrorist targets in Syria with airstrikes only taking place in Latakia and Deir ez-Zor provinces due to bad weather.

The Russian Air Force destroyed a field camp held by ISIS in Deir ez-Zor including the terrorists’ multiple rocket launchers, artillery and fuel storage located there. Also, the terrorists’ rocket artillery positions and a fuel depot in the vicinity of the village of Bgelia were targeted.

A ISIS field training camp including the militants’ command post and barracks in the vicinity of the village of Mreya in Deir ez Zor province was also destroyed. Separately, the Russian jets hit the terrorists near Jabal al-Akrad as they fled Latakia being attacked by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

There are growing indications that Turkey is preparing a ground invasion in Syria. The Turks are determined to make the so-called “buffer zone” stretching along the Syrian side of the Turkey-Syria border. It’s clear that Erdogan needs this zone to defend supply lines of the Ankara-backed terrorist groups and the oil smuggling business. It would also prevent the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from expanding their reach westward.

In what could be a sign of this intent, Turkish minesweeping vehicles have started clearing mines along a section of the border near the Syrian town of Jarabulus controlled by ISIS. Turkey has also ramped up its artillery strikes along its border with Syria. The public reason is to help its militant allies against ISIS. Indeed, it’s another move heading to the buffer zone in Northern Syria. What prevent Turkey from a full-scale invasion, it’s a possible military answer of the Russian grouping located in Syria amid refuse of the US to support this risky choice.

However, Turkey may decide to move forward with its operation anyway. The SAA supported by the Russian Airspace Forces is continuing to gain the ground in Latakia and Aleppo. The very same time, the Kurdish YPG is advancing westward toward the ISIS-controlled town of Manbij. Each of these developments decreases expected outcomes of the regional anti-Assad alliance – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar – in the Syrian conflict.

 

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The much-anticipated talks between the Syrian government and different opposition groups are scheduled to take place in the Swiss city of Geneva on January 25.

“Unfortunately, in recent days, it’s especially noticeable that ahead of the planned start of the inter-Syrian negotiations in Geneva the activities of terrorist groups have intensified. Obviously, they’re trying to turn the tide in their favor on the battlefield,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing in Moscow.

According to Zakharova, Attempts to launch counter-attacks against the government forces were performed by Al-Nusra Front and Ahrar ash-Sham groups, which “got serious reinforcements from Turkey.”

The increased activity of the terrorists was witnessed in several suburbs of Damascus, Homs and Idlib provinces of Syria, she added.

Russia will continue providing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population in Syria, Zakharova stressed.

She reiterated that Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has performed 30 flights “not only to Syria, but also to Lebanon and Jordan” in January, delivering 600 tons of food and essentials for those affected by the conflict.

Besides humanitarian assistance, “Russia has also been involved in evacuation of citizens who want to leave dangerous areas,” she added.

Zakharova said that Moscow was “surprised” by recent comments from Washington, in which “representatives of the US State Department said that they don’t see Russia’s efforts in regard to providing humanitarian aid to Syria.”

“This is very strange, especially since the State Department allegedly sees everything, including Russian tanks that are being flown in or crawling into the territory of other states, but there’s no humanitarian aid in sight,” she said.

Zakharova said that Russia is concerned over Ankara’s increased military incursions into Syria, adding that “it cannot be ruled out that… fortifications [built by Turkey] along the Syrian-Turkish border may be used by militant groups as strongholds.

“While all parties involved pin their hopes on the start of a meaningful and… inclusive dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition, external forces continue to help militants in Syria, including terrorist groups, providing them with arms and ammunition,” she stressed.

According to the spokeswoman, the Syrian government has sent an official appeal to UN secretary-general and chairman of the UN Security Council over “repeated incursions of Turkish troops into Syrian border areas.”

Since March 2011, Syria has been engulfed in a bloody civil war, in which over 250,000 lives were lost, according to UN estimates.

During those years, the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad battled various opposition and terror groups, including Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and Al-Nusra Front.

On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.

For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to call “New Australians” often choose 26 January,  “Australia Day”, to be sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.

It was sunrise on 26 January so many years ago when I stood with Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians and threw wreaths into Sydney Harbour. We had climbed down to one of the perfect sandy coves where others had stood as silhouettes, watching as the ships of Britain’s “First Fleet” dropped anchor on 26 January, 1788. This was the moment the only island continent on earth was taken from its inhabitants; the euphemism was “settled”. It was, wrote Henry Reynolds, one of few honest Australian historians, one of the greatest land grabs in world history. He described the slaughter that followed as “a whispering in our hearts”.

The original Australians are the oldest human presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To justify this fiction, mass murder was ordained. In 1838, the Sydney Monitor reported: “It was resolved to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that quarter.” This referred to the Darug people who lived along the great Hawkesbury River not far from Sydney. With remarkable ingenuity and without guns, they fought an epic resistance that remains almost a national secret. In a land littered with cenotaphs honouring Australia’s settler dead in mostly imperial wars, not one stands for those warriors who fought and fell defending Australia.

This truth has no place in the Australian consciousness. Among settler nations with indigenous populations, apart from a facile “apology” in 2008, only Australia has refused to come to terms with the shame of its colonial past. A Hollywood film, Soldier Blue, in 1970 famously inverted racial stereotypes and gave Americans a glimpse of the genocide in their own mythical “settlement”. Almost half a century later, it is fair to say an equivalent film would never be made in Australia.

In 2014, when my own film, Utopia, which told the story of the Australian genocide, sought a local distributor, I was advised by a luminary in the business: “No way I could distribute this. The audiences wouldn’t accept it.”

He was wrong — up to a point. When Utopia opened in Sydney a few days before 26 January, under the stars on vacant land in an Indigenous inner-city area known as The Block, more than 4,000 people came, the majority non-Indigenous. Many had travelled from right across the continent. Indigenous leaders who had appeared in the film stood in front of the screen and spoke in “language”: their own. Nothing like it had happened before. Yet, there was no press. For the wider community, it did not happen. Australia is a murdochracy, dominated by the ethos of a man who swapped his nationality for the Fox Network in the US.

The star Indigenous AFL footballer Adam Goodes wrote movingly to the Sydney Morning Herald demanding that “the silence is broken”. “Imagine,” he wrote, “watching a film that tells the truth about the terrible injustices committed against your people, a film that reveals how Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit.

“Now imagine how it feels when the people who benefited most from those rapes, those killings and that theft – the people in whose name the oppression was done – turn away in disgust when someone seeks to expose it.”

Goodes himself had already broken a silence when he stood against racist abuse thrown at him and other Indigenous sportspeople. This courageous, talented man retired from football last year as if under a cloud — with, wrote one commentator, “the sporting nation divided about him”. In Australia, it is respectable to be “divided” on opposing racism.

On Australia Day 2016– Indigenous people prefer Invasion Day or Survival Day– there will be no acknowledgement that Australia’s uniqueness is its first people, along with an ingrained colonial mentality that ought to be an abiding embarrassment in an independent nation. This mentality is expressed in a variety of ways, from unrelenting political grovelling at the knee of a rapacious United States to an almost casual contempt for Indigenous Australians, an echo of “kaffir”-abusing South Africans.

Apartheid runs through Australian society. Within a short flight from Sydney, Indigenous people live the shortest of lives. Men are often dead before they reach 45. They die from Dickensian diseases, such as rheumatic heart disease. Children go blind from trachoma, and deaf from otitis media, diseases of poverty. A doctor told me:

“I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class of the beginning of the industrial revolution.”

The racism that allows this in one of the most privileged societies on earth runs deep. In the 1920s, a “Protector of Aborigines” oversaw the theft of mixed race children with the justification of “breeding out the colour”.  Today, record numbers of Indigenous children are removed from their homes and many never see their families again. On 11 February, an inspiring group called Grandmothers Against Removals will lead a march on Federal Parliament in Canberra, demanding the return of the stolen children.

Australia is the envy of European governments now fencing in their once-open borders while beckoning fascism, as in Hungary. Refugees who dare set sail for Australia in overcrowded boats have long been treated as criminals, along with the “smugglers” whose hyped notoriety is used by the Australian media to distract from the immorality and criminality of their own government. The refugees are confined behind barbed wire on average for well over a year, some indefinitely, in barbaric conditions that have led to self-harm, murder, suicide and mental illness. Children have not been spared. An Australian Gulag run by sinister private security firms includes concentration camps on the remote Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru. People often have no idea when they might be freed, if at all.

The Australian military — whose derring-do is the subject of uncritical tomes that fill the shelves of airport bookstalls — has played an important part in “turning back the boats” of refugees fleeing wars, such as in Iraq, launched and prolonged by the Americans and their Australian mercenaries. No irony, let alone responsibility, is acknowledged in this cowardly role.

On this Australia Day, the “pride of the services” will be on display. This pride extends to the Australian Immigration Department, which commits people to its Gulag for “offshore processing”, often arbitrarily, leaving them to grieve and despair and rot. Last week it was announced that Immigration officials had spent $400,000 on medals which they will award their heroic selves. Put out more flags.

Notes:

On January 26, Indigenous Australians and their supporters will march from The Block in Redfern, Sydney, to the Sydney Town Hall. The march will begin at 10 am.

This is the transcript of an interview broadcast on the Pacifica Radio Network’s Project Censored Show on KPFA Jan. 1, 2016, and on other Pacifica stations during the following week, with guest host Ann Garrison:

Project Censored/Ann Garrison: Happy New Year, and welcome to the Project Censored show. Thanks to Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff for inviting me, Ann Garrison, to guest host.

Today we’re going to talk about regime change engineered by the U.S. government and its allies in East and Central Africa. We’re going to talk about Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1990s and Burundi today, where we’re still hoping for a better outcome.

Aerial bombing campaigns make U.S. wars for regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria highly visible and absolutely undeniable, but the corporate and state press don’t describe U.S. sponsored wars in Africa as such if they talk about them at all. Millions of African people have nevertheless lost their lives or seen their lives destroyed in U.S. sponsored wars for regime change and natural resources in Africa.

For more than a year now, Western policymakers and press have warned of a genocide in Burundi like that in Rwanda in 1994, and called for a so-called humanitarian intervention to override Burundi’s national sovereignty and replace President Pierre Nkurunziza with a president more to their liking. They tell us that they’re campaigning to stop genocide and mass atrocities, or often, for short, “to stop the next Rwanda,” which is what they told us when they took us to war in Libya and Syria.

One of the founding documents of humanitarian interventionist ideology is our U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power’s “Bystanders to Genocide,” an essay decrying America’s failure to stop the Rwandan Genocide, which she expanded into her book, “The Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide.”

Here with me to talk about this is University of Pennsylvania Emeritus Professor of Finance Edward S. Herman, co-author, with Noam Chomsky, of the classic “Manufacturing Consent.” Herman is also the co-author of “The Politics of Genocide” and “Enduring Lies: Rwanda in the Propaganda System 20 Years Later,” with researcher and writer David Peterson.

We’re going to talk about the enduring lies about Rwanda, which “humanitarian” interventionists now repeat as they pursue regime change in Burundi.

Welcome, Professor Ed Herman.

Ed Herman: I’m happy to be with you.

AG: Professor Herman, could you start by telling us why you and David Peterson describe the enduring lies about what really happened in Rwanda as the greatest success of the propaganda system in the past two decades?

EH: In this book, Ann, we describe the fact that Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda, has killed more than five times as many people as Idi Amin. He invaded Rwanda in 1990 and carried out a war of conquest there that ended sometime in 1994. He invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1996 and went in and out of that country for years, killing what the U.N. itself admitted was probably more than 4 million people.

Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda, has killed more than five times as many people as Idi Amin. He invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1996 and went in and out of that country for years, killing what the U.N. itself admitted was probably more than 4 million people.

He runs a dictatorship in Rwanda, where he gets 93 percent of the vote in a country where 90 percent of the people are Hutu who consider him to be a conqueror, a terrorist leader. And yet he’s considered, in the West, to be a hero, a savior.

In The New Yorker, he was described as the Abraham Lincoln of Africa. For a man who has outdone Idi Amin, I think this is miraculous.

The only way we can explain it is that he serves the ends of the United States, but it’s still a miracle that a man with that record can, in the free press of the United States, be considered a noble spirit.

In the capital city Kigali, a Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) soldier walks by the site of the April 6, 1994, plane crash that killed Rwanda’s President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamirain in this May 23, 1994, photo. – Photo: Jean Marc Boujou, AP

AG: In other words, everything we’ve been told is wrong. And I can add that the enduring lies are so successful that that includes much of what’s been broadcast here on Pacifica Radio and published in any number of left liberal outlets. Any attempt to edit the Wikipedia entry on the Rwandan Genocide triggers so many edit alerts that it starts a Wiki editing war until the Wikipedia authorities declare a ceasefire with no changes made. That Wikipedia entry is all but written in stone.

Now, can we just go through the chapter headings in your book, each of which addresses one of the enduring lies?

EH: Yes, let’s do that.

AG: Since you’ve already given us some background and context, let’s start with Chapter Two: “The RPF invasion and low-level aggressive war that never was a ‘civil war.” People who know the story of the Rwandan Genocide only through the movie “Hotel Rwanda” are likely to think that it was an explosion of tribal bloodletting that began and ended in 100 days’ time in 1994.

Those who know that it was actually the final 100 days of a four-year war are likely to believe that it was the end of the Rwandan Civil War. There is an entry in the Wikipedia on the Rwandan Civil War. Why is this an enduring lie?

EH: Well, there was no major ethnic conflict in Rwanda back in late 1990. What happened in October 1990 was an invasion of armed forces from Uganda. This was a group of Tutsi, several thousand Tutsi soldiers, who were part of the Ugandan army.

They entered, they pushed several hundred thousand Hutu farmers out of their homes in northern Rwanda, and they were pushed back, but they kept coming. And the United States and its allies gave them assistance.

They pressed the Rwandan government to sign an Arusha agreement in 1993, which gave Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its army a lot of power in Rwanda. But it also provided for an election to be held about 22 months after the agreement was signed, and the RPF could not have won that election. So they made sure they didn’t have to win that election, Instead, they resumed the war on April 6, 1994, and by July 1994, they had conquered Rwanda.

A 1993 Arusha agreement provided for an election to be held about 22 months after the agreement was signed, and the RPF could not have won that election. So they made sure they didn’t have to win that election. Instead, they resumed the war on April 6, 1994, and by July 1994, they had conquered Rwanda.

So the whole period from October 1990 to, say, July 1994 was a period in which the RPF was engaged in subversion and readying itself for a final war of conquest. So it was a war. I would say this was a war.

AG: OK, now let’s consider Chapter Three: “‘Hutu Power extremists’ did not shoot down Habyarimana’s Falcon 50 jet.” Juvenal Habyarimana was the president of Rwanda from 1973 until he was assassinated in 1994, a little more than a year before these elections were supposed to happen.

He was a Hutu, a member of Rwanda’s Hutu majority who had overcome centuries of Tutsi subjugation with independence in 1960. He died while returning home, along with Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, also a Hutu, when his plane was shot out of the sky above Rwanda’s capital Kigali.

After four years of war and massacres, which had driven a million Rwandans to the outskirts of Kigali, where they were camped as internal refugees, this convinced the Hutu population that the Tutsi army was coming to kill or subjugate them all again, and some Hutu began to kill Tutsi. Now, the Rwandan government narrative is that Hutu extremists assassinated Habyarimana because he might have blocked their genocidal plans. What’s the truth?

Image: The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania

EH: There’s no evidence of these genocidal plans, and the Hutu would have won the upcoming election.  The election was foreclosed by the assassination and conquest by Kagame.

But we don’t have to speculate about this. The Rwanda tribunal actually carried out an investigation of who shot the plane down back in 1996 and 1997.  They appointed a 20-man group to carry out this study. These investigators hired by the tribunal  came up with a report in 1996, based on what they thought to be credible witness testimony by members of the RPF, that Kagame had planned the assassinwhen the tribunal found that theation and carried it out.

When this report was presented to the prosecutor of the tribunal, she consulted the United States and then canceled the investigation. And, from 1996 to the present, although the shoot-down of this plane is widely thought to be the event that triggered the genocide, the tribunal hasn’t looked into it and the U.N. hasn’t looked into it beyond that.

These investigators hired by the Rwanda tribunal produced a report, in 1996, based on what they thought was credible witness testimony by members of the RPF, that Kagame had planned the assassination and carried it out. When this report was presented to the prosecutor of the tribunal, she consulted the United States and then canceled the investigation.

There’s lots of other evidence that the shoot down was carried out by Kagame, and it was logical too because he couldn’t win an election. So, to attain power by conquest, he shot the plane down.

And another point that shows that he was the villain in the case is that when the plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, his forces were ready and were in action within two hours of the shoot down, whereas the alleged plotters were completely bamboozled and confused and put up almost no resistance. So anyway, the evidence is compelling that the shoot-down was carried out by Kagame, and it’s logical. But most critically, it’s a proven fact.

AG: And even, whether you believe the evidence or not, Paul Kagame and his forces were the only ones who stood to gain by Habyarimana’s assassination and what happened afterwards, right? Otherwise they would have lost to Habyarimana and his party in the next year’s election.

EH: Yes, he’s the only gainer from it.

AG: OK, let’s move on to Chapter Four: “Rwandan genocide by the numbers.” When Professor Allan Stam wrote to a U.N. official to ask how he estimated that the dead in Rwanda were 500,000, the U.N. official responded that he couldn’t quite remember, but they knew they needed a really big number.

The numbers that eventually came to be most widely accepted were that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi and a few Hutu moderates who tried to protect them died at the hands of Hutu extremists. Why is this impossible?

When Kagame arrived to speak at Oklahoma Christian University on April 30, 2010, he was met by protesters, including Rwandan American Claude Gatebuke. – Photo: Kendall Brown

EH: It’s impossible because the number of Tutsi in Rwanda, back in 1994, was way under 800,000. In fact, the best figure one could come up with in those early years was based on the census, the Rwandan census of 1991, which gave the Tutsi numbers at about 590,000.

So if all of them were wiped out, it wouldn’t come anywhere near 800,000. But all of them weren’t wiped out. After the war, the best estimate, which was by a Tutsi survivors’ group, was that there were 400,000 Tutsi still there.

So let’s say there were 600,000 beforehand and afterwards there were 400,000, that means 200,000 dead Tutsi. If there were 800,000 killed and 200,000 of them were Tutsi, 600,000 of them must have been Hutu.

If it was a million, 800,000 of them must have been Hutu. And it’s completely logical that the Hutu were the greatest victims by number, because this was an invasion by a Tutsi army.

If a million Rwandans were killed in 1994, 800,000 of them must have been Hutu. And it’s completely logical that the Hutu were the greatest victims by number, because this was an invasion by a Tutsi army.

I conclude, as do Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, who did a very careful study of the killings in 1994, that many more Hutu were killed than Tutsi. And my estimate would be that it was between a 2 to 1 and 5 to 1 ratio, probably more like 4 to 1. That’s my best point estimate.

AG: OK, and because this is a very sensitive subject, I want to add that this was a tragedy for everyone in Rwanda. Hutus and Tutsis died.

Now let’s move on to Chapter Five, “The West’s alleged ‘failure to intervene.’” The story of the West’s failure to intervene to stop the Rwandan genocide has become the starting point of all the campaigns to go to war to “stop the next Rwanda.” What’s wrong with this story?

EH: What’s wrong with it is that the West was intervening from the very beginning. The West supported Kagame’s invasion in 1990. He was trained at Fort Leavenworth. And the United States and Britain pressed the Rwandan government to allow the RPF to penetrate and bring armed forces into Rwanda.

Just before the shoot down of the plane on April 6, 1994, the United States caused the U.N. to withdraw some of its troops. That was an intervention.

After the shoot down and the mass killings really started, the government of Rwanda called repeatedly for a ceasefire repeatedly, but Kagame did not want it because he knew he could win. And therefore the United States did not support any ceasefire and it recognized Kagame’s government after three more months of war.

It’s absolutely untrue that the West failed to intervene. They did intervene, but they intervened to support the man who was engaging in this war of conquest in Rwanda.

It’s absolutely untrue that the West failed to intervene in Rwanda in 1994. They did intervene, but they intervened to support the man who was engaging in this war of conquest in Rwanda.

AG: I think that really needs emphasis. People have been led to believe that the massacres began and Paul Kagame and his army moved to stop them. What actually happened was that the massacres began and Paul Kagame resumed the war to win, at all costs.

EH: Yes, that’s true. In fact one could say that all the dead people were collateral damage. The aim of the United States was to support Kagame’s takeover, and if vast numbers of people were killed, it was a cost that we were prepared to accept.

But it doesn’t look good, so we have to say that we failed to intervene; we failed to stop it. Well, in fact, we not only failed to stop it, we actually supported the mass killing.

One could say that all the dead people were collateral damage. The aim of the United States was to support Kagame’s takeover, and if vast numbers of people were killed, it was a cost that we were prepared to accept. We not only failed to stop it, we actually supported the mass killing.

AG: Yes, Professor Allan Stam has reported that the Pentagon estimated collateral damage of 250,000 people, a quarter of a million. It turned out to be closer to a million.

EH: I can believe it.

AG: Those are some pretty grim numbers. The Pentagon, according to Professor Allan Stam, estimated that the collateral damage for putting our guy Kagame in power in Rwanda would be 250,000 Rwandan lives and it turned out to be closer to a million. Let’s take a breath and a musical break and we’ll be back shortly.

Musical interlude: Rwandan gospel music

Image: Rwandan gospel singer Kizito Mihigo is now serving a 10-year prison sentence in Rwanda.

AG: And that was Rwandan gospel singer Kizito Muhigo, a Rwandan Tutsi who is now serving 10 years in a Rwandan prison for singing those lyrics for both Hutu and Tutsi who died in the Rwandan massacres. The lyrics are:

Even though genocide orphaned me

Let it not make me lose empathy for others

Their lives too were brutally taken

But not qualified as genocide

Those brothers and sisters

They too are humans, I pray for them

They too are humans, I comfort them

They too are humans, I remember them

AG: Now we return to our conversation with Professor Ed Herman, co-author, with David Peterson, of “Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System 20 Years Later.” Chapter Six: “The ICTR delivers victor’s justice.” The International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda is hailed as a great triumph of international justice, mostly in the corporate and state press. What was it in fact?

Image: Rwandan refugee children plead for permission to cross the bridge to Congo, then Zaire, during the 1994 Rwandan massacres. – Photo: AP

EH: It did deliver victor’s justice. The first part of that statement is therefore correct. That it was a great triumph of international justice is a complete fallacy because victor’s justice is not international justice. Victor’s justice is a kind of revenge and, in fact, the ICTR served as a virtual arm of Kagame and the Rwandan state.

It went after only Hutu, although, as I pointed out a while ago, the majority of killings were killings of Hutu in Rwanda. But of course the RPF could not be brought to trial.

And of course the shoot-down of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane. When the tribunal found that Kagame’s forces were the ones who had shot down Habyarimana’s plane, it canceled any further investigation. That’s victor’s justice and a triumph of international injustice.

AG: They actually fired the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, who had said that she was going to indict President Kagame for assassinating President Habyarimana.

EH: The prosecutor who dropped the case was Louise Arbour, but Carla Del Ponte actually did try, as you say, to go after some RPF people. She was not allowed to do it. She was fired shortly thereafter. Again, this is true victor’s justice.

AG: OK, Chapter Seven: “The alleged Hutu conspiracy to commit genocide that never was.” The idea that Rwanda’s majority Hutu conspired to wipe out the Tutsi minority is central to the Rwandan government’s official narrative. What’s the truth?

EH: Actually, the belief that there was a conspiracy to commit genocide is swallowed by the ICTR, by Human Rights Watch and many, many commentators. But the tribunal itself, when it had to come to grips with this, couldn’t find any such conspiracy.

They did believe that there was a genocide, and certainly there was mass killing, but a conspiracy to commit genocide would have had to take place before the shoot-down of the plane on April 6, 1994.

And so when high level people in the Hutu government were brought to trial and there was an attempt to find that they actually had a plan, the tribunal couldn’t find it. In this book, we studied 15 top trials where the prosecution attempted to prove a conspiracy to commit genocide, and in all 15 the tribunal found that there was no evidence for a conspiracy.

Image: A Rwandan refugee father and his baby barely cling to life in Kibumba refugee camp, Goma, Zaire, in July 1994. – Photo: Debbie Morello, USN&R

There was killing, which they called genocide, but they could not find any pre-April 6, 1994, plan to commit genocide. So they rejected this argument, but the defenders and apologists for Kagame continue to talk about this conspiracy to commit genocide.

AG: Yes, I have noticed this, that the press doesn’t hesitate to repeat this, that there was a conspiracy before April 6, even though no court at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda convicted anyone of that crime.

EH: Yes, it’s a remarkable fact that wipes out many of the claims about what happened in Rwanda.

AG: OK, let’s move on to Chapter Eight, “Did Paul Kagame’s RPF really ‘stop the genocide’?” This is the story that’s made him a celebrity in Western capitals. What’s the truth?

EH: Well, as I’ve been saying, Kagame actually started the genocide. He carried out the war. He refused to accept any ceasefires during the killing period. And I have made the case that more people were killed by Kagame’s RPF than were killed by any Hutus.

Kagame actually started the genocide. He carried out the war. He refused to accept any ceasefires during the killing period. And I have made the case that more people were killed by Kagame’s RPF than were killed by any Hutus.

I think this idea that he stopped the genocide is the inverse of the truth. He started the genocide and in fact it never ended, because after he conquered the country, he didn’t stop killing Hutu. And within a short time, he went in to start killing Hutu and do other things in the Congo, where vast numbers of Hutu were killed.

I would argue that, insofar as there was a genocide in Rwanda in 1994, it can be credited to Paul Kagame. And there was a second, bigger genocide in the Congo that was also Paul Kagame’s doing.

So he’s a double genocidist, and one could argue too that Bill Clinton was a partner in this. Bill Clinton is arguably a genocidist.

AG: Yes, and one would hope that people might consider that in this upcoming election year. I know that people from this part of the world are very concerned about the likelihood of Hillary Clinton’s election.

Paul Kagame is a double genocidist, and one could argue too that Bill Clinton was a partner in this. Bill Clinton is arguably a genocidist.

Image: Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea are led by Paul Kagame on a tour of Rwanda health clinics in July 2012. – Photo: Cyril Ndegeya, AP

Now, Chapter Nine: “Africa’s World War: Kagame’s alleged pursuit of ‘genocidaires’ in Zaire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the death of millions.” What’s wrong with Kagame’s claim that his troops and proxy militias were in DR Congo for nearly 20 years to hunt down the Hutu genocidaires guilty of killing Rwanda’s Tutsi in 1994?

EH: Well, one problem is there were no “genocidaires.” There were members of the Rwandan army that had been beaten and dispersed, but they were not genocidaires. That’s baloney.

And he knows who did the killing, that he himself with his forces did most of the killing. But also, the army that was in the Congo, the old Hutu army, was no longer a real force. It had been defeated and these people had been dispersed in the Congo. They did not constitute a real threat to Rwanda.

So this claim was really, essentially, a big lie that Kagame was using with the support of the United States to continue attacking in the Congo. I mean you couldn’t say, “I’m going into the Congo to exploit their rich resources.”

No, you had to have a better excuse, and so the excuse was that there were these people who had committed planned genocide in Rwanda out there in the Congo and he was going in after them.  For 20 years. This is baloney but it’s been very effective.

Kagame couldn’t say, “I’m going into the Congo to exploit their rich resources.” No, he had to have a better excuse, and so the excuse was that there were these people who committed planned genocide in Rwanda in the Congo and he was going in after them.  For 20 years. This is baloney but it’s been very effective.

It’s one reason why the ICTR, the tribunal, and the continuous prosecution of Hutu in Rwanda played into Kagame’s hands. He could argue, look, these people are being tried and convicted.

These are people who’ve committed genocide and there are some of them out there in the Congo, so I must hunt down these evil criminals. It’s a wonderful propaganda gambit. And it was swallowed in the West and he was not stopped.

So we’re dealing here with really mass killing. And yet there’s no tribunal that’s ever been established to try anybody for these crimes that tower over even what happened in Rwanda. Why is that? It’s because he’s a U.S. client and he’s serving U.S. and British interests in this resource rich Democratic Republic of the Congo.

AG: OK, now finally Chapter 12: “The role of the U.N., human rights groups, media, and intellectuals in promulgating the standard model, otherwise known as the official narrative of the Rwandan Genocide.”

EH: Well, the United States has been the superpower that has dominated what has happened in this area in the Congo and in Rwanda. The American people know almost nothing about the area, and since the United States has had a strong position of support for Kagame and for the invasion of the Congo, that dominated all the institutions that were associated with it.

The U.N. – most of its reports – were really supportive of the invasion. They swallowed the conspiracy to commit genocide line. They provided the tribunal.

It’s true that they did have some reports, like these reports I mentioned, that talked about mass killing in the Congo, but they couldn’t avoid that because this was such an enormous volume of killing, and there were millions of refugees. So the U.N. had to confront it, and they had to speak a certain amount of truth.

But essentially, the U.N. supported the U.S. position. And even during the Rwanda crisis in 1994, the U.N. did nothing when Kagame put a lot of military people right in Kigali. They let him get away with it.

The human rights groups also did poorly. Human Rights Watch was an outrage from the beginning, following the standard line.

And the media, moving forward to April 2014, and the 20th anniversary of the 1994 massacres, have supported the Western propaganda line.  When that anniversary made headlines, the bias of the mainstream media was dramatic. Thus 20 advocates for the standard model were given ten times as many bylined articles ad distinguished dissenters from that model; most of the dissenting experts couldn’t get into the mainstream media at all. And particularly terrible were the U.S. and British media.

Of the 20 dissenters from the standard model, there were a grand total of 17 articles, and most of them were in France. And most of these experts that were dissenters could never get into the mainstream media at all. And particularly terrible were the U.S. and British media.

Image: The photo of this distraught child has become emblematic of the 1994 Rwandan massacres.

AG: OK, now that we’ve gone through most of the enduring lies, what similarities do you see between Rwanda 1990 to 1994 and what’s happening in Burundi now?

EH: Well, one very important similarity is that the United States and its allies are trying for regime change in Burundi, just as they did in Rwanda. They wanted to get rid of the Habyarimana government, a social democratic government in Rwanda. They don’t like the social democratic government in Burundi and they’re trying to get rid of it.

Another thing is that they’re talking of intervention here based on the fact that the head of state of Burundi has taken a third term, which is contested on a constitutional basis. And it’s ridiculous that the great powers should be upset about a third term, when they’re supporting Kagame, who is a dictator and who has his chief contestant, Victoire Ingabire, in jail and claims to get 93 percent of the vote.

It’s ridiculous that the great powers should be upset about a third term for Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza, when they’re supporting Kagame, who is a dictator and who has his chief contestant, Victoire Ingabire, in jail and claims to get 93 percent of the vote.

They swallow that and don’t bother him at all, but here they’re going after the Burundian state, which is by comparison with Rwanda a wonderful democracy, and it is a social democracy.

AG: They have objected to Kagame’s plan to run for another term, but that’s their only objection.

EH: Yes, after all these years of atrocities.

And there’s also intervention more directly in Burundi now. There’s strong evidence that the Kagame government has been intervening in Burundi and that it’s trying to stir up agitation and killings that will cause more tension and upheaval in Burundi. This is all in preparation for further intervention to “save the people from genocide.” It has a familiar ring to it.

AG: Yes, it does. On page 20 in your book, you write, “At the time, meaning in the 1990s, and in contrast to the crises in Syria, Ukraine and Iraq today, Boris Yeltsin’s Russia was a non-factor in the U.N. Security Council and a rubber stamp for the United States.” Since you wrote that, Russia and China have used their veto power to keep the Security Council’s Western powers from passing resolutions to censure Burundi’s President Nkurunziza for seeking a third term in office or to approve humanitarian intervention “to stop genocide.”

Nothing has yet come to a formal vote and veto, but the U.S. and E.U. keep failing to get the language they want into resolutions that are passed. Most recently, they asked the Security Council to approve an intervention by 5,000 African Union troops. It responded instead that it welcomed contingency planning in case an intervention was needed, but without giving its approval. How do you think this might play out?

EH: That’s a tough one. I’m just hoping that the Russians and the Chinese will stand firm and that the situation in Burundi will not deteriorate. If it does, if the destabilization efforts of Kagame and probably the United States are successful and it becomes increasingly violent, then it’s going to be tougher to stop the approval of that intervention from the African Union troops.

I just hope that doesn’t happen, but it’s very hard to predict. It’s an ominous situation.

AG: Is there anything else you’d like to say in closing?

EH: Well, what I’d like to say is that this issue on Rwanda and the struggles there and the work of the ICTR, it’s a very complicated issue, so I would urge people to get this book that we put out, which has a lot of detail.

But there are also some other really excellent books on the work of the ICTR and other international courts. There’s a very good book called “Justice Belied: The Unbalanced Scales of International Criminal Justice,” and it’s an anthology edited by Sébastien Chartrand and John Philpot. “Justice Belied” – it’s a critical work on the workings of the international justice system.

And many of the writers are very familiar with Rwanda and the issues in Africa and it’s even argued by some of the writers that the international justice system, as it’s now working, is really an arm of U.S. foreign policy.

It’s even argued by some of the writers that the international justice system, as it’s now working, is really an arm of U.S. foreign policy.

AG: And here I think we have to mention Robin Philpot’s book as well, “Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa, from Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction,” and the CIUT-Toronto Taylor Report, which has kept the truth about this story alive for nearly two decades. The Taylor Report airs at 5 pm Eastern time every Monday on CIUT-89.5fm-Toronto.

Professor Ed Herman, thank you for speaking to the Project Censored show.

EH: It was a pleasure, Ann.

The transcript of this interview previously appeared in the San Francisco Bay View.

Oakland writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Black Agenda Report, Black Star News,Counterpunch and her own website, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, KPFA Evening News, KPFA Flashpoints and for her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at [email protected]. In March 2014 she was awarded the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa through her reporting.

The German government is planning a new military mission in Libya, Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen (Christian Democrats, CDU) announced in an interview published by the tabloid Bild on Monday.

Responding to the question of whether she would send the German army to to the North African country, Von der Leyen replied:

“Libya is opposite the coast of Europe—separated only by the Mediterranean Sea. The most important thing now is to stabilise the country, and ensure that Libya gets a functioning government. The [new government] will rapidly require assistance to impose law and order in this massive state. And at the same time to combat Islamist terrorism, which is also threatening Libya.”

She added, “Germany will not be able to escape the responsibility of making a contribution there.”

The next “contribution,” i.e., military intervention by the army, could soon be a reality. A defence ministry spokesman declared on Monday that there was not yet any concrete plan for a German army intervention in Libya. But this could change if a unity government was established there that can “act in conformity with international law.”

In the meantime, Libya’s various competing governments have agreed on the formation of a unity regime under the auspices of the United Nations. This was announced by the Libyan presidential council on Tuesday. A major role in the talks was played by the UN special representative for Libya, Martin Kobler. He is a German and headed the office of former Green Party foreign minister Joschka Fischer.

Kobler welcomed the formation of the unity cabinet and called upon the internationally recognised parliament in Tobruk to “quickly” recognise the government. From the standpoint of the imperialist powers, the new government is to supply a “legal” fig leaf for their intervention in Libya as quickly as possible.

The conservative newspaper Die Welt made this explicit in an article several weeks ago under the revealing title “Libya: the next battlefield in the fight against IS.” It commented:

“The only thing missing for a military intervention is the legal framework. As soon as the new Libyan unity government is formed, it can proceed. When Libya has a united and to some extent legitimate government again, then there is someone in response to whose request a western military intervention can take place within the framework of international law.”

As in the recently adopted missions in Mali and Syria, the German government is justifying the intervention in Libya on the basis of the “fight against Islamist terrorism.” Von der Leyen responded to a question in the Bildinterview as to whether the recent attack in Turkey was a reaction to “our Syria intervention” by noting: “We could not confuse cause and effect. ISIS initiated terrorism and brought it to Europe. The Islamists are fighting against our free values. Already prior to the Syria intervention, we were in the crosshairs of the terrorist militia.”

Who is guilty of confusing cause and effect? Everyone who knows the dramatic history of the Middle East over recent years knows that the original “terrorism” was carried out by the Western powers. They are not fighting for “freedom,” but have rather under US leadership attacked and destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, killing millions and turning millions more into refugees.

Islamic State is not simply an indirect product of Western military policy, but was rather built up by the imperialist powers and their allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. In the NATO-led war on Libya in 2011, the Western powers worked closely with Islamist militias to overthrow the regime of Colonel Gaddafi. The plan was to bring the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad down in Syria in the same way, with the goal of establishing a pro-Western puppet regime in Damascus.

In reality, the military intervention that Germany now threatens to carry out in Libya has long been in the works. The talk of a struggle against an “axis of terrorism” from Syria to Mali (Von der Leyen) is simply the propaganda smokescreen behind which the long-discussed plans are being implemented in practice.

Already in 2009, a study by the government-aligned Stifftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) entitled “Germany’s Middle East and north Africa policy,” summarised Germany’s economic and geo-strategic interests in the region in the following manner:

“In the 1990s, the Maghreb still played a marginal role in foreign policy; there could be no talk of a clear formulation of German interests. Since the new millennium at the latest, the region has gained significance for German foreign policy for three reasons: the greater value of energy security, the reduction of migration as well as the fight against terrorism and organised crime.”

The energy interests take first place in this analysis:

“The interests which guide Germany’s activity in the Maghreb are above all of an energy and security nature. First of all, the supply of oil and gas from these states will become ever more important for Germany’s energy provision. Today, Libya is Germany’s fourth most important supplier of oil; Algeria comes in eighth place. […] In the longer term there will be an equally strong interest in renewable energies, particularly solar energy, but this remains behind the desire for fossil fuels from the Maghreb in the short to medium term.”

Following the 2011 bombardment of Libya, the German ruling elite became convinced that its failure to participate was a grave mistake and that its “short to medium term interests” had to be enforced via military means.

From November 2012 to October 2013, 50 leading politicians from all parties together with journalists, academics, military officials, and business representatives outlined a strategy for the return of Germany to an aggressive imperialist foreign policy, issuing the document entitled “New power—New responsibilities. Elements for a German foreign and security policy for a world in transition.”

The SWP paper made clear that Germany would have to “lead more often and decisively in the future,” and pursue its geo-strategic and economic interests worldwide. “German security policy” could “no longer be conceived other than as global. Germany’s history, its position and lack of resources will repeatedly provoke the clear formulation of concrete strategic goals.” As a “trading and export nation” it needed “more than perhaps any other country […] demand from other markets as well as access to international trade routes and raw materials.”

The Middle East and north Africa were identified as an important area of German influence, which had to be stabilised militarily. “A pragmatic German security policy, particularly when costly and long-term military interventions are considered” had “to concentrate above all on the increasingly unstable European surrounding from north Africa through the Middle East to Central Asia,” the paper stated.

Based on this paper, German President Gauck, Foreign Minister Steinmeier and Defence Minister Von der Leyen officially announced the “end of military restraint” at the 2014 Munich Security Conference. Germany was “too big only to comment on world politics from the sidelines” and had “to be prepared to intervene earlier, more decisively and substantially in foreign and security policy,” they declared.

In May 2014, these goals were further developed in the “Outline of a policy for Africa for the German government.” Among other things, it called for the strengthening “of political, security policy and development engagement by Germany in Africa.” The German government was pursuing “the goal, based on values on human rights and oriented to its interests, to act early, quickly, decisively and substantially.”

Military operations were explicitly included in this policy. The government intended to “across all departments…deploy the entire spectrum of its available capabilities, political, security policy, development policy, regional policy, economic, academic, cultural.”

The foreign interventions adopted since then, in northern Iraq, Syria, Mali, and now soon to come in Libya, mark the return of the German ruling elite to an aggressive imperialist foreign policy. As before the First and Second World Wars, this requires the massive rearmament of the German armed forces. “If we are demanding all of this from our German army, we have to invest in personnel, as well as modern, reliable equipment,” Von der Leyen noted in the Bild interview. She would “present this with strong justification to the finance minister.”

Describing current levels of killing and mayhem in Iraq as “staggering” and “obscene,” two United Nations agencies released a report Tuesday that recorded at least 55,047 civilian casualties between January 1, 2014 and October 31, 2015. The total included at least 18,802 civilians killed and another 36,245 wounded.

The report added that over roughly the same period, a total of 3,206,736 civilians, including over 1 million school-age children, have been driven from their homes by the violence.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said the report failed to reflect the full human toll inflicted by the conflict in Iraq. The numbers reported killed or wounded, particularly in areas under ISIS control, undoubtedly fell well short of the real level of carnage. Moreover, many more had “died from lack of access to basic food, water or medical care,” he said.

The high commissioner added that the report “starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands.”

The period dealt with in the report begins with the month the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seized the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in the predominantly Sunni Anbar Province, subsequently overrunning fully one-third of Iraq’s territory. It stops short of the upsurge in violence over the past few months, including US-backed military campaigns to retake Ramadi as well as Banji and Sinjar, which undoubtedly saw a further spike in casualties.

The report deals at length with atrocities carried out by ISIS as well as attacks on civilians by Iraqi government security forces, along with Shia and Kurdish militias.

It is decidedly muted, however, about Washington’s responsibility, not only for civilian casualties from thousands of airstrikes, but more fundamentally in terms of the historic destruction wrought by the illegal US invasion of 2003 and the more than eight years of military occupation that followed.

As the report was issued, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters in Paris that the Pentagon is preparing to substantially escalate the US military presence in Iraq. “I expect the number of trainers to increase, and also the variety of the training they’re giving,” he said.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad on Wednesday said the number of new “trainers” would be “not thousands, hundreds.” They would be in addition to the 3,670 US troops the Pentagon says are now deployed in Iraq.

Much of the UN report deals with the grisly violence unleashed by ISIS against the Iraqi population, targeting in particular both current and former employees of the Iraqi government and security forces, as well as Shia Muslims and members of religious minorities, together with Sunni Muslims perceived as too “moderate.”

The report recounts a series of ISIS atrocities, including mass killings “in gruesome public spectacles, including by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings.” It documents sexual violence and enslavement of women and children by ISIS, including 3,500 from the Yazidi community, which was early on invoked by the Obama administration as a pretext for US intervention, but has since been largely forgotten by the US government and media.

It also cites “unlawful killings and abductions perpetrated by pro-Government forces” as well as their persecution of civilians forced by the fighting to flee their homes, particularly form predominantly Sunni areas. It reports that “some have experienced arbitrary arrest in raids by security forces and others have been forcibly expelled.”

In addition to Iraqi security forces, the report points to the abuse of civilians by both Shia militias and the Peshmerga, the forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

A report released Wednesday by Amnesty International further documents the systematic destruction of Sunni Arab homes by the Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, saying that their actions may constitute war crimes.

Backed by US airstrikes, the Kurdish forces have taken over areas in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces that were previously ethnically mixed. In an apparent attempt to incorporate these areas into Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurdish forces have launched what amounts to a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The UN report includes accounts of large numbers of civilian casualties inflicted by airstrikes, while failing to attribute them to any party in the conflict and stating that its investigators have been unable to confirm the totals. The US military is responsible for the majority of airstrikes carried out in Iraq. While acknowledging, as of a week ago, dropping some 29,000 bombs and missiles on the country and claiming to have killed more than 6,400 ISIS fighters over the past three months alone, the Pentagon has, incredibly, acknowledged only 15 civilians killed.

The UN report tells a different story. Among last year’s airstrikes listed in the report, some of the bloodiest include:

May 22-23—“… airstrikes hit al-Najjar, al-Rifai and Sahaa areas in western Mosul in Ninewa, allegedly killing 30 civilians and wounding 62 others, including women and children.”

June 3—“… an explosion due to an airstrike in Kirkuk’s Hawija district allegedly killed several ISIL fighters and civilians… A member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council was quoted by multiple local sources as stating that around 150 individuals, including women and children, were allegedly killed and wounded in the blast.”

June 8—“… local sources reported that an airstrike in Mosul, Ninewa, caused 33 civilian casualties. The report alleged that several residential neighbourhoods in al-Zuhour district were hit, killing 20 civilians, including seven children and nine women, and wounding 13 others, mostly women.”

June 11—“… an airstrike reportedly hit an ISIL target near a market in Hawija, Kirkuk. According to a source, 10 civilians were killed and wounded in the incident. Other reports mentioned more than 60 civilians killed and over 80 wounded.”

July 1—“17 civilians, including four children and six women, were reportedly killed in an airstrike conducted in the al-Rifaie area of western Mosul, Ninewa. Eleven other civilians were reportedly wounded.”

July 31—“… up to 40 civilians may have been killed and over 30 wounded when three houses allegedly sheltering IDPs was hit by an airstrike in Rutba, west of Ramadi, Anbar. Official sources confirmed the incident and the number of casualties, which included 18 women and 11 children (under 14 years old).”

August 13—“… a maternity and children’s hospital in Nassaf village, south Fallujah, was hit by airstrikes reportedly carried out by ISF warplanes pursuing ISIL fighters. Sources confirmed the airstrikes destroyed the hospital and killed at least 22 individuals (including six women and eight children) and wounded 52 (including eight women and 17children).”

September 3—“… an airstrike hit a bridge in Jazeera al-Khaldiya, around 20 kilometres east of Ramadi, Anbar, killing 46 civilians and wounding 20… On the same day, another airstrike reportedly hit a residential area in eastern Ramadi, killing 28 civilians.”

These murderous airstrikes are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the responsibility of US imperialism for the slaughter outlined in the UN report. The current situation is the direct product of over 25 years of US war against Iraq and of Washington’s interventions elsewhere in the region.

From the first Gulf War of 1991 through the 2003 invasion and subsequent military occupation of Iraq, US imperialism carried out the systematic destruction of what had been one of the most advanced healthcare and social infrastructures in the Arab world. The second war claimed the lives of over 1 million Iraqis, turning another 5 million into refugees, while the divide-and-rule strategy pursued by the Pentagon stoked a sectarian civil war by deliberately manipulating tensions between Iraq’s Shia and Sunni populations.

ISIS itself is the direct product of US interventions in the region, emerging first under the US occupation and then growing in strength thanks to the wars for regime-change launched first in Libya and then in Syria, in which it and similar Salafist jihadi militias received weapons and funding from the CIA and Washington’s closest regional allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

While the UN report asserts the necessity of holding accountable those responsible for “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Iraq, it fails to indict the principal criminals, who comprise the leading figures in the last two US administrations, from Bush and Obama on down.

An Israeli agricultural aircraft sprayed herbicides onto farmland along the eastern border in Gaza [Adel Hana/AP]

On January 7, a low-flying agricultural aircraft sprayed herbicides on to Palestinian farmlands along the eastern border, eradicating or damaging up to 162 hectares of crops and farmland along the Israeli border fence.

“Herbicides are sprayed in high concentrations. Thus, they remain embedded in the soil, and then find their way to the water basin. This constitutes a real hazard for the population,” said Anwar Abu Assi, manager of the chemical laboratory at the Ministry of Agriculture.

The sprayed areas belong to Israel’s unilaterally imposed and poorly delineated “buffer” or “no-go zone”.

The zone, which amounts to an estimated 17 percent of the entire territory of the Gaza Strip and a third of its agricultural lands, erodes into the Strip’s most vital and fertile soils.

Yousef Shahin, 40, was having enough trouble sustaining his farmland when, last week, an Israeli raid targeted the water tank that supplied his farm and neighbouring farms in the al-Faraheen area east of Khan Younis.

The tank and collection system had cost Shahin and his neighbours some $15,000. Shahin said governmental support was lacking.”Without support, we can never reconstruct the system again. We don’t have running water for irrigation; I think we lost this season.”

The Israeli army’s move had added another element to the suffering of Shahin and his fellow farmers.

With the Strip being merely five kilometres wide in some areas, a few hundred metres prove essential to the Strip’s food security. Over the past few months, Israeli soldiers have killed at least 16 Palestinians who entered the zone, most of them protesters who were shot at by snipers while participating in demonstrations near the fence.

Furthermore, scores of casualties have been reported among farmers who were merely tending to or approaching their lands. “We had to jeopardise our lives daily growing these crops; now all our efforts are in vain,” said Shahin while examining a new implant of spinach.

He lost crops that included spinach, peas, parsley and beans. Whether or not his new endeavours to cultivate will succeed remains unknown.

Farmers confirm that the damages of the latest spraying extend beyond the so-called “buffer zone”, as the winds carried the chemicals further inside the Strip. They also fear consequences of such materials may affect their lands in the long run.

Abu Assi explained that each herbicide or pesticide has a safety period that needs to be observed before attempting to grow new crops. At such high concentrations, he fears the lands are likely to constitute a hazard for a long time.

An Israeli army official cited “security reasons” as justification.

During the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, the agricultural sector sustained losses and damages of up to $550m. Some 14,000 hectares were razed and destroyed; thousands of hectares of crops were also lost because farmers were unable to reach their lands amid the fighting.

A few days ago, Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza’s main agricultural experiment station, causing $300,000-worth of damages and destroying the station’s building, laboratories, vehicles and a large power generator.

The station developed new seeds and strains for use by local farmers. Bombed and completely destroyed during the 2014 war, Israel seems insistent on keeping the station out of service, effectively stifling every Palestinian attempt to attain self-sufficiency or independence, even agriculturally.

The station’s manager, Shaher al-Rifi, says that the facility is currently 70 percent out of service. With the Israeli restrictions on imports of tractors and agricultural machinery, it is likely to remain so for a long time to come.

Adel Atallah, a general director at the agriculture ministry, explains that the whole agricultural sector has for years been running on old machines. “Domestic farmers face problems trying to replenish anything that goes out of service. What isn’t banned is stalled at the crossings by Israel.”

The troubles facing the agricultural sector in Gaza span a wide myriad of difficulties. Irrigation is disturbed by the continuous power interruptions, which sometimes last more than 12 hours a day. Farmers depend on power generators to pump water, and the costs of fuel add another factor to their economic vulnerability.

The war-torn Middle East has become a ground for activity of a diverse range of entities linked with government, corporations and special services from around the world. Iraqi-based security company “Falcon Security” is one of them. Falcon Security operates in Iraq, in general, and especially in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. It plays a crucial role in the security protection of Masoud Barzani,  President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.

Falcon Security was founded by Peshraw Majid Agha in 2003. Agha has a close relations with Chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, Masrour Barzani, and Prime Minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Nechervan Barzani. The company is manned by former U.S. Army servicemen and has about 600 employers. Falcon Security is a part of Falcon Group which is involved in diverse activities from oil businesses to agriculture.

Falcon Security provides logistical support to the military forces of Iraqi Kurdistan, Peshmerga from its main base around the town of Makmur. Falcon Security’s mercenaries also secure the supplies of food, ammunition and medicaments to about 3000 Kurdish fighters.

The company also provides security to Western journalists from companies as CNN and Fox News.

Falcon Security arisen in the period of the US presence in Iraq and some experts believe that it’s directly linked with the Defense Intelligence Agency and supplies to the Pentagon a major part of intelligence  related to the situation in Iraq.

Falcon Security is providing training and management assistance to Peshmerga in order to turn it into proper armed forces with divided military branches which strengthening the Kurd’s independence from the central government. This corresponds with the US actions aimed to support the Kurds as a loyal US-backed force for the anti-ISIS ground operations in Iraq and Syria.

Thus, in case of the growing Iranian influence, the US will definitely attempt to use the Iraqi Kurds to pursue own goals in the country.  The Barzani family will likely play an important role in this plan.

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At the annual State of the Union address on January 13, 2016, President Obama reiterated his Cuba policy regarding Cuba-US relations. He said:

“Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, and set us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations — (applause) — opened the door to travel and commerce, positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people. (Applause.)”*

This is basically what Obama stated several years ago in the course of developing his Cuba policy. This is also what appeared in a series of New York Times editorials. Together this helped pave the way for the December 17, 2014 joint statement by presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro to restore diplomatic relations, a victory for Cuba. There has been no change in the US position. As Obama expressed previously in other ways, the old policy of isolating Cuba “did not work.” It failed to bring “democracy” to Cuba, a euphemism for overthrowing the constitutional order and the Revolution in Cuba.

The old US Cuba policy, he reiterated as quoted above, also “set us back in Latin America.” In other words, it hindered not only US credibility in Latin America but also its ability to maneuver there. The northern country’s strategic goal in Latin America bears the same long-term objective of bringing “democracy” to those countries that have radically diverted from the pro-US, and pro-capitalist, road in order to forge a new revolutionary path based on national sovereignty and anti-capitalist policies. The most significant US target is Venezuela.

Obama expressed that his new Cuba policy “opened the door to travel and commerce.” While this is true, it is not very much more than a one-way effort that rather favors the US. This runs counter to opening doors equally, on a mutual basis, for the Cubans to do business with the US and internationally.

When he stated that the White House and the administration “positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people,” what did he mean? An important objective of the policies designed to improve the “lives of the people” is geared toward the 500,000 people in the expanding self-employed sector of the Cuban economy. The immediate tactical goal of the administration is to strengthen this sector. In developing this policy, administration officials barely hide the policy’s long-term objective. The goal is to develop this sector as a potential breach in Cuban society. This sector, according to the US game plan, would become at the very least indifferent and apolitical, if not hostile, to the Cuban government and the Cuban political system. This tendency would go hand in hand with these 500,000 self-employed people, as the US would like, looking to the US and its “values” (capitalism) as the savior. Such a scenario, with its made-in-the-US branding, would be a cancer eating away at the Cuban socialist project and even its sovereignty.

Moreover, if Obama were really interested in the goal to “improve the lives of the Cuban people,” he could use all the Executive powers at his disposal to gut out important parts of the blockade that the Congress cannot block.

Now what did Obama really say about the blockade?

“So if you want to consolidate our leadership and credibility in the hemisphere, recognize that the Cold War is over — lift the embargo. (Applause.)”

Let us forego the fact that he favors the lifting of the genocidal blockade not for moral reasons, but rather to reach the goal of improving the US image in Latin America.

However, there is another point. If he is so much against the blockade, why divert the focus toward the majority Republican US Congress? As mentioned above, there is so much he can do on his own using his executive prerogatives. Blaming the Congress for blocking the Executive branch is to a large extent a ruse. His lack of real opposition to the blockade is likewise illustrated when, in 2014, under Obama’s tutelage, a German bank was fined $1 billion for dealing with Cuba. Why should the Cuban people wait for the US Congress when the blockade has been – and still is – the principal obstacle to Cuba’s sustainable development?

Regarding Cuba, but in a very indirect way, Obama flamboyantly bragged:

“I will keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo. (Applause.) It is expensive, it is unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies. (Applause.)”

He does not want to “shut down” the prison because it is a torture chamber, a blot on humanity, but because it “is expensive, it is unnecessary.”

There are several issues regarding Guantanamo.

First, he has been promising this since he was elected. Why did he not do it, or do it right now? There is no need for Congressional approval. After all, Bush opened the notorious prison on his own without Congressional approval. Blaming Congress is once again part of US opportunist politics.

Second, what about returning Guantanamo to the Cuba people? Not a word was mentioned, even though the US naval base is part of Cuba. Just before playing the Guantanamo card, Obama said in the very previous sentence:

“That’s American strength. That’s American leadership. And that kind of leadership depends on the power of our example.”

The example offered immediately after that sentence is the one of shutting down Guantanamo. However, the example is not very persuasive since it is still open, notwithstanding his legal right to do so on his own.

Despite the statements with regard to Cuba, he never acknowledged the following problem faced by his administration. The Cuban government is very aware that the US has only changed its tactics while maintaining its long-term strategic goal to subvert the Cuban Revolution. In this context, the Cubans are valiantly opposing US interference in Cuban affairs. President Raúl Castro and the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs have publicly warned the US. The Cubans are striving to make as much headway as possible in the context of the change in US tactics for the good of the Cuban and American peoples. However, Cuba cautioned the US that it will never sell its principles and will always steadfastly defend its sovereignty and dignity.

Now that is all Obama said, and did not say, about Cuba. But what he said about other foreign relations issues affects not only Cuba and Cuba-US relations, but the rest of the world. There are far too many examples to deal with here as it goes beyond the scope of this article. Thus let us take only two illustrations.

First, he took dead aim against China and Russia, which form an important part of the foundation of a new multi-polar world in a growing alliance with Latin America and the Caribbean regional blocks.

“…when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead — they call us. (Applause.)”

As part of the above-cited US remark that indicates the ferocious competition that US world hegemony sees in China and Russia, during the course of his speech, buoyed by the traditional applause, he took jabs at Russia (Crimea). He also did so with regard to China. He indicated how China was supposedly out-maneuvered and pushed aside by the US though the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. The TPP is a trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim countries concerning a variety of matters of economic policy, which was reached on October 5, 2015 after 7 years of negotiations. The members include Chile, Mexico and Peru. It is being rammed through Congress with the representatives barely being aware what it is all about. Obama said:

“With TPP, China does not set the rules in that region; we do. You want to show our strength in this new century? Approve this agreement. Give us the tools to enforce it. It’s the right thing to do. (Applause.)”

Cuba depends on itself for its own sovereignty and independence. Even when it allied itself with the former Soviet Union, Cuba kept its distance and never became a satellite of the former USSR. Nevertheless, a growing multi-polar world very much favors Cuba. In this situation, the island can more effectively develop economic and political relations, as is the case now, with such countries as China and Russia, which have freed themselves from US domination. The striving of the US for world domination, even over countries such as China and Russia, cannot be underestimated. Any success in this direction will also affect Cuba. The concept and policy of “US imperialism” is not only still applicable; it is more than ever necessary to be aware of US imperialism as it camouflages itself in order to carry out the same policies. Its chameleon nature is all the more dangerous now as its goes through its Obama phase. World domination has not ceased to be the objective of US imperialism. World supremacy is its very nature. Latin America and the Caribbean, including Cuba, is one of its targets in achieving world domination.

Second, regarding US foreign relations policy, in addition to this objective to block the growing trend of a multi-polar world, Obama stated, believe it or not:

“The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. (Applause.) Period. It’s not even close. It’s not even close. (Applause.) It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.”

Why ask readers the rhetorical question: “believe it or not?” When this quote from Obama was sent out as a tweet during the very course of the address, several followers from the US tweeted back asking incredulously: “Wait, did he actually say that?” Yes, he did. Not only that, but he said with as much bravura that:

“Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. (Applause.)”

To respond to that can never do justice to the millions of people killed by the US military since World War II, from Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries with their allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. In fact, Obama said about Vietnam:

“We also can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis, even if it’s done with the best of intentions. (Applause.) That’s not leadership; that’s a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately will weaken us. It’s the lesson of Vietnam; it’s the lesson of Iraq — and we should have learned it by now. (Applause.)”

Obama, as is always the case with regard to Vietnam, laments the “spilling of American blood and treasure.” But once again, nothing was said about the over 1 million Vietnamese killed by the US military during its aggression and war against Vietnam. This has been the Obama position on Vietnam since his earliest days as a political figure, as he wrote in his 2006 book leading up to his first mandate in 2008. It is nothing new. Military might with a heavy dose of American chauvinism goes hand-in-hand with the opposition to growing multi-polar world.

Let us now turn to the Obama domestic policy. Once again there are so many issues. However, we will concentrate only on two.

First, some people may recall that when the movement by Afro-Americans and their allies against state/police racist attacks and killings, the grass-roots protesters raised the banner “Black Lives Matter.” Now, what were the responses of the right-wing racist politicians and groups and many of the police? To counter the growing Black Lives Matter movement, they put forward slogans such as White Lives Matter or even Blue Lives Matter (in reference to the blue police uniforms) or All Lives Matter. Now this is what Obama said in his address:

“Voices that help us see ourselves not, first and foremost, as black or white, or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native born, not as Democrat or Republican, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed.”

Is this not an indirect (or even direct) attack against Black Lives Matter? Does this seemingly innocent and moral statement not signal once again his support for the establishment’s alternative. Does not its thinly veiled backing of the reactionary backlash negate the inherent violent oppression by the state against Afro-Americans based on the heritage of the origins of the US as a slave society? This aspect of his State of the Union speech is very similar to what he trumpeted as well in his pre-presidential books with regard to the US being a “post-racist society.”

This traitorous statement on being “Americans first” is put into further relief when one takes into account the following. During the entire Obama speech, not a word was said about the killing by police of the Afro-Americans in 2015 and their ongoing mass incarceration. As in 2013 and 2014, US society is being torn apart by the inherent racism still very much brewing, and even increasing, in that country. However, not one word is said in the 6,000 word State of the Union speech. This is par for the course. If the Speech detailed this extreme violation of human rights in the US, how could the US, with a straight face, then lecture Cuba and others about human rights and democracy? The Cubans have forcefully stated to the US: You want to discuss human rights in Cuba? OK, but we have to also discuss human rights in the US.

The second domestic issue, in addition to racism, is democracy in the US. Obama said:

“But democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens… And [after giving some examples] most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter…”

Did (and does) the “voice” of the people matter when it came to the Occupy movement, which was attacked by the police and the FBI under the Obama administration? Was the voice of the Afro-Americans and their allies heard regarding the police or vigilante killing of Afro-Americans? Recall that the killer of Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, was exonerated by Obama’s Department of Justice in February, 2015. The cop killer of Michael Brown in Ferguson was given the green light to avoid trial and imprisonment by the Obama Administration when its Department of Justice report on March 4, 2015 likewise exonerated the murderer. Instead they opt for “trust” between Afro-Americans on the one hand and the state police/justice apparatus on the other. This policy is repeated again in the above-cited extraction from the State of the Union address: “basic bonds of trust.” While the people are bombarded by the joint media/administration war of words, impunity for the state/police has spiraled out of control. This situation does not constitute a very sound footing to lecture other countries such as Cuba on democracy and human rights.

There are many other domestic issues. However, let us close on this. Obama evoked Dr. Martin Luther King. The US president declared:

“Voices Dr. King believed would have the final word…”

Just the mention of the name of this great political and moral figure in US politics coming out of the mouth of Obama can make one’s blood boil. Dr. Martin Luther King was, unlike Obama, vehemently against the US war in Vietnam. King, if alive today, surely would be against the record number of wars that the Nobel Peace Prize winner is waging in the Middle East. King was a courageous fighter against racism and poverty. King carried out his missions not as a trampoline for a lucrative political career, but by standing side by side with the people even at the expense of his own life. King’s legend is far closer to the Cuban revolutionary heritage than that of Obama.

Arnold August, a Canadian journalist and lecturer, is the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections and, more recently, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion. Cuba’s neighbours under consideration are the US, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Arnold can be followed on Twitter @Arnold_August.

Notes:

*All quotes from the Obama address are from the White House: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/12/remarks-president-barack-obama-%E2%80%93-prepared-delivery-state-union-address

On 16 November 2015 the present writer published an article in Australia’s New Matilda magazine. The article had two main objectives. The first was a discussion of the legal bases upon which one State could attack another State. The second purpose was to provide an outline of my attempts to obtain a copy of the legal advice that the Australian government said it would seek before announcing a decision on whether or not to join the United States bombing campaign in Syria.

The content of that advice was of considerable interest. The majority of international lawyers doubted that Australia had any legal basis to intervene militarily in Syria. If the government’s legal advisers had a different opinion, then that would represent a minority view and lawyers would have an interest in the basis of their legal reasoning.

The Australian government had announced on 24 August 2015 that it would be seeking that legal advice. The clear inference was that no decision would be made pending receipt of that advice.

The request under the Freedom of Information Act was refused, but the schedule of relevant documents that were provided (but I was not allowed to see the actual documents) showed that the legal advice had been given to the government on 24 September 2014, eleven months before the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced that the advice would be sought.

The decision that Australia was going to join the American bombing campaign was announced in early September 2015 and the first bombing was carried out over the weekend of 12 and 13 September 2015. No legal basis was advanced on which this decision had been made. There was no debate in Parliament, but even if there had been it is unlikely that the Labor Opposition would have opposed it given their supine position on all matters relating to “national security”.

The only opposition in Parliament came from Senator Richard di Natale, the Green Party leader, and Senator Scott Ludlum, also of the Greens.

On 16 November 2015, the day the New Matilda article was published, Ms Bishop appeared on ABC National Radio to announce that the decision to join the US bombing was made in response to a request from the Iraqi government pursuant to the collective self-defence provisions of Article 51 of the UN Charter. That it took two months to even proffer a reason was interesting in itself.

What Ms Bishop claimed was the reason for the military intervention, that it was at the request of the Iraqi government, contradicted what the government had itself said in August 2015. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald the government of then Prime Minister Tony Abbott had “pushed for Washington to request that Australia expand its air strikes against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria.”

In acknowledging in August 2015 that the “invitation” was solicited, there was no mention then of any legal considerations that the government would have to consider. The further issue of how it was legally possible, under international law, for the United States to have any basis of inviting any country to join its bombing campaign in Syria, was never mentioned.

It exemplifies the arrogance characteristic of western foreign policy that simply assumes the right to bomb countries, and invite others to do so.

Ms Bishop in her radio interview of 16 November 2015 never referred to any American request, or that her former leader had solicited such a request. She preferred instead to claim that the invitation had come from the Iraqi government. For the reasons given below, that claim was in all probability untrue.

Ms Bishop’s explanation in that radio interview might have answered the query about the claimed legal basis upon which Australia was going to bomb another sovereign nation put to her by the interviewer. But there were further problems for Ms Bishop and the Australian government.

On 20 November 2015 the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2249. Despite some ill-informed media comment in the mainstream press about this resolution, it was manifestly not an authorization to attack Syria.

The operative part of the Resolution required all Member States to “take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular the UN Charter……on the territory under the control of ISIL also known as Daesh, in Syria and Iraq.”

The Australian government’s first problem then, is that it purports to rely on international law, and in particular Article 51 of the UN Charter. UN Security Council Resolution 2249 did not authorise action outside the terms of the UN Charter. That means that any action would have to be either in self-defence or by resolution of the Security Council. Neither condition exists. That leaves only the notion of collective self-defence.

This is the lingering fig leaf of legal respectability that the government clung to, as set out by Ms Bishop in her interview of 16 November 2015. She claimed that Australia was acting at the purported request of the Iraqi government.

Confirmation of the Australian government’s reliance upon the alleged request by the Iraqi government is found in the letter sent by the Australian government to the Security Council on 9 September 2015. Such a letter of notification of military action against another sovereign State is required under the terms of the UN Charter.

The letter stated that the Syrian government was “unable or unwilling” to prevent attacks from its territory upon Iraq. This is a highly contentious claim, and one that has no foundation in international law. Only two States, The United States and the United Kingdom have officially endorsed the “unwilling or unable” doctrine and their self-interest in doing so is readily apparent.

Among the many reasons for its rejection as a doctrine in international law is that it would open the floodgates to the extraterritorial use of force against non-state actors. That it should appear in an official letter from the Australian government to the UN Security Council is surprising. In effect the doctrine is a back door route to avoiding the restrictions imposed by Article 51 of the UN Charter that force must be utilized only in legitimate self-defence or with the consent of the Security Council.

The letter went on to say “in response to the request for assistance by the government of Iraq, Australia is therefore undertaking necessary and proportionate military operations against ISIL in Syria in the exercise of the collective self-defence of Iraq.”

The further problem for the Australian government however, was that the Office of the Prime Minister of Iraq issued an official statement on 3 December 2015. That statement renewed the Iraqi government’s

“emphasis on the lack of need for foreign troops in Iraq and that the Iraqi government is committed to not allowing the presence of any ground forces on the land of Iraq, and did not ask any side, whether regional or from an international coalition to send ground troops to Iraq.”

The Prime Minister of Iraq’s statement went on to repeat the Iraqi government’s position that it had asked for air support for Iraqi forces operating within Iraq. It further demanded that no activity be undertaken without the approval of the Iraqi government. It would appear that the Iraqi government has a firmer grasp of the limitations on military actions imposed by international law than does the Australian government.

That Iraqi government statement is a direct rebuttal of the claims made by Ms Bishop on behalf of the Australian government that the bombing of Syria was at the request of the Iraqi government. Thus, the Iraqi government demolished the remaining tiny element of potential legality for Australia’s actions.

This is not the end of the Australian government’s legal problems. The International Court of Justice has on at least two occasions in recent years pronounced that the concept of “collective self-defence” does not apply when the “defence” is against non-State actors.

ISIS is not a State in any meaningful sense of the word, so if Iraq had asked for such help against ISIS in Syria, (which as we have seen it did not) such a request would have had no legal basis.

The Australian mainstream media had given a small amount of space to Ms Bishop’s original announcement about Australia intending to bomb Syria. There was also some coverage of the fact that Australian warplanes had carried out operations in Syria when those operations commenced in September 2015.

Almost no coverage was given to the doubts about the legality of the air operations after they had commenced. There was no coverage given to the government’s letter to the Security Council and therefore on the contentious claims made in that letter. Neither was any coverage given to the statement from the Office of the Prime Minister of Iraq. To do so would of course have fatally undermined the editorial support for the government’s actions.

But there was a further significant development that should have been disclosed by the government and given extensive coverage by the media, and that is the extent of the actual bombing in Syria undertaken by the Australian Air Force.

The Department of Defence issues, via its website, the activities of the Air Task Group as it is known, in Iraq and Syria. These data reveal that the F/A-18 fighter-bomber used by the Australian Air Force flew 18 sorties in Syria in September 2015 for a total of 143 operational hours. This was the month the operations commenced.

It was also however, the month that the operations initially ended. The Department of Defence figures show that zero sorties were flown in Syria in the months of October and November and 10 in December.

Some obvious questions are posed by these data. The first question is why did the bombing cease after the same month it began? The second question is why, given the controversies that surrounds the bombing, were the government and the media totally silent on the fact that the bombing had ceased in October and November?

An obvious question is why did the Foreign Minister, in her interview on 16 November 2015, not mention the fact that the bombing she claimed was legally justified had in fact ceased more than six weeks previously? The impression that she strongly sought to convey was that the bombing was both legal and continuing pursuant to the various claims that she was making.

The answers to those questions are necessarily speculative, as the government does not see fit to announce to the people to whom it is accountable, what they are doing on such a vital issue. The mainstream media are doing what they always do, which is to avoid printing any material that does not accord with their pre-determined agenda.

We do know however, that the American bombing of Syria had been singularly ineffective in diminishing ISIL’s operational capacity. Some commentators have suggested that was precisely the point. Whether Australia wished to continue being a party to that charade is an interesting point, and one that an Opposition and a media interested in the truth should pursue.

There was another development at the end of September 2015 however, that has been a singular game-changer in the Syrian theatre of operations. The Russian military intervened in the Syrian conflict. Completely unlike the position of the US “coalition”, the Russians intervened at the specific request of the Syrian government. There was therefore no doubt in international law that the Russian intervention was legally permissible.

The Russian intervention, while on a relatively small scale, has been devastatingly effective. Not only were the ISIL forces obliged to seek cover from air attacks, having enjoyed apparent immunity from the Americans and their allies during the preceding 15 months, there was also major disruption of their supply lines.

As a result of Russian air reconnaissance and satellite images, it has been established beyond doubt that ISIL was transporting stolen Iraqi and Syrian oil across the Turkish border. That oil was sold on the black market through a company with close links to President Erdogan of Turkey. Military supplies were in turn being shipped back across the Turkish border into Iraq and Syria.

There is also good evidence that wounded ISIL fighters are being treated in Turkish and Israeli hospitals. They are also trained in Turkish and Jordanian camps among other places. Both President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have pointed out the financial and other support ISIL receives from other countries in the region.

The Australian media have chosen to give only minimal coverage to some of these disclosures and certainly no analysis of their implications. Those interested in discovering what is actually happening in Syria and related theatres of war are obliged to seek that information elsewhere.

The Russians have also installed the sophisticated S400 air defence system in Syria. This gives them, and their Syrian allies, the capacity to shoot down any unauthorized aircraft in Syrian air space. Again it is purely speculative, but that may also be a reason why Australian Air Force bombing of Syria, which is manifestly unauthorized, ceased for two months after the Russian intervention.

There has now been another new development. The former Defence Minister, Kevin Andrews, sacked when Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister in September, complained that Australia should not have rejected a request from the Americans for a greater commitment of troops to Syria. It appears that the replacement Defence Minister, Marise Payne, had rejected such a request.

Typically, neither the fact of the request nor that it had been refused were known to the public until Mr Andrews complained. Equally typically, the issue of the legal right of the US to make such a request was never discussed.

The fact that it was the Americans who were driving the push for a greater military commitment by Australia did not form part of the letter to the Security Council, and neither was it mentioned b Ms Bishop on 16 November 2015 when she told the ABC why Australia was going to join the bombing of Syria.

To stop the illegal bombing was undoubtedly correct from many points of view, not least from the standpoint of international law that Australia has increasingly disregarded in recent years. The great pity is that the Australian government had neither the moral fortitude nor sufficient faith in the Australian people to inform them of the decision to even temporarily withdraw from a war they had no business in pursuing in the first place.

Neither have we been given an explanation as to why this manifestly illegal bombing has recommenced, whether it is intended to continue, and if so on what possible legal basis. The original purported justifications have been comprehensively demolished by the subsequent revelations. Whether Mr Turnbull can resist the inevitable pressure from the Americans at his forthcoming meeting with President Obama will be closely watched.

James O’Neill is an Australian-based a barrister-at-law

In a dynamite interview, Richard Fisher, former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, gave what may be the biggest confession you’ll ever see and hear from a Federal Reserve insider: the Federal Reserve knowingly “front ran” the US stock market recovery (i.e., manipulated the market) and created a huge asset bubble. Fisher expresses certainty that the “juiced” stock market will come down and is coming down now that the Fed has taken its foot off the accelerator … and that it has a long way yet to go.

While that is no news to readers here whose eyes are wide open, a “market put” has been denied by the Fed and by many market advisors. That the market was an overinflated bubble created by the Fed has been denied, too; but Fisher clearly and gleefully admits the Fed created a bubble that will have to deflate now that the Federal Reserve’s stimulus is off.

As one of the members of the Federal Reserve’s FOMC (the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets US monetary policy), Richard Fisher participated in and voted on all of the Fed’s policies of zero interest and quantitative easing, so he has inside knowledge of all the discussions behind the scenes at the Fed.

Here are the significant quotes from Richard Fisher on CNBC’s video:

What the Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market rally, starting in 2009.

It’s sort of what I call the “reverse Whimpy factor” — give me two hamburgers today for one tomorrow.

I’m not surprised that almost every index you can look at … was down significantly. [Referring to the results in the stock market after the Fed raised rates in December.]

Basically, we had a tremendous rally, and I think there’s a great digestive period that is likely to take place now, and it may continue.

We front-loaded at the Federal Reserve an enormous rally in order to accomplish a wealth effect.

I wouldn’t blame [what is happening in the market’s now] on China. We’re always looking for excuses.

I wasn’t surprised at last year. And I wouldn’t be surprised at a rather fallow performance this year as well.

A lot of people are building cash positions…. Those [investors] that are taking a longer term view are being extremely cautious here, are raising their cash levels, are nervous about the valuations that are in the market.

The values are very richly priced here, so I could see significant downside.

Asked if saw a big unwind from the Fed’s 6.5-year policy and what it would look like on the way down, Fisher responded,

I was warning my colleagues, “Don’t go wobbly if we have a 10-20% correction at some point…. Everybody you talk to … has been warning that these markets are heavily priced.

Elsewhere Fisher said:

The Federal Reserve is a giant weapon that has no ammunition left.

You have to be careful here and frank about what drove the markets…. It was, the Fed, the Fed, the Fed, the European Central Bank, the Japanese Central bank … all quantitatively driven by central bank activity. That’s not the way markets should be working…. They were juiced up by central banks, including the Federal Reserve…. So, I think you have to acknowledge reality.

It’s about time for breaking the economic denial. Acknowledging reality is what many in the mainstream media, at the Fed, and among economists and stock analysts refused to do.

Now that the US stock market appears to be crashing, is Richard Fisher’s confession to cover his own hind end, by saying, “I warned the guys about this, and I voted against QE3 because I knew it went too far?” Is he just the first rat to flee the sinking ship, or is he just the most honest of Fed officials who is no longer on the board so feels freer to talk?

Your thoughts? (And please pass the confession along so that it gets lots of play time because you don’t get a confession like this about the inner arguments of the Fed very often. I imagine Yellen is doin’ a little yellin’ right now.)

You can read more from David Haggith at his site The Great Recession Blog.

U.S. public relations firm Edelman polled 33,000 people in 28 countries, and found that

people trust search engine results more than any other media:

QZ redid the graphic to make it easier to read:

Edelman also argues that search engines and the Internet have turned traditional power structures – and the sources of influence – on their head:

This sounds good … but remember that the NSA and its British counter-part the GCHQ MASSIVELY manipulate the web – including making some websites artificially popular and others less so – to spread their influence and promote their agendas.

And everyone obtains different search engine results … even if they run the exact same search.  For example, Google gathers information across all of its platforms, and personalizes search engine results based upon what you’ve looked for in past searches.

So search engine results are not totally objective … they are based upon our past expressions of interest.

And some even question whether the search engine companies themselves are really as neutral as they claim.  We express no opinion on that topic, other than to note it.

 

William White [pictured left] is one of the world’s top economists.

He was the head economist for the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – the world’s most prestigious financial institution, called the “central banks’ central bank – comprised of the world’s central banks.  He is now the chief economist for OECD, made up of most of the world’s richest and most powerful countries.

As chief economist for BIS, White predicted the 2008 crash.

While the mainstream financial media like CNBC has been trumpeting fake, happy news for many years, White confirmed yesterday what the best alternative financial sites have said for a decade, telling the Telegraph (at the World Economic Forum in Davos):

The global financial system has become dangerously unstable [he’s right] and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability …. [Uh–huh]

“The situation is worse than it was in 2007. [Accurate] Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up” …. [True]

***

“Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief,” he said.  [Indeed]

“It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something” [Yup]

***

“The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians.” [Exactly!]

***

The European banking system may have to be recapitalized on a scale yet unimagined, and new “bail-in” rules mean that any deposit holder above the guarantee of €100,000 will have to help pay for it. [Unfortunately.]

***

“Emerging markets were part of the solution after the Lehman crisis. Now they are part of the problem too,” Mr White said. [Could be bad.]

Mr White, who also chief author of G30’s recent report on the post-crisis future of central banking, said it is impossible know what the trigger will be for the next crisis since the global system has lost its anchor and is inherently prone to breakdown. [Due to such factors as soaring leverage, incestuous levels of interconnectedness between financial institutions, runaway inequality, a government policy of letting criminals get away with fraud, etc.]

***

Mr White said QE and easy money policies by the US Federal Reserve and its peers have had the effect of bringing spending forward from the future in what is known as “inter-temporal smoothing”.  [Very true.] It becomes a toxic addiction over time and ultimately loses traction. In the end, the future catches up with you. “By definition, this means you cannot spend the money tomorrow,” he said.

***

“Policy makers were seduced into inaction by a set of comforting beliefs, all of which we now see were false. They believed that if inflation was under control, all was well,” he said. [Hmmm…]

In retrospect, central banks should have let the benign deflation of this (temporary) phase of globalisation run its course. By stoking debt bubbles, they have instead incubated what may prove to be a more malign variant, a classic 1930s-style “Fisherite” debt-deflation. [Oops.]

***

“It was always dangerous to rely on central banks to sort out a solvency problem when all they can do is tackle liquidity problems [Wrong diagnosis]. It is a recipe for disorder, and now we are hitting the limit,” he said.

Indeed, it’s not just the past decade … the mainstream has willfully ignored key economic wisdom which is hundreds or thousands of years old.

A side effect of the American neocon strategy of up-ending the Middle East is to flood Europe, and in particular, Germany, the continent’s dominant power, with non-Christian immigrants.  

The author argues that this is deliberate, and that Merkel and Obama are neocon patsies, leading Europe to destruction, and that Russia is one of the few countries whose leadership understands what is happening, and is fighting back.

A few years ago, views like these would be considered on the fringe.  Today they are going mainstream.  Witness the popularity of Donald Trump.

From the United States to Europe, the Western elite are allowing a massive influx of foreigners to enter their lands, radically transforming the face of Western societies in a bid to divide, conquer and expand their military and financial rule across an unsuspecting planet.

Angela Merkel was even named Time’s “Person of the Year” for spearheading the influx which threatens to tear Europe apart.

Despite the media-generated characterization of Europe as only too willing to allow swarms of refugees into their conservative societies, recent history provides us with an altogether different picture. As early as 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in response to rising anti-immigrant sentiment, sent shockwaves around the world when she admitted that efforts to create a multicultural society in Germany have “utterly failed.”

Today, Merkel is humming a completely different tune as a wave of refugees storms Europe from all corners. Trusting the public’s short memory span, the German leader has put out the welcome mat along her country’s lengthy border, telling the world Germany is ready to accept over 1 million new arrivals – and on practically the same day that 130 people were killed by alleged Islamic fundamentalists around Paris.

Part of the public’s change of heart towards the plight of refugees came from the tragic story of Aylan Kurdis, the Syrian child whose body was found washed up along a shoreline in Turkey after the boat he had been traveling in capsized. Of course, the corporate-owned, super-consolidated media, never one to ignore a tragic moment (and especially one with graphic photographs) posted the story on every newspaper frontpage across Europe. Indeed, these were the same Western newspapers that ignored the depravations brought to children around the Middle East from NATO attacks on sovereign countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now in Syria. One need only read the subtitle that accompanied The Sun’s front page headline, which said: “Bomb Syria for Aylan.” Talk about using tragedy to sell the ugliest agenda of them all: War.

So while the European people are being coerced by a relentless media campaign to accept Syrian refugees or be labeled neo-fascists (a word few Germans can tolerate following the harrowing memory of Nazi Germany, a memory the media will never let the German people live down), the refugees are being magnetically drawn to Europe by the promise of easy money and easy jobs. Note: it has been proven that most of the new arrivals to Europe are not from Syria, but rather from other war-torn places, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Refugees in Germany receive up to 345 euro per month from the government, whereas in Sweden the monthly allowance is up to 224 euro. Compared to the places and situations where the refugees are escaping from, this temptation of free money is practically impossible to ignore.

Was this chaos planned?

While on the surface it may seem that the refugee crisis has taken Western leaders by surprise, in fact it is all part of their plan for global domination, which was outlined in a paper by the now-defunct group of US neoconservatives known as The Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

In September 2000, the group released a document entitled: ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses – Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,’ in which the power-crazed individuals came out and admitted their goal of asserting US military power around the globe in order to remain the world’s supreme superpower.

The PNAC identified five nations it deems as “deeply hostile to America” – North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria (former US General Wesley Clark added another three to that list a bit later: Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan). It should come as no surprise that two of these five countries have already suffered a US-led occupation/capitulation, while Syria is still managing to survive, albeit only due to the military intervention of Russia.

Moscow seems to have come to the correct conclusion that Islamic State is simply a proxy army created by the United States to smash down the doors of sovereign states.

Judging by the scope of these diabolical plans, it is altogether impossible that the United States could not see well in advance that a flood of desperate refugees would soon be streaming towards the European Union in search of safety.

But again, this is part of the overall plan that the US elite desire, otherwise they would not be so aggressively pushing for the rights of the illegal aliens over the rights of their natural born citizens.

This makes sense when we consider the absolute wreck that the Western elite have made of the European economy, with nations like Greece, Italy, Portugal and others on the brink of total insolvency, and only surviving due to impossible-to-return loans pushed on them by the IMF and World Bank.

There is the temptation to point to the colorful life story of Barack Hussein Obama – America’s first black president of Kenyan descent who is known to hold strong opinions on the way minorities have been treated present and past – as a powerful reason for national borders collapsing around the world, and most shockingly in the United States and the European Union. Indeed, the real estate tycoon Donald Trump has practically sealed his nomination for the Republican presidential candidacy on nothing more than the promise to build a “gigantic wall” separating America and Mexico. So why doesn’t Obama make an equally simple promise and shut down the Trump threat once and for all?

Although I do believe that Obama is predisposed by both his skin color and life history to show sympathy to the plight of refugees and minorities, and is thereby less inclined to shut down America’s borders, I don’t think the US president’s race can explain everything (although it has a wonderful way of scaring off any would-be critics out of fear of being branded ‘racist’). The simple fact is that Obama is reading from a script that was written many years ago. Washington is simply weighed down by too many powerful, behind-the-scenes puppet masters for anything to happen by chance in the realm of US politics.

According to a German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn, by mid-21st century millions of migrants from Africa and Asia (950 million of them are already willing to relocate to the EU) will drag Europe back into the Dark Ages. So isn’t this exactly what Barack Obama, a man with African roots, should be willing to achieve through his foreign policy?

 We would be amiss to singularly blame Obama for destroying the once proud European civilization (now hanging by a thread in a few stubborn holdouts, like Russia, Hungary and Belorussia). The blame must be placed on the very malevolent system that every American leader is forced to either accept or fight once in the Oval Office (John F. Kennedy is perhaps the best proof as to what will happen to any US leader who attempts to be his own man and demand real change.

 We can no longer allow ourselves to be deluded as to what is really happening in the world today. The United States is actively and intentionally destroying the old fabric of nationality – the very glue that holds together cultures and civilizations – around the world, and it does not matter if the state is friend or foe, Christian or Muslim, rich or poor.

The ultimate plan is to smash any homogeneity that exists and replace it with a US-led imperial system that relies on brute force to maintain “peace and order.”

This is much easier achieved if people no longer have anything remotely in common with their neighbors. The microcosm of this demonic system is already playing out on Main Street, USA, where local police forces are actually receiving military-grade weapons to use against the American people – while our national borders remain open to killers, rapists and drug traffickers from South America (!).

In Europe, the very same tragedy is playing out like a cold-blooded murder in broad daylight. Thanks to America’s reckless foreign policy agenda, which went absolutely insane following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, NATO countries are being helplessly dragged into battles and regardless of the public outcry and protests against these illegal wars, which have already happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria – all of which have resulted – or soon will result – in failed states.

But the real failed states will eventually be the old colonial powers of Europe, which sit on the front line of the refugee tsunami provoked by the US that is now crashing across the region, threatening to engulf every city from Lisbon to Helsinki.

This development only plays further into Washington’s hands as the European people – increasingly terrified by pre-planned acts of war, terrorism and financial collapse – look to a savior to rescue them. At that point, they will walk happily and blindly into captivity like lambs on the way to slaughter, believing they are free until the moment of their destruction.

In other words, when it is too late to reverse their fate and the real face of the global tyrant is revealed.

As the world’s political and economic elite gather to discuss their top concerns at the annual Davos summit in the Swiss Alps and with attention this week focused on the scourge of economic inequality, a new report begs questions about the potentially disastrous role the super-wealthy are playing when it comes to addressing key problems of global inequity, endemic poverty, and international development.

Released on Wednesday, the study by the UK-based social justice group Global Justice Now takes a specific look at the impact of the world’s largest philanthropic charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), to assess how large-scale private giving may be “skewing” how international aid works. In its conclusion, the report argues that what may look like altruism on a grand scale may actually mask a sinister reality about how the billionaires of the world insulate their personal fortunes while using their out-sized influence to project their private ideologies and further financial interests. The result, the report suggests, is that many of the people and communities who such charities purport to be helping, may actually be worse off in the long run.

With more than $43 billion in assets, the Gates Foundation is often lauded as a global force for social good that uses its vast financial resources to launch initiatives and support existing projects in order to, according to its mission, “help all people lead healthy, productive lives.”

The new report, however—entitled Gated Development: Is the Gates Foundation Always a Force for Good?—argues that regardless of good intentions or motivations, the foundation’s “concentration of power is undemocratically and unaccountably skewing the direction of international development” which in turn is “exacerbating global inequality and entrenching corporate power internationally.”

As Mark Jones, lead researcher and author of the report, explains in the introduction:

Analysis of the BMGF’s programmes shows that the foundation, whose senior staff is overwhelmingly  drawn from corporate America, is promoting  multinational corporate interests at the expense  of social and economic justice. Its strategy is  deepening – and is intended to deepen – the  role of multinational companies in global health  and agriculture especially, even though these  corporations are responsible for much of the  poverty and injustice that already plagues the  global south. Indeed, much of the money the  BMGF has to spend derives from investments in  some of the world’s biggest and most controversial  companies; thus the BMGF’s ongoing work  significantly depends on the ongoing profitability  of corporate America, something which is not  easy to square with genuinely realising social and  economic justice in the global south.

Polly Jones, head of campaigns and policy at Global Justice Now, highlights why the foundation’s unique role as a private organization is so troubling when it comes to putting a check on its enormous influence on the world stage.

“The Gates Foundation has rapidly become the most influential actor in the world of global health and agricultural policies, but there’s no oversight or accountability in how that influence is managed,” argues Polly Jones.

“This concentration of power and influence is even more problematic when you consider that the philanthropic vision of the Gates Foundation seems to be largely based on the values of corporate America. The foundation is relentlessly promoting big business-based initiatives such as industrial agriculture, private health care and education. But these are all potentially exacerbating the problems of poverty and lack of access to basic resources that the foundation is supposed to be alleviating.”

Based on a careful review of the charity’s behavior, the report offers these specific criticisms of the Gates Foundation:

• The relationship between the money that the foundation has to give away and Microsoft’s tax practices. A 2012 report from the US Senate found that Microsoft’s use of offshore subsidiaries enabled it to avoid taxes of $4.5 billion – a sum greater than the BMGF’s annual grant making ($3.6 billion in 2014).
• The close relationship that BMGF has with many corporations whose role and policies contribute to ongoing poverty. Not only is BMGF profiting from numerous investments in a series of controversial companies which contribute to economic and social injustice, it is also actively supporting a series of those companies, including Monsanto, Dupont and Bayer through a variety of pro-corporate initiatives around the world.
• The foundation’s promotion of industrial agriculture across Africa, pushing for the adoption of GM, patented seed systems and chemical fertilisers, all of which undermine existing sustainable, small-scale farming that is providing the vast majority of food security across the continent.
• The foundation’s promotion of projects around the world pushing private healthcare and education. Numerous agencies have raised concerns that such projects exacerbate inequality and undermine the universal provision of such basic human necessities.
• BMGF’s funding of a series of vaccine programmes that have reportedly lead to illnesses or even deaths with little official or media scrutiny.

In Polly Jones’ forward to the report, she explains why the ideological underpinnings of the foundation—often overlooked or ignored in mainstream assessments—are essential to understanding the downside of BMFG’s powerful influence:

[This report] demonstrates that the trend to involve business in addressing poverty and inequality is central to the priorities and funding of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We argue that this is far from a neutral charitable strategy but instead an ideological commitment to promote neoliberal economic policies and corporate globalisation. Big business is directly benefitting, in particular in the fields of agriculture and health, as a result of the foundation’s activities, despite evidence to show that business solutions are not the most effective.

For the foundation in particular, there is an overt focus on technological solutions to poverty. While technology should have a role in addressing poverty and inequality, long term solutions require social and economic justice. This cannot be given by donors in the form of a climate resilient crop or cheaper smartphone, but must be about systemic social, economic and political change – issues not represented in the foundation’s funding priorities.

Earlier this week, Oxfam International released a report showing that economic inequality across the globe has soared to such heights that now a mere 16 individual billionaires, including Bill Gates, own more wealth than the 3.6 billion people who represent the poorest half of the world’s population. In total, the report confirmed, the richest 1% of people now own more than the bottom 99% combined.

These shocking levels of unequal distribution of wealth are the cause, say experts, of increasingly intractable poverty levels in places like sub-Saharan Africa and across the Global South.  “The richest,” said Oxfam’s executive director Winnie Byanyima, “can no longer pretend their wealth benefits everyone – their extreme wealth in fact shows an ailing global economy. The recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the majority and particularly the poorest people.”

Last week, as Common Dreams reported, international watchdog group The Global Policy Forum put out its own critical report critical regarding the impacts of large philanthropic foundations and charities. Employing the term “philanthrocapitalism” to described the phenonomen, the report argues that the “influence of large foundations in shaping the global development agenda, including health, food, nutrition, and agriculture” raises “a number of concerns in terms of how it is affecting governments and the UN development system.”

And the intersection between outrageous levels of inequality on the one hand and the rise of powerful private foundations on the other shows how interlocked these phenomenons have become. As Gary Olson, professor of political science at Moravian College in Pennsylvania, wrote recently at Common Dreams, “The one thing that Big Philanthropy must overlook is the green elephant astride the boardroom’s conference table, the economic system that causes and extends [economic and social] injustices in perpetuity.”

Facing the gleaming Doha skyline on a Persian Gulf winter carries the merit of a panoramic perspective. Most nations around it are going into melt down and the remaining ones – with the exception of Iran – exhibit neither the political leadership nor the economic and institutional infrastructure to do anything other than to meekly accept whatever tsunami hits their shores. They are nothing but scared spectators.

The Empire of Chaos has enough warmongering hardware pre-positioned within spitting distance to turn the whole of Southwest Asia into ashes – as a gaggle of usual suspects in the Beltway, neocon or neoliberalcon, still can’t find a cure to their itching to «really win the next war» in a sort of exponential Shock and Awe.

Fear reigns supreme. Jim Rickards, the author of Currency Wars, economist and CIA asset, has just released a new book, The Big Drop, with a pretty grim message. For his part Jim Rogers, a.k.a. the «Sage of Singapore», most of the time China-bound informing the Chinese elite where to place their investments, holds on to a nuanced perspective on the West blaming all the current global economy turmoil on China.

According to Rogers:

«yes, China is slowing. But mostly the world is doing so. Japan, one of China’s largest trading partners is officially in recession. Much of Europe is worse. The US stock market was down in 2015 while the Chinese stock market was one of the strongest in the world».

Rogers adds:

«things are going to get worse worldwide so everyone will suffer and is to ‘blame’. The original source is the US Federal Reserve and its ludicrous, artificial interest rates caused by massive money printing which the world has copied. Throw in staggering debt increases by the US government [which the world has also copied] and there will soon be hell to pay».

So no wonder apocalyptic war rumors are the new normal – even as old timers boost their case for «only» a «good old-fashioned world war», as if nuclear exchanges wouldn’t be part of the equation. A few sound minds in the Atlanticist axis worry that if Il Duce Trump wins the next US presidential election, that translates into guaranteed bankruptcy for the US, and – what else – war if Il Trumpissimo implements half of what he’s boasting about.

Short all the oil you can

The Davos annual talkfest is about to begin; that’s one of those occasions when the Masters of the Universe – who usually decide everything behind closed doors – send their minions to «debate» the future of their holdings. The current debate centers on whether we are still in the midst of the Third – digitalized – Industrial Revolution and the Internet of Things or whether we’re already entering the Fourth.

In the real world though all the cackle is about the age of old-fashioned oil. Which brings us to the myriad effects of the cheap oil strategy deployed by the House of Saud under Washington’s command.

Persian Gulf traders, off the record, are adamant that there is no longer any real global oil surplus of consequence as all shut-in oil has been dumped on the market based on that Washington command.

Petroleum Intelligence Weekly estimates the surplus is at a maximum 2.2 million a day, plus 600,000 barrels a day coming from Iran later this year. The US consumption of oil – at 19,840,000 barrels a day, 20% of world production – has not increased; it’s the other 80% that have been mostly absorbing the dumped oil.

Some key Persian Gulf traders are adamant that oil should be surging by the second half of 2016. That explains why Russia is not panicking with oil plunging towards $30 a barrel. Moscow is very much aware of the «partners» that are carrying oil market manipulation against Russia, and at the same time is anticipating this won’t last too long.

That explains why Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Oreshkin issued a sort of «keep calm and carry on» message; he expects oil prices to remain in the $40-60 range for at least the next seven years, and Russia can live with that.

The Masters of the Universe – just like the Russians – have realized their oil manipulation cannot last. Hysteria, predictably, took over. That’s why they ordered major Wall Street firms to short oil using cash settlement. Compliant US corporate media was ordered to spin the shortfalls will last forever. The target is to drive down the price of a barrel of oil to $7 if possible.

The original Masters of the Universe strategy would eventually lead to regime change in Russia and the usual oligarch suspects back in the saddle re-conducting the massive looting operation Russia suffered during the 1990s.

A fearful House of Saud is a mere pawn in this strategy. Assuming the plan would work, the House of Saud under – virtually demented – King Salman, now confined to a room in his Riyadh palace, would also be regime-changed, via Saudi military officers trained in the West and recruited by Western agents. As a bonus, the Islamic Republic of Iran would also collapse, with «moderates» (rebels?) taking control.

So the Masters of the Universe strategy essentially boils down to regime-change in Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, leading to Exceptionalistan-friendly elites/vassals; in sum, the ultimate chapter in the global Resource Wars. Yet what this is yielding so far is the House of Saud having absolutely no clue of what may happen to them; Riyadh royals may think that they are undermining both Iran and Russia, but in the end they may be only accelerating their own demise.

Losing my religion

In Europe, it’s as if we’re back to 1977 when The Stranglers sang No More Heroes. Now, no more heroes and no more ideals. Even as some of European youth’s best and brightest have tried to fight the immense violence of neoliberalism, via alter-globalization, the poorest among the young are now mired in violence and suicidal nihilism – extreme Wahhabism which they’ve learned online. Yet this has nothing to do with Islam, and it’s not a war of religion, as myriad extreme-right parties across Europe routinely insist.

All across the spectrum, driven by fear, the toxic mix of political and economic instability continues to spread, leading quite a few insiders to wonder whether both the Fed and the Politburo Standing Committee in Beijing don’t really know what’s happening.

And that once again feeds the warmongering hordes, for which that «good old-fashioned world war» is the easiest ticket out. Cancel all the old debt; issue loads of new debt; turn ploughshares and iPhones into cannons. And after a little thermonuclear exchange, welcome to full employment and a new (waste)land of opportunity.

It’s in this context that, under the volcano, surfaces an essay by Guido Preparata, an Italian-American political economist now based as a scholar in the Vatican. In The Political Economy of Hyper-Modernity, soon to appear in an anthology published by Palgrave/Macmillan, Preparata offers an account of the last 70 years of US/international monetary dynamics/history by using a single indicator: the overall US balance of payments – which has not been released since 1975.

Yet the most important conclusion in the essay seems to be that «the neoliberal engine, which has had to run mostly on domestic fuel, has shown… appreciable resilience». The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, «together» managed to erect a «wall of money».

And yet «US technocrats seem to have grown disillusioned with the neoliberal machine». So, «as a momentous alternative, the technocrats have called for some kind of ‘global rebalancing’». The US-led system «seems to be transitioning to a neo-mercantilist regime». And the answer is the TPP (The Trans-Pacific Partnership) and the TTIP (The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) trade agreements that, together, «will place the United States at the center of an open trade zone representing around two-thirds of global economic output».

This would imply, ultimately, a sort of Make Trade, Not War endgame. So why so much fear? That’s because in the internal battle raging among the Masters of the Universe, the freewheeling neoliberalcons have not yet imprinted the last word. So beware the Falcons of War.

This is a transcript of an interview of Dr. Peter Koenig with PressTV, focussing on the recently released ILO Unemployment Report.

The interview is preceded by a brief news summary of the ILO report. 

According to AFP, January 19, 2016: 

“Global unemployment rose in 2015 and is expected to worsen further over the next two years, the International Labour Organization said Tuesday, citing downturns in key emerging economies. In a new report, the ILO estimated that 197.1 million working-age people were unemployed in 2015, an uptick of 0.7 percent compared to 2014 figures. In 2016, the figure is expected to rise by a further 2.3 million, with another 1.1 million people added to the jobless roster in 2017, the report said. The figures also made clear that employment rates have not recovered from the financial crash of 2008, as 27 million more people were out of work last year as compared to the pre-crisis level.

“The global economy is not generating enough jobs,” ILO chief Guy Ryder told journalists.

He pointed to “the significant slowdown in emerging markets coupled with a sharp decline in commodity prices”, as the culprits fuelling a grim outlook for the global job market. – The report said that much of the trouble in the developing world stems from struggling Brazil and especially China, which last year saw its slowest GDP growth in a quarter century. Once key drivers of global job growth, major emerging economies in Asia and Latin America will likely see unemployment rise this year, as will Arab and African nations [which] are heavily reliant on commodity sales, according to the report. – Unemployment is expected to fall slightly in advanced economies, but not by enough to fully offset the losses in the developing world, the ILO said. The report forecasts that in the United States and some other advanced economies, “unemployment will decline to pre-crisis rates.”

The ILO sounded specific alarm on the ever-rising numbers of people worldwide who have “vulnerable employment”, a term referring to low quality, unstable work, without formal contracts or benefits and with huge volatility in compensation. In addition to jobless figures, the ILO has typically used the vulnerable employment rate to assess the true health of an economy. In emerging markets, the number of people with vulnerable work is expected to grow by 25 million over the next three years, the report said.

PressTV Question: What do you make of this report?

Peter Koenig Response:

Summing up ILO’s projections – By 2017 more than 300 million people are likely to be unemployed. This does not include a shadow figure of at least another 30% to 50%, especially from developing countries where no exact statistics are held and where the line between partial employment and unemployment is blurred.

The projected 300 million-plus in 2017 do not account either for the more than 60 million refugees which according to UNHCR are currently on the move or in camps throughout world. Their situation is extremely precarious, considering health, nutrition and other social factors – and they are practically all unemployed.

The flood of refugees into Europe, especially Germany, will create more unemployment. And there is a purpose behind it: Washington wants Europe divided and working for their corporations as so-called low-wage hi-tech servants.

Even in the US, real unemployment, if it were to be accounted for like it was in the 1990s, or like it is in some European countries, would be between 20% and 25%, not the 5% currently claimed by the Labor Department.

PressTV: What do you think are the causes for this bleak outlook on unemployment?

PK:

Mr. Ryder does not talk about, what are the origins of the financial crisis – of the ongoing crisis – of the crisis with no end in sight.

This crisis is not ‘just happening’ – it is directed, fabricated and maintained by a globalized elite, led by Washington and supported by the Pentagon and NATO, fuelling wars and conflicts throughout the world.

Wars are highly profitable for the military industrial complex; and they are highly destructive, leaving entire countries without infrastructure and productive capacity – like Syria – hence unemployment becomes astronomical.

The worldwide economic crisis is manipulated by the very purpose of ‘Globalization’ – where rich industrialized countries transfer their manufacturing to cheap labor countries, where vulnerable and precarious jobs are created – no social insurances, no job security – minimal and barely living wages.

Poor people who are at the edge of survival cannot stand up for their rights; they have to fight for daily survival of their families.

The global financial – and industrial elite that is manipulating crisis after crisis- and therefore creating unemployment at will (unemployment is a ‘cushion’ for wage repression, a tool of the capitalist system) – can continue the crisis mode only as long as it uses the current fiat dollar based monetary system; only this system makes it possible to impose totally illegal ‘sanctions’ on countries that do not behave according to Washington’s dictate.

Sanctions also create unemployment.

I agree with ILO’s chief, Mr. Ryder – “this needs to change”.

And the solution is not that far-fetched: It means getting out of this nefarious and criminal dollar system, de-dollarize and de-globalize the world.

Russia-China, the other BRICS and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) countries making up about one third of the world’s GDP and about half of the world’s population – are about ready to launch an alternative monetary system.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, CounterPunch, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Monsanto’s Round Up herbicide, containing the likely-carcinogenic glyphosate, is causing widespread mitochondrial dysfunction in cells. This is associated with a long list of degenerative disease and chronic health conditions including autism, Alzheimer’s, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, type 2 Diabetes, Parkinson’s, and obesity. 

The mitochondria of our cells complete some of the most important functions of cellular respiration. This is how our cells eat, excrete, and repair themselves. Mitochondria are like the batteries of the cell. They create metabolic energy through ATP.  If the mitochondria, well-defined cytoplasmic organelles of the cell are damaged, the cell cannot function.

As Pamela Coleman, PhD from Farm and Food Policy and an Analyst for the Cornucopia Institute has said:

“Contrary to the current widely-held misconception that glyphosate is relatively harmless to humans, the available evidence shows that glyphosate may rather be the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies.”

We’ve been exposed to this chemical since the 1970’s and the bioaccumulation is killing our cells’ ability to heal themselves. Scientists at the Institute for Responsible Technology have posted a wonderful video that explains this seeming complexity in simple terms.

The list of diseases that are caused by mitochondrial dysfunction is long. Two experts discuss just how toxic Round Up is and how it affects mitochondria in your body. You could read dozens of books on this topic, but you can also obtain a quick understanding from an under-utilized video that represents vast quantities of data on the subject in a nutshell, presented by Stephanie Seneff and Alex Vasquez.

Sources:

ResponsibleTechnology

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confronts Sen. Bernie Sanders in Democratic presidential debate on Jan. 17, 2016.

A curious reality about Official Washington is that to have “credibility” you must accept the dominant “group thinks” whether they have any truth to them or not, a rule that applies to both the mainstream news media and the political world, even to people who deviate from the pack on other topics.

For instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders may proudly declare himself a “democratic socialist” – far outside the acceptable Washington norm – but he will still echo the typical propaganda about Syria, Russia, Iran and other “designated villains.” Like other progressives who spend years in Washington, he gets what you might called “Senate-ized,” adopting that institution’s conventional wisdom about “enemies” even if he may differ on whether to bomb them or not.

That pattern goes in spades for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other consciously “centrist” politicians as well as media stars, like NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Lester Holt, who were the moderators of Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate. They know what they know based on what “everybody who’s important” says, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof.

So, you had Mitchell and Holt framing questions based on Official Washington’s “group thinks” – and Sanders and Clinton responding accordingly.

Regarding Iran, Sanders may have gone as far as would be considered safe in this political environment, welcoming the implementation of the agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program but accepting the “group think” about Iran’s “terrorism” and hesitant to call for resumption of diplomatic relations.

“Understanding that Iran’s behavior in so many ways is something that we disagree with; their support of terrorism, the anti-American rhetoric that we’re hearing from their leadership is something that is not acceptable,” Sanders said. “Can I tell you that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don’t think we should.”

Blaming Iran

In her response, Clinton settled safely behind the Israeli-preferred position – to lambaste Iran for supposedly fomenting the trouble in the Middle East, though more objective observers might say that the U.S. government and its “allies” – including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – have wreaked much more regional havoc than Iran has.

“We have to go after them [the Iranians] on a lot of their other bad behavior in the region which is causing enormous problems in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere,” Clinton said.

Yet, how exactly Iran is responsible for “enormous problems” across the region doesn’t get explained. Everybody just “knows” it to be true, since the claim is asserted by Israel’s right-wing government and repeated by U.S. pols and pundits endlessly.

Yet, in Iraq, the chaos was not caused by Iran, but by the U.S. government’s invasion in 2003, which then-Sen. Clinton supported (while Sen. Sanders opposed it). In Yemen, it is the Saudis and their Sunni coalition that created a humanitarian disaster by bombing the impoverished country after wildly exaggerating Iran’s support for Houthi rebels.

In Syria, the core reason for the bloodshed is not Iran, but decisions of the Bush-43 administration last decade and the Obama administration this decade to seek another “regime change,” ousting President Bashar al-Assad.

Supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers, this U.S.-backed “covert” intervention instigated both political unrest and terrorist violence inside Syria, including arming jihadist forces such as Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al-Sham and – to a lesser degree – Al Qaeda’s spinoff, the Islamic State. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.“]

The desire of these Sunni powers — along with Israel and America’s neoconservatives — was to shatter the so-called “Shiite crescent” that they saw reaching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Since Assad is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam, he had to be removed even though he was regarded as the principal protector of Syria’s Christian, Shiite and Alawite minorities. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Money Seal Saudi-Israeli Alliance?’]

However, while Israel and the Sunni powers get a pass for their role in the carnage, Iran is blamed for its assistance to the Syrian military in battling these jihadist groups. Official Washington’s version of this tragedy is that the culprits are Assad, the Iranians and now the Russians, who also intervened to help the Syrian government resist the jihadists, both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s various friends and associates. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda.”]

Blaming Assad

Official Washington also accepts as undeniably true that Assad is responsible for all 250,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war – even those inflicted by the Sunni jihadists against the Syrian military and Syrian civilians – a logic that would have accused President Abraham Lincoln of slaughtering all 750,000 or so people – North and South – who died in the U.S. Civil War.

The “group think” also holds that Assad was behind the sarin gas attack near Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, despite growing evidence that it was a jihadist group, possibly with the help of Turkish intelligence, that staged the outrage as a provocation to draw the U.S. military into the conflict against Syria’s military by creating the appearance that Assad had crossed Obama’s “red line” on using chemical weapons.

Mitchell cited Assad’s presumed guilt in the sarin attack in asking Clinton: “Should the President have stuck to his red line once he drew it?”

Trying to defend President Obama in South Carolina where he is popular especially with the black community, Clinton dodged the implicit criticism of Obama but accepted Mitchell’s premise.

“I know from my own experience as Secretary of State that we were deeply worried about Assad’s forces using chemical weapons because it would have had not only a horrific effect on people in Syria, but it could very well have affected the surrounding states, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey. …

“If there is any blame to be spread around, it starts with the prime minister of Iraq, who sectarianized his military, setting Shia against Sunni. It is amplified by Assad, who has waged one of the bloodiest, most terrible attacks on his own people: 250,000-plus dead, millions fleeing. Causing this vacuum that has been filled unfortunately, by terrorist groups, including ISIS.”

Clinton’s account – which ignores the central role that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and outside support for the jihadists in Syria played in creating ISIS – represents a thoroughly twisted account of how the Mideast crisis evolved. But Sanders seconded Clinton’s recitation of the “group think” on Syria, saying:

“I agree with most of what she said. … And we all know, no argument, the Secretary is absolutely right, Assad is a butcher of his own people, man using chemical weapons against his own people. This is beyond disgusting. But I think in terms of our priorities in the region, our first priority must be the destruction of ISIS. Our second priority must be getting rid of Assad, through some political settlement, working with Iran, working with Russia.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes.”]

Sanders also repeated his talking point that Saudi Arabia and Qatar must “start putting some skin in the game” – ignoring the fact that the Saudis and Qataris have been principal supporters of the Sunni jihadists inflicting much of the carnage in Syria. Those two rich countries have put plenty of “skin in the game” except it comes in the slaughter of Syrian Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other religious minorities.

Blaming Russia

NBC anchor Lester Holt then recited the “group think” about “Russian aggression” in Ukraine – ignoring the U.S. role in instigating the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Holt also asserted Moscow’s guilt in the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 despite the lack of any solid evidence to support that claim.

Holt asked:

“Secretary Clinton, you famously handed Russia’s foreign minister a reset button in 2009. Since then, Russia has annexed Crimea, fomented a war in Ukraine, provided weapons that downed an airliner and launched operations, as we just did discuss, to support Assad in Syria. As president, would you hand Vladimir Putin a reset button?”

While noting some positive achievements from the Russian “reset” such as a new nuclear weapons treaty, help resupplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan and assistance in the nuclear deal with Iran, Clinton quickly returned to Official Washington’s bash-Putin imperative:

“When Putin came back in the fall of 2011, it was very clear he came back with a mission. And I began speaking out as soon as that happened because there were some fraudulent elections held, and Russians poured out into the streets to demand their freedom, and he cracked down. And in fact, accused me of fomenting it. So we now know that he has a mixed record to say the least and we have to figure out how to deal with him. …

“And I know that he’s someone that you have to continuingly stand up to because, like many bullies, he is somebody who will take as much as he possibly can unless you do. And we need to get the Europeans to be more willing to stand up, I was pleased they put sanctions on after Crimea and eastern Ukraine and the downing of the airliner, but we’ve got to be more united in preventing Putin from taking a more aggressive stance in Europe and the Middle East.”

In such situations, with millions of Americans watching, no one in Official Washington would think to  challenge the premises behind these “group thinks,” not even Bernie Sanders. No one would note that the U.S. government hasn’t provided a single verifiable fact to support its claims blaming Assad for the sarin attack or Putin for the plane shoot-down. No one would dare question the absurdity of blaming Assad for every death in Syria’s civil war or Putin for all the tensions in Ukraine. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17’s Unnecessary Mystery.”]

Those dubious “group thinks” are simply accepted as true regardless of the absence of evidence or the presence of significant counter-evidence.

The two possibilities for such behavior are both scary: either these people, including prospective presidents, believe the propaganda or that they are so cynical and cowardly that they won’t demand proof of serious charges that could lead the United States and the world into more war and devastation.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

The Chinese economy has experienced its slowest growth since the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre a quarter of a century ago, with the economy recording an expansion of 6.9 percent last year, compared to 7.3 percent in 2014. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2015 was even lower, at 6.8 percent.

Significantly, steel and electricity, two key components of Chinese heavy industry, recorded full-year contractions in output volumes. Steel production was down by 2.3 percent, while power generation fell by 0.2 percent. Coal production was down for the second year in a row.

Growth in industry and construction grew by what was described as “a paltry” 0.9 percent for the full year amid a four-year decline in the prices of industrial products. Fixed asset investment, which includes infrastructure and factory construction, grew by 10 percent, the lowest rate of increase since 2000. Infrastructure investment fell in December after earlier rising as a result of a government fiscal stimulus.

The slowdown in Chinese growth was announced even as the International Monetary Fund released a report cutting its forecasts for global growth for this year and 2017. The IMF included a warning that unless “key transitions in the world economy are successfully navigated, global growth could be derailed.”

The IMF forecast global growth of 3.4 percent in 2016, compared to a forecast of 3.6 percent it made in October, and 3.6 percent for 2017, down from 3.8 percent in October. The US economy was predicted to grow by 2.6 percent in 2016 and 2017, down from 2.8 percent, with euro zone growth forecast to come in at 1.7 percent, compared to the previous forecast of 1.8 percent.

Among the major risks to the global economy, the IMF cited: a sharper-than-expected slowdown in China; a further increase in the value of the US dollar, impacting corporate debt held in emerging market economies; “a sudden bout of global risk aversion,” that is, a financial crisis that could be triggered by a number of events; and an “escalation of ongoing geopolitical tensions which could affect confidence.”

Rather than being situated on some long-term or even medium-term horizon, such risks are an ever-present reality of the present global economic environment.

The IMF also warned that commodity markets posed a two-sided danger. Further falls in commodity prices, which are down to their lowest levels since the financial crisis of 2008-2009, would “worsen the outlook for already fragile commodity producers.” Brazil and Russia are already in recession, and the malaise could spread further.

Lower commodity prices could also impact high-yield debt—so-called “junk bonds”—issued by energy-related companies and “threaten a broader tightening of credit conditions.”

These warnings are underscored by the continuing fall in the price of oil. It has dropped to as low as $28 per barrel and could well go lower, with some analysts predicting $20 or even $16.

On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency warned that the global oil market “could drown in oversupply” as Iranian oil came back onto the market as a result of the lifting of sanctions. It said there would be an enormous strain “on the ability of the oil system to absorb the glut.”

While oil demand increased in 2015, the rate of growth has slowed as a result of recessionary trends in the global economy. With oil prices having fallen by 75 percent over the last 18 months, one of the biggest impacts of a continuing fall will be in corporate bond markets, where debts incurred when oil was $100 per barrel are no longer viable.

These trends will be further affected by the China slowdown, which, together with concerns over how far and how fast the Chinese currency, the renminbi (also known as the yuan), may fall, is one of the sources of continuing turbulence on global stock markets.

While there was general relief that the Chinese growth figures were not as bad as they might have been, sections of the financial press pointed to areas of growing concern. In an editorial on Tuesday, the Financial Times said “some optimism was justified,” given that the growth rate was within “touching distance” of the official target of around 7 percent. It also cited data showing that consumer spending was accounting for a greater share of Chinese growth, as China moved to decrease its dependence on manufacturing and heavy industry.

“Such progress,” the newspaper wrote,

“… does not disguise either the pain inherent in the transition or the deep faultlines that threaten to fracture China’s dynamism. Chief among these is the uncomfortable fact that China is buying much of its growth through a ballooning issuance of corporate and household debt.”

The Financial Times cited figures from the Bank for International Settlements showing that China has the highest private debt levels in the world, and that the cost of servicing this debt has risen from 12 percent of GDP in 2009 to 20 percent today.

“The danger now is that the contraction in industrial profits, the debt service burdens, and a flagging property market could together depress household income growth—jeopardising the consumer spending that forms the most robust stratum in the economy,” the editorial continued.

What is referred to as the “pain of transition” involves the destruction of whole swathes of industry and the loss of millions of jobs, raising before the regime its greatest fear—an upsurge in the struggles of the working class. There are already signs of such a movement.

There was a monthly record of 400 protests by Chinese workers in December, a result of growing unrest in the working class flowing from the increased financial turbulence associated with the devaluation of the renminbi, the stock market crash which began last August, and the ongoing slowdown in the economy.

The lower growth figures are also reflected in continuing job cuts in the major economies, with a series of companies in Europe cutting jobs across the board, including in electricity generation, airlines, steel and finance.

In the US, Johnson and Johnson announced Tuesday that it would cut 3,000 jobs in its medical device operations as part of a plan to slash $1 billion in costs.

There are warnings that US manufacturing is heading for a recession if it is not already in one. A survey published by the Federal Reserve earlier this month said that most of US manufacturing, with the exception of cars and aerospace, had been weakening over the course of the past eight months. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, manufacturing production, which was growing at a rate of 4.5 percent a year ago, has slowed to a rate of just 0.9 percent.

Just as in China, these worsening economic conditions and the continuing attacks on wages, jobs and social conditions are leading to greater resistance in the working class. The deep opposition to the contract imposed by the UAW bureaucracy in the US auto industry has been followed by the “sick out” protests of Detroit teachers over deplorable conditions in the city’s public schools and outrage over the lead poisoning of the water supply to the nearby city of Flint, a result of budget cuts.

This resistance is being fuelled by deepening social inequality, of which further evidence emerged this week with the publication of a report by the aid agency Oxfam. The study showed that that just 62 people held as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population.

As the report noted: “Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate.”

Growing fears in ruling circles of an eruption of class and social conflict have already been voiced by the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. In a report published in 2014, it pointed to “the conflict between unequal socioeconomic classes in global society,” noting that the tensions between the world of the poor and world of the rich “would increase, with corresponding consequences.” Those tensions have only increased since the report was written and there are signs that the consequences are emerging more clearly into the open.

In the midst of growing anger over the poisoning of residents of Flint, Michigan and the exposure of criminal actions by state and local authorities, Governor Rick Snyder gave a State of the State address Tuesday night in which he insisted that neither he nor any other top official should be held accountable.

The governor’s tone betrayed something of a siege mentality, as more than a thousand protesters marched outside the state capitol building in Lansing, many calling for his resignation and indictment.

After hailing record profits for the Michigan-based Big Three auto companies and touting the supposed “turnaround” of Detroit in a year the city emerged from bankruptcy, Snyder came to the subject of the Flint water crisis. The millionaire former corporate executive gave an empty apology to the people of Flint and asserted that it was “now time to tell the truth about what we have done,” promising to release his emails concerning Flint the next day.

After the obligatory “the buck stops here” declaration, he evaded any responsibility for decisions that have permanently disabled thousands of Flint residents, including infants and children, and will likely result in an unknown number of early deaths.

His effort at cover-up and damage control involved striking a pose of contrition (“The government has failed you”) and acknowledging that various officials had made “mistakes”—meaningless statements that were meant to evade any real accountability.

Snyder pled ignorance concerning the 17 months between April 2014, when his handpicked Flint emergency manager switched the city’s water supply to the highly polluted Flint River to cut costs, and September 2015, when he claims he first learned of the crisis. In the future, he admonished, such things “had to come to his desk immediately, with no excuses.”

He omitted the fact that immediately after the water was switched, Flint residents complained of its foul smell, color and taste and the spread of rashes and sickness. Even after a “boil only” warning had been issued by city officials, tests by the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) showed lead levels to be acceptable under the federal Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, Snyder maintained.

In May 2015, the governor continued, Dr. Mona Hannah-Attisha of Hurley Medical Center found alarming levels of lead in blood samples of city children, but “DEQ failed to reach the same conclusions.”

Again, Snyder neglected to note that his office targeted Dr. Hannah-Attisha with a slander campaign, saying she was “splicing and dicing” data and needlessly causing hysteria. With consummate cynicism, the governor asked the doctor to rise to the applause of state legislators.

While Snyder claimed that he was first briefed in September 2015, his chief of staff wrote a July 2015 email to the Department of Health and Human Services expressing concern over the stonewalling of Flint residents. “I really don’t think people are getting the benefit of the doubt,” he wrote. “Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead level studies they are receiving from the (DEQ) samples… These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us…”

In a transparent effort to protect himself from future prosecution, the Republican governor warned Democrats that they too were complicit. He noted that President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency had also ignored resident complaints and remained silent even after tests showed dangerous levels of lead, and the Democratic-controlled Flint City Council had approved the change in the city’s water source.

There is certainly a case for putting local, state and federal Democrats in the dock along with Snyder. This includes former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, currently the emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools.

The poisoning of Flint is linked to the 2013-14 Detroit bankruptcy, which was carried out with the backing of the Obama administration. The pensions and health benefits of city workers were slashed and public assets were sold off or privatized, including the treasures of the Detroit Institute of Arts and the city’s century-old public water system. This led to sharp increases in water prices in Detroit, Flint and other cities, and mass water shutoffs of working-class customers.

The modus operandi of the conspiracy of politicians and corporate holders of city bonds to plunder the incomes of city workers and seize public assets in Detroit has become a model for similar attacks across Michigan, in other US states and now in Puerto Rico. Municipalities and school districts have been starved of resources by federal, state and local authorities, forced to take on immense levels of debt, and then put under financial dictators who do the bidding of the banks.

Working-class youth are jailed for minor offenses, but those responsible for decisions that deprive families of water and electrical power and lead to fatal house fires and other tragedies essentially get away with murder.

Flint is a symbol of the criminal character of American capitalism. In 1960, the “Vehicle City” had one of the highest per capita incomes in America, the result of the sit-down strikes and mass struggles of autoworkers that forced the then-largest corporation in the world, General Motors, to recognize the United Auto Workers union. Over the last 35 years, the corporation, facing increasing international competition, has waged a relentless war against the workers, with the indispensable and unstinting assistance of the UAW.

GM has reduced employment in the city from 80,000 to 5,500. It has shut down and flattened the sit-down plants “Chevy in the Hole” and Buick City, which alone once employed 28,000 workers. Exacting huge tax cuts and polluting the Flint River with impunity, GM has left its birthplace in ruins.

During the 2009 restructuring of GM, the Obama administration worked with the UAW to shut more plants and halve the wages of all new-hires, while granting legal immunity to GM in any future lawsuits over pollution or defective vehicles. The company has taken in billions in profits and spent them, not on the people of Flint, but on stock buybacks and dividend payments to its biggest shareholders, which includes the UAW.

President Obama is coming to Detroit today, where he will speak at a UAW-GM facility and hail the “return” of the auto industry and the “rebirth” of Detroit. Meanwhile, young autoworkers cannot afford to buy the cars they build and Detroit teachers have organized sick-outs, independently of the unions, to protest rat-infested schools with no heat, overcrowded classrooms, and cuts in wages and benefits.

As for Flint, the president who has allocated trillions to bail out the Wall Street criminals and fund illegal wars has approved a derisory $5 million in federal aid for the city’s people. The government of “the most powerful country in the world” is no less indifferent to working people in Flint than its predecessor was to Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.

These disasters arise from the failure and bankruptcy of the capitalist system, an outmoded and reactionary economic order that subordinates the most elemental needs of society to the enrichment of the corporate and financial aristocracy.

In the 21st Century, no one should go without water, or, for that matter, a well-paying job, health care, education and affordable housing. The fight for these elemental rights places the working class on a collision course with American capitalism and all of its political representatives.

The last State of the Union address by President Obama was the occasion of a vigourous panegyric in favour of his country, in all points the best « on Earth » (sic). Unfortunately, his magnificent rhetoric was not based on a single convincing argument. His splendid oratory was thus unable to mask the reality of the decline of the United States, the result being that his Republican adversaries have made it the theme of their campaign.

The last address on the State of the Union, given by President Obama, was designed primarily to write the pages of his own history in the imagination of his compatriots [1]. Apart from a few allusions to the danger represented by the excesses of Republican candidate Donald Trump, the address was a long panegyric to the supremacy of his country, and ended with a proposition for the reform of political life as necessary as it is inapplicable.

« The strongest economy in the world »

Barack Obama began by declaring that :

« The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world ».

What he did not say was that, if we are to believe the IMF, while the United States does indeed have the largest nominal GDP, they come only in second position if we consider the GDP in terms of purchasing power parity, in other words, if we stop counting in dollars and begin comparing what is comparable. De facto, the primary world economic power is no longer the United States, but China.

Though he denied this reality, the President admitted that there remained much progress to be made towards sharing the riches. In its tri-annual report, made public last September, the Federal Reserve noted that the average income has declined by 5 %. In other words, while the super-rich are getting richer and richer, the United States in general are not. The inequalities have become such that 3 % of the population possess more than half of the nation’s patrimony, 7 % possess the next quarter, and 90 % the last quarter. Following the financial crisis of 2008-09, these 90 % have been reduced to what they possessed in 1986, while during the same period, the Chinese multiplied their own patrimony several times.

In order to demonstrate the excellent health of his industry, the President pointed out that this has been the best year for automobile manufacturers. Apart from the fact that we do not yet have the exact figures, if we refer to the available data, the world’s principal automobile producer is not the United States, but Japan. Whether we calculate in terms of the number of cars sold, or especially in terms of GDP and profit, Toyota is the clear winner. In reality, most of the revenue of the United States does not come from what they produce, but from royalties on the patents they have bought. Therefore, although this is revenue that everyone may consider legitimate under the aegis of the World Trade Organisation, it did not exist before, and indeed may not exist tomorrow.

After having claimed for himself certain of the arguments of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the President did not go on to announce the slightest measure to correct these inequalities, but simply proferred a few benefits intended to patch up a few wounds. Then he suddenly changed the subject and reminded his audience about his cancer research plan and his support for the United Nations Conference on « the climate ».

Having thus « refuted » the theorists of economic decline, President Obama then arrived at the heart of his subject – namely US military supremacy over the rest of the world. Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first time since Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tōjō that such an argument has been deployed in an address by a head of state or government.

The « most powerful army on Earth »

« I told you earlier all the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air. Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America [meaning only the United States] getting weaker. Let me tell you something. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. (Applause). It’s not even close. It’s not even close. (Applause.) It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that’s the path to ruin. Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office, and when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead—they call us. (Applause). »

Firstly – the Nobel Peace Prize laureate makes no attempt to celebrate the fact that his army is capable of defending his country, but rather that it is so superior to others that the whole world turns to Washington. In other words, he admits that the authority of his country does not derive from its capacities, but only from the fear it inspires.

Secondly – he measures his « leadership » by the allegation that, according to surveys whose authors he does not mention, the position of his country in the world is higher than when he was elected. Precisely, this argument does not enable us to evaluate the natural authority of his country, but it’s domination of others. This is a characteristic of US political thought. Washington’s challenge is not Life, Liberty and the pusuit of Happiness, as stated by the words of the Declaration of Independence, but superiority over others. In his famous 1991 report about the strategic objectives of the United States in a world without the Soviet Union, Paul Wolfowitz thus envisaged conserving the superiority of the moment by weakening the allies, in particular the European Union, even if this meant weakening themselves. Consequently, today, the role of US armies is not to defend the interests of US citizens, but to prevent other powers from developing faster than themselves. This is an evidence in the Near East, but it is also the case in the rest of the world.

Thirdly – like most of his compatriots, Barack Obama thinks that money allows you to buy anything. He declared a little earlier in his speech that public financial investment in cancer research would enable the victory over the disease. As if the spark of genius in researchers could be triggered with dollars. Concerning his armies, he affirmed that their un-paralleled budget has made them the most powerful. By saying so, he is the first Commander-in-Chief to pretend that the valour and courage of his soldiers is a question of dollars. From the Greco-Persian wars that saw the victory of a handful of Greeks against with the armies of emperors Darius and Xerxes, ten to twenty times superior in numbers and equipment – up until the defeat of Tsahal, the most sophisticated army in the world, backed by US logistics, the most powerful in the world, against a few Hezbollah Resistants supported by Syria and Iran, we know that the will and courage of men will trimuph over the most extravagant budgets.

Fourthly – the allusion to Russia and China is a poor disguise for US resentment at the military inustries of these two states. Everyone can now see, in Kaliningrad, in the Black Sea and in Syria, that NATO forces are marginalised by Russian technology. In the event of a conventional war against NATO, there is no doubt whatsoever that Russia would quickly prevail. The wearying of US industry is particularly visible in the aeronautics sector. For close to twenty years, the Pentagon has been promising the imminent construction of the F-35, a multi-function airplane capable of replacing almost all current military aircraft. Not only do they still have a long way to go, but while US engineers were re-designing their plans for the umpteenth time, Russia produced the Soukhoï Su-35, a plane of astounding agility, and China produced the Chengdu J-10B, with stealth capacities greater than any other. It is true that the United States have a production capacity without equivalent, but their conventional equipment has been long overtaken and now only impresses the smaller states.

After all this bragging, President Obama denounced the danger of terrorism and affirmed that he was fighting both al-Qaïda and Daesh. As proof of his engagement in the face of those who remain astounded by the patent inefficiency of the anti-Daesh Coalition, he declared :

« If you doubt America’s commitment (he means the United States) or mine, to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. (Applause.) […] When you come after Americans, (he still means the United Staters) we go after you. It may take time, but we have long memories, and our reach has no limit. (Applause.) ».

An argument which will only convince those who were already convinced of the assassination of Osama bin Laden by the Seals, in Pakistan, in 2011. In other words, not so many.

Other states are worth nothing

Speaking now of the balance of world power, President Obama continued :

« The Middle East is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia. Economic headwinds blow from a Chinese economy in transition. Even as their economy contracts, Russia is pouring resources to prop up Ukraine and Syria – client states they see slipping away from their orbit. And the international system we built after World War II is now struggling to keep pace with this new reality. »

No-one could truly say what these « conflicts that date back millennia » which are shaking the Middle East may be. In reality, since Jimmy Carter, Washington has been doing everything in its power to break up developing states by leaning on those who rejoice in their ignorance, like Saudi Arabia. But the phrase makes it possible to justify the present chaos and burden the next generation with the search for a solution.

The Chinese economy is certainly in transition, but in a similar way to that of the United States, which oscillates between growth and depression. The present fall of Chinese stock markets do not reflect economic reality. First of all because the principal Chinese companies are either public or listed in Western stock exchanges, and then because this fall is due to the war between the yuan and the yen. Shinzō Abe’s planned devaluation of Japanese currency forces China to devaluate its own money.

The contraction of the Russian economy is not due to intrinsic weakness, but is the consequence of the Western embargo – an embargo which forces Moscow to develop in the East, which it had been hoping to do for a long time without being able to do so. Apart from that, to pretend that Ukraine and Syria are client states is ridiculous – Viktor Ianoukovytch’s governement was not pro-Russian, even though it was not anti-Russian. As for Syria, it had ceased most of its relations with Moscow after the dislocation of the USSR, and had been unable to re-activate them in 2007. The recourse to lies like this is aimed only at masking defeat – it is of no importance whether or not Crimea and Syria become Russian or pro-Russian, because this is the way it has always been.

Finally, after having affirmed that other states are not worth much compared to his own, President Obama deplored that the United Nations are having trouble adapting, without specifying clearly to what they should be adapting. He was probably alluding to the fact that the UNO, under the direction of Ban Ki-moon and Jeffrey Feltman, not only are not acting in favour of peace, but are organising war, as can be seen since 2012 in Syria. Consequently, many states are now seeking to establish alternative institutions. Already, the BRICS have created an alternative banking system, distanced from the IMF and the World Bank. One after the other, all the institutions founded by Washington are soon to be in competition with, and excluded from, these new institutions.

To finish his address, Barack Obama called for a reform of Congress which would free it from lobby financing. This is a popular theme in a country in which only 3 % of the population considers itself democratically represented by the Parliament. But it is clear that the President will do nothing to ensure that this dream is realised. He spoke only to convince his compatriots to maintain confidence in his régime.

During his address, he was applauded by less than half of the audience.

Translation: Pete Kimberley

 

Thierry Meyssan is a French intellectual, founder and chairman of ‘Voltaire Network’ and the ‘Axis for Peace Conference’. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

(This article was inspired by the following website: http://www.cchrint.org/issues/prescribing-psychiatric-drugs-recklessendangerment/)

When physicians (or medical paraprofessionals) prescribe psychiatric drugs to children without the parent or legal guardian’s fully informed consent, the prescribers could reasonably be charged with reckless endangerment and/or child endangerment because such drugs commonly cause a multitude of well-known adverse effects, including the following short list: worsening depression, worsening anxiety, sleep disturbances, suicidality, homicidality, mania, psychoses, heart problems, growth disturbances, malnutrition, cognitive disabilities, dementia, microbiome disorders, stroke, diabetes, serious withdrawal effects, death, sudden death, etc. We physicians (not only psychiatrists) normally only spend a small amount of our scarce time warning about a few of the dozens of potential adverse effects when we recommend drug treatment – and apparently most American courts uphold this questionable action when the rare malpractice case manages to be heard in the legal system.

And yet, Child Protective Services has the legal right to charge parents with medical neglect for refusing to give their child a known neurotoxic or psychotoxic drug that wasn’t adequately tested either in the animal lab or in long-term clinical trials prior to being given marketing approval by the FDA.

This makes no sense to parents and can’t be explained by their lawyers, especially if the parents know more than their medical caregivers about the multitude of potentially serious dangers that such drugs could pose for their child. It is worth noting that psychiatrists admit that there is no scientific test in existence that proves that children deserve a permanent mental illness label (and getting brain-altering drugs for the rest of their lives).

Indeed, making a psychiatric diagnosis in this big business era of high volume/high turnover patient care is based largely on an unscientific, sometimes absurd checklist of patient behaviors, emotions or thoughts, often hurriedly obtained after a relatively short office visit. Checklists of signs or symptoms of a newly thought-up “mental illness” periodically are composed at the annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association where the newly invented “disorder” is voted on (by a show of hands) by groups of volunteer psychiatrists, most of whom have financial and/or professional conflicts of interest. If a sufficient majority of convention attendees agree, the new diagnosis is then placed in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), which contains hundreds of other unscientific check-lists of “mental disorders”.

Ignoring the Warnings of Drug Regulatory Agencies

Psychiatrists have long admitted that none of their drugs ever cure anything or anyone. They also admit that there are no medical, laboratory, radiological or biopsy tests to confirm that any given psychiatric diagnosis is an actual medical condition.

There are, however, thousands of lab, radiology and biopsy tests that confirm the existence of the long-term neurotoxic effects of the multitude of synthetic psychoactive drugs that continue to be given out in combinations that have never been adequately tested for efficacy or safety – even in the animal labs.

Therefore what the courts have erroneously criminalized as parental neglect must be re-assessed by the legal system. The parent that refuses potentially hazardous psychiatric drugs for their child because they happen to know more about the drug’s dangers than their prescriber, should be supported rather than punished by the courts. And lawyers and judges interested in understanding the nature of the best neuroscience need to be increasingly mistrustful of psychiatrist “experts” who frequently have serious conflicts of interest when it comes to maintaining the prestige and/or economics of the big business of pharmaceuticals, medicine and psychiatry.

There have been more than 200 international drug regulatory agency warnings about the fact that psychiatric drugs can cause dangerous and potentially life-threatening effects (check them out at: http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/). When I was in medical practice, I was totally unaware of the existence of these warnings, so I suspect that most over-worked physicians and psychiatrists today are equally unaware. Undoubtedly, lawyers and judges are in the same boat.

The basic science-based warnings about the dangers of prescription drugs are easily available for anybody concerned with the health and welfare of our children’s brains and bodies, and parents are always more concerned and in many cases, more aware, than their doctors. Concerned parents should be cautious about allowing their vulnerable children to be given potentially toxic substances, especially when the drugs are being prescribed “off label” (ie, for indications that are not approved by the FDA).

The Legal Definition of Reckless Child Endangerment

“Reckless Endangerment” is a crime consisting of an act that created a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person, even if the accused person did not intend to harm the victim. However, the person must have acted in a way that showed a disregard for the foreseeable consequences of the actions. The charge may occur in various contexts, such as domestic cases, car accidents, construction site accidents, testing sites, domestic/child abuse situations, and hospital abuse. The penalties vary from state to state.

“Child Endangerment” refers to an act or omission that places a child at risk of psychological, emotional or physical abuse. Child abuse based on the offense of child endangerment is normally a misdemeanor, but endangerment that results in mental illness or serious physical illness or injury is a felony. The child who is subjected to child endangerment is called an abused child or a neglected child.

This means that an action or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker (or healthcare giver) that results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, exploitation or an act or failure to act that presents an imminent risk of serious harm could result in legal action.

(As an aside, it must also be mentioned that there is a significant potential for serious neurological harm and/or vaccine-induced autoimmunity disorders (including the ME/CFS and “ASIA” syndromes) that can follow vaccinations that contain aluminum adjuvants and/or mercury.

(http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/05/13/5294_aluminum_toxicity_and_vaccines_recent_basic)

Infants and small children are most at risk because they commonly get multiple doses of vaccines at a single well baby visit (at 2, 4 and 6 months of age when their immune systems and blood brain barriers are at their most immature and their body weight is at its smallest). Thus our smallest pediatric patients are much more at risk of developing, sometimes in a delayed fashion, autoimmune and neurotoxic disorders mentioned in the paragraph above. Astonishingly, deaths or damage because of vaccine injuries cannot be litigated in the United States because of the 1986 Reagan-era law that absolves multinational vaccine corporations of liability!)

Antipsychotic Drugs and Reckless Child Endangerment

The sobering data below has been gleaned from www.cchrint.org and

https://www.cms.gov/medicare-medicaid-coordination/fraud-prevention/medicaid-integrity-education/pharmacy-education-materials/downloads/atyp-antipsych-pediatric-factsheet.pdf

1) The Medicaid Integrity Group (MIG) has identified issues with the utilization of the atypical antipsychotic drug therapy class. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves product labeling for prescription drugs. The MIG has found that some providers have prescribed atypical antipsychotics outside of FDA-approved product labeling for indication, age, dosage, or duration of therapy.

2) Despite their widespread use, atypical antipsychotics are not FDA approved for children younger than five years old and the use for the under-18 group has been controversial, with no long-term studies concerning brain shrinkage, brain damage or drug dependency. By and large, the studies that the FDA has approved for using antipsychotic drugs in those young children (whose brains were not hard-wired yet!) were poorly designed, of low power and showing only modest improvement in a very few select outcomes.

3) More than three-fourths of youths receiving Medicaid are taking psychiatric medications for an indication that is not FDA approved. Atypical antipsychotics are being used off-label to treat the so-called attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and aggressive behavior, indications for which the FDA has not granted approval.

4) According to a 2011 Medicaid survey, children taking antipsychotic medications almost always receive one of the newer, more expensive, “atypical” antipsychotic drugs.

In the majority of patients the use is for an off-label indication.

5) The list of so-called atypical antipsychotics include Abilify, Clozaril, Geodon, Invega, Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa, and Fanapt. They are promoted as being “safer” than the “first generation” anti-psychotic drugs like Thorazine or Haldol but they are actually only safer in that it is harder to commit suicide with them. In many respects, they are actually more dangerous, especially with long term use.

6) The use of antipsychotic drugs for very young American children with behavior problems approximately doubled between 1999 and 2007.

How Many American Pre-Schoolers are on Off Label Antipsychotics?

SOURCE: IMS, Vector One: National (VONA) and Total Patient Tracker (TPT) Database, Year 2013, Extracted April 2014.

http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/antipsychoticsideeffects/people-taking-antipsychotics/

In 2013 American psychiatrists and primary care physicians treated, off label, over 27,000 children below the age of 5 with antipsychotic drugs, drugs that are well known to be capable of causing permanent neurotoxic effects like brain atrophy (shrinkage), cognitive decline, sexual dysfunction, over-sedation and even Parkinson’s disease in children (among many other generalized toxic effects such as constipation, diabetes, obesity, sudden death and gynecomastia). It can be safely assumed that full information about all these known dangers of these brain-altering drugs is only rarely given to the parents by the prescribing physician prior to their child’s starting the drug. (For more on antipsychotic drug adverse effects, click on

http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/antipsychoticsideeffects/

Below is the 2013 breakdown of antipsychotic drug use in America, separated out according to age group. It is important to be aware that normal (non-psychotic) voice-hearing, psychostimulant drug-induced psychosis, antipsychotic drug withdrawal psychosis and PTSD with flashbacks can be easily mis-diagnosed and therefore mis-treated (with antipsychotics) as “schizophrenia”. It is equally important to be aware that psychostimulant drug-induced mania, anti-depressant drug-induced mania, and antipsychotic drug withdrawal psychosis can also be mis-diagnosed as so-called “bipolar disorder” and thus mis-treated with antipsychotic drugs.

It is also important to note that antipsychotic drug withdrawal symptoms includenausea and vomiting, diarrhea. rhinorrhea (runny nose), diaphoresis (heavy sweating), myalgias (muscle pains), paresthesias (odd sensations such as burning, tingling, numbness), anxiety, hypersexuality, agitation, mania, insomnia, increased tremor, and voice-hearing.)

Recognizing these realities should give us all pause, especially since over 4,000 American toddlers were assaulted with these drugs in one year.

Age	Number of Patients (2013)
0-1 Years	654
2-3 Years	3,760
4-5 Years	24,363
6-12 Years	359,882
13-17 Years	490,272
18-24 Years	599,816
25-44 Years	1,987,933
45-64 Years	2,406,526
65 Year +	1,169,044
Grand Total	6,845,303

 

Warnings From International Regulatory Agencies

There have been 72 warnings from eight countries (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa) about the harmful effects of antipsychotic drugs. These include the following:

• 17 warnings on antipsychotics causing heart problems
• 15 warnings on antipsychotics causing death/sudden death
• 9 warnings on antipsychotics causing weight gain
• 8 warnings on antipsychotics causing involuntary movements or movement disorders
• 7 warnings on antipsychotics causing strokes
• 7 warnings on antipsychotics causing withdrawal symptoms
• 6 warnings on antipsychotics causing convulsions, seizures or tremors
• 5 warnings on antipsychotics causing diabetes
• 5 warnings on antipsychotics causing birth defects
• 4 warnings on antipsychotics causing agitation
• 1 warning on antipsychotics causing mania and psychosis
• 1 warning on antipsychotics causing sexual dysfunction

Ignored Antipsychotic Drug Studies

There are 97 studies from seventeen countries (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Netherlands, Australia, Spain, Turkey, Italy, Israel, Ireland, Denmark, New Zealand, China, France, Japan, Sweden, Taiwan) showing that antipsychotic drugs can cause harmful side effects. These include the following:

• 18 studies on antipsychotics causing diabetes or other metabolic problems
• 16 studies on antipsychotics causing weight gain/obesity
• 15 studies on antipsychotics causing death or increased mortality
• 9 studies on antipsychotics causing heart problems
• 4 studies on antipsychotics causing strokes
• 3 studies on antipsychotics causing Parkinson’s Disease
• 3 studies on antipsychotics having lack of efficacy
• 3 studies on antipsychotics causing cognitive decline or impairment
• 2 studies on antipsychotics causing brain shrinkage
• 2 studies on antipsychotics causing seizures or convulsions
• 2 studies on antipsychotics causing lowered bone mineral density
• 1 study on antipsychotics causing violence and homicidal ideation
• 1 study on antipsychotics causing psychosis and delusional thinking
• 1 study on antipsychotics causing tumors
• 1 study on antipsychotics causing birth defects
• 1 study on antipsychotics causing coma
• 1 study on antipsychotics causing sexual dysfunction

So the question must be asked again: Does prescribing off-label anti-psychotic drugs to vulnerable immunologically-immature infants, toddlers and young children meet the definition of reckless endangerment?

In a similar vein, one must ask if prescribing (to infants, toddlers and young children) off-label psychostimulants (such as the highly addictive drug Ritalin which is known to cause brain atrophy in some cases) or off-label antidepressants such as Paxil (which is known to cause permanent sexual dysfunction in some cases) also meets the definition of reckless endangerment.

And how about this question? Does injecting an untested (for long-term safety) mixture of mercury or aluminum-containing vaccines into the bodies of pregnant women, infants, toddlers and young children also meet the definition of reckless endangerment? (http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/04/30/5226_aluminum_and_the_neurotoxicity_of_vaccines)

And we should also wonder about the injustice of prosecuting parents who are aware of the possible permanent dangers of psychiatric drugs and multiple simultaneous injections of vaccines and therefore logically refuse to allow their children to be potentially poisoned by them?

I suppose that the answers are blowing in the wind, but one can be certain that they will not be honestly addressed by the multitude of Big Pharma, Big Vaccine and Big Medicine industry-sponsored front group websites like WebMD, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Anxiety Disorders Association of America, Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA), Children and Adults with ADD (CHADD), Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, Screening for Mental Health, Inc, Signs of Suicide (SOS), Suicide Prevention Action Network USA (SPAN), TeenScreen, National Center for Mental Health Checkups, Mental Health America, the JED Foundation, etc, etc.

The (pseudo-) patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) with hidden conflicts of interest and paid-for hidden corporate agendas are almost as uncountable as the number of industry-funded lobby groups and Super PACs in Washington, DC. It should horrify us all to realize how effective they all are in emptying out our pocketbooks and bamboozling us all – a sad commentary on how brain-washable we American consumers are as we sucker for TV commercials, Big Pharma’s drug salespersons and their unaffordable prescription drugs, junk food and political promises.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Reader, Duluth’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns mostly deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, psychiatric drugging, over-vaccination regimens, Big Pharma and other movements that threaten the environment or America’s health, democracy, civility and longevity. Many of his columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn

Contrary to widespread claims by industry promoters, nuclear is NOT a low-carbon source of energy, and funding nuclear crowds out the development of better sources of alternative energy.

Mark Jacobson – the head of Stanford University’s Atmosphere and Energy Program –  who has written numerous books and hundreds of scientific papers on climate and energy, and testified before Congress numerous times on those issues – notes that nuclear puts out much more pollution (including much more CO2) than windpower, and 1.5% of all the nuclear plants built have melted down.

Jacobson also points out that it takes at least 11 years to permit and build a nuclear plant, whereas it takes less than half that time to fire up a wind or solar farm. Between the application for a nuclear plant and flipping the switch, power is provided by conventional energy sources … currently 55-65% coal.

Derek Abbott – Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia – concludes (via PhysOrg):

Nuclear power cannot be globally scaled to supply the world’s energy needs for numerous reasons. The results suggest that we’re likely better off investing in other energy solutions that are truly scalable.

In his analysis, Abbott explores the consequences of building, operating, and decommissioning 15,000 reactors on the Earth, looking at factors such as the amount of land required, radioactive waste, accident rate, risk of proliferation into weapons, uranium abundance and extraction, and the exotic metals used to build the reactors themselves.

***

His findings, some of which are based on the results of previous studies, are summarized below.

• Land and location: One nuclear reactor plant requires about 20.5 km2 (7.9 mi2) of land to accommodate the nuclear power station itself, its exclusion zone, its enrichment plant, ore processing, and supporting infrastructure. Secondly, nuclear reactors need to be located near a massive body of coolant water, but away from dense population zones and natural disaster zones. Simply finding 15,000 locations on Earth that fulfill these requirements is extremely challenging.

• Lifetime: Every nuclear power station needs to be decommissioned after 40-60 years of operation due to neutron embrittlement – cracks that develop on the metal surfaces due to radiation. If nuclear stations need to be replaced every 50 years on average, then with 15,000 nuclear power stations, one station would need to be built and another decommissioned somewhere in the world every day. Currently, it takes 6-12 years to build a nuclear station, and up to 20 years to decommission one, making this rate of replacement unrealistic.

• Nuclear waste: Although nuclear technology has been around for 60 years, there is still no universally agreed mode of disposal. It’s uncertain whether burying the spent fuel and the spent reactor vessels (which are also highly radioactive) may cause radioactive leakage into groundwater or the environment via geological movement.

• Accident rate: To date, there have been 11 nuclear accidents at the level of a full or partial core-melt. [And see this]. These accidents are not the minor accidents that can be avoided with improved safety technology; they are rare events that are not even possible to model in a system as complex as a nuclear station, and arise from unforeseen pathways and unpredictable circumstances (such as the Fukushima accident). Considering that these 11 accidents occurred during a cumulated total of 14,000 reactor-years of nuclear operations, scaling up to 15,000 reactors would mean we would have a major accident somewhere in the world every month.

• Proliferation: The more nuclear power stations, the greater the likelihood that materials and expertise for making nuclear weapons may proliferate. Although reactors have proliferation resistance measures, maintaining accountability for 15,000 reactor sites worldwide would be nearly impossible [Nuclear plants are also vulnerable to terror attacks.]

• Uranium abundance: At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling consumption up to 15 TW, the viable uranium supply will last for less than 5 years. (Viable uranium is the uranium that exists in a high enough ore concentration so that extracting the ore is economically justified.)

• Uranium extraction from seawater: Uranium is most often mined from the Earth’s crust, but it can also be extracted from seawater, which contains large quantities of uranium (3.3 ppb, or 4.6 trillion kg). Theoretically, that amount would last for 5,700 years using conventional reactors to supply 15 TW of power. (In fast breeder reactors, which extend the use of uranium by a factor of 60, the uranium could last for 300,000 years. However, Abbott argues that these reactors’ complexity and cost makes them uncompetitive.) Moreover, as uranium is extracted, the uranium concentration of seawater decreases, so that greater and greater quantities of water are needed to be processed in order to extract the same amount of uranium. Abbott calculates that the volume of seawater that would need to be processed would become economically impractical in much less than 30 years.

• Exotic metals: The nuclear containment vessel is made of a variety of exotic rare metals that control and contain the nuclear reaction: hafnium as a neutron absorber, beryllium as a neutron reflector, zirconium for cladding, and niobium to alloy steel and make it last 40-60 years against neutron embrittlement. Extracting these metals raises issues involving cost, sustainability, and environmental impact. In addition, these metals have many competing industrial uses; for example, hafnium is used in microchips and beryllium by the semiconductor industry. If a nuclear reactor is built every day, the global supply of these exotic metals needed to build nuclear containment vessels would quickly run down and create a mineral resource crisis.This is a new argument that Abbott puts on the table, which places resource limits on all future-generation nuclear reactors, whether they are fueled by thorium or uranium.

No wonder a former Commissioner for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that building nuclear plants to fight global warming is like trying to fight global hunger by serving everyone caviar.

The Nuclear Regulator Commission say that the risk of a major meltdown at U.S. nuclear reactors ismuch HIGHER than it was at Fukushima.

And an accident in the U.S. could be a lot larger than in Japan … partly because our nuclear plants hold alot more radioactive material. Nuclear energy can be cheap, or it can be safe … but it can’t be both.

And America’s nuclear reactors are old … and are falling apart piece by piece.

Even operating “normally”, nuclear plants leak radiation. For example, an investigation by Associated Press found that 75 percent of all U.S. nuclear sites have leaked radioactive tritium.

And prolonged exposure to even SMALL doses of radiation can cause cancer and other fatal illness.

And nuclear is wholly subsidized by the government, and would never survive in a free market.

Why don’t more people know these facts?  A Japanese nuclear industry consultant explains:

We spent ten times more money for PR campaigns than we did for real safety measures. It’s a terrible thing.

It’s no different in the U.S. or the rest of the world.  For example, Bloomberg noted in March of 2011:

The Nuclear Energy Institute [NEI] spent about $1.69 million lobbying Congress and the White House last year, according to records filed with the Senate. Twenty-two utilities and utility trade groups each spent more than that on advocacy, often on a range of issues, according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.

***

Executives and employees of utilities also contributed to political campaigns.

Exelon spent more than $3.7 million lobbying last year. The company’s executives and employees contributed more than $514,000 to congressional candidates ….

Those figures might be low.  The Progressive reported in 2006:

NEI spent nearly $45 million on industry coordination, policy development, communications, and “governmental affairs” in 2006, according to its most recent financial report.

That doesn’t include lobbying by individual companies with a stake in the nuclear power business, such as Entergy, Exelon, or Duke Energy.

***

NEI’s numbers also don’t include utility groups, an important part of the pro-nuclear lobby

And some of Obama’s top funders are connected with the nuclear power industry.

Bottom line: Nuclear is not the answer.

Ahead of wealthy and powerful financial and political elites meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam released a report, titled “An Economy for the 1%,” highlighting global inequality “reaching new extremes.”

“The richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined. Power and privilege is being used to skew the economic system to increase the gap between the richest and the rest,” it said.

“A global network of tax havens further enables the richest individuals to hide $7.6 trillion. The fight against poverty will not be won until the inequality crisis is tackled.”

In 2015, 62 billionaires had more wealth than half the world’s population – compared to 388 in 2010.

The wealth of 62 richest people increased 44% since 2010 to $1.76 trillion. In contrast, resources of humanity’s bottom half fell over $1 trillion, a 41% decline.

Half of all newly created new millennium wealth went to the top 1% – at the expense of the world’s least advantaged.

“The average annual income of the poorest 10% of people in the world has risen by less than $3 each year in almost a quarter of a century. Their daily income has risen by less than a single cent every year,” said Oxfam.

Financial inequality is unprecedented – “sucked upward at an alarming rate,” trillions of dollars hidden in tax havens.

Former US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said “(w)e can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

Runaway global inequality is greater than ever, the gap between extreme wealth and poverty widening annually.

Oxfam chief executive Mark Goldring called it “unacceptable that the poorest half of the world population owns no more than a small group of the global super-rich – so few, you could fit them all on a single coach.”

“World leaders’ concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action to ensure that those at the bottom get their fair share of economic growth.”

“In a world where one in nine people go to bed hungry every night, we cannot afford to carry on giving the richest an ever bigger slice of the cake.”

“We need to end the era of tax havens which has allowed rich individuals and multinational companies to avoid their responsibilities to society by hiding ever increasing amounts of money offshore.”

“Tackling the veil of secrecy surrounding the UK’s network of tax havens would be a big step towards ending extreme inequality.”

“Three years after he made his promise to make tax dodgers ‘wake up and smell the coffee’, it is time for David Cameron to deliver.”

90% of World Economic Forum corporate partners have enormous wealth hidden in tax havens – the amount quadrupled from 2000 to 2014, showing governments complicit in tax avoidance, making ordinary people bear an inordinate burden.

Cameron broke his earlier promise to crack down on corporate tax avoidance, supporting what he claims to oppose.

A key trend exacerbating inequality is “the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries,” said Oxfam – along with the widening disparity between rich and poor.

Women are especially harmed, comprising the majority of low-paid workers globally.

Goldring stressed it’s “no longer (acceptable) for the richest to pretend their wealth benefits” others when it clearly comes at the expense of the world’s least advantaged.

 

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.

 

“We must prepare for the worst scenario but it would be nice to be proven wrong” – is the leitmotif of virtually all major news-makers. And it is becoming obvious that the oil cartel OPEC, that, incidentally, has been created to protect the oil producers themselves, found itself in a very difficult position because of all that.

Possibly, the cartel members realized that it is much better to keep oil prices high and by doing so to help the competitors with the shale mining (fracking), or to produce at a low price, than not to produce at all. Mikhail Leontieff has been keeping a close look at the markets and his attention was drawn to the fact that the most pessimistic forecasts are being voiced by the most active players.

Oil prices seem to irresistibly be moving towards zero, based on expectations of China getting in a major slump, Iranian oil flooding the world markets and all the wild increase of demand over supply, at least this is what they want us to believe.

Brent crude fell below $30 a barrel and continues to get cheaper. The value of OPEC oil basket dropped to $ 25 per barrel, the Mexican Pemex has been trading at a loss, losing a dollar for every barrel of oil, Canadian crude fell as low as $15. “Our business is dying at its core” – “Wall Street Journal” quoted the owner of the oil company from Illinois. The newspaper refers to “Barclay’s” analysts, issuing the forecast of costs within industry being reduced by 20%, after they have already fallen by a quarter in the past year.

Schedule of falling oil prices, adjusted in relation to the current fluctuations, has essentially been a straight line since last September, when prices fell from $ 50 per barrel to the current $ 29. What was so momentous that happened in the world market in September? In September, “Goldman Sachs” lowered expectations for the average oil price for 2016, assuming that it will drop to $ 20 a barrel. “Expectations” of “Goldman Sachs” were “whole-heartedly” supported by “Merrill Lynch”, “Bank of America” and others.

There you have it – $ 20, quoted by “Goldman Sachs”, was not a forecast. It was the target. Only our own Ministry of Economy is the one that makes forecasts, “Goldman Sachs” , on the other hand, makes the markets. The oil market – is not the market of raw materials. Supply contracts for actual oil makes only 2% percent of the market, the rest – speculative securities, futures and other derivatives. Prices for futures are not determined by supply and demand, but by “expectations”. The futures market is completely controlled by the largest US banks. This is the market of expectations, which creates a real “Industry of expectations” using the notorious rating agencies, “independent” experts and the media.

As the hero of the film “The seller of air” said:

” I am not a business person. But I can tell you this much- soon the most popular goods turn out to be funeral wreaths. The air is just about to knock out gold. The air will become the most valuable currency in history . Now you know what our Honourable Chief has in mind? Morgan, Rockefeller and all other Fords put together. “

This wonderful mechanism of managing expectations allows the same rotten mantras to be fed to the market over and over again. Let us not forget that the basic cause of the fall in oil prices was the shale revolution in the United States, which allowed America to increase production by half.

The number of drilling rigs still in operation in the US has been steadily declining, amounting at the moment to 2/3 of the peak number of rigs in 2014. At the same time, until recently, they managed to keep the production at a stable level – around 9.2 million barrels per day.

The phenomenon of American shale transcends any price as drilling becomes redundant. As our classic Saltykov-Shchedrin quipped: “Thence, the rascal is giving birth, they yelled , downing in the noxious fumes of pride.” In fact, it was the banks, that credited the game, allowing shale companies stay afloat no matter what, and thus supported the American production. Because the decline in production in the United States is capable in breaking the whole game. However, no such games would be possible without the genie.

From the beginning of the fall in prices, Saudi Arabia announced that it would not cut production, which completely paralysed the traditional activities of OPEC in trying to control the market. From this point on, each statement of representatives of the monarchy pushed prices down. At the same time, Saudi Arabia itself ended the year with a budget deficit of 100 billion dollars, and the actual production for the last six months has decreased by 400 thousand barrels per day. This is about 4% of Saudi production. “We will meet the demand from customers, we will no longer limit the production”, – said the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia in early January. A genie, of course, can cast a spell, just there is no need to exaggerate the sovereignty of Old man Hottabych ( a character of Russian folk lore). However, every Hottabych has his own Wolf.

“The price of oil will stabilize by the end of the year and will reach $ 50 per barrel,” – said on Thursday the director of the Frankfurt branch of “Goldman Sachs”. Moreover, she explained that the fall in prices was a consequence of slowing of the growth in China and much lower demand.

In the end it was akin to showing ones hand. If the “chip” is being placed on “China slowing down”, so why on earth China would start the process of growth by the end of the year?! For any gambling to be successful, one needs to know when to quit. It looks like it is time.

This article was originally published in Russian on 1tv (Russia)

Translation: Deimantas Steponavicius

How many people have been killed in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Somalia?  On November 18th, a UN press briefing on the war in Yemen declared authoritatively that it had so far killed 5,700 people, including 830 women and children.  But how precise are these figures, what are they based on, and what relation are they likely to bear to the true numbers of people killed?

Throughout the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the media has cited UN updates comparing numbers of Afghans killed by “coalition forces” and the “Taliban.”  Following the U.S. escalation of the war in 2009 and 2010, a report by McClatchy in March 2011 was headlined, “UN: U.S.-led forces killed fewer Afghan civilians last year.”  It reported a 26% drop in U.S.-led killing of Afghan civilians in 2010, offset by a 28% increase in civilians killed by the “Taliban” and “other insurgents.”  This was all illustrated in a neat pie-chart slicing up the extraordinarily low reported total of 2,777 Afghan civilians killed in 2010 at the peak of the U.S.-led escalation of the war.

Neither the UN nor the media made any effort to critically examine this reported decrease in civilians killed by U.S.-led forces, even as U.S. troop strength peaked at 100,000 in August 2010, Pentagon data showed a 22% increase in U.S. air strikes, from 4,163 in 2009 to 5,100 in 2010, and U.S. special forces “kill or capture” raids exploded from 90 in November 2009 to 600 per month by the summer of 2010, and eventually to over 1,000 raids in April 2011.  Senior U.S. military officers quoted in Dana Priest and William Arkin’s book, Top Secret America, told the authors that only half of such special forces raids target the right people or homes, making the reported drop in resulting civilian deaths even more implausible.

If McClatchy had investigated the striking anomaly of a reported decrease in civilian casualties in the midst of a savagely escalating war, it would have raised serious questions regarding the full scale of the slaughter taking place in occupied Afghanistan.  And it would have revealed a disturbing pattern of under-reporting by the UN and the media in which a small number of deaths that happened to be reported to UN officials or foreign reporters in Kabul was deceptively relayed to the world as an estimate of total civilian war deaths.

The reasons for the media’s reluctance to delve into such questions lie buried in Iraq.  During the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, controversy erupted over conflicting estimates of the numbers of Iraqis killed and details of who killed them.  If more UN officials and journalists had dug into those conflicting reports from Iraq and made the effort to really understand the differences between them, they would have been far better equipped to make sense of reports of numbers of people killed in other wars.

The critical thing to understand about reports on numbers of civilians killed in wars is the difference between “passive reporting” and scientific “mortality studies”.

When I was investigating the conflicting reports of civilian deaths in Iraq, I spoke with Les Roberts, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s School of Public Health and one of the co-authors of two comprehensive mortality studies conducted in occupied Iraq in 2004 and 2006.  Les Roberts had conducted mortality studies in war zones for many years, including studies in Rwanda in 1994 and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2000 that are still widely cited by the media and Western politicians without the taint of controversy that was immediately attached to his and his colleagues’ work in Iraq.

In 2004, Roberts and his colleagues conducted a scientific epidemiological study of mortality in Iraq since the U.S. invasion.  They concluded that “about 100,000 excess deaths, or more” had resulted from the first 18 months of U.S.-led invasion and occupation.  They also found that, “Violent deaths… were mainly attributed to coalition forces,” and, “Most individuals killed by coalition forces were women and children.”

Both Nancy Youssef of McClatchy (then Knight Ridder) and John Simpson of the BBC also reported that U.S.-led forces, not Iraqi resistance fighters, were probably responsible for most civilian deaths in Iraq, based on figures published by the Iraqi Health Ministry.  On September 25th 2004, the Miami Herald carried a report by Youssef under the headline, “U.S. attacks, not insurgents, blamed for most Iraqi deaths.”   A Health Ministry official told Youssef, “Everyone is afraid of the Americans, not the fighters.  And they should be.” 

But after John Simpson noted the same pattern in the next Health Ministry report on the BBC’s flagship Panorama news program, the BBC received a phone call from the occupation government’s Health Minister disavowing his own ministry’s published data on who was killing who in Iraq.  The BBC retracted its story and subsequent Health Ministry reports no longer assigned responsibility for civilian deaths to either party in the conflict.

Les Roberts and his colleagues completed an even larger mortality study in Iraq in 2006, by which time they found that an estimated 650,000 Iraqis had died in the first three years of the war.  Both their studies revealed much higher mortality rates than had been reported by Iraqi hospitals, the Health Ministry, the Western media or “Iraq Body Count”, a much-cited Western compilation of data from such “passive” sources.

As each of their studies was released, Roberts and his colleagues became targets of blistering campaigns by U.S. and British officials to dispute and dismiss their findings.  The critics didn’t make educated critiques of their methodology, which was state-of-the-art in their field, but mostly just insisted that they were out of line with other reports and so must be wrong. These campaigns were so successful in throwing mud in the water and confusing the media and the public that corporate media became very reluctant to attach any credibility to this otherwise solid evidence that the U.S.-led war in Iraq was far more deadly than most people in the West had realized.  Corporate media took the easy way out and began referring to numbers of civilian deaths in Iraq only in vague, politically safe terms, if they mentioned them at all.

In reality, the huge discrepancy between the results of these mortality studies and “passive reporting” was exactly what epidemiologists expected to find in a conflict zone like occupied Iraq.  As Les Roberts and his colleagues have explained, epidemiologists working in war zones typically find that passive reporting only captures between 5% (in Guatemala, for example) and 20% of the total deaths revealed by comprehensive mortality studies.  So their finding that passive reporting in Iraq had captured about one in twelve actual deaths was consistent with extensive research in other war-torn countries.

In the U.K., Tony Blair dismissed the “Lancet survey ” out of hand, claiming that, “Figures from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which are a survey from the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is.”

But in 2007, the BBC obtained a set of leaked documents that included a memo from Sir Roy Anderson, the chief scientific adviser to the U.K.’s Defense Ministry, in which he described the epidemiologists’ methods as “close to best practice” and their study design as “robust.”  The document trove included emails between worried British officials admitting that the study was “likely to be right” and that “the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”  But the very same official insisted that the government must “not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate.”

Other mortality surveys conducted in Iraq have produced lower figures, but there are legitimate reasons to regard the work of Les Roberts and his colleagues as the gold standard, based on their experience in other conflicts and the thoroughness of their methods.  Other surveys were conducted by the occupation government, not by independent researchers, inevitably making people reluctant to tell survey teams about family members killed by occupation forces.  Some studies excluded the most war-torn parts of Iraq, while one was based only on a single question about deaths in the family as part of a lengthy “living conditions” survey.  

The authors of the most recent study, published in the PLOS medical journal in 2013, a decade after the invasion, have acknowledged that it produced a low estimate, because so much time had elapsed and because they did not interview any of the more than 3 million people who had fled their homes in the most devastated areas.  They made adjustments to compensate for such factors, but those adjustments themselves were deliberately conservative.  However, their estimate of 500,000 violent civilian deaths is still four times the highest numbers passively reported.  Gilbert Burnham, a co-author of both the Lancet studies and the PLOS study, does not find the results of the three epidemiological studies incompatible, emphasizing that, “These represent estimates, and that’s what we’ve always said.”

In 2015, Physicians for Social Responsibility co-published a report titled Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the “War on Terror,” with a new estimate of 1.3 million total war deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan between 2001 and 2011.  This 97-page report meticulously examines and evaluates mortality studies and other evidence from all three countries, and the authors conclude that the studies published by the Lancet are still the most accurate and credible studies conducted in Iraq.

But what can all this tell us about the figures cited by the UN and the media for civilian deaths in other war-torn countries since 2006?

As noted in Body Count, the only reports on civilian mortality in Afghanistan, including those published by the UN, are based on passive reporting.  To accept these figures as actual estimates of war deaths would be to believe that the most heavily bombed country in the recent history of warfare (over 60,000 air strikes in 14 years) has been a safer place to live than most Western cities, with only 5.9 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year, compared to 6.9 in Frankfurt and 48 in Detroit.

As the authors explain, “The problem in determining the number of killed civilians is the “passive” research method itself.  It can capture only a fraction of all cases…. In order to get more reliable approximations, on-site research and scientific polls would be necessary.  In Afghanistan, these simply do not exist.”

The authors of Body Count very conservatively estimate the number of Afghan civilians killed at 5 to 8 times the number passively reported, giving an estimate between 106,000 and 170,000.  At the same time, they acknowledge the conservative nature of this estimate, noting that, “…compared to Iraq, where urbanization is more pronounced, and monitoring by local and foreign press is more pronounced than in Afghanistan, the registration of civilian deaths has been much more fragmentary.”  

If the ratio of actual deaths to passively reported deaths in Afghanistan is in fact somewhere between those found in Iraq (12:1) and Guatemala (20:1), the true number of civilians killed in Afghanistan would be somewhere between 255,000 and 425,000.  As in Guatemala, the UN and Western reporters have little access to the remote resistance-held areas where most air strikes and special forces raids take place, so the true number of Afghan civilians killed could well be closer to the higher of these numbers.

Paradoxically, the Syrian government’s role as an “information victim” of U.S. information warfare may have led to more comprehensive reporting of civilian deaths in Syria than in Iraq or Afghanistan, by the UN, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other human rights groups.  But even without Western political pressure to under-report civilian deaths (except in U.S.-led air strikes), passive reporting in Syria is still just passive reporting.  The ratio of actual deaths to the numbers being reported may be lower than in Iraq or Afghanistan, but even the most thorough passive reporting is unlikely to capture more than 20% of actual deaths.  As in Rwanda, the DRC, Guatemala and Iraq, only serious, scientific mortality studies can expose the full scale of the slaughter endured by the people of Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and other war-ravaged countries.

The politically contrived controversy surrounding mortality estimates in Iraq has deterred the U.S. corporate media from making any attempt to gain a more accurate picture of the scale of the slaughter in these other wars.  This has left average Americans in almost complete ignorance of the human cost of modern war, and has served to shield our political and military leaders from accountability for appalling decisions and policies that have resulted in catastrophic losses of human life.

Deaths counted by “passive reporting” cannot be an estimate of total deaths in a war zone because they are fragmentary by nature.  But serious researchers have developed scientific methods they can use to make realistic estimates of total war deaths. As with climate change and other issues, UN officials and journalists must overcome political pressures, come to grips with the basic science involved, and stop sweeping the vast majority of the victims of our wars down this Orwellian “memory hole“.

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and S&P peaked in May 2015, investors were still confident that the Fed “had their back” and that any steep or prolonged downturn in stocks would be met with additional liquidity and a firm commitment to maintain zero rates as long as necessary.  But now that the Fed has started its long-awaited rate-hike cycle, investors aren’t sure what to expect.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and popular forces continued to push the militant groups back from more territories in the Northern parts of the Lattakia province liberating the villages of Ra’as al-Qazal and Ra’as al-Kabir. Also, the militant groups have been pushed to withdrew their forces from the villages of al-Skriyeh,al-Kandisiyeh and Jabal al-Khanadiq.

Tens of al-Nusra members were killed and wounded in the army’s missile and rocket attacks on their concentration centers in Hawash al-Ash’ari region and the town of al-Nashabiyeh in Eastern Ghouta. The Syrian government forces are conducting military operations in Darayya in Western Ghouta. Separately, the Syrian warplanes bombed the militant groups’ bases and defensive positions in Jobar.

The Syrian Armed Forces and its allies have been continuing heavy clashes against ISIS in the province of Deir Ezzor.

• On Jan. 16, ISIS launched a full-scale offensive near the provincial capital’s northwestern countryside and captured the large weapons depot of Ayyash and the entire Al-Baghayliyah District. In a separate development, the terrorists captured the Thurdeh Mountains.
• On Jan.17, ISIS offensive was halted by the SAA and the loyalists recaptured Al-Baghayliyah and a half of the district including the Al-Rawad Association Neighborhood and the Al-Furat Hotel on the western bank of the Euphrates River.
• On Jan. 18, the Syrian forces continued counter attacks and liberated the Al-Fursan Gas Station, Al-Jazeera University, and the western perimeter of the Radio Broadcast Tower. Meanwhile, the terrorists were pushed to withdraw forces from the al-Ruwad heights as the SAA and the National Defense Forces (NDF) successfully advanced in the area.
• Despite the SAA’s counter attacks, ISIS is holding area near the 137th Artillery Brigade’s Headquaters, the ‘Ayyash weapons depot and inside the Al-Bughayliyah District. The heavy clashes are going there. Also, ISIS militants launched an advacy on the 137th Brigade’s HQ and the Deir Ezzor Military Airport.

On Jan.18, the SAA and the NDF hit the positions of al Nusra near the village of Kafr Sijneh in the Idlib province and killed 23 terrorists, including al Nusra field commander, Abdul Qader al-Sbeih. A senior commander of Liwa al-Ansar terrorist group, Samer Hajj Najib, was also killed in the SAA in the clashes near Jisr al-Shughour on Sunday.

Like all false flag attacks and assassinations, the 1968 murder of Martin Luther King was covered up. In the King case James Earl Ray was the framed-up patsy, just as Oswald was in the case of President John F. Kennedy and Sirhan Sirhan was in the case of Robert Kennedy.

The King family, along with everyone who paid attention to the evidence, knew that they and the public were officially handed a cover-up.  After years of effort, the King family managed to bring the evidence to light in a civil case.  Confronted with the real evidence, it took the jury one hour to conclude that Martin Luther King was murdered by a conspiracy that included governmental agencies.

For more information see:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/court-decision-u-s-government-agencies-found-guilty-in-martin-luther-kings-assassination/5320024

Martin Luther King, like John F. Kennedy, was a victim of the paranoia of the Washington national security establishment.  Kennedy rejected General Lyman Lemnitzer’s Northwoods Project for regime change in Cuba, opposed the CIA’s invasion plan for Cuba, nixed Lemnitzer’s plans for conflict with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missile crisis, removed Lemnitzer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and negotiated behind the scenes with Khrushchev to tone down the Cold War.

Consequently, members of the military/security complex had it in for Kennedy and convinced themselves that Kennedy’s softness toward communism made him a security threat to the United States.  The Secret Service itself was drawn into the plot. The films of the assassination show that the protective Secret Service personnel were ordered away from the President’s car just before the fatal shots.

King was only 39 years old and had established himself as a civil rights leader.  The FBI convinced itself that King had communist connections and that the movement he led would develop into a national security threat.  In those days, emphasis on civil rights implied criticism of America that many confused with communist propaganda.  Criticizing America was what communists did, and here was a rising leader pointing out America’s shortcomings and beginning to foment opposition to the war in Vietnam.

The conflation of justified criticism with treason is always with us.  Not long ago Obama appointee Cass Sunstein advocated that the 9/11 truth movement be infiltrated and discredited before Americans could learn that they had been deceived into accepting wars and the loss of civil liberties.  Before Janet Napolitano left her post as head of Homeland Security to become chancellor of the University of California, she said that the focus of Homeland Security had shifted from terrorists to “domestic extremists,” which included war protesters, environmentalists, and government critics.

Throughout history thoughtful people have understood that truth is the enemy of government. Most governments are privatized.  They are controlled by small groups who use the government to pursue their private agendas.  The notion that government serves the public interest is one of the great deceptions.

People who get in the way of these interests are not treated kindly.  John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were murdered.  Robert Kennedy was murdered, because he knew who the government operatives were who murdered his brother.  Robert Kennedy was well on his way to becoming the next President and implementing his murdered brother’s plan to “break the CIA into a thousand pieces.”  If Robert Kennedy had become president, elements of the national security state would have been indicted and convicted.

The Warren Commission understood that Oswald was a fall guy, but the commission also understood that at the height of the Cold War to tell the Americans the truth of the assassination would destroy the public’s confidence in the national security state.  The commission felt it had no alternative to a coverup.

Experts’ dissatisfaction with the Warren Commission led to a second inquiry, this time by the Select Committee on Assassinations of the US House of Representatives. This report, released in 1979, 16 years after JFK’s assassination, was also a coverup, but the Select Committee could not avoid acknowledging that there had been a conspiracy, more than one gunman, and that “the Warren Commission’s and FBI’s investigation into the possibility of a conspiracy was seriously flawed.” http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c.html

In 1997 the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board released the top secret Northwoods Project submitted to President Kennedy in 1962 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The Pentagon plan was to murder US citizens and to shoot down US airliners in order to blame Castro and create public support for an invasion that would bring regime change to Cuba. President Kennedy rejected the report, a decision that increased the doubts of the national security state that Kennedy had the strength and conviction to stand up against communism.

Washington’s response to the government’s murder of Martin Luther King was to create a national holiday in his name. Honoring the man that elements of the government had murdered was a clever way to bring the controversy to an end and dispose of troublesome questions.

Canadians should be hanging their heads in shame.

Our government is guilty of the most egregious criminal acts as defined by Nuremberg Principles, and we are bona fide members of the State Sponsors of Terrorism club.

When our government bombs the sovereign state of Syria without the consent of President al-Assad and without United Nations Security Council approval, we are committing war crimes of the highest order.

When we support and fund foreign mercenary terrorists  that are invading Syria, we are state sponsors of terrorism. There are no “moderate” terrorists.  The mercenaries are all being paid and enabled by the West and its allies, including Turkey (a NATO member),Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan.

On all counts we are guilty.  We are war criminals and state sponsors of terrorism.

The popular refrain that “Assad must go”, echoed by Canada Defense Minister, Harjit Sajjan, is in itself an endorsement of criminality.  Regime change operations are criminal according to international law.

A soft power complex that disseminates lies and confusion is seemingly sufficient to make gullible western audiences accept the criminality, even as the pretexts for previous illegal invasions invariably reveal themselves to be self-serving fabrications.

Hussein didn’t  have WMD, but  Western sanctions before the pre-meditated Iraq invasion willfully destroyed water treatment facilities and subsequently killed almost two million people, including about half a million children.

Gaddafi wasn’t “bombing his own people” or destroying Libya. The West and its proxies did the killing. The illegal bombing in Libya – in support of al Qaeda ground troops– targeted and destroyed civilian infrastructure, including the Great Man-Made River Project. The bombs and the foreign terrorist ground troops killed Libyans, including Gadaffi, but Western propagandists and “confusion mongers” always portray an inverted version of reality to justify their atrocities.

Likewise for Assad – he is defending his country from foreign terrorists, not “killing his own people” – the Western invaders are killing Assad’s people.

Assad is not starving his own people either.  Recently the discredited Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) fabricated a story that alleges that Assad was starving people in Madaya.  Evidence has recently emerged, however, that Western supported rebels have been stockpiling food and selling it to civilians at exorbitant prices.  Again, Western military forces target civilians – with a view to killing and/or demoralizing them—for “strategic” purposes.  Vanessa Beeley decodes the intentional misrepresentation of the Madaya psy op. by listing investigative questions that should have been asked to find the truth, but were not.

War crimes perpetrated by the West are always dressed in mantles of respectability.  MSM spokespeople, all of whom have conflicts of interest, paint civilian murders as “collateral damage”. Some commentators use the phrase “collateral murder”, but more accurately the military doctrine of slaughtering civilians is mass murder.  The 9/11 wars are all pre-meditated,  the false pretexts are carefully manufactured by State Departments, Public Relations agencies (link), and intelligence agencies, and the mass murder is intentional. The 9/11 wars generate unforeseen developments, but the invasions and occupations were not and are not “mistakes”, as some commentators would have us believe.

Much of this evil aligns itself with Levy Strauss’ “Chaos Theory”.  NATO destroys, loots, and creates chaos so that it can impose its hegemony. Again, it’s an inversion of the ridiculous lie of “spreading democracy”.  The destruction also serves to create waves of refugees that serve to destabilize other countries — Europe is arguably being destabilized with a view to keeping the EU subservient to the U.S oligarch interests.  Interestingly, countries not being “sacrificed” include Israel and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia – and neither country is accepting refugees/ imperial crime victims either.

All of these pre-meditated invasions point to a larger picture.  Humanity is being sacrificed for the illusory benefit of the criminal 1% transnational oligarch class. If Western populations were to awaken to the barbaric crimes being perpetrated in their names, they would rightly bow their heads in shame.

The shame would be a strong foundation for shaking off the shackles of lies and war propaganda, and for withdrawing our consent to these crimes against humanity.

Mark Taliano is a retired high school teacher. Currently he is a writer and activist residing in the Niagara region.

Toxins Found in Fracking Fluids and Wastewater, Threats to Human Heath, Scientific Study

In the last years of the 20th century fraud entered US foreign policy in a new way.  On false pretenses Washington dismantled Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to advance an undeclared agenda. 

In the 21st century this fraud multiplied many times.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya were destroyed, and Iran and Syria would also have been destroyed if the President of Russia had not prevented it.  Washington is also behind the current destruction of Yemen, and Washington has enabled and financed the Israeli destruction of Palestine.  Additionally, Washington operated militarily within Pakistan without declaring war, murdering many women, children, and village elders under the guise of “combating terrorism.”  Washington’s war crimes rival those of any country in history.

I have documented these crimes in my columns and books (Clarity Press).

Anyone who still believes in the purity of Washington’s foreign policy is a lost soul.

Russia and China now have a strategic alliance that is too strong for Washington. Russia and China will prevent Washington from further encroachments on their security and national interests. Those countries important to Russia and China will be protected by the alliance.  As the world wakes up and sees the evil that the West represents, more counries will seek the protection of Russia and China.

America is also failing on the economic front.  My columns and my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, which has been published in English, Chinese, Korean, Czech, and German, have shown how Washington has stood aside, indeed cheering it on, while the short-term profit interests of management, shareholders, and Wall Street eviscerated the American economy, sending manufacturing jobs, business know-how, and technology, along with professional tradeable skill jobs, to China, India, and other countries, leaving America with such a hollowed out economy that the median family income has been falling for years. Today 50% of 25 year-old Americans are living with their parents or grandparents because they cannot find employment sufficient to sustain an independent existence.  This brutal fact is covered up by the presstitute US media, a source of fantasy stories of America’s economic recovery.

The facts of our existence are so different from what is reported that I am astonished. As a former professor of economics, Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, I am astonished at the corruption that rules in the financial sector, the Treasury, the financial regulatory agencies, and the Federal Reserve.  In my day, there would have been indictments and prison sentences of bankers and high government officials.

In America today there are no free financial markets.  All the markets are rigged by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The regulatory agencies, controlled by those the agencies are supposed to regulate, turn a blind eye, and even if they did not, they are helpless to enforce any law, because private interests are more powerful than the law.

Even the government’s statistical agencies have been corrupted. Inflation measures have been concocted in order to understate inflation. This lie not only saves Washington from paying Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and frees the money for more wars, but also by understating inflation, the government can create real GDP growth by counting inflation as real growth, just as the government creates 5% unemployment by not counting any discouraged workers who have looked for jobs until they can no longer afford the cost of looking and give up.  The official unemployment rate is 5%, but no one can find a job.  How can the unemployment rate be 5% when half of 25-year olds are living with relatives because they cannot afford an independent existence?  As John Williams (shadowfacts) reports, the unemployment rate that includes those Americans who have given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found is 23%.

The Federal Reserve, a tool of a small handful of banks, has succeeded in creating the illusion of an economic recovery since June, 2009, by printing trillions of dollars that found their way not into the economy but into the prices of financial assets.  Artificially booming stock and bond markets are the presstitute financial media’s “proof” of a booming economy.

The handful of learned people that America has left, and it is only a small handful, understand that there has been no recovery from the previous recession and that a new downturn is upon us.  John Williams has pointed out that US industrial production, when properly adjusted for inflation, has never recovered its 2008 level, much less its 2000 peak, and has again turned down.

The American consumer is exhausted, overwhelmed by debt and lack of income growth. The entire economic policy of America is focused on saving a handful of NY banks, not on saving the American economy.

Economists and other Wall Street shills will dismiss the decline in industrial production as America is now a service economy. Economists pretend that these are high-tech services of the New Economy, but in fact waitresses, bartenders, part time retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services have replaced manufacturing and engineering jobs at a fraction of the pay, thus collapsing effective aggregate demand in the US. On occasions when neoliberal economists recognize problems, they blame them on China.

It is unclear that the US economy can be revived. To revive the US economy would require the re-regulation of the financial system and the recall of the jobs and US GDP that offshoring gave to foreign countries. It would require, as Michael Hudson demonstrates in his new book, Killing the Host, a revolution in tax policy that would prevent the financial sector from extracting economic surplus and capitalizing it in debt obligations paying interest to the financial sector.

The US government, controlled as it is by corrupt economic interests, would never permit policies that impinged on executive bonuses and Wall Street profits.  Today US capitalism makes its money by selling out the American economy and the people dependent upon it.

In “freedom and democracy” America, the government and the economy serve interests totally removed from the interests of the American people. The sellout of the American people is protected by a huge canopy of propaganda provided by free market economists and financial presstitutes paid to lie for their living.

When America fails, so will Washington’s vassal states in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan.  Unless Washington destroys the world in nuclear war, the world will be remade, and the corrupt and dissolute West will be an insignificant part of the new world.

“All EU agreements with Israel must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.” – EU foreign ministers’ statement

Ministers reiterated the EU’s position that the Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war – including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – are not, and will never be, part of the internationally recognized borders of Israel.

Whilst the EU has a free-trade agreement with Israel, the largest single trading bloc in the world sees the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as illegal under international law.

The policy of the current Israeli government is to covertly establish so-called ‘facts on the ground’ intended to frustrate the intention of the UN and the international community including the EU and the U.K., for an independent state for over 5 million indigenous Palestinian Arabs.

These ‘facts on the ground’ that include all illegal settlements on the West Bank must be dismantled and all settlers repatriated if the Israeli state wishes to continue its trade with Europe. Failing which, the EU-Israel Association Agreement risks being suspended and the possibility of tariffs being imposed on all Israeli goods.

“Settlement businesses unavoidably contribute to Israeli policies that dispossess and harshly discriminate against Palestinians, while profiting from Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and other resources.” said Human Rights Watch, Business Director, Arvind Ganesan.

Israel has constructed over 230 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since its war with Palestinians in 1967. HRW stressed that businesses trading with settlers are helping these communities grow.

Settlement businesses benefit from unrestricted access to Palestinian land, water and receive government subsidies. They oversee the cultivation of thousands of hectares of Palestinian land and export agricultural products that are often labelled as made in Israel.

At the same time, Palestinians are barred from building or extracting natural resources in parts of the occupied West Bank. Between 2000 and 2012, Israel rejected 94 percent of construction permit requests filed by Palestinians.

Over 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to United Nations figures. The settlements are considered illegal by the UN, and the West Bank is considered an occupied territory by the International Court of Justice.

Notes:

WebMD is the most visited health site on the web. While the general belief is that it’s a trustworthy source of “independent and objective” health information, it’s become quite clear that WebMD (at www.webmd.com) is a shill, using its influence to primarily promote corporate-backed health strategies and products.

Partnerships and sponsorships¹ color WebMD’s recommendations across the board, and “passive” promotion techniques, where advertisements are designed to look more like editorials, have become commonplace.

The pharmaceutical industry’s influence over WebMD has of course been evident for some time.²

As just one glaring example, back in 2010, I wrote about how WebMD’s free online depression test³ was rigged in such a way that no matter how you responded the only answer you could receive was that you were at risk for major depression and should discuss your options with your doctor.

This fake test was sponsored by Eli Lilly, the maker of Cymbalta, and its function was quite clear — to get you to inquire about antidepressants.

This sneaky form of direct-to-consumer advertising masquerading as a bonafide consumer aid sparked enough furor to spur Senator Charles Grassley to launch an investigation. After all, no one expects to be directed to seek help, let alone drugs, when you have no symptoms of a problem whatsoever.

Monsanto is one of the latest multinational corporate giants to use WebMD’s influence to serve its own biased agenda.

Almost every article now flaunts a Monsanto sponsored ad saying, “It’s time for a bigger discussion about food,” with links⁴ to Monsanto’s biased take on soil, water, and honey bee issues, with no other contributors to the discussion in sight.

The Rise of ‘Passive’ Marketing

According to marketing strategists, advertorial sponsorships are the best way to sell something these days, because consumers do not realize they’re being sold something.

In years past, the line between editorial and advertorial content was quite clear, and there was virtually no confusion about the fact that you were reading an ad. Today, you have to be more “eagle-eyed” to spot these differences.

A business has to pay for a sponsorship/advertorial just like it would a regular ad, and in some cases, they pay significantly more than they would for a regular ad. But the expense of a sponsorship/advertorial is considered worth it because:⁵

• The venue where your sponsored advertorial is going (in this case, WebMD and its affiliates) has no input on the content — the advertiser has full control over the text of the “informative” ad
• You, the advertiser, can control how the information is presented on the page, as opposed to having to select a regular display ad format.
• Although expensive, the sponsored advertorial can be used in multiple publications.
• Companies can reuse a sponsored advertorial as a stand-alone ad in other places.

‘Native Advertising’ Blurs the Line Between Ads and Independent Content Even Further

Another form of this type of shrouded sales presentation is called “native advertising.⁶” The key difference between a native ad and an advertorial is that a native ad fits more seamlessly into the Website on which it is featured, making it even less noticeable as a sales pitch.

In essence, you think you’re reading a regular content article, when in fact it’s all marketing. In the case of WebMD, the advertorial/native ad line is very thin. Many of WebMD’s disclaimers on its pages are barely noticeable and in a typeset that encourages readers to skip over the disclaimers entirely.

What this amounts to is a massive collusion on the part of the industries partnering with WebMD to sell THEIR health goals and products without you realizing you’ve been sold something that may or may not be in your best interest at all.

The worst thing about this is that WebMD and its affiliates promote themselves as trustworthy sources for health information. But if the information is being blurred — deliberately — to sell very specific products and ideas. How trustworthy is that?

Monsanto Uses 3rd Parties to Manipulate GMO Content

In February 2015, the California-based activist group US Right to Know filed a freedom-of-information (FOIA) request to obtain correspondence between 40 researchers at U.S. public universities and 36 different companies, trade groups, and PR firms.

The purpose of the FOIA request was to determine whether or not academics and researchers are coordinating their messaging with the industry, and/or receiving undisclosed remuneration for spreading positive messages about GMOs.

The New York Times posted a long list of emails⁷ between Monsanto and University of Florida professor Kevin Folta, a vocal advocate for GMOs. These emails clearly reveal how Monsanto’s PR firms use “independent” scientists to further the industry’s version of science.

Mother Jones⁸ has also posted an email exchange between Lisa Drake, lead for Monsanto’s U.S. State and Local Government Affairs, and Folta, relating specifically to WebMD, and how Monsanto is manipulating WebMD’s content on GMOs via third parties.

On January 15, 2015, Drake wrote to Folta saying (in part):

“Over the past six months, we have worked hard through third parties to insert fresh and current material on WebMD’s website relating to biotechnology health and safety, especially since before that, the material popping up on relation to the topic dredged up highly negative input from Organic Consumers Association and other anti-GMO critics …

 [W]e understand another way to improve the resources on the website is through bloggers to the website. It is a fairly simple process and I would appreciate your consideration of submitting a blog on the safety and health of biotech to WebMD …”

Folta has since been thoroughly discredited as an “independent” GMO expert, but it’s quite clear that there are many more just like him, quietly working on behalf of the industry while hiding the connection between them, to prevent you from realizing that what you’re reading is actually part of a covert propaganda strategy.

WebMD’s History Is Riddled with Conflicts of Interest

WebMD also receives funds from the U.S. government. In 2013, WebMD received a $4.8 million government contract to educate doctors about the Affordable Care Act and stimulate drug sales.⁹

At the time, the lack of transparency and disclosure of the contract raised questions about potential conflicts of interest. As noted by Michael Minkoff:¹⁰

“If WebMD is comfortable selling out to the drug companies, I can’t imagine they will show more compunction concerning the civil government. In order to keep their government contracts, it is very likely they will say whatever they are told to say.”

WebMD is also partnered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This virtually assures that you will not learn about any alternatives besides those approved by the FDA for your condition, and further strengthens the promotion of sponsored drugs.

By default, you will be kept in the dark about the strategies that can make a real and lasting difference, such as simple dietary changes and exercise, which in some cases have been shown to be just as effective as drugs.

WebMD also has a programming partnership with CBS News;¹¹ the two working closely together to create co-branded news segments. However, this partnership is not openly disclosed to viewers.

In 2008, CBS News ran a segment on how to protect yourself from bad medical information on the Internet.¹² Part of the recommendations included looking at sites like WebMD, as its content has been reviewed by health professionals.

But, when so much of the information presented is sponsored advertorials and “native advertising,” just how valuable is that medical advice? Viewers were essentially snookered twice, because you’re just as likely to be misled by advertising as you are by an outright crook.

Advertisers Are Not Concerned with Transparency and Full Disclosure

Others have noted that many of WebMD’s chosen doctors and experts just so happen to be affiliated with major advertisers¹³ — yet another way of steering unsuspecting patients into a particular fold.

Besides drug companies, other major advertisers include the nutrition and diet industry and the processed food industry. Here too advertorials can easily be misunderstood as “real,” science-backed content by those who are unfamiliar with diet and nutrition and can see right through the sponsored presentations.

As noted by Terry J. Allen:¹⁴

“Numerous WebMD news videos and stories tacitly endorse fast food by posing misleading questions such as ‘Fast-Food French Fries: Which Are Healthiest?’ In ‘Fast Food Survival,’ the only quoted expert, ‘Jodie Worrell, RD, Chick-fil-A dietitian,’ praises the healthiness of her company’s chicken sandwich. On WebMD’s U.K. site … a Kellogg’s-funded ‘advertorial’ asserts that a ‘panel of world health experts … concluded that a high sugar intake is not related to the development of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or cancer.’

And that Kellogg’s breakfast cereals, some packing more sugar than a Twinkie, ‘do not increase the risk of tooth decay’ when eaten with milk … [T]here’s a ‘fundamental conflict between a business model that is reliant on pleasing BigPharma and other advertisers, and unbiased healthcare information that serves the public.'”

Indeed, and that’s a major problem for WebMD, which on the one hand relies on advertising dollars and sponsors to survive, while presenting itself as a source of reliable health information. Advertising has never been known for transparency and truth-telling. It’s about increasing sales, plain and simple.

It has nothing to do with public education, yet consumers turn to WebMD to become better informed about issues of concern. When marketing is presented as content, consumers are misinformed at best.

As just one of countless examples, Merck is one of WebMD’s sponsors,¹⁵ and when surfing through the many vaccine-related pages on WebMD, you will find a very clear pattern: The alleged benefits of vaccines are repeatedly hammered down as if they were irrefutable facts, while the potential drawbacks and hazards of vaccines are virtually nonexistent.

Contrary to what a concerned parent would expect, WebMD presents, on the whole, an exceptionally one-sided view of the vaccine issue, and what is NOT presented is equally potent evidence of corporate bias and influence as what is included.

Take Action! Tell WebMD to Stop Promoting Monsanto

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is now urging WebMD’s CEO to stop promoting Monsanto — the world’s largest poison pusher. If you’re as upset about this as we are, OCA has created a petition letter that you can sign and submit.

WebMD ‘Accreditation’ Promotes False Reassurance of Truthfulness

WebMD explains that the site is “accredited” by URAC Health¹⁶ — a nonprofit organization that promotes health care quality and offers accreditation for Internet health sites — which lends credibility to whatever WebMD publishes, whether it has a sponsor disclaimer on it or not.

For example, if you have knee pain and you find the page on knee pain on WebMD, you’ll see that this sponsored page talks a lot about ways to get pain relief — from Genzyme, the company sponsoring the page.

Now, if you’re in pain, why would you go traipsing all over the Internet for something else, when WebMD has it right there in front of you? After all, WebMD wouldn’t let them sponsor if it wasn’t good, would they? Especially since WebMD is accredited.

Most people simply are not going to sit and analyze this. They’re just going to buy the product. The same applies to Monsanto. If WebMD is carrying Monsanto’s message, even if it’s clear that Monsanto crafted it, then many will simply assume that GMOs must be safe. Especially if there’s no counter-balance of information presented.

Key for Successful Propaganda — The Illusion of Independent Corroboration

The drug, junk food, and biotechnology industries have deep pockets, so it’s no surprise that their adverts would be splashed all over the WebMD website.

Prescription drugs for every imaginable problem are listed on virtually every WebMD page, along with plenty of health-harming processed foods and snacks — along with Monsanto’s assurances of GMO safety. WebMD is a great example of the brilliant marketing these industries are doing.

They seek to provide you with the illusion of an independent objective third party that just so happens to confirm their solution is the best choice. But, when you draw back the curtain, you find it’s really the companies themselves that are crafting the message — not an independent entity that has looked at all the pros and cons and detail both sides of the issue.

The lack of independence among promoters and distributors of health information has become of tremendous concern. Due to a dramatic rise in scientific fraud, it’s more important than ever to be able to gain access to the full set of data before making or taking a recommendation.

Not only are industry studies 400 percent more likely to show positive outcomes, negative findings are often never published, and raw data is rarely publicly available. Across the board, companies do an excellent job of publicizing the findings they want you to know, while keeping studies that don’t support their product hidden from you and the rest of the world.

Also, I’m sure by now many of you can follow the dots and draw your own conclusions with circular maps and arrows marking the many conflicts of interest that exist between this unholy alliance of so-called independent health advisors, pharmaceutical companies, processed food companies, the biotech industry, and various regulatory agencies, including the FDA.

Folks, it’s time take control of your health, and that includes being able to discern real health advice from shadow marketing machines and propaganda that serves no one but the very industries responsible for much of the ill health in the first place.

When it comes to GMOs, labeling is an important aspect of public education. Campbell Soup recently announced¹⁷ it supports a mandatory national labeling standard for GMOs — a surprising but welcomed move, considering it’s a member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and has been a major contributor to previous anti-labeling campaigns.

Three-quarters of its products reportedly contain GMOs, and the company is already disclosing which ingredients in its products are genetically engineered on its website.¹⁸

What You Need to Know About GMOs

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are live organisms whose genetic components have been artificially manipulated in a laboratory setting through creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacteria, and even viral genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods.

GMO proponents claim that genetic engineering is “safe and beneficial,” and that it advances the agricultural industry. They also say that GMOs help ensure the global food supply and sustainability. But is there any truth to these claims? I believe

A recent study by USDA scientists shows that genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa has gone wild, in a big way, in alfalfa-growing parts of the West.  This feral GE alfalfa may help explain a number of transgenic contamination episodes over the past few years that have cost American alfalfa growers and exporters millions of dollars in lost revenue.  And it also exposes the failure of USDA’s “coexistence” policy for GE and traditional crops.

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) has long maintained that genetically engineered (GE) crops can co-exist with traditional and organic agriculture.  According to this “co-existence” narrative, if neighboring GE and traditional farmers just sort things out among themselves and follow “best management practices,” transgenes will be confined to GE crops and the fields where they are planted.

The latest evidence refuting USDA’s co-existence fairytale comes from arecently published study by a team of USDA scientists.  The study involved Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa, which, like most GE crops in the U.S. is engineered to survive direct spraying with Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide.

In 2011 and 2012, USDA scientist Stephanie Greene and her team scouted the roadsides of three important alfalfa-growing areas – in California, Idaho and Washington – for feral (wild) alfalfa stands.  Because alfalfa is a hardy perennial plant, it readily forms self-sustaining feral populations that persist for years wherever the crop is grown.

Greene and colleagues found 404 feral alfalfa populations on roadsides.  Testing revealed that over one-quarter (27%) of them contained transgenic alfalfa – that is, plants that tested positive for the Roundup Ready gene.  They believe that most of these feral populations likely grew from seeds spilled during alfalfa production or transport.

However, the researchers also found clear evidence that the Roundup Ready gene was being spread by bees, which are known to cross-pollinate alfalfa populations separated by up to several miles.  Their results suggested that “transgenic plants could spread transgenes to neighboring feral plants, and potentially to neighboring non-GE fields” (emphasis added).  While they did not test this latter possibility, there is no doubt that non-GE alfalfa has in fact been transgenically contaminated – not just once, but on many occasions.

In 2013, a Washington State farmer’s alfalfa was rejected by a broker after testing revealed transgenic contamination.  In 2014, China rejected numerous U.S. alfalfa shipments that tested positive for the Roundup Ready gene.  Alfalfa exports to China, a major market that has zero tolerance for GE alfalfa, fell dramatically.  U.S. hay prices fell, and at least three U.S. alfalfa exporters suffered many millions of dollars in losses.

Both the Washington State farmer and those who sold to the exporters intended to grow only traditional alfalfa.  It is not clear how their produce became contaminated.  Besides cross-pollination from GE feral or cultivated alfalfa, possible explanations include inadvertent mixing during harvest or storage, or (most insidiously) transgenic contamination of the conventional alfalfa seed they planted.

What makes the high (27%) GE contamination rate found in this study so remarkable is how little GE alfalfa produced it.  USDA first approved Roundup Ready alfalfa in 2005, and it occupied just 1% of national alfalfa acreage in 2006.  A federal court prohibited new plantings starting in 2007, but allowed what had already been planted to remain in the ground (an alfalfa stand is typically grown for about five years).  Because this study was conducted just a few months after the re-approval of GE alfalfa in 2011, all of the feral GE alfalfa the researchers detected arose from the comparatively few fields planted in 2005 and 2006.  There is much more GE alfalfa being grown now (Monsanto says 30% of alfalfa seed sold is GE).  So there is likely much more feral GE alfalfa today than is suggested by this study.

It’s important to note that the study’s major finding – that feral GE alfalfa is present and poses a contamination risk – has been known for at least six years.  Oregon alfalfa seed grower Phillip Geertson presented USDA withdocumented evidence of feral GE alfalfa in Idaho and Oregon in 2009, but was ignored.  More broadly, USDA exhaustively discussed this and other modes of transgenic contamination in its voluminous 2010 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on Roundup Ready alfalfa.  In fact, buried in that EIS is data showing still earlier episodes of transgenic contamination of alfalfa dating back to the crop’s first commercial introduction in 2005.

What’s needed now is not more studies to tell us in finer detail what we already know, but regulatory action.  Yet the USDA – which is embarrassingly subservient to the biotechnology industry – has failed to voluntarily enact a single restriction on GE crop growers.  This forces traditional farmers to bear the entire burden of preventing transgenic contamination.

The ineffectiveness of this policy is shown by contamination-induced losses of billions of dollars in corn exports to competitors like Brazil.  It is also suggested by the absurd spectacle of the U.S. (the world’s leading corn and soybean producer) importing organic corn and soy from countries like Romania and India.  Fear of transgenic contamination is one factor deterring more U.S. farmers from meeting America’s growing demand for organic foods.

Because of federal inaction, citizens have taken action to protect their traditional agriculture at the county level, and Center for Food Safety (CFS) has provided critical assistance to these efforts.  For instance, in 2014 voters in Jackson County, Oregon, overwhelmingly passed an ordinance prohibiting cultivation of GE crops in their county.  CFS helped the County and its farmers fend off a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the Ordinance brought by two GE alfalfa growers with financial backing from the biotechnology industry.

Similar “GE-free zones” have been created with CFS assistance in at least seven other counties in California, Washington, Hawaii and a second county in Oregon.  CFS is also proud to support a new ordinance introduced in November of last year in Costilla County, Colorado, that would establish a GMO-Free Zone to protect locally bred heirloom maize from transgenic contamination.

Amid growing global economic gloom, including a slowdown in China and falling oil and commodity prices, major companies throughout Europe are announcing mass layoffs and job cuts.

Last Wednesday, US multinational General Electric (GE) announced plans to cut 6,500 jobs in Europe over the next two years, including 1,700 jobs in Germany, 570 in the UK, 765 in France and 1,300 in Switzerland. According to comments from the head of GE’s power division last September, this is part of a plan to squeeze out $3 billion in cost savings over five years.

GE acquired French engineering company Alstom in a €9.7 billion deal in 2014, promising to create jobs. GE France spokesman Laurent Wormser said job cuts in France will hit mainly administrative jobs in the Paris area, in human resources, public relations and the legal department.

After reaching an agreement with the trade unions, French nuclear group Areva announced plans for 6,000 job cuts worldwide, including in Germany, the United States and 2,700 in France. The “competitiveness plan” deal would net Areva €1 billion in savings by 2017.

British Airways is eliminating 5,800 jobs under a plan to cut its debts, on top of 7,600 job cuts already announced earlier. These will largely hit major British airports, including 6,600 jobs cut at Heathrow airport and 3,000 at Gatwick.

France’s largely state-owned electricity firm EDF is cutting 4,000 jobs, or 6 percent of its workforce, through attrition over the next three years―twice the number announced previously. On a €72.8 billion turnover in 2014, EDF amassed a €3.7 net profit. This comes after last month’s announcement of more job cuts in the French state sector, with French state-owned rail operator SNCF announcement of 1,400 job cuts in France as part of a plan to shed 10,000 jobs by 2020.

Air France plans to cuts 2,900 jobs between 2016 and 2017, including 1,000 jobs this year, despite making a significant operating profit over the last year. “Air France’s recovery is continuing and the current buoyant economic situation allows us to offer a return to growth as from 2017,” Air France CEO Frederic Gagey boasted.

Tata Steel will cut 1,050 jobs in Britain, hitting plants in Port Talbot, Llanwern, Trostre, Hartlepool and Corby, after announcing hundreds of job cuts last year as steel prices plunged. Ceramics group Royal Doulton will cut up to 1,000 jobs, mostly in Britain, amid the closure of its Baddeley Green factory.

While amassing huge profits from speculation and European Union (EU) bailouts, European banks have announced over 30,000 job cuts for 2016, after Europe’s top 30 banks shed over 80,000 jobs from 2008 to 2014. According to the Financial Times, two of Europe’s biggest banks, Barclays and BNP Paribas, plan to unveil job cuts to slash 10 to 20 percent of their investment banking costs.

The assault on the European working class comes amid escalating signs that the world economy is nearing another major collapse like the one triggered by the 2008 Wall Street crash. Since the New Year, stock markets worldwide have seen massive sell-offs amid plunging prospects of economic growth in China and collapsing prices for oil and basic commodities.

As a result of a slowdown in global trade, notably in China, Germany’s export-driven economy is highly vulnerable, while Southern European economies, undermined by EU austerity bailouts, remain plagued by mass unemployment and weak consumer demand.

In a January 17 article in the South China Morning Post, New View Economics CEO David Brown warned,

“If Germany’s export powerhouse begins to falter, the rest of the euro zone will suffer as internal demand starts to trend lower. With up to 50 percent of euro zone exports traded internally within the single market, the consequences for growth and employment could be severe. Another quick recession should not be ruled out.”

Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, the world’s biggest private investment fund, told US financial channel CNBC that the crisis was set to worsen. “I actually believe there’s not enough blood in the streets,” he said, adding, “you’re going to start seeing more layoffs in the middle part of the first quarter, definitely the second quarter.”

The renewed economic collapse underscores the bankruptcy of capitalism. After the 2008 crisis, the European ruling class imposed harsh austerity policies, while plunging trillions of euros into bank bailouts, claiming this was necessary to prevent a complete collapse. Unenployment and social inequality skyrocketed as industries and living standards were undermined, while the super-rich saw a massive rise in their wealth.

Now, however, the economic devastation and financial criminality unleashed by the ruling class are provoking another global economic breakdown, with far-reaching consequences―not least of which is rising social opposition in the working class.

The financial press is nervously reporting social protest in China, which saw 2,774 worker protests last year, including 400 in December alone―a monthly record. Geoffrey Crothall of Hong Kong’s China Labour Bulletin told Bloomberg, “The increase in strikes and protests began last August around the time of the yuan devaluation and subsequent stock market crash and continued to build during the final quarter of the year, as the economy has showed little sign of improvement.”

Above all, the European ruling class is increasingly concerned about social protest at home. In one widely reported incident in October, after Air France announced thousands of jobs cuts, workers stormed an Air France works council meeting and assaulted two executives, ripping their shirts, amid widespread sympathy from workers across France and internationally. Air France took the unusual decision to sack and mount legal action against several of the workers.

These escalating class tensions are driving preparations in the European ruling class to try to use the military to crush strikes and social protests. In 2014, a study by the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies called for using military force to put down strikes, stating, “Within the framework of the joint foreign and security policy, the responsibilities of the police and armed forces are increasingly being merged, and the capacities to tackle social protest built up.”

Identifying “conflict between unequal socioeconomic classes in global society” as the main threat to EU “security,” it warned,

“the percentage of the population who were poor and frustrated would continue to be very high, the tensions between this world and the world of the rich would continue to increase, with corresponding consequences. … we will have to protect ourselves more strongly.”

Less than two years later, these issues have taken an acute form. Draconian security policies are being imposed across Europe on the pretext of the “war on terror,” a far-right regime is emerging in Poland and France’s Socialist Party (PS) government has imposed a three-month state of emergency after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris.

This state of emergency bans demonstrations and the PS has cracked down on ecological protests that proceeded in defiance of this ban. It is also preparing a constitutional amendment to extend the state of emergency indefinitely, allowing police to detain and search anyone they view as a potential threat to public order.

The ruling class will seek to turn this climate of law-and-order hysteria against workers’ struggles. Last week, in an unprecedented act of political intimidation, French courts condemned eight former Goodyear tire workers to prison for briefly detaining executives during a strike, setting a precedent for broader crackdowns on social opposition against layoffs and austerity.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified over the weekend that Iran has completed the measures necessary to comply with the nuclear deal reached last July with the P5+1  governments,  the New York Times Editorial Board proclaimed “the world is now safer for this.” They lauded the deal as a “testament to patient diplomacy” and President Barack Obama’s “visionary determination to pursue a negotiated solution to the nuclear threat.”

The Editorial Board takes for granted that Iran presents a threat. Iran has always maintained it has never intended to build nuclear weapons, and that it’s nuclear program was strictly meant to use nuclear technology as a source of energy production. In fact, in 1957 the United States government itself provided Iran with its first nuclear reactor while the country was ruled by U.S. ally – and murderous dictator – Shah Reza Pahlavi. Iran would later sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968 and ratify it two years later. 

Several years ago Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that “(w)e believe that nuclear weapons (in the world) must be obliterated, and we do not intend to make nuclear weapons.” Previously he had said making nuclear weapons was a “sin.”

But regardless of their professed intentions, the New York Times is skeptical the Iranian government can be trusted. They claim that there still exist “daunting challenges ahead” as the other parties to the agreement need to ensure “the deal is strictly adhered to.” The New York Times’s skepticism is unsurprising. While the Times certainly will not repeat George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” language, they internalize the same ideological framework.

Is the Times’s skepticism warranted by the Iranian government’s record? That would be hard to argue, as the revolutionary regime in power since 1979 has never invaded another country. Unstated and assumed to be self-evident is the idea that Iran is dangerous and unable to be trusted because it is not aligned with Washington. Rather, it exercises its own independent foreign policy outside of American control.

If there were not a double standard in play, the Times would treat the United States government with the same skepticism as Iran. After all, the United States, which possesses at least 7,200 nuclear warheads, is the only country in history to have used nuclear weapons – twice, against a country seeking for months to negotiate a conditional surrender.

Unlike Iran, the United States is not complying with the NPT. As a state already in possession of nuclear weapons, the United States has a responsibility under its treaty obligations to pursue disarmament. The Times itself detailed the U.S. government’s own modernization of its nuclear weapons in a front-page article on January 11.

The article by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger notes that Obama promised to work towards nuclear disarmament early in his presidency, saying he would “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”

However, the $1 trillion plan that later emerged called for the modernization of current nuclear weapons by redesigning and improving them. The Times quotes a critical report developed by two former national security officials as saying Obama’s plan could be seen “as violating the administration’s pledge not to develop or deploy” new nuclear weapons. Neither the report nor the Times questions whether this is also a violation of the government’s obligations under the NPT.

The Times shows a graphic depiction of the enhancements, including a steerable fins, a navigation system and safety features. “The result is a bomb that can make more accurate nuclear strikes and a warhead whose destructive power can be adjusted to minimize collateral damage and radioactive fallout,” the caption reads. This may make them “more tempting to use,” according to critics.

The title of the article, “As U.S. Modernizes Nuclear Weapons, ‘Smaller’ Leaves Some Uneasy,” is evidence that the debate around the Obama administration’s plan is seen as a matter of strategy and cost efficiency, rather than as a violation of international law and a threat to peace. The people left “uneasy” are all close to the national security establishment. Their concerns don’t have to do with the program’s contravention of the U.S. government’s responsibilities under the NPT. The debate is merely one of philosophical differences between policy makers.

Despite Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement (their continued compliance with the NPT is not even mentioned), the Times Editorial Board states that this doesn’t mean they “should not be subject to criticism or new sanctions for violation of other United Nations resolutions or American laws.” Indeed, they had previously called the Obama administration’s plans to impose new sanctions for Iran’s ballistic missile tests “wise.”

Aside from the dubious position that the U.S. government should unilaterally impose sanctions related to UN resolutions, they claim that Iran should be subject to the extraterritorial application of American laws. Under international law, no state is bound to respect the domestic laws of another state. The U.S. Supreme Court declared “the laws of no nation can justly extend beyond its own territories except so far as regards its own citizens. They can have no force to control the sovereignty or rights of any other nation within its own jurisdiction.”

The Times does not call for any legal or economic repercussions against the United States. The U.S. government’s $1 trillion program to upgrade its nuclear weapons is not in any way presented as a grave threat that affects the rest of the world. They don’t demand controls by outside powers the U.S. must strictly adhere to, as they do for Iran. Their framing of the story and absence of any editorial condemnation makes it clear the paper views the actions of the U.S. government as unquestionably beyond reproach.

The paper’s calls for the strict enforcement of the nuclear deal and application of new sanctions on the Iranian government are not grounded in any moral or legal principles. They are a reflection of the Times‘s acceptance of the U.S. government’s patronizing doctrine that threats to peace only emanate from countries outside of American control, who must be dealt with using coercion and punishment that the U.S. itself is always exempt from.

GR Editor’s Note

The ISIS is responsible for countless atrocities according to the UN report.

What the report fails to mention: Who is behind the ISIS terrorists, who is funding them, who is recruiting them?

What is the role of America’s allies: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel?

In liaison with Washington and Brussels, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are involved in the training and recruitment of terrorists. Israel provides logistical support  to the terrorists  out of the Golan Heights

The report also fails to acknowledge the civilian deaths which are the result of the US sponsored bombing campaign initiated by president Obama in August 2014. Amply confirmed the US led coalition is protecting the ISIS terrorists.  The ISIS assassinations are targeted: professionals, doctors, teachers, lawyers, public officials, journalists. Who provides them with the list? ISIS is an intelligence asset. It has special forces within its ranks.

According to the Chicago Post, which refutes its own lies:

“A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria. (Chicago Post, November 6, 2015)

The above, is a statement of the mainstream media which confirms that the US is supporting a terrorist entity in violation of international law.

The UN has a responsibility to identify the State sponsors of terrorism.

Michel Chossudovsky, January 19, 2016

*     *     *

A UN report released today details the severe and extensive impact on civilians of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, with at least 18,802 civilians killed and another 36,245 wounded between 1 January 2014 and 31 October 2015. Another 3.2 million people have been internally displaced since January 2014, including more than a million children of school age.

Of the total number of casualties, at least 3,855 civilians were killed and 7,056 wounded between 1 May and 31 October last year – the period covered by the report, although the actual figures could be much higher than those documented. About half of these deaths took place in Baghdad.

The report, compiled by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), is based largely on testimony obtained directly from the victims, survivors or witnesses of violations of international human rights or international humanitarian law, including interviews with internally displaced people.

“The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering. The so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide,” the report states.

“During the reporting period, ISIL killed and abducted scores of civilians, often in a targeted manner. Victims include those perceived to be opposed to ISIL ideology and rule; persons affiliated with the Government, such as former Iraqi security forces (ISF), police officers, former public officials and electoral workers; professionals, such as doctors and lawyers; journalists; and tribal and religious leaders. Others have been abducted and/or killed on the pretext of aiding or providing information to Government security forces. Many have been subjected to adjudication by ISIL self-appointed courts which, in addition to ordering the murder of countless people, have imposed grim punishments such as stoning and amputations.”

The report details numerous examples of killings by ISIL in gruesome public spectacles, including by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings. There are also reports of the murder of child soldiers who fled fighting on the frontlines in Anbar. Information received and verified suggests that between 800 and 900 children in Mosul had been abducted by ISIL for religious education and military training.

“ISIL continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery,” the report states.

The report also documented alleged violations and abuses of international human rights and international humanitarian law by the Iraqi Security Forces and associated forces, including militia and tribal forces, popular mobilization units, and Peshmerga.

Concerning reports have been received of unlawful killings and abductions perpetrated by some elements associated with pro-Government forces. “Some of these incidents may have been reprisals against persons perceived to support or be associated with ISIL,” the report states. “Moreover, as civilians move around the country, fleeing violence, they have continued to face Government restrictions on their ability to access safe areas. Once they reach such areas, some have experienced arbitrary arrest in raids by security forces and others have been forcibly expelled. The conduct of pro-Government forces’ operations raises concern that they are carried out without taking all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and civilian objects.”

The discovery of a number of mass graves is documented in the report, including in areas regained by the Government from ISIL control, as well as mass graves from the time of Saddam Hussein. One of the mass graves uncovered reportedly contains 377 corpses, including women and children apparently killed during the 1991 Shi’a uprisings against Saddam Hussein in the east of Basra.

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, Ján Kubiš, said “despite their steady losses to pro government forces, the scourge of ISIL continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering. I strongly reiterate my call to all parties to the conflict to ensure the protection of civilians from the effects of violence.”

“I also call on the international community to enhance its support to the Government of Iraq’s humanitarian, stabilization and reconstruction efforts in areas liberated from ISIL, so that all Iraqis displaced by violence can return to their homes in safety and in dignity and that affected communities can be reestablished in their places of origin,” he said.

“I urge the government to use all means to ensure law and order, necessary for the voluntary return of IDPs to their place of origin – a task of primary importance given the recent wave of violence and killings, often of sectarian nature, notably in Diyala and Baghdad,” SRSG Kubiš said.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein warned that the civilian death toll may be considerably higher, and called for urgent action to rein in the impunity enjoyed by the vast majority of the perpetrators of violence.

“Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq. The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care,” the High Commissioner said.

“This report lays bare the enduring suffering of civilians in Iraq and starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands.”

The High Commissioner also appealed to the Government to undertake legislative amendments to grant Iraqi courts jurisdiction over international crimes and to become party to the Rome Statute.

The full report is available on

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/UNAMIReport1May31October2015.pdf

For more information, please contact:

In Geneva: Rupert Colville (+41-22-917-9767/ [email protected]) or Ravina Shamdasani (+41-22-917-9769 / [email protected]) or Cécile Pouilly (+41-22-917-9310 / [email protected])

In Baghdad: Samir Ghattas (+964-790-193-1281 / [email protected]), UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) 

United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)
Public Information Office (PIO) – Baghdad
Phone: +39-083-105-2640
Website: http://www.uniraq.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UnitedNationsIraq
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UNiraq
Flicker: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uniraq

Following Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” a UK petition began circulating to prevent him from entering Britain.

It gathered over 570,000 signatures, passing the required threshold for mandatory parliamentary debate.

The irony wasn’t lost on observers – the hypocrisy of denouncing Trump’s opposition to Muslim immigration in America while voting up or down on banning his entry to Britain – along with attacking his free expression right, no matter how offensive.

A Trump Organization statement said “Westminster would create a dangerous precedent and send a terrible message to the world that the United Kingdom opposes free speech and has no interest in attracting inward investment.”

“This would also alienate the many millions of United States citizens who wholeheartedly support Mr, Trump and have made him the forerunner by far in the 2016 presidential election.”

“Many people now agree with Mr. Trump that there is a serious problem that must be resolved. This can only be achieved if we are willing discuss these tough issues openly and honestly.”

MPs won’t ban Trump or any other prominent American from entering Britain. An official government statement said the following:

“For good reasons the Government does not routinely comment on individual immigration and exclusion decisions.”

“The Home Secretary may exclude a non-European Economic Area national from the UK if she considers their presence in the UK to be non-conducive to the public good.”

“The Home Secretary has said that coming to the UK is a privilege and not a right and she will continue to use the powers available to prevent from entering the UK those who seek to harm our society and who do not share our basic values.”

“Exclusion powers are very serious and are not used lightly. The Home Secretary will use these powers when justified and based on all available evidence.”

“The Prime Minister has made clear that he completely disagrees with Donald Trump’s remarks. The Home Secretary has said that Donald Trump’s remarks in relation to Muslims are divisive, unhelpful and wrong.”

“The Government recognises the strength of feeling against the remarks and will continue to speak out against comments which have the potential to divide our communities, regardless of who makes them. We reject any attempts to create division and marginalisation amongst those we endeavour to protect.”

Prime Minister David Cameron blasted what he called Trump’s “hate speech.” Home Secretary Theresa May denounced his offensive remarks.

The uncomfortable reality in Britain went unmentioned. Most individuals banned from entering the country are Muslims, including Hamas Palestinian Legislative Council member Yunis Al-Astal – solely for political reasons in deference to Israel.

He’s wrongfully accused of “engaging in unacceptable behavior by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to terrorist acts.”

Islamophobia is rife in Britain, throughout Europe and America. War on Islam rages. Muslims are public enemy No. 1, portrayed as dangerous gun-toting terrorists,  blamed for false flag terror attacks.

Britain continues partnering with Washington’s endless wars on Muslim countries, responsible for millions of deaths, mass destruction and unspeakable human misery.

Cameron’s regime shuns desperate Muslim refugees and asylum seekers, victims of US-led imperial wars, indifferent to their suffering.

Instead of debating whether Trump should be banned from Britain, a nonbinding resolution if passed, UK parliamentarians should denounce US-led imperial wars, refusing any longer to partner in them.

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 Israeli Foreign Ministry has been working relentlessly to thwart a European Union decision that would firmly distinguish between Israel and territories occupied in the 1967, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday citing senior Israeli and European officials.

According to the officials, if the resolution is adopted it could result in new, tighter sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements.

The paper said the decision, which will be issued at the conclusion of the EU foreign minister’s monthly meeting, was expected to be relatively moderate, but senior Israeli officials concluded that the text of the resolution will be strong against Israel.

Haaretz quoted an Israeli official as saying that “the drafts have become increasingly harsh and grave from moment to moment. The Swedes and Irish are pushing and it appears as if our friends are not able to withstand it. The Germans are trying to hold the line, but are not succeeding.”

Regarding the distinction between Israel and the West Bank settlements, the draft says that “the EU will continue to unequivocally and explicitly make the distinction between Israel and all territories occupied by Israel in 1967.”

It also stresses that “EU agreements with the State of Israel are only applicable to the State of Israel and not to the settlements.”

According to the draft resolution, “the EU will continue to closely monitor developments on the ground and their broader implications…The EU will consider further action to protect the viability of the two-state solution, which is constantly eroded by new facts on the ground.”

Further, it outlines measures to resume the stalled peace process by establishing an “international support group” and organising an “international peace conference” to revive negotiations.

On Monday January 18, the MLK Day rally and march took place in downtown Detroit where a host of speakers and organizations participated.

Despite a wind chill factor below zero, the sanctuary at Central United Methodist Church was filled with activists who work consistently for social justice and peace throughout the state of Michigan. This is the same church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on numerous occasions during the 1950s and 1960s.

King delivered his annual Lent sermon at the facility on March 14, 1968 just three weeks prior to his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4.

The special guest for the 2015 gathering was Pastor Cori Bush of Ferguson, Missouri who traveled to Detroit and Toledo, Ohio to bring news about the ongoing movement in St. Louis County which woke up the United States and the world in 2014, exemplifying the reality that the society is by no means free of racist violence and state repression. Bush is a healthcare professional and a clergywoman who experienced firsthand the utilization of police violence against the people of Ferguson in the aftermath of the law-enforcement killing of Mike Brown on August 9, 2014.

Other speakers were invited including Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, who as a result of the inclement weather was not able to drive over 200 miles from Berrien County. Nonetheless, she sent a statement that was read by Marcina Cole, a leading organizer in the Detroit area campaign to win freedom and legal vindication of Rev. Edward Pinkney, Michigan’s political prisoner.

Rev. Pinkney was railroaded in the Berrien County courts during 2014 on fraudulent felony charges of changing five dates on recall petitions aimed at the removal of Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower. During the course of the trial there were no eyewitnesses presented by the court that testified to the actualization of the alleged crimes.

The political activities of Pinkney and his associates were introduced as evidence by the Berrien County prosecuting attorney Michael Sepic. Pinkney is the leader of the Benton Harbor Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), whose political work was utilized by the prosecution to convict him of these spurious charges.

At present Pinkney is serving a sentence of 30-120 months in Marquette prison in the far northern area of the state, some 10-12 hours from his home in the southwest region of the Michigan. He is appealing the conviction in the state courts. Recently, Pennsylvania political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal issued a commentary entitled “Free Rev. Pinkney” in solidarity with the Michigan activist.

Cole, who attends the Detroit MLK rally and march every year said of the event that “there was a great turn out representing people from all walks of life, including  youth and older people. We should be honored that we can fight the fight.”

She went on to recognize “some of the people who have lost their homes and are not with us today.  Jerome Jackson is one.” Jackson, an African American living with disabilities, passed away in 2014 after long fight to save his home in Inkster, a suburb of Detroit.

Cole also expressed concern for S. Baxter Jones, an anti-foreclosure activist whose Jackson County home was taken by Fannie Mae. Jones who was a co-recipient of the “People’s Spirit of Detroit” award, was arrested in July 2014 for blocking Homrich wrecking trucks that were heading to shut off the water services of Detroit residents.

Event Brings Together Regional Groups

The Detroit MLK event is the largest gathering annually of progressive forces from throughout southeastern Michigan and is endorsed by a host of organizations and coalitions dealing with education, water rights, housing, police misconduct and other issues.

Speakers and artists participating during the course of the rally and march also included: People’s lawyers Vanessa Fluker and Alice Jennings addressing issues involving housing and water rights; Elena Herrada, an elected member of the Detroit Board of Education in exile, still subjected to the emergency management of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder; Cong. John Conyers, who drafted and pushed through the federal holiday bill recognizing Dr. King which went into effect in 1986; two of the offspring of Detroit-based Civil Rights martyr Viola Liuzzo, Tony and Mary; Joe Mchahwar of Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST) spoke on the plight of the people of Syria and the role of the U.S. and Israel in the continuing oppression of the peoples of the Middle East; Melissa Mays of Flint whose pioneering work exposed the crimes committed by Governor Snyder in poisoning the children and adults of this industrial city, which now has become the focus of worldwide news reports; Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American writer and Adjunct Professor at the University of Detroit Mercy Law School explained the central role of Palestinian oppression in the political developments in the Middle East; among others.

Music was supplied by Bobbi Thompson of Central United Methodist Church, the Director of the Deep River Choir. Additional singing was provided by the Flowtown Revue, a group of activists concerned about the massive water shutoffs in Detroit.

After a more than two hour rally, a march was held through downtown Detroit walking pass several key locations: the 36^th District Court to demonstrate against foreclosures and evictions; the Wayne County Jail to protest the mass incarceration of African Americans and other oppressed peoples; the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) in opposition to water shutoffs proclaiming that water is a human right; and through the financial district saying bailout the people and not the banks.

Marchers returned to the Church for a community meal supplied by the Detroit Wobbly Kitchen where hundreds were served. A cultural program was then held coordinated by award-winning Poet Aurora Harris, a Broadside Press author and lecturer at the University of Michigan at Dearborn.

Numerous artists, musicians and poets presented their works including: Wardell Montgomery, Joe Kidd and Sheila Burke Music, Wanda Olugbala, Jim Perkinson, Shushanna Shakur, Susan Sunshine, and many more.

Tracy Mathews, a longtime Detroit community activist, who has been a logistical volunteer at the Detroit MLK Day for the last six years, said the January 18 event was the best so far. “My interaction with Pastor Cori Bush provided insight into the struggle in Ferguson and was inspirational.”

This annual commemoration which seeks to evoke the social justice and anti-war legacy of MLK, was founded in 2004 amid the early months of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq by the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI). By 2005, a Detroit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Planning Committee was organized bringing in veteran Civil Rights activists along with youth and workers.

The event for 2016 was co-sponsored and endorsed by the ACLU of Michigan; Avalon Bakery; Detroit Eviction Defense; the Green Party of Michigan; the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs; Workers World Party; FIST; the League of Revolutionaries for a New America; the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights; Linda Szysko; Judith Quick Thompson; UAW Local 140 Civil Rights Committee; UAW Local 160; Veterans for Peace, Chapter 74, MI; Autoworker Caravan; Detroit Light Brigade; Dr. Gloria Aneb House; Jewish Voice for Peace; Metro-Detroit Coalition of Labor Union Women; the Pan-African News Wire; Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice; The Truth Telling Project; Water You Fighting For; We the People of Detroit; National Boricua Human Rights Network; Michigan Welfare Rights Organization; the Jamaica Project; Huntington Woods Peace, Citizenship & Education Project; Advocates for Informed Nonviolent Social Change; among others.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire

The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) attempted to launch counter-offensive in the Al-Bab Plateau in the province of Aleppo last weekend. However, the militants weren’t able to break the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) defensive positions.

Heavy clashes also were observed in the area of Ayn Al-Bayda where Liwaa Suqour Al-Sahra and the SAA repeal another offensive attempt of the militants. After the fall of Salma, the pro-government forces are continuing to gain momentum in the Latakia province. Recently, the Syrian forces took control of the villages of Kadin, Duwayrikah, Mrouniyat, Kurt Fawqani and the areas of Kurt Tahtani, Kuzbar Mount, Sundian Mount, Alkndisih and Beit Afeefah. Thus, the SAA and its allies are advancing in the direction of the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughour located at the M4 highway.

The SAA and the NDF advanced on the concentration centers of the militant groups in the Sheikh Meskeen region of the Dara’a province. Also, the pro-government forces attacked the militants positions in al-Balad. Southwest of Gharz Prison in the Southern part of Dara’a city was also the scene of fierce clashes. Pro-Syrian sources report that the militants suffered heavy casualties.

On Jan.16 the Russian army launched humanitarian operations in Syria. The first humanitarian aid consignment has been delivered by Russian aircrafts to the city of Deir ez-Zor.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, some international non-governmental organizations have been already delivering humanitarian aid to Syria. However, this aid is mostly being delivered to the areas controlled by militants where most of this aid gets into the hands of extremists and is used for terrorist formations’ supplies.

On Jan.17, Jordanian Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications Mohammad Momani stated that supporters of ISIS are among Syrian refugees in the camps near the Syrian-Jordanian border. About 12,000 Syrian refugees are in these camps. There is nothing new in the fact that terrorist groups including ISIS use refugee camps especially in Turkey as rear bases for operations in Syria. However, this statement could mark a shift in the Jordanian strategy in this situation. It’s hard to believe that militants were able to successfully use refugee camps at the border without unofficial support of the Jourdanian special services.

SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence remembers, last week, Russia set up a joint war room with Jordan to coordinate anti-ISIS military operations in Syria.

 

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“Peddling fiction” …this is what Mr. Obama said of anyone who believes and says the U.S. has a weak economy.

How ironic he should say this when he did, the State of the Union address?

I mean the timing could not have been any better! In a week where oil prices hit a 14 year low, freight rates at over 30 year lows, equity, credit and FOREX markets all over the world crashing and derivatives blowing up. How do we know derivatives are blowing up? Simply because the Dallas Fed has given their banks permission not to mark energy debt to market. In essence, the Fed has instructed their banks TO PEDDLE FICTION!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-16/exclusive-dallas-fed-quietly-suspends-energy-mark-market-tells-banks-not-force-shale

One must ask the question(s), how can the Fed really do this as accounting firms must sign off on any audits or official financial reports?  Do the accounting firms also get “special waivers” to lie or as our fearless leader says “peddle fiction”? Also, how can the Fed really do this with a straight face? Did they really believe the markets would not sniff this out?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-17/us-bank-counterparty-risk-soars-after-energy-mtm-debacle

Just as I was about to send this post out, the Dallas Fed responded to Zerohedge and said they did not “issue such guidance to banks”, the follow up story is here

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-18/fed-responds-zero-hedge-here-are-some-follow-questions

I personally hope this is true as “reality” will be pulled forward, …one can hope! (This is a very important revelation, I plan to write againtomorrow regarding the Dallas Fed’s denial tweet).

Now, we await to hear individual names of “who” is in trouble. We have already seen Glencore and other commodity trading group bonds collapse. The credit markets have already discovered Citi and Wells Fargo have just “non” reserved for almost no losses in their energy portfolio. Is this credible? Somewhere $500 billion and $1 trillion has been lent into the energy industry over the last 30 months …with probably a minimum expected oil price of $70, is ANYONE profitable at $29? The rubber will surely meet the road in this market!

While on the subject of fictional accounting, foreign central banks have off loaded some $1 trillion worth of “reserves”, specifically U.S. Treasury securities. There is only one problem with this, there has been no accounting anywhere publicly on the other side of these trades. Who bought these Treasuries to provide the cash? Where are they accounted for? Most probably the ONLY place where this size transaction could be done in the darkness of night would be the ESF (Exchange Stabilization Fund chartered in the 1930’s). For $1 trillion worth of securities to go unaccounted is not small potatoes, the only other such “misplacement” was back in Sept. 2001 when it turned out the military could not account for $2.3 trillion but that was overshadowed the following day with the “other” news.

As for peddling fiction, if the BLS used the “old fashioned” unemployment numbers (U-6) they used to report, the U.S. would have 9.9% unemployment. If they decided to go entirely non fiction the number according to John Williams is 23%! In a nation of 330 million, we have 94 million “no longer in the work force” and 46 million unable to feed themselves …30% and 15% respectively. Are these 94 million, independently wealthy and do not need work? If we were living in a day of still photographs and radios, the food lines could mostly be hidden. Since we live in a world where everything you do is recorded, these “food lines” are erased by EBT transfer payments …problem solved (at least publicly)!

A little off subject but how about the timing of the Iran deal? They are now allowed to sell oil at what Wall Street has already called “bottom”? Are we now looking for another, future bottom? Also, they now get their hands on somewhere near $150 billion in previously tied up funds. What will happen to the institutions who will need to credit these funds and forward to Eastern institutions? Another question, one many have simply laughed off as not doable …what if Iran took a “small” amount, say $10 billion and bought gold with it? What if they had a “crazy” (and angry) man at the helm and decided to take those funds and bid for every gold ounce for sale on the planet? Might this be a financial nuclear bomb …? I am not saying they will do anything other than tend to their own business with these funds, what I AM saying is, we just handed them a very big and very loaded financial gun!

Folks, it is what it is and the global margin call is being issued with no hope of it being met. The real economy is now contracting with a financial economy more leveraged and in debt than ever before under any measurement. “Less income and less cash flow to service more debt than in all of history” … this is not fiction, it is stark reality. Now, we must watch to see what the responses will be as the markets overwhelm all plunge protection teams, central banks and sovereign treasuries. In plain street language, the markets are now far larger and far more disorderly than the smoke, mirrors, lies and abilities of the financial puppeteers to handle.

We will shortly be hearing individual “names” as we did back in 2008. Names like Fannie and Freddy, Lehman and Merrill, Citi and AIG. Once you begin to hear “names”, we will be very close to the plug being pulled on markets. When you hear individual names it will be like blood in the shark infested waters of the speculators. These names will be attacked to the death. Counterparty risk will be back, first and foremost in decision making, NO ONE will be trusted. Credit markets will begin (they already are) to seize up and the only “policy option” will be to unplug the computers! I wish it were all fiction! 

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. (Howard Zinn, 1922-2010.)

Britain’s aiding and abetting of the brutal, head chopping, summarily executing, flogging regime of Saudi Arabia continues unabated.

In spite of a “Letter before action sent as threat of legal action over arms export licences to Saudi Arabia increases …” (1) by London law firm Leigh Day, acting on behalf of Campaign Against the Arms Trade: “ … challenging the government’s decision to export arms despite increasing evidence that Saudi forces are violating international humanitarian law (IHL) in Yemen … “, it transpires that UK military advisors are also “working alongside Saudi bomb targeters.”

According to the Daily Telegraph:

“British military advisers are in control rooms assisting the Saudi-led coalition staging bombing raids across Yemen that have killed thousands of civilians, the Saudi Foreign Minister and the Ministry of Defence have confirmed.” (2)

Briefing the Telegraph and other journalists the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said that the UK and other countries in the control centre: “ … are aware of the target lists.”

The “target list” would seem to have included five attacks on schools, disrupting the remaining shreds of normality for 6,500 children. “In some cases the schools were struck more than once, suggesting the strikes were deliberately targeted”, states a report by Amnesty International. (3)

“In October 2015 the Science and Faith School in Beni Hushayash, Sana’a was attacked on four separate occasions within the space of a few weeks. The third strike killed three civilians and wounded more than 10 people.” The only school in the village, it provided education for 1,200 students.

In the village of Hadhran, the Kheir School: “also suffered multiple air strikes causing extensive damage, rendering it unusable.” In the same village two civilian homes and a mosque were bombed, two children were killed, their mother injured, with one man killed and another injured whilst praying in the mosque.

The director of another school in Hodeidah city, the al-Shaymeh Education Complex for Girls, which catered for some 3,200 students described her horror after the school came under attack twice within a matter of days in August 2015 killing two people. No students were present at the school during the attack, but a man and woman were killed. (All emphases added.)

“I felt that humanity has ended. I mean, a place of learning, to be hit in this way, without warning… where is humanity … “ she asked.

The al-Asma school in Mansouriya, was destroyed in a bombing in August. However, these horrors barely scrape the surface of the criminal and humanitarian outrage.

Yemen’s Ministry of Education showed Amnesty data revealing more than 1,000 schools inoperable, 254 completely destroyed, 608 partially damaged and 421 being used as shelter by those displaced by the Saudi led, UK assisted onslaught.

The UK is subject to the Arms Trade Treaty which entered in to force on the 24^th December 2014 and which Britain has both signed and ratified (2^nd April 2014) which prohibits arms transfers: “ … if they have knowledge that the arms would be used to commit attacks against civilians, civilian objects or other violations of international humanitarian law.”

Britain “have knowledge that … arms would be used … against civilians or civilian objects” – it is seemingly also helping to plan them, with the US also providing arms and “intelligence.”

The targets for which the UK surely share responsibility also include three medical facilities supported by Medecins Sans Frontieres, the latest on 10^th January, a hospital in Saada in the north of the country resulting in six deaths by the 17^th January, in which eight were also injured, two critically.

“This is the third severe incident affecting an MSF health facility in Yemen in the last three months. On 27 October Haydan hospital was destroyed by an airstrike … and on 3 December a health centre in Taiz was also hit”, with nine people wounded.

The exact co-ordinates of the facilities had been given to the Saudi led, British advised coalition, as they had when the US bombed the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on 3^rd October 2015.

It seems giving details of humanitarian facilities to trained killers is interpreted as an invitation to become target practice.

Other potential war crimes have included destruction of the Al-Sham water bottling factory, killing thirteen workers about to head home from the night shift and: “markets, apartment buildings and refugee camps … eleven people in a mosque.” (4)

Also destroyed last September was formerly one of the country’s largest employers, the ceramics factory, where Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch stated they had found definitive proof a UK made Marconi Cruise Missile used in the destruction.

Amnesty also stated that they had: “found evidence of apparent war crimes in connection with thirteen airstrikes around the north-eastern Saada region, which killed about one hundred civilians including fifty nine women and twenty two children.” (Guardian 25^th November 2015.)

Some population centres are so comprehensively decimated that survivors wonder if they are finally safe, since there is nothing left to bomb.  Doctor Natalie Roberts, working with MSF, told the New York Times (see 4) of women giving birth in caves, feeling them the safest places.

The human cost, as ever, defies imagination: “Omar Mohammed al-Ghaily, 28, sat in the center of town, near the ruins of his clothing store … The strikes killed Seif Ahmed Seif, who owned an umbrella store. Mr. Ghaily kept Mr. Seif’s identity card, maybe to return it one day to his daughter, who lives far away in Taiz. He kept coming to the rubble, he said, because he had ‘no place to go.’ “

Elsewhere, when locals tried to dig the barber from the rubble of his shop: “We found only his legs.” Bombs being dropped range from 250 pounds to 2,000 pounds. Yet last September the US was: “finalizing a deal to provide more weapons to Saudi Arabia including missiles for its F-15 fighter jets. Yemen’s population is just 24.41 million (2013 figure.)

Between March and September 2015, Britain issued thirty seven arms export licences for arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, pointed out a correspondent to the Guardian, noting: “The UK boasts that it has ‘one of the most rigorous and transparent export control regimes in the world.’ If this really is the case, the government needs to immediately suspend all arms transfers to the conflict and launch an investigation into how these weapons have been used.” (5)

Whilst the Ministry of Defence continues its mantra of having one of: “the most robust arms export control regimes in the world”, unease is growing amongst government legal advisers, with one from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office telling the Independent (27^th November 2015): “There are many Elizabeth Wilmshursts around here at the moment. Not all are being listened to”, referring to the senior government legal advisor to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who resigned in March 2003 because she was convinced of the illegality of the proposed attack on Iraq. She had worked with the Department since 1974.

It can only be hoped that some of the “many Elizabeth Wilmshursts” will publicly call time on David Cameron’s government’s collusion in atrocities in Yemen and that Leigh Day and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade legal initiative bears fruit. Justice for so much in the region has been long delayed.

 Notes

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/britain-and-saudi-arabia-collusion-in-barbarism/5500661
2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/12102089/UK-military-working-alongside-Saudi-bomb-targeters-in-Yemen-war.html
3. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/12/bombing-of-schools-by-saudi-arabia-led-coalition-in-yemen/
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/world/middleeast/airstrikes-hit-civilians-yemen-war.html?_r=0
5. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/yemen-and-the-scandal-of-uk-arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia

Nearly 18 months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine, one of the troubling mysteries is why the U.S. government – after rushing to blame Russia and ethnic Russian rebels – then went silent, effectively obstructing the investigation into 298 deaths, writes Robert Parry.

As the whodunit mystery surrounding the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 nears the 1½-year mark, the Obama administration could open U.S. intelligence files and help bring justice for the 298 people killed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. Instead, a separate mystery has emerged: why has the U.S. government clammed up since five days after the tragedy?

Immediately after the crash, senior Obama administration officials showed no hesitancy in pointing fingers at the ethnic Russian rebels who were then resisting a military offensive by the U.S.-backed Kiev regime. On July, 20, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on TV talk shows claiming there was a strong circumstantial case implicating the rebels and their Russian backers in the shoot-down.

After mentioning some information gleaned from “social media,” Kerry said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “But even more importantly, we picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.”

Two days later, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a “Government Assessment,” also citing “social media” seeming to implicate the rebels. Then, this white paper listed military equipment allegedly supplied by Russia to the rebels. But the list did not include a Buk missile battery or other high-powered anti-aircraft missiles capable of striking MH-17, which had been flying at around 33,000 feet.

The DNI also had U.S. intelligence analysts brief a few select mainstream reporters, but the analysts conveyed much less conviction than their superiors may have wished, indicating that there was still great uncertainty about who was responsible.

The Los Angeles Times article said:

“U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 [the designation for a Russian-made anti-aircraft Buk missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems.”

That uncertainty meshed somewhat with what I had been told by a source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts shortly after the shoot-down about what they had seen in high-resolution satellite photos, which they said showed what looked like Ukrainian military personnel manning the battery which was believed to have fired the missile.

There is also an important distinction to make between the traditional “Intelligence Assessment,” which is the U.S. intelligence community’s gold standard for evaluating an issue, complete with any disagreements among the 16 intelligence agencies, and a “Government Assessment,” like the one produced in the MH-17 case.

As former CIA analyst Ray McGovern wrote: “The key difference between the traditional ‘Intelligence Assessment’ and this relatively new creation, a ‘Government Assessment,’ is that the latter genre is put together by senior White House bureaucrats or other political appointees, not senior intelligence analysts. Another significant difference is that an ‘Intelligence Assessment’ often includes alternative views, either in the text or in footnotes, detailing disagreements among intelligence analysts, thus revealing where the case may be weak or in dispute.”

In other words, a “Government Assessment” is an invitation for political hacks to manufacture what was called a “dodgy dossier” when the British government used similar tactics to sell the phony case for war with Iraq in 2002-03.

Demonizing Putin

Yet, despite the flimsiness of the “blame-Russia-for-MH-17” case in July 2014, the Obama administration’s rush to judgment proved critical in whipping up the European press to demonize President Vladimir Putin, who became the Continent’s bete noire accused of killing 298 innocent people. That set the stage for the European Union to accede to U.S. demands for economic sanctions on Russia.

The MH-17 case was deployed like a classic piece of “strategic communication”or “Stratcom,” mixing propaganda with psychological operations to put an adversary at a disadvantage. Apparently satisfied with that result, the Obama administration stopped talking publicly, leaving the impression of Russian guilt to corrode Moscow’s image in the public mind.

But the intelligence source who spoke to me several times after he received additional briefings about advances in the investigation said that as the U.S. analysts gained more insights into the MH-17 shoot-down from technical and other sources, they came to believe the attack was carried out by a rogue element of the Ukrainian military with ties to a hard-line Ukrainian oligarch. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts” and “The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case.”]

But that conclusion – if made public – would have dealt another blow to America’s already shaky credibility, which has never recovered from the false Iraq-WMD claims in 2002-03. A reversal also would embarrass Kerry, other senior U.S. officials and major Western news outlets, which had bought into the Russia-did-it narrative. Plus, the European Union might reconsider its decision to sanction Russia, a key part of U.S. policy in support of the Kiev regime.

Still, as the MH-17 mystery dragged on into 2015, I inquired about the possibility of an update from the DNI’s office. But a spokeswoman told me that no update would be provided because the U.S. government did not want to say anything to prejudice the ongoing investigation. In response, I noted that Kerry and the DNI had already done that by immediately pointing the inquiry in the direction of blaming Russia and the rebels.

But there was another purpose in staying mum. By refusing to say anything to contradict the initial rush to judgment, the Obama administration could let Western mainstream journalists and “citizen investigators” on the Internet keep Russia pinned down with more speculation about its guilt in the MH-17 shoot-down.

So, silence became the better part of candor. After all, pretty much everyone in the West had judged Russia and Putin guilty. So, why shake that up?

The Ukrainian Buks

Yet, what has become clear after the initial splurge of U.S. blame-casting is that U.S. intelligence lacked key evidence to support Kerry’s hasty judgments. Despite intensive overhead surveillance of eastern Ukraine in summer 2014, U.S. and other Western intelligence services could find no evidence that Russia had ever given a Buk system to the rebels or introduced one into the area.

Satellite intelligence – reviewed both before and after the shoot-down – only detected Ukrainian Buk missile systems in the conflict zone. One could infer this finding from the fact that the DNI on July 22, 2014, did not allege that Buks were among the weapons systems that Russia had provided. If Russian-supplied Buks had been spotted – and the batteries of four 16-foot-long missiles hauled around by trucks are hard to miss – their presence surely would have been noted.

But one doesn’t need to infer this lack of evidence. It was spelled out in a little-noticed report by the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) that was made public last October when the Dutch Safety Board issued its findings on the causes of the doomed MH-17 flight. (Since the flight had originated in Amsterdam and carried many Dutch passengers, Netherlands took a lead role in the investigation.)

Dutch intelligence, which as part of NATO would have access to sensitive overhead surveillance and other relevant data, reported that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine – capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet – belonged to the Ukrainian government.

MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. MIVD said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country.”

But the intelligence agency added that the rebels lacked that capacity:

“Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude.”

MIVD noted that on June 29, 2014, “the Separatists captured a Ukrainian armed forces military base in Donetsk [where] there were Buk missile systems,” a fact that was reported in the press before the crash and attracted MIVD’s attention.

“During the course of July, several reliable sources indicated that the systems that were at the military base were not operational,” MIVD said. “Therefore, they could not be used by the Separatists.”

In other words, it is fair to say – based on the affirmative comments from MIVD and the omissions from the U.S. DNI’s “Government Assessment” – that the Western powers had no evidence that the ethnic Russian rebels or their Russian allies had operational Buk missiles in eastern Ukraine, but Ukraine did.

It also would have made sense that Ukraine would be moving additional anti-aircraft systems close to the border because of a feared Russian invasion as the Ukrainian military pressed its “anti-terrorism operation” against ethnic Russians fighters. They were resisting the U.S.-backed coup of Feb. 22, 2014, which had ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in the east.

According to the Dutch Safety Board report, issued last October, a Ukrainian warplane had been shot down by a suspected air-to-air missile (presumably from a Russian fighter) on July 16, 2014, meaning that Ukrainian defenses were probably on high alert. The Russian military also claimed that Ukraine had activated a radar system that is used to guide Buk missiles.

Gunning for Putin?

I was told by the intelligence source that U.S. analysts looked seriously at the possibility that the intended target was President Putin’s official plane returning from a state visit to South America. His aircraft and MH-17 had similar red-white-and-blue markings, but Putin took a more northerly route and arrived safely in Moscow.

Other possible scenarios were that a poorly trained and undisciplined Ukrainian squad mistook MH-17 for a Russian plane that had penetrated Ukrainian airspace or that the attack was willful provocation designed to be blamed on the Russians.

Whoever the culprits and whatever their motive, one point that should not have remained in doubt was where the missile launch occurred. Remember that just three days after the crash, Secretary Kerry had said U.S. intelligence detected the launch and “We know where it came from.”

But last October, the Dutch Safety Board still hadn’t pinned down anything like a precise location. The report could only place the launch site within a 320-square-kilometer area in eastern Ukraine, covering territory then controlled by both Ukrainian and rebel forces. (The safety board did not seek to identify which side fired the fateful missile).

By contrast, Almaz-Antey, the Russian arms manufacturer of the Buk systems, conducted its own experiments to determine the likely firing location and placed it in a much smaller area near the village of Zaroshchenskoye, about 20 kilometers west of the Dutch Safety Board’s zone and in an area under Ukrainian government control.

So, with the firing location a key point in dispute, why would the U.S. government withhold from a NATO ally (and investigators into a major airline disaster) the launch point for the missile? Presumably, if the Obama administration had solid evidence showing that the launch came from rebel territory, which was Kerry’s insinuation, U.S. officials would have been only too happy to provide the data.

A reasonable conclusion from the failure to share this information with the Dutch investigators is that the data does not support the preferred U.S. government narrative. If there’s a different explanation for the silence, the Obama administration has failed to provide it.

Amid the curious U.S. silence, the most significant public finding by Western intelligence is that the only powerful and operational anti-aircraft-missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, belonged to the Ukrainian military.

Nevertheless, the mainstream “conventional wisdom” remains that either the ethnic Russian rebels or the Russians themselves shot down MH-17 and have sought to cover up their guilt.

Some of this certainty comes from the simpleminded game of repeating that Buk missiles are “Russian-made,” which is true but irrelevant to the issue of who fired the missiles, since the Ukrainian military possesses Russian-made Buks.

But much of this “group think” can be credited to the speed with which the Obama administration got its narrative out immediately citing dubious “social media” and exploiting the West’s disdain toward Russian President Putin. He was a ready-made villain for the story.

Lying First

A similar case occurred in 1983 when Korean Airlines Flight 007 penetrated deeply into Soviet territory and was pursued by a Soviet fighter that – after issuing warnings that were ignored – shot the plane down believing it was an enemy military aircraft. Though the Soviets quickly realized they had made a terrible mistake, the Reagan administration wanted to use the incident to paint the “evil empire” in the evilest of tones.

So, Reagan’s propagandists edited the ground-control intercepts to make it appear that the Soviets had committed willful murder, a theme that was presented to the United Nations and was gullibly lapped up by the mainstream U.S. news media.

The fuller story only came out in 1995 with a book entitled Warriors of Disinformation by Alvin A. Snyder, who had been director of the U.S. Information Agency’s television and film division. He described how the tapes were edited “to heap as much abuse on the Soviet Union as possible.”

In a boastful but frank description of the successful disinformation campaign, Snyder noted that “the American media swallowed the U.S. government line without reservation. Said the venerable Ted Koppel on the ABC News ‘Nightline’ program: ‘This has been one of those occasions when there is very little difference between what is churned out by the U.S. government propaganda organs and by the commercial broadcasting networks.’”

Snyder concluded, “The moral of the story is that all governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.”

In the case of MH-17, however, the falsehoods and deceptions are not simply some spy-vs.-spy propaganda game of gotcha, but rather obstruction of justice in a mass murder investigation. Whatever evidence the Obama administration has, it should have long since been made available to the investigators, but – so far – the official Dutch reports have indicated no such assistance.

While the U.S. government maintains its official silence, the Russian manufacturer has tried to provide details about the functioning of various generations of Buks and challenged the conclusion from the Dutch Safety Board of precisely which model likely brought down MH-17. The Dutch Safety Board cited a 9M38M1 missile using a 9N314M warhead that dispersed “butterfly or bow-tie” fragments that ripped through MH-17’s fuselage.

But Almaz-Antey reported that only older warheads and missiles of the 9M38 type have that signature. “The 9M38M1 missile has no H-shaped striking elements,” Almaz-Antey executive Yan Novikov said. According to the manufacturer, the Russian army had phased 9M38 missiles out years ago, but they remained part of Ukraine’s arsenal.

On Jan. 14, the Russian aviation agency issued its own report critical of the Dutch Safety Board’s understanding of the Buk models, saying that “the strike elements” in the 9N314M warhead did not match the composition of what was recovered from MH-17. Yet, the Dutch-led criminal investigation, which is being partly run by the Ukrainian government, has shown little interest in the Russian information.

‘Citizen Journalists’

The inquiry has been much more welcoming of leads from Bellingcat, a group of “citizen journalists” led by British blogger Eliot Higgins.

Despite having made significant mistakes in an earlier investigation of the Syria-sarin case in 2013 – including misstating the range of suspect missiles – Higgins has been treated as something of a savant on the MH-17 case, basing his analysis on photographs that popped up the Internet purportedly showing a Buk missile system heading eastward from Donetsk shortly before MH-17 was shot down.

Although one of the first lessons anyone learns about the Internet is to be cautious about what you find there, Higgins and Bellingcat relied on the images to conclude that this battery was dispatched from Russia under the command of Russian forces. The bloggers went so far as to send a list of Russian soldiers’ names as suspects to the MH-17 criminal investigators.

There are, of course, problems with this sort of theorizing. First, it assumes that the photos on the Internet are genuine and not cleverly photo-shopped fakes. The Internet can be a devil’s playground for both amateur and professional disinformationists.

But even assuming that the photos are real, there is the question of why – if this cumbersome weapons system was lumbering around eastern Ukraine apparently for weeks – did Western intelligence services not detect it from overhead surveillance either before or after the shoot-down? From Bellingcat’s Internet photos, it appears there was no effort to conceal the Buk system, which curiously was headed eastward toward Russia, not westward from Russia.

 Higgins also directed an Australian TV film crew to the supposed site in Luhansk where the Buk battery, minus one missile, supposedly made its getaway back into Russia. However, the location that the Australian crew filmed clearly was the wrong place. None of the landmarks matched up, but this journalistic fraud did nothing to diminish Bellingcat’s sterling reputation with mainstream Western news outlets which routinely repeat the group’s allegations. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Reckless Stand-upper on MH-17.”]

It turns out that it is an excellent business model for “citizen” bloggers to find “evidence” on the Internet to reinforce whatever the U.S. government’s propagandists are claiming. Since the U.S. government’s credibility is shaky at best, young hip Internet readers are more inclined to trust what they hear from bloggers – and when the bloggers echo what Washington claims, the mainstream media and well-funded think tanks will join in the applause.

Latest Speculation

Earlier this month, Bellingcat’s speculation identifying Russian soldiers as MH-17 suspects based on their assignment to a Buk battery was splashed across the international press, including Dutch television, London’s Telegraph and the British Guardian. The U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty headlined its story, “Russian Soldiers Said Involved in Downing of MH17 Airliner,” complete with photos of Russian soldiers with their eyes blacked out, courtesy of Bellingcat.

“The Britain-based Bellingcat group said it had identified up to 100 Russian soldiers who may have knowledge of the movements of the Buk missile launcher that destroyed the Boeing 777 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 on board,” RFE/RL reported, citing a quote that Higgins gave to the Telegraph: “We have the names and photos of the soldiers in the June convoy who traveled with the MH17 Buk, their commanders, their commanders’ commanders, etc.”

Higgins told Dutch TV channel NOS that Belligcat believed that at least 20 soldiers in an air-defense unit based in Kursk “probably” either fired the missile or know who fired it.

The Dutch-led prosecution team, which collaborates with the Ukrainian government and nations that suffered large numbers of deaths from the crash including Australia and Malaysia, welcomed the Bellingcat information and promised to “seriously study it.”

Not that the prosecution team has asked or appears interested, but one could also give the sleuths a list of Americans who almost certainly have knowledge about who fired the missile and from exactly where: CIA Director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper, Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama.

Any one of those officials could end the strange silence that has enveloped the U.S. government’s knowledge about the MH-17 shoot-down since five days after the tragedy and – by doing so – perhaps they could finally bring some clarity and justice to this mystery.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

The key Australian founding myth was that no civilised people occupied this island-continent before British colonisation. From that piece of fiction the rights of more than 400 indigenous peoples, their ownership of land and their very existence could be ignored. They could be treated as if they did not exist.

Based on that central myth (eventually put into a legal doctrine called ‘terra nullius’) grew an ugly garden of racist practice: the ethnic-cleansing of Australia’s fertile river valleys; the colonisation and enslavement of the Pacific Islands peoples; the ‘White Australia Policy’; racialised immigration; engagement in a string of overseas imperial wars; and unique forms of physical and cultural genocide, which included concentration camps and stealing indigenous children from their families.

That colonial mentality has wider implications, and taints Australian approaches to conflict in Syria and the Middle East, based as they often are on an underlying assumption that Syrian and other Middle Eastern people do not exist, except perhaps as victims or refugees. Many who knew very little about Syria moved rapidly to condemn and attack the Styria Government, or cheer on unknown ‘revolutionaries’, as urged by Washington. No need was seen to speak with, recognise or respect the representatives and institutions of the Syrian people. Talking with Syrians or visiting Syria was effectively banned.

‘Racism’ is a term probably over-used, to include simple individual prejudice and ignorance. That trivialises the word. Yet all deep racial legacies stem from this colonial mentality, which denies the existence of other peoples while seeking to dominate, dispossess and displace them. This denial requires ideologies of systematic exclusion and dehumanisation.

The recent Australian Government approach combines these racial assumptions with a long standing, subordinate collaboration with the big power. And it is a sad historical fact that collaborators often try too hard to impress. They can sound more extreme than their masters, anxious to demonstrate their loyalty yet also keen to prove to the world they have something other than sycophancy to contribute.

So it is with Canberra’s Middle East policy. In the same week (in November 2015) that Foreign Minister Julie Bishop put on a brave face at Australia’s exclusion from the Vienna talks on Syria, her government presented the absurd claim that Australia was ‘the second largest international contributor’ to the military campaign ‘against ISIS’ in Iraq and Syria. Notice that Australia has coordinated precisely nothing with Syria. Bishop is referring to her commitments to Washington.

Australia’s dependent foreign relations are conditioned by its racialist history. To back Washington’s ‘regime change’ line – from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria – Canberra has pretended that these other peoples do not exist, or at least that they have no voice, no organisation and no representatives.

Even reading the Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian and Russian media on the Middle East is disdained, if not prohibited, because those nations are either not recognised or are somehow disqualified. This is deep racism, and the peculiar dilemma of a sub-imperial power with an unresolved colonial history. The narratives of others must be authorised and mediated by the great power.

Minister Bishop has not been the greatest authority on the Middle East region. In late 2012 – while appropriately criticising her Labor predecessor, Senator Bob Carr, over his outrageous call for the assassination of the Syrian President – she exposed her ignorance by claiming that al Qaeda and Lebanon’s Hezbollah were both fighting the Syrian Government (Bishop 2012). In fact, Hezbollah has always been a close ally of secular Syria.

Nevertheless, a role was seen for Australia in pretending to reshape Syria. Ignorance has never been a barrier to colonial-style intervention. The new conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, while certainly more articulate than his predecessor Tony Abbott, set out on that difficult tightrope all sycophants have to walk. His initial message, as reported by Mark Kenny in the Sydney Morning Herald, was that ‘Mr Turnbull’s position is in lock-step with the Obama White House’ (Kenny 2015).

On the other hand, and on the same day, according to Philip Coorey of the Australian Financial Review, Australia ‘has had a different starting point to the US’ (Coorey 2015). The difference, supposedly, is ‘pragmatism and compromise’. The context was a western retreat from the imperious demand that ‘Assad must go’, though it is not clear what Australia contributed to this. In any case, Canberra was said to have been playing a ‘constructive role’.

This ‘distinct’ role seems to mean that – while both PM Turnbull and the very uncharismatic Labor leader Bill Shorten repeat Washington’s abusive mantras about Syria and President Assad – some form of ‘transitional’ power sharing may be possible. As though Canberra would have any say in the matter. Anyway, it was expected to say something.

This ‘poodle pie’ is a difficult dish to cook, but history tells us that extreme loyalty has been the main ingredient. Back in 1966 conservative PM Harold Holt coined the phrase ‘All the way with LBJ’, emphasising Canberra’s commitment to US President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s disastrous war in Vietnam, which would fail only after destroying the lives of three million Vietnamese people.

Forty years later the conservative Howard Government was Washington’s willing fool for a last minute manoeuvre to frustrate Cuba’s annual motion at the UN, to condemn the US economic blockade of the Caribbean island. These motions, consistent with international law, had always passed with overwhelming support. However, urged on by the US, Australia proposed a gratuitous amendment, critical of Cuba.

Cuba’s then Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque reacted by calling the Australian approach one of ‘pocket imperialism’ (imperialismo de bolsillo). He lashed Canberra for its support for the US torture camp at Guantanamo, declaring that Canberra, which had submitted its Aboriginal population to ‘a real apartheid-like regime, had no moral authority to criticise Cuba’ (Prensa Latina 2006). The proposed amendment failed and Australia voted with Cuba. It was a pointless intervention, only carried out to impress Washington. It was humiliating too because, just a few years later, Canberra felt obliged to develop a foreign aid partnership with Cuba, which by then had become the major medical trainer in the pacific islands.

This Australian sycophancy has been bipartisan. In 2010 Labor PM Julia Gillard rejected calls for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. ‘Australia will not abandon Afghanistan’, she said, in a speech where her voice was described as ‘shaking with emotion’. She expected Australia’s role in the occupation to continue ‘through this decade at least’. The following year President Obama began his ‘drawdown’ of US troops from a conflict he knew the US could not win. Gillard’s emotional display in favour of endless occupation was contrived and absurd.

In the current war, seeking overthrow of the Government of Syria by use of proxy Islamist militias, Canberra has been keen to play the role expected of it; but what is the correct line? The idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’ is virtually dead, having been replaced by a new ‘war on terror’. The problem here is that all the major supporters of the sectarian terror groups are the closest allies of Washington: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel (see Anderson 2015).

One thing that makes Australia’s colonial-style approach to Syria distinct has been the participation of many on the ‘left’ and in academia. Somehow the mission of ‘saving’ an unknown foreign people excites liberals enough to join forces with the more overt imperialists. This has echoes of the ‘civilising missions’ of 19^th century colonialism. A similar racial contempt can be seen across a range of ignorant but highly opinionated Australians, who happen to share most of the US State Department’s ‘talking points’ on the target nation.

For example Corey Oakley, writing in Red Flag (9 June 2015), the paper of the small Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative, claimed there were “clear signs of coordination between ISIS and the [Syrian] regime”. This was repetition of a Washington-generated myth, created to maintain an artificial distinction between the ‘moderate’ and extremist terrorist groups attacking Syria. A few days earlier the US Government had insisted that “ISIS advances on Aleppo [were] aided by Assad” (Guardian 2 June 2015). In fact, the US and its allies sponsor every single terrorist group in Syria and most of the victims of ISIS and the others are Syrian soldiers and pro-government civilians (Anderson 2015).

Oakley goes on to criticise the US for not providing arms to “rebel groups” then praises Turkey and the Saudis for “finally” deciding to do so, facilitating the jihadist invasion and ethnic cleansing in north Syria. This Jaysh al Fateh (‘Army of Conquest’) coalition was led by the al Qaeda groups Ahrar al Sham andJabhat al Nusra. In this way a small western ‘left’ group lent support to the most vicious and backward reactionaries, proxies for the big power.

Alex Chklovski in Red Flag (13 October 2015) backs another of Washington’s fictions, that the Syrian Government is founded on “narrow sectarian divisions”, echoing the ‘Alawite regime’ claims advanced by the Gulf Monarchies, Israel and Washington, because President Assad is from an Alawite family.

In fact, Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood back in 2011 called for a holy war on Syria precisely because it was a “secular regime”. The insurrectionists would have to ensure that “the revolution will be pure Islamic” (Al-Shaqfa 2011). That view has been shared by all major anti-government armed groups in Syria, as US intelligence privately observed in 2012: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq = the Islamic State in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria”. The eventual plan to create a “Salafist principality” in Eastern Syria was “exactly” what Washington and its allies wanted, US intelligence admitted (DIA 2012).

Similarly, ‘Solidarity’ member Mark Goudkamp (21 May 2015) celebrates the “renewed victories for the insurgency” which came from this ‘Army of Conquest’. As thousands of sectarian fanatics from dozens of countries poured into Syria from Turkey, funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and armed with US weapons, Goudkamp repeated Washington’s false claims that the Syrian Government was worse than ISIS and had been “responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths”. There is no source for this claim, but it does mimic the Washington line. This ‘left’ rhetoric, denying the existence of a Syrian nation and celebrating extreme reactionaries as ‘revolutionaries’, helps the US smokescreen for its dirty war. Those who might otherwise have opposed this dirty war either made fools of themselves or were lulled into silence.

Pretentious interventions also come from academia. Tom Switzer of Sydney University’s U.S. Studies Centre (established with government money to counter ‘anti-Americanism’ in Australia, in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq) joins US colleagues with a proposal that both Syria and Iraq be balkanised, divided into tiny sectarian statelets. ‘Iraq and Syria as we have known them are gone. Iraq is not one people, but rather three peoples … Syria is also three peoples’, he claims (Switzer 2016). That idea has support from Tel Aviv, as it would tend to ‘normalise’ the apartheid state of Israel in a region thoroughly partitioned on sectarian lines. The idea has long been a ‘Plan B’ for Washington in both Syria and Iraq, in case they cannot tame unruly governments in Baghdad and Damascus.

The partition idea was detailed six months earlier by the US Brookings Institute (O’Hanlon 2015), which brazenly called for Washington to break its ‘Syria problem’ into ‘a number of localised components … envisioning ultimately a more confederal Syria made up of autonomous zones rather than being ruled by a strong central government’ (O’Hanlon 2015: 3). The Brookings report urges an initial two autonomous zones or ‘safe zones’ next to the borders of Jordan and Turkey, to allow ‘secure transportation lines for humanitarian as well as military supplies’.

All this, of course, would be in complete violation of international law, and only conceivable if the Syrian nation-state were destroyed and on its knees. Despite Washington’s best efforts, that is not the case. These academic ideas only have currency because ‘divide and rule’ has always suited the interests of big powers, intent on regional domination.

What is common to these pseudo-leftist and academic narratives, apart from their repetition of Washington’s talking points, is a deep contempt for Syrian people. None of the above authors pay attention to national organisations or representatives. The Syrian and Iraqi nation-states effectively do not exist. These colonial-style assertions rely almost entirely on western sources, consistent with the themes of colonial racism: refusing to listen to others’ voices, refusing to respect their organisations, in short refusing to recognise that other peoples exist.

Despite these colonial fantasies of ‘revolution’ and partition, the recent Vienna talks reaffirmed the important principle that only the Syrian people can decide their political leadership, and that Syria cannot be dismembered. Reassertion of these principles comes as Damascus finds itself in a much stronger military position, after Russian air power came to support a strong ground force led by the Syrian Arab Army and including local and neighbouring militia, the latter from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. The broader US plan is failing and, sooner rather than later, will be looking for some sort of face-saving exit.

Enter the Australian initiative of late 2015, which suggested that Syria, the one country in the region with a genuinely pluralist constitution, should abandon that in favour of the Lebanese ‘confessional’ model. This new constitution, according to PM Turnbull, was needed because Syria’s Sunni Muslims have been ‘disenfranchised’. He claims that the base of ISIS ‘is a Sunni population that has felt disenfranchised or depressed in Syria … [and has also felt] left out of the Shi’ite government [sic] in Iraq’. The implication is that a Lebanese-like system, where everyone must identify with a particular religious community, would somehow destroy the basis for sectarian terrorism. The sectarian history of Lebanon gives the lie to that.

This convoluted proposal is mixed with the proviso that it is the Syrians who must decide and that ‘dictating terms from foreign capitals is unlikely to be successful’. Quite so. But Australian proposals for a new constitution, prepared with zero Syrian input, are inconsistent with recognition of the right of the Syrian people to self-determination. Mr Turnbull seems to not recognise that Syrians have been just as opposed to the idea of a religious or sectarian state as would be most Australians.

US intelligence observed this fact back in 1982, after the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood insurrection at Hama. In a report of May that year, the US DIA noted ‘total casualties for the Hama incident probably number about 2,000. This includes an estimated 300 to 400 members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s elite ‘Secret Apparatus’ (DIA 1982: 7). The Brotherhood, in their typical way, would later inflate this to ‘40 thousand civilians’. Although the US had backed the insurrection, through their agents the Saudis, Saddam Hussein, the King of Jordan and others, US intelligence dryly concluded: ‘the Syrians are pragmatists who do not want a Muslim Brotherhood government’ (DIA 1982: vii). That last observation was quite right.

It is just as foolish to say that Sunnis Muslims are ‘disenfranchised’ in Syria as it is to say that Protestant Christians are disenfranchised in Australia, because we have had two successive Catholic Prime Ministers (Turnbull is a convert). All Syrians are full citizens, regardless of their religion and, as it happens, most ministers in the Syrian Cabinet are from Sunni Muslim families. It is equally foolish to call the Baghdad Government a ‘Shi’ite Government’, simply because most of the population and most MPs are from Shi’ia families.

Demanding that Arab and Muslim peoples be forced back into a sectarian box is old school racist ideology, used many times in the colonies, repeated by the sectarians and adopted by the big powers who see their own advantage in pushing sectarian division. The Australian PM references this idea to what he calls ‘Sunni Arab states’. That is Washington’s euphemism for the despotic Gulf monarchies, the least legitimate of all governments and the principal financiers of sectarian terrorism.

A few weeks after this ‘Turnbull initiative’ a UN Security Council resolution made it irrelevant. The UNSC called for an end to the Syrian conflict, demanding that the Syrian people decide their government, that terrorist groups be excluded from any truce and that a ‘unity’ government be formed. These principles require a Syrian vote on any possible constitutional change. However Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signalled his country’s support for Syria keeping its “united multi-confessional” national constitution. Syria has voted several times on this constitution and has maintained the most progressive, pluralist constitution in the region. Lavrov, who has constantly consulted with Syria, appreciates that fact; Turnbull does not.

Subsequently the Australian government set a limit to its military commitments (training Iraqis and air campaign assistance) to the US coalition but said it would consider ‘providing humanitarian support for Syria and Iraq … in consultation with our coalition partners’ (Doran 2016). In typical colonial manner, it had not consulted Syria on ‘humanitarian support’.

The good news is that Australia’s racist interventions and weak attempts to join in the subjugation of Syria will have little influence. Iraq has decided to join with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia to defeat the western backed proxy armies: ISIS, Nusra, the Islamic Front, Ahrar al Sham and the rest.

That will mark the beginning of the end for Washington’s bloody spree of ‘regime change’ across the region, aiming at a US-led ‘New Middle East’. How much more Canberra decides to poison its relations with Syria and its neighbours, to maintain most favoured status with Washington, remains to be seen.

It is a particularly Australian dilemma to have a culture pervaded by big power collaboration and colonial racism: looking for pretexts to intervene, refusing to listen to the other people’s voices, refusing to respect their organisations, even refusing to recognise that they exist. That racism goes well beyond government and overtly imperial sub-culture, into servile academia and imperious left-liberal ideologies.

We have been deceived by the dirty war on Syria, reverting to our worst traditions of intervention, racial prejudice and poor reflection on our own history. Our main hope seems to be restoring some decent understandings through our better traditions: the use of reason, ethical principle and the search for independent evidence.

Tim Anderson’s book ‘The Dirty War on Syria’ will be published online by Global Research (Canada) in January 2016.

References

AAP (2015) ‘Syria crisis: Turnbull, Shorten condemn Assad’, SBS, 19 November, online: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/11/19/turnbull-shorten-get-stuck-assad

Al-Shaqfa, Muhammad Riyad (2011) ‘Muslim Brotherhood Statement about the so-called ‘Syrian Revolution’’, General supervisor for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, statement of 28 March, online at: http://truthsyria.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/muslim-brotherhood-statement-about-the-so-called-syrian-revolution/

Anderson, Tim (2015) The Insidious Relationship between Washington and ISIS: The Evidence, Global Research, 3 September, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-relationship-between-washington-and-isis-the-evidence/5435405

Bishop, Julie (2012) ‘Syria on the brink’, Federal Member for Curtin, 6 December, online: http://www.juliebishop.com.au/syria-on-the-brink/

Chklovski, Alex (2015) ‘The left can oppose Russian intervention in in Syria without capitulating to our own rulers’, Red Flag, 13 October, online: https://redflag.org.au/article/left-can-oppose-russian-intervention-syria-without-capitulating-our-own-rulers

Coorey, Phillip (2015) ‘Vladimir Putin could accept Syria without Assad, Australia believes’, Australian Financial Review, 18 November, online: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/game-plan-to-destroy-islamic-state-20151118-gl1tbb

Coorey, Phillip (2015) ‘Malcolm Turnbull pushes US to accept deal on Assad’, Australian Financial Review, 19 November, online:http://www.afr.com/news/politics/malcolm-turnbull-pushes-us-to-accept-deal-on-assad-20151119-gl2tug

DIA (1982) ‘Syria: Muslim Brotherhood Pressure Intensifies’, Defence Intelligence Agency (USA), May, online:https://syria360.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dia-syria-muslimbrotherhoodpressureintensifies-2.pdf

DIA (2012) Intelligence Report ‘R 050839Z Aug 2012’ in Judicial Watch, Pgs. 287-293 (291) JW v DOD and State 14-812, 18 May, online: http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-287-293-291-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-2/

Doran, Matthew (2016) ‘Islamic State: Australia declines United States request to increase military commitment in Middle East’, ABC, 13 January, online: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-13/australia-declines-us-request-to-boost-fight-in-middle-east/7087174

Goudkamp, Mark (2015) ‘Syria between Assad’s and IS’s counter-revolution’, Solidarity.net.au, 21 May, online:http://www.solidarity.net.au/imperialism/syria-between-both-assads-and-iss-counter-revolution/

Grattan, Michelle (2010) ‘Gillard talks tough on war in Afghanistan’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October, online:http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-talks-tough-on-war-in-afghanistan-20101019-16sjh.html

Kenny, Mark (2015) ‘Malcolm Turnbull slaps down the military option in Syria, calls for compromise’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November, online: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbull-calls-for-practical-deal-in-syria-despite-terrorists-20151118-gl1yme.html

Oakley, Corey (2015) ‘Rebels on the march in Syria’, 9 June, online: https://redflag.org.au/article/rebels-march-syria

O’Hanlon, Michael (2015) ‘Deconstructing Syria: towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country’, Center for 21st century Security and Intelligence, Brookings, 23 June, online: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/06/23-syria-strategy-ohanlon

Prensa Latina (2006) ‘Contundente victoria de Cuba en la ONU. 183 naciones manifestaron su repudio al bloqueo de Estados Unidos, cifra récord en estas votaciones’, Estados Unidos vs Cuba, 8 November, online: http://estadosunidosvscuba.blogspot.com.au/2006/11/cuba-en-naciones-unidas.html

Switzer (2016) ‘Redrawing the map is the best way to fight Islamic State’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 January, online:http://www.smh.com.au/comment/redrawing-the-map-is-the-best-way-to-fight-islamic-state-20160104-glyqq6.html

 

In the article entitled, “Racial Identity Returns to American Politics,” “The New York Times” attempts to explain why the US working class is being drawn to racial and ethnic issues over economic ones (Wed, Jan. 6, 2016). 

However, the NYT casts doubt on any meaningful analysis by the second sentence, stating that this question

“has long bedeviled analysts on the left, troubled that people who would largely benefit from a more robust government seem so often to vote for right-leaning politicians …”

By the third paragraph, readers are told that the Republican primary is “evolving from one surprise to the next.” Yes, racial politics is always a surprise unless we explore how racism and economic exploitation are linked in American history.

The NYT gives us the familiar tropes, of course: voters “nostalgic for the country they lived in 50 years ago,” and working people fearing that social services go predominantly to Blacks. But we must move beyond this familiar ground so comforting to Wall Street if we expect to understand how racism is perpetuated by our political system.

One book that does this very well is “Sundown Towns: The Hidden Dimension of American Racism” by James W. Loewen. Describing the reasons that towns from Maine to California expelled their black populations beginning around 1890, Loewen cites the waves of immigration that brought so many ethnic groups to this country. The Democrats, the “White Man’s Party,” capitalized on immigrants’ desire to be labeled “white” by running candidates who attacked African Americans as lazy, untrustworthy, and sexually menacing. This period was also the time of the Gilded Age, and the concomitant rise of an extremely wealthy elite. Did both political parties attack African Americans to divert attention from the obscene gap between the wealthy and the working people of our country?

Most whites living in towns and suburbs across America do not know what a sundown town is. They take their ethnic homogeneity completely for granted, attributing it to economic differences and not to racist terror. But in the years following 1890, Blacks were run out of these same towns, their houses and all their belongings usually burned. Signs were then put on the highways, reminding travelers that no African American was allowed in town after the whistle blew at 6 pm. The last sundown law in the country was overturned in Stamford CT in the 1950’s. According to a recent Brookings Institute report, the Stamford stands out in another area as well. It has the worst ratio of any large metropolitan area in the country when it comes to the gap between highest and lowest wages paid.

Ronald Reagan’s use racism for political power is better understood than what went on during the Gilded Age. Millions of Americans were urged to think of “welfare queens” as Black women supposedly taking advantage of the system. Not so readily acknowledged, however, is how Reagan’s appeal to racist hatred masked the beginning of what is being called the “Second Gilded Age.” Wages began their decades long decline for all workers while Reagan was blaming Black people on welfare. Clinton continued this attack on African Americans by gutting welfare, and enlarging the “War on Crime,” that would end up incarcerating a whole generation of Black men. As real wages continued to fall, both political parties and the media scapegoated the nation’s poorest and most oppressed minority, people of color. White, middle class America was shown a steady stream of local TV news, with Black men on the run and our nation’s white police force in steady pursuit.

Michelle Alexander’s penetrating analysis of this system-wide racism, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” is a must read even for progressive thinkers. The systemic racism she details is much worse than anyone dared to think, with millions of Black lives sacrificed to political expediency as well as to corporate profit.

While our newspaper of record scratches its head about how racial identity got mixed up with politics, let us look closer at the relationship between the New Jim Crow and the Second Gilded Age. Sanders represents progressive efforts to  force the wealthy elite to share their often ill gotten wealth with the workers of this country.

Trump preaches racism, identifying various minorities that have destroyed the American Dream. Which candidate does our media, including the NYT cover more? And are we once again seeing the evils of racism perpetrated to protect the tiny minority of billionaires at the very top?

Fred Nagel, a veteran and political activist, has written for Z Magazine, Mondoweiss, and War Crimes Times (a publication of Veterans For Peace). He also hosts a show on Vassar College Radio, WVKR (classwars.org).

This article was first published by WhoWhatWhy

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, WhoWhatWhy presents — through a fascinating collection of pictures — a brief history of American racism, a look at the kind of hatred, atrocities, and soul-searing humiliation that spurred King into action. The life of Martin Luther King, Jr. was short.  He was born in 1929 into a racist, hate-filled society with entrenched bigotry enforced by uncivilized laws.But, like Mohandas Gandhi, who took back his country from the British, Martin Luther King forced change on the United States through his inspired use of nonviolent resistance.King had guts. Think of the courage it took for him, and for those who were with him, to work the front lines.

Martin Luther King, Jr.  Photo credit: LBJ Library / Wikimedia

 

As he explained in 1957 in the journal Christian Century:This is not a method for cowards; it does resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as is the person who uses violence…Nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness…This method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces…

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Nonviolent resistance avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love.Six years later, on August 28, 1963, he gave one of the greatest, most electrifying speeches ever delivered in America.

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This is how his rousing oration ended:I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:

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‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

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I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice

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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.I have a dream today.I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

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What he wanted seems so simple, so natural, and so heartbreakingly normal.One year later, on December 10, 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. At the age of 35, he was the youngest man ever to have received it. Can you think of anyone who deserved the Nobel Peace Prize more than he did?On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.Below we present a brief history, told in eloquent images, of what gave rise to Martin Luther King’s crusade and kindled his dream of a better life for everyone.

Freedmen Voting in New Orleans, 1867  Picture not credited..From Harper’s Weekly 1872. Photo credit: The New York Public Library Digital Collections.White Citizens League Barring Black Voters  From Harper’s Weekly, October 31, 1874..The Two Platforms. The Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln..“Of Course He Wants to Vote the Democratic Ticket,” Harper’s Weekly, 1876.Jim Crow Literacy Law“Eddikashun qualifukashun. The Black man orter be eddikated afore he kin vote with US Wites, signed Mr. Solid South.” Harper’s Weekly, January 18, 1879.Illustration by Merton Witten, 1937.Linocut by Elizabeth Catlett, 1946.Vote Against Supporters of Lynching Industry, 1922.Anti-Lynching Flyer circulated around 1922..No Dogs, Negros, Mexicans. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born the same year..Public Swimming Pool, White Only, 1931.Martin Luther King, Jr., at age 7 in 1936, the year Jesse Owens won Olympic gold..Jesse Owens, Olympic Gold Medalist, 1936.Separate and unequal, even the water fountains..“We Cater to White Trade Only,” 1938, Lancaster, Ohio  (NOTE:  Lancaster, Ohio, is in the North.).Rest Rooms, White Only.“Rex Billiard Hall for Colored,” Memphis, Tennessee, 1939.Rex Theatre for Colored People.Colored Only Entrance to a Movie Theater, Belzoni, Mississippi, 1939.Memphis, Tennessee, 1939.Colored Waiting Room, Durham, North Carolina, 1940.Section for “Colored Passengers” From America’s Black Holocaust Museum.We Wash for White People Only.Help Wanted. White Only..“We Want White Tenants Only in Our White Community.”  Detroit, 1940.Message from the Ku Klux Klan.Segregation in 1950.The resistance to integration continues..The power of ugliness..A police dog attacks a demonstrator in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963..“I am a man.”.Kill her! Kill her!On September 4, 1957, Elizabeth Eckford, age 15, and eight other African American students—known as the Little Rock Nine—tried to enter a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Elizabeth was supposed to join the others so they could go to school together, but she didn’t get the message. So she went on alone. This is what happened.Elizabeth approaches the guards. .“When I arrived the school, I went up to a guard. But the National Guard didn’t allow me to enter the school. I didn’t know what to do. I walked until I was right in front of the path to the front door.”..“The crowd was quiet. They were waiting to see what was going to happen. When I tried to enter, they raised their bayonets. They glared at me and I was very frightened. I turned around but the crowd came to me. They moved closer and closer. They started to revile, and blame me. They were shouting, ‘Kill her! Kill her!’”.“I tried to see a friendly face, someone who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she frowned to me. I turned back to the guards but their faces told me I wouldn’t get any help from them. It was hell…”..“Then I looked down the block and saw a bench at the bus stop. I don’t know why the bench seemed a safe place to me, but I started walking toward it. I tried to close my mind to what they were shouting and kept saying to myself ‘If I get there, I can be safe’…”.The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, 1956“. . . to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from difficulties, embarrassments, and to make his trips more enjoyable.”Esso, one of the few gas companies that would sell franchises to black entrepreneurs during that period, was a sponsor of the Negro Green Book and gave away copies at some of its stations. Esso’s Special Representative Wendell Alston wrote in an introduction to the 1949 edition, “The Negro travelers’ inconveniences are many and they are increasing because today so many more are traveling individually and in groups. The GREEN BOOK with its list of hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barber shops and various other services can most certainly help solve your travel problems.”.Woolworth Sit-In, 1960.New Orleans, 1963  Photo by John Kouns.“Go Home Niggers”  Response to School Integration, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963.Photo by John Kouns..March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. Here, King gave his “I have a Dream” speech.  Photo by Paul Schutzer..Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights, 1965  Photo by James Karales.White Protesters View the Selma March, 1965. Photo by John Kouns.KKK Sign on Highway to Selma, Alabama, 1965. Photo by John Kouns. Is the Klan still welcome in 2015?.Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow” (2010)Related front page panorama photo credit: Martin Luther King, Jr. quote Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Emijrp / Wikimedia